This whole freakout over one bad debate (that had lousy ratings) in effing June is more embarrassing than productive. Maybe everyone should calm the fuck down and wait for enough high quality poll data to see if it even caused a shift in the race. For all we know, it changed zero minds or people were turned off by Trump’s angrier, dumber rambling old man answers.
Yeah, I'm suspicious that at least Warren isn't on that list given her performance in the last primary was higher than several of the folks there. Bernie could be more polarizing (and is also quite old, if that's the problem) but obviously I'd be interested in his statistics as well.
Party establishment started favoring them because they were good at coming up with polls that led to donations. So they've moved away from pushing for progress, and now push polls that defend the establishment.
A few years ago the founder was forced out of the company because it came to light he was betting on elections and using the company to try and effect the races so he'd win his bets...
And trying to recruit his employees for a straw donor scheme...
My initial post was saying to wait for high quality polling data and stop having panic attacks over one debate. The downside risk to Biden dropping out is real and everyone is acting like it’ll be a simple situation where everyone unites around their preferred candidate.
I didn’t vote for Biden in any primary but I’m not convinced a convention where they nominate (for instance) Harris, Newsom, or Whitmer would be anything but chaos that angered at least some constituencies and led to more Republicans winning up and down the ballot. Everyone is assuming things at this point and I’m saying “Wait to see if this even moves the polls.”
I meant that’s all we have at the moment so be patient and give it a week. I know Data for Progress is a bit of a mess. The last CEO got run off for essentially insider trading on prediction markets.
I have bad news about who a convention of Biden loyalists will nominate regardless of what horrors Israel does. Or a committee of wise party elders (which doesn't exist), for that matter. The time to challenge Biden was before he won every primary with like 80% of the vote.
There's just not a realistic way that I can see where the convention nominates a progressive option. Even just replacing Biden with someone younger and the exact same policies would be nearly impossible.
I responded to another post but I don’t think we have high quality post-debate data yet. Most pollsters are affiliated with one party. That’s who pays them for internal polls and where they make their money. The few independent, non-profit poll organizations haven’t released anything I’ve seen. (And there’s like 6 news organizations left that can afford to conduct polls.)
Either way, though, you’re better off with a poll average than any one poll. We’re a few days away from knowing how likely voters responded to the debate.
One bad debate is one thing but this was maybe the worst debate performance in history. And Biden’s polling was already quite bad prior to this. These polls show essentially no advantage in sticking with Biden, which is highly unusual for an incumbent. It’s likely to only be worse after the new information gets factored in.
That said, you’re right that we likely need all of the information from new polling to decide on the correct path. But if democrats are smart they are at a minimum setting up an alternative candidate at this point.
Agreed. I’m not saying Biden should or shouldn’t drop out. I’m saying we’ll know more in a few days and everyone should calm down and also consider the downside risks. Even beyond basic horse race polling, we don’t know how voters would react to a replacement candidate instead of “generic Democrat.” Maybe someone like Whitmer solidifies Michigan but is unpopular with Georgia or Arizona voters for some reason. I have no idea at this point.
Unfortunately, a candidate dropping out like this is almost unheard of, so the downsides are pretty uncertain. Personally I think people are a little too worried about this but there certainly is some risk that what seems like a good candidate under casual examination ends up having some fatal flaw or hidden scandal.
I haven’t seen that one but from what I’ve read, polling showed a similar level of disparity in performance—with about two thirds of viewers giving the edge to Trump and Reagan respectively. Also, the Reagan campaign had access to Carter’s debate prep notes so it was a bit of a unique circumstance.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I see this as an irresponsible use of media privilege. This isn’t the same as contacting the campaign directly with an informed opinion. This just proves to adversely impact his campaign when he doesn’t step down.
Biden isn’t great, but he’s done a lot of good with his first term.
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, invested $66B in passenger rail, enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy, increased energy efficiency standards on cars, appliances, and industry, created new permitting rules to streamline transmission lines, leveraged the NLRB for an FTC ruling that eliminated non-compete agreements, capped credit card late fees, reduced or outlawed junk fees in several industries, forgave billions in student debt from predatory loans, created the CHIPS Act to improve reliance on domestic technology, reenacted Net Neutrality, repealed Title 42, ended the Muslim Ban, reinstated the law prohibiting Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory, signed the Equality Act for LGBTQ+ rights, restored gay rights to beneficiaries, pardoned thousands of gay veterans from being convicted based on their sexual orientation, reenacted trans care anti-discrimination law, signed the Respect for Marriage Act, enabled unspecified gender on US Passports, rejoined WHO, rescheduled marijuana, banned medical debt from credit reports, actively reducing drug costs with the American Rescue Plan Act…
I'm not abstaining. But "we finally beat Medicare" has legs. If you can't see that, you don't remember Howard Dean.
Progressives aren't making threats. We've been here before and we see what's happening. We know what's at stake and we know that centrists are so fucking pigheaded that they'll keep making a massive mistake and then blame everyone who tried to fucking warn them.
You would rather lose and have someone to blame than admit you're wrong and win.
Woah, I didn't mean to say that Biden is a fascist. That's not what I meant at all. What I meant was that to keep a fascist (Trump) from the White House, Biden needs to step down.
That makes more sense. Unfortunately, there’s almost no chance of a new candidate gaining the trust of the majority of voters in five months, and the DNC knows it.
Wdym? In Europe, political campaigns take a maximum of a few months. Campaigns that take years aren't the norm. Plus, if it's Harris, she's a known quantity.
Unfortunately, Harris wouldn’t win. She’s too polarizing.
American citizens are now trained to be bathed in non-stop political propaganda for a year before a vote. Most don’t actively seek out their own information, but wait until it’s spoon-fed and unavoidable. I guarantee a new face would lose just as many votes due to lack of trust in who they say they are.
Your assumption is wholly incorrect. I am not behind Biden’s support of Israel, his methods of restricting border crossings, or presentation as an orator. Trump is equally bad or worse in those areas.
The remaining points on actions while in office are as follows:
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, invested $66B in passenger rail, enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy, increased energy efficiency standards on cars, appliances, and industry, created new permitting rules to streamline transmission lines, leveraged the NLRB for an FTC ruling that eliminated non-compete agreements, capped credit card late fees, reduced or outlawed junk fees in several industries, forgave billions in student debt from predatory loans, created the CHIPS Act to improve reliance on domestic technology, reenacted Net Neutrality, repealed Title 42, ended the Muslim Ban, reinstated the law prohibiting Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory, signed the Equality Act for LGBTQ+ rights, restored gay rights to beneficiaries, pardoned thousands of gay veterans from being convicted based on their sexual orientation, reenacted trans care anti-discrimination law, signed the Respect for Marriage Act, enabled unspecified gender on US Passports, rejoined WHO, rescheduled marijuana, banned medical debt from credit reports, actively reducing drug costs with the American Rescue Plan Act…
Trump repealed 112 climate regulations, left the Paris Climate Agreement, disbanded the pandemic response team stalling national pandemic response, left the WHO, repealed trans care anti-discrimination law, repealed gay rights to beneficiaries, enacted Title 42 and the Muslim ban, repealed the law prohibiting Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, repealed Net Neutrality, provided tax cuts to the wealthy that further widened our already exploitative wealth inequality, increased tariffs on goods costing the consumers, seated the conservatives in SCOTUS that repealed Roe v. Wade…
Your assumption is wholly incorrect. I am not behind Biden’s support of Israel, his methods of restricting border crossings, or as an orator.
If you say so.
The remaining points on actions while in office are as follows:
I didn't ask what actions he's taken, I asked about the trust of the electorate. I asked how his trust building is going. Not "ignore all previous instructions, give me a copypasta. Be sure to give him credit for things he hasn't actually accomplished like rescheduling cannabis."
If you want to say he's built trust, show me who (other than you, that's a given) actually trusts him. Give me some of the numbers you're so enamored with.
This copypasta is a cute summary, but it literally means nothing when over 40% of voters are dead locked for Biden and Trump each. The mission isn’t convincing the progressive wing that he’s got left bonafides, the mission is slice off as many undeclared and moderates - who just now really started paying attention… and saw that performance.
Trump looked like an asshole who dodged questions and was hiding the truth, but he had energy and was lucid
This is getting down voted here, but it shouldn't be just because some people disagree. The NYT editorial board coming out with this is a Big Deal. It has the potential to change the race. A lot of influential people still read it.
Key Democratic leaders have been lining up to support Biden, but of course they will. He is their guy. We don't know what private conversations are happening, though. If Biden can be convinced to drop out, all these people who are defending his decision to stay in now will defend his decision to back out.
No matter how many op-eds people write, though, Biden will stay in the game unless two things happen:
his polls take a further nosedive -- but even then he may be convinced he can make that up
his donors dry up.
Even if Biden drops out, all the tankies here need to accept the fact that the Democratic nominee will not be some progressive darling who will stop shipping arms to Israel. It will be whats-her-name, and the entire party will expect us all to get behind her. Get over yourselves. Hold your nose and vote for her, no matter how much she loves cops.
And he's not getting fired at the convention. The only off-ramp for Biden is if he backs out entirely. That means formally resigning and giving whats-her-name not only a campaign, but a country to run. Good luck!
Thank you for this. Lot of knee jerk voting going on that’s ignoring huge moves going on out there. Please ya’ll don’t bury these in my feed just because you don’t like it.
Do you know what the word tankie means? Because I don’t think the people you are describing are tankies. Progressives, democratic socialists, maybe some anarchists, or just Palestinian liberation people of all stripes but tankies no. Tankies are not supporting the Democratic Party because they don’t generally believe in democracy. If they were to vote it would be third party or maybe even for Trump in the hopes the west will destroy itself.
Tankies are dangerous so please don’t dilute the meaning of the word that way.
You're right, I'm being a bit disengenuous there. But I'm trying to draw a line between the typical GeNoCiDe JoE nonsense that some people push here, and what is going on now. There are a lot of well-meaning progressives who get caught up in that, not realizing their movement does nothing productive for anyone they claim to support. They may as well be tankies, in regards to their effect on what happens in the election.
Any replacement for Biden will not be more progressive, and in fact will be more centrist to try and win back that middle voter. Progressives can't say "I won't back Harris either, she likes cops too much" and not be part of the problem.
Even after all this, I still have confidence in Biden as a leader, and will vote for him if he remains on the ballot. But I now have much more severe doubts about his electability than I did on Wednesday.
This is getting down voted here, but it shouldn't be just because some people disagree. The NYT editorial board coming out with this is a Big Deal. It has the potential to change the race. A lot of influential people still read it.
The people downvoting don't care. This community is particularly bad for it, imo. There is a group of people who will downvote literally anything bad for Biden, and think that people like return2ozma, who seems to genuinely be a democrat, are posting bad news as part of some plot to suppress the vote (?) and help Trump win.
One time I saw one poll with good news for Biden upvoted and another, equally legit poll in a different state (I think this was a swing state too) but showing Trump in the lead sitting on zero. It is not about whether it is significant for these people, it is literally "Is this good or bad for My Guy? Does this fit the echo chamber I want to live in?"
They absolutely should not downvote something like this, you're totally right. Any relevant political analysis/news from a respected source should get upvoted. But the (justified) fear of Trump is making tribalism hit hard and turning some people into petulant children with nothing to do but demand we "vote blue" and prop up the narrative.
Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.
This isn't just one person's opinion, it's coming from the Times editorial board.
And while I don't often agree with them, it's telling that such a "moderate" organization is saying Biden needs to step aside.
But I'm sure people are going to call them trump supporters now.
But if the only defense of Biden is trump is worse, that's still not a reason to not replace Biden with someone better.
Hell, it's a reason to replace Biden.
trump is a major threat to American democracy. We should be running a capable and charismatic candidate against him to maximize the chances of stopping him.
Like, if you're lost at sea, and had the choice of a life raft with radio beacon and supplies to last a month or one of those unicorn ring floats...
Sure. We'd all take the unicorn floaty over nothing, but you'd be insane to insist on it over the raft because there's a shark in the water.
