Biden 10 points down v. Trump; possible Democrat infighting

An astonishing drama is playing out today over a poll result that came out over the weekend. The poll shows President Donald J. Trump leading President Joe Biden by nine or ten points. Subsequently, one of the media organs that commissioned the poll tried to downplay or even hide the results. But one pundit, who once worked for Bill Clinton, suggests that someone, or several someones, within the Democratic Party is sending the clear message that Joe Biden must drop out of the race. If that’s true, then clearly not all Democrats are on board with this. We are seeing a level of infighting once confined to the MAGA-RINO war.

The poll showing Biden down

The poll came from ABC News and The Washington Post, who conducted the poll from September 15-20. Two separate reports are available, one with graphics, the other without.

These reports show that Biden has the lowest approval ratings yet. Worse yet, 44 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than when he became President. Recall that Ronald Reagan famously asked whether people were better off then than when Jimmy Carter became President. That question led him to win in 1980.

Naturally everyone pays attention to the Trump v. Biden election results, showing Trump beating Biden 51 percent to 42 percent. This same poll also shows Trump eleven points ahead among Republicans as to whom to nominate. But it also shows Biden behind among Democrats as to whom to nominate. By a vote of 62 percent to 33 percent, solid and leaning Democrats in the sample say, “Anybody but Biden!”

Yesterday, ABC News reported out the poll, and seemed to make no bones about it. Not so The Washington Post. They actually said this poll is “probably an outlier.” (Apparently ABC World News tried to say the same, as Trump noted on Truth Social. So ABC itself might have dissension in its ranks.)

Expert reaction

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, dropped a thread on X yesterday. In it he lambasted the Post for casting doubt on their own poll.

But Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, echoed the Post’s downplay.

But Nate Cohn at The New York Times seemed to ask whom the Post thought they were fooling.

The poll might indeed be an outlier. Trump leads by 1.6 percent in the Real Clear Politics average. The other polls that make up that average mostly show Trump ahead – by a single digit. Four of the polls show them tied, and three show Biden up by one percent. But: the polls show Trump steadily turning a lag into a lead over time, throughout September. The ABC/WaPo poll shows the widest lead, while NBC shows them tied. But a Messenger/Harris X poll shows Trump ahead by five percent. More broadly, Trump was significantly ahead from April through July, fell behind in August, and is pulling ahead again.

What’s going on here?

So why should the latest poll show such a jump? According to Blaze, the experts are blaming the poll’s methodology. In other words, they accuse those running the poll of oversampling Republicans. But a detailed examination of the raw data does not bear that out. They clearly sampled Republicans and Democrats equally, and sampled independents more than the other two.

Norman Leahy, writing in The Republican Standard, noticed the poll. He also looked at that Messenger/Harris X poll, and several State polls. His conclusion: the ABC/WaPo results authentically show Trump widening his lead.

But Dick Morris, the architect of Bill Clinton’s “moderate Democrat” image and message, offered a radical theory. He says flatly that Democrats have given up on Biden. For evidence, he focuses on the position, methods, and likely conduct of George Stephanopoulos, who has worked for ABC since Clinton left the White House.

“I know … George Stephanopoulos,” Morris said. “The recent ABC/Washington Post poll showing Trump 9 points ahead of Biden bears all of his fingerprints.” For years, Morris went on, the ABC/WaPo poll skewed against Trump, to try to slow him down. The sudden appearance of a poll showing Trump ahead by 9 or 10 percent reeks of manipulation. Simply put, George Stephanopoulos wants Biden to get out of the race, in the belief he can’t win.

If not Biden, who?

This tracks with the opposite reactions from ABC News and the Post to their joint poll. Those in control at the Post still back Biden, and so do Larry Sabato and his apparent followers. But ABC News seem to have made up their minds: Biden must go. Or at least George Stephanopoulos at ABC’s This Week might have done. The ABC World News staff have a different attitude.

So who would take his place? Morris counts Kamala Harris out, saying “her ratings are even worse.” So the Party would split between its ideologues and its establishment. The ideologues have three choices: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), Sen. Bernie Sanders ((I-Vt.), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). And the establishment? Morris suggests they will line up behind SecTrans Pete Buttigieg. That’s difficult to accept, given the literal train wrecks on his record. Other possible choices include Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.), Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Summary

Thus we see infighting on two fronts. First, ABC, or at least its George Stephanopoulos faction, is saying: “Dump Biden.” The Washington Post refuses to go along with that. These two entities jointly commissioned the poll, so seeing them fight is remarkable in itself. Second, if Biden goes, “a food fight” will break out. Those are Dick Morris’ words, and a more apt metaphor is nearly impossible to find. And Donald Trump will watch all this from the sidelines, according to one of the oldest maxims of warfare. Which is: when your enemies are destroying one another, don’t interfere.