This is rather sobering, because I had believed that this race was Biden’s to lose, and maybe that is what is happening. Let me put my cards on the table. If this was a normal election, and Democrats were tasked with picking the best candidate for the job, I would back Elizabeth Warren hands down. She is brilliant and her policies are the most developed and cogent. But this is not business as usual, this is war, and the one and only task we have in front of us is beating Donald Trump into the floorboards and retaking the White House. I don’t know if Warren can do it.
Just the other day, a man I respect said to me about Warren, “She’s got as much charisma as Marion the Librarian.” This echoes other cracks about Warren, “the little old lady from academia.” Whenever I hear one of these comments, I flash back to Hillary and 2016, and dear God, we cannot afford to make the same mistake twice. While I respect the hell out of both Warren and Harris for running, and I think that they are breaking ground that needs to be broken for women politicians, my honest assessment of the zeitgeist of this country is that we are still too backward and sexist to have a woman president at this time. I am not proud to say that, but I speak from a shell-shocked, post-November 8, 2016 mentality, and I am not willing to relive that experience. Therefore, I believe we need to nominate Joe Biden, because he’s a known quantity, gaffes and all, and Trump fears his ability to encroach on his blue-collar support in rust belt states.
In all events, here’s the latest scoop on the Monmouth poll, released Monday. The Hill:
Joe Biden’s support in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is slipping, according to a new survey from Monmouth University Poll that shows the former vice president dropping below 20 percent.
The survey showed Biden with support from 19 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters nationally, a double-digit decline from Monmouth’s most recent poll in June when he led the pack with 32 percent.
Now, the dynamics have changed, according to the Monmouth survey. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the primary field’s top progressive candidates, are each at 20 percent, putting them in a statistical tie with Biden and indicating a tightening three-way race.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was a distant fourth in Monday’s poll, with 8 percent. Her level of support was unchanged from Monmouth’s June survey.
Maybe Biden’s slipping was due to a particularly bad case of foot-in-mouth in July. Who knows? What is known is that whether this election is Biden’s to lose or not, it is absolutely the Democrats’ to lose or not. If we go all-purity and dilute our message, we are cooked.
The Democratic party rises to greatness on the occasions when we can fully unite behind a leader. When the cat herd comes together, we transform and become leonine, and nothing can stop us. We roar our way to victory, with decision and power. This year we don’t have an Obama running, or even arguably a Bill Clinton, but we’ve got to rally behind one of our candidates solidly, with an eye to beating Donald Trump. This is not the era of policy, this is the era of getting the reins of government back into sane hands. If you find yourself criticizing any Democratic candidate, just slap yourself in the face with a wet towel and ask, “Do I want four more year of Donald Trump?” The answer to that ought to make the least Democrat amongst us look majestic by comparison. Let’s not screw this one up, because we are dealing with stakes in an election that we have never dealt with before — not even close. We.Have.To.Win.In.2020.
This poll had like 300 respondents. I’d put more stock in the Morning Consult and others. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/08/26/its-not-a-two-way-race-between-biden-and-warren-at-least-not-yet/
True, but its Monmouth, perhaps the most respected polling group out there, and they always only use right around 300, and have had phenomenal success. Sometimes it is not the total number of people polled, it is more “which people” polled represent a fair cross-section. Monmouth itself noted a 5% degree of error, but even with that 5%, the result is clear. The progressive wing – for better or worse, your pick – is rising, while Biden is giving ground. It is still very early, and it is only one poll, but the message behind it remains firm.
I look for Warren to take advantage of the shift. Bernie’s running a political cult of personality.
I believe Bernie has hit a ceiling and can’t go any higher. People all know him, and the ones that love him, love him, and everyone else doesn’t — and probably many just hate him. I think all the other candidates have room to grow — or shrink.
This is classic Biden. It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before.
People like the IDEA of Biden more than the man himself.
Once he gets up in public, the only time he opens his mouth is to change feet.
It is near impossible to not like Joe Biden, and sometimes it is near impossible to vote for him. He just cannot get out of his own way when he is the main guy on the ticket. He is the ultimate sideman, probably at his best as a guy behind the guy. It will NOT be impossible to vote for him if he gets the nomination. But it appears to me that the “electability” thing is not persuading people, nor necessarily should it.
Biden is the Tim Conway of politics: lousy frontman, brilliant second banana.
I know you know my feelings on this, Ursula, so forgive me for saying them again. I’m sure you also know that I agree with you on the purity question. With that out of the way, this was predictable. Biden has been trying to run for President for several decades and there are very good reasons he has never gotten it. And very ex-VPs EVER get the presidency. So he started this latest run off with two strikes against him.
I’m waiting on someone to tell me when exactly it WILL be the right time for a woman president. If anything, the looming crisis ahead of us strikes me as a good time as any. All anyone has to do in 2020 at the basic level is a) not be Trump and b) show baseline understanding of what they’ll be up against. So it may well be Warren’s time.
Nothing would please me more than to see Elizabeth Warren elected president. I mean that. I think she’s brilliant and she’s got what it takes. Where I’m coming from is fear. I am terrified of Trump winning a second term. It makes me physically ill to think about it. Plus, if he doesn’t drive the economy into a ditch in the next year, you may rest assured he will drive us over a cliff if he gets reelected. I’m at a loss. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Time to unpack the crystal ball and brew up some tea leaves.
We’re overdue a one-term president and do remember that a lot of the usual GOP support is running scared at just about all levels right now. I went into this prepared for that nightmare scenario of a second term but I say that Dems have to do an epic fail to not beat this guy. In 2016, he was a blank screen. Now the screen has overlapping obscenities spray-painted on it and not that many people want it.
My honest to God assessment at this point is that the tanking economy is going to cook his goose. My only worry is that it’s not going to come soon enough. Generally speaking, the inverted yield curve manifests 22 months before it hits the fan, so that would be after the 2020 election. So, if he gets back in, then he’ll eff up the economy royally, and for God knows how long. OTOH, if a Democrat wins, then I can only hope s/he is going to be able to avert the catastrophe that Trump put in motion. These are concerning times to live in, to say the least.
With his unique destructiveness, I have every confidence that crash will come much, much faster than usual. China has already gamed this out, hence their response to Trump’s tariffs.
I think Warren has a better shot at beating Trump than Biden. I think Biden COULD be elected, but he’s a loose cannon. Warren is steadier. I think she’d give us fewer hair-raising moments. And I think Trump is better at dealing with old white men than with women. I know some people are angry with what Warren said about Hillary’s handling of Trump, but that was uncharted territory and now with a roadmap — the women running now know what Trump will do because he never changes — they can learn from her experience.
My issue with “people won’t vote for a woman” is the looming fact that people DID vote for a woman — in a virtual landslide. And she isn’t president, not because she is a woman, but because of voter suppression in key states, lopsided media coverage, James Comey, and Russian manipulation of Bernie voters. None of that has much to do with the fact that she’s a woman. In fact, one of the key issues would confront any Democrat running: voter suppression. It’s WHY she lost Wisconsin and Michigan, and possibly Florida and North Carolina, as well. To say now is not the right time is to basically say it will never be the right time, because we have a surfeit of excellent women candidates — with ALL the woman senators more qualified and more attractive candidates than ANY white man in the field. With so many great choices, if we say people aren’t ready now, we are basically telling women never to run again.
Anastasia, I could hug you right now! That last sentence is very much the message being broadcasted and I reject it for the lie it is. In my experience, being “ready” is BS. People are NEVER “ready” for the inevitable curveballs life and the universe throw at them. The only way forward is to challenge the lie.
One additional point being made by a lot of people on this issue of “electability” of women: when women run, they win in the same proportion as men.
“my honest assessment of the zeitgeist of this country is that we are still too backward and sexist to have a woman president at this time.”
If a certain segment of the Democratic primary/caucus electorate had not become obsessed over “proving” how “enlightened” they were by choosing the Black guy over the white woman in an election year when the “common wisdom” was that “ANY DEMOCRAT could win the White House”–because Dubya had screwed up so badly (of course, when the white woman wouldn’t simply abide by the DNC’s wishes/demands that she drop out, that “common wisdom” was *suddenly* forgotten–no, if Hillary didn’t drop out, she’d completely ruin the Dem’s chances of taking the White House).
The simple fact is that this country is NEVER going to allow a woman president if there’s a man running. Hillary got more popular votes in 2016 but was screwed over by the Electoral College. And I honestly don’t believe the GOP will ever see a woman standing at the Convention, accepting the Party’s nomination as their Presidential candidate (it took 24 years after the Dems did it before the GOP got a female VP candidate–and even then, that was a desperation move on both McCain’s and the GOP’s part); then again, with the current state of the GOP, any female candidate would be a seriously disappointing contender given the bar set back in 1964 by the Party’s first ever candidate, Margaret Chase Smith (while some, after her death, have attempted to paint her as a “conservative” champion, she would be roundly denounced by EVERY contemporary GOPer who describe themselves as “conservative”–she actually supported education, civil rights, NASA and Medicare, for heaven’s sake!).
I agree with you. I don’t know what combination of circumstances will allow a qualified woman to take the office. Believe me, I was horrified on election night 2016. I couldn’t believe that a mutt like Trump could get elected over ANY qualified politician. To this day, I believe that sexism was the preeminent factor keeping Hillary from winning. And yes, the Russian bots and Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and Hillary’s 25 years of baggage, ad nauseum, were all factors. And I at least knew about Hillary’s baggage and I knew sexism was going to be some problem as well. But I never thought, in a million years, that she wouldn’t beat Trump. To this day, the election of Trump seems like an exercise in mass psychosis to me. Which is why I fear it reoccurring. Believe me, I’m a trauma victim trying to avoid more trauma. If we were living in normal times, of course I would back Warren unhesitatingly.
I don’t see how sexism was a factor, except maybe marginally in Pennsylvania. She lost Wisconsin and Michigan due to voter suppression. The media was determined to “equalize” the race and miscalculated. She would have won had not James Comey had his ill-aged press conference. The only place I saw clear sexism at work was among the Bernie Bros. whose antipathy toward her, making them easy targets for the Russians, was certainly partly rooted in misogyny.
Never confuse the past with the future. THAT mentality is how we got Trump in the first place, after all. Obama getting in was never about being “enlightened”. It was about that desperation you were talking about, which in turn made people more willing to take a chance they wouldn’t otherwise. Trump may well be so uniquely awful to make the first female president hapoen.
Sadly, I think confusing the past with the future is why people are sighing and going “OK, I know he’s mediocre but Biden looks like the type of guy who gets elected president.” I think that’s lazy thinking and I dread a campaign that’s nothing but week after week of trying to justify his gaffes, which are happening almost every other day. I know most are minor (a kid I know in New Hampshire went to his event over the weekend and said he called the state “Vermont”) but they are so frequent.
And then there’s the being surprised that Harris went after him so early. Christ, this guy’s been in politics how many decades now and he didn’t see that coming? How do you think he’ll handle Trump’s unique blend of nastiness with that in mind? We have better folks than him.
I’m getting really tired of people continuing to blame her for “attacking” poor old Joe. She was giving him an opening to redeem himself and instead his followers (and his campaign) continue to blame her for being mean. Personally I think he’s the one keeping this narrative alive. But yeah, if he’s so fragile this continues to bother him, he won’t be able to handle Trump, for sure.
There’s no blame on my part. The debate was a friendly sparring session. Going up against Trump is the heavyweight champion match. So Harris was more than justified going after his soft spots to see how he’d react…because she understands the cost of failure here as good or better than we do.
I don’t think any of this matters at this point. One poll says this, one poll says that — I think they’re all meaningless.
Not for nothing do I say that the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. Even so, should this become a trend, I would argue we should revise our assessment of Biden’s “electability”.
I think all claims of “electability” are speculative at this point. We don’t know how the campaigns will shape up, what the candidates will do, what will be going on in the world, the economy and the political environment, how the media will frame things and on and on.
Fair points…but we can count on Trump being a terrible human being regardless.
Actually, I think he personally is the one “knowable” — because he’s incapable of changing.