CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria issued a warning to Democrats about President Joe Biden’s chances of defeating Donald Trump in the upcoming November election.
Zakaria stated on his Sunday show that his initial prediction about the 2024 election is not unfolding as he expected. The CNN anchor proceeded to explain that Biden’s lack of popularity concerning the economy and the conflict in Gaza are causing divisions among Democrats, while Trump has garnered widespread support from the GOP due to his criminal charges.
“Trump is currently ahead in nearly all the swing states. Yet, beneath those numbers are even more worrying specifics. As someone concerned about the possibility of a second Trump term, I believe it’s important to be truthful about the reality,” Zakaria remarked.
Surveys indicate that Biden has lost backing from some progressive Democrats due to his stance on Israel.
He added, “I acknowledge that polls are not always precise, but generally, they have tended to underestimate Donald Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I am skeptical that there are many discreet Biden voters in the country.”
Zakaria concluded that “the current tendencies are not favoring Biden” and the president must take “daring action” to reverse this.
Only 33% of Americans said they approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which is now opposed both by people who think he is too soft and people who think he is too hard on Israel. Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be uniting behind Trump. Whatever opposition he faced in the primaries has largely melted away, and the trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base, who sees him as a martyr and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general who believe that his prosecutors are politically motivated. This happens to be true, in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump. A majority of Americans are skeptical that Trump will be able to get a fair trial, according to a CNN poll. And I haven’t even mentioned Robert F Kennedy Junior and Cornel West and Jill Stein, all of whom will probably take votes away from Biden…
But trend lines are not working in Biden’s favor. He needs to do something bold and dramatic to seize the initiative on asylum policy, for example, and reverse these numbers. The one that troubles me the most is on the question of who was the more competent. Joe Biden led Donald Trump by nine points in 2020, but Trump now leads by 16 points in January 2024. That 25 point shift could be a reflection of people’s sense that the president’s age is affecting his capacity to govern, and there’s very little that Joe Biden can do now to change that perception.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
