Joe Biden is in deep shit

Not good.

(Joe Biden)

Let me first say that my mother-in-law hates when I swear. And so she is not going to like the title of this post. Sorry, Kerry!

But, I chose just this headline for a very specific reason: I don’t think people, generally speaking, are grasping just how bad Joe Biden’s political prospects look on the cusp of the election year.

To put a fine point on it: He is in very bad political shape. And if he was running against any one other than Donald Trump, we would (and should) be talking WAY more about that fact.

There are a lot of ways to explain Biden’s problems but the best (and starkest) are his polls.

Here are just a few numbers to consider:

• Biden’s job approval in the latest Gallup poll was just 37%, matching the lowest of his presidency. Just 75% of Democrats approved of the job he was doing, the worst he has done among members of his own party ever.

• Just 23% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal poll say that Biden’s policies have helped them while a whopping 53% say the policies have hurt them. (By contrast 49% say Trump’s policies while in office helped them while 37% say it hurt them.)

• More than 6 in 10 (62%) of voters in a new CBS News poll disapproved of how Biden is handling the economy

Not good. At all.

And then there are the head-to-head numbers with Trump — both nationally and in swing states.

Trump has led Biden in 11 out of the last 13 national polls, according to Real Clear Politics. The former president now has an average lead of 2.2% over Biden, according to RCP.

The picture in swing states is even worse for Biden.

CNN polls released Monday showed Biden trailing Trump by 5 points in Georgia and 10 points in Michigan. Those results echo findings from the New York Times and Siena College earlier this fall that showed Trump leading Biden in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.

Now. I can already hear people saying that a) polls are a snapshot in time and b) polls have been wrong before.

Both true!

But, here’s the thing: We are not talking about one poll that shows bad things for Biden. We are talking about virtually every poll that not only shows bad things for Biden but also shows the same bad things for Biden.

When that many serious and credible polls agree, you’d be dumb to simply dismiss what they are saying.

And it’s not just the polls!

As I wrote last week, Hunter Biden’s latest charges on tax evasion are a major problem for his father. The charges are serious and grow out of the ongoing special counsel investigation into Hunter.

And, what’s worse is that Joe Biden appears to have a political blind spot when it comes to his son. As Axios reported this morning:

In private, no issue is more likely to anger or sadden President Biden than attacks on his son Hunter, according to people close to the president who have seen his moods shift when there's bad news about Hunter… 

…Only a few long-serving aides feel free to discuss Hunter's situation with the president, and only at certain moments — knowing that it can prompt both fury and dejection.

Which is not good. Remember that good politicians don’t deal with the world as they want it to be, they deal with the world as it is. And in the real world, Hunter Biden — and his ongoing legal problems — are a liability for Joe Biden. Failure to see that (or to acknowledge it) won’t make it go away.

And then there is the age “thing.” Biden is now 81 years old, the oldest person ever to serve as president. He has visibly slowed in recent years — both in his physical movements and his speech.

It’s not getting better either. Here’s a report from Semafor on Biden’s speech at last week’s Christmas party for members of the media:

Given the goodwill and the captive, well-fed audience, Wednesday’s party was also a prime opportunity for President Joe Biden to dispel his main problem with the U.S. media right now — the undercurrent of concern that he’s too old for the job. It was an opportunity to say, in some sense: Hey, you idiots, I may be old but I’m fine.

That was clearly the goal of brief remarks he made at the East Wing party, which began with the usual joke — I’m for a free press, even when you drive me crazy. But he then strayed into a couple of hazy monologues, which ended only when his wife interrupted him to remind him it was a party. His speech wasn’t terrible, or even noteworthy. But everyone in the room realized Biden had a simple rhetorical job and hadn’t quite pulled it off.

Voters have noticed. A majority across a slew of polling believe that Biden is too old to be run for another term and express concern that he will be able to make it through another four years.

Much like the Hunter Biden issue, the White House has chosen to largely ignore this fact. Biden, when he talks about his age at all, does so in a joking manner. His White House is largely dismissive of voter concerns about his advanced age, insisting that the media is overblowing the issue.

Here’s how the New York Times’ Peter Baker framed the issue on the occasion of Biden’s birthday last month:

The best birthday gift the oldest president in American history could hope for would be a strategy for assuaging voters’ concerns, but that has been hard to come by. Mr. Biden and his team have taken the approach that his record of domestic legislation and international leadership should belie any worries about his capacity, even though polls have shown consistently that that line of argument has not been persuasive, at least not yet…

…Others, including some current and former administration officials, said Mr. Biden’s staff members should stop treating him like an old man they do not trust and let him interact with the public and reporters more. Some said the president needed to start getting out on the campaign trail more to show his vigor, deploy more humor to defuse the matter and even boast about his age rather than ignore it.

Others, however, said he needed to be protected even more, allowed more time to rest and not sent on so many draining international trips — what some cheekily call the “Bubble Wrap” strategy, as in encasing him in Bubble Wrap for the next 12 months to make sure he does not trip and fall.

The case against Biden — on polling, on issues and on intangibles — is, frankly, damning.

The pushback against this reality is two-fold: 1) The election isn’t today! and 2) TRUMP!

Let’s unpack them one by one.

Yes, it is obviously true that the election isn’t today. (If it was, Biden would lose.) And, yes, for the average voter — especially an undecided voter — the 2024 campaign has yet to even begin. (They are FAR more focused on buying — and receiving — Christmas presents than they are on how Joe Biden or Donald Trump is doing.)

Biden has yet to, really, begin to make the positive case for himself and, more importantly, to start prosecuting the case against Trump. The president will spend billions, literally, doing both things over the next year. And that can certainly change things.

But, the important thing to remember amid all of that context is that the fundamentals of the race are being set right now. And those fundamentals don’t look good — at all — for Biden.

As Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, put it on Monday:

That’s exactly right.

Then there is the Trump factor. It is already clear from the campaign Trump has run (as well as what he did in office) that he represents an active threat to our democratic principles. And that, if he is elected again in 2024, he will move in an even more authoritarian direction than he did in his first term.

The problem is that, in spite of ALL of that (yes, I know) Trump is clearly not disqualified in the eyes of a large number of voters. Given that, simply assuming that the fact that Trump is the Republican nominee is enough to elect Biden to a 2nd term is a fool’s errand.

How do I know that? Because the 2016 election happened. In that race, Hillary Clinton’s main message was, basically, “You’re certainly not going to vote for this guy right?”

Didn’t work then. And I don’t think it will work now.

Let me be clear: NONE of this means Biden can’t or won’t win next year. I think the election is effectively a toss up and is likely to remain one.

But, it does mean that the president is not going to start 2024 anywhere close to where he wants. The fact is that Biden is in a deeply bad political place. And the first step to climbing out of a ditch is acknowledging you are in one.