Month: July 2024

Joe Biden’s Mortality

I began this post just before learning of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. His mortality isn’t at issue here, but Joe Biden’s is.

I am a bit older than Joe Biden. I grew up and graduated from high school in a place that resembles Scranton, Pennsylvania, though it’s not as large.

I have in recent years tracked down all of the members of my high school graduating class, who were born (on average) in 1940. Here’s the mortality curve for the men:

The slope gets slippery 53 years after graduation, that is, in one’s early 70s. Joe (and Donald) are beyond that point. But Joe’s medical condition suggests that he will go first (if assassination is taken off the table) and fairly soon. If his disease doesn’t kill him in a few years, old age will probably do the job.

Trump vs. Biden: 16 (My best estimate yet)

If the election were held today, Trump would win with 313 to 343 electoral votes (as against 270 needed to win):

How did I get to that result? It’s a two-step calculation. The first step is relate electoral votes (EVs) to the two-party popular-vote split. The second step is to relate the two-party popular-vote (PV) split to the results of the most recent national polls. (I use polls with an average date that occurs in the last seven days.)

To estimate EVs as a function of the two-party PV split, I began with the results of the 2020 election. Trump got 232 EVs and Biden got 306 EVs, with a two-party vote split of 47.7 percent for Trump to 52.3 percent for Biden. I adjusted the distribution of EVs by State to reflect the redistribution of EVs following the census of 2020. That changed the EV split to Trump 235 and Biden 303, which I took as a starting point.

Suppose that the national PV split were to change from Trump 47.7 and Biden 52.3 to Trump 48.0  and Biden 52.0 as a result of proportional changes in every State (i.e., Trump’s PV share rises across the board by 0.3 percentage point and Biden’s PV share drops across the board by 0.3 percentage point). That would cause a few States to flip, specifically Arizona (11 EV) and Georgia (16 EV). The EV split would then become Trump 262 to Biden 276.

I ran cases of PV splits ranging from Trump 46-Biden 54 to Trump 55-Biden 45 in 0.5 percentage point increments. Those splits translate to PV margins ranging from -8 for Trump to +10 for Trump. At +6, for example, Trump would pick up Arizona (11), Colorado (10) Georgia (16), Maine (all 4 of its EVs vice 1 in 2020), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), Nebraska (all 5 of its EVs vice 4 in 2020), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Pennsylvania (19), and Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10). The total gain of 123 EVs would bring Trump’s total to 358.

How do I relate the PV split to polling results? Polls, on average, are biased toward Biden. By how much? I return, once again, to 2020 and the national polls reported by RealClearPolitics (RCP). The final seven-day average had Biden leading Trump by 7.6 percentage points. Biden’s PV margin (including bogus votes) was 4.5 percentage points. So there was a bias of about 3 percentage points in favor of Biden in the polls reported by RCP.* This means, for example, that if Trump’s average 7-day lead is 2 points (which it is as of today), his lead in the PV split is actually 5 points after adjusting for bias (assuming that the pro-Biden bias is at least as great in 2024 as it was in 2020).

There are margins of error around the polling results; the margins of error define the upper and lower bounds of a 95-percent confidence interval around the average. I apply those margins to obtain a range for Trump (a 95-percent confidence interval around his average lead or deficit). As of today, that range is from a 0-point lead to a 4-point lead. The horizontal axis in the graph reflects the 3-point bias adjustment to that range. A tie in the polls — the lower bound of the confidence interval — would mean that Trump is really leading by 3 in the PV split (which would give him 313 EVs); a lead of 4 points in the polls — the upper bound of the confidence interval — would mean that Trump is really leading by 7 in the PV split (which would give him 343 EVs).

As of today, Nate Silver (paywalled) of 538 fame, has Trump ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The electoral votes of those States, plus the pickup of 1 EV from Nebraska, would bring Trump’s total to 313, which is the lower bound of my estimate.

Stay tuned.

* Yes, there are margins of error around each pollster’s results, but the best estimate was 7.6 percentage-point margin, on average, and the pollsters missed it by 3.1 points, on average. Another way to adjust Biden’s 2020 showing is to take the difference between his seven-day average margin for that year (7.6 points) and his current seven-day average margin (-1.8 points) and apply the difference (-9.4 points) to his final  2020 PV margin of 3.1 points, which yields an estimated PV margin of -6.3 for 2024 (as of today). But that would introduce a measure of optimism (for Trump) that I don’t want to inject into my estimates, so I’m using the bias estimate of 3.1 points (rounded to 3).

Classic Automobiles

The classic era of American automobile design began in the 1920s and lasted through the late 1930s. Here are some of my favorites:

1927 Kissel 8-75 Speedster

1929 Jordan Speedboy G

1929 Duesenberg J 350 Willoughby

1930 Pierce Arrow Roadster

1932 Cadillac 355B Sport Phaeton

1932 Pierce Arrow Model 54 7-Passenger Touring Car

1934 Packard Eleventh Series Eight 1101 Convertible Sedan

1935 Auburn 8-851 Cabriolet

1937 Cord Model 812C Phaeton

1938 Lincoln Zephyr Convertible Coupe

Many collections of classic-car photos and specs are available online. One that I especially like is the Crawford Collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Can Barack Obama Become Biden’s VP and Succeed Him as President?

That mouthful of a title is a question that’s been in the air for quite a while. It didn’t just arise when Biden exposed his mental frailty at the non-debate with Trump on June 27. But it has been resurrected (e.g. here and here).

So, what’s the answer? There isn’t a definitive one because no U.S. court has faced the question, let alone ruled on it. If the question ever arose — about Obama or any other former twice-elected president — it would end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. USSC’s decision likely would depend on the political makeup of the Court at the time, and the party affiliation of the former president.

But, political partisanship aside, here’s what I would argue:

1. Section 1 of Amendment XXII says this:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

2. Some would argue that this bars a former president like Obama from serving as vice president because Amendment XII says this:

[N]o person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

3. But when Amendment XII was ratified on June 15, 1804, the only conditions of eligibility for the presidency were these (from Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

4. Therefore, the language of Amendment XII quoted above doesn’t apply because Amendment XII didn’t contemplate the adoption of Amendment XXII 147 years later.

In short, barring a USSC ruling to the contrary, BHO could run for VP and succeed JRB Jr. Aargh!

The Biden Plan

Why did Biden decide to debate Trump? Most likely because Biden and those whose advice he takes (or whose direction he follows) believed that he would lose the election and had nothing to lose by debating Trump.

Why would Biden or his advisers believe that he would lose when nationwide polls have put him in a virtual tie with Trump? Because they have done something like the analysis that I’ve done, which suggests a virtual tie in the polls means that Biden is actually running at least 3 percentage points behind Trump nationwide. That deficit portends spells certain defeat given that Biden would run up huge, superfluous margins in deep-Blue states.

In rehearsing for the debate, Biden’s performance must have seemed at least passable. If it hadn’t, a plausible excuse for postponement or cancellation would have been found, and it would have done less damage to Biden’s chances than his actual performance did. But the rehearsals, which included a stand-in for Trump, weren’t the real thing.

Biden’s performance in the actual debate must have come as a shock to himself, to Jill, to those who advised him to debate, and to those who helped him prepare for the debate. Biden’s performance certainly came as huge shock to the millions who planned to vote for him and who saw the real person in action, not the mummy whose condition has been hidden (as much as possible) from public view by aides and compliant corporate media.

Now what? Top Democrats (the Clintons, Obama, major donors, etc.) may have concluded that Trump will win no matter whom he faces. If they have concluded that, they are almost certainly right — barring a shockingly adverse development for Trump between now and when voting starts.

For example, they may be betting that Judge Merchan (of the “hush money” case) will announce a prison sentence or house arrest when he sentences Trump on July 11. First, any sentence will be anti-climactic — voters have long since factored the guilty verdicts into their voting plans. Second, Trump can appeal, and failure at the State level is almost certain to result in a speedy hearing and decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Third, will any court (other than Judge Merchan’s) want to legitimize DA Bragg’s blatant act of election interference: the prosecution of Trump on charges with a flimsy legal foundation? I think not. Fourth, in any event, a sentence of some kind for Trump might be just the trigger that’s needed to evoke a tidal wave of GOP voters in the fall, swamping not only Biden but Democrats down the ticket — including, more importantly, races for U.S. Senate and House seats.

Given all of that, why would the Democrats in charge want to replace Biden? The result would be to burden a new candidate with a loss, when he or she could run in 2028 as a “fresh face” who hasn’t lost a presidential race.

So, barring a development that I can’t foresee (which might include death or a crippling disability), I expect to see Trump and Biden at the head of their parties’ tickets in November. If Biden isn’t the Democrat nominee, the nod will go to the equally expendable Kamala.