One of the reasons that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley haven’t gotten the traction they want is that one argument that once looked strong, the argument that Donald Trump would be likely to lose the 2024 general election, appears considerably weaker than it did at the start of the cycle.

You don’t see those eye-popping surveys that put Trump ahead by 10 percentage points anymore, but Trump’s head-to-head polling against Biden still looks pretty good. And Biden’s job approval rating looks terrible, plunging to just 33 percent in the latest ABC News/Ipsos survey.

Here in Virginia, we’re getting flyers touting Haley sent by AFP Action, with the message, “we can’t risk it… With President Trump’s criminal trials and the Liberal media’s bias against him, our country can’t risk four more years of Joe Biden.” Virginia votes on Super Tuesday, March 5.

The other side contends, “polls show Nikki Haley is our strongest candidate against Biden. Nikki Haley crushes Biden by double digits as Trump barely clings on. Nikki Haley beats Biden in the swing states that Trump lost in 2020.” (It will probably not shock you that this flyer spotlights her best performing polls, and that other polls show her narrowly trailing Biden.)

While there’s always a chance that the next few polls will show something different, it does not appear likely that President Biden will experience some miraculous turnaround in his approval rating. This means that Biden will poll weakly against all of the GOP contenders, undermining the arguments of DeSantis and Haley that they represent a significantly safer bet for the GOP.