It’s nice, I guess, that so many people in the media are finally doing the “brave” thing and not taking orders from the DNC.
But why isn’t anyone calling on Biden to resign from office now? Why is the only concern the election? If he’s not competent for the later he’s not competent for the former. You’re talking about reputational damage to the Left writ large if they fall in line. I think it’s already done. All those media personalities you mentioned are concerned solely with what Biden’s walking corpse means for the election, not what it means for the governance of the country. It’s horrifying.
I can speak for myself: Biden doesn't look great, but I don't think that he looks so bad that he can't make it until January. Honestly, we need to see him more to know exactly how bad he is. Still, campaigning and governing are two different things, as of very recently Biden seemed to be doing a pretty good job of governing, and on Thursday I saw a man who could not speak clearly or think on his feet, but that doesn't mean he's completely gone (if you've had an elderly relative with dementia you know: Some skills erode before others). I'm open to a discussion about whether or not he can govern through this January, but what we know for sure is that he can't govern until January 2029.
You write so well, good column. And I’d like to know more before dumping him, TBH, since the mess that would now entail is pretty scary, too. Dems are not known for falling gracefully in line. Glad you will accept some more evidence.
I'm not particularly worried about the last six months of Biden's term either - that can be managed. It's not ideal, but fresh catastrophies requiring quick presidential reactions will *probably* not happen between July and November. What really worries me is the thought of where Biden will be during the next four years, and I think it is unfair to the media to say that they don't care about that. That question is almost certainly why they are now turning against Biden.
Well there will definitely be ocassions that require the President to be mentally fit and respond quickly and decisively between now and November. Limiting the concern to “catastrophes” is way too glib. If Biden really can’t function well we’re in trouble.
For your other point, I hope you’re right- that the former allies now calling for Biden to drop out of the race are doing so out of concern for the country and not concern for the Democrats electoral prospects. I could be being too cynical.
This is a problem if you think Biden is mostly or entirely mentally incapable, such that he will not be able to respond decisively at all. If (as seems more likely to me based on recent reporting, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/biden-debate-age-white-house.html ) Biden is mentally capable some but not all of the time, then in the short term, he will be able to make effective decisions when he is capable, but that will not necessarily be at the moment, or on the same day, when any particular problem comes up; that should be enough to fulfill most of his duties as president. The obvious exception is in a crisis which requires an immediate presidential decision; if that happened at the wrong time, Biden's transient incapacity would be a big problem. However, such crises are not very frequent (the only examples in Biden's term so far that I can think of are the Przewodów missile incident & maybe Hamas's invasion of Israel), & it seems reasonable to me to expect that such a crisis will probably not happen before Biden's term ends & that, if it does happen while Biden cannot deal with it, his administration will be willing to invoke the 25th Amendment for the immediate crisis. Such an argument cannot reasonably be extended to the campaign (where even transient mental incapacity would probably make him un-reelectable) or to a second term (during which his mental capacity would probably decline severely).
My feelings on why not give Biden the chance is owing to misogyny and racism. Harris is much like Hillary, strong woman. Despairing that she is unpopular. Ffs 🤦♀️
Harris needs to stop using Meghan Markel’s speech writer and start speaking coherently and clearly. It has nothing to do with racism or misogyny, much as that would be an easier answer than incompetence.
I agree that Biden resigning and letting Kamala Harris be the incumbent could be the best move. She'd have Joe's cash and his staff, and is sharp enough to make people really relieved they don't have to support someone in cognitive decline.
I'm so furious and disgusted that my choices are a semi-animate figurehead being puppeted by whoever's actually running the white house and a narcissistic, power-hungry nutjob. How can democrats still believe he can win? How?? How is it not obvious that it would be better to go down fighting with a real candidate and an actual goddamn message (I shouldn't have to explain this, but "otherwise we're all going to dieeeeeeeeee" is not a platform, you clueless, patronizing absolute clowns). As it stands, he's almost certainly going to lose, and if that prospect truly scares them as much as they claim (not to mention me + half the country), then they should be thinking harder about what happens after that rather than wasting everyone's time with their breathtakingly disrespectful bullshit.
A few typos aside (nation not notion), spot on and really disheartening. I’ve been denigrated repeatedly online as a MAGA stooge/agent saboteur/wrecker for arguing in perfectly good faith that Biden should step aside. It bears noting that those smears only come from one direction. And the stakes rose by orders of magnitude yesterday. I’m a centrist-to-a-fault ex- prosecutor and after carefully reading the immunity decision I think I can objectively state that it serves as a roadmap for authoritarian lawlessness. It makes Dredd Scott look like Brown v Bd of Ed. That’s not a joke. This Country really, really needs to wake up to how this Court is unabashedly committed to destroying constitutional democracy. Again, I say this as a proud, committed and sane centrist.
Does Trump v US (the immunity decision) go that far, though? I'm not so sure. Clearly ex-presidents have to have some immunity for official acts while in office, and I think the decision does an ok, not great, job of trying to define what is an official act. What am I missing? What is the roadmap?
I freakin’ love The Damned!! That aside, I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. Put another way, the majority answered the Seal Team Six scenario in the affirmative.
Absolutely agree 100 percent with your observation about Coney Barrett; not so much about being overwrought. Interesting question that popped into my head: Could Nixon have been prosecuted in accordance with immunity doctrine announced today? Any thoughts?
Thanks, I do too and glad someone gets the reference!
I know just enough about this to be dangerous, but the President, despite being Commander in Chief as a core duty, does not have carte blanche to direct military force. Authorization must come from Congress. Unfortunately the current AUMF has been in effect for so long that it feels like the President can do whatever.
It is not democracy to switch to a candidate that no one voted for in the primaries, while trying to imprison the leading opposition candidate. That is crony Soviet socialism. Everything the Democrats do is subversive to our Democracy, yet they claim they are saving our Democracy by playing every dirty trick to prevent the people from electing Trump: Russia hoax, lawfare, hiding Biden's obvious senility for years, etc.
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. He will refuse to believe it. That's the tragedy of the situation of demoralization." - Yuri Bezmenov
I call BS. No one is calling for Biden to be forced to stand aside. Arguing that he should voluntarily do so to preserve Democracy is emphatically not undemocratic.
Biden has to voluntarily stand aside he can’t be forced out by any legal or Party mechanism . The American justice system is independent of Government unlike in Russia which is a Police State .
I think a lot of democrats are considering the individual consequences of gambling on replacing Biden though. If you're Gavin Newsom or J.B. Pritzker and you call for Biden to step down, what happens? There's a few possibilities:
1. He steps down and the replacement wins. Great! You took a gamble and it paid off.
2. He steps down and the replacement (possibly you) loses. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad!
3. Biden does not step down and wins. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad! 538 has him at a 49% chance of winning right now.
4. Biden does not step down and loses. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad! Maybe some people say that you were right, but other people say that Biden could have won without your criticism. Many dem voters blame the electoral college, racism, Trump etc for the loss, so wonder why you chose to criticize Biden even if they don't think you contributed to the loss that much.
I can't find working links to decade old pop-science articles, but the Freakonomics guys used to talk about how taking the "safe" action has less reputational risk, even if has a worse chance of paying. In very freaknomics fashion they give examples of soccer players getting criticized for aiming penalty kicks at the center and not scoring (best chance of scoring, but seems dumber than aiming for a corner) and Japanese central bankers not changing interest rates. If they change the interest rate, they get blamed for any consequences. But if they leave interest rates the same, then consequences are blamed for macroeconomic forces beyond their individual control. That's my guess for how high-level democrats are viewing this choice.
That's why it won't be Newsom or Pritzker calling for it. But there are scores of Senators, Governors and Representatives etc. that have no designs on the White House.
That's true! They still have the same calculation when attacking a party leader though.
The only people that wouldn't face any consequences for "repeating republican talking points" or "sabotaging Biden" are people at the end of their careers. And they don't have that much influence!
Thanks! I think that looking at it like this could make it much simpler though. If you assigned probabilities and a value to each outcome, it'd turn into an "expected value" problem that an algebra student could do. Then calculate the "expected value" of doing nothing and compare.
The issue would just be estimating those probabilities (e.g. 538 has Biden at 49%, Nate SIlver has him at 33%) and putting a quantifiable value on things like Trump winning or being personally blacklisted.
Nate’s 33% was based on polls prior to the debate. I believe it’s fallen to 27% based on initial post-debate polls. My guess is that it continues that trend in the near term.
And 538 is over-playing their fundamentals on Pres. Biden. It wasn’t a 50/50 chance pre-debate; it certainly isn’t at this point. The Economist’s poll is a better second opinion, and largely matches Nate’s Silver Bulletin.
But I do think the point of “nobody in government got fired for under-reacting” does inform a lot about how we got to where we are. Good insight, Robert G.
Yeah, I think that 538's model is very generous and that Nate Silver's is more accurate.
However, I also think that these models are inherently flawed due to epistemic assumptions about the underlying system. Essentially, no model has some sort of "Candidate has debate where they're unable to consistently finish sentences" factor despite that now being a major influence on the election. Even the way that we're discussing it (e.g. 27% and likely to fall) shows some of the shortcomings. If it's predictable that model's prediction is going to change, then that model should have incorporated whatever is making the model's change predictable.
There was an argument between Nate Silver and Nassim Taleb back in 2018. This article - while explaining Taleb's position - does a better job than my word salad of explaining the issue.
Anyways, all that aside, I should have just said under-reacting is probably safer. There is likely to be a cost for anyone that pressures Biden to step down. Therefore, anyone's decision to do that will be influenced by how big they think that cost is as well as their estimate of Biden's chances.
I agree with your point about damaged credibility as far as that goes, although the prospect of long-term damage would seem to turn on the electorate having a functioning memory of longer than twenty seconds, which just doesn't seem to be the case. Otherwise, why would voters be contemplating stepping on the same rake they just got done stepping on? The fact that Trump is a credible candidate again is Exhibit A in the case against the American Electorate having a long memory or in fact any memory at all.
And yet it only seems to matter when the politician is a Republican.
It's satisfying to watch Democrats bristle at the way the Biden White House is treating them. Not much fun, is it? Now you know how the rest of us feel.
Understood. And we have our own problems with our own (UK) system! But I guess what baffles the rest of the ‘democratic world’ is why you’d invented a system that makes it so hard for any reasonably competent non-maniac to take over either ‘side’ (and at least we have a few more ‘sides’ to choose from!)…
Republicans ran a primary. The Democrats did not because they didn't want a messy mud-slinging primary to impact the perception of the eventual winner i.e. Carter vs Reagan in 1980.
Plenty of people see the problem BUT do not take it for granted that we know all the facts. Read the NYT article today and you see it isn’t that Joe’s been this way for months, as the headline screams. Nope. So let’s see the facts.
Given the "powder keg" state of foreign affairs--China threatening Taiwan, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and war in the Middle East--I'm frankly no longer convinced that a Biden with this level of decline (not to mention, this level of delusion) is better than Trump. It's truly a sad, sad, state of affairs.
In the extremely unlikely even that Biden is re-elected it will be near certainty that his VP will need to invoke section 4 of the 25th amendment. I don't think Biden's defenders have fully contemplated the crisis this would provoke. The 25th requires a 2/3rd vote in both houses of congress to remove the president. I have a very hard time imagining 2/3rds of both houses agreeing on anything, let alone the removal of the president. In this eventuality we would be stuck with an incapacitated president, that congress would be too cowardly to remove.
I hate to break the news, but Biden didn't suddenly become demented on Thursday last week. Republicans have pointed this out a lot over the last year, sometimes unfairly, but other times it has been quite obvious to anyone who isn't a democrat partisan hack. So to me, the people shielding him this whole time have already lost my confidence, that ship sailed. Saying that Biden needs to step down now to keep faith in the democrat machine is several months too late.
I also think the dems are worried about how awkward the infighting will look to prospective voters in August, but it will be much worse if Biden continues to show signs of flailing. Everything he does will seem like a sign of dementia from here on out. Even Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Witmer or Kamala Harris will trip at some point in the next few months, or walk the wrong way off the stage. But when Joe does it, the internet will light up again about how it is a sign he isn't capable. The debate was a debacle he can never recover from.
Come November, voters will forget the democrat infighting of August and rally behind their candidate. Look at the long game here, please.
On the question of Biden dropping out, I hear people say, “surely there’s another leading Democrat who is up to this challenge?” Or, “how can it be there’s no way to do this?” Or, to me personally, “why can’t you see that this is the obvious thing to do?” The best way I can answer this is to say that my assumption is that switching candidates now is the equivalent of pricing in 10 or 20 debate-night disasters. That doesn’t include how the next person does. I mean the simple act of making the switch. I’m not asking you to believe that’s true for the moment. Maybe you disagree and that’s fine. But if you’re trying to understand my reasoning, that is a significant part of what it’s based on. Needless to say, you need to be certain the current plan is hopeless and that person X is going to really knock it out of the park if you make the switch. Again, I have my own assumptions and theories that get me to this conclusion. I note it here just to give you a sense of why, while I’m not ruling anything out, I’m still very skeptical about a switch.
...
One TPM reader told me, “I think this may not have that big an impact. But like every editorialist is saying Biden should step down. How do you undo that? How does he repair that?” I don’t think that matters. My strong sense is that this goes in the following way. If over the next week to ten days the shape of the race doesn’t materially change, everything just moves forward. But if over some interval the bottom drops out of Biden’s support, I think people in his campaign will tell him that and he will decide to leave the race. This really isn’t about public polls. Campaigns have access to much more granular information, about key groups, etc. etc. I think that is what determines all of this. That’s what will determine Biden’s future. If the bottom falls out, then those pundits will be validated. Or, maybe not really validated — but it will be a predictive win. If not, what they said won’t matter. People ask a lot, why isn’t anyone saying Trump should drop out? Because Trump and Republicans won’t care. Democrats will. That’s worth thinking about. Worth thinking about regardless of what happens here.
I’m glad you posted this. I ultimately disagree with Marshall but it’s a reasoned, thoughtful argument for the present status quo that does not stoop to condescending insults.
It’s nice, I guess, that so many people in the media are finally doing the “brave” thing and not taking orders from the DNC.
But why isn’t anyone calling on Biden to resign from office now? Why is the only concern the election? If he’s not competent for the later he’s not competent for the former. You’re talking about reputational damage to the Left writ large if they fall in line. I think it’s already done. All those media personalities you mentioned are concerned solely with what Biden’s walking corpse means for the election, not what it means for the governance of the country. It’s horrifying.
I can speak for myself: Biden doesn't look great, but I don't think that he looks so bad that he can't make it until January. Honestly, we need to see him more to know exactly how bad he is. Still, campaigning and governing are two different things, as of very recently Biden seemed to be doing a pretty good job of governing, and on Thursday I saw a man who could not speak clearly or think on his feet, but that doesn't mean he's completely gone (if you've had an elderly relative with dementia you know: Some skills erode before others). I'm open to a discussion about whether or not he can govern through this January, but what we know for sure is that he can't govern until January 2029.
Biden should resign as president so he can focus all his energy on campaigning.
You write so well, good column. And I’d like to know more before dumping him, TBH, since the mess that would now entail is pretty scary, too. Dems are not known for falling gracefully in line. Glad you will accept some more evidence.
I'm not particularly worried about the last six months of Biden's term either - that can be managed. It's not ideal, but fresh catastrophies requiring quick presidential reactions will *probably* not happen between July and November. What really worries me is the thought of where Biden will be during the next four years, and I think it is unfair to the media to say that they don't care about that. That question is almost certainly why they are now turning against Biden.
Well there will definitely be ocassions that require the President to be mentally fit and respond quickly and decisively between now and November. Limiting the concern to “catastrophes” is way too glib. If Biden really can’t function well we’re in trouble.
For your other point, I hope you’re right- that the former allies now calling for Biden to drop out of the race are doing so out of concern for the country and not concern for the Democrats electoral prospects. I could be being too cynical.
This is a problem if you think Biden is mostly or entirely mentally incapable, such that he will not be able to respond decisively at all. If (as seems more likely to me based on recent reporting, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/biden-debate-age-white-house.html ) Biden is mentally capable some but not all of the time, then in the short term, he will be able to make effective decisions when he is capable, but that will not necessarily be at the moment, or on the same day, when any particular problem comes up; that should be enough to fulfill most of his duties as president. The obvious exception is in a crisis which requires an immediate presidential decision; if that happened at the wrong time, Biden's transient incapacity would be a big problem. However, such crises are not very frequent (the only examples in Biden's term so far that I can think of are the Przewodów missile incident & maybe Hamas's invasion of Israel), & it seems reasonable to me to expect that such a crisis will probably not happen before Biden's term ends & that, if it does happen while Biden cannot deal with it, his administration will be willing to invoke the 25th Amendment for the immediate crisis. Such an argument cannot reasonably be extended to the campaign (where even transient mental incapacity would probably make him un-reelectable) or to a second term (during which his mental capacity would probably decline severely).
My feelings on why not give Biden the chance is owing to misogyny and racism. Harris is much like Hillary, strong woman. Despairing that she is unpopular. Ffs 🤦♀️
Harris needs to stop using Meghan Markel’s speech writer and start speaking coherently and clearly. It has nothing to do with racism or misogyny, much as that would be an easier answer than incompetence.
I agree that Biden resigning and letting Kamala Harris be the incumbent could be the best move. She'd have Joe's cash and his staff, and is sharp enough to make people really relieved they don't have to support someone in cognitive decline.
I'm so furious and disgusted that my choices are a semi-animate figurehead being puppeted by whoever's actually running the white house and a narcissistic, power-hungry nutjob. How can democrats still believe he can win? How?? How is it not obvious that it would be better to go down fighting with a real candidate and an actual goddamn message (I shouldn't have to explain this, but "otherwise we're all going to dieeeeeeeeee" is not a platform, you clueless, patronizing absolute clowns). As it stands, he's almost certainly going to lose, and if that prospect truly scares them as much as they claim (not to mention me + half the country), then they should be thinking harder about what happens after that rather than wasting everyone's time with their breathtakingly disrespectful bullshit.
A choice between the senile and DR Edith Wilson Biden and the psychopath. I weep for our country.
A few typos aside (nation not notion), spot on and really disheartening. I’ve been denigrated repeatedly online as a MAGA stooge/agent saboteur/wrecker for arguing in perfectly good faith that Biden should step aside. It bears noting that those smears only come from one direction. And the stakes rose by orders of magnitude yesterday. I’m a centrist-to-a-fault ex- prosecutor and after carefully reading the immunity decision I think I can objectively state that it serves as a roadmap for authoritarian lawlessness. It makes Dredd Scott look like Brown v Bd of Ed. That’s not a joke. This Country really, really needs to wake up to how this Court is unabashedly committed to destroying constitutional democracy. Again, I say this as a proud, committed and sane centrist.
Does Trump v US (the immunity decision) go that far, though? I'm not so sure. Clearly ex-presidents have to have some immunity for official acts while in office, and I think the decision does an ok, not great, job of trying to define what is an official act. What am I missing? What is the roadmap?
I freakin’ love The Damned!! That aside, I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic. Put another way, the majority answered the Seal Team Six scenario in the affirmative.
Bit overwrought. Too broad maybe. Coney Barrett may be a jurist to keep an eye on.
Exec has the means and methods to order the assassination of a political rival but don’t see how that order is a “core act”, no absolute immunity.
Hard to even see how such an order is even a “perimeter duty” so an examination there would vitiate the presumptive immunity.
Absolutely agree 100 percent with your observation about Coney Barrett; not so much about being overwrought. Interesting question that popped into my head: Could Nixon have been prosecuted in accordance with immunity doctrine announced today? Any thoughts?
Thanks, I do too and glad someone gets the reference!
I know just enough about this to be dangerous, but the President, despite being Commander in Chief as a core duty, does not have carte blanche to direct military force. Authorization must come from Congress. Unfortunately the current AUMF has been in effect for so long that it feels like the President can do whatever.
It is not democracy to switch to a candidate that no one voted for in the primaries, while trying to imprison the leading opposition candidate. That is crony Soviet socialism. Everything the Democrats do is subversive to our Democracy, yet they claim they are saving our Democracy by playing every dirty trick to prevent the people from electing Trump: Russia hoax, lawfare, hiding Biden's obvious senility for years, etc.
"As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. He will refuse to believe it. That's the tragedy of the situation of demoralization." - Yuri Bezmenov
Nothing says crony Soviet socialism more than the belief once you’re president you are immune from any legal consequences to criminal behavior.
I call BS. No one is calling for Biden to be forced to stand aside. Arguing that he should voluntarily do so to preserve Democracy is emphatically not undemocratic.
Biden *can't* be forced out. The delegates are pledged to him, often by law, for the first round.
Just tell Joe "hey, remember yesterday when we talked about you stepping aside? Today we're doing that."
A party does not have to select its candidate via primaries, and democracy is strengthened when parties put forward the best candidate they can find.
Biden has to voluntarily stand aside he can’t be forced out by any legal or Party mechanism . The American justice system is independent of Government unlike in Russia which is a Police State .
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
I think a lot of democrats are considering the individual consequences of gambling on replacing Biden though. If you're Gavin Newsom or J.B. Pritzker and you call for Biden to step down, what happens? There's a few possibilities:
1. He steps down and the replacement wins. Great! You took a gamble and it paid off.
2. He steps down and the replacement (possibly you) loses. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad!
3. Biden does not step down and wins. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad! 538 has him at a 49% chance of winning right now.
4. Biden does not step down and loses. You're a party traitor that sabotaged an incumbent president for personal gain. Bad! Maybe some people say that you were right, but other people say that Biden could have won without your criticism. Many dem voters blame the electoral college, racism, Trump etc for the loss, so wonder why you chose to criticize Biden even if they don't think you contributed to the loss that much.
I can't find working links to decade old pop-science articles, but the Freakonomics guys used to talk about how taking the "safe" action has less reputational risk, even if has a worse chance of paying. In very freaknomics fashion they give examples of soccer players getting criticized for aiming penalty kicks at the center and not scoring (best chance of scoring, but seems dumber than aiming for a corner) and Japanese central bankers not changing interest rates. If they change the interest rate, they get blamed for any consequences. But if they leave interest rates the same, then consequences are blamed for macroeconomic forces beyond their individual control. That's my guess for how high-level democrats are viewing this choice.
(Also, the joke about Biden reciting Plato reminds me of one of the great Onion articles about Bush: https://www.theonion.com/bush-regales-dinner-guests-with-impromptu-oratory-on-vi-1819567929)
That's why it won't be Newsom or Pritzker calling for it. But there are scores of Senators, Governors and Representatives etc. that have no designs on the White House.
That's true! They still have the same calculation when attacking a party leader though.
The only people that wouldn't face any consequences for "repeating republican talking points" or "sabotaging Biden" are people at the end of their careers. And they don't have that much influence!
You’ve explained that perfectly. It can’t be ignored how NOT simple this is.
Thanks! I think that looking at it like this could make it much simpler though. If you assigned probabilities and a value to each outcome, it'd turn into an "expected value" problem that an algebra student could do. Then calculate the "expected value" of doing nothing and compare.
The issue would just be estimating those probabilities (e.g. 538 has Biden at 49%, Nate SIlver has him at 33%) and putting a quantifiable value on things like Trump winning or being personally blacklisted.
Nate’s 33% was based on polls prior to the debate. I believe it’s fallen to 27% based on initial post-debate polls. My guess is that it continues that trend in the near term.
And 538 is over-playing their fundamentals on Pres. Biden. It wasn’t a 50/50 chance pre-debate; it certainly isn’t at this point. The Economist’s poll is a better second opinion, and largely matches Nate’s Silver Bulletin.
But I do think the point of “nobody in government got fired for under-reacting” does inform a lot about how we got to where we are. Good insight, Robert G.
Yeah, I think that 538's model is very generous and that Nate Silver's is more accurate.
However, I also think that these models are inherently flawed due to epistemic assumptions about the underlying system. Essentially, no model has some sort of "Candidate has debate where they're unable to consistently finish sentences" factor despite that now being a major influence on the election. Even the way that we're discussing it (e.g. 27% and likely to fall) shows some of the shortcomings. If it's predictable that model's prediction is going to change, then that model should have incorporated whatever is making the model's change predictable.
There was an argument between Nate Silver and Nassim Taleb back in 2018. This article - while explaining Taleb's position - does a better job than my word salad of explaining the issue.
https://towardsdatascience.com/why-you-should-care-about-the-nate-silver-vs-nassim-taleb-twitter-war-a581dce1f5fc
Anyways, all that aside, I should have just said under-reacting is probably safer. There is likely to be a cost for anyone that pressures Biden to step down. Therefore, anyone's decision to do that will be influenced by how big they think that cost is as well as their estimate of Biden's chances.
The bedwetting brigade I'm worried about are the caregivers Joe might need.
I agree with your point about damaged credibility as far as that goes, although the prospect of long-term damage would seem to turn on the electorate having a functioning memory of longer than twenty seconds, which just doesn't seem to be the case. Otherwise, why would voters be contemplating stepping on the same rake they just got done stepping on? The fact that Trump is a credible candidate again is Exhibit A in the case against the American Electorate having a long memory or in fact any memory at all.
Endless choral repetitions of "TRANS WAMEN AER WAMEN" and other thought-terminating cultic clichés have perfectly prepared Democrats for this moment.
"Politicians lie; it’s part of their job."
And yet it only seems to matter when the politician is a Republican.
It's satisfying to watch Democrats bristle at the way the Biden White House is treating them. Not much fun, is it? Now you know how the rest of us feel.
How hard is it to be a constant victim?
Counterpoint: Trump gets away with uttering batshit insanity and a level of misconduct that would make Scientology jealous.
Excellent rant! How come you’re the only American that seems to see all of this??
Anyone not part of the left saw this a long time ago.
Maybe they did, but their view of the world is clearly even more worrying, for the rest of us.
The left is oblivious to how the non-left perceives them. Hint: It is as bad as your perception of Trump.
Understood. And we have our own problems with our own (UK) system! But I guess what baffles the rest of the ‘democratic world’ is why you’d invented a system that makes it so hard for any reasonably competent non-maniac to take over either ‘side’ (and at least we have a few more ‘sides’ to choose from!)…
Republicans ran a primary. The Democrats did not because they didn't want a messy mud-slinging primary to impact the perception of the eventual winner i.e. Carter vs Reagan in 1980.
But Brent, they chose Trump! We get the money-buys-you-votes part, but cmon! Help us here!
Plenty of people see the problem BUT do not take it for granted that we know all the facts. Read the NYT article today and you see it isn’t that Joe’s been this way for months, as the headline screams. Nope. So let’s see the facts.
"If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,"
"Not only does the President perform around the clock, but he maintains a schedule that tires younger aides."
Same energy.
Given the "powder keg" state of foreign affairs--China threatening Taiwan, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and war in the Middle East--I'm frankly no longer convinced that a Biden with this level of decline (not to mention, this level of delusion) is better than Trump. It's truly a sad, sad, state of affairs.
In the extremely unlikely even that Biden is re-elected it will be near certainty that his VP will need to invoke section 4 of the 25th amendment. I don't think Biden's defenders have fully contemplated the crisis this would provoke. The 25th requires a 2/3rd vote in both houses of congress to remove the president. I have a very hard time imagining 2/3rds of both houses agreeing on anything, let alone the removal of the president. In this eventuality we would be stuck with an incapacitated president, that congress would be too cowardly to remove.
I hate to break the news, but Biden didn't suddenly become demented on Thursday last week. Republicans have pointed this out a lot over the last year, sometimes unfairly, but other times it has been quite obvious to anyone who isn't a democrat partisan hack. So to me, the people shielding him this whole time have already lost my confidence, that ship sailed. Saying that Biden needs to step down now to keep faith in the democrat machine is several months too late.
I also think the dems are worried about how awkward the infighting will look to prospective voters in August, but it will be much worse if Biden continues to show signs of flailing. Everything he does will seem like a sign of dementia from here on out. Even Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Witmer or Kamala Harris will trip at some point in the next few months, or walk the wrong way off the stage. But when Joe does it, the internet will light up again about how it is a sign he isn't capable. The debate was a debacle he can never recover from.
Come November, voters will forget the democrat infighting of August and rally behind their candidate. Look at the long game here, please.
Yes, but... From Josh Marshall
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-thoughts-on-the-debate-and-its-aftermath
On the question of Biden dropping out, I hear people say, “surely there’s another leading Democrat who is up to this challenge?” Or, “how can it be there’s no way to do this?” Or, to me personally, “why can’t you see that this is the obvious thing to do?” The best way I can answer this is to say that my assumption is that switching candidates now is the equivalent of pricing in 10 or 20 debate-night disasters. That doesn’t include how the next person does. I mean the simple act of making the switch. I’m not asking you to believe that’s true for the moment. Maybe you disagree and that’s fine. But if you’re trying to understand my reasoning, that is a significant part of what it’s based on. Needless to say, you need to be certain the current plan is hopeless and that person X is going to really knock it out of the park if you make the switch. Again, I have my own assumptions and theories that get me to this conclusion. I note it here just to give you a sense of why, while I’m not ruling anything out, I’m still very skeptical about a switch.
...
One TPM reader told me, “I think this may not have that big an impact. But like every editorialist is saying Biden should step down. How do you undo that? How does he repair that?” I don’t think that matters. My strong sense is that this goes in the following way. If over the next week to ten days the shape of the race doesn’t materially change, everything just moves forward. But if over some interval the bottom drops out of Biden’s support, I think people in his campaign will tell him that and he will decide to leave the race. This really isn’t about public polls. Campaigns have access to much more granular information, about key groups, etc. etc. I think that is what determines all of this. That’s what will determine Biden’s future. If the bottom falls out, then those pundits will be validated. Or, maybe not really validated — but it will be a predictive win. If not, what they said won’t matter. People ask a lot, why isn’t anyone saying Trump should drop out? Because Trump and Republicans won’t care. Democrats will. That’s worth thinking about. Worth thinking about regardless of what happens here.
I’m glad you posted this. I ultimately disagree with Marshall but it’s a reasoned, thoughtful argument for the present status quo that does not stoop to condescending insults.
👍🏻