Lucky

[South Dakota Democrat]

Anyone read the book Lucky:  How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency?  If so, thoughts?

[GP270watch]

Have not read the book but Biden has had a lot of bad luck in his life. I was very happy he defeated Trump and I thought about all the hardships he endured and how improbable it is that he is President at this time and moment.

 What is the premise of the book?

[Tender Branson]

Hilldog should also have been that lucky in the 1st place, but it’s better that Biden won the Presidency by a couple ten thousand or so votes than having 2 Trump terms ...

[DaleCooper]

I've been slowly reading it. You can tell the book was a bit rushed to come out as soon as possible after the election, so it's not as well written as it should be, but there's still a lot of fantastic information in it about both the primary and the general election. It's always tough to know what kind of hindsight bias effects these types of books, but it all seems pretty believable to me so far.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Are there any interesting stories from the primary?  I loved the original Game Change, and the 2012 version Double Down was weaker but had its moments.  Shame Mark Halperin turned out to be a creepazoid so we never got a 2016 or 2020 version.

[emailking]

Have not read the book but Biden has had a lot of bad luck in his life. I was very happy he defeated Trump and I thought about all the hardships he endured and how improbable it is that he is President at this time and moment.

 What is the premise of the book?

I think it's mostly about how the stars aligned for him to win the Primary, based on interviews I heard with the authors a few weeks ago.

[sguberman]

Are there any interesting stories from the primary?  I loved the original Game Change, and the 2012 version Double Down was weaker but had its moments.  Shame Mark Halperin turned out to be a creepazoid so we never got a 2016 or 2020 version.

Actually Heilemann is writing a book for 2020
https://deadline.com/2020/11/showtime-john-heilemanns-book-2020-election-joe-biden-1234635507/

[sguberman]

One thing in the book I thought was kind of interesting was that Bernie was actually pretty reluctant to run in 2018 he only wanted to run if he could win, he had concerns his age would be a problem, and he didn't decide to run until late 2018/early 2019. Also AOC was a bit reluctant to endorse Bernie cause she had concerns he wouldn't win.

[sguberman]

The book definitely reveals a lot of new information especially about Bernie's heart attack and the Iowa caucus but there were also quite a few omissions on some topics such as RBG's death, Tara Reade, and the process that was behind Bernie dropping out.

[sguberman]

Also the primary basically ends on Super Tuesday except for a lone moment discussing a meeting Biden had on the night of the March 17th primaries.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Biden is certainly very lucky to be the stop Bernie candidate who won Massachusetts without even a campaign there, winning the general because of covid, and taking office just as vaccines were ramping up.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I have it's got interesting anecdotes but a lot of the asserations aren't gone over in much detail and far too often lapses into larping into the minds of a canidate. It's clear that the authors had good sources in the Warren and Sanders Campagin, so-so sources in the Biden Camp and basicaly non-existent sources elsewhere.

Again interesting bits of gossip but the analysis is banal and not much insight that radicaly changes the picture we saw from the campagin.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Biden is certainly very lucky to be the stop Bernie candidate who won Massachusetts without even a campaign there, winning the general because of covid, and taking office just as vaccines were ramping up.

Lmao, the moderate lane was far more split than ever with bloomberg randomly dropping in to steal biden's lane with a billion dollars. You can give every Warren vote to Sanders and nothing would have changed.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Have not read the book but Biden has had a lot of bad luck in his life. I was very happy he defeated Trump and I thought about all the hardships he endured and how improbable it is that he is President at this time and moment.

 What is the premise of the book?

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=431844.0

Lol we had a thread on the book last month

I listened to the book and have so far gotten to the end of the primary in the book a few noteworthy things that caught my eye:

-Bernie was initially reluctant to run and he only wanted to run if he could win
-Warren was planning on running and starting a resistance to Trump before Clinton even conceded
-Biden was so shocked by the busing incident from Harris that he forgot what he was supposed to say and Harris had no idea how well she went until she met with her staffers afterwards
-Bernie's staffers such as Weaver and Rocha thought that Bernie may drop out after the heart attack
-On the night of the Iowa caucus, only the Buttigieg campaign's precinct captain gave them any real data so only they knew anything important
-Rocha and Weaver actually were originally disappointed with how Bernie was doing with Latinos when the Nevada caucus was occurring
-Buttigieg's senior advisors told him the night of South Carolina it was time to drop out and even before his breakfast with Jimmy Carter knew it was the end
-In Alabama Klobuchar planned to meet with Buttigieg to discuss the state of the race but the meeting didn't go thru do to Buttigieg's plane being delayed
-Bloomberg's senior aides thought that he should drop out before Super Tuesday
-Bernie's internal polling had them up in Maine, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma and competitive in Minnesota, Virginia, and North Carolina

A few tidbits from my read through-

*Warren and Klobuchar hate each other.
*Warren’s surge really spooked the Sanders campaign.
*Hillary seriously considered jumping in the race around November 2019.
*The Klobuchar/Buttigieg feud wasn’t as bad as the media made it out to be.
*Obama did not think that Buttigieg could beat Trump.

A few things that stand out

-Biden was deeply hurt Obama didn't want him to run in 2016 and Obama even told aides he was afraid that Biden would embarrass them both

-Obama really liked Beto O'Rouke and preferred he had won the nomination

-Sanders also knew he wanted to run since Hillary lost but also hesitated. He would only run if he knew he could win.

-The Sanders campaign did think they could win unlike 2016, but knew from the start they would lose a head to head race and their victory depended on a divided field going into the convention.

-Warren and Buttigieg both thought they could win outright, but Klobuchar and Bloomberg were hoping to be compromise candidates at a contested convention

-When Sanders had the heart attack, all his campaign aides thought he was going to drop out. Instead, he seemed more energized in the hospital and that surprised them.

-Harris was gunning for VP since the start.  Only after the whole busing comment at the first debate did she think she had a chance.

[bagelman]

-Biden was deeply hurt Obama didn't want him to run in 2016 and Obama even told aides he was afraid that Biden would embarrass them both

-Obama really liked Beto O'Rouke and preferred he had won the nomination

WOW. If Biden had won rather than Hillary and invested in Ohio we could have at the very least avoided a world where Mahoning and Lorain counties turned red. Obama went elitist instead and backed Clinton, then Beto who embarrassed himself in 2019. Fuck you Borat Obummer!!

[South Dakota Democrat]

Have not read the book but Biden has had a lot of bad luck in his life. I was very happy he defeated Trump and I thought about all the hardships he endured and how improbable it is that he is President at this time and moment.

 What is the premise of the book?

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=431844.0

Lol we had a thread on the book last month

I listened to the book and have so far gotten to the end of the primary in the book a few noteworthy things that caught my eye:

-Bernie was initially reluctant to run and he only wanted to run if he could win
-Warren was planning on running and starting a resistance to Trump before Clinton even conceded
-Biden was so shocked by the busing incident from Harris that he forgot what he was supposed to say and Harris had no idea how well she went until she met with her staffers afterwards
-Bernie's staffers such as Weaver and Rocha thought that Bernie may drop out after the heart attack
-On the night of the Iowa caucus, only the Buttigieg campaign's precinct captain gave them any real data so only they knew anything important
-Rocha and Weaver actually were originally disappointed with how Bernie was doing with Latinos when the Nevada caucus was occurring
-Buttigieg's senior advisors told him the night of South Carolina it was time to drop out and even before his breakfast with Jimmy Carter knew it was the end
-In Alabama Klobuchar planned to meet with Buttigieg to discuss the state of the race but the meeting didn't go thru do to Buttigieg's plane being delayed
-Bloomberg's senior aides thought that he should drop out before Super Tuesday
-Bernie's internal polling had them up in Maine, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma and competitive in Minnesota, Virginia, and North Carolina

A few tidbits from my read through-

*Warren and Klobuchar hate each other.
*Warren’s surge really spooked the Sanders campaign.
*Hillary seriously considered jumping in the race around November 2019.
*The Klobuchar/Buttigieg feud wasn’t as bad as the media made it out to be.
*Obama did not think that Buttigieg could beat Trump.

A few things that stand out

-Biden was deeply hurt Obama didn't want him to run in 2016 and Obama even told aides he was afraid that Biden would embarrass them both

-Obama really liked Beto O'Rouke and preferred he had won the nomination

-Sanders also knew he wanted to run since Hillary lost but also hesitated. He would only run if he knew he could win.

-The Sanders campaign did think they could win unlike 2016, but knew from the start they would lose a head to head race and their victory depended on a divided field going into the convention.

-Warren and Buttigieg both thought they could win outright, but Klobuchar and Bloomberg were hoping to be compromise candidates at a contested convention

-When Sanders had the heart attack, all his campaign aides thought he was going to drop out. Instead, he seemed more energized in the hospital and that surprised them.

-Harris was gunning for VP since the start.  Only after the whole busing comment at the first debate did she think she had a chance.

Sorry, I didn't want to create redundant threads.  I looked for another thread on this topic but couldn't find it, must have missed it.

[brucejoel99]

-Obama really liked Beto O'Rouke and preferred he had won the nomination

Not really that, he was just "enamored" with O'Rourke at first but it was moreso just being intrigued by what he saw as opposed to actually being in his corner & wanting to see him go all the way. After Beto bottomed out, he then went through a Kamala phase & then put on that "ready for Warren (if need be)" shtick before coming home to Biden after SC.

-The Biden campaign was incredibly incompetent for most of 2019

Didn't need a book to tell us that

-Harris was gunning for VP since the start.  Only after the whole busing comment at the first debate did she think she had a chance.

Nah, the only one who was really gunning for VP from the start was Klobuchar. The book even explicitly stated that Kamala only made the busing comment in the first place because she'd calculated that she was running to actually win the presidential nomination, not to just wind-up as VP.

-The Buttigieg campaign were the ones who demanded CNN nix the Seltezer Iowa poll the Saturday before the caucus. They called CNN and said they would sue if released. The poll had them at 3rd and it would hurt them.

I think you're confusing that story with the one of Biden's team (Anita Dunn, specifically) threatening legal action against the IA Democratic Party if they released any partial results on caucus night when that particular meltdown was happening. Buttigieg's team (Lis Smith, specifically) wasn't threatening to sue CNN if they still put the Selzer poll out, just making it very clear that they would publicly question the veracity/validity of the poll due to the information that they had about the potential compromising thereof.

[Thank you for being a friend...]

I just got this from the library and will start reading it soon... but I don't think the title is that great. 

I think it should be more favorable to Joe.  I mean it's very rare when a President is kicked out after one term, and the turnout was through the roof and he did manage to win Arizona and Georgia, but it was a close election.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

A few tidbits from my read through-

*Warren and Klobuchar hate each other.
*Warren’s surge really spooked the Sanders campaign.
*Hillary seriously considered jumping in the race around November 2019.
*The Klobuchar/Buttigieg feud wasn’t as bad as the media made it out to be.
*Obama did not think that Buttigieg could beat Trump.

Unsurprising that they hated eachother. Klobuchar’s campaign was the antithesis of the politics Warren was fighting for: “moderation for moderation’s sake”. Klob also took a lot of cheap shots at her with her “pipe-dream” comments. Warren showed a lot of restraint, cause a Bernie or a Trump would have hit back declaring her entire campaign and idea of being President as a pipe-dream.

Bernie’s people were right to be spooked. If not for Klobuchat & Buttigieg training all of their fire for a month on Warren instead of Biden, she likely would’ve been the nominee and (sadly) lost in November. Really the only reason Biden won the nomination in the end is because the other campaigns wrongly assumed he’d collapse on his own and did nothing to try and knock him off the front-runner pedestal in the debates.

A few things that stand out

-Biden was deeply hurt Obama didn't want him to run in 2016 and Obama even told aides he was afraid that Biden would embarrass them both

-Obama really liked Beto O'Rouke and preferred he had won the nomination

-Sanders also knew he wanted to run since Hillary lost but also hesitated. He would only run if he knew he could win.

-The Sanders campaign did think they could win unlike 2016, but knew from the start they would lose a head to head race and their victory depended on a divided field going into the convention.

-Warren and Buttigieg both thought they could win outright, but Klobuchar and Bloomberg were hoping to be compromise candidates at a contested convention

-When Sanders had the heart attack, all his campaign aides thought he was going to drop out. Instead, he seemed more energized in the hospital and that surprised them.

-Harris was gunning for VP since the start.  Only after the whole busing comment at the first debate did she think she had a chance.

I still hold that ObamaWorld’s support and fascination with Beto was a hinderance more than a help. Obama alums flooding into Beto’s orbit and taking control of his campaign away from the aids who ran with him in ‘18 completely changed the type of candidate he was. Instead of being the guy running on his principles and saying what he thought he started waffling and trying to be the “unity” candidate; which, suffice to say, is a hard lane to run in because then you have no natural constituency in the party.

[sguberman]

One thing I forgot to mention was how close the Democratic Convention came to be somewhat of a disaster. Obama barely made it to the American Revolution Museum to give his speech and Kerry Washington almost couldn't host the night she was hosting because one of the staffers at her location tested positive for Covid-19.

[South Dakota Democrat]

I finished the book a few days ago.  Overall, I liked it, although small inaccuracies (such as referring to Maine's 2nd congressional district as Maine's 1st congressional district, and inaccurately asserting that Biden won Luzerne County) annoy me.