Resolves based on the consensus of three moderators (me and Joshua and Semiotic), based on the interview itself and media reactions.
An example of a 'perform very well' performance would be the Biden vs Ryan VP 2012 debate.
Criteria open to clarification/mild adjustements in the first few hours after market creation if suggestions are made!
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Based on our personal impressions, Biden did significantly better than during the debate. He was more able to list his accomplishments and make his arguments without pausing or falling into incoherence. But the confused sentences and non-answers fit into "many mistakes" and "poor impression", and and it didn't reassure us about his fitness for the office.
The media reaction was along the same lines. So we're resolving this to the third option. "He'll make many mistakes, giving a poor impression, but still perform somewhat better than the debate."
From ABC: was "It wasn't as bad as last thursday, but certainly not great".
Other headlines quotes:
President Joe Biden’s first televised interview since last week’s debate meltdown did little to stop the bleeding.”
Biden’s ABC interview does nothing to quell the existential crisis around his campaign
Biden’s ABC Interview Was a Necessary Appointment With the Public — and a Botched One
Biden faced a low bar in his first post-debate interview. It’s not certain he cleared it
While his interview performance was far stronger than the president’s often incoherent showing at the CNN debate in Atlanta, that’s not saying much. It did not contain any new disasters that would push him immediately out of the race. But it equally did little to quell the storm assailing his campaign and raised fresh intrigue about his health amid increasing signs his Democratic power base is beginning to crack.
Biden compounded those doubts by seeming unsure about whether he’d watched a playback of the debate – “I don’t think so, no,” he said when asked if he’d watched the event – and other moments in which he trailed off in some sentences.
“He was more animated and made a strong case for what he has done. But the question the debate raised is about his fitness for the next four years, not his performance in the past four years,” said David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic operative who helped lead Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “And he simply doesn’t acknowledge that concern. He also is in denial about where he is in this race.”
Most of Biden’s responses in the interview were in that vein—a little meandering, demanding of recognition, presented far more lucidly than he had managed on the debate stage, but not with the kind of nimble, commanding presence that would silence the chorus of Democrats who want him to step aside.
Biden’s repeated dismissals and refusal to seriously address concerns about his age and mental acuity struck many Democrats watching the interview closely. A Democratic official who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign said it appears Biden’s team “isn’t being straight with him, and that’s dangerous.”
Within 30 seconds, Stephanopoulos was asking a follow-up question: Biden said he was exhausted, and while Stephanopoulos allowed that the President had undergone a month of busy travel, he’d been back on east coast time for several days before the debate. Listening to this set of facts, Biden allowed his face to go into an expression familiar from the debate he was trying to erase from public memory. His eyes, on camera, looked into a distance unfamiliar; his mouth hung slackly open. Anyone who has been lucky enough to have relatives live into old age recognizes this expression, and recalls it with no small amount of pain, too.
... And it was carried across with the same unsteady tone that is newly familiar to viewers. When, describing the stresses he is under, Biden said, “Not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world,” viewers’ hearts may have stopped for a moment; Biden went on to clarify his statement, but a certain facility with words is simply gone.
Biden took eight days of preparation to give ABC News 22 minutes of screen time. It wasn’t enough. How much more preparation would have been? Or how much shorter should they have whittled down the interview? Part of the job of a party’s nominee, and of a President, is to put forward the case in all kinds of settings, to reach all kinds of people, both voters and stakeholders from lawmakers to other world leaders. Biden’s debate performance has certainly traveled widely, and he deserved the chance to clear the air. But, in giving him 22 minutes in which he spoke in an occluded and often resentful and sarcastic manner, it seemed apparent that Biden is unwilling, and — crucially — unable to make a case for himself.
Elsewhere, Biden seemed to live in a bubble. And it was within this bubble that he spoke most plainly, most clearly
But he needed to do much more than clear the incredibly low bar he set on national television last week. And the ABC interview had several examples of awkward pauses, garbled words and moments where he meandered. In one of the opening answers of the interview, Biden struggled to explain clearly whether he was aware of how bad his debate performance was as it was happening in real time. He jumped from his preparation to polling to Trump’s lies during the debate to not blaming anyone.
Thinking back on the options, I think some universes would've had ambiguous resolutions and I'll use this experience to write clearer options in the future!
Biden did fine IMO.
But the interview questions were actually very soft IMO, in the following sense. Sticking to just one topic meant that Biden could go on autopilot/stick to prep and his cognitive abilities weren't really tested.
I think it makes more sense to have another market for that https://manifold.markets/Odoacre/will-biden-drop-out-of-the-election-n8n4sact41
No criteria for what counts as a mistake either. Bar could be anywhere, from making an actual factual error to mumbling a word - whatever the mods decide.
Interesting market, but unfortunately I'm way too scared to put any mana on a subjective market that resolves based on Semiotic's opinion of anything US Politics related. Not a diss on him but we would probably disagree on literally everything subjective. Imo this should be decided by people who were pro-Biden nomination before and only started doubting after the debate.
(in my personal capacity, not as a market owner or moderator)
I'm curious what's a specific thing you think you disagree with semi on? I know you're a destiny guy, I asked him and he "has watched destiny and finds him very reasonable on most things", we both feel like you'll mostly line up in opinions
I admit it's just my vibe from other markets and a few resolution discussions in the past. I follow him and almost every time I see him in any market position tab it's the opposite position from mine.
Anyways just my 2 cents about my own confidence to put mana on a subjective market, and as I said, not a diss. It's my position on the debate performance itself that would currently be considered rather extreme on this site. I didn't think it was catastropic, and Trump did worse than Biden with the constant outrageous lies. Thus I am being extra careful with this sort of markets.
(Also I haven't really watched destiny for a while. I do frequent his subreddit but my last knowledge of his position on Biden/Dem nominations is from 2023)
I was actually very surprised by Biden's poor debate performance and I've spent some time argued he's mentally mostly fine for the past year, although I did think dems were better off with another candidate anyway on account of his age. And neither jray nor tumbles are mods lol