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Editor's Note: Joe Lockhart was a White House press secretary between 1998 and 2000 in the administration of President Bill Clinton. He is co-host of the “Words Matter” podcast. The opinions expressed in this comment are yours.
(CNN) - Reports of the decline of former Vice President Joe Biden have been greatly exaggerated. That according to a new national CNN survey. Instead of losing ground, Biden has again taken the lead with respect to his closest rivals, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
The surveys are an imperfect look at the situation of the contest at a specific time. They do not predict at this point who will win the candidacy and face President Donald Trump next year. But we can learn a lot from this survey.
The survey underlines the president's menacing influence on this contest for the selection of the Democratic candidate. The daily news of Congress, concerning the abuse of power by President Trump, underscores the approach of Democrats to dismiss him, if not through a political trial, then through the vote.
The fact that the president continues to place his own interests above those of the country makes the main thing for most Democrats is "eligibility." National polls, as well as polls in contested states, show that Biden is the strongest candidate against Trump. And as the possibility of a political trial increases, Biden's position also improves.
As much as some Democrats are in favor of the more radical proposals of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Trump's increasingly erratic and corrupt behavior has underpinned Biden's message: that all that matters is to defeat Trump.
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This new CNN survey also shows that the president's attacks on Biden and his family have lifted Biden's candidacy. Just a few weeks ago, it was not clear if the president's false attacks were going to harm or lift Biden's position among the Democrats. The survey begins to answer that important question.
Many Democrats have come out in defense of Biden and understand that Trump is attacking him this way, because he is the candidate Republicans most fear. Nobody likes to be told who should run or who should vote ... in particular the opposition party tells them to.
Some Democrats are still bitter about the treatment and false information that Hillary Clinton received in 2016. That feeling of injustice among Democrats has proved to be an important protection for Biden.
The second thing the survey reveals is that one does not have to win the debates to win the candidacy. Although Biden has sometimes fallen a little short in the debates, he has given enough to work for the Democrats to continue supporting him.
Discussions in recent months have been much more important for background candidates, determining who can continue and who has to get out of the contest. Neither Biden, Sanders or Warren have increased or decreased their chances of winning with the debates - and that will probably remain the same until only a few applicants remain.
We also see in this survey that moderate or conservative Democrats, who do not have much presence on Twitter and large campaign rallies, have stayed with Biden.
- Biden promises an office to attend to LGBTQ community rights
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Most of the country's democrats have not yet paid attention to this contest; and even in Iowa, where the country's first party assembly is held, 75% of respondents in the most recent state poll said they had not seen the CNN-NY Times debate in Columbus, Ohio. If they are not watching the debates in Iowa, chances are that many Democrats are waiting until next year to pay attention to the contest.
Finally, this survey dispels some of the idea that Democrats are looking for more candidates. Biden's strength in this poll, and in other polls that compare him to Trump in the contested states, must discard the idea that Democrats are not happy with their candidates. That happens in almost every election cycle.
But this is what the survey does not tell us: who will win the candidacy. I have no doubt that the survey accurately reflects Biden's strength at the national level, as well as that of Sanders and Warren. But national figures often do not predict the selection process of the Democratic candidate well.
The contest is very dynamic. What happens in Iowa will influence New Hampshire, and what happens in New Hampshire will influence Nevada, and so on. Still, the new figures are not insignificant. After Nevada and South Carolina, we quickly move on to the large primaries of several states, where national status has a much greater effect.
The contest is still completely open to those in the foreground and even some in the background. But it reminds us that the predictions about the decline or the rise of any candidate are uncertain, and that we must wait until the electorate votes to decide this contest.
- Translation of Jenny Rizo-Patron.