You think that those who haven’t already made up their mind, which mostly means the Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton voters, won’t be enthusiastic about Biden, and you have no other candidate in mind that you think they would be enthusiastic about, suggesting that maybe they won’t be enthusiastic about anyone and just not vote.
Since you think no one may enthuse might they vote for a candidate they are not enthusiastic for instead of not voting/
Of those either running or expected to run who do you think might be most attractive to those two groups (even if they are not enthusiastic), more appealing to both, or failing that, either, than Biden is?
If the fraction of the voting-eligible population we’re looking at is ‘those who voted for Obama then for Trump, plus those who voted for Romney then for Clinton’-----
Then I think they’ll like Biden until some combination of Biden’s foes (including some fans of Trump and some fans of others who are running as Democrats) dissuade them via relentless reminders of the vulnerabilities represented by Biden’s record.
Then they’ll look to some other person who has the qualities of ‘whiteness’ and ‘maleness’ and ‘moderateness.’ There are plenty to choose from. From that list, Tim Ryan may become a favorite, given that he challenged Nancy Pelosi for the House leadership.
Do we have any numbers on the probable size of your groups, by the way?
This study is also interesting. It looks beyond Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton and throws in 2018 midterm voting as well.
On policy Obama-Trump voters tend to want strong border security and support the Green New Deal. Pretty much everyone but the loyal Republicans specifically like the idea of pollution fees charged on businesses that produce high levels of greenhouse gases. Obama-Trump voters are pretty split on gun control but Romney-Clinton ones are strong supporters. And a very interesting one - for both the Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton voters those who voted D in 2018 show support Medicare for All while those who voted R tend not to.
Yep. Sanders supporters hit Biden, thus pushing Biden out of first place, increasing Sanders chance of winning the primary, and Trump’s chances of winning the election.
Every nasty hit piece on a Dem increases Trump’s chance of winning.
If you think there will be no hit pieces on candidates you live in a dream world. Or do you think only 1 Dem should run and nobody should say anything bad about him/her?
Oh no, not at all. It’s perfectly Ok to say that "Bidens Positions on XXXX is bad becuase here is my position which is far better. " Or that “Sanders supports Medicare for all, which is a pipe dream and too expensive>” or anything issue related. Or even “I am supporting Biden because he has the best chance of beating Trump and I dont think xxxx can win against trump.”
But cheap below the belt attacks accusing a fellow dem of being a pedophile creep are not.
Y’know, funny thing, I recall a lot of people pooh-poohing a story about presidential candidate Gary Hart getting busted getting frisky with a lady not his wife because it ran in the National Enquirer. Anybody else remember how that all shook out in the end in spite of the media outlet that leaked the story? Anyone? How did Gary do in that race, anyone recall?
Trick is that when all the “legitimate” media outlets all belong to the same five or six companies and they all have vested interests in promulgating specific narratives any stories outside of the authorized narrative are, by default, going to show up in some oddball places. That’s how media consolidation works.
Let’s just say that an “unreliable” news source tells me that when someone dropped a 50 kilo rock off a twenty story building it landed on a person’s head with great force and killed them. I have no problem believing that because, regardless of who said it, it jibes just fine with observed reality and the way that 50 kilo rocks dropped from great heights usually behave. Let’s also just say, for the sake of argument, that a very reliable source, like the NY Times for instance, reports that the very same 50 kilo rock, when dropped from another 20 story building, actually bounced right off a person’s head and did them no harm at all–in fact, it bounced off several people’s heads in sequence doing no harm to anyone at all. Does the reliability of the source automatically lend probity to the otherwise extremely unlikely story?
Well, yeah, that’s how it works. When 99% of your stories are garbage, that’s reason to see the rare counter-example as a fluke, not reason to believe that Elvis really did have Dolly Parton’s alien lovechild.
The logical fallacy would apply if it was stated that something MUST be false because an untrustworthy source stated it, or MUST be true is a trustworthy source states it. It is the absolutism that is the fallacy.
When the fallacy applies to distrust the usually untrustworthy source would be disbelieved no matter how much solid and independently evidence is shown. It would be akin to me saying that if Trump says it it must be a lie, that he nothing he says is truthful ever. That would be a very different thing that me saying that his saying it is not enough to make me believe it and that I am more prone to believe information that I read as an article (not an editorial) in the New York Times. Having relative non-absolute degrees of confidence in different source is not appeal to trust (or distrust).
No the applicable fallacy is conformation bias. You are prone to believe a very untrustworthy source because the story conforms to what you already believe, and you are prone to interpret information in a way that conforms to those extant beliefs as well, while you would be dismissive of information that does not fit those existing constructs no matter how reliable the source giving that information has previously been.
This is part of a much longer read that amounts to a devastating indictment of Biden’s kind of politics.
If there was a time when, as my father used to say, both parties wanted the same things but differed on the means of achieving them, Biden would have been right for that era. But it’s certainly not true now, and the author brings up some examples from Biden’s political career in the 1970s and 1980s that show it was often far from the case back then, as well.