Why marginal Democrats are so worried about Biden

Somebody asked in the last thread why Biden asserting that he’s not going anywhere has not completely stopped the calls for him to step down from either marginal Democratic election officials or major donors/fundraisers like George Clooney. The answer, again, is pretty obvious: Biden is losing the national popular vote by roughly 3 points when he needs at least a 2 point advantage to win, his approval ratings are consistently bad, he just blew his best chance of changing things (the debate his team wanted early), and his inability to conduct a normal campaign (which wasn’t a hindrance during a pandemic in which he was running consistently ahead), and the media feeding frenzy against him makes it very hard to see how that changes.

But, given the risks of switching candidates and the fact that nobody knows how another candidate will do, even that in itself might not be sufficient to risk Biden stepping down. Here’s the data that both makes it clear what predicament the Democrats are in AND is a strong argument against the lazy fatalism (“let’s say ‘Johnny Unbeatable’ 3 times and the problem will go away!”) too many people are succumbing to:

The data is remarkably consistent. There are five presidential swing states that also have highly competitive Senate races this year: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. (Sorry, Florida and Ohio don’t count as swing states anymore — and Texas isn’t one quite yet.) In those states, there have been 47 nonpartisan surveys conducted since Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump emerged as their parties’ clear nominees in March.

In 46 of the 47 polls, the Democratic Senate candidate polled better than Mr. Biden. He and the Senate candidate performed equally well in one poll. Which means that Mr. Biden didn’t outpoll the Senate candidate in any of the surveys. (I’m using the versions of the polls among likely voters and the version with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. included if the pollster made one available.)

None of the 47 polls — not a single one of them — showed the Democratic candidate trailing in the Senate race, though two showed a tie. In contrast, Mr. Biden led in only seven of the surveys, was tied with Mr. Trump in two and trailed in the other 38.

The contrast is remarkably consistent across blue-chip surveys, the dubious ones that voters probably should have some concerns about and everything in between. And the difference isn’t only at the margin. Mr. Biden is underperforming the presumed Democratic Senate nominee by a net of five points in Michigan, seven points in Wisconsin, eight points in Pennsylvania, 11 points in Arizona and an unlucky 13 points in Nevada.

Biden massively underperforming the Dem swing state candidates is significant for numerous reasons:

• This is clearly not a situation where the structural environment is so unfavorable for Democrats that they’re screwed no matter who the presidential candidate is.
• Claiming that the presidential polls are SKEWED at this point is basically the equivalent of Republicans who think that Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election but somehow forgot to do it for any incumbent House Republicans. We can argue about whether Biden has a viable plan to win but at this point he’s clearly losing.
• A state race is not the same as a national race, of course, but still candidates who can campaign energetically, emphasize unpopular Republican positions on abortion without starting to ramble incoherently about illegal immigrants murdering people, etc. are faring better against MAGA candidates, which at a minimum is potential upside.
• Given that Senate races tend to move toward the performance of the national ticket as a presidential campaign proceeds, if Biden keeps polling like this it is very likely to take down several swing state Senate candidates. And if the Dems lose their seats in Montana and Ohio they’re probably not getting them back for a long time.
• On a related note, while the presidency is a dichotomous outcome, congressional elections are not. Every seat matters, especially in the Senate. Assuming (reasonably) that Harris would still be an underdog, even improving on Biden’s margins by a couple points still improves the situation downballot.

It remains absolutely true that nobody knows hows how an alternative candidate will play out. But it’s very hard to look at the comparative performance of Democratic Senate candidates and think that just sticking with Biden is the lowest risk option. When you’re consistently losing, variance is an improvement. I know full well that this won’t stop 50 people from repeating “Johnny Unbeatable” like a mantra that eliminates any need for further thought or discussion. But this is why Democrats facing tough reelection fights are unlikely to just accept Biden is the nominee, even understanding perfectly well that there are no guarantees and deeply imperfect knowledge about any alternative candidate. When Tammy Baldwin doesn’t want to appear with Biden I think we should at least consider the possibility that she knows what she’s doing.