Thunderdome: How Do You Sing A Song That Says "Vivek"?

Candidate playlists and what they tell us about the narcissists who run

Welcome to Thunderdome, where back to school airborne illnesses, pumpkin spice lattes, and fantasy football drafts herald the return of fall and the point where most normal Americans start actually paying attention to who's running for president. It turns out there are more people running than Joe Biden and Donald Trump! Who would have guessed? This is because normal people do not have the gaping maw inside themselves, that hole that can never be filled by anything, and they have higher priorities than the unceasing undulating political scrum. There are errands to run and tailgates to plan and pumpkin gewgaws to be purchased from Home Goods.

But, in the height of modern convenience, one thing you can do while doing all those things is listen to Thunderdome! This week we focus on something truly important: why on earth is 25 percent of Vivek Ramaswamy's personal playlist made up of Imagine Dragons songs? These are the questions that drive us mad.

Polls have Democrats very worried

Labor Day weekend feels like the moment when top Democrats all started to realize that Joe Biden should be winning by a lot more than he is in national polls. If you assume that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy itself, you'd think he'd be consistently behind -- but he's within the margin of error most of the time, even as other Republicans score as beating Biden handily. The Nikki Haley campaign was quick to trumpet the latest example -- a CNN/SSRS poll that shows her beating Biden by the most. But whether you believe that result would hold or not, the overall picture of the current president is very poor:

Views of Biden’s performance in office and on where the country stands are deeply negative in the new poll. His job approval rating stands at just 39%, and 58% say that his policies have made economic conditions in the US worse, up 8 points since last fall. Seventy percent say things in the country are going badly, a persistent negativity that has held for much of Biden’s time in office, and 51% say government should be doing more to solve the nation’s problems.

Perceptions of Biden personally are also broadly negative, with 58% saying they have an unfavorable impression of him. Fewer than half of Americans, 45%, say that Biden cares about people like them, with only 33% describing him as someone they’re proud to have as president. A smaller share of the public than ever now says that Biden inspires confidence (28%, down 7 percentage points from March) or that he has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (26%, down 6 points from March), with those declines driven largely by Democrats and independents.

Roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (73%), and his ability to serve out another full term if reelected (76%), with a smaller 68% majority seriously concerned about his ability to understand the next generation’s concerns (that stands at 72% among those younger than 65, but just 57% of those 65 or older feel the same).

Perhaps most damning of all: 67% of Democrats wish the party would nominate someone other than Biden in 2024, up from 54% in March. But as Axios notes, "when those respondents were asked who the party's 2024 nominee should be, no other person polled above 3%."

So a decidedly larger portion of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party would like a different nominee than their current odds-on choice... but just like the Republicans, there's no one who has emerged as the clear viable alternative. In fact, they're even further away from the possibility -- and Team Biden has shown no willingness to engage in debate with anyone, let alone Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

For Democrat water carriers like Benjy Sarlin at Semafor, they're writing pieces pumping the brakes on any fears:

There is no campaign. Every time you see a poll showing Biden’s approval in the 30s, mentally add an asterisk that says “before Democrats spend $1 billion.” This isn’t so much about a prohibitive spending advantage (Republicans will have money too), but about what that money goes towards. In this case, it’s a message that so far has worked for Democrats in real-life conditions.

But for smart analysts like Nate Cohn at the New York Times, the fears are very real -- especially among those voters who may not vote for Trump, but will just stay home in an election with two unlikable candidates: nonwhite non-college educated voters.

Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade, even as racially charged fights over everything from a border wall to kneeling during the national anthem might have been expected to produce the exact opposite result. Weak support for Mr. Biden could easily manifest itself as low turnout — as it did in 2022 — even if many young and less engaged voters ultimately do not vote for Mr. Trump...

Issues like abortion and threats to democracy may also do less to guard against additional losses among Black and Hispanic voters, who tend to be more conservative than white Biden voters. They may also do less to satisfy voters living paycheck to paycheck: Mr. Biden is underperforming most among nonwhite voters making less than $100,000 per year, at least temporarily erasing the century-old tendency for Democrats to fare better among lower-income than higher-income nonwhite voters.

The risk for Republicans in nominating Trump is real: he has proven his ability to turn off Independents and suburban women voters time and again, and his presence on the ballot allows the Democrats to inflame their supporters and motivates harsher opposition. But the risk for Democrats running with Biden are real, too -- he's unpopular, he gets more blame than credit for the economy, and his age is turning into an issue just as big as any indictment they throw at Trump. And lest we forget, he's likely going to be impeached, too...

Secretaries of State target Trump

An underlying backup argument against the former president among NeverTrump circles and in some corners of legal academia, but mostly just confined to the conversations of Democrat partisans, has been the possibility of using the 14th Amendment to keep Trump from being listed on the ballot in certain states. According to a new Politico report, this has been an item of serious discussion among top Democratic Secretaries of State: 

The idea of barring former President Donald Trump from seeking the presidency on grounds that it would violate the 14th Amendment may be an increasingly catchy constitutional argument pushed by a segment of legal scholars and activists.

But it turns out election officials have been discussing how to handle it for months.

“We have been thinking about this in my office for quite some time, before the start of the year, assuming that this will play out,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in an interview.

Underscoring the seriousness with which she has been treating the topic, Griswold noted that “there have been conversations among secretaries” about it.

The legal theory argues Trump is constitutionally disqualified from running for president under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause,” which states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to defend the Constitution is forbidden from holding public office.

The theory has rarely been tested in modern times, creating a significant degree of uncertainty around who even has the ability to make the determination on whether Trump should be kept off the ballot — let alone what legally is considered “an insurrection or rebellion.”

However, even Trump foes don't agree with this line of reasoning. Here's Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, no fan of DJT, who calls the idea one that would reinforce arguments an election was "rigged and corrupt":

The 14th Amendment was a product of the Reconstruction era, immediately following the Civil War. It was written to keep former Confederate officials and leaders from regaining power by holding public office, and historians have questioned whether it was meant as a permanent standard. It went nearly unused after the 1870s until September 2022, when a state judge in New Mexico removed a county commissioner who participated in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Attempts to invoke Section 3 against the candidacies of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn failed. Each of the cases required a decision in the courts. But activists are urging secretaries of state like me to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot unilaterally.

Invoking the 14th Amendment is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box. Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn’t work. Stacey Abrams’s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump’s after the 2020 election.

One more thing

It's still early yet, but not too early to talk about Veeps. Shelby Talcott has a list of the different possible vice presidential picks from a Donald Trump renomination. It's a fine list, but most of these people would add little or nothing to a Trump ticket. While the likeliest choice is Kristi Noem of South Dakota -- someone who is telegenic, capable, and moderate in tone even if she has social conservative critics -- it's possible that Trump goes more loyalist (Byron Donalds has reportedly risen during his strong defense on camera) or more moderate (Nancy Mace is a dark horse candidate who could appeal to suburban women). Whatever the case, he seems likely to avoid going the Mike Pence route: picking someone who will push their own conservative staff into place, prioritizing capability and ideology over Trump's insistence on loyalty above all else.