stevenkesslar

And Putin, your beloved Genocide Man, wins. That's what you want. And Russian blood on the fields of Ukraine. Good thing Genocide Man can buy the still living bodies of Russian criminals and ethnic minorities for cheap. The Russian Federation will still collapse in the long run, as the GDP of the US outpaces Genocide Man's war economy by tenfold or so every year. But at least Putin can feel like he's winning.

Well, I will say this. Maybe Trump was serious when he disavowed Project 2025. That said, technically, pornography is not pussy grabbing. So Trump would still probably be safe to rape women. Especially of their rights. 🤢

Not sure I know what that means. But it would be an awesome name for a Randy Rainbow song. 😉 A pathological paradoxical bind calls for a paradoxical intervention To stop a narcissistic nattering nut named - you know, need I mention? Because the baffled debate blowing Biden ceases not to embarrass Ok, fuck it. Enough of this bullshit. Can't we just go with Harris?

Please! We've heard from George Clooney. We really don't need Meryl Streep to speak up, do we? 😉 A new poll from ABC says 56 % of Democrats think Biden should drop out. That contradicts a different recent poll saying 2 in 3 Democrats want Biden to stay as nominee. The same ABC poll says Blacks would overwhelming support Biden stepping aside for a ticket led by Harris. And the poll shows Biden and Trump tied. Harris is actually two points ahead of Trump in the ABC poll. Although in other polls she does a bit less well than Biden. So, as you said, it's a coin toss if polls are the deciding factor. One thing that is clear is that if Biden is the nominee age will be the issue for the next four months. And it seems quite possible - if not likely - it can only get worse. Kamala Harris is a risk, but the issue won't be age. Other than Trump's age. 60 % of Americans say Trump is too old. A campaign in which Harris prosecutes Trump's age and asshole behavior - and talks about actual issues - would be a change of pace, for sure. It's hard not to believe Democrats would be more energized. Almost every poll of every swing state or red state Democrat has showed them ahead of their opponent all year. As Brownstein argues above, that could change as the election gets closer, and the gravity of Biden weighs these incumbent Senators down. But what it mostly says is that there is no particular trend against Democrats, in general. It is against Biden, in particular. The generic Congressional ballot has been a toss up all year. A Harris/Shapiro or Harris/Whitmer ticket would allow all these Democrats to focus on explaining what is wrong with and old and extremist Trump, and what Democrats would actually like to do if we had the votes in the Senate and House to do so. The fact that even in a moment of darkness and crisis there are polls showing Biden is tied with Trump and Harris could beat him suggests this should be possible, when the coin finally lands.

And to further belabor your point, I think what is most telling is that the number of sitting Senators and Reps who "love" Biden, and who been staunch Biden allies, but who now say publicly or privately that he has to go just keeps growing. I think the first and most important job of any member of Congress is ensuring their own survival. And if they have managed to do that for decades, they probably know a thing or two about political survival. Biden, of course, belongs at the very top of that list. So I don't discount his political judgment. But this is unprecedented. And it obviously is hurting every Democrat. So the members of Congress who just won't shut up must really think they know something. What's also telling is that I don't think any front line Rep or swing state Senator has spoken up in Biden's favor. Quite the opposite. Tester, Brown, and Baldwin are all muttering things that don't sound like support for Biden to me. All three are perfect examples of politicians who are experts at messaging and campaigning. So they must think they know something. The people who have spoken up the most for Biden are the ones whose constituents are most likely to be sticking behind him. Namely, Black US Reps like Maxine Waters. One poll said a majority of Democrats want Biden to stay in the race. Even though other polls say a majority of Democrats think he is too old to govern. So there must be a lot of deeply conflicted Democrats. But if there is any part of his base that is ridin with Biden, it's likely Blacks. And the arguments they are making are weak. Waters is basically saying polls are not "absolute". Duh! That's true. But they are saying Biden has big problems with voters. How Biden’s 2024 choice could reshape the Senate and Supreme Court for years Ron Brownstein is now weighing in, although not taking sides. He is right that if Biden takes down a handful of swing state or red state Senators with him, Democrats are fucked for many election cycles to come. Losing incumbents like Tester and Brown will just make it harder to win states like Montana or Ohio when we have another shot at the seats - in 2030! Back to my argument about governing, rather than campaigning, when I read what Brownstein consistently writes about the deeply entrenched culture war, it actually is an argument for Biden rather than Harris, I think. But that's only true if you start with the assumption that either Biden or Harris has a roughly equal chance of winning, as the polls show. Biden said he would try to unify America. Just like every other POTUS who said the same thing, and failed. Even some progress toward unity was never likely while Trump spent four years in exile breaking laws and ginning up his base with lies. But Biden has gotten more done on a bipartisan basis than most recent Presidents. And if Trump is defeated, there is at least reason to hope "the fever will break", or at least wane, as Obama argued would happen after the 2012 election. As recently as 2018, Democratic Senators served in Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, as well as West Virginia and Montana. It should not be impossible to elect Democrats there in 2026 or 2028. But if that is the goal, it's not clear that having a liberal Californian Black Asian American female POTUS is the best way to do it. That's not me being racist. I'd say the same thing about a liberal Californian White male like Newsom. That's me saying that Biden made at least modest inroads into the White blue collar and rural voters who are currently solidly behind Trump. And who prevent Democrats from getting solid Senate majorities. Whether it is Biden or Harris, it would not be an awful thing if a Democratic President had to contend with at least one chamber of Congress that is run by Republicans. Ruy Teixeira is mostly right that Democrats can't have the majority they want unless and until they move toward the center, especially on cultural issues. In theory, that could be Kamala Harris. Part of her problem in 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matter, was a lot of liberals thought she was too tough on criminals. Her record as a prosecutor would play much better in 2024, both with White and Black conservatives. But if Democrats ever hope to have a solid Democratic Senate majority, the riddle is that Biden is in many ways the ideal guy to gradually make that happen. Other than that he's just way too old, and he's simply running out of time. It's not surprising that Democrats are having a very hard time figuring this one out. The good news is that at least Democrats are trying to think, rather than simply fall in line behind a cult leader.

Yes, but so did LBJ, and Reagan, and W., and Obama. And I mean that in the sense that Lichtman does: they got big and consequential things done, whether everyone agrees with them or not. And, for the most part, they ran on that record and said they wanted to do more. The exception is W., because by 2004 the Iraq War was starting to turn bad. If the election had been a year later, he would have lost. The fact that all four of those Presidents didn't meet the promise of their second terms is not auspicious for Biden. That article I posted about FDR argued this in his final year, and the few months of his final term, he made some big blunders due to his failing health. Biden's health is likely to keep failing. At least according to most voters, which is why he is having such problems. I repeated myself just to make it clear that we agree. The first and most important question right now is NOT about whether Biden can govern effectively in a second term. You and I agree that the most important question right now is can he campaign in a way that wins him a second term? That said, the whole point of winning is actually to govern. So what a second Biden term would look like, and what its limitations might be, is a great question that Biden and Democratic leaders should be asking.

The question on the table now is, "Can Joe Biden win?" And it seems to still be unsettled. If he can't win, everything about what he could do in a second term is wishful thinking. My Lichtman-centric mind is settled on two options that make sense: One, Biden stays. Two, Biden resigns so Harris can run as the incumbent with a unified party behind her. Anything else, including Biden completing his term but stepping aside as nominee, just seems like too big a risk, based on Lichtman's Keys. And polls that show Biden and Harris as running about the same against Trump. I hope Biden and leaders like Pelosi and Jeffries and Schumer are also looking at it from the perspective of, "Why should he stay, anyway?" In my mind, that would be the single best reason for Biden to resign, for the good of both his country and his party. What if Joe Biden stays? The US president’s team must face the reality of what a second term would look like now That is an almost impeccable argument. If we look at LBJ, Reagan, W., and Obama, their second terms ranged from disappointments to disasters. Lichtman argues that Obama's inability to get anything big done in his second term (thanks to Mitch McConnell blocking him) was a decisive factor in Clinton's 2016 defeat as heir apparent. The same could happen to Kamala in 2028. Even if Biden scores a hat trick and keeps the Senate and retakes the House, the chances of getting a mandate to do what he couldn't do in his first term seems unlikely. He'll continue to decline. With the constantly lingering question being when, not if, Kamala will need to take over. To put it harshly, many people will hope he either dies, or has some kind of decisive health event, that finally forces a resolution. And that's based on the more optimistic scenario that he will win. Probably the best thing about Biden winning is that it simply keeps Trump from doing bad things. Including cutting taxes for his billionaire donors and packing the court even more with MAGA right wing extremists. If Harris runs and wins, she will not be a lame duck. And she will likely bring new energy to an unmet agenda. If she could win the thinnest of Senate and House majorities, she would probably be able to win some incremental victories on Democratic priorities. Biden could of course do the same in 2025. But unlike with Harris the feeling would be stasis and decline, not building toward something bigger. Young people who feel disinterested and de-energized today won't somehow feel better about him when Biden is two years older. The one issue I'd take issue with the author on is Bill Clinton. He's right that the second term brought Monicagate. But it also brought a booming economy and a lot of incremental bipartisan success. Including a budget surplus. My argument for a successful Biden second term would be that he essentially becomes an avatar for what Ruy Teixeira is calling "the new centrism." Teixeira and his lefty partner in crime John Judis got it surprisingly right two decades ago when they predicted an Obamaesque "Emerging Democratic Majority." He may be getting it right again. Whether you buy that or not, I think it is true that people are sick of the divisiveness that is a hallmark of Trump's non-governing pathology. One can always hope that if they lose in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024, enough Republicans in the House and Senate will want to focus on the kinds of practical things that made Clinton's second term successful. Biden actually is temperamentally better than Harris at seeking the middle ground. Even if what that means in practice in a few years is his staff, and Kamala, do much of the work for him. That would be my blueprint for what could work about a second Biden term.

One or the other, but not both. I'd argue Scalia's seat was stolen thanks to McConnell. RGB stole the seat from herself, I think. Granted, by the time Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014 it was too late. McConnell would have probably come up with some excuse for leaving the seat vacant for two years. But it's the same lesson we will all learn if Biden stays on the ticket and loses because of his age, as many fear he will. Shoulda retired when you could. Had RGB retired in 2013 she would have served a deeply respected 20 years, and the SCOTUS right wing majority would be 5-4 today. It still probably would have meant the end of Roe v. Wade once Trump packed the court with his right wing MAGA extremists. But we don't know what Roberts might have done had he been the swing vote. Roberts seems to be the conservative who is most aware that when a felon and lying POTUS who is unpopular packs the court with MAGA radicals who made deeply unpopular decisions, it does not work well for them. There's a brand new poll out by The Economist saying that SCOTUS's disapproval rating is now -16 points, 36/52. That is unprecedented. Wonder why? Putin must be having a blast watching Trump systematically fuck up everything that worked pretty well about democracy before Trump.

Well, I'll give you this. That is factually correct. Sometimes you can get the facts right, even if you have zero ability to analyze what they might possibly mean. What's clear from a series of polls is that lots of people have no idea who Whitmer or Shapiro are. In a country where the MAGA faithful believe that unemployment is at a 50 year high and the S & P 500 is down for the year, what are we to expect? It's not reality. It's a cult. A lying, cop beating, crime loving, democracy hating cult. Murder and violent crime were down over 10 % in 2023 under Biden, who reversed Trump's 30 % murder spike in 2020. But these facts don't matter. Beating the shit out of cops to stop an election doesn't matter. It's just a cult. You'll believe whatever you want. The main difference between how Biden does against Trump and the other lesser knows in that way more voters are undecided about people they don't know, as the survey you posted but can't intellectually grasp demonstrates. Biden v. Trump is 46/43, with 11 % undecided. Biden v Shapiro is 46/38, with 16 % undecided. The difference is not that Trump does better against Shapiro. It's that many people have no clue who the Guv Of Pennsylvania is. Since you have a very troubled relationship with facts, @EmmetK, surely you can empathize. Here's another fact that matters. When Emerson pressed undecided voters to say who they are leaning to, the Biden-Trump race is tied 50/50. So much for Dementia Joe being demented, or politically dead. Even after a massive Biden fuck up, voters just don't want the stench of Trump. These latest polls have probably helped slow momentum to Kamala. In the Emerson poll you cited, Biden does 46/43, but Kamala does 49/43. A Redfield and Wilton poll shows Biden/Trump 42/43, versus Harris/Trump 37/44.  Meanwhile, Bendix and Amandi  shows Biden v. Trump 42/43, and Harris v. Trump 42/41. So Harris does either about the same or a little bit worse in horse races against Trump, compared to Biden. No reason - at least based on polls - to think that switching from Biden to Harris will make some dramatic difference for Democrats, either way. Although what's not clear is whether Harris has the same recognition as Biden or Trump. My guess is there's some voters who have no idea who Kamala Harris is.

Poor thing! You don't seem to know whether Biden is dead, or will be dead, or will be alive in mid-2025. Which is it? Or does the cult not know the right line yet? Let me help. Just read the words on the teleprompter, @EmmetK. "I AM A MAGA CULT MEMBER. I BELIEVE EVERY LIE DONLD TRUMP SAYS." There. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Oops! See? We're all a little demented now and then. I meant FDR died a few months into his final term.

Not true. If the historians have it correct, even during the 1944 campaign FDR could only work four hours a day due to severe hypertension. He died a few months into his second term. Why FDR Decided to Run for a Fourth Term Despite Ill Health When he sought a fourth term at age 62, FDR's doctor had issued a dire prognosis. Compared to FDR, Biden last week was a young colt, running around the country to rallies. And Kamala Harris is much better prepared to take power than Truman was. Plus, hopefully, Biden won't die in the middle of a World War. See if you can talk Genocide Man into calling off his Ukrainian slaughter, okay? It would help reduce that risk. If there were a way to do it, one solution is to have Biden and Harris structure a de facto co-Presidency in his second term. Since even if he lives until 2028 he will continue to grow weaker, for sure. At the very least, this is going to force Biden to continue to raise Kamala's stature more.

I posted already in a different thread about a new poll that shows Kamala or Hillary slightly outperforming Biden in a race against Trump. But here is some other relatively good news for Biden in the same poll. I take that to mean that about 48 % of America is a hard NO on Biden, and about 53 % of America is a hard NO on Trump. That's actually consistent with past election results. In 2016 and 2020 election results and in current RCP poll averages, Trump is stuck at a ceiling of 47 %. Whereas Biden got just over 51 % pf the actual vote in a record turnout election. It's not clear that a whole lot has changed. A majority of Americans still don't want Trump. And Jan. 6th gave them a very firm reason to want him even less. Meanwhile, a slight majority of Americans are still open to the idea of voting for Biden, even he is diminished and obviously will become more so. I think it is easier for Biden to prove he is undemented than for Trump to prove he is not undemocratic. You can't unsee Jan. 6th. Or the idea that it's patriotic to go beat the living shit out of cops to stop a peaceful transfer of power. Lest we forget his past antics, Trump's inference that he'd like to blow Liz Cheney's brains out for being a traitor before a televised military tribunal does jog the memory. And, sorry to be morbid, but I have to ask. Will he grab Liz by the pussy before he blows her brains out? 🤢 You can't unsee Biden's crappy debate performance, either. But he is basically undementing himself every day he talks coherently about a real campaign message. You can't stop Father Time, as Axelrod is arguing, but you actually can slow him down. Or at least create the appearance of slowing him down, which is what spin masters like Axelrod do for a living. The longer this goes on, the more I feel like it's a net positive that Biden has been stripped of the protective layers of The White House and has to prove he can still fight for himself - and us. Trump's argument is that since I am very greedy and want it all for myself, I am the right guy to be greedy for America. Biden's equivalent argument is that I am still able to fight like hell for myself, so I am the right guy to fight like hell for you. I think the latter message is better, if Biden can consistently make it. A slight majority of America seems to agree.

You called that one right. Poll finds Biden damaged by debate; with Harris and Clinton best positioned to win Mostly what these polls mean to me is that people tend to turn to fantasy candidates like Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton because they don't know the alternatives - other than Kamala - very well. So even if Harris/Shapiro wins 42/40 in one poll versus Biden/Harris losing 42/43 to Trump in the same poll, it's all very close. If this was supposed to be a fatal blow to Biden, the polls don't show it. And if Harris were to be the nominee I doubt either Whitmer or Shapiro would make a big difference outside their home states. My read of this is that the only two options in play are Biden remains and we stick a cattle prod up his ass for the next four months, or he resigns and Harris becomes POTUS, which would cement her lead in being the replacement nominee. Either way, Democrats can unify around an incumbent who was chosen in the 2024 primary. We'll never know what would have happened had Biden announced he would not run last year. But in his Conversations series last year, Bill Kristol and A.B. Stoddard speculated that both Nancy Pelosi's resignation as House leader and Biden's decision not to seek re-election would lead to divisive food fights between progressives and moderates. Never happened. So the glass half full view of this is that Democrats avoided the kind of ugly fights that could have split the party. However this gets settled, there is plenty of time tounify around either Biden or Harris. Meanwhile, it's not clear that all those primary voters who preferred Haley will in fact fall in line behind Trump. So Republicans have unity problems of their own. As far as the polls go, it is now clear that Biden is no worse off than Reagan or Obama were after blowing their first debates. They all lost a few points, and then gained them back. For Obama and Reagan, whose flub was also tinged with chatter about dementia, the episode served as a wake up call to a lazy incumbent who was used to not being challenged very much. Biden is definitely awake now. There was also lots of chatter last Summer that when Biden should have been flying all over the country rallying the troops and spreading his message, he was hanging out at the beach with Jill wasting time. It does seem like he kind of wants to have his Presidency and enjoy his retirement, too. Bad idea. Arguably, if he does survive this mess, it is better that he get a wake up call during Summer so that he knows he has to work his ass off every day moving forward. We'll see.

Those numbers are not particularly bad for Biden. If anything, they lean a bit toward supporting Biden's argument: grow a spine and just ride out the storm of a really bad debate. Since last November there has been a pretty stable pattern in the RCP polling average. Trump gets up to 47 % and change when he is doing best. Biden gets down to about 44 % when he is doing worst. That's about where they both are right now. But sometimes (mid-April, early June) they are almost tied in the RCP national average. So while being down 3 % is not good news for Biden, it is no worse news than at any other point since November. Biden's low point was in January, when he hit 43 % in the poll average. That's lower than the 44 % he is at now. So if this debate was supposed to be the fatal blow, it didn't work. At least not yet. All through 2016 people said Hillary was way ahead of Trump in the polls. That was mostly true. But there were a few points when Trump actually led Hillary be a fraction of one point. You didn't have to be an Einstein to figure out that if that happened on exactly the wrong day, Trump could be POTUS. Surprisingly, given what happened in 2000, no one (other than Ron Brownstein perhaps) was focused on the idea that Hillary could actually win the popular vote by a few points and still lose. So in 2024 Biden could win by simply being close to Trump on election day. And while it was true in 2016 that Hillary's 2 point national win did not translate to wins in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, it's not at all clear that's the case in 2024. In fact, Biden's been behind in those states pretty much the same or less as he's been behind nationally. Right now RCP says Biden is behind 3.4 % nationally. But he is behind 0.6 % in Michigan, 1 % in Wisconsin, and 3 % in Pennsylvania, in the RCP averages. So the idea that Biden has to beat Trump by 2 % or more nationally just to barely win in the three Rust Belt swing states does not appear to be true. More than anything, these polls seem to disprove the idea that Biden is just demented, and dead meat. Pretty much everyone agrees that the debate was an utter disaster for Biden. Pretty much everyone agrees that the very worst thing that could happen to Biden is he came off looking like a demented old fool. The whole world is now focused on the very thing the campaign tried desperately to avoid focusing on: Biden's age. The post-debate polls in these swing states simply don't match the prognosis that Biden is demented, or politically dead.

Well then, I'll bring it back to Morning Joe. Handsome in his own way. But I'd never make a move on him. No one fucks with Mika. President Biden Calls MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday: "I'm Testing Myself," "It Drives Me Nuts People Talking About This!" That's the most on message and on fire I have heard Biden in a long time. I keep going back to 1948 - inflation, unpopular incumbent - as one of for models of this year. Biden in this interview fully embraces the "Give Em Hell Joe" he needs to be. I see this as a potential win-win rather than the lose-lose a lot of pundits see. The age issue has been simmering and then boiling for a few years. So now it is out in the open. And everything that can be said is being said. Biden doesn't look or sound weak and fragile right now. While it would have been better if this Joe Biden showed up for the debate, it's now on him to prove he can stay this way. If he can't, we have Kick Ass Kamala as our back up. The polls do say something like 2 in 3 Democrats want Biden to stay in. So he knows he is not wrong in basing his message on the base. It remains to be seen how Independents view this. But Biden may be able to do what Trump did in 2023: take all the incoming, prove he is tough, secure his base, and then try to build out from there.

In terms of reporters, you can have Ezra. I'd happily take Josh Barro. But he's already taken. As I said, cognitive decline. I changed it. I'm so old that I still have a crush on Dean Cain. Not in his present incarnation as a right wing Fox News guy, but in his early days as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. In my imagination there are other things CK did not do quite so mildly. But that would be TMI again.

I agree. I like Newsom. He's my Guv. But a Harris/Newsom ticket makes no sense, for a whole bunch of reasons. I've assumed for years Newsom's actions have been anchored to positioning himself for 2028 [or 2024, had Biden not run]. It's the weird thing about politics. For him to win in 2028, it probably means Biden or Harris have to lose in 2024. And if that happens, he'd be a very viable candidate in 2028 I think. But if Harris is the nominee, and she wins, I can't see Newsom challenging her in 2028 if she sought a second term. But that is a whole bunch of hypotheticals. Harris/Shapiro would be a good pick, too. And if I go by today's polls, PA is a slightly harder win than MI. That said, I think two women on the ticket would be exciting. Particularly with old gross grabby hands on the top of the MAGA ballot. Speaking of cognitive decline, I am schizo on this topic. The rational part of me thinks Lichtman is right, and running Harris without letting her be the incumbent (meaning Biden does not resign) is just one more possible nail in the Democrats' coffin. The emotional part of me feels that Biden/Whitmer would completely change the dynamics of the race, in a positive way, and give Democrats the energy and actual excitement they're lacking. For sure, she would be better able than Biden to articulate a vision of change and what we need to fight for. TMI. 😉

And I wasn't saying you were, of course. We don't disagree. My point was that Lichtman argues, right or wrong, that governance and competence are what people will actually vote on. That said, Biden's lack of charisma is implicitly baked in to the cake of Lichtman's keys, but as only one of 13 factors. I'd argue more like 16 years. Obama was the one who talked about the fever breaking after the 2012 election. Instead, it got worse. I think it's just objectively true that Biden did the best job of any POTUS since 2008 in actually getting substantive bipartisan deals passed. Were he the Joe Biden of 2008 or 2012 or even 2020, that would be enough. Even if I assume Kamala will become the nominee and win, her prospects of making legislative deals look pretty grim - for exactly the reasons you state. There's no reason to believe the MAGA faithful will let up and tolerate centrist deal making, even if Trump adds 2024 to the long list of MAGA losses in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2023. The odds of her winning AND having a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate are slim. That said, the party seems to be quickly moving to the idea that her odds are better than Biden's at this point.

Opinion: Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer could make a winning ticket for Democrats Great piece arguing for a Harris/Whitmer ticket. The author ticks off all my reasons for thinking it makes sense. In one word: "Michigan." In a sentence: I've been reading lots of articles, mostly by fact-free cultists but also from some Democrats, saying Harris is a shitty debater. They must not have watched Harris on debate night deftly explaining away Biden's own incoherence. Granted, in 2020 Mike Pence got the sympathy vote since a fly landed on his head. 😉 Nevertheless three polls says Harris won that debate. A Morning Consult poll said she won 51/40. A CNN poll said she won 59/38. 538 asked a bunch of questions, and found that Kamala's approval rating among viewers of the debate in 2020 increased from 45 % before the debate to 51 % after. Her disapproval rating went from 40 % before to 41 % after. Asked whose performance was "very good or somewhat good", 69 % said Harris's performance met that standard and 60 % said Pence's performance did. Asked how well they did outlining their policies, 62 % said Kamala did "very good or somewhat good" and 44 % said Pence did the same. More relevant to 2024, only 33 % said Trump's performance was "very good or somewhat good" in the first 2020 Presidential debate. So much for Kamala being an easy debate target for Trump. Presidential Historian: Dropping Biden Won't Help Democrats That's Lichtman yet again in a brand new WSJ piece. Obviously lots of serious journalists recognize his track record and are asking his opinion. That headline gets it right. If you buy his Keys, dropping Biden can not do anything to help Democrats. But they can do it in a way that also won't hurt Democrats. Lichtman says again that Biden resigning so that Harris can run as incumbent and be selected without a divisive intraparty brawl keeps the same incumbency key and party contest key safe for Democrats. Ezra Klein had a piece in the New York Times today praising Jim Clyburn's idea of a so-called "mini-primary" if Biden drops out. I found that interesting, and clever on Clyburn's part. In my view of the world, Clyburn single-handedly choreographed the election of Biden in 2020 by bringing him back from the dead in South Carolina. He also pushed Biden to choose Kamala as his Veep. He is now making it clear that if Biden is not the nominee, he's with Kamala. I think Pelosi and Clyburn are the wise ones in the room. If Biden is pushed out, they will likely be among the top Democrats delivering the message in private. And they will choreograph something that looks competitive to chose his replacement, but is mainly designed to keep the party unified behind Harris and against Trump.

Why do you hate facts, @EmmetK? What did facts do to you? Did they rape you, like your raping cult leader? Did they lie to you, like your lying cult leader? Oh, wait. Facts don't lie. But you don't know the difference between facts and lies. Is it possible YOU have a cognitive disorder, @EmmetK? VERY URGENT: A Parkinson's disease specialist has visited the White House residence medical clinic at least nine times since July 2023 An earlier version of this story referred to one visit to The White House by Dr. Cannard earlier this year. Which implied maybe they checked Biden for Parkinson's and found nothing worth tracking. Nine visits ending in late March with no logs available afterward suggests something different. No doubt this will fuel a whole new cycle of questions. Since @EmmetK may be suffering from cognitive decline, or just likes outrageous lies told by cult leaders, let's spell out a few facts. 1. Parkinson's involves cognitive decline, but is not dementia. 2. Biden has no known diagnosis of either dementia or Parkinson's. So he does not have "obvious" dementia. And most people without cognitive decline would realize that "obvious" things can not be hidden. Poor @EmmetK. What did facts do to him? 3. While Parkinson's is not fatal, the internet says it can reduce life span by 1-2 years. The average life span of someone with Parkinson's is 81. Biden is 81. 4. While we do not know, for a fact, the average political life span of a sitting POTUS who blew a debate and is now perhaps suspected of suffering from early stage Parkinson's, my guess is the average political life span will be something like one week to one month. If these dots connect, good luck Joe.

I don't think this has been posted. John Oliver did a great piece on Project 2025. Spoiler alert: If you like MILFs, there are three bonus sexy clips included. If you get off watching hot older conservatives get angry, nothing makes me cum more than watching Larry Kudlow flail his arms around while ranting, "Impound! Impound! Impound!"

I know I am broken record about Allan Lichtman. But this is where he gets really interesting. I'm very pragmatic. So what sells Lichtman to me is simply that he's been right, in advance, either 9 or 10 times out of 10 in predicting who would win POTUS, based on his Keys system. (He predicted Gore in 2000, which was razor tight.) So he'd say charisma, or any personal quality of the candidate, is one of 13 keys. But legislative wins counts as a key, and the economy counts as two keys. More generally, his argument is that Administrations win because of how well they governed, not how they campaign. And in 2024, he says, Biden is poised to win unless lots of other things go wrong (like mass social unrest, a big military failure, as well as other keys). It's an oddly radical concept. In a democracy, you'd think it's all about how we try to elect good leaders who govern well. Not about how good a stump speaker, or even how good a debater, you are. And certainly not how good their stupid 30 second commercials or slogans or red hats are. But it is true that we've been trained by pollsters and pundits with their own short term interests to think it's really the day to day horse race that matters most. Biden is arguing pay attention to what I did in 3.5 years, not how I spoke for 90 minutes while I was sick. And Lichtman basically is saying Biden is right. Forget the polls and the whims of voters in June. In November they will give a thumbs up or thumbs down. And based on his Keys - good economy, significant achievements, incumbent with a mostly united party and no personal scandal like Trump - Biden will likely win. If Biden does survive the current crisis and remains the Democratic nominee, it will certainly be a good test of concept. The big disconnect between voters and Biden right now is that Biden wants us to focus on the past - what he did. But voters are worried about the future - what he will be capable of doing in 2026 or 2027. It's very difficult to say voters are wrong, and Biden will somehow be stronger and more articulate in 2027. But Lichtman's quantitative approach basically says it is the past that matters most. It's really going to be a thumbs up or thumbs down on what happened in Biden's (or Harris's) first term. As a Democrat who wants Biden and Harris to win, I sure hope he is right. If I assume Biden wins and in 2025 he is diagnosed with Parkinson's or dementia or just looks very old and frail, it's not a comforting concept. But this is where Stu Stevens, the 2012 Romney strategist who is now a Lincoln Project Never Trumper, would say just grow a God damn spine. If that happens, which is an unknown, that is why we have a Veep like Harris. Worry about it later, not now. Again, Lichtman would say Stevens is right. If we assume Harris takes over in 2025, she will then be judged on what her Administration does. We just don't have to worry about that now. All that said, after that horrific debate the idea of Biden being the nominee just scares the shit out of me. It's almost certain next week things will start by getting worse for Biden, with more calls for his resignation from House members and Senators. The people I have the most faith in now are Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries. The only way Biden is going to go is if the party's top leaders basically force him out. And these leaders have the wits and will to make sure this is not chaos, and a party bloodbath. Neither Biden nor Harris want that either, or course. So it's going to be a small group of wise leaders I trust making one big decision, I think.

LOL. It's one poll. And it confirms what I said. Biden v. Harris appears to be a coin toss, at least if you go by polls. In this poll Trump is up 6 over Biden and 7 over Harris. If I read the Harris X account right, that's a 3 point net shift to Trump since 5/31. No surprise that in a debate where Trump's lies and stupidity were eclipsed by Biden's debate malpractice, Trump got a post-debate bump. When the debate bounces back to Trump executing Liz Cheney after his military tribunal determines she's a traitor, shift will happen. The more concerning numbers about Harris are a Daily Mail poll that shows Trump over Biden by 5 and over Harris by 11. That's a number that will slow momentum to Kamala. But I'm quite sure in the next few weeks this will be polled to death. Meanwhile, the first good piece of news for Biden in a while. Larry Sabato said "the race between Trump and Biden is no longer close." It's good news for Biden because Sabato is often spectacularly wrong. So when he calls a trend or an election, you can feel pretty confident it will be the opposite of what he says. Sabato single-handedly created the inaccurate idea that the 2016 polls were horribly wrong. In fact, the final 2016 RCP average showed Clinton winning the popular vote by 3.2 %, and she won by 2.1 %. Pretty close. If you look at the state polls that explain her electoral college defeat, those were pretty close to reality, too. Sabato is a prognosticator, not a pollster. He guessed very badly right before Election Day 2016 that Clinton would win, and Democrats would win the Senate. He turned out to be dead wrong, of course. instead of admitting he just had his head up his ass, he was all over TV blaming his shitty and unreliable guessing on bad polling. So now that Sabato has said the race is not close, we can expect to see the race tighten. Cue the drumroll, please. Biden Has Lost Little Swing-State Support Following First Debate Biden holds an advantage over Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin A new Bloomberg state poll shows Biden beating Trump by 5 points in Michigan and 3 points in Wisconsin. That brings the RCP average of state polls in those two states back to a statistical tie. Bloomberg still shows Biden losing Pennsylvania. But he is only 1 point down in Georgia and 3 points down in Nevada. Take that, Larry Sabato! Nitwit! I'll double down on the idea that it's lucky timing for Democrats that this happened now. Of course, the best thing would be Joe Biden circa 2008 or so (the Whack Sarah Palin version) showed up to the debate. But if it was going to be Dementia Joe, thank God it happened now. This could be the setup for Comeback Kid, 2024 Edition. One way to judge whether Biden has the wits about him to fight Putin or fight for America's middle class is watching him fight for his own survival. So these Bloomberg polls may be an indictor that the "Fight, Joe, Fight!" strategy is working. Either way, the debate about how Biden is maybe crazy and Trump is for sure a crazy lying narcissist that was being suppressed is now in the open. That's a good thing. I think it makes Democrats look like the grown ups, while Trump rants about military tribunals and executing cult traitor Liz Cheney on 5th Ave. or wherever.