I normally don’t even want to get involved in posting a drumbeat of “here’s something about Biden staying in the race” stories because, (1) I’m not sure he should, and (2) it doesn’t “cancel out” the waste of time that is the incessant drumbeat of articles about how he should drop out. It’s like taking uppers to counteract downers; it just doesn’t work that way, it makes everything worse. And the amount of press this whole thing is getting and the way it’s being presented is absolutely fuckin absurd.
But that being said, I want to post this one because I like Elizabeth Warren quite a lot and I think what she says gets to the core of the issue.
Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done. And probably not even then.
Biden’s thing of “If you want to replace me then mount a challenge at the convention, that’s what it’s for, and whoever wins, let’s fuckin fight the real enemy” makes quite a bit of sense to me, and the longer this goes on, the less sense the people who are talking to the press about him dropping out make.
So here you go, here’s a story about someone who thinks he should stay in and what she has to say.
It’s all felt like external pressure to me. Trump’s team knows it’s hard for him to beat Biden, so it’s all about undermining him in any way they can.
He’s old, feeble, sundowning, has Parkinson’s, has cancer, constantly forgetting things.
And in the debate? He answered every question in detail and got like two details wrong, while his opponent doubled down on comments that have gotten him impeached and in legal trouble.
But no, let’s talk about the stuttering man who was a little hoarse, and demand his replacement with nobody. After all, they don’t want to push a narrative that defines the replacement candidate, this is all about undermining the opposition.
And if you, reader, think you’re in the crowd of amplifying that, fuck you.
If replacing Biden was the answer to all the Democrats’ problems, all the papers like the NYT that are openly hostile to the Democrats winning the election wouldn’t be pushing it so hard.
It’s not quite that simple, of course. They are not “pushing” it in the sense of sincerely advocating a particular course of action that is realistic, and interviewing the people who are trying to implement that plan of action, as they would if they were sympathetic to the Democrats’ efforts to stop a real fascist dictatorship to come to life in the US, and trying to report on that genuine strategic effort maybe with a little bit of partisan hope that it would work.
They’re just very convincingly imitating this whole panicked concern trolling freak out, to hurt Biden, for reasons of their own. That doesn’t mean he isn’t old as fuck or that that’s not a problem. It could be that going through the total clusterfuck of replacing him as a candidate 4 months before the election might be worth the risk and we’d come into smoother waters successfully before November.
But they’re recommending it with such a shouting in everyone’s face level of forcefulness and repetition and without any particular plan to substitute for him, because they know it will hurt his chances if he stays in, and that replacing him at this point will be a clusterfuck. Not because they sincerely believe it will help. And the Democrats who are buying into and amplifying the strategy free panicked shouting version of it should be ashamed of themselves.
Trump’s team knows it’s hard for him to beat Biden
Lol…wtf…Trump is up 9 points. He’s going to wipe the floor with Biden. On top of that, if the D’s DO run Biden, they might very well lose Congress due to pure apathy and disgust of having to vote for Biden.
Once again, instead of doing the hard thing the Democrats are going to fail in the face of mediocre adversity.
Anyone who uses LOL in a political conversation is not looking for a conversation.
Fuck right off.
It’s easier to write people off for typing lol than it is to refute their argument.
Edit: Trump is unpopular and Biden is still down significantly in the polls. There are options to run other people. Why would you possibly not want to run a candidate that is more likely to win?
I’m getting downvoted in other comments, but nobody is telling me how the polling deficit is good strategy.
Because not one person has identified that candidate. At all.
And I’m done talking to people who want to treat this as a school yard game. I will continue to block people who cannot debate in good faith.
Panicking about this situation does nothing, and that’s mostly what I’m reading. Writing off the government, the process, the country, because Trump is polling well at the moment.
Roe v Wade is this elections spoiler. The country’s future takes the back seat to that because of the pearl clutchers who spend all day online worrying but know nothing about politics.
Change candidates now? Is that new candidate on all the ballots? Are they funded? Or is this just a fantasy?
These are discussions that can be had, but they’re uncomfortable ones because they ended up grounded in reality and details.
These are discussions that can be had, but they’re uncomfortable ones because they ended up grounded in reality and details.
They all end in a Trump victory. The reality is Biden said he wasn’t going to run for a second term, or at least alluded to it when running last time.
His hubris has doomed us all. You can write off the LoLs all you want. The reality is, without some major dramatic action by someone, anyone, Trump wins.
This whole cycle is like watching 2016 all over again. The Democrats are completely dismissing the facts and they’re going to burn us all for their inaction.
No one is on any ballot. Party candidates aren’t nominated until their convention and that determines who’s on the ballot.
You can really tell how liberals don’t actually believe in anything because you see shit like this in their camp.
“…not one person has identified that candidate. At all.”
Unironically posting that as a defense of Biden and somehow pretending this isn’t an indictment on the DNC’s complicity with the Republican Party.
“Roe v Wade is this elections spoiler”
… what? Are you aware who lost it and has done nothing to fight back?
Are we even living in the same reality?
“Change candidates now?”
Again, you’re literally arguing against yourself. What a shining example of liberal cognitive ability.
Let me guess, your next response is “fuck you”
Pathetic.
The uncomfortable reality is Biden’s already bad approval rating will continue to worsen as the election gets closer and his minor flubs add up.
Do you want to tap in somebody else now and get to work or wait until its too late?
Pretending that there’s no possible other candidate doesn’t make it true either. Other candidates haven’t had to lobby delegates at convention since the 60s but the mechanism is in place for that. Another option is for the party to rally behind Kamala who is polling above Biden and who would also have access to previous their tickets campaign funds.
I agree that Roe V Wade is this election’s spoiler and Biden has been doing a lackluster job at drilling into that.
There are options to run other people.
Fucking name them, then! Put up or shut up!
Harris. She is polling better and she has access to the campaign funds. I don’t like either, but I’ll take almost anybody over Trump. I wish people took him seriously enough to run better candidates.
Isn’t voting Biden/Harris the exact same as voting Harris if anything happens to Biden?
Yes and no. It’s the same result if Biden is elected, but if Biden’s name on the ticket is shown to depress voter turnout then he may not get elected in the first place.
Political polling means very little.
It’s amazing how nobody notices that all the Senators and Congress people that support the working class are for Biden staying in. All the big wealthy plutocrats on the other hand want him out.
What, you mean you aren’t deeply concerned about what all the wealthy DNC donors want to have happen? Those guys have always had our backs.
That’s just political machines doing their thing. It’s the same dynamic as the Soviet Politburo propping up Brezhnev long after he’d started drooling on himself on TV.
Don’t blame progressives for any of this shit. The left wanted Biden to not run or have a primary challenger. Now it’s all centrists leaking shit to the New York Times, which is still churning out so many articles about the debate that I have to scroll down to see literally any other news. Whole UK and French elections happened and they’re still giving it top billing.
The Biden stay/go camps don’t divide neatly by left/right. Progressives and neoliberals both want Joe gone; the ones sticking with him, or at least the ones he’s appealing to for support, are the unions and the black caucus, which you can think of as the political machine wing of the Democratic party.
Progressives aren’t doing shit right now. Bernie and AOC have said they’ll support Biden. This is a rat fucking from the establishment, not the left. The NY Times hasn’t published 4001 articles about this because the left wants it.
1 Someone counted 192 several days ago and it’s been more days. I used 400 as hyperbole but it might not be.
Poster X: I am super left!
Poster X: Coincidentally I have the exact same strategy recommendations as the New York Times!
Poster Y: Hey you know Bernie Sanders actually doesn’t agree with you
Poster X: He’s just not left enough! Here are some wealthy DNC donors who agree with me!
Poster Y:
Poster X: I think people on the left should not vote! I am super left!
Poster X is constructed entirely from straw.
Constructed entirely from something, at least
the black caucus
Really? Jim Clyburn has been damning Biden with faint praise, and openly talked about how a replacement should work.
The Biden campaign’s made a big deal out of how no CBC member has openly called for him to step down so far, and they’re actively lobbying them to that end. That’s also why he visited a black church over the weekend in one of his rare bits of campaigning. The calculation is that if all black lawmakers stay the course, the effort to replace Biden can be tarred as racist.
The Biden campaign’s made a big deal out of how no CBC member has openly called for him to step down so far
Hah, right now there’s only like six people who have called for that, so that’s not particularly noteworthy. I’m amazed that article about CBC opinions didn’t mention Clyburn at all. Like he’s kind of an important member who’s been making plenty of statements about the issue.
Clyburn’s comments were intended to lay out a marker. He was signaling that if Biden steps down and the nomination doesn’t go to Harris, he’ll burn the outfit to the ground.
I don’t think the election against Trump is the primary factor for him; he’s simply maneuvering to maximize the tactical influence of the CBC, no matter the outcome. If Biden remains, he will be even more indebted to the CBC than he already was.
Lolwhat
But what does Jimmy Carter have to say?
Decisions like these can’t be trusted to young’uns.
Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done. And probably not even then.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
I think that the winning strategy, rather obviously, is to throw the nomination entirely open and let it work itself out. The exact thing that’s going to inspire the sort of enthusiasm that will steamroll Trump is a very public process by which a nominee is legitimately chosen.
Coming into it with some prepared scheme by which to hopefully force the nomination of a particular candidate is just duplicating the mistakes the DNC made in 2016 and 2020, and it’s all too likely to just end us up right back where we were before the debate - with a disappointed and frustrated base that has to be guilt-tripped into voting for a candidate in whom they don’t believe solely on the strength of them being not-Trump.
Some version of that sounds pretty good, yes. I do think there’s a legitimate conversation to be had about what candidate would be best instead of just “fuck you it’s Biden,” even though the time is pretty fuckin tight at this point. As Biden pointed out, the convention is where that can happen, which would give people time to organize a competitor candidate or two and get their ducks in a row for how to run their challenger.
Since Biden is such an objectively weak candidate that no one supports him anymore and he can’t even put a sentence together, that should be easy to do. Right?
What I, and I think Warren, are objecting to, is the stupid idea that Biden should just respond to the obvious conservative-media thirst for the idea of him dropping out, and play into the Republicans’ hands, and hope that the DNC can come through in a clutch and come up with an alternate plan from scratch without tripping over their dicks and falling down at the critical moment as they are wont to often do.
the obvious conservative-media thirst for the idea of him dropping out
I see no reason to believe that the conservatives want him to drop out, and many reasons to believe they want him to stay in.
There’s absolutely no question that they’re outnumbered. With a fully engaged voting public, they can’t possibly win. Their only hope is to prevent as many people as possible from voting, and discourage as many more as possible.
Additionally, they’ve spent the last four years flogging the “Biden crime family” narrative, so all they have to do against Biden is stay the course. A new candidate would need an entirely new set of oppositional propaganda, and they wouldn’t have much time in which to get it to take root.
I would think that pretty much the last thing in the world they’d want would be for the Democrats to make an 11th hour switch to an entirely different candidate, and quite possibly a candidate who will inspire the sort of enthusiasm Biden’s candidacy is sorely lacking.
and hope that the DNC can come through in a clutch and come up with an alternate plan from scratch without tripping over their dicks and falling down as they are wont to often do.
Now that I agree with pretty much entirely, with only the proviso that, Hanlon’s Razor notwithstanding, I tend to ascribe their failures more to malice than incompetence (though it could be argued that since it appears to boil down to stultifyingly shallow self-interest, it could qualify as just a different sort of incompetence).
I see no reason to believe that the conservatives want him to drop out, and many reasons to believe they want him to stay in.
They sure as fuck have a funny way of showing it
I am referring to the New York Times and CBS News and whatever other crap here, as conservative media. Not the modern meaning of conservative, i.e. Nazi, like Fox News or Newsmax. I’m not sure what they are saying about Biden needing to drop out but I am assuming they are also talking about it, with much of the same self-fulfilling prophecy aspect about it.
I would think that pretty much the last thing in the world they’d want would be for the Democrats to make an 11th hour switch to an entirely different candidate, and quite possibly a candidate who will inspire the sort of enthusiasm Biden’s candidacy is sorely lacking.
My god dude
The enthusiasm you are perceiving or not perceiving is purely media created. You are consuming some made up bullshit and imagining that it corresponds to reality, and that the media will suddenly be excited about this new candidate. They will not. They will find problems with the new candidate just as genuine as Biden’s fuckup of a debate, and if you start wringing your hands at that point about what a big deal it is and how maybe now we need a new candidate that people can get some enthusiasm about, the people that bankroll the media that gave you that idea will laugh and laugh, with pure contempt for you, and with a certain quiet conviction of the sureness of their victory.
As a progressive, it’s so fuckin’ funny to me to see liberals complain about media bias. With the amount of vitriol y’all spread every time we point that out, you should probably find a different tactic if you want sympathy from your left.
And also: I don’t need the media to tell me how uninspiring Biden is to people who think like me. Voting for Hillary in the 2016 general made me feel physically ill and still somehow Biden this election is less inspiring than she was. I’m mainly just exhausted from having bland centrist elites handpicked to be the only choice on my ballot.
Voting for Hillary in the 2016 general made me feel physically ill and still somehow Biden this election is less inspiring than she was.
Hey, funny story. So I was talking to this guy the other day on here, and he was so upset about how the Democratic Party had shifted to the right. And he was talking about during the Bill Clinton years, how he and all his progressive / activist friends were so happy about how Clinton balanced the budget, and how great it was to get a young guy like Clinton in the White House, and it was a shame that his legacy got tarnished when Obama and then Biden came in.
And so I was thinking back on like all the activist people I knew in the 90s and how they felt about Clinton and the fuckin balanced budget alongside the WTO and prison population and bombing in Serbia and welfare to work and all that fun stuff, and then contrasting that with how they felt when Obama got elected. And I was like damn, that guy’s story that just happens to match a particular narrative that would be convenient if you wanted to shit on the Democrats sure matches up exactly with how I remember it. Like to a T.
Anyway. I just thought of that story. What was your favorite way Hillary Clinton was better than Biden? What did you miss about her platform, as bad as it was, that Biden managed to make even worse? I am curious.
I actually have no clue what point you were trying to make in the first two paragraphs.
Frankly, I see no perceptible difference in platform between the two of them. The main difference in terms of election enthusiasm is the burden of history. This is now the third “most important election of our lifetime” facing the same boogeyman (that I do want to keep out of the White House, to be clear). In the meantime I’ve faced 8 years of the Democratic Party blaming me for 2016 even though I voted for their illegitimate candidate, saying my political group isn’t large enough to be listened to (simultaneous with being large enough to lose the election???), and refusing to take responsibility for any of their actions that have landed us here.
They propped up Trump as a pied piper, ignored progressives and polls warning them Hillary would lose, and started a pre-emptive smear campaign to blame progressives for the loss. Now, they are still contending with the man they propped up, are once again ignoring polls, and I already see the groundwork for blaming this on progressives. So I’m less enthusiastic because I’ve heard this song before and I dislike it just as much as the first time.
My vote doesn’t even matter since I’m not in a battleground state. Only my state and local elections will matter. But I’m gonna get blamed for his inevitable loss anyway. I’m just so tired of it.
I actually have no clue what point you were trying to make in the first two paragraphs.
I believe that you do not, yes. Read it again and think about what I’m saying a little bit deeper.
The main difference in terms of election enthusiasm is the burden of history.
They propped up Trump as a pied piper, ignored progressives and polls warning them Hillary would lose, and started a pre-emptive smear campaign to blame progressives for the loss. Now, they are still contending with the man they propped up, are once again ignoring polls, and I already see the groundwork for blaming this on progressives. So I’m less enthusiastic because I’ve heard this song before and I dislike it just as much as the first time.
Yeah, this stuff is totally how I look at the election, too. Just how I emotionally feel about it, and whether I’m “enthusiastic”, and nothing about platforms, and talking about all the bad things about Hillary as the reasons why I don’t like Biden.
You’re arguing with a figment of your imagination.
If you have any interest in actually discussing/debating with me rather than the caricature in your mind, let me know.
AOC and Warren are right at the top of national politicians I admire. If they support Biden that’s good enough for me.
It’s like taking uppers to counteract downers; it just doesn’t work that way, it makes everything worse.
Asked by The Boston Globe if Biden should stay in the race, the Massachusetts Democrat said, “President Biden is our nominee. He is an excellent president. He works hard on behalf of working families every day.”
This is the entire statement from the article. This isn’t a “should stay in the race” statement. It’s “I’m not going to answer that”.
Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done.
This is just wrong. “Should we replace Biden” is an entirely separate question from “who should replace him”. And if someone named a specific name, the Biden-stans would attack them for trying to promote their own pick, or worse start attacking the pick themselves.
And we’re rapidly approaching the last resort of public pressure campaigns. The “give him time and let him step down on his own terms” strategy doesn’t look like it’s going to work.
I think what Biden said was pretty spot on: If you don’t want me as the nominee, figure out a plan and mount a challenge at the convention. If I’m a weak candidate then beat me at the convention. But if you show up at the convention just standing there with nothing but your little sign that says “BUT HE’S OLLLLLLLD” then I hope you won’t mind if I don’t take you seriously, and run for president anyway, and in fact I would hope that in that case you’d be able to admit you don’t have anything better to offer and willing to vote for me so we don’t get Project 2025 instead.
To me, that sounds pretty fair.
It is not just that he’s old. Biden has such a low approval rating that it’s comparable to Trump’s when he lost reelection during a pandemic.
If you truly do care about putting up a fight against Project 2025 then it is important that Democrats run almost anybody else.
Also, the articles about Biden’s perceived inability to get elected are not a waste of time. The donor class is finally recognizing what many of us have known and are pushing for a change. I can kick and scream all I want about how I don’t want Biden but I don’t have money to fund campaigns.
Edit: You can boo me. I’ve seen you bet money on a corpse winning a race.
Pointing out Biden’s flaws is not the problem. Biden’s flaws are the problem.
Also I don’t think that wealthy donors should have this much influence. I want to clear that up if it came across like I did.
it is important that Democrats run almost anybody else
So… nobody in particular in mind?
I would literally even take Kamla who is also unpopular, but I’m sure has a better shot. She also has the benefit of having access to Biden’s campaign donations if he drops out.
Manybof these articles are also listing all of the other options. That’s why I said literally anybody who doesn’t have a sub 40% approval rating.
All of the other options that poll below Biden? Every other realistic option that’s been polled, that I’m aware of, is below Biden in polling. Polling’s not real accurate (to put it mildly) but it is precise, in that you can use a comparison between one poll and another with the same methodology to gauge the relative reality even if you can’t see the overall reality.
Kamala Harris polls a couple of percentage points above Biden. She’s the only one who does and the only alternative that seems realistic, to me. The other options would represent this gigantic risky clusterfuck to replace Biden at the last minute, just to install a candidate that polls worse, and that after the media just got done shitting all over Biden relentlessly and he had the world’s worst debate performance.
Do you not ever ask yourself why the media hates Biden so much that they try to create this reality where – for example – replacing him with almost any of these semi-nobodies would be a good idea, when that’s not how the people who would be voting feel? That seems like an important question to investigate, does it not?
Or no, you’re just gonna go with “almost anybody would be better and I know because X Y Z created that picture of how it works and will play out in my head, and it’s definitely reality because they sounded super definitive about it” maybe. IDK. Up to you though. I would be interested in knowing why they are so vigorous about it, though, if I were you.
You can’t say that everybody polls worse and then agree that Kamala Polls better.
Kamala would be the obvious choice if the party rallies behind her. She would most easily have access to the campaign funds.
I didn’t like Biden as a candidate before becuase of all of the reasons he’s been a favorite of the donors that you’re mad at for no longer supporting him. I don’t think he has the best shot at besting Trump. The media and donors suddenly turning on Biden is because of his dismal polling and a debate performance that worsened it. They are interested in their investment above all else. Biden is a career politician and he has been a favorite of wealthy donors until he became a liability.
I’m curious why you’re so ride or die for Biden. I’d prefer candidates other than Biden or Harris, but I’ll support either over Trump. I would prefer if the one picked is most likely to beat Trump though. I don’t like Christofacism.
You can’t say that everybody polls worse and then agree that Kamala Polls better.
Yeah, that’s fair. What I meant was that everyone except Harris polls below Biden, and Harris is two points ahead. (I am not counting Michelle Obama as “realistic” because that is an asinine and imaginary idea.)
Check out the Ipsos poll for July 1. It’s changed since the one I was thinking of; now Biden is literally the best-polling candidate and equal with Trump in the only recent poll I can find.
There is no challenge at the convention, it’s literally impossible. Unless he releases his delegates, they have to vote for him. Plus the convention isn’t actually where the vote will happen this year. They need to run it virtually because they scheduled it too late to be on the Ohio ballot. And as we saw with the primary, no one wants to torch their political reputation to run a race challenging the incumbent leader when there isn’t actually any chance of winning (in this case literally none, in the primary effectively none).
If that’s actually what Biden said, it’s just straight out lying to try to get him out of the tough spot now, when a decision could actually trigger a real process to find a replacement.
This, as far as I can tell, isn’t true. If someone can talk enough delegates into supporting them instead of Biden – instead of talking the media into running stories about wealthy donors and a handful of congresspeople who want Biden to drop out – then the nomination can be theirs.
Yes, they would have to challenge Biden and mount a campaign. That’s how it works. Usually nominees fight each other, sometimes fairly hard. They might also after that have to challenge Trump or get in a war or something. If they are hoping for the process to be nice to them and for Biden to just kind of clear the way so they don’t have to do any work he has already said that (for now at least) he will not.
Again, it’s incredibly notable to me that there’s this incredible level of energy being spent on how Biden shouldn’t be the nominee and almost none being spent on who should be the nominee instead. The first one will hurt the Democrats, and the second one might be a useful path forward in a difficult situation, and about 90% of what’s in the media is the first one. So what does that tell you?
Look man, I don’t know. Maybe Biden dropping out would be best. All I’m saying is that the things Biden is saying make a lot more sense to me than the things the media is saying.
Multiple news stories have said they’re bound, and I’m skeptical that anyone would want to test “in good conscience” in the voting regulations and invite a lawsuit. According to this article even those who personally think a different candidate would be better feel obligated to vote for Biden.
Plus, nearly a third of the states have explicit laws about it. You can’t possibly believe this is a contest being presented in good faith. “Let’s have a contested convention, where the decision will be by delegates hand-selected for loyalty, with wording that sounds like they don’t have a choice but maybe they do, and for a third of them would invite criminal danger.”
Hm
You may have a point. I read more about it, and it’s not really clear cut. You’re right that the states have laws about what has to happen, but the Supreme Court has also said that they can’t tell a political party how to run their nominating process. The delegates are pledged to Biden, but also, ever since 1984 they don’t have to vote for him if their conscience bothers them. But also, knowledgeable people have looked at the situation and said, it doesn’t really matter what the rules are because they just wouldn’t do it.
I think in practice, it’s a mess. I do somewhat stand by my statement that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Biden to just kind of leave the cockpit and trust that someone else will wander in and start flying the plane again, without anyone affirmatively saying, yes it is me, I will do it, I got it. But I do also get what you’re saying and it has a lot more validity than I thought at first.
She’s my Senator and I find this deeply disappointing, but not surprising. She’s about to be reelected for her third term, and she’ll be Biden’s age when she seeks a fourth. The gerontocracy protects itself.
