WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of election denialism, rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of science, and implied threats to the foundation of American democracy that we consider to be the moral equivalent of violence.
President Joe Biden and his closest advisers are laying the groundwork to delegitimize the results of the 2024 election and destroy what's left of the public's faith in our sacred democracy.
An alarming report published Tuesday indicates Biden simply "doesn't believe" the numerous polls that show him losing to Donald Trump. In what amounts to a dangerous assault on the professional data scientists and honorable journalists who conduct these polls, Biden has accused them of manufacturing fake or rigged results that don't reflect his actual support among American voters.
Whether in private meetings or in public statements, Biden has repeatedly cast doubt on the accuracy of polls that don't show him beating Trump. "The polling data has been wrong all along," he said last week, without evidence, during an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett. Days later, Biden told a group of wealthy Democratic donors "the polls [are] moving towards us and away from Trump." (Fact check: They are not.)
"The president’s blinkered view has created something of an alternate universe, one not governed by polling averages or independent analysis but by declarative statements that, at times, feel as if they are coming out of nowhere," the New York Times reported.
Biden has been rejecting the validity of polls since at least November, when he refused to accept the results of voter surveys conducted by CNN and the Times, telling a group of journalists he would provide copies of "other polls" that showed him winning.
This is dangerous denialism. Biden's inability to accept that he could lose fair and square threatens to unravel the fabric of American democracy and erode the pillars of freedom on which our republic was founded.
Biden's strategy is clear, according to a CNN analysis. The president's refusal to acknowledge polls that show Trump winning is a dog whistle to extreme left-wing Democrats. He is implying that Trump "cannot beat him fairly" and "raising the specter that if he loses next November, he will suggest that the election was not legitimate."
Things could get ugly as radicalized Biden supporters, primed to believe Trump could never win a legitimate election, descend on Washington, D.C., in an effort to "take their country back."
Pray for the United States of America.