CNN’s Harry Enten is the canary in the coal mine for the Biden campaign that has yet to realize they’re on the precipice of total political disaster. In multiple donor calls, memos, and fundraising emails, the Biden operation has taken a stoic, and some could argue insane, approach to putting out fires among the Democratic Party’s donor class. Some top donors reportedly inquired about refunds, while others wanted Biden officials to be receptive to their concerns about the president’s mental health. The Biden team accommodated neither, but Enten added that these issues should be the primary focus for a campaign teetering on defeat.
Enten told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that polling on Biden’s capacity to be president isn’t even on the same planet as it was four years ago. After Trump demolished Biden, 72 percent of Americans feel he’s too old to be president, up from 65 percent pre-debate. It was only 36 percent in 2020.
Re: Biden's age/mental acuity in the voters' minds. The numbers are worse than pre-debate, which were historically bad. Far worse than 2020 when age actually wasn't a big issue to voters.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) July 2, 2024
The comparison to Reagan is total bunk.
Unsure how Biden wins if #s don't vastly improve pic.twitter.com/46nP2gPEYf
The CNN data cruncher was blunt in that he didn’t see how Biden would win if these figures continued to be this poor for the president. He also torched a counternarrative from liberals regarding Ronald Reagan, who didn’t have a good first debate in the 1984 election. He bounced back in the second, but the baseline isn’t close. Just 27 percent of Americans felt in 1984 that Reagan was too old to be president, and that was after the first debate.
Reagan got the benefit of the doubt from voters, but Enten doesn’t see it with Biden, who arguably had a worse performance. He’s also not the only one asking how to win when three-fourths of the country thinks you’ve lost it. Sam Stein tweeted that he didn’t mean to be “glib” but wondered how Biden could win re-election with figures like this.
You probably can’t unless you cheat.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member