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Is a dollar on sale for 40ish cents? Talk me out of maxing out PredictIt contracts relating to Joe Biden, if you would please.
The numbers are super volatile, but right now, PI thinks Joe is 60c for becoming the Dem nominee, so "no" costs 40c. Now, this likely pays out upon the formal nomination at the convention, the final day of which is 45 days away, as the rules clarify that the replacement of the nominee prior to election day has no impact on resolution. But if the daggers are to come out, they really ought to come out before Joe formally nabs the nomination--otherwise you end up with total chaos and only 75 days to select a nominee, raise money, and campaign to the general public. Sure, a hot swap generates excitement, earned media, and a real chance to beat Trump, but if you're going to go that route, you reap way more of the rewards and less of the cost to do it asap.
It looks pretty impossible to me for the dems to let Biden run unopposed. Sure, one Dem rep thinks Trump will win and the sky won't fall, but everyone else is shouting from the rooftops that America will be doomed, and surely a large portion of these are true believers who will do all that they can to avert said Armageddon. Does anyone actually think Biden can beat Trump? He's down more than 3 points nationally, double that in battleground states; he's only getting older with ever more adverse scrutiny, which also shifts the focus away from Trump, which was really the only way to win, to make it a referendum on Trump's character, since his presidency itself is remembered fairly positively by the crucial independents; there is no end to Ukraine or Gaza; inflation is easing but nothing is actually getting cheaper, they're just getting pricier more slowly. Trump is so hated that there is a firm floor for his favorability to fall--what else can you throw at a man who's been called a felon, fraud, fascist, rapist, pedophile, insurrectionist, Russian plant, and democracy-destroyer?
So, if Biden can't win, and the Democratic Party thinks Trump must not win, then there is only one logical conclusion, which is Biden can't run, and so he won't be the nominee. Now, I understand the big money is outside of prediction markets. But I'm not smart enough to calculate the secondary effect orders to trade options on macroeconomics or individual stocks as they relate to who wins in November. Sticking strictly to the $850 limit per contract on PredictIt, then--
Tell me why I shouldn't max out Joe Biden "no" for being the dem nominee. The $850 limit at
40c will return2.5x, minus 10% PI's cut and 5% withdrawal fee (partly diluted by credit card points) in less than two months. How could I lose? Why aren't you heading to PI yourself right now to claim your free money?(I mean, I know the literal answer is somehow the Dems just ratify Joe's nomination in 45 days, but can even Dr. Strange with a time stone find such an implausible outcome?)
The Democrats are not in charge of the situation, Biden is. He has to be the one to make the decision to step down, he can't be forced out. And Biden is echo chambered to an extreme degree, and ego-pilled to a very large degree.
Also, think about a raw pro/cons list. The Democrats have lost elections before and will again. Even an election to Trump himself. They are still here. It's not existential, despite the rhetoric. You know what is existential? Opening the door to an open convention. These kinds of things do create hard feelings beyond "oh man we nominated the wrong guy".
I say this despite a strong pro-replacement bias. If you want free money, maxing out "Yes" is the call. (Sadly)
He can be forced out at the convention.
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I am not sure this is correct. The DNC is looking at doing a virtual nomination of Biden by July 21st. This has been planned long before the debate performance and is due to the state of Ohio's requirement that party candidates be nominated 90 days before the election (August 7th). In the past the Ohio legislature has done special sessions to extend this date when party conventions have gone later than it but I understand why the DNC doesn't want to risk it this time. Biden doesn't have to hold on 45 days to the convention, he has to hold on about a week and a half. At which point replacing him (short of his death) will probably be a logistical impossibility (I don't know the rules in Ohio on replacing candidates on ballots). If someone's plan to replace Biden involves a fight at the Convention they will be about a month too late.
Ohio moved the date back to Aug. 23; Dems still want the roll-call vote early because they don't really trust Ohio (which is fair but Ohio changing the date again would also create easy litigation re: promissory estoppel concepts that would likely still protect Aug. 23 as the date).
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Joe Biden is nominee unless he resigns or gets hit medically. There's no mechanism for removing him. I agree he would not get the nomination if it was a fresh contest, but he has essentially already won it. I'm quite large on Biden at the equivalent of 30c for nom and 10c for presidency for full disclosure, but the window for replacement has largely passed.
I mean, there are mechanisms to remove him, they're just not super likely to be invoked. The dem electors can hypothetically invoke the "in all good conscience" clause at the election and remove him. He could be impeached and convicted and thus cannot hold public office ever again. The cabinet invokes the 25th amendment and all hell breaks loose, although it's unclear if invoking the 25th would remove him from campaigning as well.
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The Dems if they really wanted to could invoke the 25th which whilst not cancelling his nomination would render it impossible for Biden to win effectively forcing Biden to withdraw.
I guess they could impeach and remove Biden (eg for covering up his extreme mental decline or for Biden corruption) but would need republican support.
That's Pandora's Box and Democrats can not open it.
It's pretty telling that even criticisms from the establishment are near uniformly disciplined about making this about the campaign.
If they admit he may be incompetent in his duties everyone will be dragged forward and asked what they knew and when.
As an outsider I think it’s the right move. A view Trump as unbeatable at this point. Invoking the 25th would make it look to me like the Dems are reforming which will massively help them in Senate and House races.
But what do I know. I thought Dems saying the GOP should abandon Trump the last few years and I thought it was a bad idea and now I’m expecting a route in 2024 led by Trump.
I want Biden as the Dem nominee. And expect that my side will win big. With Trump being quiet it seems as though their view is the same.
I do understand why they have some uniformity right now. Whatever you do in politics you do need to be unified. Having different factions fighting doesn’t work.
I don't agree with this. Invoking the 25th would make Democrats look weak and their administration look incompetent. Because it would be a declaration that its headman is incompetent, in the literal meaning of the term. Invoking the 25th also normally requires the consent of the President -- that's the only way it has been used in the past -- and to do it over his refusal would require a whole rigamarole where the Cabinet tries to argue with the Congress and Biden attempts to convince them he's actually competent. It would be an absolute shitshow of constitutional and political maneuvering that would make even the most insane Brexit deliberations across the pond look like normal legislative operations, with the executive fighting against itself and the Congress held up from all other activity while members get prime time TV slots grandstanding about the administration. In the worst case, this would lead to the nuclear football being tossed back and forth between Biden and Harris like an actual football.
Meanwhile Republicans look on uproariously laughing at the magnificent incompetence and Trump gives rallies where he talks about the Democrats as unstable and so fractured they can't even get a senile old man to step aside without causing chaos. Expect numerous comparisons to the impeachments, and if Biden were actually confirmed as unable to discharge his duties as President by the Congress, expect Trump to use it to wash his hands of the entire impeachment proceedings -- after all, the other guy actually got removed.
Although, to be clear, it would be different, in the 25th procedure Biden would still technically be the President, just one without the powers and duties of the President. What that means is little understood. The 25th was designed for a president in a coma, not a living president vigorously (well, as vigorously as Biden is capable of nowadays) defending his ability to exercise his office.
It would also make Kamala Harris the acting president. And she is unpopular, moreso than Biden. Presumably it would put her at the top of the ticket too -- there's no precedent, but it would be suicidal to run as candidate for President of the United States a man who has been unprecedentedly removed from the powers and duties of the Presidency for incompetence as a candidate for President of the United States! And even then, I could easily see the convention being fractured, giving Republicans another incredibly massive win in the months leading up to the election.
If they have Biden's consent, he can just do the normal, expected thing and resign. Which would also put Harris at the top of the ticket, but at least without the insane constitutional boogaloo that the 25th Amendment process would require. But the 25th Amendment process is pretty involved, to prevent coups. Harris can't just up and declare herself the Big Cheese.
The 25th invocation suggestions aren't serious to anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at the actual text. No senior Democrat would ever call for it. It would be the biggest unforced error in the history of the American republic.
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He really isn't on polling, though. The margin of victory in these things isn't that big.
Oh, he is.
Biden barely won last time with a >4% lead in the popular vote. He's behind now by ~3% I think.
That's before we get into specific swing states, at which point you get why there were allegedly tears in meetings from swing state Democrats who have to be stuck with him at the top of the ticket.
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I have a very hard time believing that Trump has any chance at losing this election if it’s anything close to fair. If he loses this time I would think it requires real direct vote fraud. Hacked machines. Dead people voting.
If the betting markets are at 30-40% the Dem wins then my opinion is there is a 30-40% chance of direct provable voter fraud.
Trump years were not that bad. And everyone just saw on TV that the Dems tried to pass off a non-functioning human being. No one will trust them anymore.
Is Hunter Biden the defacto POTUS right now?
Even if you swap him out you can not undo the brand damage. That’s going to a point or two hit to whoever the new guy is. Was Bill Clinton in his prime America’s most talented politician? You would need someone of that quality to pull it off.
At this point Trumps best strategy is likely Joe’s 2020 strategy of hiding in the basement. I think Trump has gotten better at politics but he has no reason to take the field again.
The easier bet to me is to vote on Trump winning because I do think there is a real chance Joe stays on the ticket but I can’t see a way Trump loses.
Edit: it just hit me. They should nominate Hunter Biden. He’s still a Biden. Everyone knows his name by now. Go full reality show. Maybe the American people will vote for the they find the most entertaining.
The smart play would be Dean Phillips. He has a good story that he tried to stand up to Biden so he’s not in the oligarchy. You would need someone outside of the Party to try for a serious campaign, but he has zero name recognition and I would guess only 2% of the population know the name.
I think Trump is not unbeatable, even by Biden. Biden could pull out very convincing performances in the next two debates. Trump could get clobbered in one of his many trials. The economy could upturn. All of these things are maybes, and there's no reason there couldn't be bad news for Biden. But there is a narrow but plausible road to the presidency.
I'll remind people that for months - basically the whole campaign, in fact - Hillary Clinton, supposedly the worst election candidate ever, led by similar margins over Trump. Where is she now?
Biden is gone. He is not winning a debate. He could not even do that in 2020.
Trump has already been convicted as a felon and as a rapists. Trials are not saving the Dems.
The economy could upturn? Unemployment is low and while inflation is too high it is better.
I see one positive catalyst. Russia collapses on the battlefield.
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I don't think any of those paths are plausible. The economy doesn't have much room to improve without overheating. The things that cause negative economic perceptions are mostly structural issues that will take decades to fix. Trump's trials are too manifold and confusing to really go that badly, if there were just one it might work, but every Negress prosecutor on the east coast filed a weak case and the scandals cross each other up. And there's no reason to believe Biden will get younger in time for the second debate.
Watergate was a manifold, confusing mess that unfolded mostly ignored by the American public. Then suddenly exploded. Nixon was around in politics for over two decades before his enemies in the press finally got their killshot. You're right to wonder if such a thing could exist for Trump, or could be found. I say it could. Trump is a fat, ugly, crude slug of a man, crooked, has terrible policies even from the perspective of the Right.
Biden is not going to get younger, but he'll have good days and bad days. I suspect hiding him away is doing more bad than good - egoist politicians like Biden draw strength from rallies, not from being sequestered with aides and drilled. But then, every hour Biden spends out of his cloister is a chance for him to shit his pants, and if the guy gets too excited he might actually try a pushup contest. I reckon Biden might have one more performance in him, even if it's his last, and if he can perform in the next debate he might get away with weaseling out of the third.
As for the economy, it's as much a matter of vibes and animal spirits as it is real data. On paper, as you say, there is not much room for improvement, but that's not how people feel and that could change.
I see this argument all over the place, and it seems to be classic WFAN caller "the coach is stupid, why doesn't he just play the good players?" I generally despise everyone I know who moved to DC and went into politics, but don't doubt that the consultants that surround him know that he should be doing rallies, that rallies would be good for him, less than a coach knows that he has to score more points than the other team. He's not doing rallies because he can't do rallies. This is a case of running a projection model that doesn't take injuries into account.
It's not just that there's no room for improvement on paper, it's that any improvement on paper probably leads to increased inflation. We're running near frictional unemployment, and the stock market is hitting record highs. Any increase in employment or wages is going to push prices higher, which upsets people. The only way prices are going to decrease is a recession, which will upset people. Biden's best hope is that everything stays the same for another few months. But running your game hoping that suddenly Americans will realize what's been going on around them for years is insanity, and hoping that Biden suddenly improves his salesmanship while in the state he's in is insanity.
But Biden's biggest problem is that the narrative is running against him that he's senile. Every slip up or routine action will be taken as a sign of senility. I was joking with my wife that, under a microscope and facing an assumption of senility, you'd find ample evidence in my life. Just yesterday, we had the septic tank pumped at one of our rental properties, which must be done every three years by township ordinance. I last worried about this three years ago, and I vaguely thought the tank lid might be out back somewhere. The guy pumping it remembered precisely where it was, on the side of the house, off the top of his head, because he did a repair on it seven years ago. Oh my God my memory is terrible!
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGe2uPLgL28
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This kind of generalization is definitely in the “more heat than light” category.
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There literally isn't a mechanism for anything you're describing without Biden resigning (at which point he likely strongly recommends Harris which would be path of least resistance) or dying (again, most likely Harris) in the next 2 weeks.
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If the Democrats can swap out their candidate, they can get rid of all their negatives. Then turn the entire media machine on promoting the Democrat and denigrating Trump (as usual). The Ds still vote for the D, the MAGAs still vote for Trump, but the squishy center which says such things as "I just want a competent adult running things" votes D, and the squishy Republican-leaners who mostly believe Trump is the Devil (because the media keeps telling them that) loses their excuse (that Biden is incompetent) to vote for him anyway.
However, they would have to swap out their candidate without breaking the party long enough for Trump to win anyway. And critically, I think they have to swap with someone other than Kamala (who as part of the Biden administration wouldn't lose all the negatives, and isn't much of a politician)
I disagree because I think the Dems have shot their credibility. Anyone connected to the establishment is going to be taking on these credibility issues.
I don’t think you can swap in Newsome and people will view him as an outsider. He even has his own issues here of the French Laundry incident where he’s out in public and about to shut the state down.
This is why I mentioned Dean Phillips because he was calling Biden senile in the primaries. You need a guy whose disconnected from establishment.
RFK is taking the liberal but outsider spot, though.
He is.
But Dean Phillips is the liberal outsider who still seems like a normie. RFK has some weird views.
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Funny enough if it were a race between RFK jr and Trump I think RFK Jr probably wins.
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Saves on yard sign replacement costs, significant experience in Ukraine and China relations, and he only has three felonies. Sign me up.
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Probably the best reason is that I honestly wasn't sure until I got to your third paragraph whether you were arguing that it's definitely 100% obvious that Biden will or will not be replaced before or at the Democrat convention.
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Problem 1, to quote Zvi:
Problem 2:
SJ activist-politics worsens these tendencies. The SJ model of the world is that choices are supposed to be (morally) easy; tradeoffs are mostly fake and made up by people who want to take the immoral options. Hence, there should be a way to win without pulling shenanigans.
I would argue that politics operate much on level 4 because the stakes are so low.
The life of the median US voter will not be affected drastically by the outcome of the US presidential election. They are unlikely to get fired or imprisoned or even have their income change by 10% no matter who sits in the White House. Trump will not turn the US into a totalitarian dictatorship. If Biden drops dead in a year, Harris will likely become an unpopular one-term president, not the downfall of the US.
Most people can be somewhat rational when they have skin in the game, but here they don't have that. It is like supporting a football team. If every fan whose team won the cup got a 20% raise, there would be an actual incentive to figure out if fan support can affect the outcome of a match, and what their optimal behavior regarding the object level should be. Instead, it is just performative, vibes, kayfabe. Politics is mostly the same, only the hatred for the other team is stronger.
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PredictIt just seems like a joke of a site, for multiple reasons:
Do it if you want to gamble and have some fun, but the format means it's hard to make any serious money there and I wouldn't expect the odds to really predict anything.
Plus, in this specific case... Biden himself is saying repeatedly that he's staying in the race, and there's no clear mechanism for the party to remove him.
There is signalling value in taking 850 dollars of money and burning it to show your commitment to a candidate. The prospect of winning money is just a bonus.
Especially if you can actually move the prediction score because the other side is prevented by that maximum bet rule to call you on your bet.
Buying shares to hype up your candidate in the absence of an efficient market might not even be the least effective way to spend money on them, outcome-wise.
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Biden staying in and dropping out will look the same until he makes a decision. If he wavers before hand, then things will look really crazy as the feeding frenzy belongs in earnest.
Potentially, but it looks like the people trying to oust him have lost a lot of momentum at this point and most of the potential challengers have flipped to supporting his candidacy.
He could always have a change of heart, but why now instead of last week?
My only point is that what Biden says he is going to do is not strong evidence of what he in fact will do given that he would say he is staying in until seconds before he announces he will drop out.
And maybe momentum has stalled. It’s hard to tell.
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Yeah there's way better ways to get down with varying levels of KYC. Polymarket, some Crypto Casinos etcetera.
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These things are opaque and unclear. The politicians seem to be lining up behind Biden even as the media revolts. There are surely power groups who want a vacant presidency so they can advance their agenda without any limits or controls.
What about a special electoral operation to keep Trump from the presidency? A hell of a lot of people have been entering the US in recent years, why not practice a little ballot harvesting, organize some reliable deputies to enfranchise the right people and help them vote? Bring in some mail-in ballots! Or just practice legitimate vote-buying by running down the US strategic petrol reserves to lower prices. Trump also did this kind of thing with his 'massive deficits to pump up the economy' approach and a platinum plan to buy black votes. Trump was only running 4% deficits in a growing economy, Biden's pushed it up to 6%. It's a race to the bottom.
I'm not saying I believe anything for certain here, just that there aren't any clear no-brainers. This isn't technology or business, this is politics.
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You should think twice because the formal mechanism for denying him the nomination relies on either pledged delegates breaking their pledge, or him giving up voluntarily.
Also, it could make more sense to have him drop out after the convention to prevent an open convention and an open intra-party civil war that could ensue.
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Rape charges would move the needle. The FBI/CIA are still in play and, I don’t think there is any way to push out Biden if he doesn’t want to go. Biden has stated he doesn’t care what pundits think, he doesn’t believe in polls, and doesn’t really care what other leaders in his own party think either - it would literally take the direct intervention of God to get him to step down. I’d buy Biden at those odds.
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Definitely, there's a lot of game left. Trying to call it before October seems a fool's errand. Anything greater than ~80% confidence seems like pure hubris to me. We have two people born in the 40s running very volatile campaigns.
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Biden seems determined to hold on right now, and there isn't any easy process to oust him by other Democrat leaders. I think it's likely he won't be nominee, but I'm not super confident on it.
The markets are definitely super volatile though, you might be able to find some good arbitrage opportunities that will be just straight free money
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I initially thought that this post would be that Biden being nominated was clearly underpriced, and there was free money being left on the table by people not concretely playing out how "Biden is too old" turns into "Biden will not be the nominee."
But, go for it if you have 100% confidence that Biden will not get the nomination. As your math shows, it would be free money, even with the substantial cut of the house.
(My guess of a fair price would be closer to 60c than 40c, and that's not enough of an edge to make it worth my while to go through the effort to place a bet and freeze up $850. It's probably better to take the $850 and dump it into UPRO if you think Biden is going to be replaced.)
Yeah there's a big gap between 'Biden is not the fittest candidate for the Democrat nomination' and 'Biden will actually be replaced with the mechanisms available at this point in time'.
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You can get better odds on a black jack table if you want to gamble. I thought it was certain that the Democrats would dump Biden a week ago; but, he, somehow, is hanging on. That's why the bet is so even. Most of the time, if you think you've found a mark, you are the mark.
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