Biden campaign pushes back on ‘pundit class’

President Biden’s reelection campaign pushed back on political pundits after positive election results for Democrats on Tuesday and what it argued was a GOP debate Wednesday that boded well for Biden.

“We know over the last week there’s been a lot of Beltway chatter,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on a call Thursday morning. “We’ve heard the press and pundits count Joe Biden out time and time again, but we know he always proves them wrong.”

“On Tuesday, voters in states across the country proved the pundits wrong,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

Communications director Michael Tyler called out “voice after voice in the pundit class” for their negative rhetoric on Biden going into 2024, adding, “I’m sure somehow this morning” pundits will say Biden is in trouble politically.

“I think that maybe after this same cycle keeps repeating itself, we might want to actually take a look at the most significant data we have, which is how people are voting,” he said. “The bottom line is that polls a year out [do] not matter, results do.”

Democrats had a winning night Tuesday, when Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection, Democrats in Virginia flipped control of the House of Delegates and held onto the state Senate, and Ohio voters chose to protect access to abortions. The Biden campaign Thursday also argued that Wednesday night’s GOP debate, which former President Trump didn’t participate in, was positive for Democrats.

“No matter who Republicans nominate, their entire field will have spent this primary embracing the most extreme positions,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

Biden allies have been railing against the coverage of a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday, which found that Biden is trailing Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, in five out of six battleground states. Additionally, CBS News and CNN polls this week found Trump ahead of Biden.

Biden’s campaign sent a memo to news outlets Tuesday asserting there’s a disparity in the way the media has covered polling. The White House and Biden campaign have been arguing there’s a still a year out until the election, and that polls consistently underestimated Biden’s support in 2020 and the 2022 midterms. 

They’ve also dismissed one major pundit, David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama, who argued Biden should weigh whether it is in his best interest or the country’s to run in 2024.  

Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesperson, in response to Axelrod shared screenshots of several headlines from 2011 in a post on X, including one that questioned if Obama was “toast.” Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, wrote on X targeting Axelrod: “Man who called Biden ‘Mr Magoo’ in Aug 2019 is still at it.”

When asked if the president will step up his travel to swing states, considering the NYT/Siena College poll and that the election is a year away, Chavez Rodriguez said that Biden and surrogates will be hitting the trail more aggressively.

“We are excited to continue to get out and — whether it’s the president, vice president, or any of our surrogates — just making sure we are present,” she said, not naming any states in particular.

Biden recently has traveled to safe blue states: On Thursday, he is traveling to Illinois, and last week, he traveled to Minnesota. Next week, he will be in California for engagements with international leaders.