Democrats’ purgatory grows with ominous poll on Biden

Early last week, President Biden took to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” amid Democratic calls for him to be replaced on the 2024 ballot to declare that he had a mandate to continue.

“All the data shows that the average Democrat out there who voted … still want me to be the nominee,” Biden said. He added: “I wanted to make sure I was right — that the average voter out there still wanted Joe Biden. And I’m confident they do.”

It was a dubious statement at the time. And it just became a harder argument to make, with a significant new poll Wednesday showing that, actually, nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden out.

It’s possible the poll is on outlier, given evidence on this front remains mixed. But it combines with other data to significantly undercut a key Biden argument, and it comes as there are increasingly ominous signs for Biden and his supposed mandate to continue.

The new AP-NORC poll shows that 65 percent of Democrats said that Biden “should withdraw and allow his party to select a different candidate.”

A review of recent polls puts that at nine points higher than the previous high — a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll last week that showed 56 percent said Biden “should step aside and let someone else run.”

But over the last week, we’ve also had multiple polls — from Fox News, NPR/PBS/Marist College and YouGov — showing the percentage of Democrats who want Biden out coming up shy of 50 percent. And the AP-NORC and Post polls mentioned above are thus far the only high-quality ones to show a majority of Democrats want Biden out.

The Fox poll, for example, showed Democrats saying that Biden should “stay as the nominee” rather than drop out, 54-44.

You can parse the wording of each polling question to deduce why certain answers on dropping out might have more appeal to Democrats than others. (It’s possible, for instance, that respondents like it more when you include the idea of someone replacing Biden — inviting them to imagine an ideal alternative — rather than just float his dropping out.) But the thrust of each question is similar.

At the very least, the latest poll gives Democrats a credible new reason to fret about their path forward — the idea that perhaps the internal resistance to sticking with Biden is growing. It gives Democrats who want him out (including many apparently unwilling to say so directly) something significant to point to, outlier or not. And it further ensconces everyone in a sort of purgatory about what to do next.

On the one hand, Biden doesn’t appear to have lost too much ground nationally in a head-to-head matchup with Donald Trump; polls suggest the race might have normalized somewhat as we’ve gotten further away from the debate.

On the other, he’s still running well behind his 2020 numbers in a race that was closer than many realize. He’s running behind nearly every Democratic Senate candidate. And the dwindling period during which Democrats can actually replace Biden appears to have spurred some Biden-skeptical Democrats into action.

The fervor to push him aside abated after a reasonably well-received NATO news conference Thursday and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday.

But as attention has turned way from the weekend’s events, Biden’s media interviews this week have been more uneven, and he flubbed a number of lines during a speech to the NAACP on Tuesday — misstating a key new proposal about capping rent increases.

Democrats are also increasingly scuffling over a Democratic National Committee plan to nominate Biden virtually weeks before the convention. The stated reason for the virtual vote is a deadline to get his name on the ballot in Ohio, even as Ohio lawmakers appear to have fixed the problem. DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison engaged in a testy back and forth Tuesday with analyst Nate Silver, arguing that the move is necessary to avoid potential Republican shenanigans, with Silver arguing that it wasn’t. But Biden’s Democratic skeptics regard this as a pretext to shove Biden’s nomination down their throats.

(The DNC on Wednesday backed off a more accelerated potential timeline, but still stated that it intended to nominate Biden early.)

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the party’s standard-bearer for the open California Senate seat, early Wednesday provided one of the most significant calls to date for Biden to step aside.

Combine that with the machinations behind the scenes — including obvious discomfort from Democratic leaders — and the new poll, it’s clear that Democrats are not ready to accept Biden’s attempts to shut all this down.