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

Biden fan art, they really are turning into mini-MAGAs, so weird.

Looking forward to the "Kamala as Fennec Shand" memes

This is mortifying.

Ridiculous. He literally just hosted a fundraiser for Joe.

Less handwringing and more backbone- the force is with us! pic.twitter.com/z0Hc7vNzhG
— Law Dog (@maximusgsd) July 10, 2024
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 10, 2024 9:07 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

for a sense of how with it these biden dead-enders are, consider what happens to obi-wan at the end of A NEW HOPE and his reasons for that decision lol

star wars!!!!!

Kamala Harris hears a ghostly voice "Run, Kamala, run!"

No surprise that Law Dog is a "retired corp litigator" who refers to his wife as "a cute Harvard girl". He confesses he has feelings for Biden.

On Tuesday, @PressSec said a WH meeting between Biden's doctor and a neurologist was not related to Biden's care.

That was not true. Hours later, she said that meeting was actually when Biden got his neurological exam. https://t.co/obAgDOnXML

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) July 10, 2024

how’s our very own puxatawney phil holding up?

It’s all just so ridiculous. ALL of it.

We're gonna get the worst of both worlds. The Dems are just going to keep pushing this up in the news feeds every day and then still not do a fucking thing about it.

The only winners (in this very moment) are the historians who get to answer the question “how the fuck did we get here?” Because that’s a very long, book length answer.

I can't believe I'm sharing a well-argued piece by this guy.

It's not that "the Dems won't do a fucking thing", but that the Dems -- meaning all those primary voters and caucus attendees -- have already done their thing and picked a nominee. They picked Biden. It happened from January through June of this year.

Unless Biden voluntarily steps aside there's no way the democrats can get rid of Biden at this point without breaking all their own rules established in 1972 after the disaster in 1968 that ensure an orderly democratic process instead of the old style "smoke-filled backroom" conventions where the party bosses sat around and picked a nominee. All the Democratic leaders have left is persuasion and they are no doubt frantically trying to leverage behind the scenes that without burning all their bridges behind them.

Oh please, appeals to the primary process are just silly. We had a primary like Russia has elections. But yes, I agree that nothing can change unless he steps aside, he can't be somehow removed by force except through a revolt of his own pledged delegates, which is incredibly unlikely.

I know Biden's not technically a Boomer but it all just feels such a literalization of every Boomer trope ever, the entitlement and self-importance and spotlight-hogging and clueless privilege all wrapped up in the walking mummy body of a thin-skinned old white man.

he's going to accept the nomination at the convention and then tell people he's stepping down and its kamala's turn. surprise!

Based on his reading stage cues from the teleprompter, I'm starting to wonder if we just went ahead and replaced him with Harris, and didn't tell him about it, if he'd even know he was off the ticket?

Oh please, appeals to the primary process are just silly.

It's the way the fucking rules are written. Exactly how do you think they should go about trashing all the rules, by not seating Biden's delegates? By simply not holding a convention and announcing Harris the nominee? What's your plan?

I recognize there needs to be a process, I just think pretending he "won" the primary is silly. Democrats did not "make a decision," the decision was made by Biden and his team.

Oh, please, appeals to your personal dissatisfaction with the result of the process in the face of the real problem of what to do about all those Biden delegates who must vote for him is just silly.

You'd need at least a dozen guys doing a combination of cons

but only one to do the garroting

pick me up

I love how people are only now realizing that Biden is a spineless, self-serving piece of shit. His horrible track record in the Senate speaks for itself

I don’t think any of us love Biden; most of us didn’t want him to be President the first time! He’s a necessity because of the alternative who’s managed to get some massive things done, even if most people aren’t aware he’s done them because of the black hole of a news environment we’re stuck with.

People on this board have known that and have expressed it plenty xp

It’s bizarre that “support” is understood as “adoration” by some people in these threads.

It’s bizarre that “support” is understood as “adoration” by some people in these threads.

It's just really, really important to beamish that you know that he hates Joe Biden. In case you forgot in the 15 minutes since the last time he made that clear, he'll come in again.

Biden’s poor debate performance had almost no impact on voter preference, new report says

President Joe Biden’s performance during the first presidential debate has been widely panned, with critics and even those within his own party calling for him to step aside. But the question remained: Would Biden’s shaky performance against former President Donald Trump result in a noticeable dip in the polls for the president?

According to a new report from the Northeastern University-led data project CHIP50, the answer is no.

Led by David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern, the report indicates that the debate had little if any impact on people’s voting preference. Lazer hopes the report helps illustrate the dangers of making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the media interpreting data.

“Even the New York Times, which is usually better about this, talked about a very tiny shift that was totally insignificant statistically like it was evidence that it was a shift toward Trump after the debate,” Lazer says. “My hope is that reporters look at this and say, ‘Maybe we need to be careful in overinterpreting noise as actual signal.’”

Seeing the dominant narrative coming out of the debate, Lazer and the team at CHIP50 decided to test the hypothesis that Biden had lost ground in public opinion after the debate. Notably, Lazer says, they didn’t survey two different cross-sectional groups of people before and after the debate like most polls. Instead, the team was able to survey the same group of respondents from a survey conducted before the debate.

Lazer says using the same group of people helps make the results more precise, which is important in polling that inherently has a margin of error.

What the report finds is that Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate. For Trump, 86% of people who said they would support him before the debate said they would do so after the debate.

“What we see is that there is some churn –– maybe 10 percent or so of people change what they answer –– but that the net result is not a movement away from Biden,” Lazer says. “If anything, it seems that Biden is holding on to his people somewhat better than Trump.”

In fact, generally, the shift in support was actually more in Biden’s favor, although Lazer notes it’s not statistically significant and well within the margin of error.

There were very minor shifts between the candidates: 1% of people who said they would vote for Biden before the debate, switched to preferring Trump, while 3% switched from Trump to Biden. Similarly, respondents who said they were unsure who they would vote for before the debate were slightly more likely to switch to preferring Biden after the debate.

“[It all] points in the same direction, which is that it seems unlikely, based on our data, that things shifted toward Trump after the debate,” Lazer says. “If anything, our point estimate is a little more toward Biden, but I wouldn’t make a lot of noise about that.”

There were more significant, but still minor, shifts toward people preferring other third-party candidates after the debate. About 4% of Biden’s supporters and 6% of Trump’s supporters said they would prefer the “Other” category on the survey post-debate. Meanwhile, 6% of those who preferred another candidate before the debate shifted to both Biden and Trump after the debate, resulting in a small net impact.

The relatively stable trend of poll numbers in the 2024 election is indicative to Lazer of how polarizing politics have become where very little will sway voters from their preferred party.

“Trump was convicted of a set of felonies,” Lazer says. “The impact it had on surveys was zero. Biden had a debate where most people said it proved he was too old. Survey respondents said, ‘Yeah, I saw that. He’s too old. I’m still voting for him.’ The numbers just aren’t moving.”

lol, well nevertheless

Oh, please, appeals to your personal dissatisfaction with the result of the process in the face of the real problem of what to do about all those Biden delegates who must vote for him is just silly.

I've said a bunch of times that the only way anything happens is if he releases his delegates. What I'm objecting to is the pretense that "the primary voters decided on Biden," which is just a bad faith argument.

yeah there was no process, he decided that he would run again and steamroll the careers of anyone who'd challenge him.

idk if aimless remembers that a good chunk of the electorate chose to vote for literally no one over voting for biden in the primary.

What the report finds is that Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate.

Not to overstate the obvious, but the challenge here is not "people who said they would support him before the debate." Most of us itt would be in that 94%, that doesn't mean we think he's a good candidate or is going to win.

By the time we had our primary it was a forgone conclusion

I recognize there needs to be a process, I just think pretending he "won" the primary is silly. Democrats did not "make a decision," the decision was made by Biden and his team.

― Blitz Primary (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, July 10, 2024 1:19 PM bookmarkflaglink

in my state, I was given the opportunity to vote for Joe Biden, or Joe Biden, or Joe Biden, or Joe Biden, in the primary

also...uh....it happened when we all still thought fucker was much less diminished than he is

He's betting on enough people to vote for Not Trump (and any other options being too small to matter) just like in 2020

all I’ve heard all year is people saying they hate that strategy and mindset and they’d be right

i didn't watch this when it was on because *yawn* kamala but now she's the savior of the world so i watched and she's better now! she's so clear. its very refreshing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne3-KA8ja6g

He can prop up RFK. Worked just fine for Hillary with Trump in 2016

That Northeastern study argues that Biden is losing but just not losing worse after the debate. Very comforting!

there's no way the democrats can get rid of Biden at this point without breaking all their own rules established in 1972 after the disaster in 1968 that ensure an orderly democratic process

1968 had a far closer general election than 1972.

I voted for Joe Biden in the primary over Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. Even if I'd been looking for an alternative to Biden at the time (when I was not yet worried about his capacity to win), there was no reason to think that his challengers were serious, viable candidates who would benefit from my vote.

Jaymc OTM

A competitive primary would’ve had some real contenders involved.

every senator's comments on biden are like the thing someone in the mob says when they want to do a crime but they're not sure if the feds are listening in https://t.co/u59YbbGKbT

— Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy) July 10, 2024

I voted for Joe Biden in the primary over Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. Even if I'd been looking for an alternative to Biden at the time (when I was not yet worried about his capacity to win), there was no reason to think that his challengers were serious, viable candidates who would benefit from my vote.

― jaymc, Wednesday, July 10, 2024 2:28 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I voted for Uncommitted in the primary. I liked that guy's positions.

same

I voted for some guy named Robinette.

The point isn't that Biden ran without serious opposition and therefore the Democratic rank and file didn't have much room for real choice. Rather, it's that the party has an elaborate process to select a nominee, that includes various rules in all 50 states and several other jurisdictions for assembling a slate of delegates, most of whom are bound by party rules to vote for a particular candidate on at least the first ballot. Then there's a convention where the delegates convene and vote until one person gets a majority of the delegate votes. This is the ONLY process the party recognizes as legitimate.

As much as the Democrats in Congress, governors, and down ballot candidates wish they could remove Biden on their own, there is no legitimate way for them to accomplish that. None. No rules process to grab onto, unless they somehow succeeded in not seating enough of the delegates pledged to Biden to prevent his winning on the first ballot and that would be such a transparent power grab that it would wreck every vestige of party unity and alienate millions of voters. Whatever happens, it has to look more like Biden's gracious choice and not like strong-arming (which, of course it would be).

Biden’s poor debate performance had almost no impact on voter preference, new report says

btw, this is from the report:

Our approach has its own limitations. Most notably, our sample of repeat respondents is
not randomly selected from the initial wave. Rather, a subset of respondents in our
April/May survey also chose to participate in the June/July survey. Since we did not
construct this panel of repeat participants from a randomly drawn set of potential
respondents, they may not be a representative subsample of the April/May sample.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s32r38vj3sct3kkrijoyw/CHIP50-REPORT-105-DEBATE-2024.pdf

there is also substantial attrition. their sample included around 32000 respondents in april-may-june pre debate, but only around 6200 respondents post-debate

it's worth looking at, but you have to look at this data point in combination with all others. and when you look at the time-series of poll averages, the gap that opens up right around the debate is either at or above the previous maximum in the preceding 12 months, during which it oscillated between a dead-lock and biden being behind

https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-model
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden

Not endorsing Steve Krakauer except for the purposes of this tweet, but I was thinking about this in re comments from Pelosi and others.

Dems: "Joe, it's time to decide if you're staying in the race."

Biden family: "We're staying in."

Dems: "You don't have to decide today, but definitely soon."

Biden family: "We're in."

Dems: "Let us know when you decide."

Biden family: "Decision made, in."

Dems: "Ok, but...

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) July 10, 2024

the (public) elementary school on my street is holding some kind of day camp for transgender kids - they're flying the rainbow flag and the similar trans flag, giant pro-trans youth banner, and all kinds of pro-trans chalking all over the playground

God I wish DeSantis could see this lol