Should we trust the decision of Biden's campaign more?

[ProgressiveModerate]

In 2020 for instance, in hindsight it seems like both campaigns had a better understanding of the true electoral picture than most pundits ever did. This could be seen in a state like Nevada which got relatively a lot of spending in 2020 even as most pundits wrote it off as likely D - the state ended only voting for Biden by 2% and swung right from 2016. It seems like both Biden and Trump teams knew it was in play.

In a recent 2024 thread, I saw some people complain about the Biden campaign spending money in Florida and Texas - but why don't we just trust the campaign knows what they're doing and is doing this because they believe it'll be a good investment, likely based on a lot of data and research that isn't available to us. It might not even be to win the state Presidentially but rather to try and win some other downballot races - we saw something similar where both campaigns spent a decent amount on Maine media markets for the Senate race.

Why do we - random folks on a political forum mostly with no real political experience act like we know better?

[Lambsbread]

Why do we - random folks on a political forum mostly with no real political experience act like we know better?

Well, this is the internet after all

[GAinDC]

In most cases, we don’t know better, but we have a right to share our opinions

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

How dare you suggest life long professionals have more insight into their field then internet hobbyists!

[Bush did 311]

Hillary wasted every cent she spent on Texas. Beto couldn't win it and Biden has a 600,000 vote hole to climb out of which is unlikely in a single cycle.

I do think Biden's campaign is much more competent than Hillary's. He spent all of election day covering every corner of PA in 2020 so he clearly knew what was up. We'll see though.

[Mehmentum]

Campaign staff are fallible, and you're never going to get closer to the truth by blindly assuming they're doing everything optimally.  See Clinton 2016 for a campaign full of experienced professionals that bellyflopped.  It's also just not fun to unquestioningly follow the campaigns.

At the same time, you're right that the campaigns have access to far more information and expertise than we do.  We shouldn't assume that they're making mistakes without considering the possibility that they know something we don't, or are taking other actions we don't know about.

For example, I heard a lot of criticism when the campaign talked about the polls being unreliable.  A lot of people were saying that the Biden campaign was complacent and putting their heads in the sand.  But of course public messaging about strategy doesn't always reflect the campaigns real beliefs about strategy.  No campaign wants to go out and say 'yeah, people hate us'.  It's possible that the Biden people are high in their own supply, but you need to look deeper into the behavior of the campaign to answer that.  

The investment in Texas and Florida could be evidence to back this up.  On the other hand we don't know how much they're putting in these states and if that money really could be more effectively spent in an oversaturated battleground state.  We've also seen Biden be very active on the campaign trail vs. running a rose garden campaign.

[Progressive Pessimist]

They seem to be doing everything right if you ask me. They're heeding warnings and not taking anything for granted while having a coherent message that's both affirmative and anti-Trump.

I personally trust them, and always knew I would be able to.

[Gustaf]

Just want to note that there is a little unfairness in saying the Biden campaign was smarter than the Clinton campaign - most people, including the Trump campaign themselves, did not anticipate the Trump 2016 performance. 2020 on the other hand was easy to extrapolate from 2016 so it was easier to analyze that election correctly.

[wbrocks67]

No campaign is infallible but I will say that the Biden campaign made it known in 2020 that the races were tighter than public polling suggested, and they were right. I remember they did some type of Zoom call or something where they actually released some of their internal polling (or averages, at least) for some states and most of it IIRC was closer than the public polling at the time.