The case for a Biden comeback always presumed that voters would mostly cast their ballots based on their views about Donald J. Trump. That’s how President Biden won four years ago, and it’s why many believed he could overcome poor approval ratings to win again.
But as my colleague Reid Epstein noted Monday, this election hasn’t been about Mr. Trump since the recent presidential debate. Instead, the political conversation has focused almost entirely on Mr. Biden’s fitness for the presidency and whether he’ll remain his party’s nominee. So long as that’s true, the path to a Biden comeback will be long and arduous.
The best that can be said for Mr. Biden is that the worst of the post-debate crisis might — might — be over. My colleagues on the Hill report that House and Senate Democrats did not reach consensus that might have encouraged party leaders to try to nudge Mr. Biden out of the election. Even skeptics like Jerry Nadler, who had reportedly told his colleagues that Mr. Biden should end his candidacy, appeared newly resigned to Mr. Biden’s renomination. And all of this follows a steady stream of Democrats who affirmed their support for Mr. Biden on Monday, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Months from now, it’s possible we’ll look back on the last 48 hours as a turning point for Mr. Biden — the moment when efforts to remove him were finally pushed aside, and when he and the Democrats got back to the task of trying to defeat Mr. Trump.
But while the worst might be in the rearview mirror, this challenging period for Mr. Biden seems far from over.
For one, his position remains precarious. If he has indeed made it through the worst, he did not do so mainly by assuaging doubts about his fitness for office. Instead, he endured because dissenting Democrats were unwilling to take the risky step of directly confronting him and his vocal allies.
The doubts still linger. Polls repeatedly show voters saying he’s too old to be effective. His public appearances will be scrutinized as the latest test of his fitness; every utterance will have the potential to reopen the debate about the viability of his bid, starting with his “big boy” news conference on Thursday. With so many Democrats pushed to the edge, another serious misstep could be enormously consequential.
For another, next week’s Republican convention will keep the spotlight on Mr. Biden. If you remember the Republican convention’s evisceration of John Kerry in 2004, you won’t find it hard to imagine the kind of damage a convention could do — though perhaps in this case much of the damage is already done.
Whatever happens next, the time between now and the end of the Republican convention is unlikely to do Mr. Biden any favors. His standing in the polls could easily be even lower by then than it is today (more on that below), since even an ordinary convention usually brings a bounce in the polls for the party that holds it.
Here are short answers to some common questions we’ve been hearing since the debate.
Are Biden’s poor recent numbers just the usual transitory debate shift?
On paper, Mr. Trump’s gains look like the usual debate bounce — he gained about three percentage points in our last Times/Siena poll, which is right in line with the typical gain for the consensus winner of a first debate.
But sometimes, the numbers don’t capture what really happened. Mr. Biden didn’t just perform poorly, the way George W. Bush or Barack Obama once did. His performance raised questions about his fitness for office, which many voters already doubted. Whatever the polling shift may be in the short term, this is a more serious and lasting problem. Mr. Biden will find it far harder to focus the electorate squarely on Mr. Trump’s liabilities, rather than his own.
When will we get a clear picture of the post-debate polling?
Usually, I’d say we’d know by now. But the unusual timing of this year’s debate is getting in the way of things. The holiday weekend and the Republican convention create a very narrow window for pollsters to get a good measure of where the race stands today. The scheduling of the June debate probably caught some pollsters off guard, and they may not have had the time or resources to field a post-debate poll on short notice.
How bad is Biden’s actual deficit right now?
It’s a little hard to say, given the limited data we have at the moment, but the evidence we do have from high-quality polling suggests Mr. Trump has a relatively comfortable lead.
Polls from The New York Times/Siena College, CNN/SSRS and The Wall Street Journal all showed Mr. Biden down at least six points nationally in the wake of the debate. An AARP poll fielded by a highly regarded Democratic and Republican pollster found Mr. Trump up six points in Wisconsin when minor-party candidates were considered.
These results are also consistent with data from a prominent Democratic firm that leaked last week.
What does the polling show about how Kamala Harris might fare against Trump if Biden stepped down? Is it too soon to say for her and for other possible candidates?
I don’t read much into the polling about how the non-Biden Democrats fare against Mr. Trump.
The limited polling we do have shows Ms. Harris trailing Mr. Trump nationwide, though perhaps by less than Mr. Biden trails in the same data. The non-Harris Democrats fare even worse, though these candidates are mostly unknown, and they’re not actively campaigning, either. If they ran, they might fare well and inspire a cynical nation; alternately, they might flop, as many do.
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