The data are limited, but the record of former First Ladies is not encouraging.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s probably a reference to Hillary Clinton. I think the general public saw her more as a scholar, attorney, US Senator, and Secretary of State than a First Lady… unfortunately for her that was pretty thin experience for a potential President when held up against a pageant owner/game show host.
I think it’s possible we’re over-analyzing it all.
History tells us that if an incumbent president has the winds of a strong economy and domestic peace blowing into his sail, he’s gonna be damn hard to beat. Trump will have a harder time taking advantage of that advantage because he’s easily the biggest douchebag ever to (dis)grace the White House.
If the economy is still humming along, I think Trump beats anyone in the field, and anyone thinking of joining the race later. On the flip side, if the economy tanks, then the odds favor whoever wins the nomination.
The question is what happens if the state of the country is somewhere in between a rose garden and the septic tank, and that’s where the quality and strength of the candidate matter. This is what happened in 2004, when the right candidate perhaps could have defeated Bush, but Kerry didn’t.
The Economist has had a poll aggregating and averaging thing going for several months now, but I just found out about it this morning.
Here’s their current numbers:
Biden 28%
Warren 19%
Sanders 15%
Harris 8%
Buttigieg 5%
Yang 3%
Booker 3%
O’Rourke 2%
Gabbard 2%
Everyone else < 1%
Here’s their methodology blurb:
I notice that they don’t include Morning Consult or any of the Harris polls. I’ve been somewhat suspicious about the former despite their B- rating from 538, because they claim to be interviewing 35,000 people a week (waaaay more than anyone else), and I’ve assumed the latter is probably pretty poor, between its C+ rating from 538 and the fact that it’s owned and run by notorious sleazeball Mark Penn.
Anyway, they update their average anytime new results come in, and they adjust for sample size and for how recent a poll is, which are things I’d do if I had the time and energy. So they’ve been filling the need that was the reason for my average, and I expect they’re better at it than me. But I think I’ll keep updating mine every Wednesday, because I kinda like doing it.
That’s cool. You should post the Economist numbers at the same time for the sake of comparison.
You give lip service to Trump having a “harder time” for all the obvious reasons, but the rest of your post shows that you don’t IMO weight that nearly enough.
If we are going to go by history, what we should be amazed by is not that Trump has failed to get good approval ratings despite a strong economy (until recently), but that given his unprecedented level of disgraceful behavior, he has managed to poll above 40 or (even 30) percent at all. Imagine describing his behavior in hypothetical terms to a political scientist or historian thirty years ago, or ten, or five. What would they expect would be the public reaction to such insanity? I doubt they would say “as long as unemployment numbers are low, he should be cruising to reelection”. More like “what about the 25th Amendment? Impeachment?”
ETA: It’s really a shame, the bum rap John Kerry gets. I firmly believe his performance was at the far right end of the bell curve of what any possible Democratic challenger could have done that year.
Here’s my weekly poll average for this week. Other than the three weekly-or-more-often polls (YouGov, Morning Consult, and HarrisX), the only poll from last week that hasn’t aged out is the C-rated Change Research poll. Incoming, we have A-rated polls from WaPo/ABC and CNN/SSRS, a poll from B-rated Ipsos, and a poll from C-rated LA Times/USC-Dornsife.
The numbers:
Biden 26.5
Sanders 17.9
Warren 17.6
Harris 6.6
Buttigieg 5.0
O’Rourke 3.0
Yang 2.5
Booker 2.1
Everyone else < 2.0.
All right, Beto, surgin’ past the Changster! I knew that 0% poll had to be an outlier. He has a long way to go, obviously: but I’ll take it as a first step. He’s within two points of Mayor Pete, after all.
Count me as one hoping for Biden to fade or drop out. The recent record of candidates with long, distinguished careers and/or presidential coattails is abysmal:
[ul]
[li]1984: Mondale gets shellacked by Reagan[/li][li]1988: G.H.W. Bush beats Dukakis, but loses to B. Clinton in 1992[/li][li]1996: Dole loses to B. Clinton[/li][li]2000: Gore loses to G.W. Bush[/li][li]2008: McCain loses to Obama[/li][li]2016: H. Clinton … say no more[/li][/ul]
Should be obvious by now that not only do experience and name-recognition not confer an advantage, they’re probably a liability. People have been fed up with the status quo for a long time, and they keep preferring candidates who promise a break from the recent past. Why does anyone think Biden (of all people) can break that trend?
That’s a pretty persuasive list, I must say — even if some would object that the first president Bush did win his first election in 1988 quite handily. It’s interesting to think about 1968 in this context, given that it was extremely close and both parties had nominees of this type. Voters had to pick someone, and of course this was the last time anyone but a major party nominee got electoral votes.
I really could have gone back to …
[ul]
[li]1976: Ford loses to Carter[/li][/ul]
… because even though Ford was already President, it was his first time running for the office. The point is that the “it’s his/her turn” candidate almost always loses, whether running against a relative newcomer or an incumbent President. We need a name and a face that promises a fresh start.
The other thing about 1968 was that it was the last year where not that many states chose their delegates via primary or caucus, but were rather in the hands of party insiders. This was why the 1968 Democratic Convention was protested so vehemently: Hubert Humphrey hadn’t won any primaries, but the insurgents - Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, who’d been assassinated after winning California - had won several. Yet Humphrey was the nominee anyway.
I predict a Biden/Warren ticket – Biden to sew up the centrist vote, Warren for the progressive vote. As for the racial-minority vote – where else they gonna go?
I predict there’s no way in hell that Warren’s gonna be Biden’s VP.
Nobody’s worried that they’ll vote GOP or Green or something; it’s if they stay home. If African-American turnout sucks, the Dems lose again, period.
My rankings from the debate last night
- Elizabeth Warren
- Kamala Harris
- Pete Buttigieg
- Amy Klobuchar
- Cory Booker
- Beto O’Rourke
- Bernie Sanders
- Joe Biden
- Andrew Yang
- Julian Castro
Warren for me was the standout in articulating her platform and promoting her vision without going after someone else on stage. She focused on selling herself to the people rather than cause a soundbite. Harris after a terrible debate last time was much more impressive last night focusing on Trump and pivoting more to the middle to offer herself as a center-left alternative to the frontrunner.
Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Booker put in solid performances. This was an introduction for themselves to the public and I think they did it well.
I put Beto in a row on his own because he had good enthusiasm when he spoke (not enough though). However his candid response to the gun confiscation issue while admirable in honesty and bluntness, it’s politically going to hurt. But as I said I admire he didn’t do what was politically the right thing to do and instead followed his conviction.
Sanders’s voice was hoarse and for a while he barely spoke. Got his standard talking points in and the Iraq/Bush/Cheney deviation was good but other than that he was flat. Not bad, not particularly good either. Biden just perplexes me. For the first hour and a half he was looking like the Biden of old. Much more lively, boisterous, getting into the details. He was excellent on the gun control section. Then he faded. That response about the quote from 1975 was a mess and even when he brought up Maduro and Latin America, I didn’t particularly disagree with what he said but the way he said it was somewhat angry and unrelated to the point in hand. His closing was excellent I’ll admit but I just don’t think anyone else mirroring that performance can be in the top five performers, and for a frontrunner a strong start didn’t hold. Yang did the things he does well and that is promote UBI and thinking outside of the box to philosophical issues but he doesn’t get involved in the bits where political mechanisms are debated (executive authority, how plans will be paid for, working with congress etc). $1000 dollars a month, democracy dollars, that stunt at the start. Feels too gimmicky. What happens if someone one-ups and says they’ll give away $2000 dollars a month in UBI? That’s his M.O. gone.
I put Castro last because I felt his hit on Biden was a low blow and apparently factually incorrect. Furthermore I learnt little about what he stands for, or who he even is.
(Bolding mine)
That’s exactly what happened in Alaska: Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend: Alaska’s universal basic income problem - Vox
The GOP gubernatorial candidate promised a huge boost to the state’s existing UBI. He won, but has failed to deliver.
Warren doesn’t sound like someone who wants to be anyone’s VP. She’s a president or bust person.
Boycott, you thought Biden’s closing was excellent? Isn’t that the incoherent rambling that he is getting such bad reviews for? Or was that just before that?
ETA:
I believe there is 0.00% chance you are right about that. She’s just going to stay in the Senate rather than become the first female vice president and the frontrunner in 2024 or 2028? 
No way.
No it wasn’t that bit.
The closing was when every candidate was asked about a personal setback they’ve experienced and how they dealt with it.
It’s pretty obvious what Biden’s was. He had to bury his first wife and infant daughter then 40 years later had to bury his son when he had his best years ahead. Biden was on a high at that point being elected to the Senate before his 30th birthday, his swearing in was still to come and it was just before Christmas that car accident happened. His life spun upside down and he lost his faith but the way he got through it was having a sense of purpose and channelling your grief by having something to keep engaged and help others.
I still thought he got dinged for that because the question was about professional setbacks, not personal ones.
Most of what I’ve seen has been praise for that answer. And to a point it overlapped as professional setback because he was set to become a US Senator and by his admission started to drift in anger but it was being involved in policy work and public service that kept him going. Others also gave personal answers such as Klobuchar talking of her father being an alcoholic with three DWIs to his name but who with the support of “family, friends and grace” turned it around and that helped inspire her into public service to help others. Buttigieg talking about coming out and the troubles he was wondering as he was serving in the military. Sanders talking of being brought up in a rent-controlled apartment to an immigrant father who came to this country with nothing in his pocket.