David Axelrod didn’t mince words when the subject of Joe Biden’s chances of re-election came up during a Sunday appearance on CNN, saying he doesn’t believe the president understands he can’t beat Donald Trump in November.
“There are certain immutable facts of life—and those were painfully obvious on that debate stage—and the president just doesn’t seem to come to—he hasn’t come to grips with it. He’s not winning this race,” Axelrod said on Inside Politics. “If you just look at the data and talk to people around the country, political people around the country, it’s more likely that he’ll lose by a landslide than win narrowly this race.”
He warned@ “And if the stakes are as large as he says, and I believe they are, then he really needs to consider what the right thing to do here is.”
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A chief campaign strategist turned senior adviser in Barack Obama’s White House, and now a CNN pundit, Axelrod has long been critical of his former boss’s vice president. As early as last fall, he suggested that Biden, then 80, might be too old to occupy the nation’s highest office.
“Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” he tweeted after a particularly dire set of New York Times polls were released in November. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it's in HIS best interest or the country’s?”
And that was before the debate. Following Biden’s lackluster performance on that Georgia stage, Axelrod has driven yet more nails into the coffin, sounding off this week to observe that the president seems “dangerously out of touch” with reality.
“The president is rightfully proud of his record,” he wrote on X on Friday. “But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacitiies [sic] moving forward and his standing in this race.
“Four years ago at this time was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind,” Axelrod continued, seemingly referencing a Wall Street Journal poll published the previous day showing that Trump has opened a 6-point lead nationally.
The Journal survey showed Biden trailing Trump at 42 to 48 percent, compared to a 2-point lead from a prior February poll. A full 80 percent of respondents also said the president is too old for a second term.
Though most fast-twitch polls after the debate showed Biden suffering a significant slide in numbers, at least one recent survey reflects something of a recovery: a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll which, when put out Saturday, showed Trump leading Biden in seven key swing states by only 2 points, 47 to 45 percent.
The new numbers represent the closest Biden has been to catching up to Trump since Bloomberg began tracking the seven states last October.
Still, Biden’s approval rating hovered around 36 percent as of earlier this week. No incumbent president has boasted such grim stats since George H.W. Bush more than 30 years ago, according to Politico.
The approval rating, no doubt a sore spot for the president, was referenced in his first sit-down interview after the debate, a 22-minute spot with ABC News that aired on Friday.
“Mr. President, I’ve never seen a president [with] 36 percent approval get re-elected,” the network’s George Stephanopoulos said.
“Well, I don’t believe that’s my approval rating. That’s not what our polls show,” Biden responded.
Asked how he would feel should he choose to remain in the race and subsequently lose to Trump, Biden replied tersely, “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” The president later clarified that only “the Lord Almighty” could make him drop out of the race.
Axelrod tipped his hat to Stephanopoulos for his work a day later. “His questions were respectful but firm and probing,” he wrote on X. “He asked what needed to be asked, and did it with sensitivity.”
Though he didn’t touch on Biden’s performance opposite his interviewer, Axelrod didn’t hold back come Sunday.
“Listening to the interview, he seemed to deny where he is in the race. He seems not to grasp what is the big concern that people have,” he said on CNN, adding that although Biden has fought successfully against “tremendous loss and tremendous odds,” he can’t beat “Father Time.”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to Axelrod’s Sunday assessment, but the president apparently harbors few warm feelings for the ex-strategist. After Axelrod proposed he consider dropping out last fall, Biden reportedly starting referring to him as “a prick” behind closed doors.
