Is Biden Toast?
It’s a year before the presidential election, and Democrats are panicking. Their incumbent is unpopular, and voters are refusing to give him credit for overseeing an economic rebound. Polls show him losing to a Republican challenger.
What’s true now was also true 12 years ago. Today, Democrats are alarmed by recent surveys finding that President Joe Biden trails Donald Trump in five key swing states. But they were just as scared in the fall of 2011, when President Barack Obama’s approval rating languished in the low 40s and a pair of national polls showed him losing to Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who would become the GOP nominee. Barely one-third of independent voters said Obama deserved a second term. A New York Times Magazine cover story asked the question on many Democrats’ minds: “Is Obama Toast?”
A year later, Obama beat Romney handily, by a margin of 126 in the Electoral College and 5 million in the popular vote. Those results are
