look i am not an elections expert but i will just say that it’s striking how few of the arguments for keeping biden have anything to do with biden’s merits as a candidate or his ability to lead the country for four more years and i don’t think that’s going to be entirely lost on voters
I think that’s because those arguments wouldn’t feel responsive to people’s fears. I haven’t been hearing anyone suggest that Biden’s performance changes their view of how he’d govern (no one’s suggesting he resign), only how he’d campaign
I see your point, but I worry that the people whose fears are being taken into account here are the professional political class and committed Dems. Whereas the people whose fears actually matter in an election are those who are on the fence about who to vote for or whether it’s worth turning out.
I will absolutely concede that I have zero idea what happens in the minds of "undecided" voters and how different scenarios would affect turnout. I'd just say that the argument for Biden on policy is roughly the same as the argument for Harris, so you quickly return to discussing other tradeoffs.
I agree that no one is disputing the fact that Biden is old and diminished compared to his younger self. But it doesn't seem damning to me that the main conversation is about what you gain and lose by switching to Harris (or contested convention), just as we talk about voting for Biden vs. Trump.
I think a lot of it is also that nobody in the professional political class really wants to admit what everyone knows is true: this election is /overwhelmingly/ just (another) referendum on Trump. Everything else is using proxies to try and paper over that fact, which is also why they don't land
That's why the polls are weirdly unresponsive to what would, in other elections, be larger swings. It's why journalists and D politicians freaked out so hard over what is, in the end, just a poor debate performance. They'll write 200 pieces about Biden old, but it's /about/ fear of a Trump return
when I look at this weird nyt crap and the "liberal freakout" going on, it feels much more like a group of moderate/business conservatives getting angry that their choice is between a literally dangerous candidate of their preferred party and a pro-labor old guy that lacks corporate charisma
This is true.
I was part of a survey and found myself having to say both:
- I thought Biden is doing a good job, and
- My vote is mostly against Trump.
I want my kids to be able to vote too, so this is really kind of simple.
This is /exactly/ it. Many of them thought a slap on the wrist after January the 6th would be enough because there's no way the American public would ever vote for him again after /that/, right?
... Right?
To say nothing of: for these people who say they really believe what they claim to, they have no answer to the point that we’ll probably get Harris in 2026, vs getting whatever bag of moldy salami Trump picks in that same year, when each of them dies.
I would love to see someone with a platform (and not just some asshole entertainment lawyer) actually say this out loud: you’re so worried about him being old? Okay, then let him win and die in office. If the Democrats have the House it’ll still work and it’s better than President Kristi Noem.
probably not a ton, which is also why i’m not persuaded that the initial polling response really tells us much about how those people will vote. bsky.app/profile/orem...
You may be right, but I have my doubts about whether “initial polling response” to a debate most people didn’t watch in real time is a good metric for how the broader sense that he’s in cognitive decline will affect his chances in November.
the but of polling we have post-debate so far shows basically no evidence the polls moved at all. it is the elites who are freaking out, not the voters.
GOTV is the really important part. There can't be a whole lot of undecideds given that everyone old enough to vote has already experienced 4 years under each candidate.
For people who don't get that you're electing a party, not a person, being led into battle by a zombie is deeply uninspiring.
Governing is harder, so that seems a little nonsensical. Not to be ungenerous to people’s fears, but consciously or unconsciously it does seem like they avoid the resigning maneuver because there’s a mechanism for a replacement that way, and they want someone else.
This may be because you are listening to a pretty thin slice of electorate. Anyone who’s cared for an elderly parent has to be pretty terrified of how he’d govern.
But he's already governing! Along with his appointees. And his administration's record isn't what people are panicking about. If he can't handle the job, he'll resign (or be forced out) and Harris will take over. I'm not saying people's fears are meritless, only that the usual tradeoffs apply.
This touches on a good point I read elsewhere. If Biden opts out of the nomination now because, ostensibly he's too old, etc., what questions does that raise about his capacity to govern until next January? His political capital would be less than zero at that point.
True, but, and again, I’m drawing on my own quite common experience of caring for an elderly parent, old people who start to slip can often decline very fast. If you could promise me Biden will not get worse, great.
if you told me, with absolute certainty, that Joe Biden will be mentally unfit to govern by May of 2025 I would still vote for him over every Republican in federal government. And on top of that I would still believe his chances in November of 2024 are better than any other Democrat.
I’ve cared for an elderly parent who was sharp as a tack right to the end, I’m not terrified. He’s governing right now & has been for 4 years.
I hope everyone panicking about this gets to experience *their* entire career & continued worth being erased by a single substandard performance.
My dad's 81 and he was fine driving after 11pm on a day of travel that started at 7am, *and* he doesn't drink caffeine. (It wasn't even his car, because my parents rented a minivan for when my family and I were visiting! And I was keeping an eye out the whole time in case I had to say something!)
Right?! I don't think *I* could handle driving my ex-wife, our daughter, her husband, and their two small boys around for seventeen hours, and I'm 40.5 years younger!
I'm willing to say that it makes me downgrade my expectation that he can govern through to 86 while also making me doubt he could recognize when he had passed that point, and maybe he already has
His performance changes my view of how he already governs, and makes him seem much more potentially negligent w/r/t to the war in the Levant. Has Netanyahu’s war cabinet known privately that he was this far gone? How much has that empowered them? How much have they manipulated him?
Like it’s 100% his age, which itself isn’t a concern, but a potential cause of other concerns; and it comes down to “do we trust him and his team to handle things” and imho I have more trust in that then I do any of the other gambling scenarios
Ha, clever, and also true to some extent. My point though is at some point you have to actually persuade some rather unmotivated people to go out and vote for your candidate rather than staying home. And if they ask why you’re running a guy who’s visibly declining, a tactical answer won’t cut it.
