White House Report Card: Presidential debate is Biden’s chance to break out, Zogby says – Washington Examiner

This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign at a turning point as he prepares for the first debate with former President Donald Trump.

Not only is it coming before either has been officially nominated to be their party’s candidate in the fall, but it is the earliest one-on-one presidential debate in recent memory.

And while the election has been essentially tied for months, no matter what happens to either candidate, Democratic pollster John Zogby, one of our two graders, said that the debate could finally break apart the deadlocked race.

“Ultimately, where we stand right now is at par, a slight edge to Donald Trump,” Zogby said in his weekly podcast with his son and fellow pollster Jeremy Zogby.

Still, John Zogby said that it is Biden who needs more of a breakout moment to get ahead of Trump and stay there. “At this point in time, it’s tough. It looks very tough, making that debate on June 27 even more important,” he said.

That is in part because reelections are typically about how voters feel about the incumbent, not the challenger. And in Biden’s case, they don’t feel good. No campaign theme he has rolled out yet has worked, certainly not the administration’s claims that the economy is booming and people are rolling in money.

The campaign this weekend is now trying out a different approach, claiming that Trump was a bad president who is going to make things worse. Polls, however, show that people have a good memory of the state of the nation under Trump, certainly far better than they see Biden’s America.

Still, added Zogby in grading Biden’s week a “B,” there are signs that Biden is picking up some momentum in polls that suggest the election is dead even.

Conservative analyst Jed Babbin doesn’t buy that, however, and dished out one of his regular “F’s” to Biden’s week. He highlighted the efforts by the administration to tell voters that all the videos they’ve seen of the president appearing lost and meandering are false. Because of those videos, the president is going to have to give a better performance at the debate, and there are reports, for example, that he’s even practicing how to stand for 90 minutes, which is the length of the debate, to be hosted by CNN.

John Zogby

Grade: B

Three new polls show President Joe Biden now ‘leading’ former President Donald Trump by one or two points. Four new polls also show Biden’s overall approval rating average at 43%, a marked increase from just a week ago.

He appears to be making some modest gains with both independents and bringing at least some black voters home. His approval numbers have also jumped on his handling the economy, by far the top issue in the race.

While the race is tight and Trump still holds leads in key battleground states, these numbers mean that Biden goes into the very important and sure-to-be-watched debate on Thursday with some modest momentum.

Jed Babbin

Grade: F

Stumbling and bumbling around, President Joe Biden managed to give amnesty to 500,000 illegal migrants, continued to slow (and probably stop) arms shipments to Israel and his $42+ billion plan to get high-speed internet to rural citizens is tied up in red tape and hasn’t provided  any new access in three years. In short, it was another week in which the Biden White House would have earned a grade lower than “F” if there were one.

Biden’s plan to grant amnesty to 500,000 migrant spouses of American citizens is another way to a path to citizenship — and voting rights for illegal immigrants. Which, of course, is what Biden wants. And there is, seemingly every day, another report of an incident in which an illegal alien who crossed into the U.S. during Biden’s first term has been caught or accused of rape, murder or some other horrible crime.

The highlight of the week was the Los Angeles fundraiser, where Biden appeared with former President Barack Obama. After a discussion, Biden had to be led off the stage by Obama, who grabbed Ol’ Joe’s wrist. The White House Memory Hole crew insisted it never happened. It will be interesting to see how he can perform for 90 minutes in the debate against former President Donald Trump on Thursday.

Our national deficit is growing thanks to Bidenomics. (So is the combined effect of inflation and our national debt. The deficit is the difference between taxes collected and the amount the government spends.) The deficit reportedly rose by 27% in four months this year. Too much spending by Biden is the only cause.

According to a couple of Republican senators, Biden has been slowing arms deliveries to Israel by not notifying Congress of them, which is a prerequisite to those shipments. And Biden is bashing Israel, urging it to de-escalate the coming war with Hezbollah, the Lebanon militia which is Iran’s most powerful proxy. As you’d expect, he’s saying nothing about how Iran or Hezbollah should calm things down.

The rural internet plan — costing more than $40 billion — hasn’t connected a single rural home to the high-speed internet promised three years ago. The problem? Biden-generated red tape. You gotta laugh.

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John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Their firm polls for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.

Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.