MARK PENN: LIBERALISM IS KILLING THE DEMOCRATS! (PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE SENATE POLLS.)

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Mark Penn -- pollster, frequent Fox News guest, and husband to No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson -- arguing that President Biden has struggled in the polls because he and his party are too damn liberal.

President Biden appears behind in all the swing states and his campaign appears all-too-focused on firming up his political base on the left with his new shift on Israel, a $7 trillion budget, massive tax increases and failing to connect on the basic issues of inflation, immigration and energy. By pitching too much to the base, he is leaving behind the centrist swing voters who shift between parties from election to election and, I believe, will be the key factor deciding the 2024 race.

I’ve spent decades looking at the behavior of swing voters and how candidates appeal to them, including for Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996. If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America....

Unfortunately, Mr. Biden is not reaching out to moderate voters with policy ideas or a strong campaign message. He is not showing clear evidence of bringing in large numbers of swing voters in the battleground states at this point. Those swing voters look for fiscal restraint without tax increases, climate policies that still give people a choice of cars and fuels and immigration policies that are compassionate to those who are here but close the borders.

I'm struggling to understand how a shift in policy regarding Israel that was reported last week helps explain poor numbers for Biden in polls conducted weeks or even months ago. I'm also not clear on how a budget that's never been front-page news for most Americans, and that will certainly not survive intact in a divided Congress, is a political liability for the president. And "choice of cars"? Does anyone apart from 14-hour-a-day Fox viewers believe that's a burning issue in this campaign?

I think Biden is being hurt badly by inflation, or at least by prices that are persistently high even if they're no longer rising rapidly. I think he's being blamed for international crises he didn't create, for crime that isn't rising anymore, and for border problems that Democrats would like to solve and Republicans would rather run on than address. I think Mark Penn knows that these are the reasons Biden is struggling -- but Penn and the fat cats he and his wife consort with would like to use an apparent crisis in the Democratic Party as an opportunity to push the party rightward. They want the party to be pro-big business, pro-fossil fuel, and unquestionably pro-Israel.

Why did Penn write and publish this now? The op-ed reads like a pre-buttal of the survey The New York Times was about to publish. You'd assume that Penn, as a fellow pollster, would know the survey was coming. It appeared today, under this headline:

Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden

A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.

There's little or no evidence that voters who have soured on Biden have done so because his budget has too many tax increases on the wealthy or because he's sometimes urged restraint on Israel. It's the economy, stupid:

The economy and the cost of living, however, remain the most important issues for one-quarter of voters — and a significant drag on Mr. Biden’s prospects. More than half of voters still believe that the economy is “poor,” down merely a single percentage point since November despite cooling inflation, an end to rate hikes and significant stock market gains.

Nearly 40 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said that the economy or the cost of living was the most important issue in the election....

The Biden administration’s insistence that the economy is faring well has fallen flat for many voters, including Jacob Sprague, 32, who works as a systems engineer in Reno, Nev. He says that he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but will not be doing so this time.

“It is concerning to me when I keep seeing press come out of the White House where they keep saying the economy is good,” Mr. Sprague said. “That’s really weird because I’m paying more on taxes and more on groceries and more on housing and more on fuel. So that doesn’t feel good.”

And there's one key finding in this survey that definitively rebuts everything Penn argues: The Times survey, like the polling averages I wrote about over the weekend, finds that Democratic Senate candidates are doing much better than Biden.

Democratic candidates for the Senate in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin lead their Republican rivals and are running well ahead of President Biden in key states where he continues to struggle....

In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, has the support of 46 percent of voters, against the 41 percent who say they back his Republican challenger, the wealthy finance executive David McCormick, although Mr. Trump holds a slender advantage in a head-to-head race with Mr. Biden, 47 percent to 44 percent.

In Wisconsin, the Democratic incumbent, Senator Tammy Baldwin, holds a wider, 49-percent-to-40 percent lead over the Republican banker Eric Hovde. Mr. Biden is up slightly against Mr. Trump, 47 percent to 45 percent.

In Nevada, where Mr. Biden is struggling the most, Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, narrowly leads her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, a wounded combat veteran, 40 percent to 38 percent, with 23 percent of registered voters undecided.

In Arizona, the one battleground state polled with an open Senate seat, Representative Ruben Gallego, a Phoenix-area Democrat, leads Kari Lake, the Republican former news anchor who is closely allied with Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 41 percent, with 14 percent undecided. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden in Arizona, 49 percent to 42 percent.

If Penn is right and the Democratic Party has become too liberal, why are these Democrats winning?

Now, I know that many of you regard polls as disinformation spread by right-leaning media barons to create the false impression that conservatism is triumphant. If that's the case, I'm not sure how these Senate polls are meant to accomplish this task. The GOP candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are right-wing finance guys -- and we're told that they're losing. Why would disinformationists who want to deceive us about Trump's popularity not do the same for David McCormick and Eric Hovde? And if the press wants Trump to win even though he's a lunatic (or perhaps because he's a lunatic and is therefore good copy), why wouldn't the press also want Kari Lake to win?

This polling confirms my belief that Joe Biden just isn't a good candidate. He could be better, but he and his team seem not to think that he needs to be, and very engaged Democratic voters seem to agree. I'd like to think this poll will be a wake-up call, but the mood in the party suggests that engaged Democrats still think a Biden win is inevitable. I don't see that at all, but I'd love to be wrong.