As you note, virtually everyone calling for Biden to drop out will vote for Biden, or for Harris or Adlai Stevenson V (if there is one) or whomever - we're worried about what other voters will do. But these voters are a black box; it's impossible for us news/politics junkies to know how the world looks to people who aren't very engaged in politics. The election will almost certainly be decided by a tiny number of votes in a handful of states, and the winner's margin of victory will be just about equal to the number of people giving their takes (guesses) on why the voters did what they did.
Seth, I think you're seeing an irrational leap because you’re skipping past some important dots. It’s not that a bad debate performance means he can’t win. It’s that he's *already* been losing in the battlegrounds he needs to reach 270, and the debate was supposed to be the pivot point that turned a faltering trajectory around. This was the strategy expressed by his campaign's proactive pursuit of such an early debate, and it would've been the right play if it worked! But it didn't -- because the candidate couldn't execute even after setting the terms and stakes of the contest.
And the “one bad night” angle seems absurd to me because (1) he likely has no other nights of similar opportunity ahead, and (2) it implies there have otherwise been more good nights. A "bad night" compared to what? Reading a prompter above 10 decibels back in March? We’re talking about someone who dodged a free Super Bowl spot and has given the fewest interviews of any president in my lifetime. Biden hasn't been out there most nights!
Is the prospect of a mystery ticket terrifying and potentially one we'd regret? Absolutely. But I'm more afraid of betting our democracy on the fortunes of a seriously unpopular incumbent whose every tired expression, slurred word and fumbled answer on the campaign trail will be taken as further evidence of a grand conspiracy to conceal the condition of his health.
Well this is just excellent. One of the reasons I like it so much is that it echoes what I’ve been saying since I calmed down on Thursday night.
WE NEED MORE INFORMATION!!! Including about what the heck happened. We all seem to think we know because we’ve been “warned” by people like Ezra Klein and Bill Kristol that Biden is old, but in fact I tried to track down the evidence for those arguments and it’s damn hard to find. You’d think if Biden was that far gone Trumpers wouldn’t have to use fake videos to prove it. And Jill wouldn’t let her husband go out there and look like a fool — she’d have stopped it. This clearly isn’t who she sees or his team sees so — let’s hear them tell us what went wrong. Share a candid medical assessment if he thinks he’s good to go.
And we need political scientists on cable news explaining the flaws in the “hey, a brokered convention 2 months before Election Day sounds like a great way to choose a winning candidate!” theory.
And while we are getting info and data and gaming out scenarios, I hope someone polls the question of whether an incumbent President Harris with, say, Gavin Newsom as her running mate, fares differently than a candidate that no one’s ever heard of, chosen by state delegates that no one’s ever heard of. If the data we gather ends up saying (and to be clear, I don’t think it will) that Biden isn’t fit to run, then maybe he isn’t fit to stay in office either. And if he were to declare he’s had a medical emergency and resigns, passing the torch to the first woman president, well that’s another way of changing the narrative.
Anyway, thanks for the column. Good stuff, as was yesterday’s on HRC’s pneumonia. I’m sharing with students!
Maybe on the margin choosing which candidate is most electable is hard. But it’s actually quite easy to tell if we would be better off without a nominee who has a -20 net approval rating. In 2020, Biden was the most popular of any of the democrats running, which is why he won. But things have changed, he is now less popular than any other national democrat by a wide margin, & & if he doesn’t want his legacy to be ruined the way Ginsburg’s was he should drop out as nominee for the good of the party and the country.
I don't understand why some people seem to think it's a massive gamble to replace the Democrat who can't answer a question about abortion without bringing up an undocumented immigrant raping a white woman with one who won't do that. Like Kamala sucks pretty hard as a candidate but at least her brain works well enough for her to not do stuff like that
The problem is that everybody's biases are leading them to the same conclusion.
Obviously people who hate Biden are motivated to pile on - be they leftists, conservatives, or media personalities who prefer flashier Presidents who are easier to cover.
However, people who LIKE Biden are of the sort that questions their assumptions and gut feelings so consistently that if they see everybody and their mother calling for Biden to step down, they will suppress their own feelings to agree with the group consensus. (It's not the best or worst trait of liberals - it's just how we are.) This is pretty obviously what happened with, say, Paul Krugman.
So the end result is very few people defending Biden, even if their initial impression watching the debate was not nearly as severe as others.
Fortunately Biden is a pathologically patient person, and is not going to panic if his numbers go down a couple of points. If we see major movement, like, greater than 5 points, I think he will reevaluate. He doesn't WANT to lose.
"Suppress their feelings"? Are you seriously telling me there are people who saw that debate, and went "we are in good hands, this befuddled cryptkeeper can definitely beat Trump in November"? What mental asylum can I find these people in?
The debate didn't make any Biden supporter feel good but there are millions and millions of people who think he can win. I don't know what to tell you.
I thought Biden could win until the debate. Obviously some people are slower on the uptake. How do you think he could possibly win? Just wishful thinking on your part, I imagine
He's down 2 points in the polls. The undecided voters are disproportionately young and minority. I suspect that when people are facing the reality of another Trump Presidency they will vote for just about anybody to stop it.
Even Nate Silver's pessimistic forecast gives Biden like a 30% chance to win, as are online betting markets... the only wishful thinking going on here is your thinking the race is over.
Because he isn't going to get a single new voter from here till November. You're telling me with a straight face that you think Biden can handle Trump again? Why? I want a detailed response why you think Biden, the man who barely managed to get through his debate without napping, is a superior candidate to Harris or literally anyone else. I need to know how you could POSSIBLY look at that shambolic near-cadaver and think you are in good hands. This was supposed to be the debate that put the age issue to bed. Instead it has METASTASIZED, and you're telling me we are good. Found Hunter Biden's account, apparently
"Because he isn't going to get a single new voter from here till November."
Well - I think you're wrong about that. Because people really, really hate Donald Trump. And I doubt Biden will have any more appearances as bad as the debate. And RFK is not going to get 10%.
Of course I'm nervous. But I don't have to feel like I'm "in good hands," or not be nervous, to not give up on the election. Go try to demoralize someone else. I'm not buying what you're selling.
The NFL comparison and point about other candidates who have lost to “worse” speakers strike me as incredibly specious almost to the point of being bad faith. Did any of those candidates face overwhelming concerns about their cognitives abilities (a thing we actually DO have data on, by the way)?
You're talking about the election where Reagan was ahead by 5-10+ for the full year of the election which meant the idea of removing him from the ticket was laughable? The election where Reagan's numbers got better and better the closer the election got? Seems like a pretty specious comparison
Additionally, while the concern about Biden’s ability to articulate a case against Trump is technically an “electability”-related question, imo it’s different/separate from the more vague sense of electability-pondering you mostly focus on. I do think it’s a point well that media elites and most debate watchers, etc are not undecided voters, but I also don’t think we need a poll to tell us that Biden is clesrt much less effective at getting a message out than most of us Democrats previously believed.
Tom Brady isn't in his 80s, Seth. The debate was singularly bad because it confirmed Biden's #1 liability when it was supposed to put it to bed. The election was already not going great and Biden just demonstrated how much worse it will be if he remains in charge
The takeaway is simple. People who are scared of a dictatorship are scared that democrats will not win. They want to win, to win, in order to keep democracy.
They want a magical amazing positive polls showing that Biden and the democratic candidates running will cream the opposition. There are none.
Biden has been an amazing president. Deep breaths.
It’s five months out. The Biden campaign has hundreds of staffed field offices and people are volunteering all around the country, doing what they can for democracy. Is that going to be a guarantee?
No. But this was never going to be easy. If anything, the higher stakes makes it more likely that democrats and those who wish to preserve democracy will keep trying and push harder.
That is always what each of us were going to have to do. This is us. This is now.
Seth, you left out one really important point. The Socialist Democrat candidates you referenced did not have Stag 5 dementia as it appears Joe has and Mark Levin (someone much smarter than you and I combined) has pointed out repeatedly. Yes anyone can have a bad night but it was clearly seen by millions of Americans that your President was not there Thursday night or for any night. His minions have been hiding him from even the permanent White House service staff. I am sorry (not really) that the curtain has fell and the American people has seen that old Joe has just been a puppet for his handlers all this time but the strings holding the puppet up have broken. Now we can get a real President back in our White House and begin to undo the damage done over the last four year.
Seth, Mark is just describing what he sees in the actions and non-verbal communications given off by Joe. You should give Dr. Cindy White over at the Univ of Colorado Boulder a call. She studied under Judiee and Michael Burgoon at Arizona and they wrote the book on identifying non-verbal communication. Plus she made it thought the gauntlet of getting a PhD in Communications in the 1990’s that the Burgoons set up in “their” department. So I would put a great deal of faith in Cindy’s take on what she saw in Joe’s debate performance.
I can't believe we lost Mark Levin's vote, I was sure he was in the bag. If Sean Hannity turns against Biden, it's all over! Unless, of course, Donald Trump drops out and endorses Biden, which seems a little unlikely, but you never know.
Ha Ha Ha and who says PolSci majors don’t have a sense of humour…. It’s not Mark, Sean, and Tucker you have to worry about it is Gavin, Whitless, and the all you can eat buffet king from Illinois that should have the Biden’s looking over their shoulder…. 😮😮
I'm all-in on Pritzker-mania, unless you're talking about Adlai Stevenson V, in which case, I'm all-in on him (provided he's either a Socialist or a Communist). "Vote for Adlai - V for Victory!"
As you note, virtually everyone calling for Biden to drop out will vote for Biden, or for Harris or Adlai Stevenson V (if there is one) or whomever - we're worried about what other voters will do. But these voters are a black box; it's impossible for us news/politics junkies to know how the world looks to people who aren't very engaged in politics. The election will almost certainly be decided by a tiny number of votes in a handful of states, and the winner's margin of victory will be just about equal to the number of people giving their takes (guesses) on why the voters did what they did.
Seth, I think you're seeing an irrational leap because you’re skipping past some important dots. It’s not that a bad debate performance means he can’t win. It’s that he's *already* been losing in the battlegrounds he needs to reach 270, and the debate was supposed to be the pivot point that turned a faltering trajectory around. This was the strategy expressed by his campaign's proactive pursuit of such an early debate, and it would've been the right play if it worked! But it didn't -- because the candidate couldn't execute even after setting the terms and stakes of the contest.
And the “one bad night” angle seems absurd to me because (1) he likely has no other nights of similar opportunity ahead, and (2) it implies there have otherwise been more good nights. A "bad night" compared to what? Reading a prompter above 10 decibels back in March? We’re talking about someone who dodged a free Super Bowl spot and has given the fewest interviews of any president in my lifetime. Biden hasn't been out there most nights!
Is the prospect of a mystery ticket terrifying and potentially one we'd regret? Absolutely. But I'm more afraid of betting our democracy on the fortunes of a seriously unpopular incumbent whose every tired expression, slurred word and fumbled answer on the campaign trail will be taken as further evidence of a grand conspiracy to conceal the condition of his health.
Well this is just excellent. One of the reasons I like it so much is that it echoes what I’ve been saying since I calmed down on Thursday night.
WE NEED MORE INFORMATION!!! Including about what the heck happened. We all seem to think we know because we’ve been “warned” by people like Ezra Klein and Bill Kristol that Biden is old, but in fact I tried to track down the evidence for those arguments and it’s damn hard to find. You’d think if Biden was that far gone Trumpers wouldn’t have to use fake videos to prove it. And Jill wouldn’t let her husband go out there and look like a fool — she’d have stopped it. This clearly isn’t who she sees or his team sees so — let’s hear them tell us what went wrong. Share a candid medical assessment if he thinks he’s good to go.
And we need political scientists on cable news explaining the flaws in the “hey, a brokered convention 2 months before Election Day sounds like a great way to choose a winning candidate!” theory.
And while we are getting info and data and gaming out scenarios, I hope someone polls the question of whether an incumbent President Harris with, say, Gavin Newsom as her running mate, fares differently than a candidate that no one’s ever heard of, chosen by state delegates that no one’s ever heard of. If the data we gather ends up saying (and to be clear, I don’t think it will) that Biden isn’t fit to run, then maybe he isn’t fit to stay in office either. And if he were to declare he’s had a medical emergency and resigns, passing the torch to the first woman president, well that’s another way of changing the narrative.
Anyway, thanks for the column. Good stuff, as was yesterday’s on HRC’s pneumonia. I’m sharing with students!
Why do you need more information? Did you miss the debate?
Maybe on the margin choosing which candidate is most electable is hard. But it’s actually quite easy to tell if we would be better off without a nominee who has a -20 net approval rating. In 2020, Biden was the most popular of any of the democrats running, which is why he won. But things have changed, he is now less popular than any other national democrat by a wide margin, & & if he doesn’t want his legacy to be ruined the way Ginsburg’s was he should drop out as nominee for the good of the party and the country.
I don't understand why some people seem to think it's a massive gamble to replace the Democrat who can't answer a question about abortion without bringing up an undocumented immigrant raping a white woman with one who won't do that. Like Kamala sucks pretty hard as a candidate but at least her brain works well enough for her to not do stuff like that
The problem is that everybody's biases are leading them to the same conclusion.
Obviously people who hate Biden are motivated to pile on - be they leftists, conservatives, or media personalities who prefer flashier Presidents who are easier to cover.
However, people who LIKE Biden are of the sort that questions their assumptions and gut feelings so consistently that if they see everybody and their mother calling for Biden to step down, they will suppress their own feelings to agree with the group consensus. (It's not the best or worst trait of liberals - it's just how we are.) This is pretty obviously what happened with, say, Paul Krugman.
So the end result is very few people defending Biden, even if their initial impression watching the debate was not nearly as severe as others.
Fortunately Biden is a pathologically patient person, and is not going to panic if his numbers go down a couple of points. If we see major movement, like, greater than 5 points, I think he will reevaluate. He doesn't WANT to lose.
"Suppress their feelings"? Are you seriously telling me there are people who saw that debate, and went "we are in good hands, this befuddled cryptkeeper can definitely beat Trump in November"? What mental asylum can I find these people in?
The debate didn't make any Biden supporter feel good but there are millions and millions of people who think he can win. I don't know what to tell you.
I thought Biden could win until the debate. Obviously some people are slower on the uptake. How do you think he could possibly win? Just wishful thinking on your part, I imagine
He's down 2 points in the polls. The undecided voters are disproportionately young and minority. I suspect that when people are facing the reality of another Trump Presidency they will vote for just about anybody to stop it.
Even Nate Silver's pessimistic forecast gives Biden like a 30% chance to win, as are online betting markets... the only wishful thinking going on here is your thinking the race is over.
Because he isn't going to get a single new voter from here till November. You're telling me with a straight face that you think Biden can handle Trump again? Why? I want a detailed response why you think Biden, the man who barely managed to get through his debate without napping, is a superior candidate to Harris or literally anyone else. I need to know how you could POSSIBLY look at that shambolic near-cadaver and think you are in good hands. This was supposed to be the debate that put the age issue to bed. Instead it has METASTASIZED, and you're telling me we are good. Found Hunter Biden's account, apparently
"Because he isn't going to get a single new voter from here till November."
Well - I think you're wrong about that. Because people really, really hate Donald Trump. And I doubt Biden will have any more appearances as bad as the debate. And RFK is not going to get 10%.
Of course I'm nervous. But I don't have to feel like I'm "in good hands," or not be nervous, to not give up on the election. Go try to demoralize someone else. I'm not buying what you're selling.
The NFL comparison and point about other candidates who have lost to “worse” speakers strike me as incredibly specious almost to the point of being bad faith. Did any of those candidates face overwhelming concerns about their cognitives abilities (a thing we actually DO have data on, by the way)?
No, although there were concerns raised about Reagan's cognitive abilities in 1984, right before he went on to win by 20 points
You're talking about the election where Reagan was ahead by 5-10+ for the full year of the election which meant the idea of removing him from the ticket was laughable? The election where Reagan's numbers got better and better the closer the election got? Seems like a pretty specious comparison
Those concerns were correct and he never should have been elected! Reagan is not an example that helps Joe Biden.
Additionally, while the concern about Biden’s ability to articulate a case against Trump is technically an “electability”-related question, imo it’s different/separate from the more vague sense of electability-pondering you mostly focus on. I do think it’s a point well that media elites and most debate watchers, etc are not undecided voters, but I also don’t think we need a poll to tell us that Biden is clesrt much less effective at getting a message out than most of us Democrats previously believed.
Tom Brady isn't in his 80s, Seth. The debate was singularly bad because it confirmed Biden's #1 liability when it was supposed to put it to bed. The election was already not going great and Biden just demonstrated how much worse it will be if he remains in charge
The takeaway is simple. People who are scared of a dictatorship are scared that democrats will not win. They want to win, to win, in order to keep democracy.
They want a magical amazing positive polls showing that Biden and the democratic candidates running will cream the opposition. There are none.
Biden has been an amazing president. Deep breaths.
It’s five months out. The Biden campaign has hundreds of staffed field offices and people are volunteering all around the country, doing what they can for democracy. Is that going to be a guarantee?
No. But this was never going to be easy. If anything, the higher stakes makes it more likely that democrats and those who wish to preserve democracy will keep trying and push harder.
That is always what each of us were going to have to do. This is us. This is now.
Weird how it's always the voters who have to make sacrifices and never the politicians. Enjoy working your ass off for a stubborn old man's ego trip
Seth, you left out one really important point. The Socialist Democrat candidates you referenced did not have Stag 5 dementia as it appears Joe has and Mark Levin (someone much smarter than you and I combined) has pointed out repeatedly. Yes anyone can have a bad night but it was clearly seen by millions of Americans that your President was not there Thursday night or for any night. His minions have been hiding him from even the permanent White House service staff. I am sorry (not really) that the curtain has fell and the American people has seen that old Joe has just been a puppet for his handlers all this time but the strings holding the puppet up have broken. Now we can get a real President back in our White House and begin to undo the damage done over the last four year.
I have no idea how smart Mark Levin is but I'm confident he has no greater ability than I do to diagnose mental illness over the television.
Seth, Mark is just describing what he sees in the actions and non-verbal communications given off by Joe. You should give Dr. Cindy White over at the Univ of Colorado Boulder a call. She studied under Judiee and Michael Burgoon at Arizona and they wrote the book on identifying non-verbal communication. Plus she made it thought the gauntlet of getting a PhD in Communications in the 1990’s that the Burgoons set up in “their” department. So I would put a great deal of faith in Cindy’s take on what she saw in Joe’s debate performance.
I can't believe we lost Mark Levin's vote, I was sure he was in the bag. If Sean Hannity turns against Biden, it's all over! Unless, of course, Donald Trump drops out and endorses Biden, which seems a little unlikely, but you never know.
Ha Ha Ha and who says PolSci majors don’t have a sense of humour…. It’s not Mark, Sean, and Tucker you have to worry about it is Gavin, Whitless, and the all you can eat buffet king from Illinois that should have the Biden’s looking over their shoulder…. 😮😮
I'm all-in on Pritzker-mania, unless you're talking about Adlai Stevenson V, in which case, I'm all-in on him (provided he's either a Socialist or a Communist). "Vote for Adlai - V for Victory!"
Wouldn't it be nice to have a candidate that would allow Democrats to say that Trump is senile, without having to say that Trump is also senile?
How incredibly sensitive. Terrible to me is supporting an old man's ego trip over beating Trump this year
Thank you.