21
votes
US polling suggests Tara Reade's allegations are having a moderate effect on public opinion of Joe Biden
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- Title
- A sexual assault allegation hasn't hurt Biden's poll numbers - yet
- Authors
- Ella Nilsen
- Published
- May 7 2020
- Word count
- 1908 words
Biden isn't left by any definition but the American one. The reason why "the left", as you call it, is so divided is simply because the Democrats are what happens when you try and unite people politically ranging from right to center right to left to hard left in one party. Why would anyone with actual leftist views vote for a milquetoast status quo party?
Republicans are all varying degrees of right wing, of course it's easier to unite them.
The only reason to vote for Biden right now boils down to "He isn't as bad as Trump." And while I agree that that, considering how bad Trump is, is a good enough reason, I personally don't think it'll work. It didn't work with Clinton, and, unless you guys get very "lucky", it won't work for Biden either.
I believe this is basically what he's talking about. It is clearly in any "actual leftist's" best interest that Joe Biden win. Yet many (though not most) in the "actual left" seem intent on making sure the opposite happens, to "punish the liberals" so to speak, even though it will set back "actual leftism" for the next 60+ years.
Do you have any actual numbers on this? I hear this a lot but I've never heard anything more than hearsay.
I'm inclined to agree. In my social circles I'm the 'loony left guy.' Abolish money, disarm the police, plan the economy, and other 'impossibly crazy ideas.'
I know a lot of Sanders/Warren supporters. With very few exceptions, the preferences were Sanders/Warren/most of the rest of the field/Biden/Bloomberg. Bloomberg was the only one that caused a significant moral quandary, as he would have paved the way for even more 'moderate' Republicans to jump ship to the Democrats, making it even harder to pull the Democrats out of the center-right territory. We accepted that Biden was better than Trump, and most of us warmed up tremendously when news broke that Biden is pulling in the Sanders camp to work on policy. Prior to that, I was voting for Biden begrudgingly, now I'm voting for Biden with a mild sense of hope.
That said, ever since the media started anointing Biden (months before he announced even), most of us knew that Biden carried a lot of baggage that Trump would easily exploit. We're terrified that Biden won't inspire sufficiently to draw in the overwhelming crowds he needs to. We're fighting against a very rigged system and it's not going to be easy.
Every single person that hasn't yet voted in the Democratic primary needs to vote for Bernie if they agree with his general message even though he dropped out, as that helps signal the larger party 'we're behind Biden, but we want Biden to push a bit further left if elected.' Biden needs a very strategic VP, one that helps balance his very bland image.
I'm genuinely curious: do you think Bernie would have done a better job, especially given that he couldn't even get the necessary turnout from his most fervent demographics in the primaries? I had similar concerns before actual voting happened, but we have actual examples now of Biden winning elections where turnout has been good. I just don't understand the "lack of enthusiasm" angle now that we've seen there's plenty of voters who are enthusiastic about getting out to vote for Biden.
There's a difference between turnout in the primaries and turnout in the general election. As a result, moderates tend to win primaries but lose general elections.
And while some of it is internal politicking, like endorsements, public statements from DNC members, candidates being allowed into or barred from debates, the scheduling of those debates, or coordinated withdrawal of candidates, there are some confounding factors that don't even need human involvement. Some states have open primaries, some don't. Even considering that, there are people who simply don't bother to vote in primaries but will vote in the general election. The staggered order of primaries creates early winners & losers that shape the future of the primaries. Like most voting in America, first-past-the-post warps preference and pushes "strategic" voting. I'm sure I'm missing something, but there are a ton of ways the way we run elections influences the results of those elections.
Biden was on the verge of dropping out after pathetic results in early states, but a win in South Carolina, along with the support of Buttigieg and Klobuchar (and I would say the DNC in general, but I'll drop that for the sake of argument), he pretty much zoomed out front and rode his way to victory. He barely even campaigned outside of South Carolina, but here we are. One of his biggest selling points was the intentionally vague "electability" metric, which is now ironic in hindsight, since some of the warning signs the left pointed out seem to be coming true—and ironically again, the left is getting blamed for it.
So yes, I at once can accept that Bernie lost the primary election, but would have done better in the general. I'll still vote for Biden if I have to, and barring the unexpected, that seems to be the case.
Sigh.
I wasn't cherry-picking, I merely posted an essay I thought made a compelling point. It also looks at the history of presidential elections over the past several decades to find a pattern with very few exceptions, which is something none of your sources do.
The first looks at a single race in North Carolina.
The second is looking at the House.
The third claims Trump ran as a moderate (what?!) while Clinton was viewed as a liberal anyway, despite being the centrist, "electable" nominee.
The fourth even directly states that name recognition was a FAR more important factor, and show numbers at a fixed point in time. The thesis that these numbers would hold true in a general election only works if you assume no movement. I know I'm heading into speculation here, but my entire point was looking at primaries vs. general elections for the presidency.
And while we're here, let's say for the sake of argument that you're right, that the left has fallen hook, line, & sinker for agitprop and can't be relied on to vote for the Democratic candidate. (Would love to see some sources, though.) If Biden were pushed as the "electable" candidate, shouldn't this be one of the factors taken into consideration? If it's purely a pragmatic choice, and if you're worried the left could swing the election, aren't they some of the voters you should be trying to reach? Is "rallying the base" only a winning strategy for Republicans and not Democrats? Or, are you purely talking about centrist swing voters, and willing to throw the left under the bus?
It seems to me like the left was warning the party about Biden's weaknesses, which much of the party is taking as a threat.
By the way, if you're really bothered by hostility, falling for trollbait, and falling for constructed narratives designed to cause self-propagating division, you really ought to look at your own behavior.
Okay but you described yourself as the "loony left guy" - the implication there is singular or at least in the minority. Also, are you planning on voting against Biden in order to "punish the liberals"?
No actual numbers, no. But it seems to be a fairly common position in leftist communities (i.e. actual socialists, not social democrats) online in places like Reddit and Twitter. I do concede that some of it seems very... inorganic. I wouldn't rule out Russian trolls or bots making up a decent portion of the supposed "many leftists" I was talking about. But clearly there is a genuine movement behind it all.
To steal an idiom from said liberals, It's the Supreme Court, stupid.
The 2 oldest judges in the SCOTUS have been appointee by Bill Clinton some 27 years, they're 87 and 81 respectively and if they die or retire they would be replaced by Trump/McConnell picks, which given Kavanaugh and Gorsuch has proven itself to be a terrible choice. Given these are the people who literally interpret our Constitution and passed landmark rulings like Citizens United, Roe v. Wade and the recent ruling on the voting rights act, they're pretty important.
??? what are you talking about? I asked if he had any actual numbers to put behind the sentiment of feeling that "many" people in the left "seemed intent" on voting against Biden to "punish the liberals".
Oh, I thought you were asking about how leftism was gonna be delayed for 60+years if Trump wins again and keeps the Senate.
As for your actual question Tl;dr go to r/presidentialracememes or r/chapotraphouse2 and see shit like this
OR this, this
Some people are just being really toxic online.
Those aren't numbers. I'm asking for actual statistics, something more than hearsay and anecdotes.
This morning Consult poll sayd 12% of sanders supporters approve of trump and 7% would/will vote for him. That's certainly not nothing.
7% is certainly not "many" in my mind, but thank you for actually finding a source!!
See this is my view too! When people say he's left I think you, me and many others have to think "... compared to the past presidents" as an addendum. Also the US left, just like any national left is slightly different so many stand points can be different :/
I think for us not from the US we have to make sure to be considerate. It's not our debate after all - it's theirs. And the shit seems tricky enough without us if you know what I mean :)
(oh and imagine every single time US left have tried to get involved in our respective national/regional debates - it's a mess. For us it was "Why don't you want to legalize weed?" (which isn't a big thing here for several reasons) and "Why are you pro guns?!" (a lot of the left here are fairly pro gun in comparison with the right that often push for more restrictions for things (although its also not much of a debate - I am only in to it because I have friends with licenses for things like heavy machine guns)).
What I am saying is - we have to be considerate here. Hell I should be more considerate and try to be more careful)
Hillary had a lot of baggage. I mean a lot. She has been the target for the right wing media for literally decades and has abysmal favorability ratings. Biden has been around a long time and doesn't have nearly as much. And also, he's a man. It still apparently matters to voters enough.
I think its partly because there is a massive divide in your left, just like your right. I'm not from the US but if push come to shove I would vote for Biden if I was - but that is basically saying "I would vote for a corpse in a clown outfit instead of the alternative". Where as Trump has a set of actual followers who want to vote for him and then several who prefer him to the alternative. Is Biden really the best they could dig up? Or is it that they did the classic "midland voter" fallacy, where they go for a centrist ideal thinking that surely everyone will back the blandest one as that encompasses the most of what is available by ticking none of the boxes.
(which is like assuming stocking an ice cream shop with nothing but vanilla will absolutely make everyone buy there because no one is offended by vanilla)
Last election cycle for you guys was a mess (not in any way saying that is true only in the US, ours was a mess too) because you stacked the hand with "one incredibly middle of the road candidate" against one that wasn't - combine that with infighting. I mean the infighting could be heard from across the Atlantic. And it wasn't just "Ohhh not likey Hillary" but a massive set of "You have to vote for her OR you are X/Y/Z!" and a very clear smug message of simplistic narratives that only worked for those that already WOULD vote for Hillary, while actively alienating and insulting those that where sceptical and then feeling surprised they didn't vote for her.
Same now, the people who'd happily vote for whatever new suit-filler the democratic party managed to unearth would vote for whatever anyway - where as those that feel disenfranchised by it will be pricklier
I'm not a betting man, but I would probably place a few hundred on Trump winning this one too. Although I've been terribly wrong before so... that says nothing really.
When people say the "Democratic Party", are they not referring to the party and its constituents at every level? This seems kind of nit picky, personally. The democratic party's members (colloquially referred to as The Democratic Party) chose Biden, and non-dems are asking those people who chose him: "Is Biden really the best [you] could dig up?" because to liberal people outside of the democratic party he's basically a centrist at best and it doesn't make a lot of sense to choose a centrist to lead a party that paints itself as the "liberal" alternative to the rights conservatism.
Then again people aren't always rational or logical, especially in times of turmoil like this, so maybe the unconscious collective decision was driven in part by that fear.
I largely agree with you in the short term, but Trump winning reelection will have far more dire consequences for the US in the long term. He will get to appoint additional right-wing justices to the Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts. He will continue to alienate any and all earnest, competent, knowledgeable officials from government posts. He will face any future disasters with equal corruption and ineptitude as he has in his first term. I’ve learned during his first term that US institutions that rely on good-faith actors are much less robust than I was taught they were. I have a sense that reelecting Trump may be enough to erode our institutions to the point that we will never recover. And that’s a shame, because the US, while far, far from being the perfect “beacon on a hill”, it has given rise to some wonderful things, and has inspired people from around the world in various ways that I think have been an overall net good in the world. If the US’s decline gives rise to a global power vacuum, at this point, who is going to fill it? If it’s China, that is not a world I want to live in. I’m in a similar boat as you in that I won’t feel many if any direct, short-term consequences if Biden loses. But I am truly fearful for the US and the world if we can’t get our act together this November.
I didn't say that. Think you got it from a different comment.
Electability is an immeasurable parameter that, as far as I can tell, is used by neolibs as a hand waive explanation for why Biden is the better choice over literally anyone more progressive rather than provide any real, meaningful rreasons. Ability to beat trump, as an extension of "electability", is an equally nonsense value.
Likewise, a Warren or Sanders Presidency would also have been the most liberal platform of any President in the last fifty years.
Being left of Obama and Hillary might have been impressive in 2008, but in 2020, all it takes to be left of them is to be anti-war or against governments spying on their own citizens.
Just because Dems think Obama was God's gift to man doesn't mean every liberal in America does.
Neat. Good talking to you.
While technically true, the clearly coordinated pull-out of candidates pre- and post-Super Tuesday made it a two-man race at the perfect time for Biden. Had a fuller suite of choices been available the popular vote could have shaken out very differently.
Coordinated by whom? All of the candidates who dropped out had no path and they knew it, and they would never have more leverage than in their suspension speech. They read the room and realized that they would have a good shot at a position in a Biden administration. It certainly helped Biden quite a bit, and that was the point - those candidates calculated that helping Biden was the best thing for them at that point. Politicians play politics, and especially so in a contentious primary. And if your strategy for winning depends on others not playing politics, it's just not a very good strategy in my opinion.
If more voters had preferred Bernie over Biden, more voters would have voted for Bernie over Biden regardless of how many other candidates were in the field or what have you.
Well “undemocratic” is a bit rough as a term but I see what you mean.
I think that any system of choice and democratic elections have similar issues where choice, options, economic power and influence and much more influence the choice.
But I also feel there is a subtext of frustration here which is understandable. Like I said I would vote for whatever they dig up (I meant that to mean “Biden makes me fall asleep in anger and he sucks still better that Trump” not “secret cabal of democratic elite chose him” (it seems many assume that is what I ment so may have walked in to a US issue that I didn’t see)).
That’s not unique to the US tho last elections here was like walking to a random school to get a gangrenous leg sawn off. You do it because you kinda have to but if someone had said “isn’t it great voting for [my party of choice]?” I may have punched them.
There is no universe where Hillary Clinton was an "incredibly middle-of-the-road" candidate. She's been a controversial figure ever since she was first in the public eye as the First Lady of Arkansas.
Who do you imagine "they" are? The candidate was selected by a majority (not just a plurality) of rank-and-file Democratic voters. One would think that being able to win the support of a majority of Democrats would be a sensible selection process for picking who can win the support of a majority of general election voters as well.
... fair enough - that could be me not being from the US but here she would be counted as centrist-right if anything. So if you say so I will happily accept that, your insight is better than mine of course all I can go from is what I read and that is based on what is available to me which may be flawed.
"They" as in "those voting and those setting up the choices and those economically supporting each candidate" - not a "They who rule in the shadows" (of course)
Those voting are literally just regular people though. It's not even like they need to pay dues or anything. In some states they don't even need to be registered Democrats.
I would like to see the numbers here. Not distrusting you, just out of interest and if it has similar drawbacks as the Swiss system.
Numbers on what exactly?
I was looking for the voter turn out and numbers, percentage per candidate etc etc. But I found them myself.
It's a fascinating subject since the way each area handles these systems and the drawbacks is often done at more or less the same time so you get unique fixes.
There is one big difference between Biden 2020 and Hillary 2016 and it's that there were 20 candidates running in the field and by New Hampshire there were still 12 candidates running. This means that at the beginning everyone has or needs to finds a base to appeal to within the big tent (Biden got the Obama nostalgists, Buttigieg and Klobuchar got the moderate suburban whites, Sanders got the progressive populists, Warren got the progressive ideologues who care about reforming the system, Bloomberg the Blue dogs/neoliberals, Yang the Silicon-Valley-ites, Gabbard and Williamson the dirt-baggers and toxic people, etc.) This meant that, unlike Clinton who faced no opposition other than Sanders, someone really different from her, Biden had/s a serious core base. This also means there is no reason to vote strategically until really late in (South Carolina, days before super Tuesday), so you wouldn't see people voting Sanders against Clinton in the rustbelt if the Democrats did this long drawn out thing in 2016 like the Republicans. The moderates also wouldn't be stuck with HRC and could have picked someone else.
The real story we saw is the rust belt vote. Sanders looked competitive against Clinton in a 2-way race and it was hard to disambiguate how much of it was genuine Sanders support and how much was just knee-jerk anti-Clintonism. After seeing the returns come in in 2020, it has become pretty clear that there we way overestimated how strong the support for Sanders was. In 2016 the rust belt and rocky mountain states were some of Bernie's strongholds. In 2020 he got walloped by Biden. It turns out lots of his voters in 2016 were just going in for the cranky, old-man affect and not the progressivism.
His decision to run this year really set his whole movement back and ended up making him look a bit bumbling. It's a real shame. A parallel universe where he dropped out after his heart attack is one in which we don't have Biden coming out as the winner.
I just want to emphasize how important this analysis is because of its implications and what we learn about 2016:
Had Sanders pulled out at a reasonable time when it was obvious that enough primaries had been held to make it extremely obvious there was no path for him to win, being extremely generous to Sanders' chances, he'd withdrawn at least a month earlier.
That month would have been all a united Democratic party not fending off attacks on Clinton from both sides would have needed to easily smash Trump and have a Democratic president for the last four years.
Sanders overestimated his support hugely. 2020 shows it was even worse than almost any serious analyst of 2016 thought.
You need to pick a primary candidate who can actually win the election, not just the party primary. I still believe with Biden's baggage, both he and Sanders were two of the very worst candidates the Democrats could end up with this time around.
That still doesn't make the reelection of Trump a sure thing. It speaks volumes of how he's the weakest incumbent president on the US ballot for generations, possibly ever.
Exit polling showed overwhelming support for Sanders policies, but it also showed people were willing to abandon their policy goals entirely on the media narrative that Biden beats Trump and Sanders doesn't.
Exit polls asked: How do you feel about replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone?
"Support": Alabama 51%, California 55%, Colorado 57%, Massachusetts 50%, Minnesota 62%, North Carolina 55%, Oklahoma 53%, Tennessee 53%, Texas 64%, Virginia 52%, Vermont 73%, Iowa 57%, New Hampshire 58%, Nevada 62%, Michigan 58%, Washington 63%, Mississippi 60%, Missouri 58%.
They also asked "Rather nominate a candidate who...Can beat Donald Trump or Agrees with you on major issues", the "Can beat Donald Trump" results are:
Alabama 53%, California 64%, Colorado 69%, Massachusetts 65%, Minnesota 65%, North Carolina 63%, Oklahoma 55%, Tennessee 61%, Texas 64%, Virginia 58%, Vermont 63%, Iowa 61%, New Hampshire 63%, Nevada 66%.
So I don't think this is a story of failed support for progressivism--it's a story of the powerful media narrative of electability. And honestly, it was probably correct. With a Sanders nomination, CNN/MSNBC would suddenly decide maybe Trump isn't so bad after all, and with a unified Fox/CNN/MSNBC narrative Trump would definitely win again.
It's extremely important to note though that support for things like Medicare for All strongly depend on how the specific plan is implemented, and what voters know about it. I'm curious what polls you are referring to here, because most of the ones I have seen have had support drastically drop when the notion of private insurance being taken away is brought up. For example, eliminating private insurance has a net -21% favorability rating, and requiring people to pay more in taxes has a -23% favorability.
Most of the people that broke for Biden in Super Tuesday states were the proverbial "low-information voters" - I don't think some concerted media effort convinced people that Joe, a pillar of the Democratic party for decades, had a better shot at beating Trump than a socialist, independent Senator from Vermont.
Exactly all these statistics are, in my opinion, cherry picked. Public perception shifts spectacularly when people are asked to consider raising taxes and eliminating private insurance. https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/
Just so you know, that's the same link as in my comment ;)
Shoot! I'll admit I didn't follow the link, the jig is up!
The polls I'm referring to specifically mention "replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone"--clearly tailor-made to sound negative, and yet still had majority support.
I collated results from each state's individual election results pages from the Washington Post, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/election-results/california-democratic-primary-live-results/ (bottom of the page)
I’m not sure describing what the plan literally is can be classified as ‘tailor-made to sound negative’, to be honest. Nonetheless this makes sense - I was trying to reconcile what you had said with the polls I knew. I can see how among Democratic primary voters a single payer system can have majority support - however, I don’t think it would hold true more generally, which is more or less what the polls I have seen say.
The plan is literally to expand Medicare to cover everyone and prevent insurers from charging you for duplicative care that is already covered by Medicare. So I do think the framing of "replacing private insurance with a single government plan for everyone" is intentionally negative.
Yes, and Sander's plan covers pretty much everything. It covers primary care, hospital visits, lab services, maternity care, dental, etc. This wide coverage, coupled with a provision to prevent insurers from duplicating care, essentially replaces private insurance with a single government plan for everyone. Sanders himself has characterized it as such during multiple primary debates. Maybe this is our own implicit biases talking, but I just can't see that characterization as negative when it literally is describing what the plan would do, and is similar if not identical to how Sanders himself has characterized the plan in front of large audiences.
It's not describing what the plan what would do, i.e., the actual text of the bill, it's describing an implication of what the plan would do exclusively using 2 negative frames ("replace" and "single government plan") without any positive framing. It's very obviously a non-neutrally worded question.
The results of the poll are impressively high as-is, but would be higher even if the question were only tweaked slightly to eliminate just one of the two negative frames:
My remark is simply that these results are impressively high considering this framing.
Broad support for Democratic policy platforms has been basically true since the late 90s, even as the country tended to vote Republican. So it's probably more likely that people vote more on personality and intangibles, like "trustworthiness" or "competence" or "makes me feel safe" than the details of any policy initiative.
Obama beat Clinton despite it. Clinton beat Tsongas despite it. The "powerful media narrative" is clearly not ALL powerful, you just need to be able to get a coalition behind you. Talking to people outside the choir helps, which the Sanders camp emphatically avoided doing. And talking about them like they're all mindless sheep and you're the sole intelligent thinker is generally a bad strategy for winning people over.
Pretty sure him being a cranky old man didn't have any effect on whether or not they liked Clinton.
Unless you're just using the turn of phrase here to take a dig at him. In which case, okay, whatevs.
This time around we held cranky old-man factor equal in a head-to-head and the centrist cranky old man won over the progressive one. All evidence points to cranky old-man status being a key factor, though I would probably rank them in decreasing order of explanatory power as follows: man > cranky > old.
All evidence in that situation, as I see it, would be that they just liked Hillary less than him. Doesn't really have anything to do with his temperment, age, or sex. But whatever helps you sleep at night.
That's not really evidence, you just asserted your conclusion and dismissed all independent variables out of hand. That's called "begging the question."
That is fascinating info! Thank you (Ok can we all agree text sounds sarcastic AF? But I am really sincere here, thank you!)
I recently had a discussion about this with a friend living in Iraq and it got odd quick - and that is coming from me looking over you guys shoulders and going "Why do you keep picking that sociopathic oompah loompah for leader?" - but its hard talking about it from my perspective because I am not as invested as you living there obviously are, and my take is not the same as yours in details and so what I say can get muddled in more national talking points AND since many of you are (for insanely good reason) really nervous about this election.
See its a tricky conversation to have for me
Others have pointed out your inaccurate framing of "the left" eating itself, so I won't bother.
But I want to ask why Democrats can't just have the guy with credible sexual assault accusations against him step down and just put up Bernie, Warren, Klobuchar?
If "the left" means "The Democrats" to you, then do places like The Intercept and Current Affairs, which are far left of the Democratic Party mean "the right"?
Because if we are talking about who goaded the Democratic party into addressing this accusation towards Biden, it was those places leading the charge. The right was present, of course, they're loving it. They were a secondary force in this though.
Wait, didn't the article say that it's not having much effect on the polls?
In any case, I don't see a reason to be deeply worried. This will be old news by November, and a lot can happen between May and November. A May poll isn't very predictive of November results.
The article has shown that a decent amount of people are now distrustful of Biden so while this isn't particularly destructive, it is pretty damn bad and nihilism-inducing.
By rights, the election shouldn't be close. Trump should be doomed already. But I don't see why, if it looks like it might be close, that should result in nihilism? A close election means that what you do is more likely to matter!
Perhaps nihilists will find any excuse for nihilism?
I meant the allegations are pretty nihilism inducing for some people ("In my view it is no more moral to vote for someone with 1 rape allegation then someone with 25.) Also all the people that are turned off by Trump probably already were turned off by him by November 2016, right?
I think there were, and still are, a lot of people who dislike Trump but didn't actually vote. Remember that in 2016, most people didn't believe he would win.
The flip side of low turnout is that there's lot of room for improvement.
This is the global total by the way. USA is at 75,000 deaths.
Have 270,000 Americans really died? I know the predictions are high, but I don't think the actual totals are anywhere near there yet.
idk, I feel like these conversations are the same sorts of echo chambers that led to Trump winning 2016 being such a shocking unthinkable thing despite ample polling showing it was quite possible and just as importantly a lack of polling in important states showing little for certain at all.
I think people need to realize that conversations on the internet don't reflect random chunks of the electorate. There's self-selection that happens in these discussions that happens far up the chain from the conversation itself. Biden has a very large, devoted base, but if you were to read this thread you'd think it is a surprise anyone in their right mind likes the guy much less would consider supporting him over the godking Sanders. Same thing happens in all sorts of online communities. It's just part of the territory.
But it also makes me roll my eyes and be much less likely to see it as worthwhile contributing myself.
I gotta wonder where are these people though? Do they just not use the Internet/discussion forums/social media platforms to discuss politics? We've all seen the poling being 30 points Biden for the entire primary season but why hasn't that been reflected in social media?
They're not coming here, or at least they're not going to speak up in a thread like this where a lot of people seem to have already made their decision to hate the guy. Surprisingly, most people don't generally like to have open conflicts with others and politics is still largely relegated to those who opt into the confrontational nature of the discussions.
It's not reflected in social media because social media is biased against moderate, unremarkable voices and in favor of the extreme and counter-narrative. Why is it biased in that way? because that's what grabs peoples' attention the easiest, and that's all what most social media platforms are about. Who gives a shit about Stacey from Nebraska who thinks that the Democratic party has some flaws, but generally at least tries to represent her in an evidence based way and is allergic to rhetoric that oversells, overpromises, and ritually underprovides. And why should Stacey, who knows that speaking up will just get her a lot of focused hatred from Sanders supporters, from Trump supporters, and probably also from nation state actors, devote even a second to what will almost certainly appear to her as trolls?
That's correct but Bernie's (or at least Warren's) proposals are mostly mainstream in Western European countries, sure there's plenty of people screeching about it like it's radical but it isn't. If that's all that this is about then I'd be hard pressed to believe it would apply outside Reddit and Twitter.
Also Warren was always there.
Mainstream isn't the same as moderate. I tend to use "moderate" to describe people who can put aside their personal feelings to listen to those who disagree with them (or those who have few strong preferences that push them away from those they might otherwise disagree with).
But that doesn't mean that Biden's supporters are "moderate", only that they don't like engaging Bernie supporters, who are often young, left leaning, or otherwise quite outspoken, or Warren supporters, who are often quite educated and wealthy and frankly at risk of getting holier-than-thou with a lot of their beliefs (myself included). There are specific reasons that Biden's base of support has been avoiding us. We're tough to talk to. We're not particularly accessible. We make it hard for them to talk to us.
Which is also kind of my point about why this sort of echo chamber is exhausting. Like good on us for patting ourselves on the back and being on top of our shit morally, but what good does that do if we're not effective at getting people to both like our ideas and like us personally. They go hand in hand.
No one said the people I'm talking about are silent. No one said they're the majority. All I said is that they choose not to speak here. Don't come at me with Reagan rhetoric I didn't use, that just proves my point about the annoying hostility of in-groups that amplifies this self-selection caused echo chamber.
It's generally unhelpful to a political cause to spend much energy speculating whether the people who are ambivalent about it are assholes or not.
Why do you even have to say this hypothetical person could be an asshole? Don't you see that by choosing to emphasize that you belie your own hostility to someone with a more calm take on Biden? Like, if I were Stacey I would want to avoid engaging where people so glibly imply me to be an asshole too.
I didn't take offense (if I had, I probably would've just said nothing). So no worries there.
I wasn't saying the calmness was a virtue, just as you weren't saying all people who will continue to calmly support Biden even in light of the most recent allegations from Tara Reade are assholes. My focus tends to be about maximizing impact (you can tell I used to be an organizer with phrases like that). So my point was solely restricted to the exhausting nature of engaging echo chambers, where a consensus appears to have formed that you, the reader thinking about participating, may not wholly agree with. Waxing into moral fights of character, quoting Martin Luther King's echo of Frederick Douglass, all of this only serves as examples of why engaging in these environments can be exhausting. Who wants to have lengthy rehashed, over and over (and over) discussions abuot what MLK meant by the "white moderate"? Who wants to have lengthy, rehashed discussions about what Douglass meant when he described the type of northern abolitionist that was more evil than the slave owner? Be careful where you apply this logic, because it is poison to constructive discussion with people who might be brought into your ideological camp. You are implying that they are more evil than republicans. Who would want to engage that level of vitriol if they felt that logic was being applied to them?
You want Stacey to care. I do too, really. But maybe Stacey doesn't have the bandwidth to care that much, especially when she's a hair trigger away from being implied to be an asshole or more evil than the people she sharply disagrees with enough to vote Dem in november. You and I both know that economic disparities and the service sector generally shouldering a lot of emotional labor makes that possible. She'll do what she can with the eggs she's got, but maybe she can't read the news every day or else she'll pull her hair out. Does that make her vote in November destructive? Seems mighty glib of you to claim so without knowing more, especially because her vote is a reflection of her best effort to understand the stakes of the election. You don't necessarily want to jump down peoples' throats when they're trying their best with what they got. That will turn people off to your message, and that hurts your effectiveness as a messenger.
The thing about echo chambers that makes me roll my eyes is this lack of concern about being messengers for our political beliefs. Like, yeah, I agree with a lot of the sentiments in this thread too. I can't lie about that. But lurkers read these words too, even if they don't say so. Lurkers almost always outnumber active participants online. On volume alone, those lurkers are very likely to include people like Stacey. I think it's really damn important that people try their best not to imply these lurkers are assholes or evil or whatever, because that hurts your ability to persuade them of your larger vision.
So, are Tara Reade's allegations really that thin?
I've read many of the comments here and it seems no one is discussing that. I get that the article is about implications on Biden's electability... but, dang, it seems weird that no one is talking about what this woman may have gone through. Believe women...when it's politically expedient?
I guess it comes down to having a president that certainly sexually assaulted women or one that maybe did. Not that that really factors in to presidential fitness, I guess. In fact, probably par for the course (sigh...).
Whatever, Señor Cheeto has got to go.
IIRC Noone has actually found any real video proof or records (that, along with actually remembering what was done to you in the moment along with the location and date is painstakingly hard to do with rape) of it so until then we only have Tara and Biden's historic to look at.
The most convincing problem with Biden for Reade's accusation to be legitimate is that there is on camera footage of him being decently inappropiate (sniffing) with young women and he himself has admitted to being ""a tactile politician""
The most convincing problem with Reade for Biden's denial to be legitimate is that she wrote this op-ed/near fanfic of Putin and her lawyer is a Trump donor and another associate of hers wrote at Sputnik, a news agency owned by the Russian government.
The latter seems to be way more convincing.
There was also this bit I didn't quote for length reasons: