David Axelrod Goes Even Harder At Biden, Giving Him 50/50 Shot At 2024 Win: He Thinks He Can ‘Cheat Nature’
“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” said veteran political analyst and former Obama advisor David Axelrod this weekend about President Joe Biden’s 2024 prospects.
This latest round in a back-and-forth that allegedly included Biden calling Axelrod a “prick” comes courtesy of Maureen Dowd at The New York Times, who spoke with Axelrod for her latest column – a defense of Axelrod in the burgeoning feud.
After Axelrod floated the idea earlier this month that Democrats might need the president to consider whether he’s the best nominee for the party next year, Biden was reportedly so angered that he referred to Axelrod as a “prick” and they were off to the races. Various pundits weighed in, and it even came up on Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday, with the host stating bluntly Biden cannot win.
“David Axelrod is not a prick. Truly,” Dowd disagreed in her column on Sunday. “I’ve known him since 2007 and if I had to pick a noun to describe him, it would be mensch.”
“So when President Biden privately employs that epithet for Axelrod, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, it’s bad for a few reasons,” she wrote, criticizing Biden for “punching down at the strategist who helped elevate him onto the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008 and who thinks he was ‘a great vice president’ and has done a lot of wonderful things as president.”
Dowd spoke with Axelrod about the fallout of his observations.
“I don’t care about them thinking I’m a prick — that’s fine,” he told her. “I hope they don’t think the polls are wrong because they’re not.”
Axelrod doubled down on his assessment of the current prospects for the Biden campaign.
“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod told Dowd. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”
Dowd agreed, writing that Biden’s “flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.”
And she, too, seemed to double down on Axelrod’s original advice to Biden, who turns 81 on Monday.
“Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office,” wrote the New York Times Democrat. “But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.”
Where the feud goes next will depend on Biden’s team, but whether the hatchet is buried, the polls can’t be, and Axelrod has not been alone in his doubts about Biden’s reelection bid succeeding. Even Biden himself has acknowledged the chatter and the name most dropped for his potential replacement on the ticket.
