Donald J. Trump is facing the possibility of up to four years in prison if convicted of 34 felony counts in the hush money trial currently underway in a New York courtroom. He has already lost two civil court cases, one for defamation and rape and another for defrauding the state of New York out of more than $400 million. He potentially faces at least two further criminal trials for election fraud and one for illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing efforts to get them back.
And yet, despite – or because of – all his sordid legal affairs, Trump has maintained his lead over Biden in key battleground states. If the election were held tomorrow, Trump would be back in the White House, with a total of 280 Electoral College votes to just 258 for Biden. That is primarily because of the way the Electoral College works and not because he is more popular than Biden overall.
And yet Biden himself is the most unpopular President in modern history at this point in his Presidency. His current approval rating stands at just 39.1%, according to 538’s rolling average of polling data. That is below Trump with 43.5% approval at this point in 2020, below Richard Nixon at 54.5% and below even Jimmy Carter at 41.6%.
Trump remains hugely unpopular in states like New York, Massachusetts and California, but hugely popular in states like Wyoming, Arkansas and North Dakota. But these are not the states that will determine the next President. The vast majority of states in the Union are either solidly red or solidly blue, and very little is likely to change that. It is only in the so-called “battleground” states that the election is decided.
Of the nine states that are potentially in play at this election, Trump is leading in all but three of them, according to the latest polling averages compiled by 270towin.com. He is ahead by 6 percentage points in Maine and Nevada, by 4 points in Arizona and Georgia, and by nearly two points in Michigan and Wisconsin. That is enough to get him 280 Electoral College votes – 10 more than needed to win the White House.
Of course things can change between now and November. But Biden would need to win both Wisconsin and Michigan – as well as one district in either Maine or Nebraska (the only two states to split their Electoral College votes) in order to beat Trump. Maybe that can happen, but the risk that it won’t is enormous. Do we want the entire country held to ransom by the voters of just two states?
As President Biden says repeatedly, the stakes are too high and the risk to our democracy is too great. The only safe, sensible and honorable thing for Biden to do is therefore to step down as soon as possible to let someone run against Trump who has a much better chance of winning. Please write to him today and urge him to do so.