Biden's Enthusiasm Gap: Yet Another New Poll

Joe Biden isn't a serious presidential candidate. He never has been. He was always a conservative opportunist, a liar and a dope--his own worst enemy--and this campaign season has added an extra wrinkle, in that he appears to be suffering significant cognitive impairment. He is unfit for the presidency. He has always been unfit. That he presently stands poised to take the Democratic nomination is astonishing--an indication of, among other things, a serious breakdown in several major American institutions. Particularly the press; Biden has become such a formidable Democratic contender only because the press has failed to inform the public of his appalling record and chronic dishonesty, has declined to adequately question his cognitive state--or to seriously question it at all--and, worse, has actively misinformed the public with a very dubious "electability" narrative manufactured to position Biden as the only hope of defeating Trump then repeated into infinity.

"In the present cycle, the notion that Joe Biden is more 'electable' than [his progressive opponent Bernie] Sanders is treated as an article of faith in national news media. It's never interrogated, and it is, on a daily basis, relentlessly propagated on the major networks' news operations, by all the major newspapers and 24 hours a day on the cable news networks. This is done both directly and, more often, by implication, as Sanders is very aggressively presented as unelectable, someone who will lose and cost Democrats the congress."

The polls have long shown that, having this narrative so relentlessly hammered into them, Democrats are internalizing it, with large majorities of them saying Biden is more "electable" than Sanders. The same polls also expose this as very dubious--in general-election match-ups against Trump, Sanders does as well as or better than Biden--but people don't accept the narrative because of any actual analysis of the race; they do so because it's what they're told--and told and told and told--by Democratic elites and the media. The exit-polling on the Democratic contests to date strongly suggests--and to an extent shows--that Biden's wins are being driven by low-information voters who have been left in the dark or actively misled about Biden and are backing a candidate who doesn't support their issues because they're buying into that "electability" narrative. So now, Democrats stand poised to nominate another weak, loser candidate.

Add the new ABC News poll to the large and growing pile of warnings about what this is building:

"Former Vice President Joe Biden has emerged as Democrats’ top choice for the presidential nomination in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, but with only bare majority support within his party and a massive enthusiasm gap in a November matchup against President Donald Trump."

Mere antipathy toward Trump can't generate enthusiasm for Joe Biden or, for that matter, for any other candidate. It seems ridiculous that one should have to point out such an obvious truism but that's where things are. Biden generates no enthusiasm. Like Hillary Clinton before him, he had to hold what few campaign events he did in small venues because no one shows up for them. He's had to rely on big-money fundraisers and eventually a super PAC to pay for his campaign because his grassroots fundraising efforts completely collapsed. Like Clinton, he opposes progressive priorities and like Clinton, he's bound to discover that "No, We Can't" doesn't make for a stirring rallying cry. Young voters don't like him. His primary base of support are elderly Democrats who would show up to vote for the Democratic candidate in the general regardless of who got the party's nomination (whereas elderly voters as a bloc favor Trump).[1] As this author wrote in his most recent article, while Biden is unlikely to inspire any real enthusiasm from the progressive base, he will, if he becomes the nominee, be up against Trump, "a 'president' with a fanatical following, the maximal leader about which those who have become his own base have always dreamed. No matter what happens, they're guaranteed to turn up in force..."

This new ABC News poll finds that "strong enthusiasm for Biden among his supporters--at just 24%--is the lowest on record for a Democratic presidential candidate in 20 years of ABC/Post polls. More than twice as many of Trump’s supporters are highly enthusiastic about supporting him, 53%." A larger slice of Biden's supporters--26%--say they have no real enthusiasm for him than say they are very enthusiastic about him, which would be, under any circumstances, a sign of something very wrong. Results:

As awful as Trump's regime has been, Biden and Trump are statistically tied in the poll's general-election match-up, neither getting 50% of the vote.[2]

"There’s déjà vu in these results: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in largely the same position four years ago. She, too, had a slim lead among Democrats for the nomination and ran essentially evenly with Trump among registered voters. And she lagged in enthusiasm, with a low of 32% very enthusiastic in September 2016. Biden is 8 points under that mark now.

"Bad as Biden’s enthusiasm score is, we’ve seen worse: As few as 17% of former Republican presidential nominee and Arizona Sen. John McCain’s supporters were very enthusiastic about his candidacy in 2008, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney saw 23% in 2012. The poor omen for Biden is that Clinton, McCain and Romney all lost."

In the event if a Biden-led Democratic ticket, this lack of enthusiasm will also drag down downballot Democratic candidates across the U.S.

Something else that turned up in 2016 polling, proved true in 2016 and has repeatedly shown up in various forms in the 2020 polling[3]: 15% of Sanders supporters said they would vote for Trump over Biden in a general election. Votes the Democrats could have but will lose if they nominate Biden.

--j.

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[1] In 2016, elderly voters favored Trump by 8%.

[2] ABC News didn't bother to include a Trump v. Sanders question that could be compared to Trump v. Biden, which I'm sure was entirely accidental, and thus no comparable enthusiasm numbers--no doubt just an oversight.

[3] The polling has shown Sanders supporters are among the most loyal to their candidate. They're far less likely than supporters of other candidates to say they'll support the Democratic nominee no matter who it may be. Such results would inevitably cause Clintonite-right commentators to clutch their pearls at the "cult-like" Sanders supporters, jewel-snatching that turned logic on its head and insisted inspiring greater loyalty in one's supporters was a negative for a candidate while being unable to do so was a positive.