I live in the definition of a purple district—one of the few in the country that was genuinely competitive in 2022. At the same time almost every week, I spend some time at a local bar, pecking away at my laptop. And I overhear a lot of conversations with the friendly, chatty bartender.
Frequently, I will hear a bunch of guys talking about their jobs, after work. They will talk about how much they make, their bosses and, often, some ongoing or upcoming expense like maintaining their house. And, for the most part, it is remarkably positive; far from the "forgotten Trump voter" narrative. They are basically describing having good-paying jobs and being able to afford a high standard of living. Then the conversation takes a turn into what I can only call a recitation of bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories—the kind I read about and think only a hard-core MAGA cultist would believe this stuff. In their defense, they aren't swallowing it hook, line and sinker, but they are often "just asking questions". And none of the answers indicate enthusiastic support for the status quo.
A recent, specific example: the very day that I became aware of the Taylor Swift psyop Super Bowl conspiracy, an otherwise totally normal, average, sensible, thoughtful regular walks in and starts chatting with the bartender about sports. The conversation makes its way to football and... the guy starts spinning an elaborate conspiracy theory (that I could not even follow) stretching back to the start of the season and involving everyone in the NFL. The bartender's jaw literally dropped before he gently pushed the topic to hockey.
My completely unscientific anecdote-based take is that there is a persuadable pool of voters who are adrift, dipping their toes in the MAGA fever swamp, but also consciously aware that things are actually pretty good. And that they are going to vote against, not for one of two bad choices—bad for different reasons, but bad. So bring on the hippie-punching, tough border rhetoric and never, ever stop talking about—and citing contemporaneous examples of—what a deranged lunatic Trump is.
I am expecting Travis Kelce to get injured with the second last play of the game and the Chiefs needing a touchdown to win. Taylor Swift will come from the stands to tend to her wounded lover... then put on his helmet. Patrick Mahomes will successfully throw a Hail Mary to her with his last throw, and she will storm through the 49ers defence to score.
Never mind scoring the winning TD. I'm reliably informed Ms. Swift will be 35 before inauguration day. Let's think bigger. The Super Bowl is one day. A presidential term lasts four years.
The TV screen in my office building's elevator was helpfully informing me yesterday about what odds are being offered on gambling sites about various things Taylor Swift might do at the Super Bowl. (Kissing Kelce on the field and giving a double high-five to someone in the viewing box were the two that I could remember.)
”So bring on the hippie-punching, tough border rhetoric and never, ever stop talking about—and citing contemporaneous examples of—what a deranged lunatic Trump is.”
You should be a paid Democratic party consultant. This is spot on and much better than the disastrous ”don’t upset the far left” strategy they are currently pursuing.
When a bunch of interns published a letter against the President and weren't immediately fired. Just for a recent example.
But you could look to Biden's first day in office when he set the mold that is still dogging him. Hard to take credit for unprecedented oil production when you cast yourself as the most anti-oil president in history. Same for the border issue by pandering to defund ICE types.
"Since day one, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have treated climate change as the existential threat of our time."
Unfortunately Biden has actual tools to address the conflict and affect its course and has to figure out how to use them. Unlike Fetterman who, no shade on Fetterman, has no actual power over the situation and so can just say whatever.
I think that is exactly right. My pet theory is that, because mainstream discourse is dominated by liberal* ideas, liberal conspiracy theories like "thousands of black men are killed by police every year" don't get coded that way.
I grew up immersed in right-wing / Conservative culture and my sense is that what started as Rush Limbaugh using course language to poke at liberal hypocrisy has morphed into a furtive sense that everyone is out to get you and only I know the Truth so you'd better tune in before they get to me, too. Ipso facto, right-wing discourse takes on the affect of conspiracy theories and people who consume that media sound like conspiracy theorists.
The net result is that everyone traffics in conspiracy theories—my (younger) self very much included—but liberals get to raise a pinky and scoff at the silly, low-brow theories about pizza restaurants because they read books by professors.
*I mean that in the "we believe in empiricism and debate" sense of liberal
I don't think "thousands of black men are killed by police every year" is a conspiracy theory. I think people don't know anything about the scale of things they hear about and simply assume the scale corresponds to the frequency of hearing about it.
You see the same thing among conservatives with crime. My grandmother was convinced I'd be dead in a week when I moved to California because of all the crime. And it's true: were Los Angeles a small town in Oklahoma, the amount of violence (at the time) would make it feel like the purge. But it's not a small town in Oklahoma, so it isn't going to happen to you.
"I don't think 'thousands of black men are killed by police every year' is a conspiracy theory."
Facially, it's ignorance. However, in my experience, in almost every case it instantly escalates to a conspiracy theory if you present the proponent with evidence from an unimpeachable mainstream media source (e.g., WaPo. Guardian, etc.) that, in fact, the number of black men (let alone *unarmed* black men) killed annually by police is less than 1000. I have literally NEVER seen a proponent respond with some variation of, "I guess I was mistaken." Instead, about 10% to 15% will respond with some variation of, "I'll need to look into that" and disappear. The other 85% to 90% will *immediately* jump to claiming that you can't trust statistics on this subject because they are all fabricated by police departments to cover up their habitual killing of black men. (This conspiracy theory is also necessarily implicit in any instance in which someone recommends that black men flee from the police or violently resist arrest because of the likelihood that the police will kill them on the spot anyway.)
See also the routine claim from progressives that rates of violent crime in wealthy neighborhoods are *really* no different than rates of violent crime in poor neighborhoods, it's just that the police and prosecutors cover up the violent crimes in wealthy neighborhoods. (As I've discussed here before, this is such a common progressive conspiracy theory that I've had several people independently make it to me IRL!)
I believe there's a lot of intersection of "conspiracy theorizing" and "doesn't have foggiest idea about realistic quantities."
The same people who think Japan and China are of similar size, or the US GDP is $10 billion, are probably more susceptible to conspiracy theories than better informed folks.
Saying, "I need to look into that," probably isn't any worse than, "I guess I was mistaken," and certainly doesn't make one a conspiracist. It is perfectly reasonable to have a mistaken impression from an article read months or years ago and want to re-examine things prior to reevaluating your long term assumptions about the world.
Sorry, but the bigger conspiracy is very clearly the "thousands" -- you can argue about the justifiability of any given shooting; there's really no plausible dispute about the number of corpses.
But it isn't rational on the part of police. Statistically, when Black driver's car are searched they are 49% LESS likely to contain drugs and guns than white drivers and are equally likely to be given a ticket. However, Black drivers are still pulled over 3 times as often as white drivers and have their cars searched twice as often.
That outcomes of those searches shouldn't be surprising since Black American and white American have fairly equal rates of drug use and white Americans are slightly more likely to own guns. Therefore if you search twice as many Black drivers you are likely searching extra drivers without good probable cause and you would be less likely to find something
But it does suggest that there isn't a good rational and credible reason that they are pulled over more often that white drivers other than racism, whether that bias is explicit or implicit.
That is very different than a suggestion that police officers are killing Black citizens for the fuck of it. If folks believe that is happening with any regularity that is a conspiracy theory and I don't doubt there are folks who hold that false view. But being pulled over more does make it more likely that Black drivers will be killed and that being unacceptable isn't inaccurate.
The lack of a sense of scale flows from the conspiracy, though. It is unarguable that police kill some number of black men every year and that there are cases of straight-up homicide. It is also true that there is some voter fraud and there are cases of straight-up ballot stuffing. Inflating the former necessitates a racist conspiracy theory involving cops. Inflating the latter necessitates a left-wing conspiracy theory involving poll workers.
I am not trying to draw a moral comparison here—I am probably choosing fraught examples. One is in service of a just cause and the other is in service to an aspiring authoritarian. I'm just saying that both involve conspiratorial thinking, but only one gets coded that way and I think that is largely a function of who is promulgating the conspiracies.
Here’s what you are missing “the police kills Black people in particular” or however you want to phrase the blm rallying cry that got the whole country (it seemed) to the streets in 2020. That’s one big conspiracy (or libel). Even the horrifying but anecdotal case of Floyd may perhaps be a wrongful conviction as is now argued convincingly according to black intellectuals like Loury and McWhorter (I’m personally agnostic on this latter point).
Yearly, cops kill half as many blacks as whites (on average). One eighth of the population is black. It seems unlikely that 50% of traffic stops are black. So it seems likely that blacks are disfavored in police confrontations. This seems likely to be a largely combination of Cops' expectations of resistance and Blacks' expectations of danger. Either way, it seems unreasonable to write-off the whole thing as delusions of, "police kill Black people in particular," because it seems like. to some extent, they kinda do.
You are assuming all traffic stops are equally dangerous, which is almost certainly not true. You can't just jump from traffic stops to deaths. What about % of people who carry guns in their vehicles? Likelihood of having committed a crime in the last 24 hours?
We don't have perfect statistics on these and I'm not implying we do, but I think your framework is very limited here.
Isn't this what Roland Fryer looked into a few years back? And he concluded that when normalized by the number of interactions with police, black people were a little less likely to be shot than white people.
Regardless of what the proximate cause of George Floyd’s death was, the fact of the matter is that the police have a duty of medical care immediately upon detaining someone, and so they’re guilty of at least extreme neglect.
I'm not going to debate the specific case . My position is that the court ruling is the truth unless proven otherwise by an equal process (i.e. a re-trial), hence as far as I am concerned Floyd was murdered. The point however is that this case, horrible as it was, was anecdotal. That the impression of a general problem is a lie, based on confirmation bias reporting that often reports completely false facts, but then under reports or ignores completely the true facts once they come to light (e.g. complete exoneration of the cops, "unarmed" men turning out to have been armed etc). It also ignores the more common cases of police killing white people etc. The Floyd case is exceptional in that it did end up in a conviction, but even under the assumption that this was the correct judgment it remains the exception that doesn't prove any rule. As I understand it, when you look at the data overall there is no empirical basis for the notion that the police is more inclined to kill Black people. There are problems with quality of policing generally, but at least insofar as wrongful killings are concerned, there is no racial angle to it, and that's the crucial point.
If you watch the body cam, they call EMS before they even get him into the car the first time, then they call again to ask where the ambulance is. I'm not sure what more they are obligated to do.
Yes. It is actually true that the ways in which the elites and the State work are opaque to almost everyone, and yet we are wired for pattern recognition. There are hundreds of interesting stories that are completely true and totally fit the model of 'conspiracy theory', because people in power actually do conspire quite a lot. Most of it is banal though.
Conspiracy theories are basically the same thing as folk legends. people making up stories about goblins, fairies and wee folk are now just deep state feds, Chinese spies, and corporate shills.
Jeffrey Epstein is pretty much a modern Rumplestiltskin.
It's also a hig thing that sociL media algorithms habe been pushing. They've been shown to slowly onramp people from reasonable questions about their baby's health, to vaccine skepticism, to vaccine conspiracies, to rhe whole wide conspiracyverse. Basically slowly onramping people to it step by step. There's a great book about it called The Chaos Machine that talks about it and gives many examples where Facebook and YouTube were the primary drivers in getting people in to a conspiracy theory rather than the algo being lead by the conspiracy nuts.
How to convert this knowledge into a short-term political strategy? Keep the focus on the real day to day issues for these voters rather than try to refute the crazy stuff? I don’t know.
I’ve long believed that my relatively good conceptual hygiene comes principally from being antisocial.
I don’t buy the fifth point in that post, though. I believe people adopt conspiracy theories because, as social animals, they seek social angles to things. The core of conspiracy theories is generally the (often imagined) actions, motives, and relationships of readily identified people.
The average person spends a lot of their time, seemingly, on gossip about other people. Conspiracy theories give them a way to make gossip into discourse, big picture issues converted wholesale into rumors about celebrities.
Hilarious that you mention the Taylor Swift thing because when I popped into my local watering hole in Vegas that was randomly a topic of conversation from two working class guys who seem to own some kind of father-son contracting business. The superbowl will be hosted here and he just said unprompted "I'm not excited for it this year cause of all that Taylor Swift media bullshit they are trying to do"
I am curious about the median income where your local pub is. Feel free to round or give a range. In my area, the cost of food items has gone up by anywhere between 50-80 percent depending on the item. I make the same meal every Friday so I have a good baseline, and receipts.
Try to imagine how people who rarely indulge in the luxury of paying a bartender huge markups for commodity beverages will have very different ideas about their quality of life since Biden became president. No amount of messaging is going to fix that.
>>My completely unscientific anecdote-based take is that there is a persuadable pool of voters who are adrift, dipping their toes in the MAGA fever swamp<<
What makes you think they're persuadable and not hardcore MAGA? I know you say you live in a purple area, but there are hardcore MAGA folks in such places (as well as plenty of very liberal Democrats).
I think the Fox News-watching crowd (which is what these folks sound like) is mostly unreachable. Persuadables generally don't obsess over political scandalettes and minutiae. They're not political hobbyists, and they tend to get their news from mainstream sources.
Well, plenty of cars out here are decked out with Trumparaphernalia and (often homemade) signs conveying their thoughts about the importance of dispatching Democrats and Liberals. And I'm pretty sure the people with "Thank You Jesus" yard signs are about as persuadable as the ones with "Thank You Science" signs further down the street. But the people conversing in the bar do not sound like brainwashed cultists. They sound like pretty normal people who are exposed to right-wing conspiracy theories via the MAGA cultists in their social (media) and professional circles. It's not obsessive either; the guy talking about the NFL conspiracy quickly moved off of it and pivoted to lamenting the slowing metabolism that accompanies aging. I think normal, non-cultists are all inherently persuadable because they are capable of understanding that Trump is a crazy person who is proposing crazy nonsense policies and that Biden is a pretty normal guy with pretty normal policies that have worked out pretty OK so far.
They tell us we're fighting for save American Democracy, but they're acting as if this is a just a nice-to-win election.
Where are the emergency measures?
At this rate, Joe will earn his loss and we'll all be hating ourselves for letting him walk us into it.
Two things I want to see:
- Replace Kamala with someone younger (and liked) and run as a tag-team ticket
- Go strong on closing the border
The border has been an obvious problem since day 1 of his term, and there's no evidence he's willing to do anything except blame Republicans. Zero swing voters are going to believe this.
If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story.
If he replaced Harris he would invite a civil war inside the Dem party. There would be no recovering by Nov. We can’t afford that. All the armchair critics who seem to think it would be as easy as erasing one name from the yard signs and writing in another know nothing about Dem politics. Biden will keep her on the ballot and wishful thinking otherwise just actively keeps people from making the affirmative case for the ticket.
I don't actually think replacing Kamala would make a big difference at this point, but doing things that piss off the kind of person that would be angry about that is exactly what the Dems need to do. Aversion to that sort of intracoalitional "civil war" is precisely the problem.
Not start a civil war, but stop worrying about appeasing those whose views on climate and immigration alienate the persuadable electorate. The degree of overlap of that group with the people who would go bonkers if Kamala was dumped is very high.
Christine -- I hear many people say "Others will be angry if Kamala is pushed off the ticket", but I've never met such a person who would themselves be angry.
Are you one?
Suppose you find a middle-aged woman (her assumed key demographic), and ask these questions?
- Is Kamala doing a good job?
- Do you think Kamala could beat Trump on a debate stage?
- Do you think Kamala could beat Trump in an election?
- Would you be upset if Kamala was replaced by someone who appealed to swing voters?
What answers do you think you would get?
* By the way, you might want to listen to "The Run-Up" from NYTimes where the host goes back to his (black) family and talks to the middle-aged women and find they all think Kamala has failed.
Anything that sounds like "Kamala is a great VP, and we just need to tell people this with more frequency" sounds like denial to me.
I am not saying she’s been a great VP but she hasn’t been horrible. Much of the criticism I hear of her is weird and strikes me as vaguely misogynistic. What’s the hard core case against her besides being “unlikeable?” Seriously?
You can point to all kinds of anecdotal evidence of Black voters unhappy with Harris but Black women are the core of the Democratic coalition and unless you have significant data showing that they AS A GROUP are disillusioned with the person they embraced in 2020, then I think you underestimate the seismic impact that pushing her off the ticket would have. And no, Warnock would not be seen as a fair swap. Geez Louise. You folks have no idea of the crap women put up with in politics and the media. Harris hasn’t had a chance.
Personally, I learned all I needed to learn about Kamala in that first debate when she jumped on old Joe for "opposing busing". This told me three things. First, that she's stupid, because how much of the electorate even knows what busing was? Second, that's she's incompetent; she thought this gambit was so good, she had all the t-shirts printed up and everything, and didn't seem to see coming the "you weren't bused, you rode *on* a bus." rejoinder. Third, that she's unscrupulous, in being willing to stir up racial division for small selfish reasons. I've seen nothing since to modify this impression.
So the woman who worked to become the 1) District Attorney of San Francisco; 2) Attorney General of California 3) Senator from CA (population 39 million people); and 4) Vice President - is stupid and incompent? And you learned that from one debate?
This is a woman who slept her way into politics, which gave her the connections to get fast-track nominations to high-profile positions, in a state where she had no real other-party opposition, and whose electoral performance was lackluster. She was quickly bounced out of the Presidential primary race (with very low ratings) in spite of being one of the few "moderate" candidates and she has had very poor approval ratings as Vice President (understandable to anyone who has heard her word-salad speeches). In the "feelings" department, I sense arrogance and entitlement, and I bet others do too. The Democratic Party is a shambles right now, but we've got to have someone better than this.
The amount of attention she gets as the VP is completely disproportionate to her actual role, not to mention the historical attention paid to VPs. And yeah yeah, Biden is very old, but it's perfectly clear that voters are voting on Biden v. Trump, not "what about Biden's potential replacement in 2 years if he passes away?" The VP choice is like "the environment"- people say it matters all the time, but when they actually go and vote they vote on their pocketbook and other kitchen table issues. Biden will win or lose on his own merits, not because of Harris. It's absolutely bonkers to me how much people think the VP matters, and it's awfully hard to escape the sense that they criticize the VP as much as they do because it happens to be a black woman filling the role this go around. If some generic 55 year old white guy hadn't accomplished anything in Biden's first term nobody would be sitting around lambasting him. Instead, people would a) never think about him because we never think about the VP very much, or b) when we do think about him we'd all shrug and say "he's the VP. Of course he's not doing anything. It's a role designed to do nothing."
Lastly, the notion that replacing her now is a good idea is ludicrous. It would look desperate, and feed into the narrative that Biden is flailing and knows he'll lose. Republicans would use it to show how clueless and desperate it is, and the media would hammer it. The SB commentariat needs to let this go. If Biden had done it a year ago then we'd be in different waters, but replacing the ticket 9 months before the election would be a horrific decision.
When the president is 80 years old and appears to be losing it, the VP is going to get a lot of attention. If Biden were a one term president, I don't think she would be that big of a deal. But since he decided to run again as an 80 year old, part of that calculus should have included whether she would be the right running mate if anything were to happen to him.
Right, this is the thing; frantically replacing the vice president simply out of fear (rather than like, a specific scandal) *reinforces* the idea that Biden's too old and not really in control of things.
But he is too old, and he is not in control of things. It's a fact, and it's obvious. He can't control the progressives when it comes to the running sore that is the border (if he loses the Presidency, this will be why) and he can't get a good vice president because he owes too much to James Clyburn. For God's sake, dozens of his own staff (and interns!) publicly rebuked him for his support of Israel, an important ally in a very delicate situation. And he did nothing. In any corporation or other organization, those staffers would be on the street with their last paycheck the very next day.
I generally agree with you about switching Kamala not really having an impact, but I also think we should be clear that Black women are not the core of the Democratic coalition. Blacks in total make up about 13% of the US population, and Black women make up maybe 7%. ANY group that small a percentage of the population cannot be the core constituency of a majority party.
edit - to be clear, that doesn't mean the Democratic party should ignore them, but also 1) they aren't going anywhere else; 2) you can't base your politics around their specific preferences.
I think what you have is a very self-conscious group for whom the "black woman" thing makes them disproportionately influential within the *party*. I suspect that they feel that Kamala is their ticket to the glory to which they are entitled, and this is why she wasn't dumped years ago.
The Republican Party has really reshaped itself around a small, core group of it's base, and it's kind of been a disaster for them. Not sure why it would be any different for Democrats, especially when the group they are centering is really not geographically distributed in an advantageous way. The mean state has a black population of about 7-8%, which is half the national average. You can't be a national party if that's really your base.
"The Republican Party has really reshaped itself around a small, core group of it's base, and it's kind of been a disaster for them."
They haven't! Its incredibly depressing to me, but the Republican party via Trump has actually expanded the segment of the population that is their base going from a reasonably well educated and wealthy base to a much broader and more blue collar base. I think they have sacrificed most of their principles along the way, but let's not kid ourselves about what they are doing.
>What’s the hard core case against her besides being “unlikeable?<
The hardcore case is A) she's been marginally successful politically in California an a total dud outside California, and B) she hasn't generated a compelling political brand or strong team of loyalists and supporters in DC. I personally admire the Vice President (she was my initial choice for the nomination, way back when), and I wish the above weren't true. But it seems true.
"marginally successful politically in California" - the state has a population of 39 million people. If you become one of the two people out of 39m that is elected Senator, I would say you are more than marginally successful politically.
As for "total dud" outside of CA - I would think VP candidates who are on losing tickets (Lieberman, Edwards, Kaine) would better bill for 'total dud' outside their home state. If you're a VP on a winning ticket, I'm not seeing the case for "total dud."
(I'm not saying VP's determine the outcome, just saying their impact is greater than zero - otherwise we wouldn't even be talking about changing VPs.)
Harris has been successful at beating other Democrats, sure. That's undoubtedly true. But once you're in the general election, having a "D" next to your name tends to make winning a foregone conclusion statewide in California (or in San Francisco), and there have been multiple elections where her vote totals have failed to match other Democrats running for office. Again, I said marginally "successful" not marginally "unsuccessful." And she badly underperformed expectations in her brief presidential run. I remember this acutely, because she was my early choice for president in 2020. That's what I meant by "dud."
As I've said repeatedly, I think it makes zero political sense to choose another running mate. And I'll go one further: I believe there's a pretty strong chance she's president a few years from now because I think it's likely indeed that Joe Biden won't serve a full second term if he wins. I think Kamala Harris is eminently well-qualified, and might well make an excellent president*.
But no, Kamala Harris doesn't strike me as the party's best option for top of ticket in a general election. I'm not sure there's a single example of "fizzles early in her nomination quest and drops out before Iowa but becomes a powerful national standard bearer in a future cycle." But maybe I'm forgetting one.
*Though sure, all bets are off if she succeeds to the office and then runs as an incumbent to secure a whole term; it's hard to predict how things would unfold in such a scenario.
"she hasn't generated a compelling political brand or strong team of loyalists and supporters in DC."
She's the Vice President, man. *Had* she done those things, those would be compelling reasons for her boss to drop her from the ticket. Veeps are supposed to be subservient and wait their turn.
Say what? Undermining the president might get you dropped. But simply having your own, credible, influential coterie doesn't do that. Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden didn't get dropped. It's possible to be an important power center in one's own right as Vice President while *simultaneously* being a supportive asset the president can count on.
I can't emphasize enough that the VP, the VP pick and almost anything about the VP generally has basically negligible impact on elections. It makes for good fodder to fill column inches but beyond that it's electoral impact is almost certainly nothing.
Decades ago Presidents chose VP(s) to "balance the ticket" when electoral coalitions operated differently. But nowadays? Yeah not so much. And I include Palin and Pence with this. Palin generated a lot of news coverage and indeed was a canary in the coal mine for where GOP was heading, but actual practical impact? Yeah Obama's victory was much more about a) Thermostatic opinion change after 8 years of GOP in the WH b) charisma and political acumen of Obama himself and c) the Wall street crash in September 2008. As for Pence. Lots of commentary written how choosing Pence shored up Evangelical support for Trump. Um, what is the actual evidence for this? Much much more likely the answer is evangelical voters were going to "come home" by the election regardless of whether Pence was on the ticket or not.
Palin personally changed my vote away from McCain because I couldn't stand the thought of her being president.
That said, I don't think that changing Kamala Harris does the same thing - she hasn't been so bad in office that people can't stand the thought of her being President, she's just lackluster.
The "column inches"* thing does terrify me. We're facing eight months of a campaign with the same candidates and the same arguments as 2020. This is the most horrifying prospect political journalists can face. I tremble to think how they'll fill the time. Constant VP speculation (for both candidates). Intense dissection of every damn poll from here on out. Hyper-inflating speculation on every move Biden makes as President as to what it means for his prospects.
We would all be a lot better off if political journalists and pundits took a five month vacation, came back refreshed and ready to treat the election seriously.
(* I'm interested if anyone under the age of 50 here knows what a "column inch" is.)
RE: Pence. Further evidence for this is that the evangelicals are clearly in the Trump bandwagon today, and have cast aside Pence. If it was his values that really made much of a difference then you'd see those voters shifting in the same way Pence did. They didn't, and they supported Trump because they liked Trump, not because of his VP.
Easy to say in hindsight, but I don’t think that automatically tracks. Things actually were different in early 2016…Rs of all factions were looking for excuses to be ok with Trump, Pence gave the evangelicals a permission structure for evangelicals to tell their friends at church they could roll with him. Do we know now that they are all value-less hypocrites? Yes, but we didn’t at the time (and neither did they!)
That was absolutely the theory, but the advantage of hindsight is that we can see if that impact actually occurred. I think it's very obvious that it didn't. Sure, if Trump had nominated a lunatic or something that might have made an impact, but the reality is that any generic replacement republican would have been fine. Trump won in spite of all of his anti-evangelical behavior because evangelicals didn't actually care about all of that. And the ones who did didn't support him even though he chose Pence.
"Rs of all factions were looking for excuses to be ok with Trump"
I feel like it's only those of us who hate Trump who think this. Actual republican voters were fine with Trump, and had been the entire time. They loved the guy. We hate him so much that we refuse to believe it.
Lots of assertions in there, Colin. Allow me to counter-assert.
From my perspective, there are some notable exceptions to your point. Maybe Pence didn’t matter but I suspect Kaine did. Trump beat Clinton by a few thousand votes in a handful of rust belt states. Putting a folksy midwesterner on the ticket instead of (ugh) Virginian zero Tim Kaine would have signaled that Clinton was listening to the frustrated blue and gray collar crowd that flipped to Trump that Election Day. Kennedy beat Nixon by a handful of votes in 1960 - you think the outcome would have been the same in West Virginia if he had put another liberal Northeasterner on the ticket instead of a conservative Southerner?
I think you’re right in many cases (eg Reagan’s choice of Bush probably didn’t affect the outcome in 1980 or 1984) - but in elections won by a whisker (as 2024 is likely to be)…I think *everything* matters. And in an election where there’s an actuarially elevated chance of the VP assuming the top office? I have no data - but would assert - that Harris’s popularity assumes special importance in how - and more importantly whether - people vote.
I have to say your choice of Kaine as VP pick that mattered is kind of bizarre to me. Until you mentioned his name I had actually completely forgotten he was even on the ticket. In fact he was chosen precisely because he was so milquetoast.
I'd say the burden of proof is showing something did impact an election rather than the opposite. Forget just VP picks there's a lot of things from past elections that pundits assert as impactful that really weren't. My favorite example is Dukakis in the tank. It's the thing possibly brought up most from that election. And yet, what proof do we have it effected the election at all.
Speaking of 1988. See Dan Quayle. He was the butt of a zillion late night jokes and had one of the more famous "owns" in the VP debate. And it meant...square root of f**k all.
Since LBJ almost certainly was involved with manipulating the counting of votes in Texas in 1960 then, yes, there's a case that the choice of him as VP made a difference.
"I can't emphasize enough that the VP, the VP pick and almost anything about the VP generally has basically negligible impact on elections." But this year is a special case, given that Biden has quite a high chance of dying or becoming incapacitated before his term ends. Given the polls on Bidens' age, the electorate is well aware of this. This means that the quality of the candidate for Vice President is actually as significant as the candidate for President, and the Democrats are in a very poor position on that score.
At 80, actuary tables suggest a 4.7% to 7.5% chance of dying each year over the next 4 years. Presumably, given Biden's quality of medical care, he should be a bit safer. Nonetheless, ignoring that, he has about an 22% chance of dying. Not sure I would call that "quite high," but it does make me glad I am not 80.
If she were pushed off the ticket, there would be people who would be privately fine with it, but would feel like they couldn't be okay with it publicly, and those people would be extremely vocal about it.
The weird thing is, I don't think she wants to be president. Even when she was campaigning for the office, her staff complained they couldn't find her or reach her, and many quit before she dropped out of the race.
I was living in California, so I was watching Harris, but I was Elizabeth Warren all the way.
Playing devil's advocate, Nate Cohn found some "Harris but not Biden" voters in some of his previous polling. If I remember correctly, those people tended to skew younger and more left-wing. And while younger, left-wing folks need to suck it up and vote for Biden anyway, I can't imagine that removing Harris from the ballot would be helpful in achieving that.
Would be curious to know how Black Americans would feel about replacing Harris, but ultimately I think it's too late.
I think there are things Biden could maybe do differently, but yes, I'm mostly in agreement with you on Kamala Harris. That's a move he shouldn't make.
Maybe you’ve never met one in person but you know they exist right? These would be the people who claimed racism over Claudine Gay’s resignation. Think Joy Reed on MSNBC saying things like a white man is blaming his problems and scapegoating a black woman.
To continue your analogy, though... How would you expect Kamala to fare in a VP debate with Elise Stefanik? Worse than Claudine Gay -- and her Snotty Kamala "That little girl was me" delivery would be even less effective than Charlene's attempt to blame her Harvard ouster on racism.
Some black women might stand by her, but that ain't worth the trade-off. Heck, even John Fetterman (speech impediment included) would be a better foil.
How does Biden replace Harris without the message being, "Biden is a bad judge of talent" and have that reflect poorly on him?
And what confidence do you have that veep choice #2 would be a surefire thing? There's no obvious name beyond Whitmer and who knows how Whitmer would perform for the first time on the national stage?
Presidents don't replace their VPs. Heck, even Eisenhower kept Nixon. Yes, it was smart of FDR to replace Wallace and it was unfortunate for Lincoln to replace Hannibal Hamlin but we're talking ancient history here. (Rockefeller in 1976 wasn't elected.)
I think one thing you’re missing is who the replacement would be.
Would people be mad in the abstract if Harris was replaced with “someone else”? Maybe not a lot of people.
Would people be mad if the first non-white VP is replaced by a white person, and 2024 is an all white ticket? Yeah, a lot of the Democratic base and key groups would be upset.
Would people be mad if the first female VP was kicked off and it was an all-male ticket? Yeah, a lot of people would.
But if you wanted to replace Harris with another black woman, who are the candidates who would be better on the ticket than her?
"Liked," but does Georgia law preclude Warnock from running for his Senate seat simultaneously with running for VP? (Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 ran for both VP and re-election for his Senate seat in Texas at the same time.)
He's not running in 24 (having just won a full term in 22). But if they won, Kemp would appoint his replacement (until a special election could be held, presumably in 26).
There are things he can do about the border chaos with his presidential powers. He should use them and then blame Republicans and Trump for keeping the borders open in order to play politics.
Thanks for bringing up these details. I want to add another point to *why* he isn't doing this. One reason Biden liberalized asylum and parole policies is he cannot deliver for his party's interest groups in Congress. Congress is more anti-immigration than it was in 2013; there was never a chance of getting a bill like comprehensive immigration reform through the senate in 2021-2022. So he's stuck using these executive levers to increase legal immigration even as it pisses off American voters, including some of his own voters in major cities like Chicago and NYC with municipal budgets straining further.
No they didn’t. They gave Biden permission to end it. A few states
sued to stop him. He won the right to end it, he can absolutely implement it.
I think anyone who wants to help economic migrants from other countries should go to their country to help them and stop trying to release them here. Mexico is a fine place for them to wait. More americans live in Mexico than anywhere else in the world and it’s one of the few places Americans travel to.
The only reason why it started is because Biden reversed Trump policies that reduced illegal migration. Most of these people do not qualify for asylum. They are hoping to be released, because the chances of deportation are low once they are, even when they lose their claim.
My motivation is to keep economic migrants out and allow high skilled immigrants in. Also neutralize republican attacks and win so democrats can replace alito and Thomas. What’s yours?
What should Biden do? SOMETHING! Right now his brand is "I'll be nicer than Trump" and folks have plenty of reasons to think nice isn't working.
As to specific steps, NBC News had a LOL article today. Excerpts:
"The Biden administration is considering taking executive action to deter illegal migration across the southern border, according to two U.S. officials.
...
The plans have been under consideration for months, the officials said...
The unilateral measures under consideration might upset some progressives in Congress, the officials said, but they noted that Democratic mayors who have asked for more help from the federal government to handle the influx of migrants in their cities would be pleased. The measures are still being drafted and are not expected to take place any time soon."
Do let me emphasize "not expected to take place anytime soon".
What's this, the Hakuna Matata staff effort? No hurries, no worries chaps.
It's too late. He could have done that two years ago, but at this point the Republicans can (justly) criticize his proposals, and just run out the clock until they can get a President who will give them everything they want.
If those swing voters want something that can only be gotten by a bipartisan agreement, and Joe can't deliver it because the Republicans won't play ball, then it will matter significantly.
The "Yes, but..." is that this immigration compromise was a progressive cave-in with nothing for Dreamers or a pathway for the undocumented. It was only on offer because Team Biden is desperate.
If Biden wins this fall, this bill won't be revived. And if Trump wins (and, as is likely, Reps control the Senate), Team Red won't have 60 votes in the Senate. Trump won't have better luck next time than he did getting funding for the Wall when Reps controlled House and Senate in 2017/18.
All that said, Biden's message seems to be "I was set on fixing the border but the Senate Majority Leader and I were blocked by Trump."
C'mon, man, who's in charge here? WEAK!
Trump's message is a lot simpler and avoids a level of nuance most voters won't follow anyway: To fix the border, start by electing a guy who wants to fix the border. Biden let it run out of control for three years. Now he's promising to get tough, and he might even stay tough until the polls close on the West Coast next fall if his party lets him. With or without new powers, Biden wasn't and isn't going to deliver.
Despite Matt's exhortation, I'm kind of freaking out. Trump blew up the Rep party in 2015/16 with his immigration message, and this time around he seems to be on track to blow up the country.
I think an underrated reason for allowing in so many asylum claimants is to decrease inflation which has clearly worked. We needed the labor and they delivered
It wasn’t a republican wishlist, it was a chamber of commerce and democrat bill. Free Lawyers for minors paid for by tax payers, catch and release for minors and families, billions for ngos and a bunch of other non starters. The goal was to make an offer the republicans couldn’t refuse, this bill wasn’t it. Biden is the reason there are so many people being released into the country. Until democrats understand that most Americans do not want unlimited economic migrants arriving at our doorstop, they’ll lose on this issue.
They both should step aside. Too much ego to do that though. He can win, but he is going to have to make serious changes starting with the border and not doing interviews.
I'm sorry but the first paragraph is just a full blown Fox News lie. The writer of this Substack just recorded a podcast where he actually carefully explained the situation. I'd say maybe give that a listen first.
Nothing your saying is inaccurate, it's just your framing that comes across as Fox Newsy.
Minors with asylum claims are of course gonna need lawyers paid for because they're minors. Catch and release is an inevitability of how hard it is process and house migrants at the border, and even though Trump tried to end it, migrant surges in 2019 forced him to go back to releasing migrants into border towns. NGO's play a huge role in guaranteeing humanitarian conditions at the border. Supporting that work is something a developed and moral country like the United States is entitled to do.
It's kind of insane we're encouraging people to send their kids alone or with paid strangers to enter the US. Similar to Defund the Police, this is one of those ideas people get after seeing a really unfair or brutal news event, without thinking about the broader incentives this will change. Of course, back in the ancient years of 2014, major Democratic politicians understood exactly this problem and weren't afraid to point it out.
"Humanitarian conditions at the border"? In other words, if an intruder (aka "migrant") dies while trying to scale a razor-wire fence, it's the razor wire's fault? You'll have trouble getting a majority of voters to accept that!
As for "asylum"? If someone has fled from Honduras, they could be looking for work in Mexico City. They have no business being at the US border (let alone trying to scale a fence or ford a river) in the first place. That goes double if, in the process, they're putting their own children in harm's way!
This is not correct. I’m not sure where you are coming from, but Biden is very popular in the Dem Parry and they aren’t going step aside. You’ll need to take that fantasy somewhere else.
Nobody thinks that. Nobody. But Dems control who the party nominee is going to be and they aren’t going to outsource that. If that’s what it takes to win, they will lose. Fortunately, it’s not. It’s a Biden/Harris ticket. Get used to it.
You do understand however that high prices, ie inflation, ARE, the cost of getting everything you want here, right. They can't just be counteracted with a Presidential price-reducing button.
Ben - I've got another treat for you. Probably showed up in your push e-mail feed. I answered a question you asked me about how I applied my knowledge to speaking persuasively with swing voters.
Swingable D to R, R to D voters do not know that or think that.
Nor do even partisan well-wishers of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party like Stan Greenberg know or think that.
Even if we accept as a valid conclusion that some Biden policies have increased some industrial supply with some price controlling/limiting/constraining effect, it certainly was not a pushbutton act, nor mere force of will, but via multiple policy processes requiring some external cooperation and having to work against some real friction.
Well inflation is now down and real median wages have grown since July of last year. The main problem is there's no promise Democrats won't increase inflation again, since most of their party operative class believes ARPA was a big success and Larry Summers is a giant meanie head. If they get another trifecta, you can expect them to behave exactly as they repeatedly tell us they will.
Is there a promise that we will be saved from Trump's inflationary massive retail tariff tax by his own laziness or Senate or House GOP lack of cohesion on fiscally related bills?
GOP Congress will not stand for a massive increase in prices for consumer goods across the board. They already shot down a non-tariff consumption tax idea not unlike a VAT in 2017, and that was less disruptive than what Trump is suggesting due to monetary exchanges balancing out.
Of course, their lives would be easier if they had another public leader of the party...
Why is it that democrats passively “agree” to do something about the border as concession to the gop? If they can’t reach consensus why not advance their own border bill, daring gop to sink it ? The very fact that Dems position themselves as needing gop to force them to do something about the border is the best evidence that they are de facto the open borders party. It’s disastrous. Protecting the borders is at the top of the president’s most basic jobs.
>If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention.<
Most marginal or persuadable voters in fact *do not pay attention* to the detailed ebb and flow of legislative battles and policy struggles. They just see "border chaos."
In other words, the intersection of A) events and B) voter perceptions is unfair, capricious and uncaring—just like our cosmos.
That's what I typically think too. I'm not so sure in this case. It's campaign season and people will soon be paying more attention to politics than they typically do. And the President has a big bullhorn. He has a chance to make the case that Trump and the Republicans are undermining attempts to fix the border while the Democrats are trying to fix the problem.
If he doesn't make a big deal of this in the State of the Union, with Democrats standing and cheering fixing the border while Republicans sit on their hands and stare stonily forward, then *that* would be political malpractice. But he'll knock it out of the park, the media will make it a leading story (fingers crossed) and I suspect some of that will seep into the body politic. The border is typically a losing issue for the Democrats, but it's possible that the Republicans scored an own goal here.
Biden's ability to "knock it out of the park" is suspect. The fact that he is sitting out the Super Bowl and is essentially an invisible President bodes poorly for him giving a SOTU speech that will have any impact. I hope I'm wrong.
27 million Americans < 10% of the population. And what percentage of these viewers were Democrats/already in Biden's camp? (I'd guess above 90%.) Meanwhile, in 2023, 115 million watched the Super Bowl.
I agree with everything you’re saying with one exception: Biden isn’t TALKING about going strong on closing the border! He’s not saying “I agree with my Republican colleagues, the border is in chaos and must be fixed.”
This is of course a consistent pattern, that MY has pointed out: Biden pursues normie policy and puts out normie ads but his public presentation is almost entirely oriented towards pro-Palestine protestors blocking highways, and their equivalents for other issues. It’s more than a little bizarre. The constituency for “illegal immigration under the guise of asylum must be allowed to continue because immigration is a form of charity we provide to the less developed world” - I mean it’s gotta be a small fraction of even the Democratic Party right? And yet who else would Biden piss off if he showed up to a speech tomorrow and said “I am instructing the border people to shut down any illegal activity at the border, it’s a crisis”?
“ If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story. If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story.”
You think anyone believes Biden actually wants to get tough on the border when he waited until an election year to figure out there was a problem? I doubt he’ll be able to stick it to Republicans on the matter.
Ok so tomorrow he announces he’s asking the Vice President to step down so that he can appoint her to Secretary of State. Then he says he’s appointing Amy Klobuchar or Stacy Abrams or name your preferred running mate to be his VP.
Why would that cause a ‘civil war’ within the party that we’d never recover from? What does that even mean? Which bloc of voters is going to go running into Trump’s arms?
(Doesn’t matter because it’s not happening in a million years…LOL)
I'm not sure what he has to do exactly, but totally agree he's gotta start doing things that at least look big as demonstrations of agency. Trump always *felt* like he was doing stuff and he was master at setting the narrative. I think Biden's patience is why he's gotten a surprising amount of policy done, but it's time to get loud.
Correct, showing fire and energy would be the best way of looking not washed up. But does he still have the energy? Could he walk a mile in 15 minutes? 18? 20?
Last I heard he rides his bike a lot, which seems like a good sign that his physical fitness is sufficient.
But I have to say that Biden's gaffes over the last couple of days have me questioning his mental fitness more than ever. He does need to be out there more, and I'm sure he will be in the coming months, but I'm genuinely concerned that he's going to look completely unfit out there. And sure, Trump's mental fitness is worse imo, but voters will see it as a wash and vote for Trump because of immigration or because his term is perceived to be more successful or just because they are more entertained by him.
Or Trump has been saying weird stuff for ever, it's not "new" for him, but being too incoherent might be "new" for Biden (he has a little bit of a gaffe reputation which should cushion a bit, but not forever)
Confusing Macron for François Mitterrand, the former French president who died in 1996, does seem to lean more towards incoherence. It's getting tough to watch.
Let's see how he does in the State of the Union. He was pretty impressive last year. If he repeats that this year, that suggests he may do fine during the campaign, at least for big events where people are watching and making judgments.
Could Trump walk a mile in 20 minutes? Trick question! Trump walking a mile, yeah right.
Yes, the anti-Kamala punditry was always cope among Dem-leaning pundits. While she's not a great politician, she's not that terrible of a politician either. The Democrats have other bigger problems.
Kamala wouldn't do much better vs. Trump, but not really because she is disliked. The problem is that Dems have been in the presidency 3 out of the last 4 cycles, and the electorate always swings away from the president.
This ought to be a "scheduled loss" for Dems. The fact that it is Trump instead of a vanilla republican is the only thing giving Dems a prayer.
I don't think she's the problem with the ticket. I agree 100% with that. Running mates seldom if every cause ticket much of a problem.*
The problem with Harris as I see it is there are blinking neon signs she'd make a poor nominee for the presidency. As long as she's not the nominee, she's not a problem.
*Not that it would ever have happened in any imaginable universe, Hillary Clinton being what she is, but I do think there's a case to be made that the obvious move in 2016 was for her to run with Bernie Sanders. So, in this one instance, although I don't think Kane qua Kane actively harmed the ticket, I do think there was probably a missed opportunity there. But we'll never know.
I think that would be a mistake. You can't convince people not to vote for Trump by behaving like Trump--they will just vote for the real thing, rather than the ersatz copy. Biden has to handle the border issue in a "Biden" way, which probably means some kind of bipartisan deal making.
>You can't convince people not to vote for Trump by behaving like Trump<
Says who?
Serious question. Also, your "behaving like Trump" is loaded language. Is a muscular use of military power to defend the border something only Trump would do? I think Eisenhower did it, too. And some earlier presidents (around the time of the Mexican Revolution?).
I personally don't believe the border situation is a crisis. I think it's a problem. But it doesn't matter what this particular Slow Boring reader thinks. What matters is what a middle-aged non-degreed food service worker in the exurbs of Detroit thinks.
Then let’s go with “Trump is wrong about immigrants. Immigrants are great. Immigrants are America. Blah blah blah. However border chaos is unacceptable. That’s why I’m demanding republicans give me emergency powers to shut down asylum claims until the border is under control.”
I guess I'm confused by your language. It sounds like you are positing that the people surrendering to CBP are actually some kind of fifth column intent on overthrowing the US government by force of arms and occupying its lands on behalf of a foreign power, and that seems...highly unlikely to me.
But if you and I agree that we are talking about refugee / immigrant flows, that's just kind of a different problem than the sorts of problems that you solve with a modern combined-arms military, which is what the the United States military is. Admittedly you can treat the military as though it's just a spare source of human labor--there are a lot of humans in the military--but that is going to create a lot of downstream problems for precisely the reason that you would predict when you use a group trained for one thing to do another thing.
The military first job is to protect the territorial sovereignty of the country. A border out of control open to all and sundry (including some on the terrorist watch list) is a security issue. Using the help of the military under this emergency situation is not a priori some kind of trumpian constitutional aberration. That’s all I’m saying.
I think you are talking yourself into a hyperbolic stance, here. The border is not "out of control [and] open to all"; if the Canadian government decided to try and capture back Maine, or if the Mexicans decided to mount a surprise invasion of Texas, they would struggle to achieve their objectives. Red Dawn is a movie, rather than a plausible future outcome of Sino-American competition, and if you get those confused, it takes you to some weird, expensive, and ultimately non-optimal places.
I think it is fair to say that more refugees and illegal immigrants are crossing the southern border than is optimal, from a policy standpoint. This is clearly not our preferred way to get to One Billion Americans. But the things that the American military does best--information-assisted precision bombing, high-mobility land warfare utilizing mechanized infantry in combination with heavy cavalry and standoff fire support, that sort of thing--are not great ways to interdict refugee flows.
So that kind of leaves you with this question which is, "what, precisely, are you expecting the big green machine to DO at the border?" I assume your answer is some version of "roll out razor wire and start shooting migrants." And I'm saying that is going to be 1) very expensive, 2) capacity intensive since the border is long, and our number of soldiers is finite, and basing + logistics is complicated, 3) very likely a PR disaster, and 4) probably not sustainable for any length of time because of 1, 2, and 3.
And you don't have to take my word for it; you have seen, quite recently, what happens when we use the military for stuff other than land warfare. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan in the post-invasion period was regarded as some kind of major shining moment for the United States.
Like, I get it: the uniforms and the guns and stuff look incredibly tough and cool, and "defend the border" rhetoric sounds awesome. Insert gif here of eagle with talons extended superimposed over MLRS launch.
But tools and organizations are built for specific missions and purposes, and people are trained for specific jobs. If you want to solve a problem that is, "I feel that too many refugees and immigrants are crossing the border and surrendering to CBP under false pretenses," the answer to that problem is never going to be, "so I think we should hit them with some JDAMs."
We need more CBP agents and asylum court staff, not the military.
You only have convince a relatively small % of still undecided voters.
And given the media ecosystem being favorable/predisposed towards Democrats overall*, they can probably control the narrative long enough make the necessary impact.
*except explicitly right-wing media, which undecideds are probably not tuning into.
The idea that the VP choice affects the election is a continuing fantasy. Maybe the really egregious choice, like Sarah Palin, might have a small effect. Is Harris as bad as Palin? I'm not seeing it.
I think Palin is a good example of how the Trump effect has dumbed down the expectations the electorate has for our politicians. There's an endless list of things Trump has said that are more ignorant than "I can see Alaska from my house."
Yeah I was paraphrasing the SNL version. But I can see Russia from the state I govern was still essentially her response to the question, and she didn't actually come out as being some whiz on the US/Russia relations.
Point being, some people kind of credit Palin with dragging down the whole ticket. Trump was rhetorically way worse! And won.
I think it's more important this time because the statistical odds of something happening to Biden and the VP taking over are not trivial. But overall, I don't think it's going to have a huge influence. But I think the administration would do itself some favors if it would improve Harris' image such that she would be more widely seen as able to competently fill the role if/when needed.
I think they missed a bet by not putting her out there on crime issues, like Matt recommended. Having her be point person on abortion is great, but it's not going to assuage swing voters' doubts about her.
I have no idea why people are so fixated on Harris. Yes, she is unpopular. No, NO ONE WHO MATTERS CARES.
The population of people who are a) right leaning and b) hate Harris are pretty far right. Among them, there are no voters for whom you could add a c) and would vote for Biden if you replaced her.
A lot of people pay lip service to it mattering, but if you swapped her with someone "liked", they'd shrug their shoulders, mutter about their pet peeve topic and how Biden messed it up for them, and still vote Trump. The way to fix the problems is to focus on the ISSUES, not the irrelevant vice president ticket (and yes, I know it's relevant because he's old. Still doesn't matter to any swing voters).
"The way to fix the problems is to focus on the ISSUES, not the irrelevant vice president ticket "
I'd like to see some polling on that, specifically focused on undecided/swing voters. From what I've seen, most of those undecided voters are uh... not well-informed on the issues. Like, they have no idea what the Inflation Reducation Act was, or how the US is supporting Ukraine. A lot of them know basically nothing. But they DO know who the vice president is, because she's a visible symbol of the country.
Isn't that Matt's point? The Biden administration needs to do a better job of communicating why they are better on those issues, and why the Trump administration would be terrible on those issues.
Obviously partisans aren't going to give a crap about the issues, they just vote for "their guy" anyway, but it's swing voters we're talking about.
If you think a random person who knows nothing about the issues truly knows or cares about Harris, you are very mistaken. Only partisans really care about Harris. The types of voters who are super uninformed about politics barely know who the VP is.
And by the way, Harris isn't really disliked by the center that much. I, for instance, and a barely-left-of-center voter, like many on this substack, and I honestly have no idea what she really does day to day or why so many people like you are so upset with her. I can honestly say I have never had a strong opinion one way or another about her. I think people that dislike her are very "online", and that's not the normie voter. And about 99% of swing voters are normie voters.
He seems to think that a good campaign can educate those voters on the issues.
I am much more cynical and think that it's hopeless to even try. You'd have to round them up and force them to attend a grade school class on "how does government work" and "where are all these countries" before they'd even begin to understand.
"Closing the border" is not a thing. You need to make legal changes to asylum law and provide more judges to adjudicate cases quickly, which is what Dems agreed to!
This is so incredibly wrong and doesn't even begin to make sense.
The immigration thing is a canard that Dems cannot win, and it's obvious, and we see that now with the bill. Rebs are sabotaging the border, and will always move the goalposts.
The best thing to do is call their bluff.
And "replace Kamala" is way easier said than done, which is particularly obvious because you didn't make a proposal.
The Reb rhetoric attacking her as the next eventual president is going to be absolutely unhinged, racist and sexist, but swapping out VP is not going to make Dems seem strong and unified and capable. Any replacement will then get skewered for replacing "a strong independent black woman" or whatever.
Like this is so comically wrong you must be trying to give out bad advice.
Yesterday Dems tried to pass the Border/Defense bill that they negotiated with Rebs, and then none of the Rebs voted for it.
The Dems then went on TV and said "Rebs are not doing any of the things they said they would do and want to keep the chaos going and abandon our allies"
That message works with _me_ but that sounds like the guy you were saying was wrong who said:
"The border has been an obvious problem since day 1 of his term, and there's no evidence he's willing to do anything except blame Republicans. Zero swing voters are going to believe this."
I mean, that's just blaming Republicans for it. I happen to think they _deserve_ the blame here, but I guess I thought you were advocating something different.
Being willing to sign a bill into law that would allow him to shut down the border the day he signed it is absolutely being WILLING to do something. Blaming republicans for not passing that bill is different than being completely indifferent to the problem while blaming others. He can't sign a bill that they won't present to him.
Insofar as people might engage with the details, I think they will wonder why Biden doesn't just do it anyway. That the courts may block him sounds like whining to a lot of voters. They want to see him at least try like Trump did.
Nobody really votes because of the VP though and firing a loyal and scandal free VP would be a pretty big deal that could easily blow up in Biden's face. Imagine if her allies (or even her!), furious at what they see as a personal betrayal, go on the morning show circuit to deliberately tell stories that make Biden look like a old dufus who's totally out to lunch. Imagine the Thomas Eagleton blowback, but supercharged and dominating social media. Wouldn't be pretty. There's a reason presidents rarely dump their VPs, the costs can be extreme.
I'm so with you on the disconnect between the fear-mongering about democracy and lack of follow-through.
I disagree about replacing Kamala though. I think it's all downside and no upside for Biden. I don't think there are a bunch of marginal voters out there who are going to swing to the Biden side with a VP switch. And the downside would significant - all the media focused on the decision, noting how rare it was to replace a VP, noting the optics of a white man essentially firing the first black female VP, etc. I don't know what alternative VP would be worth that.
And on the border, the die is cast. Democrats did nothing about it until the GoP forced them into this latest deal before the GoP did a 180 and played Lucy with the football. There isn't much Biden can do, and he's got a three year track record he has to deal with that can't be undone. The GoP demanding a deal and then reneging does, at least, give Biden and Democrats something to campaign on and is better than what they had before.
If you give an eff about democracy and are blue, but live in a hard red or blue state, expend your savings or go into debt to move into a purple state while you can still establish legal residency before the election. It works faster to change the location of butts and feet than the changing of minds and messages.
If you're not willing to do that much, you must not care all that much.
The border situation is worse than that. He stepped in Day 1 with this frothy proclamation terminating the border "emergency" and re-allocating the boarder wall funds - only to have to walk it back two years later when it continued to spiral out of control. Total misstep and I still can't believe he walked into it.
2. She's 59! Somebody younger is the key thing we need?
3. What's wrong with her again? Is there *anything* that's not just vague grumbling?
4. People don't vote the bottom of the ticket.
Meanwhile...you say go strong on the border. And I'm scratching my head cause I just watched the administration ply the GOP like a fiddle on that issue, getting them all to admit on air they are purposefully keeping that issue smoldering for Trump's benefit. What exactly do you want Biden to do here that he's not already doing?
I want Biden to have the grace and wisdom to acknowledge that he no longer has the vigor to be President. He should then let the Democratic Party know that he will not run for re-election. They should then pursue a new candidate. It is true that Kamala is not the problem - Joe is the issue. I think the team around him is looking after their own interests and would ride that horse until it dies in the Oval Office. That may happen.
I think it's underappreciated what the Administration did on the SPR in the midterms, which was opposed by the enviro world, which is weird when compared to this LNG pause. But I think the argument with the SPR was that it would only have short term consequences and the LNG pause is, supposedly, not going to change any prices now.
Until coverage shifts to election mode, voters will continue to act as if they don’t know who people are or what they think of them. Clinton is an excellent example here: until she was once again clearly identified as a political figure, she was deceptively popular.
Yes, this. I'd also add that I live in a 80% dem city in a purple state that was decisive in 2020, and my far left friends have all told me they told some pollster that they didn't approve of Biden and weren't going to vote for him because of (I/P, climate, or some other idiosyncratic agenda item). ALL OF THEM!!! Like, not one said they supported him. They're not going to vote third party either, so they just straight up lied about their plans to vote because they think saying they won't vote for Biden will drive him to the left. I've chewed out a few of them for being irresponsible given the Trump threat.
They also have nooo idea about the crazy shit Trump and Steven Miller are planning on doing, like using red state national guard troops to round up millions of migrants and putting them in internment camps before deporting them, firing the entire management of all federal agencies and replacing them with loyalists, just to name two.
I have wondered about the issue with approval ratings in this election cycle. Biden's is terrible, but a large portion of people who disapprove him must disapprove Trump more. That said, I think the far-left pushing Biden is why this thing is even close. It sounds like you pointed this out to your friends so this is not a dig at you...just an observation more generally.
Absolutely. I visited family this weekend and no one one was even thinking about the election. The thing that was on everyone’s mind was Taylor Swift (Grammys + upcoming Super Bowl). It’s anecdotal, but I get the sense normies aren’t really ready to be put through the ringer of election season
Right, we've still got a third of the country that doesn't believe it's Trump v. Biden II. We're reaching the point where it's election season, but please come back in May.
What I have been wondering is where Biden actually is. The collapse of the immigration deal gives him a prime opportunity for a national address on the subject. Maybe he announces whatever unilateral executive action he feels he can get away with without legislation. He should definitely say where he is on the subject and where he is should be a lot more hawkish than where it has been. I know parts of the Democratic coalition would not be happy about that but we really have to start thinking big picture trade offs. If this really is a democracy is on the ballot election then exchanging harder line immigration policy (or more hardline, totally unnecessary military support for Israel, or whatever) in order to save it is a complete no brainer. And yet one doesn't get the sense that D leadership or the administration is thinking in those terms.
It's funny, I've never bought that line, even in the Bush II days where civil libertarian critiques were briefly fashionable. However this is the one time I can think of where it might actually be, given that a major party is in fact nominating a guy who, however ham-fisted, actually tried some bizarro scheme involving fake electors, trying to intimidate state election officials, some legalistic sounding nonsense about the counting process, and a mob of buffoons ready to fun interference.
I mean have you read about project 2025? They are explicitly saying they will drastically expand executive power, purge non Trump fanatics from the government, and use the riot act to deploy the military to democratic cities. Trump being too disorganized to enact his autocratic wishes in his first term doesn't mean people were wrong for pointing out the dangerous stuff he was trying to do and now has a better plan for
Hey, I don’t want the guy to be president, but not because I fear an authoritarian regime. I just think his economic policies are asinine. Same reason I don’t want to see Biden reelected. Well, that, and because his wife strikes me as, at best, of average intelligence.
You ask a key question: where is Biden? I think a lot of people are wondering who exactly is in charge, as it does not appear to be Biden, who is in cognitive decline
Biden is in charge. His presidency has been fine. Where his age is a big problem is that he can't reliably execute a communications strategy. A younger candidate could.
>What makes you say Biden is in cognitive decline?<
This week he mentioned a meeting three years ago with Helmut Kohl, who was not the German Chancellor at that point, nor a living human being. The week before he mentioned Francois Mitterand, another dead ex European leader, when he meant Macron:
>The collapse of the immigration deal gives him a prime opportunity for a national address on the subject. Maybe he announces whatever unilateral executive action he feels he can get away with without legislation.<
It seems to make sense to do this on a surface level. And maybe he will. But, I'll remind you that there are a number of moving parts, including aid to Ukraine and Israel. In other words, the White House and congressional Democrats are likely at a sensitive point right now in terms of salvaging important national priorities, and the time to have such a talk with the American people may not have (yet) arrived. Though that time may come very soon. Sometimes the national interest and a president's political self-interest don't perfectly match. Stay tuned.
And the incredible, inescapable difference between Biden and Trump is that for Trump that calculus not only gets settled the other way, it never even occurs as an idea.
Biden is a more than averagely competent President who has at his core a desire to serve the American people first and last. Trump is a narcissist who if he cares about serving anyone other then himself, it is only after himself, and then only those people who worship him. If being good at your job, demonstrably better than the person who had the job before you, doesn't get you reelected, then our system just doesn't work, and I'm not sure what can be done about that.
He’s not going to make the address this week. The smoke has to clear and there’s a non-zero chance that chaos among the Republicans will create openings for either rhetoric or legislation that can’t be anticipated. But if the picture is the same in a couple weeks, failure to make that address would be gross political malpractice.
I see the same kind of cope from many Democrats as I noticed among Republicans in the 2012 election. The polls are wrong and sampling is biased and are not reflective of the strength of the candidate, etc. A lot of people genuinely believe that the Trump’s legal troubles will sink him. It’s possible but people have been saying some version of this is the final nail in his coffin for the last 8 years and I wish they would focus more on how the Democratic party can become more popular with moderate positions on immigration and climate change and less of the identity politics that moderates centrists/independents like me don’t like.
I don’t believe that Trump’s legal troubles will sink him, but I do believe that Trump will sink himself. If you look back on his presidency, he was always least popular when he was heavily in the spotlight, and his popularity improved when he stayed quiet.
Right now, Trump is staying largely quiet. People haven’t really been reminded why they dislike him. As we get closer to election day and the race has crystallized to Trump vs Biden, I am confident Trump will again become less appealing.
This is another cope. He has been around for 8 years. He's in the news a lot. Twitter/X is not real life and most voters never followed him or read his tweets.
By that logic, why should Trump’s popularity have fluctuated at all during his presidency?
And I’m not talking about Twitter, I’m talking about Trump saying incoherent and/or deranged stuff (or honestly even spouting basic GOP talking points on things like taxes and health care) in front of a microphone. When he did that, he got less popular. He hasn’t been doing that much lately. When he starts, thermostatic public opinion suggests he will get less popular.
A President's favorability rating is tied to several aspects of the performance. It's not like Biden's rating wouldn't have taken a hit if he had taken a vow of silence when there was high inflation. Trump's erratic handling of the pandemic played a big part in his loss. It was an international crisis and people were scared and looking for steady leadership. He has been saying things that no normal politician has said before. If that was a huge factor, he would have never won the Republican primary in 2016. I find it very unpersuasive that Trump will say something that'll tank his 2024 campaign but Biden won't.
Polling showed that Trump's own popularity affirmatively went up during the roughly two weeks he stayed quiet after the Access Hollywood tape came out.
Well said. One of my great hopes is that when people are reintroduced to (a clearly declining) Trump after not having thought much about him for some years, they'll go, "Eww, what was I thinking. I can't believe I used to date this guy."
I think this is right, but once it becomes clear that the race is a very obviously declining Trump vs. a possibly similarly declining Biden, it’s going to get weird. People are going to be very frustrated that these are their choices, moreso than 2016.
I'm an educated old Democrat living in a swing state (NC). I think the party is engaged in a weird kind of ritual suicide, and I hope they can recover from the madness. The economy has improved recently. Thank God, the national Democrats finally took some steps against illegal immigration. If they can now end a self-destructive culture war, end the lunatic "defund the police" mentality, and stop bemoaning "the deplorables," perhaps Mr. Biden can win the 2024 election.
I don't mean this as a dig or a disagreement, but when people talk about Defund the Police in 2024, I have no idea what they're talking about about. The platform only ever had purchase with a vocal, outsider class (not to say that didn't have a big impact) and pretty much went away in 2021, when it was clear how unpopular it was.
What does Biden do about that? That's not a smug declaration that I'm smarter than the dopes who fall for this. What does he do? Who does he denounce? What does he say?
The border deal going down seems like a good opportunity for Biden to here.
The slogan has gone away. But the idea of limited enforcement against criminal behavior continues, as witnessed by the release of the illegal immigrants who attacked police officers in NYC. Sanctuary laws don't allow cooperation with ICE and bail reform measures meant letting them walk.
Insane story. Illegal immigrants can and should be deported for that fact alone. To release them rather then deport them after they attack someone (esp the police) is insanity. If I were conspiracy driven I’d say the gop is behind this, but I prefer hanlon’s razor.
Look into Mary Moriarty the new progressive Dem prosecutor in Hennepin County. She is deeply unpopular locally, basically every prominent statewide Democrat has distanced themselves from her politically. There is locally a news story every week about a criminal she's letting of free with no consequences. The Biden Admin response? Send the Justice Department to celebrate her soft on crime accomplishments that are deeply unpopular in one of the bluest parts of the country. https://www.startribune.com/head-of-dojs-youth-justice-office-hails-hennepin-countys-reform-efforts/600340679/
At some point you can't just blame your staffers for every unpopular choice your administration makes.
In New York, stuff like this happens every day. Criminals accumulate dozens of arrests for serious crimes, for which they are let out without bail. Shoplifting gang members walk if they are caught at all. A lot of people in the City Council still explicitly support "defund the police." In any case the damage is done - it has given the police a reason to be lazy and hesitant again, so all the managerial reforms that led to the dramatic crime reductions in the late 1990's are undone and need to be done again.
Overall crimes are statistically much more frequent than they were 10 years ago. Not murder (which was mostly gangs) but all the "minor" and not-so-minor crimes - burglary, car theft, etc. are way up. The secret sauce is the lack of policing.
It makes a different that New Yorkers live on top of each other. I'm in the subway and on the sidewalks every day, unarmored by a motor vehicle. (but at least I don't have to worry about getting carjacked)
Not the incident per se, but the laws that have weakened bail measures and sanctuary laws. These changes have happened in other jurisdictions also, not only in NYC.
"Defund the police" was a widespread slogan several years ago. While media doubtless amplified it, the slogan mirrored (at least for a while) the sincere opinion of maybe 10% of Democrats. It was catchy and memorable, and aligned with views often considered characteristic of the party. It will take strong and consistent messaging to the contrary to persuade voters (especially non-aligned voters in swing states) that Democrats aren't anti-police.
Actually a number of police agencies saw budget decreases. Apologists for the idea like to point to the fact that most of the decreases were "only" in the 5% range or so.
What that fails to recognize is that most agency's have fixed budgets for personnel, training, facilities, equipment, and cost of living raises built into contracts. A 5% budget cut basically does away with any funds to do things like respond to increase in homicides. Portland saw a several hundred percent increase in homicides in the two years after defunding the police (went from a 10 year average of 22 homicides a year to over a 100).
In fact, the city had five homicides in the first five months of 2020, including during COVID, and then after they cut the gang team in June there were like 15 in month. Here's the open data website
Nationally there was the largest increase in homicides ever...and it is only now coming back down. Again, people like to blame COVID but if you look at the data the raise did not start until after George Floyd. Now I am sure there were many more factors than just funding...and I'll concede that the defunding was really a symptom of a more general issue...that said, anyone deny this trend is just gaslighting people.
A substantial part of that 10% took it to mean ""withhold funding until changes are made" not "withhold funding to eliminate the police department." I don't know anyone (other than Republicans) who took it to mean "stop paying the police."
I've heard this argument, and doubtless some who supported the demand believed as you say. But some didn't. The words are pretty clear in any case. I cannot imagine a policeman who wouldn't interpret the slogan in the way that I believe it was originally intended.
I would also add Oregon's decriminalization of drugs. It looks like that is going to be removed but only after a two-year 70% increase in fatal overdoses), but it is fodder for the rest of the country to point to incredibly stupid ideas. The Dems should have stuck with the Bill Clintion idea of not being outflanked on crime...
Your recitation of the facts here is wrong. Attacking a police officer is a crime that legitimates pretrial detention under the bail reform law. DA Bragg's office failed to oppose release for unclear reasons but possibly because their understanding of the facts was murky (the one who committed the most serious violence was detained). Non-cooperation with ICE has nothing to do with public safety--you think there aren't US citizens who commit violent acts?
There is still a Democratic majority on my city council that is blocking us from reaching legally mandated police staffing levels because they believe less police will make us safer.
Great points Richard - as someone who is center-right and still undecided (hoping for a No-Labels candidate) the issues you cited are toxic to me and would push away from Biden.
I can't help but notice that Biden ran on the notion of uniting the country and working with the right to restore a semblance of fair government. That seemingly lasted a month at best as he has catered to the progressive wing far more than the other side of the aisle and I think it may ultimately cost him this go around. Quite frankly, I think the center left probably has a better winning platform, but they have to stop the own goals if they want to win.
FYI I joined no labels early when I believed it was a group dedicated to reducing the toxic tribal partisan divide. I no longer believe that; I understand why you would be tempted to vote for a third party but I think it’s unrealistic in the US
A third party pulls the outcome to be more (not less) extreme because in a winner take all election, the parties who are closest to middle end to splitting the vote... And losing. See: Bush Nader Gore 2004, or primary races vs the general
Just my thoughts...I would not vote a third party if I lived in a swing state, but for most of America I think it would be very healthy to have a large third party vote in non-swing states.
First, it would remove any kind of perceived mandate. A president who wins in the low 40% range would have an easier time resisting the crazier elements of their party. Similarly, if enough people voted outside the mainstream it might pull one of the parties to the middle.
>That seemingly lasted a month at best as he has catered to the progressive wing far more than the other side of the aisle<
People see what they want to see. I'm no exception. But apparently neither are you. Biden's hardly a member of the The Squad. He has:
1) Pivoted hard to fighting inflation (Inflation Reduction Act) and deficit reduction.
2) Resolutely used US military power in aggressive fashion.
3) Refused to give an inch to the Hamas-sympathy crowd.
4) Engaged in wall building along our southern border.
5) Been positively Rubio-esque in his China policy. He's vowed multiple times to go war with Beijing if Taiwan is attacked; he's increased the number of US forces on that island; he's hit China's tech sector with blistering sanctions, and shot down a Chinese balloon.
6) Worked with the GOP and bucked his own left wing in rejecting DC criminal sentencing rules on grounds they're too lenient with offenders.
7) He has on multiple occasions publicly rejected calls to "defund" the police, and he has hit hard at Republicans for proposing budget cuts to the FBI.
If what you're really sore at is that Joe isn't a right winger, just say so. You've got the Orange Option if that's the way you want to go. But Biden's been a solid centrist all his career, and continues to remain so. I expect will see more visible moves to the center as he consolidates the party around him.
If the Afghan government wasn't able to hold out for even two full weeks without active US military support, there was no hope for it, and that cake was fully baked before Biden ever took office.
Seems like a lot of effort went into a deal in the Senate only to have Trump shiv the Republican deal makers (who seem to have negotiated a good deal).
I'm not sure I understand your point, but perhaps it's that these issues I'm complaining about are all in the past and therefore no longer relevant. I'd say that Democrats continue to lead a culture war. As to the other points, once a group has gained a reputation for particular views, it takes a lot of work to modify that reputation.
You appear to be complaining about ideas never once supported by Biden. What I’ve found remarkable is how well Republicans have been at tying all Democrats to positions not broadly supported by most Democrats. It certainly reduces the incentive for moderates to act as actual moderates.
I generally agree with you, though the Biden administration has promoted a number of initiatives I disagree with, whose purpose seems to be primarily to keep the left wing of his party onboard. On the other hand, I'd say that Democrats are also pretty good at tying the most bizarre fringe Republican views to the Republican party as a whole...
The difference is that the fringe actually runs the Republican Party in many ways, starting at the very top of the ticket. It isn’t necessarily an ideological fringe, at least not a consistently ideological one. But it plainly is a fringe more interested in fighting democrats than working where is common ground.
All you're describing are the incentives for Republicans to lead a culture war, digging up, reheating, and exaggerating all these age old issues for their reputational harm, rather than any effective policy discussions.
I appreciate the clarity of your headline and agree fully. I would go so far as to say the party is in full denial every time a poll comes out. I think we could use some elected high profile Democrats who are obviously backing Biden to say as much, or at least act like it.
I've noticed an uptick in messaging sharpness and intensity from Biden since the new year, but I was hoping for a faster ramp up. He's gotta get out there. Fast. Let Biden be Biden.
Fixing the border chaos and patiently waiting for the economy to fully turn and this to be seen by voters. The perception of the country doing poorly is mostly about uncontrolled immigration and inflation hang over
Really good economic performance over the next few months. I'm confident opinion about the economy will change (it's already started). And the message has to tie Biden and his program with that trend (while at the same time looking forward to how he'll make things better in the future, and Trump won't).
There's still months to go, but absent some external felicity, I'm not sure the *existing* Democratic record is enough to make voters care anymore, no matter how suavely it's messaged. What potential new trump (sorry) cards could be realistically played instead? Matt's not sure of any concrete actions, besides the generic tack-to-center manoevre that's table stakes for SB. All the high-visibility stuff is, as noted, running significant gaffe risk...there's a different risk profile between "swing for the fences" and "bunt to steal first". I dunno, I guess I keep hoping to see Hardball Mode activated, but am not sure what the actual plays would be. Smartly punching right like Matt did with Trump's Terrible Tariff Tax is...not a muscle I feel this administration knows how to flex effectively anymore. (It'd probably warp into some tired old "disproportionately hurts bipoc" applause light, the copy writes itself.)
Even if staff kept message discipline on Trump's Terrible Tariff Tax, you can't stop members of Dem constituencies from muddying the waters by going off-script with some tired old "disproportionately hurts bipoc" riff. But that off-scriptness and moth-to-the-flame attraction is unfixable and will be around forever, so don' squash good ideas because of the extra static that may come.
> not a muscle this administration knows how to flex effectively anymore
Did they ever? Every time Biden himself tried to do that, some staff idiot would write the “disproportionately hurts BIPOC” press release after the fact.
Sorry, it would have been more accurate to write "the Democratic Party" or somesuch. I don't think Biden has been especially deferential to the left flank in terms of actual results (part of why I like him), but you're right that the messaging tends to get spiced up with kritik like everything else. If only the median voter had a laser focus on revealed preferences rather than rhetorical innovations.
My sense is that the elites understand what the polls mean and have been discussing the situation internally [1]. However, I haven’t seen this translate into action, and I’m not convinced they’d take proper action anyway. E.g. the 2020 election was really close, which doesn’t suggest that Biden ran a strong campaign. But Biden is turning to the same people that ran the 2020 campaign despite the fact that 2024 is shaping up to be more difficult than 2020.
The root is fear. Fear of losing can drive both bed wetting AND shouting about polls being wrong. The fear is fear of failure fundamentally. If you think all effort is doomed you bedwet, if you refuse to face the fact that effort is needed you ignore.
Hadn’t considered the idea that Dems relative success in 2022 has mollified the typical hand wringing that leads to a pivot to the center in an election year. 2012 might’ve been the most impressive election campaign of my life and it almost certainly doesn’t happen if Obama doesn’t get shellacked and adjusts accordingly.
Here's the question I've not seen a good answer to in regards to current polling. Multiple polls show a) Trump winning 18-29 year olds and b) Trump getting north of 30% of the African American vote and even up to 40%.
I know electoral coalitions change over time. And obviously every election has swing voters. And yes in 2020, we did a small shift of African American voters to Trump from 2016 to 2020. But someone needs to explain to me the dramatic shifts we've seen in polling. The polling of African American voters would mean one of the biggest one-time shifts in voting behavior in American history. And on issue after issue, 18-29 year olds have views to the left of the median voter (and yes that includes men. See Noah Smith's post yesterday; that viral chart from FT going around is very misleading. While young men are probably not as liberal as young women, that chart showing wild divergence (at least in America) is likely a version of chart crime).
So let's say for the sake of argument that this isn't non-response bias or issues with polling in general right now. Let's take these polls at face value. Someone needs to explain to me what the issue is that would cause one the biggest shifts in voting behavior from two separate groups from one election to the next we've ever seen. What issue, what policy could explain such a dramatic shift.
Upwards of 30% of black voters in some surveys identify as conservative (I don't recall seeing a number thrown at black voters who would be moderate/swing). However, voting behavior has not reflected political opinion within the African American community. The argument has generally been that black voters have remained in lock-step with the DNC due to the social networks/in-group dynamics rather than because they align politically.
So one plausible explanation is that social networks within African American communities are fraying; if group dynamics are exerting less pressure on individuals, then they may vote more in-line with their political views. Throw in the fact that the civil rights era figures in the Democratic party are mostly gone at this point, the portion of voters that lived through Jim Crow and remember the civil rights act are fading... some of the levers that have generated good will towards Democrats are no longer there.
I can buy some of this for sure. I would chuck in the church. The most religiously observant group in this country is still African Americans. But the role of the church and how that drove (and drives voting) is pretty well established. And like the rest of the electorate, religious attendance is declining especially among the young. But unlike rest of the electorate, this could have effect of shifting African American vote to the right.
But I come back to the size of the shift. Going from like 8% to maybe 12% or 15% would be a big shift. Going to 25%. Like the decline in religious attendance (and other social network fraying) is a slow burn process. It shouldn't result in this dramatic a shift this quickly (And if I'm not mistaken it's concentrated almost entirely among men. So what is the issue that could explain this.
To get where I'm coming from. There has been a lot reporting about how Arab American voters in Dearborn Michigan may shift their vote in November. Now this would probably be a mistake as Trump has shown himself to be way way more pro Netanyahu than Biden (and has said on the campaign trail he'd basically give Netanyahu whatever he wants). But at least I understand what may actually cause such a massive shift in voting. The Gaza war is very deeply personal and important to this group voters. I get why this issue could change this group of voters voting behavior. But African American vote and 18-29 year old vote? What is the mechanism?
I'm dancing around this, but it just seems to me the Occam's razor explanation is issues with polling and non-response bias. I've said before but the lack of competitive primary on either side is means a lot of comparison to recent previous races is probably really flawed. Again, I think a subtle but real shift in POC voting is probably happening. And I am really open to the idea there is a particular policy that might be causing a very extreme shift all at once. But what is it.
On the Arab note, I think similarly to Blacks, there is a noticeable difference between their social preferences and the Democratic party. Both groups are MUCH more conservative than white liberals who run the Democratic party and related organs.
It's certainly possible that the polling data is really flawed. I would not be surprised if this was the case, but I also think the Democrats would be foolish to bet on that possibility. Even a more conservative swing to 15% would be pretty big hit to Biden's re-election chances (especially if it's distributed as a bigger swing in contested states and less of a swing in blue strongholds).
I think that in the final tally, Kemp went from 5% to 12% overall among black voters in Georgia, where I would say Abrams was a far more desirable candidate than Joe Biden is today, for whatever supposed bell weathers are worth.
I also wouldn't be surprised to see that the swing is real. It's possible that the slow burn has been accelerated by a confluence of factors rather than any specific policy and is happening much faster than anyone could anticipate: dissatisfaction with Biden + anger around education issues & Covid restrictions (like drove the Youngkin election) combining with the longer terms shifts in voting behavior. Add in Covid-era impacts accelerating more black voters leaving their previous social networks. And throw the GOP behaving as though black votes are in play (I've read that Kemp, for example, was spending in media channels he completely ceded in his previous campaign).
All plausible to me. I've said before that I agree with Matt that drift of working class POC to GOP is likely real. The wrinkle for me though is Trump himself and the people around him. He's if anything leaned even more into the bigotry stuff (see poisoning the soil).
Again, this is me trying not to be either a) too egotistical and b) interrogate my biases. But honestly I really at this point am wondering if polls are less reliable than normal in February of an election year and that's really explaining a lot of this. I mentioned before the weird nature of this primary season. But the other issue is cell phones and lack of ability to reach young voters. This was always thrown out there in 2016 and even 2020 (think 2020 was skewed by COVID itself too; liberals were more likely to be adhering to covid restrictions for one). But sort of as you say, have we reached a tipping point where ubiquity of cell phones and people not picking up is having a real effect on polling.
So to maybe turn this around and defend my "polls are skewed" stance. A ton of these same polls show Biden winning seniors. And some showing him win by a decent margin Now again, I can see a scenario where these "Biden is too old" backfires and convinces some seniors to vote for Biden. But honestly, do you really believe Biden is going to win voters over 65?
It certainly makes the skew pretty interesting and a little confusing compared to historic demographic trends, doesn't it? Increasing conservative votes among POC is a trend that's been ongoing and I can come up with plausible explanations, but 65+ going for Biden would be a pretty big shocker. It's hard to see what would drive that. Biden is too old for the job; my older relatives will all say as much. The only anecdotal thing I have is that although my parents have been mostly GOP voters during their lives, they voted for Biden and will vote for him again because they are still angry about Trump's handling of Covid.
I'd generally agree that polling data in February of an election year isn't very good, but I'd agree with Matt the signs are pointing towards a Trump comeback if things stay the course. This election cycle in particular I expect to be pretty weird, because people dislike both of the likely options.
I take Matt's argument in the column seriously, but all the arguments about why the polls that show Biden doing so badly vs. Trump are flawed have been out there for a while now. I think that what you're talking about is pretty good evidence for it - a lot of polling is just bad.
Have you talked to many gen z peole recently? The level of ignorance is astounding. As a result critical thinking goes down the drain. It’s neither stupidity nor apathy , but the simple fact the extreme of ignorance leaves you without the foundation with which you can make sense of the world. In short, to the extent they bother voting it’s hard to predict on what basis they’ll do so as so many of them are unbelievably clueless, far more than you imagine.
I'm sorry but "these kids today are not engaged and don't know anything" is a pretty long standing complaint/issue and not new. Heck not new for population at large.
Youth voting being low and youth being apathetic about voting has been a long standing issue for generations. I've mentioned on here that one of the most underexplored and under emphasized reasons why American politics is the way it is that people over 55 vote way more than people under 55. One of the people who helped educate me on this fact is Matt Yglesias.
And just from Wikipedia: "18–24 year-olds made up 18 percent of all eligible voters in America, but only 13 percent of the actual voters – an under-representation of one-third.[1] In the next election in 1978, youth were under-represented by 50 percent. "Seven out of ten young people…did not vote in the 1996 presidential election… 20 percent below the general turnout."[7] In 1998, out of the 13 percent of eligible youth voters in America, only five percent voted.[1] During the competitive presidential race of 2000, 36 percent of youth turned out to vote and in 2004, the "banner year in the history of youth voting," 47 percent of the American youth voted.[8] In the Democratic primaries for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the number of youth voters tripled and even quadrupled in some states compared to the 2004 elections.[9] In 2008, Barack Obama spoke about the contributions of young people to his election campaign outside of just voter turnout.[10]"
I was actually not harsh enough. The pattern is actually increased youth engagement not less. So yes I'm saying with evidence you're putting on rose tinted glasses.
You’re mixing different issue. The 2007 study is about *knwoldege* of current affairs, which is what I was talking about. The newer one is about how many people vote, a separate question. My point wasn’t about apathy but about ignorance (in fact I explicitly stated “it’s neither stupidity nor apathy but …ignorance”). You’re perhaps implicitly assuming that higher participation means being better informed by that’s a hypothesis requiring substantiation.
My parents are both educators--one is a professor at an elite private college and the other a high school teacher. Both have had to dumb down what they teach because kids don't have the background knowledge they used to. They surmise a lot of it is because everybody in today's families have their own screens, so you never have a situation where the kids have to watch the 6 PM news with dad before they can watch their favorite program.
For example, when I was a kid, if I wanted to watch my own TV show on Wednesdays I would have to sit through both the nightly news and The West Wing with my parents first. I had no choice but to learn what had happened in the world. Now, I see my nephew put on headphones and watch an animated show on his ipad rather than engage with adult media. They're just not learning as much current events and history because they don't have to.
Honestly, absent any other context we'd say black vote shifted back to historical norms after Obama helped inflate these numbers in 2008, 2012 with some residual effect in 2016.
Trump winning 20-25% of the black vote would still represent and absolutely astonishing shift in voting patterns from one election to the next. Again, I'm setting aside the explanation of non-response bias or polling error. I'm trying to ask to say let's assume these numbers hold up in November and this is "real". What could account for such an incredible shift? Despite what Andrew Sullivan or Bari Weiss tell you, I have an extremely hard time believing that anyone but the most engaged voters know anything going on about Harvard admissions, extreme "woke' education ideas or debates about transgender surgeries for minors. If anything, the most engaged voters who care about these topics I would venture to bet have shifted to Biden given patterns with voting and education.
I am genuinely trying to ask what a plausible explanation may be.
Social values. The Democratic party really has moved significantly to the left on social issues over the last decade and they were already further left than the average Black American.
Exception inflation (as readers of this substack know) has come down pretty significantly. And has come down significantly for quite a while. Same with as prices. And consumer sentiment has picked up. Now to support your claim, Noah Smith has posts noting there is a good 6-12 month lag time before regular people will notice this change if history is any guide. Combine with even one rate cut of 25 bps could help really jump start the housing industry, then that could cause a real change in polls (I'm a big believer that the first rate cut could be enormously impactful in many many ways).
So kind of agree. But here's my problem. Biden's numbers has slipped last 3-4 months; just when inflation was coming down and consumer sentiment was improving. So what is explaining this outside of non-response bias.
People remember what prices at supermarkets and restaurants specifically were a few years ago, see that current prices for the same goods and services are much higher now, and get angry. I don't think it is more complicated than that. It is not the inflation rate, it is the price level.
Every time someone here says “but inflation has gone down!” I want to smack them upside the head. The average American doesn’t have an Econ degree or even a cursory understanding of economics, all they know is that prices now are a lot higher than they were in 2020-21. That’s all that matters. You might think that’s stupid of them but they don’t care what some egghead says.
>all they know is that prices now are a lot higher than they were in 2020-21. That’s all that matters.<
I don't thinks it's true that this is all that matters. Because the runup in prices 2020-2023 was so rapid compared to anything we had seen since the 1970s, it stands to reason that voter trauma on this issue has been acute—and therefore will require time to dissipate.
Thus, I think the issue you're overlooking is: the passage of time. Inflation has been pretty benign now for nearly a year (it peaked in 2022). Again, given the the level it reached as its peak, a certain amount of time will be necessary for voters to have become sufficiently calm. If I'm wrong and it takes longer than I think, Biden's probably a one-termer. But my hunch is by this summer, not enough voters will be pining for 2019's prices to guarantee Trump a victory. I mean, voters may not have econ PhDs, but they seem to grasp the concept that things were cheaper once upon a time, and it generally doesn't seem to prompt them to extreme angst...
The *recency* (of the inflation burst) is the problem. We shall see if it fades.
Michigan Confidence Survey suggests, by the way, that voters are feeling much better about things. I could certainly be wrong, and there are no guarantees, but I expect political polls will follow.
Just to be clear, prices continue to rise. The rate of inflation growth has come down but it's still above the Fed's 2% target and a March cut is now off the table with the market puking accordingly.
Sure, I'm aware inflation has come down, and Matthew's dark words to the contrary, there are signs of hope in Biden's numbers (and very definitely in the electorate's perceptions wrt the economy) the last few weeks.
I think in the main, Biden's problem has been the inflation hangover, and I've long expected that, if the economy stays on track, his numbers likely will look more promising by the summer.
That said, foreign policy and ther border are complicating factors.
A few people have pointed to inflation. I agree but more broadly Trump presents himself as pro-money and this lands with some Blacks. He also has a posture that lands with some Black men. They are drawn to his alpha male personality. It’s the Dave Chappelle take. He’s an honest liar. He says things that other’s will not. And for some people - it’s lands as DAMN THATS TRUE. For Black women, some will be moved by their Black men partners who advocate for Trump. His numbers are concerning. In some swing states it could make a difference. It’s also serves as a good rebuttal from him in response to him being a racist. He may end up with the highest percentage of the Black vote for a Republican in quite some time. That’s interesting.
My wife and I have said for awhile that one thing that too many people on our side of the spectrum don’t want to confront is that there is a LOT of black men and Latino men who have some pretty “traditional” views about gender. Well so do a lot of men (and let’s be real women) but I think for those of us on the left we don’t want to think it includes POC. Trump’s gross over the top machismo unfortunately does have purchase with certain men who may have previously been Democrats.
Again though. The level of shift so suddenly from 2020 to 2022 in polling suggests the answer is almost certainly in part non response bias. I said I’m trying to interrogate my own biases but honestly as best as I can see it it’s part of the story here.
Among young and/or black people I know, the issue they are splitting with Dems on is Israel. Even tho Republicans typically have "the party that backs Israel" as their tag line, there's a perception that the current administration is supporting the war (which, true?) and they very much do not. My very much most left friend says he is considering a vote for Trump for this reason
The biggest pivot the Democrats should make is to quit talking so much about Trump as a threat to Democracy and just mock him as a crook and a loser. The majority of normies are exhausted with the left’s constant moralizing and shaming of everyone about everything, and the thing they like most about Trump is that he scares and upsets the elites. But the one thing that makes Trump himself lose his mind is when people aren’t afraid of him and don’t take him seriously.
Biden also needs to start punching left. There’s no chance that the leftie base is going to vote for Trump, but a lot of fence-sitters are more worried about the far left than they are of Trump.
Yes, I think it's pretty clear that part of Trump's appeal is being a strongman and basically everything Democrats have screamed over the last decade tends to reinforce the message, but in reality, he's a huge coward.
I don't disagree with any of these points per se. I'm not sure they quite add up to "Biden is losing" either though...the basic contour of an electorate that hasn't truly woken up to "no seriously, Trump is really the other choice" strikes me as a real thing that is happening, so I consider the current polling results somewhat less than a "if the election were held today Trump wins" certainty. But perhaps most important, to my eyes it seems like Democrats are currently busily executing the prescription you close with. I don't see why you say they "missed" the post-midterm pivot to the center, or aren't executing a more aggressive comms strategy. Certainly that seems weird coming off a week where they managed to trap Republicans on a border bill in a way that could legitimately transform the immigration issue. My feeling is this is a tight spot to be sure, but the administration and Democrats writ large seem to get that and be approaching it competently.
I'm worried sick about the whole thing to be sure. I don't see anybody complacent around here.
Longwell’s podcast really makes clear how uninformed the average voter is. I don’t think most voters will know who the candidates will be until sometime in July.
"the basic contour of an electorate that hasn't truly woken up to 'no seriously, Trump is really the other choice' strikes me as a real thing that is happening"
Seems plausible given that my wife (who has a master's degree and whom I would describe as an above-average person for intelligence) last weekend sort of out of the blue announced to me, "So it's really going to be Biden and Trump as the candidates again???" Like somehow she had not been aware that was almost certainly what was going to happen.
I think that a shockingly large percentage of the electorate still does not understand or believe that the race will be Biden vs. Trump, again. Not sure what you do about that, but I think it is screwing up a lot of analysis and polling.
Yes, as I mentioned elsewhere in a reply here, my wife had an epiphany on this issue just last weekend, which basically made my jaw drop because I couldn't believe that she hadn't already been aware that was what was going to happen.
My partner's the same way. Educated, engaged in our local community, very smart, but thought it was still a horserace between Trump and DeSantis until a few days ago because she doesn't follow politics very closely at all.
I've mentioned this many times on this thread and in previous posts but the fact that there is basically no competitive primary on either side is basically unprecedented in not just recent history but American history in general. Like honestly, has there been a situation where both party's nominees were basically known 2 year prior to the election with no real threat from any different candidates.
Biden should have been going for the swing voters since January 2021. He does not need to appease the Warren-Sanders wing of the party. That is who he DEFEATED in the primaries.
January 2021 is when he should have been trying to fix the border in order to remaking immigration into a merit based system. THAT is when he should have been trying to reform taxes to raise revenue to reduce/eliminate the deficit. THAT is when he should have been trying to reform permitting reform so as to eliminate obstacles to investing in STUFF (and tell the Bill McKibben's of this world to stuff it with opposition to fossil fuel production and transportation projects). And pretty soon after January 2021 he should have been (politely but pointedly) complaining about the the FED causing inflation. And (if necessary to get Manchin's vote) accepted a CTC with a work requirement. And he should have been designing a set of subsidies to zero and negative CO2 emitting technologies that mimic a tax on net CO2 emissions as closely as possible. And start negotiating a trade agreement with as big as possible number of countries who are not China in order to efficiently lessen our (theirs and ours) reliance on CHINA for strategic inputs.
I agree with you, but while Biden is a poor public speaker, he is a better politician than I (and perhaps also than you). It's possible that he concluded that he could not accomplish his goals unless he was first able to unify his party behind him.
Sure, but that means unifying around HIM, not him moving to the middle of the party. Plus, there could be political capital to be made by failing, in ways he could blame on Republicans, as he apparently will try to do with the recent border bills.
Totally agree - I honestly felt like he took a page out of the Obama playbook and went for the kill on priorities early on at the expense of the rest of his term, setting up a pretty tough environment to get bipartisan support for remaining priorities.
In the case of Obama, (and I'll admit its probably a little naive, and will likely garner some "downvotes") I think he honestly had the chance to be a top 5 president ever if he would have tried for bi-partisan support on healthcare reform and better bridged the divide on race. Like I truly believe he could have ended the GOP as we know it and ushered in ~20 years of democrat presidents and could have set up an environment to drive some of the more progressive ideals for years to come. Instead we got the tea party, Trump and a fractured political ecosystem.
Biden I think had a similar opportunity coming out of the Trump era and ultimately catered to the left wing instead of trying to unify toward the center and it may cost him this next election.
Yeah. The GOP pursued, and continues to pursue, a policy of obstruction. The fact people turn around and blame Democrats for that is hard to imagine a way out of.
He needed to understand the yokels better, and the fact that a lot of (non-black) Americans were extremely hopeful for his presidency to be a nail in the coffin of the race issue.
I'll preface that this was nearly 2 decades ago and I would have been in middle school at the time, but the poignant quotes I remember about ACA were "you have to pass it to see what's in it" and "elections have consequences." I'll be honest, I don't remember the nuts and bolts of who tried to work with who or to what degree from a bipartisan standpoint, but I can tell you the folks on the right didn't feel like their voice was heard and it set in motion some of the trends that ended up at Trump.
As far as on race (and again pairing memory with a quick google search), the broad brush support for BLM and subsequent anti-police sentiment that sprouted from much of the discourse. That said, looking back at a few articles, it feels a bit more moderate (at least under today's lens) that I may be remembering. Regardless, he had a unique platform to bring people further together here, but racial relation sentiment dropped to 15 year lows under his term and has gotten worse since.
As far as what could he have done better - not saying it would have been easy and maybe its a bit naive, but think on the ACA he had to find a couple center right republicans to throw a few bones to the right. Quite frankly there was meat on the bone there between lifting age restrictions to 26 on parents insurance and banning pre-existing condition denial. That said more process driven rather than hard policy points. On race - obviously super messy but I think the initial support for BLM and some of their talking points was a misstep.
The entire mechanism of the ACA, the mandatory insurance coverage, was based on a Heritage Foundation plan! You should at least consider that there is an explanation for “the Right didn’t feel their voice was heard” other than their voices not being heard.
Yeah Thomas Hutcheson is right…Obama absolutely took a bipartisan approach to healthcare to begin with. He spent tons of political capital begging, coaxing, arm-twisting republicans to get involved in shaping the bill, with the only goal being reducing the number of uninsured people (40m at the time).
Hell, the law was modeled on the Massachusetts law architected by a Republican governor. But the Rs made it clear that their goal was not to make the country better off…their only purpose was to make Obama a failure - at any cost. Anything that was good for Obama was bad for the GOP (even if their position hurt Republicans’ constituents, which in many cases they did) - the obvious example is how some R’s and Independents said they favored a public option, but as soon as Obama wanted to put it into the bill, they switched their position. It was maddening to watch, and revealed to me that the GOP was on the road to the land of ignorance and nihilism that they fully inhabit today.
You're basically describing why David Frum was basically cast out of the conservative movement. He admonished GOP for not negotiating more with Obama as there was a clear opportunity to get a number of conservative policy goals with health care inserted into the bill and Obama clearly wanted to be seen as crafting a bipartisan compromise. And for his "sin" of wanting to take the opportunity to enact some conservative policy goals he was basically fired from AEI.
I think a really eye opening moment in retrospect and I'm sure a real "come to jesus" moment for Frum that's led to him essentially be a centrist Democrat at this point. I think for Frum it was a real eye opener that outside of a few issues (tax cuts for the wealthy, overturning abortion rights and paring back labor power), GOP doesn't really care about any policy other than "owning the libs". See current refusal to take 3/4s a loaf on this immigration/Ukraine bill all because it was more important to not give Biden a "win".
ACA did eventually become non-bipartisan, but that was after months of trying and the conclusion of Democrats that Republicans would agree to noting that would be be a "win" for Obama. [Does the border bill sound familiar.]
Conceptually, there may have been things that Obama could have done or not done that would have led to less racially polarization, but we have to be specific. The Gates arrest and Trevon Martin's murder were both highly divisive, but Obama's role was near zero.
My apologies in advance for writing a very unhelpful, cri du coeur type post.
I was a child in the People's Republic of Poland. We had no free elections; we were ruled by puppets appointed by our overlords at the Kremlin, and had been since right after WW2. Then we had our first free elections in 1989. People were literally weeping with joy, I remember it. We had our country back! We could decide our own fate!
(Not that the Polish electorate hasn't made crappy decisions since then, I hate PiS, but I digress.)
And now a US President decides to try to OVERTURN A LEGITIMATE ELECTION, complete with inciting a mob to storm the Capitol... And he shows no remorse, no understanding that he has done anything wrong, because laws and rules and norms are for pussies and losers...
And he's likely to win this year, because Biden is old and feeble and people don't care about Jan 6 because it's old news and "democracy is not a high priority for the US electorate"?!!?
What. The. F**k????
This is beyond heartbreaking and infuriating. I don't get it. I really, truly don't get it, no matter how many op-ed pieces I read about Real Americans(TM) interviewed in roadside diners in rural Ohio or whatever. Trump tried to overthrow democracy!!! How can any of you consider voting for him? (You = Americans, not SB commenters.) What has Biden done that is comparably bad, eaten a puppy on live TV?
Just, I don't know what to say anymore. If anyone has any spark of hope and/or actionable item I can do in the next 8 months other than howl at the moon, please reply.
I find it deeply depressing that Biden, who has mostly done a good job despite being handed a shit hand, is so unpopular amongst Americans. I find it even more depressing and frankly inconceivable that close to half the country thinks Trump will do a better job.
I live in the definition of a purple district—one of the few in the country that was genuinely competitive in 2022. At the same time almost every week, I spend some time at a local bar, pecking away at my laptop. And I overhear a lot of conversations with the friendly, chatty bartender.
Frequently, I will hear a bunch of guys talking about their jobs, after work. They will talk about how much they make, their bosses and, often, some ongoing or upcoming expense like maintaining their house. And, for the most part, it is remarkably positive; far from the "forgotten Trump voter" narrative. They are basically describing having good-paying jobs and being able to afford a high standard of living. Then the conversation takes a turn into what I can only call a recitation of bizarre right-wing conspiracy theories—the kind I read about and think only a hard-core MAGA cultist would believe this stuff. In their defense, they aren't swallowing it hook, line and sinker, but they are often "just asking questions". And none of the answers indicate enthusiastic support for the status quo.
A recent, specific example: the very day that I became aware of the Taylor Swift psyop Super Bowl conspiracy, an otherwise totally normal, average, sensible, thoughtful regular walks in and starts chatting with the bartender about sports. The conversation makes its way to football and... the guy starts spinning an elaborate conspiracy theory (that I could not even follow) stretching back to the start of the season and involving everyone in the NFL. The bartender's jaw literally dropped before he gently pushed the topic to hockey.
My completely unscientific anecdote-based take is that there is a persuadable pool of voters who are adrift, dipping their toes in the MAGA fever swamp, but also consciously aware that things are actually pretty good. And that they are going to vote against, not for one of two bad choices—bad for different reasons, but bad. So bring on the hippie-punching, tough border rhetoric and never, ever stop talking about—and citing contemporaneous examples of—what a deranged lunatic Trump is.
I am expecting Travis Kelce to get injured with the second last play of the game and the Chiefs needing a touchdown to win. Taylor Swift will come from the stands to tend to her wounded lover... then put on his helmet. Patrick Mahomes will successfully throw a Hail Mary to her with his last throw, and she will storm through the 49ers defence to score.
This must happen.
Never mind scoring the winning TD. I'm reliably informed Ms. Swift will be 35 before inauguration day. Let's think bigger. The Super Bowl is one day. A presidential term lasts four years.
There's probably a betting line on this on FanDuel.
The TV screen in my office building's elevator was helpfully informing me yesterday about what odds are being offered on gambling sites about various things Taylor Swift might do at the Super Bowl. (Kissing Kelce on the field and giving a double high-five to someone in the viewing box were the two that I could remember.)
When does the bald eagle swoop in?
She is famously quite tall. Definitely an asset on a hail mary.
”So bring on the hippie-punching, tough border rhetoric and never, ever stop talking about—and citing contemporaneous examples of—what a deranged lunatic Trump is.”
You should be a paid Democratic party consultant. This is spot on and much better than the disastrous ”don’t upset the far left” strategy they are currently pursuing.
When were they ever doing a "don't upset the far left" strategy?
When a bunch of interns published a letter against the President and weren't immediately fired. Just for a recent example.
But you could look to Biden's first day in office when he set the mold that is still dogging him. Hard to take credit for unprecedented oil production when you cast yourself as the most anti-oil president in history. Same for the border issue by pandering to defund ICE types.
He made his bed. 2020 feels like 10 years ago.
Most of Biden's Day 1 EOs and Proclamations read like love letters to the far left.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/page/121/
Well, they recently announced a pause to liquefied gas exports or whatever it was.
"Since day one, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have treated climate change as the existential threat of our time."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/02/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-leverages-historic-u-s-climate-leadership-at-home-and-abroad-to-urge-countries-to-accelerate-global-climate-action-at-u-n-climate-conference-cop28/
do they wet the bed too?
Well, look at how much Democrats emphasize climate change as an issue, for openers.
Unfortunately Biden has actual tools to address the conflict and affect its course and has to figure out how to use them. Unlike Fetterman who, no shade on Fetterman, has no actual power over the situation and so can just say whatever.
What exactly is Fetterman's approach?
He was always like that about I/P.
I don't know what TikTok has to do with this at all.
This feels like an overcorrection.
When, exactly, are the leftist weirdos expected to go into hiding? Will they?
I think what you’re learning is that conspiracy theory is discourse for the masses, honestly.
I think that is exactly right. My pet theory is that, because mainstream discourse is dominated by liberal* ideas, liberal conspiracy theories like "thousands of black men are killed by police every year" don't get coded that way.
I grew up immersed in right-wing / Conservative culture and my sense is that what started as Rush Limbaugh using course language to poke at liberal hypocrisy has morphed into a furtive sense that everyone is out to get you and only I know the Truth so you'd better tune in before they get to me, too. Ipso facto, right-wing discourse takes on the affect of conspiracy theories and people who consume that media sound like conspiracy theorists.
The net result is that everyone traffics in conspiracy theories—my (younger) self very much included—but liberals get to raise a pinky and scoff at the silly, low-brow theories about pizza restaurants because they read books by professors.
*I mean that in the "we believe in empiricism and debate" sense of liberal
I don't think "thousands of black men are killed by police every year" is a conspiracy theory. I think people don't know anything about the scale of things they hear about and simply assume the scale corresponds to the frequency of hearing about it.
You see the same thing among conservatives with crime. My grandmother was convinced I'd be dead in a week when I moved to California because of all the crime. And it's true: were Los Angeles a small town in Oklahoma, the amount of violence (at the time) would make it feel like the purge. But it's not a small town in Oklahoma, so it isn't going to happen to you.
"I don't think 'thousands of black men are killed by police every year' is a conspiracy theory."
Facially, it's ignorance. However, in my experience, in almost every case it instantly escalates to a conspiracy theory if you present the proponent with evidence from an unimpeachable mainstream media source (e.g., WaPo. Guardian, etc.) that, in fact, the number of black men (let alone *unarmed* black men) killed annually by police is less than 1000. I have literally NEVER seen a proponent respond with some variation of, "I guess I was mistaken." Instead, about 10% to 15% will respond with some variation of, "I'll need to look into that" and disappear. The other 85% to 90% will *immediately* jump to claiming that you can't trust statistics on this subject because they are all fabricated by police departments to cover up their habitual killing of black men. (This conspiracy theory is also necessarily implicit in any instance in which someone recommends that black men flee from the police or violently resist arrest because of the likelihood that the police will kill them on the spot anyway.)
See also the routine claim from progressives that rates of violent crime in wealthy neighborhoods are *really* no different than rates of violent crime in poor neighborhoods, it's just that the police and prosecutors cover up the violent crimes in wealthy neighborhoods. (As I've discussed here before, this is such a common progressive conspiracy theory that I've had several people independently make it to me IRL!)
I believe there's a lot of intersection of "conspiracy theorizing" and "doesn't have foggiest idea about realistic quantities."
The same people who think Japan and China are of similar size, or the US GDP is $10 billion, are probably more susceptible to conspiracy theories than better informed folks.
Saying, "I need to look into that," probably isn't any worse than, "I guess I was mistaken," and certainly doesn't make one a conspiracist. It is perfectly reasonable to have a mistaken impression from an article read months or years ago and want to re-examine things prior to reevaluating your long term assumptions about the world.
Well, the conspiracy theory about "thousands of Black men are killed by police every year" is that none of the killings were at all justified.
Sorry, but the bigger conspiracy is very clearly the "thousands" -- you can argue about the justifiability of any given shooting; there's really no plausible dispute about the number of corpses.
But it isn't rational on the part of police. Statistically, when Black driver's car are searched they are 49% LESS likely to contain drugs and guns than white drivers and are equally likely to be given a ticket. However, Black drivers are still pulled over 3 times as often as white drivers and have their cars searched twice as often.
That outcomes of those searches shouldn't be surprising since Black American and white American have fairly equal rates of drug use and white Americans are slightly more likely to own guns. Therefore if you search twice as many Black drivers you are likely searching extra drivers without good probable cause and you would be less likely to find something
But it does suggest that there isn't a good rational and credible reason that they are pulled over more often that white drivers other than racism, whether that bias is explicit or implicit.
That is very different than a suggestion that police officers are killing Black citizens for the fuck of it. If folks believe that is happening with any regularity that is a conspiracy theory and I don't doubt there are folks who hold that false view. But being pulled over more does make it more likely that Black drivers will be killed and that being unacceptable isn't inaccurate.
"why would they do that?"
Because racism?
The lack of a sense of scale flows from the conspiracy, though. It is unarguable that police kill some number of black men every year and that there are cases of straight-up homicide. It is also true that there is some voter fraud and there are cases of straight-up ballot stuffing. Inflating the former necessitates a racist conspiracy theory involving cops. Inflating the latter necessitates a left-wing conspiracy theory involving poll workers.
I am not trying to draw a moral comparison here—I am probably choosing fraught examples. One is in service of a just cause and the other is in service to an aspiring authoritarian. I'm just saying that both involve conspiratorial thinking, but only one gets coded that way and I think that is largely a function of who is promulgating the conspiracies.
Here’s what you are missing “the police kills Black people in particular” or however you want to phrase the blm rallying cry that got the whole country (it seemed) to the streets in 2020. That’s one big conspiracy (or libel). Even the horrifying but anecdotal case of Floyd may perhaps be a wrongful conviction as is now argued convincingly according to black intellectuals like Loury and McWhorter (I’m personally agnostic on this latter point).
Yearly, cops kill half as many blacks as whites (on average). One eighth of the population is black. It seems unlikely that 50% of traffic stops are black. So it seems likely that blacks are disfavored in police confrontations. This seems likely to be a largely combination of Cops' expectations of resistance and Blacks' expectations of danger. Either way, it seems unreasonable to write-off the whole thing as delusions of, "police kill Black people in particular," because it seems like. to some extent, they kinda do.
I think your analysis is flawed.
You are assuming all traffic stops are equally dangerous, which is almost certainly not true. You can't just jump from traffic stops to deaths. What about % of people who carry guns in their vehicles? Likelihood of having committed a crime in the last 24 hours?
We don't have perfect statistics on these and I'm not implying we do, but I think your framework is very limited here.
Isn't this what Roland Fryer looked into a few years back? And he concluded that when normalized by the number of interactions with police, black people were a little less likely to be shot than white people.
Regardless of what the proximate cause of George Floyd’s death was, the fact of the matter is that the police have a duty of medical care immediately upon detaining someone, and so they’re guilty of at least extreme neglect.
I'm not going to debate the specific case . My position is that the court ruling is the truth unless proven otherwise by an equal process (i.e. a re-trial), hence as far as I am concerned Floyd was murdered. The point however is that this case, horrible as it was, was anecdotal. That the impression of a general problem is a lie, based on confirmation bias reporting that often reports completely false facts, but then under reports or ignores completely the true facts once they come to light (e.g. complete exoneration of the cops, "unarmed" men turning out to have been armed etc). It also ignores the more common cases of police killing white people etc. The Floyd case is exceptional in that it did end up in a conviction, but even under the assumption that this was the correct judgment it remains the exception that doesn't prove any rule. As I understand it, when you look at the data overall there is no empirical basis for the notion that the police is more inclined to kill Black people. There are problems with quality of policing generally, but at least insofar as wrongful killings are concerned, there is no racial angle to it, and that's the crucial point.
If you watch the body cam, they call EMS before they even get him into the car the first time, then they call again to ask where the ambulance is. I'm not sure what more they are obligated to do.
A lot of right-wing conspiracy theories are correct if you take their scale to be an order of magnitude or two lower than what is being claimed.
Hundreds, not thousands.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
Yes. It is actually true that the ways in which the elites and the State work are opaque to almost everyone, and yet we are wired for pattern recognition. There are hundreds of interesting stories that are completely true and totally fit the model of 'conspiracy theory', because people in power actually do conspire quite a lot. Most of it is banal though.
I was actually a Federal bureaucrat at one point, which I think immunizes me from this completely.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence nor to incompetence what can be explained by the Paperwork Reduction Act.
Conspiracy theories are basically the same thing as folk legends. people making up stories about goblins, fairies and wee folk are now just deep state feds, Chinese spies, and corporate shills.
Jeffrey Epstein is pretty much a modern Rumplestiltskin.
It's also a hig thing that sociL media algorithms habe been pushing. They've been shown to slowly onramp people from reasonable questions about their baby's health, to vaccine skepticism, to vaccine conspiracies, to rhe whole wide conspiracyverse. Basically slowly onramping people to it step by step. There's a great book about it called The Chaos Machine that talks about it and gives many examples where Facebook and YouTube were the primary drivers in getting people in to a conspiracy theory rather than the algo being lead by the conspiracy nuts.
Here’s a great explanation of what’s going on there with the bizarre beliefs (just posted yesterday)
https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/people-embrace-beliefs-that-signal
How to convert this knowledge into a short-term political strategy? Keep the focus on the real day to day issues for these voters rather than try to refute the crazy stuff? I don’t know.
I’ve long believed that my relatively good conceptual hygiene comes principally from being antisocial.
I don’t buy the fifth point in that post, though. I believe people adopt conspiracy theories because, as social animals, they seek social angles to things. The core of conspiracy theories is generally the (often imagined) actions, motives, and relationships of readily identified people.
The average person spends a lot of their time, seemingly, on gossip about other people. Conspiracy theories give them a way to make gossip into discourse, big picture issues converted wholesale into rumors about celebrities.
Yes to hippie punching, lots of it.
https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/hippie-punching-is-great-politics
Hilarious that you mention the Taylor Swift thing because when I popped into my local watering hole in Vegas that was randomly a topic of conversation from two working class guys who seem to own some kind of father-son contracting business. The superbowl will be hosted here and he just said unprompted "I'm not excited for it this year cause of all that Taylor Swift media bullshit they are trying to do"
I am curious about the median income where your local pub is. Feel free to round or give a range. In my area, the cost of food items has gone up by anywhere between 50-80 percent depending on the item. I make the same meal every Friday so I have a good baseline, and receipts.
Try to imagine how people who rarely indulge in the luxury of paying a bartender huge markups for commodity beverages will have very different ideas about their quality of life since Biden became president. No amount of messaging is going to fix that.
The two counties in our congressional district: $75k and $90k
I hear you, but also as Matt points out, Trump is running on a platform of making everything more expensive, so… poetic irony all around?
>>My completely unscientific anecdote-based take is that there is a persuadable pool of voters who are adrift, dipping their toes in the MAGA fever swamp<<
What makes you think they're persuadable and not hardcore MAGA? I know you say you live in a purple area, but there are hardcore MAGA folks in such places (as well as plenty of very liberal Democrats).
I think the Fox News-watching crowd (which is what these folks sound like) is mostly unreachable. Persuadables generally don't obsess over political scandalettes and minutiae. They're not political hobbyists, and they tend to get their news from mainstream sources.
Well, plenty of cars out here are decked out with Trumparaphernalia and (often homemade) signs conveying their thoughts about the importance of dispatching Democrats and Liberals. And I'm pretty sure the people with "Thank You Jesus" yard signs are about as persuadable as the ones with "Thank You Science" signs further down the street. But the people conversing in the bar do not sound like brainwashed cultists. They sound like pretty normal people who are exposed to right-wing conspiracy theories via the MAGA cultists in their social (media) and professional circles. It's not obsessive either; the guy talking about the NFL conspiracy quickly moved off of it and pivoted to lamenting the slowing metabolism that accompanies aging. I think normal, non-cultists are all inherently persuadable because they are capable of understanding that Trump is a crazy person who is proposing crazy nonsense policies and that Biden is a pretty normal guy with pretty normal policies that have worked out pretty OK so far.
They tell us we're fighting for save American Democracy, but they're acting as if this is a just a nice-to-win election.
Where are the emergency measures?
At this rate, Joe will earn his loss and we'll all be hating ourselves for letting him walk us into it.
Two things I want to see:
- Replace Kamala with someone younger (and liked) and run as a tag-team ticket
- Go strong on closing the border
The border has been an obvious problem since day 1 of his term, and there's no evidence he's willing to do anything except blame Republicans. Zero swing voters are going to believe this.
If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story.
If he replaced Harris he would invite a civil war inside the Dem party. There would be no recovering by Nov. We can’t afford that. All the armchair critics who seem to think it would be as easy as erasing one name from the yard signs and writing in another know nothing about Dem politics. Biden will keep her on the ballot and wishful thinking otherwise just actively keeps people from making the affirmative case for the ticket.
I don't actually think replacing Kamala would make a big difference at this point, but doing things that piss off the kind of person that would be angry about that is exactly what the Dems need to do. Aversion to that sort of intracoalitional "civil war" is precisely the problem.
How could starting a civil war in your own party drum up support or voter enthusiasm?
Not start a civil war, but stop worrying about appeasing those whose views on climate and immigration alienate the persuadable electorate. The degree of overlap of that group with the people who would go bonkers if Kamala was dumped is very high.
Huh? The people who are threatening to not vote because Biden is too far right on immigration and climate generally hate Kamala Harris.
They hate her even though she’s Black and female?The knee-jerk lefty intersectionalists?
Christine -- I hear many people say "Others will be angry if Kamala is pushed off the ticket", but I've never met such a person who would themselves be angry.
Are you one?
Suppose you find a middle-aged woman (her assumed key demographic), and ask these questions?
- Is Kamala doing a good job?
- Do you think Kamala could beat Trump on a debate stage?
- Do you think Kamala could beat Trump in an election?
- Would you be upset if Kamala was replaced by someone who appealed to swing voters?
What answers do you think you would get?
* By the way, you might want to listen to "The Run-Up" from NYTimes where the host goes back to his (black) family and talks to the middle-aged women and find they all think Kamala has failed.
Anything that sounds like "Kamala is a great VP, and we just need to tell people this with more frequency" sounds like denial to me.
I am not saying she’s been a great VP but she hasn’t been horrible. Much of the criticism I hear of her is weird and strikes me as vaguely misogynistic. What’s the hard core case against her besides being “unlikeable?” Seriously?
You can point to all kinds of anecdotal evidence of Black voters unhappy with Harris but Black women are the core of the Democratic coalition and unless you have significant data showing that they AS A GROUP are disillusioned with the person they embraced in 2020, then I think you underestimate the seismic impact that pushing her off the ticket would have. And no, Warnock would not be seen as a fair swap. Geez Louise. You folks have no idea of the crap women put up with in politics and the media. Harris hasn’t had a chance.
Personally, I learned all I needed to learn about Kamala in that first debate when she jumped on old Joe for "opposing busing". This told me three things. First, that she's stupid, because how much of the electorate even knows what busing was? Second, that's she's incompetent; she thought this gambit was so good, she had all the t-shirts printed up and everything, and didn't seem to see coming the "you weren't bused, you rode *on* a bus." rejoinder. Third, that she's unscrupulous, in being willing to stir up racial division for small selfish reasons. I've seen nothing since to modify this impression.
So the woman who worked to become the 1) District Attorney of San Francisco; 2) Attorney General of California 3) Senator from CA (population 39 million people); and 4) Vice President - is stupid and incompent? And you learned that from one debate?
Got it.
This is a woman who slept her way into politics, which gave her the connections to get fast-track nominations to high-profile positions, in a state where she had no real other-party opposition, and whose electoral performance was lackluster. She was quickly bounced out of the Presidential primary race (with very low ratings) in spite of being one of the few "moderate" candidates and she has had very poor approval ratings as Vice President (understandable to anyone who has heard her word-salad speeches). In the "feelings" department, I sense arrogance and entitlement, and I bet others do too. The Democratic Party is a shambles right now, but we've got to have someone better than this.
The amount of attention she gets as the VP is completely disproportionate to her actual role, not to mention the historical attention paid to VPs. And yeah yeah, Biden is very old, but it's perfectly clear that voters are voting on Biden v. Trump, not "what about Biden's potential replacement in 2 years if he passes away?" The VP choice is like "the environment"- people say it matters all the time, but when they actually go and vote they vote on their pocketbook and other kitchen table issues. Biden will win or lose on his own merits, not because of Harris. It's absolutely bonkers to me how much people think the VP matters, and it's awfully hard to escape the sense that they criticize the VP as much as they do because it happens to be a black woman filling the role this go around. If some generic 55 year old white guy hadn't accomplished anything in Biden's first term nobody would be sitting around lambasting him. Instead, people would a) never think about him because we never think about the VP very much, or b) when we do think about him we'd all shrug and say "he's the VP. Of course he's not doing anything. It's a role designed to do nothing."
Lastly, the notion that replacing her now is a good idea is ludicrous. It would look desperate, and feed into the narrative that Biden is flailing and knows he'll lose. Republicans would use it to show how clueless and desperate it is, and the media would hammer it. The SB commentariat needs to let this go. If Biden had done it a year ago then we'd be in different waters, but replacing the ticket 9 months before the election would be a horrific decision.
When the president is 80 years old and appears to be losing it, the VP is going to get a lot of attention. If Biden were a one term president, I don't think she would be that big of a deal. But since he decided to run again as an 80 year old, part of that calculus should have included whether she would be the right running mate if anything were to happen to him.
Right, this is the thing; frantically replacing the vice president simply out of fear (rather than like, a specific scandal) *reinforces* the idea that Biden's too old and not really in control of things.
But he is too old, and he is not in control of things. It's a fact, and it's obvious. He can't control the progressives when it comes to the running sore that is the border (if he loses the Presidency, this will be why) and he can't get a good vice president because he owes too much to James Clyburn. For God's sake, dozens of his own staff (and interns!) publicly rebuked him for his support of Israel, an important ally in a very delicate situation. And he did nothing. In any corporation or other organization, those staffers would be on the street with their last paycheck the very next day.
I generally agree with you about switching Kamala not really having an impact, but I also think we should be clear that Black women are not the core of the Democratic coalition. Blacks in total make up about 13% of the US population, and Black women make up maybe 7%. ANY group that small a percentage of the population cannot be the core constituency of a majority party.
edit - to be clear, that doesn't mean the Democratic party should ignore them, but also 1) they aren't going anywhere else; 2) you can't base your politics around their specific preferences.
I think what you have is a very self-conscious group for whom the "black woman" thing makes them disproportionately influential within the *party*. I suspect that they feel that Kamala is their ticket to the glory to which they are entitled, and this is why she wasn't dumped years ago.
The Republican Party has really reshaped itself around a small, core group of it's base, and it's kind of been a disaster for them. Not sure why it would be any different for Democrats, especially when the group they are centering is really not geographically distributed in an advantageous way. The mean state has a black population of about 7-8%, which is half the national average. You can't be a national party if that's really your base.
"The Republican Party has really reshaped itself around a small, core group of it's base, and it's kind of been a disaster for them."
They haven't! Its incredibly depressing to me, but the Republican party via Trump has actually expanded the segment of the population that is their base going from a reasonably well educated and wealthy base to a much broader and more blue collar base. I think they have sacrificed most of their principles along the way, but let's not kid ourselves about what they are doing.
>What’s the hard core case against her besides being “unlikeable?<
The hardcore case is A) she's been marginally successful politically in California an a total dud outside California, and B) she hasn't generated a compelling political brand or strong team of loyalists and supporters in DC. I personally admire the Vice President (she was my initial choice for the nomination, way back when), and I wish the above weren't true. But it seems true.
"marginally successful politically in California" - the state has a population of 39 million people. If you become one of the two people out of 39m that is elected Senator, I would say you are more than marginally successful politically.
As for "total dud" outside of CA - I would think VP candidates who are on losing tickets (Lieberman, Edwards, Kaine) would better bill for 'total dud' outside their home state. If you're a VP on a winning ticket, I'm not seeing the case for "total dud."
(I'm not saying VP's determine the outcome, just saying their impact is greater than zero - otherwise we wouldn't even be talking about changing VPs.)
Harris has been successful at beating other Democrats, sure. That's undoubtedly true. But once you're in the general election, having a "D" next to your name tends to make winning a foregone conclusion statewide in California (or in San Francisco), and there have been multiple elections where her vote totals have failed to match other Democrats running for office. Again, I said marginally "successful" not marginally "unsuccessful." And she badly underperformed expectations in her brief presidential run. I remember this acutely, because she was my early choice for president in 2020. That's what I meant by "dud."
As I've said repeatedly, I think it makes zero political sense to choose another running mate. And I'll go one further: I believe there's a pretty strong chance she's president a few years from now because I think it's likely indeed that Joe Biden won't serve a full second term if he wins. I think Kamala Harris is eminently well-qualified, and might well make an excellent president*.
But no, Kamala Harris doesn't strike me as the party's best option for top of ticket in a general election. I'm not sure there's a single example of "fizzles early in her nomination quest and drops out before Iowa but becomes a powerful national standard bearer in a future cycle." But maybe I'm forgetting one.
*Though sure, all bets are off if she succeeds to the office and then runs as an incumbent to secure a whole term; it's hard to predict how things would unfold in such a scenario.
"she hasn't generated a compelling political brand or strong team of loyalists and supporters in DC."
She's the Vice President, man. *Had* she done those things, those would be compelling reasons for her boss to drop her from the ticket. Veeps are supposed to be subservient and wait their turn.
Say what? Undermining the president might get you dropped. But simply having your own, credible, influential coterie doesn't do that. Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden didn't get dropped. It's possible to be an important power center in one's own right as Vice President while *simultaneously* being a supportive asset the president can count on.
Sue, did the President call?
I can't emphasize enough that the VP, the VP pick and almost anything about the VP generally has basically negligible impact on elections. It makes for good fodder to fill column inches but beyond that it's electoral impact is almost certainly nothing.
Decades ago Presidents chose VP(s) to "balance the ticket" when electoral coalitions operated differently. But nowadays? Yeah not so much. And I include Palin and Pence with this. Palin generated a lot of news coverage and indeed was a canary in the coal mine for where GOP was heading, but actual practical impact? Yeah Obama's victory was much more about a) Thermostatic opinion change after 8 years of GOP in the WH b) charisma and political acumen of Obama himself and c) the Wall street crash in September 2008. As for Pence. Lots of commentary written how choosing Pence shored up Evangelical support for Trump. Um, what is the actual evidence for this? Much much more likely the answer is evangelical voters were going to "come home" by the election regardless of whether Pence was on the ticket or not.
Palin personally changed my vote away from McCain because I couldn't stand the thought of her being president.
That said, I don't think that changing Kamala Harris does the same thing - she hasn't been so bad in office that people can't stand the thought of her being President, she's just lackluster.
The "column inches"* thing does terrify me. We're facing eight months of a campaign with the same candidates and the same arguments as 2020. This is the most horrifying prospect political journalists can face. I tremble to think how they'll fill the time. Constant VP speculation (for both candidates). Intense dissection of every damn poll from here on out. Hyper-inflating speculation on every move Biden makes as President as to what it means for his prospects.
We would all be a lot better off if political journalists and pundits took a five month vacation, came back refreshed and ready to treat the election seriously.
(* I'm interested if anyone under the age of 50 here knows what a "column inch" is.)
RE: Pence. Further evidence for this is that the evangelicals are clearly in the Trump bandwagon today, and have cast aside Pence. If it was his values that really made much of a difference then you'd see those voters shifting in the same way Pence did. They didn't, and they supported Trump because they liked Trump, not because of his VP.
Easy to say in hindsight, but I don’t think that automatically tracks. Things actually were different in early 2016…Rs of all factions were looking for excuses to be ok with Trump, Pence gave the evangelicals a permission structure for evangelicals to tell their friends at church they could roll with him. Do we know now that they are all value-less hypocrites? Yes, but we didn’t at the time (and neither did they!)
That was absolutely the theory, but the advantage of hindsight is that we can see if that impact actually occurred. I think it's very obvious that it didn't. Sure, if Trump had nominated a lunatic or something that might have made an impact, but the reality is that any generic replacement republican would have been fine. Trump won in spite of all of his anti-evangelical behavior because evangelicals didn't actually care about all of that. And the ones who did didn't support him even though he chose Pence.
"Rs of all factions were looking for excuses to be ok with Trump"
I feel like it's only those of us who hate Trump who think this. Actual republican voters were fine with Trump, and had been the entire time. They loved the guy. We hate him so much that we refuse to believe it.
Lots of assertions in there, Colin. Allow me to counter-assert.
From my perspective, there are some notable exceptions to your point. Maybe Pence didn’t matter but I suspect Kaine did. Trump beat Clinton by a few thousand votes in a handful of rust belt states. Putting a folksy midwesterner on the ticket instead of (ugh) Virginian zero Tim Kaine would have signaled that Clinton was listening to the frustrated blue and gray collar crowd that flipped to Trump that Election Day. Kennedy beat Nixon by a handful of votes in 1960 - you think the outcome would have been the same in West Virginia if he had put another liberal Northeasterner on the ticket instead of a conservative Southerner?
I think you’re right in many cases (eg Reagan’s choice of Bush probably didn’t affect the outcome in 1980 or 1984) - but in elections won by a whisker (as 2024 is likely to be)…I think *everything* matters. And in an election where there’s an actuarially elevated chance of the VP assuming the top office? I have no data - but would assert - that Harris’s popularity assumes special importance in how - and more importantly whether - people vote.
I have to say your choice of Kaine as VP pick that mattered is kind of bizarre to me. Until you mentioned his name I had actually completely forgotten he was even on the ticket. In fact he was chosen precisely because he was so milquetoast.
I'd say the burden of proof is showing something did impact an election rather than the opposite. Forget just VP picks there's a lot of things from past elections that pundits assert as impactful that really weren't. My favorite example is Dukakis in the tank. It's the thing possibly brought up most from that election. And yet, what proof do we have it effected the election at all.
Speaking of 1988. See Dan Quayle. He was the butt of a zillion late night jokes and had one of the more famous "owns" in the VP debate. And it meant...square root of f**k all.
Since LBJ almost certainly was involved with manipulating the counting of votes in Texas in 1960 then, yes, there's a case that the choice of him as VP made a difference.
JFK wins that race 294-243 even without Texas.
This is correct. The fact of Biden’s age just makes it all a little more fraught.
Right. The actual weak part of the ticket is Joe, not Kamala.
And if he swapped Harris out for Whitmer* how long would it be for journalists to be asking, "Shouldn't the ticket order be switched?"
* I know people are pushing for Warnock. That's crazy. Keeping a Democratic Senator in Georgia > marginal impact as VP nominee.
🙄
"I can't emphasize enough that the VP, the VP pick and almost anything about the VP generally has basically negligible impact on elections." But this year is a special case, given that Biden has quite a high chance of dying or becoming incapacitated before his term ends. Given the polls on Bidens' age, the electorate is well aware of this. This means that the quality of the candidate for Vice President is actually as significant as the candidate for President, and the Democrats are in a very poor position on that score.
At 80, actuary tables suggest a 4.7% to 7.5% chance of dying each year over the next 4 years. Presumably, given Biden's quality of medical care, he should be a bit safer. Nonetheless, ignoring that, he has about an 22% chance of dying. Not sure I would call that "quite high," but it does make me glad I am not 80.
Here is the thing, though.
If she were pushed off the ticket, there would be people who would be privately fine with it, but would feel like they couldn't be okay with it publicly, and those people would be extremely vocal about it.
The weird thing is, I don't think she wants to be president. Even when she was campaigning for the office, her staff complained they couldn't find her or reach her, and many quit before she dropped out of the race.
I was living in California, so I was watching Harris, but I was Elizabeth Warren all the way.
Playing devil's advocate, Nate Cohn found some "Harris but not Biden" voters in some of his previous polling. If I remember correctly, those people tended to skew younger and more left-wing. And while younger, left-wing folks need to suck it up and vote for Biden anyway, I can't imagine that removing Harris from the ballot would be helpful in achieving that.
Would be curious to know how Black Americans would feel about replacing Harris, but ultimately I think it's too late.
It would create unnecessary drama and would only serve to feed a negative media cycle that could potentially be spent on lambasting Republicans.
I think there are things Biden could maybe do differently, but yes, I'm mostly in agreement with you on Kamala Harris. That's a move he shouldn't make.
Maybe you’ve never met one in person but you know they exist right? These would be the people who claimed racism over Claudine Gay’s resignation. Think Joy Reed on MSNBC saying things like a white man is blaming his problems and scapegoating a black woman.
To continue your analogy, though... How would you expect Kamala to fare in a VP debate with Elise Stefanik? Worse than Claudine Gay -- and her Snotty Kamala "That little girl was me" delivery would be even less effective than Charlene's attempt to blame her Harvard ouster on racism.
Some black women might stand by her, but that ain't worth the trade-off. Heck, even John Fetterman (speech impediment included) would be a better foil.
How does Biden replace Harris without the message being, "Biden is a bad judge of talent" and have that reflect poorly on him?
And what confidence do you have that veep choice #2 would be a surefire thing? There's no obvious name beyond Whitmer and who knows how Whitmer would perform for the first time on the national stage?
Presidents don't replace their VPs. Heck, even Eisenhower kept Nixon. Yes, it was smart of FDR to replace Wallace and it was unfortunate for Lincoln to replace Hannibal Hamlin but we're talking ancient history here. (Rockefeller in 1976 wasn't elected.)
Nitpick I guess but Ford replaced his VP when running for "re" election.
Isn’t “I’ve never met…” exactly the kind of reasoning Matt warns against in this post?
I think one thing you’re missing is who the replacement would be.
Would people be mad in the abstract if Harris was replaced with “someone else”? Maybe not a lot of people.
Would people be mad if the first non-white VP is replaced by a white person, and 2024 is an all white ticket? Yeah, a lot of the Democratic base and key groups would be upset.
Would people be mad if the first female VP was kicked off and it was an all-male ticket? Yeah, a lot of people would.
But if you wanted to replace Harris with another black woman, who are the candidates who would be better on the ticket than her?
Hispanic woman - Catherine Cortez Masto.
Hispanics are more numerous than Blacks, more likely to be swing voters than Blacks, and are not seen as White (even though Cortez Masto basically is)
If Biden replaced Harris with Warnock, I think all would be forgiven.
Oh ffs.
Some comments simply can't be improved upon.
We need every Senator we have.
Why would the Democrats tip the senate back to GOP control just for maybe an extremely marginal benefit to the popularity of the VP candidate?
"Liked," but does Georgia law preclude Warnock from running for his Senate seat simultaneously with running for VP? (Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 ran for both VP and re-election for his Senate seat in Texas at the same time.)
He's not running in 24 (having just won a full term in 22). But if they won, Kemp would appoint his replacement (until a special election could be held, presumably in 26).
Do you know many middle aged black women?
There are things he can do about the border chaos with his presidential powers. He should use them and then blame Republicans and Trump for keeping the borders open in order to play politics.
Such as?
Restart remain in Mexico, remove domestic violence from asylum claims. Stop fighting Texas. There’s a lot.
Thanks for bringing up these details. I want to add another point to *why* he isn't doing this. One reason Biden liberalized asylum and parole policies is he cannot deliver for his party's interest groups in Congress. Congress is more anti-immigration than it was in 2013; there was never a chance of getting a bill like comprehensive immigration reform through the senate in 2021-2022. So he's stuck using these executive levers to increase legal immigration even as it pisses off American voters, including some of his own voters in major cities like Chicago and NYC with municipal budgets straining further.
Supreme Court shut down remain in Mexico.
But you really think it's good policy to dump battered women back out on the other side of the border?
Or that people won't find another claim to make before their day in court?
And you really think Texas won't keep endlessly escalating the conflict for media points?
What exactly are your motivations here?
No they didn’t. They gave Biden permission to end it. A few states
sued to stop him. He won the right to end it, he can absolutely implement it.
I think anyone who wants to help economic migrants from other countries should go to their country to help them and stop trying to release them here. Mexico is a fine place for them to wait. More americans live in Mexico than anywhere else in the world and it’s one of the few places Americans travel to.
The only reason why it started is because Biden reversed Trump policies that reduced illegal migration. Most of these people do not qualify for asylum. They are hoping to be released, because the chances of deportation are low once they are, even when they lose their claim.
My motivation is to keep economic migrants out and allow high skilled immigrants in. Also neutralize republican attacks and win so democrats can replace alito and Thomas. What’s yours?
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/29/supreme-court-migrant-protection-protocols-remain-mexico-biden/
Punching back against an out of touch Supreme Court is great politics and also great policy. Let them enforce their stupid word games
Stop fighting Texas? I live in Texas and i don't think he's fighting our scumbag insurrectionist Governor hard enough.
Abbott won his election handily. Ted Cruz will handily win too.
What should Biden do? SOMETHING! Right now his brand is "I'll be nicer than Trump" and folks have plenty of reasons to think nice isn't working.
As to specific steps, NBC News had a LOL article today. Excerpts:
"The Biden administration is considering taking executive action to deter illegal migration across the southern border, according to two U.S. officials.
...
The plans have been under consideration for months, the officials said...
The unilateral measures under consideration might upset some progressives in Congress, the officials said, but they noted that Democratic mayors who have asked for more help from the federal government to handle the influx of migrants in their cities would be pleased. The measures are still being drafted and are not expected to take place any time soon."
Do let me emphasize "not expected to take place anytime soon".
What's this, the Hakuna Matata staff effort? No hurries, no worries chaps.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-weighs-executive-action-border-migrants-rcna137804?taid=65c43b6c8b17820001a58e0e
Could he send American troops to help enforce it, or is that illegal?
It's too late. He could have done that two years ago, but at this point the Republicans can (justly) criticize his proposals, and just run out the clock until they can get a President who will give them everything they want.
I think it will be enough in a close election, and he doesn’t have to persuade Republican voters only swing voters who voted for him before
If those swing voters want something that can only be gotten by a bipartisan agreement, and Joe can't deliver it because the Republicans won't play ball, then it will matter significantly.
The "Yes, but..." is that this immigration compromise was a progressive cave-in with nothing for Dreamers or a pathway for the undocumented. It was only on offer because Team Biden is desperate.
If Biden wins this fall, this bill won't be revived. And if Trump wins (and, as is likely, Reps control the Senate), Team Red won't have 60 votes in the Senate. Trump won't have better luck next time than he did getting funding for the Wall when Reps controlled House and Senate in 2017/18.
All that said, Biden's message seems to be "I was set on fixing the border but the Senate Majority Leader and I were blocked by Trump."
C'mon, man, who's in charge here? WEAK!
Trump's message is a lot simpler and avoids a level of nuance most voters won't follow anyway: To fix the border, start by electing a guy who wants to fix the border. Biden let it run out of control for three years. Now he's promising to get tough, and he might even stay tough until the polls close on the West Coast next fall if his party lets him. With or without new powers, Biden wasn't and isn't going to deliver.
Despite Matt's exhortation, I'm kind of freaking out. Trump blew up the Rep party in 2015/16 with his immigration message, and this time around he seems to be on track to blow up the country.
I think an underrated reason for allowing in so many asylum claimants is to decrease inflation which has clearly worked. We needed the labor and they delivered
It wasn’t a republican wishlist, it was a chamber of commerce and democrat bill. Free Lawyers for minors paid for by tax payers, catch and release for minors and families, billions for ngos and a bunch of other non starters. The goal was to make an offer the republicans couldn’t refuse, this bill wasn’t it. Biden is the reason there are so many people being released into the country. Until democrats understand that most Americans do not want unlimited economic migrants arriving at our doorstop, they’ll lose on this issue.
They both should step aside. Too much ego to do that though. He can win, but he is going to have to make serious changes starting with the border and not doing interviews.
I'm sorry but the first paragraph is just a full blown Fox News lie. The writer of this Substack just recorded a podcast where he actually carefully explained the situation. I'd say maybe give that a listen first.
No it’s not. Chris Murphy admits it. All of that stuff is accurate. Which one is a lie?
I tried linking Chris Murphy’s tweets, but it won’t let me link. He made an entire thread and even responded to Josh hawley admitting it.
Nothing your saying is inaccurate, it's just your framing that comes across as Fox Newsy.
Minors with asylum claims are of course gonna need lawyers paid for because they're minors. Catch and release is an inevitability of how hard it is process and house migrants at the border, and even though Trump tried to end it, migrant surges in 2019 forced him to go back to releasing migrants into border towns. NGO's play a huge role in guaranteeing humanitarian conditions at the border. Supporting that work is something a developed and moral country like the United States is entitled to do.
It's kind of insane we're encouraging people to send their kids alone or with paid strangers to enter the US. Similar to Defund the Police, this is one of those ideas people get after seeing a really unfair or brutal news event, without thinking about the broader incentives this will change. Of course, back in the ancient years of 2014, major Democratic politicians understood exactly this problem and weren't afraid to point it out.
https://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-immigration-children-daca-661952
I'm with you except for the NGO's part. Why should NGO's need to pay a huge role in guaranteeing humanitarian conditions?
"Humanitarian conditions at the border"? In other words, if an intruder (aka "migrant") dies while trying to scale a razor-wire fence, it's the razor wire's fault? You'll have trouble getting a majority of voters to accept that!
As for "asylum"? If someone has fled from Honduras, they could be looking for work in Mexico City. They have no business being at the US border (let alone trying to scale a fence or ford a river) in the first place. That goes double if, in the process, they're putting their own children in harm's way!
This is not correct. I’m not sure where you are coming from, but Biden is very popular in the Dem Parry and they aren’t going step aside. You’ll need to take that fantasy somewhere else.
The fantasy is thinking he can win with just democrats.
Nobody thinks that. Nobody. But Dems control who the party nominee is going to be and they aren’t going to outsource that. If that’s what it takes to win, they will lose. Fortunately, it’s not. It’s a Biden/Harris ticket. Get used to it.
You do understand however that high prices, ie inflation, ARE, the cost of getting everything you want here, right. They can't just be counteracted with a Presidential price-reducing button.
I think Biden already pushed the big red lower inflation button.
Ben - I've got another treat for you. Probably showed up in your push e-mail feed. I answered a question you asked me about how I applied my knowledge to speaking persuasively with swing voters.
Inflation has lowered to a manageable level, but I don't think we have (or want!) deflation.
True! Mispoke and editing.
Swingable D to R, R to D voters do not know that or think that.
Nor do even partisan well-wishers of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party like Stan Greenberg know or think that.
Even if we accept as a valid conclusion that some Biden policies have increased some industrial supply with some price controlling/limiting/constraining effect, it certainly was not a pushbutton act, nor mere force of will, but via multiple policy processes requiring some external cooperation and having to work against some real friction.
Well inflation is now down and real median wages have grown since July of last year. The main problem is there's no promise Democrats won't increase inflation again, since most of their party operative class believes ARPA was a big success and Larry Summers is a giant meanie head. If they get another trifecta, you can expect them to behave exactly as they repeatedly tell us they will.
Is there a promise that we will be saved from Trump's inflationary massive retail tariff tax by his own laziness or Senate or House GOP lack of cohesion on fiscally related bills?
GOP Congress will not stand for a massive increase in prices for consumer goods across the board. They already shot down a non-tariff consumption tax idea not unlike a VAT in 2017, and that was less disruptive than what Trump is suggesting due to monetary exchanges balancing out.
Of course, their lives would be easier if they had another public leader of the party...
Why is it that democrats passively “agree” to do something about the border as concession to the gop? If they can’t reach consensus why not advance their own border bill, daring gop to sink it ? The very fact that Dems position themselves as needing gop to force them to do something about the border is the best evidence that they are de facto the open borders party. It’s disastrous. Protecting the borders is at the top of the president’s most basic jobs.
>If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention.<
Most marginal or persuadable voters in fact *do not pay attention* to the detailed ebb and flow of legislative battles and policy struggles. They just see "border chaos."
In other words, the intersection of A) events and B) voter perceptions is unfair, capricious and uncaring—just like our cosmos.
That's what I typically think too. I'm not so sure in this case. It's campaign season and people will soon be paying more attention to politics than they typically do. And the President has a big bullhorn. He has a chance to make the case that Trump and the Republicans are undermining attempts to fix the border while the Democrats are trying to fix the problem.
If he doesn't make a big deal of this in the State of the Union, with Democrats standing and cheering fixing the border while Republicans sit on their hands and stare stonily forward, then *that* would be political malpractice. But he'll knock it out of the park, the media will make it a leading story (fingers crossed) and I suspect some of that will seep into the body politic. The border is typically a losing issue for the Democrats, but it's possible that the Republicans scored an own goal here.
Biden's ability to "knock it out of the park" is suspect. The fact that he is sitting out the Super Bowl and is essentially an invisible President bodes poorly for him giving a SOTU speech that will have any impact. I hope I'm wrong.
His 2023 State of the Union received widespread praise and was viewed by over 27 million Americans.
His speech next month will be viewed by many people who've been told that he's demented and drooling. We'll see how he does. I bet he does great.
27 million Americans < 10% of the population. And what percentage of these viewers were Democrats/already in Biden's camp? (I'd guess above 90%.) Meanwhile, in 2023, 115 million watched the Super Bowl.
I agree with everything you’re saying with one exception: Biden isn’t TALKING about going strong on closing the border! He’s not saying “I agree with my Republican colleagues, the border is in chaos and must be fixed.”
This is of course a consistent pattern, that MY has pointed out: Biden pursues normie policy and puts out normie ads but his public presentation is almost entirely oriented towards pro-Palestine protestors blocking highways, and their equivalents for other issues. It’s more than a little bizarre. The constituency for “illegal immigration under the guise of asylum must be allowed to continue because immigration is a form of charity we provide to the less developed world” - I mean it’s gotta be a small fraction of even the Democratic Party right? And yet who else would Biden piss off if he showed up to a speech tomorrow and said “I am instructing the border people to shut down any illegal activity at the border, it’s a crisis”?
"but his public presentation is almost entirely oriented towards pro-Palestine protestors blocking highways,"
Where are you seeing this?
Or is it some jerk is virally asserting, maybe with an AI bot, and nobody's as virally, displacing it with something else?
Pass the republican house immigration bill in the senate, then DARE the house not to ratify it
What do we want? More hippie and sjw punching. When do we want it? Now.
“ If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story. If you don’t think his willingness to sign a Republican-wishlist immigration bill that had nothing in it he wanted was going strong on the border, you aren’t paying attention. Now it IS the Republicans’ fault and he’d better make that point every chance he gets, while touting his own willingness to shut it down when necessary. That’s not sufficient, I agree, but it’s an important part of the story.”
You think anyone believes Biden actually wants to get tough on the border when he waited until an election year to figure out there was a problem? I doubt he’ll be able to stick it to Republicans on the matter.
Ok so tomorrow he announces he’s asking the Vice President to step down so that he can appoint her to Secretary of State. Then he says he’s appointing Amy Klobuchar or Stacy Abrams or name your preferred running mate to be his VP.
Why would that cause a ‘civil war’ within the party that we’d never recover from? What does that even mean? Which bloc of voters is going to go running into Trump’s arms?
(Doesn’t matter because it’s not happening in a million years…LOL)
I'm not sure what he has to do exactly, but totally agree he's gotta start doing things that at least look big as demonstrations of agency. Trump always *felt* like he was doing stuff and he was master at setting the narrative. I think Biden's patience is why he's gotten a surprising amount of policy done, but it's time to get loud.
Correct, showing fire and energy would be the best way of looking not washed up. But does he still have the energy? Could he walk a mile in 15 minutes? 18? 20?
Last I heard he rides his bike a lot, which seems like a good sign that his physical fitness is sufficient.
But I have to say that Biden's gaffes over the last couple of days have me questioning his mental fitness more than ever. He does need to be out there more, and I'm sure he will be in the coming months, but I'm genuinely concerned that he's going to look completely unfit out there. And sure, Trump's mental fitness is worse imo, but voters will see it as a wash and vote for Trump because of immigration or because his term is perceived to be more successful or just because they are more entertained by him.
I think that when normies see the crap trump has actually been saying, many of them will swing towards biden.
I think Biden will likely surprise people by how lucid he is.
That said, his skipping the Super Bowl interview does give me a bit more concern.
Or Trump has been saying weird stuff for ever, it's not "new" for him, but being too incoherent might be "new" for Biden (he has a little bit of a gaffe reputation which should cushion a bit, but not forever)
Confusing Macron for François Mitterrand, the former French president who died in 1996, does seem to lean more towards incoherence. It's getting tough to watch.
Before I googled that in response to your comment I was _really_ hoping it was going to be Trump confusing them (like Haley / Pelosi)
Let's see how he does in the State of the Union. He was pretty impressive last year. If he repeats that this year, that suggests he may do fine during the campaign, at least for big events where people are watching and making judgments.
Could Trump walk a mile in 20 minutes? Trick question! Trump walking a mile, yeah right.
Bumping December's piece on Kamala! https://www.slowboring.com/p/is-it-time-for-a-second-look-at-kamala
Yes, the anti-Kamala punditry was always cope among Dem-leaning pundits. While she's not a great politician, she's not that terrible of a politician either. The Democrats have other bigger problems.
Kamala is not the problem here. The problem is we have an 80 year old who can't really execute a communications strategy on top.
I think if Kamala were the nominee she'd probably do very well against Trump, despite all the people dumping on her.
Kamala wouldn't do much better vs. Trump, but not really because she is disliked. The problem is that Dems have been in the presidency 3 out of the last 4 cycles, and the electorate always swings away from the president.
This ought to be a "scheduled loss" for Dems. The fact that it is Trump instead of a vanilla republican is the only thing giving Dems a prayer.
I don't think she's the problem with the ticket. I agree 100% with that. Running mates seldom if every cause ticket much of a problem.*
The problem with Harris as I see it is there are blinking neon signs she'd make a poor nominee for the presidency. As long as she's not the nominee, she's not a problem.
*Not that it would ever have happened in any imaginable universe, Hillary Clinton being what she is, but I do think there's a case to be made that the obvious move in 2016 was for her to run with Bernie Sanders. So, in this one instance, although I don't think Kane qua Kane actively harmed the ticket, I do think there was probably a missed opportunity there. But we'll never know.
Touché! In retrospect, 2016 played out as "Tom Sawyer vs Nurse Ratched." Having Bernie on the ticket might've helped.
“Congress won’t act, so I am deploying the military to protect the border. They’ll interdict some terrorists while there. Wink.”
I think that would be a mistake. You can't convince people not to vote for Trump by behaving like Trump--they will just vote for the real thing, rather than the ersatz copy. Biden has to handle the border issue in a "Biden" way, which probably means some kind of bipartisan deal making.
>You can't convince people not to vote for Trump by behaving like Trump<
Says who?
Serious question. Also, your "behaving like Trump" is loaded language. Is a muscular use of military power to defend the border something only Trump would do? I think Eisenhower did it, too. And some earlier presidents (around the time of the Mexican Revolution?).
I personally don't believe the border situation is a crisis. I think it's a problem. But it doesn't matter what this particular Slow Boring reader thinks. What matters is what a middle-aged non-degreed food service worker in the exurbs of Detroit thinks.
>Says who?<
Ron Desantis for one.
They think it’s a problem.
Yes, politics is perception.
except Rs won’t deal because they want Biden to fail.
Aren’t we talking about Sister Souljah moments, basically? Those have a history of being effective, right?
Then let’s go with “Trump is wrong about immigrants. Immigrants are great. Immigrants are America. Blah blah blah. However border chaos is unacceptable. That’s why I’m demanding republicans give me emergency powers to shut down asylum claims until the border is under control.”
Is using the military to protect the border trumpy now? Isn’t protecting the country’s borders the military’s first and least controversial role?
I guess I'm confused by your language. It sounds like you are positing that the people surrendering to CBP are actually some kind of fifth column intent on overthrowing the US government by force of arms and occupying its lands on behalf of a foreign power, and that seems...highly unlikely to me.
But if you and I agree that we are talking about refugee / immigrant flows, that's just kind of a different problem than the sorts of problems that you solve with a modern combined-arms military, which is what the the United States military is. Admittedly you can treat the military as though it's just a spare source of human labor--there are a lot of humans in the military--but that is going to create a lot of downstream problems for precisely the reason that you would predict when you use a group trained for one thing to do another thing.
The military first job is to protect the territorial sovereignty of the country. A border out of control open to all and sundry (including some on the terrorist watch list) is a security issue. Using the help of the military under this emergency situation is not a priori some kind of trumpian constitutional aberration. That’s all I’m saying.
I think you are talking yourself into a hyperbolic stance, here. The border is not "out of control [and] open to all"; if the Canadian government decided to try and capture back Maine, or if the Mexicans decided to mount a surprise invasion of Texas, they would struggle to achieve their objectives. Red Dawn is a movie, rather than a plausible future outcome of Sino-American competition, and if you get those confused, it takes you to some weird, expensive, and ultimately non-optimal places.
I think it is fair to say that more refugees and illegal immigrants are crossing the southern border than is optimal, from a policy standpoint. This is clearly not our preferred way to get to One Billion Americans. But the things that the American military does best--information-assisted precision bombing, high-mobility land warfare utilizing mechanized infantry in combination with heavy cavalry and standoff fire support, that sort of thing--are not great ways to interdict refugee flows.
So that kind of leaves you with this question which is, "what, precisely, are you expecting the big green machine to DO at the border?" I assume your answer is some version of "roll out razor wire and start shooting migrants." And I'm saying that is going to be 1) very expensive, 2) capacity intensive since the border is long, and our number of soldiers is finite, and basing + logistics is complicated, 3) very likely a PR disaster, and 4) probably not sustainable for any length of time because of 1, 2, and 3.
And you don't have to take my word for it; you have seen, quite recently, what happens when we use the military for stuff other than land warfare. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan in the post-invasion period was regarded as some kind of major shining moment for the United States.
Like, I get it: the uniforms and the guns and stuff look incredibly tough and cool, and "defend the border" rhetoric sounds awesome. Insert gif here of eagle with talons extended superimposed over MLRS launch.
But tools and organizations are built for specific missions and purposes, and people are trained for specific jobs. If you want to solve a problem that is, "I feel that too many refugees and immigrants are crossing the border and surrendering to CBP under false pretenses," the answer to that problem is never going to be, "so I think we should hit them with some JDAMs."
We need more CBP agents and asylum court staff, not the military.
This would instantly win him the election
How does that work with the asylum law provisions?
It doesn't.
But if you can get some big headlines and make a critical % of people -perceive- that he's fixed the problem, then you can win.
And then you can stop the pretense on Nov 8th.
But if people don’t believe you, lying to them isn’t going to work, it will just confirm their belief that you are not to be trusted.
You only have convince a relatively small % of still undecided voters.
And given the media ecosystem being favorable/predisposed towards Democrats overall*, they can probably control the narrative long enough make the necessary impact.
*except explicitly right-wing media, which undecideds are probably not tuning into.
"You only have convince a relatively small % of still undecided voters."
Untrustworthiness causes defections, and then that percentage needs to increase to compensate.
The idea that the VP choice affects the election is a continuing fantasy. Maybe the really egregious choice, like Sarah Palin, might have a small effect. Is Harris as bad as Palin? I'm not seeing it.
I think Palin is a good example of how the Trump effect has dumbed down the expectations the electorate has for our politicians. There's an endless list of things Trump has said that are more ignorant than "I can see Alaska from my house."
You do know that that is what Tina Fey, playing Palin, said on SNL?
Her actual words were "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
There were/are plenty of things to criticize her for, but lets at least make them accurate!
Yeah I was paraphrasing the SNL version. But I can see Russia from the state I govern was still essentially her response to the question, and she didn't actually come out as being some whiz on the US/Russia relations.
Point being, some people kind of credit Palin with dragging down the whole ticket. Trump was rhetorically way worse! And won.
You're correct, but the fact that a large percentage of people believe Palin said it still proves Ben's point about Trump.
I don't think there's much daylight between those two statements. In fact, you might say that they're as close as Alaska and _______.
(The Yukon, obviously.)
I think it's more important this time because the statistical odds of something happening to Biden and the VP taking over are not trivial. But overall, I don't think it's going to have a huge influence. But I think the administration would do itself some favors if it would improve Harris' image such that she would be more widely seen as able to competently fill the role if/when needed.
I think they missed a bet by not putting her out there on crime issues, like Matt recommended. Having her be point person on abortion is great, but it's not going to assuage swing voters' doubts about her.
"I think they missed a beat by not putting her out there on crime issues, like Matt recommended."
Clearly Biden doesn't trust that she'd generate positive-valence stories on that issue.
I have no idea why people are so fixated on Harris. Yes, she is unpopular. No, NO ONE WHO MATTERS CARES.
The population of people who are a) right leaning and b) hate Harris are pretty far right. Among them, there are no voters for whom you could add a c) and would vote for Biden if you replaced her.
A lot of people pay lip service to it mattering, but if you swapped her with someone "liked", they'd shrug their shoulders, mutter about their pet peeve topic and how Biden messed it up for them, and still vote Trump. The way to fix the problems is to focus on the ISSUES, not the irrelevant vice president ticket (and yes, I know it's relevant because he's old. Still doesn't matter to any swing voters).
"The way to fix the problems is to focus on the ISSUES, not the irrelevant vice president ticket "
I'd like to see some polling on that, specifically focused on undecided/swing voters. From what I've seen, most of those undecided voters are uh... not well-informed on the issues. Like, they have no idea what the Inflation Reducation Act was, or how the US is supporting Ukraine. A lot of them know basically nothing. But they DO know who the vice president is, because she's a visible symbol of the country.
Isn't that Matt's point? The Biden administration needs to do a better job of communicating why they are better on those issues, and why the Trump administration would be terrible on those issues.
Obviously partisans aren't going to give a crap about the issues, they just vote for "their guy" anyway, but it's swing voters we're talking about.
If you think a random person who knows nothing about the issues truly knows or cares about Harris, you are very mistaken. Only partisans really care about Harris. The types of voters who are super uninformed about politics barely know who the VP is.
And by the way, Harris isn't really disliked by the center that much. I, for instance, and a barely-left-of-center voter, like many on this substack, and I honestly have no idea what she really does day to day or why so many people like you are so upset with her. I can honestly say I have never had a strong opinion one way or another about her. I think people that dislike her are very "online", and that's not the normie voter. And about 99% of swing voters are normie voters.
He seems to think that a good campaign can educate those voters on the issues.
I am much more cynical and think that it's hopeless to even try. You'd have to round them up and force them to attend a grade school class on "how does government work" and "where are all these countries" before they'd even begin to understand.
I mean, yeah, you can give up and do nothing, I guess.
Why take a slim chance when you could have NO chance, right? /s
"Closing the border" is not a thing. You need to make legal changes to asylum law and provide more judges to adjudicate cases quickly, which is what Dems agreed to!
Sonia Sotomayor could retire "to focus on her health." Appoint Harris to the bench. Put Secretary Pete on the ticket.
That definitely would lock up the Norwegian-American vote.
Secretary Pete is of Maltese extraction, but I take your meaning.
I was referring to him teaching himself Norwegian in college. Who does that?
This is so incredibly wrong and doesn't even begin to make sense.
The immigration thing is a canard that Dems cannot win, and it's obvious, and we see that now with the bill. Rebs are sabotaging the border, and will always move the goalposts.
The best thing to do is call their bluff.
And "replace Kamala" is way easier said than done, which is particularly obvious because you didn't make a proposal.
The Reb rhetoric attacking her as the next eventual president is going to be absolutely unhinged, racist and sexist, but swapping out VP is not going to make Dems seem strong and unified and capable. Any replacement will then get skewered for replacing "a strong independent black woman" or whatever.
Like this is so comically wrong you must be trying to give out bad advice.
"The best thing to do is call their bluff."
What do you mean? What specific action are you suggesting?
Yesterday Dems tried to pass the Border/Defense bill that they negotiated with Rebs, and then none of the Rebs voted for it.
The Dems then went on TV and said "Rebs are not doing any of the things they said they would do and want to keep the chaos going and abandon our allies"
That message works with _me_ but that sounds like the guy you were saying was wrong who said:
"The border has been an obvious problem since day 1 of his term, and there's no evidence he's willing to do anything except blame Republicans. Zero swing voters are going to believe this."
I mean, that's just blaming Republicans for it. I happen to think they _deserve_ the blame here, but I guess I thought you were advocating something different.
Thanks for clarifying.
Being willing to sign a bill into law that would allow him to shut down the border the day he signed it is absolutely being WILLING to do something. Blaming republicans for not passing that bill is different than being completely indifferent to the problem while blaming others. He can't sign a bill that they won't present to him.
Insofar as people might engage with the details, I think they will wonder why Biden doesn't just do it anyway. That the courts may block him sounds like whining to a lot of voters. They want to see him at least try like Trump did.
That's true, I agree, I forgot about that as a rebuttal to the first post.
Nobody really votes because of the VP though and firing a loyal and scandal free VP would be a pretty big deal that could easily blow up in Biden's face. Imagine if her allies (or even her!), furious at what they see as a personal betrayal, go on the morning show circuit to deliberately tell stories that make Biden look like a old dufus who's totally out to lunch. Imagine the Thomas Eagleton blowback, but supercharged and dominating social media. Wouldn't be pretty. There's a reason presidents rarely dump their VPs, the costs can be extreme.
I'm so with you on the disconnect between the fear-mongering about democracy and lack of follow-through.
I disagree about replacing Kamala though. I think it's all downside and no upside for Biden. I don't think there are a bunch of marginal voters out there who are going to swing to the Biden side with a VP switch. And the downside would significant - all the media focused on the decision, noting how rare it was to replace a VP, noting the optics of a white man essentially firing the first black female VP, etc. I don't know what alternative VP would be worth that.
And on the border, the die is cast. Democrats did nothing about it until the GoP forced them into this latest deal before the GoP did a 180 and played Lucy with the football. There isn't much Biden can do, and he's got a three year track record he has to deal with that can't be undone. The GoP demanding a deal and then reneging does, at least, give Biden and Democrats something to campaign on and is better than what they had before.
If you give an eff about democracy and are blue, but live in a hard red or blue state, expend your savings or go into debt to move into a purple state while you can still establish legal residency before the election. It works faster to change the location of butts and feet than the changing of minds and messages.
If you're not willing to do that much, you must not care all that much.
The border situation is worse than that. He stepped in Day 1 with this frothy proclamation terminating the border "emergency" and re-allocating the boarder wall funds - only to have to walk it back two years later when it continued to spiral out of control. Total misstep and I still can't believe he walked into it.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/proclamation-termination-of-emergency-with-respect-to-southern-border-of-united-states-and-redirection-of-funds-diverted-to-border-wall-construction/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-administration-border-wall-construction-south-texas/
"They tell us we're fighting for save American Democracy, but they're acting as if this is a just a nice-to-win election."
Well... isn't that the truth? I think most people feel there will still be another election in 2028, regardless of who wins this one.
It would be nice for politicians to admit that this isn't *actually* an apocalyptic doomsday scenario if they lose an election.
1. People don't vote the bottom of the ticket.
2. She's 59! Somebody younger is the key thing we need?
3. What's wrong with her again? Is there *anything* that's not just vague grumbling?
4. People don't vote the bottom of the ticket.
Meanwhile...you say go strong on the border. And I'm scratching my head cause I just watched the administration ply the GOP like a fiddle on that issue, getting them all to admit on air they are purposefully keeping that issue smoldering for Trump's benefit. What exactly do you want Biden to do here that he's not already doing?
I want Biden to have the grace and wisdom to acknowledge that he no longer has the vigor to be President. He should then let the Democratic Party know that he will not run for re-election. They should then pursue a new candidate. It is true that Kamala is not the problem - Joe is the issue. I think the team around him is looking after their own interests and would ride that horse until it dies in the Oval Office. That may happen.
Biden can't do anything about the border. The factions make it ungovernable. He's spending all his time trying to manage them.
I think it's underappreciated what the Administration did on the SPR in the midterms, which was opposed by the enviro world, which is weird when compared to this LNG pause. But I think the argument with the SPR was that it would only have short term consequences and the LNG pause is, supposedly, not going to change any prices now.
If gas prices spike this summer/fall, Biden should empty out the SPR and cause gas prices to crash. I bet that would gain him 1-2% of the vote alone.
Yes. This. Democrats have an underused tool in the SPR.
We’re still in the “what election” phase, IMO.
Until coverage shifts to election mode, voters will continue to act as if they don’t know who people are or what they think of them. Clinton is an excellent example here: until she was once again clearly identified as a political figure, she was deceptively popular.
Going to write something about this for the Hill over the weekend.
Send me the link when it comes out!
Yes, this. I'd also add that I live in a 80% dem city in a purple state that was decisive in 2020, and my far left friends have all told me they told some pollster that they didn't approve of Biden and weren't going to vote for him because of (I/P, climate, or some other idiosyncratic agenda item). ALL OF THEM!!! Like, not one said they supported him. They're not going to vote third party either, so they just straight up lied about their plans to vote because they think saying they won't vote for Biden will drive him to the left. I've chewed out a few of them for being irresponsible given the Trump threat.
They also have nooo idea about the crazy shit Trump and Steven Miller are planning on doing, like using red state national guard troops to round up millions of migrants and putting them in internment camps before deporting them, firing the entire management of all federal agencies and replacing them with loyalists, just to name two.
I think social media is fucking polls.
People have learned that the goal of interaction is self-expression no matter the interaction.
I have wondered about the issue with approval ratings in this election cycle. Biden's is terrible, but a large portion of people who disapprove him must disapprove Trump more. That said, I think the far-left pushing Biden is why this thing is even close. It sounds like you pointed this out to your friends so this is not a dig at you...just an observation more generally.
Absolutely. I visited family this weekend and no one one was even thinking about the election. The thing that was on everyone’s mind was Taylor Swift (Grammys + upcoming Super Bowl). It’s anecdotal, but I get the sense normies aren’t really ready to be put through the ringer of election season
Right, we've still got a third of the country that doesn't believe it's Trump v. Biden II. We're reaching the point where it's election season, but please come back in May.
What I have been wondering is where Biden actually is. The collapse of the immigration deal gives him a prime opportunity for a national address on the subject. Maybe he announces whatever unilateral executive action he feels he can get away with without legislation. He should definitely say where he is on the subject and where he is should be a lot more hawkish than where it has been. I know parts of the Democratic coalition would not be happy about that but we really have to start thinking big picture trade offs. If this really is a democracy is on the ballot election then exchanging harder line immigration policy (or more hardline, totally unnecessary military support for Israel, or whatever) in order to save it is a complete no brainer. And yet one doesn't get the sense that D leadership or the administration is thinking in those terms.
"If this really is a democracy is on the ballot election..."
Sure: This time there *really is* a wolf.
It's funny, I've never bought that line, even in the Bush II days where civil libertarian critiques were briefly fashionable. However this is the one time I can think of where it might actually be, given that a major party is in fact nominating a guy who, however ham-fisted, actually tried some bizarro scheme involving fake electors, trying to intimidate state election officials, some legalistic sounding nonsense about the counting process, and a mob of buffoons ready to fun interference.
"There Will be no Trump Coup"
I mean have you read about project 2025? They are explicitly saying they will drastically expand executive power, purge non Trump fanatics from the government, and use the riot act to deploy the military to democratic cities. Trump being too disorganized to enact his autocratic wishes in his first term doesn't mean people were wrong for pointing out the dangerous stuff he was trying to do and now has a better plan for
"I mean have you read about project 2025?"
Meh.
Troll.
Perhaps I should point out what an ill-mannered worrier you are. Perhaps not.
Well, when that is explicitly what the wolf is saying.
He has, as you may have noticed, a grossly inflated opinion of himself.
Very true, but I'm not excited about giving the guy multiple shots on goal. One of them might go in.
Hey, I don’t want the guy to be president, but not because I fear an authoritarian regime. I just think his economic policies are asinine. Same reason I don’t want to see Biden reelected. Well, that, and because his wife strikes me as, at best, of average intelligence.
It’s not a wolf! It’s just a common Canis Lupus!
What large hair you have, grandmother.
You ask a key question: where is Biden? I think a lot of people are wondering who exactly is in charge, as it does not appear to be Biden, who is in cognitive decline
Biden is in charge. His presidency has been fine. Where his age is a big problem is that he can't reliably execute a communications strategy. A younger candidate could.
What makes you say Biden is in cognitive decline?
>What makes you say Biden is in cognitive decline?<
This week he mentioned a meeting three years ago with Helmut Kohl, who was not the German Chancellor at that point, nor a living human being. The week before he mentioned Francois Mitterand, another dead ex European leader, when he meant Macron:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/08/joe-biden-kohl-mitterrand-gaffe-age-questions
Quite honestly, this is pretty bad. I'm trying to be fair here: in similar circumstances I'd say "Trump is losing it." So what's good for the goose.
And to be honest I think Trump's brain decline is worse than Biden's. But still...
Oh yeah. That's a funny one.
>The collapse of the immigration deal gives him a prime opportunity for a national address on the subject. Maybe he announces whatever unilateral executive action he feels he can get away with without legislation.<
It seems to make sense to do this on a surface level. And maybe he will. But, I'll remind you that there are a number of moving parts, including aid to Ukraine and Israel. In other words, the White House and congressional Democrats are likely at a sensitive point right now in terms of salvaging important national priorities, and the time to have such a talk with the American people may not have (yet) arrived. Though that time may come very soon. Sometimes the national interest and a president's political self-interest don't perfectly match. Stay tuned.
And the incredible, inescapable difference between Biden and Trump is that for Trump that calculus not only gets settled the other way, it never even occurs as an idea.
Biden is a more than averagely competent President who has at his core a desire to serve the American people first and last. Trump is a narcissist who if he cares about serving anyone other then himself, it is only after himself, and then only those people who worship him. If being good at your job, demonstrably better than the person who had the job before you, doesn't get you reelected, then our system just doesn't work, and I'm not sure what can be done about that.
Well, that too!
He’s not going to make the address this week. The smoke has to clear and there’s a non-zero chance that chaos among the Republicans will create openings for either rhetoric or legislation that can’t be anticipated. But if the picture is the same in a couple weeks, failure to make that address would be gross political malpractice.
I see the same kind of cope from many Democrats as I noticed among Republicans in the 2012 election. The polls are wrong and sampling is biased and are not reflective of the strength of the candidate, etc. A lot of people genuinely believe that the Trump’s legal troubles will sink him. It’s possible but people have been saying some version of this is the final nail in his coffin for the last 8 years and I wish they would focus more on how the Democratic party can become more popular with moderate positions on immigration and climate change and less of the identity politics that moderates centrists/independents like me don’t like.
I don’t believe that Trump’s legal troubles will sink him, but I do believe that Trump will sink himself. If you look back on his presidency, he was always least popular when he was heavily in the spotlight, and his popularity improved when he stayed quiet.
Right now, Trump is staying largely quiet. People haven’t really been reminded why they dislike him. As we get closer to election day and the race has crystallized to Trump vs Biden, I am confident Trump will again become less appealing.
This is another cope. He has been around for 8 years. He's in the news a lot. Twitter/X is not real life and most voters never followed him or read his tweets.
By that logic, why should Trump’s popularity have fluctuated at all during his presidency?
And I’m not talking about Twitter, I’m talking about Trump saying incoherent and/or deranged stuff (or honestly even spouting basic GOP talking points on things like taxes and health care) in front of a microphone. When he did that, he got less popular. He hasn’t been doing that much lately. When he starts, thermostatic public opinion suggests he will get less popular.
A President's favorability rating is tied to several aspects of the performance. It's not like Biden's rating wouldn't have taken a hit if he had taken a vow of silence when there was high inflation. Trump's erratic handling of the pandemic played a big part in his loss. It was an international crisis and people were scared and looking for steady leadership. He has been saying things that no normal politician has said before. If that was a huge factor, he would have never won the Republican primary in 2016. I find it very unpersuasive that Trump will say something that'll tank his 2024 campaign but Biden won't.
I'm not sure Trump's popularity did vary that much. I think it might have been more that Hillary and Biden's popularity changed.
Polling showed that Trump's own popularity affirmatively went up during the roughly two weeks he stayed quiet after the Access Hollywood tape came out.
It is within a narrow range, but there are clear shifts of about 5 points in his approval rating tied to events (which is a lot for a highly polarized electorate) https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Well said. One of my great hopes is that when people are reintroduced to (a clearly declining) Trump after not having thought much about him for some years, they'll go, "Eww, what was I thinking. I can't believe I used to date this guy."
I think this is right, but once it becomes clear that the race is a very obviously declining Trump vs. a possibly similarly declining Biden, it’s going to get weird. People are going to be very frustrated that these are their choices, moreso than 2016.
Unrelated to anything, if I were named Siddhartha I would want to have a friend named Jesus and a friend named Muhammad.
It would be hilarious if they walked into a bar.
I'm an educated old Democrat living in a swing state (NC). I think the party is engaged in a weird kind of ritual suicide, and I hope they can recover from the madness. The economy has improved recently. Thank God, the national Democrats finally took some steps against illegal immigration. If they can now end a self-destructive culture war, end the lunatic "defund the police" mentality, and stop bemoaning "the deplorables," perhaps Mr. Biden can win the 2024 election.
I don't mean this as a dig or a disagreement, but when people talk about Defund the Police in 2024, I have no idea what they're talking about about. The platform only ever had purchase with a vocal, outsider class (not to say that didn't have a big impact) and pretty much went away in 2021, when it was clear how unpopular it was.
What does Biden do about that? That's not a smug declaration that I'm smarter than the dopes who fall for this. What does he do? Who does he denounce? What does he say?
The border deal going down seems like a good opportunity for Biden to here.
The slogan has gone away. But the idea of limited enforcement against criminal behavior continues, as witnessed by the release of the illegal immigrants who attacked police officers in NYC. Sanctuary laws don't allow cooperation with ICE and bail reform measures meant letting them walk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/04/nyregion/times-square-attack-bragg.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/brawl-migrants-police-times-square-touches-off-backlash-106972953
Insane story. Illegal immigrants can and should be deported for that fact alone. To release them rather then deport them after they attack someone (esp the police) is insanity. If I were conspiracy driven I’d say the gop is behind this, but I prefer hanlon’s razor.
You're really going to cite a single incident in NYC as evidence Dems are soft on crime?
Is that the kind of cherrypicking you'd accept if someone else presented it to you as evidence?
Look into Mary Moriarty the new progressive Dem prosecutor in Hennepin County. She is deeply unpopular locally, basically every prominent statewide Democrat has distanced themselves from her politically. There is locally a news story every week about a criminal she's letting of free with no consequences. The Biden Admin response? Send the Justice Department to celebrate her soft on crime accomplishments that are deeply unpopular in one of the bluest parts of the country. https://www.startribune.com/head-of-dojs-youth-justice-office-hails-hennepin-countys-reform-efforts/600340679/
At some point you can't just blame your staffers for every unpopular choice your administration makes.
In New York, stuff like this happens every day. Criminals accumulate dozens of arrests for serious crimes, for which they are let out without bail. Shoplifting gang members walk if they are caught at all. A lot of people in the City Council still explicitly support "defund the police." In any case the damage is done - it has given the police a reason to be lazy and hesitant again, so all the managerial reforms that led to the dramatic crime reductions in the late 1990's are undone and need to be done again.
Exactly it happens everyday.
It's a big city.
Florida and Tennessee has a violent crime problem too.
But those stories don't have the same applicable market and shock value.
Overall crimes are statistically much more frequent than they were 10 years ago. Not murder (which was mostly gangs) but all the "minor" and not-so-minor crimes - burglary, car theft, etc. are way up. The secret sauce is the lack of policing.
It makes a different that New Yorkers live on top of each other. I'm in the subway and on the sidewalks every day, unarmored by a motor vehicle. (but at least I don't have to worry about getting carjacked)
Not the incident per se, but the laws that have weakened bail measures and sanctuary laws. These changes have happened in other jurisdictions also, not only in NYC.
Where's the causality of that and the NYC incident?
It doesn't sound like you'd accept this quality of evidence if it was presented to you yourself.
"Defund the police" was a widespread slogan several years ago. While media doubtless amplified it, the slogan mirrored (at least for a while) the sincere opinion of maybe 10% of Democrats. It was catchy and memorable, and aligned with views often considered characteristic of the party. It will take strong and consistent messaging to the contrary to persuade voters (especially non-aligned voters in swing states) that Democrats aren't anti-police.
I think the Democratic President of the United States saying that during the 2022 State of the Union was pretty definitive.
But if people are dead set on believing that's what the Democratic party stands for, it will be hard to change their minds.
Man, if only Dems could control the Fox News pundits from repeating this slogan over and over.
Really, they should spend a lot of time on that.
Yeah, it was Fox News that led to all those 'In this house we believe...' signs that focused on BLM.
Actually a number of police agencies saw budget decreases. Apologists for the idea like to point to the fact that most of the decreases were "only" in the 5% range or so.
What that fails to recognize is that most agency's have fixed budgets for personnel, training, facilities, equipment, and cost of living raises built into contracts. A 5% budget cut basically does away with any funds to do things like respond to increase in homicides. Portland saw a several hundred percent increase in homicides in the two years after defunding the police (went from a 10 year average of 22 homicides a year to over a 100).
In fact, the city had five homicides in the first five months of 2020, including during COVID, and then after they cut the gang team in June there were like 15 in month. Here's the open data website
https://www.portland.gov/police/open-data.
Nationally there was the largest increase in homicides ever...and it is only now coming back down. Again, people like to blame COVID but if you look at the data the raise did not start until after George Floyd. Now I am sure there were many more factors than just funding...and I'll concede that the defunding was really a symptom of a more general issue...that said, anyone deny this trend is just gaslighting people.
A substantial part of that 10% took it to mean ""withhold funding until changes are made" not "withhold funding to eliminate the police department." I don't know anyone (other than Republicans) who took it to mean "stop paying the police."
I've heard this argument, and doubtless some who supported the demand believed as you say. But some didn't. The words are pretty clear in any case. I cannot imagine a policeman who wouldn't interpret the slogan in the way that I believe it was originally intended.
It's an pertinent, recent example.
The general explosion of crime in the past 4 years, especially in solidly blue areas, should nix any claims of cherry picking.
I would also add Oregon's decriminalization of drugs. It looks like that is going to be removed but only after a two-year 70% increase in fatal overdoses), but it is fodder for the rest of the country to point to incredibly stupid ideas. The Dems should have stuck with the Bill Clintion idea of not being outflanked on crime...
Your recitation of the facts here is wrong. Attacking a police officer is a crime that legitimates pretrial detention under the bail reform law. DA Bragg's office failed to oppose release for unclear reasons but possibly because their understanding of the facts was murky (the one who committed the most serious violence was detained). Non-cooperation with ICE has nothing to do with public safety--you think there aren't US citizens who commit violent acts?
There is still a Democratic majority on my city council that is blocking us from reaching legally mandated police staffing levels because they believe less police will make us safer.
If Minnesota turns purple -- I'm going to lose my mind. Biden was +7 in 2020 and is running at just +3 r/n. Dammit.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/minnesota/
Great points Richard - as someone who is center-right and still undecided (hoping for a No-Labels candidate) the issues you cited are toxic to me and would push away from Biden.
I can't help but notice that Biden ran on the notion of uniting the country and working with the right to restore a semblance of fair government. That seemingly lasted a month at best as he has catered to the progressive wing far more than the other side of the aisle and I think it may ultimately cost him this go around. Quite frankly, I think the center left probably has a better winning platform, but they have to stop the own goals if they want to win.
FYI I joined no labels early when I believed it was a group dedicated to reducing the toxic tribal partisan divide. I no longer believe that; I understand why you would be tempted to vote for a third party but I think it’s unrealistic in the US
A third party pulls the outcome to be more (not less) extreme because in a winner take all election, the parties who are closest to middle end to splitting the vote... And losing. See: Bush Nader Gore 2004, or primary races vs the general
Just my thoughts...I would not vote a third party if I lived in a swing state, but for most of America I think it would be very healthy to have a large third party vote in non-swing states.
First, it would remove any kind of perceived mandate. A president who wins in the low 40% range would have an easier time resisting the crazier elements of their party. Similarly, if enough people voted outside the mainstream it might pull one of the parties to the middle.
You might be right, but I'm not convinced.
Biden has passed far more bipartisan legislation than Trump or Obama, hasn’t he?
>That seemingly lasted a month at best as he has catered to the progressive wing far more than the other side of the aisle<
People see what they want to see. I'm no exception. But apparently neither are you. Biden's hardly a member of the The Squad. He has:
1) Pivoted hard to fighting inflation (Inflation Reduction Act) and deficit reduction.
2) Resolutely used US military power in aggressive fashion.
3) Refused to give an inch to the Hamas-sympathy crowd.
4) Engaged in wall building along our southern border.
5) Been positively Rubio-esque in his China policy. He's vowed multiple times to go war with Beijing if Taiwan is attacked; he's increased the number of US forces on that island; he's hit China's tech sector with blistering sanctions, and shot down a Chinese balloon.
6) Worked with the GOP and bucked his own left wing in rejecting DC criminal sentencing rules on grounds they're too lenient with offenders.
7) He has on multiple occasions publicly rejected calls to "defund" the police, and he has hit hard at Republicans for proposing budget cuts to the FBI.
If what you're really sore at is that Joe isn't a right winger, just say so. You've got the Orange Option if that's the way you want to go. But Biden's been a solid centrist all his career, and continues to remain so. I expect will see more visible moves to the center as he consolidates the party around him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/biden-centrist.html#:~:text=Biden%20focused%20on%20liberal%20goals,was%20moving%20to%20the%20center.
1.The inflation act was all about climate change not inflation.
Biden has done ok on Ukraine except for slow walking weapon approvals.
Afghanistan was a disaster.
Isreal is correct.
His immigration policies and rhetoric have been pathetic
Afghanistan was about as close to flawless a withdrawal as possible under the circumstances.
Indeed. Remarkably low casualties considering the scale of the operation, which was the largest airborne evacuation in military history.
If by flawless you mean disaster sure.
It never should have happened
If the Afghan government wasn't able to hold out for even two full weeks without active US military support, there was no hope for it, and that cake was fully baked before Biden ever took office.
Seems like a lot of effort went into a deal in the Senate only to have Trump shiv the Republican deal makers (who seem to have negotiated a good deal).
Weird I feel the same about Republicans
Are Dems leading a culture war, defunding the police, and bemoaning deplorables?
By your rubric, it seems like Bidens got it in the bag.
I'm not sure I understand your point, but perhaps it's that these issues I'm complaining about are all in the past and therefore no longer relevant. I'd say that Democrats continue to lead a culture war. As to the other points, once a group has gained a reputation for particular views, it takes a lot of work to modify that reputation.
You appear to be complaining about ideas never once supported by Biden. What I’ve found remarkable is how well Republicans have been at tying all Democrats to positions not broadly supported by most Democrats. It certainly reduces the incentive for moderates to act as actual moderates.
I generally agree with you, though the Biden administration has promoted a number of initiatives I disagree with, whose purpose seems to be primarily to keep the left wing of his party onboard. On the other hand, I'd say that Democrats are also pretty good at tying the most bizarre fringe Republican views to the Republican party as a whole...
The difference is that the fringe actually runs the Republican Party in many ways, starting at the very top of the ticket. It isn’t necessarily an ideological fringe, at least not a consistently ideological one. But it plainly is a fringe more interested in fighting democrats than working where is common ground.
All you're describing are the incentives for Republicans to lead a culture war, digging up, reheating, and exaggerating all these age old issues for their reputational harm, rather than any effective policy discussions.
I appreciate the clarity of your headline and agree fully. I would go so far as to say the party is in full denial every time a poll comes out. I think we could use some elected high profile Democrats who are obviously backing Biden to say as much, or at least act like it.
I've noticed an uptick in messaging sharpness and intensity from Biden since the new year, but I was hoping for a faster ramp up. He's gotta get out there. Fast. Let Biden be Biden.
I just hope Democrats up messaging intensity.
When asked how they are doing most Americans say they are doing well. When asked about how they think the country is doing they say it’s going poorly.
I don’t know how we address this dissonance.
Fixing the border chaos and patiently waiting for the economy to fully turn and this to be seen by voters. The perception of the country doing poorly is mostly about uncontrolled immigration and inflation hang over
Really good economic performance over the next few months. I'm confident opinion about the economy will change (it's already started). And the message has to tie Biden and his program with that trend (while at the same time looking forward to how he'll make things better in the future, and Trump won't).
Biden should stop...Biden his time?
There's still months to go, but absent some external felicity, I'm not sure the *existing* Democratic record is enough to make voters care anymore, no matter how suavely it's messaged. What potential new trump (sorry) cards could be realistically played instead? Matt's not sure of any concrete actions, besides the generic tack-to-center manoevre that's table stakes for SB. All the high-visibility stuff is, as noted, running significant gaffe risk...there's a different risk profile between "swing for the fences" and "bunt to steal first". I dunno, I guess I keep hoping to see Hardball Mode activated, but am not sure what the actual plays would be. Smartly punching right like Matt did with Trump's Terrible Tariff Tax is...not a muscle I feel this administration knows how to flex effectively anymore. (It'd probably warp into some tired old "disproportionately hurts bipoc" applause light, the copy writes itself.)
Even if staff kept message discipline on Trump's Terrible Tariff Tax, you can't stop members of Dem constituencies from muddying the waters by going off-script with some tired old "disproportionately hurts bipoc" riff. But that off-scriptness and moth-to-the-flame attraction is unfixable and will be around forever, so don' squash good ideas because of the extra static that may come.
> not a muscle this administration knows how to flex effectively anymore
Did they ever? Every time Biden himself tried to do that, some staff idiot would write the “disproportionately hurts BIPOC” press release after the fact.
Sorry, it would have been more accurate to write "the Democratic Party" or somesuch. I don't think Biden has been especially deferential to the left flank in terms of actual results (part of why I like him), but you're right that the messaging tends to get spiced up with kritik like everything else. If only the median voter had a laser focus on revealed preferences rather than rhetorical innovations.
My sense is that the elites understand what the polls mean and have been discussing the situation internally [1]. However, I haven’t seen this translate into action, and I’m not convinced they’d take proper action anyway. E.g. the 2020 election was really close, which doesn’t suggest that Biden ran a strong campaign. But Biden is turning to the same people that ran the 2020 campaign despite the fact that 2024 is shaping up to be more difficult than 2020.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/biden-s-allies-privately-warned-his-campaign-sparking-a-shakeup?sref=ujjUxZdM
From the commentary I read, the Democrats are apparently bedwetters with their heads in the sand.
I wish people would make up their minds which they are.
The root is fear. Fear of losing can drive both bed wetting AND shouting about polls being wrong. The fear is fear of failure fundamentally. If you think all effort is doomed you bedwet, if you refuse to face the fact that effort is needed you ignore.
It's gonna be work. Slow. Boring. Persuasion.
Hadn’t considered the idea that Dems relative success in 2022 has mollified the typical hand wringing that leads to a pivot to the center in an election year. 2012 might’ve been the most impressive election campaign of my life and it almost certainly doesn’t happen if Obama doesn’t get shellacked and adjusts accordingly.
Here's the question I've not seen a good answer to in regards to current polling. Multiple polls show a) Trump winning 18-29 year olds and b) Trump getting north of 30% of the African American vote and even up to 40%.
I know electoral coalitions change over time. And obviously every election has swing voters. And yes in 2020, we did a small shift of African American voters to Trump from 2016 to 2020. But someone needs to explain to me the dramatic shifts we've seen in polling. The polling of African American voters would mean one of the biggest one-time shifts in voting behavior in American history. And on issue after issue, 18-29 year olds have views to the left of the median voter (and yes that includes men. See Noah Smith's post yesterday; that viral chart from FT going around is very misleading. While young men are probably not as liberal as young women, that chart showing wild divergence (at least in America) is likely a version of chart crime).
So let's say for the sake of argument that this isn't non-response bias or issues with polling in general right now. Let's take these polls at face value. Someone needs to explain to me what the issue is that would cause one the biggest shifts in voting behavior from two separate groups from one election to the next we've ever seen. What issue, what policy could explain such a dramatic shift.
Upwards of 30% of black voters in some surveys identify as conservative (I don't recall seeing a number thrown at black voters who would be moderate/swing). However, voting behavior has not reflected political opinion within the African American community. The argument has generally been that black voters have remained in lock-step with the DNC due to the social networks/in-group dynamics rather than because they align politically.
So one plausible explanation is that social networks within African American communities are fraying; if group dynamics are exerting less pressure on individuals, then they may vote more in-line with their political views. Throw in the fact that the civil rights era figures in the Democratic party are mostly gone at this point, the portion of voters that lived through Jim Crow and remember the civil rights act are fading... some of the levers that have generated good will towards Democrats are no longer there.
I can buy some of this for sure. I would chuck in the church. The most religiously observant group in this country is still African Americans. But the role of the church and how that drove (and drives voting) is pretty well established. And like the rest of the electorate, religious attendance is declining especially among the young. But unlike rest of the electorate, this could have effect of shifting African American vote to the right.
But I come back to the size of the shift. Going from like 8% to maybe 12% or 15% would be a big shift. Going to 25%. Like the decline in religious attendance (and other social network fraying) is a slow burn process. It shouldn't result in this dramatic a shift this quickly (And if I'm not mistaken it's concentrated almost entirely among men. So what is the issue that could explain this.
To get where I'm coming from. There has been a lot reporting about how Arab American voters in Dearborn Michigan may shift their vote in November. Now this would probably be a mistake as Trump has shown himself to be way way more pro Netanyahu than Biden (and has said on the campaign trail he'd basically give Netanyahu whatever he wants). But at least I understand what may actually cause such a massive shift in voting. The Gaza war is very deeply personal and important to this group voters. I get why this issue could change this group of voters voting behavior. But African American vote and 18-29 year old vote? What is the mechanism?
I'm dancing around this, but it just seems to me the Occam's razor explanation is issues with polling and non-response bias. I've said before but the lack of competitive primary on either side is means a lot of comparison to recent previous races is probably really flawed. Again, I think a subtle but real shift in POC voting is probably happening. And I am really open to the idea there is a particular policy that might be causing a very extreme shift all at once. But what is it.
On the Arab note, I think similarly to Blacks, there is a noticeable difference between their social preferences and the Democratic party. Both groups are MUCH more conservative than white liberals who run the Democratic party and related organs.
Yes, Arab Americans voting for Trump would be a really brilliant move. /facepalm
It's certainly possible that the polling data is really flawed. I would not be surprised if this was the case, but I also think the Democrats would be foolish to bet on that possibility. Even a more conservative swing to 15% would be pretty big hit to Biden's re-election chances (especially if it's distributed as a bigger swing in contested states and less of a swing in blue strongholds).
I think that in the final tally, Kemp went from 5% to 12% overall among black voters in Georgia, where I would say Abrams was a far more desirable candidate than Joe Biden is today, for whatever supposed bell weathers are worth.
I also wouldn't be surprised to see that the swing is real. It's possible that the slow burn has been accelerated by a confluence of factors rather than any specific policy and is happening much faster than anyone could anticipate: dissatisfaction with Biden + anger around education issues & Covid restrictions (like drove the Youngkin election) combining with the longer terms shifts in voting behavior. Add in Covid-era impacts accelerating more black voters leaving their previous social networks. And throw the GOP behaving as though black votes are in play (I've read that Kemp, for example, was spending in media channels he completely ceded in his previous campaign).
All plausible to me. I've said before that I agree with Matt that drift of working class POC to GOP is likely real. The wrinkle for me though is Trump himself and the people around him. He's if anything leaned even more into the bigotry stuff (see poisoning the soil).
Again, this is me trying not to be either a) too egotistical and b) interrogate my biases. But honestly I really at this point am wondering if polls are less reliable than normal in February of an election year and that's really explaining a lot of this. I mentioned before the weird nature of this primary season. But the other issue is cell phones and lack of ability to reach young voters. This was always thrown out there in 2016 and even 2020 (think 2020 was skewed by COVID itself too; liberals were more likely to be adhering to covid restrictions for one). But sort of as you say, have we reached a tipping point where ubiquity of cell phones and people not picking up is having a real effect on polling.
So to maybe turn this around and defend my "polls are skewed" stance. A ton of these same polls show Biden winning seniors. And some showing him win by a decent margin Now again, I can see a scenario where these "Biden is too old" backfires and convinces some seniors to vote for Biden. But honestly, do you really believe Biden is going to win voters over 65?
It certainly makes the skew pretty interesting and a little confusing compared to historic demographic trends, doesn't it? Increasing conservative votes among POC is a trend that's been ongoing and I can come up with plausible explanations, but 65+ going for Biden would be a pretty big shocker. It's hard to see what would drive that. Biden is too old for the job; my older relatives will all say as much. The only anecdotal thing I have is that although my parents have been mostly GOP voters during their lives, they voted for Biden and will vote for him again because they are still angry about Trump's handling of Covid.
I'd generally agree that polling data in February of an election year isn't very good, but I'd agree with Matt the signs are pointing towards a Trump comeback if things stay the course. This election cycle in particular I expect to be pretty weird, because people dislike both of the likely options.
I take Matt's argument in the column seriously, but all the arguments about why the polls that show Biden doing so badly vs. Trump are flawed have been out there for a while now. I think that what you're talking about is pretty good evidence for it - a lot of polling is just bad.
Dye your hair pink and take a walk around Mott Haven for your answer.
Have you talked to many gen z peole recently? The level of ignorance is astounding. As a result critical thinking goes down the drain. It’s neither stupidity nor apathy , but the simple fact the extreme of ignorance leaves you without the foundation with which you can make sense of the world. In short, to the extent they bother voting it’s hard to predict on what basis they’ll do so as so many of them are unbelievably clueless, far more than you imagine.
I'm sorry but "these kids today are not engaged and don't know anything" is a pretty long standing complaint/issue and not new. Heck not new for population at large.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2007/04/15/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_vote_in_the_United_States
Youth voting being low and youth being apathetic about voting has been a long standing issue for generations. I've mentioned on here that one of the most underexplored and under emphasized reasons why American politics is the way it is that people over 55 vote way more than people under 55. One of the people who helped educate me on this fact is Matt Yglesias.
You do realize your first link is to a study ending in 2007, almost 20 years ago?
Complaints about the young are as old as time. It doesn’t follow that they are always equally valid (or vacuous).
That's precisely why I included this old Pew study. In fact it's the opposite, youth participation is actually up!
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-2020-11-point-increase-2016
And just from Wikipedia: "18–24 year-olds made up 18 percent of all eligible voters in America, but only 13 percent of the actual voters – an under-representation of one-third.[1] In the next election in 1978, youth were under-represented by 50 percent. "Seven out of ten young people…did not vote in the 1996 presidential election… 20 percent below the general turnout."[7] In 1998, out of the 13 percent of eligible youth voters in America, only five percent voted.[1] During the competitive presidential race of 2000, 36 percent of youth turned out to vote and in 2004, the "banner year in the history of youth voting," 47 percent of the American youth voted.[8] In the Democratic primaries for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the number of youth voters tripled and even quadrupled in some states compared to the 2004 elections.[9] In 2008, Barack Obama spoke about the contributions of young people to his election campaign outside of just voter turnout.[10]"
I was actually not harsh enough. The pattern is actually increased youth engagement not less. So yes I'm saying with evidence you're putting on rose tinted glasses.
You’re mixing different issue. The 2007 study is about *knwoldege* of current affairs, which is what I was talking about. The newer one is about how many people vote, a separate question. My point wasn’t about apathy but about ignorance (in fact I explicitly stated “it’s neither stupidity nor apathy but …ignorance”). You’re perhaps implicitly assuming that higher participation means being better informed by that’s a hypothesis requiring substantiation.
My parents are both educators--one is a professor at an elite private college and the other a high school teacher. Both have had to dumb down what they teach because kids don't have the background knowledge they used to. They surmise a lot of it is because everybody in today's families have their own screens, so you never have a situation where the kids have to watch the 6 PM news with dad before they can watch their favorite program.
For example, when I was a kid, if I wanted to watch my own TV show on Wednesdays I would have to sit through both the nightly news and The West Wing with my parents first. I had no choice but to learn what had happened in the world. Now, I see my nephew put on headphones and watch an animated show on his ipad rather than engage with adult media. They're just not learning as much current events and history because they don't have to.
FWIW I think Trump is on track to win 20-25% of the Black vote and 40-45% of the Hispanic vote.
Biden won the black vote 95-5 among women and 87-12 among men. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/
Honestly, absent any other context we'd say black vote shifted back to historical norms after Obama helped inflate these numbers in 2008, 2012 with some residual effect in 2016.
Trump winning 20-25% of the black vote would still represent and absolutely astonishing shift in voting patterns from one election to the next. Again, I'm setting aside the explanation of non-response bias or polling error. I'm trying to ask to say let's assume these numbers hold up in November and this is "real". What could account for such an incredible shift? Despite what Andrew Sullivan or Bari Weiss tell you, I have an extremely hard time believing that anyone but the most engaged voters know anything going on about Harvard admissions, extreme "woke' education ideas or debates about transgender surgeries for minors. If anything, the most engaged voters who care about these topics I would venture to bet have shifted to Biden given patterns with voting and education.
I am genuinely trying to ask what a plausible explanation may be.
Social values. The Democratic party really has moved significantly to the left on social issues over the last decade and they were already further left than the average Black American.
>What could account for such an incredible shift?<
Inflation. Voters hate it. Especially non-rich ones.
Exception inflation (as readers of this substack know) has come down pretty significantly. And has come down significantly for quite a while. Same with as prices. And consumer sentiment has picked up. Now to support your claim, Noah Smith has posts noting there is a good 6-12 month lag time before regular people will notice this change if history is any guide. Combine with even one rate cut of 25 bps could help really jump start the housing industry, then that could cause a real change in polls (I'm a big believer that the first rate cut could be enormously impactful in many many ways).
So kind of agree. But here's my problem. Biden's numbers has slipped last 3-4 months; just when inflation was coming down and consumer sentiment was improving. So what is explaining this outside of non-response bias.
People remember what prices at supermarkets and restaurants specifically were a few years ago, see that current prices for the same goods and services are much higher now, and get angry. I don't think it is more complicated than that. It is not the inflation rate, it is the price level.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/inflation-food-prices-democrat-biden/676901/
Every time someone here says “but inflation has gone down!” I want to smack them upside the head. The average American doesn’t have an Econ degree or even a cursory understanding of economics, all they know is that prices now are a lot higher than they were in 2020-21. That’s all that matters. You might think that’s stupid of them but they don’t care what some egghead says.
>all they know is that prices now are a lot higher than they were in 2020-21. That’s all that matters.<
I don't thinks it's true that this is all that matters. Because the runup in prices 2020-2023 was so rapid compared to anything we had seen since the 1970s, it stands to reason that voter trauma on this issue has been acute—and therefore will require time to dissipate.
Thus, I think the issue you're overlooking is: the passage of time. Inflation has been pretty benign now for nearly a year (it peaked in 2022). Again, given the the level it reached as its peak, a certain amount of time will be necessary for voters to have become sufficiently calm. If I'm wrong and it takes longer than I think, Biden's probably a one-termer. But my hunch is by this summer, not enough voters will be pining for 2019's prices to guarantee Trump a victory. I mean, voters may not have econ PhDs, but they seem to grasp the concept that things were cheaper once upon a time, and it generally doesn't seem to prompt them to extreme angst...
The *recency* (of the inflation burst) is the problem. We shall see if it fades.
Michigan Confidence Survey suggests, by the way, that voters are feeling much better about things. I could certainly be wrong, and there are no guarantees, but I expect political polls will follow.
" Same with as prices."
Just to be clear, prices continue to rise. The rate of inflation growth has come down but it's still above the Fed's 2% target and a March cut is now off the table with the market puking accordingly.
Sure, I'm aware inflation has come down, and Matthew's dark words to the contrary, there are signs of hope in Biden's numbers (and very definitely in the electorate's perceptions wrt the economy) the last few weeks.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4448796-biden-is-quietly-narrowing-the-race-against-trump-but-challenges-lie-ahead/
I think in the main, Biden's problem has been the inflation hangover, and I've long expected that, if the economy stays on track, his numbers likely will look more promising by the summer.
That said, foreign policy and ther border are complicating factors.
A few people have pointed to inflation. I agree but more broadly Trump presents himself as pro-money and this lands with some Blacks. He also has a posture that lands with some Black men. They are drawn to his alpha male personality. It’s the Dave Chappelle take. He’s an honest liar. He says things that other’s will not. And for some people - it’s lands as DAMN THATS TRUE. For Black women, some will be moved by their Black men partners who advocate for Trump. His numbers are concerning. In some swing states it could make a difference. It’s also serves as a good rebuttal from him in response to him being a racist. He may end up with the highest percentage of the Black vote for a Republican in quite some time. That’s interesting.
My wife and I have said for awhile that one thing that too many people on our side of the spectrum don’t want to confront is that there is a LOT of black men and Latino men who have some pretty “traditional” views about gender. Well so do a lot of men (and let’s be real women) but I think for those of us on the left we don’t want to think it includes POC. Trump’s gross over the top machismo unfortunately does have purchase with certain men who may have previously been Democrats.
Again though. The level of shift so suddenly from 2020 to 2022 in polling suggests the answer is almost certainly in part non response bias. I said I’m trying to interrogate my own biases but honestly as best as I can see it it’s part of the story here.
Among young and/or black people I know, the issue they are splitting with Dems on is Israel. Even tho Republicans typically have "the party that backs Israel" as their tag line, there's a perception that the current administration is supporting the war (which, true?) and they very much do not. My very much most left friend says he is considering a vote for Trump for this reason
The biggest pivot the Democrats should make is to quit talking so much about Trump as a threat to Democracy and just mock him as a crook and a loser. The majority of normies are exhausted with the left’s constant moralizing and shaming of everyone about everything, and the thing they like most about Trump is that he scares and upsets the elites. But the one thing that makes Trump himself lose his mind is when people aren’t afraid of him and don’t take him seriously.
Biden also needs to start punching left. There’s no chance that the leftie base is going to vote for Trump, but a lot of fence-sitters are more worried about the far left than they are of Trump.
Yes, I think it's pretty clear that part of Trump's appeal is being a strongman and basically everything Democrats have screamed over the last decade tends to reinforce the message, but in reality, he's a huge coward.
I don't disagree with any of these points per se. I'm not sure they quite add up to "Biden is losing" either though...the basic contour of an electorate that hasn't truly woken up to "no seriously, Trump is really the other choice" strikes me as a real thing that is happening, so I consider the current polling results somewhat less than a "if the election were held today Trump wins" certainty. But perhaps most important, to my eyes it seems like Democrats are currently busily executing the prescription you close with. I don't see why you say they "missed" the post-midterm pivot to the center, or aren't executing a more aggressive comms strategy. Certainly that seems weird coming off a week where they managed to trap Republicans on a border bill in a way that could legitimately transform the immigration issue. My feeling is this is a tight spot to be sure, but the administration and Democrats writ large seem to get that and be approaching it competently.
I'm worried sick about the whole thing to be sure. I don't see anybody complacent around here.
Longwell’s podcast really makes clear how uninformed the average voter is. I don’t think most voters will know who the candidates will be until sometime in July.
"The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with one's constituent." — Winston Churchill.
It's the strongest argument against humanity in general, honestly.
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-141/red-herrings-famous-quotes-churchill-never-said/
"the basic contour of an electorate that hasn't truly woken up to 'no seriously, Trump is really the other choice' strikes me as a real thing that is happening"
Seems plausible given that my wife (who has a master's degree and whom I would describe as an above-average person for intelligence) last weekend sort of out of the blue announced to me, "So it's really going to be Biden and Trump as the candidates again???" Like somehow she had not been aware that was almost certainly what was going to happen.
I think that a shockingly large percentage of the electorate still does not understand or believe that the race will be Biden vs. Trump, again. Not sure what you do about that, but I think it is screwing up a lot of analysis and polling.
Yes, as I mentioned elsewhere in a reply here, my wife had an epiphany on this issue just last weekend, which basically made my jaw drop because I couldn't believe that she hadn't already been aware that was what was going to happen.
My partner's the same way. Educated, engaged in our local community, very smart, but thought it was still a horserace between Trump and DeSantis until a few days ago because she doesn't follow politics very closely at all.
I've mentioned this many times on this thread and in previous posts but the fact that there is basically no competitive primary on either side is basically unprecedented in not just recent history but American history in general. Like honestly, has there been a situation where both party's nominees were basically known 2 year prior to the election with no real threat from any different candidates.
Arguably 2000? Yeah McCain won a state against Bush but the frontrunners went 99 for 100.
Biden should have been going for the swing voters since January 2021. He does not need to appease the Warren-Sanders wing of the party. That is who he DEFEATED in the primaries.
January 2021 is when he should have been trying to fix the border in order to remaking immigration into a merit based system. THAT is when he should have been trying to reform taxes to raise revenue to reduce/eliminate the deficit. THAT is when he should have been trying to reform permitting reform so as to eliminate obstacles to investing in STUFF (and tell the Bill McKibben's of this world to stuff it with opposition to fossil fuel production and transportation projects). And pretty soon after January 2021 he should have been (politely but pointedly) complaining about the the FED causing inflation. And (if necessary to get Manchin's vote) accepted a CTC with a work requirement. And he should have been designing a set of subsidies to zero and negative CO2 emitting technologies that mimic a tax on net CO2 emissions as closely as possible. And start negotiating a trade agreement with as big as possible number of countries who are not China in order to efficiently lessen our (theirs and ours) reliance on CHINA for strategic inputs.
I agree with you, but while Biden is a poor public speaker, he is a better politician than I (and perhaps also than you). It's possible that he concluded that he could not accomplish his goals unless he was first able to unify his party behind him.
Sure, but that means unifying around HIM, not him moving to the middle of the party. Plus, there could be political capital to be made by failing, in ways he could blame on Republicans, as he apparently will try to do with the recent border bills.
Really I don’t know quite what to think, but Mr Biden has been around for a while and I think we have a pretty good idea of his true opinions.
We got a lot more "leftist" government than what we might have thought his "true opinions" were.
Indeed. I'm guessing that to buy unity he changed positions on topics he didn't personally consider very important (e.g. the "cultural" issues).
And more importantly, not important to the swing voter in the swing state!
Totally agree - I honestly felt like he took a page out of the Obama playbook and went for the kill on priorities early on at the expense of the rest of his term, setting up a pretty tough environment to get bipartisan support for remaining priorities.
In the case of Obama, (and I'll admit its probably a little naive, and will likely garner some "downvotes") I think he honestly had the chance to be a top 5 president ever if he would have tried for bi-partisan support on healthcare reform and better bridged the divide on race. Like I truly believe he could have ended the GOP as we know it and ushered in ~20 years of democrat presidents and could have set up an environment to drive some of the more progressive ideals for years to come. Instead we got the tea party, Trump and a fractured political ecosystem.
Biden I think had a similar opportunity coming out of the Trump era and ultimately catered to the left wing instead of trying to unify toward the center and it may cost him this next election.
??? But he DID try to get bipartisan support for ACA.
And what could Obama have done to "better bridge" the divide on race?
Yeah. The GOP pursued, and continues to pursue, a policy of obstruction. The fact people turn around and blame Democrats for that is hard to imagine a way out of.
He needed to understand the yokels better, and the fact that a lot of (non-black) Americans were extremely hopeful for his presidency to be a nail in the coffin of the race issue.
I'll preface that this was nearly 2 decades ago and I would have been in middle school at the time, but the poignant quotes I remember about ACA were "you have to pass it to see what's in it" and "elections have consequences." I'll be honest, I don't remember the nuts and bolts of who tried to work with who or to what degree from a bipartisan standpoint, but I can tell you the folks on the right didn't feel like their voice was heard and it set in motion some of the trends that ended up at Trump.
As far as on race (and again pairing memory with a quick google search), the broad brush support for BLM and subsequent anti-police sentiment that sprouted from much of the discourse. That said, looking back at a few articles, it feels a bit more moderate (at least under today's lens) that I may be remembering. Regardless, he had a unique platform to bring people further together here, but racial relation sentiment dropped to 15 year lows under his term and has gotten worse since.
As far as what could he have done better - not saying it would have been easy and maybe its a bit naive, but think on the ACA he had to find a couple center right republicans to throw a few bones to the right. Quite frankly there was meat on the bone there between lifting age restrictions to 26 on parents insurance and banning pre-existing condition denial. That said more process driven rather than hard policy points. On race - obviously super messy but I think the initial support for BLM and some of their talking points was a misstep.
The entire mechanism of the ACA, the mandatory insurance coverage, was based on a Heritage Foundation plan! You should at least consider that there is an explanation for “the Right didn’t feel their voice was heard” other than their voices not being heard.
Yeah Thomas Hutcheson is right…Obama absolutely took a bipartisan approach to healthcare to begin with. He spent tons of political capital begging, coaxing, arm-twisting republicans to get involved in shaping the bill, with the only goal being reducing the number of uninsured people (40m at the time).
Hell, the law was modeled on the Massachusetts law architected by a Republican governor. But the Rs made it clear that their goal was not to make the country better off…their only purpose was to make Obama a failure - at any cost. Anything that was good for Obama was bad for the GOP (even if their position hurt Republicans’ constituents, which in many cases they did) - the obvious example is how some R’s and Independents said they favored a public option, but as soon as Obama wanted to put it into the bill, they switched their position. It was maddening to watch, and revealed to me that the GOP was on the road to the land of ignorance and nihilism that they fully inhabit today.
You're basically describing why David Frum was basically cast out of the conservative movement. He admonished GOP for not negotiating more with Obama as there was a clear opportunity to get a number of conservative policy goals with health care inserted into the bill and Obama clearly wanted to be seen as crafting a bipartisan compromise. And for his "sin" of wanting to take the opportunity to enact some conservative policy goals he was basically fired from AEI.
I think a really eye opening moment in retrospect and I'm sure a real "come to jesus" moment for Frum that's led to him essentially be a centrist Democrat at this point. I think for Frum it was a real eye opener that outside of a few issues (tax cuts for the wealthy, overturning abortion rights and paring back labor power), GOP doesn't really care about any policy other than "owning the libs". See current refusal to take 3/4s a loaf on this immigration/Ukraine bill all because it was more important to not give Biden a "win".
ACA did eventually become non-bipartisan, but that was after months of trying and the conclusion of Democrats that Republicans would agree to noting that would be be a "win" for Obama. [Does the border bill sound familiar.]
Conceptually, there may have been things that Obama could have done or not done that would have led to less racially polarization, but we have to be specific. The Gates arrest and Trevon Martin's murder were both highly divisive, but Obama's role was near zero.
BLM happened under Trump, not Obama. :)
I think BLM first came to prominence during the Ferguson protests, which were under Obama.
Possibly. I am going on my own memory.
My apologies in advance for writing a very unhelpful, cri du coeur type post.
I was a child in the People's Republic of Poland. We had no free elections; we were ruled by puppets appointed by our overlords at the Kremlin, and had been since right after WW2. Then we had our first free elections in 1989. People were literally weeping with joy, I remember it. We had our country back! We could decide our own fate!
(Not that the Polish electorate hasn't made crappy decisions since then, I hate PiS, but I digress.)
And now a US President decides to try to OVERTURN A LEGITIMATE ELECTION, complete with inciting a mob to storm the Capitol... And he shows no remorse, no understanding that he has done anything wrong, because laws and rules and norms are for pussies and losers...
And he's likely to win this year, because Biden is old and feeble and people don't care about Jan 6 because it's old news and "democracy is not a high priority for the US electorate"?!!?
What. The. F**k????
This is beyond heartbreaking and infuriating. I don't get it. I really, truly don't get it, no matter how many op-ed pieces I read about Real Americans(TM) interviewed in roadside diners in rural Ohio or whatever. Trump tried to overthrow democracy!!! How can any of you consider voting for him? (You = Americans, not SB commenters.) What has Biden done that is comparably bad, eaten a puppy on live TV?
Just, I don't know what to say anymore. If anyone has any spark of hope and/or actionable item I can do in the next 8 months other than howl at the moon, please reply.
Democrats are not complacent. They are lost in Doom. They have given over to the narrative "Everything is terrible and Biden is too old."
They aren't actively working for Biden. All Democrats say is "Woe is us." Read any comment thread. E.g. https://www.mattball.org/2024/01/up-is-down-red-is-green-love-is-hate-we.html
Being resigned to losing leads to losing.
I find it deeply depressing that Biden, who has mostly done a good job despite being handed a shit hand, is so unpopular amongst Americans. I find it even more depressing and frankly inconceivable that close to half the country thinks Trump will do a better job.
You and me both.