The nearer we get to November 5, the likelier it appears that the 2024 presidential election will be closer than some anticipate. While former President Donald Trump has led in various swing-state polls for months, President Joe Biden recently closed the gap in six of those states.
Most political polls are popularity contests at worst and valid indicators at best. Given the nature of support — and opposition — for both Biden and Trump, the "baked-in" vote is not likely to change, which leads to where we're usually led: voter turnout.
And oodles of voters on both sides are already accusing the other side of election shenanigans to come.
All that being said, a Sunday New York Times article caught my attention. The hopelessly far-left Times conceded that voters are looking back “more positively” on Trump’s presidency as Biden continues to prove he's the worst — or darn close — president in U.S. history.
The Times even acknowledged that voters have a “rosier picture” of Trump’s presidency in comparison with Biden's dumpster fire, particularly concerning the illegal alien crisis, the economy, and the steady decline in law and order.
Views of Donald J. Trump’s presidency have become more positive since he left office, bolstering his case for election and posing a risk to President Biden’s strategy of casting his opponent as unfit for the presidency, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
While the memories of Mr. Trump’s tumultuous and chaotic administration have not significantly faded, many voters now have a rosier picture of his handling of the economy, immigration and maintaining law and order.
Ahead of the 2020 election, only 39 percent of voters said that the country was better off after Mr. Trump took office. Now, looking back, nearly half say that he improved things during his time as president.
The poll’s findings underscore the way in which a segment of voters have changed their minds about the Trump era, recalling those years as a time of economic prosperity and strong national security.
The shift in views about his administration comes even as Mr. Trump faces dozens of felony counts and will appear in a New York courtroom on Monday for jury selection in one of his four criminal trials.
It gets even better — and more surrealistic, given it's from The New York Times.
Are you sitting down? The Times also conceded that Trump's presidency was "better for the country" than Biden's clown-car yet ominous administration.
Many voters still remember Mr. Trump as a divisive and polarizing figure, giving him low ratings on race relations and unifying the country. Yet, a larger share of voters see Mr. Trump’s term as better for the country than the current administration, with 42 percent rating the Trump presidency as mostly good for the country compared with 25 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s. Nearly half say the Biden years have been mostly bad for the country.
While the objective and even reasonably intelligent among us have known every bit of this since at least the days of Biden's infamous 2020 basement campaign, we now have a leading left-wing newspaper agreeing with us. That's profound. The Times will of course continue to try its damnedest to do anything it can to help torpedo Trump, so there's that.
Finally, The Times included a quote from a former self-proclaimed "Trump hater" who's done a 180 on the former president. Twenty-three-year-old Maya Garcia told the outlet:
When he was first running, I was, like, what is this guy even yapping about? Like, what is he even saying? Like, he’s saying all the wrong things. But to be honest, if you look deep into his personality, he actually cares about the country. You know at first I didn’t like it. But sometimes we need that type of person in our lives.
I'd only add: And all the time, we don't need a person like Joe Biden in our lives, our country, the Mideast, or any other part of the world he could make worse.