EAST LANSING, MI – Inflation has fallen far more dramatically than even most economists have imagined. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is still at a historic low.
The recession most experts predicted hasn’t happened. For the last two years, there have been no U.S. troops in combat anywhere in the world, for the first time since the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Death rates from the Covid pandemic have fallen so low they are no longer regularly reported. The most likely Republican nominee is facing a stunning array of criminal charges.
So why don’t the polls show President Joe Biden winning reelection next year by a landslide?
That’s a baffling question for many experts, especially when you look at what’s happened in past years. Some months ago, David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s legendary political advisor, said that if President Biden were 60 years old, nobody would be whispering that he shouldn’t run again.
However, he will turn 82 the month the next election is held, and is already the oldest man ever to occupy the Oval Office. Yet the Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, is less than four years younger, and unlike Biden, is officially obese.
Not to mention that the man the President defeated three years ago is facing four federal and state indictments and a total of 91 counts– something that in any other era, would have been more than enough to end any man’s political career. Yet polls show the men in a virtual tie, with Biden no more than a point or two ahead.
I asked two legendary Michigan pundits about this: Bill Ballenger, 82, who spent a few years in the legislature as a Republican more than half a century ago, but who is now a longtime analyst and publisher of the Ballenger Report. Mark Grebner, 70, who mostly works for Democrats, founded and runs the firm Practical Political Data, which supplies clients with demographic data about voters.
Ballenger confesses that he, too is somewhat surprised by the numbers, though he notes that polls also show a large majority of voters would prefer different choices.
He also noted that Biden has never drawn huge, enthusiastic support in any of his national campaigns. “He was always underwhelming as a presidential candidate,” he said, noting that his efforts to get the nomination in 1988 and 2008 went nowhere, and he faltered early in 2020, before turning things around.
Grebner, who has been a consultant since 1973 and does some polling himself, thinks that while the numbers shown by the polls may be correct, they are faulty. “They really don’t tell us anything about another Trump-Biden matchup, for one big reason.”
That reason, he said, is that people, especially independent voters, have widely different perceptions of the candidates. Those dissatisfied with Biden “think he is old and kind of boring. But when you ask them about Trump, they go into shock.”
He thinks that in the end, even those Democrats and independents who’d rather have another “more exciting” candidate will rally around and turn out for Biden in the end. “This election will be decided by Republican-leaning independents and what moderate Republicans there still are,” he said.
Grebner, who is also a county commissioner, has a hard time envisioning that anyone who voted for Biden last time would go for Trump this time. However, he thinks some reluctant 2020 Trump voters may have been turned off since by the former president’s many legal woes.
But why is the former President still in the game? Ballenger thinks it may be because he comes across as something of a unique force of nature. “He seems to be always there, full of energy, campaigning, speaking, nothing seems to stop him.”
Whereas, he added, there’s a perception that, while there’s no indication President Biden is mentally diminished, he comes across as somewhat old and feeble.
There’s no question that Biden has been perhaps amazingly successful at getting legislation he wanted passed in his first two years, accomplishing far more than Trump did with a majority Republican congress. David Hollister, a longtime former legislator and Lansing mayor, believes that Biden has been the most successful President since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
However, Ballenger said, “that may be true if you agree with his progressive agenda, but not if you don’t, or you were expecting him to work with Republicans, as he said he would do.”
Ballenger also thinks that when 13 Americans were killed by our “bungled” withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, that did lasting damage. “Even though Americans really don’t care about foreign policy and were glad we were out of Kabul, Biden’s ratings took a hit, and he has never really recovered.”
But though they have different perspectives, both men agree that it’s much more likely that in the end, President Biden will again beat his predecessor. That is, if conditions stay more or less as they are. Yet, as Ballenger said, “we have no idea what the situation will be like a year from now.” And Grebner added:
“I would say there’s also a 20 percent chance that Donald Trump’s health breaks down before the election, and a 15 percent chance that Biden’s health doesn’t allow him to run.”
Our best analyses, they said, are based on how things look today. On things, that is, always likely to change.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
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