Nate Silver is one of the most vocal voices backing Joe Biden exiting the race. One of politics’ preeminent pollsters and data crunchers, Silver has been blunt and unrelenting in making his case that Biden is cooked and should stand aside. It carries more weight that he’s no fan of Trump and liberal, but he’s not going to shy away from the fact that he’s apprehensive about Biden’s mental health and age. He noted that the president’s team might be under the impression that it’s 2020. It’s not; Biden has far worse numbers than any incumbent helming a re-election effort.
He also was honest, though some would see his lengthy paragraphs about the world of polling, getting things wrong, and other aspects of data journalism that most would find to be ways for him to cover for himself if things go haywire. Silver does delve into the minutiae of this world, but he also ends with a damning analysis of Biden. His latest piece spoke about the “broken leg” syndrome with Joe, where the model doesn’t consider some political aspects. While Biden’s chances to win aren’t good, Silver warned that there could be a circumstance where the president might be inclined to think that he could pull off a comeback.
Silver quickly throws cold water on that narrative, admitting that Biden’s chances now post-Trump debate are probably even worse than his model prediction. Second, after the ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, he acknowledged that he ‘wimped out’ adding a few sentences about the president regarding his mental health, where the best possible move is to make plans to transition the presidency to Ms. Kamala Harris. He admits he’s entirely in that camp now after this interview, adding, “Something is clearly wrong here” (via Silver Bulletin):
Biden is, in all likelihood, literally incapable of waging the sort of campaign that a league-average Democrat would be able to wage. The reporting on Biden’s condition is highly distributing — the debate probably wasn’t entirely an anomaly, and it’s not even clear to what extent Biden is making the decisions rather than his staff. Frankly, I’d rather have Kamala Harris be president right now in the event of, say, an unconfirmed report of a North Korean nuclear missile inbound to Honolulu after 8 p.m.
A fully engaged president would have done something like this following his debate performance: schedule a press conference at 9 a.m. the next morning, and answer questions forthrightly and competently until he’d demonstrated that the debate was indeed just a “bad night”. Instead, it’s been more than a week, and Biden has continued to hide from the press, using a teleprompter even at private fundraisers and making repeated verbal stumbles –- like referring to himself as a “Black woman” — in the few impromptu media appearances he has done.
I’m not going to mince words here: this is not remotely acceptable from the leader of the free world, or from the staff advising him. In consideration of Biden’s age, 81, his debate performance, and his obviously deteriorating condition, it’s not tenable for him to ask for another four years as president. (That’s not a prediction of what Biden will do but rather a proscriptive statement of what would be best for the United States.)
What’s more up for debate is whether Biden should be president now. My personal view is that we’re past the point of no return — one or two good interviews (say on ABC News tonight) would be too little, too late to restore enough trust, especially given the White House’s persistent lack of transparency. These are precarious circumstances for Democrats, at best. Although I don’t think this is the base case, I think Democrats are underestimating the possibility that this could turn into a Watergate-type scandal if the White House has been concealing details about the president’s condition from the American public.
OK — let’s turn it down a notch and get back to the implications for the forecast. Because as much as I’m a probabilist at heart, if you sweat enough sports bets, you’ll sometimes encounter circumstances where sometimes the outcome does seem pretty damned deterministic. For instance: the obviously severely concussed quarterback, down 7 points at halftime, is brought out for the second half and then immediately throws a pick-six. That’s a hard deficit to overcome to begin with — but it’s much harder if the concussed QB can barely do more than hand the ball off and the coach insists on keeping him in the game anyway.
Now, unlike in football, the “final score” in elections isn’t always accurate — sometimes the polls are wrong. It’s almost as though there’s a fifth quarter after the game in which the referees audit the result to make sure they have the right score. If a lot breaks right and if the polls aren’t pegging the situation correctly to begin with, it’s not out of the question that Biden could win.
But it’s pretty unlikely — this is a “broken leg” circumstance if I ever saw one. Biden plainly has shortcomings that the model isn’t really designed to account for. When we launched the forecast last week, I promised that I’d tell you if we reached a point where there were material circumstances that weren’t being handled well by the model. We’re in such a circumstance.
And then, post-ABC News interview, he tweeted this:
I wimped out in today's column and deleted a line saying he should formulate a plan to transition the presidency to Harris within 30-60 days, but I'm there now. Something is clearly wrong here.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 5, 2024
The most generous way to put it is that he doesn't seem in command, and that's an extremely hard sell when you're Commander in Chief. I continue to think this number is low and Democrats will apply incredible amounts of pressure.https://t.co/HW7mQIjpNE pic.twitter.com/ntW4TiUvrv
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 5, 2024
Everyone can see Biden is a mess, except the people paid to advise the president on the best possible course of action. Either they’re incompetent, just as mentally ill as Joe, or they're being held hostage by the wrath of Jill Biden, who very much has a ‘we’re done when I say we’re done’ attitude within this White House.
