Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/08/biden-leads-trump-14-points-in.html
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No complacency until until he’s either out on the street or in a jail cell.
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TBH, I’m not seeing any complacency anywhere. If anything, people sometimes seem over-anxious and ready to jump at even the slightest signs of optimism, afraid that it means overconfidence.
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No complacency, but it’s worth pointing out that Trump isn’t a political unknown anymore, and that makes a huge difference.
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This 1000x. We have to keep reminding the Dem establishment and the MSM of that, and demand that they fight this campaign as if the numbers are twice that against us (and, y’know, as if we’re still stuck with the Electoral College). The future of liberal democracy is at stake.
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Indeed, we’ve been here before. And we didn’t learn that national polls are worse than useless.
Granted, the state polling is also looking not great for Trump at the moment, BUT it certainly doesn’t mirror this 14 point reality.
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Remember, once he fully emerges from his covid bunker he’ll have to talk and debate more, and more voters will notice his cognitive issues, especially compared to a more vigorous Trump. His margin will fall.
Biden doesn’t have “cognitive issues”, he has a stammer. And “more vigorous” Trump? Have you looked at the bloviating orange turd lately, or tried to listen to his word salad?
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A lot of this depends on the local polling as well. Places like 538 will continue to point out that in 2016 it was the marginal states that were the only ones where polling didn’t really show a solid Clinton lead, and lo, that was how it turned out, with the national and local pollings both being surprisingly accurate in the end. It’s just that (weirdly) local polling is probably more vulnerable to margins of error unless it is done very carefully and very expensively.
And from what I understand (from a long way away!), local polling is currently pretty consistent with the national polling here - the current marginal states (the ones where they are running neck-and-neck) appear to be ones that are usually not even “in play” for the Democrats. This will inevitably shift as the election nears, but it makes life difficult for the Republicans as the incumbents.
To be fair, this seems to be what happened in 2016 as well - and Clinton clearly misread the mood in those swing states with her economic pitch (regardless of what one might actually think about the pitch itself) and that probably had something of an effect.
This time around, however, it’s very unclear if Trump’s populist slogan approach will work - especially as it’s been temporarily, ahem, trumped by BLM as an even more effective populist one.
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These are all pre-Russia polls. I don’t know what fuckery they’ve got planned, but I know it’s going to be 4 years more advanced than the fuckery from last time.
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We have been here before, but the complacency of 2016 is dead and gone, and has been replaced by rage. The record 2018 turnout sounded a warning gong for the right, and they have ramped up voter suppression accordingly. It’s their only game. But it only works if we allow it to. It is true Biden is not an inspiring choice, but not-Trump is inspiring as all hell, so I suspect there will be little complacency on either side this time around. It should be a blood bath, but I fear for the literal truth of that statement.
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Polls mean nothing.
GO VOTE! Period.
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Added to that, Trump’s campaign to kill off the elderly, and quash mail in voting. In the past registered Republicans tended to use mail in ballots in greater numbers than their Democrat counterparts.
If Wisconsin’s recent primary/election demonstrated its that people, if needed, are willing to brave pandemic to show up to polls and vote Blue.
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That will the the disinformation campaign that Trump’s operatives will try and play. It’s mainly based on projection to head off analysis of how badly Trump processes and communicates important information.
Of course, there are some folks who, for whatever reason, tend to amplify that disinformation campaign as fact, but what are you gonna do?
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There should be no complacency- but we’re not in the same place.
Biden is leading where Clinton was and Trump is hemorrhaging support among his key demographics - white people, men and non college educated people- and is losing swing states while cluster fucking his own convention.
It’s not 2016 - and we shouldn’t be fighting last year’s battle but this year’s battle.
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Please don’t forget to vote for democrat when it comes to the senate. If the Dems take over the house and the senate, they can begin to dismantle the crooked system of judges that Trump and McConnell have created in the judiciary. Otherwise, it will exist and be a detriment to justice for decades to come.
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Yes, vote blue and get the Republicans, but don’t just stand back and leave things for the Democrats to fix. We can not go back to 2016 or any other year viewed with rose tinted glasses, it was far from a perfect world then. The Democrats need to know that we will come for them too if they do not bring real change, whether it is in civil rights, climate chaos or economic justice.
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Is there any requirement for Presidential debates? (Other than tradition, and he wipes his ass with that all the time.)
He could probably blow off debating, and not suffer much with his base. Hubris and desperation might might get him to debate, in long hopes of a knockout punch or a fatal mistake.
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Yup.
We’ve also “been here before” in the polling sense and had things work out exactly as expected, arguably more often than it going the other way. Hence the whole attempt to predict things.
Where we haven’t been before is an incumbent Trump overseeing a cratering economy, massive social unrest, and 100,000 Americans dead due to his mishandling of the worst global pandemic in a century.
With strength of the economy being the single most reliable predictor in a presidential election, especially a reelection campaign.
From what I’ve seen of recent polling, Biden is polling much stronger in all those key places where Clinton failed. Particularly down to the huge shift away from the GOP in suburban counties. Several states that were not expected to be “in play” now appear to be. And multiple GOP senators and House members who were expected to be safely on path to reelection are starting to struggle mightily in polls and fund raising.
Biden’s polling is also surprisingly strong among young voters, even in polls that show low enthusiasm for Biden specifically among that group. While Trump’s polling among older voters, his and the GOP’s most critical demographic, is collapsing.
Then there’s more detailed “issue” polling. Even a majority of Republicans in a recent poll agreed Trump has increased racial tensions, and a plurality to a slight majority described him as Racist. Which is pretty well unprecedented.
We’ve only really “been here before” if you look exclusively at this weeks national polling. There’s an absolute fuck ton going in right now, even just in the polls. A lot of it has never happened before. Very little of it looks like it’s going to magically go away by November.
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Yeah, the “return to normalcy” that Biden has been promising won’t bloody cut it anymore. I hope he’s stopped using that phrase because, as personally nostalgic as I am for the 1990s, I know the Bill Clinton years weren’t so good for a lot of other Americans who aren’t privileged white cis-het guys. The Dems have to look to a sustainable future instead of promising to bring back an unsustainable past.
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