Fallout from Biden’s Brain, Oh No El Nino & Conventionally Unwise - Top 3 Takeaways – February 13th, 2024
- The fallout continues. Yesterday my top takeaway was about what this week would have to say about who we are in this country today. Most specifically my top interest this week is in how the average American reacts to knowing that ‘Ole Joe doesn’t even know when he was vice president, when his son died (or based on his own public accounts about where and how he died either) and that he isn’t being tried for crimes because he’s effectively not mentally fit to stand trial. Yesterday we began to get a bit of the picture. ABC News produced the first accredited poll with a completely post-Biden brain news sample. What is clear is that the fallout from the event is real and the impact of it is likely to continue. The first related note is this nugget. While Robert Hur decided not to pursue criminal charges against President Biden for his extensive illegal possession and distribution of classified documents – including Top Secret material because he’s a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory... The public isn’t so forgiving. 4% more Americans surveyed believe that President Biden should be charged for the crimes that he was documented to have committed than not. The news generally was worse for the president from there. ABC found 86% of Americans surveyed said Joe Biden is too old to be reelected president – a number which now includes 73% of self-identified Democrats who say ‘Ole Joe’s too old. The news wasn’t great for Trump either on that note as 62% say that he’s too old be reelected president, however, the news here is clear. More Americans than not feel that President Biden should be pursued with criminal charges and nearly nine out ten voters now feel that he’s too old to be reelected regardless. How does that compare to previous perspectives? The last time ABC News surveyed on the age question was in September when 74% of Americans said Joe Biden was too old to serve another term. That means the initial impact from Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s report, and President Biden’s botched presser where he did more to confirm mental health concerns than he did to address them, is that an additional 12% of Americans now view Joe as being too old to elect again. This has created the closest thing we’ve seen in modern politics to a consensus opinion on a major party presidential candidate. When almost the entire voting populous including nearly 3/4ths of your own party think you’re too old to do the job and more Americans think you should be criminally charged than not...it’s safe to say that the fallout regarding the news of the state of Biden’s brain continues.
- Don’t Go El Nino. A year ago, I was excitedly saying goodbye to La Nina and hello to El Nino, as meteorological forecasting was showing a strong likelihood that the El Nino weather pattern would be in place in time for last year’s hurricane season. As I said at the time... When it comes to the Atlantic Hurricane season, the La Nina effect is the ultimate hurricane incubator. La Nina patterns bring cooler surface temperatures to the Pacific Ocean while doing just the opposite in the Atlantic. And along with warmer surface temperatures in the Atlantic, comes less windshear as well. For the better part of the past eight years and eight hurricane seasons La Nina stirred the meteorological pot. About a month ago we conclusively knew that we’d finally be saying goodbye to La Nina, but what was unclear was whether the weather pattern would be neutral or whether we’d be seeing El Nino – the pattern which brings warmer surface temps to the Pacific, with cooler surface temps to the Atlantic along with a whole lot of windshear. The question no longer appears to be about whether we’ll have El Nino this hurricane season, but about simply how strong it will be for the back half of hurricane season. That’s the best news we’ve had in a preseason hurricane season forecast in eight years. So, goodbye La Nina and hello El Nino. And as we know, it was the calmest hurricane season on the east coast of Florida in eight years as we were never under even so much as a tropical storm watch during the entirety of last year’s hurricane season. All told we’ve experienced the 5th strongest El Nino cycle on record which has accounted for our especially rainy “dry season” most recently. So, here’s the thing. Unfortunately, it looks like you can take what I said last year and reverse it. According to NOAA there’s a 79% chance that El Nino will be gone by the end of June, or the onset of hurricane season, and a 55% chance that La Nina will take its place by the peak of hurricane season. It's clearly not a given as few things in long range meteorological forecasting ever are, however if they’re right we’ll trade our best meteorological friend on the east coast of Florida, for our worst meteorological enemy at the worst time of the year.
- Conventional wisdom is often unwise. A flat earth is the classic example of conventional wisdom being unwise. But it’s far from the only one. Jack Thompson, Chad Pennington, Mitch Trubisky. Know what they have in common? Kudos btw, if you even knew that they all were NFL quarterbacks. Jack Thompson is so obscure, and Mitch Trubisky only isn’t due to time proximity that it wasn’t a given. But anyway, this reference isn’t as much about them as it is about who came after them. In Sunday’s Super Bowl Patrick Mahomes became just the third NFL quarterback to win a minimum of three Super Bowl MVPs – joining Joe Montana and Tom Brady among elite quarterback royalty. It’s well documented that Tom Brady was largely an afterthought as a 6th round NFL draft pick. But what isn’t as widely known is who the perceived top quarterbacks were in the drafts for the other two quarterback legends. Jack Thompson who you’ve likely never heard of even if you’re a long-time NFL fan was the top quarterback taken in the 1979 NFL draft in which San Francisco eventually netted Montana. Chad Pennington, who at least had a credible NFL career, was the top quarterback in Tom Brady’s 2000 NFL draft. Most recently it was Mitch Trubisky who was the top QB choice in Patrick Mahomes’ draft year. Isn’t it interesting that of the three most successful quarterbacks on the biggest stage in NFL history, not one was considered the best quarterback in their draft? It’s yet another reminder that conventional wisdom isn’t often as wise as it may seem. There’s a lot that train of thought might apply to in this wild political presidential election year. Just think about how few prognosticators gave Trump much of a chance at this point in the cycle against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and how good it looked for Trump on this date in 2020...