Not only that, but Warren and Harris are now… according to this one poll, of course… considered more electable than Bernie Sanders.
Please elaborate; I’m not sure I follow. Why, exactly, would you much rather have that conversation after the election?
Because, no matter what some might think, this election is not about moving the ball in a progressive direction (relative to the Obama years). It’s about playing it safe, getting a madman out of the White House, and litigating the controversial stuff later.
Uhhh…you are aware that those Germans were mostly killed or captured, unless they ran away fast enough? 
If the Democrats are the Allied forces of June 1944, I like our chances! 
I don’t get where your confidence in him comes from. This will be the 3rd time he tries to be the Democratic nominee for President; he failed the two previous times. So sure, it’s not his first rodeo, but that’s not necessarily a point in his favor.
I’ve never got the sense that Biden is a strong leader. He has an agreeable personality, which is great if you all want to do is Netflix and chill with him, but not so great if you want him to advance a progressive agenda. His agreeableness does more to explain his friendliness with segregationists than anything strategic. What did Biden accomplish as a result of his bipartisanship? You don’t get points for just “working with” the other side. You get points for getting positive results that might not have occurred without these relationships.
Biden’s performance in the 2nd debate told me that he is only trying to court moderate whites, with the hope that between the 20 of them, the other candidates will split the more progressive, non-white votes. Maybe this strategy will help him land the nomination, but I worry that if we get Biden in the general, he will not be able to bring out the vote like a feistier, more energetic candidate would.
All the talk of Biden and “bussing” (rather than “busing”) is amusing to me given Joe’s proclivity to kiss women on the top of the head and so on. 
The death spiral begins! Seeing polls like this reported on cable news will likely cause more voters to peel off, and once Biden drops to second place, he’s finished.
Just to save people the trouble of clicking through:
Biden 22%
Harris 17%
Warren 15%
Sanders 14%
Buttigieg 4%
Booker 3%
O’Rourke 3%
Klobuchar 2%
Everyone else 1% or less
10-point drop for Biden since last CNN poll.
Yes, as I posted a few hours ago in the Biden/Buttigieg thread. As I said there, Biden has run multiple times for the Dem nomination and has never gotten close, and given that past history and his seeming unwillingness to change much, there is no reason to think he will pull it out this time.
He may continue to drop and others rise … but gosh y’all must be great to watch baseball with: My team got a 2 run inning and are now only down by 2. We’ve won!!! Whoo HOO!
Again, I’ve been a fan of Harris. She is *skillful *politically. Smart, quick, and able to come off as authentic, even when selling a whopper. Some here and elsewhere actually think she nearly had tears in her eyes from the authentic emotion of the moment! That’s good. Biden is not so skillful … OTOH he actually is authentic. He is not well rehearsed and likely rehearsing wouldn’t serve him well.
FWIW she may have overreached making busing as an “it’s personal” issue, making racial justice as something that she understands because of her personal life experience as a bused child.
Her facts are truthful but the manner of presenting them engages in a cynically manipulative implication of a life story that is not her lived one. Right now the focus is, very appropriately, on Biden’s complete bumble of a response. But if she goes back to this well her implied false narrative, her implied claim of an underprivileged youth with her educational future saved by being bused, is going to get called out. Not by Biden, more likely by Booker or points further left, and in a manner likely nearly as skillful as her move on Biden was.
Forced busing was an unpopular idea and would be today. By 1999 most Americans, endorsed school integration but fairly few thought that mandating busing was a good approach to accomplishing it. Blacks were more split on the subject than whites but fewer thought was a good thing than who thought it was best to allow students to stay in their neighborhood schools.
I strongly suspect that today fewer Blacks yet would endorse a plan that said Black students were required to be bused away from their neighborhood school as much as 45 minutes each way in order to attend a school that was majority white far away from their neighborhood and their local friends.
The cycle is (again, as it should be) on Biden’s shiner this week but as her numbers rise it will rotate to be her under the more critical light. Is she really proposing forcing students (Black, white, Hispanic, Asian …) to be bused far away from their neighborhood schools as a keystone campaign policy today? Can she pivot away successfully after making it so “personal”?
The impact of this play on her campaign is not yet fully felt I don’t think and may end up hurting her over more time as much as it has helped her in the moment.
I’m guessing the rumors of Biden’s death spiral may be exaggerated.
It’s not at all clear that “progressive” maps all that well onto “non-white,” especially as the term “progressive” has been used lately. Bernie Sanders, the progressive candidate in 2016, pretty neatly split the white vote with Hillary Clinton, but she clobbered him among Hispanics and especially among African Americans (she beat him among blacks slightly better than 3 to 1).
There have been some self-described progressives in House or statewide races lately who have done better than Sanders among African Americans and Hispanics (my impression is that they have usually been African American or Hispanic themselves), and there may be a candidate of that description in the current field. But I wouldn’t be too sure than people of color are going to support the candidates deemed “most progressive” in this particular campaign.
That is, quite frankly, a dumb analogy.
In baseball, you bring in your closer, and the 2-run lead holds up. Can’t do that in politics.
The deal with Biden is, he was to a large degree counting on his ‘electability’ to help him coast to victory. Voters’ perception was that he was way more electable than anyone else. Now electability comes in multiple flavors; it’s no longer his advantage.
Unlike baseball where being ahead 2-0 is probably even better than being ahead 16-12, being ahead with only 22% support means that your lead is waiting to vanish. Somebody is going to get more than 22% in Iowa, and in NH, and so forth. So far, except for his announcement bounce, what’s happened to his support? All erosion. He hasn’t yet shown the capability of persuading people to support him that weren’t already. Other candidates have, and one or more of them will surpass him unless he finds that capability.
There’s a good chance that you’re right about Harris, that down the road, her busing remarks may be a self-inflicted wound. But I’m not sure that’s going to do Biden any good. Her fans probably won’t go back to him. They’ll go to Warren, or they’ll start giving candidates like Booker and Castro and Klobuchar a second look, or who knows. Maybe even Bernie will get a second wind; at least it’s clear what the point of his campaign is. But it will take more than the alternative du jour having a bad month or two to save Biden. Biden needs to have a point to his campaign besides “I’m a likable guy and I was Obama’s veep” to win, and “electability” won’t cut it. He’ll either find a better reason, or he’ll keep dropping in the polls.
The analogy is actually spot on: one good or bad inning, one good of bad play play, is far from the game. Y’all overreact.
Digging deeper in that CNN poll one finds a bit less there. Harris did make a splash but result is her net favorability/unfavorability is now up to zero. Better than the negative numbers of Sanders, Warren, and Booker … but the debate negative hit included Biden is still in the plus 5. (To be fair they all do much better restricted to only D and D-leaners.)
Also asked of just D and D leaners - “Q13. Regardless of who you may support, which Democratic candidate for president do you think has the best chance to beat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election?”: It’s still Biden at 43% with Sanders, Warren, and Harris clustered way behind at 13, 12 and 12%.
The brand Harris is trying to create is that she can beat Trump better than Biden can. And my first reaction Thursday night and the next day or so was that she gave an impression she could. From this poll at least it is not yet looking like she has convinced many of that though and on more thought I am not as convinced myself.
But agreed that Biden needs a message more than electability and willingness to work with demons if that’s what it takes to get things accomplished or his campaign will less be killed than just fade away. He needs to focus discussion off past votes and on to what he wants to do for issues like economic and racial justice when he is president tomorrow.
I think you’re missing the point with respect to Biden’s drop. It’s not that people really believe he’s a racist; it’s that he looked weak in defending himself against implicit charges of racism. He looked old, befuddled, confused, guilty, and like someone who had not at all prepared for the challenge.
What RTF said. If anyone took my “death spiral” comment as indicating that I believe Harris is now the heavy favorite, I’m sorry to have been unclear. I don’t know who is going to be the nominee, but I am now pretty damn sure it won’t be Biden.
A good friend who is a college professor and fellow political junkie was the one who really persuaded me after Biden’s big surge that he had the inside track. But like me, he believes he has become politically a dead man walking. It’s not about this one event. It’s really not about race or busing. It’s that it is now clear that Biden is too old and feeble to pull this off, and another year on the campaign trail is not exactly going to put his internal chronometer in reverse.
So my friend’s very apt summation:
“An interesting house of cards. It’s gotta kill Biden–he wanted it so bad and really it was his for the taking, and he’s just too old.“
That’s it. It’s not his record or any of that. It’s just Father Time. He was 69 in his last national campaign, in a much less demanding role, and now he is 76. Huge difference.
ETA: Asahi posted while I was composing. What s/he said also.
Something that stuck out to me about that article is that of the 10 people interviewed for that piece to quote, only 2 were in their 20’s, one was in her 40’s and the rest were 50 and above.
As I watched some college students talk about the debate after it was over, they were giving me some hope from the younger generation. 6 college students were interviewed before and after the debates. They talked about how they wanted to see policy and civility. They didn’t get much of either on the second night of the debate.
After the second debate, the interviewer asked about Kamala Harris. One woman said that one of the reasons that Kamala can get away with going after Biden is that she doesn’t have anyone questioning her record as attorney general. She accurately predicted that the media would take Harris’ quotes and make headlines of them, making it seem like she “won”. She didn’t think Kamala won the debate. She thinks Harris is vulnerable to someone going after her in the next debate like she went after Biden.
No one in that crowd was excited about Biden.
At around 2:14:30
My 19yo son criticizes Harris pretty harshly for her atty general record. I love him dearly, but TBH I don’t think there is much if any overlap in the Venn diagram of “candidates he wouldn’t complain about” and “candidates who could win a presidential general election”. Certainly not in a normal year, and perhaps not even against Trump.
The buzz I’ve seen and heard in younger circles in this regard is around Buttegieg: the words “calm” and “intelligent” appear a lot. This isn’t necessarily translating into making him a frontrunner - considering Pete to have the right personality for the job doesn’t mean he’s the most electable, particularly given his limited experience - but if his plan this time around is primarily to build a brand for a later run he’s doing a good job of it.
Hickenlooper’s staff is voting with their feet.
At least one of them is jumping to Beto’s campaign, per the link. From one sinking ship to another!
And Hickenlooper needs to be running for Senator.
I didn’t miss the point. OTOH I didn’t see age impact or being weak so much as Biden’s long established not great in debate venues poor response to the challenge.
I just don’t think every turbulence means the plane is crashing.
He is vulnerable no question and he handled himself poorly on tha stage but he still is more likely to be the nominee than not.