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The week before a presidential debate, in American politics, is the equivalent of silly season. Nobody really knows anything about how the debate will go. The principals, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, are sequestered away in order to prep for the 90-minute ordeal, so you're not hearing and seeing them directly. But that doesn't stop the cable nets from having to fill the air time, so silly season becomes a parade of surrogates and pundits. And honestly, the vast majority of it is white noise.
Here's a couple instances of the ponderous pre-game commentary and interviews that have been featured just in the last 24-48 hours. On CNN, Manu Raju was filling in for Dana Bash, one of the two debate moderators, and brought on Florida Congressman Michael Waltz, a really smart Republican on House Intel. You'd think that with the news of at least 400 ISIS-related terrorists recently coming through the porous Southern Border and now somewhere inside the United States, there should be the makings of a really informative segment here. That's not what we got. What transpired was three minutes of Donald Trump, January 6, and election denialism.
Joy Reid, the reliably fanatical left-wing host on MSNBC, is offended. She's not offended that half of the elected Democrats are embracing open antisemitism. She's not offended that the transgender movement is pushing women's rights back decades by trying to advance biological males to compete in women's sports. No, she's offended that Joe Biden is going to have to take the stage tonight with a felon.
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As for me, I'm offended that a judge in Harris County, Texas, the home county of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, the victim who was brutally raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant wearing an ankle monitor, called a press conference to blame the rape and murder on Donald Trump. Here's Lina Hidalgo.
Note that when she got immediate pushback for playing politics with this horrific murder by an illegal immigrant who entered the country on Joe Biden's watch, a criminal who came here directly as a result of Joe Biden's inane border policy, she then claimed she didn't want to play politics with the subject. That's, of course, right after she just played politics with the subject. That's offensive.
Impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is offensive, holding a press conference to make the claim that the safety of Americans is paramount. When pressed by a reporter how that can be given the rape and murder of a 12-year old girl by someone here illegally, who is at least known enough to the legal system here to be on home confinement, he doubles down, claiming we screen and vet people.
My guess is Jocelyn Nungaray, or anyone who was blessed to be a part of her all-too-short life here on Earth, would beg to differ about the efficaciousness of the Biden administration's rigorous screening policy. Her funeral service is scheduled for today.
Short of anything substantive to talk about, like solutions to the immigration horror show, supporting Israel as it is on the threshold of a widening war with Hezbollah to its north, inflation continuing to eat away at the average American's standard of living, or rising levels of violent crime, there is polling news out there that should be discussed leading up the tonight's matchup. It's eyebrow-raising, to be certain, to normal Americans, but absolutely horrifying to Democrats.
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During the Republican primary season, I was skeptical that Donald Trump, were he to be nominated, would have much of a chance in the fall, because he wouldn't be able to overcome all the negative votes against him. I said at the time that it would take a whole lot of polling to convince me that the 2024 Election, for Republicans, was in the art of the possible. I have since become convinced.
I've written previously about the Des Moines Register polling out of Iowa, a platinum poll according to Nate Cohn's 538 blog, showing Trump up over Biden by 18 points. Is that poll an anomaly, or is that part of a trend?
Fox News showed a poll nationally this past week that Joe Biden had overtaken the former President by a couple points in a survey conducted after the kangaroo court trial in Lower Manhattan by the circus ringleader, Judge Juan Merchan. But another earthquake of a poll just got released by the New York Times and Siena that will give flop sweats to Democrat strategists working campaigns all across the country. Donald Trump, post verdict, is up four among likely voters, and up six among registered voters. This makes four out of the last six polls in the last week, more than enough time for the verdict to be considered among poll respondents, showing Trump ahead. Three of them show a lead outside the margin of error, one shows a one-point lead, one shows a tie, and only the Fox News poll shows Biden with a lead. The current bloc of polling suggests the Fox' poll might be the outlier.
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My biggest question upon seeing this latest NYT/Siena data was how does it compare to polling done by the same group at this point in the 2020 cycle? The answer is fascinating. On June 24, 2020, the New York Times/Siena poll was released, showing that Joe Biden led Donald Trump by 14 points. Keep in mind, that particular point in time was the middle of the COVID pandemic and economic lockdown. But four years later, same two candidates, same point in the cycle, there's an 18-point swing away from Biden and towards Trump. The final margin of 2020, of course, was 4.5%, so if the race was ever an 14-point lead for Biden, it closed mightily down the stretch. This time, Biden is behind at the end of June, and there's just no issue set out there that people care about in enough numbers that favor the President, and poll after poll is showing that voters are shrugging off the felony convictions because of the hyper-partisan way in which the trial was conducted.
I still maintain that New Hampshire is the hidden swing state in this cycle, and that if we see a surprise in the Live Free Or Die state early in the evening of Election Day, the rest of the election is an academic exercise. But according to Real Clear Politics, the seven swing states are Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
In Arizona, there have been five polls since the verdict, all in favor of Trump, with the RCP average being 5.6%, outside of any margin of error.
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In Nevada, there have also been five polls post-verdict, with Trump up in four out of five, tied in the fifth. RCP's average is at 4%, which is at the outer edge of margin of error.
Georgia is interesting. The five most recent polls making up the RCP average of 4%, three are post-verdict, two are in the weeks just before. The three post-verdict polls show a larger lead for Trump than the pre-verdict polls.
North Carolina's polling is still mostly pre-debate, but there's no evidence to suggest that the RCP margin of 5.8% has been chipped away at by Joe Biden.
Pennsylvania does not have nearly enough polling to make a firm consensus, but there is a poll, post-verdict, a couple right before the travesty in Manhattan concluded, and a couple from a month before. There is almost no discernible movement. Trump is up two to three points in every poll, with a 2.8% RCP average.
Michigan is essentially a toss-up. RCP's average is Trump +0.2%. There's a post-verdict poll showing Trump up 1, another one with the race tied. Immediately before the verdict, Biden was leading in a poll by a couple points, and Trump led in two different polls by 1. But to inject historical context, keep in mind that this date in 2020 showed Michigan favoring Biden over Trump by 8.6% before the race closed to a final margin of 2.8%. Biden could still pull Michigan out, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. If late breakers closed the gap in Trump's direction in 2020, it's hard to imagine late breakers going for Joe Biden when his entire administration has been a disaster thus far.
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Wisconsin has seven polls currently making up RCP's Trump +0.6% margin. Biden was up in two out of three polls six weeks before the verdict. That was his high point. Since then, the tide has moved in the former President's direction with each passing week. The 7-day period before the verdict, the race was either tied or Trump up one. Each week after the verdict, and each successive poll, Trump's lead has spread from up one to up two, and then up to a three-point edge.
One poll, of course, means nothing. Even two or three polls don't show a whole lot. But we're now talking about a dozen polls conducted nationally and in swing states over the course of the last 60 days, and two things are apparent at this moment in time. First, the Trump verdict did not have the desired effect the Democrats thought it would have, and the inevitability of Joe Biden making note of Trump's legal status every other sentence tonight might not get him the results he's going to need in order to turn his political tide. Second, when you plug in the races of these swing states into the Electoral College map with no toss-ups, here's the state of the presidential race on debate day.
Yes, the stakes are much higher for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. He's the incumbent that hasn't made the case for reelection with a good chunk of his own party, much less the country as a whole. But it's hard to imagine Joe Biden having such a good debate performance that the entire Rust Belt turns around for him. Then again, we don't actually have eyes on the swimming pool in Delaware. Maybe this is Joe Biden's debate prep.
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