US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

I think if the election were held today it might be about equal but Harris has a lot of room to improve whereas Biden I don't think can escape this story at this point. there's a reason the GOP really, really, really wants him to stay in the race.

this isn't a completely unfounded take. the forecasts haven't changed that much.

It was 50/50 before the debate if you believed enough voters would look past their disdain for Biden to vote for Anyone But Trump - after the debate polls opened up several more points in Trump's favor. Biden's not becoming a stronger candidate between now and November to reverse the drop.

Biden's schtick was being a steady hand at the tiller, you won't have to think about the news cycle anymore. Can't exactly claim that now.

I guess maybe the letter didn’t work so well:

Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, publicly said Monday that President Joe Biden should abandon his reelection bid — one day after he made that position clear during a private call with top House Democrats.

"The president’s performance in the debate was alarming to watch and the American people have made it clear they no longer see him as a credible candidate to serve four more years as president,” Smith (D-Wash.) said in a statement. ”Since the debate the president has not seriously addressed these concerns."

He's lost Yglesias.

Biden's schtick was being a steady hand at the tiller

Yep, and it was a mostly plausible case four years ago. It isn't anymore and it's not going to be. Plus also people don't even want steady-as-she-goes in 2024, they think things suck, they want them to get better. Granted, anything you can attack Biden for apart from age — inflation, immigration, the other things people say they're mad about — they could also attack Harris for. But she could somewhat credibly make a case that she'd be a new administration and not just more of the same. More credibly than Biden, anyway.

there's legit concern about down-ticket races as well, which i think is fair

Biden will only back off under direct pressure from Democratic leadership in Congress, and a nearly united front of Democratic governors and Congressional rank-and-file. It's got to be a full court press, but not one fought out in the media. That would just open wounds that wouldn't close in time for November. I think we've got, oh, about another six or eight days to make that happen, but the sooner the better.

Let's just say I'm hopeful, but not optimistic.

Yeah there's that as well. I just think this is a particularly unprecedented election. Obviously the last two were as well, but this one is really one where you have one candidate most people hate, and another one that just bums almost everyone else out. It's a very low energy sad election on both sides, the Trump energy isn't there like it was before, and what little Biden energy existed is dissipating exponentially every day. So anyone who comes in with vibrancy is going to immediately spark something in the group that's feeling Just truly despondent about the whole damn thing.

xp

Is this really the Colorado Gov? He’s got some good troll game.

None of my intelligent (130+ IQ) friends use X/twitter. They only read accurate, vetted news sources and almost never use social media spontaneously on their own time. This has been a long term consistent observation, but today confirmation came. A new meta-analysis showed time…

— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) July 8, 2024

Oof

.@AOC: “I spoke with the President extensively this weekend. He has made abundantly clear that he is in this race … he is not leaving this race. He is the nominee. I am making sure that I support him & that I am focused on making sure that we win in November.”

— Daniella Diaz (@DaniellaMicaela) July 8, 2024

Jeffries and Schumer affirmatively backing him and no longer ducking questions.

Not a serious party.

This is all part of the plan. This will negatively polarize the Biden loyalists into thinking he needs to go. Trust the process. https://t.co/g0LdggksCv

— Nolan 🌹 (@VoidOfRoses) July 8, 2024

Meanwhile: Biden is first Democratic candidate to be behind in July of an election year since Gore in 2000. He's also at his all-time low vs. Trump.

Biden is saying that 2020 polls underestimated him, so why believe them now? When it comes to the general election, that's not true. Polls overestimated him.

Biden's in his worst poll position ever against Trump. He's the 1st Democrat to trail in national July polls since 2000. pic.twitter.com/ViyxLPdto6

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) July 8, 2024

Karine Jean-Pierre inadvertently convinced me Joe Biden has Parkinson’s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/us/politics/white-house-briefing-shouting.html

thisisfine

Biden’s plan is to white knuckle it through July, appear at a heavily protested convention, never appear after 8pm, then campaign in the fall as student protests start back up and he continues to call them antisemites. This, to him, is how you win an election and save democracy.

— Blair (@__seab) July 8, 2024

where do you guys go for sane, considered writing about this stuff?

No one sane would write about this until something actually happens — it’s just conjecture and waiting afaict

https://www.drudgereport.com/

can we not link to that plz

where do you guys go for sane, considered writing about this stuff?

this is the best spot I've seen so far tbh

where do you guys go for sane, considered writing about this stuff?

2029

okay, who is Trump gonna pick for his running mate? (desperate to change the subject)

who knows what's going on at this point

Kind of funny as everyone on here is moving on with house statements that Senators keep putting out stuff like this https://t.co/jdU2VHwCGT

— tyson brody (@tysonbrody) July 9, 2024

many xxp I'm sorry, but Harry Enten is creepy. Yes, Biden's the first democrat who could potentially win to be behind in the polls in July, but Trump trailed Hillary Clinton in polls in July 2016 by 4% according to 538

Re: AOC's statement. It is remarkably disciplined, wholly focused on answering a narrow set of questions. It's full of direct assurances, but without a trace of reassurance about the unspoken issues that most need to be addressed. iow, it's the notes she doesn't play.

yup exactly, everyone will circle the wagons until they have the narrative straight (I got that PMA)

I am going to lose my mind if I have to deal w JD so my hope is Doug.

Fun fact: if you don’t want to be awful, don’t run for public office in Ohio if your name is James:
James A Rhodes
Jim Traficant
Jim Jordan
James D Vance
😱

Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar, who’s critiqued the administration’s policy toward Israel, says Biden has her support to remain the Democratic nominee. “Outside a few outliers I think everybody’s supporting the president”

— Maeve Sheehey (@MaeveSheehey) July 8, 2024

Harry Enten is "creepy"? OK. I'll add that to the barrage of denialisms I've seen from Dem friends in recent days. "Oh, the polls are always wrong." "Nobody's going to elect Trump again." "This is all just to generate ratings." And the endless whataboutisms. Stuff I'm more accustomed to seeing from the right when they are occasionally forced to confront media that doesn't flatter all their assumptions and prejudices.

Anyway, right, he said "first Democrat to trail in July since 2000." If you think about that a little, it means that Democrats have been ahead in July for the past five presidential cycles — and even at that, they lost two of them. And Biden (directly contrary to the picture he's trying to paint about 2020) way underperformed his polling four years ago.

If you can sort thru all of that and find any nugget of optimism, have at it. But Harry Enten being creepy is not an argument.

They lost the popular vote once. And polling accuracy doesn’t equate to candidate performance.

I don't have strong feelings about whether he stays in or not, but I do hope this gets resolved either way, it's stressful reading about it every day.

I'm guessing even if he utterly blows the election, he'll still win the popular vote, which is a good illustration of how absurd the entire situation is and will continue to be.

C’mon we’re not fighting for the popular vote. I wish we were. The popular vote was not much consolation from 2000-2008 or 2016-2020.

And yes, everyone likes to dismiss polls they don’t like, and they’re all just snapshots, but they’re also not at all meaningless. We’d all feel a lot better and not be dissing polls if Biden was at 55 percent.

There are many factors that make this year's election different from other previous elections. Do the differences outweigh the similarities? Depends on what you're trying to convince people of, I guess.

I'm not saying we are, just that it's absurd that every 4 years we are subjected to an ever more stressful election cycle when there is little doubt the Democrat is going to get more votes each time.

xp

Oh yeah, 100% with you. It is a bullshit system.

It is all very stressful.

"We’d all feel a lot better and not be dissing polls if Biden was at 55 percent.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)"

We would, but no presidential candidate in my remaining lifetime will ever win by 55%, and I'm not sure any presidential candidate in my previous lifetime had polls that good. It will be very close

I also think polls have changed. In 2016 Trump voters were embarrassed to say they would vote for him, but now they're emboldened and mad as hell about the convictions and shouting it from the rooftops.

But I have to have faith that the electorate is mostly reasonable and will not want to vote again for a liar who was never good at business just good at being a game show host, who encouraged an insurrection and has been convicted of 34 felonies, who is known to be a sexual predator and who created chaos and dysphoria every single day of his term and is promising to do it again on a bigger scale

You have some good antidepressants

To what kind of election it is, I think it looks a lot like what would usually be a "change" election except that there isn't really change as an option. The Project 2025 people definitely think it's a change election and they have a bunch of changes they want to make. The Democrats aren't acting like it's a change election in any way. Understandable up to a point because of the default to the incumbent, but increasingly tone deaf and unable to articulate any kind of message beyond "we're not as bad as that guy." But people already don't like what they have, selling them more of it in the form of an elderly infirm man is ... I mean, at least Trump's kind of funny. (The U.K. and France elections also felt kind of like this, right? With their own forms of frustrating choices.)

So, that's the kind of election it looks like and feels like imo.

You don’t have to convince people to be reasonable, you have to convince them to vote for an unreasonable option over a more unreasonable option.

As ever.

Leaning into the felon thing, leaning into the fascist thing. Gonna be great if they win.

WTF? Speaking about lawfare at NatCon 4, attorney John Yoo just said, “You have to retaliate against them in exactly the same way until you get some deterrence....If we’re not going to become a banana republic, unfortunately we’re going to have to use banana republic means.”

— (Stephanie) Slade (@sladesr) July 8, 2024

In 2016 Trump voters were embarrassed to say they would vote for him, but now they're emboldened and mad as hell about the convictions and shouting it from the rooftops.

But/because there are a lot fewer of them.

Not sure what that means.

"Harry Enten is "creepy"? OK. I'll add that to the barrage of denialisms I've seen from Dem friends in recent days. "Oh, the polls are always wrong." "Nobody's going to elect Trump again." "This is all just to generate ratings." And the endless whataboutisms. Stuff I'm more accustomed to seeing from the right when they are occasionally forced to confront media that doesn't flatter all their assumptions and prejudices.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, July 8, 2024"

yes he is creepy. A lot of you have been posting tweets from, and links to, right-leaning sites like Politico and The Hill, and to right-leaning commentators and randos seemingly because they just confirm your biases

unperson keeps telling us that Trump has not gained a single new voter since leaving office, despite polling showing him making gains amongst minority voters.

one of my best friends said in 2020 that Trump would not get one single new voter after 2016, but he got 10 million more new voters. Fortunately Biden got more

And having the second highest raw vote total in history in 2020 IIRC. Not sure how he had fewer voters post-2016 but got more votes, must be that unmath.