Here’s where we stand as I write this on March 1, 2024. Polling averages now include some polls concluded in late February.

The electoral college vote, as it stands at the moment, would be 293 for Trump to 245 for Biden.

About the best you can say is that things look bad for Biden, but it is not unequivocally clear that they are not getting worse… If only elections were decided by the second derivative of the vote!

Do I even need to make the case against Trump?

• Climate change is just beginning to impact our homes, our economic livelihoods and our food supply. The impacts we are seeing today are the result of emissions decades ago, and we have not even begun to see the impacts of more recent emissions let alone today’s emissions. We are just on the cusp of starting to bend back the curve of producing more emissions every year, and this progress needs to continue if we are going to see impacts continue to increase, then peak, then finally start to decrease (derivatives again!) We are doing too little, too late, but at least we are doing something. Elect Trump and we will monkey wrench the whole process and set progress back by a decade AGAIN.
• The threat from nuclear weapons (proliferation, use in war, use in terrorism, accidents) is high and getting higher. Trump let key treaties lapse, and electing him will bring this existential threat even closer to reality.
• The United States is not doing so well that it can risk having morons in charge. Trump is just one singular moron, but he will appoint incompetent political hacks to key leadership positions whenever he gets a chance. The U.S. economy and bureaucracy might be able to blunder through four years of business as usual, but throw in one or more serious crises – war, plague, famine, natural disaster, financial/cyber-meltdown – and the hacks will not be able to deal with it. Covid-19 was just a taste of what a really serious crisis could look like. Without competent leadership, our ability to bounce back from a crisis is impaired, and either a succession of smallish crises or a single major crisis could be the one that brings out nation to its knees.