This week’s New Yorker Radio Hour had a fascinating segment on what Joe Biden thinks about the upcoming election. Host David Remnick spoke to New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos, who wrote a book about Biden’s 2020 campaign, “Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, What Matters Now.”
Osnos interviewed Biden extensively for that book a few years ago. In the podcast, he talked to Remnick about a January 2024 Oval Office interview he conducted with Biden for an New Yorker profile that was published earlier today.
Addressing the age issue right off the bat, Remnick asked Osnos if he noticed a change in Biden after interviewing him nearly four years ago and again this year. Osnos said Biden is “slower in movements and gestures” and his voice has changed but said he saw nothing that indicated Biden’s mind is different.
IMO, the conversation reassures listeners who need it, indicating that Biden fully understands the stakes and what he’s up against. Remnick and Osnos touched on the topic of media coverage of the campaign so far, and Osnos reports that Biden is “testy” on the subject in a way that may resonate with readers here:*
Osnos: “He said over and over again that he thought the press was not really engaging either his wins adequately or Trump’s menace adequately.”
Remnick: “Do you agree with him?”
Osnos: “Look, I think the press is doing what the press does, which is it presses hard on questions of significance, so his [Biden’s] age is a legitimate and significant question. I think there is a degree though to which the press has become kind of accepting of the idea that everything Trump does is just another level of endless extremity — ‘what does it really mean?’ ‘how much can he get away with?’ There is a piece of that. I think the press is a part of this election in an awkward way that we’re still trying to navigate.”
Remnick: How do you mean?
Osnos: It’s become assumed that Trump is in this commanding position. The best example of this was in the Davos conference in January, when everybody was essentially assuming, according to the reporting there, that Trump is on his way to winning. And that becomes baked in, to use your term, there comes a sense of ‘this is an inevitability…’
It’s noticeable that the Biden people and Biden himself, they’re not panicking, which frankly gives Democrats a lot of concern. There is an almost ostentatious level of serenity, as if they say, they feel a lot of the numbers and commentary is wrong.
I never want to fall into “unskew the polls” territory since that way lies embarrassing delusion and self-beclowning. But this far out and in this media environment? Yeah, I think the Biden people are probably onto something there.
Osnos believes the race is a “dead heat.” That seems objectively true right now, which is horrifying. But I think Trump is at his 2024 highwater mark, and as more people pay attention, more crazy shit dribbles out of Trump’s pie hole and more footage of Trump acting the fool in court comes out, Biden will pull ahead.
Could be wishful thinking, but that’s what I believe. I also think the perception (and reality) that this will be a close race could dampen enthusiasm for third party votes, as happened between 2016 and 2020.
Specific to polling, several of y’all flagged analysis that calls into question the most recent object of poll panic, the NYT Siena findings. It raised red flags by claiming Biden and Trump are tied with women post-Dobbs and that Dean Phillips has 12% support among Democrats. That sounds like bullshit to me.
Anyhoo, the 20-minute or so podcast isn’t paywalled, and I thought y’all might find it interesting too. Osnos’ New Yorker piece, Joe Biden’s Last Campaign, was published this morning, and I look forward to reading it.
Open thread.
*Kindly note this is my transcription, which was fueled by a single cup of coffee. I don’t think I got anything important wrong or left anything critical out but want to flag that nonetheless.
Supreme Court Ruling Today – What To Look For and What It Means
Baud
We suck.
Omnes Omnibus
One thing that was notable about Biden’s 2020 campaign is that it did not panic. That also was a hallmark of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. Maybe there is a lesson there?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Which Democrats are they talking about? Do they provide names
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I assumed they were referring to the ones in the Internet. Rank and file folk, not big shots.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The primaries held so far don’t agree with what the MSM would have us believe that the rank and file Ds want Biden to step down. I predict that the pattern will continue on Super Tuesday.
RaflW
Osnos says “[media] presses hard on questions of significance”.
F*ck me running. They only do this with Democrats. Trump announces that Virginia (and really, each and every state) will be 100% vaccine-mandate free once he’s the Federal Mafia Don, and it gets 17 seconds of coverage.
The country will fall into a cesspool of measles, whooping cough, and probably polio, and the press doesn’t give a single fuck.
It’s so far beneath contempt that I just want to leave the country. Not just because Trump is a disastrous freak, but because it is patently obvious that the press, the one trick — if you will — that has kept the country from total devolution for the last century, has failed. Utterly.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Primaries don’t say anything about people’s nerves. Dems aren’t going to vote Biden out in the primary.
feebog
I think the presidential contest is very close at this point. I would just point out the following:
Any poll that suggests that fewer women will vote for Biden compared to 2020 is wrong.
Any poll that suggests 18 to 29 year olds will switch from Biden to Trump is wrong.
Right now the two drags on Biden are the lingering effects of inflation and the Isarel/Hamas conflict. The economy is going to continue to do well, most studies show voters don’t pay attention to the economy until the last six months before an election. The middle east conflict is tougher, but I think a cease fire will come about in the near future. Immigration is a made up issue and the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot by refusing to act on the bipartisan Senate bill.
japa21
This is BS. Not saying that Biden’s age isn’t a legitimate question, but it appears to be the only thing the press presses hard on. And he didn’t answer the question, which was for a reply that the media ignores the accomplishments of the administration. At least it does state that the press kind of ignores the obvious regarding Trump.
@Omnes Omnibus: As you have stated before, confidence does not equal complacency. But it does avoid panic.
pthomas745
Meanwhile, Trumpy melted down dozens of times in two speeches yesterday, slurring words, sweating, etc.
If this happened to Biden, every news media position in the country would be screaming it from the highest bullhorn.
These clips are from Mar 2. Does not include yesterday.
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/donald-trump-in-north-carolina-unintelligible
Baud
@feebog:
I’m almost happy about Gaza because it would be embarrassing to liberals to lose on economic issues.
schrodingers_cat
@RaflW: Galaxy brains are arguing in the last thread that demographics say nothing about voting patterns but education is the new marker supposedly. By that analysis these Beltway hacks who pine for the Rs and don’t lose a single opportunity to bash Ds must be highschool dropouts.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: No but they could vote for Biden alternatives in the primary if they are really that nervous. Biden is old is BUT HER EMAILS of this season. The ones who don’t want Biden and Harris are the Beltway hacks not normie Ds.
Geminid
I sometimes wonder if Chicken Little would have been a calmer bird if they had grown up watching Roadrunner cartoons.
Joe Biden is like the Roadrunner.
Captain C
You wouldn’t know them. They’re from Canada, like my girlfriend.
(Which would explain why they don’t actually vote.)
Raoul Paste
@RaflW: Absoltely
japa21
@feebog: Concerning the economy, the percentage of people who feel the economy is doing better is starting to increase dramatically.
As far as the election is concerned, I think Betty’s right. Trump is at a high water mark and the NYT/Siena poll is actually an outlier. And I really don’t see undecided’s breaking for Trump.
I also don’t see a lot of people who decide not to vote for Trump but who won’t vote for Biden going in and voting GOP for all the down ballot races. They’ll stay home instead.
JMG
It’s a close election. It almost surely will remain one right up until the last vote is cast. This is gonna lead to much anxiety and bad takes as numerous as the stars in the sky. I wouldn’t advise people not to pay attention to political news, not here, not to anyone really, but I do advise setting aside one politics-free day a week for improved mental health and for that matter, better political thinking.
Captain C
@RaflW:
They either think nothing bad will happen to them, because reasons, or they’re expecting to be the new TiFG court stenographers and hagiographers.
VFX Lurker
Seriously. My dad was born years before the invention of the mumps vaccine. Mumps left him permanently deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other ear.
Maybe the press doesn’t want to dwell on the price of anti-vax lunacy, but it is high.
Betty Cracker
I’m reading the linked piece in the New Yorker, which is lengthy but pretty interesting. Here’s a quote about Biden’s negotiation style:
That dovetails with an insight I read a while back (can’t remember where) about why Biden still bothers with the niceties now that screeching orcs are replacing his “friends across the aisle” in Congress: It’s not that he doesn’t know he’s dealing with lunatics; he’s modeling how democracy is supposed to work.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: I won’t claim to be the originator of the argument, but I have have made it.
JML
If I had commissioned a poll that had Dean Phillips at 12%, I would have immediately been on a call with my pollster trying to figure out what the eff was going on and whether or not the methodology was flawed. (and I’ve commissioned polls before) And I’d damn well get a polling memo from the pollster explaining it, so i could release that as soon as someone (rightly) got up in my grill. Assuming they had been able to satisfy all my concerns and I’d released the poll at all.
Of course, we all know where the NYTimes bias is: they want a competitive race, they want TFG in the mix because it’s the easiest writing and headlines they’ve ever had. His campaign leaks like a sieve and always gives them something wackadoodle to write about. Biden is boring and they have to write stories about policies they don’t have any interest in learning about. And there ain’t much money in books about Biden.
Parfigliano
Fuck the press. They will do anything to fat finger Trump across the finish line.
Best thing that could happen with the press is a plane full of esteemed national political reporters plane hits a mountain. Useless scum GOP water carrier’s.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Any poll that shows Phillips with 12% support is obviously deeply flawed. We have voting in for a handful of States and he hasn’t come anywhere near 12% in any primary so far he’s losing to none of the above and Marianne Williamson even though she suspended her campaign.
Omnes Omnibus
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: To be fair, she has now unsuspended it.
Baud
@JML:
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
According to a tweet someone here posted, even Dean Phillips made fun of Dean Philips getting 12%.
Chris
I’d be lying if I said that I’m extremely leery of pushing back against the polls, precisely because of the 2012 “unskew the polls” example and how easy it is to fall into wishful thinking.
But as far as the “serenity” thing goes… this is presidential campaigning 101. Biden is running on the Nick Fury Principle: “Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to keep spinning.” Presidential campaigns have to assume that the election is winnable, they have to play the best hand they’ve got, and even if they do think (or know) they’re behind, they can’t visibly panic because the only thing that’s guaranteed about this is that it’ll make losing more likely.
The media wants to see the Biden admin panicking because they hate Biden, because they want the vindication of being able to say “see, we were right, and even Biden knows it,” and because like all bullies, they eventually get really pissed off if they get the feeling that their target is genuinely unaffected by their bullying. But as with everything else they want Biden to do, it’s missing the fact that this is not what any remotely functional presidential campaign would be doing.
satby
True. And he’s undercut by the people ostensibly on the same side who wish he would act like a norm breaker too. It’s depressing sometimes how many people are comfortable with authoritarianism, as long as it’s THEIR team in charge.
Scout211
Just on a personal note, we have three adult children with spouses and four grandkids of voting age. That’s 10 voters, four in their 20s and 6 over 40. Ever one of them tell me they are worried about Biden’s age. They think he is too old and too feeble. They see their dad/grandpa (who is exactly the same age as Biden) in cognitive decline. They worry that Biden isn’t strong enough physically or cognitively to be president for the next four years.
All ten of them will be voting for Biden in November. 😊
Let’s stay serene, but keep on fighting.
Sure Lurkalot
@pthomas745:
It seems “telling” that his brain substitutes “sounds like” words or parts of words in addition to the gobbly gook that also comes out of his (as Betty puts it) piehole.
Sundowning shitgibbon. An ad of his “misspokes” with Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” in the background….
Gin & Tonic
An article notification from the FTFNYT: “A Russian mother knows in her heart her son is dead 14 months after an attack in Ukraine. But she still holds a sliver of hope for a miracle.”
Her son went off to murder Ukrainians. Spare me.
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus:
Like the meme of Obama at the 2008 convention with the message: everyone chill the fuck out, I got this.
Yes, we gotta roll up our sleeves and get to work. But if we do, we got this.
https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-can-chill-out-this/dp/B0041WG79Q
Baud
@Scout211:
I don’t get the feeble point. From what I’ve seen, he’s very active.
Obviously, no one can guarantee what will happen over four years, but I take comfort in Harris.
Matt McIrvin
@Scout211: I don’t worry about it for one reason: I think Kamala Harris would make a fine President and is perfectly ready to step in if she’s needed.
Unfortunately, I think about 75% of this is that people are freaked out about Kamala Harris for SOME reason I can’t possibly imagine (he said sarcastically). “Oh no, maybe we’re really voting for Harris” is a huge component of the panic. There was a full-court press back in 2020 to make youth suspicious of Harris too.
schrodingers_cat
I am going to the polls tomorrow calm and collected and perfectly happy voting for the Biden-Harris ticket. Like I was four years ago.
Kay
I’m a little wary of unskewing polls. If you would have accepted that poll if it had Biden as +5 you should accept it as Biden -5.
I’ll be more comfortable when he’s consistently even or up 5. This is when I would expect it to sink in to the lunkhead “sporadic” voters that Biden is the nominee – they’ll have to pick a side at some point. They can do that anytime now :)
Brachiator
I don’t know about the “dead heat” thing. I think that Trump benefits from state gerrymandering, and he has his core support. But people know who Trump is, and conservatives, especially conservative white people, believe that Trump would never hurt them.
I don’t think that new revelations will hurt Trump. People know who Trump is. They know what a Trump presidency was like, and some people want more of the same.
But most people don’t want more Trump. And independents seem to be peeling away.
I see Trump losing. I hope he loses by a wide margin. But it is sad to know that so many people believe his bullshit.
schrodingers_cat
Polls this far out predict nothing about an event that is several months in the future. So debating on the accuracy of polls something I don’t plan to waste my time on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: If a poll is a bad poll, it should be noted. The NYT/Siena poll was bad for a number of reasons that have been noted.
BellaPea
I was talking about the election with Mr. BellaPea this weekend, and mentioned that if TFG is the candidate, the RNC will be a shitshow of massive proportions. I would compare it to the 1992 RNC convention when GW Bush was running for re-election and they had a bunch of radically crazy speakers, including Pat Buchanan and Marilyn Quayle, who spoke about the “essential nature of women” or some such BS. I think a lot of undecided and swing voters actually seeing on national TV how demented and unhinged TFG and his minions are will be quite a turn-off.
ALurkSupreme
“ostentatious level of serenity”
The fuck does that even mean?
Wankers, the lot of them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I do believe that the race is tight but Biden will win. Maybe that’s just what I need to believe, but I do.
eclare
@Sure Lurkalot:
He called Sununu “hopscotch”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stephen-colbert-trump-losing-it_n_65b20bbde4b04d89950fe5ab
I assume he meant hopped up on drugs, but he could not retrieve those words. So, hopscotch.
Baud
The last presidential race that wasn’t all that close was 2008.
Miss Bianca
@VFX Lurker: Mumps is the reason my ex and I weren’t able to have kids. It can render men and boys completely sterile, which is what happened to him.
He got the mumps when he and his folks were on a trip to Paris in 1970. He told me that the (young, male) French doctor literally threw some medicine at his parents on his way out the door (they still made house calls back in the day) – he didn’t want to get too close to T. himself, he told them, because he had just gotten married and wanted to have children.
So yeah, all those “harmless” childhood diseases…maybe they won’t kill your kids, sure, but if you want grandchildren, you might be out of luck if you don’t vaccinate your kids first.
Matt McIrvin
@BellaPea: It was deranged like that in 2016 and voters liked it fine.
Almost Retired
@schrodingers_cat: Exactly. Plus polling in this day and age puzzles me. I took a polling class as a poli sci major 40 years ago, and it was premised on the fact that most people answered their phone. Virtually no one under 50 answers an unknown number, and people answering landlines skew older. I’ve listened to a couple podcasts with pollsters who try to explain how modern polling theory compensates for this, but it didn’t sound very convincing to my non-expert ears. Hence “respected” polls with Dean Phillips at 12 percent.
Sure Lurkalot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I keep missing you on threads…how’s Mr. DAW doing? I hope he’s back home and recovering well.
Chris
@Baud:
It’s also, as I sadly realized yesterday, probably the closest election we’ve had this century to a level playing field. The media was so shell-shocked by the pit George W. Bush had sunk us in that they didn’t do their usual Gush vs Bore/Butter Emailz/Buttis Age! nonsense, and the electoral shit-show of Citizens United, Shelby County, and the flurry of voter suppression laws hadn’t started in earnest to tilt the field permanently to the right.
And when you look at the 2008 results… no wonder the GOP and the media both spent the next following decade gradually losing their shit.
Captain C
@BellaPea:
I remember that convention being described by Time or Newsweek back when they were actual news magazines and not clickbait factories, as a weird “hatefest.”
Ned F
I guess y’all may have seen by now that the Supreme Beings have said FU to Colorado. He’s on the ballot
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sure Lurkalot: He is home and doing well. Thank you for asking.
Tony Jay
Speaking as an unreformable cynic, I’m still quite happy to go on record right here and now.
If Stench actually survives long enough to be the GOP candidate in November, he and his Vice Nobody will still lose to Biden-Harris by around 56/44. The Dems will take back the House and hold the Senate. The Pundits are going to be gobsmacked at the Blue Wave that gives Democrats a ton of State races and the overriding impression of election night is going to be rows of pale faced, red eyed correspondents shaking their heads in disbelief at the numbers of women and young people who “somehow overcame their well-recorded doubts about Biden’s age” to vote against the Republicans.
And Stench still won’t concede.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
👍
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: I both hope *and* fear that you are right.
laura
@Tony Jay: your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subsctribe to your newsletter. I feel it in my bones too.
Citizen Dave
I’m probably a PollyAnna, but I don’t think the election will be close. A significant number of Rs have indicated they will not vote for trump. Team Blue is fired up and has been winning elections.
I also can’t get worked up about it in March. The election happens once in a point in time–used to be Election Day but now is Election Season. Besides, it’s either Biden wins or revolution. Preparing for both.
I guess the first evidence I saw that our nation is declining was when I was 11 and the press and the DC groupthink drummed out Thomas Eagleton from running for VP because he had, for crapsakes, talked with a psychologist/psychiatrist (forget which). 1972.
Trump is melting down. That 5 second “saudi arabia-ree-bee—ahhh” clip should be leading our news today, along with all the other weird speech breakdowns he had yesterday.
Gretchen
It’s maddening that the press spent days, and dozens of articles on Biden saying Mexico instead of Egypt, (when speaking about the Egyptian president known as “the Mexican to Egyptians – not a complete gaffe to be thinking Mexico when talking about him). But Trump says Nikki Hayley was Speaker of the House on Jan 6 and thinks he’s running against Obama, and the press doesn’t bother to mention it.
Betty
@Captain C: Even Dean made a joke about that being overstated.
eclare
@Citizen Dave:
That meltdown was scary, and it should be broadcast repeatedly on every network.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay:
No way. US Presidential elections without a major third-party challenge are almost never that lopsided, and if it were going that way we’d probably know it by now.
Baud
different-church-lady
MAGA got the reality distortion machine to work in 2016, and they’re hoping they can get it to fire up again. And a scary number of people are helping with it.
Dangerman
Trump will say anything to get elected. No vaccines, gas will be free, and all Incels will get laid if they vote for him. Doesn’t matter. The Cult is in on the joke. It’s the Gong Show. Ever seen Chuck Barris in the same room as TFG?
Sure, Barriss is dead but that’s all a lie, too.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
MAYBE?
Being concerned is positive, full scale panic is a complete waste of time and energy. And that is exactly what the SFB side of the aisle desires, because it’s all they understand. There will always be a segment of humanity that only understands full scale panic is the only response to not getting their way. I suggest that they sit down, in a corner somewhere, close their eyes, and panic about their level of stupidity, and the concepts they are trying to sell. It very likely will not register, but if they just sit there, in an empty room, with doors locked from the outside, wearing jackets with wrap around sleeves, eventually they might, in an extremely unlikely manner, possibly, see at least some level of reality. Might take a few decades for them to figure out how to get their heads out of such a dark and smelly place, but it is at least a slim possibility.
Gretchen
@Scout211: I think it’s possible that Biden won’t make it through the whole four years. I’m completely comfortable with VP Harris succeeding. He’s made sure that she’s been in on all the meetings and decisions, and she’ll be ready to take over if needed. And yes, agreed that most of the fuss about his age is really about Harris. If Gavin Newsom were VP I don’t know that it would be so loud.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
By that analysis these Beltway hacks who pine for the Rs and don’t lose a single opportunity to bash Ds must be
highschoolkindergarten dropouts.They may have attended HS but they really have forgotten every single thing they only possibly learned.
FelonyGovt
Seems to me that at this point even Trump’s voters are getting tired of his shtick and are aware of what a loathsome person (“imperfect vessel 🙄) he is. That has to increase, and maybe pull some of them away or into apathy, as he gets more and more exposure.
Betty
What I disliked about Osnos’s New Yorker article is his reliance on people like James Carville and David Axelrod. Axelrod in particular has been negative on Biden for a long time. Biden treating opponents as if they are playing fair has, I believe, put him at a disadvantage in dealing with Netanyahu who is desperate to stay out of jail and with Mike Johnson who is a coward.
RandomMonster
Remember what Lloyd Braun said: “Serenity now, insanity later”
Geminid
@Dangerman: This is one of the many reasons Governor Youngkin skipped the Richmond rall. His excuse was “prior commitments,” but Youngkin knows Trump is unpopular here and wanted to keep his distance. And it’s easier to deflect questions about Trump’s ravings if Youngkin isn’t on the stage clapping.
trollhattan
@FelonyGovt: IDK, Trump’s schtick comprises the last 8+ years and his acolytes seem not able to get enough.
They’re just that shallow.
I’ll leave this here: Trump tactics continue to baffle other nations.
Captain C
@Kay: Generally yes, but if a Biden +5 poll had similarly dubious crosstabs and assumptions, I would assume something was wrong with it.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: One thing I love about Biden is his wisdom. He understands that Twitter represents a tiny sliver of our Electorate and that driving panic and division is the main goal of the platform and its’ loudest users.
Brachiator
I’m out of town taking care of a few things and almost forgot that the California primary is tomorrow. I mailed my ballot and got confirmation that it had been received and counted, so I haven’t had to think about the election.
I’ll be curious about the results, but that’s tomorrow.
Matt
Lolsob at “he likes to reach out to his critics, like Larry Summers” bit.
Remember: this election is nothing to worry about unless there are hippies to punch, and then it’s THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVAR HOW DARE YOU ASK QUESTIONS ARE YOU TRYING TO GET TRUMP ELECTED
Eolirin
@Baud: Turnout in Michigan was very high for an uncontested primary, I think it was triple Obama’s 2012 numbers? And the non committed numbers were lower than expected given the campaign, very close to the numbers for Obama in 2012. That is suggestive of a base of voters that are highly engaged and enthusiastic and who want to show support for Biden.
We’ve also seen overperformance vs polling in every special election and even the midterms, even in places like NY that had less than great results.
There’s also been some pretty amazing fundraising numbers.
So I’d say there is really strong evidence that the polling is currently off in a systemic fashion and that enthusiasm for Biden is a lot higher than the media narrative. A general election is different enough from the races we have actual data on that those dynamics may not hold up, but I’d much rather have what we have than what they do.
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: Same. I realized this morning that I hadn’t mailed my ballot yet and put it in the mailbox just this morning.
No idea how the Senate results are going to go at all. There’s three really good candidates and I’m upset that two of them won’t in the House next year.
Baud
@Matt: unfortunately there are always hippies to punch.
Anoniminous
@Almost Retired:
Pollsters need to bullshit the Bullshitters or they won’t have jobs.
Geminid
@Geminid: Youngkin’s already in a tight spot. His first two years, a Democratic Senate cancelled out the Republican House of Delegates, so controversial legislation never made it to Youngkin’s desk. Now, Democratic majorities are working up legislation on gun safety and women’s health rights that Youngkin will have to sign or veto.
Part of Youngkin’s political strength has been his lack of a real record, but he’ll finally have one after this General Assembly session.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: Polls even up to the day of the election aren’t much better. Harry Litman interviewed a man who studies polling/elections professionally and he warned of that. Different pollsters can make totally different predictions with exactly the same data set. And he cited an example from 2020.
Eolirin
Also this bit?
Not only is that demonstrably untrue, it’s a tacit appeal to authority for the media. He’s saying “It’s important because we’re asking it.”
Get the fuck outta here.
Josie
If TFG is making all these verbal mistakes and mispronouncing words in his speeches at the rallies, how will he give the nominee’s speech at the convention? It will be televised for all to see, and there will be no hiding any problems he will have speaking.
Hob
@Kay: “If you would have accepted that poll if it had Biden as +5 you should accept it as Biden -5.”
I feel like your “if” there isn’t really intended as an “if”… that is, you’re implying that this hypothetical is self-evidently true, that whoever you’re talking to would accept such a poll, no questions asked. Like, in order for this to be a valid point and a good analogy to the kind of comments you’re complaining about, they’d have to look at a poll that had Biden ahead among white male Boomers in Idaho, fundamentalists, and cops, and go “nothing suspicious about that, Biden’s ahead, yay!”
Almost Retired
Oh my goodness. Trump is addressing the Supreme Court decision. A rambling, babbling recitation of lies and grievances. Finally, it became even too much for Katy Tur and she cut away.
CaseyL
Serenity Now, indeed.
I’m trying, not too successfully, to cultivate that. Not having a TV/cable is a big help. Now if I could just stay offline altogether, that would be perfect. I really do long for the pre-internet days, sometimes…though now that I’m all too aware of the MSM’s inadequacies, I’m not sure how much better that era actually was. (I mean: Whitewater and the leadup to the War in Iraq were obvious fails right when they happened.)
Baud
@Almost Retired:
That is not an easy standard to meet.
Mousebumples
In good news, I learned yesterday that my cousin had her college debt forgiven through the PSLF. She went to a UW state school, graduated maybe 10 ish years ago, and still had ~$30K in debt forgiven.
Hopefully she won’t mind my sharing an abridged version of her comments on that news.
For what it’s worth, she works with foster youth. I’m so dang proud of her, for the impact she’s having on those kids.
Rjv
So Dean Phillips who lost to Marianne Williamson is getting 12% of Biden’s vote and the Orange Furor is getting 22% of the black vote? Lol
i am so happy I cancelled my subscription to the NYT. I save 30 minutes a day and my blood pressure is down
Baud
@Mousebumples:
👍
cain
@VFX Lurker:
They will care soon enough if the anti-vaxxers gain control of congress and remove vaccines for sake of ‘public health’. You get that trifecta and soon all vaccines will be bad.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Remember the cough? They painted a picture of Hillary close to death. I ate MSM
Ohio Mom
Just for arguments sake, if Biden steps down sometime in his second term and Harris is an absolutely a terrible president, she’ll still be far, far better than Trump and whomever he picks for his running mate. That I am sure of.
If Biden steps down, even if Harris is as fabulous a president as I would expect her to be, I’m anticipating she’ll have challengers in 2028. There will be a backlash, like the post-Obama one that helped give us Trump. Lurching into the future appears to be the best our country can do.
Ruckus
@Scout211:
First – good.
Second, Joe Biden is not in any way a moron. He very likely knows his age better than anyone, and being an honorable, older human, knows that nothing is forever or perfect. But as I see around me in the seniors apartment complex I live in (55 minimum age to rent) some people in their late 90s still have it going on. His health is good, he knows his limitations (as we all should….) and he knows and understands the job. And is doing it well.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: It’s awkwardly phrased for sure, but i don’t think Osnos meant to say it’s important only because the press thinks it’s important. He’s saying concern about Biden’s advanced age is legitimate. And he’s not wrong about that! Outside this particular online bubble, every Democrat I know is at least somewhat worried about it, and there’s scads of data to back up that anecdotal experience. The task is to allay those concerns, not pretend they don’t exist.
Anoniminous
@Eolirin:
Accurate statistical analysis requires every member of the population has a chance of being selected for the study through random selection. The vast majority of young people do not have a land line. Only 25% of US households still have a land line. Demographically land line use skews old and rural. Mathematically polling using land lines is therefore bullshit.
Kay
@Hob:
I think if he were up five no one would look at the subgroups in the poll.
JPL
@Citizen Dave: My Republican brother agrees with you and he’ll be voting for Biden/Harris.
btw The meltdown won’t be televised, You heard it heare.
JoyceH
I get that the polls are concerning, but there doesn’t seem to be much coverage of the fact that the primary polling (what people say) and the actual cast votes (what people do) are consistently divergent. Biden consistently overperforms the polls and Trump consistently (and sometimes wildly) underperforms. I mean beating your opponent by thirty points can be called a landslide, a shellacking, whatever you please, but when the polls had you up by fifty, that’s something to think about.
cain
@ALurkSupreme:
Kind of complaining that someone is “over prepared” – like a compliment but damning at the same time. It says more about the person saying it than Biden or Obama.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: How much do you care to bet against the notion that in autumn 1941 the FTFNYT put out – or at least seriously considered publishing – a “human interest” article on the order of
Bunch of fascist-humping bastards then and now.
** I.e., from Großdeutschland – Wilhelmine (pre-1914) Germany plus Austria and the Sudetenland
JPL
BTW Philip Bump wrote an excellent article about our institutions inability to save us.
Gift link
https://wapo.st/3v39GSP
Sorry if this has already been shared.
Old School
@trollhattan:
I think that’s not the link you intended to share. The article is about the use of AI in generating Trump pictures.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: The comment on the serenity of the campaign feels like it’s coming from a similar place; questioning the numbers and the commentary provided by the media is so obviously reckless that no justification or examination of the numbers or the commentary needs to be made.
Despite the multiple data points suggesting that those numbers are probably off – post Dobbs election results showing large polling misses very consistently, all in one direction – and that the narrative may not actually be representative of reality – fundraising and turnout numbers for Biden being high, Trump lagging his polling data vs Haley, depressed Republican fundraising…
And having just come off the back of having gotten the 2022 midterms so incredibly wrong.
But the media never needs to reevaluate it’s priors.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
They haven’t forgotten how to be a bunch of Heathers.
Other than that, no argument here.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
Lurching into the future appears to be the best our country can do.
This.
We are a divided nation, always have been. Because we have a level of freedom and a wide variety of humans living here, some of whom still seem to think that their side should have won the civil war, and that anyone who doesn’t look like them, pale as a piece of typewriter paper, should be only doing manual labor on a chain gang, there is likely always going to be some level of hate and distain. It is after all – humanity. Which does not mean that all will be humane, because there will always be haters and bigots within the total group of humans.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Stench keeps on degrading. Defeat(s) in court cripples his brand and drains the GOP coffers. Biden-Harris keep on looking like grown-up adults with a successful plan. An epochal tipping-point is reached as Stench melts down and the GOP starts to openly split. Lots of Republicans stay home, Independents bolt for the Democrats, the Dems themselves come out in historic numbers.
It’s not impossible. Let’s dream a dream.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: It’s the media’s job to help explain the actual circumstances of his age and the potential consequences of it though, and what we get instead are uncritical “It looks like lots of people are concerned about Biden’s age and and so we’re going to ask everyone about it, except for subject matter experts”, effectively making it impossible for anyone to know if there are any real issues because all of the people they’re going to ask are either politicially motivated one way or the other or are going to simply be expressing concern without knowing if there’s an issue.
They’re not engaged in informing people, overall, they’re simply engaged in keeping it a topic of conversation. Which they can then report on because it’s a thing people are talking about. It really is emails all over again.
The reporting that has engaged on the topic in a substantive way suggests there’s not currently anything that could really be considered an issue, but that things can suddenly change at his age.
So I think he meant it exactly how I took it, whether he intended to or not. The questions being asked about his age are not sensible and not intended to inform. They’re only important because they’re saying they are. There is zero self awareness of that fact.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Yutsano
I feel for your digestive system right now. :P
I know what you meant and I agree: the MSM are acting in a contemptuous fashion. I’m just glad it’s so far out from the election. My fear is how much worse it will get as we get closer.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
To dream the quite possible dream
To stomp the quite beatable foe
To laugh at their nourishing sorrow
To drive down their vote count so low
Chris
@Uncle Cosmo:
“You say your son was twenty three years old when he died?”
“Yes.”
“In his twenty three years, how many other children did he rape?”
Brachiator
@Almost Retired:
Phones were ubiquitous, area codes represented known locations and sufficient numbers of people were willing to speak to pollsters. This made it easier to compile representative samples.
Things are more complicated and overall I think that polls are less meaningful for all kinds of reasons, but editors like polls and keep relying on them.
cain
Looks like the SCOTUS has weighed in and we can’t kick Trump off the ballot. Perhaps we need a new thread, eh?
I suppose that works for us because if we did kick Trump out, the GOP will also be looking to kick Biden out.
Chris
@Eolirin:
Ah, but there’s a nice little built-in scam there;
1) The Media Is Liberal. Shut up. It just is.
2) Therefore, any priors that need to be reevaluated are its liberal priors, and the answer is to bring in more conservatives who can shake it out of its fossilized liberalism.
3) Therefore, we must reiterate all the same right-wing biases we’ve been drowning in for decades, only more so.
I almost feel bad singling out the media here; the above isn’t even a problem with the media, so much as a problem with nearly every institution in the country, certainly since the Nixon years. (The intelligence community, of all things, has been running through this cycle since the 1940s; somebody screams that it’s full of liberals, there are purges and political appointments and new intelligence outfits created just to “counter their liberal bias,” and the result is that what has always been a partisan Republican shit show turns into even more of a partisan Republican shit show). But, hell, the media is the one that can’t stop screaming from every television set and computer I see, so fuck ’em.
cain
WTF – really? he said Nikki was Speaker of the House? JFC. The man is losing it.
I expect that as the stress starts mounting he’s going to be a blubbering, incoherent mess. Everyone associated with him, including SCOTUS judges should be included in the history books of having embarrassed this nation with their “loyalty”.
trollhattan
@Old School: Nope, that’s the link.
Trump will retain “plausible deniability” but I think his team are actively creating these things.
My question is why foreign media are the ones reporting it.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yeah, it’s funny, area codes nowadays are a frozen-in-amber relic that basically signals where you spent your teen years. (At least for Millennials. For Zoomers, I assume it’s even earlier).
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: You make a good point — most in the political press do fail voters by incessantly rehashing voters’ legitimate concerns and not exploring them with experts in a way that could expand voters’ knowledge on the topic.
IMO, Osnos avoids that trap. He says straight up Biden is as sharp and engaged as ever, despite physical signs of aging. Don’t know if you read the New Yorker piece, but now that I have, and I’d characterize it as mostly sympathetic. Biden comes across as engaged and determined. Also, Biden must trust Osnos to some extent or he wouldn’t have invited him into the Oval for an interview.
Jackie
@Almost Retired:
Watching him muted, I’m having fun guessing what songs he’s playing with his imaginary accordion 😂
trollhattan
Welp, I’m not going to not see that from this point forward.
AlaskaReader
Infrastucture Week, …Republican style.
Think what goes on in Alaska won’t have any impact on you?
In Alaska, the Republican governor is endangering $5.6 billion of federal transportation and infrastructure funding by inserting poorly vetted, poorly designed, underbudgeted handouts for foreign mining corporations into the state’s list of transportation priorities.
He thinks he can redirect those fed funds to build bridges and roads into wilderness all to the exclusive benefit of foreign mining corporations.
This is your tax money spending as Trumpian Republicans envision it.
Stay tuned…
Miss Bianca
@Baud: “Is it fair to Trump to focus on his mental deficiencies?” – Katy Tur, probably
TBone
It’s such a beautiful Spring day 🌻😻 everyone here (furry, feathered, or bald) is wallowing in it. I hear Lauren Bacall saying “false Spring” but it’s really nice while it lasts!
...now I try to be amused
@Almost Retired:
Go back a few decades before that and phone-based polling was unreliable because…
…not enough people had a landline phone. It looks like the “golden age” of phone-based polling has come and gone.
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: why don’t you look one thread down.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’m sure he’s well meaning and being sympathetic in his reporting is great, but he’s still engaging in this reflexive defense of his profession that prevents a full reckoning of how broken it’s become, and without that there’s no way the media is going to broadly improve. It’s part of the groupthink they all exhibit when asked these kinds of questions. It comes across as obliviousness if not willful avoidance.
No one ever really takes ownership over how little accountability there is for awful takes that turn out not be true or how little effort is put into informing instead of spreading gossip.
It’s like asking a big city cop about racism in policing. Even the ones who will recognize it’s a problem tend to be careful to avoid expressing anything that would expose the core issues causing it, let alone that would suggest steps to try to address it.
Things can’t get better if people aren’t held to higher standards. At some point our media people need to have a serious grappling with the “Are we the Baddies?” conversation they’ve been avoiding through disaster after disaster that they’ve enabled.
...now I try to be amused
@Miss Bianca:
Is it fair to America not to?
Miss Bianca
@…now I try to be amused: Meanwhile, web-based polling seems to be getting some traction, at least at a local level – the housing authority in Chaffee County did some internet polling on a ballot issue and said getting six hundred responses would be amazing – at the end of the polling period, they had over 1200 responses for a survey that took about 20 minutes to complete.
Looking forward to seeing the demographic breakdown on this one to find out who the dominant age/class groups were.
PaulB
You would be incorrect. Any poll that is outside the norm is always questioned here by multiple posters. If we suddenly had a +5 Biden poll, we absolutely would be looking at the crosstabs to figure out why that poll was so different.
As others have noted, some of the crosstabs in the NYT poll defy common sense and are radically out of step with the results of actual primary voting thus far. If their next poll shows Biden up 5 and the crosstabs show, for example, that he’s winning with white male voters, I (and pretty much everyone else) would be just as skeptical of that poll.
None of this means that the poll is necessarily wrong. It simply means that until and unless it is confirmed by other pollsters or by the primary voting and special election voting, it can be, and should be, treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: Fair!
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
I preferred Porter but voted for Schiff when I saw some reports that Steve Garvey was doing well. I hate open primaries.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Tony Jay: @Baud:
If we’re doing song cues, here’s my contribution
Not strictly apropos, I just love Annie Lennox
RaflW
@VFX Lurker: I think the press’s status quo bias is way, way too strong here. They treat his threat to vaccines as just another blurt that we can ignore.
But anti-vax lunacy has been rising in this country for a couple decades now. Trump as the standard-bearer for this will make it far more likely to happen, at least in red states. And measles, mumps etc doesn’t really respect state lines.
Time for people to check their latent immunity (a not all that expensive test).
Hob
@cain: Yeah, and that one is a good example of what John Gartner in the Salon article meant by mixing up “people” rather than mixing up “names”. Trump didn’t just say “Nancy” when he meant “Nikki” (which is a type of thing I do pretty much every day at 51, and I did it pretty often at 31 too – I’ve always had a few loose wires for verbal processing). Like, he didn’t say “Nancy has been a bad governor of South Carolina.” He said “Nancy” and then proceeded to say other stuff, within a diatribe that was clearly supposed to be against Haley, that would only make the slightest bit of sense if he was really talking about Pelosi – like, that she was “in charge of security” for Congress on Jan. 6 and that he had offered her National Guard troops that she turned down, which is a lie he’s said many times about Pelosi. There was no segue into or out of that digression to give any hint that he even knew he had done it (although of course he tried to explain it away later by saying it was a deliberate joke about how Haley is as bad as Pelosi).
If Biden, when talking about a meeting with the president of France, had not just misstated Macron’s name as Mitterand but had gone on to talk about how Macron had worked in the Vichy regime and bombed a Greenpeace ship, I would be pretty concerned.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: That’s what the Pod Save America guys say, too. They think Biden’s fine, but say that you have to address concerns the voters have even if you think they’re baseless.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: Whoops, you are right.
Betty Cracker
Finally, a New York Times article fit for the Balloon Juice consensus view:
Gift link!
Eolirin
@Soprano2: I don’t disagree with that sentiment, I just wish the media was actually doing their part in that. And that the better actors in the media who are capable of recognizing that it’s a problem that they aren’t weren’t providing cover for the broad failure to do so.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Cool, now if only the Times would recognize that they’re a large part of the reason why this is the case, it’d be real progress :p
Baud
Via reddit
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Nominated!
Uncle Cosmo
That is demonstrably untrue. Among other things it’s all but impossible, as you note. (And them who have techniques to accurately sample those who, e.g., don’t have land lines or don’t answer calls unless they recognize the caller ID, ain’t about to share them; such trade secrets are their bread&butter.)
Most polls use stratified random sampling, in which identifiable subgroups of the target population are sampled (in numbers adequate for a reasonably accurate snapshot) and then recombined for an overall picture. This has (at least) two problems: Are the subgroups reliably homogeneous in their opinions re the issues of interest? Does the recombination reliably reflect the population of interest? The first problem can usually be minimized by digging deeper into the crosstabs, since respondents generally have several characteristics they can be crosstabulated against. The second problem in the hands of an unscrupulous pollster is in fact an opportunity: By juggling subgroup proportions in the recombination the U.P. can produce most any answer s/he wants. Most notoriously, “likely voter” results depend critically on what that term means; if the U.P. presumes (e.g.) GOP voters will crawl over their dying grannies to vote but Democrats have to be begged or bribed and still won’t show up at the polls, results will be biased in favor of Rethuglicans.
But (as I’ve posted repeatedly) polls we read about are not to be trusted – any that actually do a good job of discerning public opinion will be closely held by whoever paid for them (why provide opponents good data for free?), and the ones released for public consumption are 99% clickbait or pushpolling.
Ruckus
@japa21:
SFB is apparently in mid to late stage old fart decline, and along with his superb personality which believes he is the high point of human endeavor (he isn’t and he isn’t in every possible way), personality, knowledge and maturity, all of which he is rapidly decimating on an hourly basis. I live in a old fart’s apartment complex and one has to be 55 to rent and the oldest person I know of is 97. She is mentally in far better shape than SFB. (and yes SFB stands for exactly what you think it does. Shit For Brains.)
Spanky
@Betty Cracker: Except I feel far from lonely in my thinking.
Another way I feel a lot of commonality with my fellow citizens is in recognizing the NYT is horseshit.
TBone
@Baud: I’m right here 😎
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ILaTgQBKRbE
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: wth – really?
@Eolirin: Seconded!
Hob
@Brachiator: To be nitpicky – and I’m sure you know this, but in case it’s unclear to others outside of California – the problem isn’t really that it’s an open primary, it’s that it’s a jungle primary.
In an open primary that wasn’t a jungle primary, there would be separate Democratic and Republican primaries, but registered Ds could choose to vote in the R primary or vice versa. That would only be relevant in this case if there were significant numbers of Republicans throwing their votes to Lee or Porter on the assumption that they were weaker candidates against Garvey, but I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s been happening.
I think the issue you’re more concerned about is vote-splitting among Democrats. In a regular closed primary, if the percentage of the vote among Democrats ends up being for instance 35% Lee / 33% Porter / 32% Schiff, then Lee would be the candidate even if 65% of D’s had really preferred not-Lee or at least had strategically voted for not-Lee due to a feeling that she’s less likely to succeed against Garvey. In a jungle primary, you could end up with Garvey vs. Lee that way as long as Garvey’s percentage was above Porter’s and Schiff’s, even if there are far fewer Republicans than Democrats. That’s a real concern, but it’s not really about whether the primary is open or closed, it’s just about having no majority requirement and nothing like a runoff or ranked-choice.
...now I try to be amused
@Betty Cracker:
They wouldn’t be wrong. The symptom might be “Biden’s old,” but the base cause is Trump Derangement Syndrome. TDS has been worse than CDS, BDS, CDS 2.0, and ODS combined.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Besides, from what I understand – Porter’s district would be a hard pick-up for the Democrats should she go to the Senate, whereas Schiff’s wouldn’t.
I know it’s presumptuous for Random Out of State Voter to want to tell candidates, “please put your personal ambitions aside and think long-term here for the good of the country,” but…
Baud
@Spanky:
We are one.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruckus: I think it’s been noted that insofar as age issues are concerned, the Democrats’ response will be
Eolirin
@…now I try to be amused: I’m not sure you’re using Derangement Syndrome the way it was intended. Or if you are I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
It’s too late for her to run in her district.
Fake Irishman
Just popping in to add something here about Biden’s team being focused, not panicked.
1. That’s a good thing under any circumstance.
2. Remember that they have access to their own high-quality data, likely better than any media-sponsored poll. In 2020, they were saying things were close before the election, weren’t surprised when Florida went Red and had made the decision in October to focus on Georgia over North Carolina.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry, but it does mean there’s a team with a track record, a ton of expertise and motivation working for the good guys.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Oh, AWK, you’re kidding me! >:<
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This can be easily verified in how it has translated to votes, and…
…in open thread news, a single image in Contrapoints’s latest video, on Twilight and human sexuality, made me realize something must be said. I will go out on a limb to die on this hill to mix this metaphor.
I liked Melania’s Christmas designs.
Lyrebird
@RaflW: Can I come sit by y’all?
Luckily I don’t drink coffee, bc that “questions of significance” woulda lead to a big keyboard cleanup.
Dems like me are concerned that some of their fellow humans would even consider voting for a malevolent con man who would egg on a lynch mob towards his own veep. Dems like me are concerned about the media’s obsession w/Joey O’Biden’s age over multiple wars and catastrophes, because it sure sounds like more of this, hey, did you hear, Kamala is Black???? (and female yes yes) Dems like me wonder if we learned enough from the previous rounds of Russian interference to block it better this time, and why aren’t they shouting about that from the rooftops.
ETA: Also, what @Omnes Omnibus said:
Not only was the Biden campaign in “quiet confidence, get work done” mode all thru his successful primary and general, they specifially ignored twitterings and social media ups and downs while they pressed forward.
ETA2: in the last couple weeks I have gotten fundraising push polls with breathless, “we need to know! Do you support Pres. O’Biden?” and I thought, fk yeah, and who are you? do you???
JoyceH
Do anti-vaxxers get rabies shots for their dogs? Just curious.
Villago Delenda Est
“The election is in a dead heat” is part of the “Dobbs never happened” narrative.
gene108
@JML:
Campaign seems pretty tight this year. Don’t hear much at all about what’s happening with people he’s hired to run the campaign.
Eolirin
@gene108: Are they even running a campaign though?
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
This seems like your basic “out of touch liberals don’t know anybody who voted for Nixon” article. And you see it right from the start where it calls them “superfans” as opposed to simply “supporters,” and uses words like “bewildered” as opposed to “frustated.” The article goes on to describe them as “a small but dedicated group,” “a slice of voters who adore him.” We’re told that they “bristle at suggestions that anyone else could meet the moment.” The overall vibe is that this is a glimpse into some weird and sealed-off geekdom that’s baffled by the modern world and can’t stand criticism. The article commiserates about how lonely it must be, but takes it for granted that it is in fact a lonely fringe rather than a huge demographic that the media consciously refuses to ask for its opinion.
Ruckus
@VFX Lurker:
I was born in the first half of the last century the only vaccines were for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and smallpox. I personally know of 4 women who had polio. One I went to school with for 12 yrs and one also my age that lives in my complex and numbers 3 and 4 were moms of 2 of my school friends.
The reason I put this here is that most of the press is likely rather younger than me and were born well after vaccines were widely available and administered. Likely a large percentage of commenters on this blog didn’t go through that. They likely never went through what old farts did, they have no idea that school sick days often were actually school death days.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Describes how the press would typically, falsely, describe its own coverage of the right. Is our New York Times
learningglimpsing the edge of reality?Edited to be slightly less optimistic.
...now I try to be amused
@Eolirin:
I know right-wingers use “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a slur against anti-Trump people, but here’s what I see happening:
Trump gets his political power from people who share his madness and feel it validated. That is to say, the Trumpers themselves have TDS. The fact that there are so many MAGAs is scary, and it can drive the rest of us crazy if we let it.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have called it TDS, but this is a crazy time.
Paul in KY
@JML: Plus or minus 7 on this one.
Eolirin
@…now I try to be amused: Yeah, I can follow the sentiment, was just confused by the language.
CaseyL
@Spanky: I find it a bit humorous that the NYT, in trying so hard to be all things to all people, has succeeded in being despised by all people. Left or Right, Democrat or MAGA: we all hate the NYT.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Because of her comparatively good showing against Dean Phillips.
Ksmiami
@Gin & Tonic: yep. Fuck Russia – no sympathy for those monsters at all.
Almost Retired
@CaseyL: CNN seems to be going down this path as well.
JML
@Paul in KY: That’s a big variance. and the sort of level where I’d immediately be wondering if the sample was large enough or we had too many outliers in there. +/- 7??? yeesh.
Chris
@CaseyL:
Oh, I’m sure they take comfort in the knowledge that if you’re taking flak from both sides, you must be over the target.
(Seriously, what a stupid fucking saying. If you’re taking flak from both sides, somebody is fucking up big time. See also the old joke from World War Two: “When British planes fly overhead, German soldiers duck. When German planes fly overhead, Allied soldiers duck. When American planes fly overhead, everybody ducks.” Being hated by everybody is not a sign that you’re doing your job well).
Brachiator
@Chris:
There was a time when area codes were status symbols for young adults. Some people in Southern California who were Beverly Hills adjacent tried to get a 310 area code.
Eolirin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Her comparatively good showing of… *check notes* 3% of the vote. Compared to 2.7% of the vote.
With clowns like these…
SW
At this point it is tribal. It is a closely divided electorate. But I like our chances because our tribe is growing and their tribe is shrinking. Trump is a red herring. Yes he’s a buffoon. But he is a distraction. We need to focus on mobilizing our people because in November the tribes will be weighed.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Porter gave up the seat when she ran for Senate, and another Dem will have to hold it.
My Representative, Abigail Spanberger, is also vacating a purple district in order to run for Governor next year. She won her district by 4.2% in 2022 while Porter won hers by ~3%, and Republicans have a real chance to flip them with the incumbents gone.
I won’t complain though. Porter and Spanberger worked hard to beat Republican incumbents in 2018 and hold them their seats through two more elections. They’ve done their work, and now it’s time for district Democrats to do ours.
I was glad last August when Spanberger let other Dems know her plans. I think she’ll make a great Governor, and the Democrats I know think so too.
piratedan
You still have to marvel about the press and their inability to deal fairly with elections because fair is not what they do…
They repeatedly cite Biden’s age as an “issue”, and an issue is something that someone has taken a position on, say immigration, foreign policy, bodily autonomy etc. Biden is old, how does the press treat this as an issue? It is what it is, right? It’s not like JB can change anything about it. You know its baked in as is Trump’s apparent onset of Dementia in our front our our very eyes, yet somehow, the Press doesn’t treat THAT as an issue.
I think the biggest problem that the mainstream media has with Biden is that he understands the media pretty well and treats them accordingly for their supposed role, which is informing the public, not their desired role, arbiters who decide “things”.
Chris
@piratedan:
I marvel less at the press’ inability to do that and more at the public’s inability to grok that maybe they’re not in fact “the liberal media” like we’ve all been told.
Hob
@Kay: It sounds like 1. you’re very sure that we will not see any polls with Biden up five (which could well be true, I certainly am not holding my breath), and so your assertion is unlikely to be tested, and 2. you have a very very very low opinion of the commenters you’re talking to. I mean… I can’t prove that your hypothetical is wrong (except in my own case; I don’t expect you to care what I think, but I can tell you that your “no one” definitely doesn’t include me). But if that really is what you think about the commenters here, then I’m not even sure why you would bother commenting here, or why you would expect anyone to want to discuss things with you after hearing that. I don’t mean that as an insult – I honestly just do not understand, unless you explicitly meant your comment as an insult. You really think absolutely no one here has any sense at all in that regard?
Betty Cracker
@Chris: I agree the framing suggests the superfans are like people with a weird hobby or something. Still kind of surprised the Times admits they exist at all!
Baud
@piratedan:
Someone said that Biden has given far fewer mainstream media interviews than Obama or Trump did. I think for the reasons you mentioned.
hueyplong
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: A paranoid person might speculate that a dark money Phillips supporter turned its ratfucking attention to Williamson, who said, “Sure, why not? I’m back in.”
Betty Cracker
Did anyone watch The Regime on HBO? I haven’t seen it but am a Winslet fan so plan to check it out despite some scathing reviews. Of course, the minute I had that thought, our electricity went out. 🙄
Hob
@PaulB: “If their next poll shows Biden up 5 and the crosstabs show, for example, that he’s winning with white male voters, I (and pretty much everyone else) would be just as skeptical of that poll.”
I agree, but I think both you and I may be wasting our breath. If you look at Kay’s comment that you replied to, and then my comment that Kay’s comment was a reply to… I already made up an even more outlandish distribution (Biden ahead among “white male Boomers in Idaho, fundamentalists, and cops”) and Kay responded that literally no one here would notice that. I’m familiar with the urge to assume the worst about one’s fellow citizens and basically call them all oblivious morons, but it’s less common to openly do that in regard to the people one is actually talking to (if one is not just a total troll, which I really don’t think Kay is).
Baud
@Hob:
I don’t read polls, much less cross tabs, so I’d rely on others to explain to me why a good poll was not really good.
I only really hear about bad polls because they get more media play.
Geminid
@Geminid: To be honest, I was also glad when I heard Katie Porter was running for Senate because I figured she’d lose.
A couple of my friends are big fans, but Porter rubs me the wrong way. I may drop by Staples Wednsesday and buy a whiteboard to celebrate.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: I look at it this way. The polls are far out and have been doing a poor predictive job since at least 2018.
It distresses me that anyone at all can look at what the Republicans do and endorse it. That said, I haven’t seen any particular groundswell of antipathy toward Biden, the typical loudmouths not withstanding. I hear less griping about Biden in the wild than I did Obama. Obama won.
We’re also likely to see increasing fruits from investments Democrats made. The economy has only improved throughout Biden’s tenure.
These thoughts, subjective as they are, bring me comfort. As does the ability to act. Staying involved can help allieve at least some degree of any feelings of powerlessness
Perish the thought.
Baud
Via Reddit
Ironcity
@Baud: How many families in the U.S.? What proportion is 100, 000? That’s great for the 100,00 families, and will really trickle down and out and benefit their neighbors, employers and communities as well. But for the country overall it is a drop in the bucket.
Manyakitty
@Baud: seriously. Was just stopping by to say that. She has zero standards, so this blather must’ve been subterranean.
Baud
@Ironcity:
And that’s what’s important. We’re not going to solve everything at once.
Kathleen
@Miss Bianca: Measles can kill adults.
Kay
@Hob:
Did you examine the last NYTimes poll thoroughly? Is so, I apologize.
It just seems like the only time we get into “crosstabs” is when we don’t like the topline. I bow to no one in my dislike of the NYTimes, and that includes any pollster they hire, but I think it’s human nature not to “look a gift horse in the mouth”, hence, my wariness of poll deep dives.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I didn’t know this decision came. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Unanimous, makes sense, I never thought there was much of a case to remove Trump at this juncture.
CaseyL
@Almost Retired: CNN’s CEO is a Trumper. CNN has yearned after the MAGA audience for quite a while, quite possibly because that’s the only demographic that still watches TV news.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@CaseyL: CNN at one point was doing a good job of getting itself inserted in my YouTube feed. I blocked them because Jake Tapper triggers me.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jackie:
You can bet all of them are by artists who’ve send him cease and desist letters telling him not to use their songs.
Geminid
@CaseyL: Plenty of people still watch the evening network new shows, and a most of them vote, I think.
Barry
@Betty Cracker: “but i don’t think Osnos meant to say it’s important only because the press thinks it’s important. He’s saying concern about Biden’s advanced age is legitimate. ”
He’s lying. They’ve spent a year pushing it like a bulldozer. After their previous pushes on the economy failed.
If they were honest, they’d look at the man who is only three years younger, morbidly obese, shuns exercise, who can’t complete a full day of work, who talks like a demented person, who seems to be on drugs, and whose WH physician lied a lot and ran a drug ring.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
The first person mentioned and the first picture shown in the article is literally a woman and her cat, with all the stereotypes of “Crazy Cat Lady” that evokes in our culture. I assume she’s married, because if she wasn’t, there’s no way they’d pass up the chance to say so and thus hammer in the stereotype even further.
I suppose it’s better than not being mentioned at all, but not by much, and man, the angle they’re pushing is not subtle.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Eolirin: Add to this from the other side…the RNC is a mess and lacking funds. A bunch of Republicans in leadership positions are resigning. It doesn’t get better at the State level – the GOP in Michigan is flat broke and riven with infighting, and they’re not the only State where things are a mess for the party. Fundraising on that side overall seems pretty lackluster. And, despite the fact that it gets far less coverage than OMG we found a Biden voter who isn’t enthusiastic about him, and have we mentioned again that he’s old? They are also finding a bunch of Republican voters who are saying they won’t vote for Trump under any circumstances so the enthusiasm issue is not all on one side, if it does in fact exist. And yeah, the Dems keep winning the actual elections. Plus you have to be pretty out of loop to be completely unaware of the dysfunction among House Republicans who seem determined to set a record for stepping on rakes.
japa21
@Kay:
FWIW, I tend to agree that most of us (I hesitate to make it everyone) would accept the results of a positive poll without examining it closely. But one thing I do look at is if there is a major difference between a specific poll and others taken in roughly the same time period
And both the NYT poll and the Quinnipiac polls followed that route. The difference with the latter is that they had 2 polls a week apart with similar findings of Biden up on Trump by 4-5 points.
The thing is, Trump has been at 45-46 in virtually every poll until the NYT poll has him at 49. That sets off a red flag for me. And the Quinnipiac poll, although keeping Trump at that level suddenly has Biden at 48-49. Therefore, although I like the results, I take them with a grain of salt.
Super Dave
Biden – Harris will win in a landslide, and we’ll retake the House and hold the Senate. Blue tsunami on the way in November. Suburban college-educated women and young people will carry the day. I’m an older boomer, and I could be wrong, but my sense is that most of the voters in this country have seen enough of Trump.
Hob
@Kay: “Did you examine the last NYTimes poll thoroughly? Is so, I apologize.”
I’m not really sure whether that’s an actual apology or just a sarcastic gesture, but either way, it’s beside the point. The last New York Times poll that I’m aware of did not favor Biden. What you’ve been saying is that literally no one here would look thoroughly at any poll that favored Biden. Also you seem to be defining “thoroughly” as “with the slightest bit of curiosity or skepticism”– which adds to my impression that you’re not really trying to make an argument so much as just venting for rhetorical effect. But, whatever. You know and I know that if a Biden +5 poll was released, and it showed Biden ahead of Trump with white Boomers in Idaho and evangelicals and cops, no one here would need to look thoroughly to notice that, because such a bizarre outcome would be called out in multiple news headlines. Most people who are aware of weird poll results favoring Trump, like the idea that he’s gained a lot of ground with youths and Black people, are aware of them not because they did their own research, but because the media pointed them– even if it was with a credulous spin like “wow, Trump really has gained a lot of ground with youths and Black people!” It’s incredibly implausible that the same media would simply fail to call out an even weirder finding that was superficially in favor of Biden. They would either be like “wow, Biden has unexpectedly won over evangelicals!” or, more likely, “suspicious polls inexplicably show Biden winning evangelicals.” Either way, literally everyone would hear about it, and then there would be a wave of posts by other people picking apart the details further, which would inevitably get mentioned here. It has nothing to do with whether everyone here investigates everything themselves.
So what you’re really saying, as far as I can tell, is that the commenters here are not just lazy, but willfully blind. And, I guess, you feel like if you just repeat often enough how stupid you think we are, you can make us see the light. OK.
Look, I get that there are some comments that are shallowly optimistic, and it’s frustrating. But then why not just argue with those people, instead of repeating that that’s what absolutely everyone is like, and ignoring the very obvious evidence that other people besides you are also paying attention even if they don’t draw the same conclusions you do. I know you’re not a troll, but this is a good way to encourage newer commenters to think you are.
catclub
Maaaybe. From the snippets that get played I am not convinced, because they are so dang short. You get no sense of context.
I was also convinced that there was no way Trump would last past the nominating convention in 2016, and was totally wrong. I am not making that mistake again.
I want to believe these are evidence of mental problems. But in that case they could show longer clips where it becomes clear. Why aren’t they doing that in these clips?
wjca
@eclare:
I think it’s really great how many people are worried about how close the election will be. Not because I agree with them, ’cause I don’t.** But because the one thing that could lose the election for Biden is complacency. Not on the part of the Biden campaign, which knows better, but on the part of the troops in the trenches.
** Even if TIFG’s mental deterioration stops at the current level (it won’t), combine that with his loud embrace of his role in getting rid of Roe. And Biden, IMHO, wins going away. Democrats win big in the House, thanks to a combination of increasing GOP candidate insanity, the Presidential election (as usual) bringing out more voters (who lean D even when all else is equal), and Dobbs. Always, always, always, Dobbs.
The only question in my mind is how close the Senate is. Which may come down to Ohio and Montana. But between the value of incumbancy, and the same environmental factors as the House races, I expect both to hold. It then becomes a question of whether, and how many, surprises the Democrats pull off.
Jacel
@Scout211: Oh if only the Constitution could have provided for the ability to elect somebody alongside an older President who was a couple decades younger, engaged alongside the President in running the country, and prepared to be President if the aging President faltered. If only that were the case, there would be no reason to worry about Biden’s age going into a second term of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Hob
@catclub: What would count as “becoming clear” to you? Whole paragraphs of total gibberish would be pretty clear– but that’s not how the onset of dementia works. What you would see first is an increasing pattern of particular types of odd mistakes, not just verbal stumbles in general, but these particular types. And some are especially big red flags, like the extended non sequitur passage where he instantly switched from mocking Nikki to mocking Nancy, and clearly hadn’t just said the wrong name because all the stuff he was saying was really about Nancy.
The media is pointing that stuff out now because it really has increased. Trump was always an ignorant asshole who bullshitted all the time, but he used to be a lot more coherent than this, just in terms of competent use of language and ability to hold onto a train of thought.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I hope she makes a big political comeback in a different role, runs for president someday, wins the nomination and YOU are forced to vote for her. ;-)
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I guess that’s possible. I saw speculation Porter might run for Governor in two years. That’s a tough state to get ahead in though, on account of all the other talented and ambitious Democratic politicians.
the pollyanna from hell
@Betty Cracker: We knew that BC was fierce. We didn’t know she is a pure sadist.
Hob
@catclub: Also among the extra big red flags that I don’t think we’re lacking any context for, I would put his frequent misnaming of Biden as Obama. Like the Nikki/Nancy thing, it makes a certain kind of sense on a stupid level since he hates them both. But he’s not saying it in a way that indicates at all that he knows he’s doing it. Like, if his point was that Biden is really just like Obama, or Nikki is just like Nancy, he would say that– not as an excuse after the fact, but during the original mockery– because that’s the kind of asshole he is, he’s not subtle and he thinks every one of his dumbass observations is super clever so he can’t resist pointing them out. But he didn’t notice he was doing it. That’s not about context being left out; you can look up all of those speeches in full.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: You and me both. I already have a white board. What should I write on it?
zhena gogolia
@Hob: Yep. I don’t need any more context. He has repeatedly said he defeated Obama, and he spoke for several minutes about how Nikki Haley didn’t provide troops on Jan. 6. And it was in the context of talking about her as his primary opponent.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I agree with you. Anything is possible but I don’t see White Board Wanda (h/t Black Twitter) winning state wide office, let alone the presidency.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: You can always write down the vote totals the next day.
Or, an estimate of the money Democratic donors will save if Schiff and Porter don’t face each other in the runoff. Tens of millions, I’d guess.
Some of that will go to other candidates, some will go to stuff like Tuscan cooking lessons or pickleball camp.
I wonder if anyone has thought of setting up a pickleball camp in Tuscany. That could be a real moneymaker!
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
I’m not certain that this reflected voter concerns. It often seemed that some reporters were looking for a reason to judge Biden negatively. Trump is also old, and angry and fixated, but not enough is written about this.
Similarly, there was this dumb notion that voters desperately wanted new faces running for president instead of a repeat match of Biden vs Trump.
Journalists were creating a narrative, not reporting the news.
Betty Cracker
Context-free observation: I hope whoever invented HMOs is currently roasting in hell, where they’re forced to cold call endless lists of poorly run physician groups that are listed as accepting new patients but aren’t really and then follow up with defective AI chatbots trained on Pornhub data.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I hear you.
RaflW
@Ruckus: One of the bitter ironies of McConnell failing to whip an impeachment conviction is that he, a polio survivor, could help usher in a resurgence of polio about the time his great grandchildren would be at risk. If Trump successfully claims the WH, all bets are off for public health.
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: Even if Trump loses, we’re probably screwed in the next public health emergency that requires collective action, however trivial the requirement. Republicans have monetized a seething plurality of oppositional defiant-disordered lunatics who will see to that.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: Every aspect of the US health care system is broken. And HMOs are the poster children.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Alas, this might constitute an improvement over average customer support.
wjca
Which is why, pre vaccines, our parents put some effort into making sure we got it as children. Ditto mumps and chicken pox. Play dates (although we didn’t have the term) with kids who were infectious were the normal way to accomplish that.
wjca
That would arguably be Henry Kaiser. Who needed health care for his workers building Grand Coulee Dam.
Slightly_peeved
Polls this far out aren’t particularly predictive, good or bad cross tabs, and a month from now Trump’s going to be dealing with a criminal trial, possibly while his assets are being seized.
I get the frustration at the press, who are worse than sports journalism at this stage because at least sports journalism is somewhat interested in results. But it’s definitely a bit early for panicking.
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: To which the right answer is ‘lonely place? My ass. Why would they say they feel like the only one?’
Just as suspicious, because get a load of the spin on that one. Were they weeping and calling the reporter ‘sir’?
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
No problem with your input. I mainly preferred Porter because she is the youngest Democrat. If she had two full terms as a senator, she would be 62. Schiff would be 75. Lee would be 89. A younger Congress would be in the best interest of the country.
Chris Johnson
@Chris: Well, yeah, that’s the payload. You’re supposed to repeat and internalize that spin. It’s still full-on advocacy for made-up positions.
When Trump gets 80% as a write-in, and Biden gets 60% against say Marianne Williamson, then you can come talk to me about the deep shit he is in.
I’m guessing Biden’s team have a more accurate picture of who is just bullshitting to sway the rubes, and how effective they are being, and if they’re full of serenity maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe they do real polling instead of just making shit up, or watch the results of elections or something.
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: I hope that too! Love Katie :)
Hob
@Miss Bianca: “Porter’s district would be a hard pick-up for the Democrats should she go to the Senate”
It’s not “should she go to the Senate” – she’s already declined to run again for the House. That ship has sailed, even if her Senate bid goes nowhere. I guess she could always change her mind at the last minute, but I can’t see that going well.
Hob
@wjca: Yeah, I think some people who were around then & were aware of that, or who heard about it from previous generations, have taken the wrong lesson and decided that it meant something like “in the old days, we had a natural way to deal with diseases – just make sure the kids catch it early & get immune – then it’s fine!” …rather than “in the old days, that was the best option we had, but it still sucked because those diseases could still do a lot of damage to kids.”
Chris T.
@Slightly_peeved:
I think there’s something even more significant behind the better accuracy of sports reporting: the people who follow that stuff actually care about it.
This is the same reason that dedicated journals (e.g., the energy news one someone mentioned some threads back) have good data: the consumers demand it. The “infotainment” consumers don’t demand good data.
Jacel
@Miss Bianca: All three of the California House Democrats running for the Senate seat couldn’t run for the House at the same time. So none of them (Schiff, Porter, Lee) will be back in the House next year, while one should be in the Senate.
BellaPea
@Matt McIrvin: Trump was still fairly coherent in 2016. And some of the crazies were still in the woodwork.
Geminid
@Hob: We should know which Democrat will defend Porter’s seat after tomorrow. The Republican who finished 3 points behind Porter in 2022 is running again, so it’s likely only one Democrat will advance to the November election.
wjca
It was definitely a case of “least bad option.” It wasn’t perceived that way only because a vaccine wasn’t even on the horizon for most people.
Miss Bianca
@Jacel: Oh, jeez.
glc
I came across an excerpt from Osnos’ article, hard to interpret out of context.
As it’s paywalled, I have no idea whether the author views this as a refutation or as a confirmation of the claim. Presumably Zients at least is playing it straight, but I’ve seen Chotiner do that sort of thing with verbatim quotations.
Paul in KY
@JML: Means poll is completely worthless.