Nah.
There was a big enthusiasm gap in 2010 (I could post some links to contemporaneous fivethirtyeight.com posts about it), including the rise of the Tea Party; the role racial animus against Obama played in that; typical losses to the president’s party in the first midterm election after he or she wins – the electorate often acts like a thermostat that way, with 2002 being pretty much the only exception in recent memory; a number of Democratic incumbents from moderate and conservative districts who took hard votes in favor of the ACA, which was quite unpopular at the time; the economy was crap, if not on the edge of absolute disaster any more, which worked to the advantage of the dem side in 2008 but ironically against them when they couldn’t fix everything in a scant 2 years; and substantial overperformance over what the mean result would have been in 2008 due to Obama’s coattails, especially in swing states, what with the McCain campaign’s decision to try to nationalize the election and run nationwide TV commercials rather than running a heavy swing-state ground game.
I’m not trying to blunt any other criticisms of Biden you or others on this thread make. I agree with a lot of what I see on thread already. I just think it’s off base to lay this particular failure at his doorstep.
And if Biden somehow emerges with the nomination after all, I will sure as hell vote for him in the 2020 general.
