Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 9 2022 11:58pm)
I don't disagree with the notion that Trump would have defeated most other 2020 candidates and that something about Biden put him over the top. I just think these factors were more circumstancial than rooted in Biden's persona. Is it really Biden who should get credit for the coalition that rallied behind him in 2020? Imho, a significant chunk of this coalition was an anti-Trump coalition, rather than a pro-Biden coalition.
We also shouldn't forget that the pandemic covered a lot of Biden's weaknesses, conducting a front porch basement campaign played right into his hands, as did Trump's trouble holding his usual large rallies. And last but not least, let's not forget how much he was helped by the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent BLM protests, This helped drive up black turnout, which was crucial for Biden's electoral math, but looked potentially anemic before Floyd/BLM.
In the same vein, the Floyd murder and BLM protests caused upscale suburbs and corporate America to fully turn on Trump once and for all. It goes without saying that Biden/Democrats can't count on race riots helping them politically every four years going forward. Aaaaand of course the country's cultural, academic, bureaucratic, intellectual and economic elites were putting all of their institutional power in the balance to undermine Trump's reelection, which caused them to rally behind Biden to an unprecedented degree.
All of these factors contributed to the 2020 result, but they are external/circumstancial factors and not reflective of an intrinsic strength of Biden. To me, Biden isn't uniquely strong, he just happened to be the right man in the right moment in 2020. I'm not sure at all if he can replicate his 2020 coalition in 2024.
Oh come on, that's revisionist history. Fact of the matter is that the Democratic elites had largely avoided taking sides in the primary until after Nevada. Biden finished 4th in Iowa, 5th in NH and was crushed 40% to 18% by Bernie in Nevada. Bernie had just won 2.5 out of the first 3 contests and had all the momentum, then sent out his infamous "they can't stop us"-tweet.
Then, things suddenly turned around 180° within a single week. Clyburn endorses Biden, followed by Biden winning SC by the expected margin, neither over- nor underperforming expectations. Obama, still the pretty much undisputed leader of the party, works behind the scenes to close the ranks behind Biden. Within two days, Buttigieg and Klobuchar end their campaign and come on stage at a Biden rally to endorse him. With all the non-progressive factions of the party united behind Biden, he easily crushes on Super Tuesday against Bernie and Warren who split the progressive line.
Chances are that Biden would have won in the end, even without party elites orchestrating behind the scenes on his behalf, but it's imho far from a guarantee - and it would have been a long, drawn-out contest and seen Biden limp into the general election.
The way I see it, party elites, call them "20 people in a smoke filled room" if you want, settled on Biden and strongly signalled to undecided primary voters that he is the candidate the party should rally around to stave off the Bernie's insurgency and maximize their chances in the general against Trump. And there were a ton of undecided voters, looking for any clues from party elites. Keeping this in mind and looking at how badly Biden had done in the three contests before the party elites had closed the ranks around him, and how much better he performed after they did, I would say that it was indeed party elites that chose him, a majority of the party base just went along with it.
Absolutely! Only HE could get enough voters of color. Only HE could get enough white working class voters. Only HE could get enough suburban voters. Only HE could get enough Republican voters that would otherwise have voted for Trump. I really don't think that the above coalition can be replicated by many other people and they were absolutely necessary to defeat Trump. His best characteristic is his empathy and that played REALLY well with the American people when we suffered through the pandemic. I think you're really underestimating how he was the right man at the right time. I agree that the coalition will be difficult to replicate but if he can't do it, no one can.
As for the Democrat primaries, I think this is a useful article:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-second-choice-candidates-show-a-race-that-is-still-fluid/Obviously there was probably SOME fluidity to the above but I think it shows that it's not as simple as progressive vs. establishment. It shouldn't surprise you that many voters would move to Warren from Pete and Amy.
A convenient fact that you left out was that Michael Bloomberg didn't drop out. If you look at the Super Tuesday results, you can see that Warren and Bloomberg basically did the same from a popular vote perspective (delegate math is another story due to thresholding). Of the people who were TRULY undecided, I find it hard to believe that these people would have cast their vote for Warren, Bloomberg, Amy, or Pete. These type of people are low-ish information voters (they are still primary voters so they have more info than strictly GE voters) and likely would voted for Bernie or Biden based on name recognition and vapid analysis (I like Bernie but he might not win).
I 100% agree that Clyburn helped Biden win South Carolina. There's no doubt about that and Biden was
forced to promise a black woman on SCOTUS for that endorsement. I think the endorsement was inevitable though because Bernie Sanders ran away from black people so fast that he lived with his mom until he was 40 in the whitest state in the union.