e; I wrote a better headline than the ABC editors decided to and excerpted a bit more
According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59% of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27% who think only Biden is too old.
Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president. There is a large difference in how partisans view their respective nominees -- 73% of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve but only 35% of Republicans think Trump is too old to serve. Ninety-one percent of independents think Biden is too old to serve, and 71% say the same about Trump.
Concerns about both candidates' ages have increased since September when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 74% of Americans thought Biden -- the oldest commander in chief in U.S. history -- was too old to serve another term as president, and 49% said the same about Trump.
Part that drew my eye,
The poll also comes days after the Senate failed to advance a bipartisan foreign aid bill with major new border provisions.
Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress' failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border -- with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.
More Americans trust that Trump would do a better job of handling immigration and the situation at the border than Biden -- 44%-26% -- according to the poll.
So that bipartisan border bill stunt was terrible policy, and it doesn't seem to have done anything for the Democratic party politically
Can we please stop trying to compromise with fascists now?
I believe he specifically said it during one of the debates. I really wish he would have followed through with it.
He has implied the only reason he's running for a second term is because he doesn't want Trump to be president again.
We can never know, but if Trump weren't running, he might not be either.
Just because he has convinced himself that he is the only one that can beat Trump doesn't make it true.
In fact I would argue that him running again is somewhat selfish.
He has certainly had a good term, I am guilty of ignoring that, but he is old. Why have we let ourselves get into the position we are in.
An unpopular president typically does better than a popular candidate. That's just how encumbancy works.
Screw stats and precedent? Would you feel the same way if your favorite candidate ran and Trump crushed them by historic margins?
Because we're a party of compromise, and the other side is a party fo extremism. Our compromise involved someone with a lot of bullet points in his favor for our older voters while still appealing to enough of our younger voters.
Not entirely sure I follow but I guess that, that attitude is from my pessimism that an 81 year old can win the presidency. You are right that incumbents have a major advantage and it does seem silly to throw that away.
I also don't have any idea who I would want to be running in his stead. As I have said elsewhere I am far left and like the Squads politics, but I am under no illusion that they could win a nationwide race. Even though the planet is burning.
Serious question: who do you think would be more likely to defeat Trump in November?
Like...there may very well be someone that you personally like more, but from a political strategy perspective, who's out there that you think has better odds at defeating Trump?
Harris? Bernie?
I'm not arguing the implications of any position, but strictly making observations, I feel that, love him or hate him, Biden is the one person with the best odds to beat Trump in a nationwide general election, and I feel that this will still be true in November.
Totally agree, and I don't have an answer. I am a filthy liberal so who I would want as president probably isn't who the nation wants.
Bernie is good but he has age issues as well.
Kamala is probably the only reasonable choice. She was vice president so she has the experience and she is an ok orator to my knowledge.
I haven't really paid much attention though to be honest. I want someone with AOC's politics leading the Democrats but that is never going to happen for lots of reasons.
In fairness, if 2020 had fallen differently Warren could've done it. If Bernie had backed her as a VP candidate instead of running, there was a solid shot they could've beaten Biden. She actually was leading the betting odds for "president" when the 2024 campaign began.
Warren had the opposite of what the Clintons had. She was a constantly progressive voter who could rally the moderate vote of a Harvard-trained law professor with a no-nonsense mindset.
She was also Obama-level known (unknown to common voters, but known to people who paid attention) so there wasn't years of hate-news on her. The worst they could get was a true story about her having Native American ancestors that was intentionally blown out of proportion. That's some Tan Suit shit there.
Kamala would rally the right so hard if she was the candidate. Heck when Biden ran in 2020, him picking her as a running mate caused the right to freak out enough already. They started these huge conspiracies saying day one Biden would step down and hand the presidency to her. Which even amongst some of my peers, I heard. It's scary how conspiracy theories can spread.
Matter of fact, I wonder if reminding them of this point would have them be more skeptical for the next scheme...
Kamala was a tough-on-crime prosecutor. She might even be able to rally some of the right to vote for her.
Not sure that's saying something good about her, though.
The right hates her. I can't understand why the right would hate a confident african american woman, enough to make up conspiracy theories about her.
You mean more than "she's a Democratic VP"? I wasn't aware of that. She seemed the most conservative-friendly candidate to me in 2020 except Bloomberg. Guess I wasn't aware of the particular hatred. I wonder why that could be. Surely not because she's both a minority and a woman.
Yeah. I know a few people in my red state, who didn't love Trump after his last year or so and were on the fence if they were going to vote for him or just sit 2020 out.
When Harris was selected for vp.. all a sudden it was the narrative of Biden might get sick or die and her become president. Which way unacceptable. Once that narrative took hold and swayed voters, they pushed it further to Biden was a puppet to her.. then they pushed it to he was going to step down day 1 to give her presidency.
It was dreadful.
Interesting. I haved lived in and out of Purple areas in a deep-Blue state, so perhaps the Republicans here are a little less insane than the typical ones. Not surprised, really, just didn't realize
She was a successful prosecutor and da in a large city so she has some pretty "bad" history upholding the law and the war in drugs. But as others have said the right leaning voters should eat that shit up, of we lived in a world where it wasn't a big game.
In 2020, I'd have said Warren. She was able to bring in almost every demographic, if she didn't lose progressive votes to the infighting with Bernie.
In 2024, nobody has a better shot than Biden.
Isn't this an admission on your part that you believe moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with progressives and leftists?
What a warped view of the situation.
No.
First of all, it's not "an admission" it's an observation.
Second, it's not about what I believe, it's an observation.
Third, I'm not going to speculate on what a bloc of MI l millions of voters would "rather" do in your framework.
Biden was the nominee in 2020 not because he was the candidate anyone liked best, but because he was the candidate that everyone disliked least. In 2024 he's still that candidate.
Further, and more to your point, the entire notion of "moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with progressives and leftists" is a wild misrepresentation if voting weight at best, and a total disconnect with the reality of the situation in all likelihood.
More accurately: if the left flank of the American left cannot get onboard with a candidate that the majority of the rest of the American left supports...not even when the alternative is a fascist...then it's that left flank of the party who bears responsibility for being uncompromising, and letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I'd love to see a progressive president, but for that to happen, they need the votes. And it's wildly unreasonable to expect the majority of the Democratic party back someone who won't be able to carry moderates in swing states just because the progressives won't back them unless they do.
Like it or not, leftists and progressives are a far more politically expendable bloc than swing state suburban moderates.
Maybe enough of them would to shift the election towards Trump. Even if it's 60/40, losing 40% of the moderates could be a be death sentence for the Democratic candidate. Look at how many people "voted to send a message" in previous years. It's sad but it might be true.