So here's something the Biden administration knows down to their very core yet the press refuses to acknowledge: THE RACE DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER RIGHT NOW. On the 2024 timeline? Rather than the 2016 timeline? That video won't be out for another five months. Whatever the polls are? Whatever the Twitter leftists are saying? Whatever dumb shit Fox News is pushing? None of it is going to matter in the moment, which is pretty much about what voters have in their brains in September and October. By the time the Republicans anointed Trump at the 2016 convention, he was an inevitability. But at this stage in the game he was a longshot. Back then he hadn't been impeached twice, wasn't facing 91 felonies, hadn't been responsible to an absolutely abysmal pandemic and civil rights response, wasn't widely regarded as fomenting a coup for his own personal interests, etc. And he was running against one of the most polarizing Democrats of the past 50 years. I have no idea what the 2024 election is going to look like. In my casual estimation there are more variables and unknowns than any election since the Civil War. But I also agree with Claudia Sahm's insight that everyone's dissatisfaction with their standard of living right now is anchored to pre-COVID, not pre-Biden, and a full calendar year of stability and a return to normalcy is likely to have more impact on turnout than Ramaswamy for VP or whatever. In general? When you're displeased with your party you don't vote. This is one of the reasons the Democrats are rending their shirts over October 7 - the only thing the Biden administration can do is labor heroically behind the scenes to make the news less bad. But if it's nine months from now, Ukraine has held the line against the Russians, the Middle East hasn't exploded in racial conflagrations and gas, housing and food continue to normalize? Democrats are likely to come out despite their protestations on Twitter and Republicans are likely to stay home. Biden was in Boebert's district yesterday. He delivered a speech in which he pointed out he'd brought the district $200m in funding and 850 new jobs, despite Boebert calling him a traitor and voting against everything three times. Boebert won her last election by 546 out of more than 300,000 votes cast. Anyone prognosticating on the race at this point has a story to sell, not an insight to share.