Who could’ve guessed that the absolute best endorsement for a second term for former President Donald Trump would come from … the man who helped end the first term?
As is typically the case in the peculiar world of modern American politics, fact is often stranger than fiction, and it is indeed true that incumbent President Joe Biden has been the single best, loudest and ringing advertisement for another four years of Trump.
And if you needed any proof of that, just look at what’s brewing in a pair of battleground states as the 2024 general election inches closer.
The polarizing 2020 election was one that Biden “won” (your mileage may vary on the term) on the back of some razor thin margins of victory in key battleground states like Michigan and Georgia.
As CNN has documented, Biden won Michigan by 2.8 percent, and Georgia by .3 percent in the 2020 general election.
Those were two critical states that Biden desperately needed.
Now?
The very same CNN that once proudly declared Biden the next president is now telling the incumbent president that things are not looking good for him.
Do you think Trump will be the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2024?
On Monday morning, CNN “Early Start” host Kasie Hunt spoke on her program about what those two aforementioned battleground states look like for the president … and it’s not pretty.
In news that Hunt described as “rough numbers for the president,” she revealed that the incumbent was trailing — significantly so — in Michigan and Georgia, per CNN polling.
New this morning: Trump leads Biden in the critical battleground states of Georgia and Michigan, according to CNN polling. @IsaacDovere helps break down the new data pic.twitter.com/50zdGvniZQ
— CNN Early Start with Kasie Hunt (@EarlyStart) December 11, 2023
Citing a CNN poll conducted from Nov. 29 to Dec. 7, and with a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, Hunt revealed that Biden is trailing Trump in Georgia by 5 percentage points and trailing Trump in Michigan by a whopping 10 percentage points.
The poll, which asked registered voters who they would prefer in a hypothetical (but likely) 2024 showdown between Biden and Trump, paint a much different picture from even just three scant years ago. Furthermore, Hunt pointed out that “voters who say they didn’t vote in 2020” but will vote in this election are trending towards voting for Trump.
(It also does need to be pointed out that Trump’s poll lead over Biden in those two states exceeds the margin of error, so this is indeed “rough” for Team Biden.)
So what’s changed in the last three years to swing these states so strongly?
It’s certainly not the former president, who’s been entangled with a number of thorny, weaponized and spurious legal charges. Trump’s been far too busy clearing his good name in court to really do much to sway one’s opinion — good or bad — about the former president.
But Trump hasn’t had to do anything because, as the old adage goes, if you hand enough rope to your opposition, they’ll eventually hang themselves.
Trump, simply by sitting back and watching the country crumble under the “leadership” of Biden, has proven his point: Whatever faults he may have had as president pale in comparison to the glaring, epic deficiencies that Biden has as the commander-in-chief.
The general state of “Bidenomics” is proof positive of that.
Conservatives and Republicans (well, some Republicans) always knew this was coming with a Biden presidency.
The general American voting public, based on the polling in those two key battleground states, is clearly starting to become aware of this, too.
