Probably the most relevant line in the entire article:
a series of polls have suggested Biden will narrowly beat Trump in the November vote. But with eight months to go, and the polls so tight, this could change and a number of polls have also indicated that Trump will win the election.
Whether Biden wins or loses is going to come down to how well he engages people in key states. Outside of the "blue no matter who" crowd, people have decidedly mixed feelings about voting for a candidate whose strongest argument is that he isn't Trump. Everything from events in the weeks leading up to the election to the weather (which affects Dems more than Reps) will matter, so rather than leaning on polls that suggest a victory... it might be wise to end those behaviors and policies that have human rights advocates concerned.
I don’t get this point. I feel like Biden’s done a great job as president so far. He’s had a lot of tough issues to deal with as president and so far he’s handled everything really well.
I agree but not everyone votes because of these things. It’s 8 months away. Lots of stuff can come out from today until then to change a voter’s mind. They could literally vote for whatever they feel matters.
Lots of stuff can come out from today until then to change a voter’s mind.
Yes lots of stuff could but we all know Biden won’t do those things. He’s demonstrated zero regard for the opinions of people who helped him get elected in the 2020 general.
It's interesting how wilfully ignorant people get when the data doesn't support their candidate. I should be angry, but at this point it's become so comical that I have to laugh.
So ethnic cleansing and support thereof is now reduced to "a policy?" That's a big oof.
Biden mishandled COVID, has slowly re-enacted some of Trump's worst policies on immigration, abandoned those who, at no small risk to themselves, supported us in Afghan, has presided over a massive increase in the cost of housing... and I guess, on the bright side, forgave a fraction of a percent of the student loans he said he'd forgive.
Maybe it's time to support someone who doesn't have the blood of countless innocents on his hands.
If it were up to me, I would see the Republican party dismantled. Were I a member, I would vote for it's dissolution. But thing is, they can nominate whoever they like, including a fascist psychopath. That he's second most likely to win is a direct result of GOP and DNC collusion.
I understand that it was about the Israel/Hamas conflict. And I understand that many people disagree with the US supporting Israel and the way things have played out so far in Gaza. I wish the US would not get involved in conflicts in that region, but to me a single international policy isn’t enough to negate all of the good that I feel Biden has done during his presidency. I also believe that any Israelis that have committed war crimes should be held accountable.
Or you know, vote for someone who wouldn't support it in the first place...which you could do if the DNC didn't collude with fascists to keep alternative voices silenced.
He’s done an OK job for a run of the mill president during run of the mill times, but in my opinion he has failed to rise to the big threats of today, especially RAPIDLY encroaching fascism, climate change, and nearly catastrophic wealth inequality.
So our choice is between run-of-the-mill president or a guy who says he wants to a dictator, violently tried to overturn the last election, had fake electors etc. etc.
I’m not excited about Biden but the choice seems to be pretty straightforward and I’ll be SURE to get to the polls.
I’m not excited about Biden but the choice seems to be pretty straightforward and I’ll be SURE to get to the polls.
I will be getting to the polls as well but it won’t be to reward Moderates for picking a shit candidate and threatening not to back him every time there’s an opportunity for him to compromise with leftists and progressives.
Meh, I upvoted you. I personally think he’s been about as good a president as someone could hope for, which is a pretty fucking low bar, but I still voted uncommitted in my primary yesterday even though I would crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump in November. I don’t blame anybody who holds their nose and votes as a pure harm reduction measure.
The president has little power to address climate change/wealth inequality on his own. That all relates to the budget and is firmly in control of congress. Replace Manchin/Sinema with two progressive senators and you would have the BBB bill, which would have addressed both these concerns.
With respect to encroaching racism I am just not sure what any politician can do about it. Ideally, you would like to change the mind of hardcore Republicans, but it’s not like they are listening.
Manchin/Sinema could not have stopped Democrats from using the reconciliation bill as a bargaining chip to pass the BBB. It was not called for by Pelosi, Biden or any establishment Democrat for one simple reason: They didn’t care and expected voters to just show up anyway.
What are you talking about? They needed 50 votes in the Senate for a reconciliation vote which they did not have, because of the aforementioned senators. The bill was passed by the house (of which Pelosi was Speaker at the time). There was a lot of negotiation between the White House and the two senators to get the bill to 50 in the Senate. None of what you are saying is correct!
I’m relatively unconvinced by laying all the blame on them. The president is the leader of his party and has the massive power of the bully pulpit to help bring them into line. He was unable or unwilling to do that.
Objectively, he has been a mediocre president whose most impressive victories have stemmed from the fact that the economy was already recovering from a worldwide pandemic. His handling of the withdrawl from Afghanistan was an appalling travesty that got countless innocents killed, his two-faced positions on Gaza (lamenting the human rights abuses while cutting aid and supplying weapons,) the fact that the interest rate for home loans has skyrocketed in an already difficult to afford housing market, and quite honestly, his racist and homophobic past make him difficult to swallow.
It’s going to depend on the severity of several pending scandals and what the Saudis decide to do with oil prices between now and November. Democrats should have an astronomical campaign warchest while the GOP is blowing their wad on the candidate’s legal bills. The Democrats game to lose and that’s their expertise.
It honestly doesn’t matter what Congress has the authority to do at this point. They lack the capacity. Once we get a solid Dem majority, then we can start exploring what Congress can do.
Are you confusing the words “majority” and “supermajority”? Because Democrats did have a solid majority for four years. Democrats had a supermajority for a few months.
I used the vague term “solid majority” because it depends on what legislation you’re trying to get passed. Supermajority is great, but reconciliation only requires a simple majority iirc.
I like that you realized I was about to call you out again for being a Russian shill pot-stirrer so you tried to head me off, even though it doesn’t make any damn sense.
Nate Silver has long defended keeping them in. It’s not that the absolute number is any good, but a change in the number can be good. If Rasmussen shows a 3 point shift between two polls, that’s probably real and can be applied to the model.
It’s not a bad take - if it shows a consistent bias, it’s still consistent data. It’s translating the bias from a descriptive to a predictive model that’s the hard part. Maybe they found that the swings in correlation were too wide.
IIRC they ejected them because Rasmussen Reports put out a ridiculously flawed article that called the results of the Arizona gubernatorial election into question based on a study whose methodology was so flawed that it could be torn apart by a particularly sharp grade schooler–they took a poll, sponsored by a Republican group, four months after the election, then weighted it against exit polls (not the actual election results), and then used that to claim the Republican won by eight points instead of losing by 1. This prompted the guy in charge of 538 to send them a letter basically saying “are you gonna fix your methodology to reflect something close to reality, orrrrr…” and Rasmussen said “lol no”
Against an incumbent trump when people believed Biden’s campaign promises…
This time being the incumbent hurts Biden. 4 years ago if someone said Biden would be supporting a genocide, trying to codify Trump’s border policies, and calling migrants “illegals” I’d have laughed in their face.
Biden is less popular now then when all most voters knew about him was he was Obama’s VP.
Dude took 36 years to win his first presidential primary, he wasn’t that popular to begin with.
The “incumbent advantage” is often misunderstood. Because a weak incumbent gets primaried.
So the DNC says primarying a candidate hurts them, and why NH didn’t get delegates this year.
The reality is only weak incumbents get primaried. Whether they get challenged or not in the primary doesn’t make them weaker or stronger.
By taking a primary away, we’re not helping a candidate, we’re throwing away the option to run a more popular candidate. Which hurts the party and every American if it means trump is elected.
It’s like saying the only reason trump got caught on his tax fraud was he ran for president. Running for president brought attention to it, but he cheated on taxes decades before running and could have been prosecuted at any time.
An actual primary wouldn’t have made Biden unpopular, it would have just made how unpopular he is more public, while giving him a public stage to move left to his voters and win some over for the general.
Hiding it doesn’t make it better, it just gives people a false sense of security, which ironically often leads to lower turnout.
Hes more popular for me. I still can't believe how much he has done in one term with an adversarial congress that improves my quality of life. and yeah I feel sad about international affairs but I vote on internal affairs. especiallly when its so obvious how much worse the alternative is internationally.
I hope it’s enough, and I do feel a lot more comfortable now then a week ago. We just need Biden to stop reaching out to Haley voters and start trying to get liberal votes on his side.
It’s just insane to me that less than two thirds of the country hold a favorable opinion of either candidate. No matter what happens, the majority of the country will be unhappy with it.
That means depressed turnout, and those are the only elections republicans have a chance at winning. I’d rather not give them that chance
I don’t think Hillary, on her own, CHOSE to ignore Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016. Somebody told her campaign “Yeah, those are safe, you don’t need to go there…” and that was one of the factors that tanked her campaign.
Joe cannot win without them. He needs to campaign HARD there.
Latest polling in Michigan shows it at a virtual tie, 43% to 43%.
Primary data shows more energy on the Republican side:
Now, you can argue more people came out on the Republican side because they were motivated by having a choice, but just over a million Republican votes to just over 600K Democratic votes needs to be a giant fucking wake up call.
Same deal for Wisconsin, polls showing Trump +2, +3, +4:
I, a Michigander, voted against Trump in the primary and will be voting against him again in the general. And I know I wasn’t alone, which accounts for some of the total Republican ballots. Open primaries mean that can happen.
And I have zero faith in the DNC and people running Joe’s campaign to focus on the right states to win the electoral college.
That’s why I put North Carolina in the watch list. There are folks out there who think it’s winnable a) because they assume the Nikki Haley vote will flip to Biden, and b) because the Republicans just picked a batshit CRAZY candidate for Governor on Super Tuesday.
I saw a Jordan Klepper clip yesterday where he talked to Haley voters…
Most said Trump was terrible, that 1/6 was a violent insurrection, but that they’d still have to “pick the lesser of two evils” and vote trump because they’d never vote Democrat.
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Neither Haley voters or Biden’s campaign team. None of what they’re doing makes sense.
Yeah, but what you’re missing is that big business Democratic donors love it when the Democrats move right, so that’s what they do every single fucking time.
I don’t think he’s been appealing to Haley voters on the policy front at all. His new budget proposal is anathema to the republican way of thought, even the less crazy sections. He is appealing to Haley voters on the decency front, which he absolutely should. Even if you are a conservative, Trump should drastically frighten you. Not because he’s not a conservative, but because he is a destructive demagogue. Biden is appealing to voters with a distaste for that because he is not that, simple as.
Edit: Can someone help me understand how I said something controversial here? Does anyone have any examples of the Biden campaign making policy adjustments to gain Haley voters?
The thing Dems absolutely refuse to understand is that policy. Does. Not. Matter. Optics matter, that’s all. 99% of voters do not know anything about any policies. They know headlines. They know memes. Joe Biden could personally walk in front of IDF bullets to defend Palestinians and it would not matter if the media decided not to cover it.
Win the media, win the election. Truth does not matter. Results do not matter. Only the media matters.
Republicans get this. Democrats keep insisting they can run on substance.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement? Biden has nothing to lose by playing up his decency factor, because it is Trump’s primary weakness. Why would you ever not appeal to potential voters (regardless of political spectrum) by playing up a factor you planned to stress anyway? I only brought up policy in response to commentors saying Biden is kowtowing to the GOP to court Haley voters, which I just do not see happening right now. You would have seen a much more moderate budget proposal (which to be clear, is also optics, because presidential budget proposals are basically just wish lists that don’t come true) if that were the case. He’s courting the left, if anything.
The only policy proposal I see being affected by Haley voters is Ukraine funding, because Trump’s isolationism is a common complaint from her crowd. Democrats were going to support that anyway, so I’m just not seeing it.
PA is a nail biter right now, Biden +1 to Trump +6. Could really go either way, and it will be tough for Biden if he doesn’t take it. “Son of Scranton” and all that.
I still think Georgia was a fluke in 2020. You have to go back to '92 for a D win there, and that was only because a) Clinton was a Southerner and b) Perot bled off 13% of the vote.
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