Is The Overton Window Half Open Or Half Shut?

I've lately begun to gauge the extent of the Overton window, the range of opinions that can be expressed in public without seeming extreme, by looking at each day's Real Clear Politics menu, along with their aggregate poll listings. There are maybe 20 titles on a typical day, and their sources range from the New York Post on the right to The American Prospect and The Nation on the left, which skews things leftward in my view -- but of course, the poll aggregates do the same, and I'll get to that.

The big thing I've noticed since Joe went to Italy is that RCP hasn't published a single headline that says anything major about Joe's cognitive struggles there. There's been absolutely nothing about Friday's forehead bump with Pope Francis, although the only thing that can reasonably be concluded about it is that Joe completely lost situational awareness and forgot that he was in a diplomatic forum with world leaders, expected to follow closely cicumscribed standards of etiquette, and widely published photos of the forehead bump from several angles leave little room for other interpretations.

As of this morning, the only reference to G7 I've been able to find at all in the RCP menus is Michael Goodwin's Joe Biden is Mired in a Losing Streak at the New York Post. This is a very broad discussion that begins with Hunter's conviction in Delaware, continues through Hunter's looming tax trial, and only then moves to the G7:

It was his second trip to Europe in 10 days and the wear and tear on the 81-year old president was obvious.

Without First Lady Jill Biden by his side to direct him, he looked more confused than usual and at one point had to be herded back to the group by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whom Biden weirdly saluted when they met.

Coming just after the White House Juneteenth celebration, where Biden’s hands and body stood frozen as people around him clapped and swayed to music, the behavior stoked concern among his peers.

G-7 insiders talked of him “losing focus” during discussions, with one saying Biden’s condition is “the worst he has ever been,” according to media reports.

Goodwin doesn't mention the head bump with Francis at all, which is odd, because Joe's defenders have been able to argue that the vignette of him wandering away from the others at the skydiving demonstration was out of context, he was congratulating someone out of camera range, blah blah. But as I said above, the forehead bump leaves far less room for spin. And Goodwin doesn't mention it -- so far, that's been the only discussion of the G7 at RCP.

I've mentioned the commentators who've said, correctly, that the Wall Street Journal story early this month on Joe's real condition behind the scenes was just a "permission slip" that opened the subject up for polite discussion -- but clearly the discussion must remain polite. The G7 business is just one of several campaign hurdles Joe must surmount, not a much more significant indicator that he's not fit for office, and this situation has been concealed from the public for many months -- that's still not a polite thing to say.

But what we're hearing on backgound, first from the Wall Street Journal and now from G7 diplomatic circles, is that Joe has good days and bad ones, he checks in and out. This in itself is probably a polite and diplomatic way of putting things. In the context of the upcoming June 27 debate, it throws into question the basic assumption expressed by Trump himself and many others, that Joe's handlers can somehow program set-piece responses to certain questions and keep him pumped up with energy drinks or whatever that will let him exceed low expectations and "win" the debate.

The informed subtext more recently is that that may have been possible in 2020, but this is now, and Joe has gotten considerably worse in recent months. It's even within the Overton window to say he checks in and out, and this is simply visible to everyone in recent appearances. I don't think at this point, though, that his good days or focused moods can be predicted or managed any more, and the debate is going to be a real crap shoot.

But let's move to RCP and the polls, where the Overton window is clearly being manipulated. The conventional wisdom even before Trump began to rise in the polls last fall was that 2024 was going to be a close election. Nobody disputed that. The conventional wisdom established that it would be won via a narrow electoral college victory in certain "battleground" states. RCP has been a major factor in establishing this paradigm. But two things are falling out: the first is that certain states even on the RCP list, like North Carolina, have never really been in play for Biden.

So why does RCP retain North Carolina as a "battleground"? I suspect one reason is that taking North Carolina off the list would be a first acknowledgement that the consensus paradigm is off, so they can't do it. But the other "battlegrounds" have also broken into two groups, although Trump consistently leads in the aggregates for all of them. One group, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, shows Trump ahead by 4 or 5 points, and those are looking more like North Carolina, no longer really "battlegrounds". The second group, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, shows Trump ahead by slimmer margins, although he's still ahead. Those in the second group are more credibly "battlegrounds".

But now, although still outside the window of polite discussion, people have begun to mention states like Minnesota and Virginia as "in play". For instance,

Polling outfit Decision Desk HQ released some stunning numbers Friday, showing Donald Trump ever so slightly ahead in two blue states that went for Biden in the last election, which could spell doom for the president’s reelection if they turn on him in November. The survey showed Trump up an ever-so-teeny 0.2 percent in Virginia and an absolutely eye-opening 1.6 percent in Minnesota.

It seems to me that the "close election" paradigm hinging on the "battleground" states of 2016 and 2020 is beginning to fail. As of right now, it seems likely that Joe can at best carry only two or three of those "battlegrounds", which makes his chances of a narrow Electoral College victory slimmer and slimmer. But with polling data coming in that Minnesota and Virginia are already in play, this puts a potential wider Trump Electoral College victory within the realm of possibility, which renders the whole "battleground" model inoperative.

I briefly thought of suggesting to RCP that, for instance, they revise the list of "battlegrounds" and take at minimum, say, North Carolina and Nevada off the list, since Trump is ahead by over 5 points in both, start running aggregates for Minnesota and Virginia, and place them on the "battleground" list instead. That would give a list that would show the real tipping-point states. Might not that provide more of a horse race?

But then I realized that a horse race is not what RCP wants to show. As Rush Limbaugh said, the polls aren't meant to report the news, they're meant to shape it. RCP wants the election to be close. One of today's headlines on today's menu there is another Biden Could Lose the Popular Vote and Still Win, which pooh-poohs

a whole industry out there engaged in spinning polls and shifting expectations to show that Donald Trump is going to win by a massive landslide, sweeping godless woke liberalism out of power in Washington and instituting his long-promised era of vengeance and vindication.

But he falls back for his support on the Sean Trende piece I discussed Wednesday, in which Trende wants to assume there are massive polling errors in favor of Trump in Trende's own "battleground" aggregates that overestimate Biden's losses among youth, blacks, and Latins, allowing Biden ultimately to squeak by 270-268 in the Electoral College.

The problem is, of course, that the writer here is still forced to acknowledge the other possibility:

Obviously if Trump actually wins Virginia it would be a big deal, putting 13 precious electoral votes he’s never won before into his column.

But if RCP can keep the Overton window half shut, nobody needs to worry too much. At least for now.

the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy