When President Joe Biden made clear that he was going to run for reelection, I had a sense of what his election strategy was and thought it was an intelligent path to victory. After the chaos of Covid-19 and the administration of former President Donald Trump, Biden would stand for normalcy and a rising tide of good economic news. Trump would divide Republicans, with significant chunks of the party wishing that someone like former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be their nominee. Meanwhile, Trump would unite and motivate Democrats, allowing Biden to focus on independent voters in the swing states that threw the Electoral College to Trump in 2016 and to Biden in 2020.

I have to admit, none of this is playing out as I had thought. Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states, and behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it is best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate, but in general they have tended to underestimate Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country.

The economy has been in a robust recovery for more than two years now — with unemployment hitting a 54-year low in 2023 and increasing only slightly since then — but Biden is getting little credit for it. The shift here is stark. On the question of whom voters trust more to deal with the economy, Trump has a 22-point lead over Biden, according to an NBC poll from January. This marks a 15-point bump for Trump compared to the same poll in 2020. Perhaps this is because inflation is a far more pervasive problem than unemployment, affecting all Americans every day. Perhaps it is that people’s views on the economy are largely derived from their broader attitudes towards the candidates. But whatever the reasons, this is a stunning reversal in the midst of a relentless stream of good economic news.