If promising some more progressive policy was a clear winner, why wouldn’t they do it? The answer I generally see implied or stated is that the dem establishment doesn’t want that policy, but that isn’t really an adequate explanation, because politicians are perfectly familiar with dishonesty. If supporting some progressive policy they didn’t like would win them power, they’d just promise it and then just not do that thing upon getting elected.

Because their personal motivations are not “maximize the chances for a Democratic win”, but preserve the power of themselves and their allies with money and influence. If these policies become a centerpiece of the election and broadly popularized, it becomes dangerous to ignore it and advances the saliency regardless of the outcome, pushing it closer to someone actually doing it. A campaign that says “the rich are abusing workers to fill their pockets and the government should tax their wealth until there are no billionaires and provide benefits to the workers” is dangerous to the rich people, even if its initially proposed by someone with no intention of following through.

The people you want to blame aren’t here in a politics community. Maybe a few posters here did a protest vote, probably in a safe state where it didn’t matter, but most people here voted. The people who didn’t vote (in numbers meaningful to winning) weren’t sitting down to think about what the world would be like in each outcome and then saying “eh, it’s fine either way”, they were marginal voters who just didn’t really think it was important because politicians either don’t care about them or don’t follow through on promises. They’re just going to check out when you call them or the other politician names, because it’s a tiring endeavor that they don’t care about. You definitely have people in your life that say “they’re not political” and check out as soon as politics is brought up. You’re never going to reach those voters by expressing your disdain in a forum for politically engaged people, the only way to get to them is to actually motivate them to vote en masse with legit campaigns to inspire them that their lives will get better if they take this action.

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.

“Retreating glacier” feels like a euphemism to make the destruction of glaciers sound like they just decided to move somewhere else.

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.

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.

All of my artist friends also found it soul sucking, they just needed to make (real) money. Friends of friends with the occasional $20 to spare for a commission just don’t pay the bills. I think the only artist friends I have that make a living off their chosen medium and don’t hate their job are lifestyle photojournalists.