And let the record reflect that on the day he dropped out, 538 gave Biden a 49% chance of winning, and a 12% chance of winning a double digit landslide.
If 538 folks are smart, they will take this opportunity to "reset" the model and make some tweaks in the background so they stop getting absurd results. A fundamentals-based model doesn't work as well without the true incumbent, anyway, so perhaps this scenario will enable 538 to save face (but we will know better).
I’m glad Nate nailed this one — and the timing of right after the bet tweet was awesome. My one disagreement is that I do believe Biden himself deserves much credit for this difficult decision. His advisors, on the other hand, I can think of little nice to say about.
Agreed on Biden deserving a bit more credit. In, say, 10 scenarios where you have a politically non-viable nominee and are relying on that person to put party over self, probably 6+ out of the ten choose self. After all, from their perspective, quitting is a guarantee of not being elected, while a longshot campaign still preserves the possibility if only slightly. Biden could have taken the party down with him and he didn’t. I’m grateful.
I also hope and believe (acknowledging my personal bias) that Nate may be overly pessimistic about Harris’s chances. I think the contrast between a vigorous more youthful Harris and a cranky old Trump will work more to her favor than many of us now realize (and was not fully captured in any of those hypothetical Harris-Trump matchup polls).
The election may well be a test of how truthful majorities of Americans were in polls when they said they didn't want either Trump or Biden. One party has now given the electorate that choice to move on. Let's see how this plays out.
I'm a moderate/independent who raised money for Obama and voted for him. I was a never-Trumper. But I'm not voting for any establishment Democrat who doesn't disavow the border policy. I'm also Jewish, and I am deeply pissed at how the Democrats have turned a blind eye on anti-Semitism and campus protests from their own party.
Those are the two issues that matter to me, with a return to rule of law and prosecuting crime being a second tier issue for me. I won't vote for a Democrat that can't convince me that they genuinely believe that the border policy was a mess and that the anti-Semitic parts of the party will be appropriately dealt with when they commit crimes.
Long story short, Biden was unelectable because of his age. But the platform is a loser, no matter who is running IMO.
You know that Trump had the Bipartisan border bill killed. Solutions for the border, supported by members of both party, killed because he couldn't give Joe a victory.
Other than having his party come up with a bipartisan bill that he could sign, what was he supposed to do? Pledge to build a wall that wont do anything like Trump? Commit human rights violations at the border like Trump?
Biden had a solution and Trump had it killed. It's not a talking point. It's a fact.
I agree, Biden deserves a lot of credit. The world is awash with leaders who allow the cocktail of their own egotism and the flattery of sycophants to delude them into thinking their continued hold on power is more important than anything. Putin, Netanyahu, Trump. He did the thing that was best for the country. Judge the difficulty of that decision by the many, many leaders who fail the test.
Key difference for Kamala: in 2020 the bar for being a good speaker and campaigner was much higher than it is now. I think a lot of people who have been ignoring her tenure as VP will be pleasantly surprised with how coherent and compelling she sounds compared to the two ancient candidates we've been watching for two years. She's a middling political talent but given how low the bar is I think she has a good chance to win.
The uncontrolled immigration attack is going to be very hard for Kamala to deflect. The 2013 Australian federal election is a great example for Democrats to be warned about.
It may seem so, but she was actually put in charge of dealing with Central and South American leaders to improve conditions in their countries in an attempt to slow their emigration. She did a fair job at that. But you’re right that the average voter will agree with the other tag.
Anyone who puts immigration that highly on their list likely is going to Trump, anyway, given that the proximity of the Canadian border is unlikely to be a vexing issue for MI/WI/PA.
Plus the regime vs regime numbers are not bad, it's just that she doesn't talk about it with Trump's gusto. No one does.
Probably her best chance is to boil this race down to immigration vs women's issues. I still think Trump will be favored, but it's at least interesting now.
The regime vs regime looks terrible. Obama and Trump were roughly similar, and the spectacular spike that happened when Trump left office is very clear. There are literally massive caravans being assembled right now with the intent of getting in before November. Even the migrants know that if the Democrats lose they'll be blocked.
I used to volunteer at the Intl Rescue Committee. Calling these migrants who see an insecure border as a way to sneak in 'refugees' is offensive. They are people with poor living conditions who want better. I'm sympathetic. But I worked with people who had been tortured, had their whole families murdered, etc.
I have residency in WI and 100% care about the border. Rational border policy matters no matter where you are in the country.
I’m hoping she leans into it and makes immigration her campaign. She should just adopt the bipartisan compromise bill as her stance and push trump further out to the right.
Many Democratic candidates looked bad in their first attempt at running, like Biden in 1988 and 2008. Harris has been auditioning for the last Bree weeks and looks ready for prime time.
Pelosi's public statements along the lines of "Joe needs to make his final decision" were an absolutely masterful act of tactical double-speak.
That position made clear that Biden did not really have Pelosi's support, using a sequence of words that could not themselves be construed as undermining Biden.
Pelosi and Obama showed their deft political skill once again. If the Dems win this time, it will be a fitting final victory for the Obama/Pelosi/Biden era of the party's history.
For real. Obama and Pelosi let a senile man run for President. They then refused to defend him and were widely reported to be seeking to replace him.
If you 'deftly' send a signal to Biden, guess what? Everyone else on the planet got it too.
Obama was raising money with the guy. Pelosi worked with him regularly. They clearly knew the score and still supported him. If anything it's incompetence from the Democratic Party leadership that got us all in this mess to begin with.
The utter nerve of trying to hold the virtual vote early was shameful. How could the head of the Party Harrison, who should also be fired, have supported this?
They tried, but they didn't really succeed. Polls have been pretty steady for months now at 70ish% of voters saying Biden was too old for the job. They were on to the BS, but Biden and the party as a whole didn't want to acknowledge reality.
That's easy to diffuse: when Biden speaks to the nation, he says that his recent bout of COVID was a "come to Jesus" moment for him. Even if he was capable of running the country, he isn't capable of campaigning.
She at least has a natural response - “I thought he should move on, but it was not my place to push my boss out. We knew he would make the right choice, and now I have the authority to make this my own campaign.”
My respect for Nate, Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein and Megan McArdle has gone up because they were always very honest with readers about Biden’s decline. A lot of smart people who write well on public policy and politics were either wrong or unwilling to rock the boat before the first debate.
Kamala can address her downsides through messaging. Biden cannot reverse the arrow of time. I predict we’ll see a bump for Kamala vs the current hypothetical polls as she does more campaigning and people remember what a real presidential candidate who can make the case for themselves looks like.
Have you been watching her recently? She looks good, she isn't ancient, and I think the optics of her being a cop going against a felon will go well for her.
Weird flex but OK. Harris has gotten criticism for being too tough of a prosecutor in Dem circles, and about half of the folks think Trump's felony convictions reflect poorly on the Dems.
Who are these "the folks" you speak of? Most of the people I know see Trump for the crook he is. I am very skeptical that Trump's criminal activity reflects poorly on anyone but him.
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Trump. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.”
The polls literally show that independents in swing states are almost exactly split on whether convictions for Trump will make them 'more' or 'less' likely to vote Trump.
That's what the data says. Just as many swing voters think it's political theater as think it's justice.
Got nothing to say about Trump's 90+ minute ode to self? Like I said, Biden isnt running anymore, and Trump's talking turns off most of America. Kamala is a breath of fresh air, and whoever she picks as a running mate will also definitely look like not a crazy person when compared to both Trump and Vance. I think Trump's chance of winning this just sank hard, and your pathetic waterboarding comment and making fun of the VPs name is sad coping.
Harris was widely viewed to be even more unpopular than pre debate Biden. She may be slightly more popular than post debate Biden but that is a pretty low bar.
The progressive wing of the party will vote for whoever AOC and Bernie tell them to vote for. They will do whatever it takes to make sure Trump isn't in the white house. The cop thing will play well with swing voters in Middle America who are the people that Trump actually needs.
I think we've already seen that putting too much weight on the opinions of the Defund the Police crowd is a poor tack for a general election.
I have little data to prove that but personally I think it's the wild, inauthentic swing to the left which caused Harris to do so poorly in 2020. Conversely, ignoring Twitter vibes is what put Joe's primary campaign square in the lead.
You're not wrong, but thinking that Harris is going to eliminate all of Biden's negatives is wishful thinking. The polling that is out there before today still has Harris losing to Trump. I think Harris will get a bounce, but how much remains to be seen.
Maybe so but where are Trump’s specifics like ending the conflicts, how business leader feel about high tariffs, and how the country will react to drill drill drill when the US is already drilling at record levels. Harris will call out Trump where Biden obviously could not.
I honestly don’t understand the people who took shots at Nate on twitter lately for correctly weighing biden’s chances. I never want to hear anything about the 13 keys again.
Twitter discourse is completely devoid of rational thought and Bayesian thinking. Every time I read a comment from that site I feel like I've lost 10 brain cells.
Right after the debate I predicted Biden would drop out in 3 weeks. I thought it would take that long for him to go through the denial, anger, bargaining, accepting process.
On a slightly different point, this was a scarily close call. What if Biden had been, say, 15-20% sharper at the debate? Bad, but not bad enough for many top Dems to call for him to step aside. Then he got nominated and had his senior meltdown on the trail, or in the second debate.
Then JD Vance would be the Republican nominee and the significant favorite to win the election. (Remember LBJ's reputation before JFK was shot? Neither did the voters in the next election.)
True, and it would have been an open (and chaotic) Republican convention, but I think it's pretty clear Vance or maybe Governor Burgum would come out on top. And Burgum's likely to have had an even stronger position in the general election than Vance would have held. But thankfully for American democracy we did not have a major party candidate murdered (again) and we will never know for sure.
Unlikely that any 'hope' candidate wins. Trump was already well ahead in in the polls and the electoral battle.
The gap widened after the debate based on Biden's lack of mental acuity. Then widened again after Trump was shot. Then widened again after the convention.
Switching horses only addresses the mental acuity aspect (not that Kamala is an intellectual giant). We know that a more-sharp Biden barely beat Trump, but beat Kamala handily. The appeal of Kamala has been tested, she didn't exactly blow people away.
So in summary: Trump was ahead and very likely to win; Biden made it even more likely; the assassination attempt made it even more likely; let's assume the convention bounce is temporary or offset by the DNC convention bounce. Addressing the Biden incompetence only rolls back one of these major signs that Trump is in the driver's seat.
One other element of the game theory level of politics is that no other democrats have incentive to challenge Harris right now. Whitmer, Shapiro, Newsom, etc. are all incentivized to back Harris.
Downside: you get to run a four month campaign that’s incredibly risky and get to be the face of the losing Democrat Party. Also, you’ll be painted as someone who can’t tow the party line by insiders and outsiders. That’s also a big IF you can unseat her, with so many prominent democrats already endorsing her.
Upside: Wait four years, let Trump destroy the Republican brand even further, grow your national brand and run in 2028. Also, you can run quietly campaign to be the VP this year, where even if you lose you gain name recognition with probably little risk
I definitely think the game theory politics explains every other potential replacement candidate currently. Kamala will be the candidate, for better or worse.
I think they can also wait to see if Harris implodes in the next few weeks. She has some tough questions to answer. Top one being, IMO, if you really met with Biden regularly did you participate in hiding his condition from primary voters?
Not crazy to think someone who was losing to Andrew Yang in her home state will fall apart as the presumptive nominee.
Agreed except for the VP part. I think they would all do well to stay as far from the #KHive as possible. They should just stand back and stand by for 2028.
Maybe? I feel like there’s a way to be a dutiful VP that grows your national brand. As long as you don’t say really crazy things you can probably be ok. You get name recognition and I doubt people would really blame YOU for the loss under these circumstances. But maybe I’m wrong.
I hope that some issue-oriented democratic candidates would run, just to force their issue onto the agenda. Let’s see Kamala survive some tests, it’ll make her a better candidate.
Agreed that most of these guys should want to keep their nose out of it. Whitmer maybe not as she can argue that she'll get Michigan back in play after it looks solidly red right now.
Newsom needs California to come back before running. Right now he's dead in the water in a national election. Nobody else has name recognition except Michelle.
But I would push back on the idea that four more years of Trump will hurt the Republican brand. He already had a term. He's back and he's in the lead. The Democrat social platform is what is hurting them right now, and I don't see a candidate being discussed who moves the social platform to the center.
Jaime Harrison in particular sacrificed every ounce of integrity and respect for nothing. Even calling him a political hack is being too nice because even political hacks usually try to be honest enough to not totally insult the intelligence of their own party members.
While it's looking that way, I really, really hope it's not just a coronation of Kamala. I'll be an enthusiastic supporter of hers if she can actually demonstrate through some kind of process over the next few weeks that she's the best candidate, but everything I have seen up to now makes me think that isn't the case.
And I'm someone who was actually a supporter of hers during the first half of 2019 (I'm from the Bay Area, thought she had a good record as DA and Attorney General, had done reasonably well as a Senator, and I liked the fact that she was married to a Jewish guy). But in 2019, she ended up running away from her record as DA, was miserable at persuading voters to support her, and then her campaign pretty much imploded. And when she was selected to be VP in 2020 (which I was happy about), I found her somewhat off putting in both speeches and the debate.
I'm afraid Kamala is the James Wiseman/Trey Lance of Democratic nominees: someone who has all the tools and checks all the boxes on paper but doesn't actually help you win. And while I'll be happy to be proved wrong, there needs to be some kind of process where she can prove that. My gut take is that Kamala instead of Biden doubles the Democrats chance of winning but only from under 5% to under 10%. I think someone who voters actually positively respond to could raise that to 40-60% depending on just how good they are.
If she's the nominee, I hope you're right Chris and Jim. But from what I've seen, I'm really skeptical that Kamala is the right person to convince the 5-10% of the electorate that genuinely is undecided to vote Democratic.
I think if she's the nominee, we're going to need some luck to break our way. That's not impossible, Trump could implode, but I don't think it's likely. Whereas I think a genuinely strong candidate, someone like a Bill Clinton or Obama, could actually persuade the undecideds and we wouldn't need luck.
I do agree there would be a number of more competitive candidates, even favorites to beat Trump. I just see no path to get there with Harris as the sitting VP, and Biden's support.
There's no way to actually redo the primaries at this point. Here's what I'd ideally like to see as a substitute. You could randomly pick maybe 1000 registered Democrats from all across the country, and then fly them to Chicago a few days ahead of the convention. You could then ask them who they'd like to see as a candidate. Any candidate who wanted to be seen by at least 15% of them would be invited to speak to them, mingle with them, and answer questions. They could then decide who they liked best, and present it as a recommendation to the actual convention.
It won't happen, but it's the sort of thing Democrats ought to be thinking about.
Who has the national name recognition, lack of baggage (Newsom), and experience/campaign team to actually be a favorite vs Trump? Genuine question.
I don't see a Biden replacement that is favored head to head. I agree with others here that Biden dropping out may raise the odds for Democrats by 50%-100%, but that still leaves you with a 70% probability of Trump winning.
I think the path would have been a mini-primary along the lines folks like Carville were describing (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/biden-democratic-nominee.html). Think this type of process would both have been both good for the party if it revealed that Kamala was flawed and someone else was better and good for Kamala if it identified her as the best nominee.
It was a win-win that slipped away because too many Democrats just want to start taking on Trump immediately rather than allowing a process that would have allowed the best Trump opponent to emerge. The same mistake that allowed Biden to run essentially unopposed in the primaries.
As a Never Trump Republican, I was looking at a terrible choice in November. I could not vote for Trump but Biden was clearly not up for the role. Biden did the hardest thing - he gave up power. I watched the debate for 10 minutes, and I turned it off. Americans deserved way better.
I watched Monday night as Biden spoke to the nation and I felt really sorry for him - his time as the President had clearly passed. Biden did exactly what he said he would in 2020.
Kamala Harris was a flawed candidate in 2020; but she provides a clear contrast to Trump. At least the election might be competitive. I think the next few weeks will really define the election, but at least the Democrats can get behind the candidate.
The nominee should be whoever polls best against Trump. It is political malpractice to endorse Harris before we know who has the best chance of winning. There should be no stigma in seeking the nomination — choice is better than rigidity.
White men are 30% of the US population. If you limit it to White straight Christian men it is probably more like 25%. I think we can move on from thinking only a white man is electable
It's not an open secret that Black Women and the grassroots political machine they created for/with Stacy Abrams was largely responsible for delivering Georgia to the Democrats.
LOL, then Google it yourself. I am not the dude that made up the opinion that black women were largely responsible for delivering the slim margins that got 2 Senate seats in Georgia as well as Biden's victory. Google it. Don't ask for evidence then shift the goalposts when t is delivered.
I wish I had it in front of me but I did a turnout analysis of various swing states and Georgia's turnout was no more impressive than other swing states both on an absolute basis and compared to previous election cycles.
Stacy Abrams' reputation as a miracle work is not only overstated, I think any impact may be completely nonexistent. That being said, someone has to do that work. But her results weren't any better than folks in other swing states.
If they genuinely think it's the best chance of avoiding another Trump presidency and that's what they're trying to do, I don't see how it would be cowardice. They might judge that there is so little time left that a contested nomination has a worse chance against Trump than Harris with them getting behind her right away.
They could even be wrong about that and that still wouldn't make them cowards - just incorrect.
All else being equal, sure. But you'd have to actually have a contested nomination process now for her to earn it (beyond getting herself picked as VP again), and doing that has costs too.
I'm open to the idea that a contested election would have a better chance vs. Trump, but I definitely don't think it's *obvious* that that's the case. And the people who would be contesting the nomination have more relevant information about the chances than almost anyone.
Gotta give it up to Nate, I thought it was all wish-casting (and maybe it was) but the wish came true. We will see how rational it turns out to be in November (I still think dead Biden a better candidate than Kamala) but Democrats ultimately agreed with Nate and that's a win.
Does it remain to be seen? At what point will we be given access to the counterfactual universe where Biden didn't step down from candidacy? What new information are we likely to get that will make it significantly more clear whether Biden should have stepped down or not?
We might get a clear indication that it was the right call if Biden's health collapses completely in the next few months. It's already odd that he announced his withdrawal through a letter on 𝕏 rather than a speech.
That'd shift the confidence a bit, but not all that much in linear percentage point terms if your confidence is already pretty high that Biden should have stepped down by now. Of course, by other considerations going from ~99% to 99.9% confidence is still a big shift; it's a whole order of magnitude in terms of distance from 100%.
I agree that that's probably the largest movement we're likely to see and the highest entropy information outstanding. But that only moves things in the direction of Biden stepping down for being good for both the Democratic party and the US generally.
Oh agreed. I suppose we could find out that it actually was a coup after all, and Biden comes storming out demanding to be the nominee and blows everyone away with his new-found fluency. But I wouldn't class that as “likely to see”!
Looking forward to all the behind the scenes books. Biden’s inner circle is a disgraceful bunch. Quite a few doctors have stated he shows signs of parkinson’s disease. They all knew.
You think the debate is the first time Joe slurred his words, forgot his point mid sentence and needed help walking? Clearly something is amiss. His inner circle see him daily, how did they not notice the rate these behaviors were increasing? If they didn’t notice, why did they request questions pre interview? Why no Super Bowl interview?
They noticed the deterioration and were mitigating it the best they could. The hubris is what’s shocking. Donilon, Ricchetti and Jill knew.
And let the record reflect that on the day he dropped out, 538 gave Biden a 49% chance of winning, and a 12% chance of winning a double digit landslide.
If 538 folks are smart, they will take this opportunity to "reset" the model and make some tweaks in the background so they stop getting absurd results. A fundamentals-based model doesn't work as well without the true incumbent, anyway, so perhaps this scenario will enable 538 to save face (but we will know better).
That sham brand has fallen on hard times.
And as a Silver Bulleton reader, why yes, it does give me pleasure to say that.
Apparently 538 don’t even read the news.
I think they read it. And, even though they work for ABC, they don't believe it! Nutty.
And a 50% chance of winning a state he didn’t carry in 2020. WTAF?
I’m glad Nate nailed this one — and the timing of right after the bet tweet was awesome. My one disagreement is that I do believe Biden himself deserves much credit for this difficult decision. His advisors, on the other hand, I can think of little nice to say about.
Agreed on Biden deserving a bit more credit. In, say, 10 scenarios where you have a politically non-viable nominee and are relying on that person to put party over self, probably 6+ out of the ten choose self. After all, from their perspective, quitting is a guarantee of not being elected, while a longshot campaign still preserves the possibility if only slightly. Biden could have taken the party down with him and he didn’t. I’m grateful.
I also hope and believe (acknowledging my personal bias) that Nate may be overly pessimistic about Harris’s chances. I think the contrast between a vigorous more youthful Harris and a cranky old Trump will work more to her favor than many of us now realize (and was not fully captured in any of those hypothetical Harris-Trump matchup polls).
The election may well be a test of how truthful majorities of Americans were in polls when they said they didn't want either Trump or Biden. One party has now given the electorate that choice to move on. Let's see how this plays out.
I'm a moderate/independent who raised money for Obama and voted for him. I was a never-Trumper. But I'm not voting for any establishment Democrat who doesn't disavow the border policy. I'm also Jewish, and I am deeply pissed at how the Democrats have turned a blind eye on anti-Semitism and campus protests from their own party.
Those are the two issues that matter to me, with a return to rule of law and prosecuting crime being a second tier issue for me. I won't vote for a Democrat that can't convince me that they genuinely believe that the border policy was a mess and that the anti-Semitic parts of the party will be appropriately dealt with when they commit crimes.
Long story short, Biden was unelectable because of his age. But the platform is a loser, no matter who is running IMO.
You know that Trump had the Bipartisan border bill killed. Solutions for the border, supported by members of both party, killed because he couldn't give Joe a victory.
Talking point. Any reasonable person can see that Biden had 4 years to deal with the problem and refused to do so.
That's just empty rhetoric.
Again, I'm a moderate independent with a history of voting blue. If Trump wins, it will be because of the border and crime and inflation.
Other than having his party come up with a bipartisan bill that he could sign, what was he supposed to do? Pledge to build a wall that wont do anything like Trump? Commit human rights violations at the border like Trump?
Biden had a solution and Trump had it killed. It's not a talking point. It's a fact.
I agree, Biden deserves a lot of credit. The world is awash with leaders who allow the cocktail of their own egotism and the flattery of sycophants to delude them into thinking their continued hold on power is more important than anything. Putin, Netanyahu, Trump. He did the thing that was best for the country. Judge the difficulty of that decision by the many, many leaders who fail the test.
Key difference for Kamala: in 2020 the bar for being a good speaker and campaigner was much higher than it is now. I think a lot of people who have been ignoring her tenure as VP will be pleasantly surprised with how coherent and compelling she sounds compared to the two ancient candidates we've been watching for two years. She's a middling political talent but given how low the bar is I think she has a good chance to win.
She is unburdened by what has been and did not fall out of a coconut tree.
The uncontrolled immigration attack is going to be very hard for Kamala to deflect. The 2013 Australian federal election is a great example for Democrats to be warned about.
I think she's pretty well positioned to take credit for the good parts of Biden's record and run away from the bad. Pseudo-incumbency.
She was supposedly put in charge of the border. It's an easy bet that the Trump campaign plans to hit her hard on that issue.
It may seem so, but she was actually put in charge of dealing with Central and South American leaders to improve conditions in their countries in an attempt to slow their emigration. She did a fair job at that. But you’re right that the average voter will agree with the other tag.
She has been pretty harsh when given the opportunity, though. Remember "Do not come"?
That's harsh?
Anyone who puts immigration that highly on their list likely is going to Trump, anyway, given that the proximity of the Canadian border is unlikely to be a vexing issue for MI/WI/PA.
Plus the regime vs regime numbers are not bad, it's just that she doesn't talk about it with Trump's gusto. No one does.
Probably her best chance is to boil this race down to immigration vs women's issues. I still think Trump will be favored, but it's at least interesting now.
Abbott deserves a medal from the GOP for expanding the issue of illegal immigration into Democratic strongholds like NY, Chicago, Denver, etc.
The regime vs regime looks terrible. Obama and Trump were roughly similar, and the spectacular spike that happened when Trump left office is very clear. There are literally massive caravans being assembled right now with the intent of getting in before November. Even the migrants know that if the Democrats lose they'll be blocked.
I used to volunteer at the Intl Rescue Committee. Calling these migrants who see an insecure border as a way to sneak in 'refugees' is offensive. They are people with poor living conditions who want better. I'm sympathetic. But I worked with people who had been tortured, had their whole families murdered, etc.
I have residency in WI and 100% care about the border. Rational border policy matters no matter where you are in the country.
I assume the best response to the immigration attack is to always counter with Trump blowing up the bipartisan immigration bill?
Isn't the counter to that that it was laden down with a bunch of other crap?
I’m hoping she leans into it and makes immigration her campaign. She should just adopt the bipartisan compromise bill as her stance and push trump further out to the right.
So you haven't heard her speak.
Many Democratic candidates looked bad in their first attempt at running, like Biden in 1988 and 2008. Harris has been auditioning for the last Bree weeks and looks ready for prime time.
Pelosi's public statements along the lines of "Joe needs to make his final decision" were an absolutely masterful act of tactical double-speak.
That position made clear that Biden did not really have Pelosi's support, using a sequence of words that could not themselves be construed as undermining Biden.
Pelosi and Obama showed their deft political skill once again. If the Dems win this time, it will be a fitting final victory for the Obama/Pelosi/Biden era of the party's history.
This comment got howls of laughter from my wife.
Your wife has an odd sense of humor.
I also found it hilarious
For real. Obama and Pelosi let a senile man run for President. They then refused to defend him and were widely reported to be seeking to replace him.
If you 'deftly' send a signal to Biden, guess what? Everyone else on the planet got it too.
Obama was raising money with the guy. Pelosi worked with him regularly. They clearly knew the score and still supported him. If anything it's incompetence from the Democratic Party leadership that got us all in this mess to begin with.
The utter nerve of trying to hold the virtual vote early was shameful. How could the head of the Party Harrison, who should also be fired, have supported this?
Obama may end up a kingmaker in chicago. This might be a whole new era of influence for him.
Thank you Nate. I'm pissed beyond belief at the people around Biden who gaslighted us into this situation. They should be blackballed from the party.
They tried, but they didn't really succeed. Polls have been pretty steady for months now at 70ish% of voters saying Biden was too old for the job. They were on to the BS, but Biden and the party as a whole didn't want to acknowledge reality.
You do know that Harris is one of those people, right?
That's easy to diffuse: when Biden speaks to the nation, he says that his recent bout of COVID was a "come to Jesus" moment for him. Even if he was capable of running the country, he isn't capable of campaigning.
She at least has a natural response - “I thought he should move on, but it was not my place to push my boss out. We knew he would make the right choice, and now I have the authority to make this my own campaign.”
As Nate said the arsonist who ran Biden’s campaign should not even be considered for the Harris team.
How much contact did Harris have with Biden?
She had frequent lunches with Biden and knew his condition very well. And lied about it for years.
My respect for Nate, Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein and Megan McArdle has gone up because they were always very honest with readers about Biden’s decline. A lot of smart people who write well on public policy and politics were either wrong or unwilling to rock the boat before the first debate.
Ezra Klein has quickly vaulted into the top opinion writer at the Times, sorry Maureen and Tom. Hie podcast this week was outstanding.
Kamala can address her downsides through messaging. Biden cannot reverse the arrow of time. I predict we’ll see a bump for Kamala vs the current hypothetical polls as she does more campaigning and people remember what a real presidential candidate who can make the case for themselves looks like.
I agree. I think America is going to respond well to a sane adult who talks clearly.
Who would that be, exactly? It's certainly not word-salad-amala.
Have you been watching her recently? She looks good, she isn't ancient, and I think the optics of her being a cop going against a felon will go well for her.
I'd like to see her go Full Cop.
Just cuff him on the debate stage. I'm in.
Weird flex but OK. Harris has gotten criticism for being too tough of a prosecutor in Dem circles, and about half of the folks think Trump's felony convictions reflect poorly on the Dems.
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/no-democracy-is-not-on-the-ballot
Who are these "the folks" you speak of? Most of the people I know see Trump for the crook he is. I am very skeptical that Trump's criminal activity reflects poorly on anyone but him.
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Trump. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.”
—Ross Bickford, July 2024
His backers consider the charges "lawfare". Plus there is some question as to whether the charges make him more attractive as an "outsider".
Read the link to Ruy Teixeira's story on The Liberal Patriot Substack.
I report, you decide.
Probably the bigger story is that a lot of folks don't really factor it in one way or the other. "Nixon just got caught" over again.
And you can only win the vote of each voter once. Trump's behavior doesn't add weight to anyone's vote.
The polls literally show that independents in swing states are almost exactly split on whether convictions for Trump will make them 'more' or 'less' likely to vote Trump.
That's what the data says. Just as many swing voters think it's political theater as think it's justice.
No thanks, I've been waterboarded enough trying to decipher Biden over the last 4 years.
Got nothing to say about Trump's 90+ minute ode to self? Like I said, Biden isnt running anymore, and Trump's talking turns off most of America. Kamala is a breath of fresh air, and whoever she picks as a running mate will also definitely look like not a crazy person when compared to both Trump and Vance. I think Trump's chance of winning this just sank hard, and your pathetic waterboarding comment and making fun of the VPs name is sad coping.
Harris was widely viewed to be even more unpopular than pre debate Biden. She may be slightly more popular than post debate Biden but that is a pretty low bar.
I was actually making fun of her inability to speak more coherently than Biden, not her name.
The cop thing doesn't play well with the progressive wing of the party though; I've already heard a lot of complaining about it today.
The progressive wing of the party will vote for whoever AOC and Bernie tell them to vote for. They will do whatever it takes to make sure Trump isn't in the white house. The cop thing will play well with swing voters in Middle America who are the people that Trump actually needs.
Because crime rates are up? And who was in office when that happened?
I think we've already seen that putting too much weight on the opinions of the Defund the Police crowd is a poor tack for a general election.
I have little data to prove that but personally I think it's the wild, inauthentic swing to the left which caused Harris to do so poorly in 2020. Conversely, ignoring Twitter vibes is what put Joe's primary campaign square in the lead.
tl;dr: unleash Copmala
Worked for Hilary right?
You're not wrong, but thinking that Harris is going to eliminate all of Biden's negatives is wishful thinking. The polling that is out there before today still has Harris losing to Trump. I think Harris will get a bounce, but how much remains to be seen.
Maybe so but where are Trump’s specifics like ending the conflicts, how business leader feel about high tariffs, and how the country will react to drill drill drill when the US is already drilling at record levels. Harris will call out Trump where Biden obviously could not.
I honestly don’t understand the people who took shots at Nate on twitter lately for correctly weighing biden’s chances. I never want to hear anything about the 13 keys again.
Twitter discourse is completely devoid of rational thought and Bayesian thinking. Every time I read a comment from that site I feel like I've lost 10 brain cells.
The "13 keys" thing was never anything more than a rudimentary "fundamentals" model.
Some of those people are probably Trump shills.
Right after the debate I predicted Biden would drop out in 3 weeks. I thought it would take that long for him to go through the denial, anger, bargaining, accepting process.
On a slightly different point, this was a scarily close call. What if Biden had been, say, 15-20% sharper at the debate? Bad, but not bad enough for many top Dems to call for him to step aside. Then he got nominated and had his senior meltdown on the trail, or in the second debate.
Sheesh.
What if the bullet had been a centimeter to the right?
Then JD Vance would be the Republican nominee and the significant favorite to win the election. (Remember LBJ's reputation before JFK was shot? Neither did the voters in the next election.)
Trump had not named Vance as VP at the time of the attempted assassination.
True, and it would have been an open (and chaotic) Republican convention, but I think it's pretty clear Vance or maybe Governor Burgum would come out on top. And Burgum's likely to have had an even stronger position in the general election than Vance would have held. But thankfully for American democracy we did not have a major party candidate murdered (again) and we will never know for sure.
It’s going to be wild if Trump agreeeing to the early debate ends up being the thing that sinks him.
Unlikely that any 'hope' candidate wins. Trump was already well ahead in in the polls and the electoral battle.
The gap widened after the debate based on Biden's lack of mental acuity. Then widened again after Trump was shot. Then widened again after the convention.
Switching horses only addresses the mental acuity aspect (not that Kamala is an intellectual giant). We know that a more-sharp Biden barely beat Trump, but beat Kamala handily. The appeal of Kamala has been tested, she didn't exactly blow people away.
So in summary: Trump was ahead and very likely to win; Biden made it even more likely; the assassination attempt made it even more likely; let's assume the convention bounce is temporary or offset by the DNC convention bounce. Addressing the Biden incompetence only rolls back one of these major signs that Trump is in the driver's seat.
One other element of the game theory level of politics is that no other democrats have incentive to challenge Harris right now. Whitmer, Shapiro, Newsom, etc. are all incentivized to back Harris.
Downside: you get to run a four month campaign that’s incredibly risky and get to be the face of the losing Democrat Party. Also, you’ll be painted as someone who can’t tow the party line by insiders and outsiders. That’s also a big IF you can unseat her, with so many prominent democrats already endorsing her.
Upside: Wait four years, let Trump destroy the Republican brand even further, grow your national brand and run in 2028. Also, you can run quietly campaign to be the VP this year, where even if you lose you gain name recognition with probably little risk
I definitely think the game theory politics explains every other potential replacement candidate currently. Kamala will be the candidate, for better or worse.
I think they can also wait to see if Harris implodes in the next few weeks. She has some tough questions to answer. Top one being, IMO, if you really met with Biden regularly did you participate in hiding his condition from primary voters?
Not crazy to think someone who was losing to Andrew Yang in her home state will fall apart as the presumptive nominee.
Agreed except for the VP part. I think they would all do well to stay as far from the #KHive as possible. They should just stand back and stand by for 2028.
Maybe? I feel like there’s a way to be a dutiful VP that grows your national brand. As long as you don’t say really crazy things you can probably be ok. You get name recognition and I doubt people would really blame YOU for the loss under these circumstances. But maybe I’m wrong.
Even just a VP candidate. John Edwards was a major player in the 2008 primary.
I hope that some issue-oriented democratic candidates would run, just to force their issue onto the agenda. Let’s see Kamala survive some tests, it’ll make her a better candidate.
Agreed that most of these guys should want to keep their nose out of it. Whitmer maybe not as she can argue that she'll get Michigan back in play after it looks solidly red right now.
Newsom needs California to come back before running. Right now he's dead in the water in a national election. Nobody else has name recognition except Michelle.
But I would push back on the idea that four more years of Trump will hurt the Republican brand. He already had a term. He's back and he's in the lead. The Democrat social platform is what is hurting them right now, and I don't see a candidate being discussed who moves the social platform to the center.
Take a victory lap on the people who said you were wrong for saying it was obvious that Biden needed to drop out. You know you want to.
Jaime Harrison in particular sacrificed every ounce of integrity and respect for nothing. Even calling him a political hack is being too nice because even political hacks usually try to be honest enough to not totally insult the intelligence of their own party members.
While it's looking that way, I really, really hope it's not just a coronation of Kamala. I'll be an enthusiastic supporter of hers if she can actually demonstrate through some kind of process over the next few weeks that she's the best candidate, but everything I have seen up to now makes me think that isn't the case.
And I'm someone who was actually a supporter of hers during the first half of 2019 (I'm from the Bay Area, thought she had a good record as DA and Attorney General, had done reasonably well as a Senator, and I liked the fact that she was married to a Jewish guy). But in 2019, she ended up running away from her record as DA, was miserable at persuading voters to support her, and then her campaign pretty much imploded. And when she was selected to be VP in 2020 (which I was happy about), I found her somewhat off putting in both speeches and the debate.
I'm afraid Kamala is the James Wiseman/Trey Lance of Democratic nominees: someone who has all the tools and checks all the boxes on paper but doesn't actually help you win. And while I'll be happy to be proved wrong, there needs to be some kind of process where she can prove that. My gut take is that Kamala instead of Biden doubles the Democrats chance of winning but only from under 5% to under 10%. I think someone who voters actually positively respond to could raise that to 40-60% depending on just how good they are.
Love the analogy - lets hope she is more like Jordan Love who learned while watching an old pro for the last few years.
Nice Trey Lance reference/analogy! I think 10% underrates her, but even 25% is still pretty low odds.
If she's the nominee, I hope you're right Chris and Jim. But from what I've seen, I'm really skeptical that Kamala is the right person to convince the 5-10% of the electorate that genuinely is undecided to vote Democratic.
I think if she's the nominee, we're going to need some luck to break our way. That's not impossible, Trump could implode, but I don't think it's likely. Whereas I think a genuinely strong candidate, someone like a Bill Clinton or Obama, could actually persuade the undecideds and we wouldn't need luck.
I do agree there would be a number of more competitive candidates, even favorites to beat Trump. I just see no path to get there with Harris as the sitting VP, and Biden's support.
There's no way to actually redo the primaries at this point. Here's what I'd ideally like to see as a substitute. You could randomly pick maybe 1000 registered Democrats from all across the country, and then fly them to Chicago a few days ahead of the convention. You could then ask them who they'd like to see as a candidate. Any candidate who wanted to be seen by at least 15% of them would be invited to speak to them, mingle with them, and answer questions. They could then decide who they liked best, and present it as a recommendation to the actual convention.
It won't happen, but it's the sort of thing Democrats ought to be thinking about.
Who?
Who has the national name recognition, lack of baggage (Newsom), and experience/campaign team to actually be a favorite vs Trump? Genuine question.
I don't see a Biden replacement that is favored head to head. I agree with others here that Biden dropping out may raise the odds for Democrats by 50%-100%, but that still leaves you with a 70% probability of Trump winning.
I think the path would have been a mini-primary along the lines folks like Carville were describing (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/biden-democratic-nominee.html). Think this type of process would both have been both good for the party if it revealed that Kamala was flawed and someone else was better and good for Kamala if it identified her as the best nominee.
It was a win-win that slipped away because too many Democrats just want to start taking on Trump immediately rather than allowing a process that would have allowed the best Trump opponent to emerge. The same mistake that allowed Biden to run essentially unopposed in the primaries.
As a Never Trump Republican, I was looking at a terrible choice in November. I could not vote for Trump but Biden was clearly not up for the role. Biden did the hardest thing - he gave up power. I watched the debate for 10 minutes, and I turned it off. Americans deserved way better.
I watched Monday night as Biden spoke to the nation and I felt really sorry for him - his time as the President had clearly passed. Biden did exactly what he said he would in 2020.
Kamala Harris was a flawed candidate in 2020; but she provides a clear contrast to Trump. At least the election might be competitive. I think the next few weeks will really define the election, but at least the Democrats can get behind the candidate.
The nominee should be whoever polls best against Trump. It is political malpractice to endorse Harris before we know who has the best chance of winning. There should be no stigma in seeking the nomination — choice is better than rigidity.
The Democrats won Georgia and two Senate seats because of Black Women who showed up in Georgia. No way they shove Harris out of the way.
Being beholden to less than 7% of the population is a shitty electoral strategy.
Well the GOP are beholden to like a handful of billionaires. 7% seems like a lot.
Don't most billionaires donate to the D's these days?
The ones that need the government to work to keep making money do.
Like the Soros clan?
White men are 30% of the US population. If you limit it to White straight Christian men it is probably more like 25%. I think we can move on from thinking only a white man is electable
That presumes Asian and black voters will band together, for some reason, as compared to being at each others throats.
Evidence? That’s a pretty specific reading of what happened in Georgia.
It's not an open secret that Black Women and the grassroots political machine they created for/with Stacy Abrams was largely responsible for delivering Georgia to the Democrats.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/politics/georgia-democrats-black-women.html
Respectfully, I wouldn’t trust any NYT reporting about race between 2017-2021. That was peak narrative-over-fact NYT (see eg Jacob Blake)
LOL, then Google it yourself. I am not the dude that made up the opinion that black women were largely responsible for delivering the slim margins that got 2 Senate seats in Georgia as well as Biden's victory. Google it. Don't ask for evidence then shift the goalposts when t is delivered.
The GOP candidates for Senate in Georgia were ahead in the first vote tally in 2020. Then Trump showed up and torpedoed their chances.
If you're going to give black women credit for that victory I think you should give at least as much credit to Trump.
I wish I had it in front of me but I did a turnout analysis of various swing states and Georgia's turnout was no more impressive than other swing states both on an absolute basis and compared to previous election cycles.
Stacy Abrams' reputation as a miracle work is not only overstated, I think any impact may be completely nonexistent. That being said, someone has to do that work. But her results weren't any better than folks in other swing states.
Well right now Kamala’s “competitors” are endorsing her left and right - Newsom, Shapiro, mayor Pete.
cowards
If they genuinely think it's the best chance of avoiding another Trump presidency and that's what they're trying to do, I don't see how it would be cowardice. They might judge that there is so little time left that a contested nomination has a worse chance against Trump than Harris with them getting behind her right away.
They could even be wrong about that and that still wouldn't make them cowards - just incorrect.
Harris will be a stronger candidate if she earns it. Taking over because you are next in line is not a great look and no guarantee of political acumen
All else being equal, sure. But you'd have to actually have a contested nomination process now for her to earn it (beyond getting herself picked as VP again), and doing that has costs too.
I'm open to the idea that a contested election would have a better chance vs. Trump, but I definitely don't think it's *obvious* that that's the case. And the people who would be contesting the nomination have more relevant information about the chances than almost anyone.
Gotta give it up to Nate, I thought it was all wish-casting (and maybe it was) but the wish came true. We will see how rational it turns out to be in November (I still think dead Biden a better candidate than Kamala) but Democrats ultimately agreed with Nate and that's a win.
A win for Nate, yes. but whether that's a win for the Democratic party or for the country remains to be seen. I'm skeptical.
Does it remain to be seen? At what point will we be given access to the counterfactual universe where Biden didn't step down from candidacy? What new information are we likely to get that will make it significantly more clear whether Biden should have stepped down or not?
We might get a clear indication that it was the right call if Biden's health collapses completely in the next few months. It's already odd that he announced his withdrawal through a letter on 𝕏 rather than a speech.
That'd shift the confidence a bit, but not all that much in linear percentage point terms if your confidence is already pretty high that Biden should have stepped down by now. Of course, by other considerations going from ~99% to 99.9% confidence is still a big shift; it's a whole order of magnitude in terms of distance from 100%.
I agree that that's probably the largest movement we're likely to see and the highest entropy information outstanding. But that only moves things in the direction of Biden stepping down for being good for both the Democratic party and the US generally.
Oh agreed. I suppose we could find out that it actually was a coup after all, and Biden comes storming out demanding to be the nominee and blows everyone away with his new-found fluency. But I wouldn't class that as “likely to see”!
Looking forward to all the behind the scenes books. Biden’s inner circle is a disgraceful bunch. Quite a few doctors have stated he shows signs of parkinson’s disease. They all knew.
No they didn't. They would never have slotted him into that debate situation if it had been that obvious to everyone that he couldn't handle it
You think the debate is the first time Joe slurred his words, forgot his point mid sentence and needed help walking? Clearly something is amiss. His inner circle see him daily, how did they not notice the rate these behaviors were increasing? If they didn’t notice, why did they request questions pre interview? Why no Super Bowl interview?
They noticed the deterioration and were mitigating it the best they could. The hubris is what’s shocking. Donilon, Ricchetti and Jill knew.