During a private lunch with President Biden earlier this summer, Barack Obama expressed concern about Trump’s political strengths.
In the ongoing debate here in the Corner about whether Donald Trump could win the 2024 general election, put me down as another voice contending Trump is unlikely to win, but that it is not impossible for him to win. You can envision scenarios where some outside force makes it impossible for Joe Biden to win reelection, such as an economic downturn, or Biden’s deterioration in old age becoming too severe for Americans to accept.
One thing that should freak out Democrats is the fact that Trump, on paper, should be an extraordinarily weak candidate, but current polling indicates he’s still in the ballgame. Trump constantly gets himself into trouble he should have avoided, makes his arguments in just about the most divisive and antagonistic way imaginable, gets just about the most relentlessly negative coverage he could get, and has extremely high negative reactions… and yet, as CNN’s Harry Enten observes, the current polling shows Trump either hanging around in striking distance or narrowly ahead of the incumbent.
The Marquette poll is one of a number of surveys showing Trump either tied or ahead of Biden. The ABC News/Washington Post poll has published three surveys of the matchup between the two, and Trump has come out ahead – albeit within the margin of error – every time. Other pollsters have shown Biden only narrowly ahead.
…The fact that the polling between Biden and Trump is so close shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Elections are a choice between two candidates. Trump isn’t popular, but neither is Biden. The two, in tandem, would be the most disliked presidential nominees in polling history, if their numbers hold through the election.
All that being said, the 2024 election will probably come down to a few swing states. Polling in swing states has been limited because we’re still over a year from the election.
One giant warning sign for Democrats was a late June Quinnipiac University poll from Pennsylvania, a pivotal state for the past few election cycles where Trump rallied base supporters in Erie on Saturday. The state barely voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020.
Trump was up on Biden by 1 point in the Quinnipiac poll – a result within the margin of error, but nevertheless a remarkable achievement for the former president.
Is Trump going to win Pennsylvania in the 2024 general election? Probably not, but it’s not unthinkable. And if Trump were to narrowly win the Keystone state, then he’s likely to be similarly close in other swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. And if Trump is neck-and-neck in places like that, suddenly Trump reaching 270 electoral votes doesn’t seem so unthinkable.
What is going to happen between now and Election Day 2024 that will change Americans’ perspectives on Trump? He’ll get convicted? In the eyes of those who oppose him, Trump is already guilty as sin. In the eyes of those who support him, he can do no wrong. The election comes down to whether more Trump opponents turn out than Trump supporters in that handful of key swing states.
In this light, this report from the Washington Post is not all that surprising.
Former president Barack Obama, at a private lunch with President Biden earlier this summer, voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths — including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem and a polarized country — underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.
In a Politico story from 2020, one Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.” You have to wonder just how confident Obama is about Biden’s ability to beat Trump in a rematch – even with three indictments and counting.