I might be mis-remembering, but I remember being pretty confident that almost any Democrat in the primaries could and would have beaten Trump. We’re past the point where it’s meaningful to debate whether one candidate would have outperformed another hypothetically (eg would Bernie have pulled more of the disaffected blue collar white voters who went for Trump). It was closer than I expected and closer than I would have liked, but coming off the polling and voting trends we were seeing I didn’t think the Dems would lose it.
This is feeling more like 2016 in that the Dems are committed to running an unpopular candidate (like her or not as a politician, she was the least popular candidate in presidential history, except for Trump).
There was simply overconfidence on the Democratic side that people would see through the Trump arguments and a refusal to acknowledge that Hillary, while a great candidate on paper, had all the charisma of a Manila folder. Obama and Bill Clinton won on charisma. W kinda cheated and then rode the 9/11 train (but honestly Kerry was a Democratic Bob Dole). Reagan won on charisma. Trump won on racism and charisma (although it’s not a charisma that I get).
I think Biden won on being not-Trump combined with reflected glory from Obama and (for the primaries) being seen as the safe choice. The reflected glory is gone - Obama is far back in the rear view mirror and Biden has his own record now. Agree with it or not, he’s no longer being presented as the safe choice by the press because of his policies and his honestly pretty dismal approval rating. Head to head there’s a serious chance he could lose, and there’s not a Ross Perot coming in from the top rope to tip the election. The board is still out on the third parties - who they’ll pull from - but it’s telling that third party candidates with low single digits could swing the election. Again, 2016.
Hillary led Trump in the polls throughout the 2016 campaign.
So if 2024 resembles 2016, then after Biden wins we can look forward to more complaints that the polls had it wrong, and that an overconfident GOP lost because they ran the least popular candidate in presidential history.
I understand that you don’t like Biden. But there is no evidence that another candidate would do better. I think that any Democratic candidate would be criticized as fiercely as Biden, especially the natural choice to replace him: Kamala Harris. And in this political climate, no Democrat is going to poll +5% against Trump.
Finally, recent history does not support your inclination to replace him. If anything it suggests that we should be more optimistic.
I understand that you want Biden to win. I do too.
What you don’t seem to understand is that, in your enthusiasm for the former, you’re failing to identify the difference between “we should have set up an inheritor three years ago” with “we should change the ticket right now! Or in a few weeks!” or whatever it is you’re imagining I’m saying.
I will absolutely guarantee you that our back and forth here - whether it’s an intellectual debate or your defense of Biden qua Democrat - will flip zero votes.
I’d also suggest - and please at this point let’s stop play fighting and just talk - I’d suggest that you take a look at data science or statistics as a career. I think you kind of have an intuition of an argument, but it’s something that you could construct more strongly.
So let’s pretend that we build a function that predicts that a given Democratic candidate wins an election versus Trump etc. We want to maximize the probability of a Democratic win. It’s not necessarily the candidate most likely to win the primary, especially one that’s explicitly non-contested. To be more clear, we want to maximize the chance of a Democratic win, and that may or may not be the candidate most likely to have won either a fairly contested primary election. And even from that model, we’re subtracting the fairly contested primary election. As I implied, no one is going to outpoll Biden because no one is opposing him (which would be VERY BAD) and he did not announce/enact a transition plan staring two years ago (WOULD HAVE BEEN A GREAT IDEA).
So to be even more clear - no, I don’t like Biden. I don’t especially dislike Harris, except that I think she’s a very very bad politician. The Harris we saw in the first debate just never reappeared. I’m not sure Biden will win, and I’m pretty sure Harris would lose. I’m not sure Newsom would have lost (I am a fan and would hate to lose him as governor) had he gotten a $1B coffer and establishment endorsements three years ago. Do you see the difference? I’m not saying that Newsom today could start from Jump Street and beat Trump. I’m saying some people who are supposed to be the adults in the room should have made that call three years ago.
If you built a function that predicts a candidate’s chances of victory, you would find that it strongly favors an incumbent.
Furthermore, if you had to build a function that predicts a candidate’s chance of winning a primary when the incumbent isn’t running, you would find that it strongly favors the sitting vice-president.
So if three years ago a political scientist had to predict the person most likely to win in 2024, they should have chosen Biden. Especially if they had to predict, in 2021, the person most likely to win a rematch of the 2020 election.
And if they predicted that Biden would not seek re-election, then they should also predict that Harris would become the nominee.
Now, perhaps there is data in 2024 indicating uncertainty about a Biden victory. But that data would not have been available three years ago. So I’m not sure it does much good to argue that we should have made a different decision then. And frankly, I’m not even sure we got it wrong.
These arguments being made are why this feels like 2016 and not 2012.
Feels more like 2020 to me
I might be mis-remembering, but I remember being pretty confident that almost any Democrat in the primaries could and would have beaten Trump. We’re past the point where it’s meaningful to debate whether one candidate would have outperformed another hypothetically (eg would Bernie have pulled more of the disaffected blue collar white voters who went for Trump). It was closer than I expected and closer than I would have liked, but coming off the polling and voting trends we were seeing I didn’t think the Dems would lose it.
This is feeling more like 2016 in that the Dems are committed to running an unpopular candidate (like her or not as a politician, she was the least popular candidate in presidential history, except for Trump).
There was simply overconfidence on the Democratic side that people would see through the Trump arguments and a refusal to acknowledge that Hillary, while a great candidate on paper, had all the charisma of a Manila folder. Obama and Bill Clinton won on charisma. W kinda cheated and then rode the 9/11 train (but honestly Kerry was a Democratic Bob Dole). Reagan won on charisma. Trump won on racism and charisma (although it’s not a charisma that I get).
I think Biden won on being not-Trump combined with reflected glory from Obama and (for the primaries) being seen as the safe choice. The reflected glory is gone - Obama is far back in the rear view mirror and Biden has his own record now. Agree with it or not, he’s no longer being presented as the safe choice by the press because of his policies and his honestly pretty dismal approval rating. Head to head there’s a serious chance he could lose, and there’s not a Ross Perot coming in from the top rope to tip the election. The board is still out on the third parties - who they’ll pull from - but it’s telling that third party candidates with low single digits could swing the election. Again, 2016.
Hillary led Trump in the polls throughout the 2016 campaign.
So if 2024 resembles 2016, then after Biden wins we can look forward to more complaints that the polls had it wrong, and that an overconfident GOP lost because they ran the least popular candidate in presidential history.
I feel like I explained my reasoning at length and in response get nothing of note, but rather what I’d see on a bumper sticker.
I understand that you don’t like Biden. But there is no evidence that another candidate would do better. I think that any Democratic candidate would be criticized as fiercely as Biden, especially the natural choice to replace him: Kamala Harris. And in this political climate, no Democrat is going to poll +5% against Trump.
Finally, recent history does not support your inclination to replace him. If anything it suggests that we should be more optimistic.
I understand that you want Biden to win. I do too.
What you don’t seem to understand is that, in your enthusiasm for the former, you’re failing to identify the difference between “we should have set up an inheritor three years ago” with “we should change the ticket right now! Or in a few weeks!” or whatever it is you’re imagining I’m saying.
I will absolutely guarantee you that our back and forth here - whether it’s an intellectual debate or your defense of Biden qua Democrat - will flip zero votes.
I’d also suggest - and please at this point let’s stop play fighting and just talk - I’d suggest that you take a look at data science or statistics as a career. I think you kind of have an intuition of an argument, but it’s something that you could construct more strongly.
So let’s pretend that we build a function that predicts that a given Democratic candidate wins an election versus Trump etc. We want to maximize the probability of a Democratic win. It’s not necessarily the candidate most likely to win the primary, especially one that’s explicitly non-contested. To be more clear, we want to maximize the chance of a Democratic win, and that may or may not be the candidate most likely to have won either a fairly contested primary election. And even from that model, we’re subtracting the fairly contested primary election. As I implied, no one is going to outpoll Biden because no one is opposing him (which would be VERY BAD) and he did not announce/enact a transition plan staring two years ago (WOULD HAVE BEEN A GREAT IDEA).
So to be even more clear - no, I don’t like Biden. I don’t especially dislike Harris, except that I think she’s a very very bad politician. The Harris we saw in the first debate just never reappeared. I’m not sure Biden will win, and I’m pretty sure Harris would lose. I’m not sure Newsom would have lost (I am a fan and would hate to lose him as governor) had he gotten a $1B coffer and establishment endorsements three years ago. Do you see the difference? I’m not saying that Newsom today could start from Jump Street and beat Trump. I’m saying some people who are supposed to be the adults in the room should have made that call three years ago.
If you built a function that predicts a candidate’s chances of victory, you would find that it strongly favors an incumbent.
Furthermore, if you had to build a function that predicts a candidate’s chance of winning a primary when the incumbent isn’t running, you would find that it strongly favors the sitting vice-president.
So if three years ago a political scientist had to predict the person most likely to win in 2024, they should have chosen Biden. Especially if they had to predict, in 2021, the person most likely to win a rematch of the 2020 election.
And if they predicted that Biden would not seek re-election, then they should also predict that Harris would become the nominee.
Now, perhaps there is data in 2024 indicating uncertainty about a Biden victory. But that data would not have been available three years ago. So I’m not sure it does much good to argue that we should have made a different decision then. And frankly, I’m not even sure we got it wrong.