I have been getting texts for weeks to answer a poll on whether I support Biden. I am generally suspicious of any unsolicited contact, and I assumed that no one would pay good money for a poll asking a likely voter living in the SF Bay Area if they supported Biden. I never answered. Who are these people who answer polls and say they would vote for Trump over Biden??! Are they residents in mental institutions??! My support and "favorability" rating of Biden are irrelevant. The only way I vote for Trump is if the only other choice is Putin.
Bill, do you really think continuing to make a case against Biden is helpful? If you think it is, and you think he's going to step aside, I think *you* are in denial.
You keep beating this dead horse but have yet to rebut the arguments Sarah (and now JVL) have made for why it would NOT be good for Biden to step aside at this late date.
And you can only give Biden a rating of "pretty good president"??? Really? He's done an outstanding job, which is made all the more noteworthy in light of all the truly awful issues / conditions / crises in this country and the world during his time in office.
I'm certainly not thrilled at the fact that Biden's the one on the ticket (nor was I four years ago), and there are apparently few that are. But it is what it is; so PLEASE either get with the program or at least stop bashing him!
"There is a simple way to deal with the twin problems of incumbency and age: Joe Biden could step aside in favor of a non-80-year-old, non-incumbent Democratic nominee."
My view is she is too unestablished by many voters. Already, D strategists will have to try surmounting concerns about Biden's age. (Hopefully, more attention will be paid to Trump's going forward although he holds a significant advantage over the President now). A Whitmer or a Shapiro would likely have more popular appeal and each has a base in a swing state. California is not a swing state but a strong D state. Putting VP Harris in a cabinet position would not foreclose on her chances for a 2028 campaign nationally. But for now I would think a Whitmer or a Shapiro are superior communicators and better able to bond with voters which is an important asset in this campaign.
Come on Bill... ENOUGH with the Biden is old crap. Really have you seen how this NY times poll was executed. It is worthless, yet all these media agencies go on and on about stupid polling. It is TOO late in the game to quit Biden. As long as Biden can sit in a chair and make authorized and smart decisions I do not care about his age. His institutional knowledge, political strategy and brand name make him at this stage of the game our candidate. Let's move along Bill to another topic more worthy.
sorry, you are right. it was only an electoral college loss, but that 10 point lead down to 2.1 was part of the reason for that loss. i should write to the source of that wrong info i passed on.
Everyone needs to hear Lawrence O’Donnell’s explanation about why President Biden cannot suddenly step aside. It’s the best explanation out there!
The media will be responsible for Trump’s win in 2024 if that happens. Trump has been/is the dominant focus in most written and televised media while the media has failed to report President Biden’s unexpected and very successful accomplishments.
I was one of those people who thought that somehow, somewhere along the line, Trump would get stopped. Voters would come to their senses in the primaries, or Smith would get a conviction before the election, or the Supreme Court would rule that the 14th Amendment did apply to Trump’s case, or the Democrats with or without Biden would move enough to the center to win. I have now come to the conclusion that the way to bet is that Trump will be elected president in November. He wasn’t stopped in the primaries. The Supreme Court didn’t stop him. Jack Smith’s cases seem unlikely to be tried before election day. The situation in Georgia has become a mess, and the one in New York always was one. Biden is more unpopular than Trump, and efforts to hide his mental condition from the public are failing. If the Dems replace him, the likelihood of them choosing an electable centrist instead of Harris, Newsom or the equivalent is very small. As to what to do about the situation, the political answer is easy. Keep trying. It’s not over until it’s over, and there sometimes are ten run rallies in the bottom of the ninth. The more interesting question is how those of us who don’t want Trump should react in our private lives. I think we should relax a little. It is not time to load up on freeze dried food and ammo. In a second term Trump will be the same arrogant, ignorant, bumbler and repulsive scoundrel that he was in the first. There will be some bad stuff. But he will not proclaim himself generalissimo for life or overthrow the republic. If a second term happens, we will get through it and then work for something better. There are people I care about who are scared to death over this – to the point I worry about the effect on their health and ability to enjoy life. They need to see that if it happens, it won’t be the end of the world – rough, but not the end of the world.
Trump might not declare himself generalissimo for life, but it’s safe to assume that, win or lose, he will declare himself President for (at least) 4 years. Why wouldn’t he? It nearly worked last time, he successfully hoodwinked nearly half the country, and he has received no comeuppance to date. If he doesn’t win fairly, he will win by fiat.
Could somebody please explain what Biden is doing to earn 47% strong disapproval? I know it is sacrilege to say you don’t believe poll after poll when they say the same thing, but I feel like I am being told the sky is green and my own eyes say thst is BS. Can somebody explain what he is doing that is so wrong? I can rip off 50 such things about Trump and not even break a sweat.
It is not sacrilege to disbelieve polls. Data from research finds most election polls report a 95% confidence level. Yet an analysis of 1,400 polls from 11 election cycles found that the outcome lands within the poll’s result just 60% of the time. And that’s for polls just one week before an election—accuracy drops even more further out.
Since Bush, approval rating have largely morphed into a proxy for partisanship. Biden's approval rating is further damaged by his far left flank furious he won't give them everything they demand by executive order.
Fox says he's a demon, child killing Satanist who's sold out the country to Iran, China, Putin, etc., etc., etc.. Hell, Nikki says she thinks Biden is worse than the Orange Snake. So does every other R in Congress. Unless the Rs that quit because they can't stand the Snake and ENDORSE BIDEN, we're gonna get that garbage. What really ticks me off are the people that have brains and still refuse to denounce and repudiate the Snake. Do they think they'll be safe from him?
I think you are basically right in the first part -- the 47% disapproving of Biden are getting their info from Fox and the like, where they hear repeatedly how the dreaded Dems are hell bent on destroying the country and Biden is leading the effort. Of course, in reality it is the opposite. The Democrats are ironically the truly conservative party -- trying to conserve our nation's institution's, treaties and alliances. The Republicans are nihilists. On some level they know they are serving a lie, and they don't care.
Biden needs to pull an LBJ and name his Vice President as his successor. NOW !
Hillary Clinton’s massive ego, anger and sense of entitlement gave us Trump 1. We survived, barely. There’s no chance a Trump # 2 presidency will be anything other than catastrophic, which means Joe Has To Go.
Besides the latest poll results showing him losing to Trump by a wide margin today, Biden’s “accomplishments” while president are simply nonexistent, other than when viewed through the spectrum of the Virtue Signaling Hack perspective.
More people voted for Hillary than Trump. Hillary did not give us Trump. Voters who failed to take Trump both literally and seriously gave Trump, particularly the 77,000 voters who gave him the Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote.
Even MTG said that Biden was the most accomplished president since FDR, even though in her ignorance, she thought she was insulting Biden. His list of accomplishments is quite lengthy. Any party would be thrilled to have an incumbent with his list of accomplishments. So what's with the quotation marks?
Joe ain't going anywhere. Get over it. That last poll - 980 people who picked up anonymous phone calls and said exactly what? I said it earlier - other presidents had lousy polls back when they really meant something, and they won.
How does this work? If Biden steps aside, there will be a battle for the nomination. The party won’t suddenly coalesce around a candidate and Kamala Harris would be the odds in favorite to win. Normal voters have little idea who Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Jared Polis, or other potential candidates are outside of their home states. Then, during and after a protracted battle they would have to get a national campaign online — not a trivial undertaking. All while Trump (who has 100% name recognition) absolutely hammering the Dems for not having a candidate 8 months before the election. I’m not disagreeing about Biden’s weaknesses, but this would be pure chaos with the same or higher likelihood of losing.
A lot of the folks saying he should just go away have little knowledge of history and how things really work. We had 2 R presidents - Nixon and Reagan - who won because the Ds did exactly what people like Bill are trying to sell. And we're still dealing the damage from them!
I know no one wants to hear it, but Bill is right, and getting mad at him in the comments isn't going to change the fact that Biden has enormous problems that are impossible to solve unless you believe millions of Americans are lying to pollsters.
If a subscription to the Bulwark was required to vote, I'd be extremely confident in Biden’s victory, but the outright derangement on display from some of you just looks like one big sunk cost fallacy to me.
Joe Biden has enormous liabilities as a presidential candidate and should not run for a second term. But in March of 2024, there simply isn't enough time find another viable Democratic presidential candidate that isn't Kamala Harris, who would almost certainly lose to Donald Trump as well. Nobody that believes they have a future in politics beyond 2024 would be willing to risk that future on a quixotic campaign that would almost certainly fail and make them a pariah within their party when it does.
I wish that wasn't the answer, but the time for Biden to have made the decision not to run again was a year ago, not now.
Biden has just one liability---age. Trump has the same liability plus he is running on being a dictator. Besides, if Biden had announced he was not running, he would have rendered himself an ineffectual lame duck.
You said "unless you believe millions of Americans are lying to pollsters"
Millions of people are not getting polled. And yes, I think a substantial number of people are not being honest when they are getting polled. Months ago I got one after I completed a Survey Monkey poll from work --- you think I was honest in that one? No, I wasn't.
How you do explain the underperformance of polls in the GOP primary? I am old enough to remember something called a 'red wave'.
Data from research finds most election polls report a 95% confidence level. Yet an analysis of 1,400 polls from 11 election cycles found that the outcome lands within the poll’s result just 60% of the time. And that’s for polls just one week before an election—accuracy drops even more further out.
In their professional literature, pollsters lament that it has been getting harder and harder to obtain a random representative sample. So they compensate with various weighting techniques which they say are becoming less and less effective.
Even if Biden cannot finish a second term, well, that is what the VP is for.
Both can be true, correct? And you didn't explain the underperformance of polling in the GOP primary---can you explain that? I assume you won't.
Most Americans might think an 82 year old is to old to serve 4 more years, but when asked, they say they will still vote for him. Undercuts the narrative, doesn't it.
You’re right, I assumed you were smart enough to infer what I meant when I said millions of Americans. You got me.
And yes, some people will still vote for Biden regardless of if they think he’s too old. You can argue about what the electorate will look like in 8 months and pollsters can model the electorate incorrectly. But you don’t need to guess who’s going to show up to know what percentage of Americans think Biden is too old or what Americans think about any issue really. That’s just a question of “do you think Americans are lying to pollsters or not”?
I have been getting texts for weeks to answer a poll on whether I support Biden. I am generally suspicious of any unsolicited contact, and I assumed that no one would pay good money for a poll asking a likely voter living in the SF Bay Area if they supported Biden. I never answered. Who are these people who answer polls and say they would vote for Trump over Biden??! Are they residents in mental institutions??! My support and "favorability" rating of Biden are irrelevant. The only way I vote for Trump is if the only other choice is Putin.
The Constitution does need some serious amending. A lot has changed in nearly 250 years.
Bill, do you really think continuing to make a case against Biden is helpful? If you think it is, and you think he's going to step aside, I think *you* are in denial.
You keep beating this dead horse but have yet to rebut the arguments Sarah (and now JVL) have made for why it would NOT be good for Biden to step aside at this late date.
And you can only give Biden a rating of "pretty good president"??? Really? He's done an outstanding job, which is made all the more noteworthy in light of all the truly awful issues / conditions / crises in this country and the world during his time in office.
I'm certainly not thrilled at the fact that Biden's the one on the ticket (nor was I four years ago), and there are apparently few that are. But it is what it is; so PLEASE either get with the program or at least stop bashing him!
"There is a simple way to deal with the twin problems of incumbency and age: Joe Biden could step aside in favor of a non-80-year-old, non-incumbent Democratic nominee."
This is West Wing wishcasting. Stop it.
My view is she is too unestablished by many voters. Already, D strategists will have to try surmounting concerns about Biden's age. (Hopefully, more attention will be paid to Trump's going forward although he holds a significant advantage over the President now). A Whitmer or a Shapiro would likely have more popular appeal and each has a base in a swing state. California is not a swing state but a strong D state. Putting VP Harris in a cabinet position would not foreclose on her chances for a 2028 campaign nationally. But for now I would think a Whitmer or a Shapiro are superior communicators and better able to bond with voters which is an important asset in this campaign.
Come on Bill... ENOUGH with the Biden is old crap. Really have you seen how this NY times poll was executed. It is worthless, yet all these media agencies go on and on about stupid polling. It is TOO late in the game to quit Biden. As long as Biden can sit in a chair and make authorized and smart decisions I do not care about his age. His institutional knowledge, political strategy and brand name make him at this stage of the game our candidate. Let's move along Bill to another topic more worthy.
Yea. He is killing it...eyeroll.
sorry, you are right. it was only an electoral college loss, but that 10 point lead down to 2.1 was part of the reason for that loss. i should write to the source of that wrong info i passed on.
Biden isn't stepping aside and the illusory better Democratic candidate isn't coming forward.
So I don't understand why anyone keeps wishcasting that they would.
Everyone needs to hear Lawrence O’Donnell’s explanation about why President Biden cannot suddenly step aside. It’s the best explanation out there!
The media will be responsible for Trump’s win in 2024 if that happens. Trump has been/is the dominant focus in most written and televised media while the media has failed to report President Biden’s unexpected and very successful accomplishments.
I was one of those people who thought that somehow, somewhere along the line, Trump would get stopped. Voters would come to their senses in the primaries, or Smith would get a conviction before the election, or the Supreme Court would rule that the 14th Amendment did apply to Trump’s case, or the Democrats with or without Biden would move enough to the center to win. I have now come to the conclusion that the way to bet is that Trump will be elected president in November. He wasn’t stopped in the primaries. The Supreme Court didn’t stop him. Jack Smith’s cases seem unlikely to be tried before election day. The situation in Georgia has become a mess, and the one in New York always was one. Biden is more unpopular than Trump, and efforts to hide his mental condition from the public are failing. If the Dems replace him, the likelihood of them choosing an electable centrist instead of Harris, Newsom or the equivalent is very small. As to what to do about the situation, the political answer is easy. Keep trying. It’s not over until it’s over, and there sometimes are ten run rallies in the bottom of the ninth. The more interesting question is how those of us who don’t want Trump should react in our private lives. I think we should relax a little. It is not time to load up on freeze dried food and ammo. In a second term Trump will be the same arrogant, ignorant, bumbler and repulsive scoundrel that he was in the first. There will be some bad stuff. But he will not proclaim himself generalissimo for life or overthrow the republic. If a second term happens, we will get through it and then work for something better. There are people I care about who are scared to death over this – to the point I worry about the effect on their health and ability to enjoy life. They need to see that if it happens, it won’t be the end of the world – rough, but not the end of the world.
Trump might not declare himself generalissimo for life, but it’s safe to assume that, win or lose, he will declare himself President for (at least) 4 years. Why wouldn’t he? It nearly worked last time, he successfully hoodwinked nearly half the country, and he has received no comeuppance to date. If he doesn’t win fairly, he will win by fiat.
Could somebody please explain what Biden is doing to earn 47% strong disapproval? I know it is sacrilege to say you don’t believe poll after poll when they say the same thing, but I feel like I am being told the sky is green and my own eyes say thst is BS. Can somebody explain what he is doing that is so wrong? I can rip off 50 such things about Trump and not even break a sweat.
It is not sacrilege to disbelieve polls. Data from research finds most election polls report a 95% confidence level. Yet an analysis of 1,400 polls from 11 election cycles found that the outcome lands within the poll’s result just 60% of the time. And that’s for polls just one week before an election—accuracy drops even more further out.
Since Bush, approval rating have largely morphed into a proxy for partisanship. Biden's approval rating is further damaged by his far left flank furious he won't give them everything they demand by executive order.
Fox says he's a demon, child killing Satanist who's sold out the country to Iran, China, Putin, etc., etc., etc.. Hell, Nikki says she thinks Biden is worse than the Orange Snake. So does every other R in Congress. Unless the Rs that quit because they can't stand the Snake and ENDORSE BIDEN, we're gonna get that garbage. What really ticks me off are the people that have brains and still refuse to denounce and repudiate the Snake. Do they think they'll be safe from him?
I think you are basically right in the first part -- the 47% disapproving of Biden are getting their info from Fox and the like, where they hear repeatedly how the dreaded Dems are hell bent on destroying the country and Biden is leading the effort. Of course, in reality it is the opposite. The Democrats are ironically the truly conservative party -- trying to conserve our nation's institution's, treaties and alliances. The Republicans are nihilists. On some level they know they are serving a lie, and they don't care.
Biden needs to pull an LBJ and name his Vice President as his successor. NOW !
Hillary Clinton’s massive ego, anger and sense of entitlement gave us Trump 1. We survived, barely. There’s no chance a Trump # 2 presidency will be anything other than catastrophic, which means Joe Has To Go.
Besides the latest poll results showing him losing to Trump by a wide margin today, Biden’s “accomplishments” while president are simply nonexistent, other than when viewed through the spectrum of the Virtue Signaling Hack perspective.
More people voted for Hillary than Trump. Hillary did not give us Trump. Voters who failed to take Trump both literally and seriously gave Trump, particularly the 77,000 voters who gave him the Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote.
Even MTG said that Biden was the most accomplished president since FDR, even though in her ignorance, she thought she was insulting Biden. His list of accomplishments is quite lengthy. Any party would be thrilled to have an incumbent with his list of accomplishments. So what's with the quotation marks?
Joe ain't going anywhere. Get over it. That last poll - 980 people who picked up anonymous phone calls and said exactly what? I said it earlier - other presidents had lousy polls back when they really meant something, and they won.
How does this work? If Biden steps aside, there will be a battle for the nomination. The party won’t suddenly coalesce around a candidate and Kamala Harris would be the odds in favorite to win. Normal voters have little idea who Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Jared Polis, or other potential candidates are outside of their home states. Then, during and after a protracted battle they would have to get a national campaign online — not a trivial undertaking. All while Trump (who has 100% name recognition) absolutely hammering the Dems for not having a candidate 8 months before the election. I’m not disagreeing about Biden’s weaknesses, but this would be pure chaos with the same or higher likelihood of losing.
A lot of the folks saying he should just go away have little knowledge of history and how things really work. We had 2 R presidents - Nixon and Reagan - who won because the Ds did exactly what people like Bill are trying to sell. And we're still dealing the damage from them!
Exactly!!!
I know no one wants to hear it, but Bill is right, and getting mad at him in the comments isn't going to change the fact that Biden has enormous problems that are impossible to solve unless you believe millions of Americans are lying to pollsters.
If a subscription to the Bulwark was required to vote, I'd be extremely confident in Biden’s victory, but the outright derangement on display from some of you just looks like one big sunk cost fallacy to me.
Hey may be right, but that doesn't mean that a sitting incumbent president is going to step aside to fulfill West Wing fantasies.
Was Bill right about invading Iraq? No.
Was he right about Sarah Palin? No.
He isn't right this time.
Joe Biden has enormous liabilities as a presidential candidate and should not run for a second term. But in March of 2024, there simply isn't enough time find another viable Democratic presidential candidate that isn't Kamala Harris, who would almost certainly lose to Donald Trump as well. Nobody that believes they have a future in politics beyond 2024 would be willing to risk that future on a quixotic campaign that would almost certainly fail and make them a pariah within their party when it does.
I wish that wasn't the answer, but the time for Biden to have made the decision not to run again was a year ago, not now.
Biden has just one liability---age. Trump has the same liability plus he is running on being a dictator. Besides, if Biden had announced he was not running, he would have rendered himself an ineffectual lame duck.
Millions of people are not getting polled.
So you want to argue the technicalities of how polls work over the substance of what countless polls/pollsters tell us the public thinks?
Yes.
You said "unless you believe millions of Americans are lying to pollsters"
Millions of people are not getting polled. And yes, I think a substantial number of people are not being honest when they are getting polled. Months ago I got one after I completed a Survey Monkey poll from work --- you think I was honest in that one? No, I wasn't.
How you do explain the underperformance of polls in the GOP primary? I am old enough to remember something called a 'red wave'.
There are two possibilities here:
1. Thousands of people, speaking to dozens of pollsters, conducting dozens of polls, over a period of months, are lying.
2. Most American think an 82 year old is too old to serve 4 more years.
Which is more likely to you?
Data from research finds most election polls report a 95% confidence level. Yet an analysis of 1,400 polls from 11 election cycles found that the outcome lands within the poll’s result just 60% of the time. And that’s for polls just one week before an election—accuracy drops even more further out.
In their professional literature, pollsters lament that it has been getting harder and harder to obtain a random representative sample. So they compensate with various weighting techniques which they say are becoming less and less effective.
Even if Biden cannot finish a second term, well, that is what the VP is for.
It was 980 people - hardly thousands. And Lord knows how they picked the pollees.
Now it's 'thousands of people'? Gotcha.
Both can be true, correct? And you didn't explain the underperformance of polling in the GOP primary---can you explain that? I assume you won't.
Most Americans might think an 82 year old is to old to serve 4 more years, but when asked, they say they will still vote for him. Undercuts the narrative, doesn't it.
You’re right, I assumed you were smart enough to infer what I meant when I said millions of Americans. You got me.
And yes, some people will still vote for Biden regardless of if they think he’s too old. You can argue about what the electorate will look like in 8 months and pollsters can model the electorate incorrectly. But you don’t need to guess who’s going to show up to know what percentage of Americans think Biden is too old or what Americans think about any issue really. That’s just a question of “do you think Americans are lying to pollsters or not”?
Stop, Bill. Just stop with the "Biden should step down" shtick. Enough. The horse is dead so stop beating it.