Source:CNN reporting on the meeting between then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York) & President Joe Biden (Democrat, Delaware) |
From CNN
President Biden this week has been saying, or it's getting leaked by his own people, that he's convinced that had he stayed in the 2024 election race, he would've beaten Donald Trump. This is some of what Newsweek has on that story:
"President Joe Biden is facing backlash just before leaving office after insisting that he "would have beaten" incoming President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Biden withdrew as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee in July after weeks of scrutiny and intense pressure following a disastrous televised debate with Trump during the previous month.
Some Democrats have been second-guessing the decision to replace Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris, who went on to lose every swing state to Trump, while others have suggested that the incumbent president would have fared worse.
During a news conference at the White House on Friday, a reporter asked Biden if he regretted his "decision to run for reelection" or thought that the candidate switch-up "made it easier" for Trump to win.
"I don't think so," Biden responded. "I think I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump. And I think Kamala could have beaten Trump and would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about ... I thought it was important to unify the party."
"When the party was worried about whether or not I was gonna be able to move, even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party," he added.
Biden made similar remarks in an interview published by USA Today on Wednesday, saying "yes" when asked whether he thought he would have defeated Trump for a second time, although he also said he did not "know" if he would have had the energy to finish a second term...
From Newsweek
From Business Inside talking about President Biden's reelection chances last year:
"President Joe Biden already had a narrow path to reelection before his disastrous debate.
But if the bottom drops out, Democrats could be fighting to defend states like New Mexico or Virginia.
At that point, former President Donald Trump's victory would be almost a foregone conclusion.
President Joe Biden's already narrow path to reelection is getting even harder to navigate.
Biden's best-case scenario before last week's disastrous debate likely required him to run the table in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, while holding on to Nebraska's Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District. Former President Donald Trump, as the FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver pointed out, had much more flexibility in reaching 270 electoral votes and could even reach even higher.
Four years ago, Biden had the luxury of deciding whether to base his campaign on the Upper Midwest or bet on Sun Belt states like Arizona and Georgia, which hadn't gone for Democrats in decades. Trump has held a steady lead in both states, according to RealClearPolitics' polling averages.
Biden's underdog status can get much worse. In its latest update on Wednesday, Sabato's Crystal Ball moved Michigan and Minnesota closer to Trump. As Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Crystal Ball, said, this isn't rock bottom.
"It does seem like from the polling that Biden has taken a small hit, but he needed to be catching up as opposed to falling back," Kondik told Business Insider.
The Crystal Ball moved Michigan from "Lean Democratic" to "Toss Up" and Minnesota from "Likely Democratic" to "Lean Democratic." Under the University of Virginia Center for Politics' projections, there are five true toss-up states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada.
f Biden continues to decline, Virginia, New Mexico, and Maine (statewide) could all come into play.
A Republican hasn't carried Virginia or New Mexico in 20 years. Maine, which, like Nebraska, awards only two of its Electoral College votes to the statewide popular-vote winner, hasn't crowned a Republican as a winner since then-Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1988.
"There's the possibility that maybe Trump is able to win the popular vote that is a roughly 5-point improvement from 2020. And if that sort of thing happens, you would expect Trump to win the states where Biden won in 2020 but did worse than the national popular vote," Kondik said. "That is also the situation where you would start to see a Minnesota or a New Hampshire or maybe even a Virginia or Maine be closer, certainly like they were in 2016 and certainly even closer than that."
A post-debate poll in New Hampshire showed the race there was too close to call. A Saint Anselm College poll found Trump leading Biden 44% to 42%. The independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at 4% in the state. Biden won the Granite State by just over 7 points four years ago."
From Business Insider
If anyone is still awake, or hasn't found a bridge to jump off of after reading all this information: you read what I think about all of this as well.
My whole point here is that President Biden still thinks that he could've won reelection in 2024. And perhaps now regrets dropping out of the race. But before the June debate last year, it already looked bad for the President. He was on pace to lose every swing state. And then the debate happens and now we're hearing and seeing things that suggest that now he could lose Virginia, Minnesota, and New Mexico. Those states were probably locks for the President before the debate. And to be completely fair:
Vice President Kamala Harris:
Only won New Jersey by by 6 points (which is a close race considering how blue NJ is)
Only won Virginia by 5 points (which is a blue state at the state level)
Only won Minnesota by 4 points (which is a very blue state at the state level)
And only won New Mexico by 6 points (which is a very blue state at the state level)
But the more important point here is that President Biden would've lost all those blue states, to go along with all the swing states, had he not had dropped out of the election, because it was obvious by then that he simply didn't have the physical and mental fitness to run for President full-time, to go along with being the sitting President and his numbers would've continued to drop as a result.
From what I've heard and CNN reported on this back in July as well, is that it's his own pollsters telling President Biden that he was in danger of losing these blue states, to go along with all the swing states, which is what convinced him that he no longer had a path to reelection and that's why he dropped out back in July. How much do you want to bet that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, being the brilliant political strategist and legislature that he is, already had all this information as well and shared that with President Biden to try to get him to drop out of the 2024 election?