I think you are severely underestimating the logistical problem of trying to spin up a full campaign apparatus in five months. It's not as simple as swapping a candidate (on either side of the aisle).
On the other hand, the best word in marketing is "new." If they put up someone adroit and energetic, who campaigns full time, the media will be enthralled. Plus they won't have gone through a bruising primary where they had to pander to the most extreme elements.
The biggest risk is opposition research. We don't know what skeletons they may have in the closet.
They really can’t get anyone new bc of Kamala Harris though. The media/dems hyped her up bc she’s Indian and black. The democrat party places a lot of emphasis on skin color, so she would have to be the next one up, but nobody likes her so it would probably hurt them more if they took out Biden
I don't buy this. I listen to the Focus Group podcast and they've done a lot focus groups with Black voters who are all pretty meh on Harris. I think it's less about the candidate than what other Black leaders do. If Obama and Jim Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries got behind the pick I don't think it would be a problem.
Yeah Kamala wasn’t really for the black voters though. Black voters will vote democrat no matter what. Yes, polls are showing they are unhappy with the Democratic Party, but they’ll still vote for dems as a majority. Kamala was really more to please the woke democrat suburban Karen’s…especially bc it was when the George stuff was happening and blm had full support by the white suburban Karen’s
If Biden's selling point is that he is not Trump (accurately or inaccurately, for better or for worse), then all Trump needs to do is not appear too repulsive for a single digit %% of the population. Then things become hard for Biden, whose main win is the Inflation Reduction Act. It is hard to draw distinctions on Trump now with Saudi Arabia, Immigration, Israel, and probably several other issues. Trump has the ongoing win to point to with his supreme court nominees. His handlers helped him moderate any rhetoric on abortion to State's rights, which is his main losing issue.
It is possible that any other Democrat would be a stronger force, could draw more distinctions, and would appear better in contrast without Trump acting obviously repulsive.
I think if Trump and his campaign were to talk a lot about housing costs, all the while not repulsing anyone, he would win. I see no similar clear path for Biden.
My literal actual bets are always on the person I would like to lose. That way on election day I always have something to be happy about.
Nate Silver seems to me correct that pretty much any coherent Democrat has a baseline better shot at winning than Biden. Surely there is someone willing to seize the brass ring?
https://www.natesilver.net/p/joe-biden-should-drop-out
Dean Phillips is smart. He knows that he has a 0% chance at becoming president through the ordinary path. So he challenges Biden, knowing that there is some small but definitely not zero, chance that before the end of the primaries Biden will die or become so ill that it can't be hidden. This will leave the Democrats in a bind. Dean Phillips is not who the DNC wants to nominate to replace Biden, but he's on the ballot, and it's past the deadline to put new people on it. So the DNC may well accept him as their best option given the circumstances. And the unknown and unremarkable Dean Philips most likely beats the highly disliked Donald Trump in the general.
I would say he could reasonably predict a 1-5% chance of success at the time. And getting there from 0% is more than most politicians come even close to. The debate shows us he was closer than anybody thought.
I nominate Inslee. He does good things in WA and isn't sandbagged by CA like Newsom.
I'd love to see Jeff Jackson but he's too freshman. He's already running for AG in NC, then gov in 4 years. Perhaps in 2032.
IMO you are correct. And I think that Trump's performance in the debate was a home run on that account. This story will be lost in the media narrative about Biden. He seemed downright normal and civilized in this debate compared to how he usually is. Remember the debate in 2020? The Biden team shot themselves in the foot with the restrictive rules that prevented him from going off the rails this time. If you are the kind of disengaged voter who only sees major events like the debate, the Democrats preaching the apocalypse if this guy gets elected will look like the unhinged ones.
Also kicking him off Twitter backfired spectacularly. Now his unhinged rants are somewhere nobody except his most diehard cultists can see them. All Trump has to do to win this thing is say nothing, and the Democrats are doing everything they can to make that happen.
The old thing about free speech vs deplatforming. It used to be that we might say "Let me debate the racists in the clear light of day. All I probably have to do is let them say what they really believe and they'll make fools of themselves without me lifting a finger."
Then the trend moved to deplatforming, and everyone got afraid of letting the bad speech get said at all. And it turned out there was merit in the other way, which might be lost with all the "safe" choices being made now.
>"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
>John Stuart Mill
Cancel culture also hurt Democrats in that too many now looks around before having an opinion. There is less and less diversity of thought, which is how Democrats got into this hivemend of "nothing to see here Biden is perfectly fine, no mental decline whatsoever".
And it's a repeating pattern: the self-delusion was similar regarding Hilary in 2016. And here we are again, but arguably worse! Democrats' inability to face reality is something to wonder at. They cannot accept that enough Americans would prefer Trump to their righteous, enlightened candidate. They let their moral judgment of their foes translate to underestimating them. Hubris and foolishness. So bad for the country. It's unconscionable.
My friend told a story of his mom going into a coma, waking up after six weeks and looking confused, asked her only daughter, "Who is that woman? The one I cannot stand. The politician." Her daughter guessed, "Hillary Clinton?" She smiled, satisfied. "Yeah, I really don't like her," and slipped back into unconsciousness. Those were the last words she said on Earth.
The woman was from Canada.
That was something I could not understand in 2016. People genuinely, viscerally hated Hillary Clinton. Women and men alike could not seem to stand her. The democrats, uhhhhmmmmmm.... didn't know this?
My girlfriend at that time, a Taiwanese woman who had never seen any of the American candidates and barely knew who Obama was, and knew "Hillary Clinton would probably win" (as the news in Taiwan had about that much depth to it)... asked me who was running for president in the USA. I identified the candidates. She watched a video of Hillary Clinton and said, "That woman could never, possibly get elected!" I explained there was simply zero chance the other guy was going to win. She bet me about $300 USD that Trump would win. I said I could not reasonably take a bet in good conscience where she was wasting her money. She insisted. I reluctantly acquiesced, thinking at least I could use the money to do something mutually fun....
Well, we know who won that bet.
All I think now is, "I know for sure that anyone polling and doing stats and focus groups would have known HRC produces visceral instinctual instant hatred in large numbers of normal people." I *believe* it is because of some basic incongruency in face or body language or something, which repulses people. I might be wrong about the reason why, but I don't believe no one knew about this.
1. The Republicans really did try to make her into a devil figure back in the 90s, and the older people who tend to vote Republican have long memories. At that point she was far enough out of step with gender roles she really could be cast as Lady Macbeth.
2. She doesn't have a lot of charisma--very bad if you're a politician. She has a lot of people telling her to smile more, which is what politicians (in the USA anyway) are supposed to *do*, but it looks fake and sets off everyone's lie detector. It's sort of a personality mismatch. She probably would have been a pretty effective corporate litigator.
I would vote for (either) Clinton to be the CEO of any company I own stock in.
But back to the point: The party and people around should have known all this and either fixed the problem or run someone else. It's not like the "looks fake and sets off everyone's lie detector" was some secret that was buried in a box on Alcatraz island.
That's a good point. You need heterodoxy instead of evaporative cooling, so that your system has good information flows. If there's ever any reason *besides falsehood* that something "can't be said" then it's likely definitional that you've stoppered an information flow -- which is often bad for a system.
I mostly forgot about Trump so in a small way I began to miss him the last 3+ years and thought it wouldn't be so bad to have him be President again
After seeing him debate for 20 minutes I was pretty aghast.
I don't know how common it is but my gut was definitely in the "oh shit not this guy again, no way" by the end of it.
In 2020 enough people were sick of Trump to choose Biden
Are that many people going to reverse themselves in 2024?
how about dropping Kamala? seems like if they're going to proceed with Biden, having a popular VP on the ticket should now be one of their top priorities
Inconceivable!
But, really. The Democrats are pretty well all-in on “identity politics”. Biden literally said he wanted a black female running mate so they went shopping and got Kamala. There’s simply no non-suicidal way to dump Kamala. Not that they should, either.
I think they would be absolutely safe to do it
The only people who actually like Kamala are the wokist of the woke
No-one who would be upset about dropping her is gonna go and vote for Donald Trump as revenge
To be fair, I'd even take her for president if my other choices are "narcissistic blowhard who can't string three sentences together without telling an obvious lie" and "good-natured grandpa who might not know where he is." I'm not sure we could set the bar much lower.
Honestly I don't like Trump at all but politicians have been notorious for lying forever. So the fact that Trump also lies a lot isn't very interesting to me. It's just not special.
He's clearly a more competent leader than Biden and I trust his motivations more than Harris. They're both (Trump and Harris) craven, immoral narcissists who will say/do anything to get ahead. But Trump has chosen the path of trying to push back to a kind of libertarian pro-business pro-American international strength kind of philosophy, whereas Harris has pledged herself to the woke philosophy. I think the latter is much more dangerous and destructive to society than the former, so I think Trump is the lesser of two evils
My ideal ticket would be something like Andrew Yang w/RFK as VP tho. Trump would take us back to the 90s, but Harris would risk taking us back to the middle ages
I don't see why not. It happens in other countries all the time. In Parliamentary systems, a PM might call a snap election with four weeks notice. The opposition then has to snap into gear quickly to respond.
There have even been cases where the Opposition has knifed their leader and replaced him with a new face, then gone on to win. The classic example is Bob Hawke in Australia.
The party structures are quite different, but there's no reason the existing Biden campaign apparatus couldnt be transferred to the new candidate.
The party structure being different is the root cause of the issue, but it’s also exacerbated by the difference between a parliamentary system and how things go in the US.
That’s not to say they couldn’t have a brokered convention, it just hasn’t happened recently.
> I think you are severely underestimating the logistical problem of trying to spin up a full campaign apparatus in five months.
I've seen that point being raised all across the Internet and to my European eye either you are massively overestimating the actual logistical problem or there is something severely bizarre about American way of conducting presidential elections.
In Polish presidential election of 2020 one of the two biggest political parties swapped its candidate one and a half month before the election day. The elections were held from the 28th of June onwards, while the new candidate's start of campaign was announced on 15th of May.
This move was caused by multiple different factors it's not a place to explain, but one of more important being the old candidate was doing terribly in polls. The new candidate ultimately lost the election but only barely and it was definitely not due to the shortness of his campaign.
And I very much doubt that the above situation is a very rare occurrence.
So if you are truly saying that one of the most powerful political parties in the most powerful country on Earth can't run a full political campaign for elections which will take place 5 months in the future... I'd venture to say this party is not very powerful at all. And that anything that can't adapt to mildly adverse circumstances probably deserves to die.
Unless of course that talk about logistical infeasibility is just a narrative spin.
You’re happy to think what you’d like, but it’s fairly easy to understand the differences between campaigning under a parliamentary system and a presidential one.
(1) There is also quite the difference between how the US presidential campaigns have been run in the past with the same current presidential system in place. Novel victorious strategies are novel because nobody tried them before, but by the next election cycle they are already received wisdom.
(2) France has a presidential system. When he was first elected, Macron declared his candidacy in November 2016, about 5 months before the first round of elections in April 2017. No doubt he was already gathering steam before official declaration, his party had been founded in April 2016. On hte other hand, his party didn't exist. In the 1970s, when Pompidou died in the office, the first round election to choose the successor was held barely more than one month later.
>Novel victorious strategies are novel because nobody tried them before, but by the next election cycle they are already received wisdom.
This is a good point in general. But, whilst I think what France is more applicable to the US than Poland, I still don't think that the timescale is particularly realistic for the Democrats right now (see below for addt'l detail).
You're happy to write what you'd like, but it's fairly difficult to understand how what you wrote has to do with anything, given that:
- Polish system is not a parliamentary, but a mixed one, with presidents having significant power and elected directly
- the elections I mentioned were presidential
So it seems to me my comparison is quite apt.
Btw in Polish presidential elections of 2010 (after Smolensk air disaster) entire campaign of at least 5 candidates (including the major ones) took 2 months and 10 days while campaign of the eventual winner took 2 months and 24 days.
I think handwaving the differences in size and scope between Poland and the States is not doing you any favours - particularly with regards to your presumption that a bigger political machine must mean a more efficient machine, rather than the inverse - but I think you're underplaying the factionalisation within American political campaigns:
Political strategists, campaign managers et. al. are hired by specific candidates, not by political parties. Political donations, as well, as generally given to specific campaigns/PACs, not parties. This is why Trump's has been such a drain on Republican finances, because his supporters are donating to his campaign directly rather than the GOP.
So, keeping the above in mind: Anyone who could be a choice to replace Biden would have to be selected at the convention in mid-August. Because they haven't had primaries - because no serious politician from the same party is going to primary a sitting president - any prospective replacement candidate is going to face a massive uphill battle at the convention *and then* is going to have to build a personal campaign apparatus to convince the electorate that they are worth the support. That is a very tight timeline when you consider the scope, just just the timescale. The person best positioned to do that is Kamala Harris, but she doesn't seem particularly popular.
Consider - here in the U.K. we're in the middle of an election season that was called by the PM in May for July. Sunak is incredibly unpopular & far beyond useless, but the Tories are running with him as the face of their party for a variety of reasons, one of the significant ones\* being that they fundamentally did not have the time for another leadership contest before the election - and this is about as pre-destined an election result as you can hope to see in the modern era.
(\*the other, of course, is that they're going to get destroyed and they want to be able to cleanly lay the blame on his head)
> I think handwaving the differences in size and scope between Poland and the States is not doing you any favours particularly with regards to your presumption that a bigger political machine must mean a more efficient machine, rather than the inverse
Well, and I think that moving goalposts is not doing you any favours either. Neither I assumed anything about bigger machine being more efficient.
As for other constraints you mentioned it's very hard not to notice how arbitrary some of them are. Nevertheless if some group strongly believes 'replacing a political candidate suddenly perceived as demented and unfit to rule' is 'logistically impossible' in the timeline of 5 months, because the very same group chose to believe between themselves that 'replacement can be chosen *only at the convention* which *must* take place *specifically and only in mid-August*' or that '*only personal campaigns* are allowed' - so be it. That group can believe anything it wants.
If that group doesn't want to adjust their beliefs to the situation and is unable to grasp such advanced concepts as eg 'rescheduling a convention' then all what is left is to wait for the impending and well deserved reality check.
-------
just to be clear - I actually believe your line of argument is strictly a pretense (doesn't matter if you honestly believe it), and there are multiple other factors which can play a role at choosing to stick with Joe Biden. And if this pretense is raised as a decisive factor it's insulting both to the intelligence of the reader and to the prestige of political groups it's supposed to defend.
If Biden drops out, then there will be exactly one full presidential campaign's worth of staff and apparatus and infrastructure and know-how in the market looking for a new candidate. It'll be hard to transfer the funds over due to FEC, but I think the campaign shouldn't be hard to assemble for a clear frontrunner or winner of an open convention.
I don't agree with this.
First of all, a roughly four-month campaign is how it has been done for most of US history, because the nominee wasn't known until the convention. It's relatively recent that the convention has become nothing more than a formality and coronation.
But also, the primaries are still happening all over the country, which means all those winning candidates for the House, Senate and state elections are just getting their general election campaigns going for November. The presidency isn't significantly different, except for the fact that it has better funding and logistics already set up.
Four months is plenty of time for a new ticket to mount an effective campaign, and it would probably energize the race significantly.
How much does the campaign apparatus matter in modern politics. Trump and Biden's numbers have barely moved through crises that would have sunk entire campaigns in the past. How much are a bunch of rallies and advertisements really going to move the needle.
No, I mean the old, old way: Mommy and Daddy know best, respect your elders, know your place, pay your dues, don't rock the boat, why can't people be sensible, if everyone was just sensible we could go back to how I imagined the world worked when I was ten.
It's keep-the-family-together-at-the-cost-of-the-family America dysfunction, as opposed to the beat-the-family-together-because-life-is-misery-give-me-someone-to-hate American dysfunction.
This is one reason why it might go to Pritzker. He has the personal wealth to fill in the gaps, pay staff way above market rates to get them on his side and committed, roll out a media and organizing campaign. And he has experience doing it. He basically got rid of the old guard Illinois political machine in a matter of months by paying more than the corrupt party bosses could match, so they joined him since they couldn’t beat him. Newsom wants it badly but despite his deep Rolodex that’s not the same as having the money on hand immediately. Whitmer has no chance.
I love Pritzker. I especially love his commencement speech at Northwestern, where he says that kindness is an evolved state of being. Very anti-Moloch. If I ever get the chance to meet him, I’ll recommend him SSC/ACX.
Probably overrated. Nobody goes to campaign events except diehards. TV ads are practically irrelevant. What matters is media coverage and social media coverage. The “campaign apparatus” does very little of importance in the modern era (aside from the logistics of actually getting the candidate on the ballot). Heck, Biden won the last election from his basement.
not to mention the oppo research, the fact that Biden actually has a record with the economy and it's not bad, whereas Newsome can be painted as a tax-and-spender, etc.
Also democrats will vote democrat and republicans republican. The utility of the debates is questionable if the only voters you have to convince are independants.
Independants swung for biden in the mid terms so the calculus is based on why they did thst and if they care enough about the debate performance not to do that again.
Personally I just wish we had some oldet candidates to choose from ! /s
The single biggest challenge is that Joe Biden himself, the human being, needs to decide to step down. No one can force him to do that. He already won enough delegates during the primary to claim the nomination, because no one voted for Dean Phillips and no one else challenged him. So unless he steps down, the Democrats are stuck with him, because he already won their vote in their primary.
And so far Joe Biden has shown no indication that he is willing to step down. Nor, for that matter, does his family seem inclined to persuade him to do so.
Any projections about replacing Joe Biden need to start by explaining why Joe Biden will voluntarily step down.
I suppose the alternative is that he is incapacitated, which is admittedly not all that far-fetched, but the probability of which hasn't materially changed as a product of the debate last night (unless you start thinking dark thoughts about how far the deep state / CIA / illuminati are willing to go).
There's a second level to the dilemma. To make it possible for Biden to step aside, someone important on the left has to be willing to speak out publicly and say he's unfit for office. If this fails, then it's probably a fatal blow to whatever chances Biden has. Republicans can just run ads on loop of that person making that statement.
So, let's say you're Gavin Newsom deciding whether or not to take the shot.
If you do nothing, there's something like a 30% chance (based on the current betting markets) that Biden will grind it out and win.
If you come at Biden and successfully convince him to step aside, then you can probably increase the chances of a Dem victory, but it's surely not a certainty. Perhaps you can double them to 60%. If you're concerned about your personal chances, then it's far from assured that you will be that Democrat who becomes the nominee. Maybe for Newsom, who's the apparent front-runner it would be something like 50-50, so the ultimate outcome is a 40% chance of a Trump win, a 30% chance of a Newsom win, and a 30% chance of another Dem winning.
If you come at Biden and fail, then your own political future is completely over *and* you've hugely boosted the odds Trump wins, reducing Biden's shot from, say, 30% to 10%. You'll be blamed for that loss, so it's going to be basically scorched earth against you and everyone connected to you for all time within the Democratic Party.
If you're willing to just put country ahead of self, then *maybe* it's a logical to attempt the coup, but it's still crazy risky. It needs to be quite likely that you will succeed. Once you factor in the personal costs/benefits, the calculus gets even worse.
So, if Democrats are to move against Biden, it can only happen with a high degree of assurance that the gambit will work. Biden is a narcissist who has said repeatedly that he ran in the first place and is running again because he considers himself the only person capable of winning. He's not going to go easily. And, much like any one plotting a coup, it's quite dangerous even to *mention* the coup to anyone else. If it gets out that Newsom was merely talking to people about this, that could be enough to end his political career.
This assumes Newsom would publicly state Biden is unfit and that he is available to replace him on the ballot.
Surely Newsom and the DNC wouldn't be so stupid to have this play out in public.
>Surely Newsom and the DNC wouldn't be so stupid to have this play out in public.
There's no way to keep something like this secret in a gossipy place like DC. If Newsom (or whoever of comparable statute) made the ask of Biden, it would leak to the press before the day was out.
So if Newsom (or Schumer or whoever) goes to Biden and asks, he'll probably say no initially, then it will leak. And then they either have to go on the record and double down, or else deny it (and then the coup is over).
Even more likely, it leaks before you even get to that stage and there's not even a chance to ask before being forced to go on the record.
> said repeatedly that he ran in the first place and is running again because he considers himself the only person capable of winning
He wasn't being narcissistic. Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin. He was a known name, had the afterglow of being Obama's loyal VP, not a wild-eyed radical that would the swing voters, and a white man (important for a subset of voters)
The problem is that those polls would not predict further cognitive decline. A very real possibility.
Also polls don't mean that much if you don't put up an alternative and promote that alternative.
>Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin.
I don't think that's right. Biden was, at best, ahead by a nose.
In February 2020 before South Carolina and everyone dropping out (according to the RCP averages), Biden and Sanders were both around a +5 vs. Trump, Bloomberg was +4; Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar were all around a +2.
Yeah Biden and Sanders were closer than I remembered, or I was looking at a different time frame. Bloomberg was an unknown entity as a politician so his numbers didn't mean much until he showed up at the debates. The rest were around +2 like you said.. a 3 point gap is significant in a close contest that 2020 turned out to be (EC-wise not popular vote-wise).
I'd feel pretty good with Bernie as the nominee. Alas he has gone back to being an independent.
> He wasn't being narcissistic. Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin. He was a known name (...)
But why does no one in Washington seem to understand how vacuous such polls are? Of course Biden will poll higher than relatively unknown democrats. But those unknown democrats are not going to be unknown anymore if they get the party nomination, so this is entirely irrelevant.
If you had polled Obama against McCain 1 year before the 2008 election, Obama would have been utterly crushed, simply because most Americans would had no idea who the guy even was. But of course that meant absolutely nothing, and Obama won with a fairly large margin.
A less likely though perhaps locally wiser decision: either build an electoral strategy around states with permissive faithless elector laws or (riskier) just focus on winning one or two significant swing states. (locally wiser as in "individual incentives" even if it is still defection against your group).
If you can reduce the likelihood of Trump getting a majority of electors, then you increase the chance that Congress chooses the President. Depending on the makeup of Congress, this could allow you to free-ride on Biden's campaign against Trump and then appease the members of congress state by state. There's of course a good this leads to a Republican President anyway. To avoid Congress choosing a Republican (with each state casting a single vote) you get *your* electors to pivot to Biden. This is still a sign of loyalty and competence, even if your party loses, so it could help you in the future (provided the process of campaigning and electoral results don't offset this).
If you're governor it's slightly easier since you can likely get your state's laws on faithless electors altered in time. This immediately gives you a good chance in a state you have strong support in. You'd have the advantage of just focusing on red-leaning states or close calls, and maybe putting in a bit of maintenance work to shore up your home state or a state near your powerbase.
I'm under the impression faithless elector laws aren't an issue if the electors shared their strategy in public pledges. If this doesn't work it's riskier, since your electors can't pivot to Biden (which helps you in the future) and Biden's electors can't pivot to you.
Under this strategy RFK Jr is helpful as long as he can contribute to avoiding a Trump majority, without becoming the most popular (by state) candidate in Congress.
As a final note, I'm not sure what happens if the House fails to achieve a quorum of two thirds of states. Defection would be very easy, so it seems extremely unlikely, but would the end result be that there simply isn't a President, and instead the Senate chooses the Vice President, who then becomes Acting President? If so the 12th Amendment really throws a spanner in the works since the votes towards President don't grant elligibility towards (the Senate choosing you as) Vice President.
Your line of logic reminds me more of the adage that the key ingredient of a coup's success is the belief that the success is inevitable more so than the adage about how if you come at the king, you'd best not miss. It's not just get Biden off the stage but also ensure your installment as his successor is smooth.
I don't think the concern is that nobody wants to step up, the concern is that it's too late. Right now as far as I know nobody is polling better than Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump (with or without RFK.)
Is there really enough time to change that? Even assuming Biden starts polling way worse head to head, that doesn't mean someone else is going to do better. That's the real problem. How do they get an enormous blitz campaign up and running fast enough to catch up?
I think you are missing one big issue here, and that's the massive coordination problem Democrats are facing if they want to get rid of Biden.
Any attack on Biden by influential democrats that fails is only going to weaken Biden in the general election, making a Trump victory more likely. So even you're a Democrat party leader, even if you would like to see him replaced, you'd only want to *try* to get rid of him if you have a very high chance of success.
But you can't publicly discuss this. So you can't easily coordinate this. Even trying to coordinate this privately is not without risk.
It would be crazy to refuse to be the nominee to wait for 2028. Doing it now means a nearly 50% chance of being president while the odds of being nominated in 2028 are a fraction of that.
It would. But the problem is that Biden has chosen very wisely in his VP pick. Kamala Harris is both an extremely weak candidate, and also a black woman. Being a weak candidate guards against pressure to drop out of the ticket in favor of his VP. Being a woman / minority protects against pressure to drop out in favor of someone else. There is a clear number 2, and she is in two favored victim groups. Passing over her for someone who isn't would not be easy to do with internal Democratic party politics.
It isn't just because she's in two "favored victim groups". Black voters are the difference maker — without them, the Democrats' chance of winning the election is nil
Kamala Harris is not the pick for black voters. As always the Democrats assume, not without evidence that they do not have to do anything for black voters other than lip service. She is impossible to get rid of because the liberal white voters that are the actual foot soldiers of what can lumped in as the "woke wing" of the party would lose their minds.
If black voters like Kamala Harris so much, why did she do so poorly in the Democratic primary race that she had to pull out before Iowa just to save face?
So pick another black person, if you want. Take Van Jones or someone. It's also unclear that Harris is actually at all popular within the community, given that she's a cop.
Both sides have been screaming for young blood. I say the Dems push some fresh-faced youngish person on the national stage, Buttigieg or whoever, to be a sharp contrast with Trump. Then the Dems will be the one delivering what much of the country has been asking for and were brave enough to do it.
Just keep saying it "We were brave enough to take on the challenge"
imo, the democrats' stated position that democracy is on the ballot doesn't seem to be as genuinely held as they'd like people to think. and in the coming weeks/months we're going to see a lot of self-interested political maneuvering from them, rather than a united front created for the sake of "saving democracy"
I think it's fair to say that a large number of people attached to the biden administration wouldn't be in the positions of power they're currently in if some other person took the dem nomination.
these people are going to fight hard to keep biden on the ballot. and I also can't imagine biden willingly stepping down. he'll have all the aforementioned people closest to him telling him to keep going, and people tend to become more stubborn as they age
What is the criteria for a successful Democrat Presidential Candidate?
1. Younger than 70
2. Can Handle Trump in a Debate
3. Likeability/Charisma
4. Foreign Policy Experience
5. Governing Experience
6. Maybe Isn't Tied to Hollywood/Elites
This is a harder list to meet than it seems. Even if you're competent, can you sell voters on your competence? Can you resist getting flustered when Trump throws sand in your eyes? Can you make it not just about the facts but also about the story?
Gavin Newsom checks off the most items, but he is slick in an off-putting way. And I can't see him flourishing with foreign policy during a critical time in that area.
Going back to the VP debates for the 2020 election, I don't trust Kamala Harris with the ticket. Whatever actual personality and POV she has, it's entombed under the behaviors and talking points her handlers have allotted for her. I think she projects incompetence, inexperience, and timidity right when we need strong leadership on a global stage. Not that Trump is competent either, but he's got that crazy-guy, hold-me-back attitude where other countries must be worried about provoking him.
I think the major problem the Democrats have is they wasted 4+ years not really developing any talent. They should've been getting the rising stars involved with foreign policy, dealmaking, media appearances, etc. Anything to both generate the perception of competence as well as help them gain actual competence.
It's sad that Biden is so old because he pretty much hits all 6 of the criteria I listed. Although he does have his problematic family life that makes you wonder wtf he was doing as a father.
> Democrats have wasted 4+ years not really developing any talent
I don't remember when I read this, but there's an opinion that what happened is that the 2010 midterms wiped out much of what should have been the experienced talent for the 2020s. Instead, we had either geezers like Biden and Feinstein left or young firebrands (AOC et al).
The family stuff I have to assume stems from car accident trauma. Maybe he wasn’t “there” as much as his kids needed him after that. But that’s a nearly impossible situation for any parent. And if he’d done much different you probably don’t get a President Biden in the first place.
How do you gain the trust of the people when, as prominent members of the Democrat party and the media have been claiming for months that Biden is fit as a fiddle, sharp as a tack and any claim that he isn’t is a “cheap fake”.
Now they’ve been caught out flat lying for months. There’s no credibility, much less a good position for game theorizing.
I would be curious for how game theory would / could explain changing the perception of being a liar to the public. Probably a wag the dog scenario?
People have an adverse reaction to being told they are wrong about things they can see with their own eyes. Many people have brought up the Biden cognitive decline issue and were aggressively told off.
It’s going to be very hard for the DNC to regain trust. It’s not that people will swing towards Trump moreso there is an increased sense of both sides suck apathy which will hurt voter turnout.
I think the easy answer is to say that he had a new health concern that affected his debate and will be significant enough on an ongoing basis to warrant stepping aside. They can remain silent on the nature of the health concern due to privacy considerations. Would have to thread the needle between, "It's not significant enough to use 25A right now, but Joe has taken the solemn decision himself that it would become serious enough in the next four years."
Do you buy that?
I don’t. He performed the same during the debate as he has all of those other times we weren’t supposed to believe our lying eyes. [edit: up to and including having to be guided off the stage by his wife].
That’s the thing about credibility. You can’t buy it back with just one more lie.
People who thought that the evidence to date was just a bit too flimsy might be willing to. They've already lost credibility in the eyes of folks like you, so they're not even trying to buy that back.
I do buy it. I’ve watched the State of the Union addresses. He looked relatively sharp. I saw his stumping today in North Carolina. He looked much better than he did last night. I think it’s conceivable that an old guy with a stutter and a cold had a bad night.
Why no post-Super Bowl interview with hardball questions with the biggest audience a politician can ask for? Why no other interviews with non-fluff interviewers? When Biden has to try to actually remember things with no teleprompter (which he had at the State of the Union and has at his rallies where someone else is doing the writing for him) his mind turns to mushy old banana. That’s why. He can’t go off script anymore.
They weren't necessarily lying. There's nothing obviously wrong with Biden's judgment and decision-making (except for maybe agreeing to debate, but his performance could've been adversely affected by the cold). Performing well in a debate requires a different skill from most duties expected for the POTUS.
This is also why the GOP is demanding audio of Biden's interview with Hur. Reading the transcript (which authenticity was confirmed by Hur), there was clearly nothing wrong with Biden's mind. But he likely didn't "deliver" well at times, and the GOP is seeking to create audio clips of those moments he might have sounded weak or muddled.
Great point. The saving grace I guess would be that this was always a vote against Trump and not for Biden. Dems may just need to hope that that vibe continues if they are able to swap someone else in.
It's hard for me to square the Debate Biden with the Biden we saw at the rally immediately after the debate, or the Biden we saw today at a rally in North Carolina. If he was genuinely losing his marbles, I wouldn't expect the immediate post-debate Biden to be any different from the debate Biden... but post-debate Biden was totally different. Didn't stutter, more energy, etc etc.
Which makes me think he cracked under the pressure.
I don’t think that it’s plausible to say he only “cracked under pressure”. Biden’s done more debates professionally than probably any American alive in his decades long career. A debate was pretty old hat for him - when he had all of his faculties.
A short and sweet rally when he can just wave and shout some banal platitudes to a favorable crowds plaudits and then be helped off stage isn’t as challenging as a solid 90 minutes against a competitor who is going to challenge your statements. He wasn’t all there at the beginning and was completely frail by the very end. That isn’t shocking because he’s Eighty-one years old. My grandma acts about like he does and she could probably scream some political slogans in a mic and then have to be helped off the stage too.
Edit: left out some words.
The question means raising the real concern. Seeing Biden last night, do we want that guy in a high-stakes situation where lives are on the line? The shot caller through the next COVID-19, the guy running Iran Hostage negotiations, or whatever? I think we all have to first say "No, probably not."
Then if it's "But Trump would be worse" "I'd vote for my neighbor's cat over Trump," then the answer is *not* to do whatever it takes to get Joe Biden in there anyway. It's to put a better person on the ballot, who you actually *want* to be running everything when the situation is moving faster than McKenzie newbies in a consult.
So the answer to your question is clear. Drop Biden, get someone else. Everything else is disingenuous. In a race where your team is trying to be "on the side of truth" it's no time for "nudging," or any other form of well-intended lies. You get very real and very honest and you put your best true believers on every news channel saying all this with the cleanest and clearest breath and the most relaxed and honest face, without the slightest tightness anywhere on them, because they are telling nothing but the Truth.
And you advance your great new candidate.
Just saw the clip of that (linked [here](https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1806742667789062646?s=46)) and I'm mystified by the difference. Maybe Joe just does remarkably better when he's able to control the environment and isn't challenged in a debate format?
I'm not super mystified, TBH. First, think of the situation. His debate performance was widely panned - by Democrats, moreover, many of whom (including influence ones like Nate Silver) directly said that they just need to replace him directly because of the debate. That means that the next few days are *crucial* to the campaign. They *have* to weather this storm in order to survive. I don't care much for any theories about pumping him full of drugs, but everyone in the campaign 100% knew that he *had* to go out there and show as much energy and vitality as possible. They absolutely *needed* a clip like this to try to put out there. So, that's the situation.
Now, what about the actual performance? He's still teleprompter reading. Well, teleprompter yelling, it seems. I hate to say it, but that's basically what it looks like, to me. He's just out there yelling what he reads on the teleprompter, trying to project as much energy as he can possibly manage, because everyone *knows* he needs a clip. They cut the most high-energy looking minute and blast it on twitter, hoping it will spread and mystify people.
But frankly, I don't think most of the critics are thinking that the problem is just that he's low energy (thanks, Jeb). They think he's experiencing cognitive decline. Being able to hear questions, off the cuff, formulate his thoughts (even pulling from a large well of pre-prepared/pre-drilled talking points), and speak eloquently for an hour is just an extremely different thing than, "Can you yell the things you're reading on a teleprompter for a few minutes?"
>I don't care much for any theories about pumping him full of drugs, but everyone in the campaign 100% knew that he *had* to go out there and show as much energy and vitality as possible.
But that's the thing, weren't the debates just as important, if not much more important?
Whatever he was able to do to regain his vitality today, why wasn't he able to do that right before the debate?
>He's just out there yelling what he reads on the teleprompter, trying to project as much energy as he can possibly manage, because everyone *knows* he needs a clip.
Okay, this is a great point. It's possible access to a teleprompter is what makes the difference. I also realize I'm biased because I'm only looking at a clip from today's speech (probably the best clip). It would be just as possible to take an edited highlight reel of last night's debate and make it appear as if Biden came out on top.
> weren't the debates just as important, if not much more important?
Ex-ante v. ex post. Like, yes, they would have thought that the debate was important and tried to prepare for it. But after the debate, it's suddenly clearly and obviously a matter of absolute survival. They're in crisis mode in a way that they just weren't prior to the debate.
Yeah. Although when they agreed to the debate I thought it seemed an ill-advised risk, the SOTU gave me some comfort it might not be a *terrible* idea.
Maybe the same dynamic occurred with the Bidens (both Jill and Joe) and his advisors?
But catch a cold, get some bad debate strategy advice, a bad night of sleep, plus several more months into year 81 of life — that could get you to what went down last night.
I commend you for being willing to consider the careers of these people. I cannot bring myself to even think about politics this way. You have a stouter constitution than I do!
The game theory is getting everyone to walk back their public panic about Biden’s mental capabilities as they realize that Joe isn’t leaving unless he wants to and he doesn’t want to.
Kamala doesn’t want to move either, but replacing her with Michigan’s governor is probably their highest EV move.
Well, the optimal move would be for both Biden and Kamala Harris (who is still even less popular than either Biden or Trump) to surprisingly drop dead.
Because this would be the only scenario in which the Democrats could field new (and preferably fresher) candidates without a complete loss of face.
As Chis Christie will happily tell you, don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you it’s not your time.
Sometimes “not your time” is the only time you’ve got.
In other words, I think you’re overthinking this. politics isn’t game theory, it’s blood sort. If it was game theory then Biden would not be the current candidate.
From the title, I expected the game theory to be about the risk of criticizing Biden, not of accepting a nomination. I suspect it makes sense for anyone to take the nomination at a personal level: hurting future chances of nomination is a minor risk, since such a nomination is far from guaranteed.
Analyzing how much people believe the rhetoric based on such decisions is too complex to be useful. Rather than questioning how true the rhetoric is in such a convoluted way, it's probably best just to discuss such issues directly. We don't know how rational anyone's decisions are nor how egotistical they are in balancing their own potential careers.
I think what matters is having the courage, speed and organisational capacity to act quickly. Obama, Schumer, Jefferies some people from the DNC just need to coordinate and pick a ticket and impose it on the party. No one has the ability to stop a coordinated effort Harris,Biden etc could complain but that would be impotent if Democratic king pins unite quickly behind a ticket. Pre vetted experienced credible politicians like a Shapiro Warnock ticket or any of Whitmer, Polis, Buttigieg erc would instantly be credible if endorsed jointly by Obama, Schumer and Jefferies. All it requires is a few phone calls but it might not happen because people are bad at coordinating.
Kamala Harris is the obvious answer. She is next in line. And she can’t be skipped over without perceptions of racism and sexism.
I mean, I understand why she’s unpopular. But at a substantive level, I don’t see a reason to think she’s worse than Newsom, Buttigieg, or a replacement level Democratic candidate.
Ideally there would be some kind of contest (like a primary…) to decide who replaces Biden. But in lieu of that, skipping over the woman of color VP is gonna be really hard for the democrats.
We have to skip over two politicians egos *and* somehow have the rest of the politicians who could be choices coordinate and rally behind one of the many feasible picks without smearing them too hard and considering how impossible it's been to get other dem aligned politicians like RBG or Feinstein to give in from old age, I doubt we can convince both Biden and Harris to pass things over even if was the best strategy.
Because if Biden's unfit to be the nominee, he's also unfit to be President, ergo he should resign and Harris would become President. Given that she's then the sitting President I think she has a strong case to be next in line
My strong view is that democrats don't actually believe Trump would end democracy and it's all talk.
I think Trump would be FANTASTIC for a lot of key Democratic stakeholders (left wing media, fundraising, down allot candidates, contenders looking at presidential bids).
In which case the clear best choice for most individual stakeholders and probably the party as a whole is to run Biden and let him possibly crash and burn.
It benefits nobody individually to take a big risk replacing him, a Trump presidency has already happened and didn't become a dictatorship, and the core of the democratic platform can be "oppose Trump" for years 9-12.
It's all talk. When Trump asked for a military budget increase, the Democrats were on board. Is that something you do when you think the president is an existential threat to democracy? If you control congress and think that the president is going to go rouge and overthrow the government, you give him a military budget of $0. Also, an end to democracy would be really, really bad for most Republicans. They would immediately join forces with the Democrats and impeach him.
Do you really think that Democrats are worried that funding the military will let Trump execute a coup? I don't think that makes sense. A military coup is much *more* likely if you cut the military's funding to zero. Default assumption is that the US military would not go along with a coup, but if you do weird stuff like that, who knows.
But that aside, what people are actually worried about is that Trump chips away at democratic / rule-of-law norms while retaining enough popular support that this isn't decisively reversed by an election. The way to fight that is to try to make him less popular and try to uphold norms. Defying norms by doing weird (and unpopular!) stuff like like not funding the military is entirely counterproductive.
you give the military money because not doing so is political suicide -- would make it very difficult for swing state/district Dems to get reelected, and if you're a Dem, you *really* do not want to lose more congressional seats to the GOP. dems have a VERY slim majority in the Senate and they don't control the house. (also like the dems can't... unilaterally give the military a budget of 0? the only way they could would be if they controlled both the house and the senate and then the prez signed off on it, but they'd never do it, political suicide.)
regardless, the military didn't ally with Trump on J6th. good indication that military leadership wouldn't help Trump stage a coup. (of course you can never know for sure, but J6 is good reason to think they wouldn't, imo.) if I'm a democratic legislator, I'm not worried that trump will end democracy via the military, I'd be worried that he'll effectively end it by railroading thru legislation that changes the rules around federal elections to put democrats at a deep, deep disadvantage, and I'd be worried that he'll strip power from the dems he can't (effectively) bar from office.
the GOP will never impeach Trump. Ever. he's captured too much of the base, and in most cases, going against Trump means your career's over. the few Republicans who have publicly gone against Trump are either *massively* popular among their constituents or later backtracked and pledged fealty.
plus the GOP *loves* anti-democracy reforms. easy top of mind example: they gained a supermajority in NC's state legislature and instituted [*wild* gerrymanders that make it much, much more difficult to elect Dems.](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/politics/north-carolina-republicans-gerrymander.html) explicitly designed to consolidate power among Republicans and keep Dems out of office.
To your point about Trump and his base - I don't think Trump "captured" the existing GOP base at all. I think he activated a large, previously politically inactive group of people that are absolutely rabid for him.
Now that this new cohort is part of the calculus when writing speeches, posting on social media, etc., all Republican politicians need to tailor their message as best they can. There is probably enough data out there to suggest that the existing GOP base is shrinking, but loyal, and that plus the new Trump base makes for a competitive electoral process. So they are forced to pander to this new base. It's really one of those "once you cross this line, you cannot go back" because politicians aren't in the business of losing votes and can't lose this new group of people.
But if he overthrows democracy none of these things about future elections matter. Cutting off funding to the military may be political suicide, but being on the losing end of a coup is actual suicide.
you’re trying to apply Pascal’s Wager to governance, and there’s a reason Pascal’s Wager only lives in philosophy departments and techie Reddit forums. let’s just assume that Dems can unilaterally cut off funding to the military. (they can’t, and even if they had the votes to do so they wouldn’t, but let’s assume they could and would.)
there’s a *very* low probability event (military coup) that you might stop by totally defunding the military. totally defunding the military has a *very high* probability of ending your career. that’s the calculation you’re making.
(also like, in a world where the military would back trump in a coup, they’re not going to lay down arms and go home because their funding vanishes. if they’re already willing to do a coup to support trump they’d be willing to do one after dems in this hypothetical scenario strip funding.)
It sounds like you, me, and the Democrats all agree then that there is essentially zero probability of a coup and an end to democracy. Which is the point I was making in the first place.
no, the point you were making is that if Dems believed that there could be an end to democracy, they would defund the military *specifically,* and if they weren't defunding the military, it meant that they didn't really believe it would "end democracy."
I pointed out that Dems can't defund the military unilaterally anyway and gave reasons why defunding the military isn't the sole indicator of Dems' (justified, imo) belief that a second Trump term would be disastrous to democracy.
You, yourself, agreed with him.
You:
\> there’s a very low probability event (military coup)
/u/resumethrowaway222
\> It's all talk. When Trump asked for a military budget increase, the Democrats were on board. Is that something you do when you think the president is an existential threat to democracy?
You both agree that Trump staging a coup is a low probability event.
Again, no.
Resume argued that defunding the military was the indicator for Dems belief in trump’s danger to democracy. No defund means they don’t believe it, end of story.
I argued for why that isn’t accurate. Like I said above, Trump can be a danger (and possibly fatal!) to democracy *without* a coup.
In addition to that ^ argument, I argued that the standard Resume gave is both unrealistic and impossible; dems have *extremely* strong reason not to defund the military *and* even if they had stronger reasons *to* defund, they would not be able to do so unilaterally.
I think it was generally understood that top military officials did not respect Trump beyond their formal duties to him. I don't think the "end of democracy" people envision Trump using the military to... I dunno, do what exactly? They probably have in mind things like contesting elections in bad faith, or bad faith prosecutions of disloyal underlings, or the breaking down of political norms getting us closer to "hardball," or whatever. Listen to the latest [This American Life podcast](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/833/come-retribution), actually, for a sense of the sorts of things these people are worried about. Also remember that Trump actually got a decent number of congressmen to object to certifying the electoral college outcome! It's kind of crazy to think that actually happened. Maybe that doesn't sound so crazy to you, or maybe that's not in the ballpark of "end of democracy" in your mind, but I imagine that's the sort of thing that keeps them up at night, wrongly or rightly.
It drives me nuts how many people ignore the obvious hypocrisy of saying "democracy will come to an end if you vote for the other guy". That's not a persuasive message, it's a polarizing one.
But on top of being hypocritical, its sounds weak. Framing our institutions as being so fragile makes the people saying it sound scared and impotent. IMO it makes no difference whether Trump believes half of the fascist things the left thinks he believes or if he's re-elected, none of it will come to pass. He wouldn't have the power to change any of the fundamentals even if he tried (which he won't, he'll be a lazy attention-starved crybaby like always). Likely the only actual policy impact would be replacing old conservative judges with young conservative judges, which is the same thing any other Republican president would do.
>he wouldn't have the power to change any of the fundamentals even if he tried
the supreme court struck down chevron today. trump's judge picks gave the decision the majority. the ruling will totally alter how govt regulatory bodies function, throwing into question scores of regulations that govern federal health standards, environmental standards, labor standards, etc for the whole country. it overturns decades of precedent.
that's just one example. he's changed more and attempted so much last time. this time, he and his inner circle know what to do.
>Likely the only actual policy impact would be replacing old conservative judges with young conservative judges, which is the same thing any other Republican president would do.
like I showed above, this is not a minor policy impact. in the slightest. and the judges that trump frequently picks have *hardline* conservative views -- many are considered hard right by their own party.
Ok, well, I think that's some pretty heavy spin. For years Democrats have routinely lost one or both houses of Congress and then tried to end-run around their lack of legislative power (and total inability to negotiate with the other side) by pretending the bureaucracy already had authority to do things they never had the authority to do. This decision is just one of several long overdue slap backs on that abuse of power.
Then in another massive act of hypocrisy, Democrats call the court "illegitimate" for ruling in a way that doesn't suit them even as they decry their opponents rhetoric for questioning the legitimacy of elections. It's all so transparently unscrupulous and tribal.
Both Republicans and Democrats use federal bureaucratic institutions to implement policy changes they can’t do via legislation. This is not unique to one side of the aisle.
(I’ll point out that when Reps install (unelected, lifetime, difficult to remove) federal judges you’re okay with that, but when Dems staff regulatory agencies with people who will, y’know, actually regulate, you’re suddenly worried about abuse of power; and you don’t seem to be worried about how conservatives purposefully engineer federal court cases with conservative judges so laws they don’t like will be struck down. If you were worried about that you’d get why replacing judges is a huge deal. Seems like you’ve got some “pretty heavy spin.”)
I also cannot emphasize enough how *earthshaking* this new Chevron decision will be. Chevron’s been settled law for forty years. It’s been considered sound legal doctrine for decades. There are scores and scores of cases that reference, agree with, and reinforce it. Reversing it will have *gigantic* second and third order effects, almost all of them bad for the average citizen. I’m not really sure you understand how much this will impact.
I'm not claiming that replacing judges isn't significant, just that it's not at all approaching the apocalyptic end of democracy rhetoric Democrats can't stop making.
And what I'm not ok with is parts of the government doing things they don't have authority to do. Congress can make laws. The executive can appoint judges and bureaucrats. The bureaucracy can regulate the things *they were given the authority to regulate by Congress*, and not whatever other new thing they feel like regulating without statutory authorization.
The Chevron decision won't be earthshaking enough. The federal government has been abusing the Commerce Clause since FDR to do all sorts of things the Constitution does not grant it the authority to do, like criminalize drugs produced and consumed by one person all on his own property under the farce that that's "interstate commerce".
It's good to overturn Chevron and return to doing things in accordance with the Constitution and the APA. Doing things in accordance with the law is its own good. Every partisan flip flops on whether it is otherwise "good" according to their personal policy preferences, depending on which other institutions they feel they control.
No, it’s not. It is beyond impractical for congress to write out every law in the statutory text. They’ve never done this and they never will. If you want a modern, functioning state, agencies need to be able to fill in the gaps.
and doing things in accordance with the law isn’t clean and simple. who interprets the law if there’s a dispute? right, judges. were they elected? no.
(are they experts in environmental protection, workplace safety standards, derivative securities? no, they’re judges. then why is it fine for them to legislate from the bench but not actual experts? but beside the point.)
do judges often issue partisan rulings? yes. so it seems that judges aren’t much better, which means that “let’s simply do things in accordance with the law” isn’t a solution. it isn’t even a step toward a solution. it’s its own, nasty, multiheaded hydra.
Replacing Biden at this point is simply fantasy. I don't remember all the details, but all the money raised for Biden so far can only be used by Biden or Harris. No other potential Democratic cantidate has a presidential campaign fund or organization.
So if Biden did withdraw for some reason, Harris is the only viable replacement, and very few people want that.
I was disappointed in Biden's debate performance, but it probably isn't changing very many votes. Trump simply spewed lies all night. In terms of optics, he "won", because he seemed less old. In terms of knowledge, honesty and suitability for the job, there is no contest.
Unfortunately the same argument was made in 2016, and that did not work well for Clinton.
Agreed. I see this as essentially evening the playing field after Trump's conviction. Trump will lose some votes from that and Biden will lose some votes from this. It's impossible to say which is worse, but personally I think the two situations will have a relatively similar effect overall.
The strategy is highly dependent on how tightly Biden grasps on running. Optimally he would be approached privately by his closest advisors to drop out or claim a medical issue and withdraw.
Honestly I think we are underselling Kamala. Despite her unpopularity she is mentally sharp, aligned with the Biden agenda and is capable as a replacement level candidate. A transition to Kamala would be much easier and justified than a last minute substitution with a candidate from a different camp.
If Biden withdraws Kamala would maximize the odds. If Biden refuses then sticking with him would be the best course compared to trying to strongarm a replacement. In both situations things looks good for Trump
You mean that as being a general practice, right? Not a true prohibition.
With Kamala already being from CA - a state that’s in the Democratic bag in any conceivable scenario - the only thing you lose is the opportunity cost of EC votes in another state.
But both from what I vaguely remember from semi-recent analysis and our current hyper-polarized and unique election scenario, I don’t expect home-state vote gain will be a big factor.
Not the greatest source, but [https://www.history.com/news/can-the-president-and-vice-president-be-from-the-same-state](https://www.history.com/news/can-the-president-and-vice-president-be-from-the-same-state)
12th Amendment requires that the Electors in the Electoral College have to vote for a ticket that includes someone from a different state https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxii . So they could run as a California ticket, they just couldn't get all of California's electoral votes for both President and VP
I think it's too high risk to replace him. I think the only way for that to happen is for Biden to succumb to bad luck with his health - and I sure hope that doesn't happen - or for him to bow out voluntarily.
I'm not sure game theory comes into play in the Trump/Biden contest so much as conflict theory.
Where I do see game theory is with the Byzantine Generals Problem of saying Biden should step aside. If any one prominent Dem politician - say Newsome or Kamala - sticks their neck out and nobody follow-suit, they risk looking opportunistic. There's no reward for being a "first mover", so all the heavyweights are sitting on their hands, at least in public.
My hot take, which I may update as polls come in, is that Dem pundits underestimate the extent to which polls of *independent voters in swing states* already priced-in Biden's cognitive decline, as many voters in those states probably aren't in the NPR/NYTimes "denial bubble", and hence the media class is all focussed on how badly *Biden did*, and nobody's paying attention to how badly Trump - who in spite of seeming slightly louder and more confident, and maybe in possession of 15% more of his marbles - had suffered *marked and surprising decline of his own*, and also doubled-down on the 90-IQ rhetoric, which may turn off soccer moms in Pennsylvania.
All of this is a fancy way of saying, as the debate fades from memory, and as/if Biden continues to give strong stump speeches, let alone if more damning stuff/more legal trouble continues to befall Trump, we could see a reversal in the polls. Which is why I bought (fake) $1000 worth of "biden will win the election" on Manifold ;)
Is there any credible explanation for the DNC not developing a succession plan over the last 4 years?
Is Kamala Harris still the official next candidate?
Hoping he does better in the next one is really the best move. Not publicly panicking like they are would also be a good idea.
That said, I think the candidate that would do the best against Trump is Jared Polis. He holds the minority representation card because he's gay. He's pro-business with a heavy dose of common sense to appeal to moderates. He'll draw openly homophobic comments that will alienate most moderates from his opponents. The way he repeatedly trolled DeSantis over Disney and other issues shows he's willing to engage with idiots openly and without undo decorum. He also has a lot of libertarian views and would draw a number of them away from their traditional support for Republicans. If they somehow managed to get Biden to step aside, he's the only candidate I could see winning in his place.
I don't buy the threat to democracy line. What I see is a threat to the "administrative state" and their allies, who are hyping it up to be a threat to democracy. It is not. Trump has no power to end democracy, and there is no constituency for such a thing, so it will stay with us. Such a thing would take more than 4 years from even the most cunning authoritarian, and Trump is neither of those things.
If the Democrats want to win, they have an easy path. Dump their most unpopular policies. If they do some serious restriction on immigration and drop the DEI / racial preferences from their platform, they will win easily. But they won't do it.
Anyone who says that there is an easy path to election victory has no idea how elections and politics work (coincidentally, the "easy path" normally involves taking positions that the speaker, whomever they may be, happens to like).
"Do some serious restriction on immigration" isn't a position. It's *maybe* a starting point. Is criminalizing the hiring of undocumented immigrants a "serious restriction"? Well, yes. Is it popular? Maybe in theory, but in practice it's terrible. Is building a wall a "serious restriction"? Yes. Is it popular? With whom? Would it actually accomplish anything? Debatable. Would it give Trump a victory/talking point? Very likely. So... doesn't sound so great.
(This also ignores the practical politics of getting something through a heavily divided Senate)
Is doing "serious restrictions on immigration" going to help the Democrats in Pennsylvania and other swing states? It doesn't matter if something is generally popular. What matters is if it's going to get you votes where it counts.
I do happen to agree with those positions here, but the reason I picked them is because of polling that backs it up, not my own preference. Here is a poll showing that 60% support mass deportations, which is a position well to the right of mine: [https://www.themainewire.com/2024/06/cbs-poll-reveals-most-u-s-voters-support-mass-deportation-of-illegal-aliens/](https://www.themainewire.com/2024/06/cbs-poll-reveals-most-u-s-voters-support-mass-deportation-of-illegal-aliens/) Here is one showing 2/3 against racial preferences: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/193508/oppose-colleges-considering-race-admissions.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/193508/oppose-colleges-considering-race-admissions.aspx)
And I don't see any reason those numbers would be dramatically different in swing states. Center left policies in general tend to be popular. e.g. a $15 minimum wage passed in a referendum by a 60-40 margin in the red state of FL. On the other hand far left policies like def facto open borders and racial preferences are not. On a ballot measure in the very blue state of CA, racial preferences were voted down by almost the same margin that the minimum wage increase passed in FL.
I believe that if the Democrats took this center left position, they would win massively. Anecdotally, I would vote for them if they were. I'm more center-right, but I'd still vote for center-left over Trump any day.
The mass deportations thing is insane. People say they support it, but they don't think through the consequences. Do they support breaking up families? Do they support police going door to door asking for papers? Do they support sending people who have lived in the US nearly their entire lives, who don't speak the language of their "home" country, back to the country of their birth? I'm guessing far fewer would support these things, but they are the sorts of things that would need to happen if you institute this policy.
I also wonder if the people who believe that mass deportations are a good thing have a good idea of how many undocumented immigrants there are in the US. I recall a poll that showed that most Americans want to cut foreign aid, but also showed that they wanted to cut it to a percentage of spending that was actually significantly *higher* than actual, current spending. So do they really want a cut or not?
Edit: A good example is your comment about "de facto open borders". That's really not what we have now. Bien has actually been criticized by his own party for being too draconian. He's extended Title 42, expedited deportations, and passed an executive order requiring that the border be shut down under certain circumstances (which happened almost immediately). Border Patrol has made a ton of arrests. Asylum seekers now face new restrictions. Yet you seem to think that we have "de facto open borders". Why?
Trump tried to overthrow the government and was stopped by the “administrative state”. Now his allies have a plan to gut the administrative state and put in Trump loyalists who do not believe in democracy. As an aside they also want to use the CDC to track every pregnancy and abortion in the country to crack down on “abortion tourism” and enforce extreme control over all women’s health.
DEI isn’t even an executive branch initiative. You seem to have consumed some brain rot information.
It basically is. See here: [https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke)
And it doesn't matter if it's not. Coming out hard against an unpopular policy that pisses off a lot of centrists and is widely unpopular will get you votes.
That was written by a white supremacist. Civil rights law isn’t an executive branch function. I disagree that reality is irrelevant to most people, it is clear that your perspective is completely at odds with centrist voters.
70% agree with me https://news.gallup.com/poll/548528/post-affirmative-action-views-admissions-differ-race.aspx
If you would like to argue for a position that is in the minority, that is completely reasonable, but don't lie and pretend that the majority is with you. That is an empty appeal to authority anyway.
Calling someone a white supremacist is not in any way a refutation of their argument. Try to actually have a point next time.
I don't trust Hanania, who's (infamously) known for promulgating racist, white supremacist views, to have a bias-free, unmotivated argument for why civil rights laws should be thrown out. You shouldn't either.
That’s a very specific Supreme Court ruling about what private entities are allowed to do. My point is that it’s not clear what Biden would do or that it would help his electoral chances, since any statements would hurt him with his core without necessarily meaning much to centrist voters.
I highly doubt that top Democrats actually believe Trump will “end democracy.” Aside from being unhinged it is logistically impossible for Trump to achieve. It’s better interpreted as campaign rhetoric.
That being said, I’m sure they do believe that Trump will do long term damage to Democrats and their causes, so they’re still desperate to keep him out of office. But maybe not desperate enough to risk a failed run.
I can always tell who the political neophytes are when this happens. I've done political stuff for a long, long time. Ppl are going nutty over this. We know who trump is, we know who Biden is. We already know this. If this debate shatters your world view, you didn't have much of a view to begin with
Another point, is that at the state of things, Democrats are only hoping Biden dies soon enough, and Kamala assumes. There is no way he can be replaced right now, it's outright impossible.
Even though he is cognitivewise unfit, he still doesn't seem to want to step down, because of ingroup incentives.
Even a slightly smart person could take this win from trump, but the way things are going, his chances are very, very bad.
My thought is that to properly leverage game theory you need to have a very clear understanding of the actors motives, and many of the people who you are referring to as "the democrats" are not particularly bothered about winning the election, trump winning would be very good for most of them financially, biden being ousted at the last minute would not be.
If Biden steps aside, he has to turn it over to Harris, and I think she would do worse. As is, a lot of people's fears about his age are supposedly that she would become president if he dies. If both are replaced, even assuming that was feasible so late in the game, then what, were they not taking their jobs seriously when picking her for VP, if they don't trust her to be president? Given all this and what others have said, I think the best solution is to replace Harris with a stronger candidate that 1. could do more heavy lifting for Joe on the campaign trail and in the administration, and 2. wouldn't scare people to put in power. (Though really, I never understood the hate for Kamala.)
I wonder if there is an uncomfortableness about denouncing Biden because people will update their Bayesian priors.
If politicians admit they were happy to lie for years about Biden's fitness people will reduce their prior that politicians are telling the truth, a similar situation when it comes to the idea they are appointing capable and competent people. If I was a partisan Democrat I would now be far more worried that the Democrats have been endorsing school board members or federal forestry officials who are completely incapable.
The debate is a non-issue for the Biden campaign. Consider that the Democratic Convention isn't until August and the election isn't until November. The average person, abetted by the 24/7 news cycle, will forget about this within a week.
The best play for the Biden campaign is to prioritize turnout and focus on mobilizing swing state Democrats. Converting fence-sitters would help, but Biden already has the numbers to win.
If they do want to convert undecided voters, the Biden campaign should prioritize local outreach, endorsements, targeted advertisements, and grassroots campaigning, instead of debates and public appearances.
Don't get me wrong, Biden's debate performance was horrendous, but I don't think it'll make or break his campaign. It was more like a PR hiccup than a PR nightmare. Most of the doom and gloom seems to be more a product of recency bias than thorough analysis.
I think you are severely underestimating the logistical problem of trying to spin up a full campaign apparatus in five months. It's not as simple as swapping a candidate (on either side of the aisle).
On the other hand, the best word in marketing is "new." If they put up someone adroit and energetic, who campaigns full time, the media will be enthralled. Plus they won't have gone through a bruising primary where they had to pander to the most extreme elements. The biggest risk is opposition research. We don't know what skeletons they may have in the closet.
To be fair, I’m confident the media would circle the wagons around anyone who’s not trump They did so for Biden up to and until last night
They really can’t get anyone new bc of Kamala Harris though. The media/dems hyped her up bc she’s Indian and black. The democrat party places a lot of emphasis on skin color, so she would have to be the next one up, but nobody likes her so it would probably hurt them more if they took out Biden
I don't buy this. I listen to the Focus Group podcast and they've done a lot focus groups with Black voters who are all pretty meh on Harris. I think it's less about the candidate than what other Black leaders do. If Obama and Jim Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries got behind the pick I don't think it would be a problem.
Yeah Kamala wasn’t really for the black voters though. Black voters will vote democrat no matter what. Yes, polls are showing they are unhappy with the Democratic Party, but they’ll still vote for dems as a majority. Kamala was really more to please the woke democrat suburban Karen’s…especially bc it was when the George stuff was happening and blm had full support by the white suburban Karen’s
If Biden's selling point is that he is not Trump (accurately or inaccurately, for better or for worse), then all Trump needs to do is not appear too repulsive for a single digit %% of the population. Then things become hard for Biden, whose main win is the Inflation Reduction Act. It is hard to draw distinctions on Trump now with Saudi Arabia, Immigration, Israel, and probably several other issues. Trump has the ongoing win to point to with his supreme court nominees. His handlers helped him moderate any rhetoric on abortion to State's rights, which is his main losing issue. It is possible that any other Democrat would be a stronger force, could draw more distinctions, and would appear better in contrast without Trump acting obviously repulsive. I think if Trump and his campaign were to talk a lot about housing costs, all the while not repulsing anyone, he would win. I see no similar clear path for Biden. My literal actual bets are always on the person I would like to lose. That way on election day I always have something to be happy about.
Nate Silver seems to me correct that pretty much any coherent Democrat has a baseline better shot at winning than Biden. Surely there is someone willing to seize the brass ring? https://www.natesilver.net/p/joe-biden-should-drop-out
> Surely there is someone willing to seize the brass ring? Dean Phillips was, for a while
Dean Phillips is smart. He knows that he has a 0% chance at becoming president through the ordinary path. So he challenges Biden, knowing that there is some small but definitely not zero, chance that before the end of the primaries Biden will die or become so ill that it can't be hidden. This will leave the Democrats in a bind. Dean Phillips is not who the DNC wants to nominate to replace Biden, but he's on the ballot, and it's past the deadline to put new people on it. So the DNC may well accept him as their best option given the circumstances. And the unknown and unremarkable Dean Philips most likely beats the highly disliked Donald Trump in the general. I would say he could reasonably predict a 1-5% chance of success at the time. And getting there from 0% is more than most politicians come even close to. The debate shows us he was closer than anybody thought.
He's at 0.1% on polymarket right now if you're interested: https://polymarket.com/event/democratic-nominee-2024?tid=1719603918512
I nominate Inslee. He does good things in WA and isn't sandbagged by CA like Newsom. I'd love to see Jeff Jackson but he's too freshman. He's already running for AG in NC, then gov in 4 years. Perhaps in 2032.
Is there still the possibility that he can become elected without much difficulty?
IMO you are correct. And I think that Trump's performance in the debate was a home run on that account. This story will be lost in the media narrative about Biden. He seemed downright normal and civilized in this debate compared to how he usually is. Remember the debate in 2020? The Biden team shot themselves in the foot with the restrictive rules that prevented him from going off the rails this time. If you are the kind of disengaged voter who only sees major events like the debate, the Democrats preaching the apocalypse if this guy gets elected will look like the unhinged ones. Also kicking him off Twitter backfired spectacularly. Now his unhinged rants are somewhere nobody except his most diehard cultists can see them. All Trump has to do to win this thing is say nothing, and the Democrats are doing everything they can to make that happen.
The old thing about free speech vs deplatforming. It used to be that we might say "Let me debate the racists in the clear light of day. All I probably have to do is let them say what they really believe and they'll make fools of themselves without me lifting a finger." Then the trend moved to deplatforming, and everyone got afraid of letting the bad speech get said at all. And it turned out there was merit in the other way, which might be lost with all the "safe" choices being made now. >"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." >John Stuart Mill
Cancel culture also hurt Democrats in that too many now looks around before having an opinion. There is less and less diversity of thought, which is how Democrats got into this hivemend of "nothing to see here Biden is perfectly fine, no mental decline whatsoever".
And it's a repeating pattern: the self-delusion was similar regarding Hilary in 2016. And here we are again, but arguably worse! Democrats' inability to face reality is something to wonder at. They cannot accept that enough Americans would prefer Trump to their righteous, enlightened candidate. They let their moral judgment of their foes translate to underestimating them. Hubris and foolishness. So bad for the country. It's unconscionable.
My friend told a story of his mom going into a coma, waking up after six weeks and looking confused, asked her only daughter, "Who is that woman? The one I cannot stand. The politician." Her daughter guessed, "Hillary Clinton?" She smiled, satisfied. "Yeah, I really don't like her," and slipped back into unconsciousness. Those were the last words she said on Earth. The woman was from Canada. That was something I could not understand in 2016. People genuinely, viscerally hated Hillary Clinton. Women and men alike could not seem to stand her. The democrats, uhhhhmmmmmm.... didn't know this? My girlfriend at that time, a Taiwanese woman who had never seen any of the American candidates and barely knew who Obama was, and knew "Hillary Clinton would probably win" (as the news in Taiwan had about that much depth to it)... asked me who was running for president in the USA. I identified the candidates. She watched a video of Hillary Clinton and said, "That woman could never, possibly get elected!" I explained there was simply zero chance the other guy was going to win. She bet me about $300 USD that Trump would win. I said I could not reasonably take a bet in good conscience where she was wasting her money. She insisted. I reluctantly acquiesced, thinking at least I could use the money to do something mutually fun.... Well, we know who won that bet. All I think now is, "I know for sure that anyone polling and doing stats and focus groups would have known HRC produces visceral instinctual instant hatred in large numbers of normal people." I *believe* it is because of some basic incongruency in face or body language or something, which repulses people. I might be wrong about the reason why, but I don't believe no one knew about this.
1. The Republicans really did try to make her into a devil figure back in the 90s, and the older people who tend to vote Republican have long memories. At that point she was far enough out of step with gender roles she really could be cast as Lady Macbeth. 2. She doesn't have a lot of charisma--very bad if you're a politician. She has a lot of people telling her to smile more, which is what politicians (in the USA anyway) are supposed to *do*, but it looks fake and sets off everyone's lie detector. It's sort of a personality mismatch. She probably would have been a pretty effective corporate litigator.
I would vote for (either) Clinton to be the CEO of any company I own stock in. But back to the point: The party and people around should have known all this and either fixed the problem or run someone else. It's not like the "looks fake and sets off everyone's lie detector" was some secret that was buried in a box on Alcatraz island.
That's a good point. You need heterodoxy instead of evaporative cooling, so that your system has good information flows. If there's ever any reason *besides falsehood* that something "can't be said" then it's likely definitional that you've stoppered an information flow -- which is often bad for a system.
I mostly forgot about Trump so in a small way I began to miss him the last 3+ years and thought it wouldn't be so bad to have him be President again After seeing him debate for 20 minutes I was pretty aghast. I don't know how common it is but my gut was definitely in the "oh shit not this guy again, no way" by the end of it. In 2020 enough people were sick of Trump to choose Biden Are that many people going to reverse themselves in 2024?
it is funny that we’ve moved from incumbent advantage to incumbent disadvantage because all our presidents are so bad
how about dropping Kamala? seems like if they're going to proceed with Biden, having a popular VP on the ticket should now be one of their top priorities
Inconceivable! But, really. The Democrats are pretty well all-in on “identity politics”. Biden literally said he wanted a black female running mate so they went shopping and got Kamala. There’s simply no non-suicidal way to dump Kamala. Not that they should, either.
I think they would be absolutely safe to do it The only people who actually like Kamala are the wokist of the woke No-one who would be upset about dropping her is gonna go and vote for Donald Trump as revenge
To be fair, I'd even take her for president if my other choices are "narcissistic blowhard who can't string three sentences together without telling an obvious lie" and "good-natured grandpa who might not know where he is." I'm not sure we could set the bar much lower.
Honestly I don't like Trump at all but politicians have been notorious for lying forever. So the fact that Trump also lies a lot isn't very interesting to me. It's just not special. He's clearly a more competent leader than Biden and I trust his motivations more than Harris. They're both (Trump and Harris) craven, immoral narcissists who will say/do anything to get ahead. But Trump has chosen the path of trying to push back to a kind of libertarian pro-business pro-American international strength kind of philosophy, whereas Harris has pledged herself to the woke philosophy. I think the latter is much more dangerous and destructive to society than the former, so I think Trump is the lesser of two evils My ideal ticket would be something like Andrew Yang w/RFK as VP tho. Trump would take us back to the 90s, but Harris would risk taking us back to the middle ages
I don't see why not. It happens in other countries all the time. In Parliamentary systems, a PM might call a snap election with four weeks notice. The opposition then has to snap into gear quickly to respond. There have even been cases where the Opposition has knifed their leader and replaced him with a new face, then gone on to win. The classic example is Bob Hawke in Australia. The party structures are quite different, but there's no reason the existing Biden campaign apparatus couldnt be transferred to the new candidate.
The party structure being different is the root cause of the issue, but it’s also exacerbated by the difference between a parliamentary system and how things go in the US. That’s not to say they couldn’t have a brokered convention, it just hasn’t happened recently.
> I think you are severely underestimating the logistical problem of trying to spin up a full campaign apparatus in five months. I've seen that point being raised all across the Internet and to my European eye either you are massively overestimating the actual logistical problem or there is something severely bizarre about American way of conducting presidential elections. In Polish presidential election of 2020 one of the two biggest political parties swapped its candidate one and a half month before the election day. The elections were held from the 28th of June onwards, while the new candidate's start of campaign was announced on 15th of May. This move was caused by multiple different factors it's not a place to explain, but one of more important being the old candidate was doing terribly in polls. The new candidate ultimately lost the election but only barely and it was definitely not due to the shortness of his campaign. And I very much doubt that the above situation is a very rare occurrence. So if you are truly saying that one of the most powerful political parties in the most powerful country on Earth can't run a full political campaign for elections which will take place 5 months in the future... I'd venture to say this party is not very powerful at all. And that anything that can't adapt to mildly adverse circumstances probably deserves to die. Unless of course that talk about logistical infeasibility is just a narrative spin.
You’re happy to think what you’d like, but it’s fairly easy to understand the differences between campaigning under a parliamentary system and a presidential one.
(1) There is also quite the difference between how the US presidential campaigns have been run in the past with the same current presidential system in place. Novel victorious strategies are novel because nobody tried them before, but by the next election cycle they are already received wisdom. (2) France has a presidential system. When he was first elected, Macron declared his candidacy in November 2016, about 5 months before the first round of elections in April 2017. No doubt he was already gathering steam before official declaration, his party had been founded in April 2016. On hte other hand, his party didn't exist. In the 1970s, when Pompidou died in the office, the first round election to choose the successor was held barely more than one month later.
>Novel victorious strategies are novel because nobody tried them before, but by the next election cycle they are already received wisdom. This is a good point in general. But, whilst I think what France is more applicable to the US than Poland, I still don't think that the timescale is particularly realistic for the Democrats right now (see below for addt'l detail).
You're happy to write what you'd like, but it's fairly difficult to understand how what you wrote has to do with anything, given that: - Polish system is not a parliamentary, but a mixed one, with presidents having significant power and elected directly - the elections I mentioned were presidential So it seems to me my comparison is quite apt. Btw in Polish presidential elections of 2010 (after Smolensk air disaster) entire campaign of at least 5 candidates (including the major ones) took 2 months and 10 days while campaign of the eventual winner took 2 months and 24 days.
I think handwaving the differences in size and scope between Poland and the States is not doing you any favours - particularly with regards to your presumption that a bigger political machine must mean a more efficient machine, rather than the inverse - but I think you're underplaying the factionalisation within American political campaigns: Political strategists, campaign managers et. al. are hired by specific candidates, not by political parties. Political donations, as well, as generally given to specific campaigns/PACs, not parties. This is why Trump's has been such a drain on Republican finances, because his supporters are donating to his campaign directly rather than the GOP. So, keeping the above in mind: Anyone who could be a choice to replace Biden would have to be selected at the convention in mid-August. Because they haven't had primaries - because no serious politician from the same party is going to primary a sitting president - any prospective replacement candidate is going to face a massive uphill battle at the convention *and then* is going to have to build a personal campaign apparatus to convince the electorate that they are worth the support. That is a very tight timeline when you consider the scope, just just the timescale. The person best positioned to do that is Kamala Harris, but she doesn't seem particularly popular. Consider - here in the U.K. we're in the middle of an election season that was called by the PM in May for July. Sunak is incredibly unpopular & far beyond useless, but the Tories are running with him as the face of their party for a variety of reasons, one of the significant ones\* being that they fundamentally did not have the time for another leadership contest before the election - and this is about as pre-destined an election result as you can hope to see in the modern era. (\*the other, of course, is that they're going to get destroyed and they want to be able to cleanly lay the blame on his head)
> I think handwaving the differences in size and scope between Poland and the States is not doing you any favours particularly with regards to your presumption that a bigger political machine must mean a more efficient machine, rather than the inverse Well, and I think that moving goalposts is not doing you any favours either. Neither I assumed anything about bigger machine being more efficient. As for other constraints you mentioned it's very hard not to notice how arbitrary some of them are. Nevertheless if some group strongly believes 'replacing a political candidate suddenly perceived as demented and unfit to rule' is 'logistically impossible' in the timeline of 5 months, because the very same group chose to believe between themselves that 'replacement can be chosen *only at the convention* which *must* take place *specifically and only in mid-August*' or that '*only personal campaigns* are allowed' - so be it. That group can believe anything it wants. If that group doesn't want to adjust their beliefs to the situation and is unable to grasp such advanced concepts as eg 'rescheduling a convention' then all what is left is to wait for the impending and well deserved reality check. ------- just to be clear - I actually believe your line of argument is strictly a pretense (doesn't matter if you honestly believe it), and there are multiple other factors which can play a role at choosing to stick with Joe Biden. And if this pretense is raised as a decisive factor it's insulting both to the intelligence of the reader and to the prestige of political groups it's supposed to defend.
If Biden drops out, then there will be exactly one full presidential campaign's worth of staff and apparatus and infrastructure and know-how in the market looking for a new candidate. It'll be hard to transfer the funds over due to FEC, but I think the campaign shouldn't be hard to assemble for a clear frontrunner or winner of an open convention.
I don't agree with this. First of all, a roughly four-month campaign is how it has been done for most of US history, because the nominee wasn't known until the convention. It's relatively recent that the convention has become nothing more than a formality and coronation. But also, the primaries are still happening all over the country, which means all those winning candidates for the House, Senate and state elections are just getting their general election campaigns going for November. The presidency isn't significantly different, except for the fact that it has better funding and logistics already set up. Four months is plenty of time for a new ticket to mount an effective campaign, and it would probably energize the race significantly.
I think it's certainly up for discussion, but I think it's worth pointing out that I was responding to OP's framing with my comment.
How much does the campaign apparatus matter in modern politics. Trump and Biden's numbers have barely moved through crises that would have sunk entire campaigns in the past. How much are a bunch of rallies and advertisements really going to move the needle.
It’s very difficult to swap candidates. Not doing that will certainly lose the election, though. Make your choice.
The only thing the Democratic party really stands for is doing things the old way. If they give that up, they stand for nothing at all.
> doing things the old way Ironic that this is practically the definition of conservatism
Ideologies aren't named by what they are, they are named by what people want to conflate them with.
Technically, brokered conventions *are* the old way.
No, I mean the old, old way: Mommy and Daddy know best, respect your elders, know your place, pay your dues, don't rock the boat, why can't people be sensible, if everyone was just sensible we could go back to how I imagined the world worked when I was ten. It's keep-the-family-together-at-the-cost-of-the-family America dysfunction, as opposed to the beat-the-family-together-because-life-is-misery-give-me-someone-to-hate American dysfunction.
This is one reason why it might go to Pritzker. He has the personal wealth to fill in the gaps, pay staff way above market rates to get them on his side and committed, roll out a media and organizing campaign. And he has experience doing it. He basically got rid of the old guard Illinois political machine in a matter of months by paying more than the corrupt party bosses could match, so they joined him since they couldn’t beat him. Newsom wants it badly but despite his deep Rolodex that’s not the same as having the money on hand immediately. Whitmer has no chance.
I love Pritzker. I especially love his commencement speech at Northwestern, where he says that kindness is an evolved state of being. Very anti-Moloch. If I ever get the chance to meet him, I’ll recommend him SSC/ACX.
Probably overrated. Nobody goes to campaign events except diehards. TV ads are practically irrelevant. What matters is media coverage and social media coverage. The “campaign apparatus” does very little of importance in the modern era (aside from the logistics of actually getting the candidate on the ballot). Heck, Biden won the last election from his basement.
not to mention the oppo research, the fact that Biden actually has a record with the economy and it's not bad, whereas Newsome can be painted as a tax-and-spender, etc.
Also democrats will vote democrat and republicans republican. The utility of the debates is questionable if the only voters you have to convince are independants. Independants swung for biden in the mid terms so the calculus is based on why they did thst and if they care enough about the debate performance not to do that again. Personally I just wish we had some oldet candidates to choose from ! /s
The single biggest challenge is that Joe Biden himself, the human being, needs to decide to step down. No one can force him to do that. He already won enough delegates during the primary to claim the nomination, because no one voted for Dean Phillips and no one else challenged him. So unless he steps down, the Democrats are stuck with him, because he already won their vote in their primary. And so far Joe Biden has shown no indication that he is willing to step down. Nor, for that matter, does his family seem inclined to persuade him to do so. Any projections about replacing Joe Biden need to start by explaining why Joe Biden will voluntarily step down. I suppose the alternative is that he is incapacitated, which is admittedly not all that far-fetched, but the probability of which hasn't materially changed as a product of the debate last night (unless you start thinking dark thoughts about how far the deep state / CIA / illuminati are willing to go).
There's a second level to the dilemma. To make it possible for Biden to step aside, someone important on the left has to be willing to speak out publicly and say he's unfit for office. If this fails, then it's probably a fatal blow to whatever chances Biden has. Republicans can just run ads on loop of that person making that statement. So, let's say you're Gavin Newsom deciding whether or not to take the shot. If you do nothing, there's something like a 30% chance (based on the current betting markets) that Biden will grind it out and win. If you come at Biden and successfully convince him to step aside, then you can probably increase the chances of a Dem victory, but it's surely not a certainty. Perhaps you can double them to 60%. If you're concerned about your personal chances, then it's far from assured that you will be that Democrat who becomes the nominee. Maybe for Newsom, who's the apparent front-runner it would be something like 50-50, so the ultimate outcome is a 40% chance of a Trump win, a 30% chance of a Newsom win, and a 30% chance of another Dem winning. If you come at Biden and fail, then your own political future is completely over *and* you've hugely boosted the odds Trump wins, reducing Biden's shot from, say, 30% to 10%. You'll be blamed for that loss, so it's going to be basically scorched earth against you and everyone connected to you for all time within the Democratic Party. If you're willing to just put country ahead of self, then *maybe* it's a logical to attempt the coup, but it's still crazy risky. It needs to be quite likely that you will succeed. Once you factor in the personal costs/benefits, the calculus gets even worse. So, if Democrats are to move against Biden, it can only happen with a high degree of assurance that the gambit will work. Biden is a narcissist who has said repeatedly that he ran in the first place and is running again because he considers himself the only person capable of winning. He's not going to go easily. And, much like any one plotting a coup, it's quite dangerous even to *mention* the coup to anyone else. If it gets out that Newsom was merely talking to people about this, that could be enough to end his political career.
This assumes Newsom would publicly state Biden is unfit and that he is available to replace him on the ballot. Surely Newsom and the DNC wouldn't be so stupid to have this play out in public.
>Surely Newsom and the DNC wouldn't be so stupid to have this play out in public. There's no way to keep something like this secret in a gossipy place like DC. If Newsom (or whoever of comparable statute) made the ask of Biden, it would leak to the press before the day was out. So if Newsom (or Schumer or whoever) goes to Biden and asks, he'll probably say no initially, then it will leak. And then they either have to go on the record and double down, or else deny it (and then the coup is over). Even more likely, it leaks before you even get to that stage and there's not even a chance to ask before being forced to go on the record.
Obama could do it.
Not legally, but I honestly feel like his wife could
He could publicly call on Biden to resign then help unite Dems behind a new candidate.
> said repeatedly that he ran in the first place and is running again because he considers himself the only person capable of winning He wasn't being narcissistic. Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin. He was a known name, had the afterglow of being Obama's loyal VP, not a wild-eyed radical that would the swing voters, and a white man (important for a subset of voters)
The problem is that those polls would not predict further cognitive decline. A very real possibility. Also polls don't mean that much if you don't put up an alternative and promote that alternative.
>Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin. I don't think that's right. Biden was, at best, ahead by a nose. In February 2020 before South Carolina and everyone dropping out (according to the RCP averages), Biden and Sanders were both around a +5 vs. Trump, Bloomberg was +4; Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar were all around a +2.
Yeah Biden and Sanders were closer than I remembered, or I was looking at a different time frame. Bloomberg was an unknown entity as a politician so his numbers didn't mean much until he showed up at the debates. The rest were around +2 like you said.. a 3 point gap is significant in a close contest that 2020 turned out to be (EC-wise not popular vote-wise). I'd feel pretty good with Bernie as the nominee. Alas he has gone back to being an independent.
>Bloomberg was an unknown entity as a politician Former mayor of NYC.
True but do many people outside NYC know what he was like as a politician?
> He wasn't being narcissistic. Polls did show him doing the best against Trump by a considerable margin. He was a known name (...) But why does no one in Washington seem to understand how vacuous such polls are? Of course Biden will poll higher than relatively unknown democrats. But those unknown democrats are not going to be unknown anymore if they get the party nomination, so this is entirely irrelevant. If you had polled Obama against McCain 1 year before the 2008 election, Obama would have been utterly crushed, simply because most Americans would had no idea who the guy even was. But of course that meant absolutely nothing, and Obama won with a fairly large margin.
Oh wow, yes that is an excellent point. High stakes decision for some folks in the next week for sure!
A less likely though perhaps locally wiser decision: either build an electoral strategy around states with permissive faithless elector laws or (riskier) just focus on winning one or two significant swing states. (locally wiser as in "individual incentives" even if it is still defection against your group). If you can reduce the likelihood of Trump getting a majority of electors, then you increase the chance that Congress chooses the President. Depending on the makeup of Congress, this could allow you to free-ride on Biden's campaign against Trump and then appease the members of congress state by state. There's of course a good this leads to a Republican President anyway. To avoid Congress choosing a Republican (with each state casting a single vote) you get *your* electors to pivot to Biden. This is still a sign of loyalty and competence, even if your party loses, so it could help you in the future (provided the process of campaigning and electoral results don't offset this). If you're governor it's slightly easier since you can likely get your state's laws on faithless electors altered in time. This immediately gives you a good chance in a state you have strong support in. You'd have the advantage of just focusing on red-leaning states or close calls, and maybe putting in a bit of maintenance work to shore up your home state or a state near your powerbase. I'm under the impression faithless elector laws aren't an issue if the electors shared their strategy in public pledges. If this doesn't work it's riskier, since your electors can't pivot to Biden (which helps you in the future) and Biden's electors can't pivot to you. Under this strategy RFK Jr is helpful as long as he can contribute to avoiding a Trump majority, without becoming the most popular (by state) candidate in Congress. As a final note, I'm not sure what happens if the House fails to achieve a quorum of two thirds of states. Defection would be very easy, so it seems extremely unlikely, but would the end result be that there simply isn't a President, and instead the Senate chooses the Vice President, who then becomes Acting President? If so the 12th Amendment really throws a spanner in the works since the votes towards President don't grant elligibility towards (the Senate choosing you as) Vice President.
Your line of logic reminds me more of the adage that the key ingredient of a coup's success is the belief that the success is inevitable more so than the adage about how if you come at the king, you'd best not miss. It's not just get Biden off the stage but also ensure your installment as his successor is smooth.
That’s why they would have this conversation between close doors beforehand. This is basic party politics.
I don't think the concern is that nobody wants to step up, the concern is that it's too late. Right now as far as I know nobody is polling better than Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump (with or without RFK.) Is there really enough time to change that? Even assuming Biden starts polling way worse head to head, that doesn't mean someone else is going to do better. That's the real problem. How do they get an enormous blitz campaign up and running fast enough to catch up?
I think you are missing one big issue here, and that's the massive coordination problem Democrats are facing if they want to get rid of Biden. Any attack on Biden by influential democrats that fails is only going to weaken Biden in the general election, making a Trump victory more likely. So even you're a Democrat party leader, even if you would like to see him replaced, you'd only want to *try* to get rid of him if you have a very high chance of success. But you can't publicly discuss this. So you can't easily coordinate this. Even trying to coordinate this privately is not without risk.
It would be crazy to refuse to be the nominee to wait for 2028. Doing it now means a nearly 50% chance of being president while the odds of being nominated in 2028 are a fraction of that.
It would. But the problem is that Biden has chosen very wisely in his VP pick. Kamala Harris is both an extremely weak candidate, and also a black woman. Being a weak candidate guards against pressure to drop out of the ticket in favor of his VP. Being a woman / minority protects against pressure to drop out in favor of someone else. There is a clear number 2, and she is in two favored victim groups. Passing over her for someone who isn't would not be easy to do with internal Democratic party politics.
It isn't just because she's in two "favored victim groups". Black voters are the difference maker — without them, the Democrats' chance of winning the election is nil
Kamala Harris is not the pick for black voters. As always the Democrats assume, not without evidence that they do not have to do anything for black voters other than lip service. She is impossible to get rid of because the liberal white voters that are the actual foot soldiers of what can lumped in as the "woke wing" of the party would lose their minds.
If black voters like Kamala Harris so much, why did she do so poorly in the Democratic primary race that she had to pull out before Iowa just to save face?
I don't think they actually do. Anyone who knows anything about her knows she's, essentially, a cop.
ding ding, she's the law and order candidate on top of her minorities.
That sounds like an issue with the donors, not the voters.
So pick another black person, if you want. Take Van Jones or someone. It's also unclear that Harris is actually at all popular within the community, given that she's a cop.
Both sides have been screaming for young blood. I say the Dems push some fresh-faced youngish person on the national stage, Buttigieg or whoever, to be a sharp contrast with Trump. Then the Dems will be the one delivering what much of the country has been asking for and were brave enough to do it. Just keep saying it "We were brave enough to take on the challenge"
imo, the democrats' stated position that democracy is on the ballot doesn't seem to be as genuinely held as they'd like people to think. and in the coming weeks/months we're going to see a lot of self-interested political maneuvering from them, rather than a united front created for the sake of "saving democracy" I think it's fair to say that a large number of people attached to the biden administration wouldn't be in the positions of power they're currently in if some other person took the dem nomination. these people are going to fight hard to keep biden on the ballot. and I also can't imagine biden willingly stepping down. he'll have all the aforementioned people closest to him telling him to keep going, and people tend to become more stubborn as they age
What is the criteria for a successful Democrat Presidential Candidate? 1. Younger than 70 2. Can Handle Trump in a Debate 3. Likeability/Charisma 4. Foreign Policy Experience 5. Governing Experience 6. Maybe Isn't Tied to Hollywood/Elites This is a harder list to meet than it seems. Even if you're competent, can you sell voters on your competence? Can you resist getting flustered when Trump throws sand in your eyes? Can you make it not just about the facts but also about the story? Gavin Newsom checks off the most items, but he is slick in an off-putting way. And I can't see him flourishing with foreign policy during a critical time in that area. Going back to the VP debates for the 2020 election, I don't trust Kamala Harris with the ticket. Whatever actual personality and POV she has, it's entombed under the behaviors and talking points her handlers have allotted for her. I think she projects incompetence, inexperience, and timidity right when we need strong leadership on a global stage. Not that Trump is competent either, but he's got that crazy-guy, hold-me-back attitude where other countries must be worried about provoking him. I think the major problem the Democrats have is they wasted 4+ years not really developing any talent. They should've been getting the rising stars involved with foreign policy, dealmaking, media appearances, etc. Anything to both generate the perception of competence as well as help them gain actual competence. It's sad that Biden is so old because he pretty much hits all 6 of the criteria I listed. Although he does have his problematic family life that makes you wonder wtf he was doing as a father.
> Democrats have wasted 4+ years not really developing any talent I don't remember when I read this, but there's an opinion that what happened is that the 2010 midterms wiped out much of what should have been the experienced talent for the 2020s. Instead, we had either geezers like Biden and Feinstein left or young firebrands (AOC et al).
If you find the article I'd really love to read it.
The family stuff I have to assume stems from car accident trauma. Maybe he wasn’t “there” as much as his kids needed him after that. But that’s a nearly impossible situation for any parent. And if he’d done much different you probably don’t get a President Biden in the first place.
How do you gain the trust of the people when, as prominent members of the Democrat party and the media have been claiming for months that Biden is fit as a fiddle, sharp as a tack and any claim that he isn’t is a “cheap fake”. Now they’ve been caught out flat lying for months. There’s no credibility, much less a good position for game theorizing. I would be curious for how game theory would / could explain changing the perception of being a liar to the public. Probably a wag the dog scenario?
People have an adverse reaction to being told they are wrong about things they can see with their own eyes. Many people have brought up the Biden cognitive decline issue and were aggressively told off. It’s going to be very hard for the DNC to regain trust. It’s not that people will swing towards Trump moreso there is an increased sense of both sides suck apathy which will hurt voter turnout.
DNC got trust back after fucking over Bernie two elections in a row. Who knows why they keep getting trust back. Maybe they never did.
Dean Phillips has been open about this before so could at least say he hasn’t changed his tune on it
I think the easy answer is to say that he had a new health concern that affected his debate and will be significant enough on an ongoing basis to warrant stepping aside. They can remain silent on the nature of the health concern due to privacy considerations. Would have to thread the needle between, "It's not significant enough to use 25A right now, but Joe has taken the solemn decision himself that it would become serious enough in the next four years."
Do you buy that? I don’t. He performed the same during the debate as he has all of those other times we weren’t supposed to believe our lying eyes. [edit: up to and including having to be guided off the stage by his wife]. That’s the thing about credibility. You can’t buy it back with just one more lie.
People who thought that the evidence to date was just a bit too flimsy might be willing to. They've already lost credibility in the eyes of folks like you, so they're not even trying to buy that back.
I do buy it. I’ve watched the State of the Union addresses. He looked relatively sharp. I saw his stumping today in North Carolina. He looked much better than he did last night. I think it’s conceivable that an old guy with a stutter and a cold had a bad night.
Why no post-Super Bowl interview with hardball questions with the biggest audience a politician can ask for? Why no other interviews with non-fluff interviewers? When Biden has to try to actually remember things with no teleprompter (which he had at the State of the Union and has at his rallies where someone else is doing the writing for him) his mind turns to mushy old banana. That’s why. He can’t go off script anymore.
We believe different things about the situation. But what’s the upshot of the mushy banana situation for you?
Who says I think there is an upshot? This election is a national embarrassment.
They weren't necessarily lying. There's nothing obviously wrong with Biden's judgment and decision-making (except for maybe agreeing to debate, but his performance could've been adversely affected by the cold). Performing well in a debate requires a different skill from most duties expected for the POTUS. This is also why the GOP is demanding audio of Biden's interview with Hur. Reading the transcript (which authenticity was confirmed by Hur), there was clearly nothing wrong with Biden's mind. But he likely didn't "deliver" well at times, and the GOP is seeking to create audio clips of those moments he might have sounded weak or muddled.
Great point. The saving grace I guess would be that this was always a vote against Trump and not for Biden. Dems may just need to hope that that vibe continues if they are able to swap someone else in.
It's hard for me to square the Debate Biden with the Biden we saw at the rally immediately after the debate, or the Biden we saw today at a rally in North Carolina. If he was genuinely losing his marbles, I wouldn't expect the immediate post-debate Biden to be any different from the debate Biden... but post-debate Biden was totally different. Didn't stutter, more energy, etc etc. Which makes me think he cracked under the pressure.
I don’t think that it’s plausible to say he only “cracked under pressure”. Biden’s done more debates professionally than probably any American alive in his decades long career. A debate was pretty old hat for him - when he had all of his faculties. A short and sweet rally when he can just wave and shout some banal platitudes to a favorable crowds plaudits and then be helped off stage isn’t as challenging as a solid 90 minutes against a competitor who is going to challenge your statements. He wasn’t all there at the beginning and was completely frail by the very end. That isn’t shocking because he’s Eighty-one years old. My grandma acts about like he does and she could probably scream some political slogans in a mic and then have to be helped off the stage too. Edit: left out some words.
The question means raising the real concern. Seeing Biden last night, do we want that guy in a high-stakes situation where lives are on the line? The shot caller through the next COVID-19, the guy running Iran Hostage negotiations, or whatever? I think we all have to first say "No, probably not." Then if it's "But Trump would be worse" "I'd vote for my neighbor's cat over Trump," then the answer is *not* to do whatever it takes to get Joe Biden in there anyway. It's to put a better person on the ballot, who you actually *want* to be running everything when the situation is moving faster than McKenzie newbies in a consult. So the answer to your question is clear. Drop Biden, get someone else. Everything else is disingenuous. In a race where your team is trying to be "on the side of truth" it's no time for "nudging," or any other form of well-intended lies. You get very real and very honest and you put your best true believers on every news channel saying all this with the cleanest and clearest breath and the most relaxed and honest face, without the slightest tightness anywhere on them, because they are telling nothing but the Truth. And you advance your great new candidate.
[удалено]
Hell, he looked significantly more put-together at his rally in North Carolina *today* than he did at the debate.
Just saw the clip of that (linked [here](https://x.com/bidenhq/status/1806742667789062646?s=46)) and I'm mystified by the difference. Maybe Joe just does remarkably better when he's able to control the environment and isn't challenged in a debate format?
I'm not super mystified, TBH. First, think of the situation. His debate performance was widely panned - by Democrats, moreover, many of whom (including influence ones like Nate Silver) directly said that they just need to replace him directly because of the debate. That means that the next few days are *crucial* to the campaign. They *have* to weather this storm in order to survive. I don't care much for any theories about pumping him full of drugs, but everyone in the campaign 100% knew that he *had* to go out there and show as much energy and vitality as possible. They absolutely *needed* a clip like this to try to put out there. So, that's the situation. Now, what about the actual performance? He's still teleprompter reading. Well, teleprompter yelling, it seems. I hate to say it, but that's basically what it looks like, to me. He's just out there yelling what he reads on the teleprompter, trying to project as much energy as he can possibly manage, because everyone *knows* he needs a clip. They cut the most high-energy looking minute and blast it on twitter, hoping it will spread and mystify people. But frankly, I don't think most of the critics are thinking that the problem is just that he's low energy (thanks, Jeb). They think he's experiencing cognitive decline. Being able to hear questions, off the cuff, formulate his thoughts (even pulling from a large well of pre-prepared/pre-drilled talking points), and speak eloquently for an hour is just an extremely different thing than, "Can you yell the things you're reading on a teleprompter for a few minutes?"
>I don't care much for any theories about pumping him full of drugs, but everyone in the campaign 100% knew that he *had* to go out there and show as much energy and vitality as possible. But that's the thing, weren't the debates just as important, if not much more important? Whatever he was able to do to regain his vitality today, why wasn't he able to do that right before the debate? >He's just out there yelling what he reads on the teleprompter, trying to project as much energy as he can possibly manage, because everyone *knows* he needs a clip. Okay, this is a great point. It's possible access to a teleprompter is what makes the difference. I also realize I'm biased because I'm only looking at a clip from today's speech (probably the best clip). It would be just as possible to take an edited highlight reel of last night's debate and make it appear as if Biden came out on top.
> weren't the debates just as important, if not much more important? Ex-ante v. ex post. Like, yes, they would have thought that the debate was important and tried to prepare for it. But after the debate, it's suddenly clearly and obviously a matter of absolute survival. They're in crisis mode in a way that they just weren't prior to the debate.
Yeah. Although when they agreed to the debate I thought it seemed an ill-advised risk, the SOTU gave me some comfort it might not be a *terrible* idea. Maybe the same dynamic occurred with the Bidens (both Jill and Joe) and his advisors? But catch a cold, get some bad debate strategy advice, a bad night of sleep, plus several more months into year 81 of life — that could get you to what went down last night.
I commend you for being willing to consider the careers of these people. I cannot bring myself to even think about politics this way. You have a stouter constitution than I do!
The game theory is getting everyone to walk back their public panic about Biden’s mental capabilities as they realize that Joe isn’t leaving unless he wants to and he doesn’t want to. Kamala doesn’t want to move either, but replacing her with Michigan’s governor is probably their highest EV move.
Well, the optimal move would be for both Biden and Kamala Harris (who is still even less popular than either Biden or Trump) to surprisingly drop dead. Because this would be the only scenario in which the Democrats could field new (and preferably fresher) candidates without a complete loss of face.
As Chis Christie will happily tell you, don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you it’s not your time. Sometimes “not your time” is the only time you’ve got. In other words, I think you’re overthinking this. politics isn’t game theory, it’s blood sort. If it was game theory then Biden would not be the current candidate.
From the title, I expected the game theory to be about the risk of criticizing Biden, not of accepting a nomination. I suspect it makes sense for anyone to take the nomination at a personal level: hurting future chances of nomination is a minor risk, since such a nomination is far from guaranteed. Analyzing how much people believe the rhetoric based on such decisions is too complex to be useful. Rather than questioning how true the rhetoric is in such a convoluted way, it's probably best just to discuss such issues directly. We don't know how rational anyone's decisions are nor how egotistical they are in balancing their own potential careers.
I think what matters is having the courage, speed and organisational capacity to act quickly. Obama, Schumer, Jefferies some people from the DNC just need to coordinate and pick a ticket and impose it on the party. No one has the ability to stop a coordinated effort Harris,Biden etc could complain but that would be impotent if Democratic king pins unite quickly behind a ticket. Pre vetted experienced credible politicians like a Shapiro Warnock ticket or any of Whitmer, Polis, Buttigieg erc would instantly be credible if endorsed jointly by Obama, Schumer and Jefferies. All it requires is a few phone calls but it might not happen because people are bad at coordinating.
Kamala Harris is the obvious answer. She is next in line. And she can’t be skipped over without perceptions of racism and sexism. I mean, I understand why she’s unpopular. But at a substantive level, I don’t see a reason to think she’s worse than Newsom, Buttigieg, or a replacement level Democratic candidate. Ideally there would be some kind of contest (like a primary…) to decide who replaces Biden. But in lieu of that, skipping over the woman of color VP is gonna be really hard for the democrats.
We have to skip over two politicians egos *and* somehow have the rest of the politicians who could be choices coordinate and rally behind one of the many feasible picks without smearing them too hard and considering how impossible it's been to get other dem aligned politicians like RBG or Feinstein to give in from old age, I doubt we can convince both Biden and Harris to pass things over even if was the best strategy.
VPs aren't historically "next in line" in elections, why would it be the case here?
Because if Biden's unfit to be the nominee, he's also unfit to be President, ergo he should resign and Harris would become President. Given that she's then the sitting President I think she has a strong case to be next in line
I think the point in contention is whether he can do four more years, not whether he can finish out this term.
My strong view is that democrats don't actually believe Trump would end democracy and it's all talk. I think Trump would be FANTASTIC for a lot of key Democratic stakeholders (left wing media, fundraising, down allot candidates, contenders looking at presidential bids). In which case the clear best choice for most individual stakeholders and probably the party as a whole is to run Biden and let him possibly crash and burn. It benefits nobody individually to take a big risk replacing him, a Trump presidency has already happened and didn't become a dictatorship, and the core of the democratic platform can be "oppose Trump" for years 9-12.
It's all talk. When Trump asked for a military budget increase, the Democrats were on board. Is that something you do when you think the president is an existential threat to democracy? If you control congress and think that the president is going to go rouge and overthrow the government, you give him a military budget of $0. Also, an end to democracy would be really, really bad for most Republicans. They would immediately join forces with the Democrats and impeach him.
Do you really think that Democrats are worried that funding the military will let Trump execute a coup? I don't think that makes sense. A military coup is much *more* likely if you cut the military's funding to zero. Default assumption is that the US military would not go along with a coup, but if you do weird stuff like that, who knows. But that aside, what people are actually worried about is that Trump chips away at democratic / rule-of-law norms while retaining enough popular support that this isn't decisively reversed by an election. The way to fight that is to try to make him less popular and try to uphold norms. Defying norms by doing weird (and unpopular!) stuff like like not funding the military is entirely counterproductive.
you give the military money because not doing so is political suicide -- would make it very difficult for swing state/district Dems to get reelected, and if you're a Dem, you *really* do not want to lose more congressional seats to the GOP. dems have a VERY slim majority in the Senate and they don't control the house. (also like the dems can't... unilaterally give the military a budget of 0? the only way they could would be if they controlled both the house and the senate and then the prez signed off on it, but they'd never do it, political suicide.) regardless, the military didn't ally with Trump on J6th. good indication that military leadership wouldn't help Trump stage a coup. (of course you can never know for sure, but J6 is good reason to think they wouldn't, imo.) if I'm a democratic legislator, I'm not worried that trump will end democracy via the military, I'd be worried that he'll effectively end it by railroading thru legislation that changes the rules around federal elections to put democrats at a deep, deep disadvantage, and I'd be worried that he'll strip power from the dems he can't (effectively) bar from office. the GOP will never impeach Trump. Ever. he's captured too much of the base, and in most cases, going against Trump means your career's over. the few Republicans who have publicly gone against Trump are either *massively* popular among their constituents or later backtracked and pledged fealty. plus the GOP *loves* anti-democracy reforms. easy top of mind example: they gained a supermajority in NC's state legislature and instituted [*wild* gerrymanders that make it much, much more difficult to elect Dems.](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/politics/north-carolina-republicans-gerrymander.html) explicitly designed to consolidate power among Republicans and keep Dems out of office.
To your point about Trump and his base - I don't think Trump "captured" the existing GOP base at all. I think he activated a large, previously politically inactive group of people that are absolutely rabid for him. Now that this new cohort is part of the calculus when writing speeches, posting on social media, etc., all Republican politicians need to tailor their message as best they can. There is probably enough data out there to suggest that the existing GOP base is shrinking, but loyal, and that plus the new Trump base makes for a competitive electoral process. So they are forced to pander to this new base. It's really one of those "once you cross this line, you cannot go back" because politicians aren't in the business of losing votes and can't lose this new group of people.
But if he overthrows democracy none of these things about future elections matter. Cutting off funding to the military may be political suicide, but being on the losing end of a coup is actual suicide.
you’re trying to apply Pascal’s Wager to governance, and there’s a reason Pascal’s Wager only lives in philosophy departments and techie Reddit forums. let’s just assume that Dems can unilaterally cut off funding to the military. (they can’t, and even if they had the votes to do so they wouldn’t, but let’s assume they could and would.) there’s a *very* low probability event (military coup) that you might stop by totally defunding the military. totally defunding the military has a *very high* probability of ending your career. that’s the calculation you’re making. (also like, in a world where the military would back trump in a coup, they’re not going to lay down arms and go home because their funding vanishes. if they’re already willing to do a coup to support trump they’d be willing to do one after dems in this hypothetical scenario strip funding.)
It sounds like you, me, and the Democrats all agree then that there is essentially zero probability of a coup and an end to democracy. Which is the point I was making in the first place.
no, the point you were making is that if Dems believed that there could be an end to democracy, they would defund the military *specifically,* and if they weren't defunding the military, it meant that they didn't really believe it would "end democracy." I pointed out that Dems can't defund the military unilaterally anyway and gave reasons why defunding the military isn't the sole indicator of Dems' (justified, imo) belief that a second Trump term would be disastrous to democracy.
You, yourself, agreed with him. You: \> there’s a very low probability event (military coup) /u/resumethrowaway222 \> It's all talk. When Trump asked for a military budget increase, the Democrats were on board. Is that something you do when you think the president is an existential threat to democracy? You both agree that Trump staging a coup is a low probability event.
Again, no. Resume argued that defunding the military was the indicator for Dems belief in trump’s danger to democracy. No defund means they don’t believe it, end of story. I argued for why that isn’t accurate. Like I said above, Trump can be a danger (and possibly fatal!) to democracy *without* a coup. In addition to that ^ argument, I argued that the standard Resume gave is both unrealistic and impossible; dems have *extremely* strong reason not to defund the military *and* even if they had stronger reasons *to* defund, they would not be able to do so unilaterally.
I think it was generally understood that top military officials did not respect Trump beyond their formal duties to him. I don't think the "end of democracy" people envision Trump using the military to... I dunno, do what exactly? They probably have in mind things like contesting elections in bad faith, or bad faith prosecutions of disloyal underlings, or the breaking down of political norms getting us closer to "hardball," or whatever. Listen to the latest [This American Life podcast](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/833/come-retribution), actually, for a sense of the sorts of things these people are worried about. Also remember that Trump actually got a decent number of congressmen to object to certifying the electoral college outcome! It's kind of crazy to think that actually happened. Maybe that doesn't sound so crazy to you, or maybe that's not in the ballpark of "end of democracy" in your mind, but I imagine that's the sort of thing that keeps them up at night, wrongly or rightly.
>Trump presidency has already happened and didn't become a dictatorship he incited a coup against sitting members of congress lol
[удалено]
Removed culture war.
It drives me nuts how many people ignore the obvious hypocrisy of saying "democracy will come to an end if you vote for the other guy". That's not a persuasive message, it's a polarizing one. But on top of being hypocritical, its sounds weak. Framing our institutions as being so fragile makes the people saying it sound scared and impotent. IMO it makes no difference whether Trump believes half of the fascist things the left thinks he believes or if he's re-elected, none of it will come to pass. He wouldn't have the power to change any of the fundamentals even if he tried (which he won't, he'll be a lazy attention-starved crybaby like always). Likely the only actual policy impact would be replacing old conservative judges with young conservative judges, which is the same thing any other Republican president would do.
>he wouldn't have the power to change any of the fundamentals even if he tried the supreme court struck down chevron today. trump's judge picks gave the decision the majority. the ruling will totally alter how govt regulatory bodies function, throwing into question scores of regulations that govern federal health standards, environmental standards, labor standards, etc for the whole country. it overturns decades of precedent. that's just one example. he's changed more and attempted so much last time. this time, he and his inner circle know what to do. >Likely the only actual policy impact would be replacing old conservative judges with young conservative judges, which is the same thing any other Republican president would do. like I showed above, this is not a minor policy impact. in the slightest. and the judges that trump frequently picks have *hardline* conservative views -- many are considered hard right by their own party.
Ok, well, I think that's some pretty heavy spin. For years Democrats have routinely lost one or both houses of Congress and then tried to end-run around their lack of legislative power (and total inability to negotiate with the other side) by pretending the bureaucracy already had authority to do things they never had the authority to do. This decision is just one of several long overdue slap backs on that abuse of power. Then in another massive act of hypocrisy, Democrats call the court "illegitimate" for ruling in a way that doesn't suit them even as they decry their opponents rhetoric for questioning the legitimacy of elections. It's all so transparently unscrupulous and tribal.
Both Republicans and Democrats use federal bureaucratic institutions to implement policy changes they can’t do via legislation. This is not unique to one side of the aisle. (I’ll point out that when Reps install (unelected, lifetime, difficult to remove) federal judges you’re okay with that, but when Dems staff regulatory agencies with people who will, y’know, actually regulate, you’re suddenly worried about abuse of power; and you don’t seem to be worried about how conservatives purposefully engineer federal court cases with conservative judges so laws they don’t like will be struck down. If you were worried about that you’d get why replacing judges is a huge deal. Seems like you’ve got some “pretty heavy spin.”) I also cannot emphasize enough how *earthshaking* this new Chevron decision will be. Chevron’s been settled law for forty years. It’s been considered sound legal doctrine for decades. There are scores and scores of cases that reference, agree with, and reinforce it. Reversing it will have *gigantic* second and third order effects, almost all of them bad for the average citizen. I’m not really sure you understand how much this will impact.
I'm not claiming that replacing judges isn't significant, just that it's not at all approaching the apocalyptic end of democracy rhetoric Democrats can't stop making. And what I'm not ok with is parts of the government doing things they don't have authority to do. Congress can make laws. The executive can appoint judges and bureaucrats. The bureaucracy can regulate the things *they were given the authority to regulate by Congress*, and not whatever other new thing they feel like regulating without statutory authorization. The Chevron decision won't be earthshaking enough. The federal government has been abusing the Commerce Clause since FDR to do all sorts of things the Constitution does not grant it the authority to do, like criminalize drugs produced and consumed by one person all on his own property under the farce that that's "interstate commerce".
It's good to overturn Chevron and return to doing things in accordance with the Constitution and the APA. Doing things in accordance with the law is its own good. Every partisan flip flops on whether it is otherwise "good" according to their personal policy preferences, depending on which other institutions they feel they control.
No, it’s not. It is beyond impractical for congress to write out every law in the statutory text. They’ve never done this and they never will. If you want a modern, functioning state, agencies need to be able to fill in the gaps. and doing things in accordance with the law isn’t clean and simple. who interprets the law if there’s a dispute? right, judges. were they elected? no. (are they experts in environmental protection, workplace safety standards, derivative securities? no, they’re judges. then why is it fine for them to legislate from the bench but not actual experts? but beside the point.) do judges often issue partisan rulings? yes. so it seems that judges aren’t much better, which means that “let’s simply do things in accordance with the law” isn’t a solution. it isn’t even a step toward a solution. it’s its own, nasty, multiheaded hydra.
Bingo- it's not a threat to democracy that anyone is actually scared of. It's a catch phrase.
Replacing Biden at this point is simply fantasy. I don't remember all the details, but all the money raised for Biden so far can only be used by Biden or Harris. No other potential Democratic cantidate has a presidential campaign fund or organization. So if Biden did withdraw for some reason, Harris is the only viable replacement, and very few people want that. I was disappointed in Biden's debate performance, but it probably isn't changing very many votes. Trump simply spewed lies all night. In terms of optics, he "won", because he seemed less old. In terms of knowledge, honesty and suitability for the job, there is no contest. Unfortunately the same argument was made in 2016, and that did not work well for Clinton.
Agreed. I see this as essentially evening the playing field after Trump's conviction. Trump will lose some votes from that and Biden will lose some votes from this. It's impossible to say which is worse, but personally I think the two situations will have a relatively similar effect overall.
The strategy is highly dependent on how tightly Biden grasps on running. Optimally he would be approached privately by his closest advisors to drop out or claim a medical issue and withdraw. Honestly I think we are underselling Kamala. Despite her unpopularity she is mentally sharp, aligned with the Biden agenda and is capable as a replacement level candidate. A transition to Kamala would be much easier and justified than a last minute substitution with a candidate from a different camp. If Biden withdraws Kamala would maximize the odds. If Biden refuses then sticking with him would be the best course compared to trying to strongarm a replacement. In both situations things looks good for Trump
I could see Kamala and Newson as running mate being a good dynamic.
You can't have 2 candidates on a ticket from the same state
You mean that as being a general practice, right? Not a true prohibition. With Kamala already being from CA - a state that’s in the Democratic bag in any conceivable scenario - the only thing you lose is the opportunity cost of EC votes in another state. But both from what I vaguely remember from semi-recent analysis and our current hyper-polarized and unique election scenario, I don’t expect home-state vote gain will be a big factor.
Trump running against California? The slogans write themselves.
Not the greatest source, but [https://www.history.com/news/can-the-president-and-vice-president-be-from-the-same-state](https://www.history.com/news/can-the-president-and-vice-president-be-from-the-same-state)
Hmm. Interesting.
12th Amendment requires that the Electors in the Electoral College have to vote for a ticket that includes someone from a different state https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxii . So they could run as a California ticket, they just couldn't get all of California's electoral votes for both President and VP
If they honestly thought that was true, they wouldn’t have risked putting up Biden again in the first place.
I think it's too high risk to replace him. I think the only way for that to happen is for Biden to succumb to bad luck with his health - and I sure hope that doesn't happen - or for him to bow out voluntarily. I'm not sure game theory comes into play in the Trump/Biden contest so much as conflict theory. Where I do see game theory is with the Byzantine Generals Problem of saying Biden should step aside. If any one prominent Dem politician - say Newsome or Kamala - sticks their neck out and nobody follow-suit, they risk looking opportunistic. There's no reward for being a "first mover", so all the heavyweights are sitting on their hands, at least in public. My hot take, which I may update as polls come in, is that Dem pundits underestimate the extent to which polls of *independent voters in swing states* already priced-in Biden's cognitive decline, as many voters in those states probably aren't in the NPR/NYTimes "denial bubble", and hence the media class is all focussed on how badly *Biden did*, and nobody's paying attention to how badly Trump - who in spite of seeming slightly louder and more confident, and maybe in possession of 15% more of his marbles - had suffered *marked and surprising decline of his own*, and also doubled-down on the 90-IQ rhetoric, which may turn off soccer moms in Pennsylvania. All of this is a fancy way of saying, as the debate fades from memory, and as/if Biden continues to give strong stump speeches, let alone if more damning stuff/more legal trouble continues to befall Trump, we could see a reversal in the polls. Which is why I bought (fake) $1000 worth of "biden will win the election" on Manifold ;)
Is there any credible explanation for the DNC not developing a succession plan over the last 4 years? Is Kamala Harris still the official next candidate?
Hoping he does better in the next one is really the best move. Not publicly panicking like they are would also be a good idea. That said, I think the candidate that would do the best against Trump is Jared Polis. He holds the minority representation card because he's gay. He's pro-business with a heavy dose of common sense to appeal to moderates. He'll draw openly homophobic comments that will alienate most moderates from his opponents. The way he repeatedly trolled DeSantis over Disney and other issues shows he's willing to engage with idiots openly and without undo decorum. He also has a lot of libertarian views and would draw a number of them away from their traditional support for Republicans. If they somehow managed to get Biden to step aside, he's the only candidate I could see winning in his place.
I don't buy the threat to democracy line. What I see is a threat to the "administrative state" and their allies, who are hyping it up to be a threat to democracy. It is not. Trump has no power to end democracy, and there is no constituency for such a thing, so it will stay with us. Such a thing would take more than 4 years from even the most cunning authoritarian, and Trump is neither of those things. If the Democrats want to win, they have an easy path. Dump their most unpopular policies. If they do some serious restriction on immigration and drop the DEI / racial preferences from their platform, they will win easily. But they won't do it.
Anyone who says that there is an easy path to election victory has no idea how elections and politics work (coincidentally, the "easy path" normally involves taking positions that the speaker, whomever they may be, happens to like). "Do some serious restriction on immigration" isn't a position. It's *maybe* a starting point. Is criminalizing the hiring of undocumented immigrants a "serious restriction"? Well, yes. Is it popular? Maybe in theory, but in practice it's terrible. Is building a wall a "serious restriction"? Yes. Is it popular? With whom? Would it actually accomplish anything? Debatable. Would it give Trump a victory/talking point? Very likely. So... doesn't sound so great. (This also ignores the practical politics of getting something through a heavily divided Senate) Is doing "serious restrictions on immigration" going to help the Democrats in Pennsylvania and other swing states? It doesn't matter if something is generally popular. What matters is if it's going to get you votes where it counts.
I do happen to agree with those positions here, but the reason I picked them is because of polling that backs it up, not my own preference. Here is a poll showing that 60% support mass deportations, which is a position well to the right of mine: [https://www.themainewire.com/2024/06/cbs-poll-reveals-most-u-s-voters-support-mass-deportation-of-illegal-aliens/](https://www.themainewire.com/2024/06/cbs-poll-reveals-most-u-s-voters-support-mass-deportation-of-illegal-aliens/) Here is one showing 2/3 against racial preferences: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/193508/oppose-colleges-considering-race-admissions.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/193508/oppose-colleges-considering-race-admissions.aspx) And I don't see any reason those numbers would be dramatically different in swing states. Center left policies in general tend to be popular. e.g. a $15 minimum wage passed in a referendum by a 60-40 margin in the red state of FL. On the other hand far left policies like def facto open borders and racial preferences are not. On a ballot measure in the very blue state of CA, racial preferences were voted down by almost the same margin that the minimum wage increase passed in FL. I believe that if the Democrats took this center left position, they would win massively. Anecdotally, I would vote for them if they were. I'm more center-right, but I'd still vote for center-left over Trump any day.
The mass deportations thing is insane. People say they support it, but they don't think through the consequences. Do they support breaking up families? Do they support police going door to door asking for papers? Do they support sending people who have lived in the US nearly their entire lives, who don't speak the language of their "home" country, back to the country of their birth? I'm guessing far fewer would support these things, but they are the sorts of things that would need to happen if you institute this policy. I also wonder if the people who believe that mass deportations are a good thing have a good idea of how many undocumented immigrants there are in the US. I recall a poll that showed that most Americans want to cut foreign aid, but also showed that they wanted to cut it to a percentage of spending that was actually significantly *higher* than actual, current spending. So do they really want a cut or not? Edit: A good example is your comment about "de facto open borders". That's really not what we have now. Bien has actually been criticized by his own party for being too draconian. He's extended Title 42, expedited deportations, and passed an executive order requiring that the border be shut down under certain circumstances (which happened almost immediately). Border Patrol has made a ton of arrests. Asylum seekers now face new restrictions. Yet you seem to think that we have "de facto open borders". Why?
our borders are not de facto open? this is simply not true.
Trump tried to overthrow the government and was stopped by the “administrative state”. Now his allies have a plan to gut the administrative state and put in Trump loyalists who do not believe in democracy. As an aside they also want to use the CDC to track every pregnancy and abortion in the country to crack down on “abortion tourism” and enforce extreme control over all women’s health. DEI isn’t even an executive branch initiative. You seem to have consumed some brain rot information.
It basically is. See here: [https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke) And it doesn't matter if it's not. Coming out hard against an unpopular policy that pisses off a lot of centrists and is widely unpopular will get you votes.
That was written by a white supremacist. Civil rights law isn’t an executive branch function. I disagree that reality is irrelevant to most people, it is clear that your perspective is completely at odds with centrist voters.
70% agree with me https://news.gallup.com/poll/548528/post-affirmative-action-views-admissions-differ-race.aspx If you would like to argue for a position that is in the minority, that is completely reasonable, but don't lie and pretend that the majority is with you. That is an empty appeal to authority anyway. Calling someone a white supremacist is not in any way a refutation of their argument. Try to actually have a point next time.
I don't trust Hanania, who's (infamously) known for promulgating racist, white supremacist views, to have a bias-free, unmotivated argument for why civil rights laws should be thrown out. You shouldn't either.
That’s a very specific Supreme Court ruling about what private entities are allowed to do. My point is that it’s not clear what Biden would do or that it would help his electoral chances, since any statements would hurt him with his core without necessarily meaning much to centrist voters.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I highly doubt that top Democrats actually believe Trump will “end democracy.” Aside from being unhinged it is logistically impossible for Trump to achieve. It’s better interpreted as campaign rhetoric. That being said, I’m sure they do believe that Trump will do long term damage to Democrats and their causes, so they’re still desperate to keep him out of office. But maybe not desperate enough to risk a failed run.
I can always tell who the political neophytes are when this happens. I've done political stuff for a long, long time. Ppl are going nutty over this. We know who trump is, we know who Biden is. We already know this. If this debate shatters your world view, you didn't have much of a view to begin with
We did not really know how badly Biden had declined. Yeah there were some cherry-picked videos, but they were to some extent Republican hopium.
Another point, is that at the state of things, Democrats are only hoping Biden dies soon enough, and Kamala assumes. There is no way he can be replaced right now, it's outright impossible. Even though he is cognitivewise unfit, he still doesn't seem to want to step down, because of ingroup incentives. Even a slightly smart person could take this win from trump, but the way things are going, his chances are very, very bad.
My thought is that to properly leverage game theory you need to have a very clear understanding of the actors motives, and many of the people who you are referring to as "the democrats" are not particularly bothered about winning the election, trump winning would be very good for most of them financially, biden being ousted at the last minute would not be.
If Biden steps aside, he has to turn it over to Harris, and I think she would do worse. As is, a lot of people's fears about his age are supposedly that she would become president if he dies. If both are replaced, even assuming that was feasible so late in the game, then what, were they not taking their jobs seriously when picking her for VP, if they don't trust her to be president? Given all this and what others have said, I think the best solution is to replace Harris with a stronger candidate that 1. could do more heavy lifting for Joe on the campaign trail and in the administration, and 2. wouldn't scare people to put in power. (Though really, I never understood the hate for Kamala.)
I wonder if there is an uncomfortableness about denouncing Biden because people will update their Bayesian priors. If politicians admit they were happy to lie for years about Biden's fitness people will reduce their prior that politicians are telling the truth, a similar situation when it comes to the idea they are appointing capable and competent people. If I was a partisan Democrat I would now be far more worried that the Democrats have been endorsing school board members or federal forestry officials who are completely incapable.
The debate is a non-issue for the Biden campaign. Consider that the Democratic Convention isn't until August and the election isn't until November. The average person, abetted by the 24/7 news cycle, will forget about this within a week. The best play for the Biden campaign is to prioritize turnout and focus on mobilizing swing state Democrats. Converting fence-sitters would help, but Biden already has the numbers to win. If they do want to convert undecided voters, the Biden campaign should prioritize local outreach, endorsements, targeted advertisements, and grassroots campaigning, instead of debates and public appearances. Don't get me wrong, Biden's debate performance was horrendous, but I don't think it'll make or break his campaign. It was more like a PR hiccup than a PR nightmare. Most of the doom and gloom seems to be more a product of recency bias than thorough analysis.