Why can’t Biden move to the center decisively, thereby enhancing his chances of beating Trump this November? You’d think something like this would be in order now, given how dreadful the polls currently look for Biden. In the RCP running average of trial heats, he is behind Trump by a little under 4 points. By comparison, at this point in the 2020 campaign, Biden was ahead of Trump by over 5 points. And in 2016, Clinton at this point was ahead of Trump by around 3 points.

More bad news: the latest tranche of swing state polls has Biden behind in every single one. The Morning Consult release has Biden behind Trump by 10 points in North Carolina, 8 points in Georgia and Nevada, 5 points in Michigan and Wisconsin and 3 points in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Moreover, the Morning Consult data show that, as the economy has declined somewhat as voters’ main issue in these states, immigration has moved up by a similar amount and is now voters’ second most important issue in five of the seven states. And Trump is preferred over Biden by wide margins on the immigration issue in each of these states: by 24 points in North Carolina, by 23 points in Nevada, by 22 points in Wisconsin, by 20 points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and by 16 points in Michigan. …

So what’s likely to stop Biden? The answer is simple: the liberal college-educated voters and activists who punch so far above their weight in the Democratic Party.

[Biden sold out to the progressive wing in 2020, and arguably as far back as 2008 as a way to get him on board with the Obama movement. He’s not moving to the center because he’s not interested in doing so, except rhetorically as needed. Ruy notes that he’s talking a little tougher on the border this week as a way to address the massive anger over his border crisis, but he’s not actually doing anything, not even that which is already within his authority. — Ed]