I haven’t been the biggest fan of your analysis lately (just being honest - I think it’s drifted more towards punditry and a bit away from data. You were the one that got me into Statistics as a teenager and eventually towards my PhD.
With that said… this article is fantastic. Because you are one of the rare few being honest about what we can all see. Biden is senile, and he’s not capable of handling this job now or especially over the next 5 years.
And like you said: if we are wrong, prove it. But they won’t, because they can’t. Or if they try to prove it, it’ll end up being something scripted again that they try to pass off as evidence of mental acuity.
Baloney. You don't even know to use the correct term. My wife has dementia and is in a memory care facility. I visit her every day and see dementia (what you mistakenly call senility) in person and up close with her and all her acquaintances there.
Joe Biden is an older man and has occasionally memory slips. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I turn 87 next month. I see various cerebral impairments in my peers all the time. You're obviously quite young and lack real world experience. (The fact that you were reading Nate Silver as a teenager reveals this. I was a teenager thirty years before Nate Silver was even born.)
Biden couldn’t write anything close to what you just wrote. He wouldn’t even finish a paragraph. He can’t speak off the cuff, he can’t remember when his son died, he doesn’t know the president of Mexico.
Call it whatever you want, but he’s not fit for the job and 3/4 of this incredibly polarized country agree.
Oh for goodness’ sake, Albert. You are personalizing a political situation. Perhaps Joe Biden is not as badly off as the people you see in the “ memory care” unit, but that hardly says that he is fit for the job he holds. I am not quite as old as you but certainly closer to you than to Anony. Biden has much more than a few memory slips. He has many slips. He has trouble navigating his way. He is very easily angered. He has many days off and his days on are very short. Biden has never been known for his brain power but this is simply sad. I would like to see more sympathy toward his situation.
You're relying on cherry-picking. That time he confused the name of Mexico's president was in a conference where he otherwise spoke fine, but people like you ignore the rest because it doesn't fit your narrative. The fact that he's generally saying things correctly means that gaffes like that aren't representative.
Let's hear your evidence that he's not fit for the job that he's currently holding and has for the last 3 years, drama-free. You're speaking as if he's not the freaking President right now, and has been a solid one at that.
Seriously. Who are you even speaking to right now?
It doesn't matter if he is a slobbering half wit. He is good enough for government work and well able to, once again, beat the bete noir of Western civilization. Biden, Obama,Bush and Clinton were establishment figures, like all presidents. Donny is the candidate of Koch and the enemy of order, progress and decency. There is no rational defense of this malignant narcissist, his only positive effect is he inspires people to embrace socialism. Biden is the horse we have, we better bet the farm on him and move heaven and earth to keep him in office.
Considering we're now at the point of choosing between two unfit men, both experiencing cognitive decline, both incapable of writing and speaking coherently, it seems worth getting into the details.
I'd love to hear Biden simply read out a sentence like “I see various cerebral impairments in my peers all the time.” Who wants to bet that he could manage it without a flub?
You don’t think the fact that he has a stutter is a big part of this?! Look at videos of Biden from year ago - he flubbed things all the time then too!
Ahh, the battlecry of the progressive throughout the ages: “anyone who disagrees with me must be acting in bad faith, because my beliefs are obviously true and perfect that no one could possibly have a sincere disagreement with them”. You all will never change, will you.
What a nasty, hateful, ageist thing to say. It's as low as saying Black people are lazy and Jews are untrustworthy. And you, for all your youthful sagacity, can't even punctuate correctly.
Average boomer, randomly bringing up racial stereotypes to lecture a young'un about using incorrect punctuation. As I said, the jokes write themselves.
Thumbs up and a like for using baloney! On a serious note I think the solution is pretty easy. Like Nate said Do a bunch of interviews and act like a normal president running for reelection . Remember due to Covid we never even got to see Biden run in 2020.
If he can’t/wont run a campaign like pretty much every other president then I think the default is that he has serious enough age related cognitive decline that concern is justified. I am not saying that this concern would outweigh concerns about Trump, only that is it is disingenuous to assume that individuals with this concern are acting in bad faith or that it is not legitimate.
I agree with you, but also feel inclined to point out, we had similar discussions regarding Biden in the primary leading up to 2020. There were tons of people claiming Biden was hiding in his basement refusing to campaign, and it made him look weak. The fact is, he ended up winning the primary handily. He did come out and campaign. Then he beat trump in the general election. That record against trump is better than any other democrat who’s run against trump.
When I think about which unprecedented feature of a presidential election I would rather have in 2024, Biden dropping out late with the DNC picking Trumps opponent, OR, running the oldest candidate in history, I think I take the candidate with the record of beating trump already. The fact is, this argument against Biden running for reelection needed to be made 4 years ago, and it may have been made, but it didn’t work. The only purpose of publishing stories like this is it allows the author the ability to save face if trump wins again (many including Nate said they didn’t believe he would win the first time).
And the fact is, it’s a low risk position to take. If trump loses no one will care that anyone called Biden too old. I think as the primary wraps up we will see Biden ramp up his campaign and the wagons will circle around him. He will do the interviews and I’m fairly confident he will sound presidential compared to the orange man from Florida.
I tend to agree with this. I think people equate campaigning in 2024 with campaigning in 1952. It just isn't the same.
Also, who actually thinks that people don't know who Donald Trump is at this point? If you know who he is, you're either DEFINITELY voting for him...or not. If you're on the fence and you're of the "they're all too old" ilk, then you're probably staying home.
We should also come to grips with the fact that Trump will get 40% of the vote even if he pulls out a gun and shoots someone on stage. You can't argue with these people - they're not receptive to your message. They're also not enough to elect Trump.
Too right- Biden is vigorous and on the ball and fully up to the job of CIC. They’re just hiding him because they don’t want to take a big lead too early 😂
If you want to compare Biden’s mental status to a politician we know was in mental decline, here is a clip of Regan’s last press conference. Taking unscripted questions and giving detailed answers.
I can’t even imagine Biden getting through the opening remarks. He should not be in any high pressure decision making capacity. Not to worry- he probably isn’t. Remember he didn’t didn’t speak to his Sec Def for over a week while US troops were in a conflict zone and launching strikes on the Houthis. Chain of command goes from Prez to Sec Def to joint chiefs. The first two links in the chain were absent, begging the question of who exactly is in charge
Wow. I remember back when we ridiculed Reagan for being a dumb actor. He is positively statesmanlike compared to either Biden or Trump. Love Helen Thomas slapping that zinger on him! He parried reasonably well. Biden or Trump would have gotten irritated, flustered and blown her off.
I agree that Biden isn’t senile. Calling Biden senile is like calling him immobile. It’s not true but that doesn’t mean he isn’t too old - both mentally and physically - to do the hardest job in the world for another four years.
And I think this is becoming increasingly obvious to voters.
When I look up "senile" in Webster's, it says: "exhibiting a decline of cognitive abilities (such as memory) associated with old age."
I don't know where the idea that senility = dementia comes from, maybe that's what it reads in the medical texts, but in the dictionary and in common usage it just means you're old and noticeably a lot less sharp than you once were. And I'm pretty sure the common usage preceded any technical medical usage. People until recently didn't use terms like "cognitive decline."
Note that Trump is also senile by this definition -- it's easy to see in appearances from decades ago that he used to be much sharper and wittier. Though I think most observers would agree the change from 8 years ago isn't as obvious with Trump as it is with Biden. Biden, fairly or not, appears right now to be MORE senile and to have increased in senility more rapidly, which is why the word "senile" lands on him more successfully.
I am almost 82 and still working and running marathons. I don’t expect Biden to run a marathon, but he can hardly walk and cannot speak in coherent sentences. He is suffering from completely ibviius dementia, and most of my 80+ year led friends agree.
Tbh I think calling Biden "senile" is harsh and not accurate, and everybody ages differently - Bernie Sanders is older than Biden and is still cogent and energetic, for example. That said, it's clear that Biden's just not the same speaker that he was even five years ago. He has a *lot* of slips, and it's noticeable. It doesn't have to be medically diagnosed as senility to be concerning.
“ occasionally memory slips. That's it. Nothing more,”
It is simultaneously laughable and sad that you type this. Whether because you’re a hard core partisan and feel it necessary, or because you are deluding yourself because the obvious truth is too painful, I could not possibly say. But those are pretty much the only two choices.
I think, without any disrespect for your wife or loved ones, for the purposes of gauging capability to handle what may be the most difficult job on the planet during one of the most difficult times to hold it, I am more than happy with setting a ridiculously low bar for the definition of senility in this instance. Not that Trump does stellar on that metric either. But we need to be realistic about Biden's score, too.
My father succumbed to Alzheimer's at 83, and my mother to dementia at 93.
I still don't really understand the difference, but I see both of them in Biden. The fact that Jill, Barack and Hillary still find him a useful figurehead for them to control is disgusting.
As a physician, I can tell you that dementia and senility are nearly interchangeable terms. The former is currently favored by clinicians but that is almost a matter of fashion. The only distinction I can make is one of degree: one can be a little bit senile but I don’t see describing someone as a little bit demented. Although I hesitate to make any long-distance assessment, only the former is plausible in Biden’s case
My mother and stepmother both died of dementia, one 12 years after the official (late) diagnosis. I've dealt with it up close and personal for nearly 20 years. That press conference had me near tears.
The small and shrinking percentage of you trying to pass this off as occasional, or a stutter, are free to believe this, but I can't imagine you'll convince the 80% who believe what they see to unbelieve it.
Much as he deserves respect for taking down the Orange Menace, and much as he deserves admiration for wanting to soldier on, it's time to step down.
For the sake of him and his family, along with the rest of us, I pray he does so.
Biden isn't senile, but in my view the bar for "what is a reasonable level of mental acuity to expect from a president?" ought to be a lot higher than "not senile", and Biden doesn't meet that standard. (Though nor does Trump, of course.)
He isn’t senile he’s always been like this. All the gaffes when he was VP nothing has really changed. Now Trump is in clear cognitive decline. Forgetting election dates, what candidates he beat in the past, who his current opponents are. Missing names of his kids, etc.
Yes, yes, it is blindingly obvious that Trump has made many many many more “gaffes” that Biden over the last several months. Nothing whatsoever has changed with Biden.
Please please please keep repeating this.
Three quarters of the 30% of the country that will vote leftist regardless might even believe it.
I agree with the lack of data backing - but I think it applies to this piece as well. One thing Matt Yglesias has brought up is that in the limited number of comparable polls we have between Trump and Biden + other plausible dem candidates Biden is pretty clearly level with or ahead of those other options. So when Nate makes an assertion like "Biden is a below replacement level candidate" I'm open to believing that is true, but where's the data that should make me feel confident in that assertion?
To me it seems like it's pointing in the opposite direction. And if there's a reason that I should be skeptical of that, I'd hope that an expert like Nate could explain why I should take those polls with a grain of salt.
I think we see a comprehensive set of polls showing Trump leading. Nothing like this occurred in 2016 or 2020. Trump has leads in polls, which typically favor the DNC, at every level. Just a simple meta analysis reveals substantial problems for Biden
Be careful about the predictive power of polls. Pre-Dobbs, the Republicans generally outperformed their polls by a bit. Ever since the Dobbs decision, the Democrats have outperformed their polls in virtually every election, sometimes by large margins. This tells you that the sampling of polls no longer reflects the actual electorate in the same way it once did. The turnout model is wrong.
Dobbs moved the needle to be sure. I would concur with the non-predicative power of modern polls. But they also can be collectively useful. We see an overwhelming trend away from Biden. That's not happened before and has not changed.
It's not even just that Nate is doing more punditry imo. It's that some of his data-driven takes are weaker than I'm accustomed to seeing from Nate. Similar to you, I've followed Nate for basically my entire adult life, and it's disappointing to see.
(One example: Nate's "Trump is not inevitable in Iowa" piece)
I agree. The punditry is weak, but this is a guy I liked years ago because his data was solid. Now, he seems to be trying to fit the data to his punditry, and it’s not working.
Curious question, I’ve seen this comment in several forms - that Nate has drifted into punditry. I saw punditry heavily on fivethirtyeight but I haven’t noticed it myself from him. Would you be willing to give some examples?
Nah, you have free access to search so you can look. I’d say maybe a better way to word it is that the posts are less data focused. It’s not meant as a criticism so much as an observation… where we used to see a lot of regression analyses, statistical theorems tested to show pollsters fudging their results, etc, now we get more articles like this - where it’s more of a political position and the data is a smaller piece of the puzzle.
I don’t have any issue with that and I think a big part is that Nate is freed from the shackles of ABC, but I do miss the takes that were centered around some statistical analysis Nate did, or a model he built, rather than more of an “opinion” if that makes sense
Oh huh, who knew that a comment on a blog is a dissertation.
I wish I could live like you. In some blue MAGA bubble where your senile old man is somehow mentally fit and capable of being president through age 86. It honestly must be quite nice to be so naive, or have the ability to lie to yourself so thoroughly.
It obviously isn’t. The point is you should know better than making claims you can’t back up, especially with your background. Not going to address the nonsense politics since my comment had nothing to do with it.
Fair enough, I still have seen a fair amount of rigor or at least data underpinning (even if the article is an extrapolation) in his work. But you don’t owe me examples any more than I owe you agreement 🤷♂️
He isn't doing the job. He is being told what to do. He even reads the stage directions, shakes hands with someone who isn't there, and stumbles very frequently going up stairs. He was always a fool, but now he is a demented fool.
Aren't you Dems glad you went with him? and Kamala! haha
I keep asking this question and getting no answers - what evidence do you have of him being “senile”? And don’t say “just look at him” or “just listen to him.”
Yes. What evidence do you have his thinking is any less clear and cogent? He’s always been a poor verbal communicator, it doesn’t prove anything about his mental faculties.
Kevin McCarthy had every reason to cast doubt on Biden’s abilities - so why did he tell Republican allies in private that Biden was sharp in their conversations?
The McCarthy answer is actually quite simple. He was speaker and could not afford to tick off the WH and by keeping Biden in play, he aids his own side. There was no reason not to sustain the myth.
He made fun of Biden publicly while privately praising him!
“On a particularly sensitive matter, McCarthy mocked Biden's age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations — a contradiction that left a deep impression on the White House.”
If you are quoting the NYT March 18, 2023 article, which states McCarthy has told allies he has found Biden to be "sharp" in meetings. This is a vague, unattributed quote without any source which makes for easy generalizations. The article further states that Biden does not meet with McCarthy, so it would seem the sample size is small at best.
I don't know about "every" candidate. But Presidents certainly should be examined by a bipartisan medical board once a year. Under the 25A, Congress certainly has the power to set up such a board, have the doctors appointed equally by the majority and minority caucus in each House, and require an examination of the President and a report to Congress every year.
You don’t need any political boards if all the board members were Democrats they’d say that Biden was sane and mentally fit to be president. Stop with the damn gaslighting already. Just give them the damn test that’s all America and the world needs the competency test.
Not true, I am 80/and a Dem. I think Biden is sane but not cognitively balanced to be president. A high percentage of Americans do not want him or trump.
“Because you are one of the rare few being honest about what we can all see. ”
But in fact Silver is not being *completely* honest, because he suggests that the issue is “age” as euphemism for the real issue: dementia/senility.
Yes, it is an otherwise excellent article for someone on the center-left. But it’s telling that Silver can’t speak the *plain* truth when he’s supposedly speaking the truth. Though whether that says more about him or about the left overall (the large majority of his audience) is hard to say.
Reporting this post for misinformation. Biden is not senile, he is one of the best presidents in history. Open borders, inflation, and escalating towards world war 3 are good. Orange man bad. We need to keep him and Dean Phillips off the ballot in order to protect our sacred Democracy.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
It’s such a Substack experience to read a thoughtful and well-written article, go to the comments section, and see the most braindead responses imaginable.
He's just repeating the most brain dead ironic cynicism because he knows that's what Nate Silver readers crave. It's so rote, but protects them from looking at the data Nate claims to love.
Substack came to prominence as an organ for anti-science misinformation during Covid and this commenter is a fairly typical Substack subscriber. Nate is obviously a responsible and reasonable voice but I will never subscribe to another Substack because Substack is a steaming pile of manure. The Substack founders are unethical and only care about money and they rationalize the blood money they make under the pretext of “free speech”. Substack got a lot of people killed by platforming Covid misinformation about vaccines and masking and snake oil cures….buh free speech.
Why is it your business if they stuck ivermectin up their butts? Oh… I know why… you were one of those clowns decrying the maskless, ivermectin, while pretending you knew the science— the same “science” that Biden spewed in his town hall, that if you get the vax, you won’t get covid. Then we found out it’s all bullshit. You still get covid and you can give it to others. And the many international studies on the masks show no benefit.
Masks worked to slow the spread though…we have data that shows ivermectin prescriptions spiked in the southeast Delta death surge and so it was clearly ineffective as prescribed.
Meanwhile, the economic, educational and health fallout from the shutdown mandates are still being felt, but you don't care about that because it doesn't align with your full blown panic attack that started with the :world is ending" hysteria promulgated from the fear peddlers, all of whom had an agenda.
You are among the most ignorant on this platform. The early deaths were due to a major medical error— they were putting everybody on ventilators. It was a death sentence. Just on one topic — pick one —- get some fukking knowledge before you post.
That’s not medical error—that’s how the medical community deals with a NOVEL virus—trial and error. So the lockdowns slow the spread so the medical community has enough hospital beds and staff to deal with patients but also to buy time to develop best practices to treat the disease. Lockdowns and masking and social distancing very clearly slowed the spread…it wasn’t a silver bullet but nothing was.
DeSantis and Lapado promoted ivermectin and prescriptions spiked during the Delta death surge in the southeast…so it was ineffective at least as prescribed in Florida because Florida had an awful Delta wave as the median age of death actually declined.
Come on now. Substack may harbour misinformation (this is inevitable when it has no content moderation), but that's by no means how it "came to prominence". If you think the platform is dominated by COVID deniers, that must just be your filter bubble - doubtless you hate-followed a few terrible substacks and then the recommendation algorithm offered you nothing else. (And I pity you - being stuck in the company of such awful people must be soul-destroying!)
Taibbi is the biggest author on Substack. I think I just happened to sign up for his Substack before he blew up. He’s not a Covid denier but his comment section ended up pretty much all of the people that follow Alex Berenson. Btw, I’ve been around several people that came into a windfall of money and Taibbi exhibited all of the behavior of someone that knew they got lucky and were about to become a millionaire overnight.
Oh, and I just met someone worth at least $100 million and it’s because he worked for a company for 25 years whose stock was $5 a share until a few years ago. I checked out an old photo of him and he went from normal looking guy to Silicon Valley tech genius looking guy at some point in the last 5 years. So Taibbi will have new hair soon because he’s got to be worth over $5 million now thanks to Substack and the Twitter Files.
Arizona did the least in 2020 to mitigate spread and unfortunately Native American populations were ravaged and obviously the people that went to snort cocaine in Scottsdale don’t care. These people are very easily manipulated and they are still angry that they voted for Bush/Cheney who sent their neighbors’ sons to fight overseas while shipping their jobs to China. Check out my post about the bioweapon that hit East Palestine.
I think these three points are pretty complimentary:
a) Biden has been very good at the actual job of being president. Public communication aside (and that's a big caveat) there's nothing to indicate that his age has detrimentally affected this.
b) It's unclear whether this would continue throughout the entirety of a second term.
c) The fact that his age is negative affecting his ability to do public communication is *the* major handicap of his re-election campaign.
The problem is that he's locked in because of the choice of VP he made in 2020. Kamala Harris either cannot do what is necessary to appeal to the median American voter or she is unwilling to do so (maybe because her only competitive elections have been against other Democrats). If Biden steps down, even in Klein's brokered convention scenario, the institutional pressure behind Harris (or the damage to the coalition from defeating her) would be incredibly difficult to resist.
I agree with Nate's trial-by-media recommendation but the WH's calculations surely are:
1. Is Kamala Harris more likely to beat Trump than Biden is?
2. If 1=no, is there a strong chance of someone other than Harris being the nominee if Biden steps down?
If both questions=no then Biden stays and I think both questions are "no" at the moment.
"a) Biden has been very good at the actual job of being president. Public communication aside (and that's a big caveat) there's nothing to indicate that his age has detrimentally affected this."
Biden defenders forget that they're the ones making the positive claim "Biden has done well in office" and they have to provide evidence to back it up. It seems all they can muster is point out legislation passed in the 117th congress, which was the first democratic trifecta in 12 years.
I say this as someone who broadly agrees that he probably shouldn't run again, but if you are a left/center left voter then you've seen Biden:
1.) pass pretty significant legislation (Inflation Reduction, CHIPS, etc.), which has not been the norm since 2009
2.) give material support to Ukraine without boots on the ground
3.) advance left-leaning social causes through executive action
4.) navigate the economy so that inflation hasn't hit as hard as it has in peer countries (although I'd again say I think it's clear that inflation hit harder than the vibes crowd is willing to admit)
You might not agree with the policies being pushed through, but he's been fairly effective on pushing forward his agenda. That's not nothing.
Dude, you are conflating the fact that you like the left wing policies of the Biden Administration with the reality that the man himself has almost nothing to do with any of them.
On the off chance he can keep multiple coherent thoughts in his head, he surely can’t communicate them to anyone. Within his administration or to the voting public.
I’m not conflating anything as I’ve repeatedly said I’m not giving value judgements. For the record I agree with maybe 60% of his policies.
I was making an argument that he clearly had a direct impact (as evidenced by his legislative victories which we don’t get anymore and his foreign policy which is quintessential Biden). I also specifically said I do not trust him to be this effective in two years.
When the administration and both houses of Congress are of one party, it is much easier to get things done.
If you like the fact that unelected officials are getting the policies you want implemented, just say that. That’s very different from the idea that it is Biden himself that was responsible.
most of that is the bare minimum that any liberal president could accomplish. not really a testament to Biden when Bernie or Elizabeth Warren could've gotten all that stuff done and more.
also, what left-leaning social causes do you speak of? a greater push for EVs? money and arms for forever wars in the middle east and eastern europe? more police funding? real priorities for the American Left, those issues are.
Do you remember the rampant pessimism about legislation from 2020? It was received wisdom that Biden was being laughably naive that Republicans would vote for any bipartisan bills at all.
And certainly politics hasn't become a Kumbaya circle, but they did vote for those bipartisan bills, repeatedly. More than during the Obama administration.
Based on what we saw under Obama, Trump, and Bush 2’s second term, I am not optimistic that any random D could have gotten the legislation passed. Based on their records I’m also not optimistic about Ukraine, or getting out of Afghanistan (although I’m open to the critique that someone else could have done a smoother withdrawal, but I’d need to see an argument for it).
I’d say your argument is incoherent- you say any liberal president could have gotten what he’s gotten, then said he’s pushed through policies liberals don’t like. I’m not making a value judgement as to the policies themselves, simply saying he’s been more effective than most presidents at advancing his chosen agenda.
I’ll again state for the record that I think he should not be running again, and am not optimistic he could be equally effective in two years.
Liberals love all of Biden's policies, it's the left that despises him. Effective schmecktive, he hasn't made my life a single bit better, but Wall Street's at a new all-time high so of course the corporate media will sing his praises.
About (a) I’d disagree when it comes to foreign policy. The Afghan withdrawal debacle, the “minor incursion” comment just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ineffective response to Houthis, the weak enforcement of sanctions against Iran, etc. Maybe I’m just focusing on the negatives?
So without getting into a huge foreign policy debate, I'd push back on your points about Afghanistan and Ukraine but don't know as much about the Houthi and Iran situations.
I view the Afghan withdrawal as something that it was never possible to do in an orderly fashion but strategically it was the right call. The fact that the Afghan gov't collapsed so quickly shows that this wasn't a situation where a viable state could have endured without a strong American military presence. Reversing the Trump agreement would have meant ramping up the American presence in Afghanistan which, once Russia-Ukraine kicked off, suddenly leaves them very vulnerable if hostile powers want to support the Taliban and start killing Americans.
On Ukraine, I think the Biden administration played the early stages of it pretty masterfully, selectively leaking intelligence of what the Russians were about to do (and what they would claim) just before they did it to establish a clear narrative, coordinating as effective a sanctions regime as was possible (the way we exaggerate the effectiveness of economic sanctions is a separate story but the ones they did were pretty far reaching) and keeping NATO united and on-side given the dependence of Germany etc. on Russian gas. Where they've erred has been in hesitating too much in giving Ukraine heavier weapons to actually defeat Russia but I accept that they were trying to balance a genocidal dictator's views of what counts as 'escalation'. I think that balance came down too much in favour of being cautious but I don't think they've dropped the ball otherwise.
That you can defend the tactics of implementation of the withdrawal is astonishing. The rest of us can’t know whether this is due to willful lack of information, convenient memory lapse over what happened, self-delusion or hard-core partisanship.
But you express only illogic with your assertion that the fact that the government fell instantly given our execution means all other tactical plans and execution would have fared about as badly. This simply does not follow.
I'm sympathetic to your argument, and I'm far from a Biden defender. It doesn't appear to have been very competent. But what difference did it make?
I don't think the US-installed government there could ever have endured forever without the support of US forces, but it seems like it could have endured longer. Just compare it to the Soviet-backed Afghan state. But again, what difference did it make?
The main frustration I have is that we were lied to, the operation was thoroughly rotten and corrupt for a long time, and no one was ever properly punished for it. I don't think the US President should be expected to micromanage his generals' plans. And they were given a long time to plan! He delayed the initial withdrawal!
But what he can be expected to do is make heads roll when his generals and his intelligence establishment demonstrate thorough incompetence and corruption. That's the real failure that I see.
The pullout was sped up, AGAINST the strong recommendations of the generals, so that the Biden Administration could put out a press release in time for 9/11 of that year that we were out.
It’s not about “forever”, I said above I was fine with the strategic decision to pull out.
And there was in fact *plenty* of additional micromanagement from the Administration (no doubt not by Biden himself) that caused, e.g. the Bagram airport not to be protected, since given the troops they were allowed to have on the ground they could only defend 1 and were told that it needed to be Kabul.
It matters both because Americans died because of the implementation, and far more than necessary Afghanis who supported us died because of the implementation. And because other potential allies in the future will be much more reticent to work with us.
Heads didn’t roll because as Biden himself said again recently, he doesn’t think any of his people screwed up.
All of what I say is easily searchable; much of it you can even find in the left-wing media
Thanks, that's a good response, and you seem to have more recollection of the details than I do.
As I understand the Bagram situation, the generals wanted to keep more forces present for longer in order to have a presence both at Bagram and Kabul. The Admin basically gave them a troop total that was so low they could hold one. Then ended up having to send troops back to facilitate the evacuation anyway. So I think your criticism is probably fair (though I'm fine with assigning some blame to all parties).
It does seem like in a proper society, people resign or are fired after a debacle like the collapse of Afghanistan, even if they're not wholly to blame. Just to take responsibility, to acknowledge that a big screw-up happened, that a lot of sacrifices were demanded of our troops and taxpayers for 20 years and there was nothing to show for it, and we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Even if it sometimes ends up as a form of scapegoating as the President dodges all the blame and dumps it on a fall guy, I think that's STILL a much better custom than the alternative we went with: to argue about who was to blame for a short while, and then just move past it after no one anywhere accepts any blame or loses his job. The message I receive is this sort of thing is no big deal and we're fine if it happens again.
Depending on how they handled it, there would be a good shot to time it to maximize Kamala's appeal. Biden steps down in July, citing a health crisis, asking Americans to rally around the first woman president. Almost immediately, Trump and conservative media have to pivot to attacking her, there's no time to sit back, but by doing so they play right into the narrative the Dems would've set up. Media can characterize them as sexist bullies, and even suggest that attacking Kamala is a national security threat because it undermines US authority during a fragile transition. She gets nominated a few weeks later at the convention where every state delegation and speaker talks about bravely defending her from those unfair bullying Republicans who are endangering the nation and trying to send women back to the kitchen blah blah blah. The whole script practically writes itself.
If you think calling Kamala detractors "sexist bullies" is going to lead to a win, then you're right -- this script did write itself. It's also a rerun from 2016 and it seems you've learned absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I think the “criticizing Harris is sexist” strategy helps Republicans more than Democrats. It’s a turnoff to most people I encounter who aren’t already reasonably solid Dems. And it makes her look weak, as if she can’t stand on her own merits. Which is already her reputation (deserved or not)
you definitely don't say it. but you won't have to say it.
trump IS sexist; to deny this would be as absurd denying biden's swiss cheese brain. ditto for vast swathes of the Republican Party, both in terms of the professionals and the voters. there are two issues the Dems need to keep at high salience to win this, abortion and the fact that MAGA is made up of weird freaks from top to bottom, and Kamala does both those jobs well enough (as long as she doesn't fuck it up by overplaying her hand on that, which is entirely plausible)
I am a 66 year old physician. I don't have even a traffic ticket on my record for the past 15 years. I still work 50+ hours a week and pay an enormous amount of federal and state taxes, but because I prefer Trump over the inept current occupant of the white House you and your ilk want to label me as a "weird freak" or radical right wing nut job.
More and more those who do not agree with the left are beginning to understand that anything short of complete support of the left's agenda or our complete silence and non-participation in the political arena will satisfy the hardcore leftists. As a result, your insults, name-calling and petty attacks on a huge segment of American society hold little or no significance for those you disagree with. Your arrogance certainly doesn't convince us to ever think your position is legitimate, considerate or reasonable.
If you're not a weird freak, I'm not talking about you. And if you don't see that MAGA is, while also encompassing Republicans that (for all I vehemently disagree with them on politics) are more or less normal people, includes a wide plethora of weird freaks, then you're in a bubble, deluding yourself, or some combination of the two.
First, most normal Americans don’t have the same definition of sexist as you do. Second they don’t care about it in relation to many other important things, such as how incompetent and entitled the almost-certain-to-be-President is.
Most normal Americans have a definition of sexist that encompasses Trump's behavior. He is not a popular man, and I think the Venn Diagram of "people who don't like Trump" and "people who think he's a boorish, sexist pig" is at least circular.
You're not wrong that at least many Americans are even more concerned about putting a decrepit old lich in the Oval Office, which is only one reason why I am posting "hey, Kamala could be ok if we're lucky" in an article advocating that said decrepit old lich drop out of the race
And as a NeverBidener (and admittedly at this point a NeverAnyNationalDemocrat-er) I very much hope that you and your side choose to attack "MAGA" and other Trump voters. That approach is sure to work well.
Of course, if I were really smart, I'd shut up and not say this, but given the reality that so many of you think that attacking Trump's voters is a way to win elections, even telling you that it's almost surely counterproductive will not get you to stop.
But for kick and grins, let me ask you a question: why doesn't the fact that the large majority of under-30 Dem voters today actively support the women-raping, baby-decapitating, virulently anti-LGBTQ+ terrorists Hamas (NOT just “the Palestinians”, but actually Hamas by name) cause you to abandon voting for Dems?
And if it doesn't, can you tell me again why the beliefs of some supporters of a politician matter so much, but only conditionally (i.e. when it’s the “other” side)?
The key difference here is that in the scenario I propose, Biden would be resigning and invoking a combination of patriotism and sympathy. That maneuver gives it a paternalistic veneer, and therefore a broader audience than just girl power feminists. Hillary couldn't do this because she was phony and unlikable, and Kamala could not successfully invoke it on her own for the same reasons, but I think Biden could do it FOR her. A lot of normies would be inclined to defend a woman (more than they would defend a man in this situation) who was suddenly thrust into the White House and attacked, out of paternalism not 1970s style feminism. You can list off all her faults and failures, and there's many and I wouldn't even disagree with ya, but I still think that would happen.
Clearly, the Democrat establishment is being sexist and racist for not taking Biden out and elevating Kamala, right?
If these two were the sitting Republican president and Veep, and the facts identical, is there any doubt whatsoever that most leftists would be hurling that charge at the GOP?
I think you're right. The problem would be if her current reputation as unlikable is an earned reputation and whether she could taken a Biden-handoff boost and keep the momentum or instead blow it up.
Im in the sensible middle and would never vote for Kamala. She was given an opportunity as border czar and has failed- unless your definition of success is 10 million ‘refugees’ and chaos in the cities and border areas.
In the real world, you rarely get to time things like that. Best Laid Plans of Mice and all that. More likely, Biden simply croaks at a time nobody can predict in advance, and KH is President.
Biden's clearly in terrible shape, but the last president we had who was under ninety when he died was Nixon. Odds are, neither him nor DJT are gonna die of old-man problems before their tenth decades.
Public speaking is the one function the President can't hide from. Advisers, staff, and "handlers" can do most other things. I think Biden has an awful lot riding on the SOTU on March 7. I'm sure they will have him fully rested and maximally juiced for that performance. Let's see how he does.
Would not bypassing Harris be both sexist and racist? Seriously, defend how it would not (other than answering “well, they should insert Michele Obama”…)
Can someone just explain to me what makes Kamala Harris so unpopular? From where I'm standing she's just a really vanilla politician - not that exciting, sure, but equally nobody really hates vanilla.
There's a variety of reasons she's unpopular, and some variance depending on which demographic or political background is being considered:
-She ran a bad campaign with obvious slipups when running for president.
-Her previous work as a prosecutor in CA shows her railroading minor criminals and pushing for more jail time.
-Joe Biden says he was specifically looking for a black woman to be his VP, and that made Kamala look like a diversity hire/incompetent stand in.
-Kamala is fairly famous for rising in politics through personal relationships, specifically sexual favors to powerful men in California - not exactly a feminist icon.
-She has a personal reputation as being incredibly mean and hard to work with, rumors abound of high turnover in her office.
-She's done a really bad job of even basic photo-op jobs while VP - talking weird at press conferences, disappearing from publicly assigned tasks (she's supposed to be in charge of the border crisis and was down there a few times, and then we don't hear anything at all about a change in direction or if she's still doing that, etc.).
She's not the worst person to ever run for office, but she's got a pretty large amount of baggage and unfortunately very very little to recommend her positively.
I'm not the target audience, but I'm struggling to think of anything specifically positive about her. I know there are some people who like her, but other than demographic categories she fits (black, woman) and the basic outlines of her resume (which comes with baggage as mentioned above), I don't know that I've heard anything specific about why people might like her.
When she accused Joe in the debates of opposing busing, I knew she was stupid (how much of the electorate even knows what busing was?), incompetent (she printed up the t-shirts but didn’t prepare for the inevitable “you rode on a bus” retort) and unscrupulous (stirring up racial conflict for the tiniest of self-interested reasons). I’ve seen nothing since to change that impression.
I want to agree with the trial-by-media recommendation -- one sticking point is it's the people in media saying it, so it's self serving. "We are important, you need to talk to us!"
Also, not persuaded that the marginal voter is moved by interviews with editorial boards or by CBS.
Any suggestion for Biden to step aside naturally suggests Harris will step up, unless you say otherwise. Do you think Kamala Harris is an above replacement level Democrat candidate? I'm even more skeptical about her than I am Biden
She is at least not senile, which probably makes her a slight step up, but no… she’s a terrible choice too. There’s no good solution here, but the worst one is running the guy that can’t even do an interview.
I love Ezra Klein's idea of taking the nominating contest to the convention. No more coronations. Let the candidates introduce themselves, debate daily, give speeches, and then be chosen by the delegates. If Kamala is the best choice to beat Trump, then great.
Right at this moment Biden appears weaker than Hillary on election day 2016. Hillary was always ahead in the polls compared to Trump, and Biden was mostly ahead in 2020. That Biden is polling behind Trump now says he's especially weak.
I think an open convention might be the best possible thing for Democrats right now. They're stuck between Biden and Harris with no good way out of either candidate. An open convention gives them an opportunity to let the chips fall where they may, and I think would be a big relief to the voting public. Even if Harris got selected at that point I think it would be a big win for her, as it showed a 2% candidate in 2020 making her own way instead of riding Biden's coattails.
Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock are two more that come to mind. How about Gretchen Whitmer?
What liberal would vote for Biden but not any of the above? And what "Biden's too old, don't like Trump but may stay home" voter would be more turned off by any of these than Biden? What "Biden is too old and I am considering Trump" voter would be pushed even more into the Trump camp with any of the above?
These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. Who are the voter cohorts and why are they abandoning Biden? How would they respond to a different candidate? The candidate has to do 2 things: pull back some soft Biden-Trump support, and get soft Democrat support (such as pro-choice) to the polls. I don't believe for a second that ANYONE in the Democratic party wouldn't support the D candidate, whomever it is; they aren't our focus.
I am generally right-leaning and can't vote for Biden, though I don't know if I can bring myself to vote for Trump either.
I would give serious consideration to a non-Biden candidate from the Democrats. I would feel much better about that prospect if the candidate earned the nomination in some way (as opposed to Biden passing the baton to Kamala and everyone just accepting that).
2016 Trump? I would vote for him at this point. He's been acting more oddly, even unhinged a bit as of late. I know I'm not getting an accurate depiction of him since so many who report on him actively hate him and want him to lose, but it's hard to deny that Trump says and does a lot of dumb stuff and that seems to be accelerating.
I would also just generally want a younger candidate. 2016 Trump was 69 at this point, but he's 77 now and would be 82 leaving office. That's really old - older than Biden is now that we're all so concerned about.
Warnock or Whitmer I think would both be great general election candidates (Booker probably had his shot in 2020) but the problem is the process rather than the bench. If it was an open primary with no incumbent then either of those two would probably do well and probably beat Kamala Harris.
It also doesn’t take into account the party faction that wants her to be the First Black Woman President and are counting on her to be their elevator to power. They would rather back her and lose than concede to someone who can win. The party is all factions now. Party victory is not their priority.
From what little I've seen, Harris seems pretty sharp when she's not being (mis)managed. She might not be ideal, but she's the natural heir apparent. If they still had 2020 Biden, I'm confident he'd whip Trump again, but it's looking like we don't.
If the Dems can't do what Nate Silver suggests and pour doubters like me a big ol' cup of Shut the Fuck Up, then I'll say Harris probably a better bet than 2024 Biden. Even if she's not "replacement level".
I haven’t been the biggest fan of your analysis lately (just being honest - I think it’s drifted more towards punditry and a bit away from data. You were the one that got me into Statistics as a teenager and eventually towards my PhD.
With that said… this article is fantastic. Because you are one of the rare few being honest about what we can all see. Biden is senile, and he’s not capable of handling this job now or especially over the next 5 years.
And like you said: if we are wrong, prove it. But they won’t, because they can’t. Or if they try to prove it, it’ll end up being something scripted again that they try to pass off as evidence of mental acuity.
Thank you for writing this up
You claim "Biden is senile."
Baloney. You don't even know to use the correct term. My wife has dementia and is in a memory care facility. I visit her every day and see dementia (what you mistakenly call senility) in person and up close with her and all her acquaintances there.
Joe Biden is an older man and has occasionally memory slips. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I turn 87 next month. I see various cerebral impairments in my peers all the time. You're obviously quite young and lack real world experience. (The fact that you were reading Nate Silver as a teenager reveals this. I was a teenager thirty years before Nate Silver was even born.)
Biden couldn’t write anything close to what you just wrote. He wouldn’t even finish a paragraph. He can’t speak off the cuff, he can’t remember when his son died, he doesn’t know the president of Mexico.
Call it whatever you want, but he’s not fit for the job and 3/4 of this incredibly polarized country agree.
>couldn’t write anything close to what you just wrote
You have no way of knowing this. You're just repeating GOP/Fox/Newsmax talking points.
Oh for goodness’ sake, Albert. You are personalizing a political situation. Perhaps Joe Biden is not as badly off as the people you see in the “ memory care” unit, but that hardly says that he is fit for the job he holds. I am not quite as old as you but certainly closer to you than to Anony. Biden has much more than a few memory slips. He has many slips. He has trouble navigating his way. He is very easily angered. He has many days off and his days on are very short. Biden has never been known for his brain power but this is simply sad. I would like to see more sympathy toward his situation.
You're relying on cherry-picking. That time he confused the name of Mexico's president was in a conference where he otherwise spoke fine, but people like you ignore the rest because it doesn't fit your narrative. The fact that he's generally saying things correctly means that gaffes like that aren't representative.
People like me? You don’t know me. I did not speak of the president of Mexico. But, “ people like you” is kinda a loaded expression. Don’t you think?
Let's hear your evidence that he's not fit for the job that he's currently holding and has for the last 3 years, drama-free. You're speaking as if he's not the freaking President right now, and has been a solid one at that.
Seriously. Who are you even speaking to right now?
He's been one of the shittiest presidents we've ever had. Pretty much the only PotUS he looks good next to is DJT.
So, no evidence. Got it.
It doesn't matter if he is a slobbering half wit. He is good enough for government work and well able to, once again, beat the bete noir of Western civilization. Biden, Obama,Bush and Clinton were establishment figures, like all presidents. Donny is the candidate of Koch and the enemy of order, progress and decency. There is no rational defense of this malignant narcissist, his only positive effect is he inspires people to embrace socialism. Biden is the horse we have, we better bet the farm on him and move heaven and earth to keep him in office.
Considering we're now at the point of choosing between two unfit men, both experiencing cognitive decline, both incapable of writing and speaking coherently, it seems worth getting into the details.
Average Biden voter, 87 and out of touch with the majority of young people lol. The jokes write themselves.
I'd love to hear Biden simply read out a sentence like “I see various cerebral impairments in my peers all the time.” Who wants to bet that he could manage it without a flub?
You don’t think the fact that he has a stutter is a big part of this?! Look at videos of Biden from year ago - he flubbed things all the time then too!
Enough with the stutter excuse. This is not stuttering. Just compare Biden speaking when he was VP to now. It’s night and day.
No. I've never encountered anyone else with a stutter who says he's been speaking with dead people because of it, and neither has anyone else.
Stutter bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha
This is a troll.
Ahh, the battlecry of the progressive throughout the ages: “anyone who disagrees with me must be acting in bad faith, because my beliefs are obviously true and perfect that no one could possibly have a sincere disagreement with them”. You all will never change, will you.
No, it's troll-y. Period. You hear the dude on TV right now. He doesn't fumble that crap.
What a nasty, hateful, ageist thing to say. It's as low as saying Black people are lazy and Jews are untrustworthy. And you, for all your youthful sagacity, can't even punctuate correctly.
Average boomer, randomly bringing up racial stereotypes to lecture a young'un about using incorrect punctuation. As I said, the jokes write themselves.
I'm gonna go with "this is a troll account pretending to be a kid".
I can be 21 and dumb and be a real person too
Thumbs up and a like for using baloney! On a serious note I think the solution is pretty easy. Like Nate said Do a bunch of interviews and act like a normal president running for reelection . Remember due to Covid we never even got to see Biden run in 2020.
If he can’t/wont run a campaign like pretty much every other president then I think the default is that he has serious enough age related cognitive decline that concern is justified. I am not saying that this concern would outweigh concerns about Trump, only that is it is disingenuous to assume that individuals with this concern are acting in bad faith or that it is not legitimate.
I agree with you, but also feel inclined to point out, we had similar discussions regarding Biden in the primary leading up to 2020. There were tons of people claiming Biden was hiding in his basement refusing to campaign, and it made him look weak. The fact is, he ended up winning the primary handily. He did come out and campaign. Then he beat trump in the general election. That record against trump is better than any other democrat who’s run against trump.
When I think about which unprecedented feature of a presidential election I would rather have in 2024, Biden dropping out late with the DNC picking Trumps opponent, OR, running the oldest candidate in history, I think I take the candidate with the record of beating trump already. The fact is, this argument against Biden running for reelection needed to be made 4 years ago, and it may have been made, but it didn’t work. The only purpose of publishing stories like this is it allows the author the ability to save face if trump wins again (many including Nate said they didn’t believe he would win the first time).
And the fact is, it’s a low risk position to take. If trump loses no one will care that anyone called Biden too old. I think as the primary wraps up we will see Biden ramp up his campaign and the wagons will circle around him. He will do the interviews and I’m fairly confident he will sound presidential compared to the orange man from Florida.
I tend to agree with this. I think people equate campaigning in 2024 with campaigning in 1952. It just isn't the same.
Also, who actually thinks that people don't know who Donald Trump is at this point? If you know who he is, you're either DEFINITELY voting for him...or not. If you're on the fence and you're of the "they're all too old" ilk, then you're probably staying home.
We should also come to grips with the fact that Trump will get 40% of the vote even if he pulls out a gun and shoots someone on stage. You can't argue with these people - they're not receptive to your message. They're also not enough to elect Trump.
What is it that you hate about Trump?
What do you like about trump?
Too right- Biden is vigorous and on the ball and fully up to the job of CIC. They’re just hiding him because they don’t want to take a big lead too early 😂
If you want to compare Biden’s mental status to a politician we know was in mental decline, here is a clip of Regan’s last press conference. Taking unscripted questions and giving detailed answers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_puNc2MpCA
I can’t even imagine Biden getting through the opening remarks. He should not be in any high pressure decision making capacity. Not to worry- he probably isn’t. Remember he didn’t didn’t speak to his Sec Def for over a week while US troops were in a conflict zone and launching strikes on the Houthis. Chain of command goes from Prez to Sec Def to joint chiefs. The first two links in the chain were absent, begging the question of who exactly is in charge
Wow. I remember back when we ridiculed Reagan for being a dumb actor. He is positively statesmanlike compared to either Biden or Trump. Love Helen Thomas slapping that zinger on him! He parried reasonably well. Biden or Trump would have gotten irritated, flustered and blown her off.
Trump mental acuity is exceptional. Don’t let the TDS skew reality.
You realize that exceptional is not a synonym for good or excellent right?
New AP poll https://apnews.com/article/biden-state-of-union-mental-capacity-trump-reelection-66d8784586d21f30885d8153f949510c
I agree that Biden isn’t senile. Calling Biden senile is like calling him immobile. It’s not true but that doesn’t mean he isn’t too old - both mentally and physically - to do the hardest job in the world for another four years.
And I think this is becoming increasingly obvious to voters.
When I look up "senile" in Webster's, it says: "exhibiting a decline of cognitive abilities (such as memory) associated with old age."
I don't know where the idea that senility = dementia comes from, maybe that's what it reads in the medical texts, but in the dictionary and in common usage it just means you're old and noticeably a lot less sharp than you once were. And I'm pretty sure the common usage preceded any technical medical usage. People until recently didn't use terms like "cognitive decline."
Note that Trump is also senile by this definition -- it's easy to see in appearances from decades ago that he used to be much sharper and wittier. Though I think most observers would agree the change from 8 years ago isn't as obvious with Trump as it is with Biden. Biden, fairly or not, appears right now to be MORE senile and to have increased in senility more rapidly, which is why the word "senile" lands on him more successfully.
"voters" = NYT columnists
I am almost 82 and still working and running marathons. I don’t expect Biden to run a marathon, but he can hardly walk and cannot speak in coherent sentences. He is suffering from completely ibviius dementia, and most of my 80+ year led friends agree.
Tbh I think calling Biden "senile" is harsh and not accurate, and everybody ages differently - Bernie Sanders is older than Biden and is still cogent and energetic, for example. That said, it's clear that Biden's just not the same speaker that he was even five years ago. He has a *lot* of slips, and it's noticeable. It doesn't have to be medically diagnosed as senility to be concerning.
“ occasionally memory slips. That's it. Nothing more,”
It is simultaneously laughable and sad that you type this. Whether because you’re a hard core partisan and feel it necessary, or because you are deluding yourself because the obvious truth is too painful, I could not possibly say. But those are pretty much the only two choices.
Albert- we are talking about Biden. Not you. Not your wife.
I think, without any disrespect for your wife or loved ones, for the purposes of gauging capability to handle what may be the most difficult job on the planet during one of the most difficult times to hold it, I am more than happy with setting a ridiculously low bar for the definition of senility in this instance. Not that Trump does stellar on that metric either. But we need to be realistic about Biden's score, too.
My father succumbed to Alzheimer's at 83, and my mother to dementia at 93.
I still don't really understand the difference, but I see both of them in Biden. The fact that Jill, Barack and Hillary still find him a useful figurehead for them to control is disgusting.
And the media pretend it's normal.
As a physician, I can tell you that dementia and senility are nearly interchangeable terms. The former is currently favored by clinicians but that is almost a matter of fashion. The only distinction I can make is one of degree: one can be a little bit senile but I don’t see describing someone as a little bit demented. Although I hesitate to make any long-distance assessment, only the former is plausible in Biden’s case
Being pedantic about word choice is a way to be technically correct and still lose the argument.
My mother and stepmother both died of dementia, one 12 years after the official (late) diagnosis. I've dealt with it up close and personal for nearly 20 years. That press conference had me near tears.
The small and shrinking percentage of you trying to pass this off as occasional, or a stutter, are free to believe this, but I can't imagine you'll convince the 80% who believe what they see to unbelieve it.
Much as he deserves respect for taking down the Orange Menace, and much as he deserves admiration for wanting to soldier on, it's time to step down.
For the sake of him and his family, along with the rest of us, I pray he does so.
Biden isn't senile, but in my view the bar for "what is a reasonable level of mental acuity to expect from a president?" ought to be a lot higher than "not senile", and Biden doesn't meet that standard. (Though nor does Trump, of course.)
The truth hurts I guess.
He isn’t senile he’s always been like this. All the gaffes when he was VP nothing has really changed. Now Trump is in clear cognitive decline. Forgetting election dates, what candidates he beat in the past, who his current opponents are. Missing names of his kids, etc.
Yes, yes, it is blindingly obvious that Trump has made many many many more “gaffes” that Biden over the last several months. Nothing whatsoever has changed with Biden.
Please please please keep repeating this.
Three quarters of the 30% of the country that will vote leftist regardless might even believe it.
But not even 10% of the rest of the country do.
I agree with the lack of data backing - but I think it applies to this piece as well. One thing Matt Yglesias has brought up is that in the limited number of comparable polls we have between Trump and Biden + other plausible dem candidates Biden is pretty clearly level with or ahead of those other options. So when Nate makes an assertion like "Biden is a below replacement level candidate" I'm open to believing that is true, but where's the data that should make me feel confident in that assertion?
To me it seems like it's pointing in the opposite direction. And if there's a reason that I should be skeptical of that, I'd hope that an expert like Nate could explain why I should take those polls with a grain of salt.
I think we see a comprehensive set of polls showing Trump leading. Nothing like this occurred in 2016 or 2020. Trump has leads in polls, which typically favor the DNC, at every level. Just a simple meta analysis reveals substantial problems for Biden
It’s February
Be careful about the predictive power of polls. Pre-Dobbs, the Republicans generally outperformed their polls by a bit. Ever since the Dobbs decision, the Democrats have outperformed their polls in virtually every election, sometimes by large margins. This tells you that the sampling of polls no longer reflects the actual electorate in the same way it once did. The turnout model is wrong.
Dobbs moved the needle to be sure. I would concur with the non-predicative power of modern polls. But they also can be collectively useful. We see an overwhelming trend away from Biden. That's not happened before and has not changed.
If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize, it’s that polls mean nothing (i.e. mid-term Red Wave)…
And yet anyone that isn’t Biden does worse, so…
It's not even just that Nate is doing more punditry imo. It's that some of his data-driven takes are weaker than I'm accustomed to seeing from Nate. Similar to you, I've followed Nate for basically my entire adult life, and it's disappointing to see.
(One example: Nate's "Trump is not inevitable in Iowa" piece)
538 also blew the last 4 national elections. I wouldn’t take his analysis very seriously.
I agree. The punditry is weak, but this is a guy I liked years ago because his data was solid. Now, he seems to be trying to fit the data to his punditry, and it’s not working.
Curious question, I’ve seen this comment in several forms - that Nate has drifted into punditry. I saw punditry heavily on fivethirtyeight but I haven’t noticed it myself from him. Would you be willing to give some examples?
Nah, you have free access to search so you can look. I’d say maybe a better way to word it is that the posts are less data focused. It’s not meant as a criticism so much as an observation… where we used to see a lot of regression analyses, statistical theorems tested to show pollsters fudging their results, etc, now we get more articles like this - where it’s more of a political position and the data is a smaller piece of the puzzle.
I don’t have any issue with that and I think a big part is that Nate is freed from the shackles of ABC, but I do miss the takes that were centered around some statistical analysis Nate did, or a model he built, rather than more of an “opinion” if that makes sense
🤡 Reply. Would your PhD advisor accept “Nah, you have free access to search” as a response? You made a claim, back it up.
Oh huh, who knew that a comment on a blog is a dissertation.
I wish I could live like you. In some blue MAGA bubble where your senile old man is somehow mentally fit and capable of being president through age 86. It honestly must be quite nice to be so naive, or have the ability to lie to yourself so thoroughly.
It obviously isn’t. The point is you should know better than making claims you can’t back up, especially with your background. Not going to address the nonsense politics since my comment had nothing to do with it.
TL;DR: don’t be a dick
I think you were being the dick w/ clown reply - you are welcome to disagree with his observation w/out that comment.
You were the clown errr dick 🤡
Where did Anthony say anything about Joe Biden?
Ah- all I need to do is cherry pick some data you agree with and it is no longer punditry- got it
I think his data selection seems more purposed to support his opinion.
Fair enough, I still have seen a fair amount of rigor or at least data underpinning (even if the article is an extrapolation) in his work. But you don’t owe me examples any more than I owe you agreement 🤷♂️
I’m thinking of articles like these. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-president-trump-is-like-a-terrible-poker-player/
My question: Who sent out the memo telling our watchdog press it was now okay to report the obvious?
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/joe-bidens-toast?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
“He can’t handle the job”…that he’s currently doing.
This makes zero sense.
He isn't doing the job. He is being told what to do. He even reads the stage directions, shakes hands with someone who isn't there, and stumbles very frequently going up stairs. He was always a fool, but now he is a demented fool.
Aren't you Dems glad you went with him? and Kamala! haha
He literally needs cue cards to know what "his" policy positions are when talking to potential donors
I keep asking this question and getting no answers - what evidence do you have of him being “senile”? And don’t say “just look at him” or “just listen to him.”
Old and senile are not the same thing.
The definition of senility is the loss of mental faculties due to old age. Are you seriously going to conclude this does not apply to Biden?
Yes. What evidence do you have his thinking is any less clear and cogent? He’s always been a poor verbal communicator, it doesn’t prove anything about his mental faculties.
Kevin McCarthy had every reason to cast doubt on Biden’s abilities - so why did he tell Republican allies in private that Biden was sharp in their conversations?
The McCarthy answer is actually quite simple. He was speaker and could not afford to tick off the WH and by keeping Biden in play, he aids his own side. There was no reason not to sustain the myth.
He made fun of Biden publicly while privately praising him!
“On a particularly sensitive matter, McCarthy mocked Biden's age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations — a contradiction that left a deep impression on the White House.”
That’s literally the opposite of your theory!
If you are quoting the NYT March 18, 2023 article, which states McCarthy has told allies he has found Biden to be "sharp" in meetings. This is a vague, unattributed quote without any source which makes for easy generalizations. The article further states that Biden does not meet with McCarthy, so it would seem the sample size is small at best.
His verbal communication has deteriorated even compared to his second VP term.
And of course, its not just that, it's his very poor memory.
Though I'm sure you think Robert Hur is on Putin's payroll or something.
Obviously, Biden is senile. The question is to what degree.
se·nile
/ˈsēˌnīl,ˈseˌnīl/
adjective
(of a person) having or showing the weaknesses or diseases of old age, especially a loss of mental faculties.
"she couldn't cope with her senile husband"
Every candidate for any political office should have a cognitive test on a yearly basis.
I don't know about "every" candidate. But Presidents certainly should be examined by a bipartisan medical board once a year. Under the 25A, Congress certainly has the power to set up such a board, have the doctors appointed equally by the majority and minority caucus in each House, and require an examination of the President and a report to Congress every year.
You don’t need any political boards if all the board members were Democrats they’d say that Biden was sane and mentally fit to be president. Stop with the damn gaslighting already. Just give them the damn test that’s all America and the world needs the competency test.
Not true, I am 80/and a Dem. I think Biden is sane but not cognitively balanced to be president. A high percentage of Americans do not want him or trump.
Biden has a 39% of Americans who like him.
lol. Keep lying to yourself, we will see how well it works in the election.
There are many compilation clips on YouTube with Biden’s verbal mistakes. So, so many of them.
He was doing that 30 years ago!
No. If you watch him from when he was VP to now the change is obvious.
But he stutters a lot tho that’s the issue stuttering
Goes to show you that anyone can be President. A can of beans can be President. Doesn’t matter who it is obviously.
The beans can only be president if they are 35 years old!!
“Old and senile are not the same thing”
100% correct.
Trump and Bernie are old, but not senile.
Biden is old and so obviously senile that to deny it is Orwellian.
“Just listen to him” might not be a reasonable standard if it were only 1 or two instances, but it’s a large - no, enormous - body of work now.
But if he does what Silver suggests and gets out there and demonstrates otherwise, that would perhaps be evidence that he is not
Why is Biden and his handlers not doing a competency test -> there’s all the evidence you need
Pretty sure he can say “Person, woman, man, camera, TV” in order
Yeah I’m sure he can if so why not take the test
Because it’s meaningless? Do you really even believe Trump took it?
“Because you are one of the rare few being honest about what we can all see. ”
But in fact Silver is not being *completely* honest, because he suggests that the issue is “age” as euphemism for the real issue: dementia/senility.
Yes, it is an otherwise excellent article for someone on the center-left. But it’s telling that Silver can’t speak the *plain* truth when he’s supposedly speaking the truth. Though whether that says more about him or about the left overall (the large majority of his audience) is hard to say.
Good job. Now go back to papa pootin and lick his ass, mouse, he'll throw you some more crumbs.
Reporting this post for misinformation. Biden is not senile, he is one of the best presidents in history. Open borders, inflation, and escalating towards world war 3 are good. Orange man bad. We need to keep him and Dean Phillips off the ballot in order to protect our sacred Democracy.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/nina-jankowicz-ministry-of-truth-scary-poppins-
It’s such a Substack experience to read a thoughtful and well-written article, go to the comments section, and see the most braindead responses imaginable.
Substack doesn’t have a sarcasm detector yet ;)
Sarcasm. Thank God! For a second there I thought you were using Orwell nonironically.
A very internet experience in general.
The worst part is that he appears to not even understand why you called his comment brain-dead.
How to Subvert Reality with Some Lying Doofus on Substack
He's just repeating the most brain dead ironic cynicism because he knows that's what Nate Silver readers crave. It's so rote, but protects them from looking at the data Nate claims to love.
You can’t get around the fact that the Biden administration are too scared for their candidate to do basic televised interviews.
"too scared"
Substack came to prominence as an organ for anti-science misinformation during Covid and this commenter is a fairly typical Substack subscriber. Nate is obviously a responsible and reasonable voice but I will never subscribe to another Substack because Substack is a steaming pile of manure. The Substack founders are unethical and only care about money and they rationalize the blood money they make under the pretext of “free speech”. Substack got a lot of people killed by platforming Covid misinformation about vaccines and masking and snake oil cures….buh free speech.
Yeah, brah, Free Speech! You want to live in censor land, most of us here don't.
Most commenters on Substack want to stick ivermectin up their buttholes…dream big!!
Why is it your business if they stuck ivermectin up their butts? Oh… I know why… you were one of those clowns decrying the maskless, ivermectin, while pretending you knew the science— the same “science” that Biden spewed in his town hall, that if you get the vax, you won’t get covid. Then we found out it’s all bullshit. You still get covid and you can give it to others. And the many international studies on the masks show no benefit.
Masks worked to slow the spread though…we have data that shows ivermectin prescriptions spiked in the southeast Delta death surge and so it was clearly ineffective as prescribed.
Meanwhile, the economic, educational and health fallout from the shutdown mandates are still being felt, but you don't care about that because it doesn't align with your full blown panic attack that started with the :world is ending" hysteria promulgated from the fear peddlers, all of whom had an agenda.
Upwards of 30% of those hospitalized died in the initial wave…that was another 9/11 every 3 days in NYC.
You are among the most ignorant on this platform. The early deaths were due to a major medical error— they were putting everybody on ventilators. It was a death sentence. Just on one topic — pick one —- get some fukking knowledge before you post.
That’s not medical error—that’s how the medical community deals with a NOVEL virus—trial and error. So the lockdowns slow the spread so the medical community has enough hospital beds and staff to deal with patients but also to buy time to develop best practices to treat the disease. Lockdowns and masking and social distancing very clearly slowed the spread…it wasn’t a silver bullet but nothing was.
Yes, and most of them died due to ventilator use or comorbidities.
Had ivermectin been implemented in treatment regimens from the get-go, many would still be alive and enjoying the wonders of Biden’s America.
DeSantis and Lapado promoted ivermectin and prescriptions spiked during the Delta death surge in the southeast…so it was ineffective at least as prescribed in Florida because Florida had an awful Delta wave as the median age of death actually declined.
Come on now. Substack may harbour misinformation (this is inevitable when it has no content moderation), but that's by no means how it "came to prominence". If you think the platform is dominated by COVID deniers, that must just be your filter bubble - doubtless you hate-followed a few terrible substacks and then the recommendation algorithm offered you nothing else. (And I pity you - being stuck in the company of such awful people must be soul-destroying!)
Taibbi is the biggest author on Substack. I think I just happened to sign up for his Substack before he blew up. He’s not a Covid denier but his comment section ended up pretty much all of the people that follow Alex Berenson. Btw, I’ve been around several people that came into a windfall of money and Taibbi exhibited all of the behavior of someone that knew they got lucky and were about to become a millionaire overnight.
Oh, and I just met someone worth at least $100 million and it’s because he worked for a company for 25 years whose stock was $5 a share until a few years ago. I checked out an old photo of him and he went from normal looking guy to Silicon Valley tech genius looking guy at some point in the last 5 years. So Taibbi will have new hair soon because he’s got to be worth over $5 million now thanks to Substack and the Twitter Files.
Jealous much?
While I agree with some of your sentiments, I will not mourn the deaths of people who take medical advice from a blogging website.
I won’t mourn the deaths of the obese or the brown.
Wow...
Arizona did the least in 2020 to mitigate spread and unfortunately Native American populations were ravaged and obviously the people that went to snort cocaine in Scottsdale don’t care. These people are very easily manipulated and they are still angry that they voted for Bush/Cheney who sent their neighbors’ sons to fight overseas while shipping their jobs to China. Check out my post about the bioweapon that hit East Palestine.
Biden agrees with you and repeats:
"God save the Queen, man" That's why my son died in Iraq. "
Is this a joke about Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer?
I mean, I know the internet can be pretty gross, but yikes, Taek.
Oh, please. Biden has been using Beaux’s death as a convenient crutch regularly.
In fact, he’s lied so much about his dead son that it’s no wonder he forgot the date he actually died.
His dad disinters Beau’s corpse and rides it around the public square whenever he can. Even tried it with the SC. Bad move.
I'm sensing just a hint of sarcasm
I think these three points are pretty complimentary:
a) Biden has been very good at the actual job of being president. Public communication aside (and that's a big caveat) there's nothing to indicate that his age has detrimentally affected this.
b) It's unclear whether this would continue throughout the entirety of a second term.
c) The fact that his age is negative affecting his ability to do public communication is *the* major handicap of his re-election campaign.
The problem is that he's locked in because of the choice of VP he made in 2020. Kamala Harris either cannot do what is necessary to appeal to the median American voter or she is unwilling to do so (maybe because her only competitive elections have been against other Democrats). If Biden steps down, even in Klein's brokered convention scenario, the institutional pressure behind Harris (or the damage to the coalition from defeating her) would be incredibly difficult to resist.
I agree with Nate's trial-by-media recommendation but the WH's calculations surely are:
1. Is Kamala Harris more likely to beat Trump than Biden is?
2. If 1=no, is there a strong chance of someone other than Harris being the nominee if Biden steps down?
If both questions=no then Biden stays and I think both questions are "no" at the moment.
"a) Biden has been very good at the actual job of being president. Public communication aside (and that's a big caveat) there's nothing to indicate that his age has detrimentally affected this."
LOL. Willful blindness is a hell of a drug.
Biden defenders forget that they're the ones making the positive claim "Biden has done well in office" and they have to provide evidence to back it up. It seems all they can muster is point out legislation passed in the 117th congress, which was the first democratic trifecta in 12 years.
I say this as someone who broadly agrees that he probably shouldn't run again, but if you are a left/center left voter then you've seen Biden:
1.) pass pretty significant legislation (Inflation Reduction, CHIPS, etc.), which has not been the norm since 2009
2.) give material support to Ukraine without boots on the ground
3.) advance left-leaning social causes through executive action
4.) navigate the economy so that inflation hasn't hit as hard as it has in peer countries (although I'd again say I think it's clear that inflation hit harder than the vibes crowd is willing to admit)
You might not agree with the policies being pushed through, but he's been fairly effective on pushing forward his agenda. That's not nothing.
Dude, you are conflating the fact that you like the left wing policies of the Biden Administration with the reality that the man himself has almost nothing to do with any of them.
On the off chance he can keep multiple coherent thoughts in his head, he surely can’t communicate them to anyone. Within his administration or to the voting public.
I’m not conflating anything as I’ve repeatedly said I’m not giving value judgements. For the record I agree with maybe 60% of his policies.
I was making an argument that he clearly had a direct impact (as evidenced by his legislative victories which we don’t get anymore and his foreign policy which is quintessential Biden). I also specifically said I do not trust him to be this effective in two years.
When the administration and both houses of Congress are of one party, it is much easier to get things done.
If you like the fact that unelected officials are getting the policies you want implemented, just say that. That’s very different from the idea that it is Biden himself that was responsible.
most of that is the bare minimum that any liberal president could accomplish. not really a testament to Biden when Bernie or Elizabeth Warren could've gotten all that stuff done and more.
also, what left-leaning social causes do you speak of? a greater push for EVs? money and arms for forever wars in the middle east and eastern europe? more police funding? real priorities for the American Left, those issues are.
Do you remember the rampant pessimism about legislation from 2020? It was received wisdom that Biden was being laughably naive that Republicans would vote for any bipartisan bills at all.
And certainly politics hasn't become a Kumbaya circle, but they did vote for those bipartisan bills, repeatedly. More than during the Obama administration.
Izzi isn't old enough to even remember the Obama administration.
Based on what we saw under Obama, Trump, and Bush 2’s second term, I am not optimistic that any random D could have gotten the legislation passed. Based on their records I’m also not optimistic about Ukraine, or getting out of Afghanistan (although I’m open to the critique that someone else could have done a smoother withdrawal, but I’d need to see an argument for it).
I’d say your argument is incoherent- you say any liberal president could have gotten what he’s gotten, then said he’s pushed through policies liberals don’t like. I’m not making a value judgement as to the policies themselves, simply saying he’s been more effective than most presidents at advancing his chosen agenda.
I’ll again state for the record that I think he should not be running again, and am not optimistic he could be equally effective in two years.
Liberals love all of Biden's policies, it's the left that despises him. Effective schmecktive, he hasn't made my life a single bit better, but Wall Street's at a new all-time high so of course the corporate media will sing his praises.
About (a) I’d disagree when it comes to foreign policy. The Afghan withdrawal debacle, the “minor incursion” comment just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ineffective response to Houthis, the weak enforcement of sanctions against Iran, etc. Maybe I’m just focusing on the negatives?
So without getting into a huge foreign policy debate, I'd push back on your points about Afghanistan and Ukraine but don't know as much about the Houthi and Iran situations.
I view the Afghan withdrawal as something that it was never possible to do in an orderly fashion but strategically it was the right call. The fact that the Afghan gov't collapsed so quickly shows that this wasn't a situation where a viable state could have endured without a strong American military presence. Reversing the Trump agreement would have meant ramping up the American presence in Afghanistan which, once Russia-Ukraine kicked off, suddenly leaves them very vulnerable if hostile powers want to support the Taliban and start killing Americans.
On Ukraine, I think the Biden administration played the early stages of it pretty masterfully, selectively leaking intelligence of what the Russians were about to do (and what they would claim) just before they did it to establish a clear narrative, coordinating as effective a sanctions regime as was possible (the way we exaggerate the effectiveness of economic sanctions is a separate story but the ones they did were pretty far reaching) and keeping NATO united and on-side given the dependence of Germany etc. on Russian gas. Where they've erred has been in hesitating too much in giving Ukraine heavier weapons to actually defeat Russia but I accept that they were trying to balance a genocidal dictator's views of what counts as 'escalation'. I think that balance came down too much in favour of being cautious but I don't think they've dropped the ball otherwise.
I happen to agree on the Afghan *strategic* call.
That you can defend the tactics of implementation of the withdrawal is astonishing. The rest of us can’t know whether this is due to willful lack of information, convenient memory lapse over what happened, self-delusion or hard-core partisanship.
But you express only illogic with your assertion that the fact that the government fell instantly given our execution means all other tactical plans and execution would have fared about as badly. This simply does not follow.
I'm sympathetic to your argument, and I'm far from a Biden defender. It doesn't appear to have been very competent. But what difference did it make?
I don't think the US-installed government there could ever have endured forever without the support of US forces, but it seems like it could have endured longer. Just compare it to the Soviet-backed Afghan state. But again, what difference did it make?
The main frustration I have is that we were lied to, the operation was thoroughly rotten and corrupt for a long time, and no one was ever properly punished for it. I don't think the US President should be expected to micromanage his generals' plans. And they were given a long time to plan! He delayed the initial withdrawal!
But what he can be expected to do is make heads roll when his generals and his intelligence establishment demonstrate thorough incompetence and corruption. That's the real failure that I see.
The pullout was sped up, AGAINST the strong recommendations of the generals, so that the Biden Administration could put out a press release in time for 9/11 of that year that we were out.
It’s not about “forever”, I said above I was fine with the strategic decision to pull out.
And there was in fact *plenty* of additional micromanagement from the Administration (no doubt not by Biden himself) that caused, e.g. the Bagram airport not to be protected, since given the troops they were allowed to have on the ground they could only defend 1 and were told that it needed to be Kabul.
It matters both because Americans died because of the implementation, and far more than necessary Afghanis who supported us died because of the implementation. And because other potential allies in the future will be much more reticent to work with us.
Heads didn’t roll because as Biden himself said again recently, he doesn’t think any of his people screwed up.
All of what I say is easily searchable; much of it you can even find in the left-wing media
Thanks, that's a good response, and you seem to have more recollection of the details than I do.
As I understand the Bagram situation, the generals wanted to keep more forces present for longer in order to have a presence both at Bagram and Kabul. The Admin basically gave them a troop total that was so low they could hold one. Then ended up having to send troops back to facilitate the evacuation anyway. So I think your criticism is probably fair (though I'm fine with assigning some blame to all parties).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-abandoned-bagram-air-base-joe-biden-mark-milley-pentagon-afghanistan-taliban-kabul-11630096157
It does seem like in a proper society, people resign or are fired after a debacle like the collapse of Afghanistan, even if they're not wholly to blame. Just to take responsibility, to acknowledge that a big screw-up happened, that a lot of sacrifices were demanded of our troops and taxpayers for 20 years and there was nothing to show for it, and we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Even if it sometimes ends up as a form of scapegoating as the President dodges all the blame and dumps it on a fall guy, I think that's STILL a much better custom than the alternative we went with: to argue about who was to blame for a short while, and then just move past it after no one anywhere accepts any blame or loses his job. The message I receive is this sort of thing is no big deal and we're fine if it happens again.
Smells like committee decision making to me. How long do you think that’s been going on? Who do we think is President nowadays?
Depending on how they handled it, there would be a good shot to time it to maximize Kamala's appeal. Biden steps down in July, citing a health crisis, asking Americans to rally around the first woman president. Almost immediately, Trump and conservative media have to pivot to attacking her, there's no time to sit back, but by doing so they play right into the narrative the Dems would've set up. Media can characterize them as sexist bullies, and even suggest that attacking Kamala is a national security threat because it undermines US authority during a fragile transition. She gets nominated a few weeks later at the convention where every state delegation and speaker talks about bravely defending her from those unfair bullying Republicans who are endangering the nation and trying to send women back to the kitchen blah blah blah. The whole script practically writes itself.
If you think calling Kamala detractors "sexist bullies" is going to lead to a win, then you're right -- this script did write itself. It's also a rerun from 2016 and it seems you've learned absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I think the “criticizing Harris is sexist” strategy helps Republicans more than Democrats. It’s a turnoff to most people I encounter who aren’t already reasonably solid Dems. And it makes her look weak, as if she can’t stand on her own merits. Which is already her reputation (deserved or not)
you definitely don't say it. but you won't have to say it.
trump IS sexist; to deny this would be as absurd denying biden's swiss cheese brain. ditto for vast swathes of the Republican Party, both in terms of the professionals and the voters. there are two issues the Dems need to keep at high salience to win this, abortion and the fact that MAGA is made up of weird freaks from top to bottom, and Kamala does both those jobs well enough (as long as she doesn't fuck it up by overplaying her hand on that, which is entirely plausible)
I am a 66 year old physician. I don't have even a traffic ticket on my record for the past 15 years. I still work 50+ hours a week and pay an enormous amount of federal and state taxes, but because I prefer Trump over the inept current occupant of the white House you and your ilk want to label me as a "weird freak" or radical right wing nut job.
More and more those who do not agree with the left are beginning to understand that anything short of complete support of the left's agenda or our complete silence and non-participation in the political arena will satisfy the hardcore leftists. As a result, your insults, name-calling and petty attacks on a huge segment of American society hold little or no significance for those you disagree with. Your arrogance certainly doesn't convince us to ever think your position is legitimate, considerate or reasonable.
If you're not a weird freak, I'm not talking about you. And if you don't see that MAGA is, while also encompassing Republicans that (for all I vehemently disagree with them on politics) are more or less normal people, includes a wide plethora of weird freaks, then you're in a bubble, deluding yourself, or some combination of the two.
First, most normal Americans don’t have the same definition of sexist as you do. Second they don’t care about it in relation to many other important things, such as how incompetent and entitled the almost-certain-to-be-President is.
Most normal Americans have a definition of sexist that encompasses Trump's behavior. He is not a popular man, and I think the Venn Diagram of "people who don't like Trump" and "people who think he's a boorish, sexist pig" is at least circular.
You're not wrong that at least many Americans are even more concerned about putting a decrepit old lich in the Oval Office, which is only one reason why I am posting "hey, Kamala could be ok if we're lucky" in an article advocating that said decrepit old lich drop out of the race
way to prove SIlver's point here: https://www.natesilver.net/p/not-everyone-who-disagrees-with-you
And as a NeverBidener (and admittedly at this point a NeverAnyNationalDemocrat-er) I very much hope that you and your side choose to attack "MAGA" and other Trump voters. That approach is sure to work well.
Of course, if I were really smart, I'd shut up and not say this, but given the reality that so many of you think that attacking Trump's voters is a way to win elections, even telling you that it's almost surely counterproductive will not get you to stop.
But for kick and grins, let me ask you a question: why doesn't the fact that the large majority of under-30 Dem voters today actively support the women-raping, baby-decapitating, virulently anti-LGBTQ+ terrorists Hamas (NOT just “the Palestinians”, but actually Hamas by name) cause you to abandon voting for Dems?
And if it doesn't, can you tell me again why the beliefs of some supporters of a politician matter so much, but only conditionally (i.e. when it’s the “other” side)?
The key difference here is that in the scenario I propose, Biden would be resigning and invoking a combination of patriotism and sympathy. That maneuver gives it a paternalistic veneer, and therefore a broader audience than just girl power feminists. Hillary couldn't do this because she was phony and unlikable, and Kamala could not successfully invoke it on her own for the same reasons, but I think Biden could do it FOR her. A lot of normies would be inclined to defend a woman (more than they would defend a man in this situation) who was suddenly thrust into the White House and attacked, out of paternalism not 1970s style feminism. You can list off all her faults and failures, and there's many and I wouldn't even disagree with ya, but I still think that would happen.
Clearly, the Democrat establishment is being sexist and racist for not taking Biden out and elevating Kamala, right?
If these two were the sitting Republican president and Veep, and the facts identical, is there any doubt whatsoever that most leftists would be hurling that charge at the GOP?
I think you're right. The problem would be if her current reputation as unlikable is an earned reputation and whether she could taken a Biden-handoff boost and keep the momentum or instead blow it up.
Im in the sensible middle and would never vote for Kamala. She was given an opportunity as border czar and has failed- unless your definition of success is 10 million ‘refugees’ and chaos in the cities and border areas.
In the real world, you rarely get to time things like that. Best Laid Plans of Mice and all that. More likely, Biden simply croaks at a time nobody can predict in advance, and KH is President.
Biden's clearly in terrible shape, but the last president we had who was under ninety when he died was Nixon. Odds are, neither him nor DJT are gonna die of old-man problems before their tenth decades.
You’re acting as if Biden is actually “doing the job”.
He’s not, and it’s quite clear the country is actually being run by a cabal of Obama, Klain, Jarret, etc.
Wake up. Seriously.
Public speaking is the one function the President can't hide from. Advisers, staff, and "handlers" can do most other things. I think Biden has an awful lot riding on the SOTU on March 7. I'm sure they will have him fully rested and maximally juiced for that performance. Let's see how he does.
Choose president at Democratic Convention in August. We could bypass Harris more easily.
Would not bypassing Harris be both sexist and racist? Seriously, defend how it would not (other than answering “well, they should insert Michele Obama”…)
Can someone just explain to me what makes Kamala Harris so unpopular? From where I'm standing she's just a really vanilla politician - not that exciting, sure, but equally nobody really hates vanilla.
There's a variety of reasons she's unpopular, and some variance depending on which demographic or political background is being considered:
-She ran a bad campaign with obvious slipups when running for president.
-Her previous work as a prosecutor in CA shows her railroading minor criminals and pushing for more jail time.
-Joe Biden says he was specifically looking for a black woman to be his VP, and that made Kamala look like a diversity hire/incompetent stand in.
-Kamala is fairly famous for rising in politics through personal relationships, specifically sexual favors to powerful men in California - not exactly a feminist icon.
-She has a personal reputation as being incredibly mean and hard to work with, rumors abound of high turnover in her office.
-She's done a really bad job of even basic photo-op jobs while VP - talking weird at press conferences, disappearing from publicly assigned tasks (she's supposed to be in charge of the border crisis and was down there a few times, and then we don't hear anything at all about a change in direction or if she's still doing that, etc.).
She's not the worst person to ever run for office, but she's got a pretty large amount of baggage and unfortunately very very little to recommend her positively.
I'm not the target audience, but I'm struggling to think of anything specifically positive about her. I know there are some people who like her, but other than demographic categories she fits (black, woman) and the basic outlines of her resume (which comes with baggage as mentioned above), I don't know that I've heard anything specific about why people might like her.
Thanks, this is the sort of even-handed and unbiased explainer that makes it worth putting up with the endless flaming in Nate's comments.
When she accused Joe in the debates of opposing busing, I knew she was stupid (how much of the electorate even knows what busing was?), incompetent (she printed up the t-shirts but didn’t prepare for the inevitable “you rode on a bus” retort) and unscrupulous (stirring up racial conflict for the tiniest of self-interested reasons). I’ve seen nothing since to change that impression.
I want to agree with the trial-by-media recommendation -- one sticking point is it's the people in media saying it, so it's self serving. "We are important, you need to talk to us!"
Also, not persuaded that the marginal voter is moved by interviews with editorial boards or by CBS.
Any suggestion for Biden to step aside naturally suggests Harris will step up, unless you say otherwise. Do you think Kamala Harris is an above replacement level Democrat candidate? I'm even more skeptical about her than I am Biden
She is at least not senile, which probably makes her a slight step up, but no… she’s a terrible choice too. There’s no good solution here, but the worst one is running the guy that can’t even do an interview.
Democratic Convention
They’ll replace Kamala at the convention just like FDR did with Wallace when he appointed Truman.
The question is who, and how to get around basically “firing” a black woman without riling up the all the socialist voters needed to win.
Two words: Michele Obama
I love Ezra Klein's idea of taking the nominating contest to the convention. No more coronations. Let the candidates introduce themselves, debate daily, give speeches, and then be chosen by the delegates. If Kamala is the best choice to beat Trump, then great.
This is West Wing brain, no offense. Convention would be a knife fight that inevitably damages the nominee.
It seems unlikely to me that a contested convention would produce a nominee weaker than Biden, all things considered.
Biden would lose an election today, in a reasonably good economy, against Donald Trump. That’s HRC level weakness.
Right at this moment Biden appears weaker than Hillary on election day 2016. Hillary was always ahead in the polls compared to Trump, and Biden was mostly ahead in 2020. That Biden is polling behind Trump now says he's especially weak.
I think an open convention might be the best possible thing for Democrats right now. They're stuck between Biden and Harris with no good way out of either candidate. An open convention gives them an opportunity to let the chips fall where they may, and I think would be a big relief to the voting public. Even if Harris got selected at that point I think it would be a big win for her, as it showed a 2% candidate in 2020 making her own way instead of riding Biden's coattails.
Yeah, gone be real great having a lame duck president for 10 months and throwing away all incumbency advantage.
Ezra's really really clever about how that one's going to play out.
I don't see any incumbency advantage when 75-85% of Democrats don't want Biden to run again.
This isn't Reagan in 1984 or GHWB in 1992.
These numbers are near meaningless.
Biden still polls better than every other specific Dem.
Everyone wants their particular favorite Dem to run instead, even if that would be a weaker general candidate.
The incumbency advantage is that he can use his office to keep delivering for the base.
This isn't that complicated.
Hard to deliver when your brain is not working.
You're obviously evidence of this.
Unfortunately, there are no "above replacement" candidates available at this point.
That's part of the reason why Biden is still there.
Buttegieg and klobuchar would both beat trump.
Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock are two more that come to mind. How about Gretchen Whitmer?
What liberal would vote for Biden but not any of the above? And what "Biden's too old, don't like Trump but may stay home" voter would be more turned off by any of these than Biden? What "Biden is too old and I am considering Trump" voter would be pushed even more into the Trump camp with any of the above?
These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. Who are the voter cohorts and why are they abandoning Biden? How would they respond to a different candidate? The candidate has to do 2 things: pull back some soft Biden-Trump support, and get soft Democrat support (such as pro-choice) to the polls. I don't believe for a second that ANYONE in the Democratic party wouldn't support the D candidate, whomever it is; they aren't our focus.
I am generally right-leaning and can't vote for Biden, though I don't know if I can bring myself to vote for Trump either.
I would give serious consideration to a non-Biden candidate from the Democrats. I would feel much better about that prospect if the candidate earned the nomination in some way (as opposed to Biden passing the baton to Kamala and everyone just accepting that).
Why not Trump? Seriously?
2016 Trump? I would vote for him at this point. He's been acting more oddly, even unhinged a bit as of late. I know I'm not getting an accurate depiction of him since so many who report on him actively hate him and want him to lose, but it's hard to deny that Trump says and does a lot of dumb stuff and that seems to be accelerating.
I would also just generally want a younger candidate. 2016 Trump was 69 at this point, but he's 77 now and would be 82 leaving office. That's really old - older than Biden is now that we're all so concerned about.
Warnock or Whitmer I think would both be great general election candidates (Booker probably had his shot in 2020) but the problem is the process rather than the bench. If it was an open primary with no incumbent then either of those two would probably do well and probably beat Kamala Harris.
Appoint Harris to be the AG. Then step aside.
That relies on her being willing to accept the AG position.
And that relies on her having the self-awareness to know what a poor retail politician she is.
Nothing we've seen gives support for the idea that she has that self-awareness.
It also doesn’t take into account the party faction that wants her to be the First Black Woman President and are counting on her to be their elevator to power. They would rather back her and lose than concede to someone who can win. The party is all factions now. Party victory is not their priority.
From what little I've seen, Harris seems pretty sharp when she's not being (mis)managed. She might not be ideal, but she's the natural heir apparent. If they still had 2020 Biden, I'm confident he'd whip Trump again, but it's looking like we don't.
If the Dems can't do what Nate Silver suggests and pour doubters like me a big ol' cup of Shut the Fuck Up, then I'll say Harris probably a better bet than 2024 Biden. Even if she's not "replacement level".
“Better” is not good enough
“ Do you think Kamala Harris is an above replacement level Democrat candidate? I'm even more skeptical about her than I am Biden”
I am being quite earnest, and NOT intending to start a flame war, when I say: isn’t even asking that question fundamentally sexist and racist?
At least if you are a young leftist today, almost by definition it is, right?
Hence the problem.
Unless you insert Michele Obama…