Over the holiday weekend, Peter Baker wrote a New York Times piece suggesting that the Democrats are healthier than the Republicans because the former are at least discussing getting rid of their flawed presidential nominee. I only saw it just now, via what seems to be an approving reference from Nate Silver in his own typically sharp take on the race.
But Baker’s piece is nuts.
He ventures several possible explanations for why the Democrats have freaked out about Biden’s debate performance while Republicans have not turned on Trump over a New York jury’s votes to convict him. “The disparity says something important about the two major parties 248 years into the American experiment. Mr. Trump has come to thoroughly dominate his party in a way that no president has done in modern times. . . .” “Today’s parties live in radically different universes, interpreting the same fact set through radically different lenses.”
Not until the very last sentence of Baker’s analysis does the blindingly obvious make even a shrouded appearance. He quotes an academic who says that Biden’s debate catastrophe “made people update their beliefs on his probability of success in November.”
Well, yes. Parties that are on the verge of losing, maybe even losing big, tend to get more panicky than parties that are on the verge of winning, maybe even winning big. Who would have guessed?