It generally doesn't poll well.

Well I said relief. Reducing rates and capping them has high support on both sides of the aisle. Even some form of forgiveness for low income people has majority support. 80% of the country believes the government should help in some way.

Those older Dems can feel that way. Just don't blame young voters again when they don't give a shit about this election.

Everyone realizes there are more Democrats than Republicans in this country, right? If the Democrats have a reason to show up, they win. Obama gave them a reason, Hillary didn't. Biden hasn't either.

Where do you see this?

Americans Support Federal Action To Make Student Loan Repayment Easier | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Elizabeth Warren’s Student Debt Forgiveness Plan Popular With Voters

Majority of voters support free college, eliminating student debt | TheHill

I think this is generally correct for now (and he needs to milk it as long as he can).

Ultimately, he will need to tell us what his top priorities are in the first 100 days or 2 years. It doesn't need to be super-super detailed (so he can have some leeway) but it needs to be conveyed by Oct.

Over the next 2+ months, there will be a barrage of attacks against Biden, Hunter etc. The way to defend against that is to ignore it (because there will be never ending attacks anyway) and talk about issues, his plan, and definitely continue to contrast the stark differences between Trump and him.

Biden doesn't need to. Trump is so horrible that IS the reason.

Why should Biden come out and risk alienating a portion of the base with some controversial policy decisions? The fact Biden isn't saying much drives the right crazy. There is a reason Trump constantly talks about him hiding out in his basement. What he is doing works, the right knows that and it's driving them crazy.

This is literally the strategy Hillary had.

Hillary also had more negatives and wasn't running against a pandemic and recession.

SI

And Hell, shoring up the ACA and adding a public option was something Biden explicitly mentioned. And that is likely as far as one can go without losing a lot of support.

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Also, for the party as a whole now and in the future, you need to stand for something. You need to have some ideas. For almost 20 years now their stance has been "vote for us, the other guy sucks!".

And that's why they never accomplish anything. Sure they'll win an election here and there. Then they'll do nothing because they don't stand for anything. This will end with them getting squashed later on because the other side actually has things they want done. So enjoy Tom Cotton as President in 2024 when Democrats don't give a shit about voting again.

This is a general Democrats suck rant I guess. Just tired of them running on nothing and getting curbstomped by a minority of the population over and over.

Like this is the party.

Trump: I am illegally defunding the Post Office so less people can vote.

Democrats: *fewer

— Michael Green (@andmichaelgreen) August 13, 2020

We have 4 years now of seeing who Trump is. Do you honestly don't think that means anything?

Public option was mentioned one time during the convention and nobody went farther than just saying they will defend ACA.

In general, I do agree with Rainmaker on this one. I would feel better if there was something more than "not Trump" that Democrats were running on. I was serious about the question about what would excited the youth vote without losing the more established vote. I just don't think there's really an answer to that. I think both answer Rainmaker gave is as close that you can get.

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The student loan thing seems like a slam dunk. Huge support to do something about it on both sides. They don't have to come out with debt forgiveness or free tuition. Just put together a plan that caps interest rates and offers some low interest loans to people. 3% loan or something that can drop or be partially forgiven if you finish your degree. Put together a program that helps bring down college costs too.

Not only is it a bone to young voters, but suburban folks are fearful of college debt too.

But this goes against the Democrats platform of actually having a plan and going more than 5 minutes without sucking off the banks.

We all knew what Trump was 4 years ago. If anything he has solidified his base and gotten them so riled up they would walk through fire to vote for him.

I agree with the general critique of the party, I've said it plenty of times over the years, but this is the one election where I think making it about policy would be a mistake. The best ground for Dems is making it a referendum on Trump. Look at his approval ratings and how nothing he's done has gotten them into positive territory.

And it's not 2016. Biden isn't Clinton. We've seen how suburban GOP voters are fleeing in droves in 2018. At the convention Biden's team was clever in making it all about what Trump has done or failed to do rather than him personally. It was something that could only be done after Trump had been in office.

Trump was telling everyone who he was but some weren't listening. Hell, some of the Bernie Bros was claiming Trump aligned closer to Bernie than Hillary does.

There's a ton of revisionist history and oversimplification of the 2016 election. If everyone knew who Trump was 4 years ago he wouldn't be down 8+ points to Biden largely because of alienated moderates from both parties.

No because the speech was obviously taped and edited (current GOP conspiracy theory).

Heres the thing, they are both senile old men. One has a fervernt base that will come out and vote. The other is hoping his base, and the base based on his VP selection will come out and vote.

One has a base that WILL vote, one has a base that MIGHT vote.

All this equals to 4 more years of Trump

YAY (Sarcasm)

I think you are dead wrong on this. He fooled a lot of people in to thinking he was a businessman who would run the country like a successful business and an outsider who would drain the swamp. People were willing to take a chance because Hillary was so unlikable.

Four years later people have now learned he is a horrible businessman and that he is the swamp. Throw in that Biden isn't nearly as unlikable as Hillary and you have a candidate who should win going away.

He will always have his base, because they like the hate and discord, and because they are easily manipulated, but make no mistake, anyone who cast an anti establishment vote for him last time now knows what he is.

What indication do you have that Biden supporters, and on a larger scale anti Trumpers will stay home?

History and the supperssion of votes. The defunding of the USPS was a calculated event.

It is what it is. Trump voters will come out. They are very motivated. If the college aged voters step up and the poor come out, it may be different. But Trump speaks to the population in the key states that win the electoral college.

Biden will win the majority, but Trump will win the electoral.

Same shit different day.

I just think some people got so spooked by 2016 that they are ignoring obvious things like this. Biden has far higher favorables than Clinton did - you can kind of see that in the struggles to find a real attack against Biden. The primaries should have been a clue. Biden also has one thing that Trump did in 2016 - he's consistently underrated.

Underrated as a candidate for the minority is way different than underrated for the majority.

When a President is running for reelection, it's a referendum on the job they've done, and they usually win. That's why only three have lost in the last century. Bush Sr. lost the economy, as did Hoover. Carter was losing it and had Iran hostages blow up in his face. If Trump loses, it'll be because of 10%+ unemployed and Covid, not anything the Democrats promise.

Well they said that about Trump as well (hence something they share).

This is the truth. And when your base believe Covid is a conspiracy theory and the econmy will recover if you let it, this spells doom for the Dems.

The base is only mobilized by this Covid issue. The Dems lose because they dont have a dynamic candidate. Harris was a great choice for VP. But Biden was a bad choice for president.

Sucks as much as it does, Trump will win.

All that matters is turnout. People can like Biden and hate Trump. Do they care enough to vote? It wasn't like Biden was some highly popular candidate in the primary. It required a lot of backroom dealing to crown him as the candidate of choice.

Trump has a base that is willing to kill themselves and their family from a virus to show their support for him. They will be voting. Are there any passionate Joe Biden fans out there? Just seems like if you go back all the way to 1980 on, the side with the most passionate base won.

Maybe Biden wins in a blowout and this is moot. But I still think you need to give people a reason to show up and vote. The last two times the Democrats ran on nothing but "the other side sucks!", the election ended up in losses for Hillary and Kerry.

Reagan wasn't just running on "the other guy sucks!". He actually had plans to boast the economy and made a big deal about cutting government and taxes. Sure it was bullshit, but people bought into it. He also went hard into the racism stuff.

I haven't seen anything from Biden about how he is going to curb the pandemic here or boast the economy.

So you say, but turnout was way up in the Democratic primaries and those people came out for Biden (as Biden pointed out in the debate against Sanders).

Oh, btw, I remember the 2008 Obama campaign as very much a “the other side sucks” campaign as well, and it was a good reason why he won (considering the terrible state the country was in in 2008).

Perhaps you were in the bathroom during this part of the speech? There is more detail about the policies on the website, of course.

What is that national strategy? Will he invoke the DPA? Have the military make the equipment? Put tariffs on China? Like it's easy to say we'll do all this shit, but what's the plan?

The only thing in that speech that isn't vague is the national mandate on masks which really means jack shit at this point.

Obama had a comprehensive tax plan and broad health care reform on the table.

Turnout was very high in the midterms, and that's generally been the case otherwhise from what I've seen. I just don't see any evidence for this 'Democrats aren't motivated' stuff.

Nor that increased absentee/mail-in voting helps one side more than the other :)

Good point on the mid-terms. Here are some stats
Behind the 2018 U.S. Midterm Election Turnout

Or you can always just go look yourself
Build Back Better: Joe Biden’s Jobs and Economic Recovery Plan for Working Families – Joe Biden for President: Official Campaign Website

Its a pretty standard set by political standards in terms of detail, but not really sure what you are looking for after the last 4 years of random bullshit like "we're doing something really big, just wait" "Mexico is paying for the wall" and "Can we inject disinfectant?"

I think you’re misguided if you think there isn’t a large number of people who are enthusiastic to vote against Trump.

Biden's up significantly against an incumbent. Perhaps we should just acknowledge that so far the campaign team has done a very good job.

Unfortunately like the popular vote, being up significantly is meaningless. I hope the team doesn't rest on its laurels.

It's a lot better than being behind.

Biden has a couple things going for him

(1) Trump beat Clinton even though "all the polls said" that Clinton would win. (As 538 pointed out, the Clinton/Trump race was always closer that people realized, but that's not what people remember). So I think that there is less chance of Biden and his base resting on the lead, voting for Jill Stein, etc.

(2) Trump is telegraphing his moves (I'm gonna hold up the mail from black neighborhoods! I'm gonna get Brownshirt sheriffs to arrest Hispanic people at the polls! I'm gonna contest the results no matter what!) which is making them easier to counter. I know that I have switched from "will probably vote by mail b/c of COVID" to "will vote early in person when it isn't that crowded b/c of COVID and Trump saying that he will try to keep my mailed ballot from counting." I can't be the only one.

(3) "It's the economy and the easily preventable pandemic, Stupid" is even better than "It's the economy, stupid."

That said, Trump still has an Electoral College edge, so Biden does not just have to win; he needs to win big enough to overcome it.

The popular vote isn't meaningless. With the margin that Biden is up by now, there's no way he would lose the electoral college. Even if it's a similar margin as Hillary, he isn't as likely to lose because he's certainly a better fit for the electoral college than she was.

Is it though? Obama was up in the summer 2012 and won. Up in the summer of 2008 and won. Bush and Kerry flippity-flopped all over the place in 2004, and unsurprisingly it was a close election. We all know what happened with Bush-Gore; by this time that year Gore had nearly eliminated Bush's lead with lots of undecideds. Etc.

The historical pattern is not that a big lead in late summer/fall is meaningless. Late spring/early summer, yes that can happen. But by this stage if you have a big lead, and Biden's is sizable at the moment, you almost always win. There's a strong correlation between the spread at this stage, and the final voting result. Hillary was a historical outlier.

Also important is that Hillary rarely hit 50% in polls. On RCP, they have more than 100 polls from May-November 2016 and she only hit 50% in 5 of them. Biden has already hit 50% 9 times in August.

Trump can obviously still win, but Biden has a significant lead at this point.

I would be careful saying no way. All of these national polls get skewed a bit since the super blue and populous states like Cali and New York overwhelming swing for the Ds. Yes, they do have large electoral college delegate counts but if the Rs win a half dozen key swings states they can still win. Now what seems to be telling is Biden is significantly up in a lot of swing states and even has slight leads in a few historically it appears. The big unknown is not this supposed secret Trump majority that will vote and put him over the top. Rather, it is whether Trump can f up the election mechanisms with derailing the post office and having his Russian masters hack the electorate to vote for him through disinformation campaigns like 2016 and is that enough to win him swings states like NC.

I understand all of that. My point is that these electoral college/popular vote splits have happened with much smaller margins than Biden is leading by right now. Hillary won by 2.1% and lost the electoral college by extremely narrow margins in a few states. The RCP average for Biden right now is 7.6%. If he's winning by that much, then he's not losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

I think people also forget that the electoral college doesn't always favor the Republican. It's just happened that way in the two closest elections that produced a split.

For example, in 2012, Obama won the popular vote by 3.9%. But he had a margin of 5.3% or greater in enough states to get 270 electoral votes.

In 2008, Obama won the tipping point state by 9.5%, but the popular vote by only 7.3%.

In 2004, Kerry lost the tipping point state by 2.1%, but lost the popular vote by 2.5%.

I hope you are right.

Indeed. What exactly are you expecting from a nomination acceptance speech at a national convention? For reference, here is Obama’s nominating speech from 2008:

Transcript: Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech : NPR

The first half is how Bush has screwed up and McCain is not disavowing it. And then he goes into some general things he’s going to do. No one is going wonky at a DNC or RNC. That’s what white papers and website position sections are for.

And you can see very general stuff in that speech about taxes and health care plans - far less than Bush sucks and McCain is no better. Absolutely no more detailed than Biden is and if you compare the website plans, I’d argue Biden may be slightly more detailed in his plans right now than Obama was in 2008 (it was a frequent charge against Obama during that election - he dealt more in platitudes than actual plans... and then when he won the White House he pushed Hillary’s health care plan through :D ).

Yes.
Yes. You do still need a platform. I guess my argument here is that a strong platform on top of "not Trump" is still important. Especially considering the amount of voter suppression we should expect to see, and the number of anti-Biden "scandals" that are definitely coming.

Going back, would a reduction of interest on student loans be enough? I also like the idea of "forgiveness" for service work. I think that would not turn moderates off, but would that really energize youth?

It is just so hard to get youth turn-out. There is always a promise, but rarely does it deliver. I think nationally it has just been Obama and JFK that had enough of a youth surge to move the needle.