Biden: 30%
Harris: 45%, possibly higher
I can’t see a path to anyone other than Harris as the nominee unless she also explicitly drops out, which why would she. But if you put in a few of the possible names, Whitmer for example, I think you probably are in the same ballpark.
This is exactly right. Biden has a 50-50 shot of winning, any other Democrat will definitely lose.
I will speculate/ guess right now he has a 40% chance of winning.
I’ll go with 60% because recent polling shows “losing democracy” is a top concern among independents.
My sister nearing retirement has been rearranging her finances over her anxiety over a Trump win.
So I’ve seen at least 1 example of that anecdotally.
I’d be curious to hear what she thinks she can do to insulate herself financially from the economic consequences of a trump win.
IMO trump’s actions, and the world’s reactions to trump’s actions, are so chaotically unpredictable that I could make a decent argument for e.g. the S&P 500 being either half or double what it is today six months after a trump win in Nov and a trump inauguration in Jan.
The odds of anyone else winning depends on the circumstances that led them to be the candidate. If it’s just Biden dropping out, citing mental decline, poor health, or nothing in particular, then the replacement candidate’s odds are close enough to zero as to not bother calculating. If they’re the candidate because Biden dies as a result of an assassination, then their odds are extremely high. If Biden dies of natural causes, or suffers some actually-incapacitating medical condition, then their odds are probably similar to Biden’s.
I probably articulated it poorly but she’s basically spending a lot of money getting her home they way that she wants it. And she also spent a large sum on getting the dental implants she needs.
All things she was going to originally finance after retirement. She’s now in the process of getting it all done before the elections.
Keep in mind anxiety isn’t always rational.
I agree with this, but not much of the rest of the speculation.
If Joe Biden gives up the pomp and power of the presidency for the sake of his country, because of a medical condition he could have instead tried to hide, his popularity will go through the roof. We know that when Johnson quit, this happened. The improvement to the Democratic Party brand should be greater because quitting solves his ticket’s biggest problem. (Quitting did not solve the Vietnam War, which is why Johnson dropped out.)
I find it hard to find anyone who says any potential candidate is at 0% to be credible. We have a highly partisan environment and Trump is very unpopular (just not as unpopular as Biden). Take a random person off the street and make them the candidate and they would have some chance of victory. There is no way Harris or anyone else wouldn’t have some meaningful shot.
I’ll say Biden at 30% as that is where the polls are, though I’m probably still a bit more optimistic then that. Harris would put at 50% and a Whitmer like candidate who manages to get the support of Biden and Harris would be more like 70%
Don’t mistake candidate vote share for likelihood of winning. Even if the Democrats replaced Biden with that nice guy who lives down the block and feeds the stray cats, the replacement candidate would still probably get 40% of the vote. But a candidate who gets 40% of the vote has a 0% chance of winning.
Yes I mean shot at winning. No Democratic candidate is only going to get 40% of the vote. That is just not how Presidential elections work in the current environment particularly against Trump. I would put the baseline at more like 47% and it becomes a question on how much of the last 5% or 10% of the vote they can get.
This is a bit of a scary precedent of course (LBJ dropping out) because rather than taking advantage of the newfound popularity of LBJ the party splintered and Nixon won easily against LBJ’s VP.
There were other factors, of course, and it would depend on if the party unites around Harris or other candidates decide to make a run and contest the convention.
About where I’m at.
I feel too many people are underestimating the Presidential factor. Any candidate has to at some point face the voters asking the question “Can I imagine this person as President?” An incumbent has already crossed that line, which is why they have a big advantage over challengers.
Biden’s already been able to cross that line and beat Trump when he had the advantage. In a rematch, Biden would hold the advantage because he’s the President now and Trump is only a former President. But Trump would hold the advantage over any other candidate. (Which I feel is a big factor in explaining his primary wins.)
Biden’s biggest disadvantage is the “Sleepy Joe” issue. That’s especially true right now after his poor performance at the debate. But he’s working on repairing the damage. And Biden’s advantage here is that Trump can’t push it too far. Trump is at least as open to allegations that he’s the old man who’s lost his edge. There’s plenty of footage of Trump having “senior moments”. Worst case scenario is this issue becomes a draw.
Biden’s other problem is cult envy. Trump has a cult of followers who love him. They will vote for Trump regardless of what he says or does. Accept that. The cult was there four years ago and Trump lost.
The problem is a lot of people seem to feel that that kind of cult appeal is a necessity. That it’s impossible for a candidate to get elected unless the voters have fallen in love with him and would blindly jump off a cliff if he smiled at them and told them they should. So they want to dump Biden because he doesn’t inspire their devotion enough.
These people need to grow up. Presidential elections are job interviews not prom dates. Voters need to pick the person who can do the job competently not somebody they can imagine drinking a beer with. Presidential candidates are not your friends and they never will be.
The Democrats need to makes the issues character and competence. Trump loses big on both of those. He’s so malignant that his incompetence has almost become a virtue; he’s too lazy and stupid to do most of the terrible things he would like to do. But Trump would do more harm in the one hour of the day when he makes any effort than Biden would do in an entire day of actually working.
This is the low point of Biden’s campaign and the high point of Trump’s campaign. Trump has been actively campaigning for months now as he worked his way through the primaries. He’s been attacking Biden all along. But Biden didn’t face a serious primary challenge; he’s just starting his campaign. So Trump, who’s been able to coast along easily because even his rivals have been afraid to anger his base, is going to start facing some obstacles and he will begin to crumble. The best thing that could happen for Trump is for the Democrats to throw Biden out and start fighting among themselves for a new candidate while allowing Trump to relax. Democrats need to spend the next two months attacking Trump not each other.
Unenthusiastic voters that didn’t live through the Supremes anointing Bush vs Gore don’t get the stakes, and simplistically view this as a poor choice between two old geezers and my vote won’t matter.
If Biden steps down for the good of the party and country, suddenly it’s not two old geezers. The game is changed. I would argue that the younger unenthusiastic voters, independents, undecideds, Republicans for the good of the country, will turn out the vote a lot more than they will for Biden.
Not a big fan of Bill Maher, but he wrote a pretty good op-ed in the NY Times. Gifted link here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/opinion/bill-maher-open-convention.html?unlocked_article_code=1.300.Br3M.1JEDFYl87JHt&smid=url-share Two paragraphs in bold below, and you can read the whole thing
You can take away Americans’ democracy, but you can’t bore them. I’m already bored reading about both of these candidates. “Trump is a con man and used car salesman”? Yeah, I did that bit in 2017. “He acts like a mafia chieftain”? Yeah, 2018. And please don’t make me tell the orangutan-lawsuit story again.
Suddenly, instead of rehashing the debate from hell — worst episode of “The Golden Bachelor” ever — they would be hosting a competition, something Americans love. Who will get the rose this August in Chicago? Gavin or Gretchen? Suddenly, Stacey Abrams might say she’s in! And so might Tim Ryan, and Josh Shapiro! And Amy Klobuchar and Ruben Gallego! And Mayor Pete and Raphael Warnock! And Wes Moore, and who knows, maybe Andrew Yang says he’s a Democrat again! And that dude from Kentucky, I hear he’s great!
The problem is that the majority voters do not think Biden can do the job competently. It is hard to run a campaign on competence, when your candidate might not have it anymore.
Do you mean the odds at this moment of Biden winning in November, or the odds that Biden would win if the election were held at this moment? Because a lot can happen between now and November.
Less than 20% chance of Biden winning against Trump. That is based on neither opponent doing anything notable between now and election day. Trump will have enormous amounts of money to spend on advertising and Biden won’t have much more than he does now. Obviously a lot of things can change though.
Based on minimal information Gavin Newsome would be a candidate to who can handle Trump in a debate and messaging. Whitmer, Raimondo, and other women might look better against him since unlike Haley they aren’t looking to stay in line for Trump’s VP choice. Harris won’t have a chance though. Too many ways to attack her, already well researched and planned.
All of the other likely replacement candidates have a better chance of being accepted by the public as a better alternative to Trump. Even if they have problems in their background it won’t look that bad in comparison to him. At the moment I would give each of them a 50% chance of winning the election in November. We don’t know what will happen to affect that twixt now and then but after Joe’s debate performance everybody else will look like a breath of fresh to voters on both sides. They won’t have much time to make a case that gets them to a 51% chance or better, but that may be an advantage because there isn’t much time for a counter-attack.
Whatever the counter attack may be the anti-Trump side has to be willing to go Trump themselves and dismissing every negative aimed at them as lies, and going proactive and projecting their own issues on Trump. This is political war and no punches should be pulled to keep a madman from taking the now SCOTUS magnified reigns of power.
If it was late October that would be a serious problem. But it’s early July. I pointed out that Trump has been running his anti-Biden campaign for several months now as part of the primary race while Biden has not had to actively campaign. As Biden campaigns his numbers will rise and Trump’s will drop.
Joe Biden is an experienced politician who was won eleven consecutive elections. He understands the timing of an election cycle.
Anyone who claims that a replacement (D) candidate has a near-zero chance of winning is being way unrealistically pessimistic. You replace Biden with a normal young Democrat like Newsom, Pritzker or Bullock and the Democratic Party instantly has the twenty-pound weight lifted off its shoulders now that “age” has suddenly switched from the party’s biggest liability to its biggest asset, given that it’s now a 58-year old going up against the 78-year old Trump.
On top of that, you STILL have all the negatives of Trump and all the “we must keep Trump out of the White House at all costs” fervor of the D-base, combined with a young, aggressive pitbull Democrat who can and will more effectively go after Trump in a debate than the doddering, confused show from Biden, and added enthusiasm now that many people who were disillusioned about “same old, same old” are energized because it’s no longer “same old, same old.”
Wow, yes, and the Republicans would be helpless. Age after all is the only possible issue that they can run a campaign on. It’s not like they would be able to make up a different issue to target this hypothetical new candidate.