Trusting Trump to beat Biden is a loser’s bet
Zachary Faria
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The assumption by Republican voters and pundits that anyone could beat President Joe Biden because of Biden’s unpopularity is lazy and destructive — because it is being used to justify the weakest possible GOP nominee: former President Donald Trump.
Some polls very early in this election cycle show Trump leading Biden by considerable and sometimes unbelievable margins. One such recent example came from CNN, which found Trump with a 10-point lead on Biden in Michigan, a state Trump barely won in 2016 and lost in 2020. It shows just how deep dissatisfaction runs with Biden, even if it is almost certainly overestimating Trump’s support.
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More recent, though, is a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found Trump with a 2-point lead nationally against Biden. That is good, you might think, until you realize that the lead is just 38%-36%. Biden is incredibly unpopular, with questions swirling about his age and incompetence, and Trump is only pulling 38% in a national poll. That is a pathetic number for a man with near-universal name recognition and a four-year term as president under his belt.
It is even worse when you remember national polling doesn’t decide presidential races. That same poll also gave the combined results for the seven major swing states that decided 2020 and will decide 2024: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As a group, Trump is losing those states to Biden by 4 points. This after Trump already lost all of those states but North Carolina to Biden in 2020.
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Both of these results, Trump with a wide margin in Michigan in the CNN poll and the more realistic poll showing him losing in the major swing states, come while Biden is the focus of the country. In other words, those results come before Biden, liberal media, and the entertainment industry focus all of their operational might on Trump in the same way they did during his presidency. The public will be reminded of the man it rejected in 2020 (and how old he is, erasing the biggest advantage Republicans have against Biden), and those poll numbers will begin to reflect that reality again.
Yes, Trump could win against Biden. At this point, a ham sandwich could probably outpoll Biden by at least 5 points. But Trump is the only major candidate who has a real shot of losing to Biden. Nominating Trump is an unnecessary risk with no major rewards. It is a foolish bet that isn’t worth making.