A year away from Election Day 2024, former President Donald Trump is set to testify in a civil fraud trial and separately faces more than 90 criminal charges, setting up the possibility that a convicted felon tops the Republican ticket next November.
But it’s President Joe Biden’s political prospects that are plunging.
In another extraordinary twist to a 2024 campaign season that is more notable for court hearings than treks through early voting states, Trump is expected to be called to the witness stand in New York on Monday. This is hardly typical activity during a post-presidency. But Trump was, after all, the most unconventional president.
Spencer Weiss, a Pennsylvania voter quoted by The Times who backed Biden in 2020 but now supports Trump, said: “The world is falling apart under Biden.” He added: “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”
Press X to doubt.
This has to be propaganda.
CNN is owned by a right-wing billionaire. They’ve been trending right since Biden took office. They really showed their (new) colors when they did that first softball Trump interview.
It’s almost definitely propaganda or at least lazy fact-checking that is useful to that end.
The media is literally doing the same shit again. The only thing these polls should ask is “do you value US democracy?” Maybe if we didn’t have a story every fucking morning about how much stupid people care about a three year age difference, more people would be taking this seriously.
Why does it have to be propaganda? You don’t think some random mook can be that stupid?
Sure. But why blast said mook in mainstream media? Why put him on the spotlight when there are much better people out there with better informed opinions?
That’s like a reporter approaching your local wacko at the corner of the supermarket, asking him a couple of questions, then putting “HITLER DID NOTHING WRONG, according to local wacko” as a headline in all the newspapers the morning after.
I think you might be vastly underestimating how representative said mook is of the general population.
It doesn’t matter. Just don’t give him a massive media platform to spew his stupidity. Do a survey instead.
Journalists are out there to report, not prevent the spread of stupidity. If a lot of people are stupid, the rest of us should know it.
Look, in all seriousness, I get your concern, but my point is that journalists don’t have an ethical requirement to silence views many people hold, but you and I find dumb. Quite the opposite, in fact. So, don’t hate the journalist, hate the mooks.
That’s a totally different argument.
A journalist can report on an increasing trend om stupidity.
It’s questionable to pick one sample and put it in the spotlight, giving it more attention than it deserves.
“Man scratched ass and concluded that we’ll all die of butt cancer. More on page 7.”
Mr. Weiss, did you already forget about the pandemic and economic crisis that happened under Trump and Biden had to deal with?
You’d be surprised about people in Pennsylvania.
Going through Milford close to election night was a surreal experience.You can always tell a Milford man…
Milford
Unrelated but shout out to the Waterwheel 🩶
This is the embarrassment that is America now. We will probably never recover from this.
In my outsider opinion you have one more chance. This is it. If you can repel Fascism this time it will get easier next time. If you don’t, I fear for us all.
Unfortunately, nobody is an outsider anymore.
Wish i could do some laughing and mocking besides all the crying but with afd(german far right/fascists largely) on the rise and the conservatives moving a step into their direction every other week there is really no energy left to laugh at anything.
So the 2030s are just gonna be a repeat of the 1930s?
Hopefully not but it sure seems like people fancy some fascism all arpund the globe. I find it kinda hard to not fall in to doomerism these days. Just gotta believe extra hard but i am running low on hopium and copium.
Same here for what it’s worth
You think you recovered from slavery or the genocide of the indigenous people, but not trump?
I’d argue we haven’t “recovered” from those at all. Racism of still very much a factor in our politics and culture and, sadly, indigenous people are a small enough group that we kinda ignore the embarrassment without really doing anything about it beyond it contributing to relative small racism and legal battles.
I mean the US is pretty much the wealthiest and most productive society in the history of the world. Yes, our collective souls are stained forever by the sins of our fathers, but that’s hardly unique to the US.
Trump is actually going to usher in a new era of darkness which is going to be as bad as anyone alive has ever seen. I get that some people are still in denial, but this real.
What are you talking about? Still with the usa number 1? You are delusional.
I’m sorry that objective measures of economic output upset you?
I got some bad news for ya buddy, Biden signed off on more land than trump to be used for fossil fuel extraction. Doesn’t matter who’s in charge when we’re heading full steam ahead towards a climate apocalypse thanks to capitalism! Choo Choo!
What the hell happened to CNN?
It got bought out by a right winger with the explicit intention of making it more like Fox.
Well he’s fucking succeeding. This article was trash.
See also Newsweek and The Hill.
horse race = ratings = more money
Siena College is a private Franciscan college. The Franciscans are a group of related mendicant Christian religious orders. Siena was founded by the Order of Friars Minor in 1937. The college has 3,000 full-time students.
So, a conservative Christian college says Trump is ahead. Got it.
Siena is reputable when it comes to polling. It’s not like they just choose a friar to guess what the outcome of an election will be. This kind of surface-level criticism is bad for consuming accurate information.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/siena-college/
i mean 538 and nate silver have always been garbage
They’ve always been pretty good, aside from their centrist ass political takes. They have a pretty good track record and got closer to predicting Trump winning in 2016 than anybody else.
I live near Sienna and my son visited there as he looks at colleges. It’s definitely still got religious roots (the friars are still a constant presence), but they’ve gotten more non-denominational. I also got the impression that they aren’t that conservative. They might not be as liberal as some colleges, but they aren’t alt-right either.
That being said, my son decided against Sienna for various reasons (including the fact that their Computer Science department seems tiny compared to other colleges in the area).
The bigger issue isn’t the college’s leaning, it’s that polls a year out are pretty worthless. In politics, a year is basically forever. The big issues driving voters right now can be completely different a year from now. Events and scandals can crop up that could be the focus of the 2024 election. So while perhaps the Biden campaign should use this poll to remind themselves not to be complacent, I don’t think this poll means that it’s time to panic.
There are numerous polls showing Trump is ahead of Biden, by a significant margin. The recent turmoil in Gaza is definitely widening that gap.
Biden needs to drop out of the race now, for America to avoid another Trump presidency. Any democrat will do, but not Biden. Unfortunately his ego won’t have it, nor will the demands of the corporate oligarchs, so unless Americans are willing to riot (we aren’t, couch too comfy) we are well and truly fucked.
In Nevada, which Biden narrowly won in 2020, Trump leads 52% to Biden’s 41%. Trump leads in Georgia, a state where he is facing racketeering charges, 49% to Biden’s 43%. The ex-president up 49% to 44% in Arizona, another key state. In Michigan, which Trump won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020, the Republican is up 5 points.
The poll shows Biden weakening among Black and Hispanic voters. And 71% of those polled said he was too old to be an effective president, while only 39% said the same of Trump – who is 77.
Spencer Weiss, a Pennsylvania voter quoted by The Times who backed Biden in 2020 but now supports Trump, said: “The world is falling apart under Biden.” He added: “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”
I simply don’t believe that any person could switch from Biden to Trump.
This voter they spoke to must be lying about supporting Biden in 2020.
If Trump gains support in a state, it has to be that people moved in or out of the state.
It could still affect the election, but at least my interpretation would mean that there is some limit to a single person’s stupidity.
Don’t get complacent. There are millions of people that buy republican lies hook, line and sinker.
Seems to me that people may sit out or vote for a third party candidate given bad choices. I doubt many people switch to Trump from Biden, but going to the polls won’t be exciting.
A record number of people voted in the last election, and both candidates got millions more votes than 2016. And some margins in key states were extremely small. All it would take is a town or two’s worth of voters staying home in order to sway the margin in a bunch of key states.
This voter they spoke to must be lying about supporting Biden in 2020.
Mr. Weiss doesn’t exist. You can trust me… I have a source familiar with the matter!
(Well, I assume a high probability that he doesn’t exist)
I’ve seen a few times when there were testimonials like this, and when somebody dug into the history of the person, inevitably that person was always a far right winger, and they’re just lying. Although I wouldn’t put making him up past CNN, either.
The people running the dem party would rather repeat 2016 than give voters a choice.
Regardless of who wins in 2024, they’re going to loudly proclaim it means the party needs to move to the right.
This is what happens when both parties are beholden to the same donors. A loss isn’t really a lose to them like it is to us. The only way they lose is if a progressive without ties to those donors wins or makes enough noise that voters realize there’s no real reason why the Dem candidate can only be slightly better than a Republican in some areas.
ah yes it’s the dems fault nobody credible decided to run
It sort of was?
Bernie Sanders had a great chance to face Trump for the 2016 elections, and the democrat media had a horrible campaign against him while favoring Hillary Clinton. Then, once Hillary got the nomination, surprise!!! correspondence came to light in which those at the top in the party said that Sanders should absolutely NOT have the nomination.
I’m a liberal dude, but I’m also very cynical of the U.S. political system. At the very top, those assholes love a “good” status quo.
i like bernie but bernie couldn’t win outside of the coasts in a primary let alone a general.
hillary clinton had spent decades in the democratic party; bernie sanders hadn’t. of course hillary would have more delegates and history over sanders; doesn’t mean it was rigged or anything.
You guys give a hoot about polls since 2016?
Still talking about the Hillary polls?
The polls correctly predicted a high likelihood of her winning the popular vote. It’s not the fault of the polls that the actual decider is an anti-democratic and unpollable system that disproportionately favors empty land over people.
There were several models from sources like 538 that took the electoral map into account and still got it wrong. People didn’t admit their cult membership back then, today they are afraid to hide it.
538 said Trump had about a 30% chance of winning.
In what way did they “get it wrong?”
That’s partly true. 538 in particular has a tendency to be overly sure of itself and too cute by half.
A lot of what they do includes much more educated guesswork than actual polling, though, so “538 got it wrong” ≠ “the concept of polling got it wrong”
I think you’re mistaken about “getting it wrong” here. If a statistician says “Candidate A has a 99 % chance of winning”, and the candidate loses, that doesn’t mean the statistician was wrong, just that the improbable happened. If you have a repeatable experiment you can do the experiment many times to see if Candidate A wins 99% of the time, if they don’t then the statistician is wrong.
Problem is: We can’t do multiple, uncorrelated elections to test, so we can’t ever disprove the statistician. What we can do, is look at a bunch of prior elections, the predictions made, and see if we prefer trusting the statistician over not trusting them.
I think if you look at a bunch of election results and predictions, and take confidence margins into account, that you’ll find the statisticians are more often right than wrong. But you need to interpret the statistical predictions correctly.
Point taken.
so you agree the polls were wrong and inaccurate
No. They correctly and accurately measured likelihood of winning the popular vote.
That people misinterpret them doesn’t make the polls wrong, it makes the people misinterpreting them wrong.
so you agree the polls were wrong and inaccurate
Its a lot easier to be wrong when you cant factor in things like cheating… you might want to take note that trump has been indicted for cheating in 2016 by Bragg, thats not something polls could have known or could have factored in. And the hush money case is just one we know about, I assume he and the repug cheated on all sorts of levels to get trump in, again none of those factors can be predicted accurately.
Especially polls a year early.
Particularly when people are upset at Biden for Israel stuffs… the reality is, none of the progressives that support Palestine will ever support a republican
(and let’s be honest, trump probably would have had troops on the ground going into combat in Gaza too. Biden’s response is more moderate than that brand of Republicanism.)
And a lot of the people who, right now, are saying “we’ll vote third party” or “we just won’t vote” will change their tune if it comes to November and it’s a close Biden vs Trump.
This isn’t to say that Biden should take these votes for granted, of course. (Hillary made the fatal mistake of taking votes for granted.) However, it’s a common occurrence for people to refuse to back one party’s candidate a year out and then come back into the fold near election day. The Republicans will likely have a similar occurrence with people refusing to vote for Trump, but then deciding to do so in November 2024.
Do you know how many poll requests are in my spam folder? Only old people get polls.
Same phone polls are the worst - they only call land lines. Who do you know who (a) has a land line and (b) answers numbers they don’t recognize?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And an increasingly authoritarian Trump – who is promising a second term of “retribution” – could pull off a White House comeback in spite of sparking a Capitol insurrection with his false claims of electoral fraud in 2020.
Biden’s position is weakening as he tackles cascading global threats such as the war in the Middle East, sheds support over his handling of the economy and sees cracks in the multiracial coalition that first elected him.
And while Trump’s devoted followers have bought into his claims that his criminal peril is all political persecution by the Biden administration, there is no precedent for the staggering prospect of an ex-president and potential nominee on trial in an election year.
Given that the likely Republican presidential nominee faces potential conviction, after having served a single term in the White House that was capped off with a second impeachment over his involvement in an insurrection, the question for Biden ought to be: Why is the nascent 2024 race even close?
Spencer Weiss, a Pennsylvania voter quoted by The Times who backed Biden in 2020 but now supports Trump, said: “The world is falling apart under Biden.” He added: “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country.
In addition to Blumenthal, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that Biden was suffering over his staunch support for Israel despite its relentless pounding of Gaza after the Hamas terror attacks on October 7.
The original article contains 1,562 words, the summary contains 236 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
That’s what you get for proposing the shittiest candidates imaginable
What’s really so shitty about Biden? Really?
Biden’s biggest problem, honestly, is the same problem every Democrat has – an inability to communicate effectively. They have a bad habit of just doing things without actually talking about what they’re doing. There is a website with Biden’s achievements, but Biden doesn’t actually advertise this, so the Right can make claims about Biden’s accomplishments that aren’t supported by the facts. Some examples:
- Student Debt Relief for 40 million borrowers.
- 11 million jobs created.
- Pell Grant increase by $900.
- 3.5% Unemployment rate.
- Extends to people with disabilities.
- Chips Act
- Inflation Reduction Act (and the decrease of inflation over the past year).
- Protecting American and allied interests abroad by opposing Chinese and Russian Imperialism.
That I have to list this stuff out instead of having it well known across the nation is damn frustrating. That Biden isn’t pointing out that much of the malaise the country faced in 2021 and 2022 is directly attributable to policies enacted by the Trump administration as well as Russian imperialism in Ukraine is downright criminal. But you can get a list of things Biden’s accomplished by going here. Or here. Or here. I like that the last article points out what I said above. Democrats don’t tout what they accomplished. They focus on the Republicans, saying how bad they are, giving the impression that their policies are really just “meh, our accomplishments aren’t that great, but the other side is so much worse.” Somebody needs to change out Biden’s PR guy, because whoever is in that role is doing a shit job. But when you really dig deep into the above links? Everything Biden’s done is what I wanted him to do. Some of it may have been slower that I think it should have gone (hint: had Trump’s ass been nailed to the wall in 2022 rather than this year, we’d not be talking about him as the front-runner because the GOP would have literally put up a convicted felon at that point. But I guess they wanted to be sure they nailed his ass to the wall, so he’s the front-runner on the GOP side and according to these polls cruising for election in 2024 despite the numerous indictments, all based on the fact that despite only being 3 years older than the Shitgibbon, Biden is somehow too old and feeble to be POTUS.
Mind you. I think that’s a crock of shit and these polls are all bullshit pushed by a media eager for a horserace for ratings and shit, but there ARE people who buy that bullshit, so I think the Dems should be acting like these polls are serious and start touting Biden’s achievements.
Biden is clearly too old to run again for president and Trump is being trialed
Bidens age is a real problem. In your 80s your mind and body can deteriorate quite rapidly. What is the solution if he develops dementia? This is a real risk!
Mind you, better than Trump (who is also too old, and clearly more senile). Nevertheless it’s just not ideal, and I really cannot see why he did not step aside for the next generation.
He didn’t step aside because incumbency is a huge advantage. Harris is viewed worse than Biden is, with approval ratings in the 37% range (below Biden’s 38%). So replacing Biden with Harris removes the Incumbency Advantage without improving any other metrics. What else do we have?
- Bernie Sanders: He’s lost 2 times already in the Primaries and has an approval rating in the mid 40s. He’s also 82 years old.
- Elizabeth Warren: She’s got an approval rating in the low 40s, and is 74, and a woman as well.
- Michelle Obama: While she has a mid 50s approval rating, she’s still a woman, Black, and related to a former President, all things we’ve seen run against you. She’s also not been tested politically yet. She’s at what I consider the optimal age to be Potus, at 59, but given she’s never run for office before, she has a huge liability I expect to be exploited if she did run. And let’s be clear. She doesn’t want to. Made it clear repeatedly that she doesn’t want to run for office and is happy working behind the scenes without being a politician.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A potential Progressive Firebrand youngster that some people would scream with joy at being able to vote for, but even more would vote against her. Mid to upper 30s approval ratings make it clear she’s NOT a desired candidate for most Americans, with a good 63% saying “No, she’s not a good politician.” Also, this is the first year she could run as POTUS (she’ll be 35 years old in October of 2024). Her experience is limited to her Congressional District, and she’s not run in a wider election. I personally think she needs more time in the oven, running for a State Office such as Governor, Senator, or so on. Regardless, getting one of the Squad into the Oval Office sounds like a tough sell for America, to me.
- Gavin Newsom: You’d think the governor of California would be a logical first choice for President. Thing is, he’s polling in the mid 40s approval rating in his own state, and 7 in 10 reject his running for POTUS, which would make his job in Sacramento insecure if he tried to have a go at Washington. And this is before we talk about how much California is reviled in parts of the US. I can’t find national polling numbers, but if he’s only polling in the mid 40s in California, I can only imagine his numbers nation-wide, and that’s BEFORE the Republican attack ads. Don’t forget he has some things he’s done that can be used to generate attack ads from the Left too!
- Robert F. Kenney Jr: This guy is a nutcase, a virtual MAGA in Donkey clothing, with downright dangerous views on vaccinations. He is in the upper 30s in terms of approval rating, and isn’t even running as a Democrat, but instead, as an independent. He’s seen the writing on the wall, and knows that Biden’s incumbency advantage will be too much in the Dem primary, so he’s given up on that. He might poach enough votes from the Dems to elect Trump in 2024, but current polling suggests he’s more a threat to Trump than Biden (as usual, take those polls with the usual caveats and turn out to vote for your chosen candidate – the only poll that matters is the one held a year from now). Side note. Here’s a “fun” read on the guy. A whackjob for sure, but one that indicates we shouldn’t ignore the siren call of conspiracy theory bullshit on our side. After all, we are the original home to antivaxxers before it became fashionable on Team Red to reject basic biological science because “ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do!”
- Marianne Williamson: Who? This 71 year old nobody was -4 points underwater in 2019 in approval rating, but the real numbers were that 53% of people didn’t even know who she was or had no opinion of her. She’s polling at below 10%, even after RFK dropped out. The latest head to head poll I can see has Biden taking 73% while Williamson takes…5%. ‘Who?’ indeed…
- Dean Philips: Another nobody who joined the party late. Like Williamson, he’s polling at below 10%.
Biden is the Incumbent. He has a proven track record, name recognition, and the backing of the Democratic Party. He’s beaten Trump once. He’s the most likely to beat Trump again. Switching horses mid-race has never been a good idea, in horse racing OR politics. Just look at Carter for a good example of that. Unless there is a compelling reason to swap Biden out (such as death of the candidate, conviction of a major crime, involvement in a major scandal), as the old saying goes, in times of trouble, go with who you know.
I do think Biden could use to swap Harris out for a more progressive firebrand, or at least somebody younger, and this time make the VP be more front and centre. When confronted by it, he should say, “Hey look, I’m just an old man. I’ll be 86 years old when I’m forced to retire by the 22nd Amendment, so I’m going to focus on making things work, and (s)he can focus on the PR crap.” Just for shits and giggles and to spike the cannons of the ‘he’s too old!!!’ crowd…and to set up his VP to deal with a Don Trump (third or first for jr) attempt to take the Whitehouse in 2028.
Defeating the shithead again in 2024 won’t make him go away. I’m sure the oligarchs on the GOP side are planning for their next tin-pot dictator. Putin and Xi won’t be denied, after all.
