Reporter stunned by Biden voters' comments on economy: 'Nostalgia for Trump years... really shocking to me'
President Biden is facing an uphill battle to convince voters the November election is a "referendum" on Donald Trump, because even Democratic voters have "nostalgia" for the Trump years, a reporter argued on ABC's "This Week."
Host Jonathan Karl asked his political panel on Sunday to comment on the lack of enthusiasm over Biden's re-election from key demographics who backed his 2020 campaign.
NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid confessed that the Biden campaign would have trouble selling its message on Trump because "many voters are looking at this election as a referendum on [Biden]."
Khalid said she has been surprised by Democratic voters telling her on the campaign trail that they have "nostalgia" for the Trump years.
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"What I've already heard in so many of my interviews with people is a lackluster sense of enthusiasm, whether it’s Black voters — you would call them sort of disaffected Republicans," she began.
She argued a host of factors helped unify the Democratic base to support Biden ahead of the 2020 election, but the current political climate is not as friendly to Biden as it was then.
"To make this a referendum [on Trump], sure, is what the Biden campaign wants, but it is really challenging because many voters are looking at this election as a referendum on [Biden]," she said.
"I was just up in Pennsylvania. Nonstop, I heard about the economy, and people don’t feel great about the economy now. This nostalgia for the Trump years is something — it’s the economy nostalgia I heard from Democrats even, which was really shocking to me — lay Democrats, remembering how good they thought their 401K was. They would say in their next breath they're not going to vote for Trump for a variety of reasons, but that is what Joe Biden is up against," she continued.
Polls and reports have indicated the Biden campaign has lost support from younger voters, Black voters and Latino voters who voted for him in 2020 but now blame the president for the state of the economy.
The Biden administration is trying to court these voters in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan through a tour selling his "Bidenomics" message.
Fellow "This Week" panelist Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, argued that people were trying to glamorize the Trump years and were "forgetting" how former President Trump affected abortion access through his Supreme Court picks.
"Right now, everybody wants the president to fix every single thing in their lives, but the president can’t fix every single thing," she began.
"If we lean in and we talk about the fact that the president is the one that gets the Supreme Court pick, we know that these three justices that Donald Trump got to pick under his presidency — they are the ones that took away [reproductive] access. They are the ones that are attacking diversity, equity and inclusion, affirmative action. They are the ones saying, ‘You know what? Biden wants to help you on your student loans, but we refuse to allow him to give you the help that he wants to give you,’" she continued.
While Biden enjoyed a polling bump following his State of the Union address in March, he is now trailing Trump again, this time by 6 points, according to a CNN poll released last week.