As many of you have likely seen, over the weekend The New York Times and Siena released a poll showing that President Biden is running behind Donald Trump in all the big swing states with the exception of Wisconsin. Meanwhile a “generic Democrat” is polling ahead of Trump basically everywhere. Not surprisingly this has again released flurries of questions about whether Biden should be running at all or whether he should be replaced with another candidate younger and with less baggage. TPM Reader LD wrote in to ask, “Is TPM’s position still that we need to sit down and shut up if we have doubts about Biden’s appeal to the coalition necessary to win?”
Let me first respond to LD’s grievancy gripe. The dynamics of the online world make us all reflexively assume the posture of fed up little guy in a battle with the elites. But the truth is that I never said any such thing. (By the way, LD and I talked it over and now I think we’re back to being best pals.) What I said is that I don’t think anyone but Joe Biden will be the nominee and I don’t think we have any realistic way to change that. (Just why I think that you can see in the earlier posts.) So I’m focused on getting this guy reelected rather than imagining some alternative, usually fantastical scenario. As I told LD in my initial, slightly volcanic response, by all means go out and advocate for Biden to step aside. I’ll be here in what I take to be the real world trying to get him reelected. I don’t control people. I certainly don’t control Biden. This is just my interpretation of the situation before us.
But this isn’t the whole story.
The first thing to remember is that there is no generic Democrat. There are specific people with their own drawbacks, their own lack of experience in a national campaign. It’s hard to find out how they play on the big stage. How they poll today isn’t really the issue. It’s what they’d look like next October after being bruised up in a national campaign. Set aside all the shock and turbulence of a de facto presidential resignation and an out-of-the-blue primary cycle contest. I’m not sure any of the current 5 or 6 possible contenders would do better than Biden is now. One or more could do better. But I’m not confident of it. That informs how I engage in the hypothetical of whether it would be preferable for Biden not to run, setting aside the extreme unlikelihood of that happening.
The second point is that the entire news environment today is one focused on Joe Biden — his record with the economy, jobs, inflation, with Ukraine, with Israel and Gaza. Clearly the Democratic coalition and the country generally looks at him and finds him wanting. Part of that is clearly his age or at least generalized misgivings which are collected together in a feeling that he’s too old. But that’s not what a general election campaign news environment looks like. It’s focused on a binary choice — two possible presidents (even if there are more than two voting options) both of whom we know a fair amount about. I think it is highly likely that that news environment will be a significant help to Joe Biden.
In a binary choice, quite a lot of these straying Democrats won’t want to vote for Donald Trump or not vote at all. But that’s not the end of the conversation either. What is absolutely true is that the Israel-Hamas war is wreaking havoc on the Democratic electoral coalition. It’s not only between Jews and Arabs and Muslims in the US. It’s also between the old and the young. Whether that persists or fades in the intensity of a presidential campaign is something I wish I knew.
The poll that really got my attention wasn’t this Times poll it was a poll from last week from Quinnipiac. That poll showed Biden essentially tied with Trump (Biden +1) in a head to head race, in line with many recent polls. But Quinnipiac tried adding Robert Kennedy and Cornell West to the mix. In a three way race with Kennedy it was Biden 39%, Trump 36% and Kennedy 22%. Polls a year off always greatly over-estimate the pull of a third party candidate. But, Holy Crap!, 22% is totally off the charts. And he seems to be marginally helping Biden. Add West and you get Biden 36%, Trump 35%, Kennedy 19% and West 6%. Again, third party candidates never hold these high numbers in the final stretch of a national campaign. But they virtually never start this high either.
It’s worth noting that on balance, this upended version of the race seems to hurt Trump slightly more than Biden. But that’s not my takeaway. It’s rather that two way polls may simply be misleading altogether about this cycle. It may be a far more electorally chaotic contest than we’re envisioning and I’m not even sure which candidate that helps. My assumption still remains that the heat of a general election will focus voters minds on the fact that while there may be more than two candidates to vote for, there are only two who can actually get elected. That tends to push third and fourth party challengers down into the low single digits at best. But these numbers are starting far higher than anything we’ve seen for at least a generation.
The simple reality, which we should all know from life generally, is that even though things look scary, it does not follow that there’s an easy or sure way to make them less scary. Indeed, fear often drives decisions which are either unwise or self-defeating. If you’re interested, I remain basically unchanged in how I see all of this. That’s not pollyannish. It’s a very tough and sobering situation. Because the stakes are immense.