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

They're Getting Tired Of The Charade

It's worth pointing out that the "meanderer in chief" episode in Italy took place on Thursday, while Joe's bizarre forehead bump with Pope Francis took place yesterday.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the established protocol for meeting a pontiff. According to wikiHow, the rules are in part, especially for Catholics like Joe,

Genuflect as the Pope approaches. If the Pope approaches you directly, you should kneel with your right knee bent to the floor. . . . Genuflection is a sign of high respect.

If you are Catholic and if the Pope offers you his hand, that would be an appropriate time to plant a quick yet respectful kiss on the Piscatory ring, also known as the Ring of the Fisherman, traditionally worn by the Pope. . . . By kissing it, you show both respect and sincere affection for the man who holds that office.

. . . Speak respectfully, clearly, and concisely. Plan what to say beforehand so that you do not stumble too much over your words, and maintain a tone that is both clear and respectful the entire time. . . . The Pope will guide the conversation, and you should let him do so. Keep your answers direct and brief, and speak in a clear, loud voice so that the Pope can hear you.

But those rules apply mainly to Catholics. On the other hand, both Joe and the Holy Father are, diplomatically speaking, also heads of state. The normal rules for such a meeting, according to Quora, are:

The meetings tend to be very carefully scripted. A full agenda is prepared and people tend to stick too it. Both parties will actually know to a great degree of certainty what the other will say.

. . . You would be well advised to inquire in advance about expected protocols . . . . Bear in mind that you will be seen as representing America. Do so respectfully. Don't be Donald Trump! [sic]

Well, when Joe ran into Pope Francis, he definitely wasn't Donald Trump -- he was infinitely more gauche. Every indication from accounts of the forehead-bump encounter is that Francis was surprised and somewhat taken aback, the sort of thing that absolutely does not happen in a normal diplomatic context. But even accounts of ordinary people who met Christ in the gospels show Him treated with high respect, for instance in His encounter with the Canaanite woman im Matthew 15: 22-28:

22 And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” 24 He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” 28 Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith!* Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The only conclusion I can come to here is that Joe completely lost situational awareness -- he didn't act as a Catholic should, conveying great respect via his body language, and he didn't act anything like a head of state in a diplomatic context, surrounded by other heads of state and recognizing his official role in representing the US. Even gentiles who met Christ, whose vicar Francis currently is, treated Him with respect, even in their worst moments -- nobody bumped His forehead when they met Him.

By contrast, even hostile accounts of Donald Trump's meeting with Pope Francis indicate that Trump behaved according to appropriate protocol for both a non-Catholic and a head of state, and indeed, although Francis began the meeting with a stonefaced expression,

Francis' mood lightened considerably during their gift exchange and the two men shook hands before parting.

"Thank you. Thank you. I won't forget what you said," Trump told the pope after their private meeting.

Actually, I gave quite a bit of thought to what sort of behavioral pattern Joe displayed during the forehead-bump encounter, and I could only conclude that he was acting like a toddler. There's no question that if an actual toddler climbed onto Francis's lap, he or she might go one step farther and bump his forehead, and Francis in the spirit of Matthew 19:14 would presumably welcome the gesture -- but what we had here was an adult head of state in a business suit who's expected to act in a highly circumscribed manner, but he's completely forgotten where he is.

Let's ask the next question: why did this happen when it did? The answer is clear: Dr Jill or another handler is normally with him. Somehow, he was let loose in the general G7 gathering with Pope Francis, and Dr Jill wasn't there to keep him on the usual short leash:

First lady Dr. Jill Biden is hitting the campaign trail on a double mission this week, courting older voters to support her husband’s reelection bid while also tackling voters’ concerns about his age.

. . . “Joe Biden is a healthy, wise 81-year-old ready and willing to work for you every day to make our future better,” she added. “Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it.”

Her remarks came at her first stop of a three-day campaign swing through Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Nevada and Arizona.

Let's keep in mind that in France the previous week, Dr Jill appears to have been with him almost constantly in his public appearances, holding his hand, one would suspect, not just as a gesture of affection, but to hold him steady and even more important, to restrain him. Remember that on Thursday in Italy, without Dr Jill, not only did Joe offer the diplomatic kiss on both cheeks to Prime Minister Meloni, but he went on to sniff her hair. I assume Dr Jill would have been able to forestall this if she'd been present.

I can only conclude that we haven't seen as much of Joe completely losing situational awareness as he repeatedly did in Italy because Dr Jill or other handlers have been able to shield him or restrain him in public environments, and his encounters have been more carefully controlled. If Dr Jill steps away, we get these episodes -- we had something similar at the Juneteenth event on Monday, where Vice President Harris was assigned to stand next to him and presumably keep him focused. But she got caught up in jivin' with the rest of the front row and didn't notice Joe wasn't jivin'.

George Floyd's brother Philonise finally stepped in and did what Kamala should have done and "suddenly wrapped his arm around the president, footage of the moment shows". Well, if you were Kamala, would you want to wrap your arm around Joe? Give Philonese a medal.

You know what? I think even Dr Jill is sick of minding Joe 24/7, and Kamala sure doesn't want to do it. Heck, Dr Jill decided to do a campaign swing to California while Joe was in Italy, putting herself even farther from the guy than usual. That's why we're beginning to see so much more of what we're seeing. Everyone's getting tired of the charade. Even Dr Jill.

This Can No Longer Be Ignored

WHAT IS BIDEN DOING? pic.twitter.com/iY33K2srII

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 13, 2024

Up tp now, I've been extremely reluctant to come to any medical-related conclusion about Joe's condition. Yesterday's vignette from Italy above changed my mind -- it shows him wandering away from the group of G7 leaders watching a skydiving demonstration. I've had several relatives who were affected by dementia, and what Joe did there was a little too familiar. According to the Mayo Clinic,

Wandering and becoming lost is common among people with Alzheimer's disease or other disorders causing dementia. This behavior can happen in the early stages of dementia — even if the person has never wandered in the past.

. . . Wandering isn't necessarily harmful if it occurs in a safe and controlled environment.

The G7 meeting is about as safe and controlled an environment as you can find, but what we see in the video clip is Joe apparently becoming distracted from the main event, wandering a few paces away from the group, and then becoming confused. Prime Minister Meloni belatedly recognizes the problem, possibly prompted by President Macron, steps over and seizes him gently by the elbow, and pulls him back. Joe, apparently sensing that something was off but not quite understanding exactly what, compensates by putting on his sunglasses.

Once again, I'm not a medical professional, I haven't examined the president in person, and I'm not qualified to make a medical diagnosis. On the other hand, if you do a search of web sites that give advice on wandering, none of them tells you to get a medical diagnosis -- they seem to assume you recognize the symptoms easily enough, and they just tell you to implement preventive measures, which can certainly include placement in a memory care facility.

Here's a post on X, for what it's worth:

Worrying scoop from G7 as diplomatic source tells me Biden “losing focus” in world leader sessions here in Italy.

Another says “it’s worst he’s even been” at an international summit….https://t.co/QIh9By3Eh3 pic.twitter.com/YtRVRRLkca

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) June 14, 2024

Harry Cole is the Political Editor of the UK Sun, so we may surmise that he does have diplomatic sources with credibilty on the subject. He expanded in an article at the Sun:

"He's losing focus in meetings. Sometimes he's very sharp sometimes, he's very much not. So some worrying developments there.

. . . "Everyone's putting a slight brave face on it this morning. We've got some more for that for the paper tomorrow. But you can see from that footage yourself, can't you?

"This is getting embarrassing now. It makes you really wonder how President Biden is going to be able to run an election campaign in October and November for re election and if that is a man who really thinks he's going to get through the next four years?"

But this is just the fallout from from this week's G7 meeting. Apparently before the G7 episode yesterday went viral, Byron York, a highly conventional sort of guy, wrote in the Washington Examiner,

On Monday evening, the president attended a Juneteenth concert on the White House lawn. It wasn’t a complicated event, as presidential appearances go. All President Joe Biden had to do was walk out of the White House, join the crowd listening to the music, and make some brief remarks.

. . . Everyone was standing and swaying and clapping to singer Kirk Franklin’s performance. Everyone, that is, except Biden. As the scene unfolded around him, the president stood still and absolutely motionless, his hands hanging by his side. His face had a frozen expression, and his eyes seemed fixed, staring straight ahead. This went on for about a minute.

Look at your watch or phone and set it for a minute. It’s a long time. Biden was briefly engaged by Floyd, then resumed staring. Finally, he seemed to come out of it, ending the episode.

A few commentators have compared this to Mitch McConnell's "brain freeze" episodes last summer:

The Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, experienced another public health scare on Wednesday when he appeared to freeze for more than 30 seconds while speaking to reporters in his home state, Kentucky.

McConnell, 81, was eventually escorted away by staff, footage from an NBC News affiliate showed.

Asked for his thoughts about running for re-election in 2026, McConnell laughed and said: “Oh, that’s a … ” He then appeared to freeze.

Possibly in response to these episodes, McConnell announced that he would retire as Republican Senate leader this past February, but he would hold onto the job until the November election. He's 82. Although the Trump campaign has posted clips of the G7 video, there's been no official commentary on Joe's episode, Newsweek sent an e-mail to the White House, buit so far, there's been no comment.

I can't imagine that nobody is talking about this, or the Juneteenth freeze, or the generally woozy performance last week in France, behind the scenes. According to the Daily Caller,

Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed Thursday on Fox News that lawmakers are “hearing” that President Joe Biden won’t be his party’s nominee.

. . . [Y]ou know, a lot of people realize that Joe Biden is likely not going to be the nominee,” she continued. “Which is from what we’re hearing on Capitol Hill, [Republican California] Representative [Kevin] Kiley had reported that Kamala Harris [is] actually eyeing a run for California governor because of it.”

“Right, that’s the backup plan. So you are hearing also in D.C. that Joe Biden isn’t going to be the Democrat nominee?” Watters asked.

“Correct,” Luna responded.

. . . Reports have circulated that top Democratic Party officials are allegedly panicking over the chance that Biden may lose the 2024 election to Trump, according to Politico.

This will make the June 27 debate with Trump all the more important. The problem for Joe is that his condition has visibly worsened in recent months, and pumping him up with whatever is going to have fewer and fewer effects. Beyond that, I've simply got to assume there's a lot we aren't being told -- and oddly, there's been little comentary from anyone on the G7 wandering, and so far, there's been no White House response. This in itself prompts me to follow this story closely.

No Delaware Jury Will Convict A Biden

Jonathan Turley's reaction to Hunter's guilty verdict in his regular column raises a delicate question about why Bidenworld's judgment seems so poor:

[T]he defense had to know that they were increasing the chances of prison time by pursuing a nullification defense. The hope was that Wilmington is Bidentown and no local jury would convict the son of the favorite son of Delaware.

It didn’t work out that way. The team seemed to overplay its hand with defenses that were so implausible as to be insulting for the jury. They suggested that Hunter might not have checked the box or signed the form during a brief window where he was not using drugs. The prosecutors demolished those defenses within two days of the trial.

Turley expanded on his written view in this video clip. At 4:00, he says,

There are reports out today that many of the Biden family believe that a Delaware jury would not convict Hunter Biden, the son of the favorite son of Delaware. . . . So I think there were some in the family who were shocked by the quick verdict.

The way he put things in his column referred to just "the defense" or "the team", but in this Fox interview, he narrows the decision down to "the family" who believed no jury in Bidentown would convict Hunter. By "the family", he could have meant only Joe, Dr Jill, and possibly Hunter's wife and adult daughters.

So this raises the implication that if "the family" called the shots for Hunter's defense in the unrealistic belief that no Delaware jury would convict a Biden, where else is "the family" calling the shots? And if "the family" was off in its reading of the trial, can "the family's" judgment be questioned over other decisions? And who, specifically within "the family", are we talking about?

Jonathan Turley himself is carefully circumspect over this question, although I'm sure he knows the answer. Stephen Kruiser, on the other hand, doesn't beat around the bush.

Jill Biden is undoubtedly the iron fist that directs the cabal that runs her husband's head and administration. Woe be unto anyone who attempts to thwart her ambition to enjoy the perks of being first lady until January 2029, even her beloved Joe and his diminishing mental capacity.

I think this has become an entirely credible assessment, and Turley's implication that Dr Jill is the one who drove Hunter's feckless defense strategy is consistent with it. Kruiser's assessment of the predicament is that Dr Jill simply isn't ready to leave the party:

Jill Biden knows where the bodies are buried and who to lean on to get her way. The nervous desire among Democratic operatives to have a complete do-over on this ticket may very well be building to unstoppable force levels. Sooner or later, however, it will hit the immovable object that is DOCTOR Mama Jill Biden.

I know where my money is going in that one.

But this suggests that Hunter's defense strategy isn't the only area where Dr Jill has called the shots. Let's move to the question of Joe's June 27 debate with Trump, the often-expressed view that this is the decision point for whether Joe stays on the ticket, and how Joe prepares for it. Kruiser, of course, takes the view that Joe will ever leave the ticket is a chimera, and he's probably right. But what can we interpret from the plans we see for Biden's debate prep and Dr Jill's influence on those plans? And if her judgment on Hunter's defense strategy was so poor, what does this say about her plans for Joe's debate prep?

Biden is taking the debate seriously, a person with knowledge of the president’s plans told the Associated Press. Biden’s debate prep could last “the better part of a week at Camp David” for just the first debate alone, the person said.

So OK, we can assume the usual rehearsal of talking points and moot court practice with Trump stand-ins. Beyond that, according to NBC,

Inside the campaign, aides believe Biden walks on the stage with the upper hand. Mostly, his mandate will be to let “Trump be Trump,” which they believe will reveal extreme leanings and a less stable Trump than four years ago. Biden is likely to cast Trump as obsessed with revenge and retribution and hark to the political violence in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a campaign official said.

In other words, the strategy will be for Joe to come off as a reasonable centrist, with Trump as a raving nut, which was also the 2020 plan.

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning journalism watchdog group Media Matters for America, said most people get their impressions from snippets of news or shortened videos on social media, which depict Biden as a doddering old man, walking slowly or stumbling over his words.

“I don’t think that he’s going to come off as diminished and meek. My sense is that people will see that comparison and they’ll hear somebody making coherent arguments and Trump saying some really random stuff,” he said.

Frankly, I have a sense of overconfidence, which likely comes from Dr Jill, and which seems to have driven Hunter's failed defense strategy -- there's no Plan B, because Plan A just can't help but work. But the NBC account has a worrisome component:

Biden, now on back-to-back European trips, is to return to the U.S. only to head to Los Angeles for fundraisers. Once Biden is back at the White House, a source with knowledge of his debate prep said, he is expected to have a 10-day window to hunker down and engage in extensive preparatory sessions. They could include more intensive sessions at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

But Jill has had Joe on a non-stop schedule in the weeks prior to his return to the US -- just since his return from France this past Sunday, where his performance was at best woozy, she had him on display at the early Juneteenth celebration Monday, where he appeared frozen and out of it; he had to deal with Hunter's conviction the same day; on Tuesday he gave a speech in his usual stumbling style and then went to Wilmington, presumably to meet with Hunter.

Then all day Wednesday he's flying to Italy; by early morning today Italy time, he's doing G7 stuff, but that's noon US time, so he's tired and jet lagged. Right now, he isn't doing well:

Biden is in Italy for the G7 Summit. Other world leaders have to babysit him. They all surround him and guide him off the stage. He shuffles, looks confused, points, looks awkward trying to chat normally with his peers. pic.twitter.com/nlAJmMbnOz

— Linda S (@LinSapCT) June 13, 2024

By Saturday, he's flying not just back to Washington, but to Los Angeles for a Hollywood fundraiser, another full day equivalent in the air back and forth across the US after a flight across the Atlantic. Then he can maybe start to unwind and prep for the debate the following week, Thursday, June 27.

This might be doable for a robust man in early middle age. Trump might even be able to bring something like that off. For someone 81 years old whose overall health is looking more and more shaky, I'm not sure if putting him into a make-or-break debate with maybe a week to rebuild his strength is prudent or realistic.

I've heard rumors that the Royals kept Queen Elizabeth II going with blood transfusions -- maybe King Charles did so well in France for the same reason. But they're just heads of state, they aren't on a presidential schedule. I can visualize Joe hooked up to tubes with fresh blood and other meds being pumped in to jack him into shape, but really, that's something out of a science fiction flick. I don't think you can bring that off in the real world.

It sounds like Dr Jill and her yes-people are assuming that no matter how badly Joe comes off, Trump's mask will fall, he'll magically show he's actually a raving nut, and everyone's gonna change their minds. Justlikethat. And no Delaware jury will convict a Biden.

The 270-268 Scenario

Most of my posts over the past several days have covered the move in respectable opinion through the five stages of grief to reach depression and finally acceptance that Trump is on track to win the November election. There's an increasing consensus that Biden, even five months out, has run out of time to turn things around, and the only possible remedy is maybe Gretchen Whitmer at the top of the ticket, or something like that, which is pure fantasy.

But now we have two important people, Nate Silver and Sean Trende, suggesting a possible new reason for optimism, which I will call the 270-268 scenario, whereby Joe reverses the Republican strategy, loses the popular vote, but ekes out the thinnest possible Electoral College victory by flipping a few of the so-called "battleground" states at the last minute. Yes, right now at the aggregators, Biden is behind in all of them, but Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are closer. According to Nate Silver,

Take 2020 as a contrast. In that election, Biden held polling leads in the Blue Wall states and in the “Sunbelt Trio” of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. For that matter he was even slightly ahead in polls of Florida and North Carolina. Biden substantially underperformed his polls in the Blue Wall states — as Hillary Clinton had in 2016 — but not by quite enough to lose them. He did lose Florida and North Carolina, of course. However, Biden also had backup options in the form of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, where the polling proved to be largely accurate. That was enough to provide him with a relatively robust 306 electoral votes. Biden could have lost any two of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — and in some permutations, even three of these states — and still come out victorious.

But Silver acknowledges Biden has far fewer states he can potentially flip in 2024:

Very much unlike Clinton in 2016, Biden could withstand quite a bit of polling error and still squeak by [in 2020]. It was unfortunate for him that the tipping-point states were to the right of the country overall — Biden won the popular vote by nearly four-and-a-half points — but at least he had a lot of them to choose from.

Sean Trende's version is very similar:

[Trump's gains with black and Hispanic voters] provided a boost in important states with large non-white populations, like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.

. . . The gains in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are consequential. They only get Trump to 268 electoral votes. Assuming the GOP holds a majority of the congressional delegations after the elections (which would ensure Trump wins the presidency in the event of a tie), he needs one more.

. . . One doesn’t have to be gifted with a particularly vigorous imagination to see what could happen here: Trump has substantial improvements among non-white voters, driving gains in some red areas (like Texas) and flipping some important swing states. He also makes gains in some blue states like Virginia, New Mexico, California, and New York, but is unable to flip them because the hole with educated whites is just too deep. Then, in relatively white Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan, very little changes.

The result could easily be Trump winning the popular vote, but Biden eking out a narrow 270-268 Electoral Vote victory (assuming that NE-02 holds for him).

The odd thing is that both Silver and Trende, whose reputations and livelihoods depend on how they interpret the polls, are assuming fairly large-scale polling errors in favor of Trump in this scenario, when the polling errors we've seen over decades have consistently favored Democrats. The 2020 polling was no exception:

Comparing the final election results to the poll numbers for each candidate, Trump’s support was understated by a whopping 3.3 points on average, while Biden’s was overstated by a point — turning what looked like a solid Biden lead into a closer, if still decisive, race.

It seems to me that there's been no change in the actual dynamics of polling: the polls are conducted by polling companies who sell their results to the legacy media. The legacy media buy the results that confirm their bias -- and media bias from time immemorial has been toward Democrats. But Silver and Trende are expecting a different result this year -- they're effectively saying Trump is so far ahead in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia that we can't discount for polling error there.

But in all the other states where Trump has been leading the polls ever since last fall, the numbers are closer, and if we factor in a potential polling error that favors Republicans, maybe Joe can otherwise run the table, lose the popular vote, but squeak by in the smallest possible Electoral College total, in recent times something only Reoublicans have done in 2000 and 2016. This is at best counterintuitive.

Silver in particular sees this strategy as plausible but unrealistic:

It’s imprecise to say the 270-268 map requires Biden to draw to an inside straight — that isn’t the right metaphor, since the polling error between the various states is correlated, not independent like the order of a deck of playing cards. It’s an eminently plausible scenario. But it does require a lot of things to go right. Pinning one’s hopes on this exact scenario feels a little bit like the bargaining stage in the phases of grief over Biden’s continually mediocre poll numbers.

Ah, yes, the stages of grief. That's the point I've been making.

"If Something Cannot Go On Forever, It Will Stop"

BIDEN: "...since the founding of our ideals that we don't know fully what American soil is" 🧐 pic.twitter.com/o2nAnm5EUI

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 11, 2024

A recent TV show that's exceeded my expectations is the History Channel's How Disney Built America, which focuses on the old-fashioned Disney of Snow White, Davy Crockett, and Disneyland and so far has ignored the trans dudes in fairy godmother outfits selling schlock to little girls in the gift shop. This past Sunday's episode focused on "animatronics", high-tech automatons that move and speak with astonishing realism. The example on the show was the famous Abraham Lincoln figure that was first demonstrated at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

I thought of the moving, speaking Abraham Lincoln when I ran across this story at Red State, which carried the video above as well as several others. All I could think was that what we were actually watching was some beta version of a new Disney animatronic Joe Biden figure, but the bugs hadn't been worked out. For instance, in rhe video below, it looks like they've got the skin, hair, eyes, and costume pretty well down, but they haven't programmed the presidential body movements yet:

Why isn't Biden moving? pic.twitter.com/DA78820xcd

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 11, 2024

I've remarked in the past that if Joe is a puppet, he's defective -- you pull a string thinking it'll move his head, but instead it throws his knee out of joint. But now I think he's more like a Disney high-tech presidential animatron, except that somewhere offstage there's a screen scrolling error messages like "buffer overflow at *(0x12DF)", but nobody's there to see it. The writer at RedState comments,

But it's the eyes that really get me. Somehow, while standing outside, he manages to go the first 34 seconds of that video without blinking. Whatever they have him on is strong stuff.

He's onto something. I'd been thinking all weekend that the D-Day commemoration in France looks like something that would be a strain on anyone at any age, although King Charles, at 75 not that much younger than Joe and recently treated for cancer, seems to have been able to do much better than the president, performing with full dignity and speaking well and clearly. But Joe, not in as good a condition to start with, has unlike the king been forced into a reelection campaign much earlier than other US presidents, and now he's back home and having to work hard at it. And it looks like they've got him on strong stuff.

In particular, as of today, the June 27 debate, which is thought to be the one where if he does poorly, they still have time to replace him, is 16 days away. I had actually thought his handlers, especially Dr Jill, would be doing all they could to get him rested from the D-Day trip and fresh for the debate. Instead, while they must have had him pumped up to get him through the D-Day ceremonies, it looks like they pumped him up some more to get him through that early Juneteenth celebration. Today, he's going to the Washington Hilton to deliver remarks at Everytown’s Gun Sense University, whatever that's about.

But if they have to pump him up for routine events like Juneteenth -- RNC Research comments in the post below, "Biden has absolutely no idea where he is right now" --

Biden has absolutely no idea where he is right now pic.twitter.com/W7otSCDsd1

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 11, 2024

when is he not pumped up? You'd think it would be time to get him rested and really start prepping, prepping, prepping for that June 27 debate.

So far, everyone's gaming this out and expecting some miracle of modern medicine to get him suddenly focused and alert as he strides onto the debate stage. I can't rule that out, but other counsels suggest there's only so much they can do, and if he's jacked up now and he's still zoned out, what will they do to get a different result at the debate? Stein's Law: If somthing cannot go on forever, it will stop.

More Democrats Reaching Acceptance

Several pieces turned up over the weekend showimg polite opinion moving through the final stages of grief over the potential November outcome. A major theme is that, even with five months still to go until the election, Joe has run out of time to turn things around. At Roll Call:

The Biden 2020 campaign strategy was simple: portray himself as a seasoned centrist who would bring the country together and return the White House to normalcy. After three-and-a-half years governing with liberal policies to appease his base, that direction for Biden is no longer an option. Independents, who won him the election, now overwhelmingly have an unfavorable view of both the job he is doing and him personally. The majority coalition that elected him is gone, as those critical voters no longer view another four years of Biden as a positive.

So another strategy has emerged, almost by default given Biden’s limited options. It is one that seems oddly familiar, as it mirrors Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign strategy.

. . . Clinton’s campaign focused on driving negative stories on Trump’s personal life rather than policy differences, with one goal in mind: to drive up his negatives. They succeeded. Trump ended the campaign with a 60 percent unfavorable.

. . . Trial or no trial, Biden is in trouble. Channeling Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy isn’t going to fix his problem.

The whole point of the trial appears to have been to resuscitate the Stormy Daniels story, which didn't work in 2016, and it flopped again this year. This piece in Politico focuses on the time it will still take to change the public's mind on the economy:

President Joe Biden is running out of the tools — and the time — he needs to turn around Americans’ gloomy view of the U.S. economy.

. . . Inside Biden’s orbit, the fear is that there’s little new the administration can do to change the perceptions of a stubborn electorate that’s living through an upswing — yet simply refusing to believe it.

. . . The Biden campaign perspective is that the issue is not a matter of policies or even messaging, but time. The president will make gains as more Americans tune into the specifics of the presidential race.

. . . But there’s also a recognition that Democrats have tried nearly every tactic available, and whether voters’ outlook improves en masse in time for November is increasingly out of their control.

But the trend of opinion seems to be moving past the question of messaging and toward the sense that the problem is the candidate:

Veteran top Democratic consultant James Carville says he wishes President Biden wasn’t running for re-election and worries that disenchanted young party voters will sit out the November election because of it.

“It isn’t the choice I was crazy about,” admitted Carville, who played a major role in getting former President Clinton first elected in 1992, on 77 WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable” on Sunday.

“I thought that President Biden should not run for re-election,” the political guru said. “But he did — it’s him and Trump — and that’s where I am.”

But the big new event is a piece in The Atlantic, Ruth Bader Biden. The Atlantic is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, Democrat megadonor widow of Steve Jobs, and it's reasonable to surmise this is the consensus view of the Democrat megadonor class:

Bad vibes have been the persistent feature of his campaign. No matter the obstacles Trump creates for himself, Biden remains a comprehensively weak incumbent, weighed down by the same liabilities that burdened him from the start, beginning with the largest, and completely unfixable, one: At 81, he is much too old to run for president.

. . . It is too late for Democrats to do anything about their predicament now, barring some 11th-hour event that triggers an extremely unlikely swap-out of nominees at the Democratic National Convention. Trump and his party keep pushing further beyond the bounds of what would have been unthinkable even a year ago.

. . . Like many people, I’ve made the unwelcome comparison between Biden and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal icon whose legacy was stained by her unwillingness to retire while Barack Obama was still president. Ginsburg’s death, at 87, occurred in the final months of the Trump administration, which allowed him to appoint her successor (Amy Coney Barrett). The Real Time host Bill Maher dubbed the octogenarian president “Ruth Bader Biden” on his HBO program last September. Biden, Maher said, was “the person who doesn’t know when to quit and so does great damage to their party and their country.”

Biden’s conduct is far worse than Ginsburg’s, in fact, given the awesome power of the presidency and the havoc Trump could unleash with it this time.

I simply can't imagine that Ms Powell Jobs would allow this to run in The Atlantic without her knowledge and approval -- it's saying flat out that as of this June, a remarkably early point to be making such an assessment, the Biden campaign is out of time to turn things around, and it's Biden's fault. And this feeling is echoing, as we see at the other links here. And the overall listlessness of the consensus is striking.

Look at James Carville's view of the Democrat alternatives in the next-to-last link above:

Carville argued that the Democrats have a deep bench of younger elected officials who would be a better fit for the times than the 81-year-old Biden, including Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn.

I've noted that David Axelrod calls the idea that Joe would withdraw in favor of a candidate like one of these, possibly chosen at the Chicago convention, a "fantasy", not least because the far left Democrat faction will never support a white candidate, much less a Jewish one like Shapiro, but Hakeem Jeffries is a non-starter to anyone else. The only serious replacement for Biden if he withdraws is Kamala Harris, but this, the single non-fantasy alternative, is the one nobody mentions. Nobody. Ever.

Meanwhile, with a growing and unprecedented consensus even among knowedgeable Democrats so early in the cycle that Biden is going to lose the election, Joe himself looks incresingly frail and unwell. The photo at the top of this post was taken at a French cemetery on the last day of his trip to the D-Day commemoration. His gait is clearly stiff, he's relying on Dr Jill to keep him steady, and somehow his suit doesn't quite fit. Again, I think he's losing weight. Worst of all, he's wobbling through a graveyard.

We're looking at what's turning into an eight-month interregnum, an unprecedented situation. I'm starting to question how he can make it to the June 27 debate.