One adviser to major Democratic Party donors said they were texting from a meeting of donors in Atlanta on Thursday night, some writing “wtf.”
“Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies,” the donor adviser said. “Otherwise we are fucking dead.”
Oof.
I watched it all, and Biden did a much worse job than Trump did. Trump lied his way through the whole thing, but we expected that going in. I don’t think Democrats expected Biden to look this feeble.
No, not many people are going to change their vote because of this. But the last few elections have been one with very close margins in a handful of states. It doesn’t take that many people in certain zip codes to decide they can no longer support Biden to turn the election. They don’t even have to turn to Trump, they can go third party or stay home.
I’m not a fan of replacing Biden this late in the process, if that happens for any reason other than Biden’s health then it basically renders all the Primaries invalid, and puts party officials in a position to make the decision, not voters. And let’s be fair: Democrats who were watching saw that Biden was actually able to make his points, and draw a clear distinction between his positions and his opponent. Nobody is saying that the substance of Biden’s performance was wrong, they’re all just upset over the optics of his performance, and his ability to attract those last few voters in PA and WI that he needs.
I recall thinking that Biden lost the first debate in 2020, also. He managed to come back then. We’ll see about this time.
Remember, though, debates are not conclusively won or lost. It’s all opinion-based. Lots of people like you said Biden did a terrible job. But do you know what I haven’t seen any reports of? A response from “regular viewers” who say they will change their votes.
The closest thing we’ll get to that is in the polls over the next few days, and the moving forward to the election.
But even then, the numbers don’t have to move very much in order to make a difference. GA has 11 million people, and Biden won there last time by only 11k votes. Do you think a GA poll (much less a national poll) would pick up 11k people there changing their votes, or 22k people deciding to not vote at all (or vote for the brain worm guy instead)? That can all happen in the margins, outside of any ability for the rest of us to detect it.
No, but, again, I also have my doubts that anyone is going to change their votes because of this. Just like in 2020, this is much more of a Trump vs. Not Trump election than anything else. Who is going to be won over to Trump by this? He still ranted and raved like a crazy person based on what I’m reading.
His ideas and concepts were crazy, but his delivery really hasn’t changed much since we first saw him in debates in 2016. Biden’s clearly has. If you were living under a rock and didn’t already know everything you needed to about these two men, you never would have guessed that only three years separated them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim Jordan pulled his contempt Citation for the AG after this. They don’t need the audio of the Special Counsel investigation to put in attack ads anymore.
I didn’t hear any ideas or concepts. It was the same Trump ranting that he’s the best and Biden is the worst. The mods kept asking him if he wanted to answer the questions.
Yes, Trump is just as crazy as he was in 2016 when he lost the popular vote and 2020 when he lost the popular vote, so no one’s going to suddenly believe he isn’t crazy.
I’m leery of polls these days. One thing I like about the Bulwark is they do a lot of focus groups, where you can hear from voters at a more detailed level, in their own words.
It’s still not a great method, since its such a small sample size. But I think it’s better than polls of poll-taking Americans.