mtutiger

My theory (has been suggested elsewhere today) on the Univision panel MB shared earlier all thinking Biden did better is that there were likely subtitles involved. If you were reading that debate off of subtitles, that likely swings the entire view of what took place lol

When you consider that his polling rests a lot on relative strength with black and Hispanic voters at the moment, there are changes within groups that can happen on account of this debate that may not help him.

Interesting thread. The one thing I've really come around on is that while Biden had a terrible night, Trump did himself zero favors as well, particularly with Black voters (ie. "black jobs), with how he came across last night.

August to November doesn't provide a whole lot of time for fundraising.... and Kamala Harris would be the only candidate who can avail themselves of the $212 million that the Biden campaign is sitting on right now. People can joke about "replacing Baez with McKinstry" all they want as if these are excuses, but these are real issues that people just avoid when dealing with these hypotheticals that extend beyond Kamala Harris. It just is what it is.

Would you want a Democratic Senator from Georgia replaced with a Republican, Lee? lol

Brian Kemp is white, he's a Governor, and he'd be replacing Warnock on Earth 2.0 if Warnock won as a candidate on a D ticket Or are we just gonna throw names out like this is fantasy baseball some more without thinking about the second order effects?

The Democratic Party isn't a cult built around Joe Biden, that seems like a pretty significant difference.

Certainly the Dems aren't helping themselves with their messaging, but the media has been absolutely savage since this debate took place. And that would have happened regardless. They can't just ignore their way out of this.

Initial ratings suggest a 30% decline versus 2020 as well.... mirrors people's relative lack of interest in this election, on one hand maybe hide's the performance to a degree, but the downside for Biden too is that the coverage thereafter (which has been disastrous, fair or not) is likely to fill in people's perceptions of the event more had more tuned in and watched the whole way through

The chutzpah of these guys talking about "Twitter is not real life" when they are two of the most Twitter-brained people on my feed lol

It's not getting press, but Trump's "black jobs" comments did go viral and are undoubtedly a negative

It's very non-committal in a way that we haven't seen out of Dem leadership thus far, that's for sure. I'm not even sure if this situation is entirely fair, but it's taking on a life of its own at this point and it's getting harder and harder to see Biden's campaign outrunning it.

In general, it's probably not wise to read too far into any statements that any of the politicians are making today for this reason. People make bad decisions when they are reactionary, of course you are going to see anodyne statements of support. In the event that Biden does step aside (pretty unlikely still IMO), it's not something that will happen overnight, will take some coordination and behind the scenes stuff that we probably don't know about to make it reality. Dem Party leaders would hold the line until he would theoretically make that call.

Certainly true once he became nominee in 2020, but there's been a lot of reporting (anonymous sources of course) to the idea that parts of Obama's team and Biden's team didn't play well either. My point is more that simply saying that because they served together doesn't mean incredible loyalty to Joe Biden....

The open primary idea also skips over the idea that incumbency imbues a candidate with huge advantages, especially as it pertains to fundraising. Trump and Biden are almost equal at COH at the moment, with Biden being ahead of Trump in building infrastructure in the states. An open primary would lead to a situation where Trump, the quasi incumbent, would be beating whoever emerged on both of these fronts. There are downsides to these fantasy scenarios that people are not thinking about, let's just put it that way.

We've had this conversation before, but just because these guys worked for an administration that Biden served in doesn't mean they have incredible loyalty to Joe Biden. Politics is a cutthroat business.... there are people in any Presidential administration who serve with people they dislike or even hate.

"Little affect" isn't exactly good enough when you are trying to fundamentally change the dynamics in a stable race. Even if "nothing happens" (which is more of a possibility than a lot of folks are considering, especially in elite media circles), he needs more than "nothing happens"

The inability to push back on Donald Trump when he made mistakes is what got me. A sharper candidate could have drew blood on Donald Trump last night.

This campaign has been the most low energy campaign of my lifetime, most people seem to avoid the topic like the plague, but the thing I hear over and over again to the extent that the topic comes up is "is this really the best we have to offer" and "we need younger candidates" I'm sympathetic to MB's points, I think Biden and his administration have done a lot of good things in their time in office. But the job of governing and the job of running a Presidential campaign are two different things.... especially at his age he had to demonstrate that he was up to another four years, and it didn't happen last night. That's just reality.... I think we need to see what actual hard data shows, and we will get that in due time. But it's 100% legitimate to have this conversation IMO.

They could easily change the roll call back to happening in Chicago if they wanted given that Ohio has passed legislation that would fix the issue.

Maybe they are proven right in the end, but my sense is that a lot of people are getting a little too far over their skis without waiting for actual data to come in.

I'm not sure what the CSPAN callers are saying, but Trump's debate performance was objectively terrible last night as well, so it shouldn't exactly be surprising that people listening to the substance are more ambivalent than a lot of folks in elite media IMO, who are almost exclusively judging on style here. But I do think it highlights the biggest weakness for Biden, IMO: that Trump said a lot of crazy last night and made a bunch of mistakes of his own ("black jobs", tripling down on not accepting the results of the next election, his J6 answer, etc.), but that ultimately he wasn't able to do as much as he should to capitalize on that. I think that's where people's concern about his age / acuity matter.... the debate may end up being a wash but he probably needs to do more than just a wash to change the dynamic of this race.

Yeah, the magical thinking on this stuff is wild.... from people who should know better!

I'm torn, because the elite media crowd is often really really wrong on matters of public opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't move the needle much overall TBH OTOH, they have a lot of power to set the narrative, it's already been set and is *further being reinforced*, and he's not getting any younger. And even beyond Joe's age issue, the most common refrain I've heard (to the extent people talk about the election) in real life is "these are our options, really?" People need to be clear that if they make a change, it's going to be Kamala Harris. She's the VP, she's the only option that has gone through a full background vetting, going around her would create additional schisms within the party. But this has also been a relatively stable race from the beginning - her being elevated would upend that. I would add as well that while people focus on her negatives, to the extent Biden's age is the thing dragging him down, this would take that off the table, and potentially point it back at Trump (who is 78 and incoherent in his own right)