Enten: Democrats could replace Biden but there is no other Democratic candidate with better numbers.
CNN senior reporter Harry Enten has called the results of a recent CBS News/YouGovpoll the worst number for a sitting president.
A day after the CNN presidential debate, CBS Newsand YouGovconducted a poll among 1,130 registered voters. The survey reveals that 72 percent of the respondents doubt President Joe Biden’s fitness to serve, including 46 percent of Democrats.
Some 86 percent of respondents believe Biden should step aside because of his old age, 71 percent because of his overall performance in office, 66 percent because of his record as president and 59 percent because of his inability to campaign effectively. (Related: POLL: Biden’s approval rating drops to new record low.)
Moreover, 72 percent of voters now believe that Biden does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, compared to the 65 percent who said so earlier in June. Additionally, 41 percent of Democratic voters believe the same, compared to 29 percent in a February poll.
“Look at this, voters who say that Biden has the mental health to be president. It was just 35 percent pre-debate. Look where it’s dropped to now, post-debate, 27 percent. How about ‘not that he should be running’ for president? It was 37 percent pre-debate. It’s now 28 percent. I have never seen numbers this bad for an incumbent president during my lifetime,” Enten stated in dismay.
“I mean, ‘mental health to be president’ at just 27 percent? You might say, okay, that’s low, but a lot of people thought Biden was too old back in 2020,” continued Enten. “These numbers looked nothing like this back in 2020. These numbers were bad already, and the truth is, they have gotten just considerably worse, even in just a few days after that first presidential debate.”
Enten: Democrats could replace Biden but there is no other Democratic candidate with better numbers
Due to the increasing number of voters who want Biden to aside following his poor performance in the recent debate, some Democratic officials have suggested the same.
“It’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t nominate someone else,” a Democratic consultant who works on down-ballot races said.
“He’s a good man; he loves his country; he’s doing the best that he can,” said Van Jones, a one-time adviser to former President Barack Obama and a strong supporter of Biden. “But he had a chance… tonight to restore [the] confidence of the country and of the base, and he failed to do that. And I think there are a lot of people who are going to want to see him take a different course now.”
This, in turn, resulted in the discussion of potential alternatives for the Nov. 5 ballot. But Enten noted that while Democrats could potentially replace Biden, no candidate has significantly better numbers than him.
“I went back and looked at the polling versus Donald Trump for a bunch of different Democrats that have been suggested: Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. Look at this, they all trail Donald Trump. So the idea here that we’re somehow going to get this magic bullet, that there’s somehow going to be some Democrat who can beat Donald Trump easily, I just don’t see it in the numbers,” Enten explained.
“At this particular point, if Joe Biden takes on Donald Trump, he’s trailing. If there’s another Democrat who runs against Donald Trump, they too are trailing. Any Democrat who entered the race right now, at least among those that are being suggested by a bunch of folks, would all enter the race at this particular point as an underdog to former President Donald Trump.”
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