A polling turnaround is coming for Biden

I have a theory, and since I run things at the Editorial Board, I’m going with it. I invite you to push back. Here it is. Polling that shows Joe Biden in trouble is a consequence of one thing: Donald Trump.

I know that sounds simplistic, but it’s not.

There are those who support Trump. They are going to say Biden is terrible no matter what. There are those who support Biden. They are going to say Biden is terrific no matter what. Then there are those who aren’t paying attention. These people are probably most people.

Because they aren’t paying attention, they can’t quite believe that Trump will be the GOP’s nominee. Because they can’t quite believe that he will be, they can’t quite believe that Trump is a real threat. In the meantime, they do believe that they are free to complain, and let’s face it. There’s always something to complain about these days.

However, once it becomes clear that Trump will be the GOP’s nominee, it will also become clear that he’s a real threat to democracy. And once that becomes clear, people who have not been paying attention will start thinking twice about what they say to pollsters. They will be more aware that anything said against Biden will be seen as for Trump.

I have a lot of sympathy for people who can’t quite believe that Donald Trump will be the GOP’s nominee. This is the guy who really did try to overturn a free and fair democratic election. Most people can’t believe that things like that can happen in America, and yet it did. So most people can’t quite believe a guy like that could be president again.

It’s going to take something big to break through that disbelief – something like Trump winning the early states in the GOP primary, and then quickly winning the whole shebang. It’s going to take news of that magnitude to get people who aren’t paying attention to start talking to pollsters like they get the importance of what they’re saying.

I have another theory, related to the first.

While most people are probably not paying attention to Trump, they are paying attention to something, something that they care about or that affects them personally. I’m going to guess that at least two of these things are the economy and abortion – the economy, because it affects everyone, and abortion, because there’s no longer a right to it.

The economy isn’t great for a lot of people, according to polling, though these people are wrong. The economy is gangbusters. But they’re wrong because they are not paying attention. They don’t believe that Trump is going to be the GOP’s nominee. They don’t believe that he’s a real threat. They do believe, however, that they are free to complain, and let’s face it. The price of food and housing is too damn high.

Once it’s clear to them that Trump is going to be the GOP’s nominee, and once it’s clear to them that he will be, as a consequence of being the GOP’s nominee, a real threat, people who are not paying attention will find reasons to say that the economy is doing much better now.

I think this change of opinion will have virtually nothing to do with the actual economy, just as current opinion seems to have virtually nothing to do with it. People who are not paying attention to politics do pay attention to prices. They are too damn high. But that focus will probably recede to the background as they become aware of the fact that Trump will be the GOP’s nominee and, therefore, a real threat.

Abortion isn’t something that affects everyone, but those who care about it really care about it, and these days, the pool of people who really care about it is getting bigger by the day. Importantly, the people who really care about it may not be paying attention to politics, not in the way pollsters frame it, as a choice between Biden and Trump.

Indeed, abortion is probably the most salient issue among people who think of themselves as being above politics, which is to say, people who are not paying attention. Matter of fact, these people have not been not paying attention for decades, then all of a sudden they were, because the Supreme Court took away a woman’s right to an abortion. The GOP has in effect made enemies of pregnant women, a lot of them white women, and when you’re someone who’s in the habit of not paying attention, this new reality is really hard not to pay attention to.

So whatever these people are saying right now about the president is probably going to recede into the background as they become more aware of the fact that Donald Trump will be the GOP’s nominee and, as a consequence of being the nominee, a real threat. After all, no one stands for antiabortion politics like Trump does, even as Trump himself tries to stand apart from it. People who are not paying attention to politics but are paying attention to abortion are probably not going to parse Trump’s rhetoric. Their minds already are made up.

Again, I have a lot of sympathy for people who are paying attention to abortion but not politics, per se. They probably can’t quite believe that Donald Trump will be the GOP’s nominee, because what kind of party would be fool enough to field the man singularly responsible for repealing a constitutional right taken for granted for half a century?

Again, it’s going to take something big to break through that disbelief – something like Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination.