UPDATE: Friday, Jul 5, 2024 · 2:25:48 PM +00:00 · Dem
Professor Allan Lichtman, "You're absolutely right. There are a lot of reasons not to trust the polls. They tell you the error margin is+-3% which is large enough to be pretty relevant in a close election but the error is actually far greater than that. That's statistical error. That's the error you would get if you had a huge jar of red and green balls and you took a sample and estimated the percentage of red and green balls in the jar. But people are not red and green balls. They may lie to pollsters. They may not have focused their decision. They may change their minds. Response Rate is incredibly low so the sample may not be representative and, of course, noone has voted yet. So they have to guess who the likely voters are and every pollster has a different way of doing that which is why the polls are all over the map. And that additional error is not random. It's unidirectional and very large. So in 2016, the polls underestimated Republican strength. Now, they're trying to compensate for that and they're underestimating Democratic strength. Recent elections, when people actually get out and vote, Democrats have very substantially outperformed the polls. That very highly publicized election for the seat previously held by the disgraced George Santos, a Congressman in New York, in a poll taken just a few days before the election had the democrat ahead by one point dead heat, but the democrat won by eight points, outperforming the polls by seven points.
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After the debate, many more claims that President Biden is senile arose. There were many claims that the best way to explain what we saw in Joe Biden in the debate is that President Biden is senile.
If what we saw could be explained in other ways consistent with President Biden having good mental health, then the freak out over 90 minutes of an event in June is absurd. It's hard to deny that truth. That's the foundational question: is President Biden mentally healthy or not because if he is, then the freak out is one of the single most overwrought, dumb things that many seemingly bright people have ever engaged because the event, whatever it was, was in June. If the only issue is that it appeared during the event that President Biden was senile or had early onset dementia or whatever, but none of that is actually true, then the freak out is unjustified and unwarranted. The reason that this is true is that we have four months to correct this misperception. So, the only justification for the freak out is that President Biden is actually senile or has early onset dementia or something similar. However, what we saw can be interpreted in multiple ways. Confirmation bias is why there were so many people engaging in the freak out, claiming that President Biden is senile or has early onset dementia or something similar, and must, therefore be replaced on the ticket. So we must ask ourselves, "How did we get here?" However, first we will consider the claim and an alternative explanation.
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Where is there any evidence that Joe Biden has early onset dementia or is senile? If you say the event, you have to compete with other hypotheses. The president is 81 years old, had apparently multiple events previously, had a very bad cold, had a very difficult time with the Gish Gallup, and is simply unable to cover his stutter as he could previously. Is there any supporting data for that from elsewhere? The answer is no. Does the administration give any evidence of being run by somebody who is senile or has dementia? The answer is no. In fact, the opposite is true. Joe Biden has an 81 year old brain. His brain has aged. He doesn't respond as quickly intellectually as he could when he was younger. His processing time is longer. He absolutely struggles to fill time well. Every once in a while he may lose track of his train of thought. He is unlikely to perform well in an event with formatting like this. He needs to be able to cover his stutter and he absolutely could not do it in this event. On the other hand, this event does NOT replicate the conditions under which the president performs his duties. Therefore, it's very unclear to me what meaningful information or data we could get from the evident. On the other hand, evaluating the results of the two different administrations would seem to be much more relevant.
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What seems to be absolutely crystal clear to me is the importance of confirmation bias in this maelstrom. President Biden was less available and less visible to begin with. The media already started pushing age as the Trump campaign had in the 2020 presidential election. Then the New York Times violated the background information policy of all administrations really. The administration insisted that the New York Times agree to follow the policy after their failure to do so previously. They refused. President Biden remained less available or visible. The media then went into hyper Joe Biden is old, he has gaffes, he might have dementia campaign as did the Trump campaign. Through all this time and especially after he won the primary, there wasn't this united call for him to end his campaign. That call has now come from the pundit class supported by some Never Trump Republicans and some on the left who disliked him for other reasons and then confirmation bias widened the scope of those who called for his scalp. However, we see the real power and effectiveness of this messaging campaign against him months earlier.
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Did you notice that even Democratic Party Congress members were relieved after they saw the long State of the Union speech? They even made a joke about it and so did President Biden. When even Democratic Party member of Congress are relieved, it tells you how pervasive and influential the messaging campaign that President Biden is too old, he makes lots of gaffes, he might have dementia has been. Isolating President Biden because of his age, gaffes, and speech impediment was a serious mistake. The result of his lack of visibility and the campaign against him has yielded this belief or concern that he is senile or has dementia. Then people see this which they were looking for and already were concerned about and it confirms their previous doubt or prior false assumption. This is a classic example of confirmation bias .
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The data on the event says something completely different than this event moved a lot of people to Donald Trump. Dials of the responses from a thousand people during the event say something completely different than this one event won the election for Donald Trump over President Biden. I wouldn't be surprised if some polls show a short term hit taken by President Biden in polls. Even prior to the response rate problem where the supporters of the candidate whom the media is going after refuse to answer the call of pollsters or participate in polling surveys. It happened with Trump supporters which is why the polls overstated President Biden's win by two and a half percentage points and it is happening now with President Biden's supporters.
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The question of how to evaluate the event also arises. Negative partisanship is a a fundamental truth about our politics today. So we can try as the freak outers want and treat this as if swing voters or all voters know absolutely zero about both candidates and their only information is from the event exclusively and decide who wins, but this is silly and absurd . Of course, I am not going to predetermine the assessment of the debate in advance as some appear to want to do by creating rules for evaluating the event that favor Donald Trump enormously. It is absurd to rule that what we saw from Donald Trump that Thursday evening, his inability to ascertain reality or his willingness to lie as a sociopath for the purpose of gaining power, is irrelevant.
Sociopathic liars use lying as a tool for manipulation or control, and their lies are often driven by self-gain, avoidance of responsibility, and a desire for power.
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In a real debate, of course, if you choose to talk about something not relevant to the question asked or deviate from the topic in much of the response, then you lose that part of the debate if the other person at least attempts to stick to the topic. On the other hand if you introduce statements that are egregiously dishonest so that they can only be understood to be lies, then you lose that part of the debate. If you do it enough, then you lose the debate. I'm not sure that, even acting as if this took place in a vacuum that Donald Trump won. In age of negative partisanship, who was moved? Swing voters swooned for Donald Trump after what we saw in him that night? I hate to tell you this, but dials did not go his way and independents flatlined for him and not for Joe Biden. What can I tell you? I'm sorry.
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So, this leaves us with this 90 minute event in June as something not terribly significant or relevant amidst a ton of other facts and information that seem to be much more relevant. In other settings have we seen this? We have not. I have seen recent interviews with President Biden at length and he was absolutely fine.
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As I have said repeatedly, the administration must make the president visible. I wouldn't make him ubiquitous, but some events with major media need to be done. They were worried about unfair and hostile coverage with President Biden manifesting his age, his speech impediment, and or making gaffes. However, the coverage couldn't get much worse. Even with gaffes, slower processing time, and his stutter, if President Biden shows he is mentally healthy, the voters will choose him, defects and all along with all of this positive traits, over Donald Trump. President Biden is older, his brain is older, but he is mentally healthy. In an old Charlie Brown episode, I can't remember if it was Linus or Lucy, I think it was Linus who said that he NEVER ate December snowflakes because they were too early. This was an event in June. This event will be a footnote in the history books and in Wikipedia. The outcome of this presidential election is far murkier and uncertain than many of those currently engaged in the freak out seem to believe. The fact that Donald Trump has run for president twice before and we have some information other than current opinion polls give us seems lost on them. The fact that we are in June escapes them.
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The argument that Josh Marshall made is cogent [in effect, the Democratic Party would be saying]: We lied to you before and said that President Biden is mentally healthy but really we have allowed a senile guy in serious cognitive decline to run the White House the last four years but now that you figured it out, then we want you to trust us again and support our new candidate Vice President Harris who is just fine, trust us !
I'm not completely convinced that this is a winning message for president of the United States.