Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
A batch of new polls from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer has very bad news for President Biden: He's losing. Among registered voters, he's significantly behind in five of the six battleground states that are most likely to decide the election. He does slightly better among likely voters but remains behind in five key states.
It's a snapshot, but it's consistent with the overall trend of this campaign -- which is, again, he's losing.
Biden and many of his supporters seem to think the solution is to get right with the issues -- the economy, the Israel-Hamas war, student loans, pot legalization, the threat to democracy and so on. If he can just find the sweet spot on policy, they believe, voters will come home.
That might be true to some extent. But I think focusing on the issues misses Biden's real weakness: vibes.
"Vibes" is just a trendy word for "mood" or "feelings." Whatever you call them, the relationship between attitudes and issues is not always as rational as some think.
People who care passionately about issues think issues are really important. On one level, this is a fairly ridiculous tautology. But what I mean is that people who are really engaged in politics -- activists, journalists, donors -- believe issues drive everyone else's engagement with politics.
Politicians take popular positions on issues based on the understandable assumption that they will be popular as a result. Obviously, it often works this way. But sometimes the causality goes in the other direction. Some people start as rabid partisans or super-fans of a politician, and that drives their views of the issues.
In 2012, for instance, when Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage, millions of Democrats suddenly switched from opposition to support. In 2017, when Donald Trump made protectionism a centerpiece of his agenda, many Republicans changed their positions. (They also changed their position on "character," but that's another story.) I suspect that at least some of Biden's low approval ratings on many issues have less to do with people's policy preferences than with their starting assumption that he's wrong.
The Biden campaign wants to leverage the issue of abortion. That's smart. After the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, abortion really is an issue that can overpower vibes. But consider that a constitutional referendum to legalize abortion has 61% support in Florida, while Biden is polling around 37% in the state. When abortion rights out-poll a Democratic candidate nearly 2 to 1, vibes are an issue.
The best analogy is to 1992. While some partisans and ideologues convinced themselves that they hated George H.W. Bush, the truth is most people were just exhausted with him, Republicans or the status quo.
The Bush economy wasn't great, but the relatively mild recession of 1990-91 was far from the depression portrayed by many in the media, the Democratic Party and the electorate. But Bush, who hated campaigning, often helped his detractors paint him as "out of touch." It's difficult to describe the reaction to the moment the president looked at his watch during a debate question about the recession, allegedly signifying his aloofness, or seemed impressed by a new supermarket checkout scanner, supposedly revealing that he didn't understand how normal people live. In any case, many voters agreed with the worst interpretations.
The mainstream media isn't remotely as hostile to Biden, but that's not the advantage it seems to be. In a populist age, elite media support feels like establishment wagon-circling, not just to the Trump-friendly but also to disillusioned young and progressive voters. Even when the press thinks it's helping Biden, it perpetuates the out-of-touch vibe.
Voters resent the idea, pushed by many pundits, that they should wake up to the fact that the economy is actually doing much better than they think. Biden is exacerbating the problem by constantly boasting about the economy rather than emulating Bush's successful opponent and emphasizing his empathy for what people are experiencing.
The economy really is better than vibes suggest, although inflation and high interest rates tend to overwhelm all other indicators. The other problem is that, as political scientist Seth Masket notes, "Presidential approval is largely untethered from economic growth these days." That's vibes.
Obviously, it would help if Biden could fix inflation and interest rates. But he can't. Moreover, his vibe problem extends beyond the economy.
His desperation to fix his problems with poll-driven policy and rhetoric underscores the sense that he's flailing and can't keep up with the demands of the job. This both fuels and is fueled by his age problem. Biden seems exhausted, and people are exhausted with him.
First posted May 14, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.