A lot has changed in four years. In 2020, Joe Biden consistently led Donald Trump in the polls. His lead was so stable that Donald Trump never once eclipsed him in the RealClearPolitics average. Fast forward to today, and not only is Donald Trump leading in the RCP average (his spread is +2 points), but he's been in the lead for months. Not even Joe Biden's much-hyped State of the Union address managed to give him the bump his campaign hoped it would.
It's no secret that various Democrat insiders have been sounding the alarm, calling for Biden to drop out, or for Kamala Harris to drop out, or praying for some miracle, because right now, it's widely acknowledged that if the election were held today, Trump would win. He would win despite everything the Democrats have thrown at him: lies, indictments, ballot challenges, you name it. This is, of course, no reason to get cocky, anything can happen and there's ample time for it to actually happen. But, while Biden insiders pretend like everything is okay, the media is constantly looking at the polls and they can't seem to figure out how Trump is ahead.
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This week, TIME magazine conceded that Biden's campaign is in trouble, and revealed that Barack Obama has twice met with Joe Biden to basically tell him he's blowing the election. The first meeting, in June of last year, Obama warned him that defeating Trump would be more difficult in 2024, and must make the next election a referendum on Trump. While it certainly appears that Biden has followed this advice, during a follow-up meeting in December, Obama's prognosis hadn't improved. "This time, Obama’s message was more urgent. He expressed concern the re-election campaign was behind schedule in building out its field operations and bottlenecked by Biden’s insistence on relying upon an insular group of advisers clustered in the West Wing, according to the same Democratic insider," TIME reported. "Biden needed to get it together, or Trump would sweep the seven key battleground states in November, six of which Biden carried in 2020."
In the three months since, Biden's position has yet to improve, and TIME concedes that "Biden is indeed in trouble":
His stubbornly low approval ratings have sunk into the high 30s, worse than those of any other recent President seeking re-election. He’s trailed or tied Trump in most head-to-head matchups for months. Voters express concerns about his policies, his leadership, his age, and his competency. The coalition that carried Biden to victory in 2020 has splintered; the Democrats’ historic advantage with Black, Latino, and Asian American voters has dwindled to lows not seen since the civil rights movement.
Biden's inner circle is clearly out of touch with what Americans are concerned about and has a deeply inflated sense of what Biden's accomplishments are. They think the economy is strong, but few people actually feel as though Bidenomics has lifted them up and those who say it has are just lying about it. They think that they can ride the pro-abortion wave to victory, even though the economy and immigration easily outrank abortion as an issue concerning most Americans this year.
The only tangible advantage Biden actually appears to have at the moment is cash, and, as the past has shown, that won't be enough. Trump was outspent by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and still won, and if Biden's campaign thinks that they can spend millions of dollars and successfully convince people they're better off now than they were under Trump, they should look at the failed White House campaign to promote Bidenomics. All the campaign cash in the world won't be able to convince people that their grocery and utility bills are lower today than they were under Trump.
While many people aren't thrilled about a 2020 rematch, this dynamic makes the decision so much easier because they know exactly what they'll get from both candidates. Voters don't have to like Trump to know that a vote for him is in their best interests. There isn't any advice Obama could give Biden to change that.
