“All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up”
That was President Biden’s response when he was asked about polls showing him trailing Donald Trump.
If we take a closer look at that statement, it says so much about why Biden is in serious trouble reading into the conventions.
First of all, Biden is an incumbent with an impressive record of achievement as president.
Second, he defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes in 2020.
Third, Trump has been impeached a second time and convicted of 34 felonies since that election.
Fourth, Trump never had an approval rating higher than the low 40s during his four years in office and he badly botched the government response to the pandemic in 2020.
With all that in mind, Biden’s best-case scenario is that the polls showing him trailing Trump are wrong and the race is actually a toss-up?
And as horrible a president as Trump was, Biden is the only Democrat who could keep him from returning to the White House?
If that’s the case, the Democratic Party is in big trouble.
One problem is that the entire political scene has changed so much.
With Trump winning three nominations in a row and elderly Hillary Clinton (one) and Biden (two) winning the last three on the other side, younger candidates are getting shut out of the process. I think one of the things behind it — even though Biden was born before the Baby Boom — is that the boomers don’t seem to want to exit the stage.
I don’t want any more boomer presidents, although I would be willing to make an exception for Kamala Harris, who was borth in the last three months of the last year of the Baby Boom.
It cannot be Trump, though. As much as he tries to hide it, he is deeply anti-democracy and so are his Christian Nationalist supporters. He cannot be allowed bac in the White House.
And that means Biden needs to do the right thing and step aside too.