WSJ: Biden Shows Signs of Slipping

[Suckrates]

38 minutes ago, Riobard said:

I’m not American and my exposure to Biden, Gupta, etc, is limited, my impressions cursory. But perhaps a one-week transverse outsider view counts for something as adjunct to extended info flooding. 

I watched Biden on ABC. I think he would score perfectly on Mini Mental State Exam testing, often the first step in screening. Its items can be altered to mitigate rote exposure bias. I think he’s a nice guy but naïve. Irrespective of cognitive function he’s not particularly smart and insightful. He knows stuff; that’s nice, an experienced and relatable politician. Higher office and advanced intelligence are not well correlated. Worse yet, his advisers are not smart and cannot read the room.

I wish I had been able to coach him on what was obviously going to be a pivotal question on openness to evaluation. There would have been a better short and simple way to decline without the tone of oppositionality and pre-Fall pride, and/or reporting having been concretely screened at least at a rudimentary level with illustration beyond ‘well, my clinicians handle that’ [non-sic]. Goode Lawd A’mighty, doesn’t VP Biden (🤔😉) have an EdD? 

Gupta’s idea about baseline standardized cognitive paper+interview testing is not terrible. Annually is not appropriate for a lot of reasons. Follow-up at particular junctures over time could be useful. Normative score value references are as useful as within-subject longitudinal comparisons. 

With all due respect, why do we keep going in circles ?   This is not about Biden, its about Democracy and our future for ourselves and family.... Do we want to live freely or under the thumb of a crazed dictator telling us what to do and how to live.  Having the religion of others "forced" upon us..... denying us the simplest things that could make our station in life better ?   That is not the world I want to live in.    As for Biden, HE'S OLD people,  he always was old.  But ANYONE would be able to govern us better that Trump and his clown posse....  So please, enough with this OLD thing.   So lets have meaningful conversation about things we can fix..  WE CANT FIX Bidens age, but he has proven to us he is a man for the people and is working for US, while Trump has shown he wants to steal our country for his own gain.   Not really a choice when you look at it that way, if you are a sane and rational person. 

[EmmetK]

2 minutes ago, Suckrates said:

With all due respect, why do we keep going in circles ?   This is not about Biden, its about Democracy and our future for ourselves and family.... Do we want to live freely or under the thumb of a crazed dictator telling us what to do and how to live.  Having the religion of others "forced" upon us..... denying us the simplest things that could make our station in life better ?   That is not the world I want to live in.    As for Biden, HE'S OLD people,  he always was old.  But ANYONE would be able to govern us better that Trump and his clown posse....  So please, enough with this OLD thing.   So lets have meaningful conversation about things we can fix..  WE CANT FIX Bidens age, but he has proven to us he is a man for the people and is working for US, while Trump has shown he wants to steal our country for his own gain.   Not really a choice when you look at it that way, if you are a sane and rational person. 

"a crazed dictator telling us what to do and how to live.  Having the religion of others "forced" upon us..... denying us the simplest things that could make our station in life better .."

LOL. Not too much of a crazed rant....
This is exactly why Trump is in the lead and will be the next President!

TRUMP 2024
MAGA

[Riobard]

1 hour ago, Suckrates said:

With all due respect, why do we keep going in circles ?

My take is that the discussion, topic, what have you, is linear, multi-faceted, both-and. If it were circular there would be no conclusion; there will be one. The problem you identify (IMO irrefutable) is entrenched.

Surely some of the noise you perceive to be extraneous around the signal requires attention. If the focus is to be removed from cognitive competence, a course correction in which sociopathy is allowed to speak for itself is in order. Biden is not intelligent enough and trained sufficiently to persuade anybody about his opponent’s shortcomings beyond views already held. He’s shitty at mudslinging, like most empaths, and it comes off poorly, indeed, whiny in tone. Exasperated is not presidential. He does not score the denigration points many posters here are able to rack up. A dumb-looking grin does not cut it.

He should never have tried to speak if DJT was blathering over a cold mic a few feet away. The debate was not a discussion. A debate should be somewhat of a discussion not a verbal UFC octagon match, not overlapping speeches (DJT’s offputting strategy). Why couldn’t Biden have politely held his opponent to task and appeared to ‘go high’? Example: pause: “You may do better here if you actively listen. In my experience interaction goes well if talking over the other person is held in check. What say you, mods?” Drop some of the recitation of hard facts, struggling to cover off all kinds of complex data and figures. No presenter with common sense will attempt such without (eg) PowerPoint. KISS. Extensive info retrieval diminishes the desired countenance.

Why was there no forecasting and strategy for dealing with anticipatory acting out? These skills can be taught to undergrad med students barely out of their teens, in short periods of time, even though more science-y book-smart and comparatively short-changed in relationship-centred care concepts required for inevitably difficult patients. 

[Bingo T Dog]

1 hour ago, EmmetK said:

"a crazed dictator telling us what to do and how to live.  Having the religion of others "forced" upon us..... denying us the simplest things that could make our station in life better .."

LOL. Not too much of a crazed rant....
This is exactly why Trump is in the lead and will be the next President!

TRUMP 2024
MAGA

Must kill you and Plump that Michelle Obama could squash Plump like a bug in the polls.  Ha ha

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, Riobard said:

I watched Biden on ABC. I think he would score perfectly on Mini Mental State Exam testing, often the first step in screening.

Therein lies the rub, I think.  I'm not a doctor, so I have no clue how making a diagnosis works.  But it seems logical that there may not be a black and white, reliable diagnosis to be had.  That's part of what clearly bothers people.  They have seen this movie before.  But it moves slowly, and does not have a name, until it unpredictably moves quickly.

This is close to heart to me.  I know there was a point when I invited my Mom to visit me in California for a week.  It turned out to be her last trip in which she did a lot of weird things.  In retrospect I learned they were symptoms of vascular dementia, which she had not been diagnosed with yet.  Something like that seemingly did happen with Reagan in his second term, years before his Alzheimer's diagnosis.

From Politico today, post Georgey Boy:

Quote

A House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “Denial of the problem is not a solution or a path forward to convincing our constituents that he has the capacity or the vision for four more years.”

Quote

And another Democratic operative who has advised the White House called the interview a “stay of execution” but added that the president’s “acceptance of losing to Trump as long as he tried his best will make his hand significantly worse with every Democratic office holder who does not want to lose their seat.”

Despite the conventional wisdom, I see some big pluses in this for Democrats - even if Biden remains the nominee.   The quiet part that Biden loyalists tried to suppress is now being said out loud.  I think that makes Democrats look like the adults in the room.  At least compared to Republicans who are just circling the wagons and denying the deeply toxic things about Trump that repelled Independents even as they were aghast at Biden's performance.  Now the question is whether leaders like Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, and Obama can steer this to an orderly solution, one way or the other.

Biden is at least partly right.  There were lots of pundits saying things looked dire in 2022.  And Biden's wisdom and calm turned out to be right.  If he does manage to survive what could already be called an intraparty bloodbath, it actually is a form of cognitive test.  Lots of Democratic leaders, including Biden himself, have been "comeback kids" before.  The difference is that losing a primary, being involved in a sex scandal, or losing a debate are not the same as, to put in bluntly, losing your mind.

Since Trump has never had morals and is also losing his mind, it creates a very weird and concerning race to the bottom.

[Riobard]

It’s like a Battle of the Lears, inn’t? Some individual personal biophysiological and characterologic components unique, others in common. A close and elusive hard predictive call on the lesser of two possible tragedies. I hope that JB’s being pinned into a hero complex works for him and all. Would that the team goes over Cole’s Notes at the least. I think there are more sophisticated, paradoxically more gentle, ways to stimulate the opponent’s publicly perceivable decompensation.

——

Say, “George, look, nobody should be old before they’re wise.” Even if abstract, the pundits will unpack it all the live long day.

[unicorn]

A Biden statement from yesterday's interview shows where his mindset is:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/06/politics/biden-abc-interview-analysis/index.html

"So, one fatalistic statement in the ABC interview about how he’d feel next January if Trump won is likely to inflame concerns of many Democrats about his mindset, his understanding of his situation and what will happen in November.

“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Biden said."

He's saying that it doesn't matter to him if our country goes down the crapper with Trump at the helm. What's most important to Biden are his own personal feelings. I get it that (hopefully) this is about his dementia and not that he's always been a prick. To say the election isn't about the country, but just about him--that really got me hot under the collar. 

[Riobard]

“Goodest” is real neck & neck with “bigly”. Eeesh.

[EmmetK]

On 7/5/2024 at 6:39 PM, stevenkesslar said:

No 180 on my part.  More like 100 % behind Allan Lichtman, who is focused on how Democrats win and Trump loses. 

If there is an all knowing wise guy in this debate, he's it.  He was right 10 out of 10 times in picking who would win, and why they would win.  (I'm excusing his call for Gore in 2000.  Lichtman argues Gore actually won, if the votes were all counted.  Even if you disagree, Gore won the popular vote and the electoral college outcome hinged on a small number of votes in one state.)

In fact, I'll take a victory lap and argue I out-Lichtmaned Lichtman.

In his first few chats with CNN, right after the debate, Lichtman argued that Biden withdrawing from the race in a way that led to a party bloodbath (my word, not his) would be a disaster for Democrats.  I agree.  What I found confusing, and wrote in several posts, is that it seems like Biden resigning the Presidency and letting Harris run as the consensus candidate AND POTUS would solve that problem.

Sure enough, a few days later Lichtman did an interview on News Nation I posted above in which he said exactly that.  To summarize again, he has a Plan A and Plan B.  Plan A is President Biden runs for re-election under the Biden/Harris ticket, and is favored to win.  Plan B is that President Harris runs for re-election under the Biden/Harris ticket, and is favored to win.  I'm no pollster, let alone Allan Lichtman.  Nor am I a neurologist.   But my gut feeling is the same as yours, @unicorn.  I think we agree.  Biden at least appears to be showing signs of slipping.  If 80 % of voters, including most Democrats, think he is not the best candidate to beat Trump, that merits serious reflection.

Speaking of neurologists, Sanjay Gupta has weighed in with excellent advice, using words that seem to lean slightly to our shared opinion - emphasis on the word opinion.

Biden should undergo ‘detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing,’ Sanjay Gupta says

Gupta said low sleep, low blood sugar levels, or illness could have contributed to his debate performance.

Perhaps coincidentally, that echoes the precise words of Nancy Pelosi.  Is this an episode, or a condition?  They both are making a lot of sense.

The only thing I would add is that Trump should take the same tests.  Including one specifically for narcissistic personality disorder.

I'll point out what I view as the key flaw in Lichtman's initial logic, in his first CNN interview.  He said Biden should be judged by three and a half years of performance, not 90 minutes of debate.  I absolutely agree, as far as that goes.  But I think the reason 80 % of Americans are concerned is they see two old men, neither of whom appear to be fit to serve.  The question is about the future, not the past.  Lichtman appears to have gotten the memo.

I think Gupta's advice lays the groundwork for both Plan A and Plan B.  Best case for Biden, it was low blood sugar and a cold.  Reagan and Obama both survived debates in which they stumbled and fumbled.  And in Reagan's case even seemed senile and lost for a moment.  Worst case for Biden, it lays the groundwork for his resignation for the good of party and country. If Lichtman's Keys are right for the 11th time in a row, President Harris is set up to run as the consensus candidate, and incumbent.  And kick the gross old porn star fucking felon she will run against into the shit can of history, once and for all.

 

So much for CackleHead Kamala being withing striking distance of Trump.

A post-debate poll, published over the weekend, shows former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by more than he leads President Joe Biden, as talk among Democrats has turned to replacing Biden with Harris at the top of the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket.

America is not quite ready yet for its first DEI President.

10 things the American people trust more then Kamala Harris
1 - 14 days to flatten the curve
2- CNN headlines
3- Jussie Smollette testimony
4- Philadelphia election results
5- Bill Cosby's Margaritas
6- Jeffrey Epstein Prison Guards
7 - Flint Michigan tap water
8 - Long Range Weather Forecasts
9 - Biden is a fit as a fiddle
10- Anything out of the mouth of Mika Brzezynski

How about a Harris/Hillary ticket?

Cackles & Cankles

TRUMP 2024
MAGA

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, EmmetK said:

So much for CackleHead Kamala being withing striking distance of Trump.

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.

[RockyRoadTravel]

3 hours ago, EmmetK said:

So much for CackleHead Kamala being withing striking distance of Trump.

A post-debate poll, published over the weekend, shows former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by more than he leads President Joe Biden, as talk among Democrats has turned to replacing Biden with Harris at the top of the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket.

America is not quite ready yet for its first DEI President.

10 things the American people trust more then Kamala Harris
1 - 14 days to flatten the curve
2- CNN headlines
3- Jussie Smollette testimony
4- Philadelphia election results
5- Bill Cosby's Margaritas
6- Jeffrey Epstein Prison Guards
7 - Flint Michigan tap water
8 - Long Range Weather Forecasts
9 - Biden is a fit as a fiddle
10- Anything out of the mouth of Mika Brzezynski

How about a Harris/Hillary ticket?

Cackles & Cankles

TRUMP 2024
MAGA

 

 

You obsess over individual polls. Relax. Representative democracy shouldn't be so scary to you.   

[RockyRoadTravel]

3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

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.

Lots of information from a variety of sources.  Refreshing.

One of Biden's problems is that in the cable news/social media era you have to be charismatic to be successful, being a good administrator and competent legislator doesn't provide lift off a current day campaign for President. 

Is Biden as competent now as he showed over the last four years? In a presidential campaign it's not enough. 

Biden was elected in 2020 with a wave of votes flowing to him from people who were disgusted by the hate mongering and incompetent former President. 

Whether Biden can govern as well as he has over the four years or not, isn't the only question about being the next president. It's about whether he can win the election.

Sadly or not, it's not only about competence. It's about being able to explain and convince voters about what he's been able to do, in the face of constant GOP obstructionism. A candidate for president needs to be articulate and charismatic.

Trump can spew out short sound bites and repeats them over and over until people, even some on here, believe Trump's constant lies and fabrications.  

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

Sadly or not, it's not only about competence. It's about being able to explain and convince voters about what he's been able to do, in the face of constant GOP obstructionism. A candidate for president needs to be articulate and charismatic.

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.

[unicorn]

It may not be possible for her to run, but my understanding is that Michelle Obama has the best chance of defeating Trump.

[RockyRoadTravel]

18 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

I know I am broken record about Allan Lichtman.  But this is where he gets really interesting.  

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).  

Biden is arguing pay attention to what I did in 3.5 years, not how I spoke for 90 minutes while I was sick.  

 

I wasn't saying that competence over the last four years isn't important. (Biden may have accomplished more in four years than Obama did in eight. Although Biden's agenda has faced an extremist super majority on  the Supreme Court legislating from the bench.) I am saying that being able to article your successes through a shit storm of lies is essential. So far, Biden is a better administrator than he has been a campaigner.  

The next four months needs a campaigner not an administrator. Biden was elected in a wave of anti-Trump euphoria. The majority of Americans breathing a sigh of relief that the chaos was over. Biden was the agent of reason. 

There's been four years of constant chaos making and obstruction by the MAGA extremists and there are doubts about Biden's abilities to be the agent of reason that we need.   

[stevenkesslar]

40 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

I wasn't saying that competence over the last four years isn't important.

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.

42 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

There's been four years of constant chaos making and obstruction by the MAGA extremists and there are doubts about Biden's abilities to be the agent of reason that we need. 

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.

[RockyRoadTravel]

1 minute ago, stevenkesslar said:

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.  

The MAGA extremists don't need to govern, the conservative super majority on the Supreme Court is doing the legislating for them. Lifetime appointed legislature. It's the MAGA dream world, no elections necessary. Government for them is for theatrics not for governing.  

[Stable Genius]

Cognitive decline only goes in one direction.