I would, too, but there are a lot of insane people in America these days my friend.

It’s cute. But this is, of course, a given. And we don’t expect Hitler to do the right thing. We expect Biden to.

I’m as flabbergasted as anyone that polls are this close but here we are. Right-wing media controls the narrative and has had a stranglehold on this country. The polls don’t lie; they’re the canary in the coal mine sounding the alarm. So let’s face it: there is no datapoint you can point to that Biden where Biden isn’t doing significantly-worse compared to his 2020 campaign. I don’t give a fuck how you try to spin it, that’s not a good sign. Face hard truths of reality. The propaganda of the right is working with key voting groups whether we like it or not.

Neither cold nor stutter causes someone to jump from abortion to immigration mid-sentence and routinely lose their train of thought. How much experience do you have being around old people? My wife and I work in a hospital, but shit you should he able to relate with grandparents in their 80s. It could even be sundowning. I also don’t believe your 3rd point is doing you any favors. Biden campaigned on being a fighter to push the bully back. If he can’t hold his own as an 81-year-old, then that is very clearly a problem. Someone as experienced as Biden should easily be able to hold their own in a debate, being in politics as long as he has.

Look, I voted for Biden once and if it comes down to it I’d vote for a corpse over Trump. But as I’ve said over and over again: it’s not me you have to convince. The 2020 election was won by 40,000 votes across 3 states. And as I said, by every single metric, Biden is performing far worse than then. Not good. I hate to say it but I’d bet against Biden winning now.

Biden asked for the debate out of desperation to reach voters. They set most of the rules. Both campaigns signed off on the rules. It backfired tremendously, irreparably.

Yeah hubris probably isn’t the way to go when you’re losing in national polls 10 pts below where you were in 2020 at this time… And you’re losing in every battleground state… And you’re losing black and Hispanic voters… And the desperation play of asking for this debate to break the steady decline in polling utterly backfired.

Riddle me this: what if Biden’s condition worsens from here until November and it’s far past the convention to do anything? He’s not getting younger. The bad days, the sundowning will only get worse.

People are itching to vote for anyone but a senile geratric and a criminal geriatric. Give the people what they want.

Exactly!! That’s precisely my point! You tried to claim millions of people voted for Biden in the primaries when that doesn’t translate to battleground swing-state voters.

Biden is the guaranteed loss based on all available data we have, relative to his performance in 2020. Those battleground swing voters? Biden is ALREADY losing them. Besides, there’s a non-zero chance that Joe Biden could suffer an emergency health crisis after the convention… And then we’re REALLY fucked because at best we default to Harris who polls worse than everyone.

If you magically think that Newsom can ramp up a presidential campaign from scratch and beat Biden’s name recognition and win Wisconsin in only 6 months, you’re being insanely optimistic.

Yes, he absolutely can and I’m not the only one who believes it. If you don’t think there wouldn’t be a media frenzy over a sudden new face on the scene you’d be crazy. Whitmer, Newsom, or hey – how about Josh Shapiro who actually outperformed Biden himself in Pennsylvania…? If that’s really your concern, after all.

The window of time closes after the Convention. After that, we’re stuck.

I repeat: Biden is performing significantly worse in every single data-point compared to his 2020 run where he eeked a win by sliver. If he was up 20 points I wouldn’t even be saying a word. But after that debate performance seen by 50 million people? Every indicator for the election is only going to get worse for Biden.

Oh I agree, don’t get me wrong. But let’s be honest: Biden doesn’t have the grassroots fundraising that propelled Obama to victory and also gave Bernie a good shot at the primaries for how fringe he was.

Even I who’ve given loads of money in the past am exhausted by the fundraising calls under Biden and at this point post-debate think it’s a wasted investment.

I’m just assuaging concerns about money when you can substitute viral marketing which would naturally come from the unprecedented nature of having an incumbent president step down and endorse some other individual. Months of free coverage.

About 20% of voters say they have not picked a candidate in this year’s presidential race, are leaning toward third-party options or might not vote at all, according to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Reuters interviewed 15 such voters ahead of Thursday’s debate, and they agreed to be interviewed again after the event about whether the debate changed their views.

The data wasn’t good before, and it doesn’t take a statistician to know they’re going to be as-bad or worse than before post-debate. I’ll happily take that bet with you and circle back in the coming weeks as state-wide polling proves this.

And how, qualitatively, did these focus groups triangulate where undecided voters are on the issue of who to vote for?

To properly employ a focus group, you would first need to poll an appropriate sample size of undecided voters then you target demographics within the sample to gain insight into why they answered their poll as they did.

Isn’t it quite probable they did exactly this? They certainly didn’t just pull these people off the streets. They had to aggregate undecided voters to begin with, after all.

I think it’s reaching for straws to suggest this isn’t saying what we already recognize from polling conducted in battleground states.

Edit:

About 20% of voters say they have not picked a candidate in this year’s presidential race, are leaning toward third-party options or might not vote at all, according to the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Reuters interviewed 15 such voters ahead of Thursday’s debate, and they agreed to be interviewed again after the event about whether the debate changed their views.

Again, you don’t seem to understand the intent of focus groups or why they’re used by political campaigns. In a way focus groups are more akin to Case Studies, which are still extremely insightful.

Besides, we already have a broader set of polling data of battleground states, and what we see here is a reflection of those wider, scientific polls that didn’t bode well for Joe Biden even pre-Debate.

The mere fact that ANY random sample of undecided voters came away with these views, is downright dangerous.

I mean, are we humans really just this stupid?

Yes, yes we are. I feel your pain. I said it before and I’ll say it again: I would personally vote for a corpse, but it’s not me you have to convince.

And if I want to be slightly more kind and less impatient, many humans may mean well, but are so woefully uneducated and uninformed that they fall prey for the mass amount of right-wing misinformation from billions of dollars injected into the media-stream.

That would be interesting and I’m frankly open to it.

I don’t think people not voting is a big deal because frankly we didn’t have a legitimate primary season this cycle anyway. More importantly, if Biden himself voluntarily stepped down and endorsed someone else, then that at least channels those votes through Biden.

I need to hold you to some key points, here:

There is fundamentally ZERO data supporting a Biden victory this November. Think about that.

One would agree that while these are not snapshots in time and October surprises can occur, it’s certainly not a GOOD sign that Biden is.

For example, we would consider it to be a pretty good sign if Biden was leading in national polling 80% to Trump 20%, correct? Now obviously this doesn’t mean something can’t change between now and November, but it would certainly correlate with good prospects - agreed?

Now reflect on that fact that national aggregate polling of all reputable national surveys show Biden trails his 2020 performance at the same time By nearly 10%… When you consider 2020 was decided on the margins in battleground states by ~40,000 voters, this is a terrible sign. Especially when specific polling on black and hispanic and swing-voters in these specific battleground states ALSO bodes worse for Biden this time around.

Many people did not vote for Biden; hell in Florida, they didn’t even hold the Primaries it went by default to Biden. An uncontested primaries isn’t exactly proof people will be upset – especially when polling data is already telling us the vast majority of the electorate is unhappy with voting for Joe Biden. And call me crazy but I’m not too worried about the dyed-in-the-wool Democrat from California upset that we change from Biden. I’m pretty sure they’ll vote for anyone else the Democrats appoint.

Joe Biden already is our Sarah Palin. You’re struggling to find any conceivable data to support your assertions and you know it.

I will agree with the longstanding precedent of incumbent-advantage; but I do not see how that shores up support here and in the now. Put it this way: Polls show incumbent advantage is doing fundamentally nothing to put Biden past the numbers he needs in order to cross the finish-line.

And But don’t you think Biden’s numbers – steadily declining for months if not years, mind you – are sort of baked in? Media saturation has taken place, and Biden in the spotlight long enough that projections would suggest nothing will fundamentally change and that these are losing numbers – yes? So between knowing we will likely lose versus taking the gamble of garnering viral excitement from nominating a younger fresh face, the latter would be better in my view.

Look I’m sorry, but you gave zero response to the damaging statistics I mentioned except to point vaguely toward incumbency which clearly isn’t helping enough with the output of those statistics. So can changing candidates do more? I think so.

That’s a terrible take. You know why that is?

Because undecided swing-voters in battle-ground states will decide this election on the margins. It’s Not you. It’s not me. It’s those stupid undecided voters that we unfortunately need to cater to, and Joe Biden lost some of those voters in the debate. If the electorate were informed and intelligent, we wouldn’t have either of these candidates in the first place.

Reminder that 2020 was decided by something like 40,000 votes thanks to the electoral college.

Given how pivotal this moment is, I think it kind of is. Considering only 40,000 votes decided 2020, a handful of undecided voters is extremely vital. What other format would you have it in?

Not to say this falls on deaf ears because I appreciate your actually understanding how scientific surveys work, but as you said yourself: These focus-groups of undecided voters are certainly warning-signs, and if it was flipped around, users would be up-voting this and BIden’s campaign would be touting this as a great thing.

I’m all for larger studies being conducted to show the damage done; the question will then be: How will you change your perception on what needs to be done?

And golly, if only we had large sample sizes of populations comparing Donald Trump and Joe Biden in battleground swing-states. If only we could then compare those numbers to their respective numbers in 2020… That, combined with said focus group insights, sure would be useful! /s

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/05/13/new-york-times-presidential-poll-donald-trump-joe-biden-battleground-states

https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/swing-state-polling-may-2024

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-poised-beat-joe-biden-6-key-battleground-states-poll-1904688

And that’s just the start, pre-debate no less. I cannot think of a single data-point where Biden isn’t doing significantly worse than his 2020 performance. National approval ratings, black/hispanic vote, voter enthusiasm, etc.

I’m laughing you don’t seem to understand how statistics and probability work. But please, DO tell how he was wrong – I’m going to enjoy this.

But hey, excellent attempt to cop-out of the myriad of other points in my comment, buddy. Can only respond to maybe 10% of a comment but want to try to take down a leading statistician? Okie-dokie!

It’s irrelevant if it doesn’t actually propel you past the finish-line, though, isn’t it? So explain to me how incumbency and the DNC “building itself around” Biden is substantively altering the outcome of, for emphasis:

• Losing large chunks of critical Hispanic & Black Voters (voters who shouldn’t be in question to begin with)
• Losing Battleground swing-state voters.
• Losing in national polling versus Trump (where he was ahead in 2020 or at worst even)
• Has aggregate approval ratings in the 30s.

I’ll wait.

Next, answer this: Joe Biden is not the nominee yet either, for the convention has yet to happen. Now let’s be clear: In the event Biden voluntarily steps down and either an open convention occurs or he endorses, is it really that inconceivable for you to believe overnight polling for such a candidate would skyrocket as both grassroots and establishment and MASSIVE widespread media press inundate such a person with coverage…?

So at the end of the day, we have high confidence Biden will lose in November 6th if we stay the course. If that’s the case, I believe we should take the chance to put someone fresh in and who is younger. That assuages a major concern for 70% of the electorate and reinvigorates people to vote for someone new. As Mehdi Hasan said, “Americans love new shit.”

Now those are utterly meaningless. Incumbency worked so well for Trump, amirite?

I can’t believe you can write that with a straight face when he’s losing in national polling, losing with battleground state swing voters, and losing large chunks of critical Hispanic and Black voters.

Every single data-point is significantly-worse than Biden’s 2020 performance where he won by a whole 40,000 votes in battleground states.

As a Democrat, I hope my fellow members of the coalition wake up.