Will there be video evidence strongly implying that Joe Biden regrets dropping out of the presidential race, before the end of his term?
Some things that would make this resolve YES:
Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee
Biden says it was a mistake to drop out
If nothing like this comes out, resolves NO at the end of Biden's term.
Things that wouldn't count (not direct enough):
Biden says top Democrats shouldn't have put pressure on him to drop out
Biden says he wasn't too old to run
I will not bet here.
@traders The description states:
Will there be video evidence strongly implying that Joe Biden regrets dropping out of the presidential race, before the end of his term?
Some things that would make this resolve YES:
Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee
...
Now, the interview does not strongly imply that Biden regrets dropping out. However, he does say he would have won. This is a pretty unfortunate situation, where the spirit of the market contradicts the letter of the market, but given that I stated that this market resolves Yes in that scenario, I feel like that's the only choice here.
When I wrote this question, I thought that Biden saying he would have won strongly shows regret, given that Biden dropped out to give his party a better chance but they still lost. However, he added positive stuff about Harris as well during the quote, making it more ambiguous.
Hello again @traders. Some people have brought up potential issues with the quote, since Biden's (extremely strange) statements right after in the interview muddle the message somewhat. I will be thinking more about how to resolve this over the weekend, in the meantime if anyone has any arguments about how to resolve this please do share them with me
@traders An interview recently came out where Biden states "I think that I... would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump" (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJsdnmp0zps).
As per the description, I will be resolving this to Yes, unless someone can convince me otherwise in the next day or so.
Some things that would make this resolve YES:
Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee
...
@traders The description states:
Will there be video evidence strongly implying that Joe Biden regrets dropping out of the presidential race, before the end of his term?
Some things that would make this resolve YES:
Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee
...
Now, the interview does not strongly imply that Biden regrets dropping out. However, he does say he would have won. This is a pretty unfortunate situation, where the spirit of the market contradicts the letter of the market, but given that I stated that this market resolves Yes in that scenario, I feel like that's the only choice here.
When I wrote this question, I thought that Biden saying he would have won strongly shows regret, given that Biden dropped out to give his party a better chance but they still lost. However, he added positive stuff about Harris as well during the quote, making it more ambiguous.
@bagelfan Resolution to N/A would also be appropriate. There is no way that the interview strongly implies his regret, but as you point out, he did say the words.
@WilliamGunn he'll get bad ratings if he resolves NO, because that would be a resolution directly opposed to the criteria in the description.
@MattP Maybe so, I'm just saying there's a choice between the spirit of the criteria and the way it was written down. Being super literal doesn't have to be the default. I think it's worth questioning that assumption, because others might have assumed it would resolve according to what he obviously meant.
@WilliamGunn This is a great example of how difficult it is to create a market whose resolution won't be controversial.
I want to divest from this market. I didn't expect would be closed for the entire length of time between the interview and resolution date.
Reporter: "Do you regret your decision to run for re-election? Do you think that made it easier for your predecessor to now become your successor?"
Joe Biden: "I don't think so. I think I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump. And I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about..
— Cutting through the gobbledygook —
Reporter Question: does Biden regret running for re-election?
Biden Answer: I don’t think so.
Market Question: does Biden regret dropping out?
Biden answer as I interpret it: I think I would have beaten Trump. Kamala could have beaten Trump. [brain malfunction as he remembers not to trash her] Kamala would have beaten Trump (incoherent nonsense).
He continues to say/imply whether he or Kamala could/would beat Trump wasn’t the issue but rather his issue was the divided party which he maybe sees as stopping both of their chances. That doesn’t make any sense and he can barely communicate it because the actual issue is that he’s experiencing severe cognitive decline which lead to the debate failure which in turn precipitated the party divide and him dropping out. He has enough sense to know he can’t openly talk about his brain melting or imply it’s Kamala’s fault and is delusional about rerunning and beating Trump so it ends up as a confused mess.
Conclusion: He seems regretful but too incoherent to strongly say that while not coherent enough to deftly avoid implying it.
This should be NO and here's why. The wording of the question includes the word "strongly". The inclusion of Kamala in these strange comments (that both he and Kamala would have won) certainly isn't a strong statement. It's a hedging one.
Will there be video evidence strongly implying that Joe Biden regrets dropping out of the presidential race, before the end of his term?
Hello again @traders. Some people have brought up potential issues with the quote, since Biden's (extremely strange) statements right after in the interview muddle the message somewhat. I will be thinking more about how to resolve this over the weekend, in the meantime if anyone has any arguments about how to resolve this please do share them with me
@bagelfan One idea I'd like to float is shoving the quote in front of some LLM and asking it if it thinks the quote in its entirety expresses regret on some scale between 0 to 10. Ask this in two separate chats, one question in the affirmative and one in the negative to ensure it's not trying to 'people please'. If both chat logs express a value that meets whatever critical threshold you think is acceptable, that might guide the resolution of this market.
However, there may be valid criticism of this approach, and I'm ready to get my gut punched with it if anybody has it.
@traders An interview recently came out where Biden states "I think that I... would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump" (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJsdnmp0zps).
As per the description, I will be resolving this to Yes, unless someone can convince me otherwise in the next day or so.
Some things that would make this resolve YES:
Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee
...
@bagelfan Wait, the full quote is
"I think that I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump. And I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. I thought it was important to unify the party."
Mentioning how Kamala could have won appears to show that he was referring to his decision-making process at the time, not regret after the fact.
@AdamK Yes, mentioning Kamala somewhat changes the meaning of his statement (though it is quite confusing, she clearly didn't beat Trump). I agree that it is debatable whether this quote shows regret or not, especially since Biden seems confused while saying it, though I would still argue that it does. However, I had this exact situation in the description as a Yes, so the letter of the market is a Yes.
@bagelfan I think it's important also to address the question he was responding to. The question was not whether he regretted dropping out, the question was "Do you regret your decision to run for re-election? Do you think that made it easier for your predecessor to now become your successor?" I don't really see how his answer to that question is related at all to whether he regrets dropping out, he was simply expressing that he thinks it was reasonable for him to begin his campaign in the first place. It's true that you had "Biden says he would have won had he been the nominee" in the description, but he wasn't talking about what would have happened had he remained the nominee, it was an entirely different discussion.
Also, even more compellingly, the rest of his answer (not quoted above) is "And when the party was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to move-I thought it was-Even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party and it was the greatest honor of my life to be President of the United States but I didn't want to be one who caused a party that wasn't unified to lose an election and that's why I stepped aside. But, I was confident she could win."
If you don't cut off the answer and see it in its entirety, I think it's pretty clear (as clear as it can be considering how Biden talks these days) that he's saying stepping aside was the correct call while still defending being in the race up to that point.
Full press conference with that specific question timestamped here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Su2WXk0r_Q4?si=FSFPzlJTYDt7brvj&t=845
His full response, for those interested:
Reporter: "Do you regret your decision to run for re-election? Do you think that made it easier for your predecessor to now become your successor?"
Joe Biden: "I don't think so. I think I would have beaten Trump, could have beaten Trump. And I think that Kamala could have beaten Trump, would have beaten Trump. It wasn't about...I thought it was important to unify the party. And when the party was worried about whether or not I was gonna be able to move, even though I thought I could win again, I thought it was better to unify the party. It was the greatest honor of my life to be President of the United States, but I didn't want to be the one who caused a party that wasn't unified to lose an election. And that's why I stepped aside, but I was confident she could win."