President Joe Biden has gone from saying he will step down from his reelection campaign — only if the "Lord Almighty" tells him so — to saying he will stay in the presidential race until there is no path to victory.
Unless his team tells him "there's no way you can win," Biden said at Thursday's NATO news conference, he is not ending his reelection campaign.
And "they're not saying that" and neither are the polls, Biden said.
Democrats have accused him of thinking he is the only candidate who can defeat former President Donald Trump, thereby risking losing the House and Senate to Republicans, according to The Telegraph.
Biden told reporters during the news conference that he does think there are "other people" who can take down Trump, but it will be "awful hard to start from scratch" and pick a new candidate this close to the November election.
Biden and Trump have been close in the polls, with Biden narrowing the gap to just .8 points by the end of May and even tighter after Trump's felony convictions in his business records case in New York.
After the June 27 debate, the focus on Biden's age and mental acuity has grown, and Biden's numbers have dropped.
According to RealClearPolitics polling averages, Trump is leading Biden overall by 2.9 percentage points, at 47.4% to 44.5%.
Biden, though, said Thursday that at least five incumbent presidents had lower polling numbers than his are at this point.
Former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Trump as incumbents had similar approval figures, but all three were one-term presidents who lost their reelection bids.
Biden's campaign is also losing support from key demographic groups that supported him in 2020, including minority voters and young liberals who have turned their backs on him for several reasons, including his stance in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
However, such groups might pick a third-party candidate, rather than turn to vote for Trump, elections experts say.
Biden's support among other voters has also been dropping, including among middle-aged people and men, but he remains nearly tied with Trump among Hispanic voters, polls are showing.
Biden's future also depends on support from swing states. He retains support in some blue areas, such as California.
His campaign said in a memo this week that winning the "Blue Wall" states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is key to Biden taking the election.
However, pollsters are warning Biden's support in those states is crumbling.
Polls suggest that if Trump picks up wins in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina with leads of at least five points, he will win in the Electoral College race by 271 delegates to 266 for Biden.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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