Democrats need to “wake up,” strategist Donna Brazile warned on Sunday following a new national poll in which President Biden’s approval ratings sank further over the first few months of the year.
The Washington Post-ABC News survey found the president’s approval rating fell 6 percentage points between February and May, with the share of those who say they approve of the way he’s handling his job dropping from 42 percent to 36 percent. Only 18 percent of respondents said they “strongly approve” of Biden’s work with stubborn inflation lingering.
Further alarming Democrats, former President Trump beat Biden in a head-to-head matchup in the survey by 6 percentage points with 44 percent of those asked favoring Trump over the 38 percent who preferred Biden.
Brazile said she was told she couldn’t send the poll around until midnight Sunday, lamenting its urgency when she added that she sent it at 12:02 a.m.
“It kept me up and I thought they should wake up and look at those numbers,” Brazile said of Democrats on ABC’s “This Week.”
“It’s sobering in the sense that the coalition that elected Joe Biden, with the historic numbers that we saw in 2020, that coalition right now is fragmented. That should concern them,” she said of the White House.
Brazile, who was chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election when Trump won the White House, said the poll should cause the Biden campaign serious concerns about how to reach voters.
Biden launched his 2024 reelection bid late last month but so far has had a slow-roll shifting into campaign mode and instead kept a low profile and limited travel.
“They’re still unable to get a real good, strong message to the American people not just on their accomplishments but where they want to take the country. And so while the Republicans are operating on fumes… the Democrats are operating on policies,” Brazile said on ABC, noting job growth during the Biden administration.
“If they are unable to make this campaign from the bottom up and talk to people where they are, it’s going to be a struggle,” she added.
— Updated 12:08 p.m.