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'm almost positive -- in addition to that stupid, stupid promise of his -- Biden picked Harris specifically because he knew she would be the least likely possible candidate to replace him in the event the party felt he was too old to run for a second term. There's no possible altruistic motive for picking her.
Nobody erased the primary. No serious candidate ran against him because most Democrats still like Biden, despite reservations about his age and/or mental fitness
I shudder at the consequences of your statement, "most Democrats still like Biden, despite reservations about his age and/or mental fitness".
If you concede the office of the president is the most powerful/important position in our government and an entire nation cannot produce one man/woman to competently hold it, then what does that say about the deep dysfunction of your nation.
Jesus Christ! We are so screwed. We might as well have a national lottery to replace all of Congress and the Presidency. I'd trust we'd be more fairly represented.
Right. I'm with you here. You can't simultaneously say Trump is the biggest threat if he holds this one office and say it doesn't matter if Biden is really running this one office because it's not that big a deal.
Of course you can. Avoiding hypocrisy and double standards is not important. All that matters is that the left hold political power.
How can you not see that the righteous ends justify *any* means?
The 49% of 18-29 year old Americans in the recent Harvard-Harris polls who chose “Back Hamas” (not “the Palestinians”, but Hamas) in the wake of Hamas Oct 7th murderous rampage where they decapitated babies, raped women, took elderly civilians and children hostage and glorified this all by posting it publicly, those young Americans certainly well understand that their righteous ends supporting the oppressed BiPoC Palestinians against the evil white colonialist oppressor Israeli patriarchy justify *any* means.
Lifelong Democrat. Will not vote for Biden. He may be looking for ways to help student debt, but he's the one who cancelled capacity for bankruptcy when he was Senator. Not an issue for me but his contradiction of his past actions is troubling.
"How Biden helped create the student debt problem he now promises to fix":
I don't disagree, but I'd argue the real dysfunction was Democrats nominating him in 2020 in the first place. Of course, nobody really bothered to run to the right of Biden, so shame on all the other candidates I suppose
Nice to see you’ve more or less joined the William F Buckley “I’d rather entrust the U.S. government to the first 400 people in the Boston phone directory than the faculty of Harvard”…
No doubt at least Bryan Caplan would agree with you, though genuinely not sure whether or not Nate Silver would..
That was the inspiration for my comment. I was too lazy to find the exact quote for attribution. Thanks for the reminder.
Also, there was an 80’s movie where there was a scene a lady got a phone call informing her she’d been selected to be governor as a result of a lottery. That always stuck with me.
You're missing the point: the point isn't that people like RFK Jr or Dean Phillips are good candidates, the point is that debates would have given Biden the opportunity to engage with tough questions and prove he's sharp enough to handle the job. That opportunity is now gone.
As Nate noted, the issue isn't the platform. Any candidate with a different platform brings their own risks to the table.
What's required is a way for the Biden re-election campaign to find ways to play to Biden's strengths while addressing some of the issues Nate highlighted.
Specifically, they need to manage the President's various limitations (energy, focus, time) and improve public perception around his energy and his willingness to fight.
He doesn't need to do a lot, imo. His team (who seem to truly suck at their jobs, imo) need to figure out how to own each news cycle and drown out Trump.
Its not as hard as it seems.
Unfortunately, it requires borrowing from Trump's playbook.
People will forgive errors (e.g., people don't care that Trump couldn't tell the difference between Haley and Pelosi for his entire speech in the last month or so) if they hear more from you and see you aggressively fight for them.
The problem here is that Biden's naturally passive temperament (something you see even when he was a young Senator) gets mistaken for old age and weakness. No one wants to vote for a weak President.
IMO, Biden needs to come out each day and just say something for people to rally behind.
Case in point, Biden's favorability gap significantly narrowed after he showed up to the UAW picket line last last year.
Democrats don’t believe in democracy. That’s why they manipulated the past primaries so Bernie didn’t win. It’s the party person or no one. Say what you will, but Trump took on 16 of the top Republicans in 2016 and beat them all, with almost no political infrastructure.
Having been a very loyal and active party member for years I agree. The 2008 primary in Florida was won by HRC, but due to a scheduling change (very wonky) the delegates were split between her & BO so she didn't have enough going into the convention even though she won the state. All that time I had believed the process was straightforward left me disillusioned.
RFK pulls from Trump too. In a 5-way, the margin between Trump and Biden is about the same as a 2-way. And RFK hasn't really begun to campaign yet. He is still concentrated on ballot access.
Jon Stewart said it best when he played a bunch of clips of democratic leaders and White House officials all saying Biden is extremely sharp behind closed doors discussing strategy on how to deal with global conflicts and domestic issues.
"If he's so sharp in these conversations, film them!"
You proposed an easy challenge. Trump could do it, most elderly celebrities could as well. There's no excuses anymore. The Democrats aren't allowed to play the "everything will be horrible under Trump" card if they're not willing to play ball and put up a candidate that can easily beat him.
This is what drives me nuts about 2016 and 2020, and now 2024. The Democrats have some actual good candidates who are good at retail politics and can appeal to at least some decent fraction of the population. Instead they run HRC, who is known to be personally unpopular and bad at retail politics, as well as generally viewed as corrupt and scummy. Then they run Joe Biden, who has a history of failed campaigns and pretty questionable decisions over a long career (and his own corruption accusations) and is also the oldest major candidate to ever run for president. HRC and Biden both ran neck and neck with *Trump* who has some of the worst approval ratings in the history of approvals ratings. Obama would have beaten Trump by a landslide in either 2016 or 2020. Are there really no ways that the Democrats can nominate someone who can beat a guy who floats around 40% approval? Instead they're actively nominating one of the few people who has a consistently lower approval rating.
Now do the same one for why Trump should drop out.
Oh that's right. We're only allowed to trash "our" side and keep feeding the narrative that we're going to lose; "constructive criticism" and all that. Comes from a place of earnest concern and support.
Whereas Trump is the Other and an implacable force of nature, so no need to address his supporters and tell them why they're making such a terrible decision.
Or maybe just stop telling each candidate what to do.
It goes without saying that Trump is unfit, but his party's base loves him, they aren't going to be dissuaded by this type of commentary. The Dem Party base doesn't feel the same way about President Biden.
The absence of a protest vote against Biden is depressing. It makes me think my fellow Democrats are stupid drones or, if you prefer, stokers on the Titanic.
Not my point. If Democratic voters are that down on Biden they would have jumped at the chance to issue a protest vote, even if it's (pace poor Nikki Haley) "none of the above." No matter what state is voting. The fact that they've passed up two chances to do so tells us something.
Maybe Michigan will be different (Gaza and all that). But if it's the same thing again, will that start changing pundits' minds?
if traditionally lefty Gen Zers like myself (the supposed future base of the party) screaming "I'll be damned and laid to rest in my grave before I vote for Biden in November" isn't enough to make them change course and try to win, then womp womp I guess they can go ahead and lose.
As a trans woman I stand well aware of the fact my life would become so much more dangerous and difficult under a Trump presidency, and yet I refuse to be bullied into shutting my brain off and picking the "liberal status quo" candidate because I'm supposed to be terrified of the alternative. Not a single person in this comment section has provided a real argument for Biden being the best option that isn't "Trump is literally so bad guys"
Just curious. It's November and you're presented with Trump vs Biden, and some number of third party candidates none of whom has any chance of becoming President.
When it's finally time to vote, what do you, as a lefty Gen Z trans woman, do?
(And I grant that you may not live in a swing state so your vote may not "matter" so this is a question about what outcome you would *prefer* to see.)
Trump is light years ahead of Biden in terms of mental fitness. He’s holding rallies, speaking for hours, does free style interviews with reporters, holds town halls. No way Biden could keep up with a tenth of Trump’s schedule. When was the last time Biden held an official news conference prior to the disastrous one after the Hur report?
Nonsense. DJT only looks remotely virile in comparison to Biden. He mixed up Orbán with Erdoğan, Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden with Barack Obama, all within this year. The only reason he won his nomination is because his sole priority of the last eight years was purging any remotely rival element to him from the GOP, to which he succeeded so completely, it's downright sickening.
That's the only clip the left keeps playing. How about Trump playing 18 holes in a round of golf? Biden couldn't find the first tee. Remember when Biden was walking on a stage and literally fell to the ground? This guy needs a walker before he breaks his hip.
He's used a cart for sixty of those years because he doesn't believe in exercise!
It's downright pathetic you'd use such as a point in favor of his health. He's merely the beneficial recipient of good genetics from that piece-of-shit father of his who lived forevrt, every bit of which he's squandered, and which even now are clearly failing him.
Purging? Laughable. Republicans willingly side with him because they see the lengths the Uniparty will go to destroy him. He beat 17 challengers in 2016 with zero infrastructure. He beat Ron DeSantis like a drum. This is why the Uniparty is unleashing unprecedented lawfare as a last gasp to prevent the will of the voters.
He beat 17 challengers in 2016 because celebrity is by far the most important criterion in all of modern politics. All the other viable candidates hated eachother too much to coalesce around a viable alternative until it was well past too late, and the retard right backprojecyed their reasons for supporting him afterwards.
And yet he got seven million more votes in 2020 than Obama did in 2012. Double the number of blacks and Hispanics support him now than in 2020. He’s growing the coalition for Republicans, while the coalition for Dems is shrinking.
Who gives a shit what he got relative to an election eight years prior? All that matters is what he gets in the election that happens now, relative to what his opponent gets, and how it helps or hurts the other candidates for office. He also got more votes than Lyndon Johnson did in his landslide victory in '64 when he ran against Hillary in 2016, and it's precisely as relevant to how he did in 2020, how he'll do in '24, and how it'll impact the elections going forward. Any Republican could've beaten Hillary in '16, and they would've won a second term, and at worst stemmed the bleedoff of high-Q voters, who are infinitely more valuable than raising the lowest-IQ demo block in the country from 8% to 12%, a height last seen when Bob Dole LOST in '96:
This is a very silly debate. Both Trump and Biden are old men and not as clear-minded or capable as they were in years past. It's also obvious that Biden is more declined and definitely less physically active or capable than Trump.
He is. But not by much, and Biden, much as I detest the senile old fucker, as of now at least has the advantage of being willing to respect the results of the elections that don't go his way.
He's much dirtier than Dems pretend, and though he was lambasted for it, there's a decent chance Ted Cruz is right about this being a less extreme Edith Wilson situation with Obama using this as a secret third term, as there's a deal of evidence for it:
You’re right about this, it’s such an annoying feature of serious journalism and punditry that people don’t even try to influence the Republican party or bring it back from the deep edge.
Trump is a fascist, plain and simple. I’ll take a too old man over a fascist anyday.
None of that is an argument for Biden. If Trump is so exceptionally dangerous, as you say, then why are we wasting our time nominating the weakest possible candidate? Biden barely won in 2020, why put him up again when you could nominate someone with a way bigger appeal that would win easily?
Anyone under seventy. Including Harris, whom was picked specifically because Biden wanted an unpopular veep who served absolutely no danger of replacing him.
Do you even realize how badly Harris registers with the general populace? We’re on a stats blog from someone who aggregates polls, got any data backing up anyone who is currently polling better than Biden in a 24 presidential matchup?
This blog has kind of a dumpster fire commenting populace.
I don't want it to be Harris neither, but if Biden's so far gone he can't even do softball-ass shit like the fucking Superbowl interview, he's absolutely behind Harris in viability as of now.
“If Trump is elected he will end democracy. Therefore I am insisting that we run the weakest candidate against him.”
The purpose of a system is what it does.
If they tell you that Trump will end democracy and institute literal fascism, and then they act to help Trump win, that tells you that they want democracy to be ended and literal fascism to be instituted.
Yep, Democrats either want Trump to win or are too beholden to precedent and leaders of the past to effectively stop him because it easier to run a party in opposition than it is to run in power.
Trump being so uniquely unfit is exactly why Biden should step aside. Trump is too big of a danger (and whether or not we're happy about it, it's clear he will be the Republican nominee like it or not) that leaving it up to chance this way is reckless and irresponsible.
I think the point made on Ezra Klein's podcast is the best one: At this point, Biden may be capable of being president, but he's not capable of *campaigning* for president. And he has to be able to campaign to win the job. As you pointed out, the economy's improving, he's passed some meaningful bills, yet the polls haven't budged in his favor. So clearly, people think these good things are happening *despite* Biden instead of *because* of him. HIs approval on inflation, Gaza, the border, and everything else has worries about his age baked into them. Biden needs to make a strong argument that (1) he is sharp, energetic, and capable of being President for another four years, and (2) his policies are the reason things are improving now. But he's simply not doing either in a persuasive way. And what's worse, he's passing up opportunities to do so.
Unless Biden can be persuaded to step down (or if he suffers a health crisis, God forbid), Trump will be elected president this November.
Biden didn't have to campaign in 2020 - because COVID. He could do minimal events and let the Media campaign for him. An H5N1 or H7N9 pandemic is likely to occur soon, and even if it doesn't, Biden's main opponent, Trump, will be in Rikers Island soon. If Biden lucks out, he might not have to campaign in 2024 either.
There are good candidates (D Governors and Senators) with little baggage. And a “late” entry could be an advantage - there’s little time for the Fox machine to manufacture baggage, so Ds could control the narrative (and maybe we’re in a new campaigning era altogether).
But, for me, it all comes down to this question: if this is the “most important election of our time” then why are fielding the lowest-rated, highest-risk candidate?
Think about the risk of not running a sitting president, the risk that it will look like Dems are running from their record, the risk that some random senator or governor has a skeleton in their closet.
Biden actually beat Trump. The others are untested. Isn’t that the least risky option?
I agree with you that the record is good, really good - but we're missing the communication piece, which creates the effects, Like Nate and Ezra, I don't think the WH is up for that.
Not running a middle age, sitting president with high approval ratings *would* be a big risk. But considering the dynamics and polarization of the current electorate, I would put less weight on historical data, and more on current insight and judgment. Nate being a Bayesian, I'm pretty sure he would agree.
Biden's age being a problem doesn't reflect poorly on his agenda. People can love what Biden did and still vote against him if they think he's senile and incapable of doing the job.
Think about it this way - if Gavin Newsom was running against Trump in the general election, Democrats are absolutely voting for him. So, let's consider persuadable independents and Republicans who are worried about Biden's age and capability. Are they more likely to vote for Biden or Newsom? Given Biden's horrendous approval rating and 3/4 of all voters being worried about his age, I'm pretty confident to say that more people from those groups would vote for Newsom. I'm hard pressed to think of any groups that Joe Biden can reach that Newsom would not. Far left probably likes Newsom better, and centrist left probably does too. Is there a group he would lose out with compared to Biden?
I don't disagree, though if you're paying attention Newsom has been vetoing some of the crazy stuff passed up to him in the last 6-12 months. At the very least that demonstrates he knows it's unpopular and he's willing to tone it down for a national audience.
I still think he would be more popular than Biden, if only because Biden is so heavily disliked at this stage.
He's not doing any of that because it's the right thing to do, he's doing it because he knows his track record is garbage and he wants to be in the White House.
He's arguably a bigger liar/con-artist, than Biden...and that's saying a lot.
I think you understate how anathema the governor of “woke California” would be to persuadable centrist voters. They would worry more about his agenda than they would about Biden’s age IMO.
I don’t want to say Biden is the only Democrat who can beat Trump but he seems to have the right combination of attributes that many others don’t.
Meantime if the GOP nominee was someone like Haley I agree you’d probably rather have Newsom.
Upon reflection I actually think that’s what’s missing in all of this discussion of replacing Biden - that Biden himself actually brings a lot to the table against this specific opponent. Trump is in some ways a difficult Republican to beat, because he doesn’t take typical Republican stances on things like social security and Medicare, he doesn’t seem like a creepy social conservative, he’s not weirdly religious, etc. In many ways, Trump is less scary to a certain set of voters than Paul Ryan would be. So it’s Biden’s centrism and institutionalism that makes him particularly well suited to beat Trump, in ways that a generic Democrat wouldn’t be. I really don’t think you could just drop Cory Booker in there and get the same outcome against Trump in particular, even if Booker would probably do better against most GOP candidates.
If he led with his policies for most of his time in CA, sure, that would be unpopular. But he's been vetoing things lately and pushing back against the far left. I'm positive that it's only because he's looking at a national audience now, but it shows he can do that and would be pushing more centrist positions than typical CA stuff, even if he supported that in the past. It's a question of whether people accept the pivot or worry that it's a show for the election. Since most normies don't know who he even is, I think he could pull off the pivot if he was willing to publicly alienate part of the left.
You nailed it with that question. Voters can see that's what Democrats are doing, and therefore they conclude that this election is not existential. The median voter doesn't think a second Trump term will be any worse than the first. This is a fatal mistake. Republicans would have full control in a way they didn't in 2017, and they've purged their party since. The most likely outcome is a Christian Nationalist police state. Republicans have demonstrated that they cannot deny that faction of their party anything it wants, and those are Trump's most devout and fervent followers, which feeds his vanity and narcissism. They won't have to worry about public approval anymore because they'll be able to change the rules for elections.
If this Democratic party can't save us from all of that, then it will be replaced by whatever emerges as the most effective opposition to the regime in 2025. I wish there was a way with less suffering and destruction.
The fear in this reply is really over the top. At this point, I wouldn't trust Donald Trump to be able to run a Taco Bell effectively, let alone the US government. There is no way he would be able to usher in any serious change, let alone install a police state against massive resistance from all the federal law enforcement agencies and most of the public. I'm not sure he could successfully change the lunch menu at the White House without either A) being distracted 10 seconds later by a stray comment on Morning Joe or B) writing out the menu change and then being undermined by his own kitchen manager.
I'm in my 40s, and the declining standards of voters has really stunned me. If the Very Serious People on either side really thought this mattered, I assume they could've tried to do something to stop a Trump/Biden rematch and install somebody who might be capable of running the government. Since they haven't, the conclusion I draw is that they don't actually believe the president matters, that the government basically runs itself at this point, and our federal bureaucracy and gaggle of administrators will keep everything on roughly the same course no matter who wins.
Yes it does serve Republicans to have the voters think that. They saw what didn't work the first time so now they have Project 2025 and they're amassing people. Trump doesn't have to do anything but sign off, and since these people are his biggest sycophants why wouldn't he. To your point, there will have to actually be massive resistance, because Republicans will hold all the strings of power and so far they aren't going against their own. What's already happened with reproductive health care (and I read the reporting all the time and have been for a long time) is a clue to anyone who is paying attention. Most people, including many Democrats, are not.
I think you're giving these people way too much credit for either competency, level of ideological commitment, or both. Most of the hangers-on in Trumpworld are just opportunistic grifters, second-rate media people like Kari Lake who don't really have an ideology and just float around wherever it seems profitable to go. They're not very good at anything.
Case in point on your example of reproductive health care, my deep red state attempted to defund Planned Parenthood in an appropriations bill, and then when some St Louis judge struck it down the state AG's office just FORGOT to appeal one of two grounds for the ruling, and consequently Planned Parenthood won an injunction from a state supreme court that has 5 of 7 judges appointed by Republicans. This is the caliber of people we're talking about, and the legal system -- even the parts controlled by Republicans -- is not showing any desire to accommodate idiots who don't know how to play the game. These people aren't smart enough or skilled enough to be the type of villain you think they are.
Nothing would make me happier than you being right. I read Jessica Valenti's Abortion Every Day substack so I track that issue pretty closely, and developments are mostly alarming.
The Democratic Party runs itself as a business, their primary interest is raising money for the next campaign cycle. Trump is a "fund-raging" machine! They'd get more electoral success in 2026 and WAY more money in donations if Trump wins in 2024, so why would they nominate a candidate that would win easily? The incentives don't line up.
However, the House will likely flip blue in 2024, so at least the Rs won't have a trifecta like they did in 2017.
Unless Nate can convince me otherwise with data and numbers, I very much doubt Democrats would win the House while a Republican is winning the presidency. In any event, Trump can install much of the police state through executive orders, and if the courts don't agree, there's no reason to think the administration would obey court orders.
The electoral backlash to Trump in 2018 was historic, it's common sense to believe a radical nutjob such as Trump would receive a huge midterm backlash in his second term, something remarkably significant would have to happen for him to not face a blue wave. In my opinion I think the Democrats have a better chance of holding on to the Senate under a Trump presidency, unless elections start getting outright rigged.
Something would happen before 2026. 'Election security' laws! Holding the Senate is very very very difficult. Democrats have to win everywhere Biden won in 2020 plus re-elect incumbents in very red Ohio and Montana, and that's just to get to exactly 50. A Trump win (or any other Republican for that matter) almost certainly means full Republican control of every branch of the federal government in a way no party has really had since like 1965. The people pulling the strings in that party don't believe in democracy; they think they're following God's law. They won't give power back; the rest of us will have to find a way to take it. And yes every autocratic regime always passes some kind of 'national security' laws after taking power, to quell dissent and strip the citizenry of their freedoms. The Republican party has done nothing in the past several years to disabuse us that that's what will happen. Especially when they quickly encounter resistance. I'm not saying the American people are going to like it or go along, just that the old ways of getting change won't work after Jan. 20, 2025, so we'll have to quickly learn other tactics.
What makes you think the republicans will have full control - even if Trump wins? The Democrats could easily retake the House, and the Senate is likely to be extremely close with a tie, or a majority of 1 or 2 in either direction.
It would require a level of ticket splitting that we just don't see anymore, so I'd need data to suggest this year would be different. Also if you look at which Senate seats are up you really can't make the argument that a majority of 1 or 2 in either direction is plausible. The Senate is easily the hardest lift of the three; Democrats would need to win in Texas or Florida to get 51 (and that assumes going perfect everywhere else).
While I appreciate Nate's points, its conclusion (a generic Democrat would do better vs. Trump than Biden) makes a critical assumption (there is such a thing as a generic Democrat) that warrants examination.
As far as I can tell, there really isn't a Democrat either willing or able to run right now who would be able to feasibly make up for the lost incumbent advantage.
Nate, I'd be happy to hear if there are any alternatives you think are actually viable here.
He discounts the influence of the right wing noise machine in delegitimizing (by lying) any Democratic candidate who isn’t a fully known quantity already.
Yeah, it’s tough for me to relate to the view that rightist media has any influence on bringing swing voters to its side. Its main effect is probably making the GOP stupider.
If you’re a centrist or swing voter, then all of the media you consume is left-leaning (even if it’s mostly not as nakedly partisan).
There are plenty of lying right wing media outlets for sure. But if I was a Dem candidate in a national election my biggest fear would be an intraparty attack from the left. Don't you think? A succesful national candidate would probably need to rebuke the left on something. Immigration, crime/quality of life stuff, something. And the modern left, uh, doesnt seem to take kindly to that. Biden, for a variety of reasons including his age and 50 year political record and VP to the first black POTUS, can straddle those two parts of the party. I can't think of anyone else who has, except maybe Obama. And he was probably a once in a generation talent, who left office before the modern left really got going. (And even he was seemingly frustrated by them.)
Newsom is governor of a very leftist state that is reasonably well known in national politics. Sure, Republicans don't like him, but I'm not sure if that should be anyone's measure.
We have two historically *hated* candidates. Like, worst approval ratings in rating history, and they're only viable because they're running against each other. It's certainly not impossible to do worse, but I'd like to hear the argument against someone like Newsom, who clearly wants the job.
The unspoken premise of this piece is worth stating explicitly: Biden has no more “right” to be his party’s nominee than the winning quarterback of the 2020 super bowl has to keep his starting position in 2024. He’s like a quarterback who won the 2020 super bowl at age 39. He pulled it out! Good for him. That doesn’t make him a good starter in 2024.
But if Jameis Winston is the backup then you stick with Brady. And remember that Winston was the number 1 overall pick and I still think he can start on a team. Btw, remember the 2020 season Super Bowl?? It was the last major event prior to Covid and it was awesome! Wait for halftime to take to take KC at +280 because they always start off slow.
The same arrogance that the Democratic Party and the media (but I repeat myself) have shown in the last several years, secure in the knowledge that they control the narrative, is going to continue to drive them toward a precipice. The bubble they exist in is simply too strong, and the individual urge to go along with everyone else inside it will not allow an acceptance that maybe, this time, they should do the right thing. The "right thing" is no more or less that what maintains the narrative.
If there was a functioning Republican Party, that was interested in shining a light on the ridiculousness of much of the narrative, or if Trump was actually a skilled politician, rather than a clownish cult leader, the process leading to a relaxing of the hold the Dems/media have on politics might be sped up, but that is not the case. So instead we get people shrieking about how if you're not a neurologist, you can't possibly judge whether Biden is dealing with cognitive decline or not - which, just stop and think for a second how crazy that is - and like in 2020, many low-information voters probably still do not know how badly he is doing. I expect that the White House simply does not feel a need to do anything.
If they did, the first hint might be a kindly disposal of Ms. Harris, because she is probably not bright enough to be trusted not to run off script, and may want to run her own show, though they've been handling Biden for four years, so maybe they think they can do anything. Maybe they're right, at least for a while longer.
Nate, I don’t know why you keep beating this drum. It’s getting to “but her emails” levels at this point.
Is it optimal that Biden is old? No, but he was old four years ago and it was fine. What’s most important is that we have not seen a single shred of evidence that Biden has made any bad decisions as a result of mental decline or even fatigue owing to his age. In fact, Kevin McCarthy privately called Biden sharp in their conversations.
Until any such evidence emerges, I really don’t understand your (and other parts of the media’s) fixation on this.
Lmao. Buddy… 75% of Americans think he’s too old. Less than half think the same of Trump.
Biden is senile. You’re not doing him or our country any favors by gaslighting us. Everyone with functioning eyes and brains can see that he’s not capable of this.
If you truly see Trump as an existential threat (and I do) it’s time to stop pretending Biden is anything but a senile old man. And it’s time to come up with a desperate plan B. We all know it deep down, just some aren’t willing to admit it. You will soon.
Jon Stewart's takedown of Biden last week was hilarious and on-point. Barbarians at the gate; the most important election of our lives, and yet....
I'd vote for Biden in a heartbeat. But Biden barely won last time. In 2020, f he had lost another 3/10ths of a %, he loses, right? At this point, forget 3/10th of a %; he's lost at least 5-10% of his support. I can't find a single person more excited to vote for the guy than in 2020 but I can find plenty of people not excited or even considering Trump. They like Biden's policies but he's seen as so out of it that he's not getting credit for anything.
It was initiated by Trump and to reverse that required immense American boys on the ground losing their lives, American tax dollars to sustain, and still no way to withdraw without the same effect. Trump was in office 4 years and the Afghanistan War endured through all of it. Biden was the one that ended it without the common asinine take of escalating troops you want (forever war). I suggest you read https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-afghanistan/
"Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.
My predecessor, the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated. It included no requirement that the Taliban work out a cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government, but it did authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan.
And by the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.
The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces, but if we stayed, all bets were off.
So we were left with a simple decision: Either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren’t leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war.
That was the choice — the real choice — between leaving or escalating.
I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit. The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors — the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the service chiefs, and the commanders in the field.
Their recommendation was that the safest way to secure the passage of the remaining Americans and others out of the country was not to continue with 6,000 troops on the ground in harm’s way in Kabul, but rather to get them out through non-military means."
So every major well respected polling agency is fudging the numbers to “signal unwavering support to the GOP”? It’s not possible that most Americans, with their eyes and ears, see a senile old man on the rare occurrences Biden goes out in public?
No, moron, I'm saying Rebs will answer any opinion poll in any possible way that registers disapproval of Biden and approval for Trump.
Again, look at how quickly their opinion about the economy reversed in Jan 2021, despite the vaccine being cranked out, and business restrictions lifting.
I don't appreciate the condescension. You can disagree with me, but I don't think this conclusion is nearly so obvious as you do. People can disagree in good faith about things, stop psychologizing the rest of us.
On March 7, Biden will give the SOTU. The consensus was that he gave a masterful performance last year.
If he does as well this year, I wonder if Nate will still be complaining that he's not doing enough sit down one on one interviews.
Yes he's old so maybe he needs to conserve his strength. Voters don't give a damn if he sits down with the NYT or WaPo as long as when they see him for the big events (SOTU, convention speech, debates) he is energetic and compelling.
I say we should all put a cork in it until March 7. If he passes the bar, we should drop the subject. If it looks like he's rapidly declining then we're in a new ballgame and even I might take Silver's warnings seriously.
I hope you’re just desperately carrying water for your senile candidate because if you truly believe what you’re saying, I feel sorry for you.
Voters may be exposed to the SOTU significantly more than an interview. That’s quite true. But even after last years “masterful performance” (hahahaha… cringing even harder) Biden has an awful approval rating and half of democrats think he’s too old.
Seeing one more scripted speech from a senile old man isn’t going to change that.
The SOTU is a friendly set piece, a laundry list of agenda items and callouts, and they've never moved approval ratings for any other candidate. What Nate is referring to are unscripted, non-friendly settings, places where Biden has to speak off the cuff and respond to tough questions, and the SOTU ain't it. I guarantee it won't move the needle for Biden either, and we will have wasted another three weeks finding out.
Primary debates would have been great, but the DNC decided to shut those down last year and have a coronation instead. Interviews like the Super Bowl are good, but the Biden WH keeps turning those down. So, what's left?
Politics is the art of artifice. 27 million people watched the 2023 SOTU, one of the biggest audiences Biden had to spread his message. He was widely praised for his spontaneous responses to the Republicans in the hall.
On March 7 he'll have wildly cheering Democrats and stone-faced (or worse -- looking at you MTG) Republicans as his foil. The first will send a message that Democrats are solidly united behind their candidate; the latter will help him set up the contrast he needs for the campaign (e.g., *he's* ready to control the border whereas the Republicans just want chaos there).
Is this all artifice? Hell yeah! Will it move voters more than piercing questions from some journalist combined with excerpting the most embarrassing single moment? Almost certainly yes. And that's how you play the game.
But if he does just give a plodding speech with the laundry list of dull legislative priorities for the next year, pushed on him by each department and never to be passed anyway, that would be horrible. The March 7 is a SOTU is a campaign speech and if he doesn't realize that, then that would be very bad. I'm guessing he's smart enough of a politician not to fall into that trap, but we'll see, won't we?
His widely-praised 2023 SOTU did nothing for his poll numbers. There's nothing tough or substantive about responding to SOTU hecklers on the other aisle. And at the end of the day, it's still a prepared speech he reads off a teleprompter. It's simply not enough to turn public perception around.
And it's possible that the voters have closed the book on Biden and nothing he does will change their minds.
But it's also possible that they're just starting to engage mentally with the 2024 election and this will give them an opening to think harder about their binary choice. We'll see!
For all the doomsaying, I see in the RCP general election average, Biden is down 1.1 points to Trump. Down is worse than up, but that's still damn close. There's absolutely no reason why Biden can't win this election.
I'll tell you my fixation on this: just as Nate described, Biden is a "below replacement level" candidate. Take the political equivalent of the readily-available AAA player and plug them in: a Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar. They would be outperforming Biden right now. Never mind a Democrat that voters will get excited about.
Why are we running a guy who doesn't even give us the same odds as a generic Democrat? I've been asking this for a year now. What Democrat is Biden running even equal to (forget better than). Gretchen Whitmer? Naw, 7-9 points behind. Gavin Newsome? 5-8 points behind.
The question has not become how sharp Biden is, fairly or unfairly. It's how he is perceived by voters and if he can win. That's the big picture and all that really matters: can Biden win? To do so, he needs to prove to voters that he's still up to it, yet in speeches, he has no energy and sounds like my Grandpa when he was in his mid 80's. Awesome guy, super ethical and I loved him to death, but he wasn't exactly ready to barnstorm the country, saving us from the hordes of facism banging down our door.
Polls show Biden is doing better against Trump than all those hypothetical replacements.
That may just be name recognition but yes that's name recognition! Replace him with any of those others and we have no idea if they would soar or flame out.
When you see those polls you also see large 10-15% undecided. I think that gap gets closed pretty quickly and probably favorably from the Dem's perspective in late fall. At this point I think your better off trying someone else who could possibly energize the electorate. Thats the real problem with Biden.........its hard to imagine him turning this around. Senility doesn't improve
“Super ethical”…except for the bribes he took from China, taking classified docs when he wasn’t allowed, bragging on stage that he held $1b in funding to Ukraine hostage because they dared investigate the company that his son was on the board of.
In a vacuum maybe that’s all true. In a world where you have to replace Biden with one of those people, it’s certainly not.
I think the grandpa problem is right on, though - but it’s an unfair heuristic for Biden. People look at their own 80-something parents and grandparents and say “they wouldn’t be up to this so why would Biden be.”
But Biden is law school educated, relatively wealthy and healthy, and has been working in Washington for decades. He’s way more capable than the average 80-something, who if you look at the stats has a high school degree at best and likely had a blue collar job.
We should expect Biden to be much sharper than is typical at that age - but voters aren’t giving him credit for that, because they’re drawing on their experience with people who aren’t demographically like Biden.
Unbelievable comment that there’s even one person out there with the attitude of “Biden’s mental health?” Nothing to see here. It only goes to show that anybody could be President. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 15 year old or a goldfish.
I don’t know if you’re being willfully blind? The guy falls walking up stairs, falls off a bike, falls walking on a stage. He can’t remember when he was VP or what year his son died. His dementia is clearly accelerating.
Maybe instead of article billion in the "Biden old" category, journalists and commentators kept writing about how absurdly abnormal it is to have a rapist fraudster who attempted a coup run for a third time, Biden wouldn't be losing. This isn't normal. Biden is old, but is otherwise an off the shelf politician. Trump is a criminal who rapes women, commits frauds, and can't be trusted with state secrets. The story is a broken Republican party and Trump, not Biden.
Carlos the MSM bias against Trump is very real and very well documented. Its front page everyday. What is remarkable is that the MSM itself does not dispute its position.
These articles have been constantly run though, and it hasn’t affected the support from Trump’s base. I feel like the understood preamble to articles like Silver’s here is “yes Trump is bad, now how do the Democrats beat him?” Pointing out the reasons Biden is not a great candidate right now isn’t somehow an endorsement of Trump or the Republican Party.
But it's a reinforcement cycle. The public thinks Biden is too old because the media writes articles about Bidens's age because they hear the public thinks Biden is old. Literally there are more article about Biden’s age than Trump's extreme unfitness and criminality. Every article about Trumo should introduce him as having been found liable for sexual assault, defamation of his victim, and a 350M fraud against NY. People age, that is normal. Rapist fraudsters running for president is unparalleled in history.
The public thinks Biden is too old because they haven’t seen a video of Biden where he doesn’t look like he’s lost in a nursing home in years because no such video exists.
There isn’t a single FLASH of cognitive awareness of who he is or what he is doing in a single event he has done in at least 3 years. After months of prep and getting the drug concoction just right they might send him out for 10 minutes with a crib sheet of reporter’s pictures, the order to be called on, the questions they will ask and what his answers are. That’s not a press conference.
You insane water carriers that act like other people just can’t assess the cognitive abilities of the unintelligible old man wandering around the stage recalling recent conversations with multiple people who have been dead for decades.
Just stop. Even people who ultimately support your goals wouldn’t let Biden watch their pet goldfish for a weekend and cringe at your incessant gaslighting.
There is no point trying to talk people out of cult beliefs. cult thinkers (an oxymoron) would often rather die than admit that their sacred beliefs were delusional, the ego bruise is too painful.
Trump has really destroyed a lot of brains, on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, people only think Biden is a senile mummy because the media says so!
No way it could be what anyone not jacked up on tribalism can see plainly with their own eyes—the stiffened gait and glassy eyes, the slurred words, the inability to form and speak full sentences, the hiding from the press and refusal to sit for interviews.
Dems have locked themselves into a level of denial I haven't seen outside of apocalyptic cults, and one day their refusal to face reality will make a fascinating psychological study.
Nate, I've read nearly every word you've written in the last 15 years, and your opinions are among the most valuable to me on the whole wide Internet. But you've lost the plot in so many ways here:
1. Your assessment that Bidens numbers don't look good is fair enough. But the leap to "worse than replacement candidate" crosses a wide chasm. Every poll I've seen that tested Trump against a non-Biden candidate has come out the same or worse for the Democrat.
2. Step back from that just a bit and you can see that the root problem here is that Trump really consistently gets 45% in polls, regardless of opponent. Nearly half the country actually wants what he's selling. It's a sad state of affairs, but it's not obviously because of a candidate-quality problem on the other side.
3. Should Biden "step aside" the party has to choose a nominee. There are zero scenarios where that happens painlessly, to say nothing of fairly or democratically. In particular any scenario where Harris is passed over would totally tear the party in two...but Harris doesn't look great approval-wise.
4. Your demand for Biden to sit for interviews to prove his coherence of thought to the public is blissfully ignorant of reality. There are plenty of Biden interviews, press conferences, and other unscripted interactions. He regularly goes deep on policy issues and discusses details that make it clear that he's generally quite knowledgeable about everything that's going on. But the press will ignore 3hr of that detailed discussion in favor of the 5 seconds of it where he mixed something up. This article is a great example of that: plenty of harping about public perception, absolutely no acknowledgement that in real life the typical Biden remarks make perfect sense and the typical Trump remarks are unintelligible word salad. It's not obvious that providing more material, even of impeccable quality, will change this equation at all.
5. What's your actual point anyway? You demand that "Democrats pay attention" but what exactly are any of us supposed to do? If "Biden should step aside" is your actual point, then your audience is one person and this article seems poorly tuned to sway his thinking. If you were trying to make some recommendation to the rest of us, I'm not seeing it.
So ultimately I just don't know what you're trying to accomplish here. If you have no larger point than "Biden is not a favorite for reelection" I think I narrowly disagree, but I don't have any strong quarrel. But if you're honestly thinking that Biden just waving goodbye tomorrow meaningfully improves Democratic odds, I find that dubious...and if you think there's something Democrats writ large are supposed to be doing differently, please be more explicit about what that is.
For my part I'm well past the moaning about whether the nominee is my Panglossian ideal, and much more interested in how we improve his odds of winning. Biden and Trump are the nominees.
Could you please link to a video that contains the best example for your fourth point? I’m not aware of these multi hour discussions that you refer to.
Certainly I was not suggesting that there was some single 3hr conversation. If any President ever has done that I'd be surprised. But there's plenty of material out there (easily more than 3hr if you really want to get the pocket calculator out over a rhetorical flourish) and the balance of it isn't the gaffe sound bites. For a good hour of it I'd suggest the recent state of the union.
In any case, the point is absolutely not about the total quantity of tape available. The point is that the tape that's out there today is largely high-quality, but the press focuses on the small percentage that looks bad. Nate's admonition to create more tape is therefore misguided...it will inevitably not be 100% error-free (nobody is) so the press will do exactly the same thing with it. It can be stellar overall, but ultimately it just creates more gaffe sound bites.
"There are plenty of Biden interviews, press conferences, and other unscripted interactions. He regularly goes deep on policy issues and discusses details that make it clear that he's generally quite knowledgeable about everything that's going on."
I think the implicit disbelief here speaks to the power of the narrative. Please google "Biden interview" and "Biden press conference" and watch some of them...in their entirety, not just highlights. I think it'll change your outlook.
TL;DR: If Biden's really senile, it's weird that there aren't any leaked anecdotes from behind the scenes of genuine serious lapses. An alternative explanation for Biden's limited public appearances is that his staff, who are further to the left than he is, incorrectly believe that his genuine moderation is a liability and don't want him making unscripted appearances that don't give them the opportunity to make him sound more progressive. If they stopped doing that then he'd look better.
I certainly *hope* it's this, and if it's not then I remain curious about the aforementioned absence of damaging leaks.
But there are lots of leaked anecdotes from behind the scenes. They just never get reported on in the mainstream media bubble. The first one that jumps to mind, which came from sources in Rome, is the leak that Biden pooped his pants when he met the Pope in 2021. The regime media outlets dutifully denounced it as “misinformation”, but how much you trust them is up to you.
If you want to hear of leaked anecdotes—and yes, in such a category not all of them will end up being true (just as not all lurid leaks about Trump were true)—then you need to engage with the kind of right-wing media that would report on them.
Did Fox report on this? I can't find anything on their site about it. If Fox won't touch a story that makes Biden look bad but further-bottom-of-the-barrel outlets will, then you'd think that's because the story is fake.
What about the leaked anecdote that Kevin McCarthy privately told other Republicans that Biden was sharp and substantive in their conversations, but then made fun of him publicly?
None of this seems mutually exclusive with Silver's proposal. In fact, they're both basically saying the same thing: "the best way to prove Biden is still sharp is to put him in front of a mic and have him just be sharp".
Fair point. That said, while they disagree on their expectations, it is worth noting they come to the same conclusion on how to fix the impression if it is, in fact, a false one.
We'll see if the White House is both able to do so and smart enough to realize it's worth doing. There's a reason Biden won the primaries and 2020 election.
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.
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…
I'm almost positive -- in addition to that stupid, stupid promise of his -- Biden picked Harris specifically because he knew she would be the least likely possible candidate to replace him in the event the party felt he was too old to run for a second term. There's no possible altruistic motive for picking her.
He picked her because his patron James Clyburn told him to do so.
The Democrats essentially erased the primary. That was bad. There WAS a candidate for the primaries...RFKjr.
OPTICS bad:
Denying RFK Secret Service protection while granting it to Haley.
RFKjr now independent and pulling voters from Biden.
Nobody erased the primary. No serious candidate ran against him because most Democrats still like Biden, despite reservations about his age and/or mental fitness
I shudder at the consequences of your statement, "most Democrats still like Biden, despite reservations about his age and/or mental fitness".
If you concede the office of the president is the most powerful/important position in our government and an entire nation cannot produce one man/woman to competently hold it, then what does that say about the deep dysfunction of your nation.
Jesus Christ! We are so screwed. We might as well have a national lottery to replace all of Congress and the Presidency. I'd trust we'd be more fairly represented.
Right. I'm with you here. You can't simultaneously say Trump is the biggest threat if he holds this one office and say it doesn't matter if Biden is really running this one office because it's not that big a deal.
Of course you can. Avoiding hypocrisy and double standards is not important. All that matters is that the left hold political power.
How can you not see that the righteous ends justify *any* means?
The 49% of 18-29 year old Americans in the recent Harvard-Harris polls who chose “Back Hamas” (not “the Palestinians”, but Hamas) in the wake of Hamas Oct 7th murderous rampage where they decapitated babies, raped women, took elderly civilians and children hostage and glorified this all by posting it publicly, those young Americans certainly well understand that their righteous ends supporting the oppressed BiPoC Palestinians against the evil white colonialist oppressor Israeli patriarchy justify *any* means.
Why don’t you?
Lifelong Democrat. Will not vote for Biden. He may be looking for ways to help student debt, but he's the one who cancelled capacity for bankruptcy when he was Senator. Not an issue for me but his contradiction of his past actions is troubling.
"How Biden helped create the student debt problem he now promises to fix":
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/02/joe-biden-student-loan-debt-2005-act-2020
I don't disagree, but I'd argue the real dysfunction was Democrats nominating him in 2020 in the first place. Of course, nobody really bothered to run to the right of Biden, so shame on all the other candidates I suppose
Ah, but you see, he was the *electable* one.
Nice to see you’ve more or less joined the William F Buckley “I’d rather entrust the U.S. government to the first 400 people in the Boston phone directory than the faculty of Harvard”…
No doubt at least Bryan Caplan would agree with you, though genuinely not sure whether or not Nate Silver would..
That was the inspiration for my comment. I was too lazy to find the exact quote for attribution. Thanks for the reminder.
Also, there was an 80’s movie where there was a scene a lady got a phone call informing her she’d been selected to be governor as a result of a lottery. That always stuck with me.
States did.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/30/florida-democrats-dean-phillips-election-00129403
Putting Dean Phillips or RFK Jr on the ballot wouldn't effectively change much.
Look at NH, despite Biden not being on the ballot, Dean Phillips lost by a HUGE margin to a Biden write in vote.
Face it, Dean Phillips wouldn't have made it past the first cut in an open DNC primary in most cycles.
Also, you only need to look back to the primary for the 2020 DNC candidate to realize how weak the DNC presidential alternatives are.
You're missing the point: the point isn't that people like RFK Jr or Dean Phillips are good candidates, the point is that debates would have given Biden the opportunity to engage with tough questions and prove he's sharp enough to handle the job. That opportunity is now gone.
Exactly right, Sam.
Or just look at the Republican side this year. Trump had serious challengers and didn't participate in a single primary debate but won easily.
Why would we expect the Democratic side to be any different?
You make sense, but let people vote and maybe the winner will heed that some people had different views of the platforms.
As Nate noted, the issue isn't the platform. Any candidate with a different platform brings their own risks to the table.
What's required is a way for the Biden re-election campaign to find ways to play to Biden's strengths while addressing some of the issues Nate highlighted.
Specifically, they need to manage the President's various limitations (energy, focus, time) and improve public perception around his energy and his willingness to fight.
He doesn't need to do a lot, imo. His team (who seem to truly suck at their jobs, imo) need to figure out how to own each news cycle and drown out Trump.
Its not as hard as it seems.
Unfortunately, it requires borrowing from Trump's playbook.
People will forgive errors (e.g., people don't care that Trump couldn't tell the difference between Haley and Pelosi for his entire speech in the last month or so) if they hear more from you and see you aggressively fight for them.
The problem here is that Biden's naturally passive temperament (something you see even when he was a young Senator) gets mistaken for old age and weakness. No one wants to vote for a weak President.
IMO, Biden needs to come out each day and just say something for people to rally behind.
Case in point, Biden's favorability gap significantly narrowed after he showed up to the UAW picket line last last year.
Biden was not passive when he was chair of Senate Judiciary.
Democrats don’t believe in democracy. That’s why they manipulated the past primaries so Bernie didn’t win. It’s the party person or no one. Say what you will, but Trump took on 16 of the top Republicans in 2016 and beat them all, with almost no political infrastructure.
Having been a very loyal and active party member for years I agree. The 2008 primary in Florida was won by HRC, but due to a scheduling change (very wonky) the delegates were split between her & BO so she didn't have enough going into the convention even though she won the state. All that time I had believed the process was straightforward left me disillusioned.
Are you suggesting that in 2008 the fix was in for Obama over Hillary?
I have a very disfavorable view of the Democratic establishment, but even I find that has no credibility.
Obama won in 2008 because he was the superior candidate despite the fact that things were lined up for Hillary
[To be clear, I *do* agree with Ed Y about 2016 and what they are capable of today.]
RFK pulls from Trump too. In a 5-way, the margin between Trump and Biden is about the same as a 2-way. And RFK hasn't really begun to campaign yet. He is still concentrated on ballot access.
Jon Stewart said it best when he played a bunch of clips of democratic leaders and White House officials all saying Biden is extremely sharp behind closed doors discussing strategy on how to deal with global conflicts and domestic issues.
"If he's so sharp in these conversations, film them!"
You proposed an easy challenge. Trump could do it, most elderly celebrities could as well. There's no excuses anymore. The Democrats aren't allowed to play the "everything will be horrible under Trump" card if they're not willing to play ball and put up a candidate that can easily beat him.
This is what drives me nuts about 2016 and 2020, and now 2024. The Democrats have some actual good candidates who are good at retail politics and can appeal to at least some decent fraction of the population. Instead they run HRC, who is known to be personally unpopular and bad at retail politics, as well as generally viewed as corrupt and scummy. Then they run Joe Biden, who has a history of failed campaigns and pretty questionable decisions over a long career (and his own corruption accusations) and is also the oldest major candidate to ever run for president. HRC and Biden both ran neck and neck with *Trump* who has some of the worst approval ratings in the history of approvals ratings. Obama would have beaten Trump by a landslide in either 2016 or 2020. Are there really no ways that the Democrats can nominate someone who can beat a guy who floats around 40% approval? Instead they're actively nominating one of the few people who has a consistently lower approval rating.
Great post!
Now do the same one for why Trump should drop out.
Oh that's right. We're only allowed to trash "our" side and keep feeding the narrative that we're going to lose; "constructive criticism" and all that. Comes from a place of earnest concern and support.
Whereas Trump is the Other and an implacable force of nature, so no need to address his supporters and tell them why they're making such a terrible decision.
Or maybe just stop telling each candidate what to do.
It goes without saying that Trump is unfit, but his party's base loves him, they aren't going to be dissuaded by this type of commentary. The Dem Party base doesn't feel the same way about President Biden.
Maybe. And yet not even a wisp of a protest vote in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Maybe we're over-stressing these polls? Like, people like to gripe but when the rubber meets the road they're fine with Biden?
The absence of a protest vote against Biden is depressing. It makes me think my fellow Democrats are stupid drones or, if you prefer, stokers on the Titanic.
Or maybe they think he's been a really good President after hearing so often back in 2020 that he was really old.
New Hampshire and South Carolina don't matter in a general. Look at the upcoming primary in Michigan...
Not my point. If Democratic voters are that down on Biden they would have jumped at the chance to issue a protest vote, even if it's (pace poor Nikki Haley) "none of the above." No matter what state is voting. The fact that they've passed up two chances to do so tells us something.
Maybe Michigan will be different (Gaza and all that). But if it's the same thing again, will that start changing pundits' minds?
if traditionally lefty Gen Zers like myself (the supposed future base of the party) screaming "I'll be damned and laid to rest in my grave before I vote for Biden in November" isn't enough to make them change course and try to win, then womp womp I guess they can go ahead and lose.
As a trans woman I stand well aware of the fact my life would become so much more dangerous and difficult under a Trump presidency, and yet I refuse to be bullied into shutting my brain off and picking the "liberal status quo" candidate because I'm supposed to be terrified of the alternative. Not a single person in this comment section has provided a real argument for Biden being the best option that isn't "Trump is literally so bad guys"
Just curious. It's November and you're presented with Trump vs Biden, and some number of third party candidates none of whom has any chance of becoming President.
When it's finally time to vote, what do you, as a lefty Gen Z trans woman, do?
(And I grant that you may not live in a swing state so your vote may not "matter" so this is a question about what outcome you would *prefer* to see.)
Unfit how?
Trump is light years ahead of Biden in terms of mental fitness. He’s holding rallies, speaking for hours, does free style interviews with reporters, holds town halls. No way Biden could keep up with a tenth of Trump’s schedule. When was the last time Biden held an official news conference prior to the disastrous one after the Hur report?
Ed,
Both of us physically live on the planet Earth. Beyond that, not much to say.
Biden has done the fewest interviews by far compared to Obama and Trump. The numbers don’t lie, on Planet Earth.
So in other words, aside from ad hominem attacks, you have no facts on your side. Got it.
Nonsense. DJT only looks remotely virile in comparison to Biden. He mixed up Orbán with Erdoğan, Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden with Barack Obama, all within this year. The only reason he won his nomination is because his sole priority of the last eight years was purging any remotely rival element to him from the GOP, to which he succeeded so completely, it's downright sickening.
At least he doesn’t fall walking up stairs.
The old cripple moves like he can barely support his own weight!
https://youtu.be/6bqvGXGN4DA?si=f-8j5q2DzVDLq9At
That's the only clip the left keeps playing. How about Trump playing 18 holes in a round of golf? Biden couldn't find the first tee. Remember when Biden was walking on a stage and literally fell to the ground? This guy needs a walker before he breaks his hip.
He's used a cart for sixty of those years because he doesn't believe in exercise!
It's downright pathetic you'd use such as a point in favor of his health. He's merely the beneficial recipient of good genetics from that piece-of-shit father of his who lived forevrt, every bit of which he's squandered, and which even now are clearly failing him.
Purging? Laughable. Republicans willingly side with him because they see the lengths the Uniparty will go to destroy him. He beat 17 challengers in 2016 with zero infrastructure. He beat Ron DeSantis like a drum. This is why the Uniparty is unleashing unprecedented lawfare as a last gasp to prevent the will of the voters.
He beat 17 challengers in 2016 because celebrity is by far the most important criterion in all of modern politics. All the other viable candidates hated eachother too much to coalesce around a viable alternative until it was well past too late, and the retard right backprojecyed their reasons for supporting him afterwards.
And yet he got seven million more votes in 2020 than Obama did in 2012. Double the number of blacks and Hispanics support him now than in 2020. He’s growing the coalition for Republicans, while the coalition for Dems is shrinking.
Who gives a shit what he got relative to an election eight years prior? All that matters is what he gets in the election that happens now, relative to what his opponent gets, and how it helps or hurts the other candidates for office. He also got more votes than Lyndon Johnson did in his landslide victory in '64 when he ran against Hillary in 2016, and it's precisely as relevant to how he did in 2020, how he'll do in '24, and how it'll impact the elections going forward. Any Republican could've beaten Hillary in '16, and they would've won a second term, and at worst stemmed the bleedoff of high-Q voters, who are infinitely more valuable than raising the lowest-IQ demo block in the country from 8% to 12%, a height last seen when Bob Dole LOST in '96:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/11/09/no-trump-didnt-win-the-largest-share-of-non-white-voters-of-any-republican-in-60-years/?sh=128c16334a09
This is a very silly debate. Both Trump and Biden are old men and not as clear-minded or capable as they were in years past. It's also obvious that Biden is more declined and definitely less physically active or capable than Trump.
He is. But not by much, and Biden, much as I detest the senile old fucker, as of now at least has the advantage of being willing to respect the results of the elections that don't go his way.
He's much dirtier than Dems pretend, and though he was lambasted for it, there's a decent chance Ted Cruz is right about this being a less extreme Edith Wilson situation with Obama using this as a secret third term, as there's a deal of evidence for it:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama
But there's nobody dirtier than Trump in the US political scene today. He's the Vince McMahon of American politics, only dumber and crueler.
Nate has been pretty vocal about Trump’s flaws, most recently in https://open.substack.com/pub/natesilver/p/slouching-towards-trump. I wouldn’t expect every post about Biden’s mental condition to also discuss Trump.
And yet that post spends a lot of time criticizing the Democrats.
Do you want Dems to win? Replace Biden
You’re right about this, it’s such an annoying feature of serious journalism and punditry that people don’t even try to influence the Republican party or bring it back from the deep edge.
Trump is a fascist, plain and simple. I’ll take a too old man over a fascist anyday.
None of that is an argument for Biden. If Trump is so exceptionally dangerous, as you say, then why are we wasting our time nominating the weakest possible candidate? Biden barely won in 2020, why put him up again when you could nominate someone with a way bigger appeal that would win easily?
"someone with a way bigger appeal that would win easily?"
Like?
Anyone under seventy. Including Harris, whom was picked specifically because Biden wanted an unpopular veep who served absolutely no danger of replacing him.
Lmao you mean like Dean Phillips?
Do you even realize how badly Harris registers with the general populace? We’re on a stats blog from someone who aggregates polls, got any data backing up anyone who is currently polling better than Biden in a 24 presidential matchup?
This blog has kind of a dumpster fire commenting populace.
“Omg anyone could do better than Biden?”
“Ok who based on what data?” “Anyone”
“alrighty then…”
I don't want it to be Harris neither, but if Biden's so far gone he can't even do softball-ass shit like the fucking Superbowl interview, he's absolutely behind Harris in viability as of now.
“If Trump is elected he will end democracy. Therefore I am insisting that we run the weakest candidate against him.”
The purpose of a system is what it does.
If they tell you that Trump will end democracy and institute literal fascism, and then they act to help Trump win, that tells you that they want democracy to be ended and literal fascism to be instituted.
Yep, Democrats either want Trump to win or are too beholden to precedent and leaders of the past to effectively stop him because it easier to run a party in opposition than it is to run in power.
When Trump accepts RFKs challenge to a debate what is Joe Biden going to do? I’ll tell you he’s not stepping foot on a debate stage.
If Biden ever got on a stage with Kennedy he would be a far greater fool than I think he is.
Biden won’t get in a debate stage with anyone, because he isn’t capable of that anymore.
Trump being so uniquely unfit is exactly why Biden should step aside. Trump is too big of a danger (and whether or not we're happy about it, it's clear he will be the Republican nominee like it or not) that leaving it up to chance this way is reckless and irresponsible.
Biden is winning the battle for “most unfit” at the moment, and that is saying something.
Obviously Biden is a criminal, too. Stole and abused secret docs, on the take from American enemies, so maybe that is why age is such an issue.
I could not imagine voting for either of those two clowns.
I think the point made on Ezra Klein's podcast is the best one: At this point, Biden may be capable of being president, but he's not capable of *campaigning* for president. And he has to be able to campaign to win the job. As you pointed out, the economy's improving, he's passed some meaningful bills, yet the polls haven't budged in his favor. So clearly, people think these good things are happening *despite* Biden instead of *because* of him. HIs approval on inflation, Gaza, the border, and everything else has worries about his age baked into them. Biden needs to make a strong argument that (1) he is sharp, energetic, and capable of being President for another four years, and (2) his policies are the reason things are improving now. But he's simply not doing either in a persuasive way. And what's worse, he's passing up opportunities to do so.
Unless Biden can be persuaded to step down (or if he suffers a health crisis, God forbid), Trump will be elected president this November.
But he’s not sharp, energetic or capable.
It was a great column and hard not to agree
Biden didn't have to campaign in 2020 - because COVID. He could do minimal events and let the Media campaign for him. An H5N1 or H7N9 pandemic is likely to occur soon, and even if it doesn't, Biden's main opponent, Trump, will be in Rikers Island soon. If Biden lucks out, he might not have to campaign in 2024 either.
There are good candidates (D Governors and Senators) with little baggage. And a “late” entry could be an advantage - there’s little time for the Fox machine to manufacture baggage, so Ds could control the narrative (and maybe we’re in a new campaigning era altogether).
But, for me, it all comes down to this question: if this is the “most important election of our time” then why are fielding the lowest-rated, highest-risk candidate?
Because he’s actually the lowest risk candidate?
Think about the risk of not running a sitting president, the risk that it will look like Dems are running from their record, the risk that some random senator or governor has a skeleton in their closet.
Biden actually beat Trump. The others are untested. Isn’t that the least risky option?
I agree with you that the record is good, really good - but we're missing the communication piece, which creates the effects, Like Nate and Ezra, I don't think the WH is up for that.
Not running a middle age, sitting president with high approval ratings *would* be a big risk. But considering the dynamics and polarization of the current electorate, I would put less weight on historical data, and more on current insight and judgment. Nate being a Bayesian, I'm pretty sure he would agree.
Biden's age being a problem doesn't reflect poorly on his agenda. People can love what Biden did and still vote against him if they think he's senile and incapable of doing the job.
Think about it this way - if Gavin Newsom was running against Trump in the general election, Democrats are absolutely voting for him. So, let's consider persuadable independents and Republicans who are worried about Biden's age and capability. Are they more likely to vote for Biden or Newsom? Given Biden's horrendous approval rating and 3/4 of all voters being worried about his age, I'm pretty confident to say that more people from those groups would vote for Newsom. I'm hard pressed to think of any groups that Joe Biden can reach that Newsom would not. Far left probably likes Newsom better, and centrist left probably does too. Is there a group he would lose out with compared to Biden?
I live in CA. God help us if Newsom is our president.
I don't disagree, though if you're paying attention Newsom has been vetoing some of the crazy stuff passed up to him in the last 6-12 months. At the very least that demonstrates he knows it's unpopular and he's willing to tone it down for a national audience.
I still think he would be more popular than Biden, if only because Biden is so heavily disliked at this stage.
He's not doing any of that because it's the right thing to do, he's doing it because he knows his track record is garbage and he wants to be in the White House.
He's arguably a bigger liar/con-artist, than Biden...and that's saying a lot.
I think you understate how anathema the governor of “woke California” would be to persuadable centrist voters. They would worry more about his agenda than they would about Biden’s age IMO.
I don’t want to say Biden is the only Democrat who can beat Trump but he seems to have the right combination of attributes that many others don’t.
Meantime if the GOP nominee was someone like Haley I agree you’d probably rather have Newsom.
Upon reflection I actually think that’s what’s missing in all of this discussion of replacing Biden - that Biden himself actually brings a lot to the table against this specific opponent. Trump is in some ways a difficult Republican to beat, because he doesn’t take typical Republican stances on things like social security and Medicare, he doesn’t seem like a creepy social conservative, he’s not weirdly religious, etc. In many ways, Trump is less scary to a certain set of voters than Paul Ryan would be. So it’s Biden’s centrism and institutionalism that makes him particularly well suited to beat Trump, in ways that a generic Democrat wouldn’t be. I really don’t think you could just drop Cory Booker in there and get the same outcome against Trump in particular, even if Booker would probably do better against most GOP candidates.
If he led with his policies for most of his time in CA, sure, that would be unpopular. But he's been vetoing things lately and pushing back against the far left. I'm positive that it's only because he's looking at a national audience now, but it shows he can do that and would be pushing more centrist positions than typical CA stuff, even if he supported that in the past. It's a question of whether people accept the pivot or worry that it's a show for the election. Since most normies don't know who he even is, I think he could pull off the pivot if he was willing to publicly alienate part of the left.
You nailed it with that question. Voters can see that's what Democrats are doing, and therefore they conclude that this election is not existential. The median voter doesn't think a second Trump term will be any worse than the first. This is a fatal mistake. Republicans would have full control in a way they didn't in 2017, and they've purged their party since. The most likely outcome is a Christian Nationalist police state. Republicans have demonstrated that they cannot deny that faction of their party anything it wants, and those are Trump's most devout and fervent followers, which feeds his vanity and narcissism. They won't have to worry about public approval anymore because they'll be able to change the rules for elections.
If this Democratic party can't save us from all of that, then it will be replaced by whatever emerges as the most effective opposition to the regime in 2025. I wish there was a way with less suffering and destruction.
The fear in this reply is really over the top. At this point, I wouldn't trust Donald Trump to be able to run a Taco Bell effectively, let alone the US government. There is no way he would be able to usher in any serious change, let alone install a police state against massive resistance from all the federal law enforcement agencies and most of the public. I'm not sure he could successfully change the lunch menu at the White House without either A) being distracted 10 seconds later by a stray comment on Morning Joe or B) writing out the menu change and then being undermined by his own kitchen manager.
I'm in my 40s, and the declining standards of voters has really stunned me. If the Very Serious People on either side really thought this mattered, I assume they could've tried to do something to stop a Trump/Biden rematch and install somebody who might be capable of running the government. Since they haven't, the conclusion I draw is that they don't actually believe the president matters, that the government basically runs itself at this point, and our federal bureaucracy and gaggle of administrators will keep everything on roughly the same course no matter who wins.
Yes it does serve Republicans to have the voters think that. They saw what didn't work the first time so now they have Project 2025 and they're amassing people. Trump doesn't have to do anything but sign off, and since these people are his biggest sycophants why wouldn't he. To your point, there will have to actually be massive resistance, because Republicans will hold all the strings of power and so far they aren't going against their own. What's already happened with reproductive health care (and I read the reporting all the time and have been for a long time) is a clue to anyone who is paying attention. Most people, including many Democrats, are not.
I think you're giving these people way too much credit for either competency, level of ideological commitment, or both. Most of the hangers-on in Trumpworld are just opportunistic grifters, second-rate media people like Kari Lake who don't really have an ideology and just float around wherever it seems profitable to go. They're not very good at anything.
Case in point on your example of reproductive health care, my deep red state attempted to defund Planned Parenthood in an appropriations bill, and then when some St Louis judge struck it down the state AG's office just FORGOT to appeal one of two grounds for the ruling, and consequently Planned Parenthood won an injunction from a state supreme court that has 5 of 7 judges appointed by Republicans. This is the caliber of people we're talking about, and the legal system -- even the parts controlled by Republicans -- is not showing any desire to accommodate idiots who don't know how to play the game. These people aren't smart enough or skilled enough to be the type of villain you think they are.
Nothing would make me happier than you being right. I read Jessica Valenti's Abortion Every Day substack so I track that issue pretty closely, and developments are mostly alarming.
"The most likely outcome is a Christian Nationalist police state." !!!!
LOLOLOL
Please put down the crack pipe!
The Democratic Party runs itself as a business, their primary interest is raising money for the next campaign cycle. Trump is a "fund-raging" machine! They'd get more electoral success in 2026 and WAY more money in donations if Trump wins in 2024, so why would they nominate a candidate that would win easily? The incentives don't line up.
However, the House will likely flip blue in 2024, so at least the Rs won't have a trifecta like they did in 2017.
They didn't really have a trifecta in 2017, either, with a Senate margin of 1.
Unless Nate can convince me otherwise with data and numbers, I very much doubt Democrats would win the House while a Republican is winning the presidency. In any event, Trump can install much of the police state through executive orders, and if the courts don't agree, there's no reason to think the administration would obey court orders.
The electoral backlash to Trump in 2018 was historic, it's common sense to believe a radical nutjob such as Trump would receive a huge midterm backlash in his second term, something remarkably significant would have to happen for him to not face a blue wave. In my opinion I think the Democrats have a better chance of holding on to the Senate under a Trump presidency, unless elections start getting outright rigged.
Something would happen before 2026. 'Election security' laws! Holding the Senate is very very very difficult. Democrats have to win everywhere Biden won in 2020 plus re-elect incumbents in very red Ohio and Montana, and that's just to get to exactly 50. A Trump win (or any other Republican for that matter) almost certainly means full Republican control of every branch of the federal government in a way no party has really had since like 1965. The people pulling the strings in that party don't believe in democracy; they think they're following God's law. They won't give power back; the rest of us will have to find a way to take it. And yes every autocratic regime always passes some kind of 'national security' laws after taking power, to quell dissent and strip the citizenry of their freedoms. The Republican party has done nothing in the past several years to disabuse us that that's what will happen. Especially when they quickly encounter resistance. I'm not saying the American people are going to like it or go along, just that the old ways of getting change won't work after Jan. 20, 2025, so we'll have to quickly learn other tactics.
I will gladly be joining a newly-labeled "domestic terrorist group" if free and fair elections are unlawfully infringed in 2026 :)
What makes you think the republicans will have full control - even if Trump wins? The Democrats could easily retake the House, and the Senate is likely to be extremely close with a tie, or a majority of 1 or 2 in either direction.
It would require a level of ticket splitting that we just don't see anymore, so I'd need data to suggest this year would be different. Also if you look at which Senate seats are up you really can't make the argument that a majority of 1 or 2 in either direction is plausible. The Senate is easily the hardest lift of the three; Democrats would need to win in Texas or Florida to get 51 (and that assumes going perfect everywhere else).
While I appreciate Nate's points, its conclusion (a generic Democrat would do better vs. Trump than Biden) makes a critical assumption (there is such a thing as a generic Democrat) that warrants examination.
As far as I can tell, there really isn't a Democrat either willing or able to run right now who would be able to feasibly make up for the lost incumbent advantage.
Nate, I'd be happy to hear if there are any alternatives you think are actually viable here.
He discounts the influence of the right wing noise machine in delegitimizing (by lying) any Democratic candidate who isn’t a fully known quantity already.
What is this right wing noise machine you speak of, when the left controls virtually all levers of power and communication?
Yeah, it’s tough for me to relate to the view that rightist media has any influence on bringing swing voters to its side. Its main effect is probably making the GOP stupider.
If you’re a centrist or swing voter, then all of the media you consume is left-leaning (even if it’s mostly not as nakedly partisan).
There are plenty of lying right wing media outlets for sure. But if I was a Dem candidate in a national election my biggest fear would be an intraparty attack from the left. Don't you think? A succesful national candidate would probably need to rebuke the left on something. Immigration, crime/quality of life stuff, something. And the modern left, uh, doesnt seem to take kindly to that. Biden, for a variety of reasons including his age and 50 year political record and VP to the first black POTUS, can straddle those two parts of the party. I can't think of anyone else who has, except maybe Obama. And he was probably a once in a generation talent, who left office before the modern left really got going. (And even he was seemingly frustrated by them.)
Newsom is governor of a very leftist state that is reasonably well known in national politics. Sure, Republicans don't like him, but I'm not sure if that should be anyone's measure.
We have two historically *hated* candidates. Like, worst approval ratings in rating history, and they're only viable because they're running against each other. It's certainly not impossible to do worse, but I'd like to hear the argument against someone like Newsom, who clearly wants the job.
The unspoken premise of this piece is worth stating explicitly: Biden has no more “right” to be his party’s nominee than the winning quarterback of the 2020 super bowl has to keep his starting position in 2024. He’s like a quarterback who won the 2020 super bowl at age 39. He pulled it out! Good for him. That doesn’t make him a good starter in 2024.
But if Jameis Winston is the backup then you stick with Brady. And remember that Winston was the number 1 overall pick and I still think he can start on a team. Btw, remember the 2020 season Super Bowl?? It was the last major event prior to Covid and it was awesome! Wait for halftime to take to take KC at +280 because they always start off slow.
lol Biden is no Brady.
He’s president…the best thing for a candidate to be this century is to be underestimated.
Biden is no Winston, either.
The same arrogance that the Democratic Party and the media (but I repeat myself) have shown in the last several years, secure in the knowledge that they control the narrative, is going to continue to drive them toward a precipice. The bubble they exist in is simply too strong, and the individual urge to go along with everyone else inside it will not allow an acceptance that maybe, this time, they should do the right thing. The "right thing" is no more or less that what maintains the narrative.
If there was a functioning Republican Party, that was interested in shining a light on the ridiculousness of much of the narrative, or if Trump was actually a skilled politician, rather than a clownish cult leader, the process leading to a relaxing of the hold the Dems/media have on politics might be sped up, but that is not the case. So instead we get people shrieking about how if you're not a neurologist, you can't possibly judge whether Biden is dealing with cognitive decline or not - which, just stop and think for a second how crazy that is - and like in 2020, many low-information voters probably still do not know how badly he is doing. I expect that the White House simply does not feel a need to do anything.
If they did, the first hint might be a kindly disposal of Ms. Harris, because she is probably not bright enough to be trusted not to run off script, and may want to run her own show, though they've been handling Biden for four years, so maybe they think they can do anything. Maybe they're right, at least for a while longer.
Nate, I don’t know why you keep beating this drum. It’s getting to “but her emails” levels at this point.
Is it optimal that Biden is old? No, but he was old four years ago and it was fine. What’s most important is that we have not seen a single shred of evidence that Biden has made any bad decisions as a result of mental decline or even fatigue owing to his age. In fact, Kevin McCarthy privately called Biden sharp in their conversations.
Until any such evidence emerges, I really don’t understand your (and other parts of the media’s) fixation on this.
Lmao. Buddy… 75% of Americans think he’s too old. Less than half think the same of Trump.
Biden is senile. You’re not doing him or our country any favors by gaslighting us. Everyone with functioning eyes and brains can see that he’s not capable of this.
If you truly see Trump as an existential threat (and I do) it’s time to stop pretending Biden is anything but a senile old man. And it’s time to come up with a desperate plan B. We all know it deep down, just some aren’t willing to admit it. You will soon.
Jon Stewart's takedown of Biden last week was hilarious and on-point. Barbarians at the gate; the most important election of our lives, and yet....
I'd vote for Biden in a heartbeat. But Biden barely won last time. In 2020, f he had lost another 3/10ths of a %, he loses, right? At this point, forget 3/10th of a %; he's lost at least 5-10% of his support. I can't find a single person more excited to vote for the guy than in 2020 but I can find plenty of people not excited or even considering Trump. They like Biden's policies but he's seen as so out of it that he's not getting credit for anything.
That’s the problem. It’s his policies like the endless wars and open borders. If those are winning strategies, God help the country.
Which is it? Do right wingers want him to pull out of Afghanistan or continue that war? The same person will tell you they want both. What a joke
It was the helicopter-on-the-roof shameful cowardly defeat part they objected to.
It was initiated by Trump and to reverse that required immense American boys on the ground losing their lives, American tax dollars to sustain, and still no way to withdraw without the same effect. Trump was in office 4 years and the Afghanistan War endured through all of it. Biden was the one that ended it without the common asinine take of escalating troops you want (forever war). I suggest you read https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-afghanistan/
"Let me be clear: Leaving August the 31st is not due to an arbitrary deadline; it was designed to save American lives.
My predecessor, the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated. It included no requirement that the Taliban work out a cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government, but it did authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan.
And by the time I came to office, the Taliban was in its strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.
The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces, but if we stayed, all bets were off.
So we were left with a simple decision: Either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren’t leaving and commit another tens of thousands more troops going back to war.
That was the choice — the real choice — between leaving or escalating.
I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit. The decision to end the military airlift operations at Kabul airport was based on the unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisors — the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the service chiefs, and the commanders in the field.
Their recommendation was that the safest way to secure the passage of the remaining Americans and others out of the country was not to continue with 6,000 troops on the ground in harm’s way in Kabul, but rather to get them out through non-military means."
And read the whole thing. Plus https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/
The American opinion polls saying "he's told old but somehow Trump isn't as bad" it's braindead motivated reading.
Just look at what happened to opinion polls about how well the economy is doing.
Republicans use this stuff to signal unwavering support for GOP, not to voice an opinion.
So every major well respected polling agency is fudging the numbers to “signal unwavering support to the GOP”? It’s not possible that most Americans, with their eyes and ears, see a senile old man on the rare occurrences Biden goes out in public?
Did I say the pollsters were fudging the numbers?
Why go on the internet and just tell lies?
Alright, then you acknowledge that 70-75% of Americans see Biden as too old, including half of democrats.
No, moron, I'm saying Rebs will answer any opinion poll in any possible way that registers disapproval of Biden and approval for Trump.
Again, look at how quickly their opinion about the economy reversed in Jan 2021, despite the vaccine being cranked out, and business restrictions lifting.
Oh just hush.
Very compelling counter argument. 🤦♂️
And yet still likely better than Biden could come up with if it wasn’t pre-scripted
It does rhyme with mush, which is an apt description of Biden’s brain.
I don't appreciate the condescension. You can disagree with me, but I don't think this conclusion is nearly so obvious as you do. People can disagree in good faith about things, stop psychologizing the rest of us.
On March 7, Biden will give the SOTU. The consensus was that he gave a masterful performance last year.
If he does as well this year, I wonder if Nate will still be complaining that he's not doing enough sit down one on one interviews.
Yes he's old so maybe he needs to conserve his strength. Voters don't give a damn if he sits down with the NYT or WaPo as long as when they see him for the big events (SOTU, convention speech, debates) he is energetic and compelling.
I say we should all put a cork in it until March 7. If he passes the bar, we should drop the subject. If it looks like he's rapidly declining then we're in a new ballgame and even I might take Silver's warnings seriously.
Oh dear 🤦♂️ a SOTU is how we should evaluate a sitting president, not an actual interview with serious and difficult questions.
Welcome to the Biden era of presidential senility.
Agree 100 percent. That’s the level of scrutiny that Biden has to pass. Reading a script someone has written for him. That’s it!
Yes, in terms of what voters are exposed to and what affects their calculations, SOTU >> an interview with some journalist.
Sort of like the Super Bowl > a week 9 game.
I couldn’t cringe any harder.
I hope you’re just desperately carrying water for your senile candidate because if you truly believe what you’re saying, I feel sorry for you.
Voters may be exposed to the SOTU significantly more than an interview. That’s quite true. But even after last years “masterful performance” (hahahaha… cringing even harder) Biden has an awful approval rating and half of democrats think he’s too old.
Seeing one more scripted speech from a senile old man isn’t going to change that.
The SOTU is a friendly set piece, a laundry list of agenda items and callouts, and they've never moved approval ratings for any other candidate. What Nate is referring to are unscripted, non-friendly settings, places where Biden has to speak off the cuff and respond to tough questions, and the SOTU ain't it. I guarantee it won't move the needle for Biden either, and we will have wasted another three weeks finding out.
Primary debates would have been great, but the DNC decided to shut those down last year and have a coronation instead. Interviews like the Super Bowl are good, but the Biden WH keeps turning those down. So, what's left?
Politics is the art of artifice. 27 million people watched the 2023 SOTU, one of the biggest audiences Biden had to spread his message. He was widely praised for his spontaneous responses to the Republicans in the hall.
On March 7 he'll have wildly cheering Democrats and stone-faced (or worse -- looking at you MTG) Republicans as his foil. The first will send a message that Democrats are solidly united behind their candidate; the latter will help him set up the contrast he needs for the campaign (e.g., *he's* ready to control the border whereas the Republicans just want chaos there).
Is this all artifice? Hell yeah! Will it move voters more than piercing questions from some journalist combined with excerpting the most embarrassing single moment? Almost certainly yes. And that's how you play the game.
But if he does just give a plodding speech with the laundry list of dull legislative priorities for the next year, pushed on him by each department and never to be passed anyway, that would be horrible. The March 7 is a SOTU is a campaign speech and if he doesn't realize that, then that would be very bad. I'm guessing he's smart enough of a politician not to fall into that trap, but we'll see, won't we?
His widely-praised 2023 SOTU did nothing for his poll numbers. There's nothing tough or substantive about responding to SOTU hecklers on the other aisle. And at the end of the day, it's still a prepared speech he reads off a teleprompter. It's simply not enough to turn public perception around.
And it's possible that the voters have closed the book on Biden and nothing he does will change their minds.
But it's also possible that they're just starting to engage mentally with the 2024 election and this will give them an opening to think harder about their binary choice. We'll see!
For all the doomsaying, I see in the RCP general election average, Biden is down 1.1 points to Trump. Down is worse than up, but that's still damn close. There's absolutely no reason why Biden can't win this election.
Reading a scripted speech is hardly a high bar for mental fitness.
I'll tell you my fixation on this: just as Nate described, Biden is a "below replacement level" candidate. Take the political equivalent of the readily-available AAA player and plug them in: a Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar. They would be outperforming Biden right now. Never mind a Democrat that voters will get excited about.
Why are we running a guy who doesn't even give us the same odds as a generic Democrat? I've been asking this for a year now. What Democrat is Biden running even equal to (forget better than). Gretchen Whitmer? Naw, 7-9 points behind. Gavin Newsome? 5-8 points behind.
The question has not become how sharp Biden is, fairly or unfairly. It's how he is perceived by voters and if he can win. That's the big picture and all that really matters: can Biden win? To do so, he needs to prove to voters that he's still up to it, yet in speeches, he has no energy and sounds like my Grandpa when he was in his mid 80's. Awesome guy, super ethical and I loved him to death, but he wasn't exactly ready to barnstorm the country, saving us from the hordes of facism banging down our door.
Polls show Biden is doing better against Trump than all those hypothetical replacements.
That may just be name recognition but yes that's name recognition! Replace him with any of those others and we have no idea if they would soar or flame out.
When you see those polls you also see large 10-15% undecided. I think that gap gets closed pretty quickly and probably favorably from the Dem's perspective in late fall. At this point I think your better off trying someone else who could possibly energize the electorate. Thats the real problem with Biden.........its hard to imagine him turning this around. Senility doesn't improve
I don't think that word "senility" means what you think it means.
Is any Washington politician ethical?? They’d never get anything done.
“Super ethical”…except for the bribes he took from China, taking classified docs when he wasn’t allowed, bragging on stage that he held $1b in funding to Ukraine hostage because they dared investigate the company that his son was on the board of.
In a vacuum maybe that’s all true. In a world where you have to replace Biden with one of those people, it’s certainly not.
I think the grandpa problem is right on, though - but it’s an unfair heuristic for Biden. People look at their own 80-something parents and grandparents and say “they wouldn’t be up to this so why would Biden be.”
But Biden is law school educated, relatively wealthy and healthy, and has been working in Washington for decades. He’s way more capable than the average 80-something, who if you look at the stats has a high school degree at best and likely had a blue collar job.
We should expect Biden to be much sharper than is typical at that age - but voters aren’t giving him credit for that, because they’re drawing on their experience with people who aren’t demographically like Biden.
Or, alternatively, they’re watching his extremely rare public appearances and concluding that he’s senile.
Because voters care. And it’s going to give Trump the election.
lol “he was old four years ago and it was fine”. You are aware that time moves forward in a linear manner right?
Unbelievable comment that there’s even one person out there with the attitude of “Biden’s mental health?” Nothing to see here. It only goes to show that anybody could be President. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 15 year old or a goldfish.
Huh?
I don’t know if you’re being willfully blind? The guy falls walking up stairs, falls off a bike, falls walking on a stage. He can’t remember when he was VP or what year his son died. His dementia is clearly accelerating.
I realize the GOP wants everyone to believe all of this, but it’s simply not true.
He got his foot caught in his toe cages one time two years ago. Come on!
Maybe instead of article billion in the "Biden old" category, journalists and commentators kept writing about how absurdly abnormal it is to have a rapist fraudster who attempted a coup run for a third time, Biden wouldn't be losing. This isn't normal. Biden is old, but is otherwise an off the shelf politician. Trump is a criminal who rapes women, commits frauds, and can't be trusted with state secrets. The story is a broken Republican party and Trump, not Biden.
The MSM runs your Trump story everyday. The real story is that Biden is so bad he can't over come it.
No, it doesn't. You're completely benighted if you think that any of your statements are true.
Carlos the MSM bias against Trump is very real and very well documented. Its front page everyday. What is remarkable is that the MSM itself does not dispute its position.
These articles have been constantly run though, and it hasn’t affected the support from Trump’s base. I feel like the understood preamble to articles like Silver’s here is “yes Trump is bad, now how do the Democrats beat him?” Pointing out the reasons Biden is not a great candidate right now isn’t somehow an endorsement of Trump or the Republican Party.
But it's a reinforcement cycle. The public thinks Biden is too old because the media writes articles about Bidens's age because they hear the public thinks Biden is old. Literally there are more article about Biden’s age than Trump's extreme unfitness and criminality. Every article about Trumo should introduce him as having been found liable for sexual assault, defamation of his victim, and a 350M fraud against NY. People age, that is normal. Rapist fraudsters running for president is unparalleled in history.
The public thinks Biden is too old because they haven’t seen a video of Biden where he doesn’t look like he’s lost in a nursing home in years because no such video exists.
There isn’t a single FLASH of cognitive awareness of who he is or what he is doing in a single event he has done in at least 3 years. After months of prep and getting the drug concoction just right they might send him out for 10 minutes with a crib sheet of reporter’s pictures, the order to be called on, the questions they will ask and what his answers are. That’s not a press conference.
You insane water carriers that act like other people just can’t assess the cognitive abilities of the unintelligible old man wandering around the stage recalling recent conversations with multiple people who have been dead for decades.
Just stop. Even people who ultimately support your goals wouldn’t let Biden watch their pet goldfish for a weekend and cringe at your incessant gaslighting.
Complete horseshit. Maybe stop gorging on what Fox is feeding you. Also, TRUMP IS A RAPIST FRAUDSTER. But sure, Biden is old. Same thing.
There is no point trying to talk people out of cult beliefs. cult thinkers (an oxymoron) would often rather die than admit that their sacred beliefs were delusional, the ego bruise is too painful.
Trump has really destroyed a lot of brains, on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, people only think Biden is a senile mummy because the media says so!
No way it could be what anyone not jacked up on tribalism can see plainly with their own eyes—the stiffened gait and glassy eyes, the slurred words, the inability to form and speak full sentences, the hiding from the press and refusal to sit for interviews.
Dems have locked themselves into a level of denial I haven't seen outside of apocalyptic cults, and one day their refusal to face reality will make a fascinating psychological study.
(And Trump bad! doesn't change any of this.)
If you want to feel better, you can go on complaining like this. If you want the Democrats to win, you’ll start talking differently.
You nailed it here, bravo
Nate, I've read nearly every word you've written in the last 15 years, and your opinions are among the most valuable to me on the whole wide Internet. But you've lost the plot in so many ways here:
1. Your assessment that Bidens numbers don't look good is fair enough. But the leap to "worse than replacement candidate" crosses a wide chasm. Every poll I've seen that tested Trump against a non-Biden candidate has come out the same or worse for the Democrat.
2. Step back from that just a bit and you can see that the root problem here is that Trump really consistently gets 45% in polls, regardless of opponent. Nearly half the country actually wants what he's selling. It's a sad state of affairs, but it's not obviously because of a candidate-quality problem on the other side.
3. Should Biden "step aside" the party has to choose a nominee. There are zero scenarios where that happens painlessly, to say nothing of fairly or democratically. In particular any scenario where Harris is passed over would totally tear the party in two...but Harris doesn't look great approval-wise.
4. Your demand for Biden to sit for interviews to prove his coherence of thought to the public is blissfully ignorant of reality. There are plenty of Biden interviews, press conferences, and other unscripted interactions. He regularly goes deep on policy issues and discusses details that make it clear that he's generally quite knowledgeable about everything that's going on. But the press will ignore 3hr of that detailed discussion in favor of the 5 seconds of it where he mixed something up. This article is a great example of that: plenty of harping about public perception, absolutely no acknowledgement that in real life the typical Biden remarks make perfect sense and the typical Trump remarks are unintelligible word salad. It's not obvious that providing more material, even of impeccable quality, will change this equation at all.
5. What's your actual point anyway? You demand that "Democrats pay attention" but what exactly are any of us supposed to do? If "Biden should step aside" is your actual point, then your audience is one person and this article seems poorly tuned to sway his thinking. If you were trying to make some recommendation to the rest of us, I'm not seeing it.
So ultimately I just don't know what you're trying to accomplish here. If you have no larger point than "Biden is not a favorite for reelection" I think I narrowly disagree, but I don't have any strong quarrel. But if you're honestly thinking that Biden just waving goodbye tomorrow meaningfully improves Democratic odds, I find that dubious...and if you think there's something Democrats writ large are supposed to be doing differently, please be more explicit about what that is.
For my part I'm well past the moaning about whether the nominee is my Panglossian ideal, and much more interested in how we improve his odds of winning. Biden and Trump are the nominees.
Could you please link to a video that contains the best example for your fourth point? I’m not aware of these multi hour discussions that you refer to.
Certainly I was not suggesting that there was some single 3hr conversation. If any President ever has done that I'd be surprised. But there's plenty of material out there (easily more than 3hr if you really want to get the pocket calculator out over a rhetorical flourish) and the balance of it isn't the gaffe sound bites. For a good hour of it I'd suggest the recent state of the union.
In any case, the point is absolutely not about the total quantity of tape available. The point is that the tape that's out there today is largely high-quality, but the press focuses on the small percentage that looks bad. Nate's admonition to create more tape is therefore misguided...it will inevitably not be 100% error-free (nobody is) so the press will do exactly the same thing with it. It can be stellar overall, but ultimately it just creates more gaffe sound bites.
"There are plenty of Biden interviews, press conferences, and other unscripted interactions. He regularly goes deep on policy issues and discusses details that make it clear that he's generally quite knowledgeable about everything that's going on."
Link, please!
I think the implicit disbelief here speaks to the power of the narrative. Please google "Biden interview" and "Biden press conference" and watch some of them...in their entirety, not just highlights. I think it'll change your outlook.
I'm curious what people thought of Matt Y's alternative theory: https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-need-to-see-more-joe-biden
TL;DR: If Biden's really senile, it's weird that there aren't any leaked anecdotes from behind the scenes of genuine serious lapses. An alternative explanation for Biden's limited public appearances is that his staff, who are further to the left than he is, incorrectly believe that his genuine moderation is a liability and don't want him making unscripted appearances that don't give them the opportunity to make him sound more progressive. If they stopped doing that then he'd look better.
I certainly *hope* it's this, and if it's not then I remain curious about the aforementioned absence of damaging leaks.
But there are lots of leaked anecdotes from behind the scenes. They just never get reported on in the mainstream media bubble. The first one that jumps to mind, which came from sources in Rome, is the leak that Biden pooped his pants when he met the Pope in 2021. The regime media outlets dutifully denounced it as “misinformation”, but how much you trust them is up to you.
If you want to hear of leaked anecdotes—and yes, in such a category not all of them will end up being true (just as not all lurid leaks about Trump were true)—then you need to engage with the kind of right-wing media that would report on them.
There is a story that when visiting UK, Biden let out a smelly fart in front of the Royal Family. It was a thing in UK tabloids.
Another great example of the kind of story the prudish US media, including Fox News, would never cover.
Did Fox report on this? I can't find anything on their site about it. If Fox won't touch a story that makes Biden look bad but further-bottom-of-the-barrel outlets will, then you'd think that's because the story is fake.
That’s called a “shart” and it’s fairly common.
What about the leaked anecdote that Kevin McCarthy privately told other Republicans that Biden was sharp and substantive in their conversations, but then made fun of him publicly?
None of this seems mutually exclusive with Silver's proposal. In fact, they're both basically saying the same thing: "the best way to prove Biden is still sharp is to put him in front of a mic and have him just be sharp".
Well, Nate seems to suspect that he *isn't* still sharp and therefore is avoiding that test because he can't pass it.
Fair point. That said, while they disagree on their expectations, it is worth noting they come to the same conclusion on how to fix the impression if it is, in fact, a false one.
We'll see if the White House is both able to do so and smart enough to realize it's worth doing. There's a reason Biden won the primaries and 2020 election.