Right before someone crashed into his motorcade, a reporter asked Biden why he’s losing to Trump in the polls.
"You're reading the wrong polls," he told her.
But what does he really think? Does he really think that the 80% of polls showing Trump ahead of him are all wrong and the few polls these days showing him ahead are the ones that are right? Sadly, the polls are so bad for him that he'd rather we think that than the truth.
So what is the truth? Well, according to a report from The Washington Post, Joe Biden isn’t as confident as he is projecting publicly and is “increasingly frustrated” by his “dismal poll numbers."
Per the report, before leaving the White House for his Thanksgiving vacation in Nantucket, Mass., Biden had a pow-wow with his top aides in the White House, and it was not a fun meeting.
"After pardoning a pair of turkeys, an annual White House tradition, Biden delivered some stern words for the small group assembled: His poll numbers were unacceptably low and he wanted to know what his team and his campaign were doing about it,” the Washington Post reports. "He complained that his economic message had done little to move the ball, even as the economy was growing and unemployment was falling, according to people familiar with his comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation."
For months, the president and first lady Jill Biden have told aides and friends they are frustrated by the president’s low approval rating and the polls that show him trailing former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination — and in recent weeks, they have grown upset that they are not making more progress.
The White House refused to comment on the story. “We do not discuss the president’s private conversations one way or the other,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, told The Post. “The president and first lady meet regularly with their senior team for updates and to review plans.”
This article is very telling because it tells us that Biden and the White House haven't figured out the obvious: that all the messaging and talking points in the world can't change how people perceive reality. They know when they fill up the tank that gas is ridiculously more expensive now than it was under Trump. They know when they check out at the supermarket that the prices of necessities are also higher.
Yes, But... Are We Underestimating the Democrats in 2024?
Joe Biden also claims to be the king of job creation, which is a huge joke. Everyone knows—and even liberal fact-checkers admit—that the overwhelming majority of the jobs that have been added to the economy on his watch were jobs that had been lost during the pandemic that had come back. They weren't jobs created by his economic policies. Voters simply aren't going to give Biden credit for a booming economy that isn't booming.
And that's the problem his team doesn't get.
"Since that November meeting, which has not been previously reported, most polls continue to show Biden trailing Trump nationally and, more importantly, in key battleground states," the Post notes. "The accumulation of troubling polls for Biden has made it harder for Democrats to dismiss them, leading to a fresh set of conversations among Biden officials and allies about whether the president and his team need a shift in strategy. And now Democrats in competitive races are growing increasingly worried about Biden damaging their own electoral prospects."
If Joe Biden is privately frustrated, that speaks volumes. But the fact that neither he nor his team know why their strategies aren't working tells us that they don't have the slightest clue how to turn things around.
