Nothing that contradicts that the relatively disengaged and less reliable voters are leaning Trump, while Biden’s relative strength is with more engaged voters, including suburban women.
The spin in that section is that because of that perhaps Trump needs a high turnout of these less reliable voters.
The alleged conundrum is that driving up that turnout of the Trump leaning unengaged may further motivated the engaged voters who are already voting against him.
Thing is that engaged voting group voting against him are already going to vote. What now they will vote twice? It’s not much of a conundrum.
Any case, not seeing anything unclear about which way the disengaged lean. They are mostly currently between Trump or staying home. They are a long way from being not quite Biden yet just needing the imminence of Trump winning to be motivated to come out.
I think the real trick to that is to get people to understand that there’s more than the top of the ticket they can vote and have an impact on. Want the library to have more books, or the school to get upgraded, or the road fixed? Go vote yes on the bond issue or mill levy at the bottom of the ballot. Don’t like what the major or city council did? Now’s your chance to get change. Hate (or like) that Congresscritter? Go vote. And while you’re there, you can still decide if you want to leave the top line blank.
The problem with that is that such voters won’t understand why it must be Biden, and Biden specifically, to give them better bonds, mill levies, city councils, libraries, highways, school boards or whatever down-ballot Democratic issue they care about. They would ask, “Why couldn’t Candidate Kamala/Newsom/Bullock give us those things as well?”
The point is that if they’re wavering from even going to vote, you sell them on the hyper local stuff. It doesn’t matter who the President is on that stuff. It can’t matter, because even in the days of pork it would have been at the Congressional level. But the first battle is to get them to the polls, and then get them to consider going ahead to vote the top line as well.
The pauses sure. Also, the times when he wasn’t articulate because he was asked a complex question and couldn’t provide a quick glib answer. But if you’re saying that in the past he’s been 1) misidentifying world leaders, and 2) misidentifying the Vice President, then that’s news to me. However, the argument that he’s been senile for decades doesn’t fill me with hope on the prospects of his future performance.
Yeah, I think you’re touching on why I can’t buy much into the “unengaged voters will sink Biden” arguments – Biden’s opponent needs a relatively high turnout of a cohort that, well, never turns out.
Aside from that, unengaged voters aren’t a monolith. A majority may lean Trump, but it’s not like 90% lean Trump.
This is the point. It’s not just about being on the ball now for the campaign, when his wits should be sharpest (and they aren’t), but how effectively he can actually govern going forward. At this rate of deterioration, how will he be in four years from now, when he’s 85? George knows stuff. Let Kamala have at her; it’s for exactly this kind of situation that he selected her. Trump is afraid of women.
Smapti is arguing that Biden’s errors in identifying the right person he’s referring to in important speeches is nothing new. Has Biden been getting world leaders’ names wrong for decades? If so, what was/is the factor for that confusion?
The past really doesn’t matter much. It’s the present that counts. If he’s making pretty obvious misidentifications now, what makes you think that would decrease in the future? He’s done hid time, he served well, but now it’s time to read the room. Hubris is the downfall of many an otherwise great man.
Remember that the context is your expectation that the unengaged voters “will still vote ‘Biden’ when push comes to shove in November.” Your analysis that those will be the voters that push Biden across the line, those who just are not quite Biden yet. For the majority, if they vote it will be for Trump. Which is a change in the historical dynamic.
They are perhaps not the calvary coming over the hill you imagine them to be?
Yes exactly who turns out matters. Low information voters indeed are a diverse lot, only sharing in common a lack of interest to date in paying attention to politics.
Biden is a stutterer. Stutterers often get names mixed up. Several people in these threads (including myself) have personally attested to this. It’s not evidence of “senility”.
A senile Biden wouldn’t be able to hold an hour-long press conference and take open questions on policy.
I completely agree. My 88 year old MIL isn’t senile either. Still a great stock picker. Watches the news compulsively. Social. I love her dearly.
Does tend to repeat stories often and repeat herself in recent years. Not as quick to understand new concepts as she once was. She is not senile but her age still shows.
The bar is for winning a presidential campaign is higher than “not senile.”
Sure, but many in this discussion are using phrases like “senile” and “mentally decrepit,” so it does gain some relevancy there.
Again quoting article:
This makes me wonder about the polls they’re seeing. It feels like this implies something much worse than most of the numbers we see in public. Is it that they, like many here, think that a bare lead or being slightly behind is fatal under these particular circumstances? Are there internal polls that are really bad?
Why do the Biden needs to drop out/resign people, think unengaged voters are going to vote for someone they’ve never heard of/know little about? That makes no sense to me.
Because some assume when running against Trump, name recognition won’t matter; they’ll see “not Trump” and “younger than Biden” and eagerly vote for them when they wouldn’t have been so eager for Biden due to his age and perceived deficiencies.