MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wondered if President Biden is seeing inaccurate polling data that is convincing him to stay in the presidential race.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wondered Thursday if President Biden’s team is giving him inaccurate polling information that's making him certain he is the Democratic Party’s best chance to defeat former President Trump.
During a panel on MSNBC’s "All In with Chris Hayes," network pundits Hayes, Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace discussed Biden's remarks at his NATO summit press conference, with each commentator weighing in on Biden’s continued confidence that he’s the one to beat Trump.
"It makes me worried that the president is being given information about his political standing that may not be based in reality," Maddow said.
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Wallace gave a pointed response to the president’s stated commitment to staying in the race, saying that every incumbent president who had equal or worse poll numbers at this stage in the race has lost.
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"Two things on the politics: there is no incumbent president with lower approval ratings who won. There are only three with lower ratings than he has right now, and they all lost. Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter," she said.
Wallace added that there is "right now, no poll that shows [Biden] winning."
Hayes questioned Biden telling reporters on Thursday night he needed to be the one re-elected so he can "finish the job." The MSNBC host said it reminded him of a "World Series star starter in the seventh game of the World Series, who’s got four outs left to get in a close game that’s thrown 120 pitches."
"And when the manager comes out to the mound," Hayes said, "They never want to go."
Maddow said that Biden’s insistence that he’s the man to be re-elected "is an argument" but "There are other arguments that are also data based that other people might have a better shot at it."
She then followed up to what Wallace said, theorizing that perhaps Biden isn’t being shown the polling that indicates he’s in danger of losing. She said that the president’s team might be giving him info "that may be sunnier than is real."
"But him acknowledging it’s not only him who could beat Trump is an important sort of message from the reality-based world," Maddow concluded.
