Blumenthal ‘concerned’ about Biden’s poor poll numbers

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said Sunday that he is “concerned” about President Biden’s lackluster poll numbers after recent surveys showed him trailing former President Trump in next year’s election.

“I was concerned before these polls, and I’m concerned now,” Blumenthal said on CNN”s “State of the Union.” “These presidential races over the last couple of terms have been very tight. No one is going to have a runaway election here. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, concentration, resources.”

A CBS News poll that came out Sunday found that Biden is trailing Trump in a hypothetical match-up next year. Trump topped Biden with 51 percent of the vote, with the sitting president following with 48 percent.

Similarly, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that Trump leads Biden in a hypothetical match-up in five critical battleground states. Trump is leading Biden by between 3 to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Biden is only leading in Wisconsin by 2 points, the poll found.

Blumenthal then praised Biden for his leadership on the Israel-Hamas war and emphasized the need for a bipartisan aid package to pass the Senate. The House passed a GOP-backed aid package last week that included $14.3 billion in funding only to Israel, however it likely faces a dead end in the Senate and White House due to its ties to IRS cuts and no funding included for Ukraine.

“And so we have our work cut out for us,” Blumenthal continued. “But I believe that the president’s record — and we have just been talking about an area where his leadership has been critical, where he’s forged a bipartisan consensus in favor of a peaceful outcome with a Palestinian state as the goal, a lot of bipartisan agreement between [Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)] and myself on the need for a combined package.”