He won’t lose badly enough to turn the page. I wish… If he loses, the only way to turn the page will be for the left, center and non-maga right to ignore him. If there are trials, don’t cover them, etc. The “Big Lie” could’ve been laughed out of politics the way it was laughed out of court if the VSP had left it to the judges and the insult comics.
I quit Twitter about 4 months ago so I’m pretty out of the loop on what Harris is saying on a day to day basis but a couple of her ideas that made it through in rent control and abolishing taxes on tips are just plain stupid. Do these types of pure leftist pandering persuade a single voter or do they help Trumpists more credibly paint her as a leftists?
On another note, I highly recommend going the Sam Harris route and quitting Twitter.
They may be stupid, but apparently, they are actually incredibly popular. I find it very frustrating myself, but she seems to be going where the people are.
Yeah, as other people have said, this seems to be a bit of a "Kamala isn't running the campaign I would and obviously push the ideas I think are correct, so she must be doing something incorrect."
You may want deficit reduction and more performative centrist policy proposals, when the reality is, Kamala's moved to the center of the Democratic party pretty quickly, which is what the nominees of parties should do.
Again, you actually do need to get left-leaning people's out to vote, and saying, "we're going back to 2000" is not the win you think it is.
Ironically, both Matt and the leftists who think she should be coming for Medicare for All etc. are both under the same delusion, while the Kamala campaign seems to smartly realize at least this time around what the actual important issues of the election are.
Why on Earth are people taking prediction markets seriously? There is absolutely no reason to think large groups of people are better at predicting the future than anything else, even if they are willing to put money on it. It's not like we're unfamiliar with speculation markets.
It's tulips all over again.
Leaving that aside, Matt often mentions Obama's position that "marriage is between a man and a woman." Do we think that Harris would benefit from a shift to the center on culture wars, or does it need to be policy based?
I ask because I'd really like to see Harris trim the sails of the nuttier fringe of the trans rights movement. Women's sports should be for women. This is not just the popular view, but the correct one. But if she's not going to get any centrist cred for that then she shouldn't pick the fight.
My understanding is that there *is* good reason to think large groups of people are better at predicting the future than individuals are. There's a well-known book about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
I don't think tulips are a good example of the converse, because I don't think there was any way to short tulips at that time. But are you familiar with research casting doubt on these markets' performance?
Bettors in prediction markets are not only not especially knowledgable about the subjects, they bring their own biases to it, *especially* for politics. A good example cited in the article below is that even after Biden was declared the winner in 2020, Trump was given a 10% chance in prediction markets, showing people were signaling their allegiance rather than a rational evaluation of the chance of the election being overturned.
But even in other areas, I think they aren't especially reliable. Last summer, manifold had the probability that LK-99 would be confirmed to be a room temperature superconductor at ~40%! When it was incredibly clear that it was a fabrication. As the article points out, there's typically not enough "smart" money to drive out all the "dumb" money.
With all respect, I don't think a popular book from 2004 is a solid argument. Even just looking at the first example from the book, it's a guess as to the current weight of an ox, not a prediction of some point in the ox's future.
As for evidence that speculative markets often detach from reality, I think it's overwhelming.
There’s no doubt that they’re often wrong, but the question is whether they are more right than other entities. There’s been a lot of research into the question since that book came out—look into it, see what the consensus is. Maybe my understanding is out of date!
The central conceit of the trans movement is that self-ID is real, and without that there can't really be a trans movement. The nuttier fringe is in fact the central 'nut' of the issue, which is why it's so heated. Proponents can't move away from that without giving up almost everything they want (a society where sex is considered officially irrelevant).
I disagree. It seems clear that there is neurological wiring that says "I am this sex, and when I hit puberty, I will be physically attracted the other sex." In some cases, that wiring hooks up as "I am physically attracted to the same sex." And in even rarer cases, that wiring hooks up so the person fundamentally identifies as a gender that doesn't match their sex.
I'd say there's a difference between "I identify as a woman" (completely valid IMO) and "I am a woman," which I'm willing to say as a syntax / courtesy thing, but not as an "this overrides sex in all cases" which I'm not willing to concede.
I've shared bathrooms with trans women and it's fine. But sports must be based on sex, not gender identity.
Matt I'd like to make a soft request that you monitor yourself for signs of "that course of action which maximally pisses off my enemies is right" disease. Incredibly common affliction in the internet era, and while you're a long way from the worst cases I've seen your analysis since the Harris swap-in reads to me as overly concerned with the Harris campaign making moves that tick off your online enemies.
(My analysis would be that the way Harris is successfully ditching unpopular positions without getting yelled at is by not being all confrontational about it, since if you get yelled at by the extreme parts of your coalition you may have a tough time getting across "this is a moderate you should like" as opposed to "people dislike and yell at this candidate". Running your best stuff and backing away from your worst without being excessively yelled at is optimal.)
I think that you close with an important point about the difference between tactics and strategy. Breaking right may not be what the party wants to do, but if the strategy is to win and govern effectively then some compromises are needed.
Kamala should do what she's doing: Smile, wave, kiss babies, say popular things, and let Trump/Vance continue to beclown themselves in front of normies.
She should absolutely not EVER say the word "austerity," nor should she address the budget deficit except to say, "When I'm president, we're going to keep growing the economy and bring down the deficit."
It would be stupid to be complacent. We're still in the hormonal glow of the rebound relationship after the bad breakup (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/democrats-get-out-of-bad-relationship). Kamala has yet to have her inevitable stumble. The media will soon become grumpy and dyspeptic about her and slaver to take her down a notch or two. That's all coming, and then the real race will happen.
But on the other hand, we've been filled with fears before this. Right after she grabbed the nomination, people were fretting that she wasn't up on the air waves with ads and that the Republicans were able to outspend her ten to one. There was all this immediate "the race to define Harris" stuff about whose image of her would harden into concrete and afterward become unchangeable (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4795540-harris-vice-presidential-race/)
Well, the Republicans lost that early race decisively. They couldn't touch her. Now, to coin a phrase right now which I just invented, past results do not guarantee future returns. But the fact that our worst fears of her first month didn't come anywhere near to being realized should increase our confidence and optimism more than a bit.
Robbie Soave made a good point in housing. Providing subsidies is a bad idea. We have a supply problem not a demand price. She will make the problem worse. This along with her Kommy Kamala price control idea doesn’t bode well that she understands economics. The nice thing about calling her Kommy Kamala is it helps with pronouncing her name correctly. Brian Buetler should try this. It really does help Brian.
I don't care if she understands economics. At all. She won't be able to pass any legislation because Democrats are going to lose the Senate.
The only thing that matters is she takes the Oath of Office in January. She should say whatever nonsense is going to maximize her chances of winning the election. Voters are morons. She should promise everyone a unicorn, and when she's asked to explain how that's even possible, respond that's it's impossible NOT to do it.
I get the code red mentality because of Trump. But I do wonder if many people of operated in this way for so long it’s just who they are now. I am looking for a voice that leads us to reason. It’s time to be what we should be and stop making excuses for why we cannot.
Ebola is extremely dangerous. If I were in close proximity to Ebola, every day for ten years, I should be just as worried on day 3,650 as I was on day 1. If anything, the reverse is true. People have become acclimated to the existential risk Trump poses. He is more dangerous than he was in 2016, not less, because he has bent the entire Republican Party to his will. He also now understands better how to take advantage of the presidency.
People also seem to think they have gotten better at predicting Trump's behavior, when they really haven't. Trump is dangerous precisely because he is so chaotic, and you can't fully prepare for what he'll try, or whether he'll be successful.
"Still, I think it is somewhat risky to pass up the opportunity to break with the Biden record on economics and turn in a more Clintonite direction of deficit reduction rather than new spending."
I remember 1992. And I remember Clinton proposing a *lot* of new spending and not caring a whit about deficit reduction. It was only after he won that he turned toward deficit reduction (forced by Alan Greenspan and the bond market, source of James Carville's immortal quip).
What I don't remember, from the 1992 election or any in the history of the universe, is a major party candidate* benefiting from promising deficit reduction either by cutting spending or raising people's taxes.**
(* I hear you: Ross Perot. Whatever.)
** Oh damn. I forgot Walter Mondale in 1984. And that's why he was President for two terms. Promising tax increases is a proven winner!
"But then after the speech, her team (or some faction of it) seems to have come out and re-iterated the leftist spin, characterizing it as a sharp break with Joe Biden’s commitment to economic orthodoxy."
Wow, that sounds bad. So I went to the article Matt linked to, and here's the critical sentence in it:
"Harris’ agenda aims to make housing more affordable, ease health care costs and crack down on corporate greed that Democrats have blamed for high grocery prices"
I don't remember the 2020 DNC being complacent. I thought Dems paid a penalty for being responsible and doing it virtually instead of in-person but it was pretty slickly produced.
I thought the online format was much, much better, and I'm sad we didn't keep it. Networks had to cover the whole thing. It didn't involve endless speeches from Democrats trying to set up their 2028 run for president. The messaging was airtight. The fifty state video of delegates voting for Biden was deeply inspiring, rather than boring af the way it usually is.
Very good analysis and glad you are not caught up in the Pollyanna group think of those convinced of the Blue Wave.
I take Nate Silvers 55% with a grain of salt as the polls and 538 underestimated Trump in 2016 and 2020. Silver in particular called 5 states wrong in 2016 and 2 wrong in 2020 and all 7 were calling them Dem when they ended up R. RCP did slightly better, missing 5 over the two elections and calling four wrong Dem victories and one wrong R (GA in 2020).
In 2020 Biden at Election day was polling at +7.2 ( actual election was + 4.5 so a 2.7% over polling for Joe). But he only won by 0.7% if you look at his narrowest victories that gave him the majority- AZ, GA, and WI, so hypothetically, if states tracked the national vote, and the polls tracked the vote as they did in 2020, he would need to win the national popular vote by +3.8% to win (Clinton lost at +3.2) and to be polling at +6.5. Now, people have estimated that the +3.8 to win, which is due to the R electoral college advantage will be less, and Silver is smarter than me and estimating it at 1-2%. Maybe the polling error will be less, but imo, it will be there b/c the problem is that Trump people are less likely to answer polls.
All that being said, I would suspect that Harris needs to be polling over +4 (now at +1.4 RCP aggregate) for me to give her the odds.
And I think doubling down on a progressive agenda with price controls and 25K homeowners grants, is not the usual pivot to the middle that wins Independents. Of course Trump is always inventive in finding ways to hang himself, and his protégé JDV seems to be following that formula.
I don't mean to "unskew the polls" but any average that gives Rasmussen equal weight is something that cries out for adjustment. The RCP average is pretty mindless. She's maybe two points ahead now.
That Ramussen has some GOP bias I agree, but most of the other polls have Dem bias, so in the aggregate RCP has always been more accurate than 538 and in reality even RCP is skewed to the Dems though less than 538. As I said in the final polling in 2016 and 2020 RCP got 5 polls wrong and 4 were skewed to the Dems. 538 got 7 wrong and all skewed to the Dems. I would say she is more likely about +0.5 on the basis of past error.
Keep in mind that the methodology changes with each election. If pollsters miss by X they try and find out why and adjust accordingly. They don’t miss by X percent and just say, “Oh well.”
"If pollsters miss by X they try and find out why and adjust accordingly. They don’t miss by X percent and just say, “Oh well.”
You'd think, but in looking at the national popular vote polls they were biased to Clinton by 1.1% but more so to Biden by 2.7% so the Trump underestimation worsened. And both elections were decided in the states providing the winning margin by under 0.7% .
I think this might be corrected by controlling for who the pollee voted for in the prior and only a few polls do this, as they routinely control for education, race, gender. I have bugged Nate Silver on his blog about this but never a peep. He previously discounted the so called shy Trump phenom, but I think it is an angry Trump phenom, where anti establishment Trumpers hang up the phone on pollsters.
Past is not a lock, but given especially that we have the same R candidate and the same constituencies, I would say the odds are better than even for a repeat especially because imo the same dynamic is at play- Trump supporters don't answer polls as often. Silver noted this in explaining the 2020 Trump underestimate by saying "This is a relatively new phenomenon, but pollsters have increasingly found evidence of partisan nonresponse — that is, particular types of Republicans are just less likely to take surveys, so these voters’ opinions are not reflected in survey data. This was especially relevant in understanding Trump’s support, too, as many of these voters broke for him and other Republicans in 2020." (Article https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/ )
Being that the same DJT is running that should recur.
I will take Silver's estimate of the EC advantage for the Rs at 1-2 as opposed to the prior 3-4 and expect a Trump underestimate of 1% which is well below the prior two errors and say Harris needs at least +3.
The take that Harris chickened out by not choosing Shapiro is too East coast and too online.
I just can't believe that they made a decision based on fear of nutty pro-Hamas online agitators. Nobody actually cares about them. My guess is the Walz decision was made, correctly, because Shapiro is basically the same person as Harris and the Democratic Party, correctly, needs to have people involved that aren't overeducated coastal lawyers.
My take has long been that Harris decided her VP pick wasn’t gonna determine the election, and she’d vowed to follow her instincts in the campaign anyway, so she went with the guy she vibed with most.
Politicos in general tend to reject that take, but I think it’s the Occam’s-Razor right one for what we’ve seen.
Who knows what happened behind the scenes, but Walz strikes me as the kind of guy I'd prefer to lunch with weekly than Shapiro. Politicians can and should be cold-blooded but they're also human.
Agree and disagree. I think they should be concerned re pro Palestinian demonstrators as division and disorder are never a good look (think DNC 1968), I think it was reasonable to assume Shapiro would have triggered that, even if his views on Israel are not that different from Walz, the perception is that he is more pro Israel.
I am more concerned that Harris is doubling down on her progressive look with the price controls which even most liberal economists dont support, the 25K homeowners benefit which is a setup to the next foreclosure crisis by giving high risk people homes, and then Trump and her trying to outdo themselves with cutting taxes on SS and tips with, of course, no mention of what will replace that tax revenue and nary a word about a balanced budget which is a big concern for Independents .
The momentum with Kamala is certainly there, and Biden would have gotten creamed, but I think that she will have a much harder time if she continues to pivot left instead of center.
None of that matters on either side. If Trump is elected, he's too incompetent and indifferent to do anything he promises, and that's assuming he even wants to do it. I doubt he remembers he promised not to tax tips. An aide probably reminds him before speeches where that's applicable.
Harris won't have Congress, so assuming she's not lying about what she wants to do, she still won't be able to do it.
You’re missing the point. Shapiro the 2024 VP candidate was *more* critical of Israel than some of the other contenders who didn’t receive anything approaching the same heat. He also didn’t differ from the others on his approach to protesters. Explaining the unique animosity he faced by stuff he allegedly said or did as a kid decades ago makes little sense assuming the protestors point is to affect the future admin’s policy. If however the point isn’t that at all but rather to punish and marginalize those who grew up Jewish (highly correlated with strong and often naive forms of Zionism) and still be a proud Jew - then it does so perfectly. But to punish or attempt to marginalize someone for being Jewish IS antisemitism. See also here:
No I dont disagree, I think Harris was avoiding the pushback, and not a bad move. Now when you actually look at Shapiro and Walz' current views, and I hardly concern myself with somebody's opinion in high school, they really are not that different. Shapiro has been critical of Netanyahu nor is it on voters minds though clearly it would piss off the left and riots at the convention are never a good look.
I am more concerned about Harris doubling down on her progressive viewpoints with the price controls and free mortgage money that she will alienate centrists like myself, though I will hold my nose and vote for the not Trump, and then neither candidate seems to ever mention debt, Trump with his tax cuts and Harris with benefits galore.
I'm Conservative, so in many ways it's unfair for me to offer up much advice to Harris as she runs for President. Sure, I'd like for her to provide some red meat to voters like me who despise Trump and want to see him lose. But the hard fact is: Biden didn't offer me much either and I voted for him anyway. I'm skeptical there's much benefit to appealing to conservatives.
There's one policy I'd love for her to at least pay lip service to, that's conservative coded, which would maybe help: the debt and deficit. If I were Harris, I would talk about the federal government tightening its belt. Talk about some ways she's pushed Biden to cut costs, talk about where she thinks the government isn't doing enough to avoid spending, and emphasize how raising taxes on the millionaires and billionaires will cut the deficit.
A small way to combine a Progressive talking point to appeal to non-Progressives
Exactly, neither party is addressing debt, Harris with more benefits and Trump with more tax cuts. I think there is a reason to appeal to Independents and Conservatives because even getting a 1-4% advantage there can determine an election.
Most pols note that a candidate should pivot center, and Trump has with his moderating on abortion and becoming the cheerleader for social security and claiming he wont end ACA, but with Harris' latest economic policies- price controls, free money for risky homeowners, newborn and child tax credits, she is staking out herself as a progressive and will lose Independents and Never Trumper Rs.
He won’t lose badly enough to turn the page. I wish… If he loses, the only way to turn the page will be for the left, center and non-maga right to ignore him. If there are trials, don’t cover them, etc. The “Big Lie” could’ve been laughed out of politics the way it was laughed out of court if the VSP had left it to the judges and the insult comics.
I quit Twitter about 4 months ago so I’m pretty out of the loop on what Harris is saying on a day to day basis but a couple of her ideas that made it through in rent control and abolishing taxes on tips are just plain stupid. Do these types of pure leftist pandering persuade a single voter or do they help Trumpists more credibly paint her as a leftists?
On another note, I highly recommend going the Sam Harris route and quitting Twitter.
They may be stupid, but apparently, they are actually incredibly popular. I find it very frustrating myself, but she seems to be going where the people are.
Yeah, as other people have said, this seems to be a bit of a "Kamala isn't running the campaign I would and obviously push the ideas I think are correct, so she must be doing something incorrect."
You may want deficit reduction and more performative centrist policy proposals, when the reality is, Kamala's moved to the center of the Democratic party pretty quickly, which is what the nominees of parties should do.
Again, you actually do need to get left-leaning people's out to vote, and saying, "we're going back to 2000" is not the win you think it is.
Ironically, both Matt and the leftists who think she should be coming for Medicare for All etc. are both under the same delusion, while the Kamala campaign seems to smartly realize at least this time around what the actual important issues of the election are.
Why on Earth are people taking prediction markets seriously? There is absolutely no reason to think large groups of people are better at predicting the future than anything else, even if they are willing to put money on it. It's not like we're unfamiliar with speculation markets.
It's tulips all over again.
Leaving that aside, Matt often mentions Obama's position that "marriage is between a man and a woman." Do we think that Harris would benefit from a shift to the center on culture wars, or does it need to be policy based?
I ask because I'd really like to see Harris trim the sails of the nuttier fringe of the trans rights movement. Women's sports should be for women. This is not just the popular view, but the correct one. But if she's not going to get any centrist cred for that then she shouldn't pick the fight.
My understanding is that there *is* good reason to think large groups of people are better at predicting the future than individuals are. There's a well-known book about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
I don't think tulips are a good example of the converse, because I don't think there was any way to short tulips at that time. But are you familiar with research casting doubt on these markets' performance?
Bettors in prediction markets are not only not especially knowledgable about the subjects, they bring their own biases to it, *especially* for politics. A good example cited in the article below is that even after Biden was declared the winner in 2020, Trump was given a 10% chance in prediction markets, showing people were signaling their allegiance rather than a rational evaluation of the chance of the election being overturned.
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/prediction-markets-have-an-elections-problem-jeremiah-johnson
But even in other areas, I think they aren't especially reliable. Last summer, manifold had the probability that LK-99 would be confirmed to be a room temperature superconductor at ~40%! When it was incredibly clear that it was a fabrication. As the article points out, there's typically not enough "smart" money to drive out all the "dumb" money.
With all respect, I don't think a popular book from 2004 is a solid argument. Even just looking at the first example from the book, it's a guess as to the current weight of an ox, not a prediction of some point in the ox's future.
As for evidence that speculative markets often detach from reality, I think it's overwhelming.
There’s no doubt that they’re often wrong, but the question is whether they are more right than other entities. There’s been a lot of research into the question since that book came out—look into it, see what the consensus is. Maybe my understanding is out of date!
The central conceit of the trans movement is that self-ID is real, and without that there can't really be a trans movement. The nuttier fringe is in fact the central 'nut' of the issue, which is why it's so heated. Proponents can't move away from that without giving up almost everything they want (a society where sex is considered officially irrelevant).
I disagree. It seems clear that there is neurological wiring that says "I am this sex, and when I hit puberty, I will be physically attracted the other sex." In some cases, that wiring hooks up as "I am physically attracted to the same sex." And in even rarer cases, that wiring hooks up so the person fundamentally identifies as a gender that doesn't match their sex.
I'd say there's a difference between "I identify as a woman" (completely valid IMO) and "I am a woman," which I'm willing to say as a syntax / courtesy thing, but not as an "this overrides sex in all cases" which I'm not willing to concede.
I've shared bathrooms with trans women and it's fine. But sports must be based on sex, not gender identity.
Matt I'd like to make a soft request that you monitor yourself for signs of "that course of action which maximally pisses off my enemies is right" disease. Incredibly common affliction in the internet era, and while you're a long way from the worst cases I've seen your analysis since the Harris swap-in reads to me as overly concerned with the Harris campaign making moves that tick off your online enemies.
(My analysis would be that the way Harris is successfully ditching unpopular positions without getting yelled at is by not being all confrontational about it, since if you get yelled at by the extreme parts of your coalition you may have a tough time getting across "this is a moderate you should like" as opposed to "people dislike and yell at this candidate". Running your best stuff and backing away from your worst without being excessively yelled at is optimal.)
I think that you close with an important point about the difference between tactics and strategy. Breaking right may not be what the party wants to do, but if the strategy is to win and govern effectively then some compromises are needed.
Kamala should do what she's doing: Smile, wave, kiss babies, say popular things, and let Trump/Vance continue to beclown themselves in front of normies.
She should absolutely not EVER say the word "austerity," nor should she address the budget deficit except to say, "When I'm president, we're going to keep growing the economy and bring down the deficit."
It would be stupid to be complacent. We're still in the hormonal glow of the rebound relationship after the bad breakup (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/democrats-get-out-of-bad-relationship). Kamala has yet to have her inevitable stumble. The media will soon become grumpy and dyspeptic about her and slaver to take her down a notch or two. That's all coming, and then the real race will happen.
But on the other hand, we've been filled with fears before this. Right after she grabbed the nomination, people were fretting that she wasn't up on the air waves with ads and that the Republicans were able to outspend her ten to one. There was all this immediate "the race to define Harris" stuff about whose image of her would harden into concrete and afterward become unchangeable (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4795540-harris-vice-presidential-race/)
Well, the Republicans lost that early race decisively. They couldn't touch her. Now, to coin a phrase right now which I just invented, past results do not guarantee future returns. But the fact that our worst fears of her first month didn't come anywhere near to being realized should increase our confidence and optimism more than a bit.
Robbie Soave made a good point in housing. Providing subsidies is a bad idea. We have a supply problem not a demand price. She will make the problem worse. This along with her Kommy Kamala price control idea doesn’t bode well that she understands economics. The nice thing about calling her Kommy Kamala is it helps with pronouncing her name correctly. Brian Buetler should try this. It really does help Brian.
I don't care if she understands economics. At all. She won't be able to pass any legislation because Democrats are going to lose the Senate.
The only thing that matters is she takes the Oath of Office in January. She should say whatever nonsense is going to maximize her chances of winning the election. Voters are morons. She should promise everyone a unicorn, and when she's asked to explain how that's even possible, respond that's it's impossible NOT to do it.
I get the code red mentality because of Trump. But I do wonder if many people of operated in this way for so long it’s just who they are now. I am looking for a voice that leads us to reason. It’s time to be what we should be and stop making excuses for why we cannot.
Ebola is extremely dangerous. If I were in close proximity to Ebola, every day for ten years, I should be just as worried on day 3,650 as I was on day 1. If anything, the reverse is true. People have become acclimated to the existential risk Trump poses. He is more dangerous than he was in 2016, not less, because he has bent the entire Republican Party to his will. He also now understands better how to take advantage of the presidency.
People also seem to think they have gotten better at predicting Trump's behavior, when they really haven't. Trump is dangerous precisely because he is so chaotic, and you can't fully prepare for what he'll try, or whether he'll be successful.
Kommissar Kamala sounds better though...
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=G3IOBsR7yGM&si=V1bXbq_pGVlV9G5R
A little uppity…maybe that is better.
"Still, I think it is somewhat risky to pass up the opportunity to break with the Biden record on economics and turn in a more Clintonite direction of deficit reduction rather than new spending."
I remember 1992. And I remember Clinton proposing a *lot* of new spending and not caring a whit about deficit reduction. It was only after he won that he turned toward deficit reduction (forced by Alan Greenspan and the bond market, source of James Carville's immortal quip).
What I don't remember, from the 1992 election or any in the history of the universe, is a major party candidate* benefiting from promising deficit reduction either by cutting spending or raising people's taxes.**
(* I hear you: Ross Perot. Whatever.)
** Oh damn. I forgot Walter Mondale in 1984. And that's why he was President for two terms. Promising tax increases is a proven winner!
"But then after the speech, her team (or some faction of it) seems to have come out and re-iterated the leftist spin, characterizing it as a sharp break with Joe Biden’s commitment to economic orthodoxy."
Wow, that sounds bad. So I went to the article Matt linked to, and here's the critical sentence in it:
"Harris’ agenda aims to make housing more affordable, ease health care costs and crack down on corporate greed that Democrats have blamed for high grocery prices"
Communist!
Meh. She’s doing about the best job possible, so far. From what I can see.
If Data from Star Trek were here, he’d probably agree with you. Actually, he’d probably be puzzled by the whole, broader situation.
I don't remember the 2020 DNC being complacent. I thought Dems paid a penalty for being responsible and doing it virtually instead of in-person but it was pretty slickly produced.
I thought the online format was much, much better, and I'm sad we didn't keep it. Networks had to cover the whole thing. It didn't involve endless speeches from Democrats trying to set up their 2028 run for president. The messaging was airtight. The fifty state video of delegates voting for Biden was deeply inspiring, rather than boring af the way it usually is.
Yeah, the roll call was a highlight
Very good analysis and glad you are not caught up in the Pollyanna group think of those convinced of the Blue Wave.
I take Nate Silvers 55% with a grain of salt as the polls and 538 underestimated Trump in 2016 and 2020. Silver in particular called 5 states wrong in 2016 and 2 wrong in 2020 and all 7 were calling them Dem when they ended up R. RCP did slightly better, missing 5 over the two elections and calling four wrong Dem victories and one wrong R (GA in 2020).
In 2020 Biden at Election day was polling at +7.2 ( actual election was + 4.5 so a 2.7% over polling for Joe). But he only won by 0.7% if you look at his narrowest victories that gave him the majority- AZ, GA, and WI, so hypothetically, if states tracked the national vote, and the polls tracked the vote as they did in 2020, he would need to win the national popular vote by +3.8% to win (Clinton lost at +3.2) and to be polling at +6.5. Now, people have estimated that the +3.8 to win, which is due to the R electoral college advantage will be less, and Silver is smarter than me and estimating it at 1-2%. Maybe the polling error will be less, but imo, it will be there b/c the problem is that Trump people are less likely to answer polls.
All that being said, I would suspect that Harris needs to be polling over +4 (now at +1.4 RCP aggregate) for me to give her the odds.
And I think doubling down on a progressive agenda with price controls and 25K homeowners grants, is not the usual pivot to the middle that wins Independents. Of course Trump is always inventive in finding ways to hang himself, and his protégé JDV seems to be following that formula.
I don't mean to "unskew the polls" but any average that gives Rasmussen equal weight is something that cries out for adjustment. The RCP average is pretty mindless. She's maybe two points ahead now.
That Ramussen has some GOP bias I agree, but most of the other polls have Dem bias, so in the aggregate RCP has always been more accurate than 538 and in reality even RCP is skewed to the Dems though less than 538. As I said in the final polling in 2016 and 2020 RCP got 5 polls wrong and 4 were skewed to the Dems. 538 got 7 wrong and all skewed to the Dems. I would say she is more likely about +0.5 on the basis of past error.
Keep in mind that the methodology changes with each election. If pollsters miss by X they try and find out why and adjust accordingly. They don’t miss by X percent and just say, “Oh well.”
"If pollsters miss by X they try and find out why and adjust accordingly. They don’t miss by X percent and just say, “Oh well.”
You'd think, but in looking at the national popular vote polls they were biased to Clinton by 1.1% but more so to Biden by 2.7% so the Trump underestimation worsened. And both elections were decided in the states providing the winning margin by under 0.7% .
I think this might be corrected by controlling for who the pollee voted for in the prior and only a few polls do this, as they routinely control for education, race, gender. I have bugged Nate Silver on his blog about this but never a peep. He previously discounted the so called shy Trump phenom, but I think it is an angry Trump phenom, where anti establishment Trumpers hang up the phone on pollsters.
I would keep in mind that this was only true in the past two presidential cycles. Past performance is not indicative of the future.
Silver seems to think Harris will not need to win the popular vote by nearly as much as we knew Biden had to.
Past is not a lock, but given especially that we have the same R candidate and the same constituencies, I would say the odds are better than even for a repeat especially because imo the same dynamic is at play- Trump supporters don't answer polls as often. Silver noted this in explaining the 2020 Trump underestimate by saying "This is a relatively new phenomenon, but pollsters have increasingly found evidence of partisan nonresponse — that is, particular types of Republicans are just less likely to take surveys, so these voters’ opinions are not reflected in survey data. This was especially relevant in understanding Trump’s support, too, as many of these voters broke for him and other Republicans in 2020." (Article https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-outperform-the-polls-again-two-theories/ )
Being that the same DJT is running that should recur.
I will take Silver's estimate of the EC advantage for the Rs at 1-2 as opposed to the prior 3-4 and expect a Trump underestimate of 1% which is well below the prior two errors and say Harris needs at least +3.
But we're talking about systematic polling bias, not Trump. Trump has not changed. Pollster methodology has.
The only way to eliminate that bias would be to control for past voting choices and very few do.
The take that Harris chickened out by not choosing Shapiro is too East coast and too online.
I just can't believe that they made a decision based on fear of nutty pro-Hamas online agitators. Nobody actually cares about them. My guess is the Walz decision was made, correctly, because Shapiro is basically the same person as Harris and the Democratic Party, correctly, needs to have people involved that aren't overeducated coastal lawyers.
My take has long been that Harris decided her VP pick wasn’t gonna determine the election, and she’d vowed to follow her instincts in the campaign anyway, so she went with the guy she vibed with most.
Politicos in general tend to reject that take, but I think it’s the Occam’s-Razor right one for what we’ve seen.
Who knows what happened behind the scenes, but Walz strikes me as the kind of guy I'd prefer to lunch with weekly than Shapiro. Politicians can and should be cold-blooded but they're also human.
Agree and disagree. I think they should be concerned re pro Palestinian demonstrators as division and disorder are never a good look (think DNC 1968), I think it was reasonable to assume Shapiro would have triggered that, even if his views on Israel are not that different from Walz, the perception is that he is more pro Israel.
I am more concerned that Harris is doubling down on her progressive look with the price controls which even most liberal economists dont support, the 25K homeowners benefit which is a setup to the next foreclosure crisis by giving high risk people homes, and then Trump and her trying to outdo themselves with cutting taxes on SS and tips with, of course, no mention of what will replace that tax revenue and nary a word about a balanced budget which is a big concern for Independents .
The momentum with Kamala is certainly there, and Biden would have gotten creamed, but I think that she will have a much harder time if she continues to pivot left instead of center.
None of that matters on either side. If Trump is elected, he's too incompetent and indifferent to do anything he promises, and that's assuming he even wants to do it. I doubt he remembers he promised not to tax tips. An aide probably reminds him before speeches where that's applicable.
Harris won't have Congress, so assuming she's not lying about what she wants to do, she still won't be able to do it.
You’re missing the point. Shapiro the 2024 VP candidate was *more* critical of Israel than some of the other contenders who didn’t receive anything approaching the same heat. He also didn’t differ from the others on his approach to protesters. Explaining the unique animosity he faced by stuff he allegedly said or did as a kid decades ago makes little sense assuming the protestors point is to affect the future admin’s policy. If however the point isn’t that at all but rather to punish and marginalize those who grew up Jewish (highly correlated with strong and often naive forms of Zionism) and still be a proud Jew - then it does so perfectly. But to punish or attempt to marginalize someone for being Jewish IS antisemitism. See also here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/opinion/josh-shapiro-democrats-israel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
No I dont disagree, I think Harris was avoiding the pushback, and not a bad move. Now when you actually look at Shapiro and Walz' current views, and I hardly concern myself with somebody's opinion in high school, they really are not that different. Shapiro has been critical of Netanyahu nor is it on voters minds though clearly it would piss off the left and riots at the convention are never a good look.
I am more concerned about Harris doubling down on her progressive viewpoints with the price controls and free mortgage money that she will alienate centrists like myself, though I will hold my nose and vote for the not Trump, and then neither candidate seems to ever mention debt, Trump with his tax cuts and Harris with benefits galore.
I'm Conservative, so in many ways it's unfair for me to offer up much advice to Harris as she runs for President. Sure, I'd like for her to provide some red meat to voters like me who despise Trump and want to see him lose. But the hard fact is: Biden didn't offer me much either and I voted for him anyway. I'm skeptical there's much benefit to appealing to conservatives.
There's one policy I'd love for her to at least pay lip service to, that's conservative coded, which would maybe help: the debt and deficit. If I were Harris, I would talk about the federal government tightening its belt. Talk about some ways she's pushed Biden to cut costs, talk about where she thinks the government isn't doing enough to avoid spending, and emphasize how raising taxes on the millionaires and billionaires will cut the deficit.
A small way to combine a Progressive talking point to appeal to non-Progressives
Exactly, neither party is addressing debt, Harris with more benefits and Trump with more tax cuts. I think there is a reason to appeal to Independents and Conservatives because even getting a 1-4% advantage there can determine an election.
Most pols note that a candidate should pivot center, and Trump has with his moderating on abortion and becoming the cheerleader for social security and claiming he wont end ACA, but with Harris' latest economic policies- price controls, free money for risky homeowners, newborn and child tax credits, she is staking out herself as a progressive and will lose Independents and Never Trumper Rs.