Thread by @Cobretata

The question hanging over this whole election has been whether voters who aren't already committed partisans are willing to make it purely a referendum on Donald Trump, with an invisible generic Democrat as the alternative.

It worked for Biden for a while because people are angry and frightened over the coronavirus, and because Trump does tend to make himself the center of attention. The first debate is really the moment when voters will decide if the Generic Democrat is an acceptable alternative.

I don't think that game will work for much longer. One reason for tightening polls is that people are working through bad feelings about Trump, driven by saturation anti-Trump media coverage, and starting to wonder what the alternative really is. That's very bad for Biden.

The electorate changes over the course of generations, so maybe this has changed too, but in the past it's always been tough to make presidential races pure referendums on the incumbent. It's been tried, and sometimes the incumbent looks vulnerable in early polls.

But eventually people start asking about who the other guy is, and what he's planning to do, and what forces he would bring into the White House with him. The incumbent is seen in a new light as the challenger's weaknesses are considered. Voters update their scorecards.

Even the elder George Bush didn't lose in a pure thumbs-down referendum on the incumbent. He had Perot splitting the vote and Clinton hustling hard to sell himself as the "Man from Hope." If Clinton ran like Biden is running now, it probably wouldn't have worked.

The big issue in this election is still the return to normalcy, and if Biden stays in the basement, it will be much harder for him to sell himself as the one who can deliver it. Dems aren't helping with their apocalyptic freak-outs over the Supreme Court.

Right at the moment when Biden's trying to cap off the Democrat campaign of domestic terrorism - vote for us and the cities won't burn any more - the rest of his party is howling threats to pack the Supreme Court or start ignoring it, hotwire the Senate, blow up the system.

Dems are making it harder to sell themselves as the return to normal, and it will be exceptionally difficult for Biden to do that if he stays invisible and counts on a pure anti-Trump referendum vote to carry the election. Hard to close the deal without talking to the customer.

Think of it this way: at some point, people have heard all they want to hear about, or from, the incumbent. They turn to the challenger... and if they hear silence, nonsense, or mumbles, they turn back to the incumbent, who gets that precious chance to close the deal. /end