Democrats cope with a losing candidate
Biden is a few points behind in the polls:
That might look like a close race that could easily be turned around, but it’s really not.
Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump for the entire race:
She won the popular vote by 2.1%, a bit less than those polls predicted, but narrowly lost the election. The electoral college gives a boost to Republicans — roughly speaking, Democrats need to be about 2–3% ahead in the popular vote to win the election.
At this point in 2020, Biden was up 10% in the polls:
Biden was consistently well ahead of Trump for the entire race. And he won, but by much less than the polls predicted — the popular vote was only 4.5% in Biden’s favor. The vote in some swing states was still close enough that Trump kept fighting the outcome for months.
Trump did better than the polls predicted, both times. Biden is behind in the polls. He needs to be 2–3% ahead in the election to win.
Last time around, Biden polled ahead in 7 key swing states and won 6 of them. Today, he’s behind in all 7:
Things are kind of close in Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania looks worse. Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada look like lost causes. Biden would need 3 of those states to win.
You might hope that the polls are somehow biased towards Trump this time, even though they were biased against him the last 2 times. But that’s probably not the case — we can look at polls comparing Biden to other candidates in those swing states. Biden is running about 10 points behind other Democratic candidates.
We can also just look at Biden’s favorability rating, compared to previous presidents:
Notice that the 3 presidents as unpopular as Biden did not get re-elected, and the 3 that were more popular did get re-elected.
Some smart people have made models and crunched numbers for all of these polls. Nate Silver currently gives Biden 27% odds. The Economist gives him 25% odds of succeeding.
I haven’t studied these models in detail, but they confirm what you can already deduce from simpler lines of reasoning — Biden is on track to lose.
I think it’s possible that these models aren’t even pessimistic enough, because they don’t incorporate the change in the media. Now that Biden’s age is the main focus of the news, there will be daily scrutiny of every mistake he makes, and there will be plenty more of those.
Gamblers currently give Trump 60% odds of winning. I think that’s too low, and it will probably go up if Biden is confirmed as the candidate.
Replacing Biden seems like the best choice
When you’re in the lead, a conservative strategy works well. In 2020, Biden didn’t even have to campaign much, he could just let people watch the chaos of Trump and his covid response.
When you’re losing by a wide margin, it’s worth taking more risk.
I don’t have a strong opinion on who would do best as a replacement. I’m not sure if Kamala can beat Trump, but I think she can’t do much worse than Biden. She might do better, as she can speak clearly, hold a debate, perhaps inspire young people better. Realistically, Biden is not likely to serve another 4 years if re-elected, so we’d be electing Kamala either way. I think it would be more honest to have her lay out her vision for the next 4 years.
I would guess that an even better strategy would be to run 2 popular swing state politicians, perhaps something like a Whitmer/Shapiro ticket. But I’m not sure if that would cause too much chaos, to replace both Biden and Harris at the convention.
Either choice seems better than staying the course towards a likely defeat. Most people think that Biden is mentally declining:
While campaign odds rise and fall, and scandals come and go, aging is the one thing that won’t stop or reverse itself. The next few months will be an endless stream of Biden gaffes.
Swapping him out could turn the race from a referendum on Biden’s age to one on Trump’s age or his many other faults.
Maybe I’ll crunch some numbers later and try to think more about the best replacement candidate. But right now, I’m more worried that there will not be a replacement candidate — too many people are in denial about Biden’s problems.
Some people cope by looking for experts to confirm their views
I write a lot about misinformation. One common theme I see is the mental gymnastics people do to avoid admitting the truth.
The psychology is the same each time. Changing your world view is hard so many people go looking for experts that confirm their existing view.
Suppose that you didn’t get the covid vaccine in 2021. That wasn’t a crazy choice, at first — it was a new technology, maybe you didn’t want to be the guinea pig. But then, after a few months, it has rolled out without many issues. Some people start calling you a stupid anti-vaxxer. And you don’t want to think of yourself as stupid, so you go looking for someone who will tell you that the vaccines are dangerous. Maybe you end up listening to Kory or McCullough — “they’re doctors”, you think. Or maybe that was Malone — “he invented mRNA vaccines, and even he thinks they’re unsafe”.
If you’re a Democrat in 2024, maybe you’re in denial that Biden’s campaign has imploded, so you look for anyone who will tell you otherwise.
For that, you have a few choices for forecasters that will tell you Biden’s doing alright.
The first is FiveThirtyEight. Nate Silver founded that company, but he left in 2023 and took his forecasting model with him. The company, now owned by Disney, created a new model. Their new model does not match Nate Silver’s, but is much more optimistic for Biden:
That’s right, Biden needs to be 3–4% higher in the polls to have a chance, but the Disney forecast favors him as the leader.
Another choice is to turn to professor Allan Lichtman, who has a model he calls “The Keys to the Whitehouse”. He insists that debates play no role in predicting the outcome of an election:
Lichtman claims his system has predicted every election since 1984.
That’s not really true, though — he predicted Al Gore would win in 2000, but went on to say that his system actually only predicts the popular vote, and/or that the election was stolen. He then correctly predicted that Trump would win in 2016. But that can’t also be true, because he had previously said that his system only predicts the popular vote, which Trump lost.
Some elections are easier to call, because they’re not very close. The close elections like 2000 and 2016 are challenging to get right. It might be better to say that Lichtman is 1 for 2 on getting those right, rather than his false claim that he’s 10 for 10 on predicting all elections.
His forecasting system involves 13 “keys” to the whitehouse. If 5 or fewer of these keys are false, the incumbent party will win. If 6 or more are false, the incumbent will lose. Here are the 13 keys:
- Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
- No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
- Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
- No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
- Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
- Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
- Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
- No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
- No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
- No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
- Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
- Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
- Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Some of these are objective and easy to understand — one party won the midterms and one lost. Either the candidate is the incumbent or they are not. But most of the rest are vague and subjective. What’s the definition of charisma? I think that many people would agree that Barack Obama is charismatic and Joe Biden is not. But is Trump charismatic or not? Some people love him and some hate him.
In his past judgments, Lichtman said that Bill Clinton was not charismatic, but that Obama was. But he only said that Obama was charismatic in 2008, but not in 2012.
What constitutes a “major scandal”? Lichtman says that Biden’s administration has none, but the president’s debate failure would absolutely count as one, especially if more evidence comes out that the administration has hidden the president’s cognitive decline.
What about “social unrest”? I would think that 2020’s George Floyd protests would surely count, but what about the protests against Israel on college campuses? Maybe those cost Biden young voters, who turn to 3rd parties or don’t vote.
What about economic strength? We’re not in a recession, GDP growth is okay, so Lichtman rates those as positive. But many people are disturbed by inflation.
How about “major policy change”? What’s big enough to qualify there? The inflation reduction act? Obamacare? Trump’s tax cuts?
Even the “third party candidate” question is ambiguous. Lichtman defines this as, “a third party candidate polling above 10%”. RFK jr. is at 9%, easily high enough to play a spoiler role. Does that key flip against Biden if he becomes only 1% more popular?
Lichtman claims that currently only 4 keys are counting against Biden. I can count as many as 10 against Biden, depending on how I look at this.
Perhaps Lichtman has the secret ability to determine exactly how true each of these are, but I can’t imagine this system works any better than looking at polls or prediction markets.
He may also be correct that debates are normally meaningless, and no one really watches or changes their mind. But a debate where the president can’t finish a sentence is something else entirely.
Models break down when faced with outliers, problems they’ve never seen before. Biden is older than any president in history, and the concern about that is higher than ever before:
Some people cope by lashing out
If you don’t have a good case for why Biden should stay in, you can also just tell people to get in line:
If you don’t have the data behind you, just call everyone who disagrees with you a racist:
Yes, in 2024 people think it’s racist to say that Biden should be replaced by a black woman.
And sometimes, they say it with a lot more vitriol:
Some people cope by thinking there’s still another option
I regard replacing Biden as the better option, since it’s taking action to fix the problem. I think it would be great if the Democrats open up the convention and choose from a new generation of leaders.
But that doesn’t mean that’s likely to happen. Perhaps all the pundits promising there will be some exciting outcome here are just selling an unlikely dream.
The fact of the matter is, Biden’s the nominee unless he chooses to step down. It’s very clear he doesn’t want to quit. It’s unclear if enough other politicians can force him to quit, or how hard they will try.
The most likely outcome is still just that Biden runs again. And, though Biden and many of his fans are in denial, the odds are good that Trump wins that contest.
