OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
While it’s too soon to tell what effect President Joe Biden’s angry, screechy State of the Union address actually had on his reelection chances, a series of new national polls show him falling farther behind his likely GOP rival, Donald Trump.
The polling is from late February, several major outlets had Trump sailing past Biden, often outside the polls’ margins of error.
President Trump pulls ahead in all the national polls pic.twitter.com/r1EEW00dbE
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2024
The Wall Street Journal noted:
In the latest Wall Street Journal poll ahead of the State of the Union address, Republican Donald Trump holds a narrow lead over Democrat President Biden in a head-to-head test of the expected 2024 presidential matchup, with 47% backing Trump and 45% picking Biden, a difference within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. In December, Trump led by four points.
CBS News added:
As Super Tuesday makes an historic rematch all but official, voters are comparing not just two presidents, but two presidencies.
And right now former President Donald Trump emerges from that comparison as the frontrunner. He leads President Biden by four points nationally, his largest lead to date. Here’s why:
Voters recall the economy under Trump more fondly than they rate the economy now.
And Fox News reported on its survey:
With eight months until Election Day, former President Trump carries voters who say either the economy or immigration is their priority voting issue, and this edge on the top two issues gives the Republican frontrunner a 2-point advantage over current President Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup. The poll also shows Nikki Haley, Trump’s last-standing Republican primary challenger, with an 8-point lead over Biden.
Meanwhile, a noted presidential historian had some bad news for Joe Biden following his angry State of the Union Address regarding how he is likely to be viewed in the future by “honest” brokers.
Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley made his remarks about the current commander-in-chief in response to a new survey of “scholars” putting who put Biden ahead of the Gipper as the 14th “greatest president” in the history of the country.
“It made me gag,” Shirley said, describing the “Presidential Greatness Project” experts as left-wing academics.
“Joe Biden is a terrible, terrible person. He is going to go down in history by honest historians as the worst president in American history,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Shirley, who recently unveiled his latest book, “The Search for Reagan,” and is launching a biography of former President Donald Trump, didn’t pause his remarks there.
“The idea that Joe Biden is a great president is just nonsense. It’s poppycock. It’s ridiculous. Name one thing that he’s been successful at other than spending money, and, by the way, any moron can spend money,” he told the Examiner.
The outlet added:
The survey was of members of the American Political Science Association who specialize in national and presidential politics. Presidents were ranked on a 0-100 scale.
The top five were not surprising for the liberal scholars. In order, they were Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson.
The next five were more controversial: Harry Truman at No. 6, followed by Barack Obama, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and John F. Kennedy. Reagan was 16th and Trump dead last at No. 45.
Noting the placement of Trump and Reagan also prompted a response from Shirley, who noted that despite their stark differences, the two former presidents shared remarkable similarities on critical issues.
“Personally, their worlds apart. They’re different. They’re different men, but that’s just how they approach politics and life and culture and society,” Shirley said, noting the difference in the country between today and the early 1980s.
Nevertheless, he added: “The parallels are clear, more clear than I think people realize. One is that they both challenge authority. They both challenge the Washington establishment.”
