Will Joe Biden Stay Our Nominee?

While I have been a supporter of keeping President Biden our nominee, and I kept hoping the chattering class would just shut the be quiet, several things have happened in the last few days that have changed the calculus.

If you read my posts on polling (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) you know that I see most polling as inaccurate for a variety of reasons EXCEPT in two specific situations: first, for issues because people say yea or nay, it’s binary and they have no reason to lie. For example, one is pro-choice, or anti-choice, and those polls have proven extremely accurate since the demise of Roe, and the ensuing state codification of abortion rights votes ever since.

The second reason is when the polling is internal. A lot of times, the companies undertaking those polls are not the ones we all see in the media. They are never listed on the roundups of pollsters. They take a more analytic approach, and all the internal polling I have seen over the past decades has been far more correct than the more general polls.

BlueLabs Analytics is such a firm. And they recently polled 15,000 people across 7 battleground states to ascertain what would happen to people’s votes if the Democratic nominee stayed Biden or changed to a different candidate. Note that “15,000” number – a poll needs a minimum of 800 respondents to be considered valid, and it’s a reach to get over 1,000, so imagine what a firm needs to do to poll that large a number of respondents. And further imagine how much more correct the outcome would be. A lot of the universe issue I raised in my polling posts is overcome by the sheer number of responses in the BlueLabs undertaking.

This is a summary of their findings. Even if you never click on links, you should read this one. It is graphical, easy to read, and the results are devastating for a Biden-Harris ticket. Again, this is a SUMMARY – I do not have access to the crosstabs. Bottom line from BlueLabs: President Biden cannot win. Not the swing states, nor even all of the blue states. The summary also shows the four people with the highest increase over the president, all with high enough numbers to win back even the swing states.

While it is easy to pooh-pooh op eds from the NYT editorial board, or George Clooney, scuttlebutt says that people along the lines of Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi are talking to Biden about the good of the party, and the need to not only hold the White House, but also the Senate, not to mention retaking the House. On that list may well also be Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. While both the president himself, and his team, may want to hold onto power, it is likely that they wouldn’t want Biden’s last act to be a scorched earth routing up and down the ballot.

Finally, President Biden was diagnosed with Covid on Thursday night. It is his second round with the disease. The first time, he took Paxlovid, as he is this time, and had a rebound effect. That was in 2022. As an aside, we are in a Covid surge nationwide: while hospitals are no longer reporting, wastewater is showing a summer surge. Highest we’ve seen in a while. Biden likely has FLiRT, the newest variant, for which current vaccines have minimal response. FLiRT may or may not be included in the fall vaccines, that hasn’t been decided yet. Stay safe, readers!

The reason the diagnosis is important is that it will make it harder for him to campaign, especially in addition to undertaking his day job. It also might be a good reason to withdraw from the race that would be independent of politics. We all understand when someone gets sick, and the ramifications of recovery. Covid is most serious in older people, even if they lack underlying health conditions.

And so, I am coming around to the conclusion that President Biden will not be our nominee this year. While it makes me sad, I’m a political realist, and the numbers are too insurmountable, and there is now pressure from too many House candidates that it will cost them the election: even in a place like New York.

My guess is that movement will come next week.

But for all of US it shouldn’t matter in the larger picture. We are going to vote blue no matter who is on the ticket – the risk from Project 2025 and its brethren documents is just too huge. If people ask me how I could have supported President Biden, and now I am on Team “whoever the candidate is”, I have a simple answer. When I read the party platforms, and I read ALL of them, I know the policies I support. I support little-d democracy, I support the rights of ALL human beings, I support the continuation of the United States of America and its institutions. Hell, I even believe in paying taxes because I love things like roads, bridges, tunnels, schools, libraries, the electric grid, the social safety net, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I will say that I stand by President Biden’s honor in believing that it is time to pass the torch.

I am interested in your comments. And if you read the link, let me know which of the four you prefer.