The Case for Why Biden Will Win
We're all gonna make it.
1. WAGMI
I’ve been feeling more pessimistic than usual, because let’s be honest: Things are not great.
There’s a yawning disconnect between voter sentiment and economic reality.
The most successful first-term president since either Clinton or H.W. Bush has an impeachment proceeding against him for [reasons] and voters don’t seem to care.
Republicans are going to nominate a guy who attempted a coup and now expressly says he’d like to be a dictator.
This aspiring dictator is leading the incumbent president in most polls.
Ukraine has bogged down, Russia is making small gains, and America is wavering in its support for the most consequential European war since WWII.
But last night on TNB our economist friend Noah Smith made a pretty radical argument:
Even though it feels like we’re in a moment that is outside of historical norms, the long-running dynamics of economics and politics are still at work. And these dynamics suggest that Joe Biden is likely to win reelection.
So let’s unpack Noah’s thesis.
It begins by believing that the consumer sentiment numbers we keep talking about here are rational because they are lagging indicators. There was a bad bout of inflation in 2022; consumers reacted to this reality.
Inflation is now—we think—finished. This week’s suggestion that the Fed is looking at multiple rate cuts in the coming months caused the markets to jump. Projections now suggest that the economy will continue to be strong through 2024.
Having achieved a soft landing, the next phase of the business cycle may be expansion. As such, Goldman Sachs believes 2024 will be even better than initially thought.
As these economic realities continue to stack on top of one another and prices remain stable, consumer sentiment will eventually come around—as it always does. By the middle of 2024 we should see a measurable uptick in people’s perception of the economy; by late 2024 voters should be fully caught up.
And as the electorate’s economic views catch up with the facts on the ground, Biden’s support will also recover. His job approval numbers will rebound—as they do for all presidents when the economy is strong—and his general election poll numbers will similarly improve.
By staying the course, not panicking, and letting the growing economy do the work, Biden will be in a strong position for reelection simply because of the fundamentals.
I like this argument because here are some things it doesn’t do:
Require us to ignore/unskew current polling.
Believe that abortion will be a magic bullet.
Fall back on “but D’s did well in the last three elections, so don’t worry.”
Instead, it supposes that for all of the weirdness on the exterior of the car—the insurrection-inciting former president, the dictator talk, the criminal trials—under the hood everything in America is basically the same as it ever was.
And I like same-as-it-ever-was heuristics, because (1) they tend to be true1 and (2) they assume persistent levels of low information among voters.
So that’s your bull case for Biden. The economy is good. Most indicators now suggest that it will continue to improve. Consumer sentiment lags reality. Once voters catch up to the real economy, they will reward the incumbent president. Because that’s how reelection campaigns work.
All the stuff we talk about every day—the autocracy, the indictments, etc.—will turn out to be only marginally relevant to the election outcome because in American politics, economic reality is overly determinative.
Do you buy that?
Because I can see it. Certainly as one scenario. Maybe even a likely scenario.
Yet even so, I’m not sanguine.
2. The Inches Matter
I could give you a full deconstruction of the bull case, explaining why it has holes in it, why the underlying relationships have changed, or why this time might be different.
But not today.2
Instead I want to tell you why even the bull case doesn’t make me super-duper happy.
Let’s pretend that everything above comes to pass. What would Biden’s odds of winning reelection be? Maybe 3-in-5?
That still leaves a 40 percent chance that an authoritarian wins a free and fair election to the presidency.
If we got to run the election ten times and then take the average outcome, that would be great. In a one-time game, I’m not sure how much better 60 percent odds are than 40 percent odds. Certainly not enough for me to feel comfortable. If Flash asked me to come and throw a baseball around in the yard and told me that there was a 40 percent chance I’d get hit in the face with his fastball, I’d be pretty nervous.
But there’s a deeper reason, still.
We now know that tens of millions of Americans want illiberalism.
Not everyone who will vote for Trump will do it because they want a dictator. Probably less than half of the Republicans who will vote for Trump in the general election will do it because they want a post-liberal politics.
But some very large number of them will. Maybe it’s 10 million. Maybe it’s 30 million.
Until Trump, such people either didn’t know that they wanted to abandon liberalism, or they did know, but didn’t think it was possible. They thought that the guardrails would never let them get what they wanted.
Trump showed these people what was possible. And even if he’s defeated and goes away, they won’t. They’re activated. They have a clear sense of what they want. And they know that they are a large enough force to dominate one of our two political parties.
Looking at this reality and feeling a sense of existential dread about the future isn’t panicking, or bed wetting, or being addicted to doom.
It’s having a clear sense of the fundamental challenge facing America’s liberal order.
And it’s why The Bulwark—this thing of ours —exists. Not to stan for a single political party or get one guy elected president. It’s to identify the fundamental challenge to liberalism that has resurfaced in America. To be unsentimental about what it is and the threat it poses. And to defeat it and drive it back into the darkness
If you’re willing to stand with us in this mission, we’d be honored to have you.
3. Ariana vs. Run-DMC
Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” is the most successful original Christmas song of the last decade. Grande also released a “naughty” version of the track for grownups.
Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” was written for a 1987 compilation album that also featured Whitney Houston, Sting, and Madonna. “Christmas in Hollis” was—hands down—the best song on the album.
(This compilation also included Bon Jovi’s creative low point, “Back Door Santa.”)
“Christmas in Hollis” is now a bona fide classic. In fact, I’d argue that it gets the spirit of Christmas more completely than any other song in this tourney. It’s unabashed joy.
For example: For all of the “polls are broken” talk in the age of Trump, polling averages have been highly predictive from 2016 on. There have been some misses—Wisconsin state-level polling in 2016 was a big one. But on the whole, if you’ve been watching the polling averages, then you haven’t been too surprised by the results.
Okay, fine. Here’s a sketch: This election features two presidents, which changes the insurgent-incumbent dynamic in fundamental ways. The Electoral College makes minority rule possible in ways that have not existed in American politics prior to the current era. This is the first time that a truly post-liberal candidate has been a major-party nominee. Biden’s advanced age makes him unique and not comparable to previous incumbent presidents. Etc.
I'm in favor of the bull case for '24 with Noah, and I think the economic sentiment lag is around 6-9 months, which puts us in a good place *on inflation* come July/August of next year when polls will actually be in a place to be more accurate. That said, I don't leave out the possibility of a recession given the bond yield inversion and the tendency for recessions to manifest *after* bond yields uninvert and the fed cuts rates. The economy was looking pretty good in 2006/2007 prior to the '08 crash and markets regained a lot of territory before losing even more mid-way through the DotCom bubble (there were two false peaks that gave way to deeper bottoms).
Economy aside, there's a bull case to be made on the political front too. People are going to forget about Israel well before next year's election. It's already winding down and I give it less than a month before it's off of America's attention span--at best becoming as important/unimportant as Ukraine is to most Americans by January 15th. People are going to remember how crazy and chaotic Trump is as he appears on TV screens and news/social media feeds more often--and in a raged/lashing out state that makes him look even more nuts as his legal troubles come into focus (listen to the last Lincoln Project pod with George Conway for more on this).
There's always the potential for black swan events to change the course of things--including ones that could be in favor of Biden rather than Trump, but if things basically continue from where we are now I'd put Biden's chances at reelection better than Trump's chances at reelection. It will *always* come down to an election of very small numbers--because 44 states have already voted and elections are determined by <100k suburban voters in about 4 states regardless of who is running, and so thinking in terms of a coin flip election isn't wrong in the big scale, but if you think of the election coming down to just <100k suburban voters in 4 states then it doesn't look like a coin flip anymore. In that case, I'd say the suburban vote in PA, WI, AZ, and GA favors Biden to the tune of something like 75/25.
That said, as JVL notes "don't tell me the odds, tell me the stakes," and the stakes are as high as they get.
I knew JVL's title and come-on could not last. The main argument I find that a desire for illiberalism as a long-term change in the American political landscape exists is:
"Trump showed these people what was possible (about illiberalsm, ed.). And even if he’s defeated and goes away, they won’t. They’re activated. They have a clear sense of what they want. And they know that they are a large enough force to dominate one of our two political parties."
I don't see the "activated" by anyone but TFG. We have seen time and again that look-alike, talk-alike, act-alike Trumpies don't draw. The "clear sense of what they want" is they want TFG and no one else. And the fact that their view "dominates" one of the two political parties, only goes so far as TFG goes. Without him as their hero/god/king/dictator, whether due to an election loss, a health issue, or solitary confinement with no MAGAphone, they may very well retreat to the dark holes from which they came.