Say no to Joe

I just can't wrap my head around the fact that Joe Biden is even running - and worse, actually has a chance of winning the nomination.

[L]et’s start with why many political professionals assume that Biden can’t win the Democratic nomination.

(1) He’s old. I mean, really old.

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In general, old people do not win presidential campaigns. This axiom isn’t like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or anything—sometimes old guys do win. But all things being equal you’d rather have your money on a candidate in the sweet spot of 45 to 55 years old. Or, failing that, a candidate who looks and feels younger.

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(2) His electoral track record isn’t great. The last truly competitive race Biden ran, under his own banner, was in 1972.

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But he ran for president in 1988 and 2008 and flamed out both times.

If you want to flip through the history books to find the last man to win the presidency on his third try, 32 years after his first attempt, I’ll wait.

(3) He’s getting killed on Twitter. I don’t have any fancy data to back this up, but I suspect that a very large part of why people think Biden must be toast is that, alone among the top 2020 candidates, he has no real army of support on Twitter.

Trump has legions of MAGA-bots. There are Bernie Bros and Warrenistas. But Biden barely exists on Twitter, except as a prop to be dunked on.

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(4) He’s not where the party is ideologically. This is the biggest of the assumptions because no one really knows where the Democratic party is ideologically.

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[But w]herever Biden is with the electorate, he certainly looks out of step with the other candidates.

Which leaves you with one of two possibilities: Either Biden is out of step with the party, or the field is.

(5) The primary map is a challenge. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden would have to face off against a very white, and very progressive, electorate in Iowa and then take his lumps from a favorite son and a favorite daughter in New Hampshire before he could get to South Carolina and Nevada and begin building momentum.

It is entirely possible that Biden could finish fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s not great, Bob.

Is it possible he could pull a surprise landslide early, the way John Kerry did in 2004? Sure. But that scenario isn’t appreciably more likely than Biden suffering an early collapse.

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And yet . . .

Any objective measure of Biden’s position has to account for the fact that he’s very strong.

(1) He has a base. Where most of the rest of the Democratic field has had boom-bust cycles, only two candidates—Biden and Sanders—have proven to have durable support.

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(2) The calendar isn’t as bad as it looks. It’s absolutely true that Biden could finish fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. But this isn’t like Rudy Giuliani saying he’s going to skip Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and then begin his triumphal march to the nomination in Florida. (This is a thing that happened.)

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He’s 5 points out of first place in Iowa and 3 points out of first place in New Hampshire, basically within the margin of error for both.

But when you get to South Carolina and Nevada, Biden is currently leading by 25 points and 9 points. Those are pretty substantial margins in a field this large.

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In a multipolar race with muddled early results, Democratic voters won’t really understand the candidates’ strengths until they’re stress-tested in different environments.

And then there’s this: What if Biden were to actually win Iowa? That’s not a high-probability event, but it’s not crazy, either. If we were laying odds, we might say that his chances of winning Iowa were 1-in-20 or 1-in-10. And if that were to happen, he probably runs away with the nomination.

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(3) Winning is everything.

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By every objective measure we have, Biden is best positioned to beat Trump.

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For almost the entire duration, Biden has led Trump by double-digits. His current lead over the incumbent president, nationally, is 10 points.

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Biden’s relative advantage looks even bigger when you focus on the battleground states, where he is the only Democrat to have a sizable lead over Trump.

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(4) There is no pivot.

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There are only two top-tier Democrats who are running the same race today as they’ll be running in the general election: Biden and Sanders.

But where Sanders is holding on to some positions that are deeply unpopular—such as abolishing private health insurance—Biden is not. Biden started the race with the decision that he would run his general election effort right out of the gate and risk losing the primary in order to win the general.

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(5) He has not had a good stretch yet.

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Everything that could conceivably go wrong for him has gone wrong. All of his weaknesses have been on full display. He’s endured attacks from the progressive media, attacks from his more liberal rivals, and, simultaneously, attacks from Republicans and Trump intent on getting Anyone But Biden as the challenger.

And he’s still leading the field by a wide, consistent margin.

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But the most likely outcome is that the vice president of the last two-term Democratic president—the guy who has led the field by a wide margin since the day he got into the race—will win his party’s nomination and then have a very good shot to beat the incumbent he’s leading by double digits in dozens upon dozens of polls.

  The Bulwark

Please, God, no.

Just say NO to Joe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.