Maybe it was fake news -- I can't believe I actually typed those five words -- but it was important news nonetheless. It shook the political world, comforted the Donald Trump campaign and, even among the disbelievers, should have been for Democrats what Thomas Jefferson described, in an 1820 letter following the Missouri Compromise, "as like a fire bell in the night, [that] awakened and filled me with terror."
The matter at hand is the Washington Post/ABC News poll that showed Mr. Trump leading President Joe Biden by 10 percentage points. Forget about the debate over whether this poll was an outlier, or whether the Post and ABC should have suppressed it because it somehow was flawed. That's the kind of stuff that press critics and pollsters like to kick around, usually when they are deriding the kinds of topics that columnists kick around.
The meaning of this episode is exactly like the characterization columnist Salena Zito employed seven years ago when she said that Mr. Trump's supporters took him "seriously but not literally." The Biden campaign -- indeed Democrats in the capital and the country -- might not take the 10-percent gap literally, but they ought to take it seriously.
Really seriously. Like the way the George H.W. Bush campaign took the Newsweek poll showing the vice president 17 points behind Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. That July 1988 report jolted the Bush campaign out of its torpor, and eventually it prevailed in the November election.
It's not as if the Democrats don't know the liabilities of Mr. Biden: Old. Shopworn. A little slow off the starting block. Corny. A relic. They measure that against what they believe are his advantages: Experienced. Accomplished. Solid steward. Committed to democratic values. The only person on the face of the earth who actually has defeated Mr. Trump in an election.
In the cool light of reason, we know that the 10-point gap with Mr. Trump is meaningless, kind of. It's months -- actually 13 months -- before the election. An NBC News poll that came out a few hours later showed the two men tied at 46 percent, though that poll also found that Mr. Biden's disapproval rating (56 percent) was the highest of his presidency, and that 3 out of 4 registered voters polled said they doubted that the president had the mental and physical health to serve another term.
Then came the report, from the Axios news outlet, that Mr. Biden's staff was working on "an urgent project" to make sure the American public saw a vigorous, determined president. Exercises to improve Biden's balance. Wearing tennis shoes to minimize the possibilities of a mortifying tripping episode. Entering Air Force One on the low deck because it has a shorter set of stairs, the better to avoid a slip. Workouts with a physical therapist.
All to the good. But privately, Democrats think that the greater good would be served by Mr. Biden stepping aside.
The prospect of a scramble for the Democratic presidential nomination terrifies them, in part because there are no logical contenders who could step up and defeat Mr. Trump, in part because messy primaries hurt general-election campaigns, in part because they know that Vice President Kamala Harris would be in the mix.
Richard Nixon (1960), Hubert Humphrey (1968) and Al Gore (2000) went directly from the vice presidency to their party's nomination, and lost. Alben Barkley (1952) tried but didn't get the nomination, just as Dan Quayle (2000) tried and failed.
Whether Mr. Biden stays in the race -- or withdraws and Ms. Harris runs her own presidential campaign -- the vice president will be the premier target of the Republicans next year.
Mr. Quayle, George H.W. Bush's understudy, wasn't much of an issue in the GOP's 1992 reelection battle -- nobody thought Mr. Bush would expire before his second term ended. But in 1956, after Dwight Eisenhower's serious heart attack, Vice President Richard Nixon was an enormous issue in the Eisenhower reelection fight.
"Distasteful as this matter is," Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson said, "I must say bluntly that every piece of scientific evidence we have, every lesson of history and experience, indicates that a Republican victory tomorrow would mean that Richard M. Nixon would probably be president of this country within the next four years."
It is not difficult to imagine Mr. Trump saying much the same thing, and perhaps more crudely. The Republicans will run against Mr. Biden next year by running against Ms. Harris. And they will run against gasoline prices under Mr. Biden, creating more of a furor over prices at the pump than they did when, earlier this year, reports, later dismissed, emerged that the administration might be considering banning gas stoves, blamed for childhood asthma.
Right now Mr. Biden is the asset the Democrats have and the problem they cannot rid themselves of. But they know that 33 percent of Blacks disapprove of the presidential performance of Mr. Biden and that 52 percent of Hispanics do as well -- warning signs from important traditional Democratic constituencies that Mr. Trump is determined to exploit, however ham-handedly.
But the most troubling poll result -- one that hasn't been subject to criticism -- comes from YouGov, which found that 62 percent of independents disapprove of the Biden performance. A general rule of thumb: Each of the major parties claims about a quarter of the electorate, and the remaining half are independents. Political professionals concentrate on that half, even in an election in which the prevailing tactic will not emphasize efforts to lure independents to the parties' sides, but rather to mobilize their own bases and get their voters to the polls.
So this morning, take both seriously and literally the remarks that Trump advisor Jason Miller issued last week to the NHJournal, which until the balloting in the New Hampshire Primary concludes on Jan. 23, has enormous influence: "Joe Biden is in serious trouble," he said. "The bottom has fallen out with core Democratic constituencies they take for granted, and Biden can't tack back to the middle without alienating the radical liberals in his base."
And there is the newly emerging fact that should strike terror in the war rooms of the Democratic Party:
After four indictments, Mr. Trump may be considered as a loser in the salons of the Democratic Party. But in poll results, he no longer appears as the inevitable loser in the 2024 election.
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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