Aren’t the same people freaking out about Biden the ones perfectly happy to weekend-at-Bernie’s Feinstein — or play along with that — as long as they could?
This is a genuine question; I don’t know.
Oh yes, definitely.
Eh. I’m not freaking out about Biden; I am freaking out about the press, the pundits, the donors, and especially the campaign.
This seems to me to be the You Have One Job of a campaign and that they can’t manage it scares me. It’s not a surprise!
Right. And folks can (and plainly do) have lots of opinions on what to do now, but the overriding concern here, and in the D party apparatus isn't "will Biden be ok in the Oval Office" but "is his campaign going to get him there" and if not, can we fix it, and can someone else fix it, in that order
I didn’t much like Biden and never liked the primary system. I thought he was too old in 2020! But the time to fix it was before the primaries. I don’t have the impression that he’s changed much, only the world, both in very predictable ways.
I think the thing for me is there's still 4 months left. That's not a giant amount of time, but it's also plenty if they really did light the fight in the campaign
The problem is this is just a really hard election to properly model; in some profound ways it's not like any election up to 2016, and has some very important differences to 2016 or 2020 too in lots of important directions. Which isn't great for anxiety. But it does mean it's still all to play for.
I think a lot of Democrats are freaking out because they seem to be stuck in an earlier era where the president's performance had coattails that either helped or hurt the party, but if you believe polling, Trump and Biden are almost totally detached from that.
Obama and his 2008 coattails aren't helping anyone out this time. Everyone's going to have to work for this themselves on every level. Personally, I know I'm volunteering for the Stein campaign here in North Carolina.
they're worried about downticket races, but I really wouldn't underestimate how much they genuinely, genuinely are terrified of what a Trump admin would be, and feel like Biden and his bubble of senior aides fundamentally don't get it and/or aren't capable of running a campaign up to defeating it
I get that and have definitely disagreed with the campaign, as we've discussed. I think pushing for a campaign leadership shakeup might be the best thing at this point. I think pushing for Biden to drop out has backfired (and the rallying around Harris came too little, too late).
the abortion stuff is a huge wildcard. it has driven huge voter turnout in local races and it is on a ton a ballots. So it could easily skew the hell out of results.
And who knows if that would also have an impact in house/senate races.
Given it’s such a central issue, I’m not sure “skew” is the right word. It rightly and justly can affect the results a lot! I wish the Dems would run on it more!
With apologies to George Box: All models are wrong; some models are useful; and sometimes no model is useful, so spend your time touching grass instead of trying to model when it just won’t work.
Is it? Most international commentary I read have been assuming a Trump WH for months - not as something that will necessarily happen, but as a strong likelihood. Most polls have went only one way so far.
And I don’t mean the national polls either. I am talking about polls in key swing states. Dem just don’t have the swing states; and we can debate the rationale, but it’s not just Biden’s age. And while it’s true that the campaign hasn’t addressed it, it was there before that.
Aren't there still big money differences, campaign offices, staffing and staff quality differences favoring Biden - the mechanics aren't much changed are they?
Everyone in Europe (& I think a lot of the USG) is prepping for the worst case; they are already living the best case so there's no prepping to do for that.
bsky.app/profile/atru...
And the only modern precedent we have for the presumptive nominee pulling out before the convention is 1968. And that didn’t go well. And while the situations aren’t identical, boy they’re uncomfortably close.
I almost feel like it's all baked in, and we just don't know the answer until the timer goes off.
At this point... it's who is more excited/scared to vote on the actual day.
I used to work at a newspaper and August was called silly season because it was understood no one was reading the newspaper that much, I wonder to what extent this is true right now in July of 2024. I know I'm hyper aware and so are a lot of people on this site, but who else.
The poll denialism in the interview really bothered me for that reason. It feels like there’s not urgency because Biden just kinda feels like it’s going fine.
That feels like part of his slow response this week—he just doesn’t feel a sense of urgency
