Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

He’s still at around 35% in polls this week

His poll numbers have been dropping a bit, but they're still up from when he announced, and he's still far, far ahead.

to put this in some perspective, HRC was about 50 points ahead of sanders at this time four years ago: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_democratic_presidential_nomination-3824.html

I don't think Biden is going to be the nominee

4 years ago Bernie's campaign was 7 days old and there hadn't been a single debate

now everyone knows Bernie and he's 19 points behind Biden

biden's lead is not that big for this early and his support is really soft.

if this was another two-person race sanders wouldnt be that far behind (and might be ahead depending on how you see the distribution of non-biden support)

I'm still hoping for Biden to fall apart, but I don't think it's going to be Bernie who takes the prize

i dont either, warren gang warren gang warren gang warren gang

bring on the dancing DNA tests

I don't think I know a single person I know in Iowa who has attended past caucuses regularly who has been polled, if anecdotal evidence means anything

After getting a chair for a woman sitting on the floor, @JoeBiden brings the house down by saying “I want the press to know — she pulled me close!” #FITN #nhpolitics pic.twitter.com/UL8CMg4tpQ

— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) June 4, 2019

he's gonna do these bits all the way

Iirc, according to 538, Biden's lead is about where a frontrunner usually is, and a frontrunner with this kind of support get's the nomination about 50% of the time. Sanders is doing pretty badly for someone with close to 100% recognition.

if we're thinking of the same article, the analysis was very iffy imho because all their comparisons were to democratic primaries with like 2-3 contenders. not exactly apples-to-apples. so it might be best to recheck the percentages once the field has thinned out a bit.

Um, no, that's not how most Dem primaries have been? That's not how I recall it at all?

If I'm looking at the same 538 piece they use Mondale and Romney as best case for Biden, and Hillary '08 and Muskie as worst case.

As m bison says, Biden's support is certainly soft, and Its difficult to see his lead lasting past the summer , but its also difficult right now to see if there will be any particular beneficiary

this is the article i'm thinking of: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-can-win-but-he-isnt-polling-like-a-favorite/amp/

... which admits that there are 19 candidates now but never attempts to address that in the analysis. their data does included crowded republican primaries like 2016 (i'd misremembered it as all dems) but still most of the contests are not comparable to the size of this field. and they later concede that they're including people who weren't even officially running, like ford in 1980. this isn't to say that bernie is going to be a dark horse champion but just that we really have no idea where all the voters currently backing 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% candidates might end up. maybe sanders is their second choice, maybe it's warren, maybe it's harris, maybe it's biden, maybe it's spread so evenly that it doesn't really change much.

has anyone done a study to figure out which people are more likely to answer the phone when it's an unknown number, especially in the last couple years after the number of marketing/spam phone calls have skyrocketed?

I'm not saying all those people are Biden supporters, but polling organizations don't leave voicemail

There's been polls on who the voters prefer as their second choice, iirc, and Biden wins those as well. Sanders voters, especially, like Biden. And vice versa, Biden voters like Sanders.

The time to panic is now, honestly.

we're still eight months out. hold your horses

Anyone should just do what they think. Just don't wait until there's nothing to do but shout 'RIGGED' at the DNC. Again.

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

one thing he doesn't have is some golden aura where people would fear criticizing him. warren has already started that. i don't think it'll be a trump situation where the other contenders are too afraid of alienating his voters to say anything. (there may be some, particularly among the lowest tier, who are angling to be his VP pick of course.)

have a bad feeling that biden winning the primary will be the last hoorah of boomers fucking up the country bc his core constituency is 70 year olds

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

I don't see why they wouldn't be - situation doesn't seem analogous to Trump 16 at all. Don't see him lasting the debates, and there's potential big wins for whoever lands the first blows on him (especially as there's plenty of low hanging fruit to go for)

has anyone done a study to figure out which people are more likely to answer the phone when it's an unknown number, especially in the last couple years after the number of marketing/spam phone calls have skyrocketed?

Short answer: yes, lots of ppl. Polling organizations weight for that kind of stuff. I dont know the math details of exactly how it works under the hood, but pro polling orgs have an awareness of the differences between the demographics of who answers a telephone call in 2019 and whatever demo they're trying to poll. It's not just "25% of people we called said they like candidate x"

I don't see why they wouldn't be - situation doesn't seem analogous to Trump 16 at all.

It's not, but there is a different sort of pressure/mindset among a fair number of Democrats that "going negative" against your fellow Dems poisons the well. (Not that I expect this will deter Warren or Sanders; it's the others I'm wondering about.)

The online HRC fans who swear Bernie never endorsed or campaigned for her are legion.

speaking of "no shortage of material"

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign confirmed that he still supports a controversial ban prohibiting the use of federal funds for certain abortion services.

Campaign aides told The Hill that the 2020 presidential hopeful still supports the Hyde Amendment, which has prevented government health programs like Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.

Biden’s campaign did say that Biden would be open to repealing the amendment if abortion access currently protected under Roe v. Wade was threatened.

NBC News first reported Biden's stance on the measure.

The support appears to differ from what Biden told an American Civil Liberties Union volunteer when asked about the Hyde Amendment last month.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447023-biden-2020-campaign-confirms-he-supports-controversial-abortion-rule-report

(Not that I expect this will deter Warren or Sanders; it's the others I'm wondering about.)

― Simon H

It'll deter delaney and hickenlooper whoever the fuck that is and the also rans

wont deter Kamala surely? I guess you're thinking of Buttigeig/Beto? are we really consider anyone after that as a factor? Yang maybe wouldn't but not for this reason

if i were kamala i'd be pretty pissed off that the centrist donor support that should be mine is instead being thrown behind joe fucking biden out of what i would have a hard time not seeing as the misogyny+racism of those interests projected onto the american public they hate and fear, and i wouldn't see anything to lose in going after him hard

could be wishful thinking on my part because yeah if bernie+warren end up going it alone the bitching from the donors and media about treasonous probably-russian negativity and "circular firing squads" will never ever stop, and kamala joining an anti-biden bloc would make this harder for them. but as destroying him and taking his place seems like her path to the nomination i am hoping we are temporarily made allies.

buttigieg's version of going after biden will be to blather about how we need Youthful Leadership in a bid for the attention of that dumbest portion of my brain that is full of anti-boomer false consciousness. fortunately everyone in the country not crippled by g+t classes can see perfectly well that he is a vapid dweeb. beto i keep forgetting exists.

that all makes sense to me. i know making political predictions nowadays is idiotic but my inkling right now is that the nominee is either going to be Kamala or Biden. I just fear that Bernie and Warren have too much donor/Wall St/establishment animus to contend with, plus I have a lot of doubts about whether either of them can achieve substantial minority support -- no matter how much Bernie fans point to his favorables among African Americans, the fact remains that he got crushed in the South in 2016 and I don't see how that changes in 2020 vs. Obama's veep or an actual WOC.

Harris’s platform seems pretty good—support for green new deal and medicare for all and increased teacher pay—but is this something to take seriously? Like in a different year would she have a platform like this?

For sure i’d take her over biden or buttigieg (i liked him more before this supreme court thing) or lol beto but still.

Like in a different year would she have a platform like this?

no, but it's not a different year. president harris is not a jubilant prospect to me but it's not the death knell president biden would be. biden will never listen: he's running on not listening.

at this point I'm not terribly hopeful about what a Harris administration would look like. i mean, considerably more hopeful than Biden but way way less than Warren/Sanders, basically.

xpost, yup.

Yeah i agree. But i just wonder if she’s going to seem “inauthentic” versus trump, who tore apart of a bunch of career politicians in 16 on these grounds

everything depends on building and sustaining a mass movement; i remain a berniebro because he's the only one who behaves as if that is primary. will admit that prospects are not even that great even under him and less so under harris, but at least she moves.

trump tore apart republicans. everyone hates republicans

Harris doesn't really scan as "career politician" to me. she's maybe too guarded but she seems way more comfortable with sparring than Hillary, if that's what you're worried about.

yeah, i mean who knows. she will be better than hillary probably but i think trump will be in a better electoral position this time.

Especially bc he is going to do more fucked up disinformation stuff probably. My big prediction is that he js going to open an investigation against his opponent.

i suspect, on the merits or not, Harris is going to have a "Willie Brown cycle" in the news

Yeah something like that if she runs against Trump. I think we are in for an unbelievably ugly few months if Trump doesn’t have a heart attack or something

we are in for an unbelievably ugly next 18 months (until the election) no matter what, and if trump loses there is a high likelihood that he is going to go down kicking and screaming and contesting the election for many more months after that.

If he somehow died it would still be ugly but less bad. I also think it would help the democrats chances—trump’s cult of personifg is buoying a lot of unpopular policies

One of my friends who works in politics as a fundraiser for Democratic candidates is incredibly concerned about Harris as a candidate, not because he thinks she is terrible but because the prosecutor toolkit that makes her an effective and impressive Senator in Congressional hearings is uniquely unsuited towards doing well in a Presidential run. Harris is good at constructing a narrative and breaking down a witness to build upon that narrative; in the current context, she does not get to flex those muscles and is effectively just giving closing arguments constantly, which doesn't let her get to the meat of how she outlines/defines a position. (This may also account for why she's criticized as being disingenuous aside from the regular sexist/racist baggage.)

Yeah i mean who knows. I think being able to hammer soundbites is important now—a less flattering possible (and partial) explanation for bernie sanders’ success.