Trump Leads in Post-Debate Polls as Democrats Resign Themselves to Another Republican Administration
Democrats hoping to replace President Biden at the top of the ticket have fallen silent after the assassination attempt on President Trump.
A new survey shows that President Biden and President Trump are locked in a tight race for the presidency in 2024, even as Democrats reportedly back off efforts to replace Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket and their criticisms of Trump.
A new survey by NBC News conducted after Mr. Biden’s bad debate performance but before the attempt on Trump’s life found that Mr. Biden is trailing Trump by 2 points nationally.
The survey did, however, find that some 60 percent of Democrats would prefer a different candidate at the top of the ticket and that 80 percent of respondents had concerns about Mr. Biden’s mental and physical fitness for office.
“Numbers change when new information is presented,” pollster Bill McInturff told NBC News of the polling results. “The voters have been trying to tell us for a very long time that they have concerns about Biden serving a second term.”
At the same time that Democratic voters are reaffirmed in their preference for a different Democratic nominee, NBC News reports that Democratic efforts to replace Mr. Biden have come to a screeching halt.
“I think it’s over,” a Biden ally told NBC in the wake of the Trump rally shooting. “You just lose all momentum.”
Another Democratic strategist told NBC that “They were having a very bad political day, and then we had this supernova event. Now, it’s frozen.”
“If you’re an advocate for: ‘How do we tell the old man it’s time to go?’ — it’s really hard to have that conversation publicly. This event blocks out the sun right now,” the strategist added, referring to the assassination attempt against Trump.
Axios also reports that one senior Democrat said that “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,” in an apparent surrender to Trump and the Republicans.
Congressman Dean Phillips, a Democrat who has long advocated for replacing Mr. Biden and even campaigned for the Democratic nomination, told Axios that “It would be unpatriotic and unprincipled to direct energy to anything other than yesterday’s national tragedy over the coming days.”
“The only conversation about President Biden should be about how he can console our country, address the anger, and meet the moment,” Mr. Phillips said.
