Hearing What You Want to Hear and Disregarding the Rest

[andym]

16. The polling disregarded most was Joe's favorability hovering around and under 40% since Nov 2021

He basically got blamed for the price increases, especially on food and housing that were the after effects of Covid. The Fed's actions to raise interest rates to quash inflation made life difficult for those holding CC debt. These economic conditions made life difficult for many and others who could bear them were not happy about paying more. Historically, these conditions are very bad for the President or party in power: Jimmy Carter (1980) and George HW Bush (1992-2nd term election) come to mind-- Clinton beat Bush with "I feel your (economic) pain." The actual health of the economy mattered less.

Given that Joe was getting the blame for the cost-of-living and both prices and interest rates were lower under Trump, Democrats had their work cut out for them. Joe probably could not have won even if he had performed better in the debate because of his favorability. Whoever got the nomination would have had to carve out a vision/economic policies that made them the "change" candidate. Unfortunately it is very difficult for a sitting VP to do that, so Kamala would have had to propose really bold if not controversial policies (no matter that they might not get implemented), but that is not what happened.