Democrats start moving to Harris as Biden digs in -- https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/politics/kamala-harris-democrats-biden/index.html

https://www.newsweek.com/dozens-democratic-lawmakers-texting-joe-biden-stepping-down-report-1921341

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/us/politics/biden-governors-health.html

I keep going back and forth on this:

These markets tend to overreact to news, but they also tend to spring back to where they were faster than is warranted. I don't really see a good reason for this to move much in either direction until we see how Senators answer questions when they're back in DC on Monday.

fascinating market -- most interesting one I've ever seen

obviously LK-99 and Trump/Biden 2020 were in some ways more epic but so many levels to this one

I'm not 100% sure we over-reacted here actually

big part of "YES" is something happening right away -- and once that option is exhausted, the market should snap back

Biden hit a trifecta yesterday

• he made a statement

• no sitting Democrats other than a few minor Congressmen came out against him

• nothing else crazy happened -- no gaffes, statements from Bill Clinton, etc

All were pretty likely, but any of these could have changed the odds / vibe significantly.

As I think Nate Silver has been saying... Biden staying in means avoiding a large number of mines between now and November. The debate last week was him falling on one mine and it came close to sinking him. Can he survive another incident like that? The markets suggest maybe not.

Can Joe Biden avoid having one really bad day for 100 days? Maybe. Can he do that while campaigning.... we may or may not find out.

Him staying in seems like... an unstable equilibrium. Diamond Joe is a very tall pencil. It may not take a huge amount of effort to prop him up. But once he starts falling... better catch him quick.

IMO this market's prices for a dropout before July have been pretty reasonable, while the largest overreactions have been Polymarket dropping Biden's overall chances of winning to 8% at one point and having his chances of dropping out before november at 75%.

Predictit having Newsom peak at 33% was also hilariously bad. Everyone is settling down to mostly reasonable numbers though, aside from the part where Michelle Obama is ever above 1%.

I lost $$ betting on MOB, feeling seen

Agree Polymarket not buying back Biden in single digits showed markets aren’t efficient

Polymarket has a slight republican bias, manifold has a larger democrat bias and a larger Biden bias, which is why you'll always get decent odds betting against democrats.

To me, the pressure is only going to get worse. More state poll are going to come out in deep blue Bidenistan (New Jersey) with Trump leading 15 points and we're going to see electoral maps with Trump getting 300+ votes. The pressure will get worse, and polls will say voters don't want biden as a leader, don't think he's fit, think he's too old, etc. There's credible evidence that a ton of representatives and senators who do want him out (anonymously), and they'll probably get public soon.

I've actually just registered a predictit account to go steal more money from coping Nikki Haley stans (Trump at 95 cents to win nomination is a steal)

I actually don't think Biden at 8 is too unreasonable. It's definitely underpriced, but shoudn't be 18 like it is here. There's a bunch of clips going viral of Biden being confused and the nomination will be the least of his worries if he even gets there. Trump is showing no signs of stopping and just doesn't have to spectacularly fuck up with how polls are doing, while Biden has to restore America's faith in the age issue--something I'm unsure he's capable of doing.

https://imgur.com/a/feQDsfB

Trump seems to think Biden just quit... I mean is quitting... I mean is probably quitting

Is it even democracy when the support is retracted, but the person still reaches for the throne?

If support has been withdrawn, as you say, then he'll lose the (democratic) election. Dial back the melodrama

Thanks for the note. I am not american, and was confused about the current stage.

If there is an option he loses democratic election, why do people want to "ask him to step down"? It looked like democratic party choice has already passed and only he can withdraw himself, so that confused me.

No, i did not vote in last american election.

Sorry for the snark. I see a lot of populism-posting online these days, so I may have misread the tone of your comment. The Democratic party as an organization exists independent of the government, and it puts forth the Democratic candidate for president. Since Biden is the incumbent, he is presumptively the nominee for the Dem party. I am not 100% clear on the process for holding primaries for a party that already holds the presidency, but incumbency historically has been such a huge advantage that it's pretty much unheard of to replace the candidate that won the previous election.

In any case, we're a little late in the game to even hold primaries because the election is in 4 months. That raises another risky aspect of replacing Biden: who replaces him on the ticket if we can't hold primaries to know who Dem voters want as their candidate?

incumbency historically has been such a huge advantage that it's pretty much unheard of to replace the candidate that won the previous election

This isn't entirely true, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both stepped back when it was clear they didn't have support for renomination, and Gerald Ford barely fended off Ronald Reagan's primary challenge.

True, but your examples highlight the dangers of replacing the incumbent. Eisenhower annihilated the candidate who replaced Truman. Same thing happened with Nixon and Johnson.

Also, Truman stepped down because his government was embroiled in corruption scandals. Johnson was dealing with the unpopularity of Vietnam, one of the most controversial military quagmires the US had been involved in to that point. Contrast that with Biden, who is old and underperformed at a debate, and I think you'll see that the calls for Biden to step down are pretty historically aberrant.

Yeah, stepping down historically only happens when you're already clearly going to lose (which Biden, despite recent disasters, isn't; he's only doing about as badly as Trump was in 2016)

The real reason a lot of people (including me) prefer Biden withdraw isn't that he's such a historically terrible candidate (he's doing badly but no worse than many others before), it's that we think he's too old to do the job if president for another four years.

While that may be your reason, we have known he would be 4 years older than the last election for 4 years, and the calls for him to step down didn't reach this level of hysteria until his poor debate showing. Perhaps the debate was just the straw that broke the camel's back, but I fear that we're taking our eye of the ball by spending so much energy calling for him to step down

Yeah, people started calling for him to stand down when he looked like he's too old to actually do another term, not when he was behind in the polls. This matches my explanation.

Meanwhile Democratic mega-donor Reed Hastings joins Bill Ackman, others in calling for Biden to step aside.
https://deepnewz.com/washington-dc/netflix-co-founder-reed-hastings-calls-biden-to-step-aside-nyt-reports

As we enter July 4th and almost a week after the debate, Polymarket has Biden's odds (to drop out) steady at around 63%. After peaking as high as 82% before the definitive statement [that he's not going anywhere].

I don't think it's going to happen before the end of the month. It's been a week and the president is still making new excuses to try to explain what happened. He still thinks it's something he can overcome, like stuttering, like Mitch McConnel did after he shit his pants in the middle of press conference, and like Trump has done with every obstacle that should have disqualified him from the presidency.