Everybody needs to relax about this poll:
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.
Indeed, 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%.
This isn’t good, of course. It’s also irrelevant. Do we think that people will refuse to vote in seven months because they aren’t “enthusiastic” about Biden in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown in which he’s personally forced to shelter in place while the president hogs the attention of everyone? As if this will be a normal election and all the usual signifiers mean anything?
Honestly, everyone needs to just tune this stuff out right now.
The shrieking online about these numbers and the instant response that we must drop Biden as the presumptive nominee and coax a bunch of people back into the race or simply remove him by fiat and appoint Sanders — so that the Democrats can appear to be completely unhinged and panicked in the midst of a global crisis — seems just a tad unwise. If people are unenthusiastic now just wait until the Democratic Party proves itself to be a bunch of lunatics screaming that the sky is falling based upon one poll. Let’s just say it’s not a good look.
And anyway, as Steve M at NMMNB points out, this reflexive propensity to come completely unglued over a bad news poll while ignoring a good one is a truly self-destructive impulse by Democratic pundits, online and otherwise:
I told you on Friday about that other poll — a Fox News poll with Biden up 49%-40% among registered voters. In that poll, there’s no enthusiasm gap:
The race remains a nine-point advantage for Biden over Trump when looking only at those voters extremely interested in the election (52-43 percent)….
Right, because the Fox question wasn’t about whether respondents are enthusiastic about their candidate, it’s about whether they’re eager to vote in November. (The question is “How interested are you in the presidential election?,” with choices ranging from “Extremely” to “Not at all.”)
Oh, and:
… the former vice president has an eight-point edge in battleground states (48-40 percent).
However, Biden’s advantage grows to 25 points, 57-32 percent, in close counties (where Hillary Clinton and Trump were within 10 points in 2016).
Being “very enthusiastic “about Biden is not the same as being “beyond desperate and will vote for a potted plant” to get Trump out of office. I suspect if anyone asked the question that way we’d have a very different result.
I understand feeling panicked at the idea that Trump might win. I feel that too, maybe even more than most because I have lived in this online political swamp for 20 years and I know how far the Republicans will go, legally, ethically and morally to keep this monster in the White House. It is terrifying. But to make assumptions in this moment, and start agitating for some kind of reckless, panicked response would be about as self-destructive as it gets. I know Democrats are more than willing to do that in the best of times. But we are in the worst of times and they simply must behave like sensible people.
Update: I am reminded of the panic back in 2012. Recall that everyone was freaking out that Obama as going to lose re-election against Romney at this point in the 2012 race as well:
Here’s how that turned out in case you forgot:
I realize times have changed in many ways. But the polls in April are not more predictive now than they were then. And we have an infit miscreant in the White House today who is screwing the pooch in an epic crisis and literally threatening to allow people to die if their governers don’t properly kiss his feet. Let’s just say “enthusiasm” among normal people for anyone or anything but staying alive until we can get him out is probably beside the point right now.