Former Obama adviser David Axelrod warned on Sunday that President Biden’s “age issue” is consistent in the polls and added that it is “one thing” they cannot reverse, “no matter how effective” the president is behind the scenes.
Axelrod joined CNN’s Dana Bash and former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday to discuss a possible third-party run by Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.V., who recently announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.
Hogan said he would go further than Axelrod, who suggested last week the president should consider whether it was “wise” for him to drop out of the race, and said Biden may not be the strongest candidate for the Democratic Party.
“I have no concerns about voting a year out. I mean, you have to look at it and analyze it and adjust it. But I was in a situation as a strategist for Barack Obama in 2011 where we faced some tough elections. One alarming number in the poll, and in the CNN poll that followed The New York Times poll, has to do with age, and that’s one thing you can’t reverse no matter how effective Joe Biden is behind the scenes. In front of the camera, what he’s projecting is causing people to worry, and that’s troubling,” Axelrod told Bash and Hogan.
Axelrod also said Hogan needs to do a better job of keeping Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination.
According to Axelrod, it doesn’t matter how affective Biden is behind closed doors but how he appears in public.Getty Images
Bash asked Axelrod about how a third-party candidate might hurt Biden and help Trump, but also noted that Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who is challenging Biden in the Democratic primary.
“Look, I said what I said. I think there is an issue hanging on it. The country is in a sour mood, no doubt about it. It’s hard to be an incumbent, and it’s been in a sour mood since before he was elected. There are concerns about inflation, that’s a problem. That can be overcome. And I think with Donald Trump on the other side, he can still win this election. But the issue of age is difficult. And, so, Phillips tried to exploit that,” Axelrod said.
“I believe Joe Biden will be the candidate of the Democratic Party. And now, we come to the third party point. My concern is that Donald Trump has a high floor and a low ceiling, and you throw a bunch of third-party candidates in there, and you make it very likely that he will win the election,” he added.
Media pundits have repeatedly asked President Obama’s former adviser if Biden should drop out of the race.
Axelrod worries that age combined with the possibility of a third-party candidate could spell disaster for Biden and the Democrats.Getty Images
“I want him to consider what’s best in terms of the goal that I know he’s committed to, which is defeating Donald Trump. And if he believes, based not only on what’s in his heart, but what’s in the data and what he’s been told, that he has the best chance to do it, then he should run. But you know, the thing that annoys me a little bit, Wolf, is the notion that people who worry are ‘bedsuckers,’” Axelrod told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday.
A CNN poll, published Monday, found that 74% of voters do not believe the president “has the stamina and acumen to be president.”
Only 47% of voters said they did not believe Trump “has the stamina and acumen to be president,” the poll found.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
