It’s a fine sample size. That’s a normal national poll. A poll of 1,000 people has a margin of error (from random sampling) of 3%. There are other errors than random chance that could bias a poll, but random chance is what sampling size is generally managing.

This is a story about protests and mask bans in the US and non-governmental actors can still be a threat to protesters in a “free” country.

This is obviously different in countries that are not free.

So… the US? People are regularly arrested for perfectly legal, not even a shadow of a doubt, activity at protests. And protesters are vulnerable to not just cops, but dangerous actors who support the thing they’re protesting against. Whether it’s doxing, billionaire-funded slander, your boss not liking the cause, or actual violence, there’s plenty of reason not to want your face to be easily identifiable, even while orderly protesting for a just cause. Never mind health concerns like not wanting to catch COVID (or breath tear gas).

The idea that orderly protesting is safe in the United States is incredibly naïve.

The pattern of Biden defenders saying everything is ok and this is a campaign by nefarious elites rather than a very broad concern across the whole swath of the party. The problem isn’t people saying they think Biden is going to lose, the problem is Biden is going to lose.

Or hear me out, they can just gaslight us more. That’ll turn things around for sure.

They should have been building Harris up for the last 4 years instead of giving her shit issues Biden didn’t want to deal with. They knew it was possible she’d be forced to lead the party, but they were just so singularly focused on Joe Biden like he was a regular president and his reputation was the only important thing to manage.

It’s also not just voting, but donations and volunteering. People don’t think Biden can win, so they’re directing efforts to other candidates. Exciting those that are already team players has real impacts.

Democrats need to be winning by 3-4% in the popular vote to overcome the electoral college bias. Maybe he’s squeaking by in the popular vote isn’t enough to win.

who can else beat him at this point, but the Democrat who actually beat him four years ago

50 other Democrats, like Joe Biden himself said. This isn’t a close election because people love Joe Biden, it’s because they hate Donald Trump. Trump isn’t some electoral force of nature, he’s a weak candidate who’s had the fortune to run against another weak candidate (now and in 2016). There isn’t a big focus on “double-haters” in normal elections. Most people don’t want these candidates.

She can just say Biden made the decisions, because it’s true. Forget how Fox propagandizes things. If you think they have that power to shape reality, we’ve already lost. Everyone else will take a statement of “that was something I disagreed with, but it was Joe’s choice” at face value, because we all know VPs are powerless.

Obama didn’t have a real primary challenger either, or Clinton before him. There’s nothing unusual about an incumbent president not being challenged. Where they fucked up was treating it as business as usual when the president’s age was such a big risk.

broken system that heavily favors super-delegates

This is years out of date nonsense.

The time for this was during primary elections for the Democratic nominee, not now. Doing it now undermines the rule of law

And this is incoherent. There’s no “law” involved in any of this. If Biden leaves the race it will be from him withdrawing, which is a totally by the books option in Democratic internal rules.

Just another Obama bro turning against our beautiful president.

538 has an explanation on their site about why it’s not moving. Essentially they’re so far out they heavily discount current polls and events. We’re effectively seeing their baseline result with some previous races and economic measures tweaking things a little.

538’s win projections aren’t really based on current polling or really current events at all, that’s why nothing’s moved despite crazy things happening in the race. They’ve got some other fundamentals in the model that makes them think it’s all going to revert to norm and Democrats will win, but it’s just their own guesswork, not anything particularly well supported.

Hah, yeah, that’s certainly going to make the right react with solemnity and respect.

There are probably self-driving cars in some alien civilizations.

I particularly like that they hinted that some things in the trial were official and some things weren’t, but they’re not going to tell anyone what they are at this time, we have to wait for the appeal to work its way back up. At which point the election will be over and they’ll just say “psyche, it’s all official”.

Their ruling isn’t new law, it’s telling people what the law already said. Even all the stuff they made up along the way.

Before my adblocker quashed it, I got a Biden-Harris ad. Probably not the best channel for governing politicians to be advertising on.

I think all the “Biden should step aside” calls are due to concerns about Step 1.