TRUMP FACES TROUBLES, BUT BIDEN CAMPAIGN IS DEAD IN THE WATER. On Nov. 5, 2023, the New York Times published a story headlined, “Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds.” Focusing on the states most likely to decide the 2024 election, the New York Times reported, “The results show Mr. Biden is losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.”

The story set off a mass freakout in the Democratic Party. A Biden Justice Department-appointed prosecutor had indicted former President Donald Trump twice and Democratic prosecutors in New York and Georgia had indicted Trump two more times — and the former president was still leading President Joe Biden in the most important 2024 states. How could that be? The poll led to an unusually intense round of the usual fretting over Biden’s age, the state of the economy, the border, and the rest of the president’s liabilities.