It seems like a terrible idea, but maybe this is just where America is these days. “Nielsen records were smashed again in Friday’s Episode, when Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris had to race a hundred yards while knee-deep in pudding to avoid elimination. Bernie Sanders used his immunity challenge to avoid being eliminated after coming in last in the swimsuit competition. Meanwhile, on Fox, the GOP responds as JD Vance tries to break the world cockroach-eating record!”
I don’t think we can tell if it’s second-hand or first-hand. It’s “familiar with the discussions”. I could be familiar with a discussion because I was in the room discussing it. Or, someone in the room let me listen in. Or, as you suggest, I could be familiar because someone who was in the room called me and told me about it (or told someone else who told me). We don’t know, but if it is legit, that’s kind of the point. It protects their identity and it also allows some people (WH spokesman) to deny it. However, as 538 article suggests, it’s easy to determine if it’s true or not, ask Biden or his family members if it’s true.
Fundamentals.
There are a lot of competing considerations regarding whether Biden should drop out, but most of it is hunches. The objective part is that Biden is down in polling by a little (not a lot, given that it’s July) and he has incumbency (which some argue matters less than it used to, though the data is noisy and it’s hard to say it doesn’t matter at all).
The downsides to Biden are obvious. The downsides to the alternatives are less so, but will become obvious shortly after he steps aside.
I’m a fan of Nate Silver. I like his modeling, but frankly I think something broke inside of him over the past few years. I question his judgment and don’t consider him as authoritative as he was in say 2016 and earlier. He’s still worth a subscription I say.
My thinking on this subject has been shaped most by Josh Marshall. Here’s his latest:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-couple-more-thoughts-on-what-might-be-coming
Summary:
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Looks like Biden will step aside. That’s the reality. The other reality (argued above) is that this isn’t an easy call. It just isn’t.
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Wholly separately, but Biden’s decline seems to be a recent development, dated from sometime after April 26th.
ETA: Velocity: Good point, but electoral college issues can be modeled. Nate Silver has done that, but his probability is paywalled. He has implied that the number is comfortably worse than 50%. If it’s 20%, my point stands. I trust it’s comfortably above 5%.
Yes, but again, even if Biden were tied or leading by a little, it wouldn’t be enough. The Republican advantage in the Electoral College is so great that even a 4% Biden lead in the popular vote could still produce a Biden defeat.
And hence, any poll in which Biden is behind Trump in any way or form indicates a major hole to climb out of.
I’m not surprised. While I expect Heinrich to win fairly easily, Domenici has at least her father’s name to run on and as far as I know isn’t nearly the joke the last candidate the Republicans put up for Senate was. I don’t expect New Mexico to go Republican except for maybe NM-2 (we’ll see how the Democrats gerrymandering of the south of the state and half of Albuquerque holds up) but I wouldn’t be completely shocked if Heinrich lost and if Trump beat Biden.
It feels to me like it’s reached a tipping point. There’s too much direct sourcing/people on the record asking him to drop out. How can you defend it if Biden stays in? How would that work?
Of course, these statements do not actually say anything bad about Biden (e.g., he’s too old, he’s unfit, etc). More, just bland time to pass the torch kind of stuff. I suppose you can backtrack on that.
That said, “I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside” comes about as close as you can get to being, well, actual.
Allan Lichtman is the historian who listed the 13 keys to the White House, a model discussed in this thread created yesterday. Here’s what he tweeted within the past hour:
I have never seen a party so intent on self-destruction as the Democratic Party is right now, trashing their own president and presumptive nominee who was selected by the voters.
Cite.
Perhaps relevant, perhaps not, but Allan Lichtman is 77 years old.
That’s pretty much how I feel and I’m 57.
Hey, we’re all on the Left here and I like the people here with whom I’m disagreeing, but I gotta say it, Gen Z style:
THE COPE IS MASSIVE!
Let’s go over it point by point:
1. Biden had a “bad night” at the debate but is really fine.
Spinning Biden’s debate performance as a minor thing just isn’t going to fly. It was bad, really really bad. The man didn’t just shit the bed; he made choleric diarrhea under the blankets and sheets without a mattress protector.
Further, have you ever fucked up at work or something and known that, whatever you do, you can’t make the same mistake again? IOW, you had to be on your “best behavior” to make up for things?
Yeah, well, Biden hasn’t done that. Since the debate, in public speeches, he’s referred to Harris as “Vice President Trump” and President Zelensky as “President Putin.”
If there are any two fuckups that Biden should have been trying to avoid, those were it! And that’s among numerous other errors and flubs. And he knows he’s got to avoid this stuff–but he just can’t.
If you look at Biden debating or just talking four years ago, it’s a totally different picture. People are blaming stuff on his stutter and other public speaking issues now, but he was actually pretty damn good at it not too long ago. Pretending that the debate itself was not that big a problem is delusional, and trying to sell that point hard is bordering on gaslighting, guys. We know what we saw and continue to see. I know it’s hard to look at, but there it is.
Also, you guys know that Biden held the first press conference ever in his presidential term just a few days ago, right? As president, he has avoided the media like no other modern president has before him. This dovetails with the hypothesis that he’s been hiding issues for a long time and didn’t just have a bad debate night.
Finally, as I and other posters have pointed out before, this is where Biden is right now. There’s no reason to believe he will be above this level at any point going forward, while the downside is immense.
2. It’s a media conspiracy against Biden!
I’m not happy with the media either when it comes to how they’ve legitimized Trump and given him all the free advertising he could ever want. Trump effectively hacked the media, and they still don’t know how to handle him.
But the media are dealing with Biden’s issues pretty much as one would expect. They are simply reporting what we all can see.
Put another way, the traditional media template benefits Trump because Trump knows how to use it to his advantage, while it hurts Biden in this case simply because the truth is hurting him. Further, the whole debate was an own goal on the part of the Biden campaign, inasmuch as they requested the media attention of the debate and then put on a disaster.
If anything, the media has been soft on Biden. Some reporters like Brian Karem have complained about the extreme lack of media access, but that story has not made it to the eyes and ears of the public. Sure, the rightwing media have been calling Biden old and senile forever, but the mainstream media have not been bullhorning this.
3. Dems are panicking based on media reports and not pushing Biden out for rational reasons.
Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc., are not morons and, as another poster stated above, they have access to information we don’t have, and they are able to talk to the president himself and judge his capability for themselves. Further, I’m sure they’re talking to each other before saying anything major to anyone. They are not just riffing.
If it were just one pol, you could blow it off as that one person’s bad judgment. But to say so many major players in the Democratic Party are just being panicky dumbasses is not a believable argument to make.
4. Biden is being “stabbed in the back” or otherwise treated unfairly!
The goal is to win the election. Period, full stop. Losing to Trump to preserve Biden’s fee-fees is not an option.
Biden doesn’t have the “right” to be the nominee in the same way that we have, say, the “right to free speech,” etc. It is not a fundamental right; it is merely the product of the rules of the Democratic primary system. Further, there was only a nominal Democratic primary this year. Biden’s bleating, “I’m the nominee!” as a defense is bullshit, and he knows it.
Howbeit, Biden seems to be extracting himself from his own delusion and vanity. Let’s hope he continues to do so.
5. Only Biden can win / we’re fucked if we switch horses now / etc.!
The polls do not bear this out. Nor have I seen anyone trying to make this argument using polls and data (I mean a studied and comprehensive analysis–not just pointing to one or two polls and making a quick speculation). And even the fascists are not saying this and seem to fear a switch at this point.
Thus, people saying things like this here are making a gut, feelings-based claim and not backing it up.
Had Biden not debated and revealed his decline in such an egregiously public manner, it may have been possible for him to squeak over the finish line and later resign (or he may have refused to resign based on the vanity and delusion we have seen on display, which would not have been good). Now, I don’t think it is. And he has only himself and his team to blame for that.
As of right now, he has Biden’s chance of winning at only 26% (a drop of several points over the weekend, as Trump has been getting a convention/assassination bounce in the most recent polls). His chance of winning the popular vote, however, is 42%, so you see the magnitude of the problem.
I think that is an excellent summary of where we are right now.
I don’t know if there’s a word for this attitude, but some people bind a person (a politician, candidate, leader, etc.) and party and nation together to the point where they are considered one and the same. At an extreme level, this is Trumpism.
Democrats aren’t as cultish, but there are some - like Lichtman - who apparently think that to ask Biden to step aside is to ask the nation to self-destruct, or ask the party to self-destruct. Or Jill Biden saying “Joe is the ONLY man for the job.” Or like another Doper here who said that if Biden was not the nominee, he wouldn’t be voting (D) in November. That’s how deep the loyalty goes.
Nah, Dem polticos wrangle their hands all the time when they need to say things like, “After 4 year of Donald Trump, the American people decided that they have had enough. We crushed Trump in 2020, just like we will crush him in 2024 regardless of who is running. Biden is the most accomplished President in 40 years and we have a deep bench.”
I’m not good at coms, but if Republicans were down by 2 points I can guarentee you they wouldn’t be spending more airtime riling up the base and attacking the opposition and less time clutching pearls.
Thank you, TF!
There are a few of us who are staunchly centrist. I vote Dem because the Republicans have gone nuts (and I have a real dislike of religion) but as I’ve said, if Charlie Baker were on the ballot and behaving as he did when governor, I’d vote for him over Biden.
For the record, that’s certainly not a sentiment that I share. It makes little sense to me. I will fight my best for whoever the candidate is, because beating Trump is perhaps one of the most important tasks this country has ever been faced with. It is far more important than getting the person you like into office. I think Biden still has the best chance of winning, and I may be completely wrong.
Kind of like a synecdoche?