Thoughts On Oregon's Primary Election Day

Election day seems like a nice excuse to talk politics. The dispiriting candidacy of Joe Biden has stopped me from more chatter, but let’s dive in. In bullet-point form, a snapshot:
• Biden’s candidacy is about what one would expect: a snore enlivened largely by skeletons rattling around behind him on Zoom. In one way, the coronavirus is good—it keeps him out of the public eye. He can periodically issue presidential statements free of senior moments. But then there’s...

• Tara Reade. This situation isn’t a worst-case scenario for Dems, but it’s bad. The allegations are credible but confounded by Reade’s inconsistency (allegations, previous comments about Biden), associations, and the lack of any other allegations. So Dems are confronted with a choice of not believing women about harassment when it counts versus scrapping a candidate based on a single murky charge. It looks like Dems are prepared to barrel forward, barring some other emergent allegation.
• They’re doing that in part because Biden would seem to be a strong candidate in two respects. One, he manages to appeal both to Democratic POC as well as moderate, working class white swing voters, giving him elective prospects in the upper midwest and sunbelt. As a moderate, he also gives Dems their best shot at wresting the Senate from Mitch McConnell’s grip. Dems need to win in purple and red states to take back the senate, and a progressive candidate would damage candidates in those states.
• Polling only offers a snapshot in time, but right now, it’s very good for Biden. He has pretty big leads in PA and MI. But remarkably, he’s had good results in FL and AZ as well. For Trump to win, he must hold onto states he flipped from Obama and not let the map expand. If FL flips, Trump will have an extremely difficult time winning. With FL, Biden would be up to 261 EV, and basically any other state would put him over the top. Incidentally, WI is increasingly looking like OH. It is the swingiest of upper Midwest states, and may be headed into the red in future elections.
• Everyone believes/fears Trump has magic powers because of his 2016 win (including me!), but any neutral observer beaming in from another planet would say he’s in giant trouble. His handling of the pandemic and the economy’s shocking nosedive are going to be hard to reverse. The GOP’s let-grandma-die strategy (that’s not actually far from what many have said) seems to have dented its standing with seniors. In a recent poll, Trump was tied with Biden among these voters. If he can’t reverse that, it will be a crushing landslide—voters above 50 are his base.

We shouldn’t be having this discussion at all. Trump should be polling at 15% and facing a prison cell. But here we are. And, given everything, it could be worse.