Former President Barack Obama’s ex-top strategist on Sunday bluntly laid out the grim state of President Biden’s reelection bid — predicting it’s more likely he’ll “lose by a landslide” than eek out a victory.
“He’s not winning this race,” said David Axelrod, who is credited as one of the key masterminds behind Obama’s two presidential victories, to CNN’s “Inside Politics.”
“If you just look at the data and talk to people around the country, political people around the country, it’s more likely that he’ll lose by a landslide than win narrowly this race,” Axelrod said of Biden, 81, who was Obama’s vice president.
Obama has publicly stood behind Biden during the Democratic uproar over the president’s disastrous debate performance against GOP foe Donald Trump last month.
But Axelrod has long sounded the alarms over voter unease about Biden’s age, and his public consternations have reportedly rankled the president.
“If the stakes are as large as [Biden] says, and I believe they are, then he really needs to consider what the right thing to do here is,” Axelrod told CNN.
Axelrod previously ripped Biden’s debate performance as “woeful” and penned an op-ed for CNN that summed up the president’s later major televised post-debate interview with ABC News in three words: “Denial. Delusion. Defiance.
“[Biden] seemed to deny where he is in the race. He seems not to grasp what is the big concern that people have,” Axelrod reflected about Biden’s interview Friday.
Axelrod praised Biden for overcoming “tremendous loss and tremendous odds” throughout his life and mused that “his psyche is that he can beat anybody and any long odds.
“What he can’t beat is Father Time, and that’s really the concern here,” the pundit said of the president — who mumbled, couldn’t finish sentences and blankly stared into space at times during his debate against Trump.
The esteemed Democratic strategist warned that former President Trump is an “unprecedentedly flawed candidate in so many ways” and “represents a real danger to democracy” — which is what makes this year’s election so crucial.
Axelrod took note of how former NFL star Tom Brady won a Super Bowl just a few years ago but isn’t playing football anymore because of his age.
The political expert underscored that he has “a really high regard” for Biden, who he credited for having “done some historically important things,” and stressed that “history will be much kinder to him than voters are right now.”
Axelrod said “the only thing pushing [Biden] out of politics is the immutable march of time” and implored him to consider his legacy if he loses to Trump, 78.
Biden, when pressed on how he’d feel in January 2025 if he lost the November election, told ABC News that he’d be fine “as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do.”
“If his all is not enough, maybe someone else can give more because they have more energy and they have a longer runway in the future,” Axelrod said of Biden’s remark.
In the ABC News interview, Biden took responsibility for his debate debacle and contended that he was “exhausted” but was still up to the task of the presidency.
Already, at least five House Democrats have publicly urged Biden to pass the torch, something he’s rejected.
Biden’s allies have drawn attention to the slew of Democrats that are sticking with him, including the entourage that greeted him for his swing through Pennsylvania on Sunday.
