That's right: Republicans are a strange alien breed whose actions lay outside "our" control so we can only talk about how Democrats are doing terrible things, like renominating Biden. But if you've decided you're partisan and only talk about the Democrats' game, go all in and stop trashing their candidate, even if "analytically." And if you don't want to be seen as in the tank, then don't write about politics, but write about the NBA and poker. That would be fine.
And you know what? Biden's been a fantastic President. I would love four more years of this kind of performance. And you know what? I bet by next November people won't be focusing on his age.
I was with you until recently but I have become a bedwetter. I just think back to last November during the midterms when "the fundamentals" said Republicans should win but all the other ancillary signals (Roe, special elections, etc) were saying Democrats would overperform. Ultimately, Democrats overperformed.
Today, the fundamentals say Biden is a toss-up to slight favorite but the ancillary signals are flashing that Biden's in deep trouble. Do I really want to roll the dice?
Most polling shows a very close race between Biden and Trump (let's leave the NYT polls aside for now). People are also really upset about the economy which objectively has been doing fine. But perhaps they're upset because they've been scarred by inflation and don't trust the objectively good economy. That's very rational.
But if the good economy stays good for the next year and inflation doesn't spike, then I am fully confident that most voters (i.e., not Republicans who view the economy based on who is in the White House) will gain confidence and become happier about the state of things. And since it's a coin toss now under these conditions, that can only help Biden and the Democrats.
And if the economy stays sour, people will blame the Democrats and it won't matter who the nominee is.
Obviously, the economy isn't the only factor. Biden could fall and break his hip. Ukraine could look very bad and all of Biden's efforts go for naught there, making him look feckless. The Middle East could be very very bad a year from now. Or any of a number of bad things.
But ceteris paribus, a strong economy and a Biden who doesn't visibly deteriorate in the next year means to me a strong chance for him to win, especially given where he is right now.
* Aside from Trump being more in people's faces and living rooms when they start paying more attention next year and many more of them realizing how much they can't stand him.
Most people are angry about the economy because inflation has outpaced wage gains for two years. I think it's literally that simple and it's extremely suggestive that the Democrats don't want to acknowledge this.
I think it's simpler than that. I think people were just shocked at how prices that they were used to being stable suddenly shot up, no matter whether if their wages matched those increases.
I think you're right a big (probably biggest) factor affecting Biden is inflation. But voters* appear to be either oblivious to are indifferent to their own, frequently substantial, wage gains.
*Republican voters, that is. The "economic angst of voters" is almost entirely a GOP phenomenon. Democrats overwhelmingly say the economy is fine.
You've got no choice but to roll the dice. Even if a major name (Whitmer? Shapiro?) were to challenge Joe Biden and take the nomination away from him (presumably what you want?), the outcome would *still* be a gamble: candidates have a way of looking better on paper than they actually perform on the campaign trail (see DeSantis, Ronald). And Biden has been very exhaustively vetted. Moreover, serious challenges to sitting presidents have typically been damaging to the White House party (eg, 1980, 1992) in the general election. I think what you really want is for Joe Biden to sit this one out. But he's already decided to run.
Maybe they have little meaning. All models are based on past history. With presidential elections you're talking about a small sample set plus a host of new factors that the pros strongly suspect should be significant.
That means the polls could either eventually become better for Biden OR become **even worse** for Biden. It does not mean that the polls will always go in a particular direction.
What are you willing to bet on that though? I agree with you on Biden, but ignoring what's in front of our face is how we lose elections. It doesn't matter if the coverage is unfair; it's the reality. The danger of what Republicans would do to us if they win this election is so grave, so historically unprecedented, that I think we have to seriously consider every option. (To pre-empt possible replies, I am NOT in favor of not having the election, as I think that would cause far more problems than it could possibly solve.)
Have a plan to exit the country. Not joking. Although what happens in America matters far too much for the rest of the world for there to really be anywhere remotely 'safe'.
The Republicans have been quite clear that if they win they intend to get rid of checks and balances, and it's not apparent to me who could stop them or how they could do it. There is no next time, not under the current system anyway. If Democratic strategists don't know that then they're even more clueless than I would have thought.
Did you see Trump's mugshot? The look in his eyes... If he's re-elected, he will be hellbent for the next 4 years on dismantling American government as we know it. I agree 100% with Zach, and in fact I'm out of the country right now and don't plan to return anytime soon, for political reasons.
Most of what's happened in the last eight years, I didn't think could happen in America. So I would love for this time to be different and to be wrong.
If only there were more writers, reporters, and media outlets criticizing republicans, the party that doesn’t currently occupy the White House or the majority in the Senate, and providing non-stop coverage of Trump’s failings and legal troubles. Why, oh, why can’t the mainstream press spend more time propping up Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party (to which most of them belong)? It’s just not fair! Journalists and analysts should show more support for the current President, not question him, his age, his stumbles, his constant lying, his partisan and racial demagoguery, his disastrous foreign policy which has brought us closer to World War 3, his probable corruption, or anything else negative. What matters is: Democrats good, republicans and Orange Man bad.
A few stumbles in your otherwise admirable comment, but I'm glad we can arrive at the destination in complete agreement with your very wise last sentence. Well said!
The GOPe definitely wanted DeSantis to beat Trump…I think DeSantis is worse than Trump. I have voted for Republicans before and I wouldn’t vote for DeSantis or Trump.
The thing is, though, that at least the Republicans are having a real primary--it's not like we can all name 4 people who would beat Trump. As inexplicable as it might be to many of us, Trump is clearly favored by a healthy majority of Republican primary voters (and if the polls are wrong, he'll have to actually prove it in the actual primaries).
Even though it's understandable why the system is the way it is for an incumbent, I think there's a pretty good case that even though Biden is also relatively popular with Democrats, that he'd have a hard time winning a primary if there were several other viable choices, and that's a fair point to make.
Lol why should we replace the guy winning and who was the best president in decades? BUUUUT BLUIMPFF!! you can't keep him out of your mind and mouth for 10 seconds he lives rent free in your head and soon he will live rent free in the white house again
"Republicans are a strange alien breed whose actions lay outside "our" control."
This but unironically. We Democrats need to get a better candidate behind the podium asap.
If Republicans manage to do the same (and they are trying) then good for them.
But "is our guy too old" is a rational conversation you can have with rational people, unlike "what if we picked a person who wasn't a liar, fraud, cheat, and traitor?"
Any Democratic primary right now would result in performative discussions about Israel/Gaza/Hamas, race (“white supremacy”, etc) and perhaps immigration and trans issues that would likely be disastrous for the party.
How come no one, including Mr. Silver who I deeply respect, are asking the most obvious question about Biden's age.
What evidence is there that Joe Biden's age is affecting his job performance?
Someone as focused on empirical evidence like Silver and the readers here, should be asking that question and trying to find data. As far as I'm aware, there is none. Maybe he could take a few more international trips. But otherwise, I see no reason to believe that his age is affecting his job performance.
Instead I think a lot of liberals/libertarians/progressives who call themselves libertarians/progressives who call themselves progressives, are just wishing Biden accomplished more and are blaming that on age. And everyone is so freaking negative all the time that you can't help but be negative toward whoever is the president.
This isn't physics, or chemistry. It is sticking your head in the sand to not acknowledge that subjective impressions matter and there is a growing question as to whether the general public considers Biden to be too old.
Go look at those polls. There are very clear results for the percentage of respondents who thought that Biden was too old.
To be clear my position is that if things were going great Biden's age wouldn't be an issue. It's the sense that the country is seeing crisis after crisis that's driving this because it leads to the perception that Biden is too old to take decisive action.
That's actually helpful. Perhaps others like you think that his age is stopping him from being more decisive in addressing issues.
I couldn't disagree more, because I don't think 1) there are any more crises now than there always are, 2) Things are actually quite good right now but people are more mad and complaining more than ever despite how much better it is than years past, and 3) that Biden could do anything more than what he's doing given the Republican House and external factors.
I don't think it's Nate's job but I'll chime in on why I care about Biden’s age.
First I don't think Biden is special. He has accomplished a lot, but I think Obama or Clinton or several other 2020 primary candidates would have done more or less similarly, given the same congress / nation / electorate. More broadly, I don't believe any president is super wonderful. Their job performance has a lower ceiling than we like to imagine. As a result, I'm usually more interested in a candidate's potential weaknesses than their potential strengths. I ask "what could go wrong?", rather than "what could go right?"
Second, I believe very old people can go downhill fast. One year they are fine, the next they are noticeably slower, less charismatic, less capable at bridge or chess, less able to remember names, in and out of hospitals, in severe chronic pain, on lots of drugs, etc. I don't expect Biden to die, but I also don't expect him to be well in 5 years. I don't know what the odds are (not sure we have actuarial tables to represent "significant decline") but I wouldn't commit anyone over 80 to an extremely important long-term position for the same reason.
One issue for someone who wants to just run against Biden is that they're running out of time to be on the primary ballots. The deadlines for Nevada and New Hampshire have already passed. Alabama and Arkansas are in the next 10 days. Most of the rest are by mid-December. That's a pretty slim window of time for someone to declare.
Of course, I suppose Biden could at any point say that he's not going to run and delegate his electors to someone else, but that'd be a pretty tough sell to voters - "I decided not to run, but too late, so you didn't get to choose who to vote for, sorry!" That sounds like dooming whoever it is in the general election, and it'd hardly be a democratic decision either.
It's just seems too late to have an actually democratic process, other than choosing Marianne Williamson I suppose.
That's why I think the Dean Phillips strategy is actually kind of brilliant. If he gets really, really lucky, the timing will work out such that Biden has an age-related event* that tanks his chances between when filing deadlines end and the primaries are over. That leaves him as the only credible candidate in the race. (Sorry Marianne Williamson.) And, because it would reek of insiderism, Democrats wouldn't nominate someone who didn't win the primaries.
That only gets Dean Phillips to the nomination, but that's more than someone like Dean Phillips could have hoped for otherwise. He's trading a ~0% lifetime chance of nomination for a ~5% chance of nomination. And, facing Trump, he probably has better odds of election than he otherwise would trying to pull this maneuver.
(Is this a valid analysis? Or is this like something someone sniffing glue while watching West Wing would come up with?)
*Either public senior moment, a stroke, or just straight up dying.
> And, because it would reek of insiderism, Democrats wouldn't nominate someone who didn't win the primaries.
I'm pretty sure they would. They could very easily make the case that "we thought we had a nominee and the process doesn't let us pick one democratically".
It may end up being the least bad option. It would make for Republican attacks for sure, but of all the potential attacks they have I'm not sure this one's any worse than any other, and it may very well fall flat.
Yup, and that's just one problem. A real viable candidate against Biden would have to raise something like 100 million dollars by Christmas to both seriously contest Super Tuesday states and prove they could be viable in the general election.
As a person who thought Bernie losing was comparably bad to the other thing happening in March 2020, Bernie lost because more people voted for Biden. Yes, elites put their thumb on the scale, but voters decided to listen to them.
That would be the concern about Biden exiting the race. Although it's worth noting that Democrats are usually more likely to go along with their party than Republicans are. Idk what undecideds think but we already know they don't like Biden. If the election is going to be about Biden, and he can't win that no matter what, then at least it would change the subject.
I just want to say how happy I am that you're posting this stuff here now. Interesting and thoughtful content and analysis. I felt like 538 had been slipping for a while (although I did always like your posts and The Riddler), but I'm happy to have found you here.
The Siena polls hit me like a ton of bricks - I think it really means something, for young voters and voters of color, and that it’s in states that had been trending better for Ds. I accept all of your takes on it, but for the first time I think we have a situation.
This pushes me from “it’s no big deal, going to be very close as usual, but it will be OK” to “I guess some number of people have reached a level of irrationality that is hard to fathom, such that they would actually rather have Trump over Biden as President.” That is a new level of idiocy that is, incomprehensibly, a real thing. That they would tell a pollster that is a meaningful turn of events in itself.
I think the immediate solution would be for another poll to come out that does not say this, the commenter said facetiously.
The practical options are all bad, as noted. I am going to go with “I hope this problem goes away” for now.
I think people are remembering things from 2017 - 2019 as being better than they are now, and then concluding from that that Trump might not be so bad. I think that's faulty logic, because I think Trump was dealt a MUCH better hand as president than Biden was, and yet he managed to be just about as unpopular. It's also backward looking and not forward looking. If the voters make this mistake, I'm certain they'll come to regret it, fairly quickly, unless Republicans for some reason that no one can foresee suddenly decide to become moderate.
He was dealt such a good hand with ISIS controlling half of Iraq and Syria, the border being overrun, the economy being in the gutter, but poor old Biden had it rough with no wars or conflicts, an automatic foreign policy win in Afghanistan that's almost impossible to mess up, but yet he somehow managed to mess it up beyond belief, and a booming economy with 1.4% inflation, and he ruined everything.
Just like the millions Trump inherited from his father and then lied about inheriting so he could pretend to be a self made man, Trump inherited a strong economy from Obama. If you're interested in truth/facts all you have to do is look at the trend lines from Obama's economy that carried through to Trump's until Covid hit. Obama rescued the economy and made it so strong that not even Trump could screw it up despite trying (ill-advised tariffs and unnecessary trade wars anyone?)
Biden on the other hand inherited an economy on the downswing. Not that it was Trump's fault. See there was this little thing that happened in 2019 that wreaked havoc on the worlds economy. Inflation was going to be bad no matter who was in office. The Fed so far has done a great job taming inflation while not derailing the economy and Biden's economic numbers are very solid. The problem with people is they can't see just how bad things could have been so they aren't greatful for what they have now. Human nature.
But go ahead and vote for Trump. If he wins, you'll find out just how bad things can get.
Your friend is taken aback that an incumbent president would run for re-election?
The last time an incumbent president didn’t run was 1968 - it should be baked in to everyone’s expectations!
I get the frustration with a rematch - but it’s absurd to suggest Biden is somehow to be blamed for doing what every president in recent memory has done.
If you want to blame someone for a rematch, blame Trump. He’s the one going outside historical norms for a losing 1-term president.
Not that far outside the norms. Grover Cleveland did it, and there have only been 4 other losing 1 term presidents since then, if you don't include Gerald Ford. And Herbert Hoover tried to stage a comeback even if her never got the Republican nomination
Fair enough on the long term history - but if you look at presidents since the advent of the primary system (Ford, Carter, Bush) Trump is a clear outlier.
You're way smarter about this stuff than I am, so I'm not challenging you, but my mind can't escape this thought: I don't believe there's a voter who'll say, "Biden is too old, so I'll vote for Trump," or "Biden is too old, so I'll just not vote, making Trump president by default." I just don't believe that voter exists.
Yes, the number one beef with Biden is he's too old. If I got called, I'd say the same thing. But when the choice comes in November between the two of them, It'll be between Trump and Biden, and I don't believe Trump will increase his coalition after Jan 6th + numerous trials.
I believe consensus gelled around Biden early in 2020 not because of the pandemic, but because the Democratic consensus was that the best way to beat Trump was with an old white guy, not because we necessarily wanted the old white guy.
Part of what the article seemed to say to me was that the line of "Biden's too old" is more of a proxy for other complaints about Biden; chief among them being that, to many young voters, he comes across as a forced-choice that they never really wanted in the first place, let alone a second round
> but my mind can't escape this thought: I don't believe there's a voter who'll say, "Biden is too old, so I'll vote for Trump," or "Biden is too old, so I'll just not vote, making Trump president by default." I just don't believe that voter exists.
You don't? Voters clearly perceive Biden as much older than Trump. I mean, I'd vote for a St. Bernard as the Democratic nominee over Trump, and certainly my perception is that Biden shows his age much more than Trump does. That might just be that Biden is soft-spoken and slow-moving by nature and Trump talks like an eight year old taking cocaine for their ADHD, but still.
> and I don't believe Trump will increase his coalition after Jan 6th + numerous trials.
> I believe consensus gelled around Biden early in 2020 not because of the pandemic, but because the Democratic consensus was that the best way to beat Trump was with an old white guy, not because we necessarily wanted the old white guy.
Well, the main alternative at the time was also an old white guy - Bernie was the clear frontrunner at the time - but that old white guy also happened to be an unapologetic leftist and the Democratic Party is absolutely terrified of nominating one (maybe correctly and maybe not, but terrified).
The question is to what extent Trump's negatives are already baked into these polls, versus voters just thinking more about Biden's negatives right now because he's president. I wouldn't just assume the latter.
The right wing echo chamber excels at jacking up negatives of Democrats. So it’s not a coincidence that both Obama and Biden weren’t the favorites in the year before voting and so the right wing echo chamber’s focus was on jacking up other candidate’s unfavorables. Once again, the problem isn’t Trump it’s the right wing echo chamber.
I'm sure, say, Nancy Pelosi polled much worse than a generic Democrat for years, but that's because a generic Democrat hadn't spent a decade being the Source of All Evil (appropriately located in San Francisco for proper combat with the Charmed Ones).
In our current system, you clearly don't. But I'd make the case that this just says that the current party nominating structure is sub-optimal if the goal is to optimize the chances of winning the presidency. Not coincidentally, I think this view of the how the party works for its elites is a major source of the loss of support among young voters (even if I personally think they're wrong about whether Biden was a good choice the first time around).
Through the same primary process we use to choose a president in any other election year? Did you think anyone meant replacing him in his current term? I'm pretty sure this is all about running another candidate in 2024 for the next term.
Depends on what Democratic party rules say, I guess. First they have to want to replace him, and they don't seem to be there yet. But it's a long time from here to the conventions.
I remember a pretty recent NYT/ Siena poll showing that Biden and Trump were neck and neck at 43% each BUT the undecided 14% disliked Biden less than Trump.
I *think* those undecideds will ultimately decide the election, and I think they’ll ultimately come down on the Biden side of the coin. Will it be enough of them in the right (swing) states to make the difference? I’m less certain of that, but I feel like it’s a piece of the polling puzzle that doesn’t get talked about enough.
If I remember correctly, in 2016, Hilary lost because the ~11% of the population that was still undecided a week before the election broke for Trump (which I *don’t* think will happen again, since Trump is now a known quantity), and I wish that pollsters had been more vocal about how many people in the electorate were undecided!
I wish they’d do that in general, actually, as knowing about undecided voters seems to provide very important context to the top-line numbers.
The undecided will lean to Biden again. Because they tend to be more moderate, and old, and base their opinion on feeling non-threatened by the candidate. Biden fills that role perfectly, he's basically vanilla bean icecream. And when someone is undecided on ice cream they choose vanilla bean.
I'm not sure the data supports that. Hopefully the Democratic campaigns will trust the data, wherever it leads, rather than coming in with a predetermined narrative, because that could be a fatal mistake.
“If I remember correctly, in 2016, Hilary lost because the ~11% of the population that was still undecided a week before the election broke for Trump (which I *don’t* think will happen again, since Trump is now a known quantity)”
Seems like you might want to take a second to actually *read* comments before you respond to them.
What's sad about that statement is that the statistic you cite doesn't really give me any information about your demographics, other than that you're not a straight white cis male.
Not even that... I can imagine that these people would also deny a straight white cis male if that straight white cis male happens to be called "Jane" :D
Trying to find a bit of humor in something otherwise very glum.
I would love to see polling for named Democrats the way they did for other Republicans. It would be helpful to know if anyone in particular outperforms Biden, especially since aging is not always a linear process.
Biden is old enough that the risk of a sudden debilitating medical condition is not trivial and we could be left scrambling for any viable candidate other than Harris. If someone outperforms her and/or Biden it'd be nice to know, along this whole democracy idea that maybe we should have more of a say in the nominees.
I'll also make the obligatory plug for ranked choice voting that would solve this issue and help with many others.
The issue is people like whitmer polis and newsom don't have the same name recognition as Haley and desantis, so polling them would be much harder. That leaves Harris and bootyjudge as the well known people who would be most likely to run.
Yeah but now she's been running for president for a year and people have heard of her. The same way barely anyone knew who Pete was before he ran but now most Americans do
I don't even know what should've changed this morning? To take an obvious example, highest reelectability is found in populists like Erdogan and Orban who get control over media. This is not correlated with their doing good job as presidents (Erdoganomics, for Force's sake!).
I'm curious what your thoughts are on how flat that polling is across age groups.
In 2016, exit polling (I know, but roll with me for a second) had young voters almost twenty points further left than old voters (https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/national/president). But polls of 2024 seem to consistently find things pretty even across age groups (the numbers you cite here has everyone within 11 points, and the gap is between young voters and gen X).
What's going on here? Is this reflective of the rightward swing of non-white voters (who skew younger)? If so, why isn't Trump running away with things? Is Biden's old-timey-aw-shucks politics more appealing to boomers, in addition to your nod here to it perhaps being offputting to younger voters? Is it reflective of young progressives not liking his relative moderacy (and that being appealing to Reagan-era voters)?
I am 71 years old and normally don’t use this vernacular, but all I can think, reading a lot of these comments, is “clueless”. Apparently you all have missed the great “awakening” of that part of the younger generation most likely to vote, I.e., those who are well-educated and hardworking, who can see that Congress (both sides) have spent us nearly into oblivion (and are so afraid of us Boomers that they cannot admit SS and Medicare are effectively bankrupt and need to be reformed - or that the necessary buildup of our national
security apparatus to address China/Taiwan, Russia/Ukraine, Iran/Israel, not to mention accommodating the millions of undocumented people who continue to flood our borders, will require even more spending) - not to mention the takeover of our government bureaucracy/academic institutions/major media by authoritarian progressives who want to direct every aspect of our lives (and the lives of our children), regardless of our personal values. Put another way, it is now clear this younger generation and their children face a future that almost certainly will not be as bright as the one we were able to look forward to - and could be much worse. In that scenario, an outsider authoritarian with a track record of taking on these forces (and who made a lot of decisions that look pretty smart in retrospect), may seem to be an attractive alternative - especially given the tactics proven to have been used by the other side to literally try to unseat him (Russia collusion hoax) and control the flow of information to the American public (Twitter Files, among others). As I see it, our only hope is getting behind a viable third party option, as offered by No Labels. Absent that, buckle up as I think Trump will likely prevail (regardless of any “conviction” - without arguing the point, many well-informed legal experts agree, while he may be technically in the wrong, no-one else would have been the subject of the legal actions against him - the NY case, for example, where there is NO VICTIM and the prosecutor ran on a promise to “get Trump”).
Replacing Biden? How about replacing Trump?
That's right: Republicans are a strange alien breed whose actions lay outside "our" control so we can only talk about how Democrats are doing terrible things, like renominating Biden. But if you've decided you're partisan and only talk about the Democrats' game, go all in and stop trashing their candidate, even if "analytically." And if you don't want to be seen as in the tank, then don't write about politics, but write about the NBA and poker. That would be fine.
And you know what? Biden's been a fantastic President. I would love four more years of this kind of performance. And you know what? I bet by next November people won't be focusing on his age.
I, too, think Biden has been a great president. Unfortunately, he's not leading in the polls, which is why he's getting all the second-guessing.
As Nate himself said, polls have very little meaning at this point.
I was with you until recently but I have become a bedwetter. I just think back to last November during the midterms when "the fundamentals" said Republicans should win but all the other ancillary signals (Roe, special elections, etc) were saying Democrats would overperform. Ultimately, Democrats overperformed.
Today, the fundamentals say Biden is a toss-up to slight favorite but the ancillary signals are flashing that Biden's in deep trouble. Do I really want to roll the dice?
The dice have been rolled.
Here's my case for Biden optimism.*
Most polling shows a very close race between Biden and Trump (let's leave the NYT polls aside for now). People are also really upset about the economy which objectively has been doing fine. But perhaps they're upset because they've been scarred by inflation and don't trust the objectively good economy. That's very rational.
But if the good economy stays good for the next year and inflation doesn't spike, then I am fully confident that most voters (i.e., not Republicans who view the economy based on who is in the White House) will gain confidence and become happier about the state of things. And since it's a coin toss now under these conditions, that can only help Biden and the Democrats.
And if the economy stays sour, people will blame the Democrats and it won't matter who the nominee is.
Obviously, the economy isn't the only factor. Biden could fall and break his hip. Ukraine could look very bad and all of Biden's efforts go for naught there, making him look feckless. The Middle East could be very very bad a year from now. Or any of a number of bad things.
But ceteris paribus, a strong economy and a Biden who doesn't visibly deteriorate in the next year means to me a strong chance for him to win, especially given where he is right now.
* Aside from Trump being more in people's faces and living rooms when they start paying more attention next year and many more of them realizing how much they can't stand him.
Most people are angry about the economy because inflation has outpaced wage gains for two years. I think it's literally that simple and it's extremely suggestive that the Democrats don't want to acknowledge this.
I think it's simpler than that. I think people were just shocked at how prices that they were used to being stable suddenly shot up, no matter whether if their wages matched those increases.
Gas and egg prices will do that to you.
What Democrats aren't acknowledging this?
>Most people are angry about the economy because inflation has outpaced wage gains for two years.<
No, real wages have been flat, but, contra your claim, they haven't been declining.
https://jabberwocking.com/no-wages-arent-down-recently/
I think you're right a big (probably biggest) factor affecting Biden is inflation. But voters* appear to be either oblivious to are indifferent to their own, frequently substantial, wage gains.
*Republican voters, that is. The "economic angst of voters" is almost entirely a GOP phenomenon. Democrats overwhelmingly say the economy is fine.
https://jabberwocking.com/economic-gloom-is-all-about-republicans/
>Do I really want to roll the dice?<
You've got no choice but to roll the dice. Even if a major name (Whitmer? Shapiro?) were to challenge Joe Biden and take the nomination away from him (presumably what you want?), the outcome would *still* be a gamble: candidates have a way of looking better on paper than they actually perform on the campaign trail (see DeSantis, Ronald). And Biden has been very exhaustively vetted. Moreover, serious challenges to sitting presidents have typically been damaging to the White House party (eg, 1980, 1992) in the general election. I think what you really want is for Joe Biden to sit this one out. But he's already decided to run.
Maybe they have little meaning. All models are based on past history. With presidential elections you're talking about a small sample set plus a host of new factors that the pros strongly suspect should be significant.
That means the polls could either eventually become better for Biden OR become **even worse** for Biden. It does not mean that the polls will always go in a particular direction.
Lol you low IQ twat nobody not even Biden himself believes that he's the favorite right now
The worst in decades
What are you willing to bet on that though? I agree with you on Biden, but ignoring what's in front of our face is how we lose elections. It doesn't matter if the coverage is unfair; it's the reality. The danger of what Republicans would do to us if they win this election is so grave, so historically unprecedented, that I think we have to seriously consider every option. (To pre-empt possible replies, I am NOT in favor of not having the election, as I think that would cause far more problems than it could possibly solve.)
The first step to avoid ignoring what is front of our face is to acknowledge that Biden is the Democratic nominee and Harris stays on the ticket.
One can complain about that if one wishes, but I don't understand the purpose or the perceived benefit.
So what should one do given those immutable facts?
Have a plan to exit the country. Not joking. Although what happens in America matters far too much for the rest of the world for there to really be anywhere remotely 'safe'.
If you're James Carville or Ruy Texeira you're planning on using the loss to attack the woke wing of the party.
The Republicans have been quite clear that if they win they intend to get rid of checks and balances, and it's not apparent to me who could stop them or how they could do it. There is no next time, not under the current system anyway. If Democratic strategists don't know that then they're even more clueless than I would have thought.
I think this might just be a tad hysterical.
Did you see Trump's mugshot? The look in his eyes... If he's re-elected, he will be hellbent for the next 4 years on dismantling American government as we know it. I agree 100% with Zach, and in fact I'm out of the country right now and don't plan to return anytime soon, for political reasons.
Most of what's happened in the last eight years, I didn't think could happen in America. So I would love for this time to be different and to be wrong.
If only there were more writers, reporters, and media outlets criticizing republicans, the party that doesn’t currently occupy the White House or the majority in the Senate, and providing non-stop coverage of Trump’s failings and legal troubles. Why, oh, why can’t the mainstream press spend more time propping up Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party (to which most of them belong)? It’s just not fair! Journalists and analysts should show more support for the current President, not question him, his age, his stumbles, his constant lying, his partisan and racial demagoguery, his disastrous foreign policy which has brought us closer to World War 3, his probable corruption, or anything else negative. What matters is: Democrats good, republicans and Orange Man bad.
A few stumbles in your otherwise admirable comment, but I'm glad we can arrive at the destination in complete agreement with your very wise last sentence. Well said!
The GOPe definitely wanted DeSantis to beat Trump…I think DeSantis is worse than Trump. I have voted for Republicans before and I wouldn’t vote for DeSantis or Trump.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Will you vote against Trump in the Republican primary?
The thing is, though, that at least the Republicans are having a real primary--it's not like we can all name 4 people who would beat Trump. As inexplicable as it might be to many of us, Trump is clearly favored by a healthy majority of Republican primary voters (and if the polls are wrong, he'll have to actually prove it in the actual primaries).
Even though it's understandable why the system is the way it is for an incumbent, I think there's a pretty good case that even though Biden is also relatively popular with Democrats, that he'd have a hard time winning a primary if there were several other viable choices, and that's a fair point to make.
Lol why should we replace the guy winning and who was the best president in decades? BUUUUT BLUIMPFF!! you can't keep him out of your mind and mouth for 10 seconds he lives rent free in your head and soon he will live rent free in the white house again
You think Biden's been a fantastic president. Most Americans disagree.
"Republicans are a strange alien breed whose actions lay outside "our" control."
This but unironically. We Democrats need to get a better candidate behind the podium asap.
If Republicans manage to do the same (and they are trying) then good for them.
But "is our guy too old" is a rational conversation you can have with rational people, unlike "what if we picked a person who wasn't a liar, fraud, cheat, and traitor?"
Any Democratic primary right now would result in performative discussions about Israel/Gaza/Hamas, race (“white supremacy”, etc) and perhaps immigration and trans issues that would likely be disastrous for the party.
And this may be precisely why they don't want to have one.
How come no one, including Mr. Silver who I deeply respect, are asking the most obvious question about Biden's age.
What evidence is there that Joe Biden's age is affecting his job performance?
Someone as focused on empirical evidence like Silver and the readers here, should be asking that question and trying to find data. As far as I'm aware, there is none. Maybe he could take a few more international trips. But otherwise, I see no reason to believe that his age is affecting his job performance.
Instead I think a lot of liberals/libertarians/progressives who call themselves libertarians/progressives who call themselves progressives, are just wishing Biden accomplished more and are blaming that on age. And everyone is so freaking negative all the time that you can't help but be negative toward whoever is the president.
This isn't physics, or chemistry. It is sticking your head in the sand to not acknowledge that subjective impressions matter and there is a growing question as to whether the general public considers Biden to be too old.
I fully understand its a subjective feeling.
My point is, is this any more real of a silly public feeling than saying "He's too short" or "He's too bald" or "She's too unattractive"
What value does this article or others add to the conversation that someone is too old hold, when its possible "he's too old" is just a cultural bias.
It's relevant because Trump is ahead in 5 of 6 swing states in the NYTimes poll and when asked why respondents singled out Biden's age.
I'm asking the people who do polls or analyze data to dig deeper.
"He's unlikable" is a stat in and of itself. It's purely a feeling. But then pollsters try to dig deeper and see why they are unlikable.
"He's too old" has never been established as a stat. So what does it mean when someone says someone else is too old.
Since you're someone who thinks he's too old. What does that mean to you? Do you believe he would have accomplished more if he were 68?
Go look at those polls. There are very clear results for the percentage of respondents who thought that Biden was too old.
To be clear my position is that if things were going great Biden's age wouldn't be an issue. It's the sense that the country is seeing crisis after crisis that's driving this because it leads to the perception that Biden is too old to take decisive action.
That's actually helpful. Perhaps others like you think that his age is stopping him from being more decisive in addressing issues.
I couldn't disagree more, because I don't think 1) there are any more crises now than there always are, 2) Things are actually quite good right now but people are more mad and complaining more than ever despite how much better it is than years past, and 3) that Biden could do anything more than what he's doing given the Republican House and external factors.
I don't think it's Nate's job but I'll chime in on why I care about Biden’s age.
First I don't think Biden is special. He has accomplished a lot, but I think Obama or Clinton or several other 2020 primary candidates would have done more or less similarly, given the same congress / nation / electorate. More broadly, I don't believe any president is super wonderful. Their job performance has a lower ceiling than we like to imagine. As a result, I'm usually more interested in a candidate's potential weaknesses than their potential strengths. I ask "what could go wrong?", rather than "what could go right?"
Second, I believe very old people can go downhill fast. One year they are fine, the next they are noticeably slower, less charismatic, less capable at bridge or chess, less able to remember names, in and out of hospitals, in severe chronic pain, on lots of drugs, etc. I don't expect Biden to die, but I also don't expect him to be well in 5 years. I don't know what the odds are (not sure we have actuarial tables to represent "significant decline") but I wouldn't commit anyone over 80 to an extremely important long-term position for the same reason.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Biden once say he was going to be one and done?
He floated it through advisors to the media but never explicitly promised it. The closest he came was by saying he was a "transitional" figure.
Sources: The closest thing I found when searching is articles like this that said he was thinking about a pledge: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129
And this Free Beacon article would have mentioned something more explicit if it existed: https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/flashback-we-were-all-told-biden-would-only-serve-one-term/
One issue for someone who wants to just run against Biden is that they're running out of time to be on the primary ballots. The deadlines for Nevada and New Hampshire have already passed. Alabama and Arkansas are in the next 10 days. Most of the rest are by mid-December. That's a pretty slim window of time for someone to declare.
Of course, I suppose Biden could at any point say that he's not going to run and delegate his electors to someone else, but that'd be a pretty tough sell to voters - "I decided not to run, but too late, so you didn't get to choose who to vote for, sorry!" That sounds like dooming whoever it is in the general election, and it'd hardly be a democratic decision either.
It's just seems too late to have an actually democratic process, other than choosing Marianne Williamson I suppose.
(Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates)
That's why I think the Dean Phillips strategy is actually kind of brilliant. If he gets really, really lucky, the timing will work out such that Biden has an age-related event* that tanks his chances between when filing deadlines end and the primaries are over. That leaves him as the only credible candidate in the race. (Sorry Marianne Williamson.) And, because it would reek of insiderism, Democrats wouldn't nominate someone who didn't win the primaries.
That only gets Dean Phillips to the nomination, but that's more than someone like Dean Phillips could have hoped for otherwise. He's trading a ~0% lifetime chance of nomination for a ~5% chance of nomination. And, facing Trump, he probably has better odds of election than he otherwise would trying to pull this maneuver.
(Is this a valid analysis? Or is this like something someone sniffing glue while watching West Wing would come up with?)
*Either public senior moment, a stroke, or just straight up dying.
> And, because it would reek of insiderism, Democrats wouldn't nominate someone who didn't win the primaries.
I'm pretty sure they would. They could very easily make the case that "we thought we had a nominee and the process doesn't let us pick one democratically".
It may end up being the least bad option. It would make for Republican attacks for sure, but of all the potential attacks they have I'm not sure this one's any worse than any other, and it may very well fall flat.
Yup, and that's just one problem. A real viable candidate against Biden would have to raise something like 100 million dollars by Christmas to both seriously contest Super Tuesday states and prove they could be viable in the general election.
Short of Biden dropping out it's not happening.
The democrat party is a dictatorship the voters do not decide the deepstate elites do just ask Bernie
As a person who thought Bernie losing was comparably bad to the other thing happening in March 2020, Bernie lost because more people voted for Biden. Yes, elites put their thumb on the scale, but voters decided to listen to them.
In the event Biden steps down I have every confidence the party would find a way to hold a primary
That would be the concern about Biden exiting the race. Although it's worth noting that Democrats are usually more likely to go along with their party than Republicans are. Idk what undecideds think but we already know they don't like Biden. If the election is going to be about Biden, and he can't win that no matter what, then at least it would change the subject.
I just want to say how happy I am that you're posting this stuff here now. Interesting and thoughtful content and analysis. I felt like 538 had been slipping for a while (although I did always like your posts and The Riddler), but I'm happy to have found you here.
The Siena polls hit me like a ton of bricks - I think it really means something, for young voters and voters of color, and that it’s in states that had been trending better for Ds. I accept all of your takes on it, but for the first time I think we have a situation.
This pushes me from “it’s no big deal, going to be very close as usual, but it will be OK” to “I guess some number of people have reached a level of irrationality that is hard to fathom, such that they would actually rather have Trump over Biden as President.” That is a new level of idiocy that is, incomprehensibly, a real thing. That they would tell a pollster that is a meaningful turn of events in itself.
I think the immediate solution would be for another poll to come out that does not say this, the commenter said facetiously.
The practical options are all bad, as noted. I am going to go with “I hope this problem goes away” for now.
I think people are remembering things from 2017 - 2019 as being better than they are now, and then concluding from that that Trump might not be so bad. I think that's faulty logic, because I think Trump was dealt a MUCH better hand as president than Biden was, and yet he managed to be just about as unpopular. It's also backward looking and not forward looking. If the voters make this mistake, I'm certain they'll come to regret it, fairly quickly, unless Republicans for some reason that no one can foresee suddenly decide to become moderate.
He was dealt such a good hand with ISIS controlling half of Iraq and Syria, the border being overrun, the economy being in the gutter, but poor old Biden had it rough with no wars or conflicts, an automatic foreign policy win in Afghanistan that's almost impossible to mess up, but yet he somehow managed to mess it up beyond belief, and a booming economy with 1.4% inflation, and he ruined everything.
Just like the millions Trump inherited from his father and then lied about inheriting so he could pretend to be a self made man, Trump inherited a strong economy from Obama. If you're interested in truth/facts all you have to do is look at the trend lines from Obama's economy that carried through to Trump's until Covid hit. Obama rescued the economy and made it so strong that not even Trump could screw it up despite trying (ill-advised tariffs and unnecessary trade wars anyone?)
Biden on the other hand inherited an economy on the downswing. Not that it was Trump's fault. See there was this little thing that happened in 2019 that wreaked havoc on the worlds economy. Inflation was going to be bad no matter who was in office. The Fed so far has done a great job taming inflation while not derailing the economy and Biden's economic numbers are very solid. The problem with people is they can't see just how bad things could have been so they aren't greatful for what they have now. Human nature.
But go ahead and vote for Trump. If he wins, you'll find out just how bad things can get.
Your friend is taken aback that an incumbent president would run for re-election?
The last time an incumbent president didn’t run was 1968 - it should be baked in to everyone’s expectations!
I get the frustration with a rematch - but it’s absurd to suggest Biden is somehow to be blamed for doing what every president in recent memory has done.
If you want to blame someone for a rematch, blame Trump. He’s the one going outside historical norms for a losing 1-term president.
Not that far outside the norms. Grover Cleveland did it, and there have only been 4 other losing 1 term presidents since then, if you don't include Gerald Ford. And Herbert Hoover tried to stage a comeback even if her never got the Republican nomination
Fair enough on the long term history - but if you look at presidents since the advent of the primary system (Ford, Carter, Bush) Trump is a clear outlier.
You're way smarter about this stuff than I am, so I'm not challenging you, but my mind can't escape this thought: I don't believe there's a voter who'll say, "Biden is too old, so I'll vote for Trump," or "Biden is too old, so I'll just not vote, making Trump president by default." I just don't believe that voter exists.
Yes, the number one beef with Biden is he's too old. If I got called, I'd say the same thing. But when the choice comes in November between the two of them, It'll be between Trump and Biden, and I don't believe Trump will increase his coalition after Jan 6th + numerous trials.
I believe consensus gelled around Biden early in 2020 not because of the pandemic, but because the Democratic consensus was that the best way to beat Trump was with an old white guy, not because we necessarily wanted the old white guy.
Part of what the article seemed to say to me was that the line of "Biden's too old" is more of a proxy for other complaints about Biden; chief among them being that, to many young voters, he comes across as a forced-choice that they never really wanted in the first place, let alone a second round
> but my mind can't escape this thought: I don't believe there's a voter who'll say, "Biden is too old, so I'll vote for Trump," or "Biden is too old, so I'll just not vote, making Trump president by default." I just don't believe that voter exists.
You don't? Voters clearly perceive Biden as much older than Trump. I mean, I'd vote for a St. Bernard as the Democratic nominee over Trump, and certainly my perception is that Biden shows his age much more than Trump does. That might just be that Biden is soft-spoken and slow-moving by nature and Trump talks like an eight year old taking cocaine for their ADHD, but still.
> and I don't believe Trump will increase his coalition after Jan 6th + numerous trials.
Trump's favorability is no worse than it was when he was President. The very few people he lost post-Jan-6 were back in the fold a matter of months later. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
> I believe consensus gelled around Biden early in 2020 not because of the pandemic, but because the Democratic consensus was that the best way to beat Trump was with an old white guy, not because we necessarily wanted the old white guy.
Well, the main alternative at the time was also an old white guy - Bernie was the clear frontrunner at the time - but that old white guy also happened to be an unapologetic leftist and the Democratic Party is absolutely terrified of nominating one (maybe correctly and maybe not, but terrified).
The question is to what extent Trump's negatives are already baked into these polls, versus voters just thinking more about Biden's negatives right now because he's president. I wouldn't just assume the latter.
The right wing echo chamber excels at jacking up negatives of Democrats. So it’s not a coincidence that both Obama and Biden weren’t the favorites in the year before voting and so the right wing echo chamber’s focus was on jacking up other candidate’s unfavorables. Once again, the problem isn’t Trump it’s the right wing echo chamber.
Pretty much.
I'm sure, say, Nancy Pelosi polled much worse than a generic Democrat for years, but that's because a generic Democrat hadn't spent a decade being the Source of All Evil (appropriately located in San Francisco for proper combat with the Charmed Ones).
Biden is the President. Unless he's willing to step aside of his own volition how exactly do you get somebody else in?
I wonder if the powers that be in the Democratic Party are pondering the same question.
In our current system, you clearly don't. But I'd make the case that this just says that the current party nominating structure is sub-optimal if the goal is to optimize the chances of winning the presidency. Not coincidentally, I think this view of the how the party works for its elites is a major source of the loss of support among young voters (even if I personally think they're wrong about whether Biden was a good choice the first time around).
Through the same primary process we use to choose a president in any other election year? Did you think anyone meant replacing him in his current term? I'm pretty sure this is all about running another candidate in 2024 for the next term.
That's doable in principle but impossible as a practical matter.
Lol Biden is a puppet and a braindead one at that he has no free will he does what the deepstate demands
Depends on what Democratic party rules say, I guess. First they have to want to replace him, and they don't seem to be there yet. But it's a long time from here to the conventions.
I remember a pretty recent NYT/ Siena poll showing that Biden and Trump were neck and neck at 43% each BUT the undecided 14% disliked Biden less than Trump.
I *think* those undecideds will ultimately decide the election, and I think they’ll ultimately come down on the Biden side of the coin. Will it be enough of them in the right (swing) states to make the difference? I’m less certain of that, but I feel like it’s a piece of the polling puzzle that doesn’t get talked about enough.
If I remember correctly, in 2016, Hilary lost because the ~11% of the population that was still undecided a week before the election broke for Trump (which I *don’t* think will happen again, since Trump is now a known quantity), and I wish that pollsters had been more vocal about how many people in the electorate were undecided!
I wish they’d do that in general, actually, as knowing about undecided voters seems to provide very important context to the top-line numbers.
The undecided will lean to Biden again. Because they tend to be more moderate, and old, and base their opinion on feeling non-threatened by the candidate. Biden fills that role perfectly, he's basically vanilla bean icecream. And when someone is undecided on ice cream they choose vanilla bean.
I'm not sure the data supports that. Hopefully the Democratic campaigns will trust the data, wherever it leads, rather than coming in with a predetermined narrative, because that could be a fatal mistake.
Lmao lunatic you do realize Trump overhwelmingly won undecided voters in both 2016 and 2020 right?
So, here’s what I said in my comment:
“If I remember correctly, in 2016, Hilary lost because the ~11% of the population that was still undecided a week before the election broke for Trump (which I *don’t* think will happen again, since Trump is now a known quantity)”
Seems like you might want to take a second to actually *read* comments before you respond to them.
Cope harder Polls with undecided voters forced to choose all have Trump winning you liberal ape
lol “liberal ape” ... you got some work to do on yourself, my dude.
I'd run, but I have no money and about 40% of people think I deserve no human rights.
What's sad about that statement is that the statistic you cite doesn't really give me any information about your demographics, other than that you're not a straight white cis male.
Imagine that. It's almost as if we are doomed.
Not even that... I can imagine that these people would also deny a straight white cis male if that straight white cis male happens to be called "Jane" :D
Trying to find a bit of humor in something otherwise very glum.
I would love to see polling for named Democrats the way they did for other Republicans. It would be helpful to know if anyone in particular outperforms Biden, especially since aging is not always a linear process.
Biden is old enough that the risk of a sudden debilitating medical condition is not trivial and we could be left scrambling for any viable candidate other than Harris. If someone outperforms her and/or Biden it'd be nice to know, along this whole democracy idea that maybe we should have more of a say in the nominees.
I'll also make the obligatory plug for ranked choice voting that would solve this issue and help with many others.
The issue is people like whitmer polis and newsom don't have the same name recognition as Haley and desantis, so polling them would be much harder. That leaves Harris and bootyjudge as the well known people who would be most likely to run.
I think Newsom and Whitmer have about as much name recognition as Nikki Haley. Nobody actually knows who the US Ambassador to the UN is
Yeah but now she's been running for president for a year and people have heard of her. The same way barely anyone knew who Pete was before he ran but now most Americans do
Biden has done such a good job so far I am fully satisfied with him. Talk of replacing him is not at all productive.
But doing a good job and reelectability are not that correlated.
Still feel that way this morning?
I don't even know what should've changed this morning? To take an obvious example, highest reelectability is found in populists like Erdogan and Orban who get control over media. This is not correlated with their doing good job as presidents (Erdoganomics, for Force's sake!).
I'm curious what your thoughts are on how flat that polling is across age groups.
In 2016, exit polling (I know, but roll with me for a second) had young voters almost twenty points further left than old voters (https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/national/president). But polls of 2024 seem to consistently find things pretty even across age groups (the numbers you cite here has everyone within 11 points, and the gap is between young voters and gen X).
What's going on here? Is this reflective of the rightward swing of non-white voters (who skew younger)? If so, why isn't Trump running away with things? Is Biden's old-timey-aw-shucks politics more appealing to boomers, in addition to your nod here to it perhaps being offputting to younger voters? Is it reflective of young progressives not liking his relative moderacy (and that being appealing to Reagan-era voters)?
I am 71 years old and normally don’t use this vernacular, but all I can think, reading a lot of these comments, is “clueless”. Apparently you all have missed the great “awakening” of that part of the younger generation most likely to vote, I.e., those who are well-educated and hardworking, who can see that Congress (both sides) have spent us nearly into oblivion (and are so afraid of us Boomers that they cannot admit SS and Medicare are effectively bankrupt and need to be reformed - or that the necessary buildup of our national
security apparatus to address China/Taiwan, Russia/Ukraine, Iran/Israel, not to mention accommodating the millions of undocumented people who continue to flood our borders, will require even more spending) - not to mention the takeover of our government bureaucracy/academic institutions/major media by authoritarian progressives who want to direct every aspect of our lives (and the lives of our children), regardless of our personal values. Put another way, it is now clear this younger generation and their children face a future that almost certainly will not be as bright as the one we were able to look forward to - and could be much worse. In that scenario, an outsider authoritarian with a track record of taking on these forces (and who made a lot of decisions that look pretty smart in retrospect), may seem to be an attractive alternative - especially given the tactics proven to have been used by the other side to literally try to unseat him (Russia collusion hoax) and control the flow of information to the American public (Twitter Files, among others). As I see it, our only hope is getting behind a viable third party option, as offered by No Labels. Absent that, buckle up as I think Trump will likely prevail (regardless of any “conviction” - without arguing the point, many well-informed legal experts agree, while he may be technically in the wrong, no-one else would have been the subject of the legal actions against him - the NY case, for example, where there is NO VICTIM and the prosecutor ran on a promise to “get Trump”).