Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
Alabama is not the first primary he is entering. Alabama is the state with the earliest deadline to put your name on the ballot. That deadline is today so if he doesn't file he wouldn't be on the ballot there. The media loves the story, but I don't believe he has decided to run. He is preserving his opportunity. If he runs, he will be running in Iowa.Anarchistbear said:
Who of the Democrats doesn't favor gun control?
Plus the first primary he is entering is Alabama. I don't think gun control advocated by a midget New Yorker is going to play there.
My own view is he wants to spend money on growing his brand so he can be "drafted" if Warren or Sanders are getting the nomination
WIAFwifeisafurd said:
Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
Thanks, good discussion.OaktownBear said:WIAFwifeisafurd said:
Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
I don't believe he has said he has decided to run. Alabama is the first deadline to get on the ballot, so filing there just preserves his ability to jump in.
IMO, it all depends on what happens with Biden's campaign. Right now there is a completely false narrative going on that his campaign is fading and Warren is surging. As usual it is because the media doesn't know how to interpret polls. It is obvious that the lesson that wasn't learned from 2016 in the "blame the polls" for what they didn't say aftermath was that the media needs to be a lot more careful about how they report them. I suggest reading this for some context:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/warrens-polls-have-leveled-off-at-least-for-now/
And this one shows that on average Warren is down a bit since the last debate while most candidates INCLUDING BIDEN, are up a bit
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/despite-his-heart-attack-sanders-is-still-solidly-in-third/
There are a few issues going on here:
1. Biden had already coalesced the moderate and minority vote months ago. His national numbers have not been dropping much unlike the portrayal. He's stayed pretty consistent. That seems obvious as he was the defined choice of the moderate establishment from the beginning.
2. Warren has been able to become the standard bearer for a particular type of voter (mostly liberal white voters). She was competing for that lane from the beginning. Actually, if you looked at polls a few months ago, it was clear that she and Harris were competing for the same voter (in polls that asked for second choice, they were each the second choice for the other). Much of Warren's surge has been taking the Harris vote. In fact, since Harris peaked after the first debate, the change in the polling percentages across the board has been almost entirely Harris voters moving to Warren while everyone else stayed nearly the same.
3. The tightening of the race between Warren and Biden has been almost entirely due to Warren kicking other candidates like Harris out of her lane, not Biden support waning. However, at least for now, the polls indicate that process has ended. Warren hasn't gained in national polls in over a month. She convinced white liberals to come to her side. She has not made inroads with any other voting segment, so her polls have become static.
4. On that second choice polling from a few months ago, one of the surprises was that the two pairs of candidates that were most strongly correlated with each other were Warren/Harris - which didn't make sense philosophically, and Biden/Sanders which really didn't make sense philosophically. But voters aren't always voting philosophically. I think there is an assumption that if Bernie left, Warren would get his vote. I think that assumption is faulty. Frankly, a lot of Bernie voters hate Warren's guts.
5. Way too much is being made of Iowa and New Hampshire in reporting the early state polling. See the following:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/national-polls-and-state-polls-show-pretty-much-the-same-thing/
If you look at the polling in the first 4 states, they combined mimic the national polling which still has Biden ahead. Iowa and New Hampshire are both extremely white. Warren is doing better there than in national polling because you would expect her to based on the demographic makeup of the state. (plus New Hampshire is in her back yard). Buttigieg is exceeding his national polling in Iowa for the same reason. But in contest #3, South Carolina, Biden is trouncing everyone. In contest #4, Nevada, he is winning handily. If things hold as they are today, Biden is going to crush everyone throughout the south. None of the other three top candidates have shown they can pull any nonwhite vote. Frankly, if Warren doesn't win Iowa AND New Hampshire, she is probably dead meat.
That is the state of the polling. Where things are going badly for Biden are 1. Narrative and 2. Fundraising.
1. Narrative - I assume the media will continue to love the interesting story that Warren is surging whether it remains true or not UNLESS, the rest of the Democrats are able to knock her down, in which case the media will love the Warren is plummeting narrative. Biden basically needs to survive through the next few months until South Carolina and Nevada. Probably primarily Nevada because everyone knows he is going to clean up in SC. If he does that, I think you will see him go on to be the nominee.
2. Fundraising - Biden's campaign is doing terribly in fundraising. That is probably a bigger problem.
Both issues concern me as to his campaign staff. They should be able to change the narrative and I have no idea why they can't fundraise better
I think Bloomberg is plain and simple staying in to see if Biden gets taken down and creates a vacuum on the moderate side. I don't think that is likely, and I'm not sure he would be the guy to fill it if it does. It won't be Buttigieg because he can't pick up Biden's minority vote. Honestly, I think it would be the minority vote, not the moderate vote, that would determine this.
The media simply does not inform their opinions on electability on actual polling and when they do they do such a superficial job they do it wrong. "Moderate" and "Progressive" is not the whole story. To even remotely tell the story you have to separate out Socially Moderate/Progressive and Fiscally Moderate/Progressive.sycasey said:
Warren and Biden have consolidated their lanes. Waiting behind them to enter those lanes if they falter are Bernie and Pete, and behind that you still have the likes of Klobuchar, Booker, Harris. I don't see how Bloomberg captures either of those lanes at this point.
Bloomberg would appeal to a relatively small demographic within the party: upper-class white urban moderates. That group is surely overrepresented within the newsmedia and donor class, but there aren't that many votes there. That's why he's always only polled at around 1% support.
I'm going to add a couple subjective points to this. I think that Warren may have jumped the shark in her ridiculous health care pander and that has made her vulnerable especially when Bernie is essentially saying it's ridiculous. Further, she may have REALLY jumped the shark with her statement in her plan tossing a preemptive hand grenade at anyone who disagrees with her. Then when they disagreed with her she said they should be running for the Republican primary. I think Biden was right (politically and just plain right) to go after her as arrogant and elitist over that. I think her line may play well with the 20% who support her, but Democrats don't do litmus tests very well. The party is too diverse for that. I think that Biden's attacks are following up the line that came up big in the last debate that hurt her, especially by Klobuchar, essentially "hey, we're all Democrats. We want the same things. We just disagree on how to get them. Who died and made you judge of all Democrats?" I think she better have a response to this because they are all coming after her on the arrogance point. I suspect the next debate will be a big challenge for her. Personally, I think the health care plan is going to end up being an unforced error like the genetic test was. I actually hope so because politicians need to be punished for panders like that.wifeisafurd said:Thanks, good discussion.OaktownBear said:WIAFwifeisafurd said:
Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
I don't believe he has said he has decided to run. Alabama is the first deadline to get on the ballot, so filing there just preserves his ability to jump in.
IMO, it all depends on what happens with Biden's campaign. Right now there is a completely false narrative going on that his campaign is fading and Warren is surging. As usual it is because the media doesn't know how to interpret polls. It is obvious that the lesson that wasn't learned from 2016 in the "blame the polls" for what they didn't say aftermath was that the media needs to be a lot more careful about how they report them. I suggest reading this for some context:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/warrens-polls-have-leveled-off-at-least-for-now/
And this one shows that on average Warren is down a bit since the last debate while most candidates INCLUDING BIDEN, are up a bit
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/despite-his-heart-attack-sanders-is-still-solidly-in-third/
There are a few issues going on here:
1. Biden had already coalesced the moderate and minority vote months ago. His national numbers have not been dropping much unlike the portrayal. He's stayed pretty consistent. That seems obvious as he was the defined choice of the moderate establishment from the beginning.
2. Warren has been able to become the standard bearer for a particular type of voter (mostly liberal white voters). She was competing for that lane from the beginning. Actually, if you looked at polls a few months ago, it was clear that she and Harris were competing for the same voter (in polls that asked for second choice, they were each the second choice for the other). Much of Warren's surge has been taking the Harris vote. In fact, since Harris peaked after the first debate, the change in the polling percentages across the board has been almost entirely Harris voters moving to Warren while everyone else stayed nearly the same.
3. The tightening of the race between Warren and Biden has been almost entirely due to Warren kicking other candidates like Harris out of her lane, not Biden support waning. However, at least for now, the polls indicate that process has ended. Warren hasn't gained in national polls in over a month. She convinced white liberals to come to her side. She has not made inroads with any other voting segment, so her polls have become static.
4. On that second choice polling from a few months ago, one of the surprises was that the two pairs of candidates that were most strongly correlated with each other were Warren/Harris - which didn't make sense philosophically, and Biden/Sanders which really didn't make sense philosophically. But voters aren't always voting philosophically. I think there is an assumption that if Bernie left, Warren would get his vote. I think that assumption is faulty. Frankly, a lot of Bernie voters hate Warren's guts.
5. Way too much is being made of Iowa and New Hampshire in reporting the early state polling. See the following:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/national-polls-and-state-polls-show-pretty-much-the-same-thing/
If you look at the polling in the first 4 states, they combined mimic the national polling which still has Biden ahead. Iowa and New Hampshire are both extremely white. Warren is doing better there than in national polling because you would expect her to based on the demographic makeup of the state. (plus New Hampshire is in her back yard). Buttigieg is exceeding his national polling in Iowa for the same reason. But in contest #3, South Carolina, Biden is trouncing everyone. In contest #4, Nevada, he is winning handily. If things hold as they are today, Biden is going to crush everyone throughout the south. None of the other three top candidates have shown they can pull any nonwhite vote. Frankly, if Warren doesn't win Iowa AND New Hampshire, she is probably dead meat.
That is the state of the polling. Where things are going badly for Biden are 1. Narrative and 2. Fundraising.
1. Narrative - I assume the media will continue to love the interesting story that Warren is surging whether it remains true or not UNLESS, the rest of the Democrats are able to knock her down, in which case the media will love the Warren is plummeting narrative. Biden basically needs to survive through the next few months until South Carolina and Nevada. Probably primarily Nevada because everyone knows he is going to clean up in SC. If he does that, I think you will see him go on to be the nominee.
2. Fundraising - Biden's campaign is doing terribly in fundraising. That is probably a bigger problem.
Both issues concern me as to his campaign staff. They should be able to change the narrative and I have no idea why they can't fundraise better
I think Bloomberg is plain and simple staying in to see if Biden gets taken down and creates a vacuum on the moderate side. I don't think that is likely, and I'm not sure he would be the guy to fill it if it does. It won't be Buttigieg because he can't pick up Biden's minority vote. Honestly, I think it would be the minority vote, not the moderate vote, that would determine this.
wifeisafurd said:
Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
I would also caution against assuming that just because a particular candidate is not popular with minority voters now that they wouldn't shift their support there if Biden drops out. Historically, black voters in particular have been very pragmatic about who they support, which seems to be the biggest reason behind backing Biden now, thinking he's the surest bet to beat Trump. If he's not viable anymore (for example, he loses badly in the first two primaries and is out of money and has the "loser" stink on him) I could see them going in a lot of different directions.OaktownBear said:
And, as usual, the media entirely ignores minorities. Biden leads because he is the choice of minorities. Again, how is Bloomberg taking over that demographic?
I also don't think Mayor Pete is waiting in the wings to take over if Biden stumbles. He is probably the candidate least liked by Blacks.
Honestly, if Biden dropped out of the race tomorrow, it would be very interesting what would happen. I think the assumption is that minorities would move to one of the other 3 main candidates, but I'm not sure that is the case. I think you'd see the polling being a mess with whites initially moving to Pete and Bernie and Blacks trying to decide where to go between three candidates they don't like and two candidates - Harris and Booker that they like (in terms of polling) but who are way behind. It would be a question of whether one of the other candidates was able to coalesce enough support. Honestly, I think that moderate whites would rather go with Booker or Harris than Pete, Bernie or Warren, so if minorities coalesced around one, the moderates might jump to them.
concordtom said:wifeisafurd said:
Kinda late in the game.
Probably hurts Biden big time.
He deferred to Hillary, as did Biden, in 2016. And he was deferring to Biden this time, but upon seeing him slip and maybe not up to it, and with the others who he apparently has No Confidence in, he's saying, well, I guess I have to go do it in order to beat trump.
OaktownBear said:Alabama is not the first primary he is entering. Alabama is the state with the earliest deadline to put your name on the ballot. That deadline is today so if he doesn't file he wouldn't be on the ballot there. The media loves the story, but I don't believe he has decided to run. He is preserving his opportunity. If he runs, he will be running in Iowa.Anarchistbear said:
Who of the Democrats doesn't favor gun control?
Plus the first primary he is entering is Alabama. I don't think gun control advocated by a midget New Yorker is going to play there.
My own view is he wants to spend money on growing his brand so he can be "drafted" if Warren or Sanders are getting the nomination
Anarchistbear said:OaktownBear said:Alabama is not the first primary he is entering. Alabama is the state with the earliest deadline to put your name on the ballot. That deadline is today so if he doesn't file he wouldn't be on the ballot there. The media loves the story, but I don't believe he has decided to run. He is preserving his opportunity. If he runs, he will be running in Iowa.Anarchistbear said:
Who of the Democrats doesn't favor gun control?
Plus the first primary he is entering is Alabama. I don't think gun control advocated by a midget New Yorker is going to play there.
My own view is he wants to spend money on growing his brand so he can be "drafted" if Warren or Sanders are getting the nomination
Apparently not. This is interesting.
Bloomberg will not contest first four states in Democratic nominating process. "If we run, we are confident we can win in states voting on Super Tuesday and beyond, where we will start on an even footing," says Bloomberg adviser Howard Wolfson.
I doubt that this is true.OaktownBear said:
Frankly, a lot of Bernie voters hate Warren's guts.
ducky23 said:
I share bloomberg's concern that the current batch of candidates are weak
I don't see warren or sanders beating trump in the key battlegrounds states.
I think Biden could potentially beat trump, but I don't see him getting out of the primary.
And the only other moderate left is mayor Pete, whose sexual orientation probably makes him unelectable in the battleground states (plus he's currently unpopular with African Americans)
Bloomberg is right. A hero needs to emerge. Except it's not him. Either Michelle or Oprah need to save the country.
And before you scoff, both would beat trump quite easily.
They certainly "can" win. But will they? I'm hoping not to leave this up to a coin flip.sycasey said:
I think every one of the leading Democratic candidates can certainly beat Trump in the swing states. This has little to do with them and more to do with Trump being unpopular.
1. Agreed. But I don't think the Obama/Trump voter can/will differentiate socially liberal from being economically socialist. I know its a popular talking point (but I still believe it to be true), but once Trump labels them as being a "socialist", its over for them in the swing states (despite the fact that many/most Obama/Trump voters don't even know what being a "socialist" means). Trump will convince them that Bernie/Warren want to take from the middle class to give to people on welfare.OaktownBear said:ducky23 said:
I share bloomberg's concern that the current batch of candidates are weak
I don't see warren or sanders beating trump in the key battlegrounds states.
I think Biden could potentially beat trump, but I don't see him getting out of the primary.
And the only other moderate left is mayor Pete, whose sexual orientation probably makes him unelectable in the battleground states (plus he's currently unpopular with African Americans)
Bloomberg is right. A hero needs to emerge. Except it's not him. Either Michelle or Oprah need to save the country.
And before you scoff, both would beat trump quite easily.
1. Bernie and Warren are no more socially liberal than anyone else. The Obama/Trump voter was socially conservative but screwing over the rich with liberal fiscal policies is up their alley. They can win there.
2. Biden is ahead and has the most likely chance of winning.
3. I'm not happy with the field either.