President Biden said Thursday that no poll or person told him he couldn’t win the November general election following his debate performance last month.
Biden said in a one-on-one press conference after the NATO Summit that seeing polling information that showed Vice President Harris would perform better against former President Trump than he did would not in itself make him step aside.
When asked if he would step aside if his team showed him polls suggesting that, Biden said, “No, unless they came back and said there’s no way to win. They’re not saying that. No polls say that.”
He said he believed he would have an easier time winning than another candidate who would have to start from “scratch”.
“I believe I’m the most qualified to govern, and I think I’m the most qualified to win,” he said.
Biden is trying to assure Democrats after his dismal debate with Trump that he is up to the task of defeating the former president for re-election in November and serving another term as president. Since the debate, more than a dozen congressional Democrats have called on him to step aside as the party’s nominee.
Polls have not shown a complete collapse for Biden in recent weeks, and he has trailed Trump within a few points in most national polls and key battleground states. But Trump slightly increased his lead according to most recently released polls, and the data also showed significant doubts about Biden’s ability to stay in the race, including from members of his own party.
Biden questioned how accurate polls can be trusted to be and argued that while some polls show Trump ahead, others show him ahead. He added that he believes the vote is premature, as the campaign will only truly heat up after Labor Day, as happened in previous elections.
“The campaign hadn’t really even started. I mean, it hadn’t really started yet. Most of the time, it doesn’t start until after September, after Labor Day,” he said.
Democratic strategist David Axelrod said in response to Biden’s comments that if we are to believe him, it means his team is not being honest with him.
“If what he said at the end of his interview is true, it appears that the Biden team was not very frank with him about what the data shows: the age issue is a huge and potentially insurmountable concern and his chances of winning are very, very thin,” he said in apublishin X.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
