Axelrod says WSJ poll ‘very, very dark’ for Biden campaign

Former President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod said a recent Wall Street Journal poll showing President Biden’s approval rating hitting a new low is “very, very dark” for Biden’s reelection campaign.

“You know, job approval down, ratings generally down, most of the comparatives with [former President] Trump … not good,” Axelrod said on the podcast “Hacks on Tap,” which he co-hosts with former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and political media consultant Mike Murphy.

About 37 percent of respondents in the Journal poll, released Saturday, said they approve of the job Biden is doing as president, while 61 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view.

In a hypothetical match-up between Biden and Trump — who continues to lead in GOP primary polls — Biden trailed the former president by 4 points, with 47 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Trump and 43 percent choosing Biden.

Axelrod said he was most alarmed by the numbers regarding voters’ perception of Biden’s and Trump’s policies when president. About 23 percent of voters said Biden’s policies have helped them, while 49 percent said the same of Trump’s policies. About 53 percent said Biden’s policies hurt them personally, and 37 percent said the same for Trump.

“You know what I worry about … from a Biden standpoint is there are the kinds of things you get when people are starting to rationalize their votes — ‘Oh look, they’re ready to fire Biden, that’s a problem,'” Axelrod said. “And they just put out another photo op with the Bidenomics sign next to him … it’s just unbelievable to me.”

The White House has placed signs with the “Bidenomics” slogan, which it rolled out to tout the president’s economic agenda, on stage at many of the president’s recent speeches. In Denver on Nov. 29, the president spoke about investments from his Inflation Reduction Act with such signage at the stage.

Axelrod noted that based on the private polling he has heard about, he doesn’t think “it’s quite that bad … but it’s bad.”

Axelrod also made an apparent reference to a recent CNN poll showing Trump with a 10-point lead over Biden in the battleground state of Michigan, to which Gibbs argued the Biden campaign needs to start “playing campaign in a far more concerted way.”

“It is time to start drawing this choice because I think a lot of us think through these polls, we see whether it’s Michigan or The Wall Street Journal and you think to yourself, ‘Okay, people just haven’t made the turn yet to making the choice,'” Gibbs said. “These are still the ‘Biden is bad … let’s fire Biden’ polls, that’s what [Nikki] Haley’s up … and Trump’s up this …'”

“And if that’s your view that they haven’t made the choice, great. It’s time to accelerate the clock and get people to make that choice, force them to,” Gibbs added.

Axelrod argued the Biden campaign is “way behind” on this front and the campaign’s divided attentions between the election and the White House “have hurt them.”

His comments follow remarks he made last month in which he appeared to suggest Biden should drop out of the 2024 presidential race in the wake of a poll showing the incumbent trailing Trump. Following scrutiny for his comments, Axelrod clarified he is not concerned about poor polling numbers a year away from the 2024 election.

Days later, Axelrod said he thinks Biden has a “50-50 shot” of winning reelection and that the president thinks he is going to “cheat nature.”

The Biden reelection campaign did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels contributed.