Could Hillary Clinton be the “X-factor” in the Democratic Party’s primary woes? A new poll shows that, in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup for the nomination, Clinton and former vice president Joe Biden are in a dead heat.
To spice things up further, a Fox News poll, released over the weekend, shows Clinton beating President Donald Trump in a rematch of the 2016 presidential election.
The Washington Examiner reports that a Harvard Harris poll, which added Clinton to the mix of candidates seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination, puts Clinton in a statistical tie with Biden, with 19% of respondents preferring Biden to Clinton’s 18%.
Clinton beats Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) handily, 18% to 13%.
That’s bad news for the current slate of Democrats. Worse, though, is another of the poll’s findings: that if Clinton were to jump into the race today, many of Biden’s supporters would quickly move to the Clinton camp, even though the former vice president currently enjoys the support of 33% of Democrats polled.
In the Harvard Harris poll, Clinton ultimately loses, though, to President Donald Trump in a head-to-head rematch of 2016, though the same can be said for all of the 2020 Democratic contenders. Only Biden makes the final presidential race competitive, perhaps because of his demonstrated pull in “battleground” states (a New York Times poll, released Monday, shows Biden neck-and-neck with Trump across the Rust Belt).
Oddly enough, though, a Fox News poll, also released over the weekend, shows Clinton winning that same head-to-head matchup, according to The Week.
“A Fox News poll released Sunday did not have great news for President Trump,” The Week reported Monday. “A year before the 2020 election, he is behind all of the top-tier Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden (51 percent to 39 percent), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (46 percent to 41 percent), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (49 percent to 41 percent). Even worse, Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, who isn’t even running, 43 percent to 41 percent.”
That two-point spread is still well within the poll’s margin of error, but it can’t be ignored, particularly given that, as of last week, Democratic bigwigs and big-money donors were looking at 2020 options outside the current field, and Clinton has been crowing about her potential as a candidate in a media blitz.
Hillary Clinton hasn’t really gotten over her loss to President Trump, and has been on an excuse tour since, quite literally, the day after Election Day 2016. Her team was charged with promoting the idea that Russians tampered with the election outcome, she wrote her own version of how she failed and marketed it as a memoir in 2017, and her recent book tour with daughter Chelsea, promoting a childrens book about “gutsy women” has been marked by her own bizarre commentary, indicating that she’s definitely interested in a rematch.
Her most pointed threat to enter the 2020 Democratic nomination race came just last month, on October 8th, when she responded to a Trump tweet by telling the president to “Do your job,” when he suggested he could beat “Crooked Hillary” a second time.
When asked about the tweet, Clinton doubled down.
“So maybe there does need to be a re-match. I mean obviously I can beat him again,” she told PBS News Hour, perhaps not realizing that she did not, indeed, beat him the first time.