Yes, we’re in pretty bad shape. It is very depressing.
Voting for a person because they are “not that guy” is a historically losing strategy. I remember George W. Bush getting re-elected and he didn’t have nearly the magnitude of enthusiasm from the base. Democrats are in a lot of danger this year. I can easily see a case where Trump wins with an even bigger margin, wins a bunch of state legislatures, and declares that he has a mandate from the people to screw them over even harder.
I’m not really writing off anyone, just recognizing that’s it’s really hard to convince someone (like my mom) that Bernie isn’t Lenin, and whatever problems she (or anyone) has with national health care is less of a problem than how the current health care “system” holds everyone back while enriching the few.
Trump doesn’t even attempt a coherent sentence in a debate. Joe “Can’t make a coherent sentence, either” Biden will struggle with that unless he gets coached to counter Trump’s three-word sound bites with his own.
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There are multiple factors.
One is a hall of mirrors where black voters in the primary are trying to guess what white voters are going to do in the general election, and “white people voting for a Jewish Communist this time” is not something they think is going to happen. They want Trump out, and Sanders seems too risky.
The other is that African Americans are the only demographic in the party coalition where the entire population, regardless of ideology, is loyal and active in the party. The Democratic Party is white liberals, Latino liberals, Asian American liberals, black liberals, and also black conservatives, and so if we lump the black vote together as if it’s a monolith it looks different from the others.
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That’s not the problem. The problem would be Biden signing bad laws because he wants people to like him.
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Then he has to be made to know that it is more important that people on the left like him than that people on the right do.
Biden in the kind of white liberal that many fear would ultimately choose fascism over a threat to their own status. At 77 there is extremely little reason to think that is ever going to change.
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I don’t think the fear is well founded; Biden’s far from perfect, but he’s also far from the Republicans, let alone fascism.
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He’s probably not going to change being a white liberal. He can’t change choosing fascism, because he hasn’t done that yet. What can change is the fear, since that’s not his to change.
If you think “would choose fascism over something that threatens current status” is something that describes 5% of the population then it makes sense to think Biden isn’t in that 5%. If you think it describes 80% of white men then there is a good reason to think Biden is in that 80%. It doesn’t really make much sense to talk about how much of an outlier Biden is towards or away from fascism without knowing what the mean is first.
Fear seems like a pretty worthless tool for controlling people. If you put someone else into fight or flight mode it is usually because you are deeply invested in them choosing “flight” and they don’t always choose that.
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I gotta say this all happened faster than I was expecting
I think a lot depends on how the contested convention comes about. If Biden stumbles again, youth vote starts turning out more, and Sanders has a clear lead (say 45 to 35) with the dropped out candidates picking up the rest then I think they would pick Sanders. If it close to a tie and Biden is polling better against Trump then I expect they will pick Biden even if Sanders has the edge. The latter seems a lot more likely since so few total delegates have gone to warren, bloomberg, etc. that it is unlikely that there can be a strong preference without a majority.
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No need for insults. Old Joe, when he’s coherent, pulls stuff out of his butt just like Trump. In a BSer vs. BSer contest, which is what any debate would be, Trump’s the better one.
But time will tell.
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“I’m the guy!”
“Only one up here”
“Now look here”
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I’m no longer convinced that debate performance has much to do with influencing voters.
The consensus in 2016 general election was that Hillary wiped the walls with Trump on the debate stage. The consensus for the 2020 primary debates was the Elizabeth Warren smote her adversaries like a broadsword-wielding warrior goddess taking down a platoon of orcs. In the end they still didn’t move the numbers that much one way or another.
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I think a bad performance would influence voters more than a good performance would.
Remember that Trump told the Trumpists exactly what they wanted to hear, so from that perspective he gave a good performance. Biden has a far harder job, he can’t just copy Trump without losing votes.
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