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 political conditions change significantly in the coming months, that narrative may be in doubt.
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.
Yet the findings…
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