Doug Sosnik writes:

Unless the basic contours of the race change and some of the Sun Belt battleground states become more competitive (which is unlikely), Mr. Biden’s only viable path for winning is to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Each of the three states poses particular challenges for Mr. Biden. Current polling shows him trailing Mr. Trump by as many as five points in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and more narrowly in Michigan.

The deficit in Pennsylvania must be particularly disconcerting for Mr. Biden and his campaign, given the time and resources devoted to the state. He has made 10 visits since the beginning of this election cycle and has outspent Mr. Trump and his supporters on network television ads by a margin of over two to one in the last 30 days, according to an analysis by the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Michigan poses other obstacles for Mr. Biden. It is near the bottom third of states in the country when ranked by the percentage of people with college degrees; inflation has hit Michigan working-class voters hard and influenced their views of the economy and the election. The war in Gaza has also hurt Mr. Biden among the 300,000 Arab voters in the state who overwhelmingly supported him in 2020. And third-party voters were decisive in Mr. Trump’s victory in Michigan in 2016: This year, multiple states will include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Green Party candidate Jill Stein on ballots.

Of all the battleground states, Mr. Biden had been performing best in Wisconsin. Voters’ perception of the economy had been more favorable there than in other battleground states. However, in two polls released this week, Mr. Trump has pulled ahead of Mr. Biden. Ms. Stein is on the ballot, increasing the challenge for Mr. Biden in liberal areas like Madison.

Republicans clearly understand that these three battleground states are Mr. Biden’s only remaining path to 270 electoral votes. A Miriam Adelson-backed super PAC just committed to spending $61 million to support Mr. Trump in these three states. [Continue reading…]

Does President Biden realize how angry some voters in Michigan are — specifically, Arab Americans?

That anger is on full display in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit that has one of the highest percentages of Arab Americans among U.S. cities (54 percent, though experts believe that’s a significant undercount).

Opinion Video traveled to Dearborn to understand voter sentiment in a population that has the power to sway the election.

Michigan has over 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim — enough to swing the state. (Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020.) Just finding a pro-Biden Arab American voter in Dearborn is not an easy task.

“I will not be voting for Biden, for sure. And no one will be voting for Biden that I know of,” said Wissam Charafeddine, a poet who works in the public school system. “It would be an insult to ask.”

The New York Times Opinion Video below surveys a group of voters who show that age is not Biden’s only problem.