Stop Panicking!

Politics & Elections
861

Unfit maybe. But mentally unfit? I don’t think any candidate from either party for the last dozen elections has had thirty percent of their own party think that. Quayle is probably the closest, and he was VP.

I don’t think anybody thought Obama was mentally not up to the job, except maybe the “Bell Curve” racists. They may have felt him unqualified because of lack of experience, but not mentally incapable.

Think of G.W. Bush. He was a bit of a lightweight, his own party supported him strongly.

WT Holy F? You think Obama or GHW Bush or B. Clinton or Reagan were considered mentally unfit by a quarter of their own party members? How does a candidate thought that badly of get the party nomination in the first place? Being incumbent isn’t an explanation because you have to get elected the first time.

Hell, Carter wasn’t thought highly of, but he wasn’t thought mentally deficient.

As stated, even Reagan wasn’t showing any signs of decline in his second election.

I would think, purely on speculation, that number would be lower than 10%. Maybe if you take the electorate as a whole, but then you have to include low information voters who probably only barely know the names of both candidates.

If you’re including non-serious answers to polls, then sure, 10% is possible. That’s in the range of people who would say the moon landings didn’t happen, or bigfoot is roaming the woods.

YES! Colbert hit that message last night, but comedians aren’t the same as news anchors.

862

( Posting the article link… please work… please work… )

863

I think this is inevitable and the closer to the election it is, the worse it will be for Trump. I was starting to see Trump’s mental state creeping into the mainstream narrative but then the debate happened. But as time marches on I think it will become increasingly clear that while Biden is old, Trump is actively unwell and less able to hide it from anyone.

Link worked for me. I also loved that Biden straight up called Trump a loser in a recent speech.

864

Has he figured out how to erase all the clips of him looking slack-jawed and saying “we finally beat Medicare” and “Vice-President Trump” and introducing Zelenskyy as “President Putin”…?

Because that’s all that millions of the voters the Dems HAVE to get, will see. They are not going to watch his NATO speech. They are not going to watch his Detroit rally. They are not going to watch his TV interviews.

They’re not engaged. They don’t watch the news. They see only memes or clips that run before the YouTube video about Taylor or gaming or motorcycles that they clicked on.

How is Joe going to stop them from forming the opinion of him that the GOP wants them to form?

How is Joe going to inspire them to make the effort to vote, when all they see is a feeble old man?

So many people arguing that Joe should stay in the race are operating on the false assumption that the less-engaged voters and seldom-make-the-effort voters are as aware of recent developments as the arguers are. That those crucial voters are willing to sit down to listen to arguments about what a great guy Biden is and how much we owe him. That those voters are tuned in.

They aren’t.

865

And that’s the problem. I have my suspicions and thoughts, like a lot of people, but no hard numbers either way.

And if there were any consistent polls asking the same question every year, we’d see those in the baseline that emerges. As I stated, I suspect it’s non-zero. So, what is the true baseline?

So what? My point is we don’t know how many of those exist for Joe Biden, either. We need the baseline numbers to actually establish that.

Argument by incredulity (it’s a BIG NUMBER, SCARY!) is unconvincing.

Possibly. I suspect probably lower than that. How much lower? I have no idea, and nobody else apparently does, either, because nobody bothered to ask.

This is an actual problem in poll design. By asking an unusual question, you invite responses that are out of line with actual belief. If people were asked about the mental fitness of the President consistently every year, we could figure these things out.

But by asking out of the blue for a particular President, it becomes a sort of Mandela effect where people respond a certain way because of something they heard in the news or on social media, not because of actual belief or researched opinion. How much of an effect? I, again, have no clue and would love to know.

I know several people who would disagree. It comes with the territory with being President (especially as a Democrat President) during a bad economic stretch.

There are a lot more serious moon landing deniers than you believe, I suspect.

But either way, that “one-third” figure includes such non-serious answers. But to what extent?

I’m being absolutely serious. I would love to know what that baseline is, because otherwise, it’s disingenuous to say that everybody who answered a poll that way truly believes it.

866

Fortunately, the election is far enough out that the current clips will have run their course and been forgotten. If Biden can keep things on a positive note, then there will hopefully be positive images that people will see come election day. It’s true that he’s old, but so is Trump. If he can keep the flubs to a minimum, the old angle should also be minimized.

867

You’re talking about paid ads. Why would the GOP stop running ads that are effective?

The “run their course” reference seems to assume that what we see all over social media is merely what’s fashionable, and posted by disinterested individuals. That’s not correct. A huge volume of what the less-engaged voters will see (in their Instagram feed and what have you) is paid content.

And again: those paying will pay to show what works for their side. And they’ll go on showing it.

Why would the GOP pay to have positive images of Biden shown in ads?

868

The problem is Biden needs all the votes he got the last time. That record number of votes included many who don’t engage in politics. They voted against Trump. Those voters are more likely to not vote rather because than try to figure out who is marginally less unwell.

869

Every campaign runs hit ads to denigrate the opponent. I’m not sure that Biden’s debate performance will be any worse than the ads we see all the time. You know, the black-and-white ones with the opponent in slow-mo and a voice over saying stuff like “My opponent, Frank Noland, is in favor of using federally supported municipal bonds to pay for forced busing of Soviet Communists to come into your homes to kill your puppies! Save your puppies! Vote for Me!”. We see those kinds of ads so often that they lose their effectiveness. And, presumably, the Dems will be running their own ads touting the positive aspects of Biden.

In addition to ads creating an impression of the candidate, there are also things like late night shows, SNL, shared articles in social media, and chatter in online spaces. If the GOP just creates ads with the same old debate clips, the voters will get bored of it. What I feel will make a big difference is if the things like comedy shows pivot away from portraying Biden as feeble and confused. He’s old and can’t get away from that, but if he can eliminate or minimize the times where he seems like he’s confused, the comedy shows will stop using that as the basis of their material.

870

I think the perspective that you’re missing when you claim that low-informed voters are now only going to get a narrative crafted from select clips and quotes that are already “in the bank” and that nothing that happens between now and November will change it is that that is true for any candidate.

If we are chasing a perfect candidate whom the GOP cannot create a negative impression of for low-informed voters who don’t self-educate… then we are always going to be in panic mode. That person doesn’t exist.

How does candidate X break the stranglehold GOP has on people who only consume GOP sponsored media?

871

I’m not talking about GOP-sponsored media. I’m talking about TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook. There, users with virtually no interest in politics—people who don’t watch the news, or don’t watch it much—see content that’s uploaded free, and also content that’s paid for.

These people will see many images of Biden looking and sounding feeble and weak.

Will they see images of Biden uploaded by Democrats (or paid for by Biden’s campaign)? Very possibly. Will those images show a vibrant, energetic Biden? Well, not if they date from recent years. A Biden who looks and sounds his age, but speaks more coherently than “we finally beat Medicare”, may well be in such clips.

Will such clips erase the ‘old, weak, feeble’ clips in the minds of viewers? How would that happen?

872

Exactly right. The Biden brain bad story comes to an end soon, by the convention, if not before. Either he fumbles more and steps down, or he doesn’t and the public bores of the same old story.

The lens shifting to behaviors that are confused even for Trump’s low level baseline, seems likely as the next titillation.

And recency rules.

873

If they’re that unengaged, what makes you think they’ve even seen or heard what happened at the debate or at some stuffy press conference?

874

The answer to your question is in the post you quoted.

875

You can’t erase memes. You can flood with Trump looking stupid ones too. One thing we can bank on is that Trump will provide lots of material to mock.

876

To expand upon your point: Just how many votes are “the unengaged” bringing to the table, anyway? I already started a thread on this exact topic, because “the unengaged” are so often invoked as this massive, election-deciding force - I wondered what the respective campaigns are really dealing with when considering “the unengaged”.

And, logically: How many of “the unengaged” are unengaged to the point of not voting?

877

My interpretation of your position is:

-The GOP has enough footage in the bank to run a narrative of “feeble” (or whatever) from now until Nov

-There is nothing Biden can do and no way he can act that will disrupt that narrative because they’ve already got the tapes

-Low-information voters will never see clips of Biden that impress because [GOP controlls social media?]

-Low-information voters will not have their narrative about other candidates shaped by the GOP because for other candidates, there will be nothing meme-able or that shows them in a negative light. Or, if there is something negative that candidate will be able to shift the story over the following weeks because there is something inherently different about Biden.

-We will easily be able to know which candidates we can count on to deliver the low-information voters without a negative narrative of some sort taking hold.

I can understand the concern that Biden might continue to rack up poor performances and further reinforce the narrative. I don’t understand the concern that if he acts counter to the narrative it’s already too late because literally no one who matters will see it.

878

Let us assume that both sides flood social media with ads making their candidate look good, as well as making the opposition look bad.

What is the likely result of this?

I don’t think it’s likely to be people changing their minds and going, “Oh, wow, Trump / Biden really is awesome!” if they hadn’t thought that before. I think it’s more likely to be, “Oh, wow, they really are both terrible.” Where does that leave us? I would hypothesize slightly lower voter turnout, which benefits the R side.

Or am I wrong, and there’s somehow a way that this benefits Biden?

879

As I said in my previous post #871, I do believe that the Dems will run clips of Biden looking less-awful than the clips of him at the debate and the NATO speech, etc. And I believe that the same people we’ve been talking about–those who click on a YouTube video about motorcycles, for instance–will see them.

I just don’t get the confidence that a clip of today’s Biden speaking a sentence coherently would erase in that viewer’s mind, the clip of him staring down at his podium with his mouth open while Trump speaks, or any of the other Biden looks old and feeble while speaking nonsense about “Vice-President Trump” clips.

How would that work? How would that erasure happen? How would seeing a clip of Biden speaking a coherent sentence, while looking like he does now, lead to the viewer thinking that he’s strong and tough—when they’ve already seen (probably ad nauseum) clips of him looking feeble?

880

Ah. I get that (though I am not sure whether or not I agree).

It just seems that this:

Is in direct contradiction to this: