Backup quarterback syndrome and how everything is always perfectly obvious in hindsight
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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Backup Quarterback Syndrome, which is the tendency to focus on every flaw and weakness on the person who currently has the actual job/task/responsibility/nomination, while indulging in empirically-unconstrained fantasies about that person’s possible replacement(s). This is of course a particular variation on the search for Johnny Unbeatable, the perfect candidate who would guarantee victory if only the process would choose JU instead of the surefire loser the process has actually produced.
Today the Good Nate introduced the New York Times’s daily prediction widget for the coming election, with a cogent article (gift link) on the strengths and weaknesses of various polls, polling methodologies, and meta-polling curation strategies. His current analysis is that the presidential race is, based on the available evidence, essentially tied, completely up in the air, more or less a coin flip, choose your favorite metaphor, as polling indicates an extremely tight race in terms of both the national popular vote, and the vote in the half dozen states whose electoral votes will decide the outcome.
Cohn emphasizes that this is merely the present situation, and that it could change quite a bit over the less than four months remaining before the voting starts in mid-October. But given the stakes, the situation is anywhere between very concerning to totally terrifying for any non-fascist, which brings me back to Johnny Unbeatable and Backup Quarterback Syndrome.
If Joe Biden loses, practically everyone is going to say that this loss was basically inevitable because:
(1) He was so old. Really really old. He promised* not to run again and then broke that promise and look what happened.
(2) He was so white and male. The Republican party is the party of white males, and look who the Democrats forced** down everyone’s throat: a white male. Really white and really male.
(3) He funded/encouraged/planned/masterminded the Genocide in Gaza.
(4) He didn’t forgive enough student debt.
(5) He forgave too much student debt.
(6) He didn’t expand the Supreme Court.
(7) He didn’t dump Kamala Harris.
(8) He didn’t fire Merrick Garland
(9) He didn’t bring down the price of gas/eggs/cheeseburgers/Taylor Swift tickets
(10) Insert your personal hobbyhorse here.
But the thing is, if Biden hadn’t run and the Democrats had nominated, say, Gretchen Whitmer, and she had lost, would there be an equally long list of explanations as to why it was absolutely inevitable that she was going to lose, proving in the process that Biden would have cruised to an easy re-election? (The only MAN to ever defeat Donald Trump in an election yo! Don’t change horses in mid-stream! America isn’t ready for a woman, or at least not that woman.) Remember when EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE would have defeated Trump in 2016, except for Hillary Clinton, who was the worst candidate of all time, and who ran the worst campaign of all time, because she didn’t go to Wisconsin and Michigan enough? I do.
Clinton lost the election by 12 votes in Cheboygan and Biden won it by 15 in suburban Atlanta, but Biden was the obviously correct choice because only he could defeat Trump, and Clinton was the obviously disastrous choice because only she could lose to Trump.
Obviously.
Just wanted to get this out of the way ahead of time.
*Biden did not ever promise to serve only one term.
**Nobody forced Joe Biden on anybody.