Politico.com is reporting tonight on the meeting that took place
last night in Delaware between President Biden and two of
his closest and longest serving advisors, Steve Ricchetti and Mike
Donilon.
According to Politico, this is this is pretty stark reporting.
The two men, Donilon and Ricchetti, presented President Biden with,
quote, new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising
operation that had slowed considerably.
Now, get this, they also brought with them new internal
polling done by the Biden campaign which showed that Joe
Biden's path to victory was, quote, gone, according to five
people familiar with the matter.
When President Biden first started fielding questions about whether or
not he would heed the calls from some of his
party that he should not be heading the ticket heading
into November, that somebody else would have a better chance
at taking on Donald Trump.
One of the things that he said was that he
would get out if he believed if he was brought
data that showed that he did not have a path
to victory, that he did not have a way to
win.
Again, politico.com, this is not NBC News reporting.
We have not confirmed this politico.com reporting tonight that that
data was delivered to him last night at his home
in Delaware, where, of course, the president has been isolating
with COVID.
That is internal Biden polling.
We haven't seen that internal polling, so we can't confirm
it either publicly or through our own reporting.
But we've had Steve Kornacki closely watching the polls around
this decision.
Steve Kornacki, MSNBC National Political Correspondent, has been looking at
the polling that was staring President Biden in the face
heading into this decision.
But also the the the bits and pieces of polling
that we've got about how a presidential candidacy of Kamala
Harris might look a little different in the polling than
what President Biden was up against, against head to Steve,
what have you been looking at today?
Yeah, I guess a couple of things, Rachel.
Let's call it up and look at it this way.
First of all, we've just been tracking this is an
average of all of the polls nationally that have been
conducted since that debate at the end of June that
set all of this in motion.
So nationally, the average had Biden running two points behind
Trump.
Now, a couple things to say about that.
First of all, of course, we know that back in
2020 when Biden defeated Trump, never in 2020 did Trump
ever lead Biden in the polling average.
Biden let it from start to finish that year.
This time around, here's Trump leading Biden in the polling
average.
And frankly, we've seen this for a long time now.
It was the end of last summer, the end of
the summer of 2023 in our poll, our NBC poll
that for the first time, Donald Trump drew level with
Joe Biden.
Then he pulled ahead of him.
And he's been there in our poll and many other
polls since then.
So in some ways, looking at these numbers since the
debate, you know, just as a lot of Democrats, I
think kind of looked up in that debate and said,
whoa, you know, Biden not quite what we expected in
terms of his public performance.
You certainly heard Democrats making comments like that.
I think one of the things that happened was that
the numbers didn't change dramatically from that debate.
The polling numbers did not change dramatically, at least nationally.
But I think a lot of Democrats also looked at
them almost for the first time in a year and
started to take them a lot more seriously because we've
been seeing numbers like this for a year or so
now in the polls.
Now, they did get a little bit worse for Biden
nationally.
And we do have swing state poll and we've seen
the number of swing state polls were down mid single
digits somewhere.
He's down high single digits.
So you know, there's that as well.
Certainly that complicates the path to 270.
When you see that the article, they're saying the path
is gone.
I would just just caution it will forever be unprovable.
And that's always going to be a subjective statement there.
The path was gone.
Just as a reference point, I think always remember in
the middle of October 2016, the entire political world, including
Donald Trump's own party, concluded that his path to the
president was, quote, gone.
And Donald Trump won in 2016.
And I think there might be some lessons from that
that had Biden stayed in, might have been worth considering.
But that'll always be academic.
We'll never know.
It'll be unprovable.
But anyway, that is what the national polling has been
showing.
So then the question for Democrats becomes, OK, if Kamala
Harris does become the Democratic candidate, does that change things?
So the same polls that produce this average since the
debate in the Biden, Trump race, what do they show
when Harris is substituted in a difference?
But it's a difference of a point.
The Biden at 45, Harris in these same polls, an
average 46%, Trump 47% in both of them.
So you look at this and Kamala Harris is not
entering at least in the head to head standpoint with
an obvious strength over Joe Biden nor with an obvious
weakness compared to Joe Biden.
Really those numbers are pretty close to the same in
terms of a starting point for Harris.
Also just the basic impression of these folks.
So Joe Biden, this is the average when you ask
that question, do you have a favorable unfavorable view?
Biden 3657, been seeing numbers like this for a long
time with them.
Obviously, these are very perilous numbers.
What are they for Kamala Harris?
Average from the same set of polls, a little bit
better, 36 goes up to 3857, comes down to 52.
But, you know, take a step back.
Those are not strong numbers.
She hasn't entered the race with strong numbers on that.
Basic question, what's the comparison to Donald Trump here?
Trump averaging 41 favorable, 55 unfavorable, also not strong numbers.
A tick though above where both Biden and Harris are.
Again, this is the starting point for Kamala Harris.
The big question here is going to be what happens
in the next week, the next two weeks, this sort
of roll out of Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate
begins.
Does the does she get a second look from some
voters?
Do these numbers improve?
Is there movement in the horse race?
Is there a backlash?
I think you have to ask as well.
Look, Kamala Harris will be the first if she is
nominated, the first candidate from either party since 1968 to
be the nominee without contesting in name the presidential primaries.
Is there any kind of a backlash to that to
how all of this went down?
That's another question if it's Harris or whoever it is
as the Democrats nominee, this is the battleground of course
they'd be walking into if it's Harris versus Trump.
We've talked about this a lot.
The core 6 battleground states, every single one of these
states was won by Joe Biden in 2025 of them,
Biden had flipped from Donald Trump in 2016.
So obviously Harris, if she is the Democratic nominee doesn't
have to win all of these states.
But these are these are the states where I referenced
that polling, it was showing Biden down in many cases
mid single digits, sometimes even worse.
She's going to have to win a number of these
states, maybe those 3 Midwest states that could potentially hold
it for Democrats.
There's different combinations here.
The other challenge, though, for Harris, or again, whoever the
Democratic nominee is, the polling that had come out in
the last couple weeks was also suggesting, and there wasn't
enough of it to be definitive at all, but it
was suggesting that Democrats were starting to get into trouble
outside of the core battleground states.
And in particular, there's been polling from Virginia that showed
a close race, a tied race in some cases, or
even Donald Trump ahead by a couple points.
Virginia, thought to be a solidly blue state, New Hampshire.
Joe Biden won New Hampshire by 7 points back in
2020, was thought to be safe.
Democratic polling there had a very competitive race.
There were rumblings about maybe the statewide vote in Maine,
maybe about Minnesota, maybe even about New Mexico.
So again, there wasn't a ton of polling there.
There were some indications, but that's the other order of
business for whoever emerges as the Democratic candidate.
Can they make sure there's no trouble in those States
and then solidify enough of these swing states to win
the election?
Can I just ask you a technical question and just
sort of setting expectations?
It does seem like what's happening in Democratic politics is
the consolidation around Vice President Harris is fast overwhelming and
therefore I think likely to be pretty much complete in
in fairly short order.
If there isn't going to be a protracted fight in
the Democratic Party and it is very clearly going to
be Vice President Harris as the nominee, how how soon
would you expect high quality swing state polls to start
emerging that reflect that news?
So you specifically when you say swing states, I think
that complicates it a little bit in terms of national
polls.
You know, I would expect in the next two weeks
or so we'll start to get a pretty good readout
national.
I mean, because you can just imagine what's going to
be happening now, the profiles of Kamala Harris presumably, you
know, interviews, there's whatever the public rollout looks like here
immediately.
Yeah.
I think a real test nationally of sort of is
she getting a new look?
There'll be plenty of national polls I would expect in
the next couple weeks for that.
The hesitation on the swing states.
And when I mentioned these swing state polls that showed
Biden getting into some trouble here, we haven't had a
lot of them.
And the swing state polls that we've had a lot
of them don't necessarily fall into that.
You know, they're very, they're proven commodities.
They have long track records, widely thought to be very
accurate polls.
They're going to be.
We've had some here, we've had some and they've certainly
shown some trouble for Joe Biden, some real trouble in
these states.
But I think one of the realities we've had this
campaign cycle and it's a complicated why it's all kind
of come about this way is not a ton of
high quality swing state polling.
So in terms of when we'll really start to get
a readout on that about Harris or whoever the new
Democratic candidate is against Trump, I'm not sure.
That might take a little bit longer.
But I do think, look, if there is going to
be some significant movement here one way or the other
that shakes up this race, I do think you'll at
least get a pretty clear indication of that in the
national polling.
All right, Steve Kornacki, thank you, my friend.
Really appreciate having you here with us.