CNN —
The devastating verdict voters deliver on President Joe Biden in a new CNN poll is especially stark ahead of the most unprecedented election in modern times. Fourteen months before his fate is decided, Biden’s unpopularity may be brewing the only possible conditions in which a disgraced and anti-democratic ex-president, who might be a convicted felon by Election Day, would be able to squeeze back into power.
It begs the question of how GOP front-runner Donald Trump, whose administration was a four-year cacophony of chaos, scandal and fury, and who tried to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, could be locked in a statistical tie (47% to 46% among registered voters) with Biden after facing 91 criminal charges across four cases.
The chief rationale behind Biden’s bid for a second term is that he is the best positioned Democrat to beat Trump again. But unless politi
If the president goes on to lose reelection to Trump – or any other Republican – the warning signs contained in the CNN poll, which mirrors his troubles in other recent surveys but goes far deeper on reasons for his malaise, will have foreshadowed the story of his downfall.
The survey, conducted by SSRS and released on Thursday, paints a picture of a pessimistic and divided nation that is far from experiencing the return to normality that had been promised in 2020 by Biden – a president the country finds neither inspiring nor worthy of confidence.
Biden has frequently been underestimated. And a national poll so far ahead of an election that will be won in a handful of tight battleground states can never predict how it will turn out. There’s an added caveat in 2024: Trump’s multiple looming trials could reshape the electoral terrain significantly.
Biden’s deep political challenges
Yet the findings nevertheless pose dilemmas that Democrats have so far been unwilling to confront. They include the question of whether an 80-year-old president with a 39% approval rating is really the party’s strongest bet for next year’s election. The poll contains sufficient data to suggest that voters doubt Biden, who has been on the Washington stage for a half century, has the energy to turn his political standing around – as did Democrats like Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama after embarking on what looked like treacherous reelection races.The poll also poses the implicit question of whether Biden will end up like Jimmy Carter, who tumbled out of office after a single term and is the only commander in chief who had a worse approval rating in the third August of his administration than Biden. Much is written about Trump’s control of the GOP. But Biden’s grip on his own party – manifested by the unwillingness of any significant party figures to risk their own futures by challenging him – remains unshaken.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics...election-disapproval-age-concerns-sot-vpx.cnn
The CNN poll and other snapshots of public opinion will come as a gut punch for a White House that has had an industrious term by comparison with recent administrations. Biden passed the kind of sweeping bipartisan infrastructure law that had eluded many predecessors. He took office amid the worst public health crisis in 100 years, which had been botched by Trump, and helped nurture an economic recovery. With the republic reeling after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, he sought to stabilize the country’s democracy. Biden has sought to unleash an industrial reawakening, has lifted millions of kids out of poverty and is seeking to broaden access to health care and some key prescription drugs. And he has revived the Western alliance in mustering support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in the most striking display of transatlantic leadership since President George H.W. Bush at the end of the Cold War.
Yet he’s not getting credit for much of it, despite efforts to parlay historic jobs data and a dip in inflation as a great success.
The poll leaves an indelible impression that Biden’s age – and a sense that he is far less robust in mind and body since he took office – are overshadowing his achievements. Only 26% say he has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as commander in chief. And 76% of Americans say they are seriously concerned his age could affect his ability to serve out a full term if reelected.
The data in the poll also helps explain why there is so little incentive for Republicans who trail Trump by massive margins to get out of the primary. Anything that forces the front-runner from the race would leave most of them locked in a tight margin-of-error duel with the incumbent. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who makes barely a ripple with GOP voters, is best placed to consign Biden to the ignominious one-term presidency club – in part because of her stronger support among White college-educated voters than other Republicans. That Haley leads Biden 49% to 43% in a hypothetical matchup but is stuck in the single digits in primary polls underscores how the GOP is still more beholden to its base than the general electorate.
But by definition in a 50-50 nation, a president facing majority disapproval across a slate of issues must be alienating independents. Those voters break for Biden over Trump, but the president gets poor marks from the cohort. Such vulnerability might encourage anyone mulling a third-party bid for the presidency – like strategists with No Labels, who held an event featuring West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin over the summer. The group says it will only field a candidate if there’s a chance of victory. But analysts warn that a third-party candidate could doom a weakened Biden and help Trump win a non-consecutive second term if he is the Republican nominee.
The CNN poll conducted between August 25-31 has few silver linings for Biden, even if 44% of voters feel that any Democratic candidate would be a better choice than Trump. Some 58% of those polled say that the president’s policies have made economic conditions worse. Only 33% describe him as someone they are proud to have as president. And the discontent runs deep even among his own party – with 67% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters saying the party should nominate someone else, though that number represents a tick down from the 75% who thought so last summer. Still, 82% of those who’d prefer another candidate don’t have any specific alternative in mind. This may reflect the apparent paucity of the Democratic bench, the low profile of new generation party leaders, or on the performance of Harris.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/poll-hunter-biden/index.html
On a day when it emerged that a special counsel intends to indict Biden’s son, Hunter, relating to gun charges, the poll also hints at the damage Republican efforts to link the president to his son’s business activities may he having. Their tactics may be designed to distract from Trump’s far greater legal exposure. But 61% of those polled think Joe Biden was involved in those dealings while he was vice president, although only 42% think he acted illegally. (Republicans have offered no concrete proof of wrongdoing by the president.)
