During his State of the Union address, Navigator Research did one of those focus group thingees with a group of soft partisans and independents in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area. The results showed a huge (YOOGE!) swing for Biden when comparing their opinions before and after the speech:
And on abortion:
These are very large swings, but these aren’t super-high post-speech numbers; as best as I can tell, most experts think his post-speech ratings are par for the course. The real issue is how were his pre-speech numbers so bad? I don’t think this can be blamed on a bunch of lefty-libs (or full tilt leftists) shitposting online.
Brian Beutler makes a related point about Biden’s overall polling numbers (boldface mine):
This is why I’d still like the Biden campaign to be candid with the party rank-and-file about how we got to this point. Presumably being down two points in mid-March was never part of their plan. Why do they think it happened? Did Democrats make a mistake by treating Trump as though he’d entered exile, giving him wide berth to rehabilitate himself and smear Biden without pushback? And if that was a mistake, how do they plan to fix damage done over three years in the next few weeks or months?
I would go farther and ask who were the superbrain geniuses who thought of this failed strategy and how do we make sure they never work on Democratic campaigns ever again?
mikethemadbiologist
The shitposts, particularly the ones about his age, are still part of it. You’re all singing the same story, from the NYTimes to the Atlantic to late night comedians, to blogposts like this one. It can’t all be blamed on professional democrats– it’s everyone telling the same narrative. It’s like you want to be right more than you want to avert the upcoming catastrophes.
Maybe instead of just complaining you could actually, I dunno, do something? (Do what? I don’t know, but just complaining is not actually making anything better.)
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