That same Quinnipiac poll that Betty just wrote about has some very good news:
Far be it from me to get in the way of a Dems in Disarray media frenzy … but it the latest Quinnipiac poll has Trump at 42% and losing to every potential Democratic nominee
Bloomberg 51 – 42
Sanders 51 – 43
Biden 50 – 43
Klobuchar 49 – 43
Warren 48 – 44
Buttigieg 47 – 43— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) February 10, 2020
Whoever we we nominate has a good chance to win. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Buttigieg or Gabbard, but all the others are fine with me.
Let’s help whoever it is that ends up as president by giving them a Democratic Senate. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. Raised the goal to 30K.
HalfAssedHomesteader
OK, why do so many post titles on this blog have missing closing quotes? Is it a system bug? A style thing? What?
Mr. Longform
I don’t think Pete deserves to be on the same plane as Gabbard – she is many notches below him. Our democracy would be OK with him; not with her.
Dread
Yes, but are they winning in the right states?
I’d rather not continue to win the popular vote, but lose to the antiquated bullshit electoral college.
Kent
Basically Trump’s ceiling is 42 and the anyone but Trump vote seems mostly distributed by name recognition.
I think this is informative that Trump is weak but not that say Bloomberg is necessarily a better general election match than say Klobuchar.
NotMax
Have mentioned it in the past regarding your boilerplate text – could you please in the future change “between” (incorrect) to “among” (correct).
/Pedants United
WaterGirl
@HalfAssedHomesteader: Google does not have the latest font in the font library, so that font in that size may display as a single quote or apostrophe or not at all, depending on your system.
When I brought it to the attention of the developers awhile back, we discovered that this has been a known issue for 2 years, but Google hasn’t bothered to update the font library.
Not using the Google fonts could negatively impact performance, so for now we’re living with it. It may be that that font in a similar (but not the same) size might get close to what we have. But we’re not changing fonts.
Barbara
Here is my view: I think any of them would be okay. I think Buttigieg faces the most hurdles because his lack of expertise is going to allow the latent homophobe vote to pretend that they didn’t vote for him because he had no experience. So I worry about those numbers, especially for people not really paying attention. And yes, I do think he has insufficient experience.
Regarding Sanders, contrary to what might come across otherwise, I don’t hate him and if you had asked me 4 years ago I would have said (and did say, I think) that I wish we had more senators with his commitment to progressive values. But I don’t think the next president is going to be able to deliver the “change” that Sanders is promising. I am concerned about midterm backlash in particular for Sanders. Whereas, a president who delivers a caretaker image is more likely to be able to say that he/she delivered on their promises. Warren will have a similar issue but I don’t think her supporters see her in the same messianic terms that Sanders supporters see him. It was a problem for Obama as well.
catclub
the real question. The framers 3/5 curse continues.
catclub
I think Trump will have a hard time getting traction on the ‘ lack of experience’ track. He still knows less and less about the world.
bbleh
THANK YOU for pointing this out. With the media in full push-the-narrative-because-that’s-easier-than-journalism mode, far too many people are assuming that the Dems are hopelessly divided and destined for doom. It’s a primary, people. There’s supposed to be competition. And one benefit of the competition is, the candidates get tested and toughened, mostly in a less challenging environment than one will face in the general.
And yes, the popular vote doesn’t elect the prez, the EC does, so local polls are important. One has to hope that both the campaigns and the media will pay more attention to that this time.
satby
Yes, we grizzel constantly about the presidential primary but if we don’t give them a Senate to work with it limits what they can accomplish. And I believe we can flip the Senate.
Brachiator
These are national polls, right?
Doesn’t tell you much about electoral votes. At best, this will make Trump a little nervous, which is a good thing.
bbleh
@catclub: Lol yeah, I’d love to hear how Buttigieg would respond to that question at a debate with Trump.
satby
@Mr. Longform: yeah, Pete is a loyal member of the Democratic party. Gabbard is something else. No comparison.
mad citizen
The fact T is at 42 is still distressing. So many non-patriot Rs, very depressing. Yet, as Nancy said, T is self-impeaching, so we can only imagine what dumbshit things he will do between now and November.
cokane
@Barbara: IMO, every Democrat runs the risk of a midterm backlash. Even Biden, if he wins the nomination, is going to promise some pretty big things in the general. It’s kind of something voters demand.
The big bonus though, is that if Trump loses, the R party is going to realize the shambles it’s actually in. This is not a party that is going to be able to easily unite behind some simple messaging like they did in 2010. There’s going to be something of a civil war for control of it.
Baud
@mad citizen:
True, although it’s unheard of to have a president that low in an economy like the one Trump was lucky enough to inherit.
satby
@bbleh: he answered that last February on Colbert (at the 2:37 mark).
cokane
@Brachiator: Trump won 46% of the vote in 2016, so 42 can kind of give you a sense that there’s virtually no chance at an EC win.
That being said, it’s early and the $1 billion+ reelection machine that he owns hasn’t even started yet
Miss Bianca
@Mr. Longform: Yeah, little as I may be impressed with ex-Mayor Pete, I am way, WAY more impressed with him than with Tulsi. Hell, he’s *above* Sanders in my personal preference list, and she’s the only one *below* Sanders!
janesays
I’m not a huge fan of a lot of the current crop of 11, but I’ll vote for literally any of them if they’re the nominee. Yes, including Gabbard (thankfully, I’ll never have to make that awful choice).
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Agreed as to rankings.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Say what you want about Mayor Pete, but he is a much better candidate than Tulsi. Not a high bar, obviously.
dnfree
@bbleh: Trump won’t respond to that or any other question at a debate. Trump won’t debate. The terms proposed will never be acceptable. I will be astounded if his campaign agreed to face any of the Democrats.
Brachiator
@cokane:
This is not necessarily true at all. National polls are largely a waste of time as predictors of the November election, but give the press and pundits something to talk about.
But as I said, I am happy if it makes Trump sweat a little.
janesays
@cokane: There is no possible (realistic) scenario in which 42% can win the election, even with the obnoxious Electoral College (assuming there’s no unusually strong third party contender like 1992 Ross Perot).
46% nationally was just barely enough for him to squeak out <1% wins in the three states that put him over the top. Knock that down to 42%, and I don’t see how he possibly wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin again. I’m not sure he can even win Florida if he falls that low.
What’s more important for us to remember is that he absolutely CAN win if his approval rating is hovering in that 46-48% range in late October.
WaterGirl
@cokane: Can’t we just promise an end to the corruption?
MJS
@dnfree: I believe Trump will debate if he thinks he has a chance to “win” the debate, and that will depend on who the nominee is. He definitely won’t debate Warren or Klobuchar. Not sure about Buttigieg. He will probably agree to debate Biden or Sanders, because he views them as old and weak. Bloomberg is a wild card. Trump probably knows he’d get his clock cleaned, but will be tempted to show off how much taller he is.
janesays
@Brachiator: National approval ratings polls this far out aren’t a great indicator, but the ones taken in late October and early November are generally a decent indicator of a candidate’s odds of victory. Obama’s approval ratings throughout 2012 were fairly middling with him generally hovering close to a net zero and slightly under 50% approval for most of the year, but there was a slight uptick in the final weeks before the election that put him right at 50% (net +3) just before Election Day, and that’s roughly the margin by which he won that year.
germy
@MJS:
I think he’s also very concerned about the venue. He doesn’t think it’ll be a fair debate if it isn’t moderated by Hannity or the cast of Fox & Friends. He wouldn’t even want Chris Wallace moderating. (corrected from “would”)
With the proper (Fox) venue, he might be confident enough to debate anyone.
janesays
@MJS: I think it’s completely impossible to predict whether or not he will participate in the debates at this point. I clearly remember in 2016 so many people being convinced there was no way in hell he would ever debate Clinton because she would destroy him, and yet… he did the debates. All three of them. And she did destroy him. But in the end it didn’t matter, because the debates don’t seem to really have any meaningful impact on the elections anymore. As near as I can tell, Democrats have been cleaning the clocks of Republicans in most of the presidential debates for the last 20 years, and yet… we’ve only got 2 out of 5 wins in the Electoral College under our belt in that span. We can certainly chalk some of that up to shenanigans and vote suppression, but if our debate performances had really been as impactful as we had hoped they might be, the contests should never have been close enough for the Republicans to steal in the first place.
I have no idea whether or not he’ll debate this fall, but I seriously doubt his decision will be shaped by concerns that it might actually cost him the election, because… 2016. This contest is not going to be decided by the debates, whether they happen or not. It’s all about turnout, and that’s it. If we show up with overwhelming force like we did in 2018, we win, period. If we don’t, there’s a non-zero chance that he’ll get a second term.
WaterGirl
@germy:
I assume you mean “wouldn’t”?
janesays
@germy: The networks don’t get exclusivity on the debates like they do in the primary debates – all of the networks carry all of the debates, even when the moderator is employed by one of their competitors. And they are always held on college campuses. The Commission on Presidential Debates selects the moderators, and they always choose a different network’s talent for each debate. Wallace might get the gig for one debate, but he is probably the only Fox News personality that would even be considered. The other debate moderators will be chosen from news anchors on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and CNN.
Bnad
Looking back at the RealClearPolitics polls from the first week of November 2016, it was Clinton 46.8 Trump 43.6. The final popular vote was Clinton 48.2 to Trump 46.1. One of the explanations for the difference was the shy Trump voter syndrome.
With Trump at 42 we ought to be ok unless there are even more shy Trump voters this time around.
NotMax
janesays
And Univision.
germy
@WaterGirl: Sorry for the typo. I meant wouldn’t.
Wallace is Fox, but he often deviates from the script.
germy
@janesays:
Yes, which is why I doubt he will participate.
download my app in the app store mistermix
If someone wants a state data point, this Marquette poll from last month showed Biden or Bernie beating Trump, other candidates trailed by a couple points. All within the MOE.
https://law.marquette.edu/poll/category/poll-release/
cokane
Hmm… I think the idea that national polls tell you nothing about the current state of the election is just overstating the case a bit. Yes, they definitely need to be taken with a grain of salt. But it’s just not possible to cobble together an electoral college victory, given the layout of the country, with something like 45% or less of the vote, as @janesays states.
The matchup polling right now does give you a fair sense that: 1. Trump is quite vulnerable for an incumbent with a good economy. 2. Biden and Sanders poll better against him right now than Clinton did at this stage, but also 3. Trump’s odds of winning are far from miniscule.
Alot can and will happen between now and the election. That’s the key reason to take this matchup polls skeptically. Nonetheless, they do offer a decent insight into the rough parameters of where this election will lie, for example the odds of a Trump landslide are next to zero.
janesays
@Mr. Longform: I think it’s silly to even include Gabbard in discussions of hypothetical nominees anymore, since her odds of actually winning the nomination are statistically pretty close to 0% at this point. The only people who we should even be talking about today are: Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren, because those are the only people who have any statistically meaningful chance of actually becoming the nominee. Bennet, Gabbard, Patrick, Steyer, and Yang may all still technically be candidates, but none of them is going to get anywhere near the nomination. A month from now, I won’t be surprised if all of them have withdrawn from the race. Hell, I won’t be surprised if two or three of the six viable candidates I listed above have withdrawn from the race after the March 10th primaries.
All that said, of course I would choose Gabbard over Trump if I actually had to make that choice. Thankfully, there is no possible chance that I will ever have to make that choice.
Seanly
My brother & I play a few games together on Xbox. I’ve started dreading the first few minutes we get on Xbox Live with him as he goes into a diatribe about how Democrats can’t beat Trump no matter what (like me, he’s pretty very liberal). Most of it is that he thinks that most Americans are so sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic that Warren, Buttigieg, and Sanders can’t beat Trump. I prefer to still have some hope…
Jeffro
@Brachiator: He’s been busy today tweeting panicky BS and complete fabrications (day ending In ‘Y’, I know, but still)
I think he is sensing he’s on perilous ground here, and the great thing is that he will keep lashing out and stoking our voters even more than he riles his own.
Keep tweeting, trumpov, ya frickin’ moron!
MJS
@janesays: Those are just my guesses, but I don’t believe 2020 is 2016. The Trump White House knows that he can’t be exposed to questions for a significant period of time, and certainly not follow-up questions. That’s why he doesn’t do press conferences in the normal sense. Instead, they allow reporters to shout questions to him on his way to the helicopter, and he either rambles on, or he ignores the question. He won’t be able to do that in a debate. Also, while there may have been speculation that he would refuse to debate in 2016, there’s no way he could have done that and won, because he would have looked weak. Now, he and his campaign team will tout him refusing to debate as standing up to the Fake News, and Fox and the rest of his followers will lap it up.
As for debates not having an impact, I agree they generally don’t, but in recent memory, Obama caused himself significant harm with his performance in the first 2012 debate, and probably saved the election in the next two debates.
Jeffro
@germy: yeah he is NOT going to debate…Dems need to just drop that idea.
I mean, we should try to get him to debate, sure. But he won’t, so the thought that a debate is going to reveal him for the mouth-breathing moron that he already is…well, the whole country already knows that, and he ain’t gonna debate.
Jeffro
@janesays:
@MJS: He ain’t gonna debate, no way no how.
janesays
@cokane: Agreed. For all the talk some make about Trump winning a 1972 or 1984 type landslide if a certain senator from Vermont is the nominee, they’re ignoring the glaring difference between 1972 Nixon/1984 Reagan and 2020 Trump – the former two incumbent presidents were EXTREMELY popular at the time they were re-elected, both hovering around 60% approval ratings. Trump rarely gets above 45%, and usually hovers closer to 40% approval at any given time. Unless there’s a dramatic spike in Trump’s approval rating between now and the election (I’m talking ten points), there’s no way he gets re-elected in a landslide, no matter who the nominee winds up being. The only potentially vulnerable blue states in a worst case scenario are New Hampshire, Minnesota, Nevada, and Maine. I think Colorado and Virginia are both probably safe no matter who we pick. And every other state that went blue in 2016 is definitely safe
And just to be clear – I think concerns about Sanders ability to beat Trump are definitely valid. I just think they get a little hyperbolic here. I could definitely see St. Bernard getting soundly defeated in November. But he’s not gonna get crushed like McGovern or Mondale, because more than half the country doesn’t really like the guy he would be running against.
cokane
I’d be shocked if Trump doesn’t show up to the debates. It would be a huge loss for him and a giant infomercial for his opponent. What’s way more likely is that Trump will pull more Juanita Broaddrick style stunts at these. Dragging some skeletons out of Biden or Sanders or whoever’s closet and abusing the theatrical nature of the debates to his advantage.
The idea that Trump is going to pass on a chance to be on the TV show that the whole country will be watching… nah
Arclite
We need to get rid of the electoral college.
MJS
@janesays: God, I wish I had your confidence. To me, that “certain Senator from Vermont” has Michael Dukakis written all over him.
janesays
@Jeffro: What do you base that on? I remember tons of people plugged into the lefty blogosphere said he definitely wouldn’t do the debates back in 2016, either, and well… you know how that prediction worked out.
I’m not gonna go out on a limb and predict that he definitely will or definitely won’t do the debates. I’m predicting that he’s such an unbelievably unpredictable person in this regard that it’s impossible to predict whether he will or won’t do the debates right now.
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
I’m just waiting for some particularly inventive bootlicker among the Republicans to start calling Trump the answer to the question of life, the Universe and everything.
Mandalay
@MJS:
Well that locks in his 42% while his Democratic opponent and the media call him a chicken and a spineless coward.
2016 showed that getting creamed in the debates doesn’t mean you can’t win the presidency. Ducking the debates has far more downside than showing up for Trump.
Morzer
Well, it’s encouraging to see that the infamous 49% Trump poll was an outlier. The real good news is that the polls seem to be returning to the usual “deeply unpopular” Trump baseline. He’s clinging on to most of the Republican base – and that’s about it.
West of the Rockies
So Trump is at 42%, not bad (for him). But did he have an established “approval rating” prior to November ’16?
I suspect he is less popular, more despised than when he was not yet president. We will also, I would like to believe, be better able to recognize and fend off Russian rat-fucking this time around.
I think he will lose. Hopefully, he will then face consequences. I hope we don’t have a let-bygones-be-bygones approach “for the sake of the country”.
Duane
@Barbara: If Sanders had somehow won the last nomination I’d have been disappointed, but alright let’s roll out the progressive platform and give it our best go. Not now, a second Trumpov administration is unthinkable, and I’m feeling very risk adverse.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MJS:
I agree, but you spelled Walter Mondale wrong. I think Bernie would have problems winning California.
janesays
@MJS: Again… I don’t think the comparison of Sanders to previous Democratic nominees who got completely smoked is necessarily that far off, but you’re ignoring who the other person on the ballot was in each of those situations. Ronald Reagan was EXTREMELY popular in 1984. Richard Nixon was EXTREMELY popular in 1972. Donald Trump is not extremely popular in 2020. He certainly has cult-like devotion among his base, but independents really don’t like the guy at all – at best, they grudgingly tolerate him. Independents really liked Nixon and Reagan when they were up for re-election.
I think the fears of Sanders’ potential unelectability are valid. I just think they’re a little overstated. In the end, whether he loses by a similar EC margin as Clinton or he gets completely blown out, a loss of any size would be nothing short of completely catastrophic. And I think the odds of him losing are high enough that fears of him being the nominee are totally warranted. I just don’t buy into the idea that he would lose as badly as McGovern or Mondale, because again… Trump isn’t a popular incumbent. Reagan and Nixon were.
janesays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You’re insane if you think Donald Trump has any shot in hell of winning California, no matter who the Democratic nominee winds up being. 2020 Trump isn’t 1984 Reagan, at least not in terms of popularity. Not even close.
MJS
@Mandalay: That 42% is who they play to, and all they care about. They have already gotten away with basically refusing to participate in the impeachment trial, and may believe they can do the same thing with the debates. His team certainly understands that there is a huge risk in having him participate in the debates. They won’t know what he’s going to say (and neither does he), and they can’t be sure he’d even be able to say it, given that he doesn’t even appear to be able to read off a teleprompter, let alone speak extemporaneously. He will be ridiculed for not participating, but that will be okay with him, or at least more okay than being mocked and laughed at for his debate performance.
rp
@janesays:
I don’t think it would be McGovern or Mondale level because Sanders would probably win New York and California (probably), but I think he’d struggle to win more than 4-5 other states. HI, VT, DC, OR, WA, MA (maybe), uh…which others? I live in MD, and I think he’d struggle here. His acolyte, Ben Jealous, lost badly in the recent gubernatorial election.
So his overall EV count would be ok, but he’d still lose badly.
randy khan
To put some perspective on this polling, there are not a lot of scenarios in which Trump loses the popular vote by 6+ percent and somehow wins the Electoral College. If the last election was a triple bank shot, that would be a duodecimal bank shot.
Baud
@janesays:
As I said in the prior thread, I think the bigger risk is that a Sanders nomination would forces all our congressional candidates to either endorse or oppose his policies, which may not be the best way to win back the Senate.
janesays
I certainly hope you’re right on both counts, but I feel a lot more confident about the former than I do about the latter. I’ll believe that Trump will actually face real consequences for his malfeasance after his presidency on the day I see him escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs, and not a minute sooner. And I don’t expect I’ll ever live to see that day, no matter who winds up in the White House in January 2021. I think even President Warren would ultimately be dissuaded from seriously pursuing it by the institutionalists after she took office – they’ll tell her that going down that road would put her entire policy agenda at risk.
MJS
@janesays: That’s kind of why my comparison is Dukakis. I know GHWB wasn’t an incumbent. He also didn’t have Reagan’s popularity, but he did have a pretty good economy to run on, and an opponent who could be painted as an “East Coast elite liberal.”
Bernie Bros, if you’re listening, please tell your man that, if he gets the nomination, under no circumstances is he to put on a helmet and climb into a tank.
janesays
@Baud: This, this, this.
We can make convincing arguments about the real potential risks of nominating Sanders without wandering into baseless hyperbolic territory.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@janesays: I’m not insane, I live in California.
janesays
@MJS: 1988 fits a little better, and while GHWB wasn’t as wildly popular as Reagan, he also wasn’t as wildly unpopular as Trump. I think most people going into the voting booth that year probably viewed it as voting for a third Reagan term with a less charismatic version of Reagan as the Republican candidate. GHWB was still far more palatable to the average independent voter than Trump is.
Morzer
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1226565174007648257
In a more sensible world, this would be the end of Mayor Pete as a Democratic candidate,
Jeffro
@janesays: I base that on the fact that the ‘man’ has deteriorated quite noticeably since 2016 (and he was no great shakes then) and the apparatus around him will not want this to be visible to the public at large for 90/120-minute stretches on multiple occasions.
His press secretary only goes on Fox News. He himself only speaks when surrounded by sycophants, or via Twitter.
He ain’t gonna debate.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: His intention is not to win the presidency but destroy the Democratic party. BS and his acolytes believe that it is the establishment Ds who stand between them and the progressive nirvana. They attack elected Ds far more than they attack elected Rs.
Jeffro
OT but this is awesome (especially compared to the clown car list of speakers they have at CPAC): Stand Up Republic is having a “principled conservatism” summit
As I have already put up on FB and am about to put up on Twitter, at $10 a pop, we could send every trumpov voter in America to this summit for the cost of four F-35s, and would be infinitely safer.
Cacti
Can you think of any other Dem candidate for whom there is video of him leading shirtless sing alongs during a honeymoon visit to the Soviet Union?
Dukakis in the tank will be a happy memory once the oppo dump on Wilmer starts.
schrodingers_cat
@Cacti: Oh dear, I better keep my supply of brain bleach ready.
janesays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, California, a state that hasn’t elected a far-right cultural conservative Republican in a statewide election in more than a quarter century (no, Arnold doesn’t count as a far-right cultural conservative), and won’t do so in 2020 either, regardless of who the Democrat is. Sanders may lose badly if he’s the nominee, but he would easily win California by a double digit margin, because Californians don’t actually want to see Roe v Wade overturned anytime soon. Or ever, really.
You do realize that Sanders is leading the polls in the California primary right now, right?
Morzer
@Cacti: I don’t know about the oppo dump, but I think Sanders’ own supporters have every possibility of repelling enough Democrats to keep Trump viable.
schrodingers_cat
Why is the MSM trying to sell the narrative that BS is favored to win the nomination what are they basing it on?
Also why is no one making ads on BS like the one Biden did on Buttigieg.
MJS
Hoping some of his competitors draw the easy comparison with a certain someone who said he would release his taxes, but never did.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-backtracks-promise-to-release-medical-records-says-im-in-good-health
Kent
@schrodingers_cat: Probably because he is leading the polls in most of the super Tuesday primaries and the rest of the field is splitting up the vote between them.
Morzer
@schrodingers_cat: Sanders has consolidated a big chunk of leftier than thous, while the moderate wing are still fractured between multiple candidates. I am not sure that’s getting Wilmer to the big game, but it’s not crazy to think that it might.
Cacti
@MJS: I think the other Dems have been overly polite about that particular elephant in the room too.
He’s 78 years old, just had a heart attack, and is being cagey about releasing more medical info. I’m certain the GOP won’t leave that one alone.
Jeffro
@randy khan: agreed/seconded/truth
Kent
Or evidence that he is way too young for the job. He was what, in high school the last time the GOP played this bait and switch game with Bush’s tax cuts?
Citizen Alan
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t be silly. Republicans don’t read!
pamelabrown53
@Mandalay:
I disagree. If he debates and gets creamed, no harm-no foul: Trump and the republicans will go in overdrive to spin a win.
No show? there’s no spin machine large enough to counteract the coward meme.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@janesays: Excuse me, as I said, I live in California and have so for almost 60 years. Bernie would have problems here and most of it would come down to taxes. While we’ve elected Democrats to statewide office pretty much exclusively this century, we did recall a Democratic Governor and replaced him with “The Governator”. Before Grey Davis’ tenure, we had 16 years of moderate Republican Governors. Trump would hammer Bernie on taxes and this still resonates here in the land of Prop 13.
Bnad
@janesays: The next president may choose to follow a tradition of not prosecuting former presidents. But no such tradition applies to entire administrations. Barr, for example. Kushner for another.
Ksmiami
@Amir Khalid: there’s no fucking way Republicans have read Doug Adams and even if they did they wouldn’t understand it anyway
Citizen Alan
@MJS:
Are you kidding? I’m more worried about Wilmer giving a speech in which he announces that he’ll pay for M4A by abolishing the military and selling all the tanks for scrap metal.
janesays
@Cacti: What did I post that contradicts this?
I said concerns over Sanders’ electability are completely valid. Of course things like video of him singing in a Moscow bar in the 1980s would hurt him… but how much those things would hurt him might be a little overstated. It’s not the mid-1980s, and the USSR doesn’t have the same scary connotation for people under 40 as it does for people over 40. Every single voter under 30 hadn’t even been born when the Berlin Wall fell. Kids aren’t having fallout drills hiding under their desks anymore, and they haven’t in decades. I listened to Tweety Matthews go on this deranged red-baiting rant the other night about Fidel Castro rounding up people and summarily executing them in Central Park, and Joy Reid and Chris Hayes just looked at him like he was an insane person who escaped the nursing home.
Basically, I’m arguing that Bernie very likely loses the election with an Electoral College margin on par with or possibly worse than Clinton did in 2016, and you’re arguing that Bernie suffers the worst electoral defeat in over 30 years. Either scenario would be disastrous, and we’re both arguing that as such, it would better if Sanders wasn’t the nominee.
In the end, it’s all a moot point. Right now it seems like there’s a 50-50 shot that Sanders will be the nominee, at least if you believe the prediction markets. I hope he isn’t, but he may well be, and we’ll all have to deal with that if that’s what happens. If he is the nominee, I hope we’re both wrong about our fears of how he would do in the general election.
MJS
@pamelabrown53: It isn’t that he’ll get creamed. That’s a given. It’s the fear that his performance is such that his mental health issues will be undeniable. That fear could (could, not will) lead his team deciding the risk isn’t worth it, and get him to go along with it by telling him he won’t be treated “fairly” in a debate.
Mnemosyne
@janesays:
I think there’s a good chance that Sanders could win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. The states that Hillary lost are at high risk of being lost a second time because of Republican ratfucking. The only way to overcome that is to flood the zone with as many of our voters as possible. I seriously doubt that all of the non-voters that Sanders is counting on will actually show up. He’s no Obama.
janesays
@Bnad: I could see the possibility of going after Barr a lot sooner than I could see the possibility of going after Trump. Not sure I think that would happen, either, but I think there’s clearly much better odds there.
Mai naem mobile
@satby: this. We need the Senate back to take care of voting rights stuff and election security stuff. McConnell still being Senate Leader with any Dem POTUS is going to be Obama era McConnell on steroids. Especially considering he won’t face an election till 2026. I think Sanders helps the least down ballot.
The 42 for Trump is good news for the Dems because his numbers have been going up recently so 42 should be close to his ceiling.
janesays
@MJS: Are his mental health issues really that undeniable right now? I think that ship sailed some time ago. Most people either care or they don’t.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: DOJ was investigating Sanders’ wife and you can bet that investigation is reopened. It will be Biden 2.0 on steroids.
WaterGirl
@germy: I just wanted to be sure I was getting your drift!
I took the liberty of fixing that and adding a note that it was corrected. I can un-do that if you like.
Mai naem mobile
@MJS: I think Trumpov has enough of an ego that he can get goaded into a debate ignoring his handlers’ advice. Apart from the mental decline I would like a walking around townhall because I don’t think he can physically handle standing for 2 hours. I think it would be obvious that he was hanging onto a podium or chair for dear life.
Cacti
@janesays: You’re argument essentially boils down to:
It doesn’t bother young people.
The age demographic that votes in the smallest numbers.
janesays
@Morzer: This is my biggest fear with Sanders. The Bros are all out in full force on the Twitter machine talking about “bending the knee”, and I just have to remind these asshats that unless they’re actually trying to get Sanders to lose the general election, telling reluctant Democrats who are less than thrilled about him as the potential nominee to “bend the knee” probably isn’t a particularly effective way to bring voters they’ll need into the fold, should he win the nomination. There’s a whole lot of assumption that everybody will just hop on the train because what else are they gonna do, and while that’s probably true for most Democrats, having even 5-10% of us sit it out because his asshole fan club drove us away would likely obliterate his chances of winning.
satby
I keep seeing ads for Royce West, Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas. Can we add him to our fundraising?
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
Yep. IIRC, the investigation was suspended, not ended. Plenty of damaging shit would be made public, and some of it might even be true.
MJS
@janesays: Presidential debates garner a significantly higher viewership than any other venue in which Trump’s decline has been on display. Throw in the fact that his opponent will be right next to him, which hasn’t happened in 4 years, and the possibility of a complete meltdown increases.
J R in WV
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
I want them to love me like they love ‘Piac
There are NO “quotes”. IT is an apostrophe for omitted characters, the beginning of the word “Quinnipiac” shortened by the writer of the pose.
Don’t do grammar bitching if you don’t know anything about grammar!
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
HalfAssedHomesteader is confused between the use of two quote marks surrounding an actual quote and a single quote / apostrophe used to indicate missing letters. Not the actual punctuation mark in the font.
Llelldorin
@cokane: I think one thing we don’t know yet is how much of that billion-dollar machine will vanish into the constant grift that surrounds Trump.
Obviously, it won’t all vanish —Trump’s going to run a serious campaign that we will need to handle. We should seriously watch for chances to point our money siphoning away, though, if only to try to discourage his donors.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Well, you’re right about that. I caught that there were actually no quotation marks in the title, but I’ve had three people call the real thing to my attention:
You get a “At the beginning of a quote and either nothing or this at the end’.
So I figured I’d just answer the question that was asked, even though we didn’t actually have an example of it in the post.
Mnemosyne
@janesays:
I can see one way that Sanders could have a historic loss: if he picks Tulsi Gabbard as his VP.
Though if that happened, one of the other Democrats could make a very plausible 3rd party run.
janesays
@Cacti: Your counter-argument seems to be that young people don’t vote at all, and the election will be decided entirely be Baby Boomers and Silents, who will deliver Trump a 40 state landslide win where he turns… (checks notes)… Oregon and Delaware into ruby red MAGA country.
We agree that nominating Sanders has lots of risks, including dragging up his past as a guy who didn’t appear to think the 1980s USSR was so bad. I’m arguing that things like that could very easily cost him the election. You’re arguing that Chris freaking Matthews is the clearest-eyed pundit on this matter and that almost all of America has the same visceral feelings about the Cold War as he does (they don’t, because half of us either weren’t born or were barely alive when it ended) and that therefore it would be 1984 all over again at the polls if Sanders is the nominee.
Do we have to be on the exact same page on this? Is it really that big of a deal? It isn’t to me. Obviously, we disagree about how bad a Sanders’ loss might theoretically look if he’s the nominee. We agree that the risk of him losing is high enough that it would be better if someone else were the nominee. I’m not voting for him in the primary. I’m advising people that all of his baggage – including but not limited to the socialism thing – may make him unelectable in the general and that people should choose a different candidate when they vote in the primaries.
But I’m also acknowledging that he is doing better thus far than many people expected him to do, and that the odds of him actually becoming the nominee are a lot higher right now than I think a lot of people want to admit. He’s probably going to win New Hampshire tomorrow. If he does win there, and he wins by a decent margin, he’ll very likely take the lead in delegates, which will effectively make him the frontrunner. He’s polling very strongly in California right now. A razor-thin second place finish in Iowa coupled with wins in New Hampshire and California puts him in a very enviable position. Fuck bending the knee, and fuck the fuckers who tell me to bend the knee. But I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. While it might feel good to stick it to all of the insufferable Bernie Bros who have been infuriating us for the past four years, the country is literally on fire, and there’s a non-zero chance that Bernie Sanders is going to be driving the firetruck that pulls up to our house to put out the fire in November 2020. Are we really going to tell him, “Nah, I’m good” because he’s got a lot of toxic assholes on his firetruck?
I digress.
Right now, lets do everything in our power to make sure the most capable, responsible, competent, and ethical fire brigade shows up to help us put out the inferno in November. For me, I want that fire truck to be driven by Elizabeth Warren. But I may or may not get that. In the end, I’m gonna take the help of whatever fire truck shows up, even if the driver is a cranky, obnoxious, self-righteous, bloviating socialist who looks a lot like Larry David.
Marcopolo
@satby: There are 13 candidates running in the D Texas Senate primary. I’d suggest we wait until the dust settles and one of them is the nominee before we go adding that state to the list.
janesays
@Mnemosyne: If he did that, he probably would lose 40 states. I don’t think there’s any chance in hell he’ll do that, because I think there are enough people who have his ear who would tell him that he would effectively be forfeiting the election if he were to do that. I highly doubt he’s even considering it, though. Nina Turner would be an equally horrific choice, but I also don’t expect him to tap her, either. I’m guessing it will probably be some boring middle-aged white guy from the progressive caucus like Mark Pocan (WI-02).
Martin
Bloomberg is going to be the candidate to beat.
Turnout in Iowa was lower presumably because a lot of Dems didn’t care who the nominee was – ‘not Trump’ is all they’re after. Look at him leading the head to heads – catnip for the ‘don’t care so long as it’s not trump’ voters. Bloomberg isn’t attacking any of the Dems – just Trump.
Bloomberg just passed Biden in the latest CA poll, with Bernie leading. Bloomberg is tied with Warren and Bernie in Texas, with Biden leading. He’s basically tied with Bernie in NC, with Biden leading. He may not win any Super Tuesday states, but he’s pulling in 2nd place delegates from all of them. Warren is pretty much in there as well,
Prepare yourself for it.
Snarki, child of Loki
Coronavirus – 54
Trump – 42
Baud
@Martin: My thinking as well.
Martin
@cokane: Trump lost CA by 4.2 million votes. That was 3 percentage points in the national result. Had he lost CA by 1 vote, he’d have racked up the same number of EVs.
I would argue that the already blue states are going to go very deep blue, deepening the popular vote difference but not changing the EV totals at all.
The only polls that matter are PA, MI, WI. It doesn’t matter if Trump loses CA by 6 million or he loses it by 4 million.
Cacti
Yes. I’m saying that older voters are the group that votes most reliably, and that they are also the group most likely to be turned off by Bernie’s decades long love affair with Marxism.
The evidence that the Rs are fully comfortable with the above scenario can be seen by them holding their fire on Bernie for 5 years now. If Wilmer is the nominee, the Rs will go back to total control of the political branches of government.
janesays
@schrodingers_cat: Because he effectively tied with Buttigieg in Iowa, is strongly favored to win New Hampshire, and is leading the polls in most of the Super Tuesday states, most notably California. I think the race is a lot more fluid than much of the media is suggesting, but Sanders is undeniably in a strong position right now. If he has a commanding win tomorrow, he’s clearly the frontrunner.
Mai naem mobile
@Martin: I think you’re being premature. Bloomberg’s still in his honeymoon stage with the media. He hasn’t been in a debate. I think he’s buying some good coverage by hiring people like Trump’s Navy guy and the Trumpov ghostwriter . He’s not Rudy for sure but I don’t think he’s FDR.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: Job approval only exists for people who are in office, but personal approval is tracked in polls, and Trump’s personal approval the moment he won the election was at 39%. It’s higher now!
People tend to forget this because it instantly shot up to the high forties as a result of his winning, and the usual willingness to give a new President a chance. People like winners. But a lot of people who disapproved of Trump in 2016 voted for him anyway.
janesays
@Jeffro: Well, maybe you’re right, but we won’t know for another six months or so. I’m only going by what has happened in every presidential election in the last 40 years until now, including the one Donald Trump was in. We’ve never not had debates since 1980, and I’m not ready to predict with any degree of certitude that 2020 will be the year that streak ends. I’m taking the safe (some may say cowardly) prediction route on this one – I have no idea whether or not he’ll debate in the fall. I don’t really care either way. Presidential general election debates haven’t meaningfully impacted elections at any point this century.
Jeffro
@janesays: Fair enough/no problem. I’ll take any and all nickel bets that trumpov never sees a debate stage again, period. ;)
janesays
@Matt McIrvin: I believe you’re talking about his favorability rating – that was at 39% right before the 2016 election and is at 43% right now.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html
Favorability ratings obviously matter a lot for non-incumbents (especially when both candidates are non-incumbents), but I think job approval is the most important factor to look at with elections involving incumbent presidents.
chopper
@Mandalay:
he’ll do one debate, the debate will be on fox, and it won’t be a debate, just an interview with hannity.
JoeyJoeJoe
@Matt McIrvin: Hillary had a low approval rating too, I believe, though her’s was higher I think. I don’t know the answer, but what is the record for re-election for incumbents with approval ratings of 43% or lower (I suspect it’s lower)?
janesays
@Cacti: There’s a huge difference between “most reliably” and “almost exclusively”.
I’m not disputing that older generations will have more influence over the outcome of the election than younger generations. That’s been true for literally every single election in my lifetime. I’m disputing the contention that the influence of votes among older Americans will be so overpowering as to flip reliably blue states like Oregon and Delaware to Trump regardless of how the younger generations vote. I think that’s ridiculous. Here’s the thing – if Sanders is the nominee, yes, he’ll get creamed by older voters. But every Democrat is going to lose the vote among older Americans. There isn’t a single person in the field that is going to beat Trump among Boomers and Silents. I agree Bernie would lose by larger margins among those generations than other candidates, but at the same time, should Sanders be the nominee, we’ll very likely see the highest turnout among 18-29 year old voters in a presidential election that we’ve seen since at least 2008, if not longer. Will that be enough to counteract the larger Trump vote among older generations? Highly doubtful. But it would mitigate the potentially catastrophic impact of the older vote against Sanders. Also worth noting: Boomers and Silents will have less influence in the 2020 election than they did in the 2016 election, because there are fewer of them today than there were four years ago. Gen X leans a little more Trumpy than younger cohorts, but as a member of that generation, I can say confidently I don’t have the same fear of the Commies as my (Silent Gen) parents did, and I was alive and cognizant for the last decade of the Cold War in the 1980s.
Anyway, I stand by my claim – no Democrat (not even Sanders) will lose Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, New York, Illinois, Washington, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Oregon, or New Mexico. That’s the blue firewall for every Democrat in the race, including Sanders. Virginia and Colorado are probably safe as well, though a little more vulnerable than the 14 states I listed above. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.
janesays
@Mai naem mobile: Getting rid of McConnell altogether is a goal we should definitely push for, but realistically, we should worry first about just getting him out of the position of Majority Leader. It’s more likely than not that McConnell will still be a United States Senator in January 2021, but we really should do everything in our power to make sure he’s no more than the Minority Leader in the next congress.
janesays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You mean Prop 13 that was passed in… 1978? That Prop 13? Are you really forecasting voting behavior in 2020 based on how a bunch of (now mostly deceased) Californians voted more than 40 years ago?
No far-right evangelical-humping social conservative Republican has won statewide election in California in the last 30 years. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a far-right evangelical-humping social conservative Republican, so he doesn’t count. Donald Trump is that person, and even though the evangelical-humping thing is totally an act, it’s an act backed up by him giving those evangelicals exactly the judges and the policy agenda they want. Doesn’t matter how he’s conducted himself in his personal life – he’s appointing radical wingnut judges to the federal courts at record pace. Judges who are quite happy to obliterate reproductive choice laws and voting rights laws, and that’s all the evangelicals care about.
My point?
Yes, a moderate conservative Republican could possibly beat Bernie Sanders in California in a presidential election. Donald Trump isn’t that moderate conservative Republican. Bernie Sanders might be a Democrat who could actually lose California, but I can guaran-damn-tee you that Donald Trump ISN’T a Republican who can win there. No presidential candidate who loses a state by 30 points in one election is going to win that state in the following election, no matter who their opponent is. The odds of Donald Trump winning California are about as absurdly low as the odds are of him losing West Virginia. California is not in play, and it won’t be in play no matter who the Democratic nominee is. Suggesting otherwise is mind-blowingly idiotic. 30 point states don’t flip in a single cycle, ever.
janesays
@Kent: Buttigieg graduated high school in 2000, six months before SCOTUS appointed Bush to the presidency.
janesays
@Martin: I would argue the only polls that matter are MI, PA, WI, FL, AZ, NC, and GA. And possibly New Hampshire and Minnesota (Hillary won those states by 0.37% and 1.52%, respectively).
eddie blake
@Seanly:
what’s your gamertag?
Be BernieAPOSTROPHEs Valentine
Pete’s out there, man. On a whole nether level. I got a hard like here, but I’m confident all the candidates want to stop Trumpism, all but Pete. Pete wants to harness it.
janesays
@NotMax: As far as I know, Univision has never had one of its news anchors as a moderater in any of the formal autumn presidential or vice-presidential ebates (the ones sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates). They have participated in Democratic primary debates, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.