Appointment television to watch something else.
How big of a favorite does Biden have to be for you to support him as a candidate rather than roll the dice with Buttigieg/Sanders/Warren?
For example, if you are at a brokered convention and have to decide to go with either 55-45 Biden or 51-49 for your preferred candidate.
If Biden is locked in at 55-45, the lowest gambool I’d accept for Warren would be 53-47.
My main argument for Bernie in ‘16 was that he polled better than Hillary vs Trump. I think there’s a strong argument to be made for Biden if he really is a huge favorite.
If I were like really close to sure that Biden would win and Bernie or Warren would lose, I guess I’d have to vote Biden, but I’m like really really really unlikely to believe that Biden has the best shot in the general. Can’t really put a number on it.
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Yeah… the typical voter hasn’t tuned in at all yet. They still think well of Biden because they know very little about him other than his name.
The more you learn about Biden the less likable he becomes… because he’s hot garbage.
I’m not talking about policy here… I’m saying he personally is terrible at running for office and is a profoundly unlikable human being. He’s corrupt, slow witted, and his campaign’s #1 goal is to stop him from speaking spontaneously and exposing how terrible he is. He’s very possibly worse at this and less likable than Hillary… and you guys who know how much I despise Hillary.
I think Biden is a 60/40 favorite vs Trump in November 2020 after he’s spent months rolling around in the muck with Trump. I think Warren is probably more like 99/1. Because she’s +EV and every time she opens her mouth she gets a little ahead. She’s actively playing the game well and making good decisions. If any group of people on earth can appreciate that it should be us.
Good candidates make good choices and instinctively know what the right thing to say/do is in the moment. Biden just doesn’t have that. He’s going to be on the defensive the entire general election as his campaign staff tries to prevent him from making a campaign ending mistake. That’s soooooo bad.
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I think Trump has at least a 30% chance against anyone and he’s probably a small favorite against Biden.
No possible way. Trump won a low turnout election vs HRC one time. Every election result since has looked bad for him… and he’s done such an exceptional job of triggering the libs that voter turnout is going to be bananas in 2020.
He is at best a 40% dog vs Biden and way way lower vs all other contenders. He may be drawing dead vs the field honestly.
Ignore the swing state polls. He only won in those places last time because the Democrat was Hillary and she refused to believe she had to try hard vs Donald because he was Donald. That won’t happen twice. Ted Cruz almost lost a TX statewide election in 2018. The suburbs aren’t winnable for Trump in 2020.
It was as weak an argument then and as it is now. Hillary was crushing Donald Trump by 10+ points at this stage in head to head polls. Not many are paying close attention and are leaning on vague priors.
In 2015, those priors were Trump was an unqualified game show host and the news keeps calling him racist. Hillary was a career politician and wife of a former President that many liked, but some really didn’t.
Now the priors for Biden are VP to the good President back from when things were normal.
People start paying more attention (sort of, in stupid ways) in general election season. When the nominees were locked in and the smear campaign kicked into high gear, people started to go “wait, you’re telling me she actually did the emails? And the FBI looked into it? Well I can’t vote for that.” They’ll have the same realization about Biden. “You’re telling me his son got a fancy job because of his dad? And he’s declining mentally? Well, I can’t vote for that.”
To be clear, it would be the same thing with Bernie. “You’re telling me he’s an actual socialist? And he had a heart attack?”
Imo, the only thing we’re seeing in the head to head polls is Trump’s floor of 43%. The GE is a matter of how effective the GOP campaign is to paint his opponent as worse.
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The polls at this stage really are suuuper stupid. Want to see what tuned in voters think about the primary? Go to Iowa or NH basically. Nobody anywhere else cares yet. And don’t tell me that Biden does best with black voters and will follow HRC’s trajectory. There are no black voters to have tuned in in Iowa or NH. The campaigns have barely started working in SC.
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I̶’̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶C̶l̶i̶n̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶v̶s̶.̶ ̶D̶o̶t̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶s̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶2̶0̶1̶5̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶l̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶(̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶)̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶N̶o̶v̶e̶m̶b̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶. But by the middle of the 2016 primaries the Clinton v. Dotard polls were pretty stable:
Note the dotard was often under 40, so his floor was way off, but Clinton was seldom over 50 and basically never over 51 and she finished with ~49. If we see dems hit over 51 a fair amount during the primaries I think that’s a good sign.
Edit: I’m an idiot, scrolling down more, these are the heads ups of Clinton vs Dotard from 2015
So basically after a few months after he announced the double digit lead Clinton had vanished
this is 100% true.
And don’t get going on Super Tuesday states. Even the frontrunners have skeleton crews at best in CA, and nothing anywhere else. Pete has 6 staffers in CA. Warren has 2. Harris pulled most of hers out for Iowa. Bernie is the only one with any offices, even, and most of those are because he had it in place last time around. Until Pete sets up an office in San Diego, guess who the point person for the whole county is for the campaign?
That’s right, you’re lookin’ at her. And I’m not getting paid. Every campaign in CA is running on volunteers right now.
We have over 400 delegates, and even the best-run campaigns have no fucking clue how to run a primary campaign here because no one has ever had to before.
As for voters themselves? No one is paying attention yet unless they were already politically active. Average guy on the street knows the names Biden and Bernie. Warren is a tossup (maybe 60/40), and Pete is about 30/70 (known to unknown).
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Yeah let’s not pretend that any of these campaigns (except for Steyer who has unlimited funding lol) have the resources to run operations that are even 5% as dense in CA as they are in IA. Iowa is a tiny (in population) farm state. California is one of the most expensive media markets in the country and is if iirc the worlds 5th largest economy.
The reason these campaigns pull out all the stops for the first 4 primaries is because winning them comes with a vast amount of media attention and it crafts the storyline for the Super Tuesday contests where nobody has any real ability to control anything.
Personally I think that having any CA campaign resources is too many. You can’t hope to move the needle without breaking the entire campaign budget, and even then it wouldn’t move the needle by much. If you took all the money that all the candidates raised to date and spent it on ads in CA you’d have maybe a week of heavy advertising. Advertising heavily in CA for an extended period of time costs billions not millions of dollars.
Not to give away the game, but Pete’s campaign here is heavily modeled on Obama’s 2007/2008 CA operation. very lightly staffed, with an army of volunteers. Not even sure they’ll do anything but internet/social media ad buys
My work has gone from visibility throughout the summer to volunteer recruitment now and up to January. This is where people’s apathy is really starting to show, and why i get so pissed when new assholes try to jump in the race now.
Honestly the only people who can do anything different are the now two billionaires in the race. Yes Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg could make a good faith attempt at buying the CA primary. They can write a check that size.
What guidance do you get from the national campaign about what to do, where to do it, when to do it? Are you in contact with experienced campaign staff or are you mostly on your own?
Now that they actually have dedicated staffers here, I definitely am getting more guidance. we had a day-long training with the campaign, that taught us how to structure our local leadership team, and how to get volunteers, where to send them, how to canvass/phone bank/text bank, etc. We were basically on own all summer though.
I now send regular updates to them about our local work, and they provide guidance on meeting structures, etc. One area I really hope they ramp up soon is a route to acquire swag…because people are starting to want yard signs, etc. There is a definite method to how they want us to build our volunteer network here, so we’re morphing our team and efforts to work within that framework.
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hey sky, can you give me/us some thoughts on Pete’s strategy for Super Tuesday? I made a comment a day or two ago that he wishes he were the alternative to Biden, in that, he would love to make inroads into Biden’s support among non white, lower education moderate voters, and I continue to think not doing so is his biggest obstacle to winning. Say he wins IA, does well in NH, and then there’s a month before more voting, I think he targets where Warren is strong (CA etc.) rather than where Biden is strong?
Warren vs Trump looks a lot like Carter vs Reagan to me. A TV show dude who insults his opponents, says stupid shit, and is a simpleton vs a leftist who’s gonna get stuck explaining shit too long which just confuses people and will have zero business support. She will get the most votes but she’s a dog to him HU. She’ll stumble in the debates trying to explain shit.
Looks like Patrick’s running btw, I’m sure there will be hot takes of who’s votes he’s taking away even though nobody is. I don’t even know what state he gov’d. Mass? Warren losing her home state would be hilarious.
Warren’s poll numbers keep going down after people learn about her but sure she’s 99/1 vs trump, unreal.
Actually all the candidates #'s keep going down after people learn about them, Booker would be wise to bail before december for his senate race.
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