James Antle of the Washington Examiner explores Democrats’ responses to President Biden’s electoral challenges.
Democrats have a response to a fresh batch of national polls showing President Joe Biden trailing in his reelection bid to former President Donald Trump: denial.
That’s not a universal sentiment within the party. Many Democrats are alarmed by these numbers, even eight months out from the election. Biden’s age, the direction of the campaign, inflation, and the lack of a competitive primary process have long been subjects of concern.
But in public, Biden’s campaign downplays the polls, and many liberals agree.
“Polling continues to be at odds with how American votes and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in response to the recent numbers. “Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does, and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform, while Donald Trump and the party leaders are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided.”
In a long New Yorker piece about Biden’s defiance in the face of the polls, an aide is quoted as saying of the president, “He is not diverted by politics or by bad polling or by some crazy-ass s*** that Donald Trump has done.”
Politico quoted one Democrat as warning the party, “This should be a wake-up call that things have to improve and change. The reaction can’t be to go all cross-tabs truther on [elections analyst] Nate Cohn or tell people to calm down.”
Yet after years of mostly ignoring the online Left, Biden’s camp and some Democratic social media voices are aligned in poking holes in polls that show major slippage with minority voters, a lack of enthusiasm among the party base, low confidence in the economy, and major concerns about the president’s age.
