Are Never Trumpers ready for President Biden?

Speaking personally, no. Nothing’s getting my big fat RINO ass off my big fat RINO couch next Election Day, even if Democrats nominate the most centrist candidate in the crop.

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Old Man Biden may be a moderate relative to the competition but he’s still plenty left-wing on abortion, spending, amnesty, and so on. Even his “moderate” health-care proposal, adding a public option to ObamaCare, would deliver a total government takeover of health care sooner rather than later.

But I don’t speak for all Never Trumpers. And it stands to reason that some anti-Trump righties are more willing to pull the lever for a genial center-left known quantity like Biden than they are a would-be revolutionary like Elizabeth Warren. So, sure, it can safely be said, I think, that Biden will do better among Never Trumpers than any other Democratic candidate. How much better is debatable, but the difference could be meaningful in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

Some Republican operatives active in Never Trump circles are discussing the timing and what form support for Biden might take. Groups such as Stand Up Republic, co-founded by prominent Never Trump Republicans Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn, could target disaffected GOP voters in key micro-battlegrounds with finely tailored advertising in a bid to boost Biden in the Democratic primary…

“If it’s Elizabeth Warren, that presents a real problem because she may have a lot of plans, but most of them are terrible,” said Sarah Longwell, a veteran GOP operative and outspoken anti-Trump Republican. “Being Never Trump doesn’t mean abandoning conservative sensibilities,” she said.

“Never Trump means what it says: Never Trump. Under no circumstances can you embrace that man coming back to the White House,” countered Jerry Taylor, who runs the Niskanen Center, a centrist Washington think tank that has become a gathering spot for anti-Trump Republicans. “Most Never Trump Republicans that I traffic with are of the mind that any electoral outcome that doesn’t return Donald Trump to the White House is a good outcome, save for the wild card of Bernie Sanders.”…

What interests Republican operatives opposed to Trump, in addition to Biden’s relative moderation, is the former vice president’s strength against Trump in key 2020 battlegrounds. In hypothetical match-ups in heartland states such as Michigan and emerging swing states such as Arizona, Biden has led Trump and tends to outperform Warren and Sanders.

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To people like Longwell and Taylor, I’d imagine that Biden’s age is actually a virtue. The goal, after all, is to rid the country of Trump and the party of Trumpism, not to institute a two-term Democratic stranglehold on the White House. An elderly Dem who’s unlikely to make any sudden moves in office and then retire after a single term, clearing the way for a Republican renaissance in 2024, would be just what the doctor ordered.

As for Grandpa Joe’s supposed greater electability relative to the competition, yeah. Look no further than yesterday’s Fox News poll for the latest evidence:

A ceiling of 40 percent for Trump against the entire Democratic top tier ain’t great. We remain 14 months away from Election Day, of course, and will live a thousand political lifetimes between now and then but Dem pollster Will Jordan caught my attention last night when he posted a bit of bizarre, fluky historical data. It turns out that in each of the last three elections, the polling on hypothetical popular-vote match-ups between the two eventual nominees 14 months out from the election turned out to be shockingly accurate. In 2008 it had Obama beating McCain by seven points and in 2016 it had Hillary beating Trump by three. 2012 wasn’t quite as accurate, but it still had Obama defeating Romney (by one point). I can guarantee that Trump won’t lose to Biden by anything like 14 points, but an incumbent doesn’t want to be staring at numbers like this even with the vote still more than a year away.

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That’s not the only bad news in the poll, either: “In counties where the 2016 vote was close (Hillary Clinton and Trump within 10 points), Biden is ahead by 21 points.” Twenty-one points. And this is a Fox News poll! If stuff like this is still coming out in January showing Biden decimating Trump in swing districts, I think even many Warren fans will make a break for him. As lackluster as he is, Democrats aren’t going to pass on what appears to be a sure thing.

And needless to say, if he’s polling anywhere near those levels next year, he won’t need Never Trumpers.

For sheer bananas “how crazy will this election be?” results, though, nothing tops this:

Fifty-nine percent of voters are extremely interested in the 2020 presidential election. That’s a number typically only seen right before an election.

It’s 27 points higher than around this same time in the last presidential cycle — and only one point off the record 60 percent extremely interested the week before Election Day in 2008.

In addition, more Democrats (65 percent) than Republicans (60 percent) are extremely interested in the election and more Democrats (69 percent) than Republicans (63 percent) are extremely motivated about voting in 2020. That helps Democratic candidates top President Donald Trump in potential head-to-head matchups.

We’re 14 months out from the vote … and already one point away from matching the election-eve enthusiasm of the race that sent the first black president to the White House after the exhaustion of the Bush years. People are going to be brawling in the streets by next summer.

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