MSNBC star Rachel Maddow tried to pull anxious supporters of President Joe Biden from the ledge on Tuesday, telling them that early polls showing Biden down to Donald Trump in key battleground states should cause them to both “panic” and “chill.”
Appearing on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, the progressive cable news host was asked to weigh in on this past weekend’s New York Times poll that found the president trailing Trump in states he won in 2020, prompting prominent Democrats to declare a “five-alarm fire” while urging Biden to drop out.
“Too early to be concerned if you’re the Biden camp or maybe ring the alarm bells?” Late Night host Seth Meyers wondered.
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“If you work in politics and your job right now is working on the Biden campaign, it is never too early to be concerned,” Maddow replied. “I feel like they should absolutely panic and also be cognizant of the fact that it is a year out and, if you look at Barack Obama a year out from his re-election effort, he was in basically the exact same position and then handled Mitt Romney very easily when the election came around.”
She continued: “So there’s sort of reason to chill and reason to panic, and I think they should do both.”
Myers then joked if this was a “mix of chill and panic,” leading Maddow to laugh and add: “Basically my work.”
She went on to note that the NYT poll that “freaked everybody out that’s a Biden supporter” also found that a substantial number of Trump voters would flip to Biden if the ex-president were convicted on one of his dozens of felony charges.
“So I sorta feel the one thing that teaches us is that these polls mean nothing, and it’s time to work very, very hard if you want your chosen candidate to get elected,” Maddow concluded.
The MSNBC host’s cautious advice to Democrats would inevitably prove correct on Tuesday night. While her interview was taped before that evening’s election results came in, Democrats fared very well across the board as they won the Kentucky governor’s race, abortion rights in Ohio and both chambers of the Virginia legislature.