Yeah, I wrote a reply up-thread about psychopaths, and someone chimed in to say "yep, I'm a psychopath, I guess you could say I'm evil but I really don't mind because it's clear to me that the universe has no objective morality"
I can attest to being one of these people, or at least I would if I was less lazy. I only do good things so other people like me more. I'm willing to rip people off and hurt people if it enriches me, but it's so hard to get away with and so bad for my reputation that it's really best to just pretend to be a good person. And because people judge you based on your actions, technically I am a good person. But I know better.
This is just run out the mill imposter syndrome and poor self esteem. Your character is defined by your actions, not by your temptations. We all have temptations, very dark ones.
I don't see how it's imposter syndrome. I don't feel like I don't fit in. I'm very well liked at my job. I'm definitely smart enough for it and I'm a fairly hard worker. I certainly feel like I belong with my friends and family. I don't feel like an outsider or like I'm not good enough. I'm more than good enough. I'm just a bad guy.
The only reason I don't act on those (remarkably dark and scary) temptations is because I might get caught. I really don't think most people are like that, at least not with most things worse than shoplifting. I think most people are selfish, and would act more inappropriately if they could get away with it. That's true. But I don't think most people are pro-choice because they don't care about dead babies. I don't think most people are absolutely certain which lever they would pull in a trolley experiment. I don't think most people have a succinct definition of evil as a result of healthy introspection and seeing it in themselves.
You have no idea what other people are thinking. You're conflating three phenomena here. 1. Only avoiding cruel behavior due to fear of consequences. 2. Observing 1 and thinking "I'm evil." 3. Willingness to confess 1 and 2 to others. Yes, these three traits in combination are probably rare. You're unique in that respect. But I have NO IDEA how rare 1 and 2 are, and neither do you. Your willingness to assume they are super rare is not healthy. And your habit of calling yourself evil is not healthy. I suggest you avoid this habit. If you indulge it, it could put you in prison someday.
To an extent, our disagreement is more semantic than anything. There's definitely Something Wrong with you, I just think calling yourself evil and a bad person is harmful. Both to you and to society. If you write yourself off as evil, that saps your motivation to work on yourself. You need to be actively working on having empathy for others, and if you already do that, good for you. Don't be shy about seeking professional help. If you don't work on yourself, you'll slip up and do something heinous. Fear of being caught is a weak safeguard.
I'm not claiming to be unique. I'm sure the type of person that desires cruelty and pretending otherwise is very common. 3) does not apply to me. I am absolutely not willing to confess to others. You weirdos on the internet do not count as "others." You're bright spots in the void, infinitely distant from my real life.
I admit that my assumption regarding the rarity of evil is unfounded. It's possible that everyone around us are much better liars than I assume, but I am an optimist, and I'd like to think that people are too inherently kind and open-minded to be as Machiavellian as you claim is probable.
Me calling myself evil might be unhealthy but it's so far down the list of unhealthy behavior that it's not even worth paying attention to. Professional help is so boring.
I never said I'm not working on myself. I'm proud of how far I've progressed, every single day. It's remarkable how much I've built myself over these many years. And I know what heinous behavior is. That's for losers.
And now you're blatantly contradicting yourself. You appear to be just taking the piss. What a goofball. I can't believe I wasted my time responding in earnest.
Socrates (according to Xenophon): The easiest/least exhausting way to achieve a good reputation (including a reputation as a good person) is to become the person you want others to believe that you are.
"But beneath the jubilation, there was a low-grade panic stirring. It was the kind of panic that one sometimes feels when everything in life seems to be going … a little too well.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s comeback campaign, his supporters have told anyone who would listen that Mr. Biden was nothing more than the tool of a shadowy establishment that would, at the right moment, pull him to insert a more formidable candidate. Now, as they see it, this exact plot is playing out before the eyes of the nation."
It might be that some Republicans are unable to suppress the impulse to gloat, but it seems pretty obvious that Biden is in a perilously weak position and any replacement candidate would at least introduce more uncertainty into the race, which is not what you want if you're ahead.
I've been reading the assessment of lies and distortions of the debate (both sides). It seems to me that Trump isn't so much lying as he is living in an alternate reality.
I suspect that's mostly because Trump isn't talking to you, and he isn't speaking in your language.
In terms I think will make more sense to you, Trump doesn't speak in coordinates in concept-space - he doesn't "say what he means". He speaks directionally; this is the -direction- of the thing he's referring to. In linguistic terms, it's kind of like the difference between directions to a place which list distances and road names, and directions to a place which rely entirely on landmarks. The landmarks in this case are emotional.
It's like how there's a bunch of people who before Roe v Wade said they were against abortion who, if asked now, will say they are for it. They aren't telling you what the policy they support is, they're telling you what direction to go from the current policy is, to arrive at the policy they support. People within the culture understand what is being said; people outside the culture consistently misunderstand what is being said.
He's speaking in a language that the left refers to, when it is spoken by groups of people they approve of in contexts they approve of, as "lived experience". This shouldn't be taken to imply that it is his lived experience, because the term "lived experience" is one the left made up, and that's just the way the left refers to this form of communication.
Plausibly you may have more luck understanding him if you try to understand him through that framework.
I appreciate your cogent explanation, and have never doubted the emotional component of politics, and Trump's talents for that ALL-CAPS-exclamation-point stuff. When you say "directionality" I get it -- that lies, mistakes, equivocations are all the tools of directionality. In and of themselves it's a part of politics, but in Trump's case I detect a toxic comorbidity. I see it to be similar to the George Santos delusions, that the entire world has got it wrong. Spoiled, whiny, exceptionalism that only takes root in delusion. Trump's firm denials of an encounter with Stormy Daniels give me the impression of self-delusion rather than lies. I don't find the encounter offensive, so that's not the issue, nor do I find it improper, nor do I blame him for denying it. It's more though. His downplaying the Jan 6 aggression at the Capitol may be "directionality", too, but his comments strike me as being comorbid with delusion.
if i go on tv and say my daughter is perfect, half of the country would go, 'i guess she is pal!', and the other half would tell you the cnn fact checker says i'm a liar - no one's perfect, especially not his daughter!
too many democrats are living in a fantasy land now, can't decide on genders can't decide on what the pride flag means anymore and can't admit my daughter is perfect
He did make a silly suggestion that medical researchers should look into whether some disinfectant like bleach might make a good Covid treatment, but if anyone took that as saying they should drink bleach, it's because the media and Democrats lied about what Trump said.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. But I take it you're not at all concerned that you've been lied to and didn't have the wit to realize you were being lied to?
I think most people are going to see what they want to see. Personally, i dont see him recomending injecting disinfectant, just kind of musing about what people 'should check'.
Clearly, "would be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation that people drink bleach.
If there was an increase in bleach poisonings after Trump's comment, it would be due to the FALSE REPORTING of his comment as a recommendation to drink bleach. Some people prioritized scoring a cheap, dishonest political point over people's health.
How do you separate the noise here? Clearly poisonings are up 93% from March 2019 before Trump says anything. I assume because everyone is paranoid about covid and using bleach excessively? Attributing the rise in April to Trump is highly speculative, since the poisoning rate was rapidly growing anyway in the previous months. Further, it would be helpful to post the actual source for this instead of just the text.
Also, going from Trump's rambling and coming up with drinking bleach is quite a stretch.
Scott's confusion over what Biden's coterie was thinking seems to miss an obvious explanation: they wanted to pull Biden all along, and this was to be the spark; thus why the time (come on, who doesn't know about sundowning?! why, it was used in the Simpsons even, years ago!); thus why two strangely early-in-cycle debates (if one went okay, the next could be bad)...
I had been musing on this possibility long before the debate, but — since I don't really have friends (one) and don't keep up with the media at all, I had no idea this was a conspiratorial theory already... well, that explains the reaction I got the one time I aired the idea—
I support pressuring Biden to resign and replacing him on the 2024 ticket through some kind of process at the Democratic Convention.
Having said that, while I think Biden has certainly slowed down, I certainly don't think he's senile or unable to function as as effective President. Debates are a uniquely challenging environment, where there is tremendous pressure to have a vast set of facts and arguments at the ready, to be able to summarize key arguments quickly and cogently in a matter of seconds, and to be able speak effectively extemporaneously depending on what one's opponent says.
Failing in this environment doesn't mean one's senile or unable to function effectively in the day to day work of being President.
The questions are fairly obvious, if not provided on the sly, so I don't buy this. Similarly, Trump may often rant to some strange degree, but his basic positions are fairly well known. These aren't debates, but chances to summarize your key talking points. Biden couldn't do that at all well.
This really understates the disastrous performance Biden had. When given the chance to pounce on abortion, Roe vs Wade etc. (with Trump saying that Dobbs was a great and universally popular thing to do!), Biden instead... brought up crimes by immigrants against young women. That's not losing your train of thought or not retrieving a fact. That's completely misunderstanding the logic and sequence of arguments and counter-arguments. Like, he heard "young women" and this triggered a memory of an argument brought up in prep - except it was supposed to be Trump's talking point.
Debates are challenging but not uniquely so – POTUS can reasonably expect to be asked demanding questions requiring the synthesis of old and new knowledge late at night in the Situation Room, for example. There might be two compelling courses of action and he could be the only one with the authority to choose, and that requires understanding context and specifics in the moment.
Mostly agree that "debating" shouldn't necessarily map to the ability to do the job of president. With the exception of a black-swan nuclear event, the job consists mostly of choosing from a few options presented by aides who have filtered out the truly awful decisions, and signing stuff that Congress sends you.
But it is notable that nearly everyone clears the bar for basic debate competency. Some performances are better than others, but no one totally embarrasses himself. Obama had a notability weak first debate in 2012, but that was because he was wonky and low-energy. Clinton clobbered Dole in 1996 but the old guy didn't look like he didn't know his own name. Ronald Reagan had a notably bad first debate in 1984, but that's not really a helpful counter-example given that he was suffering from early Alzheimer's by the time he left office.
We've had what, probably north of thirty presidential-level debates since 1960, along with many more primary debates, and no one has ever been this bad. So I would say that the ability to draw a clock has nothing to do directly with the job of president, but if you can't clear that low bar you shouldn't get the job.
My objection was really to the claim that Biden is senile. And that we were "lied to" about his condition. I think Biden has lost his fastball (one that was never that fast to begin with), but I still don't believe he incapable of being an effective president.
I am fully convinced, however, that he can't be an effective presidential candidate.
I guess that depends a lot on what the job of the president is. If we think the president is primarily told what to do by wonk types in your party tell you to do, then just about anyone can be president. A good president would be someone who picks the right people to listen to, and resists pressure to do the wrong thing.
I hold presidents to a much higher standard. I think Obama met my higher standards, as did pretty much all of the presidents in my lifetime. Trump may be an exception, and I think Biden is also an exception (more now than when first elected).
There's also a big question here of whether Biden is capable of vetting who he listens to. There's a good chance that he listens to his wife, his brother, his son, and other family and friends. Those are not at all who I would hope are advising a president. He probably also listens to top aides and cabinet members, but the highest position in the country, maybe the planet, hinging on "probably" listening to good advice is not okay. That's far too low of a bar for a sitting president.
> With the exception of a black-swan nuclear event
"Black-swan" implies randomness. Nuclear events, and other such high-stakes geopolitical conflict situations, aren't random -- they happen when some other nation-state decides to make them happen. If e.g. Xi or Putin believes that the US is internally too dysfunctional to take the kind of action that requires the guy at the top to make a tough decision, they will be emboldened to create such a situation.
The whole point of the term black swan is that all the swans in Europe were white, but Europeans did eventually come across black swans in Australia. This is also "non-random" in a similar sense--no one set out to find black swans specifically, but it was pretty inevitable once such long-range voyages became possible. But also, from the point of view of someone without perfect information (so, everyone) these events are still effectively random.
Which is why it's a bad metaphor in this case. Black swans either exist or they do not. But geopolitical conflicts do not just spontaneously happen, or not happen, at random times. They are instigated by some party, at a time of that party's choosing, because that party expects to benefit somehow from calling the other side's bluff.
The poster I was responding to, referred to a "black-swan nuclear event" in a way which suggests that such events are too unlikely to worry about, so it's not a big deal if the President does not have the mental capacity to deal with them. But that's wrong, because the probability that such an event will happen is not independent of the potential instigator's knowledge about the American President's mental capacity.
It's like making a big-money bet that black swans do not exist -- with an expert bird-breeder. Maybe they would not have otherwise existed, but the chance that they *will* turn out to exist in the future, just became a bit bigger.
I agree that a country deciding deliberately to use nuclear weapons might not count as a 'black swan'. But what about a situation where, through accidental circumstances, nuclear-armed countries come to think someone else is going to use nukes? Or launch a full invasion which would require a nuclear response?
The time in 2017 when he disclosed Israeli intelligence sources in Syria to Putin in what appears to be simply a boast comes to mind. Using Mar-a-Lago to host important and sensitive meetings, both domestic and international, despite warnings it was insecure, quite possibly for profit, may be another example.
And I'm not pro-Biden these days, overall. And I'm not even going into the whole secret documents thing because that would derail the sub-thread.
It's not just a question of if he can handle being president now. It's a question of if he can handle it for the next four years. And I think it's important for the president to be able to function in especially challenging environments.
I don't understand. Firstly, I assume you mean W as opposed to H. W. Secondly, though you may have disapproved of his policies, did you seriously doubt his mental acuity for making them?
Slamming George W. Bush's mental acuity was a major Democratic theme throughout his presidency. He was often depicted as Alfred E. Neuman. I have a magnet showing him in a Cat in the Hat hat, with text surrounding that reads "I can lead it all by myself".
"Bush's use of the English language in formal and public speeches has spawned several books that document the statements. A poem entitled "Make the Pie Higher", composed entirely of Bushisms, was compiled by cartoonist Richard Thompson. Various public figures and humorists, such as The Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, have popularized Bushisms.
....British journalist Christopher Hitchens published an essay in The Nation in 2000 titled "Why Dubya Can't Read", writing:
I used to have the job of tutoring a dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons and websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms? We've been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. [...]
I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence. If this is true for Bush it hasn't yet become obvious."
Others were "No, he's not naturally stupid, he's chosen to be stupid":
"The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, “Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?”
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
...What’s more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn’t laugh at FDR because he couldn’t walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can’t talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush’s bond to the masses.
But if “numskull” is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.
...As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool."
I didn't, but Democrats did, they spent the whole eight years harping on about how Bush Jr was a drooling moron, based on the (very weak) evidence of his occasional verbal malapropisms.
So it's amusing to see Democrats suddenly sliding into "ehh it's fine if the President has a few roos loose in his top paddock, it's basically just a ceremonial role anyway..."
This talking point was very real and persistent across left wing circles, though often it got more of the meme treatment than anything serious -- but focus groupers and pollsters found that there was a net effect, and it actually *hurt* Al Gore. In the first debate, watchers went in with such low expectations that they came away impressed at how normal W sounded.
Yes, it was very much a thing. I think it was a combination of the generic "Republicans are a bunch of dumb hicks" stereotype, Bush's tendency towards malapropisms, and his (mostly affected) folksy good-old-boy public persona.
So imagine being a firefighter. 99% of the time there isn't a fire and you're either playing cards with your colleagues or doing some busy-work around the station which doesn't require any specific competence. But you've not been hired for that; you've been hired for the times when there *is* a fire and you need to be able at a moment's notice to slide down the pole, jump in the truck and get ready to run into a burning building and carry someone on your shoulders down six flights of stairs.
If a firefighter isn't able to do the actual firefighting part of his job, or is only able to do that job on some days but not on others, it's not much of an excuse to say "well, he can do the other 95% of the day-to-day work just fine".
Instead of 99% of time busy-work, 99% of the decisions that will effect the daily life of the country, and the other candidate being interviewed is wearing an "I love arson" T-shirt.
I seem to recall Putin starting the Ukraine war. Are you one of those that think Putin wouldn't have started it if Trump were in office? And if so, why not? Other than Trump's rhetoric about it, him basically being too scary?
At this point it would outperform both candidates, so the rock has got my vote. Also, being a non-binary silicate-American, it gets a lot of diversity points !
The most rational voting strategy, truth be told, is to weight foreign policy higher than almost anything else (except maybe general economy stuff), because that's the one part where the president has actually an incredible amount of latitude.
Do you think Trump knows how to do his own laundry? I've encountered people who have been rich since birth, and they are often completely ignorant of basic everyday stuff since someone else has always handled it for them. I'd be surprised if Trump had any idea how to work a laundry machine.
"Debates are a uniquely challenging environment, where there is tremendous pressure to have a vast set of facts and arguments at the ready, to be able to summarize key arguments quickly and cogently in a matter of seconds, and to be able speak effectively extemporaneously depending on what one's opponent says."
And that's not the case when meeting with Vladmir Putin, or when trying to pressure centrist Democrats or even Republicans into supporting his agenda, or when trying to avert the next Cuban Missile Crisis that could turn into a nuclear war?
On an off-topic, Vladimir Putin would probably perform really bad at debates. He didn't have anyone disagree with him for a long time – it doesn't sound he'd be able to form a cohesive argument outside of metaphors and long stories. Even Tucker was telling about how nervous Putin seemed to be talking to him.
This is a great point, but didn't Nixon and Khrushchev have a famous series of debates about capitalism vs. communism in some sort of fake kitchen? And Khrushchev appeared to hold his own. Maybe he came up in a much more vigorous debate culture inside of the USSR, but that seems hard to imagine
I think this is mostly an argument that we don't need a President at all in most cases. This might be true but since we do get to choose a President we should test and choose one who is competent at President-y leadership-y things.
This is a naive take. We know Biden's history, he has shown his entire career that he's an effective and confident communicator. He is a natural at public speaking, debates are his literal strong suit. You think he got overwhelmed by the pressure? No, he's clearly in the early stages of dementia/senility. Slowing down a bit would be talking slowly and maybe not getting all the points across as vigorously as he'd like. He lost his train of thought and spit out gibberish on multiple occasions. That's not slowing down a bit.
Biden was never a good communicator nor a good debater. Part of that, likely, was his stutter. Part of it was that he was never that bright. Biden's strength has always been that he is good with people. The combination of that, the sense of loyalty he built as a good VP to Obama, and his good fortune in the rest of the Dem candidates running too far to the left in 2020 is what made him the nominee.
Meanwhile, the interviews and press conferences he has done, although few in number, make it clear that he not yet senile. But I would certainly agree that he has slowed down too much to be an effective presidential candidate.
I'm pretty sure the 25th is easy enough for Biden to challenge. It looks like he just has to send a letter, and if he does then at least two thirds of congress have to agree to invoke it to remove him. That's plausible, but I think highly unlikely unless Biden is in a coma or forgets his own name.
Especially as the Republicans are likely to see prolonging the Democrat power struggle as being in their interest. They're not going to agree to apply a super-expansive definition of "incapacitated" for the benefit of the Democrats.
Also Congress has twenty-one days to determine whether the President is able to discharge his duties, during which they might be able to put him through all sorts of humiliating public tests.
As a complete aside - the thread right above discusses Kamala murdering Biden. For a brief second, I read "this would remove him from the presidency but not actually prevent him from being nominated" as a reply in that thread. Oddly fitting.
People have been posthumously elected to office before! In 2000, Mel Carnahan was posthumously elected to the Senate, defeating John Ashcroft. The seat was taken by his widow, Jean, while Ashcroft was appointed Attorney General.
There's probably "Whitmer kidnapping" style groups out there being kept in reserve, consisting of a couple of right wing loonies and half a dozen undercover FBI agents. Maybe you just steer these guys in the right direction at the right time.
Kamala Harris could murder him and then pardon herself. Then she could get seal team 6 to assassinate all her rivals, including Trump. Since the Supreme Court has decided that’s okay. She could also get rid of the justices she doesn’t like. Poetic justice.
If the President orders Seal Team 6 to assassinate all their domestic political rivals, and *Seal Team 6 is actually willing to do it*, we are already in a dictatorship and prosecuting the President will be functionally impossible regardless of what the law says.
I’m not an expert on this, but the President is commander in chief, right? So he could presumably just appoint any psychopath to Seal Team 6 or create a new unit.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first comment invoking Seal Team 6 I've seen in the wake of the decision, which is pretty quick off the mark.
Is this going to be the new Democratic, leftist, and progressive canned talking point? "The Supreme Court says the President can order Seal Team 6 to assassinate his rivals!"
How about directing that energy towards selecting an electable candidate in preference to coining snappy slogans?
Also, can somebody tell me what is so special about Seal Team 6 that they are a meme? Yes, I could look it up, but I'm lazy and prefer you nice people to explain things to me intelligently and wittily.
It was discussed at length at the Court of Appeals hearing. One of the justices (Florence Pan) brought it up. It was part of the legal arguments not a ”meme” someone just made up.
As for what seal team six is, (I had never heard of it before the hearing) — it’s a special missions unit.
I don't think the President's authority over the military extends to that level of detail, but I'm not an expert either.
At any rate, if we're assuming most of the military including all top-level officers are still loyal to America as a democracy and would vehemently oppose any attempt to impose a dictatorship, then assassin-team-6 will have a very serious problem. If anyone else finds out what they're up to, they'll all get locked up and court-martialled, and if they offer proof their orders came directly from the President then I'd expect Congress to conduct the fastest impeachment in history.
"Stop quoting laws to men with swords" - Paraphrased from a quote attributed to Pompey after the city he was conquering objected that his actions were illegal (!).
This is untrue. It’s drummed into even lowly enlisted people that there is not only no obligation to follow an unlawful order, there is a duty to not obey it. Killing random civilians for political purposes is an obviously unlawful order.
(Yes, I am aware of Anwar al-Alwaki, no that was not unlawful.)
“Then she could get seal team 6 to assassinate all her rivals, including Trump. Since the Supreme Court has decided that’s okay.”
That part is untrue. She can’t get Seal Team 6 to do it (unless they’re willing to break the law and commit murder, but then we’re not talking about Presidential powers, just crimes) and the Supreme Court never decided that was okay.
What unlawful orders do you think military people carry out? Do you have examples?
You know, this Seal Team 6 scenario is something that has been discussed publicly for months now, in the Court of Appeals and in the Supreme Court and by various media commentators. It was mentioned in Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. So you don’t need to be offended by my bringing it up (and again, I was obviously making a joke - after all I don’t think Kamala Harris would murder Biden).
This seems like the kind of question where one can reason circularly that whatever orders they DID (and DO) follow may be deemed "lawful" because, of course, the US military would never follow "unlawful orders." You did precisely this in passing, as a parenthetical remark.
And of course, no one is going to try the president in court for his orders to the military, so arbitrating precisely what laws he ISN'T being subjected to is a silly exercise.
Beyond their ever agreeing to do this, you grossly overestimate the CIA's competence. If they asked the CIA to remove Biden, they'd end up removing the entire rest of the cabinetiaside from Biden.
This opens up the possibility of the funniest (albeit extremely unlikely) possible outcome: the Democrats attempt to invoke 25th Amendment on Biden, and the Republicans refuse to give them the 2/3rds majority needed to do it.
I was checking up on the 2/3 majority of Congress - turns out that requirement comes into play if the VP and majority of cabinet declare the presidency disabled, the president declares there is no disability, and Congress needs to ratify the decision by the VP and cabinet.
How does the 25th Amendment (and the legal discussion surrounding the 25th Amendment) operationalise disability?
Alternatively phrased: Since the VP, the Cabinet members, and the President him/herself are not professionally qualified to make a disability assessment, how do they choose the professionals that make the evaluation? Also: What is the procedure if the President refuses to be examined by the professionals?
These questions could become rather important, if Biden wins the election and then experiences further functional decline.
Side note:
...although according to the radical version of the social model of disability, disability is just a social construct. if so, perhaps non-medical Cabinet members - and Congress members - are just as qualified as anyone else to make the assessment:-)
The 25th Amendment very specifically states that all that matters is whether the VP and a majority of the leaders of executive departments have determined that a disability would prevent fulfillment of the role of the Presidency. I think it is for the best that it leaves it up to their judgment as human beings about what sort of expert testimony or diagnosis would be relevant, rather than spelling out some particular concept of expertise.
I don't think the social model of disability disagrees with any role of expertise in determining whether or not someone has a disability. They'll agree that whether or not someone's eyesight is acute, or their motor control of their legs has certain features, is likely to be evaluated more effectively by people with certain kids of professional expertise. The social construction is rather on the other side - whether acute eyesight or motor control of legs counts as a "disability" that might cause problems with ordinary life, or are just within the realm of variance that don't cause problems, depends on social factors, like how easy and accepted it is to wear corrective lenses everywhere, and whether buildings are often constructed to have a step before entering the front door.
"I think it is for the best that it leaves it up to their judgment as human beings about what sort of expert testimony or diagnosis would be relevant, rather than spelling out some particular concept of expertise."
... I did not really expect the legal texts regulating the 25th Amendment to be very specific, for the reason you mention. However, this sensible legal "openness" as to what kind of expert testimony (if any at all) that is necessary in order to invoke the 25th Amendment can create a rather delicate political situation if Biden wins, his situation deteriorates, and he - and his advisors - disagree with the opinions of the VP and the rest of the Cabinet concerning if he has become disabled (or how it can be decided).
So there is a risk associated with not having specific procedures and operationalisations; a risk worth discussing before the election in November.
(I am reminded of the situation in a student collective, where everyone agreed that we do not need specific rules of who owned what, since we were always going to be such good friends. It then turned out that you need to agree on specific rules at a time when you are still friends. Because when you have stopped being friends, it is too late.)
Yeah, I think there's an essential tension between the advantages of spelling out conditions in formal detail in advance of when they are needed (because at the time they are needed, emotional and political conditions often overrule people's reasonable judgment) and the advantages of leaving conditions up to the judgment of the people at the time they are needed (because our imaginations in advance often misunderstand what the relevant considerations in the actual circumstance will be).
This is related to the tension between giving experts flexibility to make the judgments that they deem best, and requiring that experts explain their judgments in ways that can be understood by non-experts. (The people who are actually living in the unforeseen future circumstances are analogous to the experts, and the people writing the details of the rule are analogous to the people asking for explanation from the experts.)
Since you're quoting Nate Silver's estimate of 40-45% pre-debate, it's worth pointing out that he lowered that to 35% when he first published his model (which was still before the debate).
The Dems seem to be in quite an unpleasant double-bind with how everything's going overall, it seems like
My impression is that a shorter-notice candidate is maybe a better idea than running Biden in the short term, but it's still fairly rare with an incumbent who's both willing and eligible to run again. This isn't Coolidge saying he chooses not to run and leaving a clean slate for his party, the Dems and Biden have very clearly positioned him to be the next candidate before the debate debacle. It feels like the risk they run isn't just losing (which is a very substantial risk they run no matter what at this point) - but also exposing someone like Newsom to a brutal mudslinging campaign in 2024 for no reward, lowering the "this guy is fresh and new" appeal of a more winnable 2028 run, when the whole situation could very easily be affected by the DNC trying to pull a bit of a Weekend-at-Bernie's with Biden this year. It's not just ditching the incumbent, it's doing so as basically a tacit admission that Biden hasn't been 100% for a long while and the Dems simply forgot to mention that - It isn't a good look, even with a good replacement candidate
On the other hand, if the choice is "take the inevitable L for 2024 and regroup with a fresh candidate for 2028", stuff like the Chevron deference overturn/Trump v. US and Project 2025 are scary from a liberal point of view. The idea of Trump as an existential threat has been a big part of the Dem platform for a while, it's the basis of their going "yes, Hillary and Biden might not be too inspiring but you gotta vote them in anyway", and the idea of rolling over and minimizing harm in the long-term would seem to be incompatible with that view + current events. Like him or not, Trump has already had long-reaching impacts in establishing a solidly conservative SCOTUS, so it seems like the Dems are basically forced to fight hard (potentially unsustainably so, in a way that makes 2028 less of a slam dunk than necessary) for a win that might simply not be there at all.
Also, I do get the "Biden isn't senile" thing - it's a weird comparison, but it kinda reminds me of how fight viewers treat Max Holloway. For years now, he's faced massive hitters and almost none of them have even gotten reactions by hitting him really hard - so every fight cycle, someone's like "maybe this is the one Max's chin is gone". And every time so far, they've been wrong, and Max just went up a weight class to clown on a huge hitter who's even bigger than the other guys he's tanked while everyone was worried about him. But eventually those people will be right, and it'll come as a shock to everyone - but they're not right through any particular small-scale prescience, just that everyone is eventually washed or senile, so you can be wrong 100 times but the fact that you've gotten 100 chances makes the next one more likely to be right
Is there actually solid evidence that losing a presidential election reduces your likelihood of winning it later? The last one to even try a second time was Nixon, and he won. Stevenson lost twice to Eisenhower I guess, but overall the idea that it’s better for one’s future viability as a candidate to stay out of the race than run and lose seems like folk wisdom rather than empirical fact. I could just as easily see it the opposite way: getting the nomination and losing at least makes you a household name, which puts you ahead of other candidates among the large swath of the public that pay almost no attention to politics.
Yeah, I second this, especially with the incredibly obvious point that if a Democrat loses (barring another massive shift), it'll be to ANOTHER person who already lost a Presidential election, and as an incumbent no less.
In fact some wondered if Romney (as an example) should have run again. He did pretty okay against Obama, who was a generationally tough opponent, and a lot of what he talked about ended up being correct.
Yeah I think you're definitely overestimating the degree to which there is such a thing as "Democratic party elites" who can make meaningful decisions about this stuff, aside from the candidate themself. Trump on the Republican side proved that a candidate who can win over the voters can't meaningfully be stopped by the party insiders and I think that applies on the other side as well, it's just not as blatant because the voters and the insiders are more on the same page..
In some ways this is good: in most cases people would describe unelected power brokers pulling the strings behind the scenes as a bad thing, and say that the voters and the candidates they select having all the power is a good thing. But it's certainly awkward in a situation like this.
Primary elections in general are a pretty bad way of selecting candidates. While like obviously "party elites choose" (which was the status quo pre-1972) isn't a particularly appealing scenario, they did have an incentive to pick someone who would be palatable enough to their base while also likely to win. Primaries appeal specifically to the most engaged members from each side of the political spectrum and ask them to choose which candidate to support. George McGovern doesn't happen under the pre-1972 system. Donald Trump doesn't happen under the pre-1972 system.
The best system though is probably one without primaries, be that an IRV or Approval Vote or Score Vote or whatever election. With FPTP, you can't really have multiple candidates and the ability for all voters, regardless of political belief, to pick the one they like the most, so you end up with either smoke-filled rooms or primaries, both of which lead to pretty bad outcomes.
The Alaska system (and there's a proposition on the ballot to introduce this in Nevada) seems to do this quite well. The primary cuts the fields down to four or five candidates and then they use IRV amongst those.
IRV and similar systems, where more than just two candidates can win, require voters to form opinions on more people, and that first-stage (calling itself a primary) cut by higher-information voters eliminates candidates with very little chance of winning and so reduces the overload of apparent choices for the average voters without significantly reducing the real choice in the election.
IMO simple approval voting (vote for as many as you like, highest number of votes wins) is the most natural method with the least voter education and prep, and a very high degree of intuitiveness. The situations where strategic (i.e. untruthful) voting takes place are much less and don't leave the same "bad taste" in the mouth.
It's such a significant step up with fewer downsides, to the point where I almost wonder if the IRV effort is a kind of deliberate scheme to distract from approval voting. And of course you can still do reasonable things like require a certain signature threshold to make sure the ballot doesn't get too cluttered.
A sitting president can't really be moved, and there's no mechanism whatsoever to force a candidate to give up the significant funds donated to him. The 2020 primaries pre candidate with no incumbent were very different, and it's quite likely there was some teamwork to ice out Bernie
Somewhat, but it doesn't really take that much to ice out a guy who doesn't have majority support from the party's primary voters or any plausible path to it.
The majority of spending is "independent expenditure," not bound to the candidate (and ostensibly, not even coördinated with him), so that's unlikely to be a significant concern.
I mean, I think there is such an elite, though functionally it's only really strong on the Democrat side (the Republican operators don't have the same level of media connections, which limits them). But at the moment we're seeing a split between the Biden faction, and the probably larger set of people who want a more winning candidate. A number of the people close to Biden are likely to be much less influential if he's not President, so they're more willing to try to somehow pull out a win with him.
Yeah, even the best example given for a possible elite, the coalescence around Biden in March 2020, was really just about Buttigieg and Klobuchar personally preferring Biden to Sanders, and seeing that Biden wins on Super Tuesday were the only way to avoid a Sanders candidacy.
"Trump on the Republican side proved that a candidate who can win over the voters can't meaningfully be stopped by the party insiders and I think that applies on the other side as well, it's just not as blatant because the voters and the insiders are more on the same page.."
That is why Team D has, among other things, superdelegates.
as it were, Team R party insiders did try to block Trump, by trying to get Trump delegates to switch sides and even cancelling primaries (Colorado, IIRC) that Trump was likely to win.
Team R and its insiders failed for two reasons: they could not agree on a single non-Trump candidate (is it Cruz, is it Rubio, is it Jeb!, is it Kasich?), this dissipating their efforts and they could not rely on the national media to carry their water.
If you've been paying attention you'll notice that over the last decade or two the superdelegates have been stripped of basically all of their power because people didn't like the idea of unelected party insiders overruling what the primary voters chose.
> Team R and its insiders failed for two reasons: they could not agree on a single non-Trump candidate (is it Cruz, is it Rubio, is it Jeb!, is it Kasich?), this dissipating their efforts and they could not rely on the national media to carry their water.
Notably these problems seem like they would also apply to any attempt to replace Biden.
IIRC in 2016 there was some speculation that the super delegates could make a difference but in fact they didn't, and after that the rules were changed to reduce their influence even further.
That seems like a very speculative claim about what people were intending/planning that you aren't providing any evidence for. And it doesn't at all engage with the actual facts of the way the rules around superdelegates work. After 2016 (maybe even earlier, I don't remember in detail) they changed the rules so superdelegates don't even get to vote on the nominee anymore (unless no candidate gets a majority in the first round, which IIRC has never happened in the modern primary system).
And even back when they had more ability to sway things, I think you're overestimating the likelihood or even the possibility of the superdelegates operating as a unified block. Mostly they're just past elected officials in the party, who can be a fairly diverse bunch.
I think a lot of people ignore how only Harris is allowed to use Biden's massive war chest, and that alone is a huge incentive to go with her over another perspective replacement. Imo, Newsom is heavily overvalued in the Republican-leaning predictive markets as his sparring with DeSantis greatly increased his figure in those spheres, while not having as much of an impact among Dem voters. He poorly targeted his marketing of himself if his intention was to position himself as a future presidential contender. Or maybe he didn't and you just take whatever press you can get when you're a local political figure trying to raise your profile.
No, YOU can't criticize him. For starters, he's pro-abortion, anti-gun, soft on crime, for open borders, and supports the climate hoax. Also, he's probably anti-Israel.
She has the advantage of never actually having held office. But the moment she throws her hat in the ring she has to start taking positions, giving more speeches and interviews, leading to more gaffes, and her opponents would now have a vested interest in tearing her apart.
The popularity of popular non-politicians - Michell Obama, Dwayne Johnson, etc. - is, imo, basically a mirage, and would dissipate the moment they enter the ring. I suspect most of them know this and that’s why they rarely try to capitalize on it and run.
On a less Nietzschean note, "Haha, we're cleverly putting one over on all those suckers" is probably fairly common among the sort of professional liars we're talking about here.
Yea, SA's extreme positivity bias of nice people in a nice world strikes again. Evil isn't so rare and not amongst the elites. It is a psychopathic club for psychopaths who have spent thousands of years building and shaping the world to better accept them as rulers. They are not simplistically evil like cartoons, but so what. Evil need not be understood from a child's view point. If you want to know what they're like, look at their private talking which they never thought would be public. Just 30 seconds of real talk sunk Romney's campaign. They know they have to hide what they are.
Nixon tapes come to mind. Or any court case where internal docs from executives come out. Smart psychopaths can in fact lie convincingly. Nixon level selfishness, greed, list for power, and damn the consequences style people are the norm. And they lie about it, of course.
I recall a case of a doco film making on Rogan doing Erin brokovich style reporting on companies dumping toxic crop into water leads to disease in town stories and the executives all voted in favour of continuing to dump toxins for longer after they knew it was killing people and even had hand written notes from their board meeting about it with demented cruel and comically evil lines about killed whole we can to make as much money now as possible, extract ecey last dollar of sales before this gets banned and let the company go down. They also gave themselves bonuses.
These truly are evil people and Scott lives in a fantasy world where he pretends pretends don't and can't exist except in rare historical cases. Yet thin f s are more house of cards and less people making mistakes.
I disagree. Most politicians never do anything overtly evil. Most exaggerate and embellish and sometimes outright lie, but so do regular people. Most politicians probably sincerely think they’re doing so for the greater good. Most of the ‘evil’ things you would attribute to your least favorite politician are things half the population think are good, so it’s not really politicians but rather that half of the population that is ostensibly evil.
Overall, I don’t think regular people are more moral than “elites.” Their moral defects are just as acute (it wouldn’t surprise me if even more so), but just happen to be constrained by their impotence.
most politicians take bribes from the country's wealthiest people to enrich them further, at the expense of their constituents, and then cast votes to murder people halfway around the world
I am fighting a similar thing with my own mother right now who is about Biden's age. (She is 78). We super don't want to shuffle her off to a care home or have her move in with us. We are *very* motivated for her to maintain her independence and pride as long as she can. But, like, she just can't do certain things anymore. And I don't mean certain things will kill her. If she wanted to go bungie jumping or something, I'd totally endorse it. "I died at age 78 while bungie jumping" seems like a pretty damn good way to go really. My 80 year old dad just went sky diving for his birthday on our dime as a gift.
It's the mundane things. Telling her she can't afford certain things on her fixed income. Telling her that she forgets things a lot now, it's already gotten her in trouble, and thus she needs to outsource some aspects of navigating her labyrinthine benefits and medical expenses and so on to us. She doesn't like it but it seems cruel to me to *not* tell her this and just let her like lose her car or her apartment or something. Biden's family baffles me. Let the old man retire with dignity rather than feed his delusions and let him go out in an epic loss of cantankerous pride that also jeopardizes the country. He is 81. There will be *no* recovery for him on that.
> Biden's family baffles me. Let the old man retire with dignity rather than feed his delusions
I have to believe that most of the time, Biden's still pretty much all there, and that it's only under actual pressure that he can completely run out of gas. Otherwise it means all the people around him are monstrous.
Yeah, there's hundreds of interviews and rallies done in the last few months where he looks fine. Feels like they overprepped and over pressured him for the debate and that backfired
Has he done more than the well known handful in the last week? This seems like it would be a very good time for him to be in some unscripted situations to prove his capabilities. As far as I know he's been in like *two*, maybe three scripted situations since last Thursday, and zero unscripted.
Either he doesn't have it, or they're terrified he does have it, or they're very foolish for wasting the opportunity to fix the situation.
If you know he's going to bomb the debate like that, and you still put him out there, to fail like that in public? That counts as monstrous in my book. *shrug* Machiavelli might approve, if it were a necessary part of a plan to get a better candidate for the general election. But that wouldn't make it less cold-blooded.
Jill’s fawning but condescending praise to Joe after the debate, on camera — “You did a great job! You answered every question!” — convince me that she knows exactly what his condition is, and that she is indeed monstrous.
I've had a low opinion of Jill ever since I saw her pretend her doctorate in education a real degree. It's the textbook definition of a vanity degree that people with a load of money get to feed their egos without having to do any real work. Shaquille O'Neal and Bill Cosby have Ed.Ds.
HIs family gets huge benefits from his current position. This big time politicians are like a mid-sized corporation there are dozens of people at a minimum living off his position right now. That is a big difference from your mother.
No most of them won't necessarily become impoverished or anything, but a lot might lose their jobs and/or substantial incomes.
Do we know at what rate dementia tends to progress? One of my biggest concerns is that this is most lucid version of Biden that we're ever going to get, and it can only go downhill during the next 4 years.
Trump seems increasingly demented as well. I think if we looked for issues or errors during speeches between 2016 and today we would see an increased rate in the last couple years. I wonder if anyone has done that...
I'm sure if we had a psychiatrist around here he could tell you about prognosis for dementia. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for one though.
A lot of this discussion seems to be predicated on the idea that Biden will definitely be alive in four and a half years, and our choices between an 86-year-old president of unknown lucidity and Donald Trump. The chance that Biden will not be alive in four, two, or one years is substantial.
That feels really hard for a psychiatrist to do? My sense was that first impressions and patient background were undeniably important, but that you’d need real neuropsychological testing, or at least proper interviews, to diagnose a dementia and its progress accurately enough for a semi-decent prognosis. And that’s before the variability in how well he would putatively respond to treatment.
There are a couple of drug treatments, but last time I looked into the matter what was available made relatively little difference in how fast the dementia progressed: If you took one of them it took you 28 months to decline as far as untreated people did in 24 months. As for how fast his dementia would progress, it's variable, like that of most progressive illnesses. However, very slow progression is rare enough that it's a safe bet that in 4 years Biden will be way worse off than he is now.
Just based on age and actuarial life expectancy tables, Biden has a 32% chance of dying over the next four years, Trump has a 23% chance. That's high for both of them! By rights it should warrant greater scrutiny of the the VP candidate, since there's a strong chance they end up as president.
Probably both risks are overstated if you're just looking at age; they're both rich, upper-class and in generally good health so far as we can see. Of course it's really 4.5 years we're concerned about. And Trump is a bit overweight. And POTUS sounds like a high-stress job.
And also it's not only death . Falling into a coma, needing prolonged healthcare in bed following a serious stroke or a heart attack, particularly debilitating cancer - the cumulative likelihood of all of those and more has to be substantial.
The issue is that Trump looked 30 years younger than Biden at the debate, not three, to paraphrase one talking head. The debate in essence gave the public to make a head to head comparison between the two candidates in terms of their mental fitness. It was an unmitigated disaster for Biden.
There's a lot of variability, but yes, this (Biden's current/average state, not his debate performance, which, given that his handlers allowed him to do the debate, is probably worse than his average state) is the most lucid version of Biden we're going to get, and it will only get worse. I suspect it will seem to get worse very very quickly - my grandmother's decline was relatively smooth and stable over the course of at least thirty years, but it felt like it was accelerating, because the capabilities that she lost were increasingly fundamental, until one day she stopped being able to drink. (We did not attempt to keep her alive beyond this point, it would have been senseless and cruel.)
Trump doesn't seem unusually demented; he definitely showed his age in the debate, but this actually worked for him, because his historic behavior is uncomfortably manic, and it brought him more in line with what people expect to see from politicians. Where's Biden's condition made him seem like a more dangerous and risky candidate (relative to our expectations of Biden), Trump's condition made him seem like a safer and saner candidate (relative to our expectations of Trump).
Charts and graphs on decline won't help much I suspect.
The reason why so many people already thought Biden was too old to serve is because so many people already have direct and personal experience with the mental decline of the elderly. It's a one way street of variable steepness.
It took 18 months for my father to go from basically normal to forgetting everyone's name to being dead. (Fortunately, be never forgot who we were but he forgot our names often).
Betfair has matched $28 million on the 'Election Winner' market and $15m on the 'Democratic Nominee' market. The rest of the world reads your media and contains enough smart rich people to correct obvious mispricings, so it seems like a mistake to ignore these markets!
Right now sportsbet.com.au is offering 4.50 to 1 for Biden to win the Presidency. If you think the prediction markets are right about there being a 29% chance, you should jump on that.
They're also giving 7:1 for Harris to be the Dem nominee and 8.50:1 for Gavin Newsom. Honestly I'm tempted to put some money on at those prices (but I know that if I were to sign up for online betting I'd probably wind up losing in the long run).
Unless you're ~100% sure you don't have compulsive gambling tendencies lurking inside you, I'd say it's not worth it. Even if you have the brain and the temperament for it, you're unlikely to make significant money without putting a lot of time and effort in, and the downside risk is high.
You're confusing fractional odds with decimal odds in your writing (though I think you understand the decimal odds correctly). The Sportsbet figures that you quote are decimal odds, so you should omit the "to 1". Decimal odds of 4.50 are equivalent to fractional odds of 3.5 to 1.
You're correct that 4.50 is good value if the true probability is 29%, since 4.5 * 0.29 > 1.
The weighted averages across prediction sites of candidates' probabilities of winning conditional on being nominated are wrong. Biden's average can't be 31% when only one source gives a lower probability than that (29%), and that source has a very low weight, and there are sources with much higher probabilities and much higher weights.
Yeah, looks like Scott accidentally divided the weights by 2.5 to make them sum to 1, even though their sum is actually 2.2.
It looks like the same mistake affects all candidates, so it doesn't matter for their relative ranking. But the weighted probabilities are all too low.
It also seems like he is wrong about nailing Nate Silver's number for today? I looked at Nate Silver's chart and it seems that in all of the last few days Biden is being pinned at ~40%, and has never been as low as 31%? Am I missing something?
Right now Manifold has Biden 73% to be the nominee, 34% to win the election conditional on being the nominee, and 29% to win the election (unconditionally). What am I missing?
"the Republicans would say 'ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!' And then he would always do fine.”
"Fine" is doing a lot of work here. In 2020, Biden's decline from the 2012 debate with Paul Ryan was notable. Due to COVID he was able to get away with running the most stage-managed campaign in history. And the measures designed to hide his decrepitude - limited interviews, pre-screened press conference questions, calling a lid before lunch - began immediately upon taking office. There was still a lot of weird behavior that couldn't be blamed on an alleged stutter that no one has actually heard.
Republicans did overreach, though, setting the bar very low. I suspect this was because while they knew what was happening, they couldn't prove it; there was nothing they could do about the protective measures, so they just shouted "he's senile" in the hope that everyone would see three obvious decline.
Yeah the big tipoff that he was actually in decline was the way they have been handling him the last 18 months or so. Don't listen to screaming on Fox News, think about the actual concrete facts you hear. There was more than enough smoke to know there was a fire.
I remember about a year ago thinking Biden was probably senile, at like a 55%. It was the superbowl interview cancellation that made me go to 90% senile. It was such an easy opportunity, and the only reason I could think that someone would refuse it is if he had good days and bad days.
I watched the 2020 debates. It was hard for me to compare it to the 2012 debates because debating Donald Trump is such a different experience from debating Paul Ryan.
I grant that the opponents were different, but I still think there were clear instances of "senior moments" during the 2020 cycle, like when Biden confused Cory Booker for Barack Obama. Not as bad as he's gotten since then, clearly, but still things that couldn't easily be brushed off as the kind of verbal slip up that everyone makes.
Yeah, people have been saying "Biden was fine in 2020" but it was a very common thing to observe in 2020 that he had already declined considerably. Certainly he didn't seem mentally incompetent at the time, but starting to get fuzzy around the edges. If you went back to 2020 me and showed a clip of this 2024 debate, I probably would've thought, "yeah, that's about what I would expect Biden to be like in four years or so." I would have been very perplexed at why the Democrats would have made him the nominee though...
There's an odd lack of memory in contemporary politics. Biden used to be really sharp as old footage of him shows. He was clearly in decline four years ago by his own standards.
The stutter is something that has been a part of his political biography for decades, and it’s said to be part of what led to the decisions that caused is 1988 presidential campaign to flame out. I haven’t actually watched that footage though.
Yes, I've heard many of his defenders say that he has a stutter. And then those defenders pin every mistake he makes on the stutter and try to shame people who notice the mistakes for being mean to someone with a speech impediment. (Search "Biden debate stutter" for examples). But I've never actually seen him rapidly repeat the first syllable of a word. What I have seen him do is get confused and say things like ”we finally beat Medicare." It has become a running gag in right-wing spaces to say ”It's just a stutter" when Biden does something obviously unrelated, like falling down or not being able to find his way off stage.
I understood that his 1988 campaign was derailed by credible plagiarism allegations.
And weren't his "gaffes" a big talking point for a while? Where he'd just mess something big up, and move right along. It seemed like something I do, where the wrong words just pop out of my mouth for no apparent reason.
They've been a big issue throughout his career. Though I think they've normally been in the "no filter" side of things than the "stutter" side. It's not that he said something when he meant something else - it's that he said something he wasn't supposed to say out loud.
One of his most famous ones was during the 2012 presidential campaign, when he came out and said that of course gay people should be allowed to be married, at a time when most politicians were still keeping quiet about their view on the topic officially. In response to his "gaffe", the Obama campaign finally had to come out in support as well, which seems to have helped tip the issue.
Yeah, to the point that at the 2011 Correspondents' Dinner while he was Vice President the Obama administration made a parody video of The King's Speech based on Biden's frequent verbal mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508aCh2eVOI .
(Including a line where Biden says "And I'm not that old! ... actually, I am", which I guess has not aged well, thirteen years later)
A 1988 candidate winning in 2020 and trying again for 2024, with his opponent barely any younger, really drives home the gerontocracy the USA is developing. Not even late-stage USSR was this bad, their leaders died in office in their 70s.
I thought they were crazy to do a debate given his likely good day / bad day status. Too risky.
My theory is this debate challenge was a bluff thinking Trump would put in conditions that they could then refuse. Trump was wise to accept unconditionally.
"Significantly better than expected" would have been more accurate. People were expecting (and in some cases hoping for) him to drool or forget where he was or something, and he would come out and be stammery but lucid, and he would make a few gaffes but he's always been famous for those, and the bar would be cleared.
The last State of the Union speech was a good example. He's reading off a Teleprompter, but the peanut gallery heckling that has come to characterize the SOTU in recent years gives it a bit of the unscripted character of an interview or a debate. He did better than expected, engaged in back-and-forth with the hecklers, and again the bar--very low at the time, because some very embarrassing videos had recently been circulating--was cleared.
And then, it seems to me, we all decided that they must have found the magic drug after all and we raised the bar of expectation some. And then came the actual debate. Ninety minutes in a purely adversarial situation, unscripted. Whoops.
The linked prediction markets presumably integrate every possible scenario where Harris or Newsom gets the nomination, between Biden immediately giving it to them with no fuss whatsoever to incredibly messy open convention cage match.
Presumably a peaceful, coordinated, and immediately universally accepted handover would push towards the upper bounds of the potential transitions in the prediction markets, which implies the odds would actually be higher than shown if Biden firmly steps down now.
A follow-up on the everyone-is-rational-but-the-collective-outcome-is-irrational way of thinking: If I were Newsom or any of the other would-be contenders (apart from vice president Harris), I would be very reluctant to put myself forward in the present situation. It is only four months to go so I have limited time to build up national name recognition; I am bound to alienate some Democratic voters plus other would-be contenders if I try; I would also have to somehow get hold of the campaign funds already accumulated by Biden/Harris since there is limited time to build up my own funds; and if I should lose I will in all probabilities have lost my chance to try for the presidency in 2028.
Much more rational, then, to sit still in the boat.
Trump isn't gonna stop running just because he's term limited. Once he's in, he will keep running until he dies. Even if the brakes are put on him, he'll just have Eric run in his place, Junior having died of alcohol poisoning in 2027.
This is a reasonably popular theory as to what's happening in DC. Obama already took the highly unusual step of never leaving DC since losing office, and the Biden White House is riddled with Obamanauts. At the very least, unlike many, it's a plausible conspiracy.
In a saner world, we'd hold a convention where the people nominate Jake Sullivan, who has years of experience with multiple US Presidents, bears no criticism of senility at the age of 47, and is extremely intelligent and diplomatic. That this is an impossibility for a position with such broad reaching consequences to everyone in the world is a sad indictment of the state of our elections.
"He was reported to be the only senior staffer who repeatedly suggested that Clinton should spend more time in Midwestern swing states during the election campaign."
Really interesting point! I know people hate the *idea* of career government officials and the deep state, but they might well like the individual if they saw him.
People like Sullivan do not run for office for the same reason that people like Robert Moses didn't. They don't want them or their policies subject to electoral scrutiny.
>I think the proper Rationalist response is - okay, we screwed this one up.
Eh, I think your "we" isn't really capturing all of us. Not all Rats want the Democrats to win, and not all Rats were saying Biden was fine (I've been saying both Biden and Trump are way too old for a while; you can maybe say I was wrong about Trump, but I certainly didn't make your error).
I think what Scott is trying to say here is "What I should say in this situation if I reasoned as a model Rationalist, while retaining my own values* rather than *what all rationalists are morally obliged to conclude in this situation*. "We" here must refer to Democrats, not to Rationalists.
At least that's the interpretation that makes the most sense to me, given all the context?
I get the impression that Rationalists lean left, but it isn't as clear-cut as other issues, such as abortion. Am I wrong? Are Rationalists, by-and-large, liberals?
The rationalists who follow Scott Alexander tend to be; IIRC, where his surveys turn up Republicans, they tend to basically be liberals who think the Republicans do a slightly better job of pushing liberal values (libertarians, broadly).
This is likely greatly overshadowed by his in-person social bubbles, given where he lives. Any rationalists living in California are, I suspect, negligibly likely to be Republican.
If this comments section is anything to go by, there is a very significant alt-right / "anti-woke" / vaguely MRA or MGTOW contingent in the rationalist world. Significant enough to make Scott's constant insistence that Rats lean liberal or even "left" genuinely baffling to me. Maybe the (silent?) majority are liberals, but it still wouldn't be an overwhelming one, I don't think.
I think Scott tends to associate more with the EA wing of the broader rationalist diaspora, and I'm pretty sure they tend to lean left (if a multi-dimensional space needed to be chopped in two), and I'd bet he feels comfortably at home with them.
I think the comment section here is kind of its own thing, and not directly representative of Scott's views, nor representative of what I'd view as the "core" of the rationalists on LW.
"Every early-stage dementia patient (and their family and friends) always tells themselves (and everyone else) that they’re fine. It’s an easy thing to think, there’s never a clear bright-line where things obviously stop being fine..."
Is there some sort of useful cognitive test that those of us who've reached Medicare age can take, ideally on a weekly or monthly basis, so we can track the decline of our mental powers? I'd like to be able to plot my score on such a test versus time, so that if dementia's in the offing, I can see the graph sloping downward toward the red zone while I'm still capable of appreciating its significance, and can make a competent decision that it's time to put my affairs in the hands of younger family members.
I'm sure that there're a million cognitive-powers tests online, but are any of them actually useful? I suspect that most of them are about as valid as the ones that tell you which Pokémon you are...
I think I read somewhere that the timed "click the mouse as fast as you can when a spot of light appears on the screen" is a good test of dementia, especially when comparing results over time. Also, it would obviously be easy to implement as a web app. But maybe there's also something to be said for that other test you mention, if your Pokémon character suddenly and ominously changes! :-P
You'd sure think so! Unsteady nerves, arthritis, reduced reaction times and general slowness often accompany old age in the absence of the kind of dementia we're talking about here, don't they?
Maybe so. Perhaps there was more of a cognitive aspect to it, such as numbers popping up on the screen which the testee had to match or add within a certain time.
I mean you can just be in touch with your own mind?
I am noticeably slower at things, and I am only 43. Just part of getting old, your brain doesn't work like when you were 16. Just like the rest of your body. Are people that out of touch with their mental states and performance?
I am wiser and more experienced now, but the "raw horsepower" is way down.
My experience is that people with Alzheimer's will continue saying things like "I am noticeably slower than I used to be" and "my brain just doesn't work as good as it used to." But "I have dementia" is a bridge too far. Or maybe it isn't, and people with dementia do realize it sometimes, but soon forget their epiphany.
It is extremely hard to be in touch with your state over long periods of time. If there is some specific past event where you lifted an object, and now you can’t lift that object, that is noticeable. But it’s very hard to tell whether I’m actually stronger or weaker than I was a few years ago if I’m not explicitly tracking the weights I’m lifting.
It's really hard to compare! There are specific mathematical results whose proof I was more aware of 20 years ago than I am now, but I still do plenty of mathematical proofs, and have clearly improved some of my skills while others have withered, in a way that is hard to compare. I am more aware of the ways in which caffeine and lack of sleep can both interfere with my mental acuity, but it's also hard to tell how much that was just younger me being oblivious. It's really hard to come up with benchmarking tests, especially when many of them are things you do every day, so your memories of how well you used to do them are overwritten by your memories of how you were doing them over the past 12 months.
IDK I have been accused of having a photographic memory many times (though I don’t), but I do have a really excellent memory in other ways. Maybe I just remember my mental states particularly well?
No, being in touch with our own mind doesn't work. Your ability to judge how well your mind is working declines along with other mental abilities, and motivated reasoning has more sway over your self assessment.
Are you faster or slower than you were 15 years ago? You don't have your 15 year ago self on hand to race. And yet I suspect most of us know the answer.
Yes, Martin, in general I and other normal people can make reasonably accurate judgments about changes in our abilities, and about what we are able to do adequately in the present era and what we are not.
However, there are various conditions in which people are not able to judge their mental functioning accurately, but believe that they are. I'm a psychologist and used to work in a mental hospital, and I have seen many psychotic people who had no insight at all into their condition. They believed they were functioning normally. For instance I had a patient who was an MD who had several delusions. On subjects other than his delusions, he was entirely reasonable. One of his delusions was that his teeth were being reabsorbed by his body. I was curious how he reconciled his conviction that that was happening with his still-intact ability to think like a doctor, so I asked him what he thought the physiological process was that led to reaborption of teeth. "I don't know! " he exclaimed. "It's the weirdest thing. I did't even know that was possible." But he had no doubt his teeth were being reabsorbed.
So that doctor was in the class of people who still retained many of his mental abilities, but was unable to take into account evidence that was very persuasive to everybody but him that he was having major mental glitches. There are also people who have had a dramatic decline in their mental abilities, yet continue to believe that their mind is working as well as ever. I have had the misfortune to observe 3 quite smart and insightful people descend into dementia, while never having a clue that their mind was not working right. They remembered the evidence that convinced the rest of us that something was wrong. They remembered getting lost many times driving to a nearby familiar location. They realized they were able to read the same mystery over and over as though it was new,, that they had forgotten their niece's name, that they now left stove burners on almost every time they used them . But when people pointed these things out to them and urged them to, for instance, stop driving, they were certain these people were making a mountain out of a molehill , and laughed it off.
In short, Martin: We each believe we are good judges of the current state of our mental functioning. However, that belief on our part isn't evidence we are not suffering from psychosis or dementia.
>I mean you can just be in touch with your own mind?
I mean there's this thing called "Alzheimer's Disease" that, among other things, is rather famous for making it difficult to be in touch with one's own mind, such that people with the disease almost universally are unaware that they have it?
No and I'd be shocked if it were. But the original commenter is pretty obviously concerned about dementia of the sort that is above and beyond, and of a different nature than, normal age-related lack of sharpness. These kinds of dementia *very, very* often come with the tragic side effect of the person with the dementia not perceiving them.
Peasy's exactly right. I know that my brain isn't what it once was—ten years ago, I was doing intensive research and turning it into excellent Wikipedia articles, a thing that I don't think I could do today. I also occasionally forget a word or a name that I should know quite well, and it only comes to me later.
The sort of cognitive impairment I'm worried about is quite a different animal. I've watched it progress in my aunt, to the point where she couldn't remember something that'd been said five minutes before, even when it had a strong emotional content for her (like the death of her brother). I'm seeing it beginning in my mother: when we go to refill her weekly pill-organizer, we find that about half of the days' compartments are still full; and when we point this out to her, she says that she must've taken the pills out of the drugstore vials that day. That kind of thing is far beyond "There was a time when I could've solved this Putnam problem, but now I can't seem to" or "Dammit, I know the capital of Burkina Faso; why can't I come up with the name?"
And once that sort of memory issue arises, it becomes difficult or impossible for the sufferer to self-diagnose: I can't remember all the times I've forgotten something... It's that kind of cognitive impairment whose precursors and early stages I want to be able to track, so that I can act on them before my failing memory makes me incapable of making competent decisions.
However, it seems like they would be hard to administer to yourself because of the nature of the items. Also, once you know the items on them you can prepare for some of them (for instance one item is knowing the present date.).
There's probably something you can self-administer. But you should search for it on google scholar, because you want a test that's been evaluated for validity and reliability. Actually, I just did that, and found this 2021 review: Current State of Self-Administered Brief Computerized Cognitive Assessments for Detection of Cognitive Disorders in Older Adults: A Systematic Review. The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease,
Reviews
Published: 24 March 2021
Volume 8, pages 267–276, (2021)
You can download it as a pdf.
From their summary. "There was substantial variability in characteristics of validation samples and reliability and validity estimates. Only 2 measures evaluated feasibility and usability in the intended clinical settings. " It may not be a problem that they found a lot of variability among the 10 studies in reliability and validity, if there is one they identified as trustworthy.
It is taught in medical school that "if you're worried you might have Alzheimer's disease, you don't have Alzheimer's disease." One of the faculties that is lost early on in dementia sufferers is the capacity for self awareness.
So you would have to pre-commit to doing a cognitive test regularly and seeking medical attention if you noticed a decline in your test scores, while being alert to the possibility of post hoc rationalisation ("this test is getting weird, whoever is responsible for it must be making it harder over time, I'm fine")
Alternately you could do what most people do and accept that people who love you and see you regularly (family, close friends) will probably be the first people to notice, and listen to them if they have concerns.
Perhaps more pertinent is what you can do to ward off dementia -
- physical activity (self explanatory)
- cognitive activity (reading, crosswords/sudoku, learning new things, travelling)
- social activity (spending time with friends/family/grandkids)
There's a huge difference between lefty podcasters and Twitter users saying you should drop out and having Barack H. Obama in the country call you on the phone and beg you to drop out. The former was ordinary background noise. The latter was an extraordinary exercise of influence by a former president and current Democratic party elite.
I don’t understand prediction markets. Read the primer (which I still didn’t fully understand). Which is why I’m not involved in them.
I don’t fully understand the stock market in nitty gritty detail either. The description of the parallels is helpful. But I am in the market, in ETFs cuz imo active management adds nothing. So in essence I am riding general consensus opinion in the same way a prediction market is supposed to play out (if I understand it poorly but vaguely correctly) (and I suppose I don’t “trust experts” or active management since historically and over time they don’t outperform).
But as mentioned briefly, the stock market generally over long periods WILL go up. What is the prediction market equivalent?
Also, the stock market does not seek to answer a binary question…eg. Will Biden quit the race; who will win in November; etc etc. The stock market is the general arbitraged consensus of “value” (future value, i suppose) in a way that prediction markets aren’t and can’t be. But a prediction market will have a definite resolution. Either Biden 100% quits or he 0% quits. So generally, how well do these markets actually perform against objective reality, over time and with multiple scenarios?
Plus, if I’m a buy and hold long timeline market type, I don’t worry so much about short term binary events. But in an election type event, short term is the whole point . And granted that presumably the prediction market will better approximate the final outcome on Nov 4 than it does today, but how often have these markets been correct 4 months out?
Prediction markets can only have an analogue to the upward trajectory of the stock market if they are subsidized. Which is what Robin Hanson recommends to discover valuable information.
>Prediction markets can only have an analogue to the upward trajectory of the stock market if they are subsidized.
Would prediction markets with the buy/sell prices denominated in S&P500 indices instead of dollars work? ( or some other highly diversified stock market index )
I've been explaining to my hardcore Trump family for months that if there was a magic drug that turned off Alzheiemer's for a couple hours, they wouldn't keep it a secret.
I guess I didn't consider to what extent they could schedule things around his good and bad days. Or maybe he's just spent his entire adult life forcefully reading speeches off a teleprompter and now it's second nature.
If it's relatively early onset, then simply being "peppy" through stimulants can accomplish some of the stage appearance necessary for a candidate. It wasn't just a lack of focus and incoherence that got people concerned from the debate; it was that Biden looked completely out of gas, practically catatonic, just plain old. The lack of mental acuity was part too, of course, but if he'd been shouting his way through he might have looked more alive to the audience even if he made just as many flubs and word salads.
Ive been somewhat in the 'hes drugged up' camp, but I admit, I have no idea what drugs would even help. What would the effects of like Adderal be on someone who was declining into demtia be? Would it give him some focus like it does for everyone else?
One of the things the 'Biden is demented' camp higlights quite a bit is that Biden sometimes looks weirdly wide eyed and unblinking. What could be the cause of that?
During Biden's State of the Union address I was pleasantly surprised at how animated he looked. ( although I have seen comments about Alzheimer's on meth... ). The contrast to the debate was breathtaking. Now, I've only seen these two data points. But, if I _were_ to extrapolate from them, I'd expect his response to, say, Putin detonating a tactical nuke in Ukraine in 2025 to be something like "What's a kiloton?"
I've no basis for a medical opinion, but I would guess that almost any stimulants would make someone more animated, almost by definition. If he'd been loud or manic and struggling with coherence, I think that might nevertheless have played slightly better on TV than being listless and incoherent; at least it would indicate energy.
That would be a good idea anyway, just so they can undermine the future winner slightly by letting it come out, and/or possibly get acausally-negotiated reciprocation from the future winner.
> A possible objection to these results: conditional probabilities don’t exactly reflect the intuitive concept of decision-making. That is, we’re not asking “We want to know whether or not to keep Biden, so what are the chances that he’ll win if we do?”, we’re asking the market for the chance that he’ll win, in the set of worlds where people decide to keep him for other reasons. We should expect this to overestimate his performance.
Wouldn't this apply in the opposite direction as well? The set of worlds is also limited to where the Democrats fail to replace him, and many aspects of those worlds are relatively unfavourable for Democrats.
Biden getting nominated is more likely when:
* The party is dysfunctional, and unable to make decisions.
* The party predicts very messy resistance from Biden himself, as Biden becomes less capable of reasonably/fairly evaluating the situation, or he expects that the proposed replacement would lose. The party concludes that they have little chance of winning whether they replace Biden or not, but decide the likely mess and infighting wouldn't be worth it, especially taking into account the broken legacy and fracturing base in the expected aftermath.
* There is no available replacement who would be expected to win.
** The otherwise possible replacements have become unpopular for whatever reasons, which might imply difficult times for Democrats in general. The party bets on incumbency advantage, because they don't have anything else to work with.
** The most popular potential replacement(s) are not willing to run, perhaps because they believe that they will likely lose, because of the sudden unpopularity of the Democratic party.
I am unsure whether these outweigh the overall "Biden was nominated because his mental health was good" factor.
This is basically correct. The conditional probabilities can be a helpful guide (if the markets are thick enough and the money is real etc) but you can't just handwave away the selection into specific states of the world.
As a general principal, the less likely X is to happen, then p(a|X) will be over-sampling from states of the world where particularly unlikely/unrepresentative stuff had to happen, and you can't just say those are a good guide to p(a|X-via-magic-wand). In the context of elections, a longshot candidate will tend to have good p(win|nominee) because something wild probably has to happen for them to become the nominee, and that will tend to be "they suddenly became popular for some external reason". But if you just force them to be the nominee by fiat, you don't get that beneficial sampling.
I've never worked for the DNC and only know a little about their internal culture. But as you said, it's a mistake to conflate the DNC with the will of the "Elites". The chairman of the DNC may have gone to Yale, but the vice-chairman went to University of Miami Dade.
The DNC leadership are just professional campaigners who are good at their job (which is to raise money for their candidates.) The Elites are the wealthy people who donate millions of dollars to Biden's campaign, from Seth MacFarlane to Reid Hoffman. The DNC is nothing more than the people in charge of holding the bag and asking the millionaires (and the small-sum donors) for money please. They have other jobs too but those are mostly boring legal stuff.
In other words, the "DNC" is just a handful of bureaucrats who were told by their boss, Joe Biden, that he's not stepping down and they should calm down the anxious donors (which they haven't been doing a good job at either, probably for regular incompetence reasons.) There's no shadow council of powerful people who convene in the dead of night to coordinate strategy and pressure Biden to bow out (or pull his puppet strings like the nefarious Illuminati some imagine them to be.) They're just some fundraising geeks, the largest of the many PACs raising money for Joe Biden for President, having one of the most stressful weeks of their careers.
One of many reasons why Parliamentary systems are better. You actually have a mechanism to cold bloodedly knife the leader when he becomes a liability.
Yeah, and that's not surprising. Knifing your leader generally means things are not going well!
The 2013 Australian election was the canonical example of this. Labor lost in a landslide after Rudd replaced Gillard, but polling was clear that he improved the party's standing and saved it from an even bigger landslide. "Saving the furniture" was the phrase that was used at the time - everyone knew the situation was too far gone for Rudd to actually win.
Only in theory or in places with robust political ecosystems like the UK. Parliamentary systems in places with a weak political culture and a 'strong leader ' end up in the same situation of not being able to do anything about the leader. Exhibit A - India
Certainly the BJP lost some skin. That doesn't imply that Modi is a liability though.
The question is not "Is the party currently popular?", it's "Would the party be more popular if it dispensed with it's leader?" As I mentioned elsewhere, Rudd led the ALP to a crushing defeat in 2013, but he was still the best choice they could make in that circumstance.
I'm not intimately familiar with Indian politics, so maybe there's relevant aspects to the situation there that I'm missing. But my impression is that the BJP is largely seen as an extension of Modi and the main reason to vote for them is because you want him in charge. Even if that's a less compelling sales pitch than it has been in the past, the prospects of a BJP without Modi could well be worse.
For this election and the last, the party was not running for election, Modi was. This is another example of how the apparent form of the system matters a lot less than the underlying function. It's nominally a parliamentary system, but can(and does) switch to a presidential one depending on the cast of actors. The system being parliamentary in name is no protection from anything.
>In other words, the "DNC" is just a handful of bureaucrats who were told by their boss, Joe Biden, that he's not stepping down and they should calm down the anxious donors (which they haven't been doing a good job at either, probably for regular incompetence reasons.)
Or for regular "there's no possible way to calm people down when they've discovered that the candidate they donated millions to has an obviously disqualifying mental competence problem on top of his historically low approval rating" reasons?
I'm close to someone with whom I have spoken at length about Biden's condition who is a geriatric specialist, and also focused on dementia for a number of years. While they also got very strong "vibes" of dementia from Biden even some years back, they have consistently said that it would be basically impossible to diagnose from watching him alone. By vibes I mean that a number of behaviors and mishaps do align with dementia, they are not proof of it, at least iiuc. They've said consistently that they would need a one-on-one conversation to actually determine anything about that.
After the debate, they've said that most of the phenomenon Biden exhibits that make people think he's senile/demented could actually be explained by something else, which as a casual guess on their part (not to be taken as an actual diagnosis, in other words) seems to be the best fit: Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
From the NIH:
PSP affects a person’s movements, and can lead to loss of balance, difficulty walking or swallowing, slurred speech, problems with eye movements. PSP can also affect a person’s mood, behavior, and thinking. The most frequent first symptom of PSP is a loss of balance while walking which can lead to abrupt and unexplained falls. People with PSP may also have stiffness and slow movement.
As the disease progresses, most people develop eye problems. Eye and vision symptoms may include:
Slow eye movements
Trouble looking up or down
Trouble controlling eyelids, involuntary closing of the eyes, decreased blinking, or difficulty opening the eyes
Tendency to move the head rather than just the eyes to look in different directions
People with PSP and their loved ones may notice changes in mood or behavior. These may include:
Depression
Lack of motivation
Changes in judgment, insight, and problem solving
Difficulty finding words
Forgetfulness
Loss of interest in activities the person used to enjoy
Increased irritability
Sudden laughing, crying, or angry outbursts for no apparent reason
Personality changes
Slowed, slurred, or monotone speech
Difficulty swallowing
Mask-like facial expressions
Sleep problems
I mean this primarily to say that Biden might not actually be demented. This might be academic - your point is primarily that it would seem more obvious after the debate that Biden's faculties are damaged and whether it's dementia or PSP is moot, but it does make me wonder if the pharma cocktail theory has a bit more value, since we wouldn't be dealing with dementia anymore. Assuming those close to him are aware of his condition (and that a PSP diagnosis is correct), it could be that there are enough medications, therapies, and other treatments that have given them the impression that they can keep Biden well enough.
PSP is similar to Alzheimer's dementia in that they are both tauopathies that progress to cognitive decline in the long term. PSP has more features of movement disorder (like Parkinson's disease), and difficulty with eye movements, especially inability to look up, is considered a pathognomonic feature.
It really doesn't matter which one the underlying diagnosis is, it matters the degree of functional impairment. There are no known drugs that can temporarily alleviate the cognitive symptoms of PSP, either.
Also your friend is correct that none of us can or should try and diagnose public figures without having a medical consultation with them.
How quickly does PSP (or other similar ailments) trypically progress?
I am wondering two things:
- Perhaps Biden really was basically functional and relatively lucid until recently, and the debate took his advisers by surprise simply because he had never or rarely actually been that bad before?
- Could there be noticeable further decline by election day? By the convention?
Not that fast. Usually over years. Lewy body dementia is the one where there can be fluctuations day to day in cognitive capacity - someone can be relatively lucid one day and severely impaired the next
BS of the highest order. Voters aren't providing or recommending treatment. Voters with elderly parents, relatives and friends know what progressive mental decline looks like and are absolutely free to "diagnose" what Biden's problem is here.
What the debate did is shift the burden of proof onto Biden's team that he is not experiencing progressive mental decline. Good luck.
You may have misinterpreted my comment. I’m in no way arguing that Biden is not impaired, I’m arguing against unfounded speculation as to whether it’s PSP or Alzheimer’s or Lewy Body (and indeed against the notion that it should matter - what matters is the degree of impairment, not the diagnosis)
Please be mindful of ACX's comment policy: "The great Sufi poet, Rumi, believed that before we speak our words should pass through three gates. 'Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?'". ACX is generous and requires two out of three for any given comment.
Turtle wasn't trying to say you can't form a hypothesis of Biden's condition and vote based on that. I think he has some mental decline, personally, and is unfit for the office or will soon be.
Turtle is saying you can't *diagnose*, formally, medically, with professional weight, without a personal meeting.
Please be careful not to become hostile on the basis of assumptions.
> none of us can or should try and diagnose public figures without having a medical consultation with them
I agree. Will Biden be making his appointment with me today, or should we wait until tomorrow when it's more convenient for him?
If he doesn't make an appointment with me, but people still want my opinion, precisely why should I not make my guess based on the available data?
I get why doctors don't do it, because if they're wrong, boy, that's gonna bode poorly for their careers. But I don't get why people say they shouldn't do it (unless that's the reason they're going to cite).
I would think of PSP as a kind of dementia rather than as an alternative to it.
I don't know much about it or its treatment. Wikipedia says rivastigmine might sort of work. But I don't expect it to be magic, if it was magic they'd have used it at the debates, and I also think "Biden is on rivastigmine" would be the sort of explosive fact that would have come out by now.
His obviously declining state has been apparent for years, and yet it only "came out" a few days ago, and then, not because somebody leaked that information, but because his debate performance was so terrible it couldn't be denied anymore.
Likely a misunderstanding on my part then - I thought it was more about motor than cognitive, but likely conjured that based on misinterpreting something the aforementioned geriatric expert said.
Dementia is more than a thousand fold more common at Biden's age, so we should resist the diagnosis of PSP until evidence is fairly strong in favor of it over dementia.
Wow, great post. It really is inevitable for every great empire to rot and burn away. And then the survivors will try to build something better from the ashes, only to find that the same conditions will always end up producing the same results.
That's not necessarily true. Sometimes the area a day's drive around Paris produces François Hollande's uninspiring socialist-lite republic. Sometimes it produces the Napoleonic Wars.
Your post seems contradictory, if you’re fine with a generic democrat who is all style and substance (like Gavin Newsom) to be the president, why not Biden? Even if he is senile. In both cases , it’s likely the aides will be running everything anyway. We’ve done fine for quite a while with Biden, we’ll probably continue to do well under him
Not everyone. I was expecting much worse from a Trump presidency than we got in 2016, including running up the deficit so we could then go bankrupt. That, of course, didn't happen.
Summarizing what I saw as the major bad points of both presidencies:
Trump: blindly following the law to separate immigrant parents from their children, unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear treaty, giving money away during COVID.
Biden: withdrawing unconditionally from Afghanistan by a set date, forgiving student loan debt, prioritizing appointing "diverse" judges instead of rating based off of ability, giving money away during COVID.
These points aren't exhaustive, of course. I believe they are objective, though others may disagree on the diverse judges one (but my essential point there is that race ought to be irrelevant if one isn't racist).
EDIT: I want to add another thing I thought Trump did wrong: firing Janet Yellen simply because of political affiliation; I thought she was doing a fine job, better than Powell did. It is possible Yellen might have started raising interest rates sooner, and we would have had less inflation. So I basically call the current inflation we're fighting Trump's fault.
Note that Trump is the one who set the Afghanistan date, not Biden! And judges, like police officers and teachers, are definitely a position where we want to give people explicit role models and community members in the position, in order for the system to function well in a diverse society. It’s really hard to see how caring about this is a problem comparable to the Iran fiasco (which had very important repercussions for the Ukraine war), unless you can point to some actual judges who have done bad work.
Trump set the date as May 1st, 2021. Biden didn't keep that date, for probably good reasons. The Taliban started really winning against Afghanistan in July, yet Biden chose to withdraw the troops even sooner, moving from 9/11 to 8/31. Maybe he was putting America First, but it seems a poor choice for long-term national security.
Did he appoint anyone not competent? He appointed people that didn't get the highest possible mark. But that doesn't mean they're not competent, just that some other people have higher paper qualifications.
It would be nice if people in a diverse society were able to ignore their diversity and trust people based on paper commitments. But I think that's just to say, it would be nice if society weren't diverse - we don't think of the distribution of second letters of last names as a type of "diversity", even though we are very "diverse" on that mark, precisely because it's not a type of "diversity" we see as relevant. You are saying it would be good if we didn't see each other as diverse. Which is true. But since we do, it's important to ensure that people see members of their community in positions of authority (hence why it was very important when Irish-Americans and Black Americans first started getting representation on police forces, and why it would be valuable to have male teachers in elementary schools).
We're talking about the choice between candidates being whether their presence will inspire others from their community. The effect is speculative, especially the overall effect of undermining confidence in and the prestige in these positions, but utilitarian reasoning could justify this. Meanwhile there's an opposed but related idea of reparative or retributive justice which makes groups of people to be natural kinds that can owe debts to one another, usually debts of blood over many generations. This older idea probably colors our feelings when thinking about opposed but related ideas like the one we're talking about now.
Developing strong taboos against discrimination seems like an appealing cultural device to curb and choke out the older ideas. But it requires blunt consistency, and so necessarily foregoes some advantages. There are many social advantages of incest leading it to be done in practice, but the widespread taboo emerged for a reason. Humanity may currently be in a phase of developing a widespread incest-like aversion to discrimination. If we're in such a transition, then consistency is even more important, since the aversion to discrimination is not yet general.
I think it's plausible that Trump 2.0 will be substantially worse, from the status quo-preserving perspective. He knows by now that he won't get any cooperation beyond passing the occasional tax break from the establishment/deep state, and may just find the right people to uproot large swathes of it on his behalf.
Low confidence, but in recent discussion a lot of people have talked about how the president himself has a lot of inevitable decision power he can't delegate to his aides, like negotiations.
Maybe if Biden wins they'll come up with some way to have the aides do things they normally wouldn't, but at that point I would expect him to resign or get Article 25ed.
I’ll assume your question is going toward your average centrist out there. I think there’s clear pros and cons to both sides in terms of civil rights from the right, and high taxes and spending and war from the left. If both candidates were identical, I’d strongly consider voting right. However, with the current slate, Trump is a lot more likely to do irreparable harm than strong growth. We all want a government that runs smoothly, like clockwork, efficiently. I both believe that most of trump’s staff and cabinet were extremely dissatisfied, and believe with 20% probability that there will be some kind of major civil unrest with a second trump term.
And, finally, for me specifically, I do value civil rights/abortion at a level slightly higher than economic growth. I see things like access to abortion and birth control (and/or the nominations to Supreme Court) as an investment into long term future results. I understand arguments over abortion bad, but conservatives use restricting birth control in the same breath, and I would think the proponents of preventing abortion should be the party of making easy birth control as accessible as possible.
I do think some control of left-ideals are important though. Free college for all seems irresponsible.
I'm against abortion in that I'm against murder, especially against the helpless. I am NOT against birth control, and except for religious arguments, which need not be based in reason, cannot understand opposition to availability of contraception, though I'm against public funding of it like I would be against public subsidies of, say, fruit juices.
I definitely agree that free college for all is bad. Not everyone SHOULD go to college; it's specifically for those more studiously-inclined. Others can go to trade schools: plumbers, electricians, software developers, masons...lots of things don't need a college education. The world is full of all kinds of people.
These things ought to somehow be self-funding. Otherwise, where would the money come from?
I see no way to equitably subsidize birth control.
Need-based college funding might be possible, by some kind of student loan at base Fed interest rate, where payments start 10 years after the loan is first given? If someone doesn't get value out of their education, then the loan will be hanging over their heads for a long, long time.
Self funding is just an equation we do after the fact. Except for things taxed separately, it all gets combined and then redistributed. People generally say things like college loans are a net positive on taxes over time. I’m just suggesting birth control would also be that way.
Then you're artificially reducing the price of birth control, thus increasing the demand for it, and paying for it from money gained from people not receiving the benefit. You may say it benefits society preventing unwanted births, but I think it is the responsibility of adults who chose to perform adult activities to be adult about it, and take responsibility for their own actions, or else not to do those actions.
Why exactly should Trump have a significant edge on the economy? His was nothing more or less than a continuation of Obama's, and Biden's, whatever its flaws, compares very favorably to the rest of the world
I think it’s a tricky comparison to distill. I’m not convinced that it was Obama policy that led to low interest rates and economic growth during trump administration, but I’m also not convinced it was trumps red tape cutting. But I’d give the slight edge to trump’s removal of red tape and pro-business rhetoric vs a neutral/slightly against rhetoric from the left.
stock market, GDP, jobs--if there's a chart of economic well-being that doesn't show a steady line from 2010 to the start of the pandemic, I haven't seen it
although, to be fair, that does also disprove a LOT of dire predictions made on Nov 9, 2016
trump was still less harmful even if he was clearly part of the problem to people who understand supply and demand and that money is still a resource
there isnt a credible option for someone whos will turn off the money printers and start killing the ponzi scheme in american politics and probaly wont be until boomers start dying and we can go "you blood suckers who prevented homes from being built and made a 1 bedroom apperment 1 trillion dollars and bought into a ponzi scheme GET NOTHING" in 2030
Im not so sure, I think the best possible outcome on the table is ubi hyper inflation until nation states literally die. The printers will brrrrrr, I think trump signing checks so it went to the lower classes was the best development since the downward spiral started.
Given free money, it should go to lots of people in "small" amounts, not be part of a money launder scheme that involved killing brown children in the middle east, or inflate the housing market even more or some other nonsense.
> I understand arguments over abortion bad, but conservatives use restricting birth control in the same breath
Controlled opposition and religious extermists who were bombing clinics not that long ago, the most likely outcome is a state by state "safe legal rare" compromise with restrictions on late term abortions. Row v wade died from corona mandates making the compromise based on absolutist medical privacy clearly a lie.
>believe with 20% probability that there will be some kind of major civil unrest with a second trump term.
From who?
The problem with such a consideration is it means that terrorist blackmail has a considerable impact on your voting preferences. A good thing to be aware of, but a sign of a deeply sick culture.
but dont you know trump only supported civil unions 20 years ago? idk what Washington believed on lgbtq420bffjill issues but he was probably better(/s I know he supported sodomy laws,)
I don’t have particularly care for Trump, but he started approximately zero wars or special military operations. If you consider the knock on effects of Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the benefits, one could make an argument that he was a less damaging president than GW Bush.
Yes, you are right, GW Bush and his wars were very damaging.
What made DT damaging was his refusal to understand the benefits of international treaties, e.g. NATO or the Paris climate treaty (OK, if he believes against all evidence that the climate is *fine*), his botching of the pandemic response (the China travel ban was a good idea, but too late, and then he rambled about horse dewormer and the like https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RxDKW75ueIU instead of listening to the doctors), spreading discord in the population (dividing into those who love him almost religiously and those who, uh, don't; he could have prevented a lot of that unrest), oh did I mention his constant lying and inability to distinguish truth from "alternative facts"?
If narcissism is disqualifying, we're going to have to throw out a lot of presidents. Most of them, probably.
Rapist is an exaggeration; Trump was found guilty in a civil trial, which has a lower evidentiary burden of proof, and that still wasn't for rape but sexual abuse.
I don't believe E Jean Carroll, is the trouble. There are no witnesses, and the story is very shaky. Maybe it's true that in a department store in the middle of the day, there were no other customers around and no sales assistants, but every time I've gone into a clothing store I've been zeroed in on by the assistant within about five minutes with "Can I help you, madam?"
So it's really "he said/she said" and I don't think it's beyond reasonable doubt. But this was Trump, so the presumption of innocence went out the window.
Now, if you're saying "But why would E. Jean Carroll lie?"
Aging woman losing career opportunities needs to make money, sees way of getting her name back in the public eye, riding the wave of Orange Man Bad, and perhaps making some money off it (which, thanks to the civil trial, she did).
I've personally seen in my home town a *very* high profile case of allegations of sexual abuse and rape being run on lynch mob principles, where the conviction was pushed through on "of course the accused did it, they're One Of This Unpopular Group" and surprise surprise, turns out the 'victim' was lying due to being a mentally unstable fabulist and the 'witness' backing them up was lying due to a grudge against the accused.
Is Trump a swine around women? Yeah. But the infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" remark would, if made by the likes of Howard Stern, have been treated as bold taboo-breaking by the guy fighting the stuffed shirts of the fuddy-duddy FCC:
"Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued fines totaling $2.5 million to radio licensees for airing material it deemed indecent from The Howard Stern Show, the highest amount of any American radio show.
... Benchmark Communications, the licensee of show affiliate WVGO in Richmond, Virginia, was fined $10,000 in October 1996 for two broadcasts. The first involved the discussion of a sexual encounter between Stern and his wife from October 23, 1995, while the second concerned a segment from June 3, 1996 whereby the father of pornographic actress Jenna Jameson identified his daughter's vagina from a selection of photographs."
Getting your father to identify your vagina on air. How charming.
As a woman who has actually been raped, I agree strongly with you that I do not believe Carroll. I also have personal experience with mentally ill people coaching others to make false sex abuse allegations, delusional and yet simultaneously convenient, never against people they like.
I am getting pretty sick of the go-to discrediting approach against people with conservative positions like Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh, Roland Fryer, Trump, and on and on, being unfalsifiable accusations of sexual molestation.
I don't respect Bill Clinton for soliciting blow jobs from a starstruck young adult intern down the hall from his wife, but it is not pertinent to his ability to govern.
Let's drop the unfalsifiable attacks and rely on verifiable, pertinent information.
There are various legal distinctions of what amounts to rape. Groping someone's genitals could go either way I suppose.
I am very leery of giving credence to sexual abuse allegations made decades after the fact; this one occurred in 1996. Human memory isn't reliable enough to accurately testify about what happened over 25 years ago. Plus it was a civil rather than criminal trial. This means that Carroll was primarily seeking money, $5 million of it in fact. And also the evidentiary standard is preponderance of the evidence, meaning the jury only had to believe the chance of the assault occurring was more likely than not.
Why wait so long, and why not take Trump to a criminal trial if he is going around raping people? The circumstances aren't convincing enough for me to confidently think Trump is guilty, although that is certainly a possibility.
I would give a similar credence to Trump-Carroll as I would to Biden-Reade. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. Maybe something vaguely like it happened but it's been exaggerated, or maybe consent has been retrospectively withdrawn. Maybe it's completely confabulated by someone with a political axe to grind. Who the heck knows?
He's a liar and a sleazebag, but certainly not a Madoff. He listens to his lawyers. Of course, when the establishment decides that an example needs to be made, there are always crimes or "crimes" to be found, as Beria wisely remarked.
Don't forget, he's also a Nazi, a liar, a Christofascist, a regular fascist, a christian nationalist, and a zionist (also, he literally tried to coo the goverment! hello people!!!!
Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government (by attempting to force Mike Pence to throw out the electoral votes of 7 states, where 26,490,946 Americans voted, and sending a mob to the capitol to intimidate him into submission when he refused) and the judicial system is apparently completely incapable of actually punishing him for it, at least not in any reasonable amount of time.
I've read the emails where they planned it out (anybody can), and they've never denied the legitimacy of those emails, so I don't have any question on if they did it. It's also been over three years and we're just getting more dilly-dallying from SCOTUS, to at best kick it past the election and at worst render it impossible to prosecute, so I don't think how you could think this is prompt - the guy in Bolivia who tried a coup got arrested the same day, for comparison.
Not sure where my uncertainty is supposed to come from. Care to explain?
If they are technically not crimes, then it is a failure of our system.
To be clear, I am not talking about the idea of legally challenging it - fine, it was all bullshit, but that's why the legal system can sort bullshit from reality. I'm not even talking about making people perjure themselves by declaring themselves duly appointed electors from their states when they weren't, since that could be justified if it had turned out there was outcome determinative fraud.
I am talking about saying, "Mike Pence, I know we didn't win any legal cases in these states to overturn these results. In fact, given that I said the election was going to be stolen back in May and then proceeded to do approximately nothing to stop it, I probably don't even actually believe the election was stolen. But, I think you should throw out the electoral votes from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona, because then I'll win." If you can't see how that's different from Gore in 2000, I really don't know what to say.
I don’t believe the passage you have “quoted” is real, and neither do you. “I probably don't even actually believe the election was stolen.” Give me a break. Provide a citation for that, and I will apologize sincerely.
There is a reason the Constitution has Congress meet to tabulate the results, and that reason is that there are sometimes questions about the validity of the results being tabulated. If either candidate has doubts about those results, he has the right to express them to anybody. It’s wrong to say Trump “did approximately nothing”: many suits were filed and the courts weaseled out of considering them, earlier in the grounds that it was too early, and later on grounds of standing. But that doesn’t really matter: Trump trying to convince Pence of his case was yet another Constitutionally permissible attempt to steer our system to do what he was convinced it should do. Yes, he lost in the courts, and he lost in the Congress. You don’t get to accuse him of a crime (and you seem to agree that there is no crime you can accuse him of) for trying and failing.
Trump is a narcissistic blowhard (who nevertheless has my vote because who else is there?). The world is full of them, and it’s not a crime.
What about Biden's 50% on Chinese solar panels (I thought we loved green energy) and 100% tariff on Chinese EVs (I thought we needed these to solve climate change - what's going on??)
Yes Biden has put tariffs on specific industries. This is a lot different from a 10% tariff on all imports. I oppose tariffs in general, and I think the ones you are referencing are bad, that said, the idea behind the tariffs on solar panels and EVs is that China heavily, heavily subsidizes those industries, so for the US to stay competitive and not let China put all our solar and EV companies out of business and corner the market, we must employ a tariff.
If China subsidizes them, America should exploit it by buying them on the cheap on the Chinese state's dime. Then, when the Chinese raise prices, rebuild the American solar and EV industry. Or if it's expected to be cheaper for America on the long run (at present value) to keep the industry running than to either rebuild it later or to let China dominate the market, then private investors will pour money into the American companies to keep them afloat, knowing they'll reap the profit once the Chinese raise prices.
If so, the problem is much more general than that China subsidizes solar panels and EVs: it's that people have a higher time preference than they should have (in your opinion).
If we're going to do the paternalistic thing and overrule people's preferences, we should try to solve the actual problem: force people to put some fraction of their income in savings/securities accounts that they can only withdraw after some amount of time. Or, less paternalistically, cut capital gains/dividend tax, and cut welfare benefits/services to people who have savings or should have if they saved the advised amount.
This is also a problem you can solve for yourself if you want, without forcing others to do so: whenever you buy a cheap Chinese EV or solar panel, or a product made cheaper by the use of energy produced by cheap Chinese solar panels, save what the tariff would be, and invest it into American solar/EV companies that maintain American production (and so will be valuable when the Chinese raise prices) and/or just arbitrary diversified investments. Then, when the Chinese raise prices, cash out and use it to pay the high prices charged by the Chinese, or by the newly rebuilding American producers.
I don't want Trump to control the nukes, and I think Biden is better than Trump on war. Trump took actions that could have led to a US war with Iran. I think he's also more likely to increase conflict with China (I'm of the opinion that eventual conflict is not inevitable, and it would be best to avoid it).
Trump is not good from the perspective of political norms. I believe that Trump could lead to authoritarian backslide or otherwise contribute to political instability over the medium term. As much as I think the stagnant two party system pre-2016 led to non-optimal policies, I still think U.S. instability would be a bad thing. It would be better if the Republican party is pushed to nominating a saner, smarter, and more virtuous candidates, rather than more Trump-like figures. Politics have gotten worse since 2016, and we seem less capable of making good decisions.
I think Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric is highly damaging, since I believe increasing immigration would be highly beneficial, and shifting opinions and building political will behind this is an important priority.
I think Republicans are less likely to respond well to emerging risks from AI and synthetic biology because of greater skepticism towards regulation and the current stance on climate change, though I'm less confident of this assessment.
i mean, ya, abortion is the biggest reason for me. That and hopefully more support for higher taxes on the very wealthy, tho I'm not super hopeful on that one. Theres also pretty much nothing i like about conservative policies, at all, so it didn't take much to sway me towards Democrats. Its "a few things i like" vs "basically nothing i like". And I actively *dislike* a bunch of stuff Republicans are doing
I feel like replacing the candidate at this stage would be unfair to the Republicans.
Many a Republican primary voter is going to say "whoa hey, I only voted for Trump because I thought we were going up against Slow Joe Crow... if we'd known you were going to nominate a popular purple-state governor then I'd have voted for someone more electable and less representative of my preferences!"
Luckily it won't be a popular purple state governor (there's no reason to think that the Democrats are going to be any better with candidate selection this time than the last few times), but if it is then the Republicans should be allowed a do-over.
Well, the Republicans can rechoose their candidate too. The Democrats aren’t preventing them. They can ask Trump to step down for the good of the GOP and the USA.
But you think the parties care about treating the other party ”unfairly”?
Actually, I think Melvin has a good point. The selection process is already done for Republicans. They COULD do it again, but no system is in place to do it again.
If they DID re-do the nomination process, perhaps Nikki Haley would stand a better chance against a known opponent.
Trump's sole priority since winning in '16 was to purge the part of anyone who would do this for any reason. As long as he's not catatonic, he will be the nominee. Hence why he became the nominee without even participating in any debates or even trying very hard to win.
The left will not truly understand what went wrong until they realize Trump IS the moderate, electable candidate.
People confuse style for substance. Nikki Haley (for example) is wayyyy more "right-wing" especially on stuff like abortion - but at least she has the decency to play the game of looking like a moderate respectable politician - and so she doesn't trip the same alarms.
Opposition to trump is less about his specific policies but a combination of (a) his self-enrichment at a cost to the public good (b) his significant undermining of norms that leaves the government vulnerable to even more autocracy in the future (c) his very annoying persona
Eh, Trump was as inevitable for the Rs in 2024 as Hillary Clinton was for the Ds in 2016. And if being captured by a controversial and disliked candidate leaves the party vulnerable to a surprise challenger... That seems like karma in action?
I think people are hoping for grand plans because they imply that smart people are in charge, and are used to that from TV and movies. But reality is much less dramatic.
> But if elites are going to do something behind closed doors, maybe they should take advantage and choose the candidate most likely to win, for once.
That's pretty much what they did in 2020. And it worked.
> Still, for the past four years, every time Biden was going to do something - a press conference, a State of the Union, whatever - the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!”
The few times I checked, over the last couple of years, by actually watching some video with Biden in it, he looked noticeably worse. Not senile, but so tired he was barely holding it together. If he were a friend or relative of mine, I'd have told him that he's killing himself and needs to take a break. I think Pope Benedict XVI set us all a good example.
> I’m still confused what those elites were thinking.
Same here. In addition to what you list, I worry that they've started drinking their own Kool-Aid. Or rather, enough of them are pretending to drink the Kool-Aid that others assume it must be OK and actually do drink it. Open and blunt conversations behind closed doors should have exposed the problem, which implies that somewhere along the line, those conversations weren't happening, and everyone downstream was getting the sanitized version.
> If she gets angry at the other Democrats, they should just say “sorry, it’s an old man’s dying wish, it would be cruel not to honor it”.
We're already close to "life imitates 'Veep'"; do we need to get close to "life imitates 'House of the Dragon'", too?
> Elites can sublimate whatever emotions they’re having about Biden onto Sotomayor, and maybe it’ll do some good.
I think I'd prefer to live in a world where "elites" didn't make decisions out of gut-level short-sighted tribal loyalty, but I'm afraid that's the world we're in.
> Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded?
I think what's going on is that, as you say, the Democrats aren't a single "conspiracy", but rather they're a lot of smaller "conspiracies" (OK, groups) and independent individuals, who coordinate through ideology and public and private communications. When there's a clear answer, they'll all converge on it fairly rapidly. When there's a question of how extreme to go, various groups will organically try out different positions and some will stick. But when ideology doesn't provide a guide, it's just like a bunch of college kids trying to hash out a place to go for dinner. And if there's time pressure that forces people to take a public stance before a consensus has had time to form, then different groups will end up saying different things. To agree, they'll need to create a narrative that saves face for all involved, or some will have to lose face by updating (changing their mind) in public. And I think that's where we are now - an argument over what the best course of action is, with the glaring subtext that anyone who'd previously said something in opposition to that course of action will need to fall on their sword.
How is "Michelle Obama" still around $0.05 on these markets. I'd be surprised to see a lot of random politicians that high, but I can't even *conceive* of the scenario where Michelle Obama is the nominee. Somebody like "Oprah Winfrey" I could buy, because at least there's been random news articles leaking that she's thought about running for something.
I think the idea is that Barack Obama has a lot of influence within the party (and at least some with Biden personally), so if Michelle *did* want to run then it might be feasible to parachute her in as a last-minute replacement for Biden. She seems to be widely liked and respected, the whole 'not being a politician' thing is arguably a positive these days, and her being a black woman would neutralise some of the risk in passing over Harris.
(Obviously it doesn't seem like she has any intention at all of running. But it's not completely inconceivable that she would change her mind in a world where Biden had to step down at the last minute, Harris was clearly going to lose, and there was no other candidate with a chance of winning that the party could unite behind.)
Some group on the left keeps pushing her, but I don't connect to those circles any more, so I have no idea where it's coming from. When a friend earnestly suggested her as a candidate, I reacted with surprise and disbelief, and my friend seemed taken aback at my response. I don't think my friend thought I'd been getting the same information as they had, but instead I think they'd been persuaded that Michelle was obviously a great choice, and hadn't heard any arguments to the contrary.
I heard the claim that she polls really well. If true, that is a strong argument in favor of picking her, even if she's otherwise a bad choice. She can always resign the presidency and let the VP take her place if she really hates the job.
It's a way of giving Barack Obama a third term. Michelle would be the President but they would be the same kind of close team like Bill and Hillary during the Clinton presidency, and he would have a lot of input into policy and decision-making etc.
That's the rationale I can put on it, anyway. That, and the idea of dynasty building like the Bushes father and son, then the Clintons (except that didn't work out) but this time we can have the Obamas, right?
If you were 99.9999% sure Michelle Obama would not be on the ticket, could you profit by betting no vs. putting money in a 5% CD? Predictit at least has really high fees.
Polymarket has dramatically lower fees and still has Michelle Obama at 7% for nomination and 3% for president, so I'm skeptical of the fees point.
We are 4 months from election, a 3% return on polymarket is better than a 1.67% return in a 5% CD.
We are 1.5 months from the DNC convention, 4.67% return on polymarket is better than a 0.42% return in a 5% CD. - that's an alpha of ~32% in annualized terms.
That being said, I'm skeptical Smart Money™ is in these markets, because they are generally very small compared to the markets Physics PhDs are hired to trade in, and prediction markets have a well-known bias in favor of low-probability events (and against high-probability events), presumably due to some combination of a gambler-esque population of traders (gamblers generally prefer lottery-esque bets) and differing risk profiles.
Nitpick, but the weighted averages in your spreadsheet are obviously wrong. The weighted average for biden listed at 31% was lower than all but one of the probabilities, and the lower one had one of the lowest weights.
The actual weighted average with the listed weights in the graphic should be 35.24 for Biden. The weighted averages for Harris and Newsom are similarly incorrect, but the relative differences are approximately right.
I don't think Scott's interpretation necessarily follows. This is because, this data does not let us answer the question of "what do people really believe would happen if we could force a switch in candidates right now?". Indeed, this data would be consistent with a story in which the participants believe Biden has about a 75% chance of being better than all the alternative candidates.
To see this consider that Democrat delegates and elites will need to believe that some alt candidate has a significant enough advantage to replace Biden. Lets say this advantage is a perceived X percentage points greater likelihood of winning. Note, if you want to stop Trump then we want X to be very close to zero, and we should be trying to push those delegates/elites to adopt such a rule. However, it is hard to see what rule they are actually using as we don't know the expected switching costs etc.
One might argue that X must be much larger than zero as alternative candidates have a 10-15% lead conditional on nomination. However, conditional on nomination, the delegates/elites will believe that they have at least an X% lead. X is the minimum, in expectation the nominee will have a lead of Y=E[Adv|Adv>X]>X. I am not sure how much bigger we should expect Y to be than X, maybe a lot, I don't know.
A different argument could be that X must be quite large as the polls are quite close for the alternative candidates, but the imputed probability of Biden stepping down is only 1 in 4. We don't know how big a poll lead this candidate will need to have in order to have an equal chance of winning. First, we don't know how well the actual candidate will do compared to the anonymous amorphous democrat that the average poll respondent will have in mind. Second, there are other large costs associated with changing the candidate in such a chaotic and last second manner that might cause problems, such as transferring the funds raised for the biden campaign to another candidate.
Given the above, it could be that the threshold X is something very close to zero. In which case, Biden stays in if and only if he is more likely to win than all the alternatives. Moreover, anti-Trumpers would be happy with the imputed strategy of the democratic delegates/elites. Of course, the data is also consistent with beliefs that X is quite large e.g. 10%. In which case, these implied odds would be much closer to Scott's interpretation, and the imputed democratic strategy would be much further from the anti-Trump optimum.
Okay, the problem is about selection. The analysis above was pretty rough, so I will try to be clearer and a bit more accessible. I will have to be a little imprecise to keep things in a reasonable word limit. Pease tell me if it helps.
Suppose you are asked to answer the following question about each candidate.
A) what is the likelihood of a candidate winning if we could make the democratic party run that candidate?
Now, suppose you come to the conclusion that Kamal Harris has a 30% chance of beating Donald Trump if you could just *make* the Dems run her. However, just before answering your question, a Genie comes along and whispers to you that the democrats would actually choose Harris if you left them to their own devices. How should this change your guess?
The way you should change your guess depends on how you think the democrats choose the candidate. If they choose their candidate at random, then you don't need to change your guess because there is no information in the choice of the democrats. This seems extremely unlikely. Alternatively, suppose that the democrats choose the candidate they think is the most likely to win. Moreover, suppose they have access to all the information and processing power you have, and much much more. In this case, you would want to increase your guessed probability that Kamala would win.
Why? There was a state of the world in which the democrats got a really negative signal about her. That would have been contained in your initial guess, but this has been ruled out now by the fact they have selected her. So now you increase your guess because it is conditioned on her not being really bad (in fact it is conditioned on her being the best). It is as if you have just received an extra bunch of polls saying that she is even more competitive than your initial guess.
Returning to the prediction market, the participants get their Kamala stake back if Kamala is not selected to run. Hence, their bet should condition on the fact that the Democrats have selected her-- that is the event in which they are actually placing a wager. The bet they are making is conditional on the information contained in the genie's whisper. So, when you see the prediction markets estimate you are not seeing an answer to question (A) above, you are instead seeing the answer to question (B) below:
B) what is the likelihood of a candidate winning if the democratic party actually selected that candidate?
Okay, fine you say, but why does that matter?
Problem 1: The estimated probability of victory for each candidate will be biased, potentially by a very large amount. Moreover, the degree of bias will vary across each candidate so it will not really tell you "who we should run".
Problem 2: Suppose the democrats did a silly thing and just choose whoever the prediction market gives the highest probability of victory, but the people in the prediction market thought that the democrats would decide based off a rigorous internal process of deliberation and research. In that case, the Dems would be relying on estimates based not off data but off an incorrect guess about what it would mean for the Dems to choose each particular candidate. There are a million variants of this problem, it does not have to be this extreme.
Problem 3: Suppose we were evaluating the quality or nature of Dem decision making based of our prediction market. For example, we might be looking for who to blame for losing an election, or trying to work out whether Dems actually choose the candidate with the highest chance of winning. These prediction markets are not great for answering this question, because interpreting the relative suitability of the candidates requires understanding the process by which the democrats select the candidate in the first place.
For instance, someone might want to say "the democrats were irresponsible to keep Biden, Harris had a much greater likelihood of winning". However, that is only conditional on Harris being selected. It could be that the democrats run Biden because Harris and all the other candidates are on tape smoking crack with Hunter on Epstein island (or some much less extreme version of this). Yet, the prediction markets are conditioning on their being nothing disqualifying about the selected candidate (and much more). So it would be inaccurate to say that the prediction markets were telling us that Harris is a better person to run than Biden, just that she will be a better person to run than Biden if the democrats decide she is.
All this does not mean we cannot get anything out of this data. However, it would require careful analysis and lots of modelling assumptions.
Very clear now. Yes, I haven't wrapped my head around it enough to get any action item for me, but probably there isn't one because I'm not likely to make bets or even make specific financial plans based on my assessment of the election. But I had not thought about prediction markets in this way before and it makes me wonder if there are broader lessons about non-election prediction markets. It seems like there might be: for instance, a bet about the capabilities of GPT6 is contingent on there *being* a GPT6, and if it turns out they can't deliver "enough" better than GPT5 then there probably wouldn't be.
I just want to add one more point to explain those, like me, who were shocked by Bidens decline: in 2016 we were constantly treated with memes and videos about how Hillary was on the verge of dying and how the media is covering it up. Of course, Hillary is alive and well. I assumed the same was true about the RW Biden panic. Unfortunately I was wrong and Biden was that unhealthy.
The influential people saying Sotomayor should retire for the good of the country really irritate me because they are only making it harder.
Unlike Biden who has to listen to the voters in some sense Sotomayor doesn't. She's not an idiot so she knows the costs and benefits and the more people publicly push her to retire the more difficult it becomes for her to do because it looks all the more partisan -- you may not care about that but SCOTUS justices tend to care alot (balanced against other factors) and makes the consequences worse if she does. Besides from a purely psychological POV no one likes to feel pressured into doing something they don't want to do.
So if she should retire and you care about the good of the country then you should STFU if you have an real audience (Scott u might be a borderline case there). And sure, you can try and say that you aren't saying it should happen only doing a dispassionate horserace analysis but that's really hard to do with SCOTUS given it's relatively indirect effect on policy.
Having said that I think the case for retirement is less strong than one might think. Though I do fear that Trump's next set of appointments really will be norm breaking in ways previous ones haven't been.
The partisanship thing seems like a non-issue. She can just say she's retiring for health reasons and no good faith actor is going to question that. 70 year olds have a lot of health issues.
She can but she's friends with other justices even from across the aisle and what if she hasn't mentioned it before and the mentions it after everyone starts screaming about it -- besides lying to friends is hard.
I'm not saying she shouldn't retire (or that she should) only that unless you are her close friend advising her in private publicly calling on her in public to retire strictly makes it harder for her and less likely to happen.
I mean people always want to tell the best narrative about themselves to themselves and it's alot easier to think of yourself as making a noble sacrifice when people aren't demanding you do it. It's true in politics as much in marriage.
She knows all the facts and considerations and being a justice on SCOTUS is about being able to ignore political pressure so WTF is the upside?
There's no upside, I just don't think there's a downside, either. I just doubt she's so wracked with pride and insecurity that she's going to let this post affect her decision. Assuming she even knows who Scott Alexander is. And I don't have any expectation that my friends will keep me fully up to date on their health issues at all times.
Judges are supposed to be impartial, ruling what they think the law is. I wish we could get back to that, instead of appointing judges expected to rule in certain ways.
I heard Trump put in a lot of effort to convince Kennedy to resign during his term, Kennedy did, and nobody complained (including Democrats, AFAICT). Am I misunderstanding something, or do you think Sotomayor would go worse?
I'm not objecting to people putting *private* pressure on her. If Biden wants to make a phone call or her friend suggest it over lunch that might be a good idea.
I just don't see the benefit of public pressure. No one is slapping their head and going we never thought about a justice retiring early. I'm mostly annoyed with the kind of connected people who write editorials about this because I'm sure they do know the people who could put the suggestion to her in relative privacy.
There is a reason that even Trump didn't tweet out "it's time for Kennedy to retire." but worked in the background. This isn't something where putting it out to the general public helps.
I mean I think it's the same for persuading a friend. Advise in private, even in coordination with other friends and they may accept the advice but make it a matter of public pressure and not so much. Even if they won't really care after the fact if it comes out you persuaded them.
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I don't mean to critisize you per se because you have to balance your quite modest political visibility against just telling your readers how you see things. I mean I've obviously decided I don't matter enough to worry about wording these comments in a different way.
But I feel differently about people of Nate Silver or Matt Yglesias's visibility doing it. Especially people who clearly see themselves as engaged in the buisness of nudging political choices in one way or another not just as random opiners.
On the margin I think it has a tiny effect. She reads media online like anyone else, not that implausible she stumbles over him or someone reposting him. On the margin does that persuade her to retire OFC not. It does make her a little more annoyed people are trying to push her.
I mean it likely won't make much difference in either case even if the people calling for it seem to feel it somehow does but on the margin I think it leans to less likely.
Here, too, the question comes up why a conservative SCOTUS majority is bad. AFAIK on most questions with an ideological divide I can think of, conservative justices tend to be more originalist, which mostly cashes out as less power to the federal government and more to the states, and less restriction of state policy by made up constitutional rights. This should be up Scott's alley, given his archipelago writings.
Besides that, a conservative SCOTUS is more likely to keep striking down affirmative action (Scott tentatively supported AA earlier, but opposed it by the time of the 2020 California referendum), and more likely to continue upholding a strong protection of the freedom of speech (of which Scott has always been a strong supporter).
Well, I don't really know in general why Scott continues to consider himself a Democrat/left-leaner, despite his views on CW issues (where he may disapprove of some right-wing rhetoric, but policy-wise it seems pretty clear to me that the status quo is to the left of where he thinks it should be); one possible reason I know of is that he supports relatively high redistribution, but the SCOTUS is unlikely to interfere with that in either way.
While I like originalism as a theory of how judges should internally think about what they are trying to do [1] I think the idea that it devolves more power to the states or does much to restrict the federal government in practice is largely bullshit.
For instance, this court just recently took away the ability of states to decide not to fund religious schools with vouchers. And you don't even need to directly strike down state laws to practically increase federal power. For instance several opinions this year restricted standing on who has power to challenge those federal laws pretty extensively which in effect gives the feds more real world power.
And what if they narrow the already extremely thin grounds on which grants of money to the states are considered coercive? After all nowhere in the constitution does it say the feds can't condition finding on states having certain laws or doing certain things. That plus letting states vary more in what laws they pass leads to the equilibrium where congress basically beggers all states who don't submit to a swath of federal laws.
Also in practice, not even Thomas is going to try and rule the modern administrative state is unconstitutional and no one goes as far as him. So to a large extent the effect any realistic originalist court has is as much or more about what kinds of things it's precedents make easy and that often depends on what kinds of things the court cares about and this court seems to be doing little to allow states economic freedom to experiment but plenty to allow them to experiment with culturally conservative ideas so I see why Scott isn't onboard.
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1: I think in context original understanding of the courts did expect a degree of common law style development by analogy and precedent. So while I felt Roe was always problematic absent supermajorian (or obv on the way) support by the people
Thank you for your examples; I haven't followed SCOTUS jurisprudence very closely (I'm not even an American), I mostly see what turns up in these communities.
The last sentence in your footnote seems unfinished.
Maybe the shorter way to put it is that as long as SCOTUS isn't reversing Wickard v. Fillburn it's hard to see how it's giving states any real power to do things differently in ways that allow real experimentation with different models.
All the court has net done by becoming more originalist is replace abortion and sex rights applied against states with gun rights. I don't think that's illegitimate, SCOTUS can't not reflect values to some degree, but a claim of generally broader states rights is more a talking point than a verified empirical fact about what their rulings achieve at this point.
And there are liberal originalists (Balkin) who I sus Scott would be more sympathetic to just none on the court.
I don't know if anyone buys that Sotomayor isn't already partisan, she is one of those judges whose votes tend to line up very predictably with the preferences of the party that appointed her. But in any case, "SCOTUS justices should make impartial legal decisions" and "SCOTUS justices should be impartial in when they retire" are different and unrelated claims, and the latter one makes no sense - nobody thinks the process of appointing a new justice to an empty seat is non-partisan, Republican presidents and senates will always select Republican-friendly justices and Democrats will always select Democrat-friendly ones, so retirement is seen as part of the obviously-partisan process of selecting new justices, not the aspiring-to-be-non-partisan process of making court decisions.
That she is annoyed by calls to step down and will refuse out of spite is possible, although the opposite seems possible too, that she will bow to pressure if she feels she'll be despised otherwise. (Bowing to peer pressure seems to be a core progressive trait these days.)
Also, Yglesias at least wasn't so much suggesting to pressure Sotomayor to step down but to pressure elected politicians not to cover for her (e.g. the Hispanic Caucus making a statement that it's racist to ask a hispanic justice to retire), which seems like reasonable targeting, since those people need to care a lot more about what voters think.
Everyone is unbiased in their own mind. I'm not saying she wouldn't prefer to retire under a democrat. She no doubt would. But she'd also prefer to not be perceived by her colleagues as being blantantly so. I might even characterize it as a kind of etiquette -- not saying it's dispositive but it's certainly less appealing the more overtly partisan it feels.
None of that says she wouldn't do it anyway but no part of the public calling for it makes it more likely. It's all on one side.
Yglesias has said different things at different times but fair.
In the second graphic under "Prediction Market Sources", what the hell is that first spike saying that Biden has ~100% chance of winning 2024? What event is that associated with? (There's another one in 2023 too, but a bit less than 100%)
If Justice Sotomayor retires or is otherwise removed from office at this time Republicans would simply block any attempt to replace her until after the election. They did it before when the party wasn't Trump owned and operated, they certainly won't balk at doing it again now.
Adding to the fun, apparently Manchin is against any replacement before the election, meaning Dems couldn't afford to lose a single other vote (without getting one from Collins et al).
It appears that a Justice can announce an intention to retire pending a replacement; Breyer did this and was then replaced by Jackson. Presumably if the nomination process is held up the Justice can just...not retire.
>Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way.
I think the elites pretty clearly did decide during the debate to ditch him and put the word out to the media and that is why the initial coverage was so harsh. But the problem is no one can really make him step down, and most of the people immediately around him have a big vested interest in him staying President as they get a variety of benefits from it.
So the party elites simply didn't get what they wanted because they don't have much control over a sitting President, even a senile one.
I'll read more about the methodology, but translating a 2% polling deficit into a 50% prediction market deficit just doesn't make intuitive sense (I've read Silver's analysis so I agree it's likely Biden loses)
I'm not an expert, but I think the argument is that the polling deficit is worse in swing states, the electoral map is against him, and polling deficits at this stage tend to be relatively stable.
I appreciate the reply. Put it this way: if you could offer Rishi Sunak Biden's numbers he'd take them, with a week to go at 20%, 5 months at 40% looks great. But that doesn't mean Biden will win of course.
I guess it's the difference between "what is the probability of a randomly chosen voter supporting Biden?" and "what is the probability, in a sample of x voters, that Biden's support will be greater than 0.5x?" Increase x and Biden's chances diminish (Very simple of course I'm just trying to get an intuitive sense)
Yeah, but, for large enough x, the uncertainty in the result is dominated by (almost unknowable) systematic errors in estimating the mean probability for a single randomly chosen voter. If we knew the mean for a single voter _perfectly_, yeah, the probability distribution for the mean of a sample of x approaches a gaussian with standard deviation scaling as 1/sqrt(x). And you eventually get answers for
>"what is the probability, in a sample of x voters, that Biden's support will be greater than 0.5x?"
that look like e^-(single_voter_mean - 0.5)*x and e^-1000
while _really_, the single_voter_mean itself has a distribution (not just from _expected_ sampling error!) and the tails of that distribution eventually dominate.
Fascinating! I assumed that an opinion poll doubled as a bag of marbles to choose random voters from, so that Biden's vote share is also the % probability of picking a Biden voter at random - so that % probability is as accurate as the poll I.e useful but not perfect.
>I assumed that an opinion poll doubled as a bag of marbles to choose random voters from, so that Biden's vote share is also the % probability of picking a Biden voter at random
My impression is that poll takers work to make this as true as possible, and the _random_ error in the poll numbers can be driven as low as the budget allows by sampling more voters and reducing the 1/sqrt(x) error in the poll results. But the systematic errors (which they also work hard to identify and compensate for) are never completely avoidable or knowable. Are the voters who are willing to answer a telephone poll the same mix of R/D as the full electorate? Do their R/D subsets have the same odds of actually voting on election day? What are the odds of just plain mistakes in data handling of the poll results? I think of these as adding a small but very wide/flat base to the probability distribution.
Imagine a candidate is expected to get 51% of the vote with 0.1% standard deviation - they will be at a 2% polling advantage but their probability of winning is overwhelming.
standard deviation is much higher tho? Idk the exact numbers but weather patterns effect turnout and I think you maybe have a good enough county and by hour resulation weather map a week ahead if that
Yeah, that's why I said "imagine". The standard deviation which would lead to a 50% prediction market deficit is maybe around 1%, I haven't calculated exactly.
Thanks for the example, another thought I had was exit polls - you might be close on an exit poll but everyone has already voted so the chance of actually winning is seriously low (mind, BBC exit poll in 92 was famously off).
Nothing is so bad that it is not good for something. The present Biden debacle gives us a possibility to strengthen/weaken John N Zaller’s theory concerning the impact of media on public opinions.
…the traditional theory is/was that media effects on political opinions are modest. Many studies support this. However, Zaller’s view (in his 1996 article the myth of mass media impact revived) was/is that media effects are indeed normally modest, but not if media on all sides converge on the same narrative. Then majority public opinion can shift very fast even on the desirability of war and peace, and certainly on more mundane policy issues.
If this hypothesis is right, we should expect large swings in the survey response in Biden’s disfavor (probably mainly toward the “homesitter party”). The reason being that a substantial chunk of “liberal” media has now come out against Biden, after his debate performance. De facto siding with the Trumpian narrative that Biden is not fit enough mentally for four more years.
This is a testable hypothesis. Opinion polls over the next weeks and months will show (plus the "real thing", i.e. the election result).
I am not following US politics closely, nor have I watched the debate. But I do wonder whether people interpret too much into a single debate.
I certainly have days/moments when my brain locks down. This doesn't happen often, but it happens. I remember a job interview where I gave the impression of a complete moron. And an exam. I think this easily happens if you are sick, or by other factors. There is quite a history of political debates in TV where one candidate really screws up, and everyone is surprised. Performance at a debate has a pretty large random factor to it.
> I remember a job interview where I gave the impression of a complete moron.
Were you slurring your words, unable to get a complete sentence out? Staring slack-jawed into space for half of the interview? Losing track of what you were talking about mid-sentence? This wasn't just ordinary "normally intelligent person having a bad day" level of screwing up.
I've had some interviews where I kicked myself afterwards for missing softball questions and forgetting things I would normally have down pat. But even at my worst I am still able to act and sound like an educated and non-mentally-handicapped adult. And while I've had a decent career so far, the jobs I apply to aren't *quite* at the level of "President of the most powerful nation in the world" -- I would hope that the bar for qualifying for that job is higher, not lower, than for mine.
I mean, I personally have gone to job interviews while mildly ill. Once I did two on the same day with a bad cold, and while my performance in the morning was probably okay the interview in the afternoon was...honestly, I don't remember much of it. The plot twist is that the job opportunity from the morning never got back to me, and the one from the afternoon (which I thought I'd blown) offered me a job. Take all that with a grain of salt, of course.
I knew Biden was in a bad way, and didn't particularly -want- to watch the debate, but the people I was hanging out with at the time did, so we watched it. It was bad. It didn't hit my worst-case-scenario (probably because of the extensive preparation Biden's team did), but it was still significantly worse than my median expectations, and was intensely uncomfortable to watch.
I think this bodes extremely poorly for the Democrats.
Not just for the obvious reasons - their candidate is too old and is becoming forgetful. But because people close to Biden knew he was too old, and covered it up. And because the Democratic Party actively tried to fend off younger challengers - Dean Phillips, RFK Jr.
None of this makes sense. If the boss isn't able to do the job, you encourage him to step down, or at least allow other people to run for the job in his place.
So why on Earth was this state of affairs allowed to persist in the leadership of the most powerful country on the planet??
It probably is because certain elements within the party see his forgetfulness as useful. He is weak and can be easily manipulated. These have been Republican talking points for awhile, which the media dismisses as conspiracy theories, but no conspiracy is necessary - just people being people and following their rational path to power. Probably the same thing happened with George W Bush in the early 2000s - he wasn't the brightest spark, and unscrupulous advocates like Dick Cheney used that to their advantage.
I think Biden is basically a decent man, and Trump is not, but Trump will probably win. There's too much shadow puppetry going on in the Democratic side of the aisle. Americans don't trust their government or their media; they want someone to take them to task, even if that person is an asshole.
In what sense do you feel there was a "cover up". I feel like there's been a strong media narrative (not just from the right) that he is too old, probably partially driven by off the record conversations. Do you think his spokesperson should have started declaring that her boss is unfit, or Kamala Harris should have publicly called for him to step down in her favour? If Biden was privately being encouraged to step down, we wouldn't know. In the meantime, it's best to toe the party line, as Harris continues to do even now.
I don't think you need to assume elements in the party prefer a weak president. The issue of the person at the top being unfit has just always been a vexing challenge - you can't openly cross them, and while they are your boss you're obliged to back them up.
I think it says a lot about the future of our country, that our best choice for the person to lead it is between a guy who is definitely senile, and another guy who might be senile but maybe not (or at least not yet). This is the best that we can do nowadays, apparently.
"Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations? I don’t know, maybe that was just a fluke and the party has no state capacity at all"
Maybe Bernie winning the primary is enough of a threat to unite """"THE BIG PLAYERS"""" but Trump winning a general isn't. Marxist theories of the state predict, or at least well explain this.
In general, I find that if you model politicians as optimising for personal power within their political coalition rather than as optimising for the strength of their coalition overall, you will make more accurate predictions.
Fyi, for me Manifold content is visible only in an e-mail; on the website, there is "server is too slow", or something (due to localization I see that in Czech, so I don't know exact English wording).
Biden has obviously been avoiding public appearances and interviews. I don’t see how some one who avoids interviews can think himself capable of running for president. The reason he doesn’t get credit for his achievements is that he can’t communicate.
I think a big problem is that the parties don’t have coordinated ”elites” or much structure. This decline of the party structure is something Ezra Klein has discussed on his podcast. There is just the president at the top, his supporters who have the most to lose from getting rid of him and then a lot of unorganized group of other people or activists. That is the impression I get anyway.
This is also why the Republicans can’t get rid of Trump.
A large number of Republican "elites" (such as they are) tried toto stop Trump from being the nominee to varying degrees in 2016/2020/2024. It made not a jot of difference.
There are no mysterious elites welding black magic behind the curtain. At least since JFK's time. What exactly is this mythical elite supposed to do to summon up challengers, line up donors, against an incumbent running for reelection.
To be fair, Biden *massively lost* the first few of those primaries (which were in 2020). He was running in 4th or 5th when people panicked about Bernie Sanders and there was a realignment.
He was kind of like Emperor Claudius. Noted tabloid rag Suetonius claimed Claudius was hiding behind a curtain during the chaos after the assassination of Caligula, when some guards plucked him out and told him he was the new emperor.
Here, we need someone, *not that guy*, you happen to be nearby and seem good enough, the job is yours now.
I wish calls for Biden to step down would be more clear about whether their goal is to truly minimize the chance of Trump becoming president again, or simply to maximize the chance of a Democrat becoming or remaining president. These aren't the same thing, and they potentially suggest radically different courses of action.
Like, just what are the stakes here? If it is merely not wanting the other team to have the Big Job and associated largesse for the next four years then sure, replace Biden with Harris. Or Newsom. Or Whitmer. Or whomever. Maybe it helps you win the Politics Superbowl this year, or maybe it's not enough and you try again next time. Whatever.
On the other hand, if there's a genuine worry that a Trump victory would lead to the US abandoning Europe to Putin and Taiwan to China, that there'd be mass unemployment and Hyperstagflation from trade war tariff policy, that we'd see martial law, World War III, a collapse of global trade, the end of the free press and democracy, etc., etc., then we should be prepared to do whatever necessary to stop that from happening.
How strong a message would it send if the Democrats nominated, or even just openly considered, nominating any of the Republican senators who voted for Trump's conviction in the impeachment trial? What better way to communicate the seriousness of the situation than by essentially saying "we're willing to sit this round out, just to make sure that there is a next round"? Conversely, that I haven't even heard this floated as an option suggests that Democratic insiders and media types don't actually think a Trump presidency would be that bad, relative to any other Republican presidency.
I get why the incentive structures make this hard to do. But there are also some ways that it would be easier. You wouldn't have to worry about Harris' camp feeling skipped over, for example. You could avoid all the other chaotic infighting about who gets the nod.
Doesn't this incentivize parties nominating the most insane antidemocratic dipshit they can, so they can ensure the victory of a boring moderate member of their party?
Nominating an insane antidemocratic dipshit carries an electoral penalty. With Trump as their candidate, Republicans are probably running 10 or so points behind where they would be with Haley.
In this specific case, the insane antidemocratic dipshit is still on track to win because the incumbent is so unpopular (his senility is not even his biggest problem, rising cost of living is). But most of the time, nominating the psycho is just going to get you crushed.
I am doubtful Trump is running that far behind Haley, but even so, isn't that just "nominate an insane antidemocratic dipshit, whenever you're running many points ahead"?
Yeah, but this way you get either your insane antidemocratic dipshit (preferred choice of the base, see: 2024 R primaries), OR, you get your moderate. If you just pick a moderate, they could end up losing because they had sex with a dolphin or whatever.
I don't think so? I'm not sure how replicable the Trump phenomenon is, and a lot of people with probably want someone who wasn't crazy, but also isn't as moderate as the Unity candidate would be. Also, you want your preferred candidate to be somewhat beholden you, and not trying to the other party.
It’s natural to want to criticize your own tribe, but for all the talk about how it’s bad to lie even if you think you’re doing the right thing, Republicans of all stripes and ranks have been lying shamelessly for a decade now. Trump got his start lying about Obama’s birth certificate, and nobody who promoted that lie thought it was a “little white lie”. It’s annoying when people selectively use moral cudgels on Democrats; it’s like they’re being punished for responding to moral pressures.
Trump doesn't lie as often as people make him out to lie. He speaks in hyperbole, of which all such statements, taken literally, are lies. If you interpret his statements as he intends instead of how his opponents intend, you will find far fewer lies.
Which is not to say he doesn't lie, and do so during the debate. But he HAS evolved into a politician.
I think his first response ought to be considered typical:
"We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us.
We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished – so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.
But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have, is getting us out of that COVID mess. He created mandates; that was a disaster for our country.
But other than that, we had – we had given them back a – a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID, and nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounceback jobs; they’re bounced back from the COVID.
He has not done a good job. He’s done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us."
* Greatest economy in the history of our country: clearly not literally true, but somewhat, depending on how you look at it, such as stock market highs.
* Everybody was amazed by it: Certainly detractors weren't. So what?
* Other countries were copying us: useless words, ignore.
* Ending up in a Great Depression: hyperbole.
* Lots of credit: useless words, ignore.
* No wars: no NEW wars, anyway, unless you count the trade war with China, which, to be sure, he doesn't in this context.
* Mandates disaster: hyperbole.
* Nobody thought the stock market would be higher than pre-COVID: useless words, ignore.
* Only illegal immigrant jobs Biden created: hyperbole, typical politician statement.
* Inflation killing our country: he clearly isn't talking about actual hyper-inflation
Did you have any particularly blatant lie that troubled you?
I disagree with none of the categorizations you have listed. But the statements themselves don't really bother me. Trump seems to blend politics with social media, both of which involve lying in various degrees, and that is his style. It garners him something of a following, which is why he was able to secure the Republican nomination.
He isn't the best President we've had, nor a great candidate to elect this year. But look at our list of options. I see no alternative but that he will end up elected in November.
The question is why we can't find better candidates of perhaps 150 million possible choices. Someone not only eminently electable but that will do a good job. GREAT job is impossible, as opinions differ as to what that will end up being.
"TRUMP: 'So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth, because some states, Democrat-run, take it after birth.'
[Plain Lie]"
He constantly is referencing this, more explicitly in another part of the debate, which all goes back to a comment made by the Governor of Virginia. The media just calls this a lie without actually quoting what was said, because if you actually read it, it sounds pretty bad and like they are or should be killing babies after they are born.
That said it's not actually legal anywhere as far as I know. But I think his whole shtick is trolling, saying something that is a lie/exaggeration but sort of close to the truth, so that in order to explain how it is a lie you have to say the thing that is actually true, which is bad enough and helps him.
Biden does seem to lie a lot, though. He lied about Charlottesville (after even Snopes has debunked it), he lied about Trump slandering dead soldiers, he lied about the Border Patrol endorsing him (https://x.com/BPUnion/status/1806501048724430943), he lied about no "troops dying anywhere in the world" under his administration, he lied about Trump wanting to cut social security and Medicare (as much as many conservatives would like Trump to, he has been pretty clear that he won't), and he lied about billionaires only paying "8.2%" in taxes.
Beyond that he made plenty of "hyperbolic lies", the same as Trump did: saying that unemployment was 15% under Trump (true, but only in April of 2020 when COVID hit hard; by the end of his administration unemployment was 6%), saying that illegal border crossings are better than they were under trump because there's been a 40% reduction (it's true that I don't think illegal crossings ever dropped 40% under Trump, but that's because up until about a month ago an enormous amount of people were illegally crossing and Biden is just now cracking down on it with an executive order), or saying that black unemployment is the lowest it's been in a long time (black unemployment did reach a record low during Biden's administration of 4.8%, but the most recent data has it at over 6% and it was under 6% during parts of Trumps administration).
It seems like Biden lied frequently during the debate as well, Trump (hyperbolically, as always) calling that out doesn't seem unfair.
EDIT: Forgot to mention: he lied about Trump telling people to drink bleach as a cure for COVID as well.
Some people make the distinction that Biden is a liar, but Trump is a bullshitter. This isn't perfect, not defending Trump, etc, but I do think some sort of category split like this helps highlight the distinction and make sense of why some people react so differently to Trump's forms of non-truth. Biden occasionally tries to be a bullshitter (I think Corn Pop is a good example of an attempt bullshit rather than some other form of non-truth) but doesn't have Trump's weird knack for it.
A large contingent of supporters of Democrats think Republicans are Literally Hitler, and their support for Democrats arises in large part because they expect Democrats to be better. You actually have to BE better for that to work, however.
Do you think Democrats will try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power if they lose, or that Republicans won’t? I’m finding it hard to empathize with people who believe that the Democrats aren’t better in this particular moment.
You mean like filing lawsuits in the state of Florida to try to force recounts for weeks on end until the Supreme Court is forced to tell them that they've had enough recounts?
Yes, if the Democrats think they can prevent the transfer of power, they absolutely will make the attempt.
Your example of Democrats 'trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power' is that they filed some lawsuits and peacefully abided by the results, twenty-something years ago. Do you genuinely think that stacks up against Trump's response to his 2020 loss and/or his likely response to a 2024 loss?
As for your alternative framing, I have little interest in litigating that issue with somebody who isn't going to change their mind, but I will observe that said framing implies a moral imperative to oppose a peaceful transfer of power in the event that Trump wins.
My 'alternative framing' was in line with this entire comment chain, which is explicitly about comparing the two parties. My question was largely rhetorical, but I was open to a serious answer if you were willing to give one.
Evidently you're not, which is unsurprising given the gulf between the two parties on this point (evidenced by your best counterexample being the Democrats peacefully following the legal process to challenge the result of one election decades ago).
My opinion of Dems is now so low I can't put any kind of limit as to what they wouldn't do. The fact that they're even running a man in this condition shows how little daylight there is between them and Republicans on civic duty.
They don’t have to be *much* better to get the vote, my impression is that many, many people are going to reluctantly vote for X because they can’t stomach Y.
Many Thanks! True, I was just thinking of the Electoral College. Local elections can indeed also be affected, even if the electors from a state are "set in stone".
While lying about Biden's condition has come up in the discussions and coverage, I don't think it is all that large an issue, compared to just the raw question of whether he is capable of acting as POTUS through much of another term (and the policy choices that made him unpopular orthogonal to capability worries).
Many Thanks! Yes, but it may not be a single person. It may be a group of staff. I'm morbidly curious about who (if anyone!) has nuclear weapons use authority during those eighteen hours...
The Democrats would probably need both the presidency and control of the senate at the same time; otherwise the Republicans could block any nominee and the seat would remain vacant until a Republican becomes president, as when Scalia kicked the bucket. Who knows when that'll be the case - could be in four years, might not be for a generation.
It has happened in the first two years of every Democrat president since we started caring about the Supreme Court so odds are it's not going to take a generation.
> But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations? I don’t know, maybe that was just a fluke and the party has no state capacity at all.
The state capacity of the Democratic Party is certainly more real than that of the Republican Party, but it's nothing compared to the state capacity of the actual government. For better or worse, Joe Biden is in fact the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, and literally nobody can tell him what to do.
“They [Polymarket, Predictit] usually overestimate Republicans’ chances, partly because Democrats’ opposition to online political betting has turned the pool of online political bettors disproportionately red.“
(I doubt the normal user of a platform cares that much about the opinion of politicians and think this has other reasons. )
Maybe they are biased, but I am not sure we have good reasons to think that Manifold / Metaculus are better.
If you look at Manifold / Metaculus comments, they seem a lot smarter and nicer. However, this makes sense given that the main currency on these platforms is something closer to social status. Polymarket and Predictit seem very dumb in comparison, but users do have an incentive to seem dumb!
Despite their flaws I would trust anything with real money more. I think people who are successful on Manifold understand this and often copy from e.g. Polymarket. One month ago Biden traded at 40% on Polymarket (60% on Manifold) and I thought that was due to their right wing bias. In retrospect, Polymarket was probably just smarter than me.
>Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded
? None of that happened. Obama did not endorse Biden, except possibly when it was too late to matter; Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out after doing terribly in South Carolina, esp among black voters, a key voter group for Dems; Warren and Bloomberg did not drop out until they bombed on Super Tuesday; and Sanders campaign was stronger after others dropped out.
Right. A bunch of establishment types endorsed Biden after he'd de facto won to try to build early unity, and a few moderates dropped out early when their campaigns became obviously hopeless. There wasn't a need for coordination in any of that
There may have been some coordination - iirc a bunch of the dropped out moderates synched up their support for Biden - but it wasn't ever *needed*, which is important since it meant they could just do it on their own instead of needing party consensus (which is hard to get and would be required to push Biden to drop out if he doesn't want to).
This is partly incorrect. Biden came in 4th in Iowa (often a campaign killing placement), then 5th in New Hampshire (definitely a campaign killing placement), while Sanders came in first in both of those (typically anoints you unless you mess up big time or there is a strong second place who puts up a fight).
That is when everyone panicked. Biden emerged in the ensuing media discussion as a consensus choice to fend off Sanders and started picking up a lot of moderate media endorsements and favorable coverage. He was able to come second in the Nevada Caucuses, a smaller event with 100k participants and ranked choice voting, and days later South Carolina's Jim Clyburn gave what was seen as *the* critical endorsement to Biden, netting him the South Carolina win, and Buttigieg (25% Iowa, 24% NH) and Klobuchar (12% Iowa, 19% NH) dropped out and I believe quickly endorsed Biden.
tldr: after a few contests, he was in 5th place and should have had to drop out, then media cycle said he's the only guy who can beat Sanders and then Trump, and three weeks later he was the front runner.
I'm not a Bernie guy. I'm not even a democrat or a voter. If you forced me, I would have picked Warren. But what happened was kind of unseemly. I don't know about you, but my and everyone else's boomer democrat parents went from each having a personal favorite to "oh shit Bernie might happen, CNN has been talking about Biden all week, we've all gotta go Biden" in a *real* hurry.
You're ignoring the part where they had polling on states down the line and knew Biden was much stronger with nonwhite voters and had a clear path to winning, and they didn't.
Important comment. Scott should probably correct what he wrote. People dropped out "in lockstep" because of poor results that came in at the same time that made their campaigns impossible to win, not because of an Obama endorsement or a phone call from democratic elites.
Not sure that Sanders campaign was stronger relative to the Biden campaign after everyone else dropped out though. I think most Pete, Amy, and Bloomberg voters went to the Biden camp, while most Warren voters went to the Sanders camp, but I could be wrong on this.
What's different from normal is not that they dropped out and the votes went to the logical next preference.
It's that the 2nd and 3rd place candidates dropped out almost immediately and endorsed the 5th place candidate, instead of "selfishly" waiting for Super Tuesday to see how they did.
That happened because the media cycle in favor of Joe Biden was *brutal* about everyone else.
As I said in another comment, I am not a Bernie guy, a democrat, or even a *voter*. I have odd politics, and I just like following this stuff sometimes. But I could not ignore the evidence of my senses, that a large number of "serious" people ran to the frankly pathetically safe choice when they realized Sanders had a good chance of becoming the nominee.
We didn't get "let's go with Buttigieg, he basically tied Sanders in the first two contests". We didn't get "Warren did well enough and she's basically the legitimate democratic party flavor of what the Bernie bros want, let's go with her". No, we got "We need the boomers to beat Trump, and we now realize the only sure way to get the boomers is their man Joe". And we got it with the same impressive, annoying decisiveness that has now doomed that same man under the weight of like... fifty mainstream articles flatly saying he should end his campaign.
Pete and Klobuchar were not the 2nd/3rd place candidates after SC. Pete at the time was polling around 10% nationally, and Klobuchar was at like 5%. They dropped out after South Carolina and endorsed Biden, who was at that time 1st based on pledged delegate count and 1st/2nd based on national polling. Warren stayed in until after Super Tuesday, and when it went terrible for her and she lost her home state, she dropped out. Bloomberg pretty much same story.
I also don't think that it's accurate to say that the media controls people's minds like you are implying. I think its more of a feedback loop if anything.
Alternate theory for why the Democrats would let this debate happen despite knowing he's senile: they needed a public justification in order to remove him. If any of them even suggest "hey, I want to remove Biden and replace him", they appear disloyal which is potentially an opportunity for others in their party to oust them or something. And if they do collectively agree to replace Biden then the average Democrat voter who has been being told Biden is not senile for years will be suspicious and angry that the party is going against the candidate that they voted for. It's undemocratic!
But if Biden makes a fool of himself and the public sees that Biden is obviously unfit and likely to lose to Trump then this is much more convincing than some press release. If the public demands Biden be replaced then the elites can replace Biden and look like they're supporting the will of the people at the same time.
With this theory in mind, I have a higher confidence of Biden being replaced than these markets do, but I don't think this affects any of the conditional probabilities afterwards.
It's less that there are adults actually in charge as a unified block and more that there are scatterings of advisors and individual actors with their own personal agendas and interests, and they hesitate to act in any way that will expose themselves to backlash from the public, or backstabbings from each other.
So it's less that The Powers That Be masterminded a scheme to set up Biden to take the fall so that they could move to the next step of their master plan, and more that everyone knew it was going to be a disaster but nobody wanted to be the one to speak up, and realized they didn't have to because if they let it go forward the public would speak up for them.
> He’s better in the daytime than at night (this is a classic dementia symptom called “sundowning”), his aides mostly only saw him during the day, but this debate was at night (9 - 11 PM in his time zone).
"as an American, I’m banned from even reading Betfair"
Since I'm not an American, I can do that for you:
"Event Start Time
05 November 2024, 12:00
Win Only Market
MARKET INFORMATION
For further information please see Rules & Regs.
Which candidate will win the 2024 US Presidential Election?
This market will be turned in-play at the stated time on the day of the election. Thereafter the market will not be actively managed. Customers are entirely responsible for their bets at all times.
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2024 presidential election. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This market will be settled once both the projected winner is announced by the Associated Press and the losing candidate concedes. If the losing candidate does not concede, or if there is any uncertainty around the result (for instance, caused by recounts and/or potential legal challenges), then the market will be settled on the winner decided by Congress, on the date on which the Electoral College votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.
This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2024. If more than one election takes place in 2024, then this market will apply to the first election that is held.
Once voting (whether postal, electronic or at the ballot box) begins in the year 2024 for the US Presidential Election 2024, the election will be deemed to have taken place for the purposes of this market. We will then settle the market as per our rules regardless of whether the election process is fully completed in 2024 or beyond.
If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time.
Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.
Betfair expressly reserves the right to suspend and/or void any and all bets on this market at any time if Betfair is not satisfied (in its absolute discretion) with the certainty of the outcome.
Betfair may suspend betting on the market at any time in the interests of maintaining integrity and fairness in the markets.
Additional candidates may be added to this market on request.
Please note that candidates in this market will not be partially settled and will remain in the market until it is fully settled. This is to allow customers to continue trading candidates that they have positions on and because each candidate is still a valid runner in this market.
If any candidate withdraws for any reason, including death, all bets on the market will stand and be settled as per the defined rules.
Customers should be aware that:
Transmissions described as “live” by some broadcasters may actually be delayed.The extent of any such delay may vary, depending on the set-up through which they are receiving pictures or data."
I have no idea what these figures mean, so someone who knows how betting/prediction markets work can explain it (there are a lot more candidates than this, this is just the top few):
> This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2024. If more than one election takes place in 2024, then this market will apply to the first election that is held.
Interesting. It looks like they're trying to specify what will happen in the event of an unlikely scenario coming to pass.
But they're doing so really badly; a normal presidential election takes place at the beginning of November, 85% of the way through the year. This disambiguation policy has a very high risk, if it comes into play at all, of specifying that, in the event of something totally crazy happening, the crazy election will be the one that counts, and the normal one won't count.
Suppose there's one election in September and then another one in early November. What's the argument for the September election determining this question?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It’s the only reason I could think of for that rule i.e. only the first one counts. I suppose it entirely depends on your view of the 2020 election but I would be willing to bet money that if he loses, he’s going to scream that it was fraudulent. I also don’t really think he’s going to lose.
I (a leftish Democrat) have never particularly liked Kamala Harris and thought she was a remarkably poor campaigner in the 2020 primary. But I think the possibility that she'd actually perform much better than Biden is being underrated.
The generic case for not-Biden is actually not very contingent on who the particular not-Biden would be (Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, whomever). Trump is such a known commodity, and such an unpopular and damaged one, that any Democrat who evinces basic mental competency would be sufficiently competitive as to make the election basically a referendum on Trump. The problem with Biden is that he no longer exceeds that extraordinarily low bar, but Harris would. (That doesn't mean she or any other Democrat would necessarily win; it might be that there's a plurality in the electorate that would but Trump back in the White House despite his being a convicted felon who explicitly threatens liberal democracy because they're grouchy about inflation or whatever.)
I, on the other hand, think that the chances of any Democratic candidate succeeding are being systemically overrated; we can call it the halo effect, although I don't really like that way of describing the phenomena - but I expect the damage isn't at all localized.
The worst fallout can, should, and probably will fall on the left-wing side of the media, who has been systemically downplaying Biden's cognitive issues for some time now - which will have severe secondary impacts for -all- the Democratic candidates, as all friendly coverage will be extra-suspect.
Additionally, those feeling particularly betrayed will likely form a one-time exodus from the Democratic party.
I'm watching Weird Twitter talking itself into supporting Kamala in realtime and it's the most amazing thing. Switching candidates is a big risk but it might also spark some interest in a lackluster race, too.
Can you link some of the twitter users or threads you're talking about? (I don't mean this in an 'I demand you justify your claim!' way, I'm just curious to see it.)
I think they're stuck with Biden now, is the problem. It's too late to change horses in mid-stream, and if they were going to, being forced to do so because of a terrible TV performance is not how anyone would prefer to do it.
If Kamala is not handed the nomination on a platter, I think there will be a lot of screaming from the small but devoted following she has, and a lot of stoked-up perception that this is due to sexism (as Hillary's campaign did after she lost) plus racism. Unless the new anointed gives Kamala a plum job in the new administration (should they win), this will be a hard sell, and what better job can you offer the VP?
But if Kamala is selected, I do think she's unelectable. Next in line is Gavin Newsom, and that opens up a lot of lines of attack. Rich white guy (hanging out with the Gettys), what has he done? (you can argue over what he did or did not achieve as Governor of California), the internal Democrat party wrangling with the recall - certainly, handing him the nomination might be repayment for Joe's support during the recall. But can he appeal to the nation?
It may well be seen that the lesser of two evils is go ahead with Joe and hope to hell that Trump does something like detonate a nuke in Times Square.
I'm in Michigan, and I have heard Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan's governor, proposed. I would welcome Jennifer Granholm back as governor. Whitmer may campaign well, but she is awful at getting the job done. She promised to "fix the damn roads" then gave up after a single attempt to raise taxes to do it. She can't reach across the aisle, either.
The earliest use of the phrase that I'm aware of is as a slogan for Lincoln's 1864 reëlection campaign. Not sure if they originated it or just used an already-established expression.
> Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now.
While I understand wanting to blame this on Republicans crying wolf for five years, that's a bit disingenuous. They didn't just make that up in a vacuum--there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that something was amiss. Biden rarely held press conferences or answered questions from reporters that weren't canned. On the rare occasion that he was on camera without teleprompters, he'd often make gaffes, slurred his speech, told clearly false anecdotes, and then wondered off stage. This has been happening his entire term, not just recently. When it did start to get too obvious to ignore, the press secretary said it was all "cheap fakes", misinformation, and disinformation.
The real blame should be on the media that willingly ignored or covered up the problem.
I don't blame you for getting snookered, but I think a part of it was that you were categorizing concerns about Biden in a way that the critics didn't mean to communicate. The point wasn't that he was totally demented, but instead that he was in decline by 2020. I think there is clear and convincing evidence that *something* isn't right with Biden has been around for a very long time and his administration has taken pretty obvious steps to mitigate it that, in retrospect, I hope everyone will recognize. I think that the biggest change has been that his staff has been better at guarding his worst impulses from public scrutiny, both by mitigating opportunities for misbehavior and then spinning the narrative when it happens.
For instance, his constant pestering and inappropriate behavior around women and children has resulted in him being walled off so that he literally has no public appearances with women and children. His *nibbling* on his wife's finger while she was giving a public speech should have been alarming. To me, that's the moment when the media should have started asking hard questions, but since then his public appearances have been even more controlled, keeping him out of biting distance of people's fingers. Literally every foreigner he interacts with is always unhappy with him, including during the last G7 where he was late every day an the Italian Prime Minister had to shepherd him to return to the group. I cannot imagine a single other president letting themselves get pushed around like that. Reminded, maybe, or shown that "hey, the rest of us are over here," but... Western progressives are coping hard with the fall of the hero that rescued us from the Orange Man.
I think you're right that all of this should be looked at in retrospect as "well, maybe there was something wrong from [this date]." Nobody [responsible] was saying he was totally demented, but the evidence was there that merited further discussion. I think, though, a lot of people distrusted the messengers and so distrusted the message.
Furthermore, I think that the verified lies about Biden should call *all* of their honesty into question. Like you said, they were accusing Trump of the actual condition of Biden. It should also call the honesty of Biden's accusers into question. Are they only right about the senility? Or could they be right about other things, too, and the narrative that they were no credible messengers disrupted that, too?
Your point about Newsome deserves a little more thought and attention, I think. If the DNC's best bet is someone like Newsome, someone who is "all style and no substance," doesn't that just likely perpetuate the problem that got us here in the first place?
I think it's sad, too. We will always be a progressive country, but in the absence of an engaged public and media we are drifting back towards oligarchy.
It's crazy to think that the nibbling incident was in December of 2019, well before the first primary had even been held. Biden wasn't even considered a front runner until the South Carolina primary in late February. If that was an actual sign of dementia, it's appalling that they chose to stay in.
Him saying that 150 millions Americans died from gun violence since 2007 was in February 2020. You'd think someone might have noticed how bad that one was, too.
I haven't seen much of anything of world leaders being unhappy with Biden -- I mean, I remember when Biden visited Ukraine and met with Zelensky, and to the best of my recollection he was reportedly cogent then. Of course, if I were Zelensky I wouldn't go around maligning a powerful friend. I dunno. I feel like if there were extensive, long-standing issues, they'd have come out earlier.
I went looking for a link; it was in a recent news article I read but looking for "biden 30 thiry minutes late g7" just turned up old stories.
I don't think that concerns about the President necessarily would have come out sooner. That's the sort of thing that if you screw up the messaging you're going to find US foreign aid to your country gets reallocated. It's the same way the Federal gets compliance from states in tying education and highway funding to other policy decisions.
That aside, it was shocking to me that a few news outlets (CNN and Politico, I think) had foreign diplomats on the record saying they were concerned about Biden's condition and ability to serve (https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/foreign-diplomats-biden-debate-reaction/index.html). That, and Poland's Foreign Minister publicly calling for him to step aside was... stunning. I really feel like America's power overseas is shaken.
> That, and Poland's Foreign Minister publicly calling for him to step aside was... stunning. I really feel like America's power overseas is shaken.
That is interesting. Some low-quality thoughts:
- America's power overseas definitely has been shaken. The reputation of the USA is in a shambles compared to 2014. The USA's ability to enforce its will overseas may not be much different, but people have now realized that it's gone.
- Poland really wants a specific thing from the USA. They want it to be strong and protect them from Russia. Having the ruler of the country be recognized across the world as a buffoon or worse is a bad way to project deterrence. That might explain why Poland would feel it's more important to antagonize their powerful friend - and hopefully shore up that friend's power - than to have a stronger relationship with a friend who can't do anything for them.
>The point wasn't that he was totally demented, but instead that he was in decline by 2020. I think there is clear and convincing evidence that something isn't right with Biden has been around for a very long time and his administration has taken pretty obvious steps to mitigate it that, in retrospect, I hope everyone will recognize.
Ouch! Morbid question: Any idea what his advisors/administration does / is doing about nuclear weapons use authority? Is it even legally and physically possible for Biden to delegate that to one of his staff?
Scott, I must be missing something. Interesting, voluminous discourse, but if you're trying to avoid the "little white lie" like risk yourself, how can you spend this much effort without both engaging the issue of whether Biden needs to resign (or have 25th Amendment proceedings initiated) and why that conversation isn't forefront within the ethical commentators? I recognize it is possible, though perhaps straining a bit of credibility, to conclude "Oh, he's clearly showing signs interpreted as decisively predictive of him being ineffective as president in the period between Jan. 20th 2025 and Jan 19 2029 and shame on various parties for having hidden those, but there is such a clear deficit of related signs of him likely to be ineffective July 2, 2024 through Jan 19, 2025 that we shouldn't even discuss that, and perhaps we should even castigate those that do." Isn't this a FAR bigger little white lie risk that many are now engaging in?
That's a good question. First, I don't know what the exact 25th amendment criteria are and am nervous speculating about legal issues beyond my expertise. Second, I think the chaos from trying to arrange a sudden presidential transition with 4-6 months left in the term might be more disruptive than just letting him hang around for 4-6 more months with aides who have managed to keep things under control so far. Third, asking him to resign is a bigger ask than asking him to not run, and he won't even not run.
Regarding your 1st point, the exact 25th amendment criterion is just this: "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office". There really is no legal standard more precise than this constitutional text. This is partly because section 4 has never been invoked to involuntarily remove a President, and so the courts have never ruled on it---but even more so, because the courts would almost certainly decide it was a purely "political question" to be determined by the VP & Cabinet heads, and ultimately by Congress. Not by the courts.
So basically, if you have carefully read the full text of the 25th amendment (and perhaps its wikipedia article), and are canny to the realpolitick considerations, you are in just as good a position to say what section 4 of the 25th amendment means, as any other citizen. (Except for the actual political actors, who authoritatively interpret its de facto meaning by their own decisions.)
Of course, law professors have written reams of text saying when they think it *should* be used, but none of this is legally binding precedent in any way.
Priors. A big boy word that applies here. Also that you can’t see what you refuse to look at. Like the stunning decline of California under Newsom. But yes, let’s vote for more!
This is probably the correct take from a “political vibes” sense, but ~all of California’s problems are in large part due to the insane cost of housing. Within CA politics, Newsom is one of the (relative) good guys in the sense that he is pushing for state preemption of local zoning laws. Replacing him with a generic CA Republican would actually make things worse, because Newsome is more YIMBY than the median CA Republican
It's rare to find a 6'0 person, good at acting, and with a face you can get looking convincingly like Joe Biden with just stage makeup.
It's not rare to find a 6'0 person, good at acting, and with a face you can get looking convincingly like Joe Biden with just stage makeup AND some minor surgery.
Have you considered the fact that winning the presidency isn't actually that important to the Democrats?
"Trump will destroy democracy" is basically a propaganda.
"Trump will be good for ratings" is a lot closer to the truth.
I would have thought this was obvious when the DNC supported all those MAGA people in the primaries.
There are a lot of advantages to Trump being president. He can veto the dumbest part of the lefts agenda. He can unite the left rather than sniping at each other. He can take the fall for a lot of messes this administration has created. 2026 and 2028 will likely be easy election seasons.
I'm not saying they WANT to lose, but losing isn't like that big of a deal really. So "be the person that causes a huge inter party death match because it might improve our odds of winning 5%" doesn't seem like a good move if you don't actually think the sky will fall.
I had estimated that Trump losing in 2020 could be a not so bad outcome for the GOP. Year Six midterms are always set up to be a bloodbath for the incumbent, Trump fatigue was likely to be off the charts high in 2028, and I correctly anticipated that inflation would be a major issue. All of that sets up the conditions for a Democrat supermajority like Obama had in his first two years. But if Trump lost in 2020, well, we're in a situation where Republicans are positioned to have control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the next two years
Where I was wrong was assuming that losing in 2020 would cause the GOP to move on from Trump. That they haven't is bad, but it might not work out so badly for the GOP, due to the fact that Trump is basically running against a reanimated corpse.
You can game out the same situation for the Democrats with a loss this fall: Trump 2 is bad, the Democrats win back Congress quickly and they're poised to run a younger, more competent candidate in 2028.
What's bad about the other side winning is that they implement their policies and if you think those policies are bad then they make life worse.
Also, every presidency is "will SC judges die bingo" where if you get lucky you control the philosopher king branch of the government that can do whatever the fuck it wants.
So I don't think anyone wants to lose an election. The question is "do I care enough about winning to take on a huge risk that *might* increase my chances of winning 5-10% (or might not, or might cause more problems them it solves) but defiantly involves personal sacrifices from me (people advising Biden, etc).
If Trump is Hitler that is worth a shot but if he isn't the status quo makes plenty of sense.
All of my Democrat-voting friends fervently believe that a Trump presidency will usher in a thousand years of darkness. They are not posturing or virtue signaling AFAICT, they really do believe this.
Yes, but they are losers (voters). I'm talking about how people with power and a stake and who think about this critically consider the matter.
Let's say Trump wins. Won't your friends all just be even more energized. More willing to donate and get out the vote and do all the things the party wants out of you.
Sure, you will be pissed off at Biden, who will be dead soon. And they will still have lots of negative polarization about needing to stop Trump (and stop whoever comes after Trump) and they will buy into whoever the process spits out.
Did they try to get Mitt Romney the democrat nomination? That would be the obvious play for anyone who actually believes that and has cursory knowledge of the median voter theorem.
The "Democrats should Run a moderate Republican" would be good advice, but Mitt Romney isn't a moderate Republican. On many issues he's more right-wing than Trump.
> I support the Principle of Charity. Nobody ever thinks in their own head “Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world”. They think “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”.
I don't see that the conclusion follows from the premise. There are plenty of people out there thinking along the lines of "I can fool them all, and they deserve it for being gullible". Not seeing yourself as a villain doesn't imply that deceptions are always perpetrated by people who mean well. It's not necessary to mean everyone well in order to not be a villain. Nobody does mean everyone well, and people aren't in denial about that.
I often wonder what goes through the head of really boringly evil people. Not the Maos and Bin Ladens, who clearly think they're doing something good, but just the standard burglars and muggers and bike thieves and so forth. Do they have some kind of complicated self-talk about how they're actually justified in doing these things because reasons? Or does it just never occur to them to feel bad?
There's a lot of variance, but for career thieves they tend to justify themselves by going "Everybody steals when they get the chance, I'm just honest about it" and "Life has been unfair to me so I'm just balancing the scales." Also they're not bad guys I mean haven't you seen the real monsters, rapists, child molesters, investment bankers....
There are definitely people out there who actively take joy in other people's suffering. Psychopaths and sadists.
What goes through their head? Who knows, but I suspect something just staggeringly evil like "torturing this animal is such fun, see how it screams and whimpers in pain, so enjoyable."
I wonder if it ever crosses their mind that they are evil. Possibly they don't have the vocabulary of "good" and "evil," or choose to ignore it.
I'm somewhat of a psychopath, except not sadistic. Acknowledging that I'm evil has never been a problem for me, since it's clear that there's no objective cosmic way in which being good is preferable.
"Maybe they prefer a well-known likeable incumbent over an unknown quantity (and the unknown quantity’s potential new/weird aides), even if the well-known likeable incumbent is senile."
This would be right if the opposition wasn't Trump. People seem to ignore that Trump is also running for reelection. He is a known quantity. And models that giv na incumbent advantage seems o ignore that it's likely a reelection advantage instead. In the entire history of presidential democracies, in all three times a president run for reelection against a president also running for reelection,he lost to the former president (U.S. 1892, U.S. 1912, Brazil 2022).
"Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations?"
Parties elites exist, but there isn't a Mr. Democratic Party, like there is a Mrs. National Rally in France. You should read Richard Hanania's posts on how liberals work, and it isn't done in a top down way like the GOP. But nonetheless, it's a difused power. You can use Obama, Pelosi, and party elites to rally around Biden to stop a socialist from taking the party. But this doesn't mean that you can stop the presumptive nominee from running. Political parties in the U.S. are very shallow. What kind of pressure you can make towards the world's most powerful man? Stop donating to his campaign? Are we going to pretend that in the year of our lord jesus Christ of 2024 this would be what would matter? Someone in Michigan will see a Biden ad, and only then, decide to vote? No way. This works for primaries and down ballot stuff. But you can't exert pressure on him like that. The truth is that Biden, and only Biden, that holds all the cards. Certainly someone foolled him to make this debate in June, to create optionality to remove him. But that's the extent the party elite could do.
I'm confused by your invocation of 1912? Isn't the fact that (then-current) president Wilson defeated then-former president Roosevelt evidence that (now-current) president Biden would defeat now-former president Trump? Or am I misunderstanding your metaphor?
Re: Obama and Pelosi, I'm not sure, because IIUC Obama and Pelosi have both endorsed his continued candidacy. If Obama, Pelosi, Hillary, Sanders, Jeffries, etc all came out and said explicitly "Biden needs to step down, we asked him and he refused", then the situation would look very different to me - it would look like Biden was a crazy lone cannon, and nobody would be blaming the party. But also, I don't think Biden has the guts to stand against Obama, Pelosi, Hillary, Sanders, and Jeffries.
Nope. The president in 1912 was Taft, who run for reelection against Roosevelt (as a third party) and Wilson (a Democrat). Taft lost both to Wilson and Roosevelt. Taft did 23% of the votes, while Roosevelt did 27%. Taft had only 8 electoral votes, versus 88 for Roosevelt. I understand that Roosevelt didn't win, but nonetheless, with N=3, I am not throwing away an occurrence.
Therefore, Biden winning against a former president would be unprecedented.
In my experience living through the Lula v. Bolsonaro campaign, the former president can always call for a fantastic nostalgia of the good old times. The election was just as close as I expect the American election to be (51%-49% for Lula, the second closest ever in Brazil), with extremely high turn-out. There weren't people who didn't have a strong position on the candidates. For both sides it was a life-or-death situation. But in the end, the inflation story and how Bolsonaro dealt with COVID were ultimately decisive. I seriously think pundits would do good if they studied this remarkably close historical analogy.
I understand the party could rebel against Biden the way you said. But just imagine if Obama picks up the phone and says to Pelosi: "wanna do a concerted statement to oust Joey?" And she says: "No way!". Obama will always be the guy who betrayed the party. Same goes for Hilary, Sander, Jeffries, Schumer... You need some trusted broker that allows them to share information without ever going to the history books that they considered that. It's hard for them to coordinate.
The exact causes of sundowning are unknown, but they probably are not simply a function of the number of hours that the person has been awake. They may actually have something to do with exposure to wavelengths of light at the end of the day, and associated melatonin production. So an effective adjustment to his circadian rhythm may have required more than simply letting him sleep until noon for a couple of days.
Biden has recently shown himself to be lucid enough for evening events. I don't think this year's State of the Union address was the triumph that a lot of people say it was, but he did have more vigor. So maybe his handlers had their fingers crossed that with some rest and a little luck he would perform well enough during the debate. A possible mistake made here is that reading a teleprompter passionately does not imply mental dexterity or fully functional memory. "Old Man Yells at Cloud" may be fundamentally different from "Old Man Extemporaneously Explains Wonky Positions."
"So with the constant attempts to prove that both candidates were senile, the constant demonstration by both candidates that they weren’t, and the constant retreat into conspiracy theories of “I guess he used the magic drug again but we’ll get him next time!”, I just tuned out this entire category of thing. And I guess I kept it tuned out longer than I should have, whoops."
That's all fine--I don't trust Republicans either--but it wasn't just Republicans who said Biden was getting senile. Ezra Klein said he was too old to campaign for president in February, all the while praising his achievements to the skies and saying he wasn't too old to actually be president: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html
Also in March, Special Counsel Robert Hur called Biden "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory". In a press conference meant to rebut Hur's characterization, Biden referred to Egyptian president el-Sisi as the "president of Mexico". Hur is Republican, but AFAIK not the kind of Republican who makes up conspiracy theories about Biden being on drugs.
I visited China in February, and Chinese people asked me whether Biden is pretending to be senile. Even without knowing English, they could clearly tell that his appearance was not that of a young man, even compared to the elderly Trump.
Finally, this whole campaign season, Biden has been hiding from the public. He turned down free publicity by not doing the Superbowl interview. He's done very few other interviews or press conferences. Why? If there's really nothing wrong with him, why doesn't he take every interview opportunity he gets to show how non-senile he is?
I interpreted Klein ("Biden is fit to do the presidency, just not to campaign") as saying something like "he's getting on in years, doesn't have a spring in his step, probably within the next four years he'll be really bad". I thought that given the extreme difficulty of replacing Biden at this stage and the lack of good candidates, his campaign difficulties still put him above eg Harris, and that if he became senile in 2026 or something he would resign. I think I made a big update from the Klein worldview to, basically, "Biden is unfit for the presidency right now, probably it's okay to keep him another four months to avoid chaos, but it's not acceptable for him to be running".
Same. It would take something really bad to make replacing Biden worth the chaos it would cause (and Harris isn't a terribly great candidate either). Unfortunately, now it seems like that's now the least bad option.
I think the Democrats' best chance, by far, would be to rally around Michelle Obama. If she isn't putting herself forward, then she must not feel that Trump's reelection is an existential risk to the country.
"Worse, they don’t even seem united on the need to figure anything out, with many deflecting the conversation to irrelevant points like “Trump is also bad” or pretending that nothing is really wrong."
This seems like a very obviously wrong take to me. Which makes me wonder (1) Is Scott in fact very obviously wrong here? (2) If so, why did Scott say it?
Why do I think it's very obviously wrong? Because publicly admitting that you're thinking about replacing Biden obviously tanks him. To take the extreme example, if Jill Biden says "we're considering our options" then it's already over.
So therefore, *until* they've collectively decided that he's going to get replaced (probably including getting his consent for it), they *must* deflect. They must steadfastly back the president; they can't admit that there's anything to figure out or that anything is really wrong.
i.e. this is a classic coordination problem. And since Scott often writes about coordination problems, I feel like he must realize this.
So either I'm wrong, or Scott is being disingenuous in his take -- for engagement-bait-y type reasons, presumably? (Nate Silver does the same thing btw, and it drives me nuts there too.)
I agree this exists, and I'll give the Democratic elites an A if they have a secret Discord room where they're discussing all of this completely frankly. But another famous coordination problem is "driving to Abilene", where everyone does something nobody wants because people were afraid to compare notes, and I think that's the bigger danger here (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox )
That's fair. But my point is, what's the counterfactual to "worse, they don’t even seem united on the need to figure anything out, with many deflecting the conversation to irrelevant points like “Trump is also bad” or pretending that nothing is really wrong"?
That's what we're going to hear (even from a lot of anonymous sources), no matter what's going on internally, unless and until Biden agrees to step down. So, it doesn't seem like a fair criticism.
Until Biden steps down, it puts everyone in a huge bind. They *have to* defend the undefendable (that everything's fine). There's literally no alternative.
Also this part of the paradox makes no sense - they would've been familiar with every last dish at the restaurant in Abilene and there would have been no "discovering" that the food was bad, nor would they have had any other restaurant to go to, most likely, especially as the nearest cafe is only open for lunch; and all women enjoy a break from doing the cooking and the dishes so there is no possible sense in which the food displeased.
They still might better have stayed home especially if the car had no AC.
Putting Harris on the ticket seems to indicate they weren’t thinking that far ahead.
“Biden at age 86 might be a serious problem” should have been obvious in 2020, even if you thought 2020 Biden was sharp enough.
And the VP would be the obvious successor. So Dems thinking with forethought would have tapped someone they thought could win in ‘24. But instead they went for Kamala, who the primaries had shown to be extremely unpopular and a poor campaigner, to score a few short term idpol points.
Pretty much any of the other plausible women VPs would have put the Dems in a better position today, and the fact that they didn’t shows that maybe they really were in some degree of denial / wishful thinking about Joe’s long term competence.
Dems did not select Kamala Harris as VP, Joe Biden (and his team) did. This is an important distinction, since maybe they did not want the VP replacing Joe Biden to be the obvious option after 4 years. If Kamala was very popular, the pressure on Biden to step down now would be much stronger. From the perspective of the Biden camp, this could be viewed as a bad thing.
I hear you that there is a distinction, but they are all still Democrats who presumably prefer Democrats to retain the Presidency.
Besides, “Biden’s handpicked successor” would be better for Biden’s camp than “Biden loses in 2024, or is forced to step down”. And having an obvious potential opponent as your VP puts them inside your camp rather than threatening you externally.
Either way, Biden’s team clearly put all their cards on “we can maintain the fiction that Biden is not a mentally declining octogenarian” for 8 years.
I wonder if prediction markets side bets are 30-60% insider trading, it seemed very coordinated with the nyt prewritten emergency bidens doomed post and if you have a full time job as a political insider and always need more money laundering, why not?
Maybe there was a smokey room deal that the nyt editor knew of that said, if biden is publicly senile for the debate they will turn on him and push newsom, and so when it happened, they had a meeting everyone updates thier picks and push out the articles
>Maybe there was a smokey room deal that the nyt editor knew of that said, if biden is publicly senile for the debate they will turn on him and push newsom
<mild snark>
Or news organizations around the country united to add enough uncertainty about the Democratic Convention to get people to watch/buy the news this August? :-)
I'm not sure I buy into the premise that anyone but Harris could be chosen to replace Biden. To me, the most likely scenario is Biden keeps going, second is that he steps down and instructs his delegates to vote for Harris, and then a distant third from that is anything else happening. Curious to hear what the scenario looks like where Newsom or Whitmer becomes nominee, the voting has already been done, the only thing left is for the delegates to go to the convention.
"Their model is based on results from Betfair, Smarkets, PredictIt, and Polymarket. But I don’t know much about the first two (as an American, I’m banned from even reading Betfair), and the latter two are notoriously bad at partisan political questions. They usually overestimate Republicans’ chances, partly because Democrats’ opposition to online political betting has turned the pool of online political bettors disproportionately red."
Yes if you're non-American, good with crypto, and willing to figure out the process in order to make high-risk 10% returns in a year - which I think amply explains why not many people are doing it.
From what I can tell, Team R is very much an *American* phenomenon. If you see Team R as the politician manifestation of *local* gentry, this makes sense. (Team D, by contrast, is the political manifestation of the PMC, and the PMC are not really "from" anywhere, nor are they especially tied to any given location, long as there's wifi.)
Biden's dementia has long been obvious, and long before Thursday. Just compare clips of the man in 2012 and in 2020.
The problem with replacing Biden with Harris is that Harris is arguably even less popular than Biden. At the same time Harris knows that she will never have more leverage as a candidate with Team D than she does now.
'I support the Principle of Charity. Nobody ever thinks in their own head “Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world”. They think “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. '
I agree with this in general, with one important extension. People tell themselves they are telling white lies for the greater good but that is NOT the true reason. That is the rationalization they tell themselves.
They tell white lies because they fear the consequences of telling the truth and and are uncomfortable admitting cowardice to themselves. (Being honest with oneself about feeling cowardly is quite liberating.) They tell white lies to save face for themselves. Often, the lie is intended to save face for another person, which saves mutual faces and may also be empathetic.
The other person may even have a pretty good idea they are being white-lied to. The important aspect is that one is signaling that one is willing to misrepresent the truth, that maintaining affiliation is most important. Other people are reassured by that evidence of affiliation intentions.
Most people deeply and understandably fear being rejected, ostracized, disapproved of by those in their own circle. It is a fundamental aspect of communication, generally not explicitly articulated, embedded secret code. This is a crucial factor in political communication.
It is worth a little effort to find a way to be truthfully tactful, in my opinion. Genuine intimacy arises from the authenticity of showing one cares about the other's feelings, and about affiliation with them, yet will not deceive and manipulate toward that end.
On the negative side, I despise white lies. The person who is willing to tell them is untrustworthy even if they value affiliation with me. They will use manipulation on me, a controlling, dominance move, and I despise those, too.
So in this imperfect world, I might hence despise people in my own small circle, most of whom do tell white lies. I solve this potential problem by despising the lies but not the person. When I see blind spots in other people, it makes it likely that I also have blind spots, and I curiously search for what those might be. I have made errors in the past, am humbled by them, and see understanding forgiveness as the path forward and as a way to maintain affiliation in my own life.
So we all (non-psychopaths) have the same ends, don't we? How do we reconcile the differences towards the greater shared ends? I believe rigorous truthfulness is the path toward that.
Don't know if these ruminations are useful in the overall discussion, but I throw them out.
Biden seems to be to have the mental decline that comes from being very old and weak. Both of my in-laws had CHF, and when they had good energy were fine mentally, but when their energy was low they exhibited signs of senility/dementia. People are very sloppy in using these terms. It is obvious to me that Biden is given stimulants for some of his performances - the SOTU address made me think he was going to have a heart attack - and maybe this time it just wasn't enough.
One option is to toss Kamala under the bus and put a more palatable VP in, while keeping Biden. Then a wink-wink to the electorate that within a year or two Biden will step aside. Obviously Kamala has to go one way or another, and putting Whitmer or someone who can talk behind Biden would help, and by itself signal that Biden isn't really going to be the president for four more years.
You're right that the difference in presentation can be quite stark even with old people who have no dementia diagnosis. You don't see it until you have reason to be with them round the clock and especially at night.
Still, you might want to consider the reaction of my rather moderate companion to mention of the name Whitmer in connection with this stuff - "That's who they're going to? A woman best known for having been fake-kidnapped by the FBI?"
I imagine if you want a generic candidate with no big scandals or skeletons lurking in the closet, that "best known for fake kidnap" isn't a bad thing. Bland, generic, won't frighten any horses, plus can be run as First Female Ever.
I don't think she's going to get the nod because right now it's too chaotic to dump Biden and the time frame is way too short to get a new candidate agreed and set up, but if you need scandal-free and inoffensive, she seems as good as any.
Actually, yeah, she'd be fine if there isn't really an interest in winning, but more a desire to maintain the drama and the fundraising possibilities and give the media another shot in the arm that is Trump.
Someday a woman will be president, because both parties will run women candidates. Mexico has much to teach us about governance.
We've had two female presidents by now in Ireland.
What they need, to learn from the Irish example, is to source a leprechaun. Our current guy is widely beloved, and has cooled down from the days when he was hob-nobbing with the Sandinistas to now be "adorable grandpa with his giant dogs".
He's 83, had a mild form of stroke earlier this year, but seems to be recovering okay.
Bernese Mountain Dogs and this is the third one he's had. A couple have died while he was in office, as he was elected in 2011 and is currently serving his second term. They're usually very friendly, it was odd that this dog wasn't willing to be coaxed out by Biden.
His term isn't up until 2025 so unfortunately we can't do a swap and have him step in to replace Biden 😁 He's got the political background to appeal to the progressive/lefty wing of the party (fluent Spanish speaker, visited South American countries often, academic career) and the cute dogs for the other voters.
Simon Harris? Very meh about him but he hasn't managed to do anything terrible yet. Or anything fantastic. What really needs to be solved is our housing problem but nobody seems to have an idea how to manage that.
We've now got a new Minister for Finance who rose out of obscurity. Not alone have I never heard of the guy, nobody else seems to have done, and there's a lot of wondering how exactly he got selected for the job. He qualified as a doctor, was elected as a Fianna Fáil TD. and didn't do anything remarkable to achieve public notice (to the point where he had to come out on Instagram earlier this year about being gay in order to get some publicity, but I never heard anything in the news about it because nobody cares about that anymore).
He does seem to be the usual career politician type, going off Wikipedia; when the winds of public opinion change to blow from a different quarter, his positions "evolve" (just as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with gay marriage):
"On 3 May 2018, he, along with several other Fianna Fáil TDs, called for a No vote in the referendum to remove the constitutional article which prohibited abortion by recognising the equal right to life of the unborn. He has since stated that his position has evolved and that he supports women being able to access terminations up to 12 weeks of pregnancy in all circumstances."
We're going to have an early Budget in October, it seems, and there is speculation that this is to set the way for an early election, though that has been denied. So maybe I *should* believe that there will be an election!
There are some advantages to a parlimentary system like the UK where, for example, the Conservative MPs can vote to replace their Prime Minister. (If I recall correctly, recent ex PMs have resigned rather than formally losing a vote of no confidence e.g. Lizz Truss)
It has already happened, more or less, principally because the cascade among Democrats is modest. Per a poll reported by Drudge, 52% of Democrats want Biden to stay in. Replacing him might be the smartest move but it's not going to happen if a majority of the party is against it. Biden can rightly say that a majority of his party still wants him to run, no matter what the New York Times and juiceboxer bloggers counsel.
Of course that means that somewhere in the 40s or high 30s of the party think he's kind of senile and needs to go. Obviously they're still going to pull the lever for him in November, though.
That maps reasonably well to what's going on in the Republican party. The base wants Trump. There's a substantial faction of Republicans who understand that he's not the best candidate, but nearly all those are going to come home at the end of the day. Never Trump is a real phenomenon though, and it's larger than any Never Biden coalition within the Democrats.
So yeah, I would say that the "our candidate sucks" cascade happened for the Republicans in approximately the same way that it happened for the Democrats, at least to the extent that it has any effect on the ultimate outcome.
But how much do you want to wager that Biden doesn’t get even worse before November? The “Never Biden” camp seems more likely to grow than the “Never Trump” camp.
He's going to be watched a lot more closely in the second debate. If he does well this might significantly blow over. If he does as bad or worse, I don't know what else can happen but him dropping out or tanking the election for the Democrats.
He can hold the Democrats hostage by refusing to step aside. They've boxed themselves in to the point that they may not be able to force him out. I really really doubt they would go through the absolute chaos of a 25th Amendment removal during an election season with the guy still on the ballot.
If he does that, then there's nothing else happening but wait and see.
He needs a lot more than one good day to offset the debate, he needs to prove it was a one off. Meaning he needs to be on TV nonstop giving cogent candid interviews.
That's his best bet, but given that his cognitive decline is not at all news to people paying attention (mostly Republicans who are incentivized to watch him more critically), it seems quite possible that his supporters refuse to acknowledge the problem and give no one any other option but to wait it out. We've got several years of evidence that this strategy might work for him.
If he is unscripted in public and doesn't do well, then that works against him. He doesn't really have to do that again until the second debate, though.
“He doesn’t really have to do that again until the second debate”
That’s my whole point, he DOES have to do that more often, because an ok second debate won’t undo the disaster of the first. “50% of the time, the President can be cognitively viable in crunch time” won’t cut it.
He can’t wait it out this time because he’s lost the ability to make reasonable excuses for waiting it out - failure to appear frequently and candidly in public will be seen as proof that he can’t hack it.
People don't vote for Trump because they like him. They never have. Maybe some morons on TV or who like posting to social media do actually like him, but as someone from Trump country, I can count on one hand the number of people who actually like Trump, rather than the vast majority of people who simply despise what the liberals are up to.
My late wife's best friend is planning on voting for Trump again, and I can confirm that her view is that she is voting for Lesser Evil (or voting against Greater Evil, if you prefer).
Contrary to the narrative our illustrious and trustworthy pop culture media promote, just because you live in a red area, or disagree with the politics of our hegemonic elites, it doesn't mean you're a deplorable moron.
You're underestimating the cynicism factor. Trump is absolutely a crook and a conman, but so are most national level politicians (though for sure their cons and crimes take very diverse forms). So the crook thing isn't going to affect my choice this November. I think most federal officials are bloodsucking leeches and rent-seekers. But I'm not a libertarian or an anarchist! A bloodsucking leech can be very helpful if he can protect you from even worse parasites.
I think all this focus on the election is misplaced. This man is president right now. He needs to step down right now. Someone who has good days and bad days, or is mostly coherent during the morning but less so in the afternoon has no business being President of the United States. I don't love Kamala Harris but if China invades Taiwan or we have another terror attack tomorrow, someone needs to be in charge, I'd rather it be her than hoping that the crisis hits before 7pm. Let's worry about the election once we have a competent human being in the presidency.
"I was that stupid. I didn’t say it openly, because I’m at least smart enough to have a high threshold for giving my opinion on political things I don’t know much about. But I thought it in my heart. "
Even as a non-American I've seen many times on TV he's doing weird stuff like trying to sit where there's nothing to sit, shaking hands of nonexistent people, unexplicably freezing in place etc. Was it something successfully screened by the USA media so nobody got to see them?
"So I think he should decline the nomination and endorse some likeable purple-state governor."
After 2 minutes of wikipediaing, I decided on Josh Shapiro which checks your boxes and as a bonus also is an Ashkenazi Jew who married another and made 4 kids. I hope he's the hawkest of all against Russia, China and Iran.
"Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded?"
I think the only reason all those camps came together to screw Bernie was because Bernie was anti-establishment so him being the candidate was a matter of life and death for them. As long as the candidate is within establishment it's difficult for them to stop their Byzantine intrigues among each other I guess.
I would've loved to see the DNC get humiliated with a Trump win but his soft stance against Russia makes me wish the democrats win for the greater good this time.
'Was it something successfully screened by the USA media so nobody got to see them?'
Half the media in the US screened this kind of thing out, half the media elevated it, depending on what side of the partisan divide they fell on.
Those who were surprised by the debate are those whose media diet was partisan such that this information didn't reach them, or who themselves were partisan such that they ignored the information they were receiving.
As Nate Silver's pointed out on Twitter, the chart of head to head polls _does_ show those candidates doing better than Biden. They have the same percentages in 'committed For', but Trump has fewer committed votes, and undecideds are higher. That means a higher chance of overcoming the gap and convincing enough undecideds to win the race. (Which needs about a 2% head to head advantage in national polls by his model.)
I feel like people are underrating the effect that a chaotic last minute primary at the convention would have on voters, the voters may even be underrating how they would react to such an event. The general sense of "Dems in disarray" that will undoubtedly come from such a convention certainly wouldn't reassure very many voters that the Democratic party is a party that's put together enough to govern, especially when compared to the Republican side where this whole issue has been settled for awhile now.
A chaotic convention combined with Kamala Harris as the new candidate (which seems very likely to me even though she is highly unpopular with the average voter) seems like it might actually be worse than dragging Biden across the finish line Weekend at Bernie's style. (Which is of course not to say that it's the most ethical choice).
That's a math question regarding how bad Biden will do as much as how much better someone else will do.
Harris is polling very poorly, and has been consistently low as VP, so picking her will probably not help the Democrats much at all.
I also agree that a very chaotic and split convention will likely draw negative attention. A relatively quick and relatively calm convention might actually make people feel much better about voting Democrat. Given Biden's recent performance, the Democrats being The Adults in the Room and taking care of their own business has a decent chance of giving them a bump. Getting away from Biden may as well, just because of how poorly he was already polling + his very bad performance in the debate.
I think that's a good chance that (Biden)+(Debate) < (Convention Chaos) in terms of approval, and ultimately helps the Democrats. They really shot themselves in the foot here, so I don't think there's anything close to a good outcome available.
Are there any markets for "Biden is replaced by a specific candidate" rather than just "Biden is replaced?" Otherwise, I'd worry about the generic-ballot effect - just like polls show a lot of support for a replacement but every conceivable specific replacement polls worse, I would expect that lots of people in the market are bullish on a generic Democratic replacement doing better than Biden but not optimistic on any specific replacement.
Betfair has separate 'Democratic Nominee' and 'Election Winner' markets, so we can infer conditional winning probabilities from those. Sometimes there's a bit of a spread between the available back and lay prices, and obviously they keep jumping around, but very roughly speaking, it has Biden at 24% to win conditional on being nominated, Harris 41%, Newsom 57%.
You have convinced me that the very best thing for America is for Trump to become President and decline into the scheduled senility, so that (a) he won’t run yet again and (b) we will have a bipartisan acceptance of the fact that youthful vigor matters when deciding who runs the country. And I say that as a 70-year-old who is seeing all this as a stark vision of my future.
Scott, I have to ask how familiar you are with dementia/sundowning and whether you personally watched the debate, because I would have expected you to be very familiar with those symptoms as a psych, but i have seen other people that I generally trust to have good takes arguing that Biden's debate performance looked like "dysfluency associated with fatigue (common in people with speech disorders)", and *not* dementia or sundowning because sundowning is associated with agitation and nervous energy, and if Biden had dementia, he would not be able to hide it in interviews or meeting with donors or the public or memorize soundbites, and that his aides would be keeping him away from everyone.
This post seems like a reaction to the reaction, rather than a reaction to actual events. The reactions to the event are part of reality also, and perception is part of reality, and perception is more important than reality in *predicting* politics, but it seems wise to keep actual reality in mind also.
I expect the markets to be overreacting to a single bad debate; I predict the odds on Biden will creep back as it becomes clear that he is old and tired and has a stutter but is not actually suffering dementia, to the extent that observers are capable of understanding the difference. So not very much, because they're mostly not.
Greatly appreciate this post, I'd looked at the prediction markets to see whether it was crazy for Dems to run Biden up to this point, and up to this point the markets generally did not think anyone had a better chance than Biden. I think they're now overreacting, and that they underestimate the difficulties involved in Biden stepping down, but I think they're right in that replacing Biden would increase the odds of a Dem win if they could do so frictionlessly.
Note that information is now leaking out that, no, this isn't an isolated incident.
And this information itself is almost certainly damage control - "Yeah, it's bad, but it's a new development, we weren't lying for the past five years about Biden's cognitive abilities, we've just been understandably misguided for the past six months".
Because, as bad as this looks, it looks way worse if this has been Biden's entire presidency. And a lot of people are desperately hoping this -hasn't- been his entire presidency, that Biden's family and administration and possibly the Democratic Party as a whole (or at least the parts of it that matter) haven't actively been gaslighting them for the past five years.
His aides HAVE been keeping him away from people, and he DOES have trouble memorizing sound bites. I mean yes there is probably some theoretical alternative that sort of looks like Biden did last week - but he’s 81, the prior should be progressive dementia until proven otherwise.
It's true that he doesn't do much off-the-cuff speaking, for us to know what his baseline is; and in the little part I saw where we are all being raped by our twisted sisters, his verbal mix-up didn't seem all that different even from his occasional mishaps with a teleprompter.
But haven't you noticed that he seems often to be in a sort of trance-like state? I guess where some people see "vacancy" there, others could see: he's exploring his interesting mind palace.
Again with the stutter excuse! Just once I want to see him actually s-s-s-tutter. He doesn't. He makes up wild stories, he goes on bizarre tangents, he mangles quips from movies that never existed, he confuses black men, he brags about finally beating Medicare.
But the one thing he doesn't do is stutter. The gaslighting has to stop.
He might have had a stutter as a kid, and then grown out of it completely. That's actually quite common, but for some people the experience might be traumatizing enough to recount many decades later.
Biden frequently shows signs of a stutter and more broadly long has displayed dysfluency, which people might describe as him getting tripped on words and losing his train of thought. It historically hasn't looked like it did during the debate, though you cannot rule out the effects of aging and fatigue worsening the presentation.
This is from 2012 in a debate. Here you can see a stutter, associated word substitutions, and his line of thought getting disrupted. But he's also quite fast-talking and recovers from it.
Without more information than we have access to, it's pretty hard to come to any conclusions of what was going on there. It'd be reasonable to recommend a neuropsych eval, but of course everyone's an amateur doctor who thinks the Goldwater rule is for suckers.
"Stutter" is being used in a loose sense as a generic term for a speech impediment, I think — Biden certainly slurs his words, mangles syllables, trips over himself at times.
The grand bargain should be that Biden resigns effective immediately, Harris gets to be the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first female president” for 6 months, and the Dems run some abbreviated activity to figure out who the actual best candidate will be (with Harris considered but not guaranteed).
Or Harris can get a tap for a Supreme spot to replace Sotomayor. As a somewhat right leaning moderate I don’t really like this, but then Sotomayor is basically a partisan hack (don’t hate me, I actually like Kagan and increasingly KBJ as thoughtful, good judges even when I disagree). So Harris can’t be much worse.
Not your main point, but I wanted to add that I agree with you about Jackson - more is there than I expected, and so far she hasn't been a partisan shrill (despite being part of the party line splits that I find disappointing).
I've respected Kagan more than most, including some of the conservatives, but find Sotomayor to fill the hack role more than the other liberals.
I'm glad to hear that Ketanji Brown is turning out to be better than her "I have no idea how to define what a woman might be" answer indicated. Sure, that was the kind of awkward political manoeuvring one has to do when hit with a 'gotcha' question, but it did seem to fit too neatly with the narrative that she only got the nomination as a diversity quota candidate, with Biden having promised a black female justice nominee.
1. I'm a biased conservative, but I don't think Newsom's anywhere near as good as this post makes him out to be, and I'm surprised there are markets showing him doing well when the head-to-head poll cited in this post has him trailing Trump. If Newsom got nominated there would be nonstop attack ads showing people defecating on sidewalks and shoplifting in San Francisco.
2. We need a constitutional amendment that says nobody over the age of 75 can hold any office, elected or otherwise, in any branch of the federal government. If you're over 75, you can't be elected or appointed; if you're already in a position, you are removed on your 75th birthday. No exceptions.
When the dust settles, there should be momentum for an age cap. The gerontocracy will oppose it but perhaps grandfathering can reduce the opposition. Constitutional amendments are hard but they do get through. (I'm actually surprised that Democrats went along with capping president to two terms. Like, was their experience of FDR so negative that they had to prevent anything like that from happening again? Not to hear them tell it; FDR is one of their greatest heroes.)
I expect Republican support for such a limitation to be near unanimous, as it is very on-brand for the Republican party to save the Democrats from their worst impulses.
Seems awkward for the GOP to support such a limitation currently, when their presumptive presidential nominee just turned 78.
Not to mention that their longtime Senate leader is now 82 and the oldest Senator is a Republican who's now 90; the two oldest Supreme Court justices (75 and 73) are conservative heroes Alito and Thomas; the GOP has the three oldest state governors who are 79, 77, and 77; etc.
>If Newsom got nominated there would be nonstop attack ads showing people defecating on sidewalks and shoplifting in San Francisco.
Hmm... Are the odds of Newsom high enough to motivate starting to film these ads now? I have no idea what the lead time is for attack ads.
>We need a constitutional amendment that says nobody over the age of 75 can hold any office, elected or otherwise, in any branch of the federal government.
I see the point about having a crisp criterion. It is a pity that this would exclude quite a few people who are still quite mentally capable, and it would miss people who have early onset cognitive deterioration. Ideally a better choice would be some sort of cognitive assessment, but that would lead to all sorts of grey areas...
This strikes me as profoundly silly. It would be gross political malpractice to step aside now, for several reasons:
1. The debate was four days ago. The actual permanent effect on the polls will not be known for weeks.
2. There are ongoing negotiations re a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as re a possible violent conflict with Hezbollah. The moment he withdraws is the moment that US influence evaporates.
4. See also Ukraine.
5. Withdrawal now = weeks in intraparty jockeying over who will replace him, exacerbated by the fact that most potential candidates know that it might be now or never; if Raphael Warnock decides to run in 2028, he is going to have massive advantages over the rest of the field, both among voters and among party elites looking to electability in the general election. In contrast, if Biden announces at the convention that he is stepping down and endorsing X, the intraparty conflict, if any, will be much shorter and hence less damaging.
I took that to mean that Biden didn't step aside months ago (prior to the primaries entirely?) in a move that would have seemed much more gracious. Then the primaries could go forward as normal and not be clouded by an incumbent.
The brain deteriorates with age. And people are more tired in the evening. But the brain doesn't deteriorate in the evening and regenerate by morning.
So it has to be something (as always) more complicated where the brain's functioning *as a function of wakefulness, energy levels, and a million other things* deteriorates. But then isn't that exactly the kind of thing stimulant medication could help with, to allow someone to function similarly in the evening as they would during the daytime?
Purportedly anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications may help improve cognitive function in sundowning adults (at least it relieves some of the symptoms), which dovetails nicely with some stuff Scott has covered about depression-as-error-in-priors, and hints at a causal factor in sundowning behavior.
The brain deteriorates with fatigue, which correlates with being up for 10+ hours, which correlates with nighttime. Then it recovers during sleep.
Biden is likely maximally medicated, and has been for years. While an extra dose of stimulants can give a shortterm boost, and he probably had this during the State of the Union, what goes up must come down; uppers have side effects, and the severity of sides increase exponentially while the benefits scale logarithmically.
One of the common features in people who experience sundowning is their sleep cycles get disrupted, sometimes resulting in days and nights completely reversing. And they still experience the symptom even though dusk for them is morning. And stimulants generally do not resolve the dysfluency that people are primarily focusing on in their amateur diagnostic assessment of Biden as having a cognitive impairment.
> We should expect [the conditional probability problem] to overestimate his performance. That is, imagine that tomorrow, Biden has completely recovered, he easily wins his next debate with Trump, and everyone agrees the most recent debate was just a fluke - in that world, he is both more likely to be nominated and more likely to win. Alternatively, if tomorrow he gets much worse and can’t even speak in full sentences, he’s much less likely to be nominated and much more likely to lose. Since the real world includes both those possibilities, restricting ourselves to the set of worlds where he gets nominated means we’re overestimating the chance that he wins.
If that's the case, then the market is also saying that there's option value in waiting rather than making a decision right away - there's information that's not yet revealed that is expected to affect both Biden's conditional chance of winning and the chance he gets nominated. I don't think this option value moves the needle on the overall probabilities, if it exists at all, but it would roughly if not exactly offset the "overestimating the chance he wins" part.
(in theory you have the same option value with any other candidate, but in practice I think we can agree that replacing the candidate *twice* between now and the election isn't realistic)
I'm still amazed, even after reading your response to “how could anyone possibly have been stupid enough to not realize that Biden was senile?”
You say: "Republicans have been ACCUSING Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now," but you don't say anything about direct sources of information. I've been watching the video of Biden looking like he's not all there anymore for years. How did you miss it? Undoubtedly, these things get worse over time, but there's been evidence of problems for years. In particular, the video from his visit to France recently was astonishing.
I wonder if you just don't follow any sources that show you the videos of Biden being out of it? I doubt most people saw the original, uncut video from France (the one with the parachutist landing): you need good sources. Perhaps you could benefit from adding some good conservative sources, that will cover things like this. Brit Hume on X is excellent. Many people on Fox News would have kept you apprised of this and other things the mainstream media won't cover; Greg Gutfeld is one I like myself.
Agreed. I saw a reference to that and was curious since it had not merited mention in the MSM at all, though it was just 3 weeks ago; so looked it up. I thought it was weirder than the debate in a way. Sure, no sooner did people start putting up videos of it than the response was "all faked". So did he or did he not sleep during the ceremonies, I don't know.
But if you watch a long video e.g. from The Guardian which I don't think has any reason to discredit Biden, he just seems out of it and automaton-like. There's a moment during the parachute business - never mind about the supposedly faked stuff, no need to invoke it - where Macron - in a manner that rather humanizes him for me - gives Biden a little wink, like, you can do it, we're in this together, buddy. Then when Macron was delivering his remarks - well, I can't say that I've ever had to sit by someone making a speech in a language I didn't understand - but *I think* the customary thing is to glance over and look attentive and appreciative. Biden looked like he was staring at a bug on the floor. Macron looked suitably awkward, like, it's just me, who thinks this is odd?
Appearances can be deceiving, as any smart kid who got shouted at in school for not *looking* like they were paying attention will tell you. I think this is an issue Scott is particularly sensitive to (he's written about how part of why he doesn't like appearing on camera is that he always looks like he's frowning in concentration/squinting in the light, even when he's actually feeling completely relaxed and comfortable), and I can't blame him for overcorrecting. If someone keeps making daily public appearances for years, plausibly you're going to find several hours of footage of them "staring off into the void" regardless of their mental acuity.
>Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out.
I have never seen a group that operates that way. It has always looked to me like the glue that holds groups together is a network of personal ties and loyalties and obligations. To remain a member or to rise, you simply have to keep feeding the members of your network what they signal that they want. This process has nothing whatever to do with individuals’ rational assessment of the situation the group is supposed to be managing.
I know a couple of people, A&B, who are deeply involved in the DNC, and one of them, B, is high enough up in it to be having meetings with people whose names you hear in the news. A recently told me the following story: B wrote a thoughtful, data-driven memo about how a subgroup in the DNC was being given far too much work to do, with the result that work quality suffered and subgroup members were quitting. B gave the report to C, who is a close personal friend, to present at a meeting of higher ups. B used to be C’s boss, but C was recently promoted to a position higher than B. B attended the meeting where their report was presented, and C had kept B's data about the subgroup’s unreasonable work load, but presented it as evidence of how committed the subgroup was and how much they were accomplishing. Afterwards, A asked B whether they had talked with C about why C had done that. B said that C had not, because C knew that B understood the reason C had done that: So early in C’s tenure it was important for them to come across as positive, and to not say things that imply that somebody had mismanaged a subgroup.
I think that's typical of organizations that lose their purpose, and become ends in themself. It's like... a heavily unionized industry where the unions and the bosses pay more attention to each other and to dividing up their pie, while competition from overseas is making the pie shrink and dooming the entire company.
Is it more important to establish your own place in the Democratic Party, or is it more important to get the organization functioning better so that it can accomplish "its goals"? Of course, maybe you have to establish your own place before you can make it function better, but that seems to become habit and lead to a cycle where internal politics is prioritized above reform. (It's the problem with Social Security, in a way.) I think "The Wire"'s political threads in seasons 3-5 illustrated this fairly well.
"Still, for the past four years, every time Biden was going to do something - a press conference, a State of the Union, whatever - the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!” And then he would always do fine..."
Biden did NOT always do fine. How did you reach that conclusion?
> Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now.
Same. It was obviously cope in 2016, and in 2020. (And I said as much while predicting Trump would win and lose, respectively). I assumed this was on repeat but this time it was wrong. Obviously Republicans continue to lie anyway, as with today's "end of quote" lie, so this is just a matter of a broken clock being right twice a day.
Nonetheless, it is right. Biden needs to step aside for the sake of Our Democracy.
Here are the lead stories at the Associated Press and CNN right now, two stories that were posted within one hour of each within the past two hours:
headline: "As Biden digs in, some top Democrats want him out of the race this week"
lede: "Defiance has become as much a part of Joe Biden’s psychology as Delaware. But as the president and his inner circle dig in following his disastrous debate performance last week, a growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want him to step aside for the good of the party – and the country...."
headline: "Many Democrats feel powerless to replace Biden as party leaders fight to contain debate fallout"
lede: "Bernie Sanders describes President Joe Biden’s recent debate performance as “painful.” In an interview, he says he’s not confident that Biden can win this fall. But the progressive senator from Vermont does not want Biden to step aside. Instead, Sanders, who served as Biden’s chief rival in the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination fight, is calling on voters to adopt “a maturity” as they view their options this fall...."
Both articles then report that Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett today became the first Democratic federal elected official to publicly call for Biden to step down as the party's presidential nominee. Also they say that the president will sit down tomorrow with several (unnamed) Democratic state governors who requested the meeting.
It's kind of funny because Doggett, although a solid conservation vote, has never gained much of a stature in the House, and some may feel has been coasting in his seat (or seats, as the map changes) for what seems like decades. He doesn't ever have a high enough profile to deliver the goods like one of his predecessors, LBJ man Jake Pickle - but he is never seriously challenged. At the same time, he has often been invoked as someone who's holding up progress up the ladder for younger Democrats - there being no statewide avenues to higher office in Texas. Indeed, the cast of understudies has turned over several times at this point.
ETA: I should add that it doesn't necesssarily speak poorly of him if he's not made a success in D.C.
Biden could easily lay this to rest simply by having some open, give-and-take press conferences. Which he will not do and has not done his whole presidency. He takes one or two questions, gives odd, belligerent answers, and stalks off, or is led off by his staff. Contrast that to the Biden of 10 years ago.
I work with the elderly every day (RN). It's clear he is slipping, has well-slipped.
I had a close relative with dementia, who, when he could still talk in complete sentences, would have exactly the same verbal hiccup: whatever he was talking about, it was always about millions of people. "100 million people agree that..." I don't know if it's a common hiccup for people with dementia, or if it's something they get from watching too much TV, but I used to hear a lot of this.
Scott, I'd humbly suggest trying to get news from outside the liberal bubble (and I don't mean Fox News). RealClearPolitics, for one, does a pretty good job of aggregating both sides - and they are in general a good operation, with good people contributing (Sean Trende, for example).
Huh. The documents say that they were allowed to use deadly force. But, you know, this also reads as a more general statement that they went all out to take him down, not necessarily by deadly force - and that is factually correct. I'm a bit disappointed you didn't pick something that would be obviously factually wrong - Trump has no shortage of such statements.
But, you know, as to what half the country sees in Trump is that his administration was obviously not a wrecking ball taken to this country, unlike this administration. The sky didn't fall. Wars didn't start. Whatever bodycount is blamed on him for not telling the rioters (incited by FBI) to disperse more emphatically is in single digits. There was no censorship, no persecution of political opposition.
Whereas this administration is a wrecking ball. 12 millions pretty much completely unchecked immigrants imported because they wanted more Dem voters and more cheap labor, without any concern for what this will do to this country. DEI weaponized to subvert all kinds of institutions by hiring the less competent over the more competent. Overwhelming pressure to censor speech the government doesn't like - to the point where they asked Amazon to take down books. Persecution of political opposition, culminating in trying to bankrupt and jail the front-runner presidential candidate of the opposing party, who happens to be supported by about half of the country. I could continue, but this is already more than enough.
I don't quite understand what got into the heads of people who think that Trump is a bigger problem than the above and more. Really, Trump talking crap and writing mean tweets is a bigger problem than the above? I could understand the fear of the unknown, but remember, we had him for 4 years, and the sky did not fall.
Thanks for the response. Sincerely. I’m going to sleep on my reply. I’m waiting for my body to win it’s first battle with Covid so I’m retiring early for a few more days till I get a couple of negative antigen tests.
For now I’ll just say I see things differently than you. I’m not basing my aversion to the man on liberal bubble media spin but on his own words and actions. For example balking at lowering flags to half staff after Senator McCains death. A man who was held as a POW in Hanoi for 5 1/2 years. This isn’t a mean tweet. It’s contempt for a man who made a great sacrifice for his country . Trump expresses his patriotism by dry humping Old Glory when he walks on a rally stage. Something like that is disgusting to me. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how anyone can stand Trump.
What's your opinion on all the "ha ha only joking" online suggestions, since the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that Biden should order Trump assassinated?
Can't be accused of doing anything bad because presidential immunity, just take the guy out for the sake of Democracy and whatever, then retire to well-earned rest free from prosecution.
Of course we don't mean this *seriously* but....if he did suddenly drop dead, wouldn't it be great?
It just makes me wonder does nobody else remember the accusations that the Republicans put targets (literally) on Democratic politicians and Sarah Palin was responsible for the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords?
" In March 2010, Giffords had expressed concern about the use of crosshairs on a national midterm election map on Sarah Palin's campaign webpage denoting targeted congressional seats, including Giffords', in Arizona's 8th district. Shortly after the map's posting and the subsequent vandalizing of her office that month, Giffords said, "We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action." At that point in the interview, however, the interviewer said, "campaign rhetoric and war rhetoric have been interchangeable for years." The image was removed from Palin's "takebackthe20" website following the January shootings. Palin responded to her critics in a January 12 video, rejecting the notion that anyone other than the gunman could bear any responsibility for the Tucson shooting, and accusing the press of manufacturing a "blood libel" to blame her and the right wing for the attacks. No link was proven between the crosshairs map and the shooting, and it is unclear whether Loughner ever saw the map."
I suppose thirteen years is a long time and the silly-billies posting this kind of "ha ha funny joke" weren't old enough to be aware of what was going on back then.
>What's your opinion on all the "ha ha only joking" online suggestions, since the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that Biden should order Trump assassinated?
Give me a break. You are just throwing up chaff here. I know I told you a few days ago that I don't seek out trolls and knuckleheads on the internet. I don't need the opinions of idiots.
My take on something like Biden should shoot Trump because of immunity would be "That's really fucked up. Shut up and go away." Do you think for a moment I would defend it?
The ordering the assassination of a rival by a president hypothetical *did* come up in January of this year in the context of Trump's immunity of prosecution
"Former President Trump’s legal team suggested Tuesday that even a president directing SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent would be an action barred from prosecution given a former executive’s broad immunity to criminal prosecution.
The hypothetical was presented to Trump attorney John Sauer who answered with a “qualified yes” that a former president would be immune from prosecution on that matter or even on selling pardons."
So *Trump's* attorney said a president would be immune in a case like that half a year ago. Get you facts straight. Did you even hear about that? If you saw some asshole saying Biden should order Trump's death they were probably doing a call back to that abomination. It's in the transcript of their oral arguments.
On a tangential note, I drove through Wasilla Alaska last week, where Sarah Palin got her political start. Nice little town. Couldn’t quite make out Russia from there that day though. Kinda overcast. ;)
Thing is, I'm seeing these "ha ha only joking" posts being shared around approvingly by mutuals who are, although liberal to progressive, not what I'd consider total raving loons - not trolls and knuckleheads.
So while I don't take any of this as serious "we should assassinate Drumpfler" suggestions, the fact that there's a kind of "he is that bad a threat" does make me wonder. Your own opinion seems to be that he's not just a poor candidate and the rest of it, but a uniquely awful threat.
So the "trolls and knuckleheads" seem to be more in tune with your assessment of the terribleness of Trump, rather than just that he's a braggart blowhard who, astoundingly. managed to get elected to be president of the USA but who, while in office, didn't blow the world up.
As to the rest of what you say, was Obama ever prosecuted for the drone strikes that killed American citizens overseas? I imagine that is more along the lines of what the "Trump's lawyer totes said Trump could murderate his rivals!!!!" argument was really about - if a sitting president orders something that ends up in the death of such and such persons, can they be prosecuted?
Even the ACLU - and yeah, I know it's them scaremongering for fund raising - issued a press release back in 2010 about "Obama can kill any American he wants!!!"
"Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority To Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones
The Obama administration today argued before a federal court that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans the executive branch has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. Government lawyers made that claim in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging that the administration’s asserted targeted killing authority violates the Constitution and international law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments from both sides today."
If Trump's reelection represented an existential threat to democracy (which I don't believe), I'm not sure if it would be wrong for Biden to off him. That's an interesting moral dilemma.
What I'm even more astounded by is how the hell I ended up sort of defending Trump and the Trumpists, or MAGAtards, or however one wishes to call them.
I always said that were I American, or had emigrated to the USA like so many family and countrypeople, I'd be a Democrat voter like many's the Irish before me. But sometime post-Reagan, the Democrats went to the likes of me "Fuck off, poor white non-college educated working-class/lower middle class with socially conservative views, we don't need or want you and the sooner you deplorables die off the better for the world".
So here I am, saying "let's be fair to the MAGAtards for who amongst us, my brethren, may not one day find themselves washed up on the opposite shore, left behind by the tide turning?"
You might or might not remember a bit of my backstory. Working in a shirt factory after school and Saturdays in high school rather than going out for the basketball or hockey team. Clothing was still being made in America then. Arrow shirts were manufactured in my hometown. Followed by working in an iron mine for more than a decade after graduation.
Donald Trump’s pitch is to people with an experience like that. I don’t buy it for a second. I know a Grade A grifter when I see one. I wouldn’t want a guy like that for a team member, a coworker or a neighbor. He is just a disgrace.
Oh, I do see your point of view, and I'm not saying Trump is genuinely "a friend to the working man".
But it's been left for him to pick up those fifty dollar bills lying on the sidewalk, as it were. Hillary and her basket of deplorables was the stupidest thing any Democratic politician could have said in public, and nobody on that side seemed interested in playing it down, rather it seemed "well gosh we all think that but did she have to say the quiet part out loud?"
Abortion is the make-or-break issue for me, and the Democrats seem to have gone full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes, abortions for everyone in the room! on that, pushing out the pro-life Democrats and sticking to a party line of "we need those Planned Parenthood and Emily's List endorsements".
I was genuinely surprised about the Supreme Court and Roe vs Wade under Trump, because it seemed to be the same old "Republicans appeal to pro-life voters then when in power do damn-all" business as usual, but Trump of all people got something major done. I think in this case he was rather like the dog who caught the car and now what does he do with it, but it was him rather than anyone else. I'm still not sure that we haven't somehow slipped sideways to a parallel dimension, but wow. Actually achieving a policy goal.
For whatever reason, Trump's defense team took the approach that the president should have absolute immunity for all acts, despite the lack of support for this in the law. Maybe they just took the most extreme view in favor of the defendant. So the lawyer had to either say that the president was immune from prosecution for ordering the military to assassinate people, or admit their entire legal argument was BS.
Then we have Sotomayor's moronic dissent, where she equated the immunity for official presidential acts back to the Seal Team Six assassination. Which anyone not made stupid by bias can clearly see ordering the military to murder other Americans is not a constitutional prerogative of the President.
> “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. '
Really? You are saying this with a straight face? IIRC you didn’t want to speak out too aggressively against Trump. “He’ll just do more or less Republican stuff.” In fact you seemed kind of proud of your restraint in not writing an honest journeyman’s takedown of him.
So the decade of a firehose of lies from the moral cretin is some lesser matter? Your scrupulosity seems a bit late to the game.
Yeah, I think Scott isn't generalizing enough here. "little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good" is a subset of "lies, because I think they'll produce the outcome I want". And one big difference there is that what people want isn't always "the greater good".
I'm not seeing your complaint; where does Scott imply that any of Trump's lies are "some lesser matter"?
Scott has already pretty thoroughly condemned Trump:
"I’ve never been the slightest bit of a Trump supporter. Since he came onto the national stage, I have called Trump “a bad president”, “randomly and bizarrely terrible”, “an emotionally incontinent reality TV show host”, and “an incompetent thin-skinned ignorant boorish fraudulent omnihypocritical demagogue”. I’ve accused him of “bizarre, divisive, ill-advised, and revolting” rhetoric, worried that his election might “lead directly to the apocalypse [or] the fall of American democracy”, and called his administration “a disaster”. I’ve urged blog readers to vote for literally anyone except him and to donate money to the ACLU to stop him. If you want to accuse me of being pro-Trump, or even lukewarm on disliking Trump, I don’t know what else to tell you."
I signed on here after that post. I wish I had seen it before my comment.
I joined about when Scott deleted SSC and ACX started. I don’t think I’ve seen this sort of direct criticism since I’ve been here. It’s not like I haven’t been looking for it. I really don’t like Trump for the reasons Scott lists above.
Since Scott is on record for this, I apologize to him.
I don’t think I’ll have much luck finding the ACX comment I assume I’m misremembering where I thought Scott said something to the effect that he didn’t write an unequivocal statement about the awfulness of 45.
I think I can come up with a paraphrase of the sentence in my apparently faulty memory and I’ll try some Google search magic to come up with the actual wording I misremember or misconstrued. I recall it being something like “people wanted me to say this about Trump, but I didn’t or wouldn’t”
Scott was being fair minded. When the more hysterical were predicting gay conversion torture camps and jackbooted mobs roaming the streets murdering minorities, how oh how can I flee to Canada before The Handmaid's Tale becomes fact, he was going "Trump is terrible but if elected he'll be mediocre, not the Antichrist".
In this entire comment thread, I see Scott being accused of ignoring bad shit done by/lying FOR the Republicans and AGAINST the Democrats, and ignoring bad shit done by/lying FOR the Democrats and AGAINST the Republicans.
There are, to put it mildly, no good options for the Democratic party. Personally I think Biden needs to do a huge media blitz. Live interviews every few days. If he keeps it together, the narrative could change. And if he can't, then it's time to get someone new. Hoping it blows over (the seeming current plan) just won't cut it.
If he can't hold it together then it's time for a convention. It seems unthinkable, undemocratic, but it was actually the norm for most of the country's founding, and in most countries, the party picks the candidate.
The only problem is who. Harris is frankly not in the top 5 or perhaps even 10 most electable Democrats. But pushing her out is almost impossible, and practically speaking no other candidate can use the $240 million war chest. Keeping Harris as VP and putting someone more electable as the candidate is the obvious best strategy, but obviously there would be huge pushback - Harris is the second most powerful person in the party with backing from Jim Clyburn and other important figures. But assuming it were possible to get someone else Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer or Andy Beshear would be my picks.
The other problem is that Harris now has the taint of the “Biden senility cover up conspiracy” on her. so she either has to distance herself from it, or the party needs to bury her with it.
That's a good point. Also, I learned today that she can only use the campaign funds if she's the nominee. Being the VP candidate isn't good enough. To use the campaign funds, it's basically Biden/Harris, or Harris/someone else. There is no advantage to keeping her on as VP and having someone else as the nominee.
There is another path though, Biden can simply refund everyone or convert to a PAC. If that happens, then maybe the ideal Whitmer/Shapiro ticket could actually happen. Lock up two swing states, play heavy defense in Nevada and Wisconsin - probably win the presidency.
Back to reality, it's just looking more and more likely that Harris is simply the nominee.
I dunno. That seems like an all downside plan. It would be seen as an admission of Biden's weakness while still keeping him around as a liability. Either remain resilient, have Biden prove himself, or have him step aside. A halfway measure seems worse than either.
The upside in keeping $200 million as campaign funds isn't worth it imo. Biden raised $600 million dollars in August and September in 2020. Whoever the nominee is will catch up quickly.
I don’t think Dems should actually implement this plan, but it should be explored as a stick to make Harris play ball.
Basically, offer Harris this deal:
1) Biden retires effective immediately, making Harris first female president BUT she has to accept some sort of abbreviated primary / open convention she is not guaranteed to win
OR
2) Biden stays in the race and the Dems pick a different running mate for him
Harris would not have Biden's cognitive decline, but wouldn't she inherit at least a large chunk of dislike for policies that happened during Biden's administration? The open borders, the additional push towards Woke?
This is the dem and dem donor elite strategy in action. Why would we think something as nefarious and duplicitous as politics would never ever chose to use strategies which include an element of confusion which works to their potential advantage.
Dems have zero time to set up or promote a different candidate. Kamala is a joke, a stop gap to make even a senile biden look OK.
As such, they'll have to rely on style over substance and a set of empty sympathetic promises to carry on bidens legacy or whatever. A legacy of racist friends, racist laws, and working for the credit card lobby while taking bribes across his family, so like...typical Washington political life.
That debate was the slow execution of his candidacy and was done on purpose and allowed to happen on purpose to drag this out and garner sympathy about a fake good man with good values who just got too old.
Trump can't run against an unknown. An august surprise candidate is the hard deadline dems can't ignore and it probably is messy with many elite favoured horses all vying for the top spot from donors. Right now they are waiting for polls and such so their donors and owners can decide which generic dem to try their chances with. This is their primary, sans voters.
This is exactly their strategy to get more information and to set up a story to shift blame onto biden personally over time. A sort of accelerated Regan effect where he is lionised and yet none of his actual policies or actions are ever considered in detail. Regan is the perfect and most recent model of a senile president and how to handle his marketing. Of ourselves dems would try to do that.
They ask who's the president, and what day of the week is it?
At least, people pitching 'assisted living' regard one's answer to those two questions as enough to get you committed.
Mr. Biden would likely get the first one right -- with perhaps an oblique anecdote about being raised by Puerto Ricans or his uncle being brunch for cannibals -- but I'm not so sure about the second.
I'm only 76, but I've lost a hundred pounds and several organs, and have days when I lose my car in several parking lots.
After about a month of being retired I started to lose certainty on day-of-the-week, and obviously the people who make these tests up are employed. Bias!
I've just realised something really depressing though, which is that assuming Trump wins we're going to have to go through this whole thing again over the next four years. Trump is only three years younger than Biden, he will pass Biden's current age before his term is out. Democrats will undoubtedly sieze on every single misstep that Trump makes over the next four years as evidence that he too is non compos mentis. Republicans will be the ones saying "no, he's totally fine". Divining the truth will be damn near impossible.
I guess, though, that there's easy ways to prove that you're still with it if you are -- give an off-the-cuff speech without a teleprompter. If Trump keeps doing those, it'll be hard to say that he's turning into Biden. It's only if they start hiding Trump indoors and keeping him away from impromptu speaking engagements that we'll know something is actually wrong.
This is a good example of how the people in power are much less competent than imagined by their fans or their conspiracy-theorist enemies. They're affected with group-think and dogmatism just like their followers. Biden's team could have had him refuse to debate Trump because he's a "convicted felon." I doubt swing voters would have cared. After all, Trump was able to get away with refusing to debate his GOP primary rivals. But Biden's team didn't do that, either because the old man refused or because they were too incompetent or group-thinky to see it.
"But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations?"
That was a situation where, iirc, the main immediate actions were Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out of the race right before Super Tuesday and endorsing Biden. Klobuchar was 59 years old at the time and a U.S. Senator. Buttigieg was then 38 and the former mayor of South Bend.
Offers of future benefits - and subtle threats - from other elected officials and major donors have credible leverage for candidates in the situations of Klobuchar and Buttigieg in 2020. Buttigieg was later named to a cabinet position, Secretary of Transportation, in the Biden Administration, for example. Klobuchar and Buttigieg were both likely to be candidates in future campaigns, including future presidential primary candidates.
In the case of Biden, what meaningful offers (or subtle threats) can anyone make to Joe and Jill Biden? Whether today, or convincing him 1 or 2 years ago to decide not to run for re-election. The Presidency is clearly his last political office. An incumbent President is going to be able to raise enough money to fund a campaign. Anything that can be offered or threatened pales in comparison with a credible chance - even if well below 50% - to remain President.
Addition: in checking the history, Obama's endorsement of Biden occurred in mid-April 2020. At that point, the campaign for the Democratic nomination was de facto over. Sanders had withdrawn a few days earlier.
I think that Scott is referring to earlier events that did not include a public endorsement by Obama.
Oof. You had a rare opportunity to notice when a true fact penetrated your bubble of selected, curated sources of information. Most facts, sadly, do not have these conveniently packaged moments where the truth suddenly becomes undeniable. Ideally, this would be the time for humility and reflection. Sadly, instead, you just decided to reinforce your bubble with a lame both-sides-ism about Trump. Your choice is not between liars on the left and liars on the right, you know! There ARE reasonable voices on the right, who aren't yelling about Pizzagate or vaccines not working, but were noticing Biden's cognitive decline and how managed all his appearances were. And there are honest people on the left who were noticing it too - and apparently these aren't sources you trust, either!
How many other facts do you, and everyone you listen to, filter out because they inconveniently help Republicans?
Well, you can never successfully forecast what will happen, and I'm sorry prediction markets but who would have thought that what looked like a boring, coin-toss re-run of 2020 would blow up like this?
Now (allegedly) one of Harris' delegates threatens that if Kamala isn't chosen, they'll blow up the party. I don't know how reliable this site is or what it's biases are, but if the Democratic Party is faced with:
(1) Stick with Biden - but there's a real problem with that
(2) Pick Kamala - but the problem is that she's probably unelectable
(3) Pick somebody else - but the problem is that the Harris delegates will raise hell over racist sexism
Then maybe option (1) really will look more and more like the least worst of the bad outcomes.
"Kamala Harris delegate, Areva Martin, appeared on Stephen A. Smith's podcast, and let's just say the Democrat Party will implode if a white man not named Joe Biden becomes the Democrat nominee. It was only a matter of time for someone to say the quiet part out loud.
Here is what Martin told Stephen A. Smith:
You've got to build consensus, and there is not consensus right now. You pick a white man over Kamala Harris -- black women, I can tell you this: We're gonna walk away, we're gonna blow the party up."
The kicking and screaming over "will Biden be gently crowbarred out of the nomination and if so, who will replace him?" is looking to be prime entertainment for those of us lucky enough not to be stuck having to vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum as our next leader of the nation.
If I were a betting man (and knew where to place it) I would put a substantial sum on Harris being the Democratic contender in the November US presidential election.
It is extremely risky to bypass her unless she steps down voluntarily. And why on Earth should she – this is her chance in a lifetime.
If she is squeezed out in the August 19-22 Democratic Convention, as you point out her people in the party will get boiling mad at the party elders and whoever puts him/herself in front of her - and who can blame them.
Plus, she probably formally controls the Biden/Harris campaign funds (together with Biden). So without her consent it becomes at best very cumbersome to fund the campaign of someone else. Serving as a massive disincentive for anyone else to put themselves forward in front of her.
If she then goes on to win against Trump, everyone in the party is reasonably happy.
And if she loses, all of today’s would-be contenders, including lily-white males, can then credibly say “ok everyone, we tried with a minority candidate, and unfortunately it did not work. So why not try someone like me in 2028?” …without risking massive pushback from Harris and her people.
In short, the forces are aligned so that “Harris 2024” is the most rational choice for everyone involved in the decision.
That's only if Harris is happy to be a dying duck candidate with a very slim chance of winning. If she loses, the screeching about sexism (as per after Hillary lost) will be turned up to eleven, because now it will have racism to go along with it, and of course blaming the Old White Guys in power in the party for killing her chances, throwing her under the bus after Biden mucked it up, and forcing her to run a campaign that everyone knew would lose. It wasn't her fault! (even if she is deemed unelectable).
Unless she gets the offer of a very plum job down the line, and that's rather "live horse and get grass" - 'sure, Kamala, when I win in 2028 I'll definitely appoint you as Secretary of State for something or other!' Or maybe a judicial appointment between now and then? That might be a bargain she would be willing to make, in exchange for being the sacrificial lamb to take over from Biden.
I think Newsom etc. would be much smarter to wait until 2028 for a clear run at the nomination and presidency.
EDIT: Though I agree, if someone can work out where and when to bet, and on which horse (be it Harris or another), they'll make a small fortune. I suppose this is where we'll see if the prediction markets are worth their salt!
...watching a few clips of Harris this morning, I begin to understand why not everyone are confident she is a sufficient replacement to beat Trump.
Still, if I were her, it would have to be an offer of a very plummy plum job indeed.
Partly because of my strong bargaining position, but perhaps even more because bowing out would signal to everyone I ever encounter, and for the rest of my life, that I did not think of myself as sufficiently competent to win over Trump.
It's really tough, because I think she and everyone else was expecting a run in 2028 which would have given her all that time to build up her public image as a credible candidate.
But right now it's a very short period of time to get her campaign up and running, there's the mistrust and disappointment engendered by how badly Biden did (see the usual water carriers in the media coming out with how he should step down instead of the boilerplate 'Republicans lie about our Best President In The History of the USA, Orange Man Bad') - though how long that will last is hard to estimate - and her lack of charisma. While "vote for her because she's a woman and she's black" may get out some votes, it's not really a position to fire up the nation.
Against that, as you say, is "I didn't think I could win against Trump" being a bad look.
i think you should lose scott. your team is full of bad thinkers, thinkers that put you in this predicament. the other team is winning with a madman at the helm. they are *beating* you with someone you "think" is a madman.
clearly, your team is not as good as you think they are. as an independent, i think you should lose. i think your team should not win. why should the group that stood around while their candidate was losing it slowly for many years, that choose a diversity hire VP all those years ago, and decided not to change VP's sooner like Roosevelt did have power?
people who are smart make decisions that you think 'there's no way this works' and it works out for them. that's not what's happening for your team right now. you're like the white lie teller, but your white lie is that you're being a good guy, and your team is good. no one thinks they're committing evil, they're just helping the group that made sooo many poor decisions win.
still love your blog, but i can't believe you missed an egg on your face for so long
It is silly to not draw any distinctions between a “team’s” values/policy goals on the one hand, and their tactical effectiveness on the other hand. It is not exactly news that neither political party is full of rationalists. I have already not been especially impressed by the political tactics of the “team” whose values and policy goals I am broadly aligned with. Why should additional evidence that they are poor *tactical* thinkers mean that I should want them to lose to the team whose values and policy goals I disagree with?
As an independent, why do you choose the party to support based on tactical effectiveness and not by deciding which party’s values/policy goals you are more in alignment with?
some exercise is better than none, and i'd rather die in the ocean than get stuck in a bog.
i really never cared for the monarchs of the oil rich middle east but: they are doing a lot better than i expected. my beliefs of what a good society can be are growing. having money, opportunity, and chance are better than nice beliefs. i still aim to have good ones, but i find for living humans it's better to have activity than non activity.
the 'good' belief groups are well meaning and not stupid locally, but they seem dumb in the long run.
The "sundowning" explanation for Biden's debate performance doesn't square with the fact that he got better as it went on, and was better still at the event afterwards (leading people to joke that they used the wrong clone at the debate.)
You, for a given value of "you", should seriously be taking time right now to re-evaluate everything you think you know. The administration and the media have been lying to you - possibly they lied to themselves first, but they definitely have been lying to you.
Your opinions about the Supreme Court, about January 6th, about Trump himself, should all be subjects of some internal soul-searching as you consider how and why you have arrived at your beliefs, given that you've just been surprised by information that a substantial portion of the country, and by all accounts most of the rest of the world, has known for years.
Over the course of those years, the same people who have informed all of your political beliefs have been lying to you about this thing.
If your response to the debate is "but Trump" - if you think the right thing to do is still vote Biden, because, even with this performance, he is after all still better than Trump - then, let me be perfectly clear:
YOU HAVE NOT LEARNED ANYTHING.
You will be taken in by the next lie. You will be taken by surprise by the next bombshell. You have chosen to be ignorant.
Which is not to say that the correct thing to do is vote for Trump!
The correct thing to do at this point in time is to be re-evaluating what you think you know. Maybe, at the end of that, you will still believe the correct thing to do is vote for Biden. But if that is your belief right now, before you have undertaken a serious project of re-evaluating how and why you know that is the right thing to do, then you no longer get to claim to be a rational person, you no longer get to claim to be a smart person. You're just another partisan whose beliefs are determined, not by a rational process of evaluating evidence, but by what your party says to believe.
The beauty of it is they announce their bigotry proudly and loudly -- which makes the job of personnel managers easier when screening job applicants. No point in considering people whose whole education, vita and employment history is built on 'cognizant dissonance'. Dishonesty is dishonesty.
We all (normies or non-rationalists) know that politicians lie all the time. And yet, reverse ignorance is not knowledge, so it is not that simple to find real truth by negating everything they say. Most people just don't delve into that too deeply. Biden will be forgotten in a year or two.
What concerns me is constant bulling about climate change. Many new restrictions, taxes and generally bad policies will be introduced with the pretext of the climate change. In general, I agree that the world is warming and it is mostly due to human activity. It will cause some problems. The issue I have with politicians is that they propose solutions that are worse than the change itself. And that those solutions probably won't have much effect anyway.
In general it is ok to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible, ideally reaching zero. But we also need to develop a stronger economy to be able to make a switch successfully. The policies that aim towards soft or hard degrowth are counterproductive to these goals. It is not just politicians don't understand the economic principles, they actively lie about them.
>The policies that aim towards soft or hard degrowth are counterproductive to these goals.
And counterproductive to almost any goals towards making peoples' lives generally better. Every worry I've heard about population decline applies towards economic shrinkage with many times the force.
This is also true. Republicans make a lot of good points, but their stance on the Covid vaccine is endlessly frustrating to me - the assumption is because the elites pushed it, it must be toxic. Reversed ignorance is not knowledge!
Vaccine mandates were abomination and transgression of our rights. It is sad that the US institutions allowed those mandates. Especially sad that the CDC did not follow scientific evidence.
Vaccine mandates caused a lot of resistance and now even child vaccination rates are falling in certain countries.
I was surprised to learn that some ACT readers still believe that the fact that covid vaccines does not stop covid infection is considered controversial. It is not.
Yeah OK, I think you can have a principled opposition to vaccine mandates, but it is a medical fact that at the height of the Covid pandemic, vaccines saved way more lives than they cost.
So a vaccine mandate - forcing someone to take an action that is good for their health - could be considered analogous to, say, banning alcohol. Principled libertarians can reasonably oppose this. I primarily object to the characterisation that vaccines are net harmful.
Covid vaccination does not stop Covid infection, but it significantly reduces the probability of severe or life threatening infection. Again, medical fact.
The only fact I know about the US is that Democrats delayed approval of vaccine to hurt Trump's chances of re-election.
Now about vaccine effectiveness: yes, for elderly and certain risk groups vaccine was certainly beneficial. For middle aged people it probably had some benefit and for young people could be even negative and useless for children. And yet the CDC still recommends covid vaccine for children. Why?
In UK covid vaccine is no longer given to anyone (regardless of previous infection) except to elderly of 75 y.o. and older and specific risk groups.
Vaccine mandates: it is not hard to see that elderly could avoid them most easily (this population are retired, do not travel extensively etc.), so any mandates didn't really help with reducing harm from covid.
Yes, Democrats in America did a lot of shady things to affect Trump's chance of re-election (Hunter Biden laptop, etc.)
However, Republicans in America are wont to argue that the Covid vaccine actually causes more harm than good.
I think this position is false. (Note, I don't actually live in America, I am a doctor who lives in Australia.) I think the evidence shows that vaccines did tremendous good and Trump deserves way more credit than is typically given to him by his party for Operation Warp Speed.
My position on Covid vaccines in general is strongly supportive. My position on Covid vaccine mandates throughout 2021 is weakly supportive. My position on any Covid vaccine mandate that still exists, today, is strongly against. So, I disagree with you on the object level about historical vaccine mandates, but I am trying to be maximally charitable to your position.
I don't know if the Democratic Party hired Hamas to set up their convention in Chicago, or Machiavelli himself. It couldn't have been anyone who was an adult in 1968.
For circumstances too lengthy to list, Chicago should have been the Last choice of locations for a Democratic convention at this time. Does anyone know who's responsible? What were they thinking?
Ross Douthat has a piece in Sunday's NYT opinion section in which he argues that beating the marmalade-complected menace could turn out to be worse for Biden and the Democrats than losing.
It's a difficult call to make, but if Biden exits now, his legacy should be a positive one.
But the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, as well as Putin's aggression in Europe, leave little room for error. Douthat points out that a Biden victory could present "significant dangers". While I'm not a regular Douthat fan, out of a couple dozen theories I've read regarding this issue, his makes the most sense. Preserving the integrity and efficacy of the office -- as well as global stability -- is more important than Mr. Trump.
If all this is acted out in Chicago, it may more closely resemble 1968 than 1996.
That would be true no matter where the convention was held, though, and the convention site was chosen six months before 10-7-23. Pro-Hamas demonstrations could become a big problem in any city now, and 1968 is ancient history to most 2024 voters.
Also, the City of Chicago has thus far been pretty strong regarding such demonstrations during the convention. The sequence of events thus far is:
-- February 2024: the city denies permits to three groups (the Anti-War Committee Chicago, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Students for a Democratic Society) planning demonstrations about Gaza at the convention site. The city instead offers permits for alternate protest sites located three miles away from the primary convention facility.
-- early March: immediate appeals by two of the groups are rejected by a city administrative court judge.
-- late March: the three groups, banded together as "The Coalition to March on DNC", file a federal lawsuit arguing that the city's permit ordinance is unconstitutional in a fairly technical way, and also that the city's specific decision in this instance denies a "constitutional right to protest within sight and sound of the convention".
-- late May: a small group (18 people) who said they were members of the above coalition tell reporters that they will "disrupt" the convention with or without a permit.
-- June 5th: the city's new police chief publicly warns that “First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime, and you can be acting out peacefully but still breaking the law.” Specifically he listed blocking a roadway or venue or protesting on private property as examples of illegal behavior. “You can be acting out peacefully but still [be] breaking the law" and subject to arrest, he said. That made headlines partly because it was a shift from the superintendent's statement in late April that protesters during the convention would be able to “exercise their First Amendment rights as long as they are doing it peacefully” without “violence, looting or vandalism.”
-- June 7th: city attorneys in a court filing related to the lawsuit indicate that the city is preparing to offer a compromise to the plaintiff groups, march locations somewhat closer to the convention than the city had declared in February. The filing indicates that the city can't get specific about that until the Secret Service finalizes the event's security perimeter at the end of July.
-- June 26th: the city announced an agreement to grant to a coalition of feminist and LGBTQ+ groups a permit for a short march down Michigan Avenue on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. That location is a couple of miles from the convention site; it is a high-profile spot in the city. The ACLU on behalf those groups had sued after their January permit application for a much-longer march was denied by the city.
As of this writing,
-- "The Coalition to March on DNC" says they have not heard anything specific from the city about compromise march locations.
-- the federal judge handling that case set a July 10th deadline for a full city brief in response to the lawsuit. The judge had held a June 25th status hearing which did not add any new information.
-- coincidentally I happened to learn that a large privately-owned ice rink facility at which I play recreational ice hockey, located several blocks from the convention site, has been notified that it is within the Secret Service's security perimeter and hence has to shut down for three weeks in August.
that stuff about the white lies is real true. I was caught in this myself.
I've moaned here enough about how much I miss my (ex-) wife, so I'll spare y'all. I just wanted to confirm the hypothesis, I guess, that you can justify yourself into real big "black lies" real quick, and all the while feel as if you're not doing anything so bad and hey might even be doing something For The Greater Good™...
tl;dr: black lies matter, but white lies matter too
By the way, has anyone else been getting spammed by the Biden campaign these last few days? It's really weird because I'd literally never gotten an email from their campaign, either now or in previous cycles, and I have no idea how they even got my email. And it's even weirder that they would start sending emails the day after the calamitous debate. Why now of all times? And the rate at which they're sending them keeps going up - I'm now getting several a day.
This was great! I've put almost all my fake manifold money, (I doubled my 'money' betting on T. Swift for person of the year.) On Biden no, and yes on all the other Dem minor players. I think it's all a loss except for Biden no. Cause no matter who the Dems put up, Trump is still winning. (And like voting for the man, I can't bet on him to win.) Still, if you put a gun to my head and said pick a or b for the next 4 years, I'd pick Trump. Which mostly just saddens me.
I wouldn’t look to prediction markets as the first source on this. I’d look at polls of undecided voters in swing states, now, and a few weeks out. There’s already encouraging data that the debate caused only a blip in the poll numbers. It’s hard to tell whether you think Biden should step aside because his administration committed a moral wrong, in your calculation, or because he has a slightly lower chance of winning, according to your prediction markets. If it’s the former, why bring up the latter first. Indeed why even bring up the latter.
In any case, if the prediction markets are wrong it’s because they didn’t capture a few things, like incumbency, the fact that Biden is a known quantity and somebody like newsome hasn’t undergone opposition research, and the bass rate stuff like the economy doing well. And the voters that determine the direction of the electoral college are so demographically and geographically specific that I’d trust prediction markets less than targeted polls on thid.
Sundowning is characterized by high anxiety, agitation, restlessness, and occasional hallucinations/delusions with a particular focus on paranoia. It's not simply being better during the days than at night. The classic presentation is someone at dusk pacing, seemingly lost, angrily accusing someone of stealing their things. How were you, as a psychiatrist, able to diagnose Biden with Sundowning Scott?
(1) All this demonstrates that what the US political system really needs is a strong third party alternative. Seems like the Libertarians won't be it, as the whole "minding mice at a crossroads" nature of the party means they shunned their own selected nominee in favour of putting their backing with RFK
(2) Entertaining as all this is shaping up to be, it's still not as fun as UK elections. America needs the Baked Bean Delegate and the guy running against Jacob Rees-Mogg:
"Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Rectenwald admitted to reporters on Sunday that he consumed a weed gummy before speaking at his party's national convention in Washington, D.C.
On Sunday, the Libertarian Party will pick their presidential nominee for the upcoming election. Rectenwald is a former New York University (NYU) professor whose campaign promises include slashing government spending and taxes; abolishing agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); refusing COVID-19 mandates and ending the United States' involvement in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday that Rectenwald admitted to eating an edible before he spoke at a press conference.
"This was not some sort of a major political scandal, okay. I wasn't found in bed with Stormy Daniels. I'm at a Libertarian Party convention. Somebody offered me something," Rectenwald told Kornfield.
Rectenwald was referring to former President Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial. Trump, who is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, stands accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied the affair ever took place and pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming the case is politically motivated against him.
Newsweek reached out to Rectenwald's campaign via online form for comment.
Kornfield's post was in reply to David Weigel, a politics reporter at Semafor, who wrote on X on Sunday that Rectenwald drew criticism after being "unusually off in his public remarks last night. Bailed halfway through a press conference w[ith] two other candidates last night, saying he was bored w[ith] the Qs [questions]."
Have the Libertarians never been advised by their mothers "Don't take sweets from strangers", or is it that Libertarian mothers would consider such advice to their young children to be a heinous restriction on their liberty and an unwarranted imposition of authority?
"A possible objection to these results: conditional probabilities don’t exactly reflect the intuitive concept of decision-making. That is, we’re not asking “We want to know whether or not to keep Biden, so what are the chances that he’ll win if we do?”, we’re asking the market for the chance that he’ll win, in the set of worlds where people decide to keep him for other reasons."
I had this realization (about other betting markets) years ago, and I was shocked that no one ever mentioned it. Btw, this is a complex but very important idea, and Scott explains it very well. Kudos!
Some more-thoughtful reactions to the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity have been posted.
For example the Lawfare Institute writes,
"The case involves a tension at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Article II vests the president of the United States with the “executive Power” and gives the president a duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” These phrases give the president power to interpret the law for the executive branch, to enforce the law (including prosecutorial decisions), to supervise the running of the government (including firing subordinate executive branch officials), and to direct government policy.
"These same phrases—especially the “take Care” Clause—also ensure that the president is not above the law. The great paradox of the American presidency is that the same constitutional provisions that render the president beholden to law also endow the presidency with extraordinary power and discretion to interpret and enforce the law, and thus give an unscrupulous president tools to abuse the law. The paradox is on palpable display in the Biden administration’s prosecution of former President Trump...."
[The ruling] "has three moving parts. First, a president receives no immunity for criminal prosecution for unofficial acts. Second, a president receives absolute immunity from criminal prosecution that would violate the president’s official conduct in exercising an exclusive presidential power, such as issuing a pardon or firing a subordinate. Third, a president receives “presumptive immunity” for other official acts, broadly construed, that can be overcome if the prosecutor shows that prosecution for the act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”
The first two rulings are not controversial. But the third—a variation of what the special counsel proposed, but one much more protective of the presidency—is quite controversial, and is a large victory for presidential power at the expense of presidential accountability...."
Law Prof. Kim Wehle, who previously was a U.S. attorney and also served as an investigator with Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration, wrote that the ruling means voters have to “rely on the delusional belief that future presidents will choose to act in good faith with their own conscience as a guide rather than abuse the virtually unlimited power the radical majority just gave them.”
Andrew McCarthy, the National Review's regular writer about SCOTUS and other federal courts, had listened to all of the oral arguments in this case. He is therefore amazed that the SCOTUS majority went farther with the 'presumptive immunity' part than even Trump's lead attorney did under questioning by Justice Barrett. Hence, McCarthy writes, "Roberts implies that the premise of Sauer’s concession—namely, that “campaign conduct” is not “official conduct”—is at least overbroad. As a result, the fake-electors scheme joins all of the other allegations in the indictment that are, or at least could be, presumptively immune from prosecution."
Andy Craig, a Cato Institute staffer who writes often for Libertarianism.org as well as some mainstream publications, wrote for The Unpopulist that "It was a shocking ruling, even for those who expected the Court to effectively tank the prosecutions against Trump....In the meandering majority opinion written by Roberts, the Court has decreed an effectively complete presidential power to commit crimes with impunity. Even the Court’s own supposed power to strike down presidential actions is rendered a nullity. The judiciary, no less than acts of Congress, ultimately relies on the coercive power of the law.....
"The Framers of the Constitution disagreed on many things. On some matters, it can be difficult to parse their intent on questions they never squarely addressed and might not have even considered. But this is not one such area of ambiguity. If the Revolutionary generation agreed on anything, it was rejection of a king who is above the law. They spoke often of creating a presidency that was under the law, an office whose holder enjoyed no sovereign immunity because in America, the people are sovereign, not the head of state.....
"Against all the legal principles to the contrary, the Court instead engaged in a kind of freewheeling policy making based on its own subjective wishes about what the Constitution should say rather than what it does. Ostensibly, this is grounded in the structural implications of the Constitution, the separation of powers under which some powers are accorded to the president and so cannot be criminalized. It is generally undisputed, for example, that Congress could not pass a law making it a crime to veto a proposed law. But in their sweeping notion of “official acts,” the justices have erased any distinction between lawful and unlawful exercises of presidential power. Roberts gives a perfunctory nod in this direction with a distinction between “core” powers exclusively granted by the Constitution to the president, which enjoy absolute immunity, and all other exercises of presidential power, which get “presumptive” immunity. Or maybe that immunity’s absolute, too. The Court declined to say. But in practice, this putative presumption of immunity is indefeasible, wrapped in such vague but strongly worded protections that no prosecutor could ever realistically overcome it...."
The Cato Institute's "Cato at Liberty" blogger, senior fellow Walter Olson, wrote that "In Trump v. US, a majority of the Supreme Court has laid down an astonishingly broad view of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution over official actions, even those taken for heinous motives and with no show of justification.....
"Nowhere in the Constitution is there mention of executive immunity, which was a topic of peculiar interest to the Founders and Framers. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69 that unlike the “king of Great Britain,” the chief executive of the United States would “be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law,” and in Federalist 77 named “subsequent prosecution in the common course of law,” in addition to impeachment, as checks on “abuse of the executive authority.”....
"The shock was not that the majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts recognized some zone of immunity, but that at one key decision point after another, it seized on any half-plausible ground (and some perhaps less than half-plausible) to expand both the formal and the practical scope of immunity."
Ilya Somin, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog which is distributed through Reason magazine, said that "The Supreme Court's flawed decision largely ignores text and original meaning, and fails to resolve crucial issues....The liberal dissenting justices pay much more attention to originalist considerations here than the conservative originalist majority. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent points out, nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution gives the president anything like this degree of immunity. In fact, text and original meaning cut the other way....
"The majority has no meaningful rebuttal to any of this. Their neglect of text and original meaning might be more defensible if there was strong precedent on the subject. But there is no such precedent, because the courts have never before considered the issue of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.
"The majority mainly relies on the consequentialist policy argument that the president must have extensive immunity so he won't be deterred from carrying out his duties with "bold and unhesitating action." They fail to explain why this consideration should outweigh the danger that sweeping immunity would incentivize presidents to commit horrific crimes and abuses of power—such as, for example, trying to use force and fraud to stay in power after losing a presidential election!....
"In addition to being poorly grounded in the text and original meaning, the majority's ruling is also extremely vague and unclear on key points. It gives us very little guidance on how to tell the difference between "core powers" (subject to absolute immunity), and other "official acts" (which may not be). That seems like a crucial issue on which the justices should have given more guidance to lower courts.
"Similarly, the Court refuses to tell us whether presidents get absolute immunity for non-core official acts, or merely presumptive immunity. Another whopper of an omission! If immunity in such cases is just presumptive, it is hard to tell what would be enough to overcome the presumption. The majority does suggest, at one point, that the president must "be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch." Taken literally, this would preclude prosecution for any acts even remotely connected to anything official, a there might always be at least some small danger of "intrusion" on executive power in such situations....."
[I encountered some of the above opinions as an online subscriber to Reason and to Cato at Liberty, and learned of others via The Unpopulist on Substack.]
>Second, a president receives absolute immunity from criminal prosecution that would violate the president’s official conduct in exercising an exclusive presidential power, such as issuing a pardon or firing a subordinate.
Cough - umm, that seems to imply immunity for firing a subordinate who refuses to follow a flagrantly illegal order? Am I reading this correctly?
Many Thanks! Hmm... Well, the Presidency has been called "Imperial" in the past... I guess this SCOTUS opinion should have concluded with a traditional "Strength to the Empire!" (in Klingon, of course...)...
This probably makes things even more awkward for Kamala, as if she is the leading contender to replace him, now the campaign is split between them. This may be her best shot at it, and if she steps aside for another candidate there's no guarantee she gets a second chance in 2028.
On the other hand, if Joe Won't Go, the Democrats are faced with the unedifying spectacle of ripping the incumbent out of the nomination while he clings on kicking and screaming, or gritting their teeth and continuing as-is. Neither are great options, but it may serve Kamala better if she can spin non-action into "I neither stabbed my running mate in the back for ambition, nor abandoned the greater good of the nation, which is why I stood aside for Gavin to lose, the sucker" if she is thinking of going in 2028.
I assume that this will get resolved, one way or another, at the Democratic Convention. So we spend a month wondering will he / won't he? And, if the switch _is_ to Harris, she now has 3 months instead of 4 to explain her stands on various questions to the voters, and to try to convince them that her stands are better than Trump's.
On the assumption that Biden's staff knew his approximate condition months or more ago, (possibly years), if they wanted to win in 2024 they should have switched candidates _far_ earlier. ( If Biden's decline were due to something sudden and unpredictable, like a stroke, I wouldn't fault Biden's staff. But it doesn't look like that. )
I don't like either of the parties, personally. I more-or-less believe the prediction markets 60/30 odds in favor of the GOP. To my untutored eye, this situation looks like the Democrats taking careful aim at their own foot, and firing a heavy caliber at it.
> I assume that this will get resolved, one way or another, at the Democratic Convention. So we spend a month wondering will he / won't he?
Big assumption. If Biden doesn't get kicked out by the convention then we're still going to see all kinds of "here's how the Dems can still replace Biden" discourse right up to election day.
Many Thanks! Aargh. On the GOP side there has been speculation that Trump might delay his final choice of Veep to keep the electorate more interested than they would be if it got settled quickly. I don't like either party pulling this sort of stunt, making it more difficult to know which person's record to look at.
I'm just hoping the electronic voodoo used to confuse Mr. Biden during the debate wasn't the notorious Jewish Space Laser. That might complicate getting aid to the IDF through congress.
Here is what's bad about Sotomayor doing a tactical resignation.
While politicians are nakedly partisan around the Supreme Court, the Justices themselves keep up a non partisan posture quite well. I don't know if it's fake or earnest, but they do.
You'd never know it from reading the press, but the vast majority of cases are decided by majorities containing both the conservative and liberal justices.
If Sotomayor breaks the non partisan facade it draws the court further down the gutter, and maybe she just don't want to do that.
>the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!” And then he would always do fine
Always do fine? No. There were many, many examples of him showing dementia on stage. He read the instructions that were on the teleprompter out loud - just like he did now again at the NATO summit. He read the instructions on his cards out loud. He stood still not knowing where to go so he had to be led off stage. He walked on stage and then walked off when everyone else was staying. He CONSTANTLY messed up words in a way that clearly showed dementia. He even turned to one side to shake hands with empty air.
But you read Democrat media, and those media hid the truth from you. They ridiculed those who told the truth. They even invented a new word, "cheap fakes," because it sounds like "deep fakes," and used that dismiss the clips that showed Biden's behavior. "Those are just cheap fakes that the Republicans use!"
The debate didn't show Republicans anything new because Biden has been acting exactly like that for five years. But it was the first time Democrats saw something outside their media bubble. The information was always readily available if you'd looked at Revolver News or other websites than the leftist ones.
> I used to believe something like this, but no longer. People often lie blatantly and knowingly because they think they will get away with it.
Same here.
Yeah, I wrote a reply up-thread about psychopaths, and someone chimed in to say "yep, I'm a psychopath, I guess you could say I'm evil but I really don't mind because it's clear to me that the universe has no objective morality"
I worry Scott is too trusting
I can attest to being one of these people, or at least I would if I was less lazy. I only do good things so other people like me more. I'm willing to rip people off and hurt people if it enriches me, but it's so hard to get away with and so bad for my reputation that it's really best to just pretend to be a good person. And because people judge you based on your actions, technically I am a good person. But I know better.
This is just run out the mill imposter syndrome and poor self esteem. Your character is defined by your actions, not by your temptations. We all have temptations, very dark ones.
I don't see how it's imposter syndrome. I don't feel like I don't fit in. I'm very well liked at my job. I'm definitely smart enough for it and I'm a fairly hard worker. I certainly feel like I belong with my friends and family. I don't feel like an outsider or like I'm not good enough. I'm more than good enough. I'm just a bad guy.
The only reason I don't act on those (remarkably dark and scary) temptations is because I might get caught. I really don't think most people are like that, at least not with most things worse than shoplifting. I think most people are selfish, and would act more inappropriately if they could get away with it. That's true. But I don't think most people are pro-choice because they don't care about dead babies. I don't think most people are absolutely certain which lever they would pull in a trolley experiment. I don't think most people have a succinct definition of evil as a result of healthy introspection and seeing it in themselves.
You have no idea what other people are thinking. You're conflating three phenomena here. 1. Only avoiding cruel behavior due to fear of consequences. 2. Observing 1 and thinking "I'm evil." 3. Willingness to confess 1 and 2 to others. Yes, these three traits in combination are probably rare. You're unique in that respect. But I have NO IDEA how rare 1 and 2 are, and neither do you. Your willingness to assume they are super rare is not healthy. And your habit of calling yourself evil is not healthy. I suggest you avoid this habit. If you indulge it, it could put you in prison someday.
To an extent, our disagreement is more semantic than anything. There's definitely Something Wrong with you, I just think calling yourself evil and a bad person is harmful. Both to you and to society. If you write yourself off as evil, that saps your motivation to work on yourself. You need to be actively working on having empathy for others, and if you already do that, good for you. Don't be shy about seeking professional help. If you don't work on yourself, you'll slip up and do something heinous. Fear of being caught is a weak safeguard.
I'm not claiming to be unique. I'm sure the type of person that desires cruelty and pretending otherwise is very common. 3) does not apply to me. I am absolutely not willing to confess to others. You weirdos on the internet do not count as "others." You're bright spots in the void, infinitely distant from my real life.
I admit that my assumption regarding the rarity of evil is unfounded. It's possible that everyone around us are much better liars than I assume, but I am an optimist, and I'd like to think that people are too inherently kind and open-minded to be as Machiavellian as you claim is probable.
Me calling myself evil might be unhealthy but it's so far down the list of unhealthy behavior that it's not even worth paying attention to. Professional help is so boring.
I never said I'm not working on myself. I'm proud of how far I've progressed, every single day. It's remarkable how much I've built myself over these many years. And I know what heinous behavior is. That's for losers.
And now you're blatantly contradicting yourself. You appear to be just taking the piss. What a goofball. I can't believe I wasted my time responding in earnest.
Socrates (according to Xenophon): The easiest/least exhausting way to achieve a good reputation (including a reputation as a good person) is to become the person you want others to believe that you are.
Exactly correct. And it's an insight I'm glad I had as a kid in college. Took me a while to get there, but I'm relieved I did.
I'm not sure that's accurate about what Republicans are thinking; from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/us/politics/trump-youngkin-virginia-rally.html:
"But beneath the jubilation, there was a low-grade panic stirring. It was the kind of panic that one sometimes feels when everything in life seems to be going … a little too well.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s comeback campaign, his supporters have told anyone who would listen that Mr. Biden was nothing more than the tool of a shadowy establishment that would, at the right moment, pull him to insert a more formidable candidate. Now, as they see it, this exact plot is playing out before the eyes of the nation."
It might be that some Republicans are unable to suppress the impulse to gloat, but it seems pretty obvious that Biden is in a perilously weak position and any replacement candidate would at least introduce more uncertainty into the race, which is not what you want if you're ahead.
If true Democrats are rallying behind Biden, and it is only Republicans who have the sense to see reality, that's the worse for true Democrats.
Democrats would be surprised that you're using the words "Republicans" and "reality" in the same sentence.
Given they were surprised by the slap reality just handed them in the debate, maybe they should update their beliefs.
I've been reading the assessment of lies and distortions of the debate (both sides). It seems to me that Trump isn't so much lying as he is living in an alternate reality.
I suspect that's mostly because Trump isn't talking to you, and he isn't speaking in your language.
In terms I think will make more sense to you, Trump doesn't speak in coordinates in concept-space - he doesn't "say what he means". He speaks directionally; this is the -direction- of the thing he's referring to. In linguistic terms, it's kind of like the difference between directions to a place which list distances and road names, and directions to a place which rely entirely on landmarks. The landmarks in this case are emotional.
It's like how there's a bunch of people who before Roe v Wade said they were against abortion who, if asked now, will say they are for it. They aren't telling you what the policy they support is, they're telling you what direction to go from the current policy is, to arrive at the policy they support. People within the culture understand what is being said; people outside the culture consistently misunderstand what is being said.
He's speaking in a language that the left refers to, when it is spoken by groups of people they approve of in contexts they approve of, as "lived experience". This shouldn't be taken to imply that it is his lived experience, because the term "lived experience" is one the left made up, and that's just the way the left refers to this form of communication.
Plausibly you may have more luck understanding him if you try to understand him through that framework.
I appreciate your cogent explanation, and have never doubted the emotional component of politics, and Trump's talents for that ALL-CAPS-exclamation-point stuff. When you say "directionality" I get it -- that lies, mistakes, equivocations are all the tools of directionality. In and of themselves it's a part of politics, but in Trump's case I detect a toxic comorbidity. I see it to be similar to the George Santos delusions, that the entire world has got it wrong. Spoiled, whiny, exceptionalism that only takes root in delusion. Trump's firm denials of an encounter with Stormy Daniels give me the impression of self-delusion rather than lies. I don't find the encounter offensive, so that's not the issue, nor do I find it improper, nor do I blame him for denying it. It's more though. His downplaying the Jan 6 aggression at the Capitol may be "directionality", too, but his comments strike me as being comorbid with delusion.
I think this is a very good analysis and that you're right.
if i go on tv and say my daughter is perfect, half of the country would go, 'i guess she is pal!', and the other half would tell you the cnn fact checker says i'm a liar - no one's perfect, especially not his daughter!
too many democrats are living in a fantasy land now, can't decide on genders can't decide on what the pride flag means anymore and can't admit my daughter is perfect
But Trump didn't tell anyone to drink bleach.
He did make a silly suggestion that medical researchers should look into whether some disinfectant like bleach might make a good Covid treatment, but if anyone took that as saying they should drink bleach, it's because the media and Democrats lied about what Trump said.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. But I take it you're not at all concerned that you've been lied to and didn't have the wit to realize you were being lied to?
You just blindly repeated an obvious lie and then changed the subject. Can you just acknowledge that the drinking bleach thing was a lie?
Here is the actual clip, or at least part of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE
I think most people are going to see what they want to see. Personally, i dont see him recomending injecting disinfectant, just kind of musing about what people 'should check'.
Clearly, "would be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation that people drink bleach.
If there was an increase in bleach poisonings after Trump's comment, it would be due to the FALSE REPORTING of his comment as a recommendation to drink bleach. Some people prioritized scoring a cheap, dishonest political point over people's health.
How do you separate the noise here? Clearly poisonings are up 93% from March 2019 before Trump says anything. I assume because everyone is paranoid about covid and using bleach excessively? Attributing the rise in April to Trump is highly speculative, since the poisoning rate was rapidly growing anyway in the previous months. Further, it would be helpful to post the actual source for this instead of just the text.
Also, going from Trump's rambling and coming up with drinking bleach is quite a stretch.
My “Not Biden for DNC nominee”contracts on Predict are up $0.10.
🎵We’re in the money!🎶
Damn it! I knew I should have bought in!
Scott's confusion over what Biden's coterie was thinking seems to miss an obvious explanation: they wanted to pull Biden all along, and this was to be the spark; thus why the time (come on, who doesn't know about sundowning?! why, it was used in the Simpsons even, years ago!); thus why two strangely early-in-cycle debates (if one went okay, the next could be bad)...
I had been musing on this possibility long before the debate, but — since I don't really have friends (one) and don't keep up with the media at all, I had no idea this was a conspiratorial theory already... well, that explains the reaction I got the one time I aired the idea—
I support pressuring Biden to resign and replacing him on the 2024 ticket through some kind of process at the Democratic Convention.
Having said that, while I think Biden has certainly slowed down, I certainly don't think he's senile or unable to function as as effective President. Debates are a uniquely challenging environment, where there is tremendous pressure to have a vast set of facts and arguments at the ready, to be able to summarize key arguments quickly and cogently in a matter of seconds, and to be able speak effectively extemporaneously depending on what one's opponent says.
Failing in this environment doesn't mean one's senile or unable to function effectively in the day to day work of being President.
The questions are fairly obvious, if not provided on the sly, so I don't buy this. Similarly, Trump may often rant to some strange degree, but his basic positions are fairly well known. These aren't debates, but chances to summarize your key talking points. Biden couldn't do that at all well.
I actually think he did that fine. He just lost his train of thought or couldn't retrieve a fact a few times.
This really understates the disastrous performance Biden had. When given the chance to pounce on abortion, Roe vs Wade etc. (with Trump saying that Dobbs was a great and universally popular thing to do!), Biden instead... brought up crimes by immigrants against young women. That's not losing your train of thought or not retrieving a fact. That's completely misunderstanding the logic and sequence of arguments and counter-arguments. Like, he heard "young women" and this triggered a memory of an argument brought up in prep - except it was supposed to be Trump's talking point.
Don't forget that he then pivoted from rapes by illegal immigrants to rapes by in-laws, brothers, and sisters. That's a helluva train of thought.
I would like to know why Biden's mind associates "rape" with "in-laws". Yes, I'm looking at you, Hunter and Hallie.
Debates are challenging but not uniquely so – POTUS can reasonably expect to be asked demanding questions requiring the synthesis of old and new knowledge late at night in the Situation Room, for example. There might be two compelling courses of action and he could be the only one with the authority to choose, and that requires understanding context and specifics in the moment.
Mostly agree that "debating" shouldn't necessarily map to the ability to do the job of president. With the exception of a black-swan nuclear event, the job consists mostly of choosing from a few options presented by aides who have filtered out the truly awful decisions, and signing stuff that Congress sends you.
But it is notable that nearly everyone clears the bar for basic debate competency. Some performances are better than others, but no one totally embarrasses himself. Obama had a notability weak first debate in 2012, but that was because he was wonky and low-energy. Clinton clobbered Dole in 1996 but the old guy didn't look like he didn't know his own name. Ronald Reagan had a notably bad first debate in 1984, but that's not really a helpful counter-example given that he was suffering from early Alzheimer's by the time he left office.
We've had what, probably north of thirty presidential-level debates since 1960, along with many more primary debates, and no one has ever been this bad. So I would say that the ability to draw a clock has nothing to do directly with the job of president, but if you can't clear that low bar you shouldn't get the job.
I agree. It's why I support replacing Biden.
My objection was really to the claim that Biden is senile. And that we were "lied to" about his condition. I think Biden has lost his fastball (one that was never that fast to begin with), but I still don't believe he incapable of being an effective president.
I am fully convinced, however, that he can't be an effective presidential candidate.
I guess that depends a lot on what the job of the president is. If we think the president is primarily told what to do by wonk types in your party tell you to do, then just about anyone can be president. A good president would be someone who picks the right people to listen to, and resists pressure to do the wrong thing.
I hold presidents to a much higher standard. I think Obama met my higher standards, as did pretty much all of the presidents in my lifetime. Trump may be an exception, and I think Biden is also an exception (more now than when first elected).
There's also a big question here of whether Biden is capable of vetting who he listens to. There's a good chance that he listens to his wife, his brother, his son, and other family and friends. Those are not at all who I would hope are advising a president. He probably also listens to top aides and cabinet members, but the highest position in the country, maybe the planet, hinging on "probably" listening to good advice is not okay. That's far too low of a bar for a sitting president.
> With the exception of a black-swan nuclear event
"Black-swan" implies randomness. Nuclear events, and other such high-stakes geopolitical conflict situations, aren't random -- they happen when some other nation-state decides to make them happen. If e.g. Xi or Putin believes that the US is internally too dysfunctional to take the kind of action that requires the guy at the top to make a tough decision, they will be emboldened to create such a situation.
The whole point of the term black swan is that all the swans in Europe were white, but Europeans did eventually come across black swans in Australia. This is also "non-random" in a similar sense--no one set out to find black swans specifically, but it was pretty inevitable once such long-range voyages became possible. But also, from the point of view of someone without perfect information (so, everyone) these events are still effectively random.
> these events are still effectively random
Which is why it's a bad metaphor in this case. Black swans either exist or they do not. But geopolitical conflicts do not just spontaneously happen, or not happen, at random times. They are instigated by some party, at a time of that party's choosing, because that party expects to benefit somehow from calling the other side's bluff.
The poster I was responding to, referred to a "black-swan nuclear event" in a way which suggests that such events are too unlikely to worry about, so it's not a big deal if the President does not have the mental capacity to deal with them. But that's wrong, because the probability that such an event will happen is not independent of the potential instigator's knowledge about the American President's mental capacity.
It's like making a big-money bet that black swans do not exist -- with an expert bird-breeder. Maybe they would not have otherwise existed, but the chance that they *will* turn out to exist in the future, just became a bit bigger.
I agree that a country deciding deliberately to use nuclear weapons might not count as a 'black swan'. But what about a situation where, through accidental circumstances, nuclear-armed countries come to think someone else is going to use nukes? Or launch a full invasion which would require a nuclear response?
Those kind of things have happened before - ABLE ARCHER, Stanislav Petrov etc. There are books describing plausible scenarios where countries go nuclear through confusion e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_2020_Commission_Report_on_the_North_Korean_Nuclear_Attacks_Against_the_United_States
A black swan is not an event that's "too unlikely to worry about", it's something you didn't anticipate that has a major effect.
I don't think it's unlikely that some sudden crisis that might lead to nuclear escalation could happen leaving a president to make a snap decision.
We are in a proxy war with nuclear power. Is this the guy you want being told "you have 15 minutes to make a decision".
It sounds like a better choice then the guy who will give away 50 years of hard won strategic gains because he's afraid of going broke personally.
You must have in mind some specific example of this from his first term, right?
The time in 2017 when he disclosed Israeli intelligence sources in Syria to Putin in what appears to be simply a boast comes to mind. Using Mar-a-Lago to host important and sensitive meetings, both domestic and international, despite warnings it was insecure, quite possibly for profit, may be another example.
And I'm not pro-Biden these days, overall. And I'm not even going into the whole secret documents thing because that would derail the sub-thread.
Fair but weak. Hard to see that really fits An Engineer’s pearl-clutching, and the whatabout writes itself.
I don't care about "strategic gains" a fraction as much as I care about not dying in a nuclear exposion
Is there evidence that he is still competent, that would create reasonable doubt in a moderate Republican voter?
It's not just a question of if he can handle being president now. It's a question of if he can handle it for the next four years. And I think it's important for the president to be able to function in especially challenging environments.
Oh man, where were all the "mental acuity is not that important for being President" Democrats during the Bush presidency?
I don't understand. Firstly, I assume you mean W as opposed to H. W. Secondly, though you may have disapproved of his policies, did you seriously doubt his mental acuity for making them?
Slamming George W. Bush's mental acuity was a major Democratic theme throughout his presidency. He was often depicted as Alfred E. Neuman. I have a magnet showing him in a Cat in the Hat hat, with text surrounding that reads "I can lead it all by myself".
Depending on how hard you want to take "seriously", there's an entire Wikipedia article on "Bushisms":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism
"Bush's use of the English language in formal and public speeches has spawned several books that document the statements. A poem entitled "Make the Pie Higher", composed entirely of Bushisms, was compiled by cartoonist Richard Thompson. Various public figures and humorists, such as The Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, have popularized Bushisms.
....British journalist Christopher Hitchens published an essay in The Nation in 2000 titled "Why Dubya Can't Read", writing:
I used to have the job of tutoring a dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons and websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms? We've been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. [...]
I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence. If this is true for Bush it hasn't yet become obvious."
Others were "No, he's not naturally stupid, he's chosen to be stupid":
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/05/how-bush-chose-stupidity.html
"The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, “Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?”
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
...What’s more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn’t laugh at FDR because he couldn’t walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can’t talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush’s bond to the masses.
But if “numskull” is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.
...As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he’s something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool."
I didn't, but Democrats did, they spent the whole eight years harping on about how Bush Jr was a drooling moron, based on the (very weak) evidence of his occasional verbal malapropisms.
So it's amusing to see Democrats suddenly sliding into "ehh it's fine if the President has a few roos loose in his top paddock, it's basically just a ceremonial role anyway..."
This talking point was very real and persistent across left wing circles, though often it got more of the meme treatment than anything serious -- but focus groupers and pollsters found that there was a net effect, and it actually *hurt* Al Gore. In the first debate, watchers went in with such low expectations that they came away impressed at how normal W sounded.
From what I've read, Bush also deliberately cultivated the image in order to appear more relatable to ordinary voters.
Yes, it was very much a thing. I think it was a combination of the generic "Republicans are a bunch of dumb hicks" stereotype, Bush's tendency towards malapropisms, and his (mostly affected) folksy good-old-boy public persona.
So imagine being a firefighter. 99% of the time there isn't a fire and you're either playing cards with your colleagues or doing some busy-work around the station which doesn't require any specific competence. But you've not been hired for that; you've been hired for the times when there *is* a fire and you need to be able at a moment's notice to slide down the pole, jump in the truck and get ready to run into a burning building and carry someone on your shoulders down six flights of stairs.
If a firefighter isn't able to do the actual firefighting part of his job, or is only able to do that job on some days but not on others, it's not much of an excuse to say "well, he can do the other 95% of the day-to-day work just fine".
Instead of 99% of time busy-work, 99% of the decisions that will effect the daily life of the country, and the other candidate being interviewed is wearing an "I love arson" T-shirt.
We do remember who started most of the bad fires over the last eight years…
Let me guess, you are blaming Biden for the Ukraine war?
No, I was talking about the burning cities in the U.S. But since you mention it...
I seem to recall Putin starting the Ukraine war. Are you one of those that think Putin wouldn't have started it if Trump were in office? And if so, why not? Other than Trump's rhetoric about it, him basically being too scary?
Maybe we could have a rock as President.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work
At this point it would outperform both candidates, so the rock has got my vote. Also, being a non-binary silicate-American, it gets a lot of diversity points !
Lol
Are silicate-Americans exclusionary to, say, slate-Americans?
The most rational voting strategy, truth be told, is to weight foreign policy higher than almost anything else (except maybe general economy stuff), because that's the one part where the president has actually an incredible amount of latitude.
Abortion is another, or at least it was eight years ago.
The man probably can't do his own laundry. The idea he is fit to be President is a joke.
Do you think Trump knows how to do his own laundry? I've encountered people who have been rich since birth, and they are often completely ignorant of basic everyday stuff since someone else has always handled it for them. I'd be surprised if Trump had any idea how to work a laundry machine.
At least the leading replacement candidate knows French laundry.
Yes, as has been noted elsewhere many times, the job of being President is much different than the job of running for President.
"Debates are a uniquely challenging environment, where there is tremendous pressure to have a vast set of facts and arguments at the ready, to be able to summarize key arguments quickly and cogently in a matter of seconds, and to be able speak effectively extemporaneously depending on what one's opponent says."
And that's not the case when meeting with Vladmir Putin, or when trying to pressure centrist Democrats or even Republicans into supporting his agenda, or when trying to avert the next Cuban Missile Crisis that could turn into a nuclear war?
On an off-topic, Vladimir Putin would probably perform really bad at debates. He didn't have anyone disagree with him for a long time – it doesn't sound he'd be able to form a cohesive argument outside of metaphors and long stories. Even Tucker was telling about how nervous Putin seemed to be talking to him.
This is a great point, but didn't Nixon and Khrushchev have a famous series of debates about capitalism vs. communism in some sort of fake kitchen? And Khrushchev appeared to hold his own. Maybe he came up in a much more vigorous debate culture inside of the USSR, but that seems hard to imagine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Debate
Debates are less trying than being the chief executive of the US.
I kinda feel bad about joining what's a bit of a pile-on, but come on....
> Failing in this environment doesn't mean one's senile or unable to function effectively in the day to day work of being President.
This is a horrible take. Not sounding literally demented for a couple of hours is OBVIOUSLY an easier job than being president of the USA.
I think this is mostly an argument that we don't need a President at all in most cases. This might be true but since we do get to choose a President we should test and choose one who is competent at President-y leadership-y things.
This is a naive take. We know Biden's history, he has shown his entire career that he's an effective and confident communicator. He is a natural at public speaking, debates are his literal strong suit. You think he got overwhelmed by the pressure? No, he's clearly in the early stages of dementia/senility. Slowing down a bit would be talking slowly and maybe not getting all the points across as vigorously as he'd like. He lost his train of thought and spit out gibberish on multiple occasions. That's not slowing down a bit.
Biden was never a good communicator nor a good debater. Part of that, likely, was his stutter. Part of it was that he was never that bright. Biden's strength has always been that he is good with people. The combination of that, the sense of loyalty he built as a good VP to Obama, and his good fortune in the rest of the Dem candidates running too far to the left in 2020 is what made him the nominee.
Meanwhile, the interviews and press conferences he has done, although few in number, make it clear that he not yet senile. But I would certainly agree that he has slowed down too much to be an effective presidential candidate.
Biden doesn’t have to leave willingly. They could 25th amendment him.
Would this mark Harris as a Kingskayer though?
This would remove him from the presidency, but not actually prevent him from being nominated as the Democratic candidate for 2024.
I’m overwhelmingly confident that Biden would drop out at that point. The humiliation would be unprecedented.
I think it could also poison the well for any Democratic candidate and the Democratic brand in general.
why? if anything its to little to late
If 2024 is a lost cause the logical next step is to not throw 2028 away.
why would doing the prudent and sensible thing of removing a senile man from office harm the brand in the long term?
There is absolutely nothing they can do in 2024 that will kill their chances on the other side of four more years of Trump.
I'm pretty sure the 25th is easy enough for Biden to challenge. It looks like he just has to send a letter, and if he does then at least two thirds of congress have to agree to invoke it to remove him. That's plausible, but I think highly unlikely unless Biden is in a coma or forgets his own name.
Especially as the Republicans are likely to see prolonging the Democrat power struggle as being in their interest. They're not going to agree to apply a super-expansive definition of "incapacitated" for the benefit of the Democrats.
Also Congress has twenty-one days to determine whether the President is able to discharge his duties, during which they might be able to put him through all sorts of humiliating public tests.
As a complete aside - the thread right above discusses Kamala murdering Biden. For a brief second, I read "this would remove him from the presidency but not actually prevent him from being nominated" as a reply in that thread. Oddly fitting.
People have been posthumously elected to office before! In 2000, Mel Carnahan was posthumously elected to the Senate, defeating John Ashcroft. The seat was taken by his widow, Jean, while Ashcroft was appointed Attorney General.
That would be dirty. Much cleaner to ask the CIA to "remove" him.
And frame Trump/Russia? Now we're getting somewhere!
There's probably "Whitmer kidnapping" style groups out there being kept in reserve, consisting of a couple of right wing loonies and half a dozen undercover FBI agents. Maybe you just steer these guys in the right direction at the right time.
Kamala Harris could murder him and then pardon herself. Then she could get seal team 6 to assassinate all her rivals, including Trump. Since the Supreme Court has decided that’s okay. She could also get rid of the justices she doesn’t like. Poetic justice.
If the President orders Seal Team 6 to assassinate all their domestic political rivals, and *Seal Team 6 is actually willing to do it*, we are already in a dictatorship and prosecuting the President will be functionally impossible regardless of what the law says.
I’m not an expert on this, but the President is commander in chief, right? So he could presumably just appoint any psychopath to Seal Team 6 or create a new unit.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first comment invoking Seal Team 6 I've seen in the wake of the decision, which is pretty quick off the mark.
Is this going to be the new Democratic, leftist, and progressive canned talking point? "The Supreme Court says the President can order Seal Team 6 to assassinate his rivals!"
How about directing that energy towards selecting an electable candidate in preference to coining snappy slogans?
Also, can somebody tell me what is so special about Seal Team 6 that they are a meme? Yes, I could look it up, but I'm lazy and prefer you nice people to explain things to me intelligently and wittily.
It was discussed at length at the Court of Appeals hearing. One of the justices (Florence Pan) brought it up. It was part of the legal arguments not a ”meme” someone just made up.
As for what seal team six is, (I had never heard of it before the hearing) — it’s a special missions unit.
I don't think the President's authority over the military extends to that level of detail, but I'm not an expert either.
At any rate, if we're assuming most of the military including all top-level officers are still loyal to America as a democracy and would vehemently oppose any attempt to impose a dictatorship, then assassin-team-6 will have a very serious problem. If anyone else finds out what they're up to, they'll all get locked up and court-martialled, and if they offer proof their orders came directly from the President then I'd expect Congress to conduct the fastest impeachment in history.
"Stop quoting laws to men with swords" - Paraphrased from a quote attributed to Pompey after the city he was conquering objected that his actions were illegal (!).
This is untrue. It’s drummed into even lowly enlisted people that there is not only no obligation to follow an unlawful order, there is a duty to not obey it. Killing random civilians for political purposes is an obviously unlawful order.
(Yes, I am aware of Anwar al-Alwaki, no that was not unlawful.)
What specifically is untrue?
Military people do carry out unlawful orders sometimes, so the president would only have to ask enough people.
Also, you know, my comment was kind of a joke.
“Then she could get seal team 6 to assassinate all her rivals, including Trump. Since the Supreme Court has decided that’s okay.”
That part is untrue. She can’t get Seal Team 6 to do it (unless they’re willing to break the law and commit murder, but then we’re not talking about Presidential powers, just crimes) and the Supreme Court never decided that was okay.
What unlawful orders do you think military people carry out? Do you have examples?
You know, this Seal Team 6 scenario is something that has been discussed publicly for months now, in the Court of Appeals and in the Supreme Court and by various media commentators. It was mentioned in Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. So you don’t need to be offended by my bringing it up (and again, I was obviously making a joke - after all I don’t think Kamala Harris would murder Biden).
This seems like the kind of question where one can reason circularly that whatever orders they DID (and DO) follow may be deemed "lawful" because, of course, the US military would never follow "unlawful orders." You did precisely this in passing, as a parenthetical remark.
And of course, no one is going to try the president in court for his orders to the military, so arbitrating precisely what laws he ISN'T being subjected to is a silly exercise.
The Supreme Court did not “decide that’s okay”. Stop repeating this lie.
You're watching too much MSNBC.
Beyond their ever agreeing to do this, you grossly overestimate the CIA's competence. If they asked the CIA to remove Biden, they'd end up removing the entire rest of the cabinetiaside from Biden.
This opens up the possibility of the funniest (albeit extremely unlikely) possible outcome: the Democrats attempt to invoke 25th Amendment on Biden, and the Republicans refuse to give them the 2/3rds majority needed to do it.
I can understand their possible reticence, given Harris would then be President.
I was checking up on the 2/3 majority of Congress - turns out that requirement comes into play if the VP and majority of cabinet declare the presidency disabled, the president declares there is no disability, and Congress needs to ratify the decision by the VP and cabinet.
How does the 25th Amendment (and the legal discussion surrounding the 25th Amendment) operationalise disability?
Alternatively phrased: Since the VP, the Cabinet members, and the President him/herself are not professionally qualified to make a disability assessment, how do they choose the professionals that make the evaluation? Also: What is the procedure if the President refuses to be examined by the professionals?
These questions could become rather important, if Biden wins the election and then experiences further functional decline.
Side note:
...although according to the radical version of the social model of disability, disability is just a social construct. if so, perhaps non-medical Cabinet members - and Congress members - are just as qualified as anyone else to make the assessment:-)
The 25th Amendment very specifically states that all that matters is whether the VP and a majority of the leaders of executive departments have determined that a disability would prevent fulfillment of the role of the Presidency. I think it is for the best that it leaves it up to their judgment as human beings about what sort of expert testimony or diagnosis would be relevant, rather than spelling out some particular concept of expertise.
I don't think the social model of disability disagrees with any role of expertise in determining whether or not someone has a disability. They'll agree that whether or not someone's eyesight is acute, or their motor control of their legs has certain features, is likely to be evaluated more effectively by people with certain kids of professional expertise. The social construction is rather on the other side - whether acute eyesight or motor control of legs counts as a "disability" that might cause problems with ordinary life, or are just within the realm of variance that don't cause problems, depends on social factors, like how easy and accepted it is to wear corrective lenses everywhere, and whether buildings are often constructed to have a step before entering the front door.
"I think it is for the best that it leaves it up to their judgment as human beings about what sort of expert testimony or diagnosis would be relevant, rather than spelling out some particular concept of expertise."
... I did not really expect the legal texts regulating the 25th Amendment to be very specific, for the reason you mention. However, this sensible legal "openness" as to what kind of expert testimony (if any at all) that is necessary in order to invoke the 25th Amendment can create a rather delicate political situation if Biden wins, his situation deteriorates, and he - and his advisors - disagree with the opinions of the VP and the rest of the Cabinet concerning if he has become disabled (or how it can be decided).
So there is a risk associated with not having specific procedures and operationalisations; a risk worth discussing before the election in November.
(I am reminded of the situation in a student collective, where everyone agreed that we do not need specific rules of who owned what, since we were always going to be such good friends. It then turned out that you need to agree on specific rules at a time when you are still friends. Because when you have stopped being friends, it is too late.)
Yeah, I think there's an essential tension between the advantages of spelling out conditions in formal detail in advance of when they are needed (because at the time they are needed, emotional and political conditions often overrule people's reasonable judgment) and the advantages of leaving conditions up to the judgment of the people at the time they are needed (because our imaginations in advance often misunderstand what the relevant considerations in the actual circumstance will be).
This is related to the tension between giving experts flexibility to make the judgments that they deem best, and requiring that experts explain their judgments in ways that can be understood by non-experts. (The people who are actually living in the unforeseen future circumstances are analogous to the experts, and the people writing the details of the rule are analogous to the people asking for explanation from the experts.)
>These questions could become rather important, if Biden wins the election and then experiences further functional decline.
<mild snark>
Proposed bumper sticker:
25th in 2025!
</mild snark>
Since you're quoting Nate Silver's estimate of 40-45% pre-debate, it's worth pointing out that he lowered that to 35% when he first published his model (which was still before the debate).
The Dems seem to be in quite an unpleasant double-bind with how everything's going overall, it seems like
My impression is that a shorter-notice candidate is maybe a better idea than running Biden in the short term, but it's still fairly rare with an incumbent who's both willing and eligible to run again. This isn't Coolidge saying he chooses not to run and leaving a clean slate for his party, the Dems and Biden have very clearly positioned him to be the next candidate before the debate debacle. It feels like the risk they run isn't just losing (which is a very substantial risk they run no matter what at this point) - but also exposing someone like Newsom to a brutal mudslinging campaign in 2024 for no reward, lowering the "this guy is fresh and new" appeal of a more winnable 2028 run, when the whole situation could very easily be affected by the DNC trying to pull a bit of a Weekend-at-Bernie's with Biden this year. It's not just ditching the incumbent, it's doing so as basically a tacit admission that Biden hasn't been 100% for a long while and the Dems simply forgot to mention that - It isn't a good look, even with a good replacement candidate
On the other hand, if the choice is "take the inevitable L for 2024 and regroup with a fresh candidate for 2028", stuff like the Chevron deference overturn/Trump v. US and Project 2025 are scary from a liberal point of view. The idea of Trump as an existential threat has been a big part of the Dem platform for a while, it's the basis of their going "yes, Hillary and Biden might not be too inspiring but you gotta vote them in anyway", and the idea of rolling over and minimizing harm in the long-term would seem to be incompatible with that view + current events. Like him or not, Trump has already had long-reaching impacts in establishing a solidly conservative SCOTUS, so it seems like the Dems are basically forced to fight hard (potentially unsustainably so, in a way that makes 2028 less of a slam dunk than necessary) for a win that might simply not be there at all.
Also, I do get the "Biden isn't senile" thing - it's a weird comparison, but it kinda reminds me of how fight viewers treat Max Holloway. For years now, he's faced massive hitters and almost none of them have even gotten reactions by hitting him really hard - so every fight cycle, someone's like "maybe this is the one Max's chin is gone". And every time so far, they've been wrong, and Max just went up a weight class to clown on a huge hitter who's even bigger than the other guys he's tanked while everyone was worried about him. But eventually those people will be right, and it'll come as a shock to everyone - but they're not right through any particular small-scale prescience, just that everyone is eventually washed or senile, so you can be wrong 100 times but the fact that you've gotten 100 chances makes the next one more likely to be right
Whoever accepts the nomination in 2024 must know that it is their last shot in their entire life of winning the presidency.
If Newsom accepts in 2024, it has to be a mix of "better one in the hand than two in the bush" and patriotic duty.
"If Newsom accepts in 2024, it has to be a mix of "better one in the hand than two in the bush" and patriotic duty."
Mrrrrowp?
Is there actually solid evidence that losing a presidential election reduces your likelihood of winning it later? The last one to even try a second time was Nixon, and he won. Stevenson lost twice to Eisenhower I guess, but overall the idea that it’s better for one’s future viability as a candidate to stay out of the race than run and lose seems like folk wisdom rather than empirical fact. I could just as easily see it the opposite way: getting the nomination and losing at least makes you a household name, which puts you ahead of other candidates among the large swath of the public that pay almost no attention to politics.
Yeah, I second this, especially with the incredibly obvious point that if a Democrat loses (barring another massive shift), it'll be to ANOTHER person who already lost a Presidential election, and as an incumbent no less.
In fact some wondered if Romney (as an example) should have run again. He did pretty okay against Obama, who was a generationally tough opponent, and a lot of what he talked about ended up being correct.
Yeah I think you're definitely overestimating the degree to which there is such a thing as "Democratic party elites" who can make meaningful decisions about this stuff, aside from the candidate themself. Trump on the Republican side proved that a candidate who can win over the voters can't meaningfully be stopped by the party insiders and I think that applies on the other side as well, it's just not as blatant because the voters and the insiders are more on the same page..
In some ways this is good: in most cases people would describe unelected power brokers pulling the strings behind the scenes as a bad thing, and say that the voters and the candidates they select having all the power is a good thing. But it's certainly awkward in a situation like this.
Primary elections in general are a pretty bad way of selecting candidates. While like obviously "party elites choose" (which was the status quo pre-1972) isn't a particularly appealing scenario, they did have an incentive to pick someone who would be palatable enough to their base while also likely to win. Primaries appeal specifically to the most engaged members from each side of the political spectrum and ask them to choose which candidate to support. George McGovern doesn't happen under the pre-1972 system. Donald Trump doesn't happen under the pre-1972 system.
The best system though is probably one without primaries, be that an IRV or Approval Vote or Score Vote or whatever election. With FPTP, you can't really have multiple candidates and the ability for all voters, regardless of political belief, to pick the one they like the most, so you end up with either smoke-filled rooms or primaries, both of which lead to pretty bad outcomes.
The Alaska system (and there's a proposition on the ballot to introduce this in Nevada) seems to do this quite well. The primary cuts the fields down to four or five candidates and then they use IRV amongst those.
IRV and similar systems, where more than just two candidates can win, require voters to form opinions on more people, and that first-stage (calling itself a primary) cut by higher-information voters eliminates candidates with very little chance of winning and so reduces the overload of apparent choices for the average voters without significantly reducing the real choice in the election.
IMO simple approval voting (vote for as many as you like, highest number of votes wins) is the most natural method with the least voter education and prep, and a very high degree of intuitiveness. The situations where strategic (i.e. untruthful) voting takes place are much less and don't leave the same "bad taste" in the mouth.
It's such a significant step up with fewer downsides, to the point where I almost wonder if the IRV effort is a kind of deliberate scheme to distract from approval voting. And of course you can still do reasonable things like require a certain signature threshold to make sure the ballot doesn't get too cluttered.
A sitting president can't really be moved, and there's no mechanism whatsoever to force a candidate to give up the significant funds donated to him. The 2020 primaries pre candidate with no incumbent were very different, and it's quite likely there was some teamwork to ice out Bernie
Somewhat, but it doesn't really take that much to ice out a guy who doesn't have majority support from the party's primary voters or any plausible path to it.
The majority of spending is "independent expenditure," not bound to the candidate (and ostensibly, not even coördinated with him), so that's unlikely to be a significant concern.
>quite likely there was some teamwork to ice out Bernie
Bit of an understatement, no?
I mean, I think there is such an elite, though functionally it's only really strong on the Democrat side (the Republican operators don't have the same level of media connections, which limits them). But at the moment we're seeing a split between the Biden faction, and the probably larger set of people who want a more winning candidate. A number of the people close to Biden are likely to be much less influential if he's not President, so they're more willing to try to somehow pull out a win with him.
Yeah, even the best example given for a possible elite, the coalescence around Biden in March 2020, was really just about Buttigieg and Klobuchar personally preferring Biden to Sanders, and seeing that Biden wins on Super Tuesday were the only way to avoid a Sanders candidacy.
it was also Warren staying in an extra week once this happened to stick a dagger in our back
"Trump on the Republican side proved that a candidate who can win over the voters can't meaningfully be stopped by the party insiders and I think that applies on the other side as well, it's just not as blatant because the voters and the insiders are more on the same page.."
That is why Team D has, among other things, superdelegates.
as it were, Team R party insiders did try to block Trump, by trying to get Trump delegates to switch sides and even cancelling primaries (Colorado, IIRC) that Trump was likely to win.
Team R and its insiders failed for two reasons: they could not agree on a single non-Trump candidate (is it Cruz, is it Rubio, is it Jeb!, is it Kasich?), this dissipating their efforts and they could not rely on the national media to carry their water.
If you've been paying attention you'll notice that over the last decade or two the superdelegates have been stripped of basically all of their power because people didn't like the idea of unelected party insiders overruling what the primary voters chose.
> Team R and its insiders failed for two reasons: they could not agree on a single non-Trump candidate (is it Cruz, is it Rubio, is it Jeb!, is it Kasich?), this dissipating their efforts and they could not rely on the national media to carry their water.
Notably these problems seem like they would also apply to any attempt to replace Biden.
I seem to recall otherwise in 2016 concerning superdelegates.
No argument regarding any attempt to replace Biden.
IIRC in 2016 there was some speculation that the super delegates could make a difference but in fact they didn't, and after that the rules were changed to reduce their influence even further.
Superdelegates in 2016 turned out to be unnecessary, but were held in reserve, in the event that the coronation didn't go as planned.
That doesn't mean that there weren't and aren't there.
That seems like a very speculative claim about what people were intending/planning that you aren't providing any evidence for. And it doesn't at all engage with the actual facts of the way the rules around superdelegates work. After 2016 (maybe even earlier, I don't remember in detail) they changed the rules so superdelegates don't even get to vote on the nominee anymore (unless no candidate gets a majority in the first round, which IIRC has never happened in the modern primary system).
And even back when they had more ability to sway things, I think you're overestimating the likelihood or even the possibility of the superdelegates operating as a unified block. Mostly they're just past elected officials in the party, who can be a fairly diverse bunch.
I think a lot of people ignore how only Harris is allowed to use Biden's massive war chest, and that alone is a huge incentive to go with her over another perspective replacement. Imo, Newsom is heavily overvalued in the Republican-leaning predictive markets as his sparring with DeSantis greatly increased his figure in those spheres, while not having as much of an impact among Dem voters. He poorly targeted his marketing of himself if his intention was to position himself as a future presidential contender. Or maybe he didn't and you just take whatever press you can get when you're a local political figure trying to raise your profile.
Who do they like?
Generic Democrat. That guy has the advantage of not being real so you can't criticize him in any way.
If he isn't real, then how could he have the best hair? And without that, how could he win?
No, YOU can't criticize him. For starters, he's pro-abortion, anti-gun, soft on crime, for open borders, and supports the climate hoax. Also, he's probably anti-Israel.
Dems voted like 180-30 for aid to Israel. Stop living in whatever bubble you're living in.
You demonstrate the lack of imagination that keeps you from criticizing Generic Democrat.
Michelle Obama. But she has too many principles to get involved in politics.
She has the advantage of never actually having held office. But the moment she throws her hat in the ring she has to start taking positions, giving more speeches and interviews, leading to more gaffes, and her opponents would now have a vested interest in tearing her apart.
The popularity of popular non-politicians - Michell Obama, Dwayne Johnson, etc. - is, imo, basically a mirage, and would dissipate the moment they enter the ring. I suspect most of them know this and that’s why they rarely try to capitalize on it and run.
Jeb!
Biden
That is not correct. The money can be given to the DNC. https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/winding-down-candidate-campaign/winding-down-costs/
Harris is the sole option. Running her would be better because
1) She was already scrutinized for scandals.
2) She would be the president anyway in the next 4 years.
3) She is already running a presidential ticket.
There should be reverse betting odds. "Will Trump die of old age and biden live through the election?"
That would be a market for helping them die: <https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SwcyMEgLyd4C3Dern/the-parable-of-predict-o-matic>.
>Nobody ever thinks in their own head “Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world”.<
Eh, never say never. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb The Superman theory is mostly dead, but mostly dead is not all dead.
For the rest... oh whatever, I'm linking Nick Lutsko's Living Dead In Washington D.C. NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv9KHHSbpXw
On a less Nietzschean note, "Haha, we're cleverly putting one over on all those suckers" is probably fairly common among the sort of professional liars we're talking about here.
Yea, SA's extreme positivity bias of nice people in a nice world strikes again. Evil isn't so rare and not amongst the elites. It is a psychopathic club for psychopaths who have spent thousands of years building and shaping the world to better accept them as rulers. They are not simplistically evil like cartoons, but so what. Evil need not be understood from a child's view point. If you want to know what they're like, look at their private talking which they never thought would be public. Just 30 seconds of real talk sunk Romney's campaign. They know they have to hide what they are.
Nixon tapes come to mind. Or any court case where internal docs from executives come out. Smart psychopaths can in fact lie convincingly. Nixon level selfishness, greed, list for power, and damn the consequences style people are the norm. And they lie about it, of course.
I recall a case of a doco film making on Rogan doing Erin brokovich style reporting on companies dumping toxic crop into water leads to disease in town stories and the executives all voted in favour of continuing to dump toxins for longer after they knew it was killing people and even had hand written notes from their board meeting about it with demented cruel and comically evil lines about killed whole we can to make as much money now as possible, extract ecey last dollar of sales before this gets banned and let the company go down. They also gave themselves bonuses.
These truly are evil people and Scott lives in a fantasy world where he pretends pretends don't and can't exist except in rare historical cases. Yet thin f s are more house of cards and less people making mistakes.
I disagree. Most politicians never do anything overtly evil. Most exaggerate and embellish and sometimes outright lie, but so do regular people. Most politicians probably sincerely think they’re doing so for the greater good. Most of the ‘evil’ things you would attribute to your least favorite politician are things half the population think are good, so it’s not really politicians but rather that half of the population that is ostensibly evil.
Overall, I don’t think regular people are more moral than “elites.” Their moral defects are just as acute (it wouldn’t surprise me if even more so), but just happen to be constrained by their impotence.
most politicians take bribes from the country's wealthiest people to enrich them further, at the expense of their constituents, and then cast votes to murder people halfway around the world
I am fighting a similar thing with my own mother right now who is about Biden's age. (She is 78). We super don't want to shuffle her off to a care home or have her move in with us. We are *very* motivated for her to maintain her independence and pride as long as she can. But, like, she just can't do certain things anymore. And I don't mean certain things will kill her. If she wanted to go bungie jumping or something, I'd totally endorse it. "I died at age 78 while bungie jumping" seems like a pretty damn good way to go really. My 80 year old dad just went sky diving for his birthday on our dime as a gift.
It's the mundane things. Telling her she can't afford certain things on her fixed income. Telling her that she forgets things a lot now, it's already gotten her in trouble, and thus she needs to outsource some aspects of navigating her labyrinthine benefits and medical expenses and so on to us. She doesn't like it but it seems cruel to me to *not* tell her this and just let her like lose her car or her apartment or something. Biden's family baffles me. Let the old man retire with dignity rather than feed his delusions and let him go out in an epic loss of cantankerous pride that also jeopardizes the country. He is 81. There will be *no* recovery for him on that.
> Biden's family baffles me. Let the old man retire with dignity rather than feed his delusions
I have to believe that most of the time, Biden's still pretty much all there, and that it's only under actual pressure that he can completely run out of gas. Otherwise it means all the people around him are monstrous.
Yeah, there's hundreds of interviews and rallies done in the last few months where he looks fine. Feels like they overprepped and over pressured him for the debate and that backfired
He doesn't do interviews. He reads off a teleprompter.
Biden has multiple instances of reading off the teleprompter incorrectly. Reading instructions out loud such as "(Pause for applause)".
Has he done more than the well known handful in the last week? This seems like it would be a very good time for him to be in some unscripted situations to prove his capabilities. As far as I know he's been in like *two*, maybe three scripted situations since last Thursday, and zero unscripted.
Either he doesn't have it, or they're terrified he does have it, or they're very foolish for wasting the opportunity to fix the situation.
I'm not sure. Actually, the debate cemented my feeling that the FBI got their case correctly when assessing his (mis)handling of classified documents.
"Otherwise it means all the people around him are monstrous." - AKA the right-wing perception
If you know he's going to bomb the debate like that, and you still put him out there, to fail like that in public? That counts as monstrous in my book. *shrug* Machiavelli might approve, if it were a necessary part of a plan to get a better candidate for the general election. But that wouldn't make it less cold-blooded.
Is that monstrous or delusionally optimistic?
When your delusional optimism causes you to publicly humiliate someone whom you should be caring for, someone who trusts your judgement?
The key word is deluded. If it's deluded, it's still genuine, and not monstrous.
Jill’s fawning but condescending praise to Joe after the debate, on camera — “You did a great job! You answered every question!” — convince me that she knows exactly what his condition is, and that she is indeed monstrous.
I've had a low opinion of Jill ever since I saw her pretend her doctorate in education a real degree. It's the textbook definition of a vanity degree that people with a load of money get to feed their egos without having to do any real work. Shaquille O'Neal and Bill Cosby have Ed.Ds.
I see I was entirely right to feel such.
HIs family gets huge benefits from his current position. This big time politicians are like a mid-sized corporation there are dozens of people at a minimum living off his position right now. That is a big difference from your mother.
No most of them won't necessarily become impoverished or anything, but a lot might lose their jobs and/or substantial incomes.
Notably, Trump is also 78.
I spoke the other day to a 93 year old human. Sharp as a tack, she was.
Biden? Er, not so much.
Do we know at what rate dementia tends to progress? One of my biggest concerns is that this is most lucid version of Biden that we're ever going to get, and it can only go downhill during the next 4 years.
Trump seems increasingly demented as well. I think if we looked for issues or errors during speeches between 2016 and today we would see an increased rate in the last couple years. I wonder if anyone has done that...
I'm sure if we had a psychiatrist around here he could tell you about prognosis for dementia. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for one though.
A lot of this discussion seems to be predicated on the idea that Biden will definitely be alive in four and a half years, and our choices between an 86-year-old president of unknown lucidity and Donald Trump. The chance that Biden will not be alive in four, two, or one years is substantial.
That feels really hard for a psychiatrist to do? My sense was that first impressions and patient background were undeniably important, but that you’d need real neuropsychological testing, or at least proper interviews, to diagnose a dementia and its progress accurately enough for a semi-decent prognosis. And that’s before the variability in how well he would putatively respond to treatment.
There are a couple of drug treatments, but last time I looked into the matter what was available made relatively little difference in how fast the dementia progressed: If you took one of them it took you 28 months to decline as far as untreated people did in 24 months. As for how fast his dementia would progress, it's variable, like that of most progressive illnesses. However, very slow progression is rare enough that it's a safe bet that in 4 years Biden will be way worse off than he is now.
Just based on age and actuarial life expectancy tables, Biden has a 32% chance of dying over the next four years, Trump has a 23% chance. That's high for both of them! By rights it should warrant greater scrutiny of the the VP candidate, since there's a strong chance they end up as president.
Probably both risks are overstated if you're just looking at age; they're both rich, upper-class and in generally good health so far as we can see. Of course it's really 4.5 years we're concerned about. And Trump is a bit overweight. And POTUS sounds like a high-stress job.
And also it's not only death . Falling into a coma, needing prolonged healthcare in bed following a serious stroke or a heart attack, particularly debilitating cancer - the cumulative likelihood of all of those and more has to be substantial.
The issue is that Trump looked 30 years younger than Biden at the debate, not three, to paraphrase one talking head. The debate in essence gave the public to make a head to head comparison between the two candidates in terms of their mental fitness. It was an unmitigated disaster for Biden.
There's a lot of variability, but yes, this (Biden's current/average state, not his debate performance, which, given that his handlers allowed him to do the debate, is probably worse than his average state) is the most lucid version of Biden we're going to get, and it will only get worse. I suspect it will seem to get worse very very quickly - my grandmother's decline was relatively smooth and stable over the course of at least thirty years, but it felt like it was accelerating, because the capabilities that she lost were increasingly fundamental, until one day she stopped being able to drink. (We did not attempt to keep her alive beyond this point, it would have been senseless and cruel.)
Trump doesn't seem unusually demented; he definitely showed his age in the debate, but this actually worked for him, because his historic behavior is uncomfortably manic, and it brought him more in line with what people expect to see from politicians. Where's Biden's condition made him seem like a more dangerous and risky candidate (relative to our expectations of Biden), Trump's condition made him seem like a safer and saner candidate (relative to our expectations of Trump).
Charts and graphs on decline won't help much I suspect.
The reason why so many people already thought Biden was too old to serve is because so many people already have direct and personal experience with the mental decline of the elderly. It's a one way street of variable steepness.
It took 18 months for my father to go from basically normal to forgetting everyone's name to being dead. (Fortunately, be never forgot who we were but he forgot our names often).
Betfair has matched $28 million on the 'Election Winner' market and $15m on the 'Democratic Nominee' market. The rest of the world reads your media and contains enough smart rich people to correct obvious mispricings, so it seems like a mistake to ignore these markets!
Right now sportsbet.com.au is offering 4.50 to 1 for Biden to win the Presidency. If you think the prediction markets are right about there being a 29% chance, you should jump on that.
They're also giving 7:1 for Harris to be the Dem nominee and 8.50:1 for Gavin Newsom. Honestly I'm tempted to put some money on at those prices (but I know that if I were to sign up for online betting I'd probably wind up losing in the long run).
Unless you're ~100% sure you don't have compulsive gambling tendencies lurking inside you, I'd say it's not worth it. Even if you have the brain and the temperament for it, you're unlikely to make significant money without putting a lot of time and effort in, and the downside risk is high.
You're confusing fractional odds with decimal odds in your writing (though I think you understand the decimal odds correctly). The Sportsbet figures that you quote are decimal odds, so you should omit the "to 1". Decimal odds of 4.50 are equivalent to fractional odds of 3.5 to 1.
You're correct that 4.50 is good value if the true probability is 29%, since 4.5 * 0.29 > 1.
The weighted averages across prediction sites of candidates' probabilities of winning conditional on being nominated are wrong. Biden's average can't be 31% when only one source gives a lower probability than that (29%), and that source has a very low weight, and there are sources with much higher probabilities and much higher weights.
Yeah, looks like Scott accidentally divided the weights by 2.5 to make them sum to 1, even though their sum is actually 2.2.
It looks like the same mistake affects all candidates, so it doesn't matter for their relative ranking. But the weighted probabilities are all too low.
It also seems like he is wrong about nailing Nate Silver's number for today? I looked at Nate Silver's chart and it seems that in all of the last few days Biden is being pinned at ~40%, and has never been as low as 31%? Am I missing something?
I believe you're looking at the polling average, not the probabilities of winning (which is behind a paywall).
oh ok, paywalls ruin everything DX
You're right, thank you, fixed.
Right now Manifold has Biden 73% to be the nominee, 34% to win the election conditional on being the nominee, and 29% to win the election (unconditionally). What am I missing?
A 73% chance of being the noninee to have a 34% chance of winning is 25% rather than 29% so there's definitely a bit of gap between the answers
I think different questions can influence how you react to them, most famously for the bias to choose yes on yes/no polls
"the Republicans would say 'ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!' And then he would always do fine.”
"Fine" is doing a lot of work here. In 2020, Biden's decline from the 2012 debate with Paul Ryan was notable. Due to COVID he was able to get away with running the most stage-managed campaign in history. And the measures designed to hide his decrepitude - limited interviews, pre-screened press conference questions, calling a lid before lunch - began immediately upon taking office. There was still a lot of weird behavior that couldn't be blamed on an alleged stutter that no one has actually heard.
Republicans did overreach, though, setting the bar very low. I suspect this was because while they knew what was happening, they couldn't prove it; there was nothing they could do about the protective measures, so they just shouted "he's senile" in the hope that everyone would see three obvious decline.
Yeah the big tipoff that he was actually in decline was the way they have been handling him the last 18 months or so. Don't listen to screaming on Fox News, think about the actual concrete facts you hear. There was more than enough smoke to know there was a fire.
I remember about a year ago thinking Biden was probably senile, at like a 55%. It was the superbowl interview cancellation that made me go to 90% senile. It was such an easy opportunity, and the only reason I could think that someone would refuse it is if he had good days and bad days.
It's been there all along, steadily escalating; there wasn't actually an inflection point 18 months ago.
Yep. The fact that they were acting like he needed to be treated with kid gloves should have greatly increased your prior that he did.
I watched the 2020 debates. It was hard for me to compare it to the 2012 debates because debating Donald Trump is such a different experience from debating Paul Ryan.
I grant that the opponents were different, but I still think there were clear instances of "senior moments" during the 2020 cycle, like when Biden confused Cory Booker for Barack Obama. Not as bad as he's gotten since then, clearly, but still things that couldn't easily be brushed off as the kind of verbal slip up that everyone makes.
Except Trump also had plenty of similar senior moments around the same time. Their respective declines felt similar until recently.
Yeah, people have been saying "Biden was fine in 2020" but it was a very common thing to observe in 2020 that he had already declined considerably. Certainly he didn't seem mentally incompetent at the time, but starting to get fuzzy around the edges. If you went back to 2020 me and showed a clip of this 2024 debate, I probably would've thought, "yeah, that's about what I would expect Biden to be like in four years or so." I would have been very perplexed at why the Democrats would have made him the nominee though...
There's an odd lack of memory in contemporary politics. Biden used to be really sharp as old footage of him shows. He was clearly in decline four years ago by his own standards.
He isn't what he was in the 80s, but 4 years ago I thought he was still "good enough", and now I don't.
The presidency is four years, and decline has a range of possible rates. The question isn't a good-enough spot-check.
BTW Trump also is too old now, just in general.
The stutter is something that has been a part of his political biography for decades, and it’s said to be part of what led to the decisions that caused is 1988 presidential campaign to flame out. I haven’t actually watched that footage though.
Yes, I've heard many of his defenders say that he has a stutter. And then those defenders pin every mistake he makes on the stutter and try to shame people who notice the mistakes for being mean to someone with a speech impediment. (Search "Biden debate stutter" for examples). But I've never actually seen him rapidly repeat the first syllable of a word. What I have seen him do is get confused and say things like ”we finally beat Medicare." It has become a running gag in right-wing spaces to say ”It's just a stutter" when Biden does something obviously unrelated, like falling down or not being able to find his way off stage.
I understood that his 1988 campaign was derailed by credible plagiarism allegations.
True. He stole some lines from a Welsh MP IIRC.
That was not the only person he plagiarized from.
That’s the one I remember.
Biden was a contender in 1988 until his plagiarism was found out.
And weren't his "gaffes" a big talking point for a while? Where he'd just mess something big up, and move right along. It seemed like something I do, where the wrong words just pop out of my mouth for no apparent reason.
They've been a big issue throughout his career. Though I think they've normally been in the "no filter" side of things than the "stutter" side. It's not that he said something when he meant something else - it's that he said something he wasn't supposed to say out loud.
One of his most famous ones was during the 2012 presidential campaign, when he came out and said that of course gay people should be allowed to be married, at a time when most politicians were still keeping quiet about their view on the topic officially. In response to his "gaffe", the Obama campaign finally had to come out in support as well, which seems to have helped tip the issue.
"Clean and articulate" has been one my my criteria for politicians ever since he coined it.
Classic Biden.
Yeah, to the point that at the 2011 Correspondents' Dinner while he was Vice President the Obama administration made a parody video of The King's Speech based on Biden's frequent verbal mistakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508aCh2eVOI .
(Including a line where Biden says "And I'm not that old! ... actually, I am", which I guess has not aged well, thirteen years later)
A 1988 candidate winning in 2020 and trying again for 2024, with his opponent barely any younger, really drives home the gerontocracy the USA is developing. Not even late-stage USSR was this bad, their leaders died in office in their 70s.
I thought they were crazy to do a debate given his likely good day / bad day status. Too risky.
My theory is this debate challenge was a bluff thinking Trump would put in conditions that they could then refuse. Trump was wise to accept unconditionally.
"Significantly better than expected" would have been more accurate. People were expecting (and in some cases hoping for) him to drool or forget where he was or something, and he would come out and be stammery but lucid, and he would make a few gaffes but he's always been famous for those, and the bar would be cleared.
The last State of the Union speech was a good example. He's reading off a Teleprompter, but the peanut gallery heckling that has come to characterize the SOTU in recent years gives it a bit of the unscripted character of an interview or a debate. He did better than expected, engaged in back-and-forth with the hecklers, and again the bar--very low at the time, because some very embarrassing videos had recently been circulating--was cleared.
And then, it seems to me, we all decided that they must have found the magic drug after all and we raised the bar of expectation some. And then came the actual debate. Ninety minutes in a purely adversarial situation, unscripted. Whoops.
The linked prediction markets presumably integrate every possible scenario where Harris or Newsom gets the nomination, between Biden immediately giving it to them with no fuss whatsoever to incredibly messy open convention cage match.
Presumably a peaceful, coordinated, and immediately universally accepted handover would push towards the upper bounds of the potential transitions in the prediction markets, which implies the odds would actually be higher than shown if Biden firmly steps down now.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-the-parties-cant-decide
"It’s not that “the Democrats” and “the Republicans” are making bad strategic choices, it’s that they genuinely can’t make strategic choices."
It's a good blog post you linked to there.
A follow-up on the everyone-is-rational-but-the-collective-outcome-is-irrational way of thinking: If I were Newsom or any of the other would-be contenders (apart from vice president Harris), I would be very reluctant to put myself forward in the present situation. It is only four months to go so I have limited time to build up national name recognition; I am bound to alienate some Democratic voters plus other would-be contenders if I try; I would also have to somehow get hold of the campaign funds already accumulated by Biden/Harris since there is limited time to build up my own funds; and if I should lose I will in all probabilities have lost my chance to try for the presidency in 2028.
Much more rational, then, to sit still in the boat.
Not to mention Trump, assuming he wins in 2024, will be term limited out in 2028. Newsom is relatively young, he can wait.
Trump isn't gonna stop running just because he's term limited. Once he's in, he will keep running until he dies. Even if the brakes are put on him, he'll just have Eric run in his place, Junior having died of alcohol poisoning in 2027.
By that logic, one could say that Biden was just a continuation of Obama.
This is a reasonably popular theory as to what's happening in DC. Obama already took the highly unusual step of never leaving DC since losing office, and the Biden White House is riddled with Obamanauts. At the very least, unlike many, it's a plausible conspiracy.
I am aware of the theory, just that the idea of "everyone Team R is really Trump" is kind of silly in the context of incumbency and term limits.
In a saner world, we'd hold a convention where the people nominate Jake Sullivan, who has years of experience with multiple US Presidents, bears no criticism of senility at the age of 47, and is extremely intelligent and diplomatic. That this is an impossibility for a position with such broad reaching consequences to everyone in the world is a sad indictment of the state of our elections.
"He was reported to be the only senior staffer who repeatedly suggested that Clinton should spend more time in Midwestern swing states during the election campaign."
Ya don't say...
Really interesting point! I know people hate the *idea* of career government officials and the deep state, but they might well like the individual if they saw him.
People like Sullivan do not run for office for the same reason that people like Robert Moses didn't. They don't want them or their policies subject to electoral scrutiny.
The electorate's scrutiny is not very discerning if Trump is the frontrunner.
At risk of repeating myself, looking at Trump and Biden: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
Robert Moses ran for Governor: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_New_York_state_election
>I think the proper Rationalist response is - okay, we screwed this one up.
Eh, I think your "we" isn't really capturing all of us. Not all Rats want the Democrats to win, and not all Rats were saying Biden was fine (I've been saying both Biden and Trump are way too old for a while; you can maybe say I was wrong about Trump, but I certainly didn't make your error).
I think what Scott is trying to say here is "What I should say in this situation if I reasoned as a model Rationalist, while retaining my own values* rather than *what all rationalists are morally obliged to conclude in this situation*. "We" here must refer to Democrats, not to Rationalists.
At least that's the interpretation that makes the most sense to me, given all the context?
I get the impression that Rationalists lean left, but it isn't as clear-cut as other issues, such as abortion. Am I wrong? Are Rationalists, by-and-large, liberals?
The rationalists who follow Scott Alexander tend to be; IIRC, where his surveys turn up Republicans, they tend to basically be liberals who think the Republicans do a slightly better job of pushing liberal values (libertarians, broadly).
This is likely greatly overshadowed by his in-person social bubbles, given where he lives. Any rationalists living in California are, I suspect, negligibly likely to be Republican.
If this comments section is anything to go by, there is a very significant alt-right / "anti-woke" / vaguely MRA or MGTOW contingent in the rationalist world. Significant enough to make Scott's constant insistence that Rats lean liberal or even "left" genuinely baffling to me. Maybe the (silent?) majority are liberals, but it still wouldn't be an overwhelming one, I don't think.
I think Scott tends to associate more with the EA wing of the broader rationalist diaspora, and I'm pretty sure they tend to lean left (if a multi-dimensional space needed to be chopped in two), and I'd bet he feels comfortably at home with them.
I think the comment section here is kind of its own thing, and not directly representative of Scott's views, nor representative of what I'd view as the "core" of the rationalists on LW.
"Every early-stage dementia patient (and their family and friends) always tells themselves (and everyone else) that they’re fine. It’s an easy thing to think, there’s never a clear bright-line where things obviously stop being fine..."
Is there some sort of useful cognitive test that those of us who've reached Medicare age can take, ideally on a weekly or monthly basis, so we can track the decline of our mental powers? I'd like to be able to plot my score on such a test versus time, so that if dementia's in the offing, I can see the graph sloping downward toward the red zone while I'm still capable of appreciating its significance, and can make a competent decision that it's time to put my affairs in the hands of younger family members.
I'm sure that there're a million cognitive-powers tests online, but are any of them actually useful? I suspect that most of them are about as valid as the ones that tell you which Pokémon you are...
I think I read somewhere that the timed "click the mouse as fast as you can when a spot of light appears on the screen" is a good test of dementia, especially when comparing results over time. Also, it would obviously be easy to implement as a web app. But maybe there's also something to be said for that other test you mention, if your Pokémon character suddenly and ominously changes! :-P
Isn't that very much confounded by physical decline?
You'd sure think so! Unsteady nerves, arthritis, reduced reaction times and general slowness often accompany old age in the absence of the kind of dementia we're talking about here, don't they?
Maybe so. Perhaps there was more of a cognitive aspect to it, such as numbers popping up on the screen which the testee had to match or add within a certain time.
I mean you can just be in touch with your own mind?
I am noticeably slower at things, and I am only 43. Just part of getting old, your brain doesn't work like when you were 16. Just like the rest of your body. Are people that out of touch with their mental states and performance?
I am wiser and more experienced now, but the "raw horsepower" is way down.
My experience is that people with Alzheimer's will continue saying things like "I am noticeably slower than I used to be" and "my brain just doesn't work as good as it used to." But "I have dementia" is a bridge too far. Or maybe it isn't, and people with dementia do realize it sometimes, but soon forget their epiphany.
It is extremely hard to be in touch with your state over long periods of time. If there is some specific past event where you lifted an object, and now you can’t lift that object, that is noticeable. But it’s very hard to tell whether I’m actually stronger or weaker than I was a few years ago if I’m not explicitly tracking the weights I’m lifting.
Your brain feels as good now as it did 20 years ago?
I guess I play men’s league sports a lot, it is VERY clear my body isn’t what it was 15 years ago, hell 7 years ago.
Ditto learning new things and understanding say a tortured math proof. It takes more chugging now. The megahertz are down.
It's really hard to compare! There are specific mathematical results whose proof I was more aware of 20 years ago than I am now, but I still do plenty of mathematical proofs, and have clearly improved some of my skills while others have withered, in a way that is hard to compare. I am more aware of the ways in which caffeine and lack of sleep can both interfere with my mental acuity, but it's also hard to tell how much that was just younger me being oblivious. It's really hard to come up with benchmarking tests, especially when many of them are things you do every day, so your memories of how well you used to do them are overwritten by your memories of how you were doing them over the past 12 months.
IDK I have been accused of having a photographic memory many times (though I don’t), but I do have a really excellent memory in other ways. Maybe I just remember my mental states particularly well?
No, being in touch with our own mind doesn't work. Your ability to judge how well your mind is working declines along with other mental abilities, and motivated reasoning has more sway over your self assessment.
Are you faster or slower than you were 15 years ago? You don't have your 15 year ago self on hand to race. And yet I suspect most of us know the answer.
Yes, Martin, in general I and other normal people can make reasonably accurate judgments about changes in our abilities, and about what we are able to do adequately in the present era and what we are not.
However, there are various conditions in which people are not able to judge their mental functioning accurately, but believe that they are. I'm a psychologist and used to work in a mental hospital, and I have seen many psychotic people who had no insight at all into their condition. They believed they were functioning normally. For instance I had a patient who was an MD who had several delusions. On subjects other than his delusions, he was entirely reasonable. One of his delusions was that his teeth were being reabsorbed by his body. I was curious how he reconciled his conviction that that was happening with his still-intact ability to think like a doctor, so I asked him what he thought the physiological process was that led to reaborption of teeth. "I don't know! " he exclaimed. "It's the weirdest thing. I did't even know that was possible." But he had no doubt his teeth were being reabsorbed.
So that doctor was in the class of people who still retained many of his mental abilities, but was unable to take into account evidence that was very persuasive to everybody but him that he was having major mental glitches. There are also people who have had a dramatic decline in their mental abilities, yet continue to believe that their mind is working as well as ever. I have had the misfortune to observe 3 quite smart and insightful people descend into dementia, while never having a clue that their mind was not working right. They remembered the evidence that convinced the rest of us that something was wrong. They remembered getting lost many times driving to a nearby familiar location. They realized they were able to read the same mystery over and over as though it was new,, that they had forgotten their niece's name, that they now left stove burners on almost every time they used them . But when people pointed these things out to them and urged them to, for instance, stop driving, they were certain these people were making a mountain out of a molehill , and laughed it off.
In short, Martin: We each believe we are good judges of the current state of our mental functioning. However, that belief on our part isn't evidence we are not suffering from psychosis or dementia.
>I mean you can just be in touch with your own mind?
I mean there's this thing called "Alzheimer's Disease" that, among other things, is rather famous for making it difficult to be in touch with one's own mind, such that people with the disease almost universally are unaware that they have it?
That clearly isn't what I am talking about. You think your mind is sharp today as it was at 22?
No and I'd be shocked if it were. But the original commenter is pretty obviously concerned about dementia of the sort that is above and beyond, and of a different nature than, normal age-related lack of sharpness. These kinds of dementia *very, very* often come with the tragic side effect of the person with the dementia not perceiving them.
Peasy's exactly right. I know that my brain isn't what it once was—ten years ago, I was doing intensive research and turning it into excellent Wikipedia articles, a thing that I don't think I could do today. I also occasionally forget a word or a name that I should know quite well, and it only comes to me later.
The sort of cognitive impairment I'm worried about is quite a different animal. I've watched it progress in my aunt, to the point where she couldn't remember something that'd been said five minutes before, even when it had a strong emotional content for her (like the death of her brother). I'm seeing it beginning in my mother: when we go to refill her weekly pill-organizer, we find that about half of the days' compartments are still full; and when we point this out to her, she says that she must've taken the pills out of the drugstore vials that day. That kind of thing is far beyond "There was a time when I could've solved this Putnam problem, but now I can't seem to" or "Dammit, I know the capital of Burkina Faso; why can't I come up with the name?"
And once that sort of memory issue arises, it becomes difficult or impossible for the sufferer to self-diagnose: I can't remember all the times I've forgotten something... It's that kind of cognitive impairment whose precursors and early stages I want to be able to track, so that I can act on them before my failing memory makes me incapable of making competent decisions.
Yes, there are a couple brief tests that are given during physicals for people who are age 65+ & have pretty good validity. They're here (you'll have to scroll a ways): https://www.alz.org/getmedia/9687d51e-641a-43a1-a96b-b29eb00e72bb/cognitive-assessment-toolkit
However, it seems like they would be hard to administer to yourself because of the nature of the items. Also, once you know the items on them you can prepare for some of them (for instance one item is knowing the present date.).
There's probably something you can self-administer. But you should search for it on google scholar, because you want a test that's been evaluated for validity and reliability. Actually, I just did that, and found this 2021 review: Current State of Self-Administered Brief Computerized Cognitive Assessments for Detection of Cognitive Disorders in Older Adults: A Systematic Review. The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease,
Reviews
Published: 24 March 2021
Volume 8, pages 267–276, (2021)
You can download it as a pdf.
From their summary. "There was substantial variability in characteristics of validation samples and reliability and validity estimates. Only 2 measures evaluated feasibility and usability in the intended clinical settings. " It may not be a problem that they found a lot of variability among the 10 studies in reliability and validity, if there is one they identified as trustworthy.
It is taught in medical school that "if you're worried you might have Alzheimer's disease, you don't have Alzheimer's disease." One of the faculties that is lost early on in dementia sufferers is the capacity for self awareness.
So you would have to pre-commit to doing a cognitive test regularly and seeking medical attention if you noticed a decline in your test scores, while being alert to the possibility of post hoc rationalisation ("this test is getting weird, whoever is responsible for it must be making it harder over time, I'm fine")
Alternately you could do what most people do and accept that people who love you and see you regularly (family, close friends) will probably be the first people to notice, and listen to them if they have concerns.
Perhaps more pertinent is what you can do to ward off dementia -
- physical activity (self explanatory)
- cognitive activity (reading, crosswords/sudoku, learning new things, travelling)
- social activity (spending time with friends/family/grandkids)
all have excellent evidence in support.
> Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded
That was Jim Clyburn, not Obama.
And it wasn’t everyone in lockstep - it was Buttigieg and Klobuchar, while Elizabeth Warren resisted.
There's a huge difference between lefty podcasters and Twitter users saying you should drop out and having Barack H. Obama in the country call you on the phone and beg you to drop out. The former was ordinary background noise. The latter was an extraordinary exercise of influence by a former president and current Democratic party elite.
I don’t understand prediction markets. Read the primer (which I still didn’t fully understand). Which is why I’m not involved in them.
I don’t fully understand the stock market in nitty gritty detail either. The description of the parallels is helpful. But I am in the market, in ETFs cuz imo active management adds nothing. So in essence I am riding general consensus opinion in the same way a prediction market is supposed to play out (if I understand it poorly but vaguely correctly) (and I suppose I don’t “trust experts” or active management since historically and over time they don’t outperform).
But as mentioned briefly, the stock market generally over long periods WILL go up. What is the prediction market equivalent?
Also, the stock market does not seek to answer a binary question…eg. Will Biden quit the race; who will win in November; etc etc. The stock market is the general arbitraged consensus of “value” (future value, i suppose) in a way that prediction markets aren’t and can’t be. But a prediction market will have a definite resolution. Either Biden 100% quits or he 0% quits. So generally, how well do these markets actually perform against objective reality, over time and with multiple scenarios?
Plus, if I’m a buy and hold long timeline market type, I don’t worry so much about short term binary events. But in an election type event, short term is the whole point . And granted that presumably the prediction market will better approximate the final outcome on Nov 4 than it does today, but how often have these markets been correct 4 months out?
Prediction markets can only have an analogue to the upward trajectory of the stock market if they are subsidized. Which is what Robin Hanson recommends to discover valuable information.
>Prediction markets can only have an analogue to the upward trajectory of the stock market if they are subsidized.
Would prediction markets with the buy/sell prices denominated in S&P500 indices instead of dollars work? ( or some other highly diversified stock market index )
I've been explaining to my hardcore Trump family for months that if there was a magic drug that turned off Alzheiemer's for a couple hours, they wouldn't keep it a secret.
I guess I didn't consider to what extent they could schedule things around his good and bad days. Or maybe he's just spent his entire adult life forcefully reading speeches off a teleprompter and now it's second nature.
If they'd found one in the last few years, do you think it unlikely they'd keep it secret until AFTER the '24 election?
If it's relatively early onset, then simply being "peppy" through stimulants can accomplish some of the stage appearance necessary for a candidate. It wasn't just a lack of focus and incoherence that got people concerned from the debate; it was that Biden looked completely out of gas, practically catatonic, just plain old. The lack of mental acuity was part too, of course, but if he'd been shouting his way through he might have looked more alive to the audience even if he made just as many flubs and word salads.
Ive been somewhat in the 'hes drugged up' camp, but I admit, I have no idea what drugs would even help. What would the effects of like Adderal be on someone who was declining into demtia be? Would it give him some focus like it does for everyone else?
One of the things the 'Biden is demented' camp higlights quite a bit is that Biden sometimes looks weirdly wide eyed and unblinking. What could be the cause of that?
During Biden's State of the Union address I was pleasantly surprised at how animated he looked. ( although I have seen comments about Alzheimer's on meth... ). The contrast to the debate was breathtaking. Now, I've only seen these two data points. But, if I _were_ to extrapolate from them, I'd expect his response to, say, Putin detonating a tactical nuke in Ukraine in 2025 to be something like "What's a kiloton?"
I've no basis for a medical opinion, but I would guess that almost any stimulants would make someone more animated, almost by definition. If he'd been loud or manic and struggling with coherence, I think that might nevertheless have played slightly better on TV than being listless and incoherent; at least it would indicate energy.
So prediction markets suggest Vladimir Putin should support both Trump and Biden.
Typo nitpicking:
> to find the probability of Democrats winning they nominate Biden
There seems to be a missing _if_, or is it on purpose?
That would be a good idea anyway, just so they can undermine the future winner slightly by letting it come out, and/or possibly get acausally-negotiated reciprocation from the future winner.
> A possible objection to these results: conditional probabilities don’t exactly reflect the intuitive concept of decision-making. That is, we’re not asking “We want to know whether or not to keep Biden, so what are the chances that he’ll win if we do?”, we’re asking the market for the chance that he’ll win, in the set of worlds where people decide to keep him for other reasons. We should expect this to overestimate his performance.
Wouldn't this apply in the opposite direction as well? The set of worlds is also limited to where the Democrats fail to replace him, and many aspects of those worlds are relatively unfavourable for Democrats.
Biden getting nominated is more likely when:
* The party is dysfunctional, and unable to make decisions.
* The party predicts very messy resistance from Biden himself, as Biden becomes less capable of reasonably/fairly evaluating the situation, or he expects that the proposed replacement would lose. The party concludes that they have little chance of winning whether they replace Biden or not, but decide the likely mess and infighting wouldn't be worth it, especially taking into account the broken legacy and fracturing base in the expected aftermath.
* There is no available replacement who would be expected to win.
** The otherwise possible replacements have become unpopular for whatever reasons, which might imply difficult times for Democrats in general. The party bets on incumbency advantage, because they don't have anything else to work with.
** The most popular potential replacement(s) are not willing to run, perhaps because they believe that they will likely lose, because of the sudden unpopularity of the Democratic party.
I am unsure whether these outweigh the overall "Biden was nominated because his mental health was good" factor.
This is basically correct. The conditional probabilities can be a helpful guide (if the markets are thick enough and the money is real etc) but you can't just handwave away the selection into specific states of the world.
As a general principal, the less likely X is to happen, then p(a|X) will be over-sampling from states of the world where particularly unlikely/unrepresentative stuff had to happen, and you can't just say those are a good guide to p(a|X-via-magic-wand). In the context of elections, a longshot candidate will tend to have good p(win|nominee) because something wild probably has to happen for them to become the nominee, and that will tend to be "they suddenly became popular for some external reason". But if you just force them to be the nominee by fiat, you don't get that beneficial sampling.
I've never worked for the DNC and only know a little about their internal culture. But as you said, it's a mistake to conflate the DNC with the will of the "Elites". The chairman of the DNC may have gone to Yale, but the vice-chairman went to University of Miami Dade.
The DNC leadership are just professional campaigners who are good at their job (which is to raise money for their candidates.) The Elites are the wealthy people who donate millions of dollars to Biden's campaign, from Seth MacFarlane to Reid Hoffman. The DNC is nothing more than the people in charge of holding the bag and asking the millionaires (and the small-sum donors) for money please. They have other jobs too but those are mostly boring legal stuff.
In other words, the "DNC" is just a handful of bureaucrats who were told by their boss, Joe Biden, that he's not stepping down and they should calm down the anxious donors (which they haven't been doing a good job at either, probably for regular incompetence reasons.) There's no shadow council of powerful people who convene in the dead of night to coordinate strategy and pressure Biden to bow out (or pull his puppet strings like the nefarious Illuminati some imagine them to be.) They're just some fundraising geeks, the largest of the many PACs raising money for Joe Biden for President, having one of the most stressful weeks of their careers.
One of many reasons why Parliamentary systems are better. You actually have a mechanism to cold bloodedly knife the leader when he becomes a liability.
Good point. And the ministers are the prime ministers colleagues not his servants.
Agree that parliamentary systems are better, however, parties that replace leaders just before an election often go on to lose anyway.
Yeah, and that's not surprising. Knifing your leader generally means things are not going well!
The 2013 Australian election was the canonical example of this. Labor lost in a landslide after Rudd replaced Gillard, but polling was clear that he improved the party's standing and saved it from an even bigger landslide. "Saving the furniture" was the phrase that was used at the time - everyone knew the situation was too far gone for Rudd to actually win.
Good point.
Only in theory or in places with robust political ecosystems like the UK. Parliamentary systems in places with a weak political culture and a 'strong leader ' end up in the same situation of not being able to do anything about the leader. Exhibit A - India
Are you suggesting Modi is a liability for the BJP at this point? That's not the impression I've gotten.
You think their seats fell from 300 to 240 because the public approves of him?
Certainly the BJP lost some skin. That doesn't imply that Modi is a liability though.
The question is not "Is the party currently popular?", it's "Would the party be more popular if it dispensed with it's leader?" As I mentioned elsewhere, Rudd led the ALP to a crushing defeat in 2013, but he was still the best choice they could make in that circumstance.
I'm not intimately familiar with Indian politics, so maybe there's relevant aspects to the situation there that I'm missing. But my impression is that the BJP is largely seen as an extension of Modi and the main reason to vote for them is because you want him in charge. Even if that's a less compelling sales pitch than it has been in the past, the prospects of a BJP without Modi could well be worse.
For this election and the last, the party was not running for election, Modi was. This is another example of how the apparent form of the system matters a lot less than the underlying function. It's nominally a parliamentary system, but can(and does) switch to a presidential one depending on the cast of actors. The system being parliamentary in name is no protection from anything.
>In other words, the "DNC" is just a handful of bureaucrats who were told by their boss, Joe Biden, that he's not stepping down and they should calm down the anxious donors (which they haven't been doing a good job at either, probably for regular incompetence reasons.)
Or for regular "there's no possible way to calm people down when they've discovered that the candidate they donated millions to has an obviously disqualifying mental competence problem on top of his historically low approval rating" reasons?
I'm close to someone with whom I have spoken at length about Biden's condition who is a geriatric specialist, and also focused on dementia for a number of years. While they also got very strong "vibes" of dementia from Biden even some years back, they have consistently said that it would be basically impossible to diagnose from watching him alone. By vibes I mean that a number of behaviors and mishaps do align with dementia, they are not proof of it, at least iiuc. They've said consistently that they would need a one-on-one conversation to actually determine anything about that.
After the debate, they've said that most of the phenomenon Biden exhibits that make people think he's senile/demented could actually be explained by something else, which as a casual guess on their part (not to be taken as an actual diagnosis, in other words) seems to be the best fit: Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
From the NIH:
PSP affects a person’s movements, and can lead to loss of balance, difficulty walking or swallowing, slurred speech, problems with eye movements. PSP can also affect a person’s mood, behavior, and thinking. The most frequent first symptom of PSP is a loss of balance while walking which can lead to abrupt and unexplained falls. People with PSP may also have stiffness and slow movement.
As the disease progresses, most people develop eye problems. Eye and vision symptoms may include:
Slow eye movements
Trouble looking up or down
Trouble controlling eyelids, involuntary closing of the eyes, decreased blinking, or difficulty opening the eyes
Tendency to move the head rather than just the eyes to look in different directions
People with PSP and their loved ones may notice changes in mood or behavior. These may include:
Depression
Lack of motivation
Changes in judgment, insight, and problem solving
Difficulty finding words
Forgetfulness
Loss of interest in activities the person used to enjoy
Increased irritability
Sudden laughing, crying, or angry outbursts for no apparent reason
Personality changes
Slowed, slurred, or monotone speech
Difficulty swallowing
Mask-like facial expressions
Sleep problems
I mean this primarily to say that Biden might not actually be demented. This might be academic - your point is primarily that it would seem more obvious after the debate that Biden's faculties are damaged and whether it's dementia or PSP is moot, but it does make me wonder if the pharma cocktail theory has a bit more value, since we wouldn't be dealing with dementia anymore. Assuming those close to him are aware of his condition (and that a PSP diagnosis is correct), it could be that there are enough medications, therapies, and other treatments that have given them the impression that they can keep Biden well enough.
PSP is similar to Alzheimer's dementia in that they are both tauopathies that progress to cognitive decline in the long term. PSP has more features of movement disorder (like Parkinson's disease), and difficulty with eye movements, especially inability to look up, is considered a pathognomonic feature.
It really doesn't matter which one the underlying diagnosis is, it matters the degree of functional impairment. There are no known drugs that can temporarily alleviate the cognitive symptoms of PSP, either.
Also your friend is correct that none of us can or should try and diagnose public figures without having a medical consultation with them.
How quickly does PSP (or other similar ailments) trypically progress?
I am wondering two things:
- Perhaps Biden really was basically functional and relatively lucid until recently, and the debate took his advisers by surprise simply because he had never or rarely actually been that bad before?
- Could there be noticeable further decline by election day? By the convention?
Not that fast. Usually over years. Lewy body dementia is the one where there can be fluctuations day to day in cognitive capacity - someone can be relatively lucid one day and severely impaired the next
BS of the highest order. Voters aren't providing or recommending treatment. Voters with elderly parents, relatives and friends know what progressive mental decline looks like and are absolutely free to "diagnose" what Biden's problem is here.
What the debate did is shift the burden of proof onto Biden's team that he is not experiencing progressive mental decline. Good luck.
You may have misinterpreted my comment. I’m in no way arguing that Biden is not impaired, I’m arguing against unfounded speculation as to whether it’s PSP or Alzheimer’s or Lewy Body (and indeed against the notion that it should matter - what matters is the degree of impairment, not the diagnosis)
Please be mindful of ACX's comment policy: "The great Sufi poet, Rumi, believed that before we speak our words should pass through three gates. 'Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?'". ACX is generous and requires two out of three for any given comment.
Turtle wasn't trying to say you can't form a hypothesis of Biden's condition and vote based on that. I think he has some mental decline, personally, and is unfit for the office or will soon be.
Turtle is saying you can't *diagnose*, formally, medically, with professional weight, without a personal meeting.
Please be careful not to become hostile on the basis of assumptions.
> none of us can or should try and diagnose public figures without having a medical consultation with them
I agree. Will Biden be making his appointment with me today, or should we wait until tomorrow when it's more convenient for him?
If he doesn't make an appointment with me, but people still want my opinion, precisely why should I not make my guess based on the available data?
I get why doctors don't do it, because if they're wrong, boy, that's gonna bode poorly for their careers. But I don't get why people say they shouldn't do it (unless that's the reason they're going to cite).
Parkinsons disease has also been mentioned. And Lewy Body Dementia, whatever that is (different from Alzheimer apparently).
I would think of PSP as a kind of dementia rather than as an alternative to it.
I don't know much about it or its treatment. Wikipedia says rivastigmine might sort of work. But I don't expect it to be magic, if it was magic they'd have used it at the debates, and I also think "Biden is on rivastigmine" would be the sort of explosive fact that would have come out by now.
His obviously declining state has been apparent for years, and yet it only "came out" a few days ago, and then, not because somebody leaked that information, but because his debate performance was so terrible it couldn't be denied anymore.
Likely a misunderstanding on my part then - I thought it was more about motor than cognitive, but likely conjured that based on misinterpreting something the aforementioned geriatric expert said.
6/100,000 incidence for PSP is probably enough to put it to bed anyway unless something changes.
It's an interesting alternative, but from the outside we have to keep in mind the statistical difference.
"Five percent of people ages 71 to 79, 24.2 percent of people 80 to 89, and 37.4 percent of those 90 years or older were estimated to have some type of dementia" - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/one-seven-americans-age-71-older-has-some-type-dementia-nih-funded-study-estimates#
"PSP affects about six people per 100,000" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_supranuclear_palsy
Dementia is more than a thousand fold more common at Biden's age, so we should resist the diagnosis of PSP until evidence is fairly strong in favor of it over dementia.
You should never trust your own recollections of how you made a mistake. The correct explanation is here: https://nonzionism.substack.com/p/the-tragedy-of-centrism
Wow, great post. It really is inevitable for every great empire to rot and burn away. And then the survivors will try to build something better from the ashes, only to find that the same conditions will always end up producing the same results.
At least the flames will be wonderful to watch.
That's not necessarily true. Sometimes the area a day's drive around Paris produces François Hollande's uninspiring socialist-lite republic. Sometimes it produces the Napoleonic Wars.
Your post seems contradictory, if you’re fine with a generic democrat who is all style and substance (like Gavin Newsom) to be the president, why not Biden? Even if he is senile. In both cases , it’s likely the aides will be running everything anyway. We’ve done fine for quite a while with Biden, we’ll probably continue to do well under him
Probably because he seems to have a lower chance to be elected than the alternatives, while the Orange Man is, as we all know, Bad.
Not everyone. I was expecting much worse from a Trump presidency than we got in 2016, including running up the deficit so we could then go bankrupt. That, of course, didn't happen.
Summarizing what I saw as the major bad points of both presidencies:
Trump: blindly following the law to separate immigrant parents from their children, unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear treaty, giving money away during COVID.
Biden: withdrawing unconditionally from Afghanistan by a set date, forgiving student loan debt, prioritizing appointing "diverse" judges instead of rating based off of ability, giving money away during COVID.
These points aren't exhaustive, of course. I believe they are objective, though others may disagree on the diverse judges one (but my essential point there is that race ought to be irrelevant if one isn't racist).
EDIT: I want to add another thing I thought Trump did wrong: firing Janet Yellen simply because of political affiliation; I thought she was doing a fine job, better than Powell did. It is possible Yellen might have started raising interest rates sooner, and we would have had less inflation. So I basically call the current inflation we're fighting Trump's fault.
Note that Trump is the one who set the Afghanistan date, not Biden! And judges, like police officers and teachers, are definitely a position where we want to give people explicit role models and community members in the position, in order for the system to function well in a diverse society. It’s really hard to see how caring about this is a problem comparable to the Iran fiasco (which had very important repercussions for the Ukraine war), unless you can point to some actual judges who have done bad work.
Trump set the date as May 1st, 2021. Biden didn't keep that date, for probably good reasons. The Taliban started really winning against Afghanistan in July, yet Biden chose to withdraw the troops even sooner, moving from 9/11 to 8/31. Maybe he was putting America First, but it seems a poor choice for long-term national security.
Ketanji Brown Jackson: doesn't know what a woman is, but knows what a machine gun is? https://www.courthousenews.com/supreme-court-divided-on-bump-stock-ban/
In a diverse society trusting that people are appointed based on their competence becomes even more important than it would otherwise be.
Did he appoint anyone not competent? He appointed people that didn't get the highest possible mark. But that doesn't mean they're not competent, just that some other people have higher paper qualifications.
It would be nice if people in a diverse society were able to ignore their diversity and trust people based on paper commitments. But I think that's just to say, it would be nice if society weren't diverse - we don't think of the distribution of second letters of last names as a type of "diversity", even though we are very "diverse" on that mark, precisely because it's not a type of "diversity" we see as relevant. You are saying it would be good if we didn't see each other as diverse. Which is true. But since we do, it's important to ensure that people see members of their community in positions of authority (hence why it was very important when Irish-Americans and Black Americans first started getting representation on police forces, and why it would be valuable to have male teachers in elementary schools).
We're talking about the choice between candidates being whether their presence will inspire others from their community. The effect is speculative, especially the overall effect of undermining confidence in and the prestige in these positions, but utilitarian reasoning could justify this. Meanwhile there's an opposed but related idea of reparative or retributive justice which makes groups of people to be natural kinds that can owe debts to one another, usually debts of blood over many generations. This older idea probably colors our feelings when thinking about opposed but related ideas like the one we're talking about now.
Developing strong taboos against discrimination seems like an appealing cultural device to curb and choke out the older ideas. But it requires blunt consistency, and so necessarily foregoes some advantages. There are many social advantages of incest leading it to be done in practice, but the widespread taboo emerged for a reason. Humanity may currently be in a phase of developing a widespread incest-like aversion to discrimination. If we're in such a transition, then consistency is even more important, since the aversion to discrimination is not yet general.
I think it's plausible that Trump 2.0 will be substantially worse, from the status quo-preserving perspective. He knows by now that he won't get any cooperation beyond passing the occasional tax break from the establishment/deep state, and may just find the right people to uproot large swathes of it on his behalf.
That's my worry too.
Low confidence, but in recent discussion a lot of people have talked about how the president himself has a lot of inevitable decision power he can't delegate to his aides, like negotiations.
Maybe if Biden wins they'll come up with some way to have the aides do things they normally wouldn't, but at that point I would expect him to resign or get Article 25ed.
What's the contradiction? He's fine with Biden and Newsom, but Biden appears to be less likely to get elected. Seems perfectly coherent
Why do we want Democrats to win, again? I get abortion, but everything else is kind of meh.
I don't want a president who has threatened his former VP with jail time due to disloyalty.
Serious replies only, please.
This is a fact.
If Trump ever becomes President the world will literally explode!
If the climate change doesn't melt it first.
I’ll assume your question is going toward your average centrist out there. I think there’s clear pros and cons to both sides in terms of civil rights from the right, and high taxes and spending and war from the left. If both candidates were identical, I’d strongly consider voting right. However, with the current slate, Trump is a lot more likely to do irreparable harm than strong growth. We all want a government that runs smoothly, like clockwork, efficiently. I both believe that most of trump’s staff and cabinet were extremely dissatisfied, and believe with 20% probability that there will be some kind of major civil unrest with a second trump term.
And, finally, for me specifically, I do value civil rights/abortion at a level slightly higher than economic growth. I see things like access to abortion and birth control (and/or the nominations to Supreme Court) as an investment into long term future results. I understand arguments over abortion bad, but conservatives use restricting birth control in the same breath, and I would think the proponents of preventing abortion should be the party of making easy birth control as accessible as possible.
I do think some control of left-ideals are important though. Free college for all seems irresponsible.
"efficiently"
Who ever said the government was efficient?
I'm against abortion in that I'm against murder, especially against the helpless. I am NOT against birth control, and except for religious arguments, which need not be based in reason, cannot understand opposition to availability of contraception, though I'm against public funding of it like I would be against public subsidies of, say, fruit juices.
I definitely agree that free college for all is bad. Not everyone SHOULD go to college; it's specifically for those more studiously-inclined. Others can go to trade schools: plumbers, electricians, software developers, masons...lots of things don't need a college education. The world is full of all kinds of people.
I’m suggesting we want the government to be efficient. Not that it is.
I’m for public funding of birth control just like public funding of preventative medicine. The downstream impacts are much more expensive.
I support need-based college funding for students that are seeking high paying degrees.
These things ought to somehow be self-funding. Otherwise, where would the money come from?
I see no way to equitably subsidize birth control.
Need-based college funding might be possible, by some kind of student loan at base Fed interest rate, where payments start 10 years after the loan is first given? If someone doesn't get value out of their education, then the loan will be hanging over their heads for a long, long time.
Self funding is just an equation we do after the fact. Except for things taxed separately, it all gets combined and then redistributed. People generally say things like college loans are a net positive on taxes over time. I’m just suggesting birth control would also be that way.
Then you're artificially reducing the price of birth control, thus increasing the demand for it, and paying for it from money gained from people not receiving the benefit. You may say it benefits society preventing unwanted births, but I think it is the responsibility of adults who chose to perform adult activities to be adult about it, and take responsibility for their own actions, or else not to do those actions.
Why exactly should Trump have a significant edge on the economy? His was nothing more or less than a continuation of Obama's, and Biden's, whatever its flaws, compares very favorably to the rest of the world
I think it’s a tricky comparison to distill. I’m not convinced that it was Obama policy that led to low interest rates and economic growth during trump administration, but I’m also not convinced it was trumps red tape cutting. But I’d give the slight edge to trump’s removal of red tape and pro-business rhetoric vs a neutral/slightly against rhetoric from the left.
stock market, GDP, jobs--if there's a chart of economic well-being that doesn't show a steady line from 2010 to the start of the pandemic, I haven't seen it
although, to be fair, that does also disprove a LOT of dire predictions made on Nov 9, 2016
trump was still less harmful even if he was clearly part of the problem to people who understand supply and demand and that money is still a resource
there isnt a credible option for someone whos will turn off the money printers and start killing the ponzi scheme in american politics and probaly wont be until boomers start dying and we can go "you blood suckers who prevented homes from being built and made a 1 bedroom apperment 1 trillion dollars and bought into a ponzi scheme GET NOTHING" in 2030
Im not so sure, I think the best possible outcome on the table is ubi hyper inflation until nation states literally die. The printers will brrrrrr, I think trump signing checks so it went to the lower classes was the best development since the downward spiral started.
Given free money, it should go to lots of people in "small" amounts, not be part of a money launder scheme that involved killing brown children in the middle east, or inflate the housing market even more or some other nonsense.
It starts with "inf" and ends with "lation".
I get that Presidents are sometimes victims of global circumstances but this is one that cannot be ignored.
Was the US an outlier for inflation levels among its peers?
> I understand arguments over abortion bad, but conservatives use restricting birth control in the same breath
Controlled opposition and religious extermists who were bombing clinics not that long ago, the most likely outcome is a state by state "safe legal rare" compromise with restrictions on late term abortions. Row v wade died from corona mandates making the compromise based on absolutist medical privacy clearly a lie.
>believe with 20% probability that there will be some kind of major civil unrest with a second trump term.
From who?
The problem with such a consideration is it means that terrorist blackmail has a considerable impact on your voting preferences. A good thing to be aware of, but a sign of a deeply sick culture.
John Oliver says: https://youtu.be/gYwqpx6lp_s
Also wondering how much of https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/ still applies.
And looking for "best and worst presidents" rankings, Trump is commonly among the bottom five, whereas Biden is something like place 14 or 19 or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
I think Trump is a bad guy, but such historical rankings can't be taken seriously.
As long as we're pulling down statues because those men held unacceptable views, the presidents who owned slaves must be considered worse than Trump.
but dont you know trump only supported civil unions 20 years ago? idk what Washington believed on lgbtq420bffjill issues but he was probably better(/s I know he supported sodomy laws,)
I don’t have particularly care for Trump, but he started approximately zero wars or special military operations. If you consider the knock on effects of Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the benefits, one could make an argument that he was a less damaging president than GW Bush.
Yes, you are right, GW Bush and his wars were very damaging.
What made DT damaging was his refusal to understand the benefits of international treaties, e.g. NATO or the Paris climate treaty (OK, if he believes against all evidence that the climate is *fine*), his botching of the pandemic response (the China travel ban was a good idea, but too late, and then he rambled about horse dewormer and the like https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RxDKW75ueIU instead of listening to the doctors), spreading discord in the population (dividing into those who love him almost religiously and those who, uh, don't; he could have prevented a lot of that unrest), oh did I mention his constant lying and inability to distinguish truth from "alternative facts"?
Because Trump is a conman, a rapist, a fool and a narcissist. And this isn’t exaggeration.
If narcissism is disqualifying, we're going to have to throw out a lot of presidents. Most of them, probably.
Rapist is an exaggeration; Trump was found guilty in a civil trial, which has a lower evidentiary burden of proof, and that still wasn't for rape but sexual abuse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-rape-e-jean-carroll-sexual-abuse-jury-judge-2023-7?op=1
I don't believe E Jean Carroll, is the trouble. There are no witnesses, and the story is very shaky. Maybe it's true that in a department store in the middle of the day, there were no other customers around and no sales assistants, but every time I've gone into a clothing store I've been zeroed in on by the assistant within about five minutes with "Can I help you, madam?"
So it's really "he said/she said" and I don't think it's beyond reasonable doubt. But this was Trump, so the presumption of innocence went out the window.
Now, if you're saying "But why would E. Jean Carroll lie?"
Aging woman losing career opportunities needs to make money, sees way of getting her name back in the public eye, riding the wave of Orange Man Bad, and perhaps making some money off it (which, thanks to the civil trial, she did).
I've personally seen in my home town a *very* high profile case of allegations of sexual abuse and rape being run on lynch mob principles, where the conviction was pushed through on "of course the accused did it, they're One Of This Unpopular Group" and surprise surprise, turns out the 'victim' was lying due to being a mentally unstable fabulist and the 'witness' backing them up was lying due to a grudge against the accused.
Is Trump a swine around women? Yeah. But the infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" remark would, if made by the likes of Howard Stern, have been treated as bold taboo-breaking by the guy fighting the stuffed shirts of the fuddy-duddy FCC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission_fines_of_The_Howard_Stern_Show
"Between 1990 and 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued fines totaling $2.5 million to radio licensees for airing material it deemed indecent from The Howard Stern Show, the highest amount of any American radio show.
... Benchmark Communications, the licensee of show affiliate WVGO in Richmond, Virginia, was fined $10,000 in October 1996 for two broadcasts. The first involved the discussion of a sexual encounter between Stern and his wife from October 23, 1995, while the second concerned a segment from June 3, 1996 whereby the father of pornographic actress Jenna Jameson identified his daughter's vagina from a selection of photographs."
Getting your father to identify your vagina on air. How charming.
As a woman who has actually been raped, I agree strongly with you that I do not believe Carroll. I also have personal experience with mentally ill people coaching others to make false sex abuse allegations, delusional and yet simultaneously convenient, never against people they like.
I am getting pretty sick of the go-to discrediting approach against people with conservative positions like Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh, Roland Fryer, Trump, and on and on, being unfalsifiable accusations of sexual molestation.
I don't respect Bill Clinton for soliciting blow jobs from a starstruck young adult intern down the hall from his wife, but it is not pertinent to his ability to govern.
Let's drop the unfalsifiable attacks and rely on verifiable, pertinent information.
There are various legal distinctions of what amounts to rape. Groping someone's genitals could go either way I suppose.
I am very leery of giving credence to sexual abuse allegations made decades after the fact; this one occurred in 1996. Human memory isn't reliable enough to accurately testify about what happened over 25 years ago. Plus it was a civil rather than criminal trial. This means that Carroll was primarily seeking money, $5 million of it in fact. And also the evidentiary standard is preponderance of the evidence, meaning the jury only had to believe the chance of the assault occurring was more likely than not.
Why wait so long, and why not take Trump to a criminal trial if he is going around raping people? The circumstances aren't convincing enough for me to confidently think Trump is guilty, although that is certainly a possibility.
I would give a similar credence to Trump-Carroll as I would to Biden-Reade. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. Maybe something vaguely like it happened but it's been exaggerated, or maybe consent has been retrospectively withdrawn. Maybe it's completely confabulated by someone with a political axe to grind. Who the heck knows?
Still, has anyone ever denied he was a conman, other than about half of the people he conned out of various things?
No, but apparently a lot of his supporters think that if he is ever (even arguably)
unfairly accused by anyone of anything, then he becomes innocent of everything and his opponents are guilty.
He's a liar and a sleazebag, but certainly not a Madoff. He listens to his lawyers. Of course, when the establishment decides that an example needs to be made, there are always crimes or "crimes" to be found, as Beria wisely remarked.
Don't forget, he's also a Nazi, a liar, a Christofascist, a regular fascist, a christian nationalist, and a zionist (also, he literally tried to coo the goverment! hello people!!!!
You forgot existential threat to democracy.
You are referring to this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Which smells a lot like that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
Donald Trump attempted to overthrow the US government (by attempting to force Mike Pence to throw out the electoral votes of 7 states, where 26,490,946 Americans voted, and sending a mob to the capitol to intimidate him into submission when he refused) and the judicial system is apparently completely incapable of actually punishing him for it, at least not in any reasonable amount of time.
You seem to be way surer of that than Merrick Garland is.
I've read the emails where they planned it out (anybody can), and they've never denied the legitimacy of those emails, so I don't have any question on if they did it. It's also been over three years and we're just getting more dilly-dallying from SCOTUS, to at best kick it past the election and at worst render it impossible to prosecute, so I don't think how you could think this is prompt - the guy in Bolivia who tried a coup got arrested the same day, for comparison.
Not sure where my uncertainty is supposed to come from. Care to explain?
I’ve read the emails too, and don’t see what statute makes them crimes any more than Gore’s actions were in 2000.
If they are technically not crimes, then it is a failure of our system.
To be clear, I am not talking about the idea of legally challenging it - fine, it was all bullshit, but that's why the legal system can sort bullshit from reality. I'm not even talking about making people perjure themselves by declaring themselves duly appointed electors from their states when they weren't, since that could be justified if it had turned out there was outcome determinative fraud.
I am talking about saying, "Mike Pence, I know we didn't win any legal cases in these states to overturn these results. In fact, given that I said the election was going to be stolen back in May and then proceeded to do approximately nothing to stop it, I probably don't even actually believe the election was stolen. But, I think you should throw out the electoral votes from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona, because then I'll win." If you can't see how that's different from Gore in 2000, I really don't know what to say.
Neither do I.
I don’t believe the passage you have “quoted” is real, and neither do you. “I probably don't even actually believe the election was stolen.” Give me a break. Provide a citation for that, and I will apologize sincerely.
There is a reason the Constitution has Congress meet to tabulate the results, and that reason is that there are sometimes questions about the validity of the results being tabulated. If either candidate has doubts about those results, he has the right to express them to anybody. It’s wrong to say Trump “did approximately nothing”: many suits were filed and the courts weaseled out of considering them, earlier in the grounds that it was too early, and later on grounds of standing. But that doesn’t really matter: Trump trying to convince Pence of his case was yet another Constitutionally permissible attempt to steer our system to do what he was convinced it should do. Yes, he lost in the courts, and he lost in the Congress. You don’t get to accuse him of a crime (and you seem to agree that there is no crime you can accuse him of) for trying and failing.
Trump is a narcissistic blowhard (who nevertheless has my vote because who else is there?). The world is full of them, and it’s not a crime.
I think the Trump 10% tariffs on everything idea is bad.
What about Biden's 50% on Chinese solar panels (I thought we loved green energy) and 100% tariff on Chinese EVs (I thought we needed these to solve climate change - what's going on??)
Yes Biden has put tariffs on specific industries. This is a lot different from a 10% tariff on all imports. I oppose tariffs in general, and I think the ones you are referencing are bad, that said, the idea behind the tariffs on solar panels and EVs is that China heavily, heavily subsidizes those industries, so for the US to stay competitive and not let China put all our solar and EV companies out of business and corner the market, we must employ a tariff.
If China subsidizes them, America should exploit it by buying them on the cheap on the Chinese state's dime. Then, when the Chinese raise prices, rebuild the American solar and EV industry. Or if it's expected to be cheaper for America on the long run (at present value) to keep the industry running than to either rebuild it later or to let China dominate the market, then private investors will pour money into the American companies to keep them afloat, knowing they'll reap the profit once the Chinese raise prices.
I don't think private investors would choose to take losses for years waiting for the Chinese to try raising prices or stop their subsidies.
If so, the problem is much more general than that China subsidizes solar panels and EVs: it's that people have a higher time preference than they should have (in your opinion).
If we're going to do the paternalistic thing and overrule people's preferences, we should try to solve the actual problem: force people to put some fraction of their income in savings/securities accounts that they can only withdraw after some amount of time. Or, less paternalistically, cut capital gains/dividend tax, and cut welfare benefits/services to people who have savings or should have if they saved the advised amount.
This is also a problem you can solve for yourself if you want, without forcing others to do so: whenever you buy a cheap Chinese EV or solar panel, or a product made cheaper by the use of energy produced by cheap Chinese solar panels, save what the tariff would be, and invest it into American solar/EV companies that maintain American production (and so will be valuable when the Chinese raise prices) and/or just arbitrary diversified investments. Then, when the Chinese raise prices, cash out and use it to pay the high prices charged by the Chinese, or by the newly rebuilding American producers.
they suck really bad but not like trump's gonna repeal em
I don't want Trump to control the nukes, and I think Biden is better than Trump on war. Trump took actions that could have led to a US war with Iran. I think he's also more likely to increase conflict with China (I'm of the opinion that eventual conflict is not inevitable, and it would be best to avoid it).
Trump is not good from the perspective of political norms. I believe that Trump could lead to authoritarian backslide or otherwise contribute to political instability over the medium term. As much as I think the stagnant two party system pre-2016 led to non-optimal policies, I still think U.S. instability would be a bad thing. It would be better if the Republican party is pushed to nominating a saner, smarter, and more virtuous candidates, rather than more Trump-like figures. Politics have gotten worse since 2016, and we seem less capable of making good decisions.
I think Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric is highly damaging, since I believe increasing immigration would be highly beneficial, and shifting opinions and building political will behind this is an important priority.
I think Republicans are less likely to respond well to emerging risks from AI and synthetic biology because of greater skepticism towards regulation and the current stance on climate change, though I'm less confident of this assessment.
i mean, ya, abortion is the biggest reason for me. That and hopefully more support for higher taxes on the very wealthy, tho I'm not super hopeful on that one. Theres also pretty much nothing i like about conservative policies, at all, so it didn't take much to sway me towards Democrats. Its "a few things i like" vs "basically nothing i like". And I actively *dislike* a bunch of stuff Republicans are doing
I feel like replacing the candidate at this stage would be unfair to the Republicans.
Many a Republican primary voter is going to say "whoa hey, I only voted for Trump because I thought we were going up against Slow Joe Crow... if we'd known you were going to nominate a popular purple-state governor then I'd have voted for someone more electable and less representative of my preferences!"
Luckily it won't be a popular purple state governor (there's no reason to think that the Democrats are going to be any better with candidate selection this time than the last few times), but if it is then the Republicans should be allowed a do-over.
Well, the Republicans can rechoose their candidate too. The Democrats aren’t preventing them. They can ask Trump to step down for the good of the GOP and the USA.
But you think the parties care about treating the other party ”unfairly”?
Actually, I think Melvin has a good point. The selection process is already done for Republicans. They COULD do it again, but no system is in place to do it again.
If they DID re-do the nomination process, perhaps Nikki Haley would stand a better chance against a known opponent.
The selection process is the same as for Democrats. If Trump steps down, they have to find a new candidate at the convention.
Trump's sole priority since winning in '16 was to purge the part of anyone who would do this for any reason. As long as he's not catatonic, he will be the nominee. Hence why he became the nominee without even participating in any debates or even trying very hard to win.
Isn't that MORE reason for them do it, not less?
Unfair? Why is any political party expected to be "fair" to its opponents?
The left will not truly understand what went wrong until they realize Trump IS the moderate, electable candidate.
People confuse style for substance. Nikki Haley (for example) is wayyyy more "right-wing" especially on stuff like abortion - but at least she has the decency to play the game of looking like a moderate respectable politician - and so she doesn't trip the same alarms.
Opposition to trump is less about his specific policies but a combination of (a) his self-enrichment at a cost to the public good (b) his significant undermining of norms that leaves the government vulnerable to even more autocracy in the future (c) his very annoying persona
Who said politics was supposed to be fair?
Eh, Trump was as inevitable for the Rs in 2024 as Hillary Clinton was for the Ds in 2016. And if being captured by a controversial and disliked candidate leaves the party vulnerable to a surprise challenger... That seems like karma in action?
Right but even more so. The idea that it was a strategic response to the opponent doesnt pass the laugh test
I think people are hoping for grand plans because they imply that smart people are in charge, and are used to that from TV and movies. But reality is much less dramatic.
> But if elites are going to do something behind closed doors, maybe they should take advantage and choose the candidate most likely to win, for once.
That's pretty much what they did in 2020. And it worked.
> Still, for the past four years, every time Biden was going to do something - a press conference, a State of the Union, whatever - the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!”
The few times I checked, over the last couple of years, by actually watching some video with Biden in it, he looked noticeably worse. Not senile, but so tired he was barely holding it together. If he were a friend or relative of mine, I'd have told him that he's killing himself and needs to take a break. I think Pope Benedict XVI set us all a good example.
> I’m still confused what those elites were thinking.
Same here. In addition to what you list, I worry that they've started drinking their own Kool-Aid. Or rather, enough of them are pretending to drink the Kool-Aid that others assume it must be OK and actually do drink it. Open and blunt conversations behind closed doors should have exposed the problem, which implies that somewhere along the line, those conversations weren't happening, and everyone downstream was getting the sanitized version.
> If she gets angry at the other Democrats, they should just say “sorry, it’s an old man’s dying wish, it would be cruel not to honor it”.
We're already close to "life imitates 'Veep'"; do we need to get close to "life imitates 'House of the Dragon'", too?
> Elites can sublimate whatever emotions they’re having about Biden onto Sotomayor, and maybe it’ll do some good.
I think I'd prefer to live in a world where "elites" didn't make decisions out of gut-level short-sighted tribal loyalty, but I'm afraid that's the world we're in.
> Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded?
I think what's going on is that, as you say, the Democrats aren't a single "conspiracy", but rather they're a lot of smaller "conspiracies" (OK, groups) and independent individuals, who coordinate through ideology and public and private communications. When there's a clear answer, they'll all converge on it fairly rapidly. When there's a question of how extreme to go, various groups will organically try out different positions and some will stick. But when ideology doesn't provide a guide, it's just like a bunch of college kids trying to hash out a place to go for dinner. And if there's time pressure that forces people to take a public stance before a consensus has had time to form, then different groups will end up saying different things. To agree, they'll need to create a narrative that saves face for all involved, or some will have to lose face by updating (changing their mind) in public. And I think that's where we are now - an argument over what the best course of action is, with the glaring subtext that anyone who'd previously said something in opposition to that course of action will need to fall on their sword.
How is "Michelle Obama" still around $0.05 on these markets. I'd be surprised to see a lot of random politicians that high, but I can't even *conceive* of the scenario where Michelle Obama is the nominee. Somebody like "Oprah Winfrey" I could buy, because at least there's been random news articles leaking that she's thought about running for something.
I think the idea is that Barack Obama has a lot of influence within the party (and at least some with Biden personally), so if Michelle *did* want to run then it might be feasible to parachute her in as a last-minute replacement for Biden. She seems to be widely liked and respected, the whole 'not being a politician' thing is arguably a positive these days, and her being a black woman would neutralise some of the risk in passing over Harris.
(Obviously it doesn't seem like she has any intention at all of running. But it's not completely inconceivable that she would change her mind in a world where Biden had to step down at the last minute, Harris was clearly going to lose, and there was no other candidate with a chance of winning that the party could unite behind.)
Some group on the left keeps pushing her, but I don't connect to those circles any more, so I have no idea where it's coming from. When a friend earnestly suggested her as a candidate, I reacted with surprise and disbelief, and my friend seemed taken aback at my response. I don't think my friend thought I'd been getting the same information as they had, but instead I think they'd been persuaded that Michelle was obviously a great choice, and hadn't heard any arguments to the contrary.
I heard the claim that she polls really well. If true, that is a strong argument in favor of picking her, even if she's otherwise a bad choice. She can always resign the presidency and let the VP take her place if she really hates the job.
It's a way of giving Barack Obama a third term. Michelle would be the President but they would be the same kind of close team like Bill and Hillary during the Clinton presidency, and he would have a lot of input into policy and decision-making etc.
That's the rationale I can put on it, anyway. That, and the idea of dynasty building like the Bushes father and son, then the Clintons (except that didn't work out) but this time we can have the Obamas, right?
If you were 99.9999% sure Michelle Obama would not be on the ticket, could you profit by betting no vs. putting money in a 5% CD? Predictit at least has really high fees.
Polymarket has dramatically lower fees and still has Michelle Obama at 7% for nomination and 3% for president, so I'm skeptical of the fees point.
We are 4 months from election, a 3% return on polymarket is better than a 1.67% return in a 5% CD.
We are 1.5 months from the DNC convention, 4.67% return on polymarket is better than a 0.42% return in a 5% CD. - that's an alpha of ~32% in annualized terms.
That being said, I'm skeptical Smart Money™ is in these markets, because they are generally very small compared to the markets Physics PhDs are hired to trade in, and prediction markets have a well-known bias in favor of low-probability events (and against high-probability events), presumably due to some combination of a gambler-esque population of traders (gamblers generally prefer lottery-esque bets) and differing risk profiles.
Common sense suggests replacing Biden. I wish we could replace Trump as well.
If only...
Seconded!
Nitpick, but the weighted averages in your spreadsheet are obviously wrong. The weighted average for biden listed at 31% was lower than all but one of the probabilities, and the lower one had one of the lowest weights.
The actual weighted average with the listed weights in the graphic should be 35.24 for Biden. The weighted averages for Harris and Newsom are similarly incorrect, but the relative differences are approximately right.
I see this is a duplicate
You're right, thanks, fixed.
I don't think Scott's interpretation necessarily follows. This is because, this data does not let us answer the question of "what do people really believe would happen if we could force a switch in candidates right now?". Indeed, this data would be consistent with a story in which the participants believe Biden has about a 75% chance of being better than all the alternative candidates.
To see this consider that Democrat delegates and elites will need to believe that some alt candidate has a significant enough advantage to replace Biden. Lets say this advantage is a perceived X percentage points greater likelihood of winning. Note, if you want to stop Trump then we want X to be very close to zero, and we should be trying to push those delegates/elites to adopt such a rule. However, it is hard to see what rule they are actually using as we don't know the expected switching costs etc.
One might argue that X must be much larger than zero as alternative candidates have a 10-15% lead conditional on nomination. However, conditional on nomination, the delegates/elites will believe that they have at least an X% lead. X is the minimum, in expectation the nominee will have a lead of Y=E[Adv|Adv>X]>X. I am not sure how much bigger we should expect Y to be than X, maybe a lot, I don't know.
A different argument could be that X must be quite large as the polls are quite close for the alternative candidates, but the imputed probability of Biden stepping down is only 1 in 4. We don't know how big a poll lead this candidate will need to have in order to have an equal chance of winning. First, we don't know how well the actual candidate will do compared to the anonymous amorphous democrat that the average poll respondent will have in mind. Second, there are other large costs associated with changing the candidate in such a chaotic and last second manner that might cause problems, such as transferring the funds raised for the biden campaign to another candidate.
Given the above, it could be that the threshold X is something very close to zero. In which case, Biden stays in if and only if he is more likely to win than all the alternatives. Moreover, anti-Trumpers would be happy with the imputed strategy of the democratic delegates/elites. Of course, the data is also consistent with beliefs that X is quite large e.g. 10%. In which case, these implied odds would be much closer to Scott's interpretation, and the imputed democratic strategy would be much further from the anti-Trump optimum.
Note, this is a pretty rough first pass.
Yeah, I can’t say I follow you but what I read was intriguing; I would be interested if you could explain your theory more accessibly.
Okay, the problem is about selection. The analysis above was pretty rough, so I will try to be clearer and a bit more accessible. I will have to be a little imprecise to keep things in a reasonable word limit. Pease tell me if it helps.
Suppose you are asked to answer the following question about each candidate.
A) what is the likelihood of a candidate winning if we could make the democratic party run that candidate?
Now, suppose you come to the conclusion that Kamal Harris has a 30% chance of beating Donald Trump if you could just *make* the Dems run her. However, just before answering your question, a Genie comes along and whispers to you that the democrats would actually choose Harris if you left them to their own devices. How should this change your guess?
The way you should change your guess depends on how you think the democrats choose the candidate. If they choose their candidate at random, then you don't need to change your guess because there is no information in the choice of the democrats. This seems extremely unlikely. Alternatively, suppose that the democrats choose the candidate they think is the most likely to win. Moreover, suppose they have access to all the information and processing power you have, and much much more. In this case, you would want to increase your guessed probability that Kamala would win.
Why? There was a state of the world in which the democrats got a really negative signal about her. That would have been contained in your initial guess, but this has been ruled out now by the fact they have selected her. So now you increase your guess because it is conditioned on her not being really bad (in fact it is conditioned on her being the best). It is as if you have just received an extra bunch of polls saying that she is even more competitive than your initial guess.
Returning to the prediction market, the participants get their Kamala stake back if Kamala is not selected to run. Hence, their bet should condition on the fact that the Democrats have selected her-- that is the event in which they are actually placing a wager. The bet they are making is conditional on the information contained in the genie's whisper. So, when you see the prediction markets estimate you are not seeing an answer to question (A) above, you are instead seeing the answer to question (B) below:
B) what is the likelihood of a candidate winning if the democratic party actually selected that candidate?
Okay, fine you say, but why does that matter?
Problem 1: The estimated probability of victory for each candidate will be biased, potentially by a very large amount. Moreover, the degree of bias will vary across each candidate so it will not really tell you "who we should run".
Problem 2: Suppose the democrats did a silly thing and just choose whoever the prediction market gives the highest probability of victory, but the people in the prediction market thought that the democrats would decide based off a rigorous internal process of deliberation and research. In that case, the Dems would be relying on estimates based not off data but off an incorrect guess about what it would mean for the Dems to choose each particular candidate. There are a million variants of this problem, it does not have to be this extreme.
Problem 3: Suppose we were evaluating the quality or nature of Dem decision making based of our prediction market. For example, we might be looking for who to blame for losing an election, or trying to work out whether Dems actually choose the candidate with the highest chance of winning. These prediction markets are not great for answering this question, because interpreting the relative suitability of the candidates requires understanding the process by which the democrats select the candidate in the first place.
For instance, someone might want to say "the democrats were irresponsible to keep Biden, Harris had a much greater likelihood of winning". However, that is only conditional on Harris being selected. It could be that the democrats run Biden because Harris and all the other candidates are on tape smoking crack with Hunter on Epstein island (or some much less extreme version of this). Yet, the prediction markets are conditioning on their being nothing disqualifying about the selected candidate (and much more). So it would be inaccurate to say that the prediction markets were telling us that Harris is a better person to run than Biden, just that she will be a better person to run than Biden if the democrats decide she is.
All this does not mean we cannot get anything out of this data. However, it would require careful analysis and lots of modelling assumptions.
Does that make sense?
Very clear now. Yes, I haven't wrapped my head around it enough to get any action item for me, but probably there isn't one because I'm not likely to make bets or even make specific financial plans based on my assessment of the election. But I had not thought about prediction markets in this way before and it makes me wonder if there are broader lessons about non-election prediction markets. It seems like there might be: for instance, a bet about the capabilities of GPT6 is contingent on there *being* a GPT6, and if it turns out they can't deliver "enough" better than GPT5 then there probably wouldn't be.
This is a general issue with using prediction markets for thinking about the effects of human decisions.
Are democrats particularly adverse to online political betting? I find that very hard to believe and would have expected it to go the other way.
Maybe dems are just less likely to bet online in general?
I just want to add one more point to explain those, like me, who were shocked by Bidens decline: in 2016 we were constantly treated with memes and videos about how Hillary was on the verge of dying and how the media is covering it up. Of course, Hillary is alive and well. I assumed the same was true about the RW Biden panic. Unfortunately I was wrong and Biden was that unhealthy.
People have been saying that Biden was too old for the past five years or more. Sooner or later they were bound to be right.
The influential people saying Sotomayor should retire for the good of the country really irritate me because they are only making it harder.
Unlike Biden who has to listen to the voters in some sense Sotomayor doesn't. She's not an idiot so she knows the costs and benefits and the more people publicly push her to retire the more difficult it becomes for her to do because it looks all the more partisan -- you may not care about that but SCOTUS justices tend to care alot (balanced against other factors) and makes the consequences worse if she does. Besides from a purely psychological POV no one likes to feel pressured into doing something they don't want to do.
So if she should retire and you care about the good of the country then you should STFU if you have an real audience (Scott u might be a borderline case there). And sure, you can try and say that you aren't saying it should happen only doing a dispassionate horserace analysis but that's really hard to do with SCOTUS given it's relatively indirect effect on policy.
Having said that I think the case for retirement is less strong than one might think. Though I do fear that Trump's next set of appointments really will be norm breaking in ways previous ones haven't been.
The partisanship thing seems like a non-issue. She can just say she's retiring for health reasons and no good faith actor is going to question that. 70 year olds have a lot of health issues.
She can but she's friends with other justices even from across the aisle and what if she hasn't mentioned it before and the mentions it after everyone starts screaming about it -- besides lying to friends is hard.
I'm not saying she shouldn't retire (or that she should) only that unless you are her close friend advising her in private publicly calling on her in public to retire strictly makes it harder for her and less likely to happen.
I mean people always want to tell the best narrative about themselves to themselves and it's alot easier to think of yourself as making a noble sacrifice when people aren't demanding you do it. It's true in politics as much in marriage.
She knows all the facts and considerations and being a justice on SCOTUS is about being able to ignore political pressure so WTF is the upside?
There's no upside, I just don't think there's a downside, either. I just doubt she's so wracked with pride and insecurity that she's going to let this post affect her decision. Assuming she even knows who Scott Alexander is. And I don't have any expectation that my friends will keep me fully up to date on their health issues at all times.
Ohh w/ Scott it's even a smaller effect but he does seem to feel it has some marginal effect.
Judges are supposed to be impartial, ruling what they think the law is. I wish we could get back to that, instead of appointing judges expected to rule in certain ways.
I heard Trump put in a lot of effort to convince Kennedy to resign during his term, Kennedy did, and nobody complained (including Democrats, AFAICT). Am I misunderstanding something, or do you think Sotomayor would go worse?
I'm not objecting to people putting *private* pressure on her. If Biden wants to make a phone call or her friend suggest it over lunch that might be a good idea.
I just don't see the benefit of public pressure. No one is slapping their head and going we never thought about a justice retiring early. I'm mostly annoyed with the kind of connected people who write editorials about this because I'm sure they do know the people who could put the suggestion to her in relative privacy.
There is a reason that even Trump didn't tweet out "it's time for Kennedy to retire." but worked in the background. This isn't something where putting it out to the general public helps.
I mean I think it's the same for persuading a friend. Advise in private, even in coordination with other friends and they may accept the advice but make it a matter of public pressure and not so much. Even if they won't really care after the fact if it comes out you persuaded them.
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I don't mean to critisize you per se because you have to balance your quite modest political visibility against just telling your readers how you see things. I mean I've obviously decided I don't matter enough to worry about wording these comments in a different way.
But I feel differently about people of Nate Silver or Matt Yglesias's visibility doing it. Especially people who clearly see themselves as engaged in the buisness of nudging political choices in one way or another not just as random opiners.
I doubt she gives a rat's ass about what Matty Yglesias thinks.
On the margin I think it has a tiny effect. She reads media online like anyone else, not that implausible she stumbles over him or someone reposting him. On the margin does that persuade her to retire OFC not. It does make her a little more annoyed people are trying to push her.
I mean it likely won't make much difference in either case even if the people calling for it seem to feel it somehow does but on the margin I think it leans to less likely.
Here, too, the question comes up why a conservative SCOTUS majority is bad. AFAIK on most questions with an ideological divide I can think of, conservative justices tend to be more originalist, which mostly cashes out as less power to the federal government and more to the states, and less restriction of state policy by made up constitutional rights. This should be up Scott's alley, given his archipelago writings.
Besides that, a conservative SCOTUS is more likely to keep striking down affirmative action (Scott tentatively supported AA earlier, but opposed it by the time of the 2020 California referendum), and more likely to continue upholding a strong protection of the freedom of speech (of which Scott has always been a strong supporter).
Well, I don't really know in general why Scott continues to consider himself a Democrat/left-leaner, despite his views on CW issues (where he may disapprove of some right-wing rhetoric, but policy-wise it seems pretty clear to me that the status quo is to the left of where he thinks it should be); one possible reason I know of is that he supports relatively high redistribution, but the SCOTUS is unlikely to interfere with that in either way.
While I like originalism as a theory of how judges should internally think about what they are trying to do [1] I think the idea that it devolves more power to the states or does much to restrict the federal government in practice is largely bullshit.
For instance, this court just recently took away the ability of states to decide not to fund religious schools with vouchers. And you don't even need to directly strike down state laws to practically increase federal power. For instance several opinions this year restricted standing on who has power to challenge those federal laws pretty extensively which in effect gives the feds more real world power.
And what if they narrow the already extremely thin grounds on which grants of money to the states are considered coercive? After all nowhere in the constitution does it say the feds can't condition finding on states having certain laws or doing certain things. That plus letting states vary more in what laws they pass leads to the equilibrium where congress basically beggers all states who don't submit to a swath of federal laws.
Also in practice, not even Thomas is going to try and rule the modern administrative state is unconstitutional and no one goes as far as him. So to a large extent the effect any realistic originalist court has is as much or more about what kinds of things it's precedents make easy and that often depends on what kinds of things the court cares about and this court seems to be doing little to allow states economic freedom to experiment but plenty to allow them to experiment with culturally conservative ideas so I see why Scott isn't onboard.
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1: I think in context original understanding of the courts did expect a degree of common law style development by analogy and precedent. So while I felt Roe was always problematic absent supermajorian (or obv on the way) support by the people
Thank you for your examples; I haven't followed SCOTUS jurisprudence very closely (I'm not even an American), I mostly see what turns up in these communities.
The last sentence in your footnote seems unfinished.
Maybe the shorter way to put it is that as long as SCOTUS isn't reversing Wickard v. Fillburn it's hard to see how it's giving states any real power to do things differently in ways that allow real experimentation with different models.
All the court has net done by becoming more originalist is replace abortion and sex rights applied against states with gun rights. I don't think that's illegitimate, SCOTUS can't not reflect values to some degree, but a claim of generally broader states rights is more a talking point than a verified empirical fact about what their rulings achieve at this point.
And there are liberal originalists (Balkin) who I sus Scott would be more sympathetic to just none on the court.
I don't know if anyone buys that Sotomayor isn't already partisan, she is one of those judges whose votes tend to line up very predictably with the preferences of the party that appointed her. But in any case, "SCOTUS justices should make impartial legal decisions" and "SCOTUS justices should be impartial in when they retire" are different and unrelated claims, and the latter one makes no sense - nobody thinks the process of appointing a new justice to an empty seat is non-partisan, Republican presidents and senates will always select Republican-friendly justices and Democrats will always select Democrat-friendly ones, so retirement is seen as part of the obviously-partisan process of selecting new justices, not the aspiring-to-be-non-partisan process of making court decisions.
That she is annoyed by calls to step down and will refuse out of spite is possible, although the opposite seems possible too, that she will bow to pressure if she feels she'll be despised otherwise. (Bowing to peer pressure seems to be a core progressive trait these days.)
Also, Yglesias at least wasn't so much suggesting to pressure Sotomayor to step down but to pressure elected politicians not to cover for her (e.g. the Hispanic Caucus making a statement that it's racist to ask a hispanic justice to retire), which seems like reasonable targeting, since those people need to care a lot more about what voters think.
Everyone is unbiased in their own mind. I'm not saying she wouldn't prefer to retire under a democrat. She no doubt would. But she'd also prefer to not be perceived by her colleagues as being blantantly so. I might even characterize it as a kind of etiquette -- not saying it's dispositive but it's certainly less appealing the more overtly partisan it feels.
None of that says she wouldn't do it anyway but no part of the public calling for it makes it more likely. It's all on one side.
Yglesias has said different things at different times but fair.
In the second graphic under "Prediction Market Sources", what the hell is that first spike saying that Biden has ~100% chance of winning 2024? What event is that associated with? (There's another one in 2023 too, but a bit less than 100%)
If Justice Sotomayor retires or is otherwise removed from office at this time Republicans would simply block any attempt to replace her until after the election. They did it before when the party wasn't Trump owned and operated, they certainly won't balk at doing it again now.
They controlled the senate back then, now supreme court nominations only need 50%, so the Republicans wouldn't be able to block the nomination.
Adding to the fun, apparently Manchin is against any replacement before the election, meaning Dems couldn't afford to lose a single other vote (without getting one from Collins et al).
The most hilarious timeline is the one where:
1. Sotoymayor drops out
2. Some red-state D senator drops dead and is replaced with an R
3. The senate refuses to confirm Biden's new appointee
4. Trump gets in and appoints some 24 year old from the Harvard Law School Young Republicans
5. Sotomayor lives another three decades in perfect health
It appears that a Justice can announce an intention to retire pending a replacement; Breyer did this and was then replaced by Jackson. Presumably if the nomination process is held up the Justice can just...not retire.
>Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way.
I think the elites pretty clearly did decide during the debate to ditch him and put the word out to the media and that is why the initial coverage was so harsh. But the problem is no one can really make him step down, and most of the people immediately around him have a big vested interest in him staying President as they get a variety of benefits from it.
So the party elites simply didn't get what they wanted because they don't have much control over a sitting President, even a senile one.
Or to put it another way, the sitting President is the single most important party elite.
I'll read more about the methodology, but translating a 2% polling deficit into a 50% prediction market deficit just doesn't make intuitive sense (I've read Silver's analysis so I agree it's likely Biden loses)
I'm not an expert, but I think the argument is that the polling deficit is worse in swing states, the electoral map is against him, and polling deficits at this stage tend to be relatively stable.
I appreciate the reply. Put it this way: if you could offer Rishi Sunak Biden's numbers he'd take them, with a week to go at 20%, 5 months at 40% looks great. But that doesn't mean Biden will win of course.
I lost £20 betting on Sanders and Buttigieg in 2020 so I'm over-correcting.
Rishi Sunak is a very low bar. His chance of winning is in the single digits, if that.
Fair
I guess it's the difference between "what is the probability of a randomly chosen voter supporting Biden?" and "what is the probability, in a sample of x voters, that Biden's support will be greater than 0.5x?" Increase x and Biden's chances diminish (Very simple of course I'm just trying to get an intuitive sense)
Yeah, but, for large enough x, the uncertainty in the result is dominated by (almost unknowable) systematic errors in estimating the mean probability for a single randomly chosen voter. If we knew the mean for a single voter _perfectly_, yeah, the probability distribution for the mean of a sample of x approaches a gaussian with standard deviation scaling as 1/sqrt(x). And you eventually get answers for
>"what is the probability, in a sample of x voters, that Biden's support will be greater than 0.5x?"
that look like e^-(single_voter_mean - 0.5)*x and e^-1000
while _really_, the single_voter_mean itself has a distribution (not just from _expected_ sampling error!) and the tails of that distribution eventually dominate.
Fascinating! I assumed that an opinion poll doubled as a bag of marbles to choose random voters from, so that Biden's vote share is also the % probability of picking a Biden voter at random - so that % probability is as accurate as the poll I.e useful but not perfect.
Many Thanks!
>I assumed that an opinion poll doubled as a bag of marbles to choose random voters from, so that Biden's vote share is also the % probability of picking a Biden voter at random
My impression is that poll takers work to make this as true as possible, and the _random_ error in the poll numbers can be driven as low as the budget allows by sampling more voters and reducing the 1/sqrt(x) error in the poll results. But the systematic errors (which they also work hard to identify and compensate for) are never completely avoidable or knowable. Are the voters who are willing to answer a telephone poll the same mix of R/D as the full electorate? Do their R/D subsets have the same odds of actually voting on election day? What are the odds of just plain mistakes in data handling of the poll results? I think of these as adding a small but very wide/flat base to the probability distribution.
Imagine a candidate is expected to get 51% of the vote with 0.1% standard deviation - they will be at a 2% polling advantage but their probability of winning is overwhelming.
standard deviation is much higher tho? Idk the exact numbers but weather patterns effect turnout and I think you maybe have a good enough county and by hour resulation weather map a week ahead if that
Yeah, that's why I said "imagine". The standard deviation which would lead to a 50% prediction market deficit is maybe around 1%, I haven't calculated exactly.
Thanks for the example, another thought I had was exit polls - you might be close on an exit poll but everyone has already voted so the chance of actually winning is seriously low (mind, BBC exit poll in 92 was famously off).
Nothing is so bad that it is not good for something. The present Biden debacle gives us a possibility to strengthen/weaken John N Zaller’s theory concerning the impact of media on public opinions.
…the traditional theory is/was that media effects on political opinions are modest. Many studies support this. However, Zaller’s view (in his 1996 article the myth of mass media impact revived) was/is that media effects are indeed normally modest, but not if media on all sides converge on the same narrative. Then majority public opinion can shift very fast even on the desirability of war and peace, and certainly on more mundane policy issues.
If this hypothesis is right, we should expect large swings in the survey response in Biden’s disfavor (probably mainly toward the “homesitter party”). The reason being that a substantial chunk of “liberal” media has now come out against Biden, after his debate performance. De facto siding with the Trumpian narrative that Biden is not fit enough mentally for four more years.
This is a testable hypothesis. Opinion polls over the next weeks and months will show (plus the "real thing", i.e. the election result).
…Assuming Biden stays on, that is.
I am not following US politics closely, nor have I watched the debate. But I do wonder whether people interpret too much into a single debate.
I certainly have days/moments when my brain locks down. This doesn't happen often, but it happens. I remember a job interview where I gave the impression of a complete moron. And an exam. I think this easily happens if you are sick, or by other factors. There is quite a history of political debates in TV where one candidate really screws up, and everyone is surprised. Performance at a debate has a pretty large random factor to it.
> I remember a job interview where I gave the impression of a complete moron.
Were you slurring your words, unable to get a complete sentence out? Staring slack-jawed into space for half of the interview? Losing track of what you were talking about mid-sentence? This wasn't just ordinary "normally intelligent person having a bad day" level of screwing up.
I've had some interviews where I kicked myself afterwards for missing softball questions and forgetting things I would normally have down pat. But even at my worst I am still able to act and sound like an educated and non-mentally-handicapped adult. And while I've had a decent career so far, the jobs I apply to aren't *quite* at the level of "President of the most powerful nation in the world" -- I would hope that the bar for qualifying for that job is higher, not lower, than for mine.
I mean, I personally have gone to job interviews while mildly ill. Once I did two on the same day with a bad cold, and while my performance in the morning was probably okay the interview in the afternoon was...honestly, I don't remember much of it. The plot twist is that the job opportunity from the morning never got back to me, and the one from the afternoon (which I thought I'd blown) offered me a job. Take all that with a grain of salt, of course.
You may not remember much of it, but if they offered you a job afterwards then I assure you that you did a lot better than Biden did last week.
> interpret too much
having someone whos brain dead 10% of the time with a nuclear button is still a bad idea
Particularly if the adversary is able to detect when the 10% is!
See Melvin's https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-336/comment/60668315
Watch the debate.
I knew Biden was in a bad way, and didn't particularly -want- to watch the debate, but the people I was hanging out with at the time did, so we watched it. It was bad. It didn't hit my worst-case-scenario (probably because of the extensive preparation Biden's team did), but it was still significantly worse than my median expectations, and was intensely uncomfortable to watch.
I think this bodes extremely poorly for the Democrats.
Not just for the obvious reasons - their candidate is too old and is becoming forgetful. But because people close to Biden knew he was too old, and covered it up. And because the Democratic Party actively tried to fend off younger challengers - Dean Phillips, RFK Jr.
None of this makes sense. If the boss isn't able to do the job, you encourage him to step down, or at least allow other people to run for the job in his place.
So why on Earth was this state of affairs allowed to persist in the leadership of the most powerful country on the planet??
It probably is because certain elements within the party see his forgetfulness as useful. He is weak and can be easily manipulated. These have been Republican talking points for awhile, which the media dismisses as conspiracy theories, but no conspiracy is necessary - just people being people and following their rational path to power. Probably the same thing happened with George W Bush in the early 2000s - he wasn't the brightest spark, and unscrupulous advocates like Dick Cheney used that to their advantage.
I think Biden is basically a decent man, and Trump is not, but Trump will probably win. There's too much shadow puppetry going on in the Democratic side of the aisle. Americans don't trust their government or their media; they want someone to take them to task, even if that person is an asshole.
In what sense do you feel there was a "cover up". I feel like there's been a strong media narrative (not just from the right) that he is too old, probably partially driven by off the record conversations. Do you think his spokesperson should have started declaring that her boss is unfit, or Kamala Harris should have publicly called for him to step down in her favour? If Biden was privately being encouraged to step down, we wouldn't know. In the meantime, it's best to toe the party line, as Harris continues to do even now.
I don't think you need to assume elements in the party prefer a weak president. The issue of the person at the top being unfit has just always been a vexing challenge - you can't openly cross them, and while they are your boss you're obliged to back them up.
https://x.com/0rf/status/1807620571934478683
I think it says a lot about the future of our country, that our best choice for the person to lead it is between a guy who is definitely senile, and another guy who might be senile but maybe not (or at least not yet). This is the best that we can do nowadays, apparently.
"Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations? I don’t know, maybe that was just a fluke and the party has no state capacity at all"
Maybe Bernie winning the primary is enough of a threat to unite """"THE BIG PLAYERS"""" but Trump winning a general isn't. Marxist theories of the state predict, or at least well explain this.
In general, I find that if you model politicians as optimising for personal power within their political coalition rather than as optimising for the strength of their coalition overall, you will make more accurate predictions.
Fyi, for me Manifold content is visible only in an e-mail; on the website, there is "server is too slow", or something (due to localization I see that in Czech, so I don't know exact English wording).
Biden has obviously been avoiding public appearances and interviews. I don’t see how some one who avoids interviews can think himself capable of running for president. The reason he doesn’t get credit for his achievements is that he can’t communicate.
I think a big problem is that the parties don’t have coordinated ”elites” or much structure. This decline of the party structure is something Ezra Klein has discussed on his podcast. There is just the president at the top, his supporters who have the most to lose from getting rid of him and then a lot of unorganized group of other people or activists. That is the impression I get anyway.
This is also why the Republicans can’t get rid of Trump.
A large number of Republican "elites" (such as they are) tried toto stop Trump from being the nominee to varying degrees in 2016/2020/2024. It made not a jot of difference.
There are no mysterious elites welding black magic behind the curtain. At least since JFK's time. What exactly is this mythical elite supposed to do to summon up challengers, line up donors, against an incumbent running for reelection.
Kamala should run. She's young, she's capable and experienced. She's also the VP: her whole JOB is to take over if the president can't function.
She might lose. She isn't very likable. But neither are Newsom, Pete or Cory tbh. That's why Biden won the primaries in 2019!
It just seems like engineering a replacement is crazy hard already, so the party should rally around the VP as the default choice.
Agreed. She is as stupid as dirt, but at least she isn’t getting any stupider.
To be fair, Biden *massively lost* the first few of those primaries (which were in 2020). He was running in 4th or 5th when people panicked about Bernie Sanders and there was a realignment.
He was kind of like Emperor Claudius. Noted tabloid rag Suetonius claimed Claudius was hiding behind a curtain during the chaos after the assassination of Caligula, when some guards plucked him out and told him he was the new emperor.
Here, we need someone, *not that guy*, you happen to be nearby and seem good enough, the job is yours now.
I wish calls for Biden to step down would be more clear about whether their goal is to truly minimize the chance of Trump becoming president again, or simply to maximize the chance of a Democrat becoming or remaining president. These aren't the same thing, and they potentially suggest radically different courses of action.
Like, just what are the stakes here? If it is merely not wanting the other team to have the Big Job and associated largesse for the next four years then sure, replace Biden with Harris. Or Newsom. Or Whitmer. Or whomever. Maybe it helps you win the Politics Superbowl this year, or maybe it's not enough and you try again next time. Whatever.
On the other hand, if there's a genuine worry that a Trump victory would lead to the US abandoning Europe to Putin and Taiwan to China, that there'd be mass unemployment and Hyperstagflation from trade war tariff policy, that we'd see martial law, World War III, a collapse of global trade, the end of the free press and democracy, etc., etc., then we should be prepared to do whatever necessary to stop that from happening.
How strong a message would it send if the Democrats nominated, or even just openly considered, nominating any of the Republican senators who voted for Trump's conviction in the impeachment trial? What better way to communicate the seriousness of the situation than by essentially saying "we're willing to sit this round out, just to make sure that there is a next round"? Conversely, that I haven't even heard this floated as an option suggests that Democratic insiders and media types don't actually think a Trump presidency would be that bad, relative to any other Republican presidency.
I get why the incentive structures make this hard to do. But there are also some ways that it would be easier. You wouldn't have to worry about Harris' camp feeling skipped over, for example. You could avoid all the other chaotic infighting about who gets the nod.
Doesn't this incentivize parties nominating the most insane antidemocratic dipshit they can, so they can ensure the victory of a boring moderate member of their party?
Nominating an insane antidemocratic dipshit carries an electoral penalty. With Trump as their candidate, Republicans are probably running 10 or so points behind where they would be with Haley.
In this specific case, the insane antidemocratic dipshit is still on track to win because the incumbent is so unpopular (his senility is not even his biggest problem, rising cost of living is). But most of the time, nominating the psycho is just going to get you crushed.
I am doubtful Trump is running that far behind Haley, but even so, isn't that just "nominate an insane antidemocratic dipshit, whenever you're running many points ahead"?
Or you could just nominate the boring moderate in the first place and have a crushing victory without having to deal with 3d chess.
Yeah, but this way you get either your insane antidemocratic dipshit (preferred choice of the base, see: 2024 R primaries), OR, you get your moderate. If you just pick a moderate, they could end up losing because they had sex with a dolphin or whatever.
> With Trump as their candidate, Republicans are probably running 10 or so points behind where they would be with Haley.
the easily hatable warmoger? I hate neocons so much
Id prefer if the cia didnt kill mcafee but I want a angry outsider in the whitehouse
I don't think so? I'm not sure how replicable the Trump phenomenon is, and a lot of people with probably want someone who wasn't crazy, but also isn't as moderate as the Unity candidate would be. Also, you want your preferred candidate to be somewhat beholden you, and not trying to the other party.
It’s natural to want to criticize your own tribe, but for all the talk about how it’s bad to lie even if you think you’re doing the right thing, Republicans of all stripes and ranks have been lying shamelessly for a decade now. Trump got his start lying about Obama’s birth certificate, and nobody who promoted that lie thought it was a “little white lie”. It’s annoying when people selectively use moral cudgels on Democrats; it’s like they’re being punished for responding to moral pressures.
Trump doesn't lie as often as people make him out to lie. He speaks in hyperbole, of which all such statements, taken literally, are lies. If you interpret his statements as he intends instead of how his opponents intend, you will find far fewer lies.
Which is not to say he doesn't lie, and do so during the debate. But he HAS evolved into a politician.
I think his first response ought to be considered typical:
"We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us.
We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished – so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.
But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have, is getting us out of that COVID mess. He created mandates; that was a disaster for our country.
But other than that, we had – we had given them back a – a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID, and nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounceback jobs; they’re bounced back from the COVID.
He has not done a good job. He’s done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us."
* Greatest economy in the history of our country: clearly not literally true, but somewhat, depending on how you look at it, such as stock market highs.
* Everybody was amazed by it: Certainly detractors weren't. So what?
* Other countries were copying us: useless words, ignore.
* Ending up in a Great Depression: hyperbole.
* Lots of credit: useless words, ignore.
* No wars: no NEW wars, anyway, unless you count the trade war with China, which, to be sure, he doesn't in this context.
* Mandates disaster: hyperbole.
* Nobody thought the stock market would be higher than pre-COVID: useless words, ignore.
* Only illegal immigrant jobs Biden created: hyperbole, typical politician statement.
* Inflation killing our country: he clearly isn't talking about actual hyper-inflation
Did you have any particularly blatant lie that troubled you?
I disagree with none of the categorizations you have listed. But the statements themselves don't really bother me. Trump seems to blend politics with social media, both of which involve lying in various degrees, and that is his style. It garners him something of a following, which is why he was able to secure the Republican nomination.
He isn't the best President we've had, nor a great candidate to elect this year. But look at our list of options. I see no alternative but that he will end up elected in November.
The question is why we can't find better candidates of perhaps 150 million possible choices. Someone not only eminently electable but that will do a good job. GREAT job is impossible, as opinions differ as to what that will end up being.
"TRUMP: 'So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth, because some states, Democrat-run, take it after birth.'
[Plain Lie]"
He constantly is referencing this, more explicitly in another part of the debate, which all goes back to a comment made by the Governor of Virginia. The media just calls this a lie without actually quoting what was said, because if you actually read it, it sounds pretty bad and like they are or should be killing babies after they are born.
That said it's not actually legal anywhere as far as I know. But I think his whole shtick is trolling, saying something that is a lie/exaggeration but sort of close to the truth, so that in order to explain how it is a lie you have to say the thing that is actually true, which is bad enough and helps him.
Biden does seem to lie a lot, though. He lied about Charlottesville (after even Snopes has debunked it), he lied about Trump slandering dead soldiers, he lied about the Border Patrol endorsing him (https://x.com/BPUnion/status/1806501048724430943), he lied about no "troops dying anywhere in the world" under his administration, he lied about Trump wanting to cut social security and Medicare (as much as many conservatives would like Trump to, he has been pretty clear that he won't), and he lied about billionaires only paying "8.2%" in taxes.
Beyond that he made plenty of "hyperbolic lies", the same as Trump did: saying that unemployment was 15% under Trump (true, but only in April of 2020 when COVID hit hard; by the end of his administration unemployment was 6%), saying that illegal border crossings are better than they were under trump because there's been a 40% reduction (it's true that I don't think illegal crossings ever dropped 40% under Trump, but that's because up until about a month ago an enormous amount of people were illegally crossing and Biden is just now cracking down on it with an executive order), or saying that black unemployment is the lowest it's been in a long time (black unemployment did reach a record low during Biden's administration of 4.8%, but the most recent data has it at over 6% and it was under 6% during parts of Trumps administration).
It seems like Biden lied frequently during the debate as well, Trump (hyperbolically, as always) calling that out doesn't seem unfair.
EDIT: Forgot to mention: he lied about Trump telling people to drink bleach as a cure for COVID as well.
Don't forget Biden's uncle getting eating by cannibals in Papua New Guinea: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/papua-new-guinea-leader-defends-nation-biden-cannibals-rcna148748
Some people make the distinction that Biden is a liar, but Trump is a bullshitter. This isn't perfect, not defending Trump, etc, but I do think some sort of category split like this helps highlight the distinction and make sense of why some people react so differently to Trump's forms of non-truth. Biden occasionally tries to be a bullshitter (I think Corn Pop is a good example of an attempt bullshit rather than some other form of non-truth) but doesn't have Trump's weird knack for it.
A large contingent of supporters of Democrats think Republicans are Literally Hitler, and their support for Democrats arises in large part because they expect Democrats to be better. You actually have to BE better for that to work, however.
Do you think Democrats will try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power if they lose, or that Republicans won’t? I’m finding it hard to empathize with people who believe that the Democrats aren’t better in this particular moment.
You mean like filing lawsuits in the state of Florida to try to force recounts for weeks on end until the Supreme Court is forced to tell them that they've had enough recounts?
Yes, if the Democrats think they can prevent the transfer of power, they absolutely will make the attempt.
Your example of Democrats 'trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power' is that they filed some lawsuits and peacefully abided by the results, twenty-something years ago. Do you genuinely think that stacks up against Trump's response to his 2020 loss and/or his likely response to a 2024 loss?
I answered the question that was asked.
As for your alternative framing, I have little interest in litigating that issue with somebody who isn't going to change their mind, but I will observe that said framing implies a moral imperative to oppose a peaceful transfer of power in the event that Trump wins.
My 'alternative framing' was in line with this entire comment chain, which is explicitly about comparing the two parties. My question was largely rhetorical, but I was open to a serious answer if you were willing to give one.
Evidently you're not, which is unsurprising given the gulf between the two parties on this point (evidenced by your best counterexample being the Democrats peacefully following the legal process to challenge the result of one election decades ago).
My opinion of Dems is now so low I can't put any kind of limit as to what they wouldn't do. The fact that they're even running a man in this condition shows how little daylight there is between them and Republicans on civic duty.
They don’t have to be *much* better to get the vote, my impression is that many, many people are going to reluctantly vote for X because they can’t stomach Y.
Every marginal vote counts, though
In swing states, at least...
Even outside swing states. A depressed turnout of Democrats on the national level also impacts local elections.
Many Thanks! True, I was just thinking of the Electoral College. Local elections can indeed also be affected, even if the electors from a state are "set in stone".
While lying about Biden's condition has come up in the discussions and coverage, I don't think it is all that large an issue, compared to just the raw question of whether he is capable of acting as POTUS through much of another term (and the policy choices that made him unpopular orthogonal to capability worries).
The real question is who's doing his job on the eighteen hours a day he can't, and why isn't this person runninv instead.
Many Thanks! Yes, but it may not be a single person. It may be a group of staff. I'm morbidly curious about who (if anyone!) has nuclear weapons use authority during those eighteen hours...
I think people are being a bit alarmist about Sotomayor. She's 70. Not exactly a spring chicken, but still significantly younger than Ginsburg was.
She can keep going for a good long while. Democrats are likely to win at least one of the next 3 or 4 elections, and she can retire then.
The Democrats would probably need both the presidency and control of the senate at the same time; otherwise the Republicans could block any nominee and the seat would remain vacant until a Republican becomes president, as when Scalia kicked the bucket. Who knows when that'll be the case - could be in four years, might not be for a generation.
It has happened in the first two years of every Democrat president since we started caring about the Supreme Court so odds are it's not going to take a generation.
> But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations? I don’t know, maybe that was just a fluke and the party has no state capacity at all.
The state capacity of the Democratic Party is certainly more real than that of the Republican Party, but it's nothing compared to the state capacity of the actual government. For better or worse, Joe Biden is in fact the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, and literally nobody can tell him what to do.
“They [Polymarket, Predictit] usually overestimate Republicans’ chances, partly because Democrats’ opposition to online political betting has turned the pool of online political bettors disproportionately red.“
(I doubt the normal user of a platform cares that much about the opinion of politicians and think this has other reasons. )
Maybe they are biased, but I am not sure we have good reasons to think that Manifold / Metaculus are better.
If you look at Manifold / Metaculus comments, they seem a lot smarter and nicer. However, this makes sense given that the main currency on these platforms is something closer to social status. Polymarket and Predictit seem very dumb in comparison, but users do have an incentive to seem dumb!
Despite their flaws I would trust anything with real money more. I think people who are successful on Manifold understand this and often copy from e.g. Polymarket. One month ago Biden traded at 40% on Polymarket (60% on Manifold) and I thought that was due to their right wing bias. In retrospect, Polymarket was probably just smarter than me.
Is the incentive to seem dumb that people will bet against you?
Yeah, that's what i meant. Not sure if this is a huge effect, but it certainly does not help to seem smart
>Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded
? None of that happened. Obama did not endorse Biden, except possibly when it was too late to matter; Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out after doing terribly in South Carolina, esp among black voters, a key voter group for Dems; Warren and Bloomberg did not drop out until they bombed on Super Tuesday; and Sanders campaign was stronger after others dropped out.
Right. A bunch of establishment types endorsed Biden after he'd de facto won to try to build early unity, and a few moderates dropped out early when their campaigns became obviously hopeless. There wasn't a need for coordination in any of that
There may have been some coordination - iirc a bunch of the dropped out moderates synched up their support for Biden - but it wasn't ever *needed*, which is important since it meant they could just do it on their own instead of needing party consensus (which is hard to get and would be required to push Biden to drop out if he doesn't want to).
This is partly incorrect. Biden came in 4th in Iowa (often a campaign killing placement), then 5th in New Hampshire (definitely a campaign killing placement), while Sanders came in first in both of those (typically anoints you unless you mess up big time or there is a strong second place who puts up a fight).
That is when everyone panicked. Biden emerged in the ensuing media discussion as a consensus choice to fend off Sanders and started picking up a lot of moderate media endorsements and favorable coverage. He was able to come second in the Nevada Caucuses, a smaller event with 100k participants and ranked choice voting, and days later South Carolina's Jim Clyburn gave what was seen as *the* critical endorsement to Biden, netting him the South Carolina win, and Buttigieg (25% Iowa, 24% NH) and Klobuchar (12% Iowa, 19% NH) dropped out and I believe quickly endorsed Biden.
tldr: after a few contests, he was in 5th place and should have had to drop out, then media cycle said he's the only guy who can beat Sanders and then Trump, and three weeks later he was the front runner.
I'm not a Bernie guy. I'm not even a democrat or a voter. If you forced me, I would have picked Warren. But what happened was kind of unseemly. I don't know about you, but my and everyone else's boomer democrat parents went from each having a personal favorite to "oh shit Bernie might happen, CNN has been talking about Biden all week, we've all gotta go Biden" in a *real* hurry.
You're ignoring the part where they had polling on states down the line and knew Biden was much stronger with nonwhite voters and had a clear path to winning, and they didn't.
Important comment. Scott should probably correct what he wrote. People dropped out "in lockstep" because of poor results that came in at the same time that made their campaigns impossible to win, not because of an Obama endorsement or a phone call from democratic elites.
Not sure that Sanders campaign was stronger relative to the Biden campaign after everyone else dropped out though. I think most Pete, Amy, and Bloomberg voters went to the Biden camp, while most Warren voters went to the Sanders camp, but I could be wrong on this.
What's different from normal is not that they dropped out and the votes went to the logical next preference.
It's that the 2nd and 3rd place candidates dropped out almost immediately and endorsed the 5th place candidate, instead of "selfishly" waiting for Super Tuesday to see how they did.
That happened because the media cycle in favor of Joe Biden was *brutal* about everyone else.
As I said in another comment, I am not a Bernie guy, a democrat, or even a *voter*. I have odd politics, and I just like following this stuff sometimes. But I could not ignore the evidence of my senses, that a large number of "serious" people ran to the frankly pathetically safe choice when they realized Sanders had a good chance of becoming the nominee.
We didn't get "let's go with Buttigieg, he basically tied Sanders in the first two contests". We didn't get "Warren did well enough and she's basically the legitimate democratic party flavor of what the Bernie bros want, let's go with her". No, we got "We need the boomers to beat Trump, and we now realize the only sure way to get the boomers is their man Joe". And we got it with the same impressive, annoying decisiveness that has now doomed that same man under the weight of like... fifty mainstream articles flatly saying he should end his campaign.
The media giveth, and the media taketh away.
I think you are misremembering the 2020 primary. First, there were lots of calls in the media after Iowa and NH that Biden should drop out (https://www.google.com/search?q=biden+drop+out&sca_esv=7535fa7457e2bb3a&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2020%2Ccd_max%3A2%2F27%2F2020&tbm=). He then came in second in Nevada, got the Clyburn endorsement, and won SC by a ton. (49% to Sanders 20%).
Pete and Klobuchar were not the 2nd/3rd place candidates after SC. Pete at the time was polling around 10% nationally, and Klobuchar was at like 5%. They dropped out after South Carolina and endorsed Biden, who was at that time 1st based on pledged delegate count and 1st/2nd based on national polling. Warren stayed in until after Super Tuesday, and when it went terrible for her and she lost her home state, she dropped out. Bloomberg pretty much same story.
I also don't think that it's accurate to say that the media controls people's minds like you are implying. I think its more of a feedback loop if anything.
Alternate theory for why the Democrats would let this debate happen despite knowing he's senile: they needed a public justification in order to remove him. If any of them even suggest "hey, I want to remove Biden and replace him", they appear disloyal which is potentially an opportunity for others in their party to oust them or something. And if they do collectively agree to replace Biden then the average Democrat voter who has been being told Biden is not senile for years will be suspicious and angry that the party is going against the candidate that they voted for. It's undemocratic!
But if Biden makes a fool of himself and the public sees that Biden is obviously unfit and likely to lose to Trump then this is much more convincing than some press release. If the public demands Biden be replaced then the elites can replace Biden and look like they're supporting the will of the people at the same time.
With this theory in mind, I have a higher confidence of Biden being replaced than these markets do, but I don't think this affects any of the conditional probabilities afterwards.
I think you are desperately hoping there are adults in charge, somewhere, secretly managing and running things so that everything turns out fine.
But, uh, if there were adults in charge we wouldn't be here right now.
It's less that there are adults actually in charge as a unified block and more that there are scatterings of advisors and individual actors with their own personal agendas and interests, and they hesitate to act in any way that will expose themselves to backlash from the public, or backstabbings from each other.
So it's less that The Powers That Be masterminded a scheme to set up Biden to take the fall so that they could move to the next step of their master plan, and more that everyone knew it was going to be a disaster but nobody wanted to be the one to speak up, and realized they didn't have to because if they let it go forward the public would speak up for them.
> He’s better in the daytime than at night (this is a classic dementia symptom called “sundowning”), his aides mostly only saw him during the day, but this debate was at night (9 - 11 PM in his time zone).
Apparently his aides were aware of this: https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/two-bidens-trump-debate-2024-president
"Biden's miscues and limitations are more familiar inside the White House.
The time of day is important as to which of the two Bidens will appear.
From 10am to 4pm, Biden is dependably engaged — and many of his public events in front of cameras are held within those hours.
Outside of that time range or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued, aides told Axios."
"as an American, I’m banned from even reading Betfair"
Since I'm not an American, I can do that for you:
"Event Start Time
05 November 2024, 12:00
Win Only Market
MARKET INFORMATION
For further information please see Rules & Regs.
Which candidate will win the 2024 US Presidential Election?
This market will be turned in-play at the stated time on the day of the election. Thereafter the market will not be actively managed. Customers are entirely responsible for their bets at all times.
This market will be settled according to the candidate that has the most projected Electoral College votes won at the 2024 presidential election. In the event that no Presidential candidate receives a majority of the projected Electoral College votes, this market will be settled on the person chosen as President in accordance with the procedures set out by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This market will be settled once both the projected winner is announced by the Associated Press and the losing candidate concedes. If the losing candidate does not concede, or if there is any uncertainty around the result (for instance, caused by recounts and/or potential legal challenges), then the market will be settled on the winner decided by Congress, on the date on which the Electoral College votes are counted in a joint session of Congress.
This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2024. If more than one election takes place in 2024, then this market will apply to the first election that is held.
Once voting (whether postal, electronic or at the ballot box) begins in the year 2024 for the US Presidential Election 2024, the election will be deemed to have taken place for the purposes of this market. We will then settle the market as per our rules regardless of whether the election process is fully completed in 2024 or beyond.
If there is any material change to the established role or any ambiguity as to who occupies the position, then Betfair may determine, using its reasonable discretion, how to settle the market based on all the information available to it at the relevant time.
Betfair reserves the right to wait for further official announcements before the market is settled.
Betfair expressly reserves the right to suspend and/or void any and all bets on this market at any time if Betfair is not satisfied (in its absolute discretion) with the certainty of the outcome.
Betfair may suspend betting on the market at any time in the interests of maintaining integrity and fairness in the markets.
Additional candidates may be added to this market on request.
Please note that candidates in this market will not be partially settled and will remain in the market until it is fully settled. This is to allow customers to continue trading candidates that they have positions on and because each candidate is still a valid runner in this market.
If any candidate withdraws for any reason, including death, all bets on the market will stand and be settled as per the defined rules.
Customers should be aware that:
Transmissions described as “live” by some broadcasters may actually be delayed.The extent of any such delay may vary, depending on the set-up through which they are receiving pictures or data."
I have no idea what these figures mean, so someone who knows how betting/prediction markets work can explain it (there are a lot more candidates than this, this is just the top few):
Back All Lay All
"Donald Trump 1.63 €867 1.64 €587 1.65 €2146 1.66 €198 1.67 €463 1.68 €3125
Joe Biden 5.1 €9007 5.2 €760 5.3 €204 5.4 €831 5.5 €1800 5.6 €201
Gavin Newsom 19.5 €96 20 €144 2 1€72 23 €16 24 €17 25 €23
Michelle Obama 22 €93 23 €43 24 €35 28 €26 29 €30 30 €41
Kamala Harris 18 €11 20 €50 21 €27 23 €449 24€1023 25 €25
Hillary Clinton 75 €62 80 €65 85 €17 95 €461 100 €12 110 €30"
Robert F.Kennedy Jr 90 €17 95 €37 100 €75 120 €16 130 €13 150 €22
Gretchen Whitmer 26 €54 27 €60 28 €20 29 €14 30 €112 32 €14
> This market will be void if an election does not take place in 2024. If more than one election takes place in 2024, then this market will apply to the first election that is held.
Interesting. It looks like they're trying to specify what will happen in the event of an unlikely scenario coming to pass.
But they're doing so really badly; a normal presidential election takes place at the beginning of November, 85% of the way through the year. This disambiguation policy has a very high risk, if it comes into play at all, of specifying that, in the event of something totally crazy happening, the crazy election will be the one that counts, and the normal one won't count.
The theory of the first one being the normal one defends against another scenario, equally unlikely…
Suppose there's one election in September and then another one in early November. What's the argument for the September election determining this question?
Trump and his minions lose the first one, declare it fraudulent, congress refuses to certify it and a second one is held that he wins.
Sorry, Trump loses the September election, declares it fraudulent, and we think he's wrong? What happened there?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It’s the only reason I could think of for that rule i.e. only the first one counts. I suppose it entirely depends on your view of the 2020 election but I would be willing to bet money that if he loses, he’s going to scream that it was fraudulent. I also don’t really think he’s going to lose.
I (a leftish Democrat) have never particularly liked Kamala Harris and thought she was a remarkably poor campaigner in the 2020 primary. But I think the possibility that she'd actually perform much better than Biden is being underrated.
The generic case for not-Biden is actually not very contingent on who the particular not-Biden would be (Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, whomever). Trump is such a known commodity, and such an unpopular and damaged one, that any Democrat who evinces basic mental competency would be sufficiently competitive as to make the election basically a referendum on Trump. The problem with Biden is that he no longer exceeds that extraordinarily low bar, but Harris would. (That doesn't mean she or any other Democrat would necessarily win; it might be that there's a plurality in the electorate that would but Trump back in the White House despite his being a convicted felon who explicitly threatens liberal democracy because they're grouchy about inflation or whatever.)
I, on the other hand, think that the chances of any Democratic candidate succeeding are being systemically overrated; we can call it the halo effect, although I don't really like that way of describing the phenomena - but I expect the damage isn't at all localized.
The worst fallout can, should, and probably will fall on the left-wing side of the media, who has been systemically downplaying Biden's cognitive issues for some time now - which will have severe secondary impacts for -all- the Democratic candidates, as all friendly coverage will be extra-suspect.
Additionally, those feeling particularly betrayed will likely form a one-time exodus from the Democratic party.
I'm watching Weird Twitter talking itself into supporting Kamala in realtime and it's the most amazing thing. Switching candidates is a big risk but it might also spark some interest in a lackluster race, too.
Can you link some of the twitter users or threads you're talking about? (I don't mean this in an 'I demand you justify your claim!' way, I'm just curious to see it.)
https://x.com/search?q=coconut%20tree&src=typeahead_click
Will get you most of them, people backing into supporting Kamala with heavy use of irony.
Here’s an example: https://x.com/cd_hooks/status/1808248597495857532
I think they're stuck with Biden now, is the problem. It's too late to change horses in mid-stream, and if they were going to, being forced to do so because of a terrible TV performance is not how anyone would prefer to do it.
If Kamala is not handed the nomination on a platter, I think there will be a lot of screaming from the small but devoted following she has, and a lot of stoked-up perception that this is due to sexism (as Hillary's campaign did after she lost) plus racism. Unless the new anointed gives Kamala a plum job in the new administration (should they win), this will be a hard sell, and what better job can you offer the VP?
But if Kamala is selected, I do think she's unelectable. Next in line is Gavin Newsom, and that opens up a lot of lines of attack. Rich white guy (hanging out with the Gettys), what has he done? (you can argue over what he did or did not achieve as Governor of California), the internal Democrat party wrangling with the recall - certainly, handing him the nomination might be repayment for Joe's support during the recall. But can he appeal to the nation?
It may well be seen that the lesser of two evils is go ahead with Joe and hope to hell that Trump does something like detonate a nuke in Times Square.
I'm in Michigan, and I have heard Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan's governor, proposed. I would welcome Jennifer Granholm back as governor. Whitmer may campaign well, but she is awful at getting the job done. She promised to "fix the damn roads" then gave up after a single attempt to raise taxes to do it. She can't reach across the aisle, either.
> It's too late to change horses in mid-stream
Intentional or not, a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog makes me very happy.
The earliest use of the phrase that I'm aware of is as a slogan for Lincoln's 1864 reëlection campaign. Not sure if they originated it or just used an already-established expression.
Forget the election, get Biden out now. Replace him right now. He’s clearly unfit to lead. Don’t like Trump either, but keeping Biden is crazy.
> Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now.
While I understand wanting to blame this on Republicans crying wolf for five years, that's a bit disingenuous. They didn't just make that up in a vacuum--there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that something was amiss. Biden rarely held press conferences or answered questions from reporters that weren't canned. On the rare occasion that he was on camera without teleprompters, he'd often make gaffes, slurred his speech, told clearly false anecdotes, and then wondered off stage. This has been happening his entire term, not just recently. When it did start to get too obvious to ignore, the press secretary said it was all "cheap fakes", misinformation, and disinformation.
The real blame should be on the media that willingly ignored or covered up the problem.
I don't blame you for getting snookered, but I think a part of it was that you were categorizing concerns about Biden in a way that the critics didn't mean to communicate. The point wasn't that he was totally demented, but instead that he was in decline by 2020. I think there is clear and convincing evidence that *something* isn't right with Biden has been around for a very long time and his administration has taken pretty obvious steps to mitigate it that, in retrospect, I hope everyone will recognize. I think that the biggest change has been that his staff has been better at guarding his worst impulses from public scrutiny, both by mitigating opportunities for misbehavior and then spinning the narrative when it happens.
For instance, his constant pestering and inappropriate behavior around women and children has resulted in him being walled off so that he literally has no public appearances with women and children. His *nibbling* on his wife's finger while she was giving a public speech should have been alarming. To me, that's the moment when the media should have started asking hard questions, but since then his public appearances have been even more controlled, keeping him out of biting distance of people's fingers. Literally every foreigner he interacts with is always unhappy with him, including during the last G7 where he was late every day an the Italian Prime Minister had to shepherd him to return to the group. I cannot imagine a single other president letting themselves get pushed around like that. Reminded, maybe, or shown that "hey, the rest of us are over here," but... Western progressives are coping hard with the fall of the hero that rescued us from the Orange Man.
I think you're right that all of this should be looked at in retrospect as "well, maybe there was something wrong from [this date]." Nobody [responsible] was saying he was totally demented, but the evidence was there that merited further discussion. I think, though, a lot of people distrusted the messengers and so distrusted the message.
Furthermore, I think that the verified lies about Biden should call *all* of their honesty into question. Like you said, they were accusing Trump of the actual condition of Biden. It should also call the honesty of Biden's accusers into question. Are they only right about the senility? Or could they be right about other things, too, and the narrative that they were no credible messengers disrupted that, too?
Your point about Newsome deserves a little more thought and attention, I think. If the DNC's best bet is someone like Newsome, someone who is "all style and no substance," doesn't that just likely perpetuate the problem that got us here in the first place?
I think it's sad, too. We will always be a progressive country, but in the absence of an engaged public and media we are drifting back towards oligarchy.
It's crazy to think that the nibbling incident was in December of 2019, well before the first primary had even been held. Biden wasn't even considered a front runner until the South Carolina primary in late February. If that was an actual sign of dementia, it's appalling that they chose to stay in.
Him saying that 150 millions Americans died from gun violence since 2007 was in February 2020. You'd think someone might have noticed how bad that one was, too.
I haven't seen much of anything of world leaders being unhappy with Biden -- I mean, I remember when Biden visited Ukraine and met with Zelensky, and to the best of my recollection he was reportedly cogent then. Of course, if I were Zelensky I wouldn't go around maligning a powerful friend. I dunno. I feel like if there were extensive, long-standing issues, they'd have come out earlier.
I went looking for a link; it was in a recent news article I read but looking for "biden 30 thiry minutes late g7" just turned up old stories.
I don't think that concerns about the President necessarily would have come out sooner. That's the sort of thing that if you screw up the messaging you're going to find US foreign aid to your country gets reallocated. It's the same way the Federal gets compliance from states in tying education and highway funding to other policy decisions.
That aside, it was shocking to me that a few news outlets (CNN and Politico, I think) had foreign diplomats on the record saying they were concerned about Biden's condition and ability to serve (https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/foreign-diplomats-biden-debate-reaction/index.html). That, and Poland's Foreign Minister publicly calling for him to step aside was... stunning. I really feel like America's power overseas is shaken.
> That, and Poland's Foreign Minister publicly calling for him to step aside was... stunning. I really feel like America's power overseas is shaken.
That is interesting. Some low-quality thoughts:
- America's power overseas definitely has been shaken. The reputation of the USA is in a shambles compared to 2014. The USA's ability to enforce its will overseas may not be much different, but people have now realized that it's gone.
- Poland really wants a specific thing from the USA. They want it to be strong and protect them from Russia. Having the ruler of the country be recognized across the world as a buffoon or worse is a bad way to project deterrence. That might explain why Poland would feel it's more important to antagonize their powerful friend - and hopefully shore up that friend's power - than to have a stronger relationship with a friend who can't do anything for them.
>The point wasn't that he was totally demented, but instead that he was in decline by 2020. I think there is clear and convincing evidence that something isn't right with Biden has been around for a very long time and his administration has taken pretty obvious steps to mitigate it that, in retrospect, I hope everyone will recognize.
Ouch! Morbid question: Any idea what his advisors/administration does / is doing about nuclear weapons use authority? Is it even legally and physically possible for Biden to delegate that to one of his staff?
"If someone knows what is appropriate, let me know."
Just whisper your ideas into each of our electrical outlets. The bugs in there should get them to the illuminati.
Scott, I must be missing something. Interesting, voluminous discourse, but if you're trying to avoid the "little white lie" like risk yourself, how can you spend this much effort without both engaging the issue of whether Biden needs to resign (or have 25th Amendment proceedings initiated) and why that conversation isn't forefront within the ethical commentators? I recognize it is possible, though perhaps straining a bit of credibility, to conclude "Oh, he's clearly showing signs interpreted as decisively predictive of him being ineffective as president in the period between Jan. 20th 2025 and Jan 19 2029 and shame on various parties for having hidden those, but there is such a clear deficit of related signs of him likely to be ineffective July 2, 2024 through Jan 19, 2025 that we shouldn't even discuss that, and perhaps we should even castigate those that do." Isn't this a FAR bigger little white lie risk that many are now engaging in?
That's a good question. First, I don't know what the exact 25th amendment criteria are and am nervous speculating about legal issues beyond my expertise. Second, I think the chaos from trying to arrange a sudden presidential transition with 4-6 months left in the term might be more disruptive than just letting him hang around for 4-6 more months with aides who have managed to keep things under control so far. Third, asking him to resign is a bigger ask than asking him to not run, and he won't even not run.
Regarding your 1st point, the exact 25th amendment criterion is just this: "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office". There really is no legal standard more precise than this constitutional text. This is partly because section 4 has never been invoked to involuntarily remove a President, and so the courts have never ruled on it---but even more so, because the courts would almost certainly decide it was a purely "political question" to be determined by the VP & Cabinet heads, and ultimately by Congress. Not by the courts.
So basically, if you have carefully read the full text of the 25th amendment (and perhaps its wikipedia article), and are canny to the realpolitick considerations, you are in just as good a position to say what section 4 of the 25th amendment means, as any other citizen. (Except for the actual political actors, who authoritatively interpret its de facto meaning by their own decisions.)
Of course, law professors have written reams of text saying when they think it *should* be used, but none of this is legally binding precedent in any way.
Priors. A big boy word that applies here. Also that you can’t see what you refuse to look at. Like the stunning decline of California under Newsom. But yes, let’s vote for more!
This is probably the correct take from a “political vibes” sense, but ~all of California’s problems are in large part due to the insane cost of housing. Within CA politics, Newsom is one of the (relative) good guys in the sense that he is pushing for state preemption of local zoning laws. Replacing him with a generic CA Republican would actually make things worse, because Newsome is more YIMBY than the median CA Republican
It's rare to find a 6'0 person, good at acting, and with a face you can get looking convincingly like Joe Biden with just stage makeup.
It's not rare to find a 6'0 person, good at acting, and with a face you can get looking convincingly like Joe Biden with just stage makeup AND some minor surgery.
Same goes for Trump, except he must be 6'3.
After seeing Walton Goggins as the ghoul in Fallout I think he could probably do a decent Biden.
Have you considered the fact that winning the presidency isn't actually that important to the Democrats?
"Trump will destroy democracy" is basically a propaganda.
"Trump will be good for ratings" is a lot closer to the truth.
I would have thought this was obvious when the DNC supported all those MAGA people in the primaries.
There are a lot of advantages to Trump being president. He can veto the dumbest part of the lefts agenda. He can unite the left rather than sniping at each other. He can take the fall for a lot of messes this administration has created. 2026 and 2028 will likely be easy election seasons.
I'm not saying they WANT to lose, but losing isn't like that big of a deal really. So "be the person that causes a huge inter party death match because it might improve our odds of winning 5%" doesn't seem like a good move if you don't actually think the sky will fall.
I had estimated that Trump losing in 2020 could be a not so bad outcome for the GOP. Year Six midterms are always set up to be a bloodbath for the incumbent, Trump fatigue was likely to be off the charts high in 2028, and I correctly anticipated that inflation would be a major issue. All of that sets up the conditions for a Democrat supermajority like Obama had in his first two years. But if Trump lost in 2020, well, we're in a situation where Republicans are positioned to have control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the next two years
Where I was wrong was assuming that losing in 2020 would cause the GOP to move on from Trump. That they haven't is bad, but it might not work out so badly for the GOP, due to the fact that Trump is basically running against a reanimated corpse.
You can game out the same situation for the Democrats with a loss this fall: Trump 2 is bad, the Democrats win back Congress quickly and they're poised to run a younger, more competent candidate in 2028.
What's bad about the other side winning is that they implement their policies and if you think those policies are bad then they make life worse.
Also, every presidency is "will SC judges die bingo" where if you get lucky you control the philosopher king branch of the government that can do whatever the fuck it wants.
So I don't think anyone wants to lose an election. The question is "do I care enough about winning to take on a huge risk that *might* increase my chances of winning 5-10% (or might not, or might cause more problems them it solves) but defiantly involves personal sacrifices from me (people advising Biden, etc).
If Trump is Hitler that is worth a shot but if he isn't the status quo makes plenty of sense.
>due to the fact that Trump is basically running against a reanimated corpse.
<mild snark>
CNN said that the debate would not have a _live_ audience. Undead wasn't excluded :-)
</mild snark>
All of my Democrat-voting friends fervently believe that a Trump presidency will usher in a thousand years of darkness. They are not posturing or virtue signaling AFAICT, they really do believe this.
Yes, but they are losers (voters). I'm talking about how people with power and a stake and who think about this critically consider the matter.
Let's say Trump wins. Won't your friends all just be even more energized. More willing to donate and get out the vote and do all the things the party wants out of you.
Sure, you will be pissed off at Biden, who will be dead soon. And they will still have lots of negative polarization about needing to stop Trump (and stop whoever comes after Trump) and they will buy into whoever the process spits out.
Did they try to get Mitt Romney the democrat nomination? That would be the obvious play for anyone who actually believes that and has cursory knowledge of the median voter theorem.
Mitt is an honorable man, but he’s too smart to fall for that
The "Democrats should Run a moderate Republican" would be good advice, but Mitt Romney isn't a moderate Republican. On many issues he's more right-wing than Trump.
He's 77 and retiring from the Senate after this year. Let the man enjoy a gentle decline in peace.
I feel sorry for them :(
> I support the Principle of Charity. Nobody ever thinks in their own head “Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world”. They think “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”.
I don't see that the conclusion follows from the premise. There are plenty of people out there thinking along the lines of "I can fool them all, and they deserve it for being gullible". Not seeing yourself as a villain doesn't imply that deceptions are always perpetrated by people who mean well. It's not necessary to mean everyone well in order to not be a villain. Nobody does mean everyone well, and people aren't in denial about that.
I often wonder what goes through the head of really boringly evil people. Not the Maos and Bin Ladens, who clearly think they're doing something good, but just the standard burglars and muggers and bike thieves and so forth. Do they have some kind of complicated self-talk about how they're actually justified in doing these things because reasons? Or does it just never occur to them to feel bad?
There's a lot of variance, but for career thieves they tend to justify themselves by going "Everybody steals when they get the chance, I'm just honest about it" and "Life has been unfair to me so I'm just balancing the scales." Also they're not bad guys I mean haven't you seen the real monsters, rapists, child molesters, investment bankers....
There are definitely people out there who actively take joy in other people's suffering. Psychopaths and sadists.
What goes through their head? Who knows, but I suspect something just staggeringly evil like "torturing this animal is such fun, see how it screams and whimpers in pain, so enjoyable."
I wonder if it ever crosses their mind that they are evil. Possibly they don't have the vocabulary of "good" and "evil," or choose to ignore it.
I'm somewhat of a psychopath, except not sadistic. Acknowledging that I'm evil has never been a problem for me, since it's clear that there's no objective cosmic way in which being good is preferable.
"Maybe they prefer a well-known likeable incumbent over an unknown quantity (and the unknown quantity’s potential new/weird aides), even if the well-known likeable incumbent is senile."
This would be right if the opposition wasn't Trump. People seem to ignore that Trump is also running for reelection. He is a known quantity. And models that giv na incumbent advantage seems o ignore that it's likely a reelection advantage instead. In the entire history of presidential democracies, in all three times a president run for reelection against a president also running for reelection,he lost to the former president (U.S. 1892, U.S. 1912, Brazil 2022).
"Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations?"
Parties elites exist, but there isn't a Mr. Democratic Party, like there is a Mrs. National Rally in France. You should read Richard Hanania's posts on how liberals work, and it isn't done in a top down way like the GOP. But nonetheless, it's a difused power. You can use Obama, Pelosi, and party elites to rally around Biden to stop a socialist from taking the party. But this doesn't mean that you can stop the presumptive nominee from running. Political parties in the U.S. are very shallow. What kind of pressure you can make towards the world's most powerful man? Stop donating to his campaign? Are we going to pretend that in the year of our lord jesus Christ of 2024 this would be what would matter? Someone in Michigan will see a Biden ad, and only then, decide to vote? No way. This works for primaries and down ballot stuff. But you can't exert pressure on him like that. The truth is that Biden, and only Biden, that holds all the cards. Certainly someone foolled him to make this debate in June, to create optionality to remove him. But that's the extent the party elite could do.
I'm confused by your invocation of 1912? Isn't the fact that (then-current) president Wilson defeated then-former president Roosevelt evidence that (now-current) president Biden would defeat now-former president Trump? Or am I misunderstanding your metaphor?
Re: Obama and Pelosi, I'm not sure, because IIUC Obama and Pelosi have both endorsed his continued candidacy. If Obama, Pelosi, Hillary, Sanders, Jeffries, etc all came out and said explicitly "Biden needs to step down, we asked him and he refused", then the situation would look very different to me - it would look like Biden was a crazy lone cannon, and nobody would be blaming the party. But also, I don't think Biden has the guts to stand against Obama, Pelosi, Hillary, Sanders, and Jeffries.
Nope. The president in 1912 was Taft, who run for reelection against Roosevelt (as a third party) and Wilson (a Democrat). Taft lost both to Wilson and Roosevelt. Taft did 23% of the votes, while Roosevelt did 27%. Taft had only 8 electoral votes, versus 88 for Roosevelt. I understand that Roosevelt didn't win, but nonetheless, with N=3, I am not throwing away an occurrence.
Therefore, Biden winning against a former president would be unprecedented.
In my experience living through the Lula v. Bolsonaro campaign, the former president can always call for a fantastic nostalgia of the good old times. The election was just as close as I expect the American election to be (51%-49% for Lula, the second closest ever in Brazil), with extremely high turn-out. There weren't people who didn't have a strong position on the candidates. For both sides it was a life-or-death situation. But in the end, the inflation story and how Bolsonaro dealt with COVID were ultimately decisive. I seriously think pundits would do good if they studied this remarkably close historical analogy.
I understand the party could rebel against Biden the way you said. But just imagine if Obama picks up the phone and says to Pelosi: "wanna do a concerted statement to oust Joey?" And she says: "No way!". Obama will always be the guy who betrayed the party. Same goes for Hilary, Sander, Jeffries, Schumer... You need some trusted broker that allows them to share information without ever going to the history books that they considered that. It's hard for them to coordinate.
Why was Biden's sleep schedule not adjusted to ensure his lucidity during the debate?
The exact causes of sundowning are unknown, but they probably are not simply a function of the number of hours that the person has been awake. They may actually have something to do with exposure to wavelengths of light at the end of the day, and associated melatonin production. So an effective adjustment to his circadian rhythm may have required more than simply letting him sleep until noon for a couple of days.
Biden has recently shown himself to be lucid enough for evening events. I don't think this year's State of the Union address was the triumph that a lot of people say it was, but he did have more vigor. So maybe his handlers had their fingers crossed that with some rest and a little luck he would perform well enough during the debate. A possible mistake made here is that reading a teleprompter passionately does not imply mental dexterity or fully functional memory. "Old Man Yells at Cloud" may be fundamentally different from "Old Man Extemporaneously Explains Wonky Positions."
Please notice if you are doubling down on "The Republicans are wrong", especially if you are doing so on the grounds that they are correct.
"So with the constant attempts to prove that both candidates were senile, the constant demonstration by both candidates that they weren’t, and the constant retreat into conspiracy theories of “I guess he used the magic drug again but we’ll get him next time!”, I just tuned out this entire category of thing. And I guess I kept it tuned out longer than I should have, whoops."
That's all fine--I don't trust Republicans either--but it wasn't just Republicans who said Biden was getting senile. Ezra Klein said he was too old to campaign for president in February, all the while praising his achievements to the skies and saying he wasn't too old to actually be president: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html
In March, the majority of Biden's 2020 voters said he was now too old to be effective: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/biden-age-trump-poll.html
Also in March, Special Counsel Robert Hur called Biden "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory". In a press conference meant to rebut Hur's characterization, Biden referred to Egyptian president el-Sisi as the "president of Mexico". Hur is Republican, but AFAIK not the kind of Republican who makes up conspiracy theories about Biden being on drugs.
I visited China in February, and Chinese people asked me whether Biden is pretending to be senile. Even without knowing English, they could clearly tell that his appearance was not that of a young man, even compared to the elderly Trump.
Finally, this whole campaign season, Biden has been hiding from the public. He turned down free publicity by not doing the Superbowl interview. He's done very few other interviews or press conferences. Why? If there's really nothing wrong with him, why doesn't he take every interview opportunity he gets to show how non-senile he is?
I interpreted Klein ("Biden is fit to do the presidency, just not to campaign") as saying something like "he's getting on in years, doesn't have a spring in his step, probably within the next four years he'll be really bad". I thought that given the extreme difficulty of replacing Biden at this stage and the lack of good candidates, his campaign difficulties still put him above eg Harris, and that if he became senile in 2026 or something he would resign. I think I made a big update from the Klein worldview to, basically, "Biden is unfit for the presidency right now, probably it's okay to keep him another four months to avoid chaos, but it's not acceptable for him to be running".
Same. It would take something really bad to make replacing Biden worth the chaos it would cause (and Harris isn't a terribly great candidate either). Unfortunately, now it seems like that's now the least bad option.
Note that Robert Hur is a Republican.
I think the Democrats' best chance, by far, would be to rally around Michelle Obama. If she isn't putting herself forward, then she must not feel that Trump's reelection is an existential risk to the country.
Kind regards,
David
Why? She has no experience and loses to Trump in head-to-head polls.
Hi Scott!
My take was anecdotal based on vibes I get from moderates in South Dakota, but this also supports it:
https://www.newsweek.com/michelle-obama-odds-replace-joe-biden-debate-1918796
Kind regards,
David
Or she thinks she'll be unpopular and lose. Trump in 2016 had no political experience, but at least he had experience leading a large organization.
"Worse, they don’t even seem united on the need to figure anything out, with many deflecting the conversation to irrelevant points like “Trump is also bad” or pretending that nothing is really wrong."
This seems like a very obviously wrong take to me. Which makes me wonder (1) Is Scott in fact very obviously wrong here? (2) If so, why did Scott say it?
Why do I think it's very obviously wrong? Because publicly admitting that you're thinking about replacing Biden obviously tanks him. To take the extreme example, if Jill Biden says "we're considering our options" then it's already over.
So therefore, *until* they've collectively decided that he's going to get replaced (probably including getting his consent for it), they *must* deflect. They must steadfastly back the president; they can't admit that there's anything to figure out or that anything is really wrong.
i.e. this is a classic coordination problem. And since Scott often writes about coordination problems, I feel like he must realize this.
So either I'm wrong, or Scott is being disingenuous in his take -- for engagement-bait-y type reasons, presumably? (Nate Silver does the same thing btw, and it drives me nuts there too.)
I agree this exists, and I'll give the Democratic elites an A if they have a secret Discord room where they're discussing all of this completely frankly. But another famous coordination problem is "driving to Abilene", where everyone does something nobody wants because people were afraid to compare notes, and I think that's the bigger danger here (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox )
That's fair. But my point is, what's the counterfactual to "worse, they don’t even seem united on the need to figure anything out, with many deflecting the conversation to irrelevant points like “Trump is also bad” or pretending that nothing is really wrong"?
That's what we're going to hear (even from a lot of anonymous sources), no matter what's going on internally, unless and until Biden agrees to step down. So, it doesn't seem like a fair criticism.
Until Biden steps down, it puts everyone in a huge bind. They *have to* defend the undefendable (that everything's fine). There's literally no alternative.
(Now they know how Sean Spicer must have felt!)
They should've stopped for a "cold drink" and then everyone wouldn't have been so cranky at the end.
Also this part of the paradox makes no sense - they would've been familiar with every last dish at the restaurant in Abilene and there would have been no "discovering" that the food was bad, nor would they have had any other restaurant to go to, most likely, especially as the nearest cafe is only open for lunch; and all women enjoy a break from doing the cooking and the dishes so there is no possible sense in which the food displeased.
They still might better have stayed home especially if the car had no AC.
Putting Harris on the ticket seems to indicate they weren’t thinking that far ahead.
“Biden at age 86 might be a serious problem” should have been obvious in 2020, even if you thought 2020 Biden was sharp enough.
And the VP would be the obvious successor. So Dems thinking with forethought would have tapped someone they thought could win in ‘24. But instead they went for Kamala, who the primaries had shown to be extremely unpopular and a poor campaigner, to score a few short term idpol points.
Pretty much any of the other plausible women VPs would have put the Dems in a better position today, and the fact that they didn’t shows that maybe they really were in some degree of denial / wishful thinking about Joe’s long term competence.
Dems did not select Kamala Harris as VP, Joe Biden (and his team) did. This is an important distinction, since maybe they did not want the VP replacing Joe Biden to be the obvious option after 4 years. If Kamala was very popular, the pressure on Biden to step down now would be much stronger. From the perspective of the Biden camp, this could be viewed as a bad thing.
I hear you that there is a distinction, but they are all still Democrats who presumably prefer Democrats to retain the Presidency.
Besides, “Biden’s handpicked successor” would be better for Biden’s camp than “Biden loses in 2024, or is forced to step down”. And having an obvious potential opponent as your VP puts them inside your camp rather than threatening you externally.
Either way, Biden’s team clearly put all their cards on “we can maintain the fiction that Biden is not a mentally declining octogenarian” for 8 years.
I wonder if prediction markets side bets are 30-60% insider trading, it seemed very coordinated with the nyt prewritten emergency bidens doomed post and if you have a full time job as a political insider and always need more money laundering, why not?
Maybe there was a smokey room deal that the nyt editor knew of that said, if biden is publicly senile for the debate they will turn on him and push newsom, and so when it happened, they had a meeting everyone updates thier picks and push out the articles
>Maybe there was a smokey room deal that the nyt editor knew of that said, if biden is publicly senile for the debate they will turn on him and push newsom
<mild snark>
Or news organizations around the country united to add enough uncertainty about the Democratic Convention to get people to watch/buy the news this August? :-)
</mild snark>
I'm not sure I buy into the premise that anyone but Harris could be chosen to replace Biden. To me, the most likely scenario is Biden keeps going, second is that he steps down and instructs his delegates to vote for Harris, and then a distant third from that is anything else happening. Curious to hear what the scenario looks like where Newsom or Whitmer becomes nominee, the voting has already been done, the only thing left is for the delegates to go to the convention.
"Their model is based on results from Betfair, Smarkets, PredictIt, and Polymarket. But I don’t know much about the first two (as an American, I’m banned from even reading Betfair), and the latter two are notoriously bad at partisan political questions. They usually overestimate Republicans’ chances, partly because Democrats’ opposition to online political betting has turned the pool of online political bettors disproportionately red."
Isn't that an arbitrage opportunity, right there?
Yes if you're non-American, good with crypto, and willing to figure out the process in order to make high-risk 10% returns in a year - which I think amply explains why not many people are doing it.
So why then would so many non-Americans be skewing the results towards Team R?
Good question, I think a combination of:
- same dynamics in other countries
- realistically a lot of them are Americans with VPNs
...but I don't have enough data to back this up.
There's also PredictIt, where Americans are allowed to bet but only at amounts so low that it's not worth it for many people.
From what I can tell, Team R is very much an *American* phenomenon. If you see Team R as the politician manifestation of *local* gentry, this makes sense. (Team D, by contrast, is the political manifestation of the PMC, and the PMC are not really "from" anywhere, nor are they especially tied to any given location, long as there's wifi.)
Biden's dementia has long been obvious, and long before Thursday. Just compare clips of the man in 2012 and in 2020.
The problem with replacing Biden with Harris is that Harris is arguably even less popular than Biden. At the same time Harris knows that she will never have more leverage as a candidate with Team D than she does now.
'I support the Principle of Charity. Nobody ever thinks in their own head “Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world”. They think “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. '
I agree with this in general, with one important extension. People tell themselves they are telling white lies for the greater good but that is NOT the true reason. That is the rationalization they tell themselves.
They tell white lies because they fear the consequences of telling the truth and and are uncomfortable admitting cowardice to themselves. (Being honest with oneself about feeling cowardly is quite liberating.) They tell white lies to save face for themselves. Often, the lie is intended to save face for another person, which saves mutual faces and may also be empathetic.
The other person may even have a pretty good idea they are being white-lied to. The important aspect is that one is signaling that one is willing to misrepresent the truth, that maintaining affiliation is most important. Other people are reassured by that evidence of affiliation intentions.
Most people deeply and understandably fear being rejected, ostracized, disapproved of by those in their own circle. It is a fundamental aspect of communication, generally not explicitly articulated, embedded secret code. This is a crucial factor in political communication.
It is worth a little effort to find a way to be truthfully tactful, in my opinion. Genuine intimacy arises from the authenticity of showing one cares about the other's feelings, and about affiliation with them, yet will not deceive and manipulate toward that end.
On the negative side, I despise white lies. The person who is willing to tell them is untrustworthy even if they value affiliation with me. They will use manipulation on me, a controlling, dominance move, and I despise those, too.
So in this imperfect world, I might hence despise people in my own small circle, most of whom do tell white lies. I solve this potential problem by despising the lies but not the person. When I see blind spots in other people, it makes it likely that I also have blind spots, and I curiously search for what those might be. I have made errors in the past, am humbled by them, and see understanding forgiveness as the path forward and as a way to maintain affiliation in my own life.
So we all (non-psychopaths) have the same ends, don't we? How do we reconcile the differences towards the greater shared ends? I believe rigorous truthfulness is the path toward that.
Don't know if these ruminations are useful in the overall discussion, but I throw them out.
Biden seems to be to have the mental decline that comes from being very old and weak. Both of my in-laws had CHF, and when they had good energy were fine mentally, but when their energy was low they exhibited signs of senility/dementia. People are very sloppy in using these terms. It is obvious to me that Biden is given stimulants for some of his performances - the SOTU address made me think he was going to have a heart attack - and maybe this time it just wasn't enough.
One option is to toss Kamala under the bus and put a more palatable VP in, while keeping Biden. Then a wink-wink to the electorate that within a year or two Biden will step aside. Obviously Kamala has to go one way or another, and putting Whitmer or someone who can talk behind Biden would help, and by itself signal that Biden isn't really going to be the president for four more years.
You're right that the difference in presentation can be quite stark even with old people who have no dementia diagnosis. You don't see it until you have reason to be with them round the clock and especially at night.
Still, you might want to consider the reaction of my rather moderate companion to mention of the name Whitmer in connection with this stuff - "That's who they're going to? A woman best known for having been fake-kidnapped by the FBI?"
I imagine if you want a generic candidate with no big scandals or skeletons lurking in the closet, that "best known for fake kidnap" isn't a bad thing. Bland, generic, won't frighten any horses, plus can be run as First Female Ever.
I don't think she's going to get the nod because right now it's too chaotic to dump Biden and the time frame is way too short to get a new candidate agreed and set up, but if you need scandal-free and inoffensive, she seems as good as any.
Actually, yeah, she'd be fine if there isn't really an interest in winning, but more a desire to maintain the drama and the fundraising possibilities and give the media another shot in the arm that is Trump.
Someday a woman will be president, because both parties will run women candidates. Mexico has much to teach us about governance.
We've had two female presidents by now in Ireland.
What they need, to learn from the Irish example, is to source a leprechaun. Our current guy is widely beloved, and has cooled down from the days when he was hob-nobbing with the Sandinistas to now be "adorable grandpa with his giant dogs".
He's 83, had a mild form of stroke earlier this year, but seems to be recovering okay.
https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0424/1445447-michael-d-higgins-health/
Our president, your president, and one of our president's dogs during Biden's visit to Ireland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2D-ELNd9Tw
That's a very pretty dog! - though I prefer the sort of dogs that are everybody's friend. I always feel they have more independence of mind.
Bernese Mountain Dogs and this is the third one he's had. A couple have died while he was in office, as he was elected in 2011 and is currently serving his second term. They're usually very friendly, it was odd that this dog wasn't willing to be coaxed out by Biden.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9XQvqHv2k0Q
His term isn't up until 2025 so unfortunately we can't do a swap and have him step in to replace Biden 😁 He's got the political background to appeal to the progressive/lefty wing of the party (fluent Spanish speaker, visited South American countries often, academic career) and the cute dogs for the other voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwidQilUWPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyoHuVQB93I
How 'bout that new taoiseach though.
Simon Harris? Very meh about him but he hasn't managed to do anything terrible yet. Or anything fantastic. What really needs to be solved is our housing problem but nobody seems to have an idea how to manage that.
We've now got a new Minister for Finance who rose out of obscurity. Not alone have I never heard of the guy, nobody else seems to have done, and there's a lot of wondering how exactly he got selected for the job. He qualified as a doctor, was elected as a Fianna Fáil TD. and didn't do anything remarkable to achieve public notice (to the point where he had to come out on Instagram earlier this year about being gay in order to get some publicity, but I never heard anything in the news about it because nobody cares about that anymore).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Chambers_(politician)
He does seem to be the usual career politician type, going off Wikipedia; when the winds of public opinion change to blow from a different quarter, his positions "evolve" (just as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with gay marriage):
"On 3 May 2018, he, along with several other Fianna Fáil TDs, called for a No vote in the referendum to remove the constitutional article which prohibited abortion by recognising the equal right to life of the unborn. He has since stated that his position has evolved and that he supports women being able to access terminations up to 12 weeks of pregnancy in all circumstances."
We're going to have an early Budget in October, it seems, and there is speculation that this is to set the way for an early election, though that has been denied. So maybe I *should* believe that there will be an election!
There are some advantages to a parlimentary system like the UK where, for example, the Conservative MPs can vote to replace their Prime Minister. (If I recall correctly, recent ex PMs have resigned rather than formally losing a vote of no confidence e.g. Lizz Truss)
I do wonder if the REpublicans will eventually have a cascade over Trump like the Dems did over Biden...
"Oh my God, you're right! That Trump guy is a crook! I'd never realised until just now!"
It has already happened, more or less, principally because the cascade among Democrats is modest. Per a poll reported by Drudge, 52% of Democrats want Biden to stay in. Replacing him might be the smartest move but it's not going to happen if a majority of the party is against it. Biden can rightly say that a majority of his party still wants him to run, no matter what the New York Times and juiceboxer bloggers counsel.
Of course that means that somewhere in the 40s or high 30s of the party think he's kind of senile and needs to go. Obviously they're still going to pull the lever for him in November, though.
That maps reasonably well to what's going on in the Republican party. The base wants Trump. There's a substantial faction of Republicans who understand that he's not the best candidate, but nearly all those are going to come home at the end of the day. Never Trump is a real phenomenon though, and it's larger than any Never Biden coalition within the Democrats.
So yeah, I would say that the "our candidate sucks" cascade happened for the Republicans in approximately the same way that it happened for the Democrats, at least to the extent that it has any effect on the ultimate outcome.
But how much do you want to wager that Biden doesn’t get even worse before November? The “Never Biden” camp seems more likely to grow than the “Never Trump” camp.
He's going to be watched a lot more closely in the second debate. If he does well this might significantly blow over. If he does as bad or worse, I don't know what else can happen but him dropping out or tanking the election for the Democrats.
The second debate is September 10, if it even happens. Do you think Biden can wait over two months to assuage concerns?
He can hold the Democrats hostage by refusing to step aside. They've boxed themselves in to the point that they may not be able to force him out. I really really doubt they would go through the absolute chaos of a 25th Amendment removal during an election season with the guy still on the ballot.
If he does that, then there's nothing else happening but wait and see.
He needs a lot more than one good day to offset the debate, he needs to prove it was a one off. Meaning he needs to be on TV nonstop giving cogent candid interviews.
That's his best bet, but given that his cognitive decline is not at all news to people paying attention (mostly Republicans who are incentivized to watch him more critically), it seems quite possible that his supporters refuse to acknowledge the problem and give no one any other option but to wait it out. We've got several years of evidence that this strategy might work for him.
If he is unscripted in public and doesn't do well, then that works against him. He doesn't really have to do that again until the second debate, though.
“He doesn’t really have to do that again until the second debate”
That’s my whole point, he DOES have to do that more often, because an ok second debate won’t undo the disaster of the first. “50% of the time, the President can be cognitively viable in crunch time” won’t cut it.
He can’t wait it out this time because he’s lost the ability to make reasonable excuses for waiting it out - failure to appear frequently and candidly in public will be seen as proof that he can’t hack it.
People don't vote for Trump because they like him. They never have. Maybe some morons on TV or who like posting to social media do actually like him, but as someone from Trump country, I can count on one hand the number of people who actually like Trump, rather than the vast majority of people who simply despise what the liberals are up to.
My late wife's best friend is planning on voting for Trump again, and I can confirm that her view is that she is voting for Lesser Evil (or voting against Greater Evil, if you prefer).
Contrary to the narrative our illustrious and trustworthy pop culture media promote, just because you live in a red area, or disagree with the politics of our hegemonic elites, it doesn't mean you're a deplorable moron.
Many Thanks! Agreed!
You're underestimating the cynicism factor. Trump is absolutely a crook and a conman, but so are most national level politicians (though for sure their cons and crimes take very diverse forms). So the crook thing isn't going to affect my choice this November. I think most federal officials are bloodsucking leeches and rent-seekers. But I'm not a libertarian or an anarchist! A bloodsucking leech can be very helpful if he can protect you from even worse parasites.
I think all this focus on the election is misplaced. This man is president right now. He needs to step down right now. Someone who has good days and bad days, or is mostly coherent during the morning but less so in the afternoon has no business being President of the United States. I don't love Kamala Harris but if China invades Taiwan or we have another terror attack tomorrow, someone needs to be in charge, I'd rather it be her than hoping that the crisis hits before 7pm. Let's worry about the election once we have a competent human being in the presidency.
Yup! Melvin said similar things in https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-336/comment/60668315
Morbid question: Which nation is most likely to try to exploit Biden's cognitive decline first, Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea?
All of them at the same time.
Many Thanks! I really hope that they don't successfully solve _that_ coordination problem...
"I was that stupid. I didn’t say it openly, because I’m at least smart enough to have a high threshold for giving my opinion on political things I don’t know much about. But I thought it in my heart. "
Even as a non-American I've seen many times on TV he's doing weird stuff like trying to sit where there's nothing to sit, shaking hands of nonexistent people, unexplicably freezing in place etc. Was it something successfully screened by the USA media so nobody got to see them?
"So I think he should decline the nomination and endorse some likeable purple-state governor."
After 2 minutes of wikipediaing, I decided on Josh Shapiro which checks your boxes and as a bonus also is an Ashkenazi Jew who married another and made 4 kids. I hope he's the hawkest of all against Russia, China and Iran.
"Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded?"
I think the only reason all those camps came together to screw Bernie was because Bernie was anti-establishment so him being the candidate was a matter of life and death for them. As long as the candidate is within establishment it's difficult for them to stop their Byzantine intrigues among each other I guess.
I would've loved to see the DNC get humiliated with a Trump win but his soft stance against Russia makes me wish the democrats win for the greater good this time.
'Was it something successfully screened by the USA media so nobody got to see them?'
Half the media in the US screened this kind of thing out, half the media elevated it, depending on what side of the partisan divide they fell on.
Those who were surprised by the debate are those whose media diet was partisan such that this information didn't reach them, or who themselves were partisan such that they ignored the information they were receiving.
As Nate Silver's pointed out on Twitter, the chart of head to head polls _does_ show those candidates doing better than Biden. They have the same percentages in 'committed For', but Trump has fewer committed votes, and undecideds are higher. That means a higher chance of overcoming the gap and convincing enough undecideds to win the race. (Which needs about a 2% head to head advantage in national polls by his model.)
I feel like people are underrating the effect that a chaotic last minute primary at the convention would have on voters, the voters may even be underrating how they would react to such an event. The general sense of "Dems in disarray" that will undoubtedly come from such a convention certainly wouldn't reassure very many voters that the Democratic party is a party that's put together enough to govern, especially when compared to the Republican side where this whole issue has been settled for awhile now.
A chaotic convention combined with Kamala Harris as the new candidate (which seems very likely to me even though she is highly unpopular with the average voter) seems like it might actually be worse than dragging Biden across the finish line Weekend at Bernie's style. (Which is of course not to say that it's the most ethical choice).
That's a math question regarding how bad Biden will do as much as how much better someone else will do.
Harris is polling very poorly, and has been consistently low as VP, so picking her will probably not help the Democrats much at all.
I also agree that a very chaotic and split convention will likely draw negative attention. A relatively quick and relatively calm convention might actually make people feel much better about voting Democrat. Given Biden's recent performance, the Democrats being The Adults in the Room and taking care of their own business has a decent chance of giving them a bump. Getting away from Biden may as well, just because of how poorly he was already polling + his very bad performance in the debate.
I think that's a good chance that (Biden)+(Debate) < (Convention Chaos) in terms of approval, and ultimately helps the Democrats. They really shot themselves in the foot here, so I don't think there's anything close to a good outcome available.
Are there any markets for "Biden is replaced by a specific candidate" rather than just "Biden is replaced?" Otherwise, I'd worry about the generic-ballot effect - just like polls show a lot of support for a replacement but every conceivable specific replacement polls worse, I would expect that lots of people in the market are bullish on a generic Democratic replacement doing better than Biden but not optimistic on any specific replacement.
Betfair has separate 'Democratic Nominee' and 'Election Winner' markets, so we can infer conditional winning probabilities from those. Sometimes there's a bit of a spread between the available back and lay prices, and obviously they keep jumping around, but very roughly speaking, it has Biden at 24% to win conditional on being nominated, Harris 41%, Newsom 57%.
You have convinced me that the very best thing for America is for Trump to become President and decline into the scheduled senility, so that (a) he won’t run yet again and (b) we will have a bipartisan acceptance of the fact that youthful vigor matters when deciding who runs the country. And I say that as a 70-year-old who is seeing all this as a stark vision of my future.
Scott, I have to ask how familiar you are with dementia/sundowning and whether you personally watched the debate, because I would have expected you to be very familiar with those symptoms as a psych, but i have seen other people that I generally trust to have good takes arguing that Biden's debate performance looked like "dysfluency associated with fatigue (common in people with speech disorders)", and *not* dementia or sundowning because sundowning is associated with agitation and nervous energy, and if Biden had dementia, he would not be able to hide it in interviews or meeting with donors or the public or memorize soundbites, and that his aides would be keeping him away from everyone.
This post seems like a reaction to the reaction, rather than a reaction to actual events. The reactions to the event are part of reality also, and perception is part of reality, and perception is more important than reality in *predicting* politics, but it seems wise to keep actual reality in mind also.
I expect the markets to be overreacting to a single bad debate; I predict the odds on Biden will creep back as it becomes clear that he is old and tired and has a stutter but is not actually suffering dementia, to the extent that observers are capable of understanding the difference. So not very much, because they're mostly not.
Greatly appreciate this post, I'd looked at the prediction markets to see whether it was crazy for Dems to run Biden up to this point, and up to this point the markets generally did not think anyone had a better chance than Biden. I think they're now overreacting, and that they underestimate the difficulties involved in Biden stepping down, but I think they're right in that replacing Biden would increase the odds of a Dem win if they could do so frictionlessly.
Note that information is now leaking out that, no, this isn't an isolated incident.
And this information itself is almost certainly damage control - "Yeah, it's bad, but it's a new development, we weren't lying for the past five years about Biden's cognitive abilities, we've just been understandably misguided for the past six months".
Because, as bad as this looks, it looks way worse if this has been Biden's entire presidency. And a lot of people are desperately hoping this -hasn't- been his entire presidency, that Biden's family and administration and possibly the Democratic Party as a whole (or at least the parts of it that matter) haven't actively been gaslighting them for the past five years.
His aides HAVE been keeping him away from people, and he DOES have trouble memorizing sound bites. I mean yes there is probably some theoretical alternative that sort of looks like Biden did last week - but he’s 81, the prior should be progressive dementia until proven otherwise.
It's true that he doesn't do much off-the-cuff speaking, for us to know what his baseline is; and in the little part I saw where we are all being raped by our twisted sisters, his verbal mix-up didn't seem all that different even from his occasional mishaps with a teleprompter.
But haven't you noticed that he seems often to be in a sort of trance-like state? I guess where some people see "vacancy" there, others could see: he's exploring his interesting mind palace.
>I guess where some people see "vacancy" there, others could see: he's exploring his interesting mind palace.
<mild snark>
Could attempts (e.g. age limits) to avoid a repetition of this in the future be construed as putting a "No Vacancy" sign on the Oval Office? :-)
</mild snark>
Again with the stutter excuse! Just once I want to see him actually s-s-s-tutter. He doesn't. He makes up wild stories, he goes on bizarre tangents, he mangles quips from movies that never existed, he confuses black men, he brags about finally beating Medicare.
But the one thing he doesn't do is stutter. The gaslighting has to stop.
He might have had a stutter as a kid, and then grown out of it completely. That's actually quite common, but for some people the experience might be traumatizing enough to recount many decades later.
He also might have vocal techniques that he developed to get around a stutter, and still uses because that's they way he talks now.
Biden frequently shows signs of a stutter and more broadly long has displayed dysfluency, which people might describe as him getting tripped on words and losing his train of thought. It historically hasn't looked like it did during the debate, though you cannot rule out the effects of aging and fatigue worsening the presentation.
e.g.
https://x.com/i/status/1806724955515838684
This is from 2012 in a debate. Here you can see a stutter, associated word substitutions, and his line of thought getting disrupted. But he's also quite fast-talking and recovers from it.
Without more information than we have access to, it's pretty hard to come to any conclusions of what was going on there. It'd be reasonable to recommend a neuropsych eval, but of course everyone's an amateur doctor who thinks the Goldwater rule is for suckers.
"Stutter" is being used in a loose sense as a generic term for a speech impediment, I think — Biden certainly slurs his words, mangles syllables, trips over himself at times.
The grand bargain should be that Biden resigns effective immediately, Harris gets to be the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first female president” for 6 months, and the Dems run some abbreviated activity to figure out who the actual best candidate will be (with Harris considered but not guaranteed).
Or Harris can get a tap for a Supreme spot to replace Sotomayor. As a somewhat right leaning moderate I don’t really like this, but then Sotomayor is basically a partisan hack (don’t hate me, I actually like Kagan and increasingly KBJ as thoughtful, good judges even when I disagree). So Harris can’t be much worse.
Not your main point, but I wanted to add that I agree with you about Jackson - more is there than I expected, and so far she hasn't been a partisan shrill (despite being part of the party line splits that I find disappointing).
I've respected Kagan more than most, including some of the conservatives, but find Sotomayor to fill the hack role more than the other liberals.
Ditto.
I'm glad to hear that Ketanji Brown is turning out to be better than her "I have no idea how to define what a woman might be" answer indicated. Sure, that was the kind of awkward political manoeuvring one has to do when hit with a 'gotcha' question, but it did seem to fit too neatly with the narrative that she only got the nomination as a diversity quota candidate, with Biden having promised a black female justice nominee.
1. I'm a biased conservative, but I don't think Newsom's anywhere near as good as this post makes him out to be, and I'm surprised there are markets showing him doing well when the head-to-head poll cited in this post has him trailing Trump. If Newsom got nominated there would be nonstop attack ads showing people defecating on sidewalks and shoplifting in San Francisco.
2. We need a constitutional amendment that says nobody over the age of 75 can hold any office, elected or otherwise, in any branch of the federal government. If you're over 75, you can't be elected or appointed; if you're already in a position, you are removed on your 75th birthday. No exceptions.
When the dust settles, there should be momentum for an age cap. The gerontocracy will oppose it but perhaps grandfathering can reduce the opposition. Constitutional amendments are hard but they do get through. (I'm actually surprised that Democrats went along with capping president to two terms. Like, was their experience of FDR so negative that they had to prevent anything like that from happening again? Not to hear them tell it; FDR is one of their greatest heroes.)
I expect Republican support for such a limitation to be near unanimous, as it is very on-brand for the Republican party to save the Democrats from their worst impulses.
Seems awkward for the GOP to support such a limitation currently, when their presumptive presidential nominee just turned 78.
Not to mention that their longtime Senate leader is now 82 and the oldest Senator is a Republican who's now 90; the two oldest Supreme Court justices (75 and 73) are conservative heroes Alito and Thomas; the GOP has the three oldest state governors who are 79, 77, and 77; etc.
Presumably, under any such plan, anybody currently actively serving would be grandfathered in (heh)
>If Newsom got nominated there would be nonstop attack ads showing people defecating on sidewalks and shoplifting in San Francisco.
Hmm... Are the odds of Newsom high enough to motivate starting to film these ads now? I have no idea what the lead time is for attack ads.
>We need a constitutional amendment that says nobody over the age of 75 can hold any office, elected or otherwise, in any branch of the federal government.
I see the point about having a crisp criterion. It is a pity that this would exclude quite a few people who are still quite mentally capable, and it would miss people who have early onset cognitive deterioration. Ideally a better choice would be some sort of cognitive assessment, but that would lead to all sorts of grey areas...
> Biden has refused to step aside gracefully,
This strikes me as profoundly silly. It would be gross political malpractice to step aside now, for several reasons:
1. The debate was four days ago. The actual permanent effect on the polls will not be known for weeks.
2. There are ongoing negotiations re a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as re a possible violent conflict with Hezbollah. The moment he withdraws is the moment that US influence evaporates.
4. See also Ukraine.
5. Withdrawal now = weeks in intraparty jockeying over who will replace him, exacerbated by the fact that most potential candidates know that it might be now or never; if Raphael Warnock decides to run in 2028, he is going to have massive advantages over the rest of the field, both among voters and among party elites looking to electability in the general election. In contrast, if Biden announces at the convention that he is stepping down and endorsing X, the intraparty conflict, if any, will be much shorter and hence less damaging.
I took that to mean that Biden didn't step aside months ago (prior to the primaries entirely?) in a move that would have seemed much more gracious. Then the primaries could go forward as normal and not be clouded by an incumbent.
Did you deliberately misnumber this list?
I'm confused by sundowning.
The brain deteriorates with age. And people are more tired in the evening. But the brain doesn't deteriorate in the evening and regenerate by morning.
So it has to be something (as always) more complicated where the brain's functioning *as a function of wakefulness, energy levels, and a million other things* deteriorates. But then isn't that exactly the kind of thing stimulant medication could help with, to allow someone to function similarly in the evening as they would during the daytime?
Purportedly anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications may help improve cognitive function in sundowning adults (at least it relieves some of the symptoms), which dovetails nicely with some stuff Scott has covered about depression-as-error-in-priors, and hints at a causal factor in sundowning behavior.
The brain deteriorates with fatigue, which correlates with being up for 10+ hours, which correlates with nighttime. Then it recovers during sleep.
Biden is likely maximally medicated, and has been for years. While an extra dose of stimulants can give a shortterm boost, and he probably had this during the State of the Union, what goes up must come down; uppers have side effects, and the severity of sides increase exponentially while the benefits scale logarithmically.
One of the common features in people who experience sundowning is their sleep cycles get disrupted, sometimes resulting in days and nights completely reversing. And they still experience the symptom even though dusk for them is morning. And stimulants generally do not resolve the dysfluency that people are primarily focusing on in their amateur diagnostic assessment of Biden as having a cognitive impairment.
> We should expect [the conditional probability problem] to overestimate his performance. That is, imagine that tomorrow, Biden has completely recovered, he easily wins his next debate with Trump, and everyone agrees the most recent debate was just a fluke - in that world, he is both more likely to be nominated and more likely to win. Alternatively, if tomorrow he gets much worse and can’t even speak in full sentences, he’s much less likely to be nominated and much more likely to lose. Since the real world includes both those possibilities, restricting ourselves to the set of worlds where he gets nominated means we’re overestimating the chance that he wins.
If that's the case, then the market is also saying that there's option value in waiting rather than making a decision right away - there's information that's not yet revealed that is expected to affect both Biden's conditional chance of winning and the chance he gets nominated. I don't think this option value moves the needle on the overall probabilities, if it exists at all, but it would roughly if not exactly offset the "overestimating the chance he wins" part.
(in theory you have the same option value with any other candidate, but in practice I think we can agree that replacing the candidate *twice* between now and the election isn't realistic)
I'm still amazed, even after reading your response to “how could anyone possibly have been stupid enough to not realize that Biden was senile?”
You say: "Republicans have been ACCUSING Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now," but you don't say anything about direct sources of information. I've been watching the video of Biden looking like he's not all there anymore for years. How did you miss it? Undoubtedly, these things get worse over time, but there's been evidence of problems for years. In particular, the video from his visit to France recently was astonishing.
I wonder if you just don't follow any sources that show you the videos of Biden being out of it? I doubt most people saw the original, uncut video from France (the one with the parachutist landing): you need good sources. Perhaps you could benefit from adding some good conservative sources, that will cover things like this. Brit Hume on X is excellent. Many people on Fox News would have kept you apprised of this and other things the mainstream media won't cover; Greg Gutfeld is one I like myself.
Agreed. I saw a reference to that and was curious since it had not merited mention in the MSM at all, though it was just 3 weeks ago; so looked it up. I thought it was weirder than the debate in a way. Sure, no sooner did people start putting up videos of it than the response was "all faked". So did he or did he not sleep during the ceremonies, I don't know.
But if you watch a long video e.g. from The Guardian which I don't think has any reason to discredit Biden, he just seems out of it and automaton-like. There's a moment during the parachute business - never mind about the supposedly faked stuff, no need to invoke it - where Macron - in a manner that rather humanizes him for me - gives Biden a little wink, like, you can do it, we're in this together, buddy. Then when Macron was delivering his remarks - well, I can't say that I've ever had to sit by someone making a speech in a language I didn't understand - but *I think* the customary thing is to glance over and look attentive and appreciative. Biden looked like he was staring at a bug on the floor. Macron looked suitably awkward, like, it's just me, who thinks this is odd?
Appearances can be deceiving, as any smart kid who got shouted at in school for not *looking* like they were paying attention will tell you. I think this is an issue Scott is particularly sensitive to (he's written about how part of why he doesn't like appearing on camera is that he always looks like he's frowning in concentration/squinting in the light, even when he's actually feeling completely relaxed and comfortable), and I can't blame him for overcorrecting. If someone keeps making daily public appearances for years, plausibly you're going to find several hours of footage of them "staring off into the void" regardless of their mental acuity.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I was having a great time and someone said, "What's wrong? You look worried."
Scott sez:
>Speaking of elites - one other update I’ve had from this situation is that I’m less confident that some group fairly called “Democratic elites” is in control in any meaningful way. I always knew that the party had different factions and nobody had obvious, trivial control. But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out.
I have never seen a group that operates that way. It has always looked to me like the glue that holds groups together is a network of personal ties and loyalties and obligations. To remain a member or to rise, you simply have to keep feeding the members of your network what they signal that they want. This process has nothing whatever to do with individuals’ rational assessment of the situation the group is supposed to be managing.
I know a couple of people, A&B, who are deeply involved in the DNC, and one of them, B, is high enough up in it to be having meetings with people whose names you hear in the news. A recently told me the following story: B wrote a thoughtful, data-driven memo about how a subgroup in the DNC was being given far too much work to do, with the result that work quality suffered and subgroup members were quitting. B gave the report to C, who is a close personal friend, to present at a meeting of higher ups. B used to be C’s boss, but C was recently promoted to a position higher than B. B attended the meeting where their report was presented, and C had kept B's data about the subgroup’s unreasonable work load, but presented it as evidence of how committed the subgroup was and how much they were accomplishing. Afterwards, A asked B whether they had talked with C about why C had done that. B said that C had not, because C knew that B understood the reason C had done that: So early in C’s tenure it was important for them to come across as positive, and to not say things that imply that somebody had mismanaged a subgroup.
That's an interesting anecdote.
Seems to me all groups are like that. Argh! It's madness. Does this seem like weird dysfunction to you, rather than business as usual?
>it was important for them to come across as positive
It sounds just like the Challenger launch decision to me. Possibly also like the Bay of Pigs invasion decision.
All too much like (_commonly_ dysfunctional!)
>business as usual
I think that's typical of organizations that lose their purpose, and become ends in themself. It's like... a heavily unionized industry where the unions and the bosses pay more attention to each other and to dividing up their pie, while competition from overseas is making the pie shrink and dooming the entire company.
Is it more important to establish your own place in the Democratic Party, or is it more important to get the organization functioning better so that it can accomplish "its goals"? Of course, maybe you have to establish your own place before you can make it function better, but that seems to become habit and lead to a cycle where internal politics is prioritized above reform. (It's the problem with Social Security, in a way.) I think "The Wire"'s political threads in seasons 3-5 illustrated this fairly well.
"Still, for the past four years, every time Biden was going to do something - a press conference, a State of the Union, whatever - the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!” And then he would always do fine..."
Biden did NOT always do fine. How did you reach that conclusion?
> Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now.
Same. It was obviously cope in 2016, and in 2020. (And I said as much while predicting Trump would win and lose, respectively). I assumed this was on repeat but this time it was wrong. Obviously Republicans continue to lie anyway, as with today's "end of quote" lie, so this is just a matter of a broken clock being right twice a day.
Nonetheless, it is right. Biden needs to step aside for the sake of Our Democracy.
Receipt: https://x.com/powerfultakes/status/1311255586907000833
Here are the lead stories at the Associated Press and CNN right now, two stories that were posted within one hour of each within the past two hours:
headline: "As Biden digs in, some top Democrats want him out of the race this week"
lede: "Defiance has become as much a part of Joe Biden’s psychology as Delaware. But as the president and his inner circle dig in following his disastrous debate performance last week, a growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want him to step aside for the good of the party – and the country...."
headline: "Many Democrats feel powerless to replace Biden as party leaders fight to contain debate fallout"
lede: "Bernie Sanders describes President Joe Biden’s recent debate performance as “painful.” In an interview, he says he’s not confident that Biden can win this fall. But the progressive senator from Vermont does not want Biden to step aside. Instead, Sanders, who served as Biden’s chief rival in the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination fight, is calling on voters to adopt “a maturity” as they view their options this fall...."
Both articles then report that Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett today became the first Democratic federal elected official to publicly call for Biden to step down as the party's presidential nominee. Also they say that the president will sit down tomorrow with several (unnamed) Democratic state governors who requested the meeting.
It's kind of funny because Doggett, although a solid conservation vote, has never gained much of a stature in the House, and some may feel has been coasting in his seat (or seats, as the map changes) for what seems like decades. He doesn't ever have a high enough profile to deliver the goods like one of his predecessors, LBJ man Jake Pickle - but he is never seriously challenged. At the same time, he has often been invoked as someone who's holding up progress up the ladder for younger Democrats - there being no statewide avenues to higher office in Texas. Indeed, the cast of understudies has turned over several times at this point.
ETA: I should add that it doesn't necesssarily speak poorly of him if he's not made a success in D.C.
Biden could easily lay this to rest simply by having some open, give-and-take press conferences. Which he will not do and has not done his whole presidency. He takes one or two questions, gives odd, belligerent answers, and stalks off, or is led off by his staff. Contrast that to the Biden of 10 years ago.
I work with the elderly every day (RN). It's clear he is slipping, has well-slipped.
The guy saying that 150 million Americans died from gun violence since 2007 (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/18/fact-check-joe-biden-botched-stats-covid-gun-deaths/5461700002/ ) was the moment it really hit me. How would anyone with a reasonably functioning brain not only say this, but also not even instantly realize that he misspoke?
I had a close relative with dementia, who, when he could still talk in complete sentences, would have exactly the same verbal hiccup: whatever he was talking about, it was always about millions of people. "100 million people agree that..." I don't know if it's a common hiccup for people with dementia, or if it's something they get from watching too much TV, but I used to hear a lot of this.
Scott, I'd humbly suggest trying to get news from outside the liberal bubble (and I don't mean Fox News). RealClearPolitics, for one, does a pretty good job of aggregating both sides - and they are in general a good operation, with good people contributing (Sean Trende, for example).
> The guy saying that 150 million Americans died from gun violence since 2007
> How would anyone with a reasonably functioning brain not only say this, but also not even instantly realize that he misspoke?
Definitely a bad mistake. I agree, after his debate performance Joe probably should step down.
“The crooked Biden Justice Department was locked and loaded to take me out at Mara Largo raid.”
Definitely not a mistake. A knowing inflammatory lie.
On a scale based on integrity, which is worse?
Who knew that shamelessness would prove a political superpower?
What on earth do you see in that toad?
Huh. The documents say that they were allowed to use deadly force. But, you know, this also reads as a more general statement that they went all out to take him down, not necessarily by deadly force - and that is factually correct. I'm a bit disappointed you didn't pick something that would be obviously factually wrong - Trump has no shortage of such statements.
But, you know, as to what half the country sees in Trump is that his administration was obviously not a wrecking ball taken to this country, unlike this administration. The sky didn't fall. Wars didn't start. Whatever bodycount is blamed on him for not telling the rioters (incited by FBI) to disperse more emphatically is in single digits. There was no censorship, no persecution of political opposition.
Whereas this administration is a wrecking ball. 12 millions pretty much completely unchecked immigrants imported because they wanted more Dem voters and more cheap labor, without any concern for what this will do to this country. DEI weaponized to subvert all kinds of institutions by hiring the less competent over the more competent. Overwhelming pressure to censor speech the government doesn't like - to the point where they asked Amazon to take down books. Persecution of political opposition, culminating in trying to bankrupt and jail the front-runner presidential candidate of the opposing party, who happens to be supported by about half of the country. I could continue, but this is already more than enough.
I don't quite understand what got into the heads of people who think that Trump is a bigger problem than the above and more. Really, Trump talking crap and writing mean tweets is a bigger problem than the above? I could understand the fear of the unknown, but remember, we had him for 4 years, and the sky did not fall.
Thanks for the response. Sincerely. I’m going to sleep on my reply. I’m waiting for my body to win it’s first battle with Covid so I’m retiring early for a few more days till I get a couple of negative antigen tests.
For now I’ll just say I see things differently than you. I’m not basing my aversion to the man on liberal bubble media spin but on his own words and actions. For example balking at lowering flags to half staff after Senator McCains death. A man who was held as a POW in Hanoi for 5 1/2 years. This isn’t a mean tweet. It’s contempt for a man who made a great sacrifice for his country . Trump expresses his patriotism by dry humping Old Glory when he walks on a rally stage. Something like that is disgusting to me. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how anyone can stand Trump.
Get well soon! (Also, keep in mind that negative tests might take much longer than your recovery.)
What's your opinion on all the "ha ha only joking" online suggestions, since the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that Biden should order Trump assassinated?
Can't be accused of doing anything bad because presidential immunity, just take the guy out for the sake of Democracy and whatever, then retire to well-earned rest free from prosecution.
Of course we don't mean this *seriously* but....if he did suddenly drop dead, wouldn't it be great?
It just makes me wonder does nobody else remember the accusations that the Republicans put targets (literally) on Democratic politicians and Sarah Palin was responsible for the assassination attempt on Gabby Giffords?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting#Reaction
" In March 2010, Giffords had expressed concern about the use of crosshairs on a national midterm election map on Sarah Palin's campaign webpage denoting targeted congressional seats, including Giffords', in Arizona's 8th district. Shortly after the map's posting and the subsequent vandalizing of her office that month, Giffords said, "We're in Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action." At that point in the interview, however, the interviewer said, "campaign rhetoric and war rhetoric have been interchangeable for years." The image was removed from Palin's "takebackthe20" website following the January shootings. Palin responded to her critics in a January 12 video, rejecting the notion that anyone other than the gunman could bear any responsibility for the Tucson shooting, and accusing the press of manufacturing a "blood libel" to blame her and the right wing for the attacks. No link was proven between the crosshairs map and the shooting, and it is unclear whether Loughner ever saw the map."
I suppose thirteen years is a long time and the silly-billies posting this kind of "ha ha funny joke" weren't old enough to be aware of what was going on back then.
>What's your opinion on all the "ha ha only joking" online suggestions, since the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that Biden should order Trump assassinated?
Give me a break. You are just throwing up chaff here. I know I told you a few days ago that I don't seek out trolls and knuckleheads on the internet. I don't need the opinions of idiots.
My take on something like Biden should shoot Trump because of immunity would be "That's really fucked up. Shut up and go away." Do you think for a moment I would defend it?
The ordering the assassination of a rival by a president hypothetical *did* come up in January of this year in the context of Trump's immunity of prosecution
"Former President Trump’s legal team suggested Tuesday that even a president directing SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent would be an action barred from prosecution given a former executive’s broad immunity to criminal prosecution.
The hypothetical was presented to Trump attorney John Sauer who answered with a “qualified yes” that a former president would be immune from prosecution on that matter or even on selling pardons."
So *Trump's* attorney said a president would be immune in a case like that half a year ago. Get you facts straight. Did you even hear about that? If you saw some asshole saying Biden should order Trump's death they were probably doing a call back to that abomination. It's in the transcript of their oral arguments.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4398223-trump-team-argues-assassination-of-rivals-is-covered-by-presidential-immunity/
On a tangential note, I drove through Wasilla Alaska last week, where Sarah Palin got her political start. Nice little town. Couldn’t quite make out Russia from there that day though. Kinda overcast. ;)
Thing is, I'm seeing these "ha ha only joking" posts being shared around approvingly by mutuals who are, although liberal to progressive, not what I'd consider total raving loons - not trolls and knuckleheads.
So while I don't take any of this as serious "we should assassinate Drumpfler" suggestions, the fact that there's a kind of "he is that bad a threat" does make me wonder. Your own opinion seems to be that he's not just a poor candidate and the rest of it, but a uniquely awful threat.
So the "trolls and knuckleheads" seem to be more in tune with your assessment of the terribleness of Trump, rather than just that he's a braggart blowhard who, astoundingly. managed to get elected to be president of the USA but who, while in office, didn't blow the world up.
As to the rest of what you say, was Obama ever prosecuted for the drone strikes that killed American citizens overseas? I imagine that is more along the lines of what the "Trump's lawyer totes said Trump could murderate his rivals!!!!" argument was really about - if a sitting president orders something that ends up in the death of such and such persons, can they be prosecuted?
Even the ACLU - and yeah, I know it's them scaremongering for fund raising - issued a press release back in 2010 about "Obama can kill any American he wants!!!"
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/obama-administration-claims-unchecked-authority-kill-americans-outside-combat-zones
"Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority To Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones
The Obama administration today argued before a federal court that it should have unreviewable authority to kill Americans the executive branch has unilaterally determined to pose a threat. Government lawyers made that claim in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charging that the administration’s asserted targeted killing authority violates the Constitution and international law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments from both sides today."
> Your own opinion seems to be that he's not just a poor candidate and the rest of it, but a uniquely awful threat
I’m in pretty good company in that opinion. It’s shared by Mike Pence and the bulk of the officials that worked in his cabinet.
If Trump's reelection represented an existential threat to democracy (which I don't believe), I'm not sure if it would be wrong for Biden to off him. That's an interesting moral dilemma.
What I'm even more astounded by is how the hell I ended up sort of defending Trump and the Trumpists, or MAGAtards, or however one wishes to call them.
I always said that were I American, or had emigrated to the USA like so many family and countrypeople, I'd be a Democrat voter like many's the Irish before me. But sometime post-Reagan, the Democrats went to the likes of me "Fuck off, poor white non-college educated working-class/lower middle class with socially conservative views, we don't need or want you and the sooner you deplorables die off the better for the world".
So here I am, saying "let's be fair to the MAGAtards for who amongst us, my brethren, may not one day find themselves washed up on the opposite shore, left behind by the tide turning?"
You might or might not remember a bit of my backstory. Working in a shirt factory after school and Saturdays in high school rather than going out for the basketball or hockey team. Clothing was still being made in America then. Arrow shirts were manufactured in my hometown. Followed by working in an iron mine for more than a decade after graduation.
Donald Trump’s pitch is to people with an experience like that. I don’t buy it for a second. I know a Grade A grifter when I see one. I wouldn’t want a guy like that for a team member, a coworker or a neighbor. He is just a disgrace.
Oh, I do see your point of view, and I'm not saying Trump is genuinely "a friend to the working man".
But it's been left for him to pick up those fifty dollar bills lying on the sidewalk, as it were. Hillary and her basket of deplorables was the stupidest thing any Democratic politician could have said in public, and nobody on that side seemed interested in playing it down, rather it seemed "well gosh we all think that but did she have to say the quiet part out loud?"
Abortion is the make-or-break issue for me, and the Democrats seem to have gone full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes, abortions for everyone in the room! on that, pushing out the pro-life Democrats and sticking to a party line of "we need those Planned Parenthood and Emily's List endorsements".
I was genuinely surprised about the Supreme Court and Roe vs Wade under Trump, because it seemed to be the same old "Republicans appeal to pro-life voters then when in power do damn-all" business as usual, but Trump of all people got something major done. I think in this case he was rather like the dog who caught the car and now what does he do with it, but it was him rather than anyone else. I'm still not sure that we haven't somehow slipped sideways to a parallel dimension, but wow. Actually achieving a policy goal.
For whatever reason, Trump's defense team took the approach that the president should have absolute immunity for all acts, despite the lack of support for this in the law. Maybe they just took the most extreme view in favor of the defendant. So the lawyer had to either say that the president was immune from prosecution for ordering the military to assassinate people, or admit their entire legal argument was BS.
Then we have Sotomayor's moronic dissent, where she equated the immunity for official presidential acts back to the Seal Team Six assassination. Which anyone not made stupid by bias can clearly see ordering the military to murder other Americans is not a constitutional prerogative of the President.
I'm pretty sure Palin got a financial judgment from the NYT for that nonsense.
ETA: which episode of course told anyone paying attention, who wanted to create just such an effect.
> “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. But the flip side of that is that every horrible giant deception was perpetrated by people saying “I’m telling little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good”. '
Really? You are saying this with a straight face? IIRC you didn’t want to speak out too aggressively against Trump. “He’ll just do more or less Republican stuff.” In fact you seemed kind of proud of your restraint in not writing an honest journeyman’s takedown of him.
So the decade of a firehose of lies from the moral cretin is some lesser matter? Your scrupulosity seems a bit late to the game.
This just doesn’t add up.
Yeah, I think Scott isn't generalizing enough here. "little white lies that don’t matter, for the greater good" is a subset of "lies, because I think they'll produce the outcome I want". And one big difference there is that what people want isn't always "the greater good".
I'm not seeing your complaint; where does Scott imply that any of Trump's lies are "some lesser matter"?
Scott has already pretty thoroughly condemned Trump:
"I’ve never been the slightest bit of a Trump supporter. Since he came onto the national stage, I have called Trump “a bad president”, “randomly and bizarrely terrible”, “an emotionally incontinent reality TV show host”, and “an incompetent thin-skinned ignorant boorish fraudulent omnihypocritical demagogue”. I’ve accused him of “bizarre, divisive, ill-advised, and revolting” rhetoric, worried that his election might “lead directly to the apocalypse [or] the fall of American democracy”, and called his administration “a disaster”. I’ve urged blog readers to vote for literally anyone except him and to donate money to the ACLU to stop him. If you want to accuse me of being pro-Trump, or even lukewarm on disliking Trump, I don’t know what else to tell you."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/29/dogs-and-wolves-in-defense-of-some-past-posts/
I signed on here after that post. I wish I had seen it before my comment.
I joined about when Scott deleted SSC and ACX started. I don’t think I’ve seen this sort of direct criticism since I’ve been here. It’s not like I haven’t been looking for it. I really don’t like Trump for the reasons Scott lists above.
Since Scott is on record for this, I apologize to him.
I don’t think I’ll have much luck finding the ACX comment I assume I’m misremembering where I thought Scott said something to the effect that he didn’t write an unequivocal statement about the awfulness of 45.
I think I can come up with a paraphrase of the sentence in my apparently faulty memory and I’ll try some Google search magic to come up with the actual wording I misremember or misconstrued. I recall it being something like “people wanted me to say this about Trump, but I didn’t or wouldn’t”
Again. Sorry.
You might be remembering something from his “Grading my Trump Predictions” post.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mantic-monday-grading-my-trump-predictions?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Scott was being fair minded. When the more hysterical were predicting gay conversion torture camps and jackbooted mobs roaming the streets murdering minorities, how oh how can I flee to Canada before The Handmaid's Tale becomes fact, he was going "Trump is terrible but if elected he'll be mediocre, not the Antichrist".
In this entire comment thread, I see Scott being accused of ignoring bad shit done by/lying FOR the Republicans and AGAINST the Democrats, and ignoring bad shit done by/lying FOR the Democrats and AGAINST the Republicans.
Seems to me he's doing things right!
There are, to put it mildly, no good options for the Democratic party. Personally I think Biden needs to do a huge media blitz. Live interviews every few days. If he keeps it together, the narrative could change. And if he can't, then it's time to get someone new. Hoping it blows over (the seeming current plan) just won't cut it.
If he can't hold it together then it's time for a convention. It seems unthinkable, undemocratic, but it was actually the norm for most of the country's founding, and in most countries, the party picks the candidate.
The only problem is who. Harris is frankly not in the top 5 or perhaps even 10 most electable Democrats. But pushing her out is almost impossible, and practically speaking no other candidate can use the $240 million war chest. Keeping Harris as VP and putting someone more electable as the candidate is the obvious best strategy, but obviously there would be huge pushback - Harris is the second most powerful person in the party with backing from Jim Clyburn and other important figures. But assuming it were possible to get someone else Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer or Andy Beshear would be my picks.
The other problem is that Harris now has the taint of the “Biden senility cover up conspiracy” on her. so she either has to distance herself from it, or the party needs to bury her with it.
That's a good point. Also, I learned today that she can only use the campaign funds if she's the nominee. Being the VP candidate isn't good enough. To use the campaign funds, it's basically Biden/Harris, or Harris/someone else. There is no advantage to keeping her on as VP and having someone else as the nominee.
There is another path though, Biden can simply refund everyone or convert to a PAC. If that happens, then maybe the ideal Whitmer/Shapiro ticket could actually happen. Lock up two swing states, play heavy defense in Nevada and Wisconsin - probably win the presidency.
Back to reality, it's just looking more and more likely that Harris is simply the nominee.
Why can’t Biden select a different running mate? Could he run as “Biden/Whitmer” with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge that he plans to resign on Jan 21 2025?
I dunno. That seems like an all downside plan. It would be seen as an admission of Biden's weakness while still keeping him around as a liability. Either remain resilient, have Biden prove himself, or have him step aside. A halfway measure seems worse than either.
The upside in keeping $200 million as campaign funds isn't worth it imo. Biden raised $600 million dollars in August and September in 2020. Whoever the nominee is will catch up quickly.
I don’t think Dems should actually implement this plan, but it should be explored as a stick to make Harris play ball.
Basically, offer Harris this deal:
1) Biden retires effective immediately, making Harris first female president BUT she has to accept some sort of abbreviated primary / open convention she is not guaranteed to win
OR
2) Biden stays in the race and the Dems pick a different running mate for him
Harris would not have Biden's cognitive decline, but wouldn't she inherit at least a large chunk of dislike for policies that happened during Biden's administration? The open borders, the additional push towards Woke?
This is the dem and dem donor elite strategy in action. Why would we think something as nefarious and duplicitous as politics would never ever chose to use strategies which include an element of confusion which works to their potential advantage.
Dems have zero time to set up or promote a different candidate. Kamala is a joke, a stop gap to make even a senile biden look OK.
As such, they'll have to rely on style over substance and a set of empty sympathetic promises to carry on bidens legacy or whatever. A legacy of racist friends, racist laws, and working for the credit card lobby while taking bribes across his family, so like...typical Washington political life.
That debate was the slow execution of his candidacy and was done on purpose and allowed to happen on purpose to drag this out and garner sympathy about a fake good man with good values who just got too old.
Trump can't run against an unknown. An august surprise candidate is the hard deadline dems can't ignore and it probably is messy with many elite favoured horses all vying for the top spot from donors. Right now they are waiting for polls and such so their donors and owners can decide which generic dem to try their chances with. This is their primary, sans voters.
This is exactly their strategy to get more information and to set up a story to shift blame onto biden personally over time. A sort of accelerated Regan effect where he is lionised and yet none of his actual policies or actions are ever considered in detail. Regan is the perfect and most recent model of a senile president and how to handle his marketing. Of ourselves dems would try to do that.
So how does one know when a loved one is senile and too demented to live on their own anymore?
They ask who's the president, and what day of the week is it?
At least, people pitching 'assisted living' regard one's answer to those two questions as enough to get you committed.
Mr. Biden would likely get the first one right -- with perhaps an oblique anecdote about being raised by Puerto Ricans or his uncle being brunch for cannibals -- but I'm not so sure about the second.
I'm only 76, but I've lost a hundred pounds and several organs, and have days when I lose my car in several parking lots.
After about a month of being retired I started to lose certainty on day-of-the-week, and obviously the people who make these tests up are employed. Bias!
ha, that does sound true
"Most Democrats wish RBG would have retired when she had the chance..."
This should read "wish RBG had retired when she had the chance." Common mistake!
Approval voting would fix this
Haha, I am an evil person who is deceiving my friends and the world.
Sorry, opposition reflex.
PS: My wife asks that you call them minions instead of aides.
If you really want a laugh, then fivethirtyeight still has Biden as a 48% chance to win https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/?cid=rrpromo
I've just realised something really depressing though, which is that assuming Trump wins we're going to have to go through this whole thing again over the next four years. Trump is only three years younger than Biden, he will pass Biden's current age before his term is out. Democrats will undoubtedly sieze on every single misstep that Trump makes over the next four years as evidence that he too is non compos mentis. Republicans will be the ones saying "no, he's totally fine". Divining the truth will be damn near impossible.
I guess, though, that there's easy ways to prove that you're still with it if you are -- give an off-the-cuff speech without a teleprompter. If Trump keeps doing those, it'll be hard to say that he's turning into Biden. It's only if they start hiding Trump indoors and keeping him away from impromptu speaking engagements that we'll know something is actually wrong.
"It's only if they start hiding Trump indoors and keeping him away from impromptu speaking engagements that we'll know something is actually wrong."
If Stephen Miller is the Edith Wilson in that scenario, then something may actually be right for once.
This is a good example of how the people in power are much less competent than imagined by their fans or their conspiracy-theorist enemies. They're affected with group-think and dogmatism just like their followers. Biden's team could have had him refuse to debate Trump because he's a "convicted felon." I doubt swing voters would have cared. After all, Trump was able to get away with refusing to debate his GOP primary rivals. But Biden's team didn't do that, either because the old man refused or because they were too incompetent or group-thinky to see it.
If Biden drops out, it's an admission he's no longer fit for office, which means he must also resign.
That is a very good point. At least he will have to explain why he does not also resign.
...this is a sufficient reason why he is likely to continue to deny he has any problem, and that he will stay on till the end.
LBJ didn’t, neither does Biden.
"But I thought if the party was threatened, some important people could meet in a room and talk things out. Wasn’t this what happened when Obama endorsed Biden over Bernie, everyone pivoted in lockstep, and Bernie’s campaign imploded? I mean sure, maybe this was bad, but didn’t it at least demonstrate “state capacity” that the party could use in more important situations?"
That was a situation where, iirc, the main immediate actions were Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropping out of the race right before Super Tuesday and endorsing Biden. Klobuchar was 59 years old at the time and a U.S. Senator. Buttigieg was then 38 and the former mayor of South Bend.
Offers of future benefits - and subtle threats - from other elected officials and major donors have credible leverage for candidates in the situations of Klobuchar and Buttigieg in 2020. Buttigieg was later named to a cabinet position, Secretary of Transportation, in the Biden Administration, for example. Klobuchar and Buttigieg were both likely to be candidates in future campaigns, including future presidential primary candidates.
In the case of Biden, what meaningful offers (or subtle threats) can anyone make to Joe and Jill Biden? Whether today, or convincing him 1 or 2 years ago to decide not to run for re-election. The Presidency is clearly his last political office. An incumbent President is going to be able to raise enough money to fund a campaign. Anything that can be offered or threatened pales in comparison with a credible chance - even if well below 50% - to remain President.
Addition: in checking the history, Obama's endorsement of Biden occurred in mid-April 2020. At that point, the campaign for the Democratic nomination was de facto over. Sanders had withdrawn a few days earlier.
I think that Scott is referring to earlier events that did not include a public endorsement by Obama.
Oof. You had a rare opportunity to notice when a true fact penetrated your bubble of selected, curated sources of information. Most facts, sadly, do not have these conveniently packaged moments where the truth suddenly becomes undeniable. Ideally, this would be the time for humility and reflection. Sadly, instead, you just decided to reinforce your bubble with a lame both-sides-ism about Trump. Your choice is not between liars on the left and liars on the right, you know! There ARE reasonable voices on the right, who aren't yelling about Pizzagate or vaccines not working, but were noticing Biden's cognitive decline and how managed all his appearances were. And there are honest people on the left who were noticing it too - and apparently these aren't sources you trust, either!
How many other facts do you, and everyone you listen to, filter out because they inconveniently help Republicans?
Well, you can never successfully forecast what will happen, and I'm sorry prediction markets but who would have thought that what looked like a boring, coin-toss re-run of 2020 would blow up like this?
Now (allegedly) one of Harris' delegates threatens that if Kamala isn't chosen, they'll blow up the party. I don't know how reliable this site is or what it's biases are, but if the Democratic Party is faced with:
(1) Stick with Biden - but there's a real problem with that
(2) Pick Kamala - but the problem is that she's probably unelectable
(3) Pick somebody else - but the problem is that the Harris delegates will raise hell over racist sexism
Then maybe option (1) really will look more and more like the least worst of the bad outcomes.
https://redstate.com/levon/2024/07/02/kamala-harris-delegate-says-they-will-blow-up-the-democrat-party-if-a-white-man-is-chosen-over-her-n2176299
"Kamala Harris delegate, Areva Martin, appeared on Stephen A. Smith's podcast, and let's just say the Democrat Party will implode if a white man not named Joe Biden becomes the Democrat nominee. It was only a matter of time for someone to say the quiet part out loud.
Here is what Martin told Stephen A. Smith:
You've got to build consensus, and there is not consensus right now. You pick a white man over Kamala Harris -- black women, I can tell you this: We're gonna walk away, we're gonna blow the party up."
The kicking and screaming over "will Biden be gently crowbarred out of the nomination and if so, who will replace him?" is looking to be prime entertainment for those of us lucky enough not to be stuck having to vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum as our next leader of the nation.
If I were a betting man (and knew where to place it) I would put a substantial sum on Harris being the Democratic contender in the November US presidential election.
It is extremely risky to bypass her unless she steps down voluntarily. And why on Earth should she – this is her chance in a lifetime.
If she is squeezed out in the August 19-22 Democratic Convention, as you point out her people in the party will get boiling mad at the party elders and whoever puts him/herself in front of her - and who can blame them.
Plus, she probably formally controls the Biden/Harris campaign funds (together with Biden). So without her consent it becomes at best very cumbersome to fund the campaign of someone else. Serving as a massive disincentive for anyone else to put themselves forward in front of her.
If she then goes on to win against Trump, everyone in the party is reasonably happy.
And if she loses, all of today’s would-be contenders, including lily-white males, can then credibly say “ok everyone, we tried with a minority candidate, and unfortunately it did not work. So why not try someone like me in 2028?” …without risking massive pushback from Harris and her people.
In short, the forces are aligned so that “Harris 2024” is the most rational choice for everyone involved in the decision.
That's only if Harris is happy to be a dying duck candidate with a very slim chance of winning. If she loses, the screeching about sexism (as per after Hillary lost) will be turned up to eleven, because now it will have racism to go along with it, and of course blaming the Old White Guys in power in the party for killing her chances, throwing her under the bus after Biden mucked it up, and forcing her to run a campaign that everyone knew would lose. It wasn't her fault! (even if she is deemed unelectable).
Unless she gets the offer of a very plum job down the line, and that's rather "live horse and get grass" - 'sure, Kamala, when I win in 2028 I'll definitely appoint you as Secretary of State for something or other!' Or maybe a judicial appointment between now and then? That might be a bargain she would be willing to make, in exchange for being the sacrificial lamb to take over from Biden.
I think Newsom etc. would be much smarter to wait until 2028 for a clear run at the nomination and presidency.
EDIT: Though I agree, if someone can work out where and when to bet, and on which horse (be it Harris or another), they'll make a small fortune. I suppose this is where we'll see if the prediction markets are worth their salt!
...watching a few clips of Harris this morning, I begin to understand why not everyone are confident she is a sufficient replacement to beat Trump.
Still, if I were her, it would have to be an offer of a very plummy plum job indeed.
Partly because of my strong bargaining position, but perhaps even more because bowing out would signal to everyone I ever encounter, and for the rest of my life, that I did not think of myself as sufficiently competent to win over Trump.
It's really tough, because I think she and everyone else was expecting a run in 2028 which would have given her all that time to build up her public image as a credible candidate.
But right now it's a very short period of time to get her campaign up and running, there's the mistrust and disappointment engendered by how badly Biden did (see the usual water carriers in the media coming out with how he should step down instead of the boilerplate 'Republicans lie about our Best President In The History of the USA, Orange Man Bad') - though how long that will last is hard to estimate - and her lack of charisma. While "vote for her because she's a woman and she's black" may get out some votes, it's not really a position to fire up the nation.
Against that, as you say, is "I didn't think I could win against Trump" being a bad look.
i think you should lose scott. your team is full of bad thinkers, thinkers that put you in this predicament. the other team is winning with a madman at the helm. they are *beating* you with someone you "think" is a madman.
clearly, your team is not as good as you think they are. as an independent, i think you should lose. i think your team should not win. why should the group that stood around while their candidate was losing it slowly for many years, that choose a diversity hire VP all those years ago, and decided not to change VP's sooner like Roosevelt did have power?
people who are smart make decisions that you think 'there's no way this works' and it works out for them. that's not what's happening for your team right now. you're like the white lie teller, but your white lie is that you're being a good guy, and your team is good. no one thinks they're committing evil, they're just helping the group that made sooo many poor decisions win.
still love your blog, but i can't believe you missed an egg on your face for so long
It is silly to not draw any distinctions between a “team’s” values/policy goals on the one hand, and their tactical effectiveness on the other hand. It is not exactly news that neither political party is full of rationalists. I have already not been especially impressed by the political tactics of the “team” whose values and policy goals I am broadly aligned with. Why should additional evidence that they are poor *tactical* thinkers mean that I should want them to lose to the team whose values and policy goals I disagree with?
As an independent, why do you choose the party to support based on tactical effectiveness and not by deciding which party’s values/policy goals you are more in alignment with?
some exercise is better than none, and i'd rather die in the ocean than get stuck in a bog.
i really never cared for the monarchs of the oil rich middle east but: they are doing a lot better than i expected. my beliefs of what a good society can be are growing. having money, opportunity, and chance are better than nice beliefs. i still aim to have good ones, but i find for living humans it's better to have activity than non activity.
the 'good' belief groups are well meaning and not stupid locally, but they seem dumb in the long run.
The "sundowning" explanation for Biden's debate performance doesn't square with the fact that he got better as it went on, and was better still at the event afterwards (leading people to joke that they used the wrong clone at the debate.)
He was better with a teleprompter. Being better when you have a teleprompter does not count.
I didn't think it was linear. It looked like he went up and down a few times.
Summary of my latest post:
You, for a given value of "you", should seriously be taking time right now to re-evaluate everything you think you know. The administration and the media have been lying to you - possibly they lied to themselves first, but they definitely have been lying to you.
Your opinions about the Supreme Court, about January 6th, about Trump himself, should all be subjects of some internal soul-searching as you consider how and why you have arrived at your beliefs, given that you've just been surprised by information that a substantial portion of the country, and by all accounts most of the rest of the world, has known for years.
Over the course of those years, the same people who have informed all of your political beliefs have been lying to you about this thing.
If your response to the debate is "but Trump" - if you think the right thing to do is still vote Biden, because, even with this performance, he is after all still better than Trump - then, let me be perfectly clear:
YOU HAVE NOT LEARNED ANYTHING.
You will be taken in by the next lie. You will be taken by surprise by the next bombshell. You have chosen to be ignorant.
Which is not to say that the correct thing to do is vote for Trump!
The correct thing to do at this point in time is to be re-evaluating what you think you know. Maybe, at the end of that, you will still believe the correct thing to do is vote for Biden. But if that is your belief right now, before you have undertaken a serious project of re-evaluating how and why you know that is the right thing to do, then you no longer get to claim to be a rational person, you no longer get to claim to be a smart person. You're just another partisan whose beliefs are determined, not by a rational process of evaluating evidence, but by what your party says to believe.
For me it was after October 7 when all the people who talked so loudly about racism turned out to be the most racist and intolerant of all
The beauty of it is they announce their bigotry proudly and loudly -- which makes the job of personnel managers easier when screening job applicants. No point in considering people whose whole education, vita and employment history is built on 'cognizant dissonance'. Dishonesty is dishonesty.
We all (normies or non-rationalists) know that politicians lie all the time. And yet, reverse ignorance is not knowledge, so it is not that simple to find real truth by negating everything they say. Most people just don't delve into that too deeply. Biden will be forgotten in a year or two.
What concerns me is constant bulling about climate change. Many new restrictions, taxes and generally bad policies will be introduced with the pretext of the climate change. In general, I agree that the world is warming and it is mostly due to human activity. It will cause some problems. The issue I have with politicians is that they propose solutions that are worse than the change itself. And that those solutions probably won't have much effect anyway.
In general it is ok to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible, ideally reaching zero. But we also need to develop a stronger economy to be able to make a switch successfully. The policies that aim towards soft or hard degrowth are counterproductive to these goals. It is not just politicians don't understand the economic principles, they actively lie about them.
Pretty much agreed on all points.
>The policies that aim towards soft or hard degrowth are counterproductive to these goals.
And counterproductive to almost any goals towards making peoples' lives generally better. Every worry I've heard about population decline applies towards economic shrinkage with many times the force.
This is also true. Republicans make a lot of good points, but their stance on the Covid vaccine is endlessly frustrating to me - the assumption is because the elites pushed it, it must be toxic. Reversed ignorance is not knowledge!
What do Republicans say about covid vaccine?
Vaccine mandates were abomination and transgression of our rights. It is sad that the US institutions allowed those mandates. Especially sad that the CDC did not follow scientific evidence.
Vaccine mandates caused a lot of resistance and now even child vaccination rates are falling in certain countries.
I was surprised to learn that some ACT readers still believe that the fact that covid vaccines does not stop covid infection is considered controversial. It is not.
Yeah OK, I think you can have a principled opposition to vaccine mandates, but it is a medical fact that at the height of the Covid pandemic, vaccines saved way more lives than they cost.
So a vaccine mandate - forcing someone to take an action that is good for their health - could be considered analogous to, say, banning alcohol. Principled libertarians can reasonably oppose this. I primarily object to the characterisation that vaccines are net harmful.
Covid vaccination does not stop Covid infection, but it significantly reduces the probability of severe or life threatening infection. Again, medical fact.
How is this related to Republicans?
The only fact I know about the US is that Democrats delayed approval of vaccine to hurt Trump's chances of re-election.
Now about vaccine effectiveness: yes, for elderly and certain risk groups vaccine was certainly beneficial. For middle aged people it probably had some benefit and for young people could be even negative and useless for children. And yet the CDC still recommends covid vaccine for children. Why?
In UK covid vaccine is no longer given to anyone (regardless of previous infection) except to elderly of 75 y.o. and older and specific risk groups.
Vaccine mandates: it is not hard to see that elderly could avoid them most easily (this population are retired, do not travel extensively etc.), so any mandates didn't really help with reducing harm from covid.
Yes, Democrats in America did a lot of shady things to affect Trump's chance of re-election (Hunter Biden laptop, etc.)
However, Republicans in America are wont to argue that the Covid vaccine actually causes more harm than good.
I think this position is false. (Note, I don't actually live in America, I am a doctor who lives in Australia.) I think the evidence shows that vaccines did tremendous good and Trump deserves way more credit than is typically given to him by his party for Operation Warp Speed.
My position on Covid vaccines in general is strongly supportive. My position on Covid vaccine mandates throughout 2021 is weakly supportive. My position on any Covid vaccine mandate that still exists, today, is strongly against. So, I disagree with you on the object level about historical vaccine mandates, but I am trying to be maximally charitable to your position.
Hopefully this clears up any confusion.
I don't know if the Democratic Party hired Hamas to set up their convention in Chicago, or Machiavelli himself. It couldn't have been anyone who was an adult in 1968.
For circumstances too lengthy to list, Chicago should have been the Last choice of locations for a Democratic convention at this time. Does anyone know who's responsible? What were they thinking?
They were probably thinking "it went fine in 1996".
I'd forgotten about that one.
Ross Douthat has a piece in Sunday's NYT opinion section in which he argues that beating the marmalade-complected menace could turn out to be worse for Biden and the Democrats than losing.
It's a difficult call to make, but if Biden exits now, his legacy should be a positive one.
But the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, as well as Putin's aggression in Europe, leave little room for error. Douthat points out that a Biden victory could present "significant dangers". While I'm not a regular Douthat fan, out of a couple dozen theories I've read regarding this issue, his makes the most sense. Preserving the integrity and efficacy of the office -- as well as global stability -- is more important than Mr. Trump.
If all this is acted out in Chicago, it may more closely resemble 1968 than 1996.
That would be true no matter where the convention was held, though, and the convention site was chosen six months before 10-7-23. Pro-Hamas demonstrations could become a big problem in any city now, and 1968 is ancient history to most 2024 voters.
Also, the City of Chicago has thus far been pretty strong regarding such demonstrations during the convention. The sequence of events thus far is:
-- February 2024: the city denies permits to three groups (the Anti-War Committee Chicago, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Students for a Democratic Society) planning demonstrations about Gaza at the convention site. The city instead offers permits for alternate protest sites located three miles away from the primary convention facility.
-- early March: immediate appeals by two of the groups are rejected by a city administrative court judge.
-- late March: the three groups, banded together as "The Coalition to March on DNC", file a federal lawsuit arguing that the city's permit ordinance is unconstitutional in a fairly technical way, and also that the city's specific decision in this instance denies a "constitutional right to protest within sight and sound of the convention".
-- late May: a small group (18 people) who said they were members of the above coalition tell reporters that they will "disrupt" the convention with or without a permit.
-- June 5th: the city's new police chief publicly warns that “First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime, and you can be acting out peacefully but still breaking the law.” Specifically he listed blocking a roadway or venue or protesting on private property as examples of illegal behavior. “You can be acting out peacefully but still [be] breaking the law" and subject to arrest, he said. That made headlines partly because it was a shift from the superintendent's statement in late April that protesters during the convention would be able to “exercise their First Amendment rights as long as they are doing it peacefully” without “violence, looting or vandalism.”
-- June 7th: city attorneys in a court filing related to the lawsuit indicate that the city is preparing to offer a compromise to the plaintiff groups, march locations somewhat closer to the convention than the city had declared in February. The filing indicates that the city can't get specific about that until the Secret Service finalizes the event's security perimeter at the end of July.
-- June 26th: the city announced an agreement to grant to a coalition of feminist and LGBTQ+ groups a permit for a short march down Michigan Avenue on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. That location is a couple of miles from the convention site; it is a high-profile spot in the city. The ACLU on behalf those groups had sued after their January permit application for a much-longer march was denied by the city.
As of this writing,
-- "The Coalition to March on DNC" says they have not heard anything specific from the city about compromise march locations.
-- the federal judge handling that case set a July 10th deadline for a full city brief in response to the lawsuit. The judge had held a June 25th status hearing which did not add any new information.
-- coincidentally I happened to learn that a large privately-owned ice rink facility at which I play recreational ice hockey, located several blocks from the convention site, has been notified that it is within the Secret Service's security perimeter and hence has to shut down for three weeks in August.
Both this mayor and this police chief are new, so any answer would be just guessing.
Yikes. It sounds as if any place is ready, Chicago is. A straight-up replay of '68 may be unlikely.
And the suburban Marxists from Columbia and Yale may receive an education, after all.
Many Thanks for the detailed information!
>I don't know if the Democratic Party hired Hamas to set up their convention in Chicago
Maybe ISIS-K?
that stuff about the white lies is real true. I was caught in this myself.
I've moaned here enough about how much I miss my (ex-) wife, so I'll spare y'all. I just wanted to confirm the hypothesis, I guess, that you can justify yourself into real big "black lies" real quick, and all the while feel as if you're not doing anything so bad and hey might even be doing something For The Greater Good™...
tl;dr: black lies matter, but white lies matter too
By the way, has anyone else been getting spammed by the Biden campaign these last few days? It's really weird because I'd literally never gotten an email from their campaign, either now or in previous cycles, and I have no idea how they even got my email. And it's even weirder that they would start sending emails the day after the calamitous debate. Why now of all times? And the rate at which they're sending them keeps going up - I'm now getting several a day.
This was great! I've put almost all my fake manifold money, (I doubled my 'money' betting on T. Swift for person of the year.) On Biden no, and yes on all the other Dem minor players. I think it's all a loss except for Biden no. Cause no matter who the Dems put up, Trump is still winning. (And like voting for the man, I can't bet on him to win.) Still, if you put a gun to my head and said pick a or b for the next 4 years, I'd pick Trump. Which mostly just saddens me.
(I'm voting for RFK)
I wouldn’t look to prediction markets as the first source on this. I’d look at polls of undecided voters in swing states, now, and a few weeks out. There’s already encouraging data that the debate caused only a blip in the poll numbers. It’s hard to tell whether you think Biden should step aside because his administration committed a moral wrong, in your calculation, or because he has a slightly lower chance of winning, according to your prediction markets. If it’s the former, why bring up the latter first. Indeed why even bring up the latter.
In any case, if the prediction markets are wrong it’s because they didn’t capture a few things, like incumbency, the fact that Biden is a known quantity and somebody like newsome hasn’t undergone opposition research, and the bass rate stuff like the economy doing well. And the voters that determine the direction of the electoral college are so demographically and geographically specific that I’d trust prediction markets less than targeted polls on thid.
My friend says:
> One big reason why they have to keep Biden or Harris is because of the huge campaign funding that they have already accumulated
> If Biden drops out they have to return them
> Unless Harris is the nominee
Is that true?
The campaign funds are a bit messy but there are several options, assuming Biden wants it to go to someone other than Harris:
- Refund all of the donors and tell them to donate to someone else
- Give the funds to the DNC and let them sort it out
- Give the funds to a PAC which can then support another candidate
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753737-biden-drop-out-rumors-campaign-funding/
Sundowning is characterized by high anxiety, agitation, restlessness, and occasional hallucinations/delusions with a particular focus on paranoia. It's not simply being better during the days than at night. The classic presentation is someone at dusk pacing, seemingly lost, angrily accusing someone of stealing their things. How were you, as a psychiatrist, able to diagnose Biden with Sundowning Scott?
(1) All this demonstrates that what the US political system really needs is a strong third party alternative. Seems like the Libertarians won't be it, as the whole "minding mice at a crossroads" nature of the party means they shunned their own selected nominee in favour of putting their backing with RFK
(2) Entertaining as all this is shaping up to be, it's still not as fun as UK elections. America needs the Baked Bean Delegate and the guy running against Jacob Rees-Mogg:
https://x.com/jamiemroberton/status/1809121421479571872
No, these are not the same person; Captain Beany was running as an independent in Wales:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/captain-beany-announces-2024-last-29478176
Baked bean balaclava man was Barmy Brunch for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party running in Somerset North East and Hanham:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e9tsMa5ThU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hqKe53-5xU
Maybe Biden should take a leaf out of the Libertarian official pick's book and claim someone gave him an edible before the debate 😀
https://www.newsweek.com/michael-rectenwald-libertarian-admits-eating-weed-gummy-before-remarks-1904859
"Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Rectenwald admitted to reporters on Sunday that he consumed a weed gummy before speaking at his party's national convention in Washington, D.C.
On Sunday, the Libertarian Party will pick their presidential nominee for the upcoming election. Rectenwald is a former New York University (NYU) professor whose campaign promises include slashing government spending and taxes; abolishing agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); refusing COVID-19 mandates and ending the United States' involvement in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday that Rectenwald admitted to eating an edible before he spoke at a press conference.
"This was not some sort of a major political scandal, okay. I wasn't found in bed with Stormy Daniels. I'm at a Libertarian Party convention. Somebody offered me something," Rectenwald told Kornfield.
Rectenwald was referring to former President Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial. Trump, who is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, stands accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleged that she had an affair with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied the affair ever took place and pleaded not guilty to all charges, claiming the case is politically motivated against him.
Newsweek reached out to Rectenwald's campaign via online form for comment.
Kornfield's post was in reply to David Weigel, a politics reporter at Semafor, who wrote on X on Sunday that Rectenwald drew criticism after being "unusually off in his public remarks last night. Bailed halfway through a press conference w[ith] two other candidates last night, saying he was bored w[ith] the Qs [questions]."
Have the Libertarians never been advised by their mothers "Don't take sweets from strangers", or is it that Libertarian mothers would consider such advice to their young children to be a heinous restriction on their liberty and an unwarranted imposition of authority?
You appear to be taking for granted that Biden would nominate a better Supreme Court Justice than Trump would.
Do you consider Sotomayor, or Jackson, to be better Justices than Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett?
Or do you think that political balance is more important than quality?
And, if the latter, would you be equally as concerned that a court which was 6-3 Democrat needed the next Justice to be. Republican?
"A possible objection to these results: conditional probabilities don’t exactly reflect the intuitive concept of decision-making. That is, we’re not asking “We want to know whether or not to keep Biden, so what are the chances that he’ll win if we do?”, we’re asking the market for the chance that he’ll win, in the set of worlds where people decide to keep him for other reasons."
I had this realization (about other betting markets) years ago, and I was shocked that no one ever mentioned it. Btw, this is a complex but very important idea, and Scott explains it very well. Kudos!
Some more-thoughtful reactions to the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity have been posted.
For example the Lawfare Institute writes,
"The case involves a tension at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Article II vests the president of the United States with the “executive Power” and gives the president a duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” These phrases give the president power to interpret the law for the executive branch, to enforce the law (including prosecutorial decisions), to supervise the running of the government (including firing subordinate executive branch officials), and to direct government policy.
"These same phrases—especially the “take Care” Clause—also ensure that the president is not above the law. The great paradox of the American presidency is that the same constitutional provisions that render the president beholden to law also endow the presidency with extraordinary power and discretion to interpret and enforce the law, and thus give an unscrupulous president tools to abuse the law. The paradox is on palpable display in the Biden administration’s prosecution of former President Trump...."
[The ruling] "has three moving parts. First, a president receives no immunity for criminal prosecution for unofficial acts. Second, a president receives absolute immunity from criminal prosecution that would violate the president’s official conduct in exercising an exclusive presidential power, such as issuing a pardon or firing a subordinate. Third, a president receives “presumptive immunity” for other official acts, broadly construed, that can be overcome if the prosecutor shows that prosecution for the act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”
The first two rulings are not controversial. But the third—a variation of what the special counsel proposed, but one much more protective of the presidency—is quite controversial, and is a large victory for presidential power at the expense of presidential accountability...."
Law Prof. Kim Wehle, who previously was a U.S. attorney and also served as an investigator with Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration, wrote that the ruling means voters have to “rely on the delusional belief that future presidents will choose to act in good faith with their own conscience as a guide rather than abuse the virtually unlimited power the radical majority just gave them.”
Andrew McCarthy, the National Review's regular writer about SCOTUS and other federal courts, had listened to all of the oral arguments in this case. He is therefore amazed that the SCOTUS majority went farther with the 'presumptive immunity' part than even Trump's lead attorney did under questioning by Justice Barrett. Hence, McCarthy writes, "Roberts implies that the premise of Sauer’s concession—namely, that “campaign conduct” is not “official conduct”—is at least overbroad. As a result, the fake-electors scheme joins all of the other allegations in the indictment that are, or at least could be, presumptively immune from prosecution."
Andy Craig, a Cato Institute staffer who writes often for Libertarianism.org as well as some mainstream publications, wrote for The Unpopulist that "It was a shocking ruling, even for those who expected the Court to effectively tank the prosecutions against Trump....In the meandering majority opinion written by Roberts, the Court has decreed an effectively complete presidential power to commit crimes with impunity. Even the Court’s own supposed power to strike down presidential actions is rendered a nullity. The judiciary, no less than acts of Congress, ultimately relies on the coercive power of the law.....
"The Framers of the Constitution disagreed on many things. On some matters, it can be difficult to parse their intent on questions they never squarely addressed and might not have even considered. But this is not one such area of ambiguity. If the Revolutionary generation agreed on anything, it was rejection of a king who is above the law. They spoke often of creating a presidency that was under the law, an office whose holder enjoyed no sovereign immunity because in America, the people are sovereign, not the head of state.....
"Against all the legal principles to the contrary, the Court instead engaged in a kind of freewheeling policy making based on its own subjective wishes about what the Constitution should say rather than what it does. Ostensibly, this is grounded in the structural implications of the Constitution, the separation of powers under which some powers are accorded to the president and so cannot be criminalized. It is generally undisputed, for example, that Congress could not pass a law making it a crime to veto a proposed law. But in their sweeping notion of “official acts,” the justices have erased any distinction between lawful and unlawful exercises of presidential power. Roberts gives a perfunctory nod in this direction with a distinction between “core” powers exclusively granted by the Constitution to the president, which enjoy absolute immunity, and all other exercises of presidential power, which get “presumptive” immunity. Or maybe that immunity’s absolute, too. The Court declined to say. But in practice, this putative presumption of immunity is indefeasible, wrapped in such vague but strongly worded protections that no prosecutor could ever realistically overcome it...."
The Cato Institute's "Cato at Liberty" blogger, senior fellow Walter Olson, wrote that "In Trump v. US, a majority of the Supreme Court has laid down an astonishingly broad view of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution over official actions, even those taken for heinous motives and with no show of justification.....
"Nowhere in the Constitution is there mention of executive immunity, which was a topic of peculiar interest to the Founders and Framers. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69 that unlike the “king of Great Britain,” the chief executive of the United States would “be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law,” and in Federalist 77 named “subsequent prosecution in the common course of law,” in addition to impeachment, as checks on “abuse of the executive authority.”....
"The shock was not that the majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts recognized some zone of immunity, but that at one key decision point after another, it seized on any half-plausible ground (and some perhaps less than half-plausible) to expand both the formal and the practical scope of immunity."
Ilya Somin, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog which is distributed through Reason magazine, said that "The Supreme Court's flawed decision largely ignores text and original meaning, and fails to resolve crucial issues....The liberal dissenting justices pay much more attention to originalist considerations here than the conservative originalist majority. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent points out, nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution gives the president anything like this degree of immunity. In fact, text and original meaning cut the other way....
"The majority has no meaningful rebuttal to any of this. Their neglect of text and original meaning might be more defensible if there was strong precedent on the subject. But there is no such precedent, because the courts have never before considered the issue of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.
"The majority mainly relies on the consequentialist policy argument that the president must have extensive immunity so he won't be deterred from carrying out his duties with "bold and unhesitating action." They fail to explain why this consideration should outweigh the danger that sweeping immunity would incentivize presidents to commit horrific crimes and abuses of power—such as, for example, trying to use force and fraud to stay in power after losing a presidential election!....
"In addition to being poorly grounded in the text and original meaning, the majority's ruling is also extremely vague and unclear on key points. It gives us very little guidance on how to tell the difference between "core powers" (subject to absolute immunity), and other "official acts" (which may not be). That seems like a crucial issue on which the justices should have given more guidance to lower courts.
"Similarly, the Court refuses to tell us whether presidents get absolute immunity for non-core official acts, or merely presumptive immunity. Another whopper of an omission! If immunity in such cases is just presumptive, it is hard to tell what would be enough to overcome the presumption. The majority does suggest, at one point, that the president must "be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch." Taken literally, this would preclude prosecution for any acts even remotely connected to anything official, a there might always be at least some small danger of "intrusion" on executive power in such situations....."
[I encountered some of the above opinions as an online subscriber to Reason and to Cato at Liberty, and learned of others via The Unpopulist on Substack.]
>Second, a president receives absolute immunity from criminal prosecution that would violate the president’s official conduct in exercising an exclusive presidential power, such as issuing a pardon or firing a subordinate.
Cough - umm, that seems to imply immunity for firing a subordinate who refuses to follow a flagrantly illegal order? Am I reading this correctly?
No you are not. That is exactly what it means, and the Court majority emphasized it in their text.
Many Thanks! Hmm... Well, the Presidency has been called "Imperial" in the past... I guess this SCOTUS opinion should have concluded with a traditional "Strength to the Empire!" (in Klingon, of course...)...
And the fun goes on! Now Biden says only God can take him out of the running:
https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2024/0706/1458526-biden-interview-president/
This probably makes things even more awkward for Kamala, as if she is the leading contender to replace him, now the campaign is split between them. This may be her best shot at it, and if she steps aside for another candidate there's no guarantee she gets a second chance in 2028.
On the other hand, if Joe Won't Go, the Democrats are faced with the unedifying spectacle of ripping the incumbent out of the nomination while he clings on kicking and screaming, or gritting their teeth and continuing as-is. Neither are great options, but it may serve Kamala better if she can spin non-action into "I neither stabbed my running mate in the back for ambition, nor abandoned the greater good of the nation, which is why I stood aside for Gavin to lose, the sucker" if she is thinking of going in 2028.
Opinions?
I assume that this will get resolved, one way or another, at the Democratic Convention. So we spend a month wondering will he / won't he? And, if the switch _is_ to Harris, she now has 3 months instead of 4 to explain her stands on various questions to the voters, and to try to convince them that her stands are better than Trump's.
On the assumption that Biden's staff knew his approximate condition months or more ago, (possibly years), if they wanted to win in 2024 they should have switched candidates _far_ earlier. ( If Biden's decline were due to something sudden and unpredictable, like a stroke, I wouldn't fault Biden's staff. But it doesn't look like that. )
I don't like either of the parties, personally. I more-or-less believe the prediction markets 60/30 odds in favor of the GOP. To my untutored eye, this situation looks like the Democrats taking careful aim at their own foot, and firing a heavy caliber at it.
> I assume that this will get resolved, one way or another, at the Democratic Convention. So we spend a month wondering will he / won't he?
Big assumption. If Biden doesn't get kicked out by the convention then we're still going to see all kinds of "here's how the Dems can still replace Biden" discourse right up to election day.
Many Thanks! Aargh. On the GOP side there has been speculation that Trump might delay his final choice of Veep to keep the electorate more interested than they would be if it got settled quickly. I don't like either party pulling this sort of stunt, making it more difficult to know which person's record to look at.
I'm just hoping the electronic voodoo used to confuse Mr. Biden during the debate wasn't the notorious Jewish Space Laser. That might complicate getting aid to the IDF through congress.
Here is what's bad about Sotomayor doing a tactical resignation.
While politicians are nakedly partisan around the Supreme Court, the Justices themselves keep up a non partisan posture quite well. I don't know if it's fake or earnest, but they do.
You'd never know it from reading the press, but the vast majority of cases are decided by majorities containing both the conservative and liberal justices.
If Sotomayor breaks the non partisan facade it draws the court further down the gutter, and maybe she just don't want to do that.
All the controversial cases were 6-3, though.
You should maybe look more closely, e.g., Ketanji Brown joined 5 of the more conservative justices on the Fischer v. United States 6-3 decision.
Whitmer is the only would-be candidate that can realistically beat Trump in the all-important swing states.
>the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!” And then he would always do fine
Always do fine? No. There were many, many examples of him showing dementia on stage. He read the instructions that were on the teleprompter out loud - just like he did now again at the NATO summit. He read the instructions on his cards out loud. He stood still not knowing where to go so he had to be led off stage. He walked on stage and then walked off when everyone else was staying. He CONSTANTLY messed up words in a way that clearly showed dementia. He even turned to one side to shake hands with empty air.
But you read Democrat media, and those media hid the truth from you. They ridiculed those who told the truth. They even invented a new word, "cheap fakes," because it sounds like "deep fakes," and used that dismiss the clips that showed Biden's behavior. "Those are just cheap fakes that the Republicans use!"
The debate didn't show Republicans anything new because Biden has been acting exactly like that for five years. But it was the first time Democrats saw something outside their media bubble. The information was always readily available if you'd looked at Revolver News or other websites than the leftist ones.