When Will Barack O’Bama Endorse Joe Biden?
There is a little scuff-up happening right now in PredictIt’s market for when and if President O’Bama will endorse Joe Biden.
I personally am in love with this market because it is a total mess of sloppy rules and coronavirus panic, plus it has a thin pile of data to support a conclusion. It is just one big cocktail party where everyone has enough information to be dangerous.
First of all, I would like to pat myself on the back for predicting that this market would be a fail for anyone who thought the DNC would happen on time. Savage pick by the Keendawg and I suspect that donkeys are being rescued all over America right now with the absolute gusher of cash this has set-off. But this blog is only as good as its last prediction, so we move on.
The first things I would want to know about a bet on when a former President will endorse his party’s candidate is when former presidents usually smash the “Deploy political capital NOW” button. So I made this nifty chart of when recent presidents/past nominees have done this:
| Year | George W Bush | Bill Clinton | Barack Obama | John McCain |
| 2004 | x | July 27 | x | x |
| 2008 | March 5 | June 7 | x | x |
| 2012 | March 5 | September 6 | x | January 4 |
| 2016 | x | June 9 | June 9 | x |
Reverse-engineering this to that date in history, you will quickly realize that these endorsements are either designed to have maximum impact in the primaries, or they coincide with when a party’s nominee mathematically clinches the trophy.
The worst case scenario, which I personally was horrified about, was one where a savage rules cuck happens due to a former president withholding the nom until after the keynote speech at the convention. There isn’t a strong precedent in recent history for that. So I honestly think that the ending to this bet is more obvious than the ending to an episode of Star Trek. Basically all the series regulars on PredictIt are going to get off this planet with a win and the random fringe guys making guest appearances in this episode and will get hosed. Fear not though, you are on Star Spangled Gamblers and we are going to tell you how to be a winner.
Barack Obama will endorse Biden on the date that he reaches 1,991 delegates, as he did for Hillary in 2016.
And right now, every single primary is scheduled to conclude by June 23. So the only argument for this resolving NO would be if coronavirus panic either causes:
- The remaining primaries + the DNC to move back farther.
- O’Bama to think that he should withhold his endorsement until a better news cycle.
I honestly think that there is a lower chance of #2 happening than there is of Trump taking out his hair extensions during one of his bonkers press conferences. So really the only reason to buy NO is if you think the whole primary calendar will get pushed.
IMO that prediction gets a fat zero. As I have said repeatedly on podcasts and in this blog, the Dem primary will just switch over to mail-in.
A final argument for why the DNC will not slip farther into the fall is this: the Democratic Party doesn’t have time to dick around while Trump’s campaign is on the move. They need to be in attack mode and not, “should we cancel our rager in Milwaukee” mode.
This one is easy
We should be looking at a 75/25 market here. Those are my odds.
KEENDAWG
