The Daily - Biden’s Slipping Support

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

A major Times poll has found that voters’ doubts about President Biden deepened after his poor performance in the first debate, with Donald J. Trump taking by far his biggest lead of the campaign.Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The Times, explains what those results could mean for Mr. Biden’s future.Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. Trump now leads Mr. Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters nationally.Mr. Biden has been left fighting for his political future after his faltering debate performance. Read the latest.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is a special episode of The Daily. Today, a major Times poll finds that since President Biden's poor performance in the first presidential debate, voters' doubts about his mental fitness have deepened. And Donald Trump has taken by far his biggest lead of the campaign. I spoke with my colleague, Shane Goldmacher, about what the results could mean for Biden's future.

It's Thursday, July 4th. Shane, thank you for coming on with not a ton of notice on a very busy day for you. Happy to be on. We don't normally publish an episode on a national holiday, July 4th, but we felt the results of this poll were significant enough and newsworthy enough that it was worth departing from that tradition. I mean, in the time that I've been at the Times and covering our polls, this has been by far the most anticipated poll that we've put out.

And the reason it's so anticipated is that tens of millions of Americans watched the debate last week. And one of the biggest questions about Joe Biden's political future has been, how did voters actually process what they saw on stage? Right. What did they make of a Democratic nominee struggling openly at times to be coherent, to offer cogent answers? would it affect the race? That's been one of the fundamental questions. And the storyline out of the White House and in Wilmington, where Biden's campaign is headquartered, is that this debate was just a blip. They put out

their own survey showing that it hadn't made a change between before the debate and after. Notably, they were behind in the survey that they released themselves. But really, people have been waiting for independent polling to take a look at the state of the race after that debate. And enter the New York Times Siena poll. What did we find on this very big, highly anticipated question? We found that Donald Trump had the biggest lead he's ever had in a New York Times poll. He's ahead of Joe Biden 49% to 43%. So he has a six percentage point lead among likely voters and even larger nine percentage points among registered voters. Wow. Nine percentage points is meaningful. Yeah. And it's not just the size of his lead. It's the direction.

So the race shifted three percentage points in Trump's direction in just the span of about a week. And the reason we know that is the Times actually pretty intentionally planned to do two polls. One right before the debate to get a snapshot of the race heading into this key moment. It was our first poll since Trump's conviction. And it set a

baseline. Where did the race stand before these two men met on stage? And then we began polling immediately after to figure out if and how the debate had changed the dynamics. And what we see are some real changes. Right. And just to summarize, a six-point Trump lead over Biden among likely voters, a nine-point lead among registered voters, and that three-point swing, those are striking data points

in a race that has seemed very close throughout and was expected to be very close in the end. I really think it's the totality of the poll that makes it a significant snapshot of the state of the race. You have the overall margin with Donald Trump leading by more than he's ever led in a New York Times poll. And you have on the critical question of age for an 81-year-old president who just struggled to perform on the national stage, growing concerns about his ability to govern. And it's basically everyone in the poll. A majority of every demographic, geographic, and ideological group that we tested thought that Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president.

And that includes people who are voting for Joe Biden. How much did that perception of Biden's age and is he too old to be president change since the debate? So before the debate, Democrats already had concerns about Joe Biden's ability to do the job. And those concerns got bigger after the debate. They rose eight percentage points to 59% of his own party. And as worrisome for the Biden campaign, they also rose further among independents, all the way up to 79%. independence, all the way up to 79%. Overall, what percentage of everyone polled says that President Biden is too old to be an effective president? Overall, 74% of voters in the survey

said that Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president. Wow. As you said, Shane, a meaningful percentage of the voters we polled will still vote for Biden despite these concerns because he's getting, I think the number was 43% of the vote, which means some meaningful group of those who are concerned about his age are still going to vote for him. So I'm curious, when you really get into the results of this poll, which voters do you find since the debate have thrown their support behind Trump and have helped him get this six-point or nine-point lead, depending on how you slice it over Biden? I can give you an answer with just one word, and it's men. The voters who swung to Donald Trump in this survey pretty decisively were men. He was leading among men going into the debate. He was leading by 12 percentage points among men before the debate. But afterward, that lead has almost doubled to 23 percentage points. How do you think about that? It makes a lot of sense in the framing that Donald

Trump has taken to the race overall, which is this sort of machismo-ness that he campaigns on. His entire frame for the 2024 election is one of strength versus weakness. His campaign has been designed to appeal in a lot of ways to men, right? After he was convicted of falsifying records related to, don't forget, a hush money payment made to a porn star, the first event he did was at a UFC fight. And he stayed until one in the morning. There is this sort of male energy that the Trump campaign has very intentionally tried to tap into. And I think a debate that showed him in much more command than Joe Biden seems to have jostled some of these men in his direction. And of course, for most of the Trump era, women voters have voted much more heavily

for Democrats. And in the post-debate poll, Joe Biden's lead among women actually ticked up too. He is now leading by eight percentage points. The problem for him is that lead is so much smaller than the Trump advantage among men. Shane, was there any good news in this poll for President Biden? How much would you like to squint, Michael? I think there are some glimmers of good news for Joe Biden. We talked about how independents now see Joe Biden as increasingly old and really look on that age question a lot like Republicans at this point.

In the top line question of do you pick Biden or Trump right now, Trump actually lost a small amount of ground in this survey among independent voters. It's just that he gained so much more among Republicans and Biden lost so much more among Democrats that it ended up being a net negative for Joe Biden. Interesting. Thus, glimmer, not really necessarily pure good news. The other glimmer of good news for Joe Biden is that while Democrats are increasingly worried about how old he is, they actually didn't move away from him on the basic question of, should he remain the Democratic Party's nominee? The share of Democratic voters who think he should no longer be the Democratic nominee ticked up ever so slightly. But it's not a significant movement away from Biden in a way

that some of his advisors might have feared. That's interesting. And I suppose good news for Biden after this debate. But I recall our guest on the debate night when we did that episode of Stead Herndon reminding us that the point of this debate, the reason why Joe Biden agreed to do this debate, was to try to reassure Democrats of his place as the nominee and to hopefully, in a poll like this, find that more and more Democrats want him to be the nominee and aren't worried about that, it doesn't sound like this poll finds that at all. I mean, this was one of the fundamental things that the Biden campaign was trying to accomplish. They wanted to reunite the Democratic Party behind him to get people to focus on the contrast, the threat of Donald Trump. Right. party behind him to get people to focus on the contrast, the threat of Donald Trump, to rally behind Joe Biden as the one and only alternative to stopping Donald Trump this fall,

to take a race that a lot of people have tuned out and get them to tune in. And what the poll found is that, yes, more people are paying more attention to the race now. But on those questions of are Democrats further behind Joe Biden, it actually added questions to that rather than answering them. I want to ask about something that people around the president are saying a lot since this debate happened, which is bad debates happen. They point to the fact, for example, that President Obama had a rough debate against Mitt Romney in 2012. He dipped in the polls, came back. How are you and your reporting and thinking about this poll contemplating the idea that what we're seeing here is a momentary problem for President Biden,

not necessarily a permanent one? I think there's a big fundamental difference between the 2012 race, which you're right, Barack Obama had a bad night. He did dip in the polls, he recovered, and he won pretty comfortably by the end of that race. And we saw in this debate, which is the struggles that Joe Biden had fed into the fundamental questions and weaknesses that he's had in this entire election, which is voters' questions about his ability to serve as president at age 81 and to continue to serve as president until age 86. And so it wasn't just about, oh, well, he gave a really bad answer on Medicare, or he gave a really bad answer on the economy, or he flubbed a taxes question, or he didn't answer abortion right. Because, by the way,

he did have those particular issue struggles. The bigger problem for him in the debate is that on the question that most voters have about him, can he continue to do the job? They left with an answer that left them less confident in his ability to do the job. And in that way, it's fundamentally different than the Obama campaign in 2012. So Shane, it's hard to imagine this poll doing anything to quiet the very real panic that has erupted within the Democratic Party over Biden's candidacy. If anything, I have to suspect it's going to deepen it.

Look, Michael, the campaign was so worried about this poll that they actually sent out an internal staff memo on Wednesday morning, pre-butting the findings, kind of dismissing the result before they even knew what it was. And the reason why is that the Biden campaign has been nervous. This is the kind of empirical evidence that can be used to try to push him out of the race, which is something that prominent Democrats

have already started to do. We'll be right back. So, Shane, let's talk about how this has all been playing out within the Democratic Party, within the Biden campaign over the past few days, and as you hinted at just before the break, how this new polling is potentially going to fit into that. And just to note, in our last episode about this with our colleague Peter Baker, the discussion, the idea of replacing Biden as nominee because of this debate performance had mostly been confined to pundits and a handful of former elected officials, which had given it an air of being kind of a fringe conversation. My sense is that that

started to change. So just bring us up to speed. Yeah, it has moved from cable pundits to Capitol Hill. And that is a very important shift. I think like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified by the debate. You had Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a liberal from Rhode Island, saying he was horrified. Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell says one interview isn't going to fix this. You have some important members of Congress in key swing states like Michigan. I want to see him talk to the American people. Saying that voters are worried about this issue. And tell them why he can do the job and what he's going to deliver

and that he's got the stamina to do it. And then on Tuesday, you really have the beginning of a dam break. And we don't know just how big the leak is going to be yet, but we do know that he's leaking important support. As a college student, I did a lot of debating. You had Jim Clyburn, who is one of the president's closest allies, who delivered an endorsement to Joe Biden in 2020 that helped deliver him the presidency and the Democratic nomination. This party should not in any way do anything to work around Ms. Harris. He began talking about what he would do if Joe Biden wasn't in fact the leader. We should do everything we can to bolster her, whether it's in second place or at the top of the ticket.

And he said he would back his vice president, Kamala Harris. And then you had Nancy Pelosi. We all have been in touch with people close to the president. So it's not a question of not having an opportunity to make our concerns known. Who's one of the most revered names in Democratic politics, almost going a step further. Now, again, I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? And saying the questions about Joe Biden's mental fitness, those questions that we saw jumping among Democrats in our poll, that that is a legitimate line of inquiry for the public. Now, her spokesperson later said she still continues to support Joe Biden, but it's pretty hard to unring a bell like, is this an episode or is this a condition?

an episode or is this a condition? You know, when my wife and I watched the debate last Thursday, we were so hoping for the momentum to overcome the lag that we've had. And of course, Joe Biden then had the first Democratic member of Congress officially call for him to step aside. And that's Lloyd Doggett, a progressive from Texas. I was so moved by that evening that the next morning I was out to talk on the floor of Congress with our leadership and with as many of my colleagues as I could find to express the view that it was time for a replacement and for President Biden to step aside. Right, and as we're sitting here, and I should say we're talking at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday,

literally at this precise moment, I'm seeing that another sitting Democratic congressman, Raul Grijalva from Arizona, has also come out and publicly called for Biden to step aside as nominee. This has to be President Biden's nightmare. Two Democratic Congress members saying, get out of the race. I mean, this is exactly the kind of drumbeat

that Joe Biden has been seeking to avoid. Where do you think, and based on your reporting and the reporting of our colleague Shane, has this left Biden in his thinking on the eve of July 4th? The president and his team have been doing two things at once. On Wednesday, President Biden

and his vice president, Kamala Harris, both joined an all-staff conference call of his campaign team. And he reiterated that he's going to be in this race until the very end. But my colleague, Katie Rogers, has reported on some private conversations that President Biden has had with key allies, in which he has told them that he understands the coming days are absolutely critical to salvaging his candidacy. Now, I should say that the White House has denied

that reporting. But Democrats pretty much across the spectrum at this point are saying that Joe Biden needs to reassure the American people about his ability to serve. And that's important, Shane, because that reporting from Katie Rogers suggests a self-awareness on the part of Biden that he might not make it, that there are conditions under which he would and wouldn't make it. And that, of course, makes me wonder, what does Biden think might make or break this moment for him? I think it's worth pausing for a second and thinking about what it took to get those first members of Congress to call for him to step aside and for Nancy Pelosi in particular to express her frustrations out loud, which is silence. There's really been silence from Joe Biden since this debate night. He went the next day and had

a rally that his campaign team was really pleased with in North Carolina, where he said, I'm not a young man anymore. And I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. And I don't walk as well as I used to. And they took those remarks and they packaged it into a television ad and they're writing that on the airwaves. But what Joe Biden hasn't done is speak unscripted since that debate night. He used a teleprompter at that rally in North Carolina, and he did a series of fundraisers. And even behind closed doors in the Hamptons, he used a teleprompter with his donors, which raised some concerns about

why isn't he speaking unscripted even with us? Right, why isn't he deliberately trying to demonstrate his ability to be extemporaneous, to fight this growing perception that if left to his own devices, he will have problems communicating. Yeah, the question that it raises is, why would you not put him out there more? And so this private conversation that he had,

and some of his other actions, tell you that the Biden team and the president himself know that he needs to go out and fix this problem. And to address that, he's meeting with a series of governors, key Democratic governors and allies from across the country, some of whom are flying into Washington, D.C. to hold this meeting. He's sitting down for an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, and then he's hitting the campaign trail over the weekend in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And the president clearly at this point knows that each of these encounters are a high-stake moment

where people are going to judge his readiness and capacity for the job. Mm-hmm. I just want to end this conversation by reflecting on what I think it's safe to say is the pretty extraordinary nature of this moment. We are four months out from the election, and it very much seems day by day, hour by hour, poll by poll, as if President Biden's nomination could be teetering on the edge. It may never get to that point. could be teetering on the edge.

It may never get to that point. He may absolutely, you know, as he says, remain the nominee until the end. But that's where we are right now, is that people are asking that question. They're asking it openly. They're asking it within the Democratic Party. And it feels very fraud and momentous.

Joe Biden made a bet that the earliest debate in presidential history was going to help him consolidate the Democratic Party and unite everyone to take on Trump this fall. And so far, it's done just the opposite. He's facing more questions than he has allowed from Democrats from almost two years about his capacity to lead the party. But the issues at hand, Joe Biden's age, are not a new one. When he ran for president in 2020, he talked about being a bridge to the next generation. And when he announced that he was going to run again, a lot of Democratic voters were surprised.

The Democratic Party moved pretty quickly to squash any chance that there would be any real opposition to Joe Biden in 2024. They reordered the nominating calendar. They put his strongest state first. And they made sure that no serious Democrat challenged him for the nomination. But he's been in something really, though, of a staring contest with his party's voters for the last few years,

who have had doubts about his age and him remaining their standard bearer. And for the first time in that staring contest, a few prominent members of his own party are saying it may be time for President Biden to blink and step aside. Well, Shane, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

For more on the fallout from the debate, check out this week's episode of The Run-Up, where Astead is hearing from voters around the country and asking them how they're now feeling about their options. You can find The Run-Up wherever you listen. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Hurricane Beryl, after devastating two small islands in Grenada,

struck Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on Wednesday as a powerful Category 4 storm. According to local officials, the damage on two of Grenada's islands, Karakou and Petit Martinique, was catastrophic. About 98% of the buildings on the islands have been damaged or destroyed, including Caracu's main hospital, airport, and marinas. During a news conference, Granada's prime minister said, quote, we have to rebuild from the ground up. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko, Carlos Prieto, and Nina Feldman.

It was edited by Devin Taylor, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Grunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.