Biden beat Dean Phillips by a much larger margin than Trump beat Haley, and he wasn’t even on the ballot.
But sure, there’s no enthusiasm there. 🙄
CNN's Abby Phillip: "As Nikki Haley put it -- I think it's actually such a smart way to put it -- maybe the first party to let go of their 80 years old might be the victor, but who's gonna be the one to move first? ... nobody wants Trump, nobody wants Biden."
Tired of the “old people should remove themselves from the arena” rhetoric. It’s ageism. Plenty of impactful people are over 80, incl Rep Waters, Dr Fauci, Rep Clyburn, Sister Helen Prejean, Dolores Huerta, Not all elders are qualified; not all young people are qualified.
@GottaLaff
I have noticed that the people that have been focused on posting polling results that suggest that the electorate "doesn't want Joe to run again" are totally ignoring the fact that he just won overwhelming support from the ACTUAL electorate in New Hampshire.
@GottaLaff Hold on. Half of congress is over 65. The 2 leading pres candidates are approaching 80. Elections are held on workdays, which favors retired individuals and makes it harder for younger working folks and students to vote. And if you haven't noticed, we aren't exactly leading the way on climate change.
Ageism in politics is not the problem. We need to fix our political system so that younger generations have more of a say in our system. Not the other way around.
@GottaLaff I don't know, IMO the much, much larger problem is that younger generations don't have enough of a say - by design. I would argue that if politicians were younger - from the national to the local levels - there would be more progress on climate change and women's rights, to name just two issues. But older generations are a large voting block so it will be hard to change things. For example, by making election day a holiday so more young folks can vote.
@GottaLaff Thanks, I respect your opinion, but I really don't see that ageism in politics is much of a problem in our country. Ageism in other facets, yes.
@underthestars@GottaLaff
I am a Boomer, 73 years young. I was one of thousands and thousands of Baby Boomer & Silent Generation liberals & progressives who fought & demonstrated & spoke loudly in the 50's, 60's and 70's about civil rights, women's rights, pollution/climate change/fossil fuels, renewable energy, etc.
Most of us still feel that way. The biggest conservative & reactionary bloc are Gen X-ers & Millenials. And way too many just don't care.
@GottaLaff exactly. Not everyone has cognitive impairments just because they're old. And Biden is a wealth of experience that you simply can't discount.
It's about performance, and frankly Biden is performing as well as or better than any president in history. He's got a clear policy agenda for both domestic and foreign positions and he is executing it as well as anyone could with the existing Congress.
Some of that is his team. Unlike Trump, Biden DOES have "the best people".
I think people greatly underestimate the value of elders' experience/knowledge/wisdom. I have said more than once that Biden's 40+ yrs of legislative experience, plus his experience w foreign relations and as VP during the Great Recession of 2008 have made him the best possible president for what he's had to deal with.
@GottaLaff
Napolitano & Norton, both 86! Napopolitano is retiring, but these are not doddering ancients. People forget the impact of RBG, John Lewis...
Louis Brandeis was 82, Thurgood Marshall 83 while being active progressives on the SC. There's a reason many cultures value "the Elders".
@GottaLaff
The "nobody wants Trump, nobody wants Biden" trope is such bothsiderism bullshit.
Some people (notably Republicans, and Russian and Iranian psyops assets) DESPERATELY want Biden to be as unpopular as Trump, and are ginning up everything they can to make it come true.
The write-in campaign suggests that Biden is nowhere near as unpopular on the Left as Trump is everywhere.
@mloxton@GottaLaff
Biden is +15 unfavorable while Trump is +8.7 unfavorable. That's from an average of polls, the truth is probably not too different from that. Biden has a lower approval rating today than Trump did at this point in his presidency.
The write-in campaign does not suggest anything about Biden's popularity because only 60k people wrote him in (compared to 168k who voted for Trump). All that indicates is that the die-hard Dems were willing to show up despite the DNC telling people the election did not matter and their vote was meaningless.
Comparing Dean Philips to Nikki Haley is just not particularly useful. There were no debates on the Dem side, Dean Philips joined the primary late. Biden has no real challenger and the DNC has de-legitimized the process so much that voters disengaged, not much can be learned from the results at this point.
@smitten
Poll reliability is so low and has so much variation in sampling and target populations that averaging them and coming up with a difference between Trump and Biden as a measure of "popularity" is about as useful as doing it with chicken entrails or reading tea leaves.
@mloxton What should we use then? Why is a poorly-attended write-in campaign that had less engagement than the Republican election (in a state that normally leans blue) more reliable than an average of polls?
"Why is a poorly-attended write-in campaign ... more reliable than an average of polls?
Because it is an outcomes measure rather than an estimation of future intent based on sentiment
Outcomes measures almost always trump an estimate of sentiment. "How much do you like vanilla" is far less useful as an unbiased estimator of reality than what the person ends up drinking
@GottaLaff
I will see if they give me another opportunity for a PSA on sampling and estimation, and if not, yep, block
I also need to block a whole raft of little fellow travelers of the GRU
@joesabin Oh I've used that for well over a decade. I was known on Twitter for playing WhackATroll and then issuing a Toodles, meaning, "blocked." @mloxton
@GottaLaff
Yeah, we would have, too bad...It was a grand time there in its heyday. I joined the first week, a coworker convinced me to try, I didn't "get it" and deleted my account. Then joined again to stay. @mloxton
@GottaLaff
I miss all the gay toxicologists and the tweetchats
I miss how I could get an instant response about what mushroom my character should eat to have the highest probability of really smelly farts followed by certain death
"Genocide Joe" is written on whiteboards all over the Eastern hemisphere, in rooms full of people in front [possibly banks of] social media devices who are themselves impoverished and being exploited for a meagre salary to destabilize a rival nation which is full of less-exploitable people who might ruin it for all the billionaires.
Whatever @Hoodedman is on the other end of the wire, it should think about its children and what sort of future it is actively creating.
@GottaLaff And no doubt some (most?) of the Democrats who crossed over and voted for Haley are Biden supporters who figured weakening Trump in the GOP primary was more important than voting for Biden when the Dem primary didn't count.
yes.. it's a bit... as we said last night.. I wonder also how many he received that are refuse to vote biden due to the Israel Hamas issues and Biden backing Israel.
@GottaLaff
Sometimes, when listening to these horses patooties endlessly drone on and on about the same rhetoric it feels like November is a looong way off.