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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s time to take a Biden landslide seriously
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s time to take a Biden landslide seriously
Donald Trump has always treated his presidency as a game show; one where success is measured in ratings and dollars. Controversy is to be welcomed: it keeps attention on him and his fans love it. As politics, it’s been relatively successful – enough so to win him the presidency, even if his approval figures have never been much to write home about and the mid-terms were a serious set-back.
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Nonetheless, the Democratic platform will probably be the most radical in a generation or more.
On waking up this morning I had my doubts. One could make the opposite case that Trump is indeed an idiot, referencing actual footage to confirm this.
It seems all the more relevant given that Trump's disapproval rating in polls recorded by 538 hit 56.1% last night, the highest since January 2018.
I am less sure that remains true today.
It may satisfy the vengeful, but it has nothing to do with helping peoples lives
And I dislike Trump with a passion and want him gone now
Biden can send the next 4 years Trump-proofing the presidency for future generations. That will involve criminal trials I think.
Trump on the other hand has been successful by being negative. If Trump can successfully deconstruct Biden and the Dems, he's back in play.
So the only way the Presidential Election mirrors the 2024 GE is that the incumbent must defend their record, but isn't that always the way?
P.S. If Trump does deconstruct Biden, you could claim it similar to GE2019 where the challenger's credibility was demolished by the incumbent (and by the challenger's own folly).
Right now, a period of calm rather than radicalisation which will undoubtedly cause further division and unrest is what the US needs above all, before it becomes actually ungovernable.
The legislation to do so for the VRA has been sitting on Mitch McConnel's desk but the coward won't put it to a vote.
Did Corbyn ever record a message for Armed Forces' Day? If so I would be interested to see it.
In any even, prosecutions are not, and should not be a matter for the President.
But more than that, somebody this calm, intelligent and thoughtful is somebody who, even I disagree with them politically, I can both imagine as PM and accept them as PM. With Corbyn, I just could not.
There is unlikely to be a giant 'stop Labour' vote for Johnson or his successor to bank.
Reagan's admin was filled with criminals. Bush Snr pardoned them. Barr ran interference.
GWB had a bucket full of people who should be in jail.
The failure of America to prosecute political criminals means they just keep doing it.
It is possible that the lived reality of job losses, illness and death is breaking through that psychological barrier - and the spectacle of Trump whining about the numbers will only compound the anger once the switch is made.
I was particularly struck by the strong disapproval number in the poll last night. If the electorate is that determined to get rid of you they tend to make sure that the job is done properly - 1997-style.
The founding fathers assumed a lunatic President would be restrained by the other branches of Government.
Trump has destroyed that notion.
Biden needs to bolster the institutions against future Trumps (lunatic presidents, not Republicans)
It was for Armed Forces Day in Venezuela.
Also it would make it easy for the GOP to highlight and magnify anything illegal the Dems did in office.
I like Starmer's "pick your battles" approach, which even if I agreed with many of the battles Corbyn fought, I do agree in hindsight he should have been more specific.
For me, Corbyn's advisers are just as much a failure as he is. So much could have been avoided if he had the people advising Starmer now, I think.
Regardless, Starmer is I think the first Labour leader probably since Brown (who was the PM so I am not sure it really counts but still), who most people can see running the country, even if they don't like him. That's quite a big problem for the Tories as that poll post the election showed most people swapped, or didn't vote because of the leadership.
I maintain that Johnson is/was never especially popular, definitely not historically. He was just less unpopular than Corbyn (albeit by a long way in the end). Yes he continues to poll high (although Starmer has overturned a 26 point lead to 6 points, so not sure I would say Starmer is doing too badly) but I suspect it won't last.
Ah, my coat...
The 9/4 on under 200 in the EC is spectacular value. It should be close to evens.
Simply laying Trump also remains great value. Just because you missed out when he was much shorter does not mean you should miss out again now.
But of course dyor.
I was burnt too badly last time to even dare hope you are right.
I'm sorry but that is unintentionally hilarious
However Biden's current average poll rating is only 49.7% ie little more than 1% higher than Hillary got in 2016, despite no major 3rd party candidate (which also enabled Reagan and Clinton to get big wins in 1980 and 1996 on a similar score).
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html
In my view he is not even certain of winning yet and it will be a close election, talk of a landslide smacks of complacency
It failed this time because (a) elected Republicans were scared of losing Primary elections to Trump loyalists and (b) there are deep categorical divisions in US politics (abortion, gun rights, etc) that encourage partisanship.
I don't see that there's much you can do with institutional reform to address those problems. STV for House of Representative elections might help*, but it would probably make the Senate more important where elections are necessarily binary.
* It would weaken the role of Primaries and reduce the scope for gerrymandering.
Halderman, Erlichman and Hunt for example were jailed from the Nixon administration after Watergate
Make a speech about building...
Right now it's much harder for him. Part of the problem is that he's having to deal with reality, so he has much less latitude to make up good messages. Relatedly the ground is moving underneath him, so he can say something that sounds good to his audience, like "the virus will just disappear", then a few weeks later he has to say something different, because the virus didn't disappear.
Finally, I wonder if he's just out-of-touch. When he was in opposition, he was constantly interacting with the voters; He'd actually go to MacDonalds and buy his burgers, and while he was there he'd meet voters and talk to them. Now he still orders MacDonalds, but it's delivered to the White House. Worse, the virus has prevented him from doing the rallies, which seemed to work as a weird kind of public focus group; He'd stand there ad-libbing and see what the audience liked, and build his messages around the best bits, then just pretend he never said the stuff that didn't go down so well. You could of course perfectly well substitute *normal* focus groups, but it's not clear he wants to pay attention to the results.
There's no way in hell this will work
At the 2015 election is was expecting a Labour win, and was pretty relaxed about it, even if I didn’t vote for it: Milband was a grown-up.
I was not so sanguine at the next two: May and even more Johnson were not my first choice as PMs, but Corbyn and his team were genuinely frightening.
With SKS in charge I’m no longer afraid of a Labour government. This means I don’t have to vote for my local MP who is a pilock.
It seems to be the 2017 manifesto with the foreign policy aims of Ed mixed with the relative unity of Blair with the robustness of Brown
But I was rather sad I couldn't bring myself to vote Labour in 2017 as they had an excellent candidate here.
Of course, by 2024 I may have moved away, or Milling may retire (she has looked very strained over the last year, which is not surprising) so at the moment I can afford to focus on the national picture.
Starmer's video is very impressive. I posted yesterday on his plans to win back the Red Wall, and said patriotism without nationalism would be a part of it. It's a long journey, but this is an impressive start.
(Am I stretchering a point there?)
I do not want to have to vote for him again.
Haldeman....Ehrlichman..... Come on, this is PB.com. We have standards.
You got Hunt right though.
Regards
Peter_the_Pedant
Edit: You are of course absolutely right, a number of the Watergate crew did do chokey. The sentences weren't that great but it didn't matter. The point was made and their careers, including that of the President, were ended.
Haldeman was an odious individual, a talented but unprincipled ad-man. Hunt was clever but shallow. Ehrlichman would have been a decent public servant in a different kind of administration.
Cairns is my MP, and after his outrageous behaviour re: Ross England, I would vote SWP or UKIP if it meant his ejection from the HoC.
The 2017 manifesto was essentially a message of "this is what was wrong about Tory Austerity since 2010". It's not a message relevant to an election in 2024.
What does Starmer need to do, therefore?
1) Provide a clear, consistent break with Corbyn, as Corbyn was a key part of the problem.
2) Draw a line under the saga of Labour's Brexit policy (which let it not be forgotten, he was directly responsible for)
3) Provide probing, intelligent opposition to make sure the government is held to account.
4) Make sure he cannot be accused of making political capital out of the worst public health crisis in a hundred years
5) Keep current Labour voters on board while ensuring he can reach out to non-voters.
6) Look, sound and behave like a plausible Prime Minister - calm, dignified, unruffled and sensible.
So how's he done so far?
1) Long Bailey. Antisemitism. Praise for the Armed Forces. Mentions of national pride. Job done.
2) We've left. End of conversation. Job also done.
3) Performances in PMQs and with the media have generally been impressive. Johnson has been forced to get better quick (although he has) and the media are giving him a fair hearing. Comments are sensible and measured. Most people will have agreed with his assessments of Cummings and Jenrick, but he did not call for their resignation.
4) Has offered to help the government, and supported many key measures. Admittedly, the offers have not been gratefully received, but he's doing the right thing and I think people appreciate that. He (and Sturgeon for the matter of that) were pitch perfect in their response to the news of Johnson's illness.
5) Knelt for BLM protests, but condemned the statue toppling by saying there is a right way and a wrong way to protest (at the same time noting he would personally prefer the statue to have been moved).
6) The rest feed into this.
He's still behind Johnson on leader ratings. No shit, he's not the PM and Johnson is. The incumbent always has an advantage. But he's narrowed the gap substantially and if he continues like this, people will be willing to give him a hearing. That's all he can do.
So far, so impressive. Again, not to say he will win - formidable barriers face him - but he is what Labour so desperately needed after Corbyn.
I'm just beginning to think the Dems have played an unintentional blinder in selecting Joe Biden.
Who do you want in a situation like this? A rock solid, sensible, tried-and-trusted safe pair of hands, that's what.
A big victory is by no means impossible.
The political centre of the country is a little to the left of centre economically and a little to the right of centre on social issues, although that's arguably a crude way of representing the present situation.
Now if Malcolm pitches in (tee hee) then I can say, 'ta mac'.
https://www.270towin.com/maps/zLgOb
I had a go at doing it without Texas but it's tough:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/9m9Z0
So Trump below 150 is pretty near equivalent to "Biden wins TX".
The Covid situation is really bad and still getting worse. His policies of denial, premature opening and federal chaos are going to look unforgiveable if the cases keep coming. The US already has a much worse infection rate than us although a lower death rate. I wonder if the excess mortality figures might show an even worse figure.
His strength was the economy but he faces going into the election with record unemployment and a deep recession. This is despite an almost reckless disregard for the federal deficit throughout his tenure.
America is a deeply divided country and the antics of BLM protesters will rile many but I think independents have had enough.
Except Hancock until yesterday, apparently.
https://twitter.com/dremilyportermd/status/1276336319715835905