We know that dedicated, informed Democrats—the base—will vote for whichever Democrat is at the top of the ticket. (And for the down-ballot races, too.) The base will support Biden, or Harris, or … anyone running as the Democratic alternative to Trump.
But the votes of the base are not enough to elect the Democrat. The base ‘maintaining discipline’ and saying only nice things about Biden won’t convince the voters that Democrats MUST have to win the Presidency.
One point that ‘keep Biden’ advocates have been stressing is that all the uproar over asking him to step aside is Bad—that it will affect the less-engaged voters that Dems must win.
This point is a poor one, because it assumes that what we’ve all been going through in the past week—the emotions, the anguish, the upheaval—is something being gone through by ALL Americans. But it simply isn’t. The less-engaged voters that Democrats need are barely aware that there is upheaval going on. They probably have been exposed to clips of Biden’s poor debate performance—the GOP is making certain that those clips are being seen in front of TikToks and YouTubes focused on non-political topics. So the less-engaged may be aware that there is some controversy concerning Biden. But they are NOT following the news. They are NOT aware of which Representatives have spoken out, or of the stories of what the governors have leaked despite their public happy talk. They don’t know about the speculation surrounding Kamala Harris. They don’t know about ANY of that.
Those who pay little attention to politics—but whose votes Dems need—will go on paying attention to music, gaming, sports, etc. If the Dems succeed in getting Biden to step down, and then have a noisy discussion of who will run in his place (for P or for VP)—the less-engaged will hear about little or none of it.
In short: the argument that Chaos surrounding the Dem ticket will turn off the voters that Dems need is based on a false assumption: that those voters are following every twist and turn with angst and discomfort.
The talk about “maintaining discipline and saying only nice things about Biden” doesn’t come across to many voters the way some D’s think it does. Those Ds think it comes across as strength and unity, when in fact it rubs many voters as “Pretend the emperor’s clothes are real.” It comes across more as reading-from-a-script gaslighting and clamping down on truth than it does as unity.
For the truly low-information voters, all they are going to see, if the Ds replace Biden with some 50-year old, is that now there is a young D going up against an old R. Given that perhaps 90% of the objection to Biden is about his age (if Biden were 50 years old right now and running as the incumbent president, he’d probably be near-invincible against Trump,) this would represent a major weight lifted off the D’s shoulders.
One issue is that these disengaged voters may or may not know who the VP is. If they wander into the polls on voting day and see the choice between Biden vs Trump, they’ll probably recognize those names. But if they see Harris vs Trump, they’ll probably be like “Who’s Harris?”. Harris would need to be making enough noise in the news that she makes an impression on this segment of voters. And she’d have to make sure that impression is favorable and motivating enough to get them to go to the polls and vote for her. She might be able to do this, but she’d have to have a personality makeover. She’d need to hire a publicity team to tell her what she needs to do. And she’d have to fall in line with whatever they say. As it is, I don’t think Harris’ personality is going to motivate the disengaged voters. I kind of find her annoying in her public appearances. If it’s the same Harris that I’ve always seen, I don’t think she’ll attract many of the voters from this segment.
Dems want to say Biden has done great. The stock market is doing well and unemployment is low. Dems think that is enough.
But, they miss the lower middle-class which is struggling with inflation. They see the much higher prices every time they shop for food or gas or pay electric bills and their wages have not grown to match it. Many find owning a home impossible and even renting near impossible to afford. Sure they have a job but it only barely covers necessities. Never mind things like medical costs.
In short, people are not seeing a good future for themselves and dems seem a Pollyanna more than a party with solutions.
Republicans are no better (far from it) but they sell fear which is easy. Your problems are because of “those people” and it’s an easy message to sell even if wrong.
People who believe a Trump presidency will solve their immediate financial problems – especially the portion of that cohort willing to scapegoat others – have probably never been “gettable” for Biden in this cycle.
I agree with that. But I’m defining the ‘voters that Democrats must win’ as being a group OTHER than those who think Trump makes sense. And there are millions. Basically, they don’t think Trump makes sense because they aren’t paying attention to Trump any more than they are paying attention to Biden. They just spend all their spare time on things other than political news. (Think people focused on sports, on gaming, on fashion-influencing, on the music scene, etc.)
These people have the vague notions of both Biden and Trump that they’ve picked up from the ads that run before their YouTube video or maybe from a clip from a late-night talk-show host routine that someone sent them. In other words, they see Old, Weak Biden and Loud, Belligerent Trump and that’s really all they know about it.
My immediate concern was countering the argument that Dems can’t change the ticket because all Americans are keeping up with every argument and every proposal about what should happen, and therefore they’re distressed and exhausted by the prospect of changing the ticket. My belief is that millions of less-engaged voters—voters Dem need—are NOT distressed nor exhausted, because they barely know this is going on (if they know it at all).
There are other aspects of the topic of reaching these voters, too, of course. As Whack-a-Mole and kenobi_65’s posts indicated, getting the economic message across has been, and remains, an unsolved challenge. filmore points out the difficulties posed by name-recognition, or lack thereof. Velocity’s post highlighted the issues with the current approved tactic of pretending all is well with Biden.
Very possibly we will know within a few days if Biden is going to try to cling to power or not. Now and then, how to reach those less-engaged voters will be a crucial question to answer.
Yes. Although they may say they never read or watch news (my sister), there is a point where the noise breaks through.
One requirement for the noise breaking through is lots of back and forth emotional discussion.
If Joe resigns — probably he won’t, but I can dream — Harris needs to break through that she respects people who voted for Trump last time — without compromising her deeply held policy beliefs. Speeches on this will not be heard. My favorite idea is to ask Mike Pence to be her veep until next January. This would surely be heard above the noise if he accepts, but maybe even if he didn’t.
This is a great point, and I hope the Democrats in power consider it carefully. Millions who voted for Trump in 2016 yet find him unacceptable now, need a home.
Well, things are bad enough that this idea should at least be entertained by the Dem powers that be.
Pence is 65, though. How about 46-year-old Adam Kinzinger? He may have more credibility with Dems than does Pence—Pence held the line on 1/6/21, but Kinzinger did more to stop Trump over a longer period of time (with the House hearings).
I would suspect that any GOP member of Congress who voted to confirm Kinzinger as VP would be painting a massive political (and actual) target on their backs, courtesy of Trump and his acolytes, who view Kinzinger in the same light as Lynn Cheney – a traitor to the Republican MAGA cause.
I’d think low information voters (the ones who pay no attention to politics and never think about public policy) will vote based on whether they are better off today than they were four years ago and, I think, most of that group would say no, they are not better off. So, they vote Trump simply because he is different than the person they had for the last four years who didn’t help them.
Of course, those are also likely to be a cohort that mostly doesn’t actually vote. But the votes the last few elections can be very close so every one counts.
Progressives like those here would get the joke. But for reasons kenobi_65 stated, Kinzinger (or Cheney) probably wouldn’t be confirmed. Also, from a low info centrist POV, Pence is the best qualified person in the country for the job since he’s already done it well.
Yea, they could still say it was game playing. If so, I think it a smarter game, because it would be hard to impossible for Johnson to block the confirmation vote from getting to the House floor.
I suppose this won’t really happen – too much risk of Pence voting the wrong way on a senate tie. But Harris would need to break through on something where her skill at governance is more memorable than whatever insult naming Trump settles on.
If Biden resigns and Harris becomes President she will lead the news every night and the online media every morning. She will break through in the way Lyndon Johnson did only much more so.
How did Lyndon Johnson break through in the news? (I am really asking…I do not know this and I am genuinely interested…in a summary, non-hijack kinda way.)
By the media covering every move he made. People wanted to know everything about the new President and the press obliged. Happily. He was NEWS every day.
I’ve been thinking about this and wondering if there is any real way to assess the impact among these voters of a switch to Harris. I think it matters why they are low-information in the first place. Are they low-information because they are young so disheartened that they’ll LOVE Harris as the new top of the ticket? Or are they low-information because they are antiestablishment in general (which would presumably mean anti-woke) and are more likely to be turned off of voting by a black woman they don’t know.
It’s true that this election more than any in our lifetimes is about so much more than the person at the top but is it truly enough to overcome the misogyny and racism baked into the fabric? Are there enough people who can overcome their worst selves enough to pull that lever for a black woman no matter what is at stake? I sincerely don’t know, as horrifying as that is.
I don’t doubt this—but are we assuming that Trumpian Republican members of Congress will vote to confirm ANY Democratic P/VP ticket? No matter who is on it?
Because it seems quite plausible to me that they will simply refuse to so vote, no matter who those running may be.
All this is true. Low-information voters may well believe they are worse off now than they were in 2020, having completely forgotten how Trump mishandled the pandemic. AND every vote, even the votes of the less-informed, will be crucial.
What we have now–Biden/Harris–is not going to change that dynamic.
A new ticket might have the power to break through even to those who avoid political news. That’s why it’s so critical that the VP pick be someone who will excite and engage the news media–which will give the less-informed a chance to be exposed to the new situation. Not same-old-same-old Trump v Biden, but Trump v. someone they find INTERESTING.
Just in case you needed another thing to worry about, add in antisemitism. Her husband is Jewish. I’m guessing that most people don’t currently know this. I’m sure this knowledge would become quickly widespread if she was the nominee.
Yeah, they’d oppose any proposed VP. I posted what I did in response to the idea that “hey, if the Democrats proposed a Republican, like Pence or Kinzinger, they could get some GOP support for the vote.”
Which, IMO, not only won’t happen, but proposing a Republican who has defied Trump is probably even more unacceptable to Trump’s supporters than some random Democrat.