So Biden’s toast. Right?
The numbers certainly suggest a defeat — maybe a big one — in 12 months. The president’s approval rating is abysmal. And over the weekend, the results of a Siena College/The New York Times poll showed “Trump beating Biden in five out of the six battleground states … including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania by margins of 3 to 10 percentage points among registered voters.”
Biden Derangement Syndrome sufferers are elated, and have no doubt that 2020 will be avenged in 2024.
I’m skeptical. In the fall of 2011, the polling looked bad for Barack Obama, too. You know what happened the following year. (Yep, one more piece of evidence that D. Dowd Muska usually knows what he’s talking about.)
Enjoy!
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The Electoral College isn’t interested in candidates’ nationwide “favorability” ratings. It doesn’t monitor the price of gas, nor the performance of the stock market. It doesn’t track campaign donations. And it couldn’t care less about soccer moms and NASCAR dads.
Keep these verities in mind the next time you hear GOP pols, media consultants, and pundits happy-dance on the president’s political grave. Barack Obama appears Carteresque today, but with less than 14 months to go, he still enjoys a considerable advantage in the only contest that counts on November 6, 2012: the battle for at least 270 electoral votes.
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