Opinion | The Most Powerful Anti-Trump Argument in the GOP Has Evaporated

Joe Biden has done Donald Trump the enormous favor of collapsing before our eyes.

As the 2024 GOP presidential race heads into the first contests, Biden’s abysmal run of polling has boosted Trump and undercut his Republican opponents by hanging a neon sign on our politics reading, “TRUMP CAN WIN.”

It may be that Trump, such is his hold on GOP voters, didn’t need any help establishing a dominant position in the fight for the Republican nomination, but two exogenous events have boosted him.

First, the indictments from the Justice Department and Democratic prosecutors created a predictable rally-around-Trump effect that put him on a fundamentally higher trajectory in the race, and second, Biden’s execrable polling has completely eliminated any possibility of making an electability argument against Trump.

There’s picking your opponent through underhanded ads — something Democrats did to help get vulnerable MAGA opponents in 2022 — and then there’s picking your opponent through your own incredible weakness that makes him look even more alluring to his partisans.

The most salient doubt about Trump among on-the-fence Republicans has never been his policy priorities, governing effectiveness or conduct after the 2020 election, but his ability to win.

Trump’s standing in the party was shaken after the 2022 elections when Republicans underperformed, and he had his fingerprints on the disappointment. The Ron DeSantis landslide in Florida created a contrast that seemingly opened a vista for an intuitive, winning argument — stick with Trump and lose, or go with the young, fresh governor and win.

The electability argument also had the advantage of side-stepping any of the issues about Trump that most Republicans don’t want to hear. Saying he can’t win isn’t a critique of him personally or anything he wants to do. It’s a practical claim, not a moral one. And it can be offered more in a tone of sorrow than anger.

The problem is that the polling hasn’t cooperated, thanks to Biden’s downward spiral.

In 2016, Trump was often reduced to citing Drudge polls and other dubious sources to try to demonstrate what he’s always maintained is his overwhelming public support. This time around, he can cite the most reputable polls in the business.

The Biden collapse is nearly comprehensive. He is losing in ballot tests to Trump, his approval rating is scraping bottom, he’s trailing on almost every top issue, and super-majorities think he’s too old to serve again.

He is the weakest incumbent since Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush.

The latest Wall Street Journal poll has Trump leading Biden by 4 points in a hypothetical two-way race, and 6 in a multi-candidate field. Only 37 percent approve of Biden’s job performance, while 61 percent disapprove. Fewer than 30 percent of voters approve of “Bidenomics.”

Trump leads by double digits on the economy, inflation, crime, the Ukraine and Gaza wars, and the border. He leads by 34 points on having the physical stamina to do the job, and 16 points on being mentally up for the job. And people think Trump policies helped them by 49-37 percent, and Biden hurt them by 25-53.

Is this just early, showy, unsustainable Trump support? Maybe. But Trump never led in 2020 polling.

As if to provide a punctuation mark on the Wall Street Journal poll, CNN came out with a survey that showed Trump leading by 5 points in Georgia and a jaw-dropping 10 points in Michigan.

Republican voters already had an exaggerated sense of Trump’s electoral prowess, but many of them are probably ready to conclude they could run Perry Johnson or Ryan Binkley next year and win. Why worry — about what might happen to Trump next year at trial, or his underwhelming electoral history, or the effects he has in the suburbs — when 2024 is a lock?

Republican voters have long considered Trump the strongest general election candidate. Still, he’s been gaining on this metric. A recent Monmouth poll found that 54 percent of Republicans think Trump would be the strongest candidate, up from 48 percent in September and 45 percent in July. Even 41 percent of Republicans supporting other candidates think Trump would be strongest.

In Iowa, belief in Trump’s electability, despite the criminal charges, has been ticking up. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans say Trump can win, up from 65 percent in October.

What is DeSantis supposed to do with this? He’s still saying he will win and Trump won’t, especially if the former president is convicted. But electability is a hard card to play when the Florida governor is trailing Trump by nearly 50 points nationally and he’s matching up more poorly against Biden. Even if DeSantis is right, there’s no way to convince any Republican of that when the polling from media outlets hostile to Trump shows him consistently ahead.

Nikki Haley looks strongest of all against Biden in the polling, but for Republicans the threshold question is whether Trump can win. As long as they think he can, a few extra points for another candidate is unlikely to sway them one way or the other.

The ideal scenario for Democrats is that Biden’s weakness is illusory, and Republicans blithely nominate Trump based on the current polling only to be shocked to learn he isn’t as strong against Biden as advertised next fall.

This is plausible, but there’s every possibility that Biden’s political standing is as bad as it seems and he’s on his way to not just helping Trump get the Republican nomination, but paving his way back to the White House.

It’s axiomatic among Republicans that Trump is fortunate in his enemies. Biden may be the best proof yet.