Michael Dukakis warns Biden to ignore the polls: 'No guarantee of success'
One poll showed Dukakis up 17 percentage points on George H.W. Bush in late July 1988.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Michael Dukakis, the former Democratic Massachusetts governor who lost his 1988 White House bid to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, is warning Joe Biden not to take polls showing him with a double-digit lead over President Trump too seriously.
A recent Fox News poll has Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leading Trump 50-38 nationally as concerns grow over the coronavirus pandemic, racism and unemployment. He also leads Trump by 8.8 percentage points in an average of the latest national polls compiled by Real Clear Politics.
By comparison, in late July 1988, a Newsweek/Gallup poll showed Dukakis with a 55-38 lead over Bush, according to The Boston Globe.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: THE LATEST POLLS FROM FOX NEWS
"Particularly this year, [polls] should be studied cautiously," Dukakis told the Globe. "Biden can and should win, but being at 50, no matter how weak your opponent is, is no guarantee of success.”
Dukakis' numbers took a nosedive following a series of public relations gaffes, as well as what was regarded as a dispassionate performance in the second debate between himself and Bush. At one point, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Dukakis said "no," citing his belief that capital punishment isn't a deterrent to crime. Many saw his answer as cold.
Presidential candidate Vice President George H.W. Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis shake hands before the start of their debate at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“It was a question about Dukakis’s values and emotions,” his campaign director, Susan Estrich, later recalled, according to Politico. “When he answered by talking policy, I knew we lost the election.”
Dukakis' numbers further declined following a Bush campaign attack ad that featured Willie Horton, a black man who raped and killed a white woman and stabbed her fiance in a 1987 home invasion in Maryland. Horton had escaped from a weekend furlough at a Massachusetts prison when the killing occurred.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The furlough program had been in place while Dukakis was governor.
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The ad portrayed him as soft on crime and was widely condemned as stoking racial divisions.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ronald Reagan, the incumbent president at the time, also referred to Dukakis as an "invalid," prompting questions over the governor's mental state. Reagan later claimed he was joking.
“I think I dropped eight points in the week Reagan called me ‘the invalid,’” Dukakis told the Globe in an email. “I never took those early polls seriously.”
In a similar manner, Trump and his supporters have frequently questioned Biden's mental acuity. He did the same with Hillary Clinton in 2016, calling her "unhinged" and suggesting she was not up for the job of being president.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I think Biden now is weaker than Dukakis in 1988," Globe columnist Alex Beam wrote. "Biden is battling an incumbent president who can wield the levers of power to his own benefit almost any time he wants. And Biden, you can argue, is no Dukakis."
Beam noted that Dukakis had turned 55 days before Election Day in 1988, while Biden is 77 and prone to "cringe-worthy gaffes." Dukakis also presided as governor of Massachusetts over a sustained period of economic growth, he said.
"What can Biden take credit for?" Beam said. "A serviceable stint as a small-state senator, eight years of unremarkable vice-presidential yeomanry, and — lest we forget — an unblemished losing record in presidential campaigns."
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Meanwhile, longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove, who informally advises the Trump campaign, told Fox News Friday the Trump needs to hit the reset button ahead of the Republican National Convention.
He also cited Bush's win over Dukakis after trailing in the polls months before his election.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"When you are in the barrel, when you’re getting a lot of bad press and the polls are going against you, you need to do something that says, ‘We’re moving in a different direction.’ That’s what I mean by a reset," he said on "America's Newsroom."