How Joe Biden Could Still Win This Thing

Amid growing calls to withdraw from the presidential race, President Joe Biden insists he is still the best person to defeat Donald Trump. Asked on Thursday whether he would end his run if he decides he cannot defeat his Republican rival, Biden told ABC News it would take a message from the “Lord Almighty” to convince him.

Biden was trailing Trump in virtually every battleground state poll before his calamitous debate on June 27, and there are some indications his standing has worsened significantly since then.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, Biden said of his detractors, “They’re big names, but I don’t care what those big names think. They were wrong in 2020. They were wrong in 2022 about the red wave. They were wrong in 2024.”

What if Biden is right, though?

HuffPost spoke on Wednesday to Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, a Democratic public opinion initiative not aligned with any candidate or group, about whether there’s a plausible case for a Biden victory, despite all of the doubts. The interview followed Biden’s trip to Capitol Hill to impress upon House Democrats his continued commitment to running, and it preceded his Thursday evening press conference from the NATO summit in Washington.

Blueprint is funded by Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman, whose top political adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, remains firmly in Biden’s corner. But Mehlhorn has no involvement in Blueprint’s operations, and the initiative’s only goal is defeating former President Trump, according to Smith, who also co-founded the New York City-based consulting firm Slingshot Strategies.

Below is a condensed and edited transcript of the interview.

Let’s say Biden not only locks up the nomination but also wins the election against