As the Democrats go into a very public meltdown about Joe Biden’s fitness to be their presidential candidate in November, there is an unusual sound emanating from Donald Trump: silence. In the 2016 campaign and across four years in the White House, Trump proved himself incapable of message discipline, venting against fellow Republicans on social media and turned press conferences into rambling denunciations of the latest character to displease him. This behaviour regularly handed Democrats and journalists the chance to shift the news cycle from issues difficult for them (e.g. immigration) and onto issues difficult for the GOP (e.g. Trump’s intemperance and Republican infighting). Few presidents have so routinely undermined their own momentum.
The Democrats are in trouble with very few good options
Trump’s new-found reticence comes at the perfect time for his candidacy. It is so out-of-character that it is a toss-up as to whether he has hired better advisers or his usual advisers just managed to change the passcode on his iPhone. Truth Social tirades have been kept to a minimum. Trump is behaving almost like a professional politician.
This has Democrats almost as worried as Biden’s mental capacity. Their entire re-election campaign is built around the orange boogeyman, whose outbursts motivate Democrats and repel swing voters. Having manoeuvred him into the GOP nomination with a spot of Maga-baiting lawfare, the Democrats are learning that having Trump as the Republican candidate is only useful to them if he is front and centre, being his bombastic, suburbs-alienating self. With Trump giving the news media the silent treatment, reporters have been left with no option but to cover the president and that isn’t going well for him or them.
Panic set in with Biden’s catastrophic debate performance, with Democrats at odds over whether to nominate another candidate and the media scrambling to reconcile irrefutable evidence of the president’s mental decline with their previous characterisation of any Republican claims to this effect as misinformation and ugly politics. But the Biden campaign’s problems didn’t begin with the debate. There were reasons to worry long before then, but both the party and its journalistic outriders resolutely ignored them.
The polling has been trending against Biden for some time now. Of the 26 national polls conducted in the last 30 days, 17 put Trump ahead, five put Biden in the lead, and four had the race tied. Trump’s average lead is 3.3 points – or 4.9 when respondents are also given the option of third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein. But while national polls give a flavour of the general public mood, presidential elections are won and lost in battleground states, and it is there that polls are beginning to alarm Democrats.
Wisconsin, which has ten electoral college votes, went Trump in 2016 by a margin of 0.77 points and Biden in 2020 by 0.63. There have been 15 polls conducted in the state in the last three months, ten of which gave the advantage to Trump, two to Biden and three resulted in a tie. Michigan, with 15 electoral votes, narrowly backed Trump in 2016 then reverted to blue four years later. However, the state has a sizeable Muslim population, some of whom are said to be unhappy at Biden’s failure to be more stridently anti-Israel. Two-thirds of polls in the last three months have favoured Trump. Pennsylvania was the backbone of Hillary Clinton’s supposed ‘blue wall’ in 2016 but it fell to Trump before returning to the Democrat column last time. The state’s 19 electorate votes are up for grabs and Biden hasn’t led in a single statewide poll since late March.
The last time Nevada voted for a Republican presidential candidate was George W. Bush in 2004 but its six votes look set to go to Trump. President Biden hasn’t managed a poll lead in the Silver State since last October. Since 1952, Arizona has endorsed a Democrat for president only twice but in recent years it has been described as a purple state transitioning from red to blue, thanks in part to immigration. But it’s been a year since Biden was out front in a poll there, suggesting the state’s 11 electoral votes are Trump’s for the taking. Traditionally a red state, Georgia (16 votes) helped Biden get over the line in 2020 but Trump has been in the lead there since last December. Since 1968, only two Democrat presidential candidates have won North Carolina: Jimmy Carter, in 1976 but not 1980, and Barack Obama, in 2008 but not 2012. In the last four elections, the Tar Heel State has been won by a margin of less than five per cent, but Trump has been in the lead there for 22 polls in a row.
The freakout isn’t limited to battleground states. Politico reports that – I can’t believe I’m about to write these words – Democrats are worried about New York. Yes, that New York. The New York that, politically speaking, is bluer than Sonic, Cookie Monster and the entire Smurf clan combined. A state that last voted for a Republican for president in 1984 and where Biden won in 2020 by a margin of 23 points. In the latest poll, Trump has cut the president’s lead to just eight points in the Empire State. The notion of Trump taking New York’s 28 electoral votes is still highly implausible at this point but the 45th president enjoys a narrow lead in a couple of key congressional districts, which might hamper Democrats’ ambitions of reclaiming the House.
The current stalemate between Jill Biden and those Democrats who want a fresh nominee will do little to improve these numbers, but it’s not clear that a change will either. For one, Democrats will have to explain why they consider Biden too far gone to be their nominee but are happy for him to continue as commander-in-chief until next January. For another, they will have to come up with an answer as to why they aren’t putting Kamala Harris top of the ticket. (An answer, that is, other than ‘We don’t want to lose all 50 states plus the District’.) And replacing the nominee at the convention next month in Chicago could be a bloody affair, with competing egos knifing one another for the top spot. Is Gavin Newsom too California to win Pennsylvania? Possibly. Is Gretchen Whitmer too progressive for independents? Probably. Is Hillary Clinton mad enough to have another go at the White House? Absolutely.
The Democrats are in trouble with very few good options. Their best hope is that Donald Trump reverts to form and stops giving them the silent treatment.
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