My reasons for confidence about the election
By Infidel753
Infidel753 Blog
My Independence Day post was largely a repudiation of the lurch into pessimism and panic which has been evident in some quarters over the last couple of weeks. This stance is not rooted solely in my natural antipathy for pessimists and cynics. I have solid reasons, based on evidence and facts, for optimism about the near-term future.
To begin with, in case you’re among those who still believe that Biden is actually suffering from cognitive impairment and may be ineffective in his campaign for re-election, or will not be up to the demands of a second term, here is the unedited video of his speech at the NATO summit yesterday. See for yourself:
I have some experience with public speaking, and I spent years in close contact with a person who was developing age-related dementia, from the beginning of the process to the end. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that a person with any significant degree of dementia or other cognitive impairment could deliver a speech as clearly, forcefully, and effectively as this, even with a teleprompter. The man is up to the job. He may have occasional bad days, as everyone does, but we need to stop pretending there is any valid question about his mental fitness.
(I stress that this is an unedited video. For months, right-wing sites have been circulating clips of Biden which are carefully edited to make him look incoherent or befuddled. We all know what dishonest editing can do along those lines.)
As I pointed out here (scroll to end), the media have a strong vested interest in trying to keep this non-issue alive. However, Biden has made it clear that he is not going to step aside, and has demonstrated that there is no reason to ask him to. The Democratic party and its supporters need to quit fussing around about something that isn’t going to happen and get back to working on winning the election.
Next.
Despite the post-debate kerfluffle and other red herrings which the media will from time to time waggle in our faces, this election is going to be mainly about abortion rights. There is abundant hard evidence that that issue has completely reshaped the electoral landscape. Since the Dobbs ruling, we’ve seen a whole succession of referenda in which abortion rights were affirmed by very large margins in high-turnout elections even in red states like Kansas and Ohio. There have also been several special elections in which the Democrat, win or lose, did at least twenty points better than Democrats typically do in whatever district the election was being held in. A good example, less than a month ago, was the OH-6 special election — the Republican won, but by only nine points, in a district where Republicans normally win by around thirty.
Trump is evidently aware that this is a problem, and is trying to push the Republican party away from its most hard-line pro-forced-birth positions — for example, dropping the call for a national abortion ban in favor of leaving the issue to the states. Some other Republicans running for office are also backing away from their former extremist stances. When we get close to the election and campaigning begins in earnest, it will be the Democratic party’s job to debunk all of these obfuscations, to remind the voters of what Republicans have actually done in the states where they hold power — actions, not words, are the best predictor of post-election behavior. Then, too, leaving the issue to the states is the current post-Dobbs status quo, which has enabled all the sadistic laws and the many cases of women and girls going through horrific medical crises without proper treatment which we’ve seen over the last two years. If the Democrats handle things at all competently, their overarching message will be: voting Republicans out of office is the only sure way to protect this fundamental right.
It is also possible that the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, the recent revelations about Trump’s past ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and the increasing public interest in Project 2025 will drive even more voters away from the Republicans. The mass media have shamefully neglected these issues, but the Democratic party will have plenty of money to get its message out about them when the time comes. Still, it remains to be seen how much they will actually sway voters. The abortion-rights issue, by contrast, has a solid track record of producing results. The election and referendum outcomes described above are indisputable facts — hard data, not supposition.
If that twenty-plus-point shift toward Democrats were to be replicated across the whole country in November, it would probably produce the biggest landslide in living memory, on every level from president to dogcatcher. Biden would carry even some deep-red states and would take office supported by huge majorities in the House and Senate, with similar results in every swing state. I’m not going to go out on a limb and predict that that is actually going to happen. But it beggars belief to think that an issue which has produced such large swings in almost every state or local election where it’s been relevant won’t have some major effect on the national vote.
Next.
So, if the abortion issue is going to have such an impact, why are most polls — including high-quality, competently-conducted ones — showing a close race for president and for the Congressional majorities?
As readers know, I do not agree with the view that polls in general are worthless — if that were the case, the media and politicians would not keep on spending millions of dollars on them. In most cases the best ones do turn out to be pretty accurate, or if they don’t, there’s often an obvious explanation (for example, the “red wave” detected by polls in 2022 was probably real at the time — it wasn’t reflected in election results because Dobbs squelched it). However, this year, there are a couple of special factors to consider.
First, remember that most voters don’t pay much attention to politics until around early September. Hard as it may be for the activist types to believe, most people find politics a boring and repulsive subject, and don’t seek out information about it until the election is actually close and they know they will soon need to make a decision. For that reason, I don’t much trust polls months in advance to predict the outcome, especially in a year like this when there are unusual factors at work. And this survey a month ago showed that 62% of Americans are “worn out” by the massive overkill coverage about the election, sick of hearing about it — so they may well be actively avoiding political news for now. A lot of people have no clue about Project 2025 or what exactly the threat to abortion rights is. But they will, when the time comes.
Second, in most of the post-Dobbs referenda and elections I mentioned above, the startling results were not predicted by polls. This suggests that there’s some aspect of the reproductive-freedom issue’s impact that polls are not capturing. It might be that the issue is bringing out voters who don’t usually vote, thus rendering the pollsters’ turnout models useless. Or it might be that many people who normally vote Republican (especially women) are telling pollsters they intend to do so again, but then changing their minds at the last minute in the voting booth as the horror of draconian forced-birth laws really sinks in. Or it might be something entirely different. But the pattern is there. It’s at least reasonable to anticipate that whatever the reason is for it, that reason will also be operative in November.
I hope I’ve shown here that facts and logic support an optimistic view of the election. That doesn’t mean hard work will not be necessary. But I see no valid grounds for defeatism.
Thanks for this detailed and thoughtful post. I particularly appreciate the link to the NATO speech. It should be an antidote to the Dunning-Kruger types who claim to be able to diagnose dementia telepathically through TV video clips, but I’m sure it won’t have any effect.
Thank you.
It’s true that nothing can convince those who are determined not to see, but there are always some, at least, who are amenable to evidence.
I’m not sure optimistic is the right word: I’m not as confident as I was yesterday, or even this morning. I fear Trump’s pocket judge dismissing the espionage cases, sending it to the eleventh under state appeal, just fast-tracked it to the Gestapo Court, who may well decide the election
That said, it’s long been my contention trump has been doing everything he can to lose … and it ain’t working. Bear with me ~ think about just how outrageous the top three stories: the 2025 Plan to overthrow America, JD Vance, and the kayfabe ‘assassination’
They’re pretty damned serious, I’m not sure optimism is prudent …
Ten Bears
Push back harder with the facts about trump and his plans.
Last Week in Project 2025 …
Ten Bears:
It needs an explanation which I need to tackle, or you, Infidel, or Joel, etc. It is not clear to many people.
I will vote for whomever the Democrat put forward because I’m a never Trumper. Unfortunately, this election is going to be decided by the fairly large chunk of voters in swing states that are having a hard time deciding which candidate they dislike the most. Your analysis that President Biden is fine because he can read a teleprompter isn’t reassuring. A bad debate and a questionable interview performance with a friendly interviewer leaves many on the fence leaning away from the president. He has another friendly interview tonight that will not move the needle either although it will cause the democrats to rejoice that the president wasn’t totally incoherent. I don’t know the best path forward to defeat Trump but I’m not optimistic that President Biden will prevent a big loss in November and give Trump the presidency along with the house, the senate, and the Supreme court.
You know Tom:
Four years of a good economy in spite of a pandemic did not convince you? You want someone who can sell you rather than the reality of the last four years? And now we have a 2+ trillion deficit to deal with in 2025 left over by trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. trump is leaving us with an economic disaster that was used to pay off the upper income bracket numbering about two million people.
I will take the person who stutters and who “may” have issues in conversations and speeches over a liar and a fraud.
Voting for a Dem is not a reason. Voting for Biden because he out-performed trump economically and took the necessary action during a pandemic to save people who lacked resource when the nation was shutting down due to a pandemic.
But you want someone who can talk pretty. I will talk performance over BS any day.
Biden has consistently shown normal cognitive ability since the debate, including at events where teleprompters were not used.
The whole post was dedicated to the reasons why I’m optimistic about the election — most of which have nothing to do with Biden and little to do with the presidential race.
@paddy,
Compared to what?
These comments were made apparently prior to the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania. To Infidel’s emphasis on Project 2025, I would add the many Trump authoritarian style recent comments made by himself, not some committee. There is a danger that the Democrats may soften their criticisms characterized as “demonizing” by the Republicans seeking to blame the incident on the Democratic emphasis on the dangers posed by Trump when acting in his court granted immunity. The Democrats have agreed to withhold them temporarily in light of the incident. Hopefully that will be very temporarily. They are the heart of the campaign. The economic arguments tend to fall flat despite their cogency because of the public’s concentration on high prices as opposed to technical explanations of inflation.
I part company with Infidel’s confidence in the polls given the recent history of their predictive errors. My gut, as opposed to the polls, tells me this race is close, partly based on our very narrow victory in 2020 in the swing states, and the deficiencies of voters’ memories.
Be optimistic if you’re inclined that way but contribute to GOTV efforts in the swing states is my recommendation.
Why not run on the great economy?
Bill says there is a lot of good with Biden: run on it!
Might not run on all that money Lockheed etc. make selling weapons?
Trump bad or dangerous to whatever “our democracy is” became outdated, Saturday.
The Russian bot is on it.
Lest We Forget … What brought us here