Over the last half-century, first-term presidents seeking re-election nearly always flub their first debate. Ronald Reagan looked and sounded awful against Walter Mondale in 1984; George W. Bush was easily defeated by John Kerry in 2004; and Barack Obama struggled badly against Mitt Romney in 2012. When Democrats respond to last week’s developments by pointing to this recent history, they have a point.
The difference is, Reagan, Bush and Obama were ahead at the time. When debate viewers tuned in and saw them stumble, the incumbents enjoyed a buffer of support that helped prevent panic among their respective parties and supporters.
With President Joe Biden, it’s a bit more complicated.
Ahead of last week’s debate, the Democratic incumbent was already trailing in most national and battleground state polling. What’s more, pre-debate surveys found that nearly seven in 10 Americans saw Biden as too old to effectively lead.
The buffer the president’s modern predecessors enjoyed didn’t exist ahead of last week’s showdown. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons Biden and his team scheduled the debate in the first place: They thought it might help push the 2024 race in a new direction.
Obviously, the Democrat’s performance in Atlanta didn’t go as planned, and as a result, there’s been intense interest in what the next round of polling would say. It’s against this backdrop that USA Today reported:
Republican Donald Trump has edged ahead of Democrat Joe Biden, 41% to 38%, in the aftermath of the candidates’ rancorous debate last week, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll. That narrow advantage has opened since the previous survey in May showed the two contenders tied, 37% to 37%. The findings still signal a close contest, not a decisive lead. The difference in support and the shifts since the spring are within the polls’ margins of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Note, this national survey was conducted entirely after last week’s Biden/Trump debate.
The poll’s results are not enough to send shockwaves through Democratic politics — if the same data showed the presumptive GOP nominee ahead by double digits, today would be a very different kind of day — though they are enough to keep the fire of anxiety alive among Biden’s backers. Similarly for Trump, the former president will be pleased to see himself ahead, but if he thought the debate would put him in a dominant position, the poll suggests that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. Though the next big round of data hasn’t yet arrived, the USA Today/Suffolk poll wasn’t the only survey of note. In New Hampshire, for example, a St. Anselm College poll conducted a post-debate poll and found Trump leading Biden in the Granite State by a couple of points — which wouldn’t be that bad for Democrats except Biden won New Hampshire by seven points in the last election, and late last year, a St. Anselm College poll found Biden up by 10 points in the state. I continue to believe the polls will have an enormous impact on whether Democratic officials try to shake up their 2024 ticket. For now, the fact that the data isn’t showing an epic collapse for the incumbent should probably be seen as a good sign at Biden HQ, though the longer the polls show him trailing his felonious rival, the more the chatter will endure about the president passing the torch.
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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