The problem here is that you're assuming Biden's poor popularity is due to Biden. I think it's because he's the nominee for the Democrats for POTUS. I don't think Gavin Newsome would be doing any better, or Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris. EVERY Western incumbent is struggling right now, because every Western incumbent is dealing with inflation (which is partly why AMLO and Modi are so popular). Sure, you could replace Biden: but then the new nominee would be saddled with his record.
So unless you want Democrats to nominate a complete outsider, who repudiates everything Biden did, and was generally unlike Biden: you're going to be in a similar position. The ONLY REASON Biden has a shot is because Trump is running. If ANYONE ELSE was running: he'd be cooked.
I don't think it's just his record, I think it's that he doesn't provide a credible idea for change.
The Democratic party doesn't have any potent personalities at present. Nobody really shines. However, there have been politicians in history, who can look at a bad situation, and come up with an idea to change it, and get people to believe in that idea.
I think the Democratic party forfeited all initiative and most of their vision, by relying on Trump being the leader of the GOP to deliver victory to them. I personally think that choice was suicidal, but... I'm not a politician, or an average voter. I don't understand the average American, and I most certainly don't understand Biden.
I think Pete Buttigieg shines. He's incredibly intelligent and articulate while also being kind and sensitive. Of course, there's a large chunk of America that will never vote for a gay man, but maybe that chunk is less than 50%.
I don't find Buttigieg compelling at all. His sexuality is irrelevant to me. He knows lots of things, and has lots of ideas, but that doesn't make him a good leader, and it doesn't mean his ideas will work.
Let's look at his stint at the head of the DOT: we've had problems with trains, we've had problems with planes, we've had problems with ships, and CO2 emissions from cars have remained steady instead of declining. Now, I know, problems are not necessarily his fault, but the DOT could have done more to proactively prevent these things, especially the issues at Boeing. They could be doing more to ensure the safety of our transportation systems, and they could definitely be pushing harder to decarbonize them. Where is his grand vision in action, in laying out the future of America's transportation infrastructure, and getting regulation that's compatible with both productivity and safety? I don't see it.
He was a mediocre mayor, and he's been a below-average secretary of the DOT.
Being clever is well and good, but it's mostly independent of the things that make you cut out to lead.
I don't hate him or anything, but I don't think he's the right person for these jobs.
Hard disagree. He’s complete milquetoast, he toes the party line and doesn’t bring anything new to the table from a policy perspective. He’s certainly better than Genocide Joe in the sense that he can form coherent sentences, but we need to do so so much better than Pete. The stakes are way too high.
Meh. The more fraught politics becomes, the more I detach myself emotionally from it. Certainly it's an interesting soap opera to follow, but as news-for-profit and the inescapable ubiquity of media make politics more and more pervasive in our culture, we have begun to overestimate, even more wildly than before, the degree to which our daily lives are affected by who is president and which party is in power. The reality is that the vast majority of us - including nonwhites, including non-males - are going to be just fine regardless. Or at least not significantly less fine than in the opposite-case scenario. So if the picture Nate paints in this article fills you with anxiety, think of that.
I'm a big Bill Maher fan, and he had a monologue a couple weeks back where he really hit it on the head. "People come up to me a lot these days, and they say: 'Bill, what are we gonna do if he wins?'... my guess is we'll keep on living. Trump could absolutely blow up the world on Day 1 of Term 2. He's a dangerous, erratic, insane, awful person and I'd love to help him get *not* elected. But he didn't actually start World War III last time, or nuke a hurricane, or trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. Sure, the sequel is usually worse, but until he does, I'm gonna live *my* life. Not the one the media wants me to live, hating half the country and shitting my pants 24/7."
I understand the sentiment but this is the kind of argument that enables authoritarianism to rise (e.g. as long as the majority is ok, who needs to worry about the needs of the minority?). Either way, the sequel will almost undoubtedly be worse - you can read about Project 2025 online.
Folks on the left love to trot out the Project 2025 boogeyman, and it does seem scary until you consider its actual likelihood of being enacted - i.e. no more so, and probably less so, than any of the other moonshot partisan wishlists that we've seen in recent years.
Contrary to popular belief, the president is not a dictator who sets policy by fiat. For Project 2025 to become the law of the land would require not only a Republican president but also an overwhelming Republican majority in Congress. And barring some profound sea change on the political landscape, an overwhelming majority in Congress is not something that either party can realistically hope for anytime soon.
Even in some hypothetical red wave, any Republican candidate who might conceivably win a normally purple or purplish-blue district would by definition need to be moderate, i.e. not inclined to support an extremist legislative package like Project 2025. And incidentally: from my perspective as a Democratic-leaning independent, a significant infusion of new moderate voices into the Republican Party would be a welcome silver lining in the event of a red wave.
See, this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
To begin with, only 50% of the population are women. And of that 50%, a majority fall outside the childbearing age range. And of those who are the right age, there are significant proportions who are infertile, or who actually want children, or who don't want children but would still rather carry one to term than terminate the pregnancy. And probably other factors that I'm forgetting.
So when you whittle it down and look at who is actually in the market for an abortion, you see it for what it is: a niche issue that directly affects only an extremely narrow slice of the population. But of course, it's in the financial interests of the for-profit media that everyone always thinks the sky is falling at any given time, and the social media algorithms have divided us, "1984"-style, into factions permanently at war with each other based on a constantly shifting rationale: today abortion, tomorrow something else. So here we are, and here we will be for the foreseeable future - except for those of us who've checked out, and refuse to cede our emotions to this quagmire.
You can join our club anytime you like, my friend. Consider this your written invitation. Personally, I can't tell you how much better I feel no longer weighed down with that sack of burdens. And best of all, the more of us there are who refuse to participate, the more socially acceptable refusal to participate will become, and soon enough we'll have a positive feedback loop. And there will no longer be any incentive to stretch the Overton window out to the fringes, so the temperature of the rhetoric will cool down, and we as a nation will be well on our way back from the brink toward sanity.
I am quite well educated on the issue. When one political party insists on putting half the population in mortal danger, (not even to mention taking all their freedoms away), because of the religious beliefs of a subset of members of said party, yes it is a very bfd. If you think a group willing to do that can be trusted with any other human rights or civil rights, including your own, well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to go out among the people without having to constantly steel yourself for confrontation? Wouldn't it be great to see everyone as a potential friend rather than a potential enemy?
Isn't it exhausting to live your life constantly suspicious of everyone and everything? Wouldn't it be great to be able to let your guard down and allow yourself to experience positive emotions without preconditions? Without the obligation to fly into a righteous rage the minute someone says a wrong thing or expresses a wrong opinion? Doesn't that weigh you down? It sure weighed me down.
You have the power to start living that kind of life anytime you want. You can do it today, even.
I know that if you respond, you're going to do so negatively. This conversation is happening in a public forum, and others are reading, and you don't want to lose face by backing down. I understand completely and take no offense to whatever may show up below this space. But, behind the screen where no one can see, I hope you are giving some consideration to what I said above.
Yes. Every issue is a niche issue. Whether it's the tax rate on imported electric vehicles, or the deductibility of state and local taxes, or the presence of unwanted competitors in your sporting league, only a small fraction of people are affected by any issue.
Got to disagree on that one. Many of the things governments are involved in affect society broadly. The tax rate on imported electric vehicles might be niche, but what about the tax rate as a whole? That affects everyone. General management of the economy effects everyone, albeit to different degrees.
For another example, the education system effects everyone who will live long enough to interact with the people going through it, which is easily a majority of people (unless something *really* bad is about to happen).
In the same way, the regulation of abortion rights doesn't just affect people who are currently considering an abortion - it affects everyone whose family system might at some point in their life be affected by someone's option to have an abortion. That's unlikely to be much of an effect for me personally, as a gay man with no sisters, but I'm clearly the minority here.
In the same way, yes, but not to the same degree. And degree is everything.
If there are twice as many abortions, or twice as few, the privileged many who aren't directly or close-to directly affected may well not notice.
But imagine if half as many resources were spent on education. It would take a little while, but everyone would notice the impact that that has. If you doubled or halved the total tax take of a country, everyone would also notice that pretty quickly.
Ok, and? I don’t see a contradiction between thinking a second Trump term would be very bad and risky, and that nonetheless it probably won’t dramatically impact most people’s lives in the short run.
I have some appropriate anxiety and concern about a second Trump term, and also I’m not obsessing about it or making major life decisions around the possibility. Obsessive freaking out may be irrational, but it’s equally irrational to just say “meh” and devolve into apathy.
"I have some appropriate anxiety and concern about a second Trump term, and also I’m not obsessing about it or making major life decisions around the possibility."
If that's true, then you're doing better than a lot of people.
I mentioned several times above how the news media has become increasingly more pervasive and difficult to escape. One of the most unfortunate effects of that is that the ubiquity of bad news leads people to catastrophize, which in turn leads to decisions that are more overreactive and less rational. In myriad ways, the far-left flank of the Democratic Party is an object lesson in this.
The lesson we in this society need to learn - the sooner the better - is that information works like a bell curve. Past its peak is a whole other side where, paradoxically, the more you continue to take in, the *less* accurate your view of the world is. Information overload is real, it's a serious problem, and we are feeling its effects all over the place nowadays.
You've outlined the nightmare scenario for those of us who lived through 2000. I don't think people these days understand how fraught that period was, even if it seems relatively tame in today's cultural environment. Buckle up.
Other than the ending, 2000 was a pretty boring election and much, much more tame compared to today. Obviously the “other than” is a pretty big caveat but that year was like, Peak Boring until November rolled around. 2024 is quite different.
To what extent do you think covid-inspired migration might create uncertainties in the upcoming election? A lot of people, for example, left California and New York and dispersed to other states. Anecdotally, the people I know who've left those states tend towards the right. I suppose the polling would pick this up, but I'd also guess that pollsters rely on historical demographics and trends in weighing the poll responses, and that recent arrivals might be less likely to be polled.
I don't know how this plays out, but it just seems like a factor, given how many people moved around over the last few years, that could make it harder to understand what's going on.
But I'm thinking more of the model of the electorate that a pollster would apply to the polling sample to extrapolate the sample out to the entire potential electorate. Let's say 60,000 people from California moved into Phoenix during Covid, and those people lean heavily GOP, the extrapolation could be based on assumptions that aren't correct. Maybe the population shift is too small to make an impact, or maybe there are means to correct for this. But it seems like it could be a source of uncertainty for pollsters.
Come on Nate. The only violence is the threat of lawsuits and jail for anyone related to Trump, or legal challenges to the shenanigans from 2020. Or do you think it fair that attorneys such as Eastman or Clark are threatened with lawsuits or disbarment? What do you think of all three key swing states suddenly pausing counting at midnight, only to resume at 3am? What are the odds of that? A reported water main break at State Farm Arena was the pretext, only to later be told it was an overflowing urinal. Video and geofencing evidence of ballot mules in 2000 Mules going back and forth, taking photos before dumping ballots in ballot boxes. Hundreds of affidavits by people on all sides claiming they witnessed irregularities.
You say you’re a man of data. Were that true, you’d look at the above and assume the odds Biden legitimately won by a margin of 44,000 votes is close to zero.
Take the red pill. The evidence is in plain sight.
Never underestimate the power of an individual with a narrative to confirm. You can certainly find hundreds of people that have deluded themselves into thinking that the election was stolen enough to swear to something false. It seems like a circular argument that the election was stolen from Trump because "there is no way he could have lost". Why could he not have lost? "Well he had so many people show up at his rallies!" Except that with 155 million people voting in the 2020 election, saying that it looks like a lot of people attended Trump's rallies is statistically meaningless. And really? 2000 Mules? Any time anyone brings that up I know they are arguing in bad faith because 2000 Mules is full of disproven data. "It has been well-demonstrated by multiple authorities that the type of geolocation data relied upon by Defendants is not precise enough to determine whether an individual deposited a ballot in a drop box." In addition, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations fully investigated many of the claims therein and have exonerated each and every one of the people accused. Every single time it was someone bringing the ballots of person(s) who lived at their house with them, which is 100% legal in Georgia. Additionally, despite having declared numerous times that they have evidence of so-called "mules" dropping off ballots at multiple dropbox locations or even multiple times at a single location, they have yet to produce a single shred of this evidence that they claim to have.
"It was pristine. There was a difference in the texture of the paper — it was as if they were intended for absentee use, but had not been used for that purpose," Susan Voyles, a poll manager with two decades of experience, wrote in her affidavit about her time at a recount center in Fulton County. "There were no markings on the ballots to show where they had come from, or where they had been processed. I observed that the markings for the candidates on these ballots were unusually uniform, perhaps even with a ballot marking device."
Also, “ Investigators examined the ballots in the batches and box identified by Voyles, but all had been creased and none appeared to have been marked by a computer. Voyles then told investigators she may have been mistaken and gave them another box number. Investigators determined the box-batch combination she cited didn’t exist.”
You certainly are like the boy who cried wolf. Even if you managed by some miracle to say something true at some point in the future, you have discredited yourself to such a degree that no one will be listening.
Joe's dementia let the truth slip out when he said: “Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for our administration — President Obama’s administration before this — we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
States unilaterally changed election voting procedures which are definitively the purview of the state assemblies. These are facts. And no amount of burying your head in the sand will change the fact that a majority of Americans know Dems cheated in 2020.
Geolocation data is actually used by police and prosecutors in criminal cases.
There's also actual video footage of people holding up multiple ballots, taking a selfie, then dumping them into a ballot box. Again. And again. And again. Boy, they must love voting!
Cellphone geodata has been used in criminal cases, yes, but in concert with other evidence and is similarly limited in its exactness. The level of rigor in criminal cases is also [typically] orders of magnitude greater than the level of rigor that 2000 Mules applied. Additionally, the geolocation data that 2000 Mules was stripped of identifying information. “[t]he entirety of [Defendants’] claim rests on cell phone location data, which doesn’t remotely show that people were actually using the drop boxes (it doesn’t have the granularity to show that, as opposed to just walking or even driving by)." "Cellphone geodata is: “not accurate enough to tell if someone stopped at a ballot box, or if someone simply walked near the box." There are a significant "number of legitimate reasons why someone would be in the vicinity of a ballot box.” Again, with the multiple ballots point, dropping off multiple ballots is legal if you are dropping off for those in your household, which is what the GBI found was what individuals alleged to have committed crimes had done and exonerated them. A selfie smiling with ballots proves literally nothing--that is probably the daftest thing I have heard in long time. And no, 2000 Mules and its producers have zero evidence of the same voter showing up to multiple ballot boxes or the same ballot box multiple times. If they had it, they would share it with their audience, the investigative agencies that challenged them to produce it, or at least in their ongoing suit for defamation. As much fun as it is playing whack-a-mole with you spewing demonstrably false statements ad nauseum, I am not interested in doing the very easy legwork in disproving your conspiracy theories, which you are too lazy to do yourself.
Many of the affidavits were witnesses who were life long Democrats or non partisans, like Jessy Jacobs, who worked for the city of Detroit for decades and stated in an affidavit she personally witnessed — and in some cases was instructed — to backdate thousands of absentee ballots the day after the election to make them appear legal even though they were not in the Qualified Vote File and had not arrived by the deadline: https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-11/JessyJacobAffidavit.pdf
A judge found that Jessy's "claims about election fraud lack[ed] credibility." "Ms. Jacob's information is generalized. It asserts behavior with no date, location or frequency or names of employees." "Ms. Jacob only came forward after the unofficial results of the voting indicated former Vice President Biden was the winner in the state of Michigan." Perfect timing to come forward with claims like these, amiright? The judge also found that several of her claims were demonstrably false or intentionally misleading.
"The only violence is the threat of lawsuits and jail for anyone related to Trump, or legal challenges to the shenanigans from 2020."
Beating police officers with flagpoles and fire extinguishers is violence.
"Or do you think it fair that attorneys such as Eastman or Clark are threatened with lawsuits or disbarment?"
Yes, I think if you write up fraudulent legal memos to justify a coup, you should be disallowed from practicing law. The legal profession has rules. The various bar associations are charged with enforcing them.
"What do you think of..."
Your various conspiracy theories? Not much, other than Trump's own lawyers weren't stupid enough to try these arguments in court.
So was it a coup when Hillary and the Dems created the Steele Dossier, circulated it and got Buzzfeed to run a story, then have their allies in the FBI get a FISA warrant on Carter Page so they could cripple an incoming president? Peter Strzok to Lisa Page: “Don’t worry, he won’t be president. We have insurance against that.”
Uh...no, none of that would have been a coup, even if it had happened. The coup attempt was when Trump lost the election and then tried not to leave through a variety of extremely illegal mechanisms.
That doesn't sound like an attempt to change the governance of the country. It sounds like an attempt to discredit the President, which is standard practice for partisan leaders at least since McConnell's "We want to make Obama a one-term president". (Also, I don't think Clinton was involved in the Steele Dossier - that seems like something that was made by the individuals involved in it.)
I was wrong about the Steele Dossier. I had been under the impression it was put together by British intelligence, though it appears that it was opposition research done by a subcontractor of a Clinton legal firm.
Wait, what? Wasn't the first impeachment about Trump calling Zelensky and threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine if he failed to put pressure on Biden? It wasn't about any alleged collusion during the presidential campaign, but only about activities as President.
(You might be confusing the impeachment with the earlier investigations by the Justice Department, which did touch on many other aspects of Trump's alignment with Russia.)
You are correct, I was mistaken. But they def. used Russia to delegitimize him and launch endless investigations into him. The irony is, Biden is on the record literally threatening Ukraine to call off the investigation of Burisma or the US would withhold aid.
People like you have never explained the Uniform Increase In Turnout in Georgia. If Fulton county was so rigged, why did it’s turnout have a below average increase compared to Georgia? Why did heavy Trump counties like Cherokee, Hall, etc. have even larger turnout increases? Were they cheating too?
I actually have looked at the data. Pennsylvania is even worse, Philadelphia had almost the lowest turnout in the state and swung towards Republicans by a couple of points. But I’m supposed to think that was the nexus of fraud and I’m a blue-pilled idiot if I think otherwise.
You hit the nail right on the head. There are tons of people that think the way he thinks and have decided that Trump "had to have won!" for...reasons, and then has to grasp at straws for evidence that will back up his narrative. But he is willing to believe anything that supports him, no matter how easily the evidence is demonstrably false. He will not even do his own legwork: the two specific examples of "evidence" that he believes prove something fraudulent happened were affidavits from 1. someone who the judge found had no specific evidence and intentionally chose not to inform anyone of the "issue" until it was clear Biden had won and 2. an actual Republican (i.e. in no way non-partisan) election auditor who was given an opportunity in real time to prove her complaint, was not able to and said she might have been mistaken but still pointed investigators to look at another box of ballots the ID number for which she gave them did not exist.
1. Vulnerable machines; black boxes that they claimed weren't connected to the Internet but actually were.
2. Massive ballot harvesting fraud through drop boxes and suspended counting/ballot dumps. Days and days of "elections" dragging on even past Election Night. States unable to complete the count when huge states like FL and OH were able to quickly complete the same night.
3. Secretaries of States or Governors unilaterally changing state election laws illegally, when it was the state legislatures that only had that power.
4. Censoring Hunter laptop news, collusion with 51 intel officials on the letter. Polls later found that had voters knew about the Hunter laptop, enough people would have changed their vote that Trump would have won.
Despite all this, corrupt Joe still only won by 44,000 across 3 swing states. Sad.
I don't understand your question. What does turnout have to do with it? Trump was leading by midnight, Dems knew the gap they had to close. They stopped counting. When they resumed, the ballot dumps were astronomically high for Biden. It's not rocket science. They're laughing that people like you are covering up for the cheat that they pulled off right in from of you. "Water main break! Exit the arena. Ooops never mind, it was just a leaky urinal. But hey, look at this, Joe won!" Haha, no one believes that. If you do, your power of denial is strong.
Really so Hunter doesn’t face jail time. You need to take a red pill man. Go touch grass and remember Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and harmed police officers.
I'll make you a bet right now that Hunter won't serve a day in jail. The bigger reveal is that the laptop that was supposedly Russian disinformation, 51 intel officials signed a letter to, social media banned the NY Post...turned out to be so real and credible it's being used as evidence in this case.
Oh, and by the way, that laptop has hundreds of texts and emails of the Bidens selling out our nation's secrets for cash to our biggest adversaries.
"Hunter described Ho in a call recording on his abandoned laptop as the 'spy chief of China', and the Chinese businessman was later surveilled by US law enforcement as a foreign intelligence threat before he was convicted of bribery in 2018."
I’ll take the bet whether he’ll be found guilty: I think he will. As to his sentence it might be equivalent to Trump’s (i.e., not jail). The rest of what you have to say, it’s off the rails and out of touch, so please go enjoy a nice beer or glass of wine, or sparkling water or whatever brings you joy my friend.
Trump will either get jail time to appease the drooling TDS left, or house confinement. After all, their goal this entire time was to damage and interfere with the election, coordinated by the Biden Admin. Biden cannot do rallies. He can barely speak unaided for more than a minute. So they have to try and take Trump off the board so he cannot do rallies either. After all, without Covid, hard to justify why only 10 people show up to see Corrupt Joe while 10,000s line up to see Trump.
Hunter will get a slap on the wrist so they can say "See? We're equal in applying justice" while ignore the hundreds of laws he's broken as it relates to money laundering, wire fraud, treason and sex trafficking.
They will be doing Trump a favor if they take him off the campaign trail. Biden’s path to victory consists of Trump gaining visibility and reminding people he’s even more off the rails than Biden, which is admittedly saying something.
Yes, because Biden draws 30 people at best and Trump has thousands that wait in the blazing sun for his rallies. Trump has been gaining in all swing states, in the national polls, among Hispanics, blacks and youth. People are waking up to the fact that life was better under Trump.
Remember Antifa burned cities down, murdered people, tried to storm the White House and...no one has served jail time for that. Contrast that to J6 where some people who did nothing more but set foot into the Capitol that they were let into were imprisoned in solitary confinement. You're ok with that dichotomy?
"Remember Antifa burned cities down, murdered people, tried to storm the White House..."
No, I don't remember that. But it's always entertaining to hear you wingers explain how none of your side's crimes matter because the liberal crimes in your imagination are so much worse.
No, I’m not okay comparing two false things to each other. Touch grass, ask a neighbor how they’re really feeling, go enjoy the sunshine this summer, but please stop reading and spreading lies. It’ll suit you well, as it has the rest of us living in reality my friend.
Its a good article, but if I could prevail upon Nate, I have yet to hear a good credible correction for the Trump underestimation in both 2016 and 2020 and a reason not to expect it again.
The 538 methodology which treats the aggregate data with special sauce like pollster credibility tends to be less accurate than RCPs (RealClearPolitics) aggregate. eg RCP in 2020 got two states wrong as 538 did but they went either way calling GA for the Rs but FL for the Ds where 538 got both NC and FL wrong to the Ds.
In 2016 both RCP and 538 miscalled PA, MI, and WI for the Ds, but that was it for RCP where 538 also miscalled FL and NC.
I dont want to criticize the good wonks at 538 s I presume there is scientific justifcation for altering the aggregates with pollster ratings and such, where RCP doesn't, but gets less biased results. That is because there is some other process creating Dem bias. I dont think it is so much "shy Trump" as "anti pollster Trump" where Trump people are just more likely to hang up the phone because they are mad at the world in general and polling in particular. that could be adjusted for if polls were weighted to how respondents voted in the previous presidential but I dont think most do.
Reading some Democrats opining that Biden’s age in 2020 was not an issue so why now.Well Biden led many, myself included, to believe at his advanced age in 2020 he would be a one term “transitional”, president. But what has changed also is Biden does not hold press conferences or give serious unscripted interviews. And now Biden has to promote his recorded, or defend, while presenting a vision not a laundry list. June 27 is an impending disaster.
in light of the success of fascist/far right candidates across europe, how much should we be thinking about this election as biden/trump as opposed to a broader democracy/authoritarian that is playing out across the globe?
It's definitely part of a larger trend, but figuring out what that larger trend is is confusing. While the European votes are tilting closer towards the populist right, places like Poland and India have been tilting away.
It's past time to give up this "Biden should step aside" nonsense, hedged or not. There was never a time when this actually made sense...never during this cycle has any other real candidate (as in, not "Some Other Democrat" but an actual human being with a name) polled any better than Biden. And never have you or anybody else produced an even halfway plausible scenario for how the party is supposed to pick its nominee without a primary and without ripping the party to shreds.
It was never going to work. Now, long past the primary and two weeks from the first debate, it's downright madness. Please let it go.
It would have made a lot of sense in December 2022, or even January 2021, for Biden to have said "I'm a transitional figure, a one-term president, and I intend to pave the way for new generations to contest the 2024 primary". Of course, we're way past that now, but there was a time it would have made sense.
As a decision on the part of Biden himself, sure, that would have been fine, provided it happened early enough for a full primary season. That's not the formulation I'm reading here or anywhere else, and it's not 2022.
That all seems right. I was just responding to "There was never a time when this actually made sense." Nate did start talking about this probably at the last possible moment when there could have been a reasonable chance - but Biden probably should have promised it early on, the way that Pelosi promised she would step aside from the leadership (and did).
I realize this is old now, and we're not that far apart. But I'd note I said "that would be fine" and I'd like to draw a distinction between that and "that would have been optimal for the Democratic party."
It's worth considering that Biden polls no worse than other Dems. And incumbency may still have advantages (although that seems debatable these days). But most importantly for those of us who care about the work of government as opposed to tribalism, it would have made him a lame duck immediately, and likely led to much worse policy outcomes. I think Biden has done a lot of good work...if it's a close call on the electioneering, that's an easy tiebreaker for me.
Do you think lame-duck-ness actually leads to worse policy outcomes? It seems likely that it does in the two months after losing an election, when it’s clear the person lacks a mandate. But I don’t think there’s much fall-off in performance for second-term presidents (beyond three elections worth of reversion to the mean in control of Congress).
I think it’s hard to be sure about what actual polls mean for a counterfactual situation where someone else is actually the nominee and gets the benefit of a partisan rally (and the opposite party’s rally against, to be fair).
It’s too late. The missiles have left the silos. The train has left the station. The ship has embarked upon the sea. I completely agree Biden *should* have stepped down, and I judge him extremely harshly for not doing so. However, the time where that made sense is over.
I agree. That being said, for those of us who want and feel like we deserve better choices, this is the only option of hope we have. If Dems have hopium for denying the polls, then let Nate (and me) have our hopium by hoping he drops out and Generic Democrat becomes the nominee.
Or we could all move on and try to figure out a path forward with Biden by convincing others this election (like all) matter and people’s lives will be effected for the worse if Trump is elected. Sure my life may be fine, but I’m not the only person in this Union and we all deserve the best, amongst the choices we ACTUALLY have.
I mean first off, no...no hopium for anybody. The polls say what they say. We have some time to change them and some reasons to think we might be successful, but Dems' hair should be on fire across the board.
And you get no hopium either...your wished-for scenario doesn't even work! If Biden really did step down now, the result would be a disaster. Everybody else polls just as bad, isn't the incumbent president, has no campaign infrastructure, and would join the race under a massive cloud of undemocratic process and pissed-off Dems who backed other candidates.
My preferred scenario isn’t simply to beat Trump, it also to give me a real choice for a new direction of the country. It’s not about polling better than Biden against Trump. It’s about looking forward, toward brighter better days for America. It’s about moving on and having a new generation lead this country. I’d rather have a choice than a victory. That’s why it’s my hopium, I’d hope for that choice, victory be damned. Dems are too worried about winning elections to be brave enough to actually go win them. That’s how we got Biden in the first place.
I’m voting for Biden, because my hope is not a reality, neither is Nate’s. Your comment isn’t really a reply because by calling his and my hopes hopium is to say they are detached from reality. I know no one else is polling better or will have the infrastructure that Biden has. Does that mean the world is right currently or that we don’t get to point out how bad of risk Biden’s nomination remains even with all of the facts? No we get to have our say and we get to feel bad. And frankly, I’m so mad at Biden for putting us in this position.
This is a really nice analysis, but honestly, I'm surprised you're even having to explain to these goobers why a squeak-by win from Biden would be a weird bad time with the state the country is in. The dems might prefer the close victory either way, but honestly, with what it'd do the already giant fault lines in our political system, I'm not sure it'd be more than a pyrrhic victory for the country as a whole.
If Democratic voters are getting more reliable then a terrible time in 2026 is unlikely even if Biden’s popularity did not improve..Dems over performed in 2022 and would likely do the same in 2026.
Well...except in Yglesias' words "it's bad Senate maps all the way down." In 2026 NC is the only pickup opportunity for Dems better than TX, and they have to play defense in GA/VA/NH/MI/MN (among others). It's a map where you could just barely see them holding a majority they managed to keep in 2024, but it's hard to see them regaining it if they lost the prior cycle.
The Democratic party might just fall apart completely.
If the Democrats are correct, then a defeat in 2024 would mean the end of democracy, in which case, it would clearly be the end of their party as an entity that could garner votes and change things, not that it ever changed all that much in the past 30 years.
They went so big tent, that they've ceased to mean anything.
I wouldn't bet on the Democratic party ever performing well again.
Few things are less compelling than moderates who can't even hold on to the center. I think they had their chance, and they blew it.
When I first saw the title to Nat's article, I immediately thought of the article that talked about the significance of the number 27....Spent a bunch of time trying to find it but no luck. A lot of interesting facts about it. Wish I could have shared.
Ground work: I am no fan of the current Administration, but reading the news today, and the posts here, I am amazed at how are language/narrative has become so polarized. Virtually everyone talks in Far Right/Left Extremists. What happened to the middle?
Personally, I am surprised that the Democrats are hanging in with Biden. I know of a close confident of the President got the boot from his role in the inner circle because he tried to convince Biden to not run. This is my observation only, but I don't think Biden is being told how his chances look. I was personally surprised by a comment he continues to make when asked, as in this example, why Democrats were abandoning him? His response was something like "Hey Jack, read the poles, I am leading" Which was not the case. So why does he think that?
Some one here said he/she was a fan of Maher's. Well he has come out and said "Biden is going to F loose." I asked another Dem pollster/ Political operative whether the Dem's will dump Biden and his comment was "Never", most likely because they would have to let Harris run and if there is one person worse than Biden, it is Harris, but a vote for Biden is a vote for a Harris Presidency. It will be luck if Biden makes it to November. There is no way he survives another 4 years. This country is in such bad shape, I hate to see where we would be after another B/H 4 years. Just sayien
Hi Nate, great analysis. My only question is around the impact of RFK Jr on this outcome. I'm not sure if you've written about this already, but do you see his campaign having more of an impact than third-party candidates in past elections, and if so, does it hurt Trump or Biden more? How would it potentially change this 270-268 map?
I have looked at the comparatives when you have pollsters do two polls of the same respondents one in the two way and then one in the 5 way. In general Trumps margins in the 5 way are better. Of course they have not been polling for the Libertarian yet, which could help Biden, but Kennedy's vote factor is the strongest and he I still think is hurting Biden more.
In the last two npv polls Yahoo showed Biden +2 in the head to head but -1 in a 5 way. Emerson had Trump +1 in the head to head and +5 in the 5 way. That is good evidence that the third parties hurt Biden especially since these are presumably the same respondents. Last caveat, polls always overestimate third parties compared to the actual votes.
Yeah, third-party candidates always underperform their polls, but with RFK's polls around 10%, I would expect he would still come in at more than the usual 1% or less you get from third-party candidates in other elections. (And I don't expect West, Stein, or whoever the Libertarian candidate is to do better than that). That's especially true if RFK can manage to get on the debate stage, which he claims he will be able to do in a few weeks.
Might be a good point. Perot's actual vote tally was above his final polls, though in1992 he had earlier in June polled as high as 40% and ended up at 19%. Now Anderson in 1980 was polling at about 20% in June closer to where RFK Jr is now (8.6%) and ended up with 6.6%
Do the lovers of the Biden Administration read the news at all. Everything they accuse Tump of, the Biden Admin is doing it in Spades. Every week, these neocons are pushing us closer to a hot war with Russia. A little over a week ago, without a shred of public discussion, in secret the Biden Admin armed the Ukrainians with missiles to shoot into Russian cities. The first time EVER we have done this. Not satisfied, the Administration has now lifted the ban on supplying arms to the Azov Battalian in the Ukraine, about as Hitlerian, Nazism at it gets. Previously the Leahy Law prevented the US from suppling them weapons but through a slight of the had, similar of other actions from this Admin. The hypocrisy is unbelievable. What message do we now send about our principles where it is OK to arm Nazies
It would be interesting to read what you think about a reverse scenario where there is a 269 tie (perhaps due to the second district in Nebraska, which was more pro-Trump than the rest of the Midwest in 2016), and whether you think there is a realistic possibility that they could take the presidency away from Trump in such a case, given the complexity of the process in Congress.
Biden has to get 270. The House will vote for Trump if there is a tie, it’s based on one state delegation, one vote. Republicans will win that battle under any tie scenario.
I mean that in a 269 tie, Trump is the clear favorite to become president if the complicated process in Congress is implemented, since the small states are conservative and California has as much influence as Wyoming in this process.
The problem here is that you're assuming Biden's poor popularity is due to Biden. I think it's because he's the nominee for the Democrats for POTUS. I don't think Gavin Newsome would be doing any better, or Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris. EVERY Western incumbent is struggling right now, because every Western incumbent is dealing with inflation (which is partly why AMLO and Modi are so popular). Sure, you could replace Biden: but then the new nominee would be saddled with his record.
So unless you want Democrats to nominate a complete outsider, who repudiates everything Biden did, and was generally unlike Biden: you're going to be in a similar position. The ONLY REASON Biden has a shot is because Trump is running. If ANYONE ELSE was running: he'd be cooked.
I don't think it's just his record, I think it's that he doesn't provide a credible idea for change.
The Democratic party doesn't have any potent personalities at present. Nobody really shines. However, there have been politicians in history, who can look at a bad situation, and come up with an idea to change it, and get people to believe in that idea.
I think the Democratic party forfeited all initiative and most of their vision, by relying on Trump being the leader of the GOP to deliver victory to them. I personally think that choice was suicidal, but... I'm not a politician, or an average voter. I don't understand the average American, and I most certainly don't understand Biden.
I think Pete Buttigieg shines. He's incredibly intelligent and articulate while also being kind and sensitive. Of course, there's a large chunk of America that will never vote for a gay man, but maybe that chunk is less than 50%.
I don't find Buttigieg compelling at all. His sexuality is irrelevant to me. He knows lots of things, and has lots of ideas, but that doesn't make him a good leader, and it doesn't mean his ideas will work.
Let's look at his stint at the head of the DOT: we've had problems with trains, we've had problems with planes, we've had problems with ships, and CO2 emissions from cars have remained steady instead of declining. Now, I know, problems are not necessarily his fault, but the DOT could have done more to proactively prevent these things, especially the issues at Boeing. They could be doing more to ensure the safety of our transportation systems, and they could definitely be pushing harder to decarbonize them. Where is his grand vision in action, in laying out the future of America's transportation infrastructure, and getting regulation that's compatible with both productivity and safety? I don't see it.
He was a mediocre mayor, and he's been a below-average secretary of the DOT.
Being clever is well and good, but it's mostly independent of the things that make you cut out to lead.
I don't hate him or anything, but I don't think he's the right person for these jobs.
Hard disagree. He’s complete milquetoast, he toes the party line and doesn’t bring anything new to the table from a policy perspective. He’s certainly better than Genocide Joe in the sense that he can form coherent sentences, but we need to do so so much better than Pete. The stakes are way too high.
What’s the explanation for Biden generally underperforming Dem Senate candidates in competitive regions?
Dem Senate candidates don't suffer from the 'too old' problem. Let's remember that Trump is historically unpopular too.
Senate candidates almost always out perform presidential ones
So both Dem and Repubs win every close senate election? 150 senators! Let's have a party :)
Meh. The more fraught politics becomes, the more I detach myself emotionally from it. Certainly it's an interesting soap opera to follow, but as news-for-profit and the inescapable ubiquity of media make politics more and more pervasive in our culture, we have begun to overestimate, even more wildly than before, the degree to which our daily lives are affected by who is president and which party is in power. The reality is that the vast majority of us - including nonwhites, including non-males - are going to be just fine regardless. Or at least not significantly less fine than in the opposite-case scenario. So if the picture Nate paints in this article fills you with anxiety, think of that.
I'm a big Bill Maher fan, and he had a monologue a couple weeks back where he really hit it on the head. "People come up to me a lot these days, and they say: 'Bill, what are we gonna do if he wins?'... my guess is we'll keep on living. Trump could absolutely blow up the world on Day 1 of Term 2. He's a dangerous, erratic, insane, awful person and I'd love to help him get *not* elected. But he didn't actually start World War III last time, or nuke a hurricane, or trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. Sure, the sequel is usually worse, but until he does, I'm gonna live *my* life. Not the one the media wants me to live, hating half the country and shitting my pants 24/7."
I understand the sentiment but this is the kind of argument that enables authoritarianism to rise (e.g. as long as the majority is ok, who needs to worry about the needs of the minority?). Either way, the sequel will almost undoubtedly be worse - you can read about Project 2025 online.
Folks on the left love to trot out the Project 2025 boogeyman, and it does seem scary until you consider its actual likelihood of being enacted - i.e. no more so, and probably less so, than any of the other moonshot partisan wishlists that we've seen in recent years.
Contrary to popular belief, the president is not a dictator who sets policy by fiat. For Project 2025 to become the law of the land would require not only a Republican president but also an overwhelming Republican majority in Congress. And barring some profound sea change on the political landscape, an overwhelming majority in Congress is not something that either party can realistically hope for anytime soon.
Even in some hypothetical red wave, any Republican candidate who might conceivably win a normally purple or purplish-blue district would by definition need to be moderate, i.e. not inclined to support an extremist legislative package like Project 2025. And incidentally: from my perspective as a Democratic-leaning independent, a significant infusion of new moderate voices into the Republican Party would be a welcome silver lining in the event of a red wave.
Well, we’re headed for a sequel regardless of who wins. How fun is that?
The convergence of Hollywood and Pennsylvania Ave. What is with this decade and endless recycling of old movies/music/matchups?
It's not fun. It's not fun at all.
Bill Maher can't get pregnant.
See, this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
To begin with, only 50% of the population are women. And of that 50%, a majority fall outside the childbearing age range. And of those who are the right age, there are significant proportions who are infertile, or who actually want children, or who don't want children but would still rather carry one to term than terminate the pregnancy. And probably other factors that I'm forgetting.
So when you whittle it down and look at who is actually in the market for an abortion, you see it for what it is: a niche issue that directly affects only an extremely narrow slice of the population. But of course, it's in the financial interests of the for-profit media that everyone always thinks the sky is falling at any given time, and the social media algorithms have divided us, "1984"-style, into factions permanently at war with each other based on a constantly shifting rationale: today abortion, tomorrow something else. So here we are, and here we will be for the foreseeable future - except for those of us who've checked out, and refuse to cede our emotions to this quagmire.
You can join our club anytime you like, my friend. Consider this your written invitation. Personally, I can't tell you how much better I feel no longer weighed down with that sack of burdens. And best of all, the more of us there are who refuse to participate, the more socially acceptable refusal to participate will become, and soon enough we'll have a positive feedback loop. And there will no longer be any incentive to stretch the Overton window out to the fringes, so the temperature of the rhetoric will cool down, and we as a nation will be well on our way back from the brink toward sanity.
Tell the guys whose wives almost died that.
In other words, consider the issue from the absolute least objective point of view? Gotcha.
I am quite well educated on the issue. When one political party insists on putting half the population in mortal danger, (not even to mention taking all their freedoms away), because of the religious beliefs of a subset of members of said party, yes it is a very bfd. If you think a group willing to do that can be trusted with any other human rights or civil rights, including your own, well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to go out among the people without having to constantly steel yourself for confrontation? Wouldn't it be great to see everyone as a potential friend rather than a potential enemy?
Isn't it exhausting to live your life constantly suspicious of everyone and everything? Wouldn't it be great to be able to let your guard down and allow yourself to experience positive emotions without preconditions? Without the obligation to fly into a righteous rage the minute someone says a wrong thing or expresses a wrong opinion? Doesn't that weigh you down? It sure weighed me down.
You have the power to start living that kind of life anytime you want. You can do it today, even.
I know that if you respond, you're going to do so negatively. This conversation is happening in a public forum, and others are reading, and you don't want to lose face by backing down. I understand completely and take no offense to whatever may show up below this space. But, behind the screen where no one can see, I hope you are giving some consideration to what I said above.
Remember, it's not hopeless. Escape is possible.
Be well, my friend.
Yes. Every issue is a niche issue. Whether it's the tax rate on imported electric vehicles, or the deductibility of state and local taxes, or the presence of unwanted competitors in your sporting league, only a small fraction of people are affected by any issue.
Got to disagree on that one. Many of the things governments are involved in affect society broadly. The tax rate on imported electric vehicles might be niche, but what about the tax rate as a whole? That affects everyone. General management of the economy effects everyone, albeit to different degrees.
For another example, the education system effects everyone who will live long enough to interact with the people going through it, which is easily a majority of people (unless something *really* bad is about to happen).
In the same way, the regulation of abortion rights doesn't just affect people who are currently considering an abortion - it affects everyone whose family system might at some point in their life be affected by someone's option to have an abortion. That's unlikely to be much of an effect for me personally, as a gay man with no sisters, but I'm clearly the minority here.
In the same way, yes, but not to the same degree. And degree is everything.
If there are twice as many abortions, or twice as few, the privileged many who aren't directly or close-to directly affected may well not notice.
But imagine if half as many resources were spent on education. It would take a little while, but everyone would notice the impact that that has. If you doubled or halved the total tax take of a country, everyone would also notice that pretty quickly.
Ok, and? I don’t see a contradiction between thinking a second Trump term would be very bad and risky, and that nonetheless it probably won’t dramatically impact most people’s lives in the short run.
I have some appropriate anxiety and concern about a second Trump term, and also I’m not obsessing about it or making major life decisions around the possibility. Obsessive freaking out may be irrational, but it’s equally irrational to just say “meh” and devolve into apathy.
"I have some appropriate anxiety and concern about a second Trump term, and also I’m not obsessing about it or making major life decisions around the possibility."
If that's true, then you're doing better than a lot of people.
I mentioned several times above how the news media has become increasingly more pervasive and difficult to escape. One of the most unfortunate effects of that is that the ubiquity of bad news leads people to catastrophize, which in turn leads to decisions that are more overreactive and less rational. In myriad ways, the far-left flank of the Democratic Party is an object lesson in this.
The lesson we in this society need to learn - the sooner the better - is that information works like a bell curve. Past its peak is a whole other side where, paradoxically, the more you continue to take in, the *less* accurate your view of the world is. Information overload is real, it's a serious problem, and we are feeling its effects all over the place nowadays.
You've outlined the nightmare scenario for those of us who lived through 2000. I don't think people these days understand how fraught that period was, even if it seems relatively tame in today's cultural environment. Buckle up.
Other than the ending, 2000 was a pretty boring election and much, much more tame compared to today. Obviously the “other than” is a pretty big caveat but that year was like, Peak Boring until November rolled around. 2024 is quite different.
Reminds me of the classic line: "other than *that*, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"
To what extent do you think covid-inspired migration might create uncertainties in the upcoming election? A lot of people, for example, left California and New York and dispersed to other states. Anecdotally, the people I know who've left those states tend towards the right. I suppose the polling would pick this up, but I'd also guess that pollsters rely on historical demographics and trends in weighing the poll responses, and that recent arrivals might be less likely to be polled.
I don't know how this plays out, but it just seems like a factor, given how many people moved around over the last few years, that could make it harder to understand what's going on.
If they answer polls, they should be reflected in the polling averages.
Weighting might be a big problem in this case
Thanks, that makes sense.
But I'm thinking more of the model of the electorate that a pollster would apply to the polling sample to extrapolate the sample out to the entire potential electorate. Let's say 60,000 people from California moved into Phoenix during Covid, and those people lean heavily GOP, the extrapolation could be based on assumptions that aren't correct. Maybe the population shift is too small to make an impact, or maybe there are means to correct for this. But it seems like it could be a source of uncertainty for pollsters.
This would have shown up in 2022, which I don’t think it did.
Come on Nate. The only violence is the threat of lawsuits and jail for anyone related to Trump, or legal challenges to the shenanigans from 2020. Or do you think it fair that attorneys such as Eastman or Clark are threatened with lawsuits or disbarment? What do you think of all three key swing states suddenly pausing counting at midnight, only to resume at 3am? What are the odds of that? A reported water main break at State Farm Arena was the pretext, only to later be told it was an overflowing urinal. Video and geofencing evidence of ballot mules in 2000 Mules going back and forth, taking photos before dumping ballots in ballot boxes. Hundreds of affidavits by people on all sides claiming they witnessed irregularities.
You say you’re a man of data. Were that true, you’d look at the above and assume the odds Biden legitimately won by a margin of 44,000 votes is close to zero.
Take the red pill. The evidence is in plain sight.
Never underestimate the power of an individual with a narrative to confirm. You can certainly find hundreds of people that have deluded themselves into thinking that the election was stolen enough to swear to something false. It seems like a circular argument that the election was stolen from Trump because "there is no way he could have lost". Why could he not have lost? "Well he had so many people show up at his rallies!" Except that with 155 million people voting in the 2020 election, saying that it looks like a lot of people attended Trump's rallies is statistically meaningless. And really? 2000 Mules? Any time anyone brings that up I know they are arguing in bad faith because 2000 Mules is full of disproven data. "It has been well-demonstrated by multiple authorities that the type of geolocation data relied upon by Defendants is not precise enough to determine whether an individual deposited a ballot in a drop box." In addition, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations fully investigated many of the claims therein and have exonerated each and every one of the people accused. Every single time it was someone bringing the ballots of person(s) who lived at their house with them, which is 100% legal in Georgia. Additionally, despite having declared numerous times that they have evidence of so-called "mules" dropping off ballots at multiple dropbox locations or even multiple times at a single location, they have yet to produce a single shred of this evidence that they claim to have.
More affidavits, all under the penalty of perjury if not true:
https://letsfixstufforg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/patrick_letsfixstuff_org/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits%2FMI%20Affidavit%206a%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits&ga=1
https://letsfixstufforg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/patrick_letsfixstuff_org/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits%2FMI%20Affidavit%203%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits&ga=1
https://letsfixstufforg-my.sharepoint.com/personal/patrick_letsfixstuff_org/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits%2FMI%20Affidavit%204%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpatrick%5Fletsfixstuff%5Forg%2FDocuments%2FFiles%2F2020%20Election%2FAffidavits&ga=1
"It was pristine. There was a difference in the texture of the paper — it was as if they were intended for absentee use, but had not been used for that purpose," Susan Voyles, a poll manager with two decades of experience, wrote in her affidavit about her time at a recount center in Fulton County. "There were no markings on the ballots to show where they had come from, or where they had been processed. I observed that the markings for the candidates on these ballots were unusually uniform, perhaps even with a ballot marking device."
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18632787/6/4/wood-v-raffensperger/
Really? You really can’t quit while you’re behind can you? Suzi Voyles is the worst example of a non-partisan claimant.
https://ballotpedia.org/Suzi_Voyles
Also, “ Investigators examined the ballots in the batches and box identified by Voyles, but all had been creased and none appeared to have been marked by a computer. Voyles then told investigators she may have been mistaken and gave them another box number. Investigators determined the box-batch combination she cited didn’t exist.”
You certainly are like the boy who cried wolf. Even if you managed by some miracle to say something true at some point in the future, you have discredited yourself to such a degree that no one will be listening.
Joe's dementia let the truth slip out when he said: “Secondly, we’re in a situation where we have put together, and you guys did it for our administration — President Obama’s administration before this — we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
States unilaterally changed election voting procedures which are definitively the purview of the state assemblies. These are facts. And no amount of burying your head in the sand will change the fact that a majority of Americans know Dems cheated in 2020.
-Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that ballot boxes in 2020 were illegal.
-Censoring Hunter's laptop swung the Indy vote enough to swing the election.
Need more examples of election interference?
Geolocation data is actually used by police and prosecutors in criminal cases.
There's also actual video footage of people holding up multiple ballots, taking a selfie, then dumping them into a ballot box. Again. And again. And again. Boy, they must love voting!
Cellphone geodata has been used in criminal cases, yes, but in concert with other evidence and is similarly limited in its exactness. The level of rigor in criminal cases is also [typically] orders of magnitude greater than the level of rigor that 2000 Mules applied. Additionally, the geolocation data that 2000 Mules was stripped of identifying information. “[t]he entirety of [Defendants’] claim rests on cell phone location data, which doesn’t remotely show that people were actually using the drop boxes (it doesn’t have the granularity to show that, as opposed to just walking or even driving by)." "Cellphone geodata is: “not accurate enough to tell if someone stopped at a ballot box, or if someone simply walked near the box." There are a significant "number of legitimate reasons why someone would be in the vicinity of a ballot box.” Again, with the multiple ballots point, dropping off multiple ballots is legal if you are dropping off for those in your household, which is what the GBI found was what individuals alleged to have committed crimes had done and exonerated them. A selfie smiling with ballots proves literally nothing--that is probably the daftest thing I have heard in long time. And no, 2000 Mules and its producers have zero evidence of the same voter showing up to multiple ballot boxes or the same ballot box multiple times. If they had it, they would share it with their audience, the investigative agencies that challenged them to produce it, or at least in their ongoing suit for defamation. As much fun as it is playing whack-a-mole with you spewing demonstrably false statements ad nauseum, I am not interested in doing the very easy legwork in disproving your conspiracy theories, which you are too lazy to do yourself.
Who takes selfies of themselves dropping off multiple ballots again and again and again? Your power of denial is powerful, my friend.
Many of the affidavits were witnesses who were life long Democrats or non partisans, like Jessy Jacobs, who worked for the city of Detroit for decades and stated in an affidavit she personally witnessed — and in some cases was instructed — to backdate thousands of absentee ballots the day after the election to make them appear legal even though they were not in the Qualified Vote File and had not arrived by the deadline: https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-11/JessyJacobAffidavit.pdf
A judge found that Jessy's "claims about election fraud lack[ed] credibility." "Ms. Jacob's information is generalized. It asserts behavior with no date, location or frequency or names of employees." "Ms. Jacob only came forward after the unofficial results of the voting indicated former Vice President Biden was the winner in the state of Michigan." Perfect timing to come forward with claims like these, amiright? The judge also found that several of her claims were demonstrably false or intentionally misleading.
She is but one of hundreds of other affidavits. Can't poo poo them all.
"The only violence is the threat of lawsuits and jail for anyone related to Trump, or legal challenges to the shenanigans from 2020."
Beating police officers with flagpoles and fire extinguishers is violence.
"Or do you think it fair that attorneys such as Eastman or Clark are threatened with lawsuits or disbarment?"
Yes, I think if you write up fraudulent legal memos to justify a coup, you should be disallowed from practicing law. The legal profession has rules. The various bar associations are charged with enforcing them.
"What do you think of..."
Your various conspiracy theories? Not much, other than Trump's own lawyers weren't stupid enough to try these arguments in court.
So was it a coup when Hillary and the Dems created the Steele Dossier, circulated it and got Buzzfeed to run a story, then have their allies in the FBI get a FISA warrant on Carter Page so they could cripple an incoming president? Peter Strzok to Lisa Page: “Don’t worry, he won’t be president. We have insurance against that.”
Uh...no, none of that would have been a coup, even if it had happened. The coup attempt was when Trump lost the election and then tried not to leave through a variety of extremely illegal mechanisms.
It did happen. All of this is proven. But I don't blame you if this is the first time you've heard of this if all you watch is MSNBC.
That doesn't sound like an attempt to change the governance of the country. It sounds like an attempt to discredit the President, which is standard practice for partisan leaders at least since McConnell's "We want to make Obama a one-term president". (Also, I don't think Clinton was involved in the Steele Dossier - that seems like something that was made by the individuals involved in it.)
The Steele Dossier was funded by Perkins Coie, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign: https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2022/05/18/ex-perkins-coie-partner-marc-elias-testifies-about-clinton-campaign-work-frustration-with-fbi/?slreturn=20240510224725
I wasn't able to read the article you linked, but I did find another: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-dossier-fusion-gps/index.html
I was wrong about the Steele Dossier. I had been under the impression it was put together by British intelligence, though it appears that it was opposition research done by a subcontractor of a Clinton legal firm.
I believe Steele was ex-British intel.
Um, they used it literally to say Trump won because of "RUSSIA!", and it led to the first impeachment.
Wait, what? Wasn't the first impeachment about Trump calling Zelensky and threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine if he failed to put pressure on Biden? It wasn't about any alleged collusion during the presidential campaign, but only about activities as President.
(You might be confusing the impeachment with the earlier investigations by the Justice Department, which did touch on many other aspects of Trump's alignment with Russia.)
You are correct, I was mistaken. But they def. used Russia to delegitimize him and launch endless investigations into him. The irony is, Biden is on the record literally threatening Ukraine to call off the investigation of Burisma or the US would withhold aid.
Prove these so call fraudulent legal memos. Calling it fraudulent doesn’t make it so.
No, *me* calling them fraudulent doesn't make it so. But the state bar saying so...
Yes, because we trust the institutions implicitly! They would never lie or do anything untoward.
People like you have never explained the Uniform Increase In Turnout in Georgia. If Fulton county was so rigged, why did it’s turnout have a below average increase compared to Georgia? Why did heavy Trump counties like Cherokee, Hall, etc. have even larger turnout increases? Were they cheating too?
I actually have looked at the data. Pennsylvania is even worse, Philadelphia had almost the lowest turnout in the state and swung towards Republicans by a couple of points. But I’m supposed to think that was the nexus of fraud and I’m a blue-pilled idiot if I think otherwise.
You hit the nail right on the head. There are tons of people that think the way he thinks and have decided that Trump "had to have won!" for...reasons, and then has to grasp at straws for evidence that will back up his narrative. But he is willing to believe anything that supports him, no matter how easily the evidence is demonstrably false. He will not even do his own legwork: the two specific examples of "evidence" that he believes prove something fraudulent happened were affidavits from 1. someone who the judge found had no specific evidence and intentionally chose not to inform anyone of the "issue" until it was clear Biden had won and 2. an actual Republican (i.e. in no way non-partisan) election auditor who was given an opportunity in real time to prove her complaint, was not able to and said she might have been mistaken but still pointed investigators to look at another box of ballots the ID number for which she gave them did not exist.
The fraud was multi-pronged:
1. Vulnerable machines; black boxes that they claimed weren't connected to the Internet but actually were.
2. Massive ballot harvesting fraud through drop boxes and suspended counting/ballot dumps. Days and days of "elections" dragging on even past Election Night. States unable to complete the count when huge states like FL and OH were able to quickly complete the same night.
3. Secretaries of States or Governors unilaterally changing state election laws illegally, when it was the state legislatures that only had that power.
4. Censoring Hunter laptop news, collusion with 51 intel officials on the letter. Polls later found that had voters knew about the Hunter laptop, enough people would have changed their vote that Trump would have won.
Despite all this, corrupt Joe still only won by 44,000 across 3 swing states. Sad.
There were literally hundreds of affidavits and witnesses who testified in multiple states that they saw irregularities and outright fraud.
I don't understand your question. What does turnout have to do with it? Trump was leading by midnight, Dems knew the gap they had to close. They stopped counting. When they resumed, the ballot dumps were astronomically high for Biden. It's not rocket science. They're laughing that people like you are covering up for the cheat that they pulled off right in from of you. "Water main break! Exit the arena. Ooops never mind, it was just a leaky urinal. But hey, look at this, Joe won!" Haha, no one believes that. If you do, your power of denial is strong.
Really so Hunter doesn’t face jail time. You need to take a red pill man. Go touch grass and remember Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and harmed police officers.
I'll make you a bet right now that Hunter won't serve a day in jail. The bigger reveal is that the laptop that was supposedly Russian disinformation, 51 intel officials signed a letter to, social media banned the NY Post...turned out to be so real and credible it's being used as evidence in this case.
Oh, and by the way, that laptop has hundreds of texts and emails of the Bidens selling out our nation's secrets for cash to our biggest adversaries.
You sure say a lot of things that are just flat out not true.
"Hunter described Ho in a call recording on his abandoned laptop as the 'spy chief of China', and the Chinese businessman was later surveilled by US law enforcement as a foreign intelligence threat before he was convicted of bribery in 2018."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9522591/Hunter-Bidens-close-relationship-Chinese-American-secretary-revealed.html
What part? Be specific.
I’ll take the bet whether he’ll be found guilty: I think he will. As to his sentence it might be equivalent to Trump’s (i.e., not jail). The rest of what you have to say, it’s off the rails and out of touch, so please go enjoy a nice beer or glass of wine, or sparkling water or whatever brings you joy my friend.
Trump will either get jail time to appease the drooling TDS left, or house confinement. After all, their goal this entire time was to damage and interfere with the election, coordinated by the Biden Admin. Biden cannot do rallies. He can barely speak unaided for more than a minute. So they have to try and take Trump off the board so he cannot do rallies either. After all, without Covid, hard to justify why only 10 people show up to see Corrupt Joe while 10,000s line up to see Trump.
Hunter will get a slap on the wrist so they can say "See? We're equal in applying justice" while ignore the hundreds of laws he's broken as it relates to money laundering, wire fraud, treason and sex trafficking.
They will be doing Trump a favor if they take him off the campaign trail. Biden’s path to victory consists of Trump gaining visibility and reminding people he’s even more off the rails than Biden, which is admittedly saying something.
Yes, because Biden draws 30 people at best and Trump has thousands that wait in the blazing sun for his rallies. Trump has been gaining in all swing states, in the national polls, among Hispanics, blacks and youth. People are waking up to the fact that life was better under Trump.
I’m not convincing you of anything else. I appreciate you saying be well.
I’ll just ask and leave you with this. What if you’re wrong about any of the above? Will anything change for you?
Proof of Biden direct involvement with lawfare against Trump:
Matthew Colangelo, #3 at the DoJ, steps down to become an assistant in the SDNY to go after Trump with Bragg.
Jonathan Su, Biden Deputy White House Counsel, colluding with Gary Stern, General Counsel of the National Archives, on the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Nathan Wade billed taxpayers 16 hours for 2 meetings with White House Counsel.
Wrong about what part?
Remember Antifa burned cities down, murdered people, tried to storm the White House and...no one has served jail time for that. Contrast that to J6 where some people who did nothing more but set foot into the Capitol that they were let into were imprisoned in solitary confinement. You're ok with that dichotomy?
"Remember Antifa burned cities down, murdered people, tried to storm the White House..."
No, I don't remember that. But it's always entertaining to hear you wingers explain how none of your side's crimes matter because the liberal crimes in your imagination are so much worse.
"More Than 1,500 Minnesota Businesses Damaged in George Floyd Protests, Expect to Take Years to Rebuild"
https://www.newsweek.com/businesses-year-after-floyd-1596610
"...as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades."
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-george-floyd-politics-a2326518da6b25b4509bef1ec85f5d7f
"At least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled
"Riots following George Floyd’s death may cost insurance companies up to $2B"
https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/riots-following-george-floyds-death-could-cost-up-to-2b/
Which city was burned down? Why are all the cities still on the map?
The CNN mostly peaceful meme. Ask the black residents who live in those neighborhoods that were looted and burned how they are doing.
What do they say? Have you asked them? Or do you just claim to speak for them?
No, I’m not okay comparing two false things to each other. Touch grass, ask a neighbor how they’re really feeling, go enjoy the sunshine this summer, but please stop reading and spreading lies. It’ll suit you well, as it has the rest of us living in reality my friend.
Says the NPC lol. Be well.
The fact that it's 2024 and you're still using the "red pill"/"blue pill" analogy speaks volumes.
Its a good article, but if I could prevail upon Nate, I have yet to hear a good credible correction for the Trump underestimation in both 2016 and 2020 and a reason not to expect it again.
The 538 methodology which treats the aggregate data with special sauce like pollster credibility tends to be less accurate than RCPs (RealClearPolitics) aggregate. eg RCP in 2020 got two states wrong as 538 did but they went either way calling GA for the Rs but FL for the Ds where 538 got both NC and FL wrong to the Ds.
In 2016 both RCP and 538 miscalled PA, MI, and WI for the Ds, but that was it for RCP where 538 also miscalled FL and NC.
I dont want to criticize the good wonks at 538 s I presume there is scientific justifcation for altering the aggregates with pollster ratings and such, where RCP doesn't, but gets less biased results. That is because there is some other process creating Dem bias. I dont think it is so much "shy Trump" as "anti pollster Trump" where Trump people are just more likely to hang up the phone because they are mad at the world in general and polling in particular. that could be adjusted for if polls were weighted to how respondents voted in the previous presidential but I dont think most do.
Reading some Democrats opining that Biden’s age in 2020 was not an issue so why now.Well Biden led many, myself included, to believe at his advanced age in 2020 he would be a one term “transitional”, president. But what has changed also is Biden does not hold press conferences or give serious unscripted interviews. And now Biden has to promote his recorded, or defend, while presenting a vision not a laundry list. June 27 is an impending disaster.
in light of the success of fascist/far right candidates across europe, how much should we be thinking about this election as biden/trump as opposed to a broader democracy/authoritarian that is playing out across the globe?
It's definitely part of a larger trend, but figuring out what that larger trend is is confusing. While the European votes are tilting closer towards the populist right, places like Poland and India have been tilting away.
So Modi is not populist-right? Really?
He is, but he won fewer seats than last time. So does suggest tilting away.
It's past time to give up this "Biden should step aside" nonsense, hedged or not. There was never a time when this actually made sense...never during this cycle has any other real candidate (as in, not "Some Other Democrat" but an actual human being with a name) polled any better than Biden. And never have you or anybody else produced an even halfway plausible scenario for how the party is supposed to pick its nominee without a primary and without ripping the party to shreds.
It was never going to work. Now, long past the primary and two weeks from the first debate, it's downright madness. Please let it go.
It would have made a lot of sense in December 2022, or even January 2021, for Biden to have said "I'm a transitional figure, a one-term president, and I intend to pave the way for new generations to contest the 2024 primary". Of course, we're way past that now, but there was a time it would have made sense.
As a decision on the part of Biden himself, sure, that would have been fine, provided it happened early enough for a full primary season. That's not the formulation I'm reading here or anywhere else, and it's not 2022.
That all seems right. I was just responding to "There was never a time when this actually made sense." Nate did start talking about this probably at the last possible moment when there could have been a reasonable chance - but Biden probably should have promised it early on, the way that Pelosi promised she would step aside from the leadership (and did).
I realize this is old now, and we're not that far apart. But I'd note I said "that would be fine" and I'd like to draw a distinction between that and "that would have been optimal for the Democratic party."
It's worth considering that Biden polls no worse than other Dems. And incumbency may still have advantages (although that seems debatable these days). But most importantly for those of us who care about the work of government as opposed to tribalism, it would have made him a lame duck immediately, and likely led to much worse policy outcomes. I think Biden has done a lot of good work...if it's a close call on the electioneering, that's an easy tiebreaker for me.
Do you think lame-duck-ness actually leads to worse policy outcomes? It seems likely that it does in the two months after losing an election, when it’s clear the person lacks a mandate. But I don’t think there’s much fall-off in performance for second-term presidents (beyond three elections worth of reversion to the mean in control of Congress).
I think it’s hard to be sure about what actual polls mean for a counterfactual situation where someone else is actually the nominee and gets the benefit of a partisan rally (and the opposite party’s rally against, to be fair).
It’s too late. The missiles have left the silos. The train has left the station. The ship has embarked upon the sea. I completely agree Biden *should* have stepped down, and I judge him extremely harshly for not doing so. However, the time where that made sense is over.
I agree. That being said, for those of us who want and feel like we deserve better choices, this is the only option of hope we have. If Dems have hopium for denying the polls, then let Nate (and me) have our hopium by hoping he drops out and Generic Democrat becomes the nominee.
Or we could all move on and try to figure out a path forward with Biden by convincing others this election (like all) matter and people’s lives will be effected for the worse if Trump is elected. Sure my life may be fine, but I’m not the only person in this Union and we all deserve the best, amongst the choices we ACTUALLY have.
Everyone is searching for their hopium it seems.
I mean first off, no...no hopium for anybody. The polls say what they say. We have some time to change them and some reasons to think we might be successful, but Dems' hair should be on fire across the board.
And you get no hopium either...your wished-for scenario doesn't even work! If Biden really did step down now, the result would be a disaster. Everybody else polls just as bad, isn't the incumbent president, has no campaign infrastructure, and would join the race under a massive cloud of undemocratic process and pissed-off Dems who backed other candidates.
My preferred scenario isn’t simply to beat Trump, it also to give me a real choice for a new direction of the country. It’s not about polling better than Biden against Trump. It’s about looking forward, toward brighter better days for America. It’s about moving on and having a new generation lead this country. I’d rather have a choice than a victory. That’s why it’s my hopium, I’d hope for that choice, victory be damned. Dems are too worried about winning elections to be brave enough to actually go win them. That’s how we got Biden in the first place.
I’m voting for Biden, because my hope is not a reality, neither is Nate’s. Your comment isn’t really a reply because by calling his and my hopes hopium is to say they are detached from reality. I know no one else is polling better or will have the infrastructure that Biden has. Does that mean the world is right currently or that we don’t get to point out how bad of risk Biden’s nomination remains even with all of the facts? No we get to have our say and we get to feel bad. And frankly, I’m so mad at Biden for putting us in this position.
This is a really nice analysis, but honestly, I'm surprised you're even having to explain to these goobers why a squeak-by win from Biden would be a weird bad time with the state the country is in. The dems might prefer the close victory either way, but honestly, with what it'd do the already giant fault lines in our political system, I'm not sure it'd be more than a pyrrhic victory for the country as a whole.
Strategy to retain free democracy in America: Dems win every single election agonizingly closely, for ever.
No risk in that, is there?
If Democratic voters are getting more reliable then a terrible time in 2026 is unlikely even if Biden’s popularity did not improve..Dems over performed in 2022 and would likely do the same in 2026.
Well...except in Yglesias' words "it's bad Senate maps all the way down." In 2026 NC is the only pickup opportunity for Dems better than TX, and they have to play defense in GA/VA/NH/MI/MN (among others). It's a map where you could just barely see them holding a majority they managed to keep in 2024, but it's hard to see them regaining it if they lost the prior cycle.
I don't know.
The Democratic party might just fall apart completely.
If the Democrats are correct, then a defeat in 2024 would mean the end of democracy, in which case, it would clearly be the end of their party as an entity that could garner votes and change things, not that it ever changed all that much in the past 30 years.
They went so big tent, that they've ceased to mean anything.
I wouldn't bet on the Democratic party ever performing well again.
Few things are less compelling than moderates who can't even hold on to the center. I think they had their chance, and they blew it.
When I first saw the title to Nat's article, I immediately thought of the article that talked about the significance of the number 27....Spent a bunch of time trying to find it but no luck. A lot of interesting facts about it. Wish I could have shared.
Ground work: I am no fan of the current Administration, but reading the news today, and the posts here, I am amazed at how are language/narrative has become so polarized. Virtually everyone talks in Far Right/Left Extremists. What happened to the middle?
Personally, I am surprised that the Democrats are hanging in with Biden. I know of a close confident of the President got the boot from his role in the inner circle because he tried to convince Biden to not run. This is my observation only, but I don't think Biden is being told how his chances look. I was personally surprised by a comment he continues to make when asked, as in this example, why Democrats were abandoning him? His response was something like "Hey Jack, read the poles, I am leading" Which was not the case. So why does he think that?
Some one here said he/she was a fan of Maher's. Well he has come out and said "Biden is going to F loose." I asked another Dem pollster/ Political operative whether the Dem's will dump Biden and his comment was "Never", most likely because they would have to let Harris run and if there is one person worse than Biden, it is Harris, but a vote for Biden is a vote for a Harris Presidency. It will be luck if Biden makes it to November. There is no way he survives another 4 years. This country is in such bad shape, I hate to see where we would be after another B/H 4 years. Just sayien
Hi Nate, great analysis. My only question is around the impact of RFK Jr on this outcome. I'm not sure if you've written about this already, but do you see his campaign having more of an impact than third-party candidates in past elections, and if so, does it hurt Trump or Biden more? How would it potentially change this 270-268 map?
I have looked at the comparatives when you have pollsters do two polls of the same respondents one in the two way and then one in the 5 way. In general Trumps margins in the 5 way are better. Of course they have not been polling for the Libertarian yet, which could help Biden, but Kennedy's vote factor is the strongest and he I still think is hurting Biden more.
In the last two npv polls Yahoo showed Biden +2 in the head to head but -1 in a 5 way. Emerson had Trump +1 in the head to head and +5 in the 5 way. That is good evidence that the third parties hurt Biden especially since these are presumably the same respondents. Last caveat, polls always overestimate third parties compared to the actual votes.
Yeah, third-party candidates always underperform their polls, but with RFK's polls around 10%, I would expect he would still come in at more than the usual 1% or less you get from third-party candidates in other elections. (And I don't expect West, Stein, or whoever the Libertarian candidate is to do better than that). That's especially true if RFK can manage to get on the debate stage, which he claims he will be able to do in a few weeks.
Might be a good point. Perot's actual vote tally was above his final polls, though in1992 he had earlier in June polled as high as 40% and ended up at 19%. Now Anderson in 1980 was polling at about 20% in June closer to where RFK Jr is now (8.6%) and ended up with 6.6%
Do the lovers of the Biden Administration read the news at all. Everything they accuse Tump of, the Biden Admin is doing it in Spades. Every week, these neocons are pushing us closer to a hot war with Russia. A little over a week ago, without a shred of public discussion, in secret the Biden Admin armed the Ukrainians with missiles to shoot into Russian cities. The first time EVER we have done this. Not satisfied, the Administration has now lifted the ban on supplying arms to the Azov Battalian in the Ukraine, about as Hitlerian, Nazism at it gets. Previously the Leahy Law prevented the US from suppling them weapons but through a slight of the had, similar of other actions from this Admin. The hypocrisy is unbelievable. What message do we now send about our principles where it is OK to arm Nazies
You sound like a Russian bot
Read the news.
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-lift-ban-ukrainian-unit-using-us-weapons-wash-post-reports-2024-06-11/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/02/what-is-ukraines-azov-battalion/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/06/ukraine-military-right-wing-militias/
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-allows-ukraine-use-us-supplied-arms-strike-inside-russia-near-kharkiv-area-2024-05-30/
It would be interesting to read what you think about a reverse scenario where there is a 269 tie (perhaps due to the second district in Nebraska, which was more pro-Trump than the rest of the Midwest in 2016), and whether you think there is a realistic possibility that they could take the presidency away from Trump in such a case, given the complexity of the process in Congress.
Biden has to get 270. The House will vote for Trump if there is a tie, it’s based on one state delegation, one vote. Republicans will win that battle under any tie scenario.
What do you mean "take the presidency away from Trump"? He doesn't have it currently.
I mean that in a 269 tie, Trump is the clear favorite to become president if the complicated process in Congress is implemented, since the small states are conservative and California has as much influence as Wyoming in this process.
Great post. I’m getting some fun Earth-2 vibes. Maybe this can be called Earth-270? :)