It may be hard to remember or even believe at this point, but Biden never trailed Trump in 2020 aggregate polling. The closest that race ever got was on April 12, just after Bernie dropped out, when Biden led by 3.4%. On the eve of the election, Biden was up 8.4% in the polls. This translated to an actual popular vote margin of 4.4%, almost a 50% discount, or 4-point Trump swing, depending on how you process it. And of course the actual election hinged on an even smaller margin in a handful of electoral swing states: Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Since the debate, Biden has gone from down 0.1% to down 1.6%. He’s declining in every poll. His unfavorability splits are a whopping -19.4%, a staggering drop of 42.4 points from his +23% just after inauguration. For context, Trump was -8% on election day 2020 and only exceeded Biden after January 6th (when most elected Republicans publicly abandoned him). Even then, Trump’s unfavorability peaked at -20%, within 6/10ths of a point of Biden’s current standing.
Again, Biden is comparably unpopular today to Trump the week after January 6th.
It’s also worth remembering that Trump never led the 2016 polls either for an election that he won. He did get within 0.8% of HRC on July 30, a week after the close of the Republican Convention. On the eve of the election, he was down 3.6%, but only lost that popular vote by 2.1% en route to securing Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and the White House.
Again, Trump is up 1.6% in the polls at present and gaining steam.
Trump currently runs at -11.4% unfavorability (+8 on Biden), but also has yet to experience the inevitable energizing boost of choosing a VP candidate, who as things stand today will be the only new face not involved in the 2020 election. He might pick the equivalent of Sarah Palin, but he’s far more likely to pick someone like Marco Rubio, a mainstreamer who will energize mainline Republicans and convince them that Trump can be tamed and is worth voting for.
Whatever you think of Joe Biden, whatever you believe about him as a person or a historical figure or a fighter or a comeback kid, whether you think he’s trustworthy or inevitable or the best of a bad situation, he cannot win the 2024 presidential election. You may have serious doubts about an alternative, about chaos that could ensue from going to an alternative, about uncertainty and ambiguity. But if you want Democrats to have literally any chance of beating Donald Trump in November, Joe Biden has to be removed from the ticket.
It would be lovely if Joe Biden tottered out to the White House lawn tomorrow and gave the most dignified and memorable speech of his life, standing aside for the next generation, reminding us that he was one of the youngest Senators in 1972 (yes, 52 years ago, he was a Senator, when Kamala Harris was 8 years old) but the time had come to give someone else a shot. He could give everyone something to truly celebrate this holiday and his popularity would double overnight. What a great gift to this country he supposedly loves. He could turn around and walk into his legacy and a long overdue rest.
But if he doesn’t do that — and really, he’s a profoundly privileged 81-year-old white man who has spend five and a half decades in government with increasing power, one who thinks that exaggerating his golf handicap is an important use of the national stage — that cannot be the reason that Trump is re-elected. The more you believe that the stakes are high or this election matters, the more important it is to ensure that Joe Biden is replaced on the ticket and soon. Every day that passes, he becomes more frail and vulnerable. There are four long months till November in which he could fall or fall ill, say something even more memorably embarrassing, or simply perish. If you think an open convention is chaotic, imagine the uncertainty of Donald Trump running against a Biden who suddenly entered the hospital in September, never to be seen in public again.
I can’t guarantee that another Democrat would beat Trump in 2024. I personally believe that any two people under 60 who could consistently articulate that Trump is a threat to democracy would stomp him in the battleground states that will decide the outcome. I also believe that the relief of being done with Biden, the immunity of a new candidate to being blamed for the last four years of inflation and war (whatever Biden’s actual role in these matters was is irrelevant to the perceptual reality), and the energy that a new younger and vibrant speaker would bring to the race would turn everything over in a heartbeat.
But I could be wrong about all of that. And it’s irrelevant. If you have a choice between being absolutely certain of failure and total uncertainty, you have to choose uncertainty. You have to try.
(Source for all polling numbers: 538)
