A couple of weeks ago, President Joe Biden fielded a few questions from reporters on the White House south lawn before a Marine One departure. Toward the end of the brief Q&A, someone asked, “Nikki Haley or Donald Trump, who would you prefer in November?”
Biden, smiling, replied, “Oh, I don’t care.”
While it’s certainly possible that the incumbent Democrat had a genuinely detached attitude when it came to the race for Republican Party’s presidential nomination, it’s also fair to say that Biden’s campaign team cared quite a bit about the outcome. I’m reminded anew of a Politico report from January — published immediately after the New Hampshire primary — that said a Trump-Biden rematch was “the race President Joe Biden’s team wanted.”
Those [Biden] aides believe that Trump poses a far greater threat to the nation’s democracy than any of his Republican rivals would. But they also feel the most confident about their chances in that looming matchup. … Biden aides and allies believe a faceoff with Trump will help negate the incumbent’s biggest weakness — his age — and motivate both swing voters and reluctant Democrats to turn out against Trump.
Not surprisingly, Biden campaign officials didn’t make much of an effort to intervene in the GOP race — they didn’t have to — and they certainly didn’t go around publicly acknowledging their fear of Haley’s candidacy.
But it’s also true that given a choice between the finalists for the Republican nomination, Team Biden saw the former president as easily the weakest general election candidate in the GOP field.
Polling suggested that these assumptions had merit.
Last month, for example, CNN released the results of a national survey that found Donald Trump with a relatively small lead over Biden, 49% to 45%, in a hypothetical one-on-one match-up. That same poll also asked respondents about a Haley-Biden race, and the results were less close: Haley led the incumbent, 52% to 39%.
A few days later, Marquette Law School released the results of a poll in Wisconsin, which is arguably the nation’s most closely watched battleground state. The survey found Trump ahead of Biden by the narrowest of margins in the Badger State, 50% to 49%, but it also showed Haley leading the incumbent president in a hypothetical match-up, 57% to 42%.
A national New York Times/Siena College poll, released this past weekend, found Trump ahead of Biden by five points. The same survey found Haley leading Biden by 10 points. In other words, polling didn’t just show Haley with comparable advantages over Biden, it showed the South Carolinian in a much better general election position than Trump. You think Democrats are nervous about the 2024 race now? Imagine how they’d feel if the president were facing a GOP rival leading him nationally and in Wisconsin by double digits. A lot can and will happen between now and Election Day, but at least for now, if Team Biden were able to script the outcome of the Republicans’ primary process, it would write the story exactly as it unfolded.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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