On Sunday's This Week, anchor and former Clinton hatchetman George Stephanopoulos was forced out of his liberal bubble when reporting on his own network's poll showing how truly unpopular President Joe Biden is with the American people. With inflation at a forty-year high, an economy teetering on recession, and one international crisis after another, you have to wonder why Stephanopoulos finds this at all surprising.
Turning to ABC's political director Rick Klein, Stephanopoulos fretted: "This is just brutal for President Biden." Klein was forced to agree with him since there was no way to spin this since this was their own network's poll conducted with the liberal rag The Washington Post:
Absolutely George and you talked earlier about that record low approval rating for President Biden, it’s actually six points down just since February. And the skepticism over his leadership extends deep inside his own party only 36 percent of Democrats think that their party should nominate Joe Biden for a second term. 58 percent say they would support someone else, prefer someone else. That’s despite the fact that the entire DNC, most of the Democratic establishment has rallied behind President Biden and you’re seeing real weaknesses in the coalition that powered Joe Biden to the presidency back in 2020.
Continuing to dissect the poll, Klein revealed that "Biden carried independents by 13 points against Donald Trump. He is now trailing Trump by nine points, among those same voters. He carried black voters by 75 points in 2020. Now he is up just 35. That may sound like a lot but the fact of the matter is in modern politics, that is not the kind of number that a Democrat needs to be victorious."
Worst of all for the Democrats on ABC, the same poll showed former President Trump with a "seven-point edge" over Biden.
Toward the end of the segment, Klein reported "56 percent say that he should face charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. What’s interesting to me about this, George, is that even among that 56 percent, the people that think that yes, Trump should face criminal charges, 18 percent say they would vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden anyway."
This stunned Stephanopoulos who jumped in to admit "I have a hard time wrapping my head around that."
Klein observed, "That just tells you about how much Trump is kind of baked into the political equation."
This segment was made possible by Salonpas. Their information is linked.
To read the transcript click "expand":
ABC’s This Week
5/7/2023
9:32:23 a.m. EasternGEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Rick, this is just brutal for President Biden.
RICK KLEIN: Absolutely George, and you talked earlier about that record low approval rating for President Biden, it’s actually six points down just since February. And the skepticism over his leadership extends deep inside his own party only 36 percent of Democrats think that their party should nominate Joe Biden for a second term. 58 percent say they would support someone else, prefer someone else. That’s despite the fact that the entire DNC, most of the Democratic establishment has rallied behind President Biden and you’re seeing real weaknesses in the coalition that powered Joe Biden to the presidency back in 2020. Biden carried independents by 13 points against Donald Trump. He is now trailing Trump by nine points, among those same voters. He carried black voters by 75 points in 2020. Now he is up just 35. That may sound like a lot but the fact of the matter is in modern politics, that is not the kind of number that a Democrat needs to be victorious.
And then of course that does spill over into the head-to-head matchup, a hypothetical rematch, Trump versus Biden. Right now a seven-point edge in our poll from in Trump leading Biden and in fact that’s an identical number with Ron DeSantis in a head-to-head that might happen next November. That tells us at this very early stage, George that this race is shaping up a lot more about the incumbent president, Joe Biden than it is about any of his challenges.
[...]
KLEIN: Despite all of that, despite the strength that we are seeing for Donald Trump right now, a strong majority of Americans think he should be facing criminal charges across a range of investigations including on this one 56 percent say that he should face charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. What’s interesting to me about this, George, is that even among that 56 percent, the people that think that yes, Trump should face criminal charges, 18 percent say they would vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden anyway. That tells you a lot about Trump's potential strength but maybe more than that, some of Biden's weaknesses. And that question of age that you mentioned earlier, that Joe Biden has been trying to address. Donald Trump is less than four years younger than Joe Biden but the concerns over Biden's age are much more significant. 68 of voters say they think that Joe Biden is too old for an additional term. Only 44 percent say the same about Donald Trump.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Rick, I got to admit, I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. You’ve got one in five people who say believe President Trump should face criminal charges but they’d still vote for him?
KLEIN: It is remarkable and I do think once there’s a matchup with an actual person, maybe that changes. But that just tells you about how much Trump is kind of baked into the political equation.
