Less people will come out specifically to vote against Biden than did for Clinton. A non polarizing figure has a pretty good shot against Trump I think.
I’m not a huge Warren fan - not that I have a personal distaste for her, just that I don’t think she’s what we’re looking for in a presidential candidate. But be that as it may, I can’t deny that she’s got razor sharp wit and is really good at connecting with people in a crowd. I bet Warren’s performances will be must-see TV.
That’s the thought that keeps popping into my head as well. My sense is that he doesn’t really want to be doing this, but he’s probably been haunted by the outcome of 2016. He’s probably heard people say a million times that Trump wouldn’t be president if he had challenged Hillary and won, and I’m sure the decision not to run will forever haunt him. And I’m sure he’s heard from pundits that he’s got the best chance to beat Trump now, so he almost feels like he has to run. But when I look at him on TV, I see a guy who looks good and healthy for someone in his mid-70s, but…he’s in his mid-70s.
Based on that Pittsburgh speech, I don’t think he’ll make it unless they keep him under wraps. A lot. I mean that was his first public speech after declaring, right? It’s not like he ever painted the corners with a 95 mph fastball, but now it’s about 55 mph and a little wild.
I wonder if Biden will take credit for the booming economy. A lot of Democrats credit Obama and his policies for creating the foundation for what is going on right now.
Does he have the chutzpah to publicly say," Barak and I created this!"
since free stuff is all the rage now with candidates will Joe give out free depends and dentu creme?
Biden has just opened up an enormous 32% lead over Bernie.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/442310-joe-biden
Well that’s horrifying.
Truth is, Biden has opened up a big lead. Not as big as that small-sample-size poll from an outfit run by the ever-trustworthy Mark Penn would have you believe (can’t the media afford reporters who will know to look at the sample size first? N=259 is crap!), but Morning Consult has Biden up by 40-19 over Sanders, and with a sample size of 15,770, that’s just a wee bit more reliable.
I don’t think Biden’s big lead over the rest of the field means anything at this point. Hillary Clinton started out with a commanding lead over Barack Obama in 2008. In fact she took a 10-12 point lead in the spring of 2007 and opened it up to a 28 point lead in October of that same year - we know how that turned out. In may of 2015, Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders 63 - 8, and we know how THAT turned out. The Republican 2015-16 field was definitely tighter but Bush started out with a lead that he held for most of the spring and well into summer, and we know how that ended. Nobody knows the candidates yet. Most of the voters have had a lot of time to be nostalgic about Biden, which was how Hillary Clinton entered the race in 2016. But people will start seeing what they don’t like as well as what they do like, and Biden will come back down to earth.
The problem that Biden creates is that he makes some of the candidates pretenders. The pretender candidates will be gone probably by the end of summer, if not before then. In fact, Seth Moulton, Michael Bennett, and Marianne Williamson are all pretty much done before they start, as they will not qualify for the first two debates. They might run zombie campaigns, but they’re already irrelevant. John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Tim Ryan, and Eric Swallwell will need to have strong showings in the debates or otherwise gain some name recognition just to have a chance to make it through the summer. So we can already count on 8 candidates being effectively eliminated by the end of July. Not necessarily these I’ve mentioned - it’s possible that some of the other 1-2 % polling candidates drops down while one of the above moves up, but either way, almost half the field will be on our ignore list by the end of summer for all practical purposes.
That will leave us with an elite 8, who will probably include: Biden, Sanders, Harris, Booker, Warren, and Buttigieg. Perhaps Gabbard, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar will round out that group, but they will be fighting just to remain in the conversation. After July, voters will mostly be focusing on Biden, Sanders, Harris, Booker, Warren, and Buttigieg, and it’s possible that one or two of those candidates might stumble and that Gabbard, Gillibrand, or Klobuchar moves up. All of this is to say that Biden will have competition. He’s not going to run away with the field. The media will begin paying attention to other candidates. Biden may remain the front runner for a while but this level of dominance is unsustainable. He will eventually fall back closer to the rest of the pack.
But the polling is probably bad news - maybe even very bad news - for Bernie Sanders, because the space that he occupies is that of being a candidate who stands in opposition to the Democratic party orthodoxy. He prides himself on being a fringe candidate and that he has succeeded in making the Democrats more open to his ‘revolutionary’ ideas. But when you look at the polls, this seems to indicate that voters have a lot more on their minds than making the democratic party more authentically progressive. The results seem to suggest that voters want a candidate who can compete with and beat Donald Trump, and that they aren’t necessarily looking for a candidate who promises to take a wrecking ball to the system. In 2016, Sanders benefited from the growing unpopularity of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He became an opposition candidate, and he was new and different. He’s not going to have that advantage anymore in 2020. This could be a sign that Bernie Sanders revolution hasn’t gone quite as mainstream as some would like to believe. I won’t write off Sanders just yet, though, because there’s clearly a lot of enthusiasm. But if I’m a Sanders supporter, the polls post-Biden’s announcement aren’t good.
Williamson as of a couple weeks ago only needed another 9000 donors to qualify for the debate, so she’s close. Of course, that assumes that no more than 20 candidates qualify; if more do, the criteria will be changed, so getting those donors still wouldn’t guarantee her a spot.
She’s down to 1800, so I’m pretty certain she’ll make it by the end of the month.
She won the nomination handily?
His lead does not mean he is a sure thing to win. It almost certainly will tighten up. Bill Clinton came up from 5% in August '91 to win. But saying that it doesn’t mean anything?
Bill Clinton came up from 5% because he was an amazing campaigner with outsized oratory skills who connected with wide swaths of voters. Hillary Clinton lost despite a commanding lead because she was running against someone with similar skills and abilities.
Biden will likely not get the nom if someone demonstrates those mad skillz this time. Too soon to say that they won’t. But if no one shows those chops he’s the default nominee. The early numbers at least mean that thing.
Colion Noir has released this 4-minute video ripping on Biden. The lines of attack featured there are probably something Dems ought to be aware of as they’re deciding who their nominee is going to be.
Don’t really feel like giving some NRA shill clicks. Can you give the broad strokes?
BIden can certainly lose, but now another candidate has to actually take it from him, really earn it. It’s not just a bunch of candidates in a crowded field anymore. Now it’s a crowded field with a crystal clear frontrunner. The only way to beat Biden is if ONE of those candidates captures the base’s imagination. I don’t see an Obama here, sorry.
Bill Maher had a good comment : Biden is like old comfortable shoes and America’s feet hurt.
Good one, although I think Biden is also genuinely liked, even by many Republicans. He’s authentic, honest to a fault, and genuinely likes his opponents. There’s been too much divisiveness. It’s time to heal before things get really out of hand.
He’s got a 21% favorability rating among Republicans, according to this recent poll (which is more than the other Dem candidates)
He’s also completely delusional, claiming that republicans will have “an epiphany” and work with democrats towards consensus.
This, for someone who was literally part of the white house from 2008 onwards, is akin to saying, “Republicans don’t really want war with Iran.” It’s so completely wrong based on everything we know, and if you rely on it for policy decisions, you’re going to get your ass burned.
Biden needs to not be the nominee. I’m already seeing rumbling along the lines of “if Biden is the nominee, I’m staying home”, and I absolutely understand why - Biden is an utterly shitty candidate.
Biden is a lot of things - delusional, milquetoast, unwilling to take bold action on climate change and so basically not much better than the outright denialists, holding a voting record that should have ended his political career ages ago, mildly creepy - but he is not inspiring. He’s comfortable, right up until you scratch the surface even a little bit. The people who do scratch the surface find a man who has been exceedingly kind to republicans, racists, and banks, and by that token exceedingly unkind to their victims. A man who eulogized Strom Thurmond, voted for Iraq, and to this day is laboring under the insane delusion that all it’ll take is being a little nicer to make Mitch McConnell stop feeding democratic norms cock-first through a malfunctioning industrial shredder. :mad: For fuck’s sake, the dude thinks millenials are all whiny bitches and has said as much. And this guy is supposed to represent us?
I really hope enough dems scratch the surface to realize what a terrible candidate Biden is. Everything that was wrong with Clinton is exemplified by him - he’s a long-term political insider with a long history of bad votes and pseudoscandals ripe for exploitation. All he has to work with in the progressive crowd is “I’m not Trump”, and as we’ve discovered, that’s not enough to win an election.
And even if he does win - what then? We get a compromise candidate, a person who’s utterly incapable of facing off against the republican party on their level. A person who will “go high” when McConnell breaks the rules over and over and over again. A person who will seek compromise with the republican party, which in effect means giving up more and more ground in the hopes that they return the favor and not noticing that they never fucking will. Four years of an utterly ineffectual president hamstrung by republicans in congress and the judiciary - sounds like a great fucking plan.
TL;DR: fuck Biden. The dude should not be running, and if he wins the primary we are completely fucked.