I wonder what Javier Milei’s supposed ceiling was before he got 56 percent this past Sunday.
I do believe the American race is less fluid, as the great majority of voters already are firm in their choice. But the American ceilings are unclear, and there are too many polls where Trump hits 50 percent or more for it to be pegged so low.
This. Poll numbers only tell you so much; particularly in a close race, it comes down to turnout. Trump won in 2016 because his supporters were highly motivated to show up and vote (and possibly because some liberals chose to sit it out); Biden won in 2020 because non-MAGATs were motivated to show up, by the threat of a second Trump term.
You mean the primary where, aside from Biden, of ten legitimate candidates only Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren consistently got double digits in polls for any duration? (Bloomberg and Buttegieg occasionally managed to get 10 %-12% but never consistently, and everyone else was in the <5% bracket.)
Frankly, I think the strongest candidates that could hypothetically run in a Biden-less 2024 races are ones that have not previously staked out but there doesn’t seem to be anyone who is just going to clear the field and have Democratic voters streaming to the polls, and divisiveness over recent economic conditions and foreign developments are not great for Biden, and probably worse for any candidate who doesn’t have strong credentials in prior governance.
And unlike the incumbent or anyone representing from the Democratic side, the worse things get economically or on the foreign landscape, the better things are for Trump, no matter how badly House Republicans screw up legislatively.
Stranger
The idea that Biden’s going to step down barring a significant health event or that it would be good if he did is insanity.
I was thinking about Andy Beshear recently. Young (45), just won re-election in a very red state (Kentucky) as a democrat (his 2023 margin of victory was just under 5% as an incumbent. In his first win, it was less than 1%).
He’s too young for 2024, in my opinion. Plus, he’s a democrat in a red state, so I’d like to keep him in office here until he’s out because of term limits. But for 2028? Sure. I could see him as a dark horse candidate as it stands now. Give him another term as Governor, and he could be an exciting candidate to get behind.
This is the part that kills me. 45 is too young? Hello, Jack Kennedy? Teddy Roosevelt? Did Bill Clinton and Barack Obama suffer from marked immaturity because they had mere months on Widdle Andy-pandy Beshear? Meanwhile, the GOP would run a baby chimpanzee if they thought they’d get away with it, and tout him as the wisest member of their party.
I’m not even sure if Beshear would be younger than Bill Clinton at inauguration. There have historically been loads of presidents in their early 50s, and you’re making a big thing disqualifying one because he’s in his late 40s? What is WRONG with Democrats that they seek any excuse to take aim at their own feet?
And they might be right.
You assume that youth is its own asset, and completely discount the importance of experience in running government, particularly as it pertains to foreign policy. That’s a big mistake, in my opinion.
This whole discussion reminds me of all the hand-wringing over whether Nancy Pelosi was “too old” to be Speaker of the House again in 2019. It was an argument largely promulgated by Republicans, then (as usual) picked up by Democrats who rarely recognize how deeply they are affected by Republican propaganda.
And I hope we can remember how that turned out.