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Perhaps the most exasperating part of being President is the quick forgetfulness of voters. Fleeting joys – the false victory over the Taliban, the real death of Osama bin Laden – never last long. But the advantage of Americans’ constant rewriting of our collective memories is that the bad ones don’t stick around either.
That’s the optimistic outlook President Joe Biden’s allies are taking as they approach the two-week mark after a disastrous debate that raised serious questions about the president’s mental acuity and cognitive abilities. With Democrats in frank dismay and unable to force Biden’s hand, there’s a good chance that the energy at next week’s GOP nominating convention in Milwaukee will feel more like a UFC fight than a C-SPAN audience. This collective intimidation will do Democrats few favors, as it will likely only redouble Biden’s determination not to be forced.
Internally and externally, Biden’s top advisers are treating the fallout as hypersensitivity on the part of politicians and pundits inside the Beltway, most of whom seem to have forgotten that it’s still July. Voting doesn’t begin until September, and there will be two nominating conventions and the Olympics to change the conversation among the electorate. And they point to perhaps this century’s most notorious campaign moment to make that argument: the infamous Access Hollywood tape and its audio of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault.
Released a month before election day in 2016, many assumed the scandal would be strength Trump step aside. Instead, he overcame it and voters agreed. On election day he prevailed –winning more than 64% of white working-class voters, 62% of white men and 47% of white women.
Some Biden team members are now pointing to this Access Hollywood episode, which actually caused Trump’s polls to drop by less than a percentage point in less than three weeks; the tape aired on October 7, 2016, and he returned to his normal position in the polls on October 25, according to the polling average of 538 file.
The analogy is, of course, imperfect. But it combines with other moments that evaporate. As US News and World ReportOlivier Knox pointed out to me, the day after the collapse on stage in Atlanta, the vote for Barack Obama I emphasize after bin Laden’s death lasted just six weeks in 2011. Separately, when Trump contracted Covid-19 and had to be flown to Walter Reed in 2020, his polling dipped again by less than a percentage point.
This is a way for those steeped in Biden World to reassure themselves — and their boss — that these things that seem huge among political junkies rarely actually reach the pop generation. The news came out of Atlanta in real time as the debate continued: a 90-minute error would not define the choice voters would face in November. Plus, they had time. Furthermore, although Biden’s polls have dropped, it doesn’t appear to be as bad as the collapse in poll numbers that many predicted.
Still, Tuesday’s nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have moved from contested status to leaning Republican. Analysts also moved Minnesota, New Hampshire and a single congressional district in Nebraska from Democratic strongholds to merely tilt the Democrats’ way. Despite some researches had Biden standing firm, others had him below 6 points in some places like Georgia and nationally. For the survey of likely voters, it was a three-point assessment balance in less than two weeks.
All of this could be temporary, Biden supporters argue.
Trump’s candidacy provides many reasons for Democrats to shudder, but one captivating lesson: nothing lasts forever, not even a terrible showing that has provoked countless recriminations within Democratic circles. Further proof: 51% of voters say that now to approve of Trump’s performance when he was president, a benchmark he never reached while in office.
Biden’s team counts on such a fickle electorate and hopes that the non-stop repetition of their admittedly terrible responses does not continue.
“They think they can get through this, and so do I,” said one lawmaker who heard the Access Hollywood analogy and is a close ally of the White House. “Joe Biden is the only person who defeated Donald Trump. Why would you trade that, even for someone as promising as the vice president?”
The big caveat to relying on the 2016 polls is this: Trump’s return to previous levels still left him behind Hillary Clinton almost everywhere. Trump’s victory came seemingly out of nowhere. This time, Trump is ahead of Biden in the polls in every swing state, and Biden has yet to surpass the 50% mark in any of them.
Biden, however, remains a highly undesirable presence on the ticket, let alone as its leader. As TIME’s Nik Popli reports on Capitol Hill, there is a grudging acceptance that Biden is probably their nominee, whether they want him or not. After only a handful of House Democrats publicly urged Biden to drop out of the race, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have reignited the issue Wednesday morning, suggesting instead Morning Joe that Biden should reconsider. “We all encourage him to make this decision because time is running out,” Pelosi said, as if Biden hadn’t already made his position crystal clear over a week ago.
Biden appears to be taking a page from his predecessor: fake it until you make it. Trump pretended there was no crisis until there was none. Biden is trying to assure voters that he will be ready for a task at hand for another four years, a challenge that grows more acute with each passing day of open ambivalence. He told ABC News ‘ George Stephanopolous that he you knew he had a bad night, but it also sparked a light storm over whether he used his “best work” in a response. (Official transcript from ABC News, edited At Team Joe’s request, he concluded that he used “good as work” in a sentence that didn’t become much clearer with the adjustment.)
Plus, there’s the added bonus that no Democrat actually thinks there’s a good chance Biden will step aside. A YouGov poll show 72% of Democrats think they are stuck with Biden whether they like it or not. Biden believes that by Election Day Democrats will forget they ever had doubts about his candidacy. Given how waiting has worked out for others, it’s not an unreasonable move – and clearly there’s already a lot of forgetting going on.
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