A top Democratic strategist is warning liberals not to worry that Trump could defeat Biden in the presidential election, despite polls showing the two candidates are neck and neck.
New polling from The Wall Street Journal released on Tuesday has President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in six out of seven battleground states.
The survey data has Trump leading Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The two men are tied in Wisconsin when it’s just Trump and Biden on the ballot.
Damning polling has caused some Democrats to fret over the November election, but strategist and consultant Simon Rosenberg insists Biden will secure his reelection.
‘We are quietly confident. In the grand scope of things, we can handle this; we can win the election,’ he told The New York Times.
Top Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg insists Biden will secure his reelection and tells fellow liberals not to worry
Polling from The Wall Street Journal released has President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump in six out of seven battleground states
Rosenberg said Biden’s attack on Trump during the State of the Union helped him and said Trump is not as strong of a candidate now as he was in 2016
‘The big thing that people got wrong in 2022 was that they thought the Democratic Party wasn’t going to bring it, that we weren’t hungry and we weren’t energized. And it turned out that we were.’
‘We’re asking polling, in my view, to do too much when we have all this other information and data that’s available to us to augment our understanding. And to me, that additional data suggests that we’re going to have a good election. But we’ve got a long way to go,’ Rosenberg said.
In 2022, many were surprised at how Democrats performed and withstood an expected ‘red wave.’
Now, 18 months later, positive headlines about Biden’s State of the Union address—one of the biggest political set-piece events of the year—and a recent flurry of campaign travel is said to have helped turn around his public image.
Biden won favorable reviews with a combative State of the Union when he referred to ‘my predecessor’ 13 times without ever using Trump’s name.
Biden attacked him on Russia, reproductive rights, on affordable healthcare, on the border crisis, on gun control, on the January 6 attack and on his handling of the pandemic in an effort to remind people of the turbulence of the Trump years, which Rosenberg said plays in Biden’s favor.
‘Trump is a far weaker candidate in this election than he was in 2016. He’s more dangerous. He’s more extreme. His performance on the stump is far more erratic and disturbing,’ he said.
‘There’s a structural thing happening underneath all of this, which is that Dobbs broke the Republican Party and that a big chunk of the Republican Party has become loosened from MAGA. It’s costing them in elections and costing them a lot of donors — and money.’
The Wall Street Journal polling found the president’s age continues to be a drag – with just 28 percent of swing state voters saying they believe 81-year-old Biden has better physical and mental fitness to handle the White House.
However, Rosenberg said Biden’s age could be used to his benefit.
‘I know Biden’s age is an issue. But I think Biden assuaged a lot of the concerns that people had with a strong performance at the State of the Union,’ he said.
‘But also you have to write, in my view, you have to be honest and fair-minded: there’s a strong argument that Biden’s age is also an asset for him, that, in a time of an enormous challenge for the country, having the guy who’s the most experienced person to ever be in the Oval Office may have been a blessing for us.’
The Wall Street Journal polling found the president’s age continues to be a drag but Rosenberg said Biden’s age could be used to his benefit
On the issue of third-party candidates, The Wall Street Journal write-up of the poll said that pollsters believed voters currently backing the third-party hopefuls were persuadable voters – and could end up casting a ballot for either Trump or Biden.
And among the third-party candidates, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is attracting the most support – polling between 7 and 15 percent across the seven battlegrounds.
In Kennedy’s case, he’s viewed favorably by half of all Republican voters but only a quarter of Democrats, despite previously running for the Democratic nomination.
Pollsters found Kennedy draws more support from voters who would otherwise back Trump over Biden.
Other third party hopefuls – independent Cornel West, Libertarian Lars Mapstead and Green Party hopeful Jill Stein – are pulling away between 1 and 3 percent of the vote across the seven states.
The other third-party candidates are pulling more support from Biden over Trump.
‘We know from history that we have to take all that very seriously. Democrats understand that we are not just running against Donald Trump this cycle, but we’re running against three other candidates as well, and that we’re going to have to engage them,’ said Rosenberg.
‘We’re going to have to treat them like they are serious candidates in this election. And we have to do what we do in politics, which is we have to make them unacceptable to voters.’