Is Cenk behaving like the new Jimmy Dore?
- Yes
- No
0
voters
Cenk is not the new Jimmy Dore and he actually won the debate Vs Lichtman. There are a bunch of things I would like to comment about that debate, but I will do that on a separate topic.
2 Likes
What exactly makes you think that Cenk is acting like Jimmy Dore?
2 Likes
If you think that, that is problem no 1 with your perception of Cenkâs behavior
3 Likes
No he didnât. Cenk behaved despicably, was wrong and even lied.
1 Like
Okay, for fairness, list the lies.
3 Likes
I dont know which lie they meant, but I did catch a few in that video - whether you want to call them lies or untruths or misrepresentations or just him not understanding how these things work (which is def not the case).
- cenk keeps saying the race is NOT neck and neck.
The entire time, even now, the polls have been within the margin of error. And it IS literally neck and neck, even now.
- Cenk keeps making this about approval ratings. Approval ratings have to be measured with the popularity of the opponent. Trumpâs approval ratings arent great either.
Here is Obama vs Romney for comparison.
Cenk keep equating Bidenâs numbers to Obamaâs numbers without considering the numbers of their respective opponents.
-
I donât remember but I think they were talking about what polls to consider. Cenk was wrong about only focusing on rolling average of polls. yes we should look at multiple polls and see averages and stuff but we also have to look at treands after specific events. For example what the polls are showing right after the debate. Then check back 4-5 days later to see if that was permanent or temporary. What happened after the attempted assassination attempt, vance nomination etc. Are those trends temp or permanent. Are they reversible by correct messaging or not.
-
Cenk also says it will be âeasyâ to move that money to a superpac. But the problem remains that that money is pledged to the Bien-Harris ticket. And for it to be moved (according to the DNC rules for campaign financing), donors, and both the candidates on the ticket have to approve. harris knows that she isnât getting another shot at running for president. So I donât think she will be very amenable to fund her own replacement. So its not that easy.
-
He keeps saying âanyone would be better than Bidenâ. However the polls donât actually show that. The possible replacements were all polled and they polled either the same or worse than Biden and donât even help win any swing states. At the time of this debate polls stoof :
Currently they stand:
Plus that is not accounting for all the risk taken because of the divisions or if people get put off by the chaos and then still getting establishment candidate etc.
There were a few more, but I have forgotten now
2 Likes
Also, Cenk kept saying he had predicted the 2016 election outcome correctly. He implied in his statement that he was correct all along. However, we were there and we remember, for the entire cycle he was perfectly in line with the mainstream polls. Only towards the very end few days did he suggest the possibility of Trump winning.
He also keeps repeatedly misrepresenting âdivisionâ. He keeps saying Repubs had contested primaries in 2016, Dems in 2020 hence respective wins. however, that misrepresents âdivisionâ. Primaries are normal events, one year out and are supposed to be to contest and media test candidates. They are always great. âDivisionsâ are irreconcilable differences between different factions which always lose us elections.
in 2016 dems were divided between Hillary and Bernie supporters - we lost. In 2020 progressives were divided between bernie and warrena nd we lost and Biden got the nomination. similarly repubs were divided between RINO and MAGA and they lost.
look at tories - they ousted Boris Johnson, entered a leadership crisis, installed a corporate sleazebag Sunak and faceplanted into the worst defeat in a 100 years.
Chaos and division just before the elections has never served anyone well
he also keeps calling this convention a âdemocraticâ process. But there isnât anything democratic about it, Voters still donât get a choice. Deleagtes pick candidates. And delegates are all establishment hacks. Currently all Biden hacks. We literally saw this with them chivving bernie in 2016. And still he calls it democratic?
Also, In the entire conversation Cenk kept talking about advisers and donors and media. That is not where the election is. It is with independents who start paying attention much later And these are the people who KNOW Joeâs age and Trumpâs felonies and are considering both as viable candidates. These arent double haters who are likely to vote 3rd party or stay home. When Lichtman tried to point that out, He just refused to acknowledge that as a viable point.
2 Likes
ânationalâ polls donât mean much. If every man woman and child voted for Biden, 50 million votes, only deliver 55 electoral votes. Citing ânationalâ polls like, âsee, here!â is dumb.
first of all children cant vote,
Second, you do know there are electoral college polls yeah?
1 Like
well, i do know I know more then you
1 Like
If you did then you wouldnt be posting nonsense like you did
2 Likes
No, Ana is.
- These are polls showing Harris, who isnât the nominee, didnât get the money or narrative or infrastructure of Biden, doesnât have as much name recognition and hasnât been actively campaigning for president. It is reasonable to believe that her numbers can rise substantially (with help from all of these things), while Biden was at his absolute ceiling. If she is mostly 1-2 points behind him without these advantages, it is very likely that she overtakes him.
- In order for an incumbent to be unelected, they have to be unpopular enough that the country rejects them and moves to someone else. If Biden and Trump were polling at 58% and 60%, even though that margin is close the sentiment is likely that thereâs no problem keeping Bidenâif it ainât broke, donât fix it. People who are happy with their meal typically donât want to send it back even for a slightly better meal. But with Biden at 38% and Trump at 40%, it means that people are generally upset with the whole choice, which makes it much more likely they stay home (which usually helps Republicans) and much more likely that they opt for a change in leadership (after all, what weâve been doing hasnât been working). So the approval rating does matter in isolation, regardless of how it compares to Trump, unless it is an extreme example.
- The math showed a blowout even if the national overall polling was still (barely) within the margin of error. BTW, Cenk is correct that the odds of a Democrat winning the EC if he/she is 3.2 points down in the national polling are virtually zero. Biden won the popular vote by around 5 points last time and the EC by 45,000 votes. So the Republican by 3.2 is a near guaranteed win.
But regardless, Biden would have had to hold MN, NH, NM and VA, one of which he was currently losing, plus PICK UP Michigan, Wisconsin, NE-2 and Pennsylvania, all of which he was losing (and PA by 5 points), or to replace PA, GA and NV, where he isnât close in either of them. Mathematically, give him an 80% chance (each) of holding MN, NH, NM and VA, a 50% chance of MI, WI and NE-2 (which is generous) and a 20% chance of PA or NV+GA (which is very generous), and his actual odds were well under 10% of winning, even if momentum tends to rise all boats at once. Plus he had no momentum and hasnât had any since last October. Trump legitimately had an easier path to 340 EV than Biden had to 270 EV. Even Bidenâs own inner circle were saying that they couldnât see a âclear pathâ for him.
- Would it be âeasyâ to move the money around? Not instantaneous, but yeah, still easy. Biden had no intention of dropping out, and had both a legal and a delegate-centered case for staying in, and he still bent eventually to party pressure. Harris would approve the money to be sent to someone else if there was enough pressure on her to do so. Sheâs in her 50âsâeven if she is no longer in office in 6 months, she has years left of being an elder statesperson of the party, writing books, doing a speaking tour, surely she has relatives that she wants to help get cushy jobs, etc. She isnât going to anger the donors and the party insiders by hoarding the money while a different nominee loses to Trump.
- What trends? First, Cenk didnât have unlimited time to focus on the subtle nuances of every stateâs polling trends while he was trying to explain his case. Second, Lichtman said he wasnât even interested in what the polling said anyway, and was barely listening to ANY argument, since he felt that his keys were the only thing that mattered. Third, there ARE no changes in trends that favor Biden. It isnât as though âwow, Biden is up 4 in Arizona, now heâs down 3, now thereâs a sharp change again after the debate, now Trumpâs convictions dropped HIM by 5 points.â Every swing state has been relatively inelasticâsmall Trump lead that never goes away, or large Trump lead that Biden cuts into by 20% but not more, except for recent developments in PA and WI, both also favoring Trump. It was a perfectly valid point for Cenk to make.
First of all, I completely disagree that harris hasnât had name recognition. Everyone has been reminded over and over again about Biden appointing Harris as the first black women as VP. So no, I do believe that when it comes to name recognition, those polls are accurate.
Second, if you are going to talk about campaigning, well, Biden hadnât started campaigning either. While Trump has been doing so for weeks now - against Biden. And yet, we saw the polls remained neck and neck. There isnât just name recognition that comes with campaigning, there is also attacks and digging up of past skeletons. Harris came into 2020 primaries all pumped with a massive support. And then folded pretty quickly after her past started being looked into. Now imagine that at a national scale. It is a double edged sword which is why I donât understand people focusing on it as if it will only improve her numbers.
The point still remains that harris didnât outperform Biden in any of the polls nor does she deliver any swing states despite being a much younger candidate. If you were given a slightly raw meal. And the other option was also a slightly raw meal. Why would you change it? You can say, I will change the meal and get it cooked but you could have done with the first one.
Again, favorability and unfavorability donât stand in isolation for a candidate. Kamalaâs ratings are within the margin of error of Bidenâs. its not like people saw Bidenâs 38.2% approval and said oh I think 38.6% fro kamala is so much better. The problems you are citing with Biden remain with Kamala. Another problem is that the numbers you are citing and Cenk keeps repeating come from Obamaâs run. I am saying that those numbers need to be understood in the context of Romneyâs approval ratings vs Trumpâs. And again, the fact that Dems have to have a much higher favorability rating than Repubs is not historically accurate.
Clinton won his first term with pretty much the same net favorability as HW Bush in 1992. While Hillary had much higher net favorability rating than Trump and still lost. So why are we still stuck on Obama? Washington seriously needs to come out of Obama brain. The political landscape has changed drastically since then.
Do you know WHY since Obama Dems have needed a much higher fav to win? Because in 2008, the fracture between Hillary and Obama wing never healed. And another appeared btw progressives and establishment. The pandemic and Biden somehow allowed all those factions to come together in 2020. With that gone, we are back to not being able to stand our own.
But if you are going to match 2020 approval vs votes then The analysis that he was leading by 5 points is meaningless because the election literally was decided in 3 states. In that case it only matters what his performance in swing states was. And harris performs worse in many key and similar in others as I have shown in the data I posted.
A lot of people want to use one metric or the other to justify the decision. But plain data doesnât justify it. You can operate in assumptions because there is no way to test any of this. Its all hypotheticals and we can make them what we want to be by focusing on what we like. But the data at hand doesnât show a reason to put any of these replacements in for Biden. This is the reason why everyone keeps saying Bidenâs numbers as bad and âanyone will be betterâ but when asked who would actually be a choice that would flip national results, people donât have an answer. Because that is what freaking primaries are for!
To be clear, I donât think Kamala is the answer. Just saying.
I am not sure that Harris is the answer, but I am sure that Biden was not the answer. Unless you can point to some sort of a path that Biden had to win this electionâtrend lines/momentum, polling, widespread satisfaction with him or with the direction of the country, campaigning strengths, rhetorical strengths, enthusiasm level among the baseâit is not arguable that he is the best candidate to run. The odds of a Hail Mary succeeding for 50 yards with 5 seconds left on the clock are much worse than the odds of a run up the middle succeeding for 5 yards, but it doesnât matter because youâre going to lose the game. If you think Biden had a good shot to win, then I would agreeâdonât make the switch, there are some risks associated with it. I thought Bidenâs chances were 0%. And not because of Cenk, because I saw him on the debate stage and since then. He was frankly not capable of running this campaign.
When I say that Harris hadnât started to campaign yet, I mean that literally. Zero days of being the presumptive nominee, zero thought that she was the likely nominee, she didnât run for president in the 2024 primary, she didnât have the camera on her, she had raised no money at all for the Harris for President 2024 campaign. Even if Biden âhadnât started campaigning yet,â which I find laughable since he just talked about being at 22 events in the last 3 weeks, and also moot because he CANâT campaign, he can barely speak without alarming his own voters further, and had been intentionally hiding himself as much as possible for the last 8 months, he had been the presumptive nominee in peopleâs minds for this whole year. Everyone had prepared for Biden mentally even if he wasnât storming through Arizona every day. That is not like comparing him to Kamala, who was ACTUALLY not campaigning.
I donât even really understand your point about âDems have had to have a higher favorability rating because of splits in the party.â Those splits are still there in 2024, so why wouldnât the same thing apply? Why would we go back 30 years to illustrate something that is irrelevant because the 2008-and-after splits in the party will still affect this race? Yeah, in 1992 the Demâs approval rating wasnât as important as now. Also, Perot got 19% of the vote that year, which significantly affected the results.
There will never be a perfect way to know, since Biden and Harris and others cannot possibly all run for the remainder of this race and measure numbers against one another. But we should have a good idea a month from now. If Harris is leading in states that Biden never led at any point in 2024, I think it is safe to assume that she is a better nominee, and that it wasnât just the case that âpeople would have come home to Biden eventually,â since there has been no measurable bump in his momentum since March 2023 and you already showed that chart.
This is the problem. Everyone keep saying Biden didnât have a path to victory but again refusing to acknowledge that again campaign hadnât started yet. And no one actually polled better than him, in fact most did worse. So what is the rationale of changing him?
As for harris, she has been prepping to run for president for months now. Her op eds about how she could control the money on the ticket and how skipping her would enrage black voters started coming out months ago. She was going on these solo Abortion clinic tours and stuff for this reason only. And my point still stands. You can keep focusing on positive outcomes from media coverage without focusing on the negative impacts of it - but they coexist in reality.
And you can laugh about Biden, but even without caomoaging his numbers were neck and neck and better than Kamalaâs and his drawbacks wee baked in. I know you want Kamala to be nominee. Would really hurt if she imploded in public eye just like Biden, but we can both make up whatever hypotheticals we like., âEventsâ doesnât mean he had campaign events. He had like 5 speeches. And remember 2020 and primaries - he wont those from a basement too. Why? Because the establishment was working for him. They generated media for him. Now they decided not to and instead focused on help him implode. You can spin this however you like. But we know establishment builds candidates and establishment destroyed them. Establishment doesnât really like Kamala either. Lets see if she too implodes like Biden and then what people will say about her.
Her polls in swing states are worse than Biden.
As for the splits, the point is that the same 2008 split is still hurting the party. The not listening to progressives is hurting the party. But instead of actually holding primaries they just want to keep shoving establishment candidates down our throats? We wouldnât need to win by 5 points or 10 points if we didnât have the wplit. But instead of reforming that, everyone must suck it up and sit through corporate changes of peppers and find a way to be excited about it? What kind of insane strategy is that? And then they will still come and blame us when they lose. Instead of fixing the divisions they caused.
Also it is relevant because the more divisions and fractures you have, the more you have to overcome opposition form your own side to win the same race. They are making it more difficult unnecessarily. But no, they want us to accept made up numbers about Biden and kamala and whoever they pick and vote blue and expect nothing. That is not a way to run an election. The whole freaking process is designed to fail. Switching Biden with harris ot machine or beshear will not change that. So what was the point?
1 Like
As I said, Biden is not capable of running the kind of campaign that he would need to in order to win. Just on that alone, switching to a new candidate is preferable. Thereâs some chance of Harris imploding, thereâs some chance of Beshear imploding, and thereâs some chance of the media deciding to say that they imploded even if they didnât, but there is a much much higher likelihood of Biden imploding, because he could barely answer softball interview questions. You donât get 1/5 of the elected members of your party to publicly come out and say you should exit the race if you are not a significantly higher liability than any generic Dem that would replace you. Some of them might be wrong in their calculus, but they all have strategists working for them and theyâre all neck-deep in how politics works.
Whether itâs the mediaâs fault for destroying Biden (it isnât) or someone elseâs fault, the fact is that it was unrecoverable. COULD Harris or someone else face the same fate? Sure, but itâs much less likely, and as you just said it is already confirmed reality for Biden. Why would the media destroy him to the point that he had to leave the race, and then turn around a month from now and help him win?
We just disagree that his numbers were neck and neck, we disagree that his campaigning rigor in September would have improved his numbers, we disagree that this low-key tour Harris was on was the same visibility or the same thing as the presumptive nominee being set in the minds of everyone for months, and we also disagree that the party has to win the election by 5 points because of divisions. They have to win by 5 points because the larger states in the country have proportionally less power in the electoral college and the Democrat is going to win California by millions and millions of worthless votes.