LET'S WATCH DAVID LEONHARDT MISINTERPRET A POLL

A new New York Times poll is mostly bad news for the president:

President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating.

On the other hand:

One glimmer of good news for Mr. Biden is that the survey showed him with a narrow edge in a hypothetical rematch in 2024 with former President Donald J. Trump: 44 percent to 41 percent.

David Leonhardt of the Times tries to tell us what it all means -- and gets the answer wrong:

In 2016, when The New York Times’s pollsters asked Americans whether they planned to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, more than 10 percent said they would not support either one. They said that they would instead vote for a third-party candidate or not vote at all.

Four years later, the situation was different. Joe Biden was a more popular nominee than Clinton had been, while some of Trump’s skeptics had come around to supporting him. Less than 5 percent of voters told pollsters that they didn’t plan to vote for either major party nominee.

This morning, The Times is releasing its first poll of the 2022 midterm campaign. And one of the main messages is that Americans again seem to be as dissatisfied with the leading candidates as they were in 2016. “This felt like a poll from 2016, not from 2020,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, told me.

It would have been nice if Leonhardt had provided links to the 2016 and 2020 polls he cites -- when were they taken? Just before the election? Months ahead? Years ahead? This one is many years ahead, so it doesn't make sense to compare it to an election-year survey, if that's what Leonhardt is doing.

But one thing Leonhardt barely mentions is the massive age skew in the pool of voters who say they won't vote:

In the new New York Times poll, the "won't vote at all" numbers among 18-29-year-olds are much, much higher if it's Trump/Biden in '24 than they are in any other age group. https://t.co/bHbdIJMMmy pic.twitter.com/zmC5ybhIbc

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) July 11, 2022

The people who chose "won't vote" are 2% of the 30-44-year-olds, 3% of the 45-64-year-olds, 5% of the 65+ group -- and 22% of 18-29-year-olds.

How disillusioned are the young by Biden? Very.

For 30-44 year olds, he is -28.

For 45-64 year olds, he is -33.

For 65+ year olds, he's -11.

But for the youngest, most liberal, most Democratic group of voters: -50.

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) July 11, 2022

By the way, before someone comes in here saying "It's just inflation," it's notable that the group that likes Biden the least is also the significantly LEAST likely to list inflation or the economy as the biggest issue, and the MOST likely to say guns, abortion, or human rights. pic.twitter.com/3VdglngnAA

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) July 11, 2022

But when Leonhardt looks for an explanation for the overall sense of disillusionment, he falls back on a hackish recitiation of bothsiderist clichés:

This level of dissatisfaction is a reflection of the huge, dueling weaknesses of the two parties.

The Democratic Party has two core problems. First, Biden’s job approval rating is only 33 percent (similar to Trump’s worst ratings during his presidency), partly because of frustration over inflation and the continuing disruptions to daily life stemming from the pandemic.

(What are "the continuing disruptions to daily life stemming from the pandemic"? Months ago we abandoned nearly all the public health interventions that were seen as disruptive, at the urging of media figures such as Leonhardt. What disruptions remain, apart from those resulting from COVID infections?)

Second, Democrats’ priorities appear out of step with those of most Americans.

Oh boy, here we go.

Congressional Democrats have spent much of the past year bickering, with a small number of moderates blocking legislation that would reduce drug prices, address climate change and take other popular steps.

Nice of Leonhardt to acknowledge that the bills Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are blocking would be popular. But he can't leave it at that.

Many Democrats — both politicians and voters, especially on the party’s left flank — also seem more focused on divisive cultural issues than on most Americans’ everyday concerns, like inflation.

“The left has a set of priorities that is just different from the rest of the country’s,” Nate said. “Liberals care more about abortion and guns than about the economy. Conservative concerns are much more in line with the rest of the country.”

If Leonhardt were right about this, you'd think young people would be the least likely to reject Biden and say they plan to sit out the 2024 election. But the most left-leaning age cohort is the most disillusioned by the president.

On the other hand, Nate points out, “Republicans have serious problems of their own.”

Really? Ya think?

Trump remains the party’s dominant figure — and he is roughly as unpopular as Biden....

Republicans also face some vulnerabilities from the recent Supreme Court decisions. The court has issued aggressive rulings, including overturning Roe v. Wade, that take policy to the right of public opinion on some of the same issues where many Democrats are to the left of it.

The sound you hear is me repeatedly pounding my head on my desk.

Let's review: Republicans want to ban abortion outright in the states they control (and I do mean outright: In the GOP of 2022, rape and incest exceptions are for RINOs and cucks). They want to prevent residents seeking abortions from receiving abortion pills in the mail. They want to prevent abortion seekers from traveling to states where abortion is legal. They want to intimidate doctors who prescribe abortion drugs for reasons other than abortion, just to make sure the fear level is sufficiently high. They want to scrutinize miscarriages, for the same reason.

Democrats? They want to expand abortion access somewhat in states they control, but most would consider themselves lucky to have the Roe the status quo ante.

David Leonhardt: Both sides go too far!

We can do this on guns, too. We can do it on the EPA's ability to regulate carbon. We can do it next year on the right to have your vote counted in an election if you vote for the party other than the one that controls your state legislature. But to Leonhardt, both sides go too far is theology -- it isn't subject to a fact-check because it's an article of faith.

Again, if progressive extremism is what's disillusioning voters, you'd think the young would be ready to vote for more of it. But that's not what the numbers say.

I realize that young people are always less reliable voters. But the high level of dissatisfaction with the president suggests that Democrats risk losing an entire generation of voters if they don't change course. Either they need to change the person at the top or the person at the top needs to deliver at least some of what youngers want. Otherwise, 2024 could hurt the Democratic Party for decades.