Thank you for posting this… I think more people should evaluate this info, tho will they ? There is simply no better candidate … if there were , Biden would’ve been convinced (coerced?) outta the race a long time ago. Excellent thoughts on the incumbency - it is both a blessing and a curse.
Next- a rundown of why all these lesser knowns could not win a national election - and their weaknesses. First , you cannot bypass Harris - she’s got the money if Biden is coerced out. I think she would be fine … but she really has to be able to win… I don’t see that happening. Buttigieg (?) cmon - excellent candidate - but he would not win. Newsom (?) coastal elite , CA Gretchen Whitmer said she would not run my point is any one of these people would be excellent options … in 2028 and beyond but they were already evaluated and did not throw their hat in bc they know Biden is the best bet this year. We are in the midst of a major transformation … we have a bench full of excellent candidates for the future. We’re just not there yet … we gotta move the ball this year. Interested in your thoughts on ea of the alternates weaknesses on the Natl playing field, beyond they’re unknowns
So much of this kind of reasoning depends on "usually", on claims from patterns and regularities. I think when we're talking U.S. Presidential races, that's already a slightly tenuous base from which to argue about patterns and regularities because, weirdly enough given how much we talk about them, it's a very small dataset--only seven instances in the 21st Century if we count 2000, and only 20 since the end of World War II. Moreover there are a lot of elements to US Presidential races that make them hard to compare over that postwar sequence: some voters were in effect being prevented from voting (most notably Blacks in the US South), primaries did not become a dominant force in candidate selection until 1972, the amount of money in races and the constraints (or lack thereof) on campaign spending has changed a great deal, the national media environment and advertising have undergone enormous shifts, and so on.
But also, arguments from patterns and regularities become a lot less reliable if they're being applied to a system or behavior that is arguably in the middle of a major transformation or rupture. I honestly think that's what's happening right now, and it really started happening in earnest in 2016--notably a year where many prognostications made from patterns and regularities failed very badly.
I agree with most of what you said here, but take issue with the overall point. Using your logic, most of popularly consumed opinion and logic pieces about presidents should be quashed because the datasets are too small. This is the nature of the beast. In order to write a consumable opinion piece, one has to do their best to use data as efficiently as possible. This may result in less-than-ideal sample sizes, but then again, if we used ideal sample sizes, these pieces would tend to be PhD dissertation-level quality. Which is fine, but hard for most writers to write and laypeople to consume (If you want to support me by being a founding member and donating $100k a year to my publication, that could help!). I stand by what I used to back up my point, which is the most recent 24 years of presidencies and an approval poll of 9 different people. To me, that is enough to formulate a respectable opinion and make a coherent argument in 1000-2000 words.
And I agree about the challenges of comparing data over large sequences in history, which is a great argument for NOT expanding the datasets, and why I chose more modern data and stopped there. If I went further back in my sitting president approval analysis, it may have fallen apart at some point, because the nature of the data and the role of "approval" in society surely changes over time. So using only 21st century data seems fine to me, as it would apply to the here-and-now.
And then the statement about being in the middle of a major transformation or rupture I actually agree with to some degree. But I'm not ready to discount all data because of it. I am open to challenging some worldviews that are taken for granted, but not all. And it's hard to know which ones will be obsolete as a result or which won't. In this day and age, with attention spans and education lacking, these trends I focused on in my post seem legit and strong, IMO.
I think there are ways to 'read' political outcomes that are more in the vibes, if you know what I mean--more ethnographic, more qualitative, more intuitive. There's at least some reason to think that so-called superforecasters draw as much on intuitive and ethnographic readings to predict near-term future outcomes; Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner's book on the subject also noted the consistent importance of open-mindedness and flexibility in prognostication, which I think at least partly involves skepticism about whether past outcomes are a good guide to predicting outcomes in systems that have a lot of sui generis elements in each iterative run of the same process.
I think we're on the same page. We just have different mediums and considerations we use to convey our thoughts. I'm a wannabe pundit, you're more of an academic. Different styles and such.
This election is unique in modern time as being a rematch of a very close election. Except for the seven swing states, including NC, which continues to slip slowly away, my beginning point, with the new electoral college allocation, is Biden leads 225-220. The seven swings have 93 votes among them. 45 are required to win for Biden, while Trump needs 50. Should Biden take only the Blue Wall, that gives a 269-269 tie. The tie goes to the new House for voting by delegation, so each state has an equal vote. Currently, it’s R 26, D 20, split evenly 4. That gives the election to Trump.
Picking up one or more of the three states outside the Blue Wall prevents the tie. NV has 6 2votes and was strong for Democrats in 2020. AZ and GA have the electoral votes but were very close. If age had been a prominent issue in 2020, it
Oh, and I think your point about unknowns polling favorably is certainly borne out. Remember Dean Phillips? I know, I don’t really either. But people were initially more favorable to him than RFKJr. And then we saw him speaking on television and streams. We got to know him. And we were like, who is this piker? This guy who has been in congress for 4 years at the time, and now thinks he has the same chops to move infrastructure, technology, labor, climate change, veterans care and so much other legislation the Biden administration has been able to pass. And they avoided government shutdowns and were able to get the MAGAs who literally want America to fail and fall to raise the debt ceiling. Not to mention under Biden, the Baltic Sea is now NATO Lake (credit to Charlie Sykes for that quip, I’m a scientist, I try very hard to cite my sources).
So this guy, he can replicate this success? After we had a hearty laugh, we moved on. I mean, even the protest votes didn’t go to him.
You make excellent points about Biden versus the Democratic field. This is important context. However, the contention that Trump hasn’t been subjected to negative attention during his three years out of office is bananas. I’m pretty sure there are a couple of negative pieces out there about him from time to time. What might be true, and I hope it is, is that as Election Day nears, some of the voters who claim they are willing to support him know will think more seriously about a Trump presidency would actually mean for them, the country and the world. For non-political types, the election is somewhere over the horizon, and not a serious concern at the moment. I hope that’s what’s happening.
Except I don’t think polls have been anywhere near accurate since 2016. With a nod to a very few pollsters in red states who are honest brokers and understand the people they are polling because they have been doing this a very long time and are spending the capital required for accuracy, pretty much every one else is way off. Trump’s primary polling numbers were 10-20 points above how he actually performed, again with the exceptions being two or three red state pollsters who invested heavily in their methodology and reaching the voters.
Didn’t the polls show Hillary stomping Trump into the mud?
Besides, what these polls don’t take into account is the hit the Democrats will take if they’re perceived as having allowed Trump to bully them into pulling their candidate three months before the election. They’re already seen as feckless, flighty ditherers - pulling Biden would cement that impression in the minds of voters.
The voters, bless their grubby little unwashed souls, admire strength above all things, and Trump has that in spades. Biden may still lose - after that disastrous performance at the “debate” things aren’t looking good. But at least if we stick with Biden, we’ll die on our feet instead of on our knees.
Given the significantly lopsided results of incumbent presidents running for a second term, I'm questioning your contention that his incumbency is supposed to be a disadvantage vs the field.
I'm not contending that at all. In fact, I believe just the opposite of that contention. My point is not about incumbency, it's that approval ratings tend to fluctuate depending on the timing of the president's terms. They have tended to be higher at the election/ending of the term and dip lower throughout the meat of the term. By this logic, it stands to reason that Biden's approval will rise as the election approaches and perhaps be some of his highest ratings ever around election time.
For comparison, Obama had historically high approval ratings, but even he was in the 30%'s for much of 2011 and was at a dismal 43% approval in mid-Aug 2012, 3 months before the election. A month later, he was back up to 50% and by election time, was above 50%.
Read the article about this that I linked to in my post for further clarification/understanding.
Thank you for posting this… I think more people should evaluate this info, tho will they ? There is simply no better candidate … if there were , Biden would’ve been convinced (coerced?) outta the race a long time ago. Excellent thoughts on the incumbency - it is both a blessing and a curse.
Next- a rundown of why all these lesser knowns could not win a national election - and their weaknesses. First , you cannot bypass Harris - she’s got the money if Biden is coerced out. I think she would be fine … but she really has to be able to win… I don’t see that happening. Buttigieg (?) cmon - excellent candidate - but he would not win. Newsom (?) coastal elite , CA Gretchen Whitmer said she would not run my point is any one of these people would be excellent options … in 2028 and beyond but they were already evaluated and did not throw their hat in bc they know Biden is the best bet this year. We are in the midst of a major transformation … we have a bench full of excellent candidates for the future. We’re just not there yet … we gotta move the ball this year. Interested in your thoughts on ea of the alternates weaknesses on the Natl playing field, beyond they’re unknowns
So much of this kind of reasoning depends on "usually", on claims from patterns and regularities. I think when we're talking U.S. Presidential races, that's already a slightly tenuous base from which to argue about patterns and regularities because, weirdly enough given how much we talk about them, it's a very small dataset--only seven instances in the 21st Century if we count 2000, and only 20 since the end of World War II. Moreover there are a lot of elements to US Presidential races that make them hard to compare over that postwar sequence: some voters were in effect being prevented from voting (most notably Blacks in the US South), primaries did not become a dominant force in candidate selection until 1972, the amount of money in races and the constraints (or lack thereof) on campaign spending has changed a great deal, the national media environment and advertising have undergone enormous shifts, and so on.
But also, arguments from patterns and regularities become a lot less reliable if they're being applied to a system or behavior that is arguably in the middle of a major transformation or rupture. I honestly think that's what's happening right now, and it really started happening in earnest in 2016--notably a year where many prognostications made from patterns and regularities failed very badly.
I agree with most of what you said here, but take issue with the overall point. Using your logic, most of popularly consumed opinion and logic pieces about presidents should be quashed because the datasets are too small. This is the nature of the beast. In order to write a consumable opinion piece, one has to do their best to use data as efficiently as possible. This may result in less-than-ideal sample sizes, but then again, if we used ideal sample sizes, these pieces would tend to be PhD dissertation-level quality. Which is fine, but hard for most writers to write and laypeople to consume (If you want to support me by being a founding member and donating $100k a year to my publication, that could help!). I stand by what I used to back up my point, which is the most recent 24 years of presidencies and an approval poll of 9 different people. To me, that is enough to formulate a respectable opinion and make a coherent argument in 1000-2000 words.
And I agree about the challenges of comparing data over large sequences in history, which is a great argument for NOT expanding the datasets, and why I chose more modern data and stopped there. If I went further back in my sitting president approval analysis, it may have fallen apart at some point, because the nature of the data and the role of "approval" in society surely changes over time. So using only 21st century data seems fine to me, as it would apply to the here-and-now.
And then the statement about being in the middle of a major transformation or rupture I actually agree with to some degree. But I'm not ready to discount all data because of it. I am open to challenging some worldviews that are taken for granted, but not all. And it's hard to know which ones will be obsolete as a result or which won't. In this day and age, with attention spans and education lacking, these trends I focused on in my post seem legit and strong, IMO.
I think there are ways to 'read' political outcomes that are more in the vibes, if you know what I mean--more ethnographic, more qualitative, more intuitive. There's at least some reason to think that so-called superforecasters draw as much on intuitive and ethnographic readings to predict near-term future outcomes; Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner's book on the subject also noted the consistent importance of open-mindedness and flexibility in prognostication, which I think at least partly involves skepticism about whether past outcomes are a good guide to predicting outcomes in systems that have a lot of sui generis elements in each iterative run of the same process.
I think we're on the same page. We just have different mediums and considerations we use to convey our thoughts. I'm a wannabe pundit, you're more of an academic. Different styles and such.
This election is unique in modern time as being a rematch of a very close election. Except for the seven swing states, including NC, which continues to slip slowly away, my beginning point, with the new electoral college allocation, is Biden leads 225-220. The seven swings have 93 votes among them. 45 are required to win for Biden, while Trump needs 50. Should Biden take only the Blue Wall, that gives a 269-269 tie. The tie goes to the new House for voting by delegation, so each state has an equal vote. Currently, it’s R 26, D 20, split evenly 4. That gives the election to Trump.
Picking up one or more of the three states outside the Blue Wall prevents the tie. NV has 6 2votes and was strong for Democrats in 2020. AZ and GA have the electoral votes but were very close. If age had been a prominent issue in 2020, it
,… well reversed those stares.
Yes! Last paragraph!!! Yes! … in the middle of a major transformation
These are key points.
Oh, and I think your point about unknowns polling favorably is certainly borne out. Remember Dean Phillips? I know, I don’t really either. But people were initially more favorable to him than RFKJr. And then we saw him speaking on television and streams. We got to know him. And we were like, who is this piker? This guy who has been in congress for 4 years at the time, and now thinks he has the same chops to move infrastructure, technology, labor, climate change, veterans care and so much other legislation the Biden administration has been able to pass. And they avoided government shutdowns and were able to get the MAGAs who literally want America to fail and fall to raise the debt ceiling. Not to mention under Biden, the Baltic Sea is now NATO Lake (credit to Charlie Sykes for that quip, I’m a scientist, I try very hard to cite my sources).
So this guy, he can replicate this success? After we had a hearty laugh, we moved on. I mean, even the protest votes didn’t go to him.
You make excellent points about Biden versus the Democratic field. This is important context. However, the contention that Trump hasn’t been subjected to negative attention during his three years out of office is bananas. I’m pretty sure there are a couple of negative pieces out there about him from time to time. What might be true, and I hope it is, is that as Election Day nears, some of the voters who claim they are willing to support him know will think more seriously about a Trump presidency would actually mean for them, the country and the world. For non-political types, the election is somewhere over the horizon, and not a serious concern at the moment. I hope that’s what’s happening.
Yep... even the fantasy candidates don't beat the real thing.
Well.. apart from one... Mrs Obama.
That’s only bc she is fully vetted .
You make a good argument.
The only fly in the ointment is that polls still show Biden (or anybody else) losing to Trump.
And?
And so…
From the 2020 election, and yet somehow so, so, so very appropriate to the upcoming 2024 election.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pAyljtELZ8k
Polls are off … just like France . And as T Burke points out, the reason they’re off is we’re in a major transformation
We HOPE polls are off as they were in France. That is what we hope.
——
Magic the Gathering card: Hope
Enchantment - U
Flavor texts:
“Hope is what you have when there is nothing left.” Niel Gaiman
“You must always have hope.”
Cannot be exiled
Cannot be sacrificed
Cannot be discarded
Cannot be put on the battlefield
May be given to a player
Must stay in your hand unless given to another player
With Hope in your hand you cannot lose the game by being unable to draw a card from your library.
Except I don’t think polls have been anywhere near accurate since 2016. With a nod to a very few pollsters in red states who are honest brokers and understand the people they are polling because they have been doing this a very long time and are spending the capital required for accuracy, pretty much every one else is way off. Trump’s primary polling numbers were 10-20 points above how he actually performed, again with the exceptions being two or three red state pollsters who invested heavily in their methodology and reaching the voters.
From the 2020 election, and yet somehow so, so, so very appropriate to the upcoming 2024 election…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pAyljtELZ8k
Didn’t the polls show Hillary stomping Trump into the mud?
Besides, what these polls don’t take into account is the hit the Democrats will take if they’re perceived as having allowed Trump to bully them into pulling their candidate three months before the election. They’re already seen as feckless, flighty ditherers - pulling Biden would cement that impression in the minds of voters.
The voters, bless their grubby little unwashed souls, admire strength above all things, and Trump has that in spades. Biden may still lose - after that disastrous performance at the “debate” things aren’t looking good. But at least if we stick with Biden, we’ll die on our feet instead of on our knees.
There is that, yes.
As we know, the opposition is already doing all it can to game the election process.
(And, the newly Supreme Court empowered Biden has apparently decided to sit on his hands as an official act and let them, no matter what he could do.)
Thank you. This makes sense.
Given the significantly lopsided results of incumbent presidents running for a second term, I'm questioning your contention that his incumbency is supposed to be a disadvantage vs the field.
I'm not contending that at all. In fact, I believe just the opposite of that contention. My point is not about incumbency, it's that approval ratings tend to fluctuate depending on the timing of the president's terms. They have tended to be higher at the election/ending of the term and dip lower throughout the meat of the term. By this logic, it stands to reason that Biden's approval will rise as the election approaches and perhaps be some of his highest ratings ever around election time.
For comparison, Obama had historically high approval ratings, but even he was in the 30%'s for much of 2011 and was at a dismal 43% approval in mid-Aug 2012, 3 months before the election. A month later, he was back up to 50% and by election time, was above 50%.
Read the article about this that I linked to in my post for further clarification/understanding.