John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 48 percent of Arkansas LV’s, according to a new Arkansas News Bureau/Stephens Media Group Poll conducted 10/18-20. Kerry was down by 9 percent in the ANB poll taken two weeks ago.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 20: What Biden Should Say If He “Steps Aside”
In all the talk about whether Joe Biden should “step aside,” there hasn’t been enough discussion of the rationale he should present if he does so. So I offered one at New York:
The Democratic Party’s semi-public bickering over what to do with Joe Biden needs to come to an end very soon, lest it turn into a horrific party-rending conflict or a de facto surrender to Donald Trump. While he can technically be pushed out of the nomination, it would be nightmarishly difficult to do so given his virtually unopposed performance in the primaries and the lack of precedent for anything like a forced defenestration of a sitting president. It would also express disloyalty to a brave and dedicated leader. But Biden has already lost the united, confident party he needed to make a comeback. He’s trailing in the polls right now. And even more importantly, his own conduct and fitness for office will command center stage for the rest of the general-election campaign, which is precisely what he cannot afford given his poor job-approval ratings and the sour mood of the electorate.
So Joe needs to go of his own accord, and it needs to happen quickly before Republican and Biden-loyalist claims of a “coup” become all too credible. But it’s obviously a humiliating exercise. So if Biden comes to realize the futility of going forward, what can this proud and stubborn man say that will make him something other than an object of derision or pity?
I have a simple answer: He can tell the truth.
The truth is that Biden’s firm commitment to the pursuit of a second term, despite his advanced age and increased frailty, hardened into inflexible determination when Trump made his own decision to launch an initially unlikely comeback. When Biden took office, Trump was a disgraced insurrectionist whose very defenders in his second impeachment trial mostly denounced his conduct, even as they urged acquittal on technical grounds. The 46th president was in a position to serve one distinguished “transitional” term and retire with a wary eye on his fellow retiree festering in anger and self-righteousness in Mar-a-Lago. But as Trump slowly recovered and eventually reemerged as a more dominant figure than ever in a MAGA-fied Republican Party, Biden became convinced that as the only politician ever to defeat Donald Trump, he had the responsibility to do it again and the ability to remind voters why they rejected the 45th president in 2020.
As this strange election year ripened, Biden had a perfectly plausible strategy for victory based on keeping a steady public focus on Trump’s lawless conduct (including actual crimes), his erratic record, and extremist intentions for a perilous second term. The polls were close and Biden wasn’t very popular, but these surveys also showed a durable majority of the electorate that really didn’t want to return Trump to power, particularly as economic conditions improved and the consequences of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments grew more shockingly apparent each day.
Then came the June 27 debate, and suddenly Biden lost the ability to make the election about Trump. He needs to look into a camera and say just that, and conclude that just as the threat posed by Trump motivated him to run for a second term, the threat posed by Trump now requires that he withdraw so that a successor can make the case he can’t make as he’s become the object of endless speculation about his age and cognitive abilities. Biden does not need to resign the presidency, since his grounds for withdrawing his candidacy are about perceptions and politics rather than any underlying incapacity. Biden would be withdrawing as a weakened candidate, not as a failed president.
For this withdrawal to represent a stabilizing event for his administration and his party, it’s critical that Biden not equivocate or complain, and that he show his mastery of the situation by clearly passing the torch to the vice-president he chose four years ago. For all the talk of an “open convention” being exciting (for pundits) and energizing (for the winner), the last thing Democrats need right now is uncertainty. No matter what the polls show and how badly his old friends want him to succeed, it’s the prospect of 100 days of terror every time Biden makes unscripted remarks that is feeding both elite and rank-and-file sentiment that a change at the top of the ticket is necessary. The fear and confusion needs to end now, and Biden effectively made his choice of a successor when he made Kamala Harris his governing partner. The president needs to reassert his agency now, not look like he is abandoning his party and his country to the winds of fate.
A straightforward and honest admission of why Biden 2024 is coming to an end could go a very long way toward enabling Harris and other Democrats to shift the nation’s gaze back to the ranting old man whose acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention showed that he has not mellowed or moderated at all. Of course Biden wants to solidify and extend his legacy over the next four years. But right now, the clear and present danger is that it will be extinguished altogether. He alone can address that threat, not as a candidate, but as a president and a patriot who recognizes his duty.
Perhaps the best number for Kerry in the Arkansas poll is his strength in the Third Congressional District. The 3rd, which covers Northwest Arkansas, is the most heavily Republican area in the state. It was heavily Republican long before Republicans had any standing in Arkansas, and the district has had a Republican in Congress since at least the 1960s. The district is now home to big companies like Tyson Chicken and Wal-Mart, and still tends to be very conservative.
Kerry’s showing of 45% in the 3rd district, then, is very, very good. If Bush does not beat Kerry by more than eight percent in the 3rd in Arkansas, Bush will have a very hard time winning the state because the other three Congressional districts are usually fairly Democratic.
Kerry can win this state. Clinton’s doing a few events here would sew it up.
I don’t understand what “link” stands for on your site. It looks to be a way to connect with the original report of a poll, so that more details can be learned. However, clicking on “link” simply provides a repeat of the original paragraph.
I would expect that President Clinton, who plans to be in Fla late tomorrow after a rally with Senator Kerry in Philadelphia, will, as rumored, spend some quality time in Arkansas now that those important handfull of electoral votes are clearly up for grabs.
If we can pick off Ark, then losing NV (which never looked particularly promising for Kerry) surely will be less important.
Thanks Ruy for absolutely the best, most informative and analytical political writing on the web. You are a refuge for many looking for a clear minded look at what really is going on beneath the surface.
dsslaw
Bill Clinton needs to campaign this week in Arkansas. He could really make the difference.
For those who are worrying about Zogby — ironically it seems to be an outlier this weekend. ABC went to just 1 point and, in terms starkly opposite to those of Zogby, found that “Saturday was Kerry’s best single day since this tracking poll began Oct.1.” Rasmussen also tightened up, less than 0.5 now between them, so no time to panic. Zogby himself suggested that most of the undecideds coming home in his poll are probably from the South. We never had them to begin with… Tomorrow’s Zogby’s numbers will be not pretty, perhaps, but in 2000 around this time Bush was also +5 or so in Zogby’s poll.