As soon as I saw it on my podcast player, I knew Ezra Klein’s “Democrats have a better option than Biden” podcast was going to be incredibly annoying and very skippable. I have too many naps to take, and too much scotch to drink. to listen to yet another take on how some imaginary candidate X would wipe the floor with Trump, and yet the Democrats won’t pick X.
But I was wrong – it’s worse. Young Ezra has grown from a young participant in the bong parties following a freshman PoliSci seminar into a full-fledged wanktastic pundit, because he’s trotted out the oldest pundit masturbatory topic in the book: the brokered convention. Apparently — and here I have to admit I’ve only read about his podcast and not listened to it — he thinks that Obama, Anita Dunn, and the rest of Biden’s inner circle need to stage an intervention. They (merely) need to say, Joe, you’ve gotta go, we had it once, we ain’t got it anymore. Then, Joe, who as we all know likes trains, will buy a ticket on the central line and leave DC. His rapid and drama-free departure will leave the convention wide open for candidate Captain Marvel/Superspiderman (or woman), who will swoop in to the accolades of the smoky backroom fixers and we’ll all live happily ever after. Be sure to check for belongings under your seat before exiting the theater.
There are so many reasons that this is stupid that I don’t think I need to go into them with this audience, though I will mention that nothing gets a wanker pundit to wank harder than imagining the democratic will of the people being thwarted by a few backroom fixers. Still, Ezra’s got people talking about this moronic idea instead of whatever screw up the Republicans are perpetrating today, so at least it’s a win for his Republican employer, the NYT.
Anyway, here’s where I can mention that I get a chuckle out of people in the comments here and elsewhere re-litigating the primaries, saying that some candidate ruined another’s chances in the general by making some criticism of that candidate in the primary. That’s a real misreading of the role of primaries. Primaries are, in theory at least, where our side dukes it out to find out if Candidate X is the real thing or just plays a superhero on TV. History books are full of candidates that looked good for a bit, then shit the bed when it was time to run a campaign. Only someone whose contact with politics is quasi-academic, and who’s spent too much time reading fantasy novels, would want to substitute a brokered convention for primaries.
Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee because nobody serious stepped up to challenge him. There will probably be zero delegates voting against him because the non-serious challengers won no delegates. That’s how Democratic nomination conventions work in the current century, no matter how many fantasies people like Ezra crank out.
Baud
Ron DeSantis has entered the chat
ETA: Also, too, agree about the wank fest. It’s a reason I’ve given up on most media. There’s no market for straight news anymore.
Parfigliano
Ezra just expressing his employer’s wishes. He is a well paid tool.
waspuppet
He never actually mentioned who he thought the better option was, except Not Kamala Harris, for reasons.
He also imagined Biden would simply disappear without a trace or even an endorsement of a successor.
He may have mentioned the fact that the party of a president declining to run for reelection has essentially never kept the White House, but I don’t really care enough to check.
Elizabelle
Ezra has soiled himself. Sad!
dmsilev
So, the people largely defined by their closeness and loyalty to Biden are …expected to tell Biden that it’s time for him to set himself adrift on an ice floe? And then the proverbial smoke-filled room will bring forth a consensus candidate around whom the party will consolidate?
This is almost definitely the stupidest take of the week.
hueyplong
All Klein has accomplished from my POV is to lower his credibility. It’s his job, so he has to write about something when there is actually very little to write about in terms of the Democratic “race.” Accordingly, he mails in this crap. But those columns don’t present homework assignments and we don’t have to do/read them (unless laughing at them is your thing, and we know it’s wrong to kink-shame here).
Harrison Wesley
What a great campaign message! “Our candidate sucked so much in his 4 years as President that we’re dumping him for somebody new – improved – better than Halloween candy! You can really trust us this time!”
I’m sure that Sleepy Shmoe, feeling his eyes glaze watching a commercial for this, will be galvanized into running all the way to the polling place and waiting there without food or water or a potty until the doors open.
eclare
Not a Swiftie, but I love the post title!
The reporting is ridiculous. After November 2020 I knew that November 2024 would be Joe vs TFG. Where is my big media contract?
PaulWartenberg
Ezra has fallen into the “established pundit” fantasy of 1) thinking he KNOWS exactly what the majority of American voters want, 2) believing the best possible Presidential candidate is a version of himself, but smart enough to realize he can’t name HIMSELF as the prize so he leaves it vague as to who he wants as a replacement, and 3) urging the “well-meaning Democratic choice” that they think is out-of-touch with voters to step aside as though this was the mid-19th Century when we traded in Presidents every four years like used cars.
/headdesk
dmsilev
@waspuppet:
Only vaguely recent example that comes to mind is LBJ, and yeah that didn’t go so well for the Democrats.
Baud
@dmsilev: Or the country.
Old School
The people demand Baud2024!
Scout211
Why not Ezra himself? We could call him Captain Super Ezra! No one would ever criticize him for being too old and feeble. Because Ezra is just so darned smart and savvy and “everyone thinks” he’s just so cool and with it and hip. What a guy! A maverick, even! ///////
mistermix, you’ve got a way with words and I am liking all your words these days. 😊
ETA: I see Paul Wartenburg at #9 (in bold) is on the same wavelength. It’s Ezra himself!
Lapassionara
When is someone going to suggest that Trump step aside? He is the person with the age-related dementia, not Biden.
narya
I always appreciate the Bruce lyrics . . .
Rathskeller
One thing I haven’t seen in any of this brilliant punditry of a brokered convention is the instant reaction of a large slice of black voters, who would raise extraordinarily obvious questions about why Harris is being overlooked.
Replacing Biden would hurt turnout generally, while adding to Trump’s triumphalism and inevitability in the MSM and the GOP flying monkey press. Replacing Biden with someone other than Harris would devastate black turnout.
I’ve appreciated Ezra and Jon Stewart for years, so their recent takes are very disappointingly stupid.
Tim in SF
The spokesmodel asshats on a recent Hill clip absolutely scoffed at the suggestion that the New York Times was Republican or conservative-leaning. They scoffed. No other word for it. Victims of conventional wisdom, obviously; DC conventional wisdom, which is the worst kind of conventional wisdom. Plus, they’re on The Hill.
But still.
Yutsano
The “Joe Biden is old and he needs to be replaced!” seem to lack one critical piece of information. Not a one makes a suggestion about who should replace the President. And all seem to skip over the one person who should replace him: Kamala Harris. We see you Ezra. You’re playing the “I’m not racist but…” game.
EDIT: Rathskeller said it better.
RaflW
@waspuppet: “He never actually mentioned who he thought the better option was, except Not Kamala Harris, for reasons.”
And I’m going to wild-ass guess that Ezra also didn’t detour into speculating about what happens to the Democratic coalition when a well-qualified Black VP person with ladyparts is quietly smuggled off the stage and retired to … uhh, where, exactly?
Fractured coalition is a vastly inadequate term for the booming implosion that except not Kamala would cause
eta: And asking Kamala to remain VP on a ticket with a new top dude (of course they don’t say it’s a dude, but you can just see the dude-ness of their imaginings being right there) is basically as insulting as asking her to skedaddle.
hueyplong
“History books are full of candidates that looked good for a bit, then shit the bed when it was time to run a campaign.”
Somewhere in the wilds of Florida a notification bell rings and Ms. Cracker realizes another reference has been made to DeSantis and renews her hope that the pile-ons have a half-life of 40 years.
Tim in SF
I used to like Ezra until about five years ago. During Trump he became, imho, increasingly verbose and decreasingly concise on both his podcast and his appearances. I unsubbed from him around the same time that I unsubbed from fivethirtyeight and a few others, in favor of the CrookedMedia podcasts that were popping up and gave me just what I wanted.
I’m disappointed, maybe saddened to hear Ezra has continued his slide downward.
Tim in SF
@hueyplong: ““History books are full of candidates that looked good for a bit, then shit the bed when it was time to run a campaign.””
Where does that delightful quote come?
$8 blue check mistermix
@Rathskeller:
No shit! I’ve never seen Ezra as someone in touch with black voters, to put it mildly.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Does Nate Silver make a guest appearance to bitch about Biden not doing a Super Bowl interview?
Dorothy A. Winsor
I am constantly amazed by the number of people who live in fantasy land.
RaflW
OT, but the GOP push to just destroy every public good in America continues apace, while Ezra Klein fiddles.
The goal of sh*t like this, and pounding on teachers, etc, is to get dedicated professionals to say “f*ck it, I quit”, so that these institutions can be hollowed out and run by glassy-eyed true believers in Xrist.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Tim in SF:
Yeah, he decided to turn it into shitty freshman polisci seminar. I listen to about 1 a year. The last one I listened to was when he talked to Dan Savage, and I wrote about it here (a few graphs down since I had some other things to rant about first.) https://balloon-juice.com/2023/02/28/grow-the-fuck-up
I described his podcast as “like listening to a bunch of virgin college freshman discuss politics and political theory after half a bong hit and a sip of beer.”
Scout211
He also apparently hasn’t checked any recent polling on Biden’s chances against Trump compared to other Democrats being suggested as replacements. I posted this recent Emerson College poll a few days ago.
I don’t think that voters opinions are all that important to pundits like Ezra.
ETA: more detail:
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: Yeah. All of this.
Betty Cracker
I think Klein’s take is bullshit on stilts too, but having actually read it, I feel compelled to point out that he did not advocate dumping Harris as some commenters imply. He noted that she polls badly as VP but blamed that on the DC press narrative, which is not wrong, IMO. He also said she’s a highly capable pol who would have a shot at winning his fantasy brokered convention. Gift link for anyone who wants to read the podcast transcript for themselves.
sdhays
@Baud: Same
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: That’s good to see. I have issues with Klein, for sure, but I don’t think he’s stupid. I think sometimes he just seems slightly outside of reality.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Betty Cracker: What, are we supposed to read the stuff we criticize now? I just read what was written about it at LGM, by Atrios and Josh Marshall…
UncleEbeneezer
I think it’s incredibly naive to believe that sustained and prolonged bashing of the eventual Dem candidate doesn’t have a huge risk of handing a razor-thin margin election to the GOP. Some candidate bashing outlives the Primary and continues to be believed by voters into the GE. Or are we all supposed to pretend like all the damage that ButterEmailz, Benghazi, GoldmanSachs did to Hillary evaporated once the Primary ended and didn’t contribute to her falling only 70K votes short in three states? I know Stein/Johnson voters who used them, verbatim, to justify their shitty votes. We have thousand page Intel reports documenting the fact that Putin and GRU was happily sowing division in the Dem coalition trying to achieve exactly this sort of result, because they know how information warfare works. Some candidate-bashing genies, can’t be easily put back in the bottle. People who are actively spreading BidenIsOld bullshit are working against his chances in November. Same thing is true for #GenocideJoe. That’s my hot-take.
Matt McIrvin
earwormed with The Boss now
Hoppie
Well, the (C)entral (L)ine is in London, but its colo(u)r IS at least red. And you don’t buy a ticket, you get an Oyster Card. But yeah, Klein is a shortish dick.
Betty Cracker
@hueyplong: Haha, guilty as charged. Even the staffer who was fired for the Nazi Sonnenrad meme video now calls the campaign “downright embarrassing.” Woof!
$8 blue check mistermix
@UncleEbeneezer:
The big push on emails came from Comey’s press conference in October 2016 (well after the convention/primary). Benghazi hearings were a year earlier in front of a Republican-controlled committee. Google tells me that the Goldman Sachs speeches were released by Wikileaks in October, 2016. So 2 were after the convention, and the other was way before the primaries. All were pushed by non-Democrats. Don’t see how we blame primaries for any of that…
Betty Cracker
@$8 blue check mistermix: Nah, you’re right about Klein’s take — it’s hot garbage! Not sure where people are getting the Harris angle though, which you didn’t mention. Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of OTHER pundits who want Biden to step aside discounting Harris. I’ve definitely seen that before, just not in Klein’s piece.
Suzanne
Go home, Ezra, you’re drunk. Or maybe stupid.
hrprogressive
I very proudly and loudly voted for Bernie in both the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and then voted, if quietly, for Hillary and Joe in those respective elections too.
Biden’s not nearly as progressive as I’d like, and I, too, am tired of “a bunch of old white men running things”, said as a younger-than-them white man not yet north of 40.
That said, this is a fucking stupid idea, and Ezra Klein has clearly gone from someone whose analysis I used to think was can’t miss to a giant fucking assclown trying to help bothsides us into Fascism.
Fuck you, Ezra.
Attempted Chemistry
@Betty Cracker: he’s pulling a Karl Marx: it doesn’t matter how good your analysis of the problem is, if your solution ignores how people actually exist in reality.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Alison Rose:
Just to be clear, I don’t think Ezra is stupid. He’s an intelligent person who lacks political common sense, and is far too willing to entertain (IMO) dumb hypotheticals.
Miss Bianca
@$8 blue check mistermix:
LOL! Right?!
hueyplong
@Tim in SF: The quote is from mistermix in the item above to which we are making comments.
TBone
I’ve got 4 Life Mags from the 60s. Two are: ‘The Incredible Year ’68 Special Issue Moon Landing,’ and ’68 Dem Convention (‘Corruption of Chicago Police – Where Discipline Broke Down’). Came across ’em cleaning out a friend’s basement storage bin. Informative and fascinating.
Suzanne
@$8 blue check mistermix: Hmmm, I think he might be getting stupid.
He first got prominence by really diving into an issue over years (health care), and that was well-deserved attention. That should have taught him that complicated issues need to be looked at from multiple angles.
I think he’s lost that. Maybe it’s due to the speed pressures of the podcasting format. But he hasn’t brought insight in a while.
trollhattan
Something rotten in Texas has helped them become the Jesusy stronghold they are today. A billyunaire I never heard of, who even lives on a compound to complete the brand. Tim Dunn, everybody, the man who gave you Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick. And Dunn ain’t done, nosir.
A long deep dive by Texas Monthly and well worth the time. Texas is not “going purple” any time soon, perhaps not at all.
TBone
@hrprogressive: seconded. President Biden put a damn good team together.
Fake Irishman
@Betty Cracker:
Speaking of freshman political science seminars, Betty, thanks for actually, you know, doing the reading (Klein’s piece) before delivering your hot take. I love the BJ community, but we often love a good dog pile without doing our homework as much as the next internet tradition.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: What was that line about “every billionaire is a policy failure”?
TBone
@trollhattan: grrrrrrrrr
TBone
@RaflW: aaaarrrrggghhh
ChrisSherbak
Just my 2 cents but it seems like a ‘good idea gone bad’ that I’d noticed a lot: people start with a premise “OMG Trump is bad we MUST NEEDS WIN” and another “OMG Sleepy Joe isn’t the greatest (where’s the next OBAMA??)” and you start moving down this path.
Which is fine as a thought experiment, but you inevitably get to all the things noted above: estrangement of Blacks, Joe(sephine) Miracle Not In Evidence, Joe polls pretty well, conventions are kinda anti democratic, etc. etc. So you spend just a little time thinking it thru (or you have an editor that does it for you) and you realize “OK this is a trash idea that does NOT need to see the light of day.” NEXT!
I’m a big fan of thought experiments to focus the mind and arguments, but he (and others) need to realize that just cuz you have a thought AND have a need to produce content 24×7, does not mean you have to put out trash. cf. Fox News et al.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
In other words, he is a Tool of Satan.
Jeffro
I understand that many, many in the punditariat are terrified that either trumpov will win re-election, or that Harris will become president at some point in the next four years.
(or that…YE GODS…Biden will just, you know, win and keep on doing the same old same old of successful governance. which yields no “clicks”)
But none of those three reasons speaks very well of them, nor does it relieve them of their responsibility to, as Jay Rosen put it, “inform voters of the stakes, not the odds”
hueyplong
I looked it up. Only one person has actually beaten Trump in an election. Let’s pick that guy.
Alison Rose
@$8 blue check mistermix: That’s a good way to put it. Some people can be very smart and also not wise.
TBone
@hueyplong: 💙
Jeffro
also: what’s funny is that I 110% knew what this post would be about when I read the title. =)
well done, MM
Alison Rose
*in a very quiet voice*: Can we go back to the drought, please?
dmsilev
@hrprogressive:
The jackass in me feels compelled to point out that Bernie is every bit as white, every bit as male, and every bit as old as Joe…
(just ribbing you a bit. “Vote for whom you like best in the primaries, and then unite around the ultimate winner for the general” is 100% perfectly fine)
hrprogressive
@TBone:
I mean, I do have a lot of what I think are legitimate criticisms of Biden and how they handled, among other things, their “nothing to see here, move along” methodology regarding COVID starting all the way back in 2022 (!!), and the fact that they haven’t spent nearly enough time using the bully pulpit of the presidency to warn the nation about the Fascist dangers that await us if we aren’t careful.
But trying to primary a sitting president who, let’s be clear, if he doesn’t win it could very well be Game Over, Man, in order to levy those criticisms is a stupid fucking idea.
He needs to win for the sake of the nation. Period.
The fact that he’s not a 40 year old uber progressive doesn’t change that.
It’s Biden or Bust. Freedom or Fascism. That’s how stark it is.
Another Scott
@waspuppet: One of Allan Lichtman’s losing indicators is an incumbent having to fight for the nomination.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fake Irishman
@trollhattan:
Dunn’s tactics have been great at radicalizing the GOP and pulling them out of step with public opinion, but general elections have been getting steadily closer over the last decade with comparison to national results. The big urban counties are almost all gone for the GOP and the biggest suburban counties — where all the population growth is — are steadily bleeding. The GOP gerrymander after 2010 was a swing for the fences to knock the Dems under 50/150 seats in the state House. The one after 2020 is extremely defensive and recognizes the Dems will probably keep 60 seats even in a bad year.
Papa Boyle
I also used to read Klein. I listened to his podcast for a little while. I didn’t drop him because I’m achingly cool. I drifted away from his content because (as it’s become much more obvious in hindsight) he’s slowly morphing into David Brooks. I’m having enough trouble with the first one.
hrprogressive
@dmsilev:
I understand the critique here, even in jest.
Bernie at least said what needed to be said during the primaries about the state of our inequality, something a lot of other people didn’t want to do with the ferocity he did.
At this point, frankly, if the Democratic Party could elect a bunch of young, progressive men and women of color a-la AOC and Maxwell Frost that would make me quite happy.
My people have done fucked up enough. Time to give other folks a chance with some real power.
eclare
@narya:
These are Bruce lyrics?
NotMax
@eclare
Lenny?
;)
eclare
@hueyplong:
Well said. Concise. KISS. Love it.
Scout211
Deleted
eclare
@hrprogressive:
Love Maxwell Frost. I am a 55 yo, can’t wait for his cohort to get more power, while learning the ropes from the people who have been there awhile.
Also looking forward to Speaker Hakeem.
TheOtherHank
Has Ezra ever done anything except opine about stuff? I read his blog while he was still an undergrad at UCSC. (I started working at UCSC and was going to look him up and see if I could have lunch with him, but at about that time he transferred to UCLA). Anyway, I think he got his start at being a person with opinions about stuff when he was no more than 20 and has been doing that ever since. He’s sort of a Kardashian of punditry; he’s known for having opinions, not for actually having done anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@eclare: They seem awfully Taylor Swift to me.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Scout211:
Title: A riff on Shake It Off by that little-known artist Ms. Swift
“Joe you gotta go” is a riff on Springsteen’s Downbound Train:
glc
@Parfigliano: Seems like an overly charitable interpretation.
Meanwhile, I was randomly watching some Victor Borge I doubt I’ve found the best clip, but it’s a decent start.
I drifted there after rewatching Mozart playing Salieri’s march, from Amadeus, or a version of it. I believe the full segment was 9 minutes but for rewatching this seems like the one.
Scout211
@$8 blue check mistermix: Oops. I already deleted that comment before you posted this. I figured I was wrong.
But thanks for the explainer. 😊
Cacti
A pair of decrepit old men battling for control of a fading empire. Inspiring, innit?
RSA
Ballotpedia has it that
Stevenson and Dewey! Those are famous political names, even three-quarters of a century later. A quick Google search wasn’t enough to tell me the last time (if ever) the nominated candidate of a brokered convention won the Presidency.
suilebhan
Maybe Ezra thinks we should summon the ghost of Richard J. Daley to “preserve disorder” at his dumbass brokered convention.
Villago Delenda Est
Ezra is a choad.
Here’s some fun over at Wonkette: https://www.wonkette.com/p/behold-the-terrible-ai-cartoon-that
eclare
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Thanks! Not a big Springsteen fan, I had no idea what people were referring to.
kindness
Joe Biden’s secret plan is to win re-election and 1 day after the third year of his next term he’ll resign and give the presidency to Kamela. Bwahhahaha!
I’d be cool with that. Kamela would be able to serve just under 10 years in office. We can fix a lot of stuff in 10 years.
different-church-lady
You sound like you could use someone to help with that.
NotMax
@RSA
FDR in 1932. Won the nomination on the 4th ballot.
BellyCat
@RaflW: Unreal. Did they forget to also legislate minimum wages for these positions, just to underscore their intent?
different-church-lady
Needed to put a finer point to that.
prostratedragon
The Ballad of Narayama (1958) at imdb
NotMax
@different-church-lady
We all remember “I am not a witch.”
Good times, good times.
;)
Xavier
Gotta say this argument makes a lot of sense to me when applied to the Republicans and Trump.
West of the Rockies
@Cacti:
Well, what has decrepit Joe done in the last 3+ years, hmmm?
Decrepit (in the view of dome), but quite effective.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Good, good.
Maybe if guns weren’t so easy to get in Mexico and other struggling countries then so many people wouldn’t be fleeing in fear of their lives…
(via https://mastodon.social/search )
Cheers,
Scott.
Lee H
Josh Marshall had a good putdown of this as well.
RaflW
Also, my cursory look indicates that it’s been about 72 years (roughly 33 years before Ezra’s birth) since the Democrats had a floor fight nominating convention. But every four years for decades now, the punditariat gets damp knickers for the elusive brokered convention. It’s a very goofy — and pointless — tic with these people.
Barbara
@TheOtherHank: This is for me the essential question. I think that Ezra Klein’s piece on the generational divisions on opinions about Israel was very insightful, and ultimately, brave, so I am inclined to give him some benefit of the doubt generally. But this podcast is the kind of mental masturbation that appeals to no one other than people who like to sit around fantasizing about politics. The idea that a party of 1 or 10 or even 100 should have the right to appoint a candidate is an idea that is now dead and gone. The fact that Joe Biden got 97% of the vote in SC, or got more than 10 times the vote as a write-in candidate than Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson did are what they need to grapple with. But those facts are so boooo-ring that they would rather sit around writing the political equivalent of fan fiction. They should be embarrassed but they’re not because they never have to be accountable for their failure.
Unlike just about anyone else who has ever worked at anything that doesn’t allow them to just sitting around saying how they think things ought to be.
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That’s long since ceased to amaze me. But the number of reporters and opinionators for the major media outlets that live in fantasy land – now that’s scary.
BellyCat
@trollhattan: ‘splains a lot about TX politics. Thanks for this insightful link.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: What’s really scary is that they don’t actually recognize it as fantasyland.
RSA
@NotMax: Thanks! That’s a success story, if for a very different time.
RaflW
@Barbara: Yes, I think the Phillips spanking in N.H. really belies the whole notion that Democratic voters want a replacement for Biden.
Setting aside that Phillips offers the excitement of a dollar store dishsoap dispenser, if there was an appetite for change he’d have done better than 19% against a write-in Biden. People had to get up off the couch, walk/drive/show up at their polling place, and write in Joe’s name, and they did. Way more than sufficiently.
If the Dem base really felt dyspeptic about the current President, they’d have sent an “anybody but Joe” message since Phillips is at least an actual Dem and a House member (Williamson’s seance-ticket standing is utterly disqualifying). And they did send a message, one that doesn’t jibe with Ezra & other’s takes.
Miss Bianca
@TheOtherHank:
Oh, ouch! LOL
Gretchen
None of these people want Harris to be the nominee, but they think she will just quietly step aside and all the black women who lobbied for her and are thrilled with her will just meekly sit down and vote for the two young white guys Ezra prefers. Newsom/Buttigieg?
Did people tell FDR to step aside even though he was so sick he died in office? Did it work out well when Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Carter and gave us 8 years of Reagan and four of Bush? These people enrage me.
lige
Republicans would be much more advised to get rid of their loser candidate. I think there’s an equal chance of that happening.
NotMax
@NotMax
Other cases prior to FDR of emerging with the nomination from a brokered convention and going on to win the presidency:
Harding in 1920
Wilson in 1912
B. Harrison in 1888
Cleveland in 1884*
Garfield in 1880*
Hayes in 1876*
Lincoln in 1860*
Buchanan in 1856
Pierce in 1852
Polk in 1844
*years in which both the D and the R conventions were brokered
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: Holy shit – they can do that? I thought gun manufacturers were immunized against lawsuits in this country – is that just against our own citizens, or can other countries actually sue them? That would be HUGE if so.
Cacti
@Gretchen: FDR hid the fact that he was dying when running for his fourth term.
Barry
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
“Does Nate Silver make a guest appearance to bitch about Biden not doing a Super Bowl interview?”
He’s a couple of steps further down the drain than Ezra is. Last I read his stuff, he’s now seriously angry that his genius is not recognized.
Another Scott
A pointer to the latest from Eleven Films.
Worth a click. (2:09)
[ yeah!! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: The story makes the point that the immunity isn’t absolute:
Worth a click.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
Well, they get rewarded for living there.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
I hope that I am detecting the proper amount of sarcasm here……
And yes I agree with you. I will hold total condemnation of young Ezra for a bit, to find out if this is how he really feels, or if he was putting his name on an idea of someone above him in the chain of his paycheck.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
This is almost definitely the stupidest take of the week.
I’m glad you put that almost in there, for surely there will be worse somewhere in our national news/infotainment/paper and ink sales business this week.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: Clicked. Saving for later.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
You are making this way too easy……
artem1s
So how long until the dead girl or live boy in his bed is revealed. These guys all turn out to be sick perverts.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: It’s subtext. “Eggads Black Woman In Charge” borderline dog whistle soon to be a bull horn. ETA It permeates the discourse.
David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch
Who’s Ezra Klein?
Seriously. 20 years ago I saw an interview with the editor and chief of the FTFNYT and he said only 12% of subscribers ever read a portion of the editorial pages. Who ever this nobody is, to paraphrase Stalin dismissive view of criticism from Pope Pius XII, “how many division does he have”
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I am constantly amazed by the number of people who live in fantasy land.
Why? For many people fantasy land is what looks real to them. Fantasy land is what they dream about. What they know would be much better than the actual life they do live. They live adult lives but have never actual matured past 7th grade, only grown older.
Geminid
@David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch: Who’s Ezra Klein? Ezra Klein is the kind of pundit Harry Truman was talking about when he said, “I wouldn’t pay them to pound sand into rat holes.”
beckya57
@Rathskeller: not to mention female voters. Any of the media clowns aware that Black women are a major part of the Dem coalition? I guarantee you Biden is.
Putting on my child psychologist hat, I think Ezra is an example of how people can be influenced in not great ways by their environments. I see this regularly at work. Very unfortunate. He was good in his pre-NYT days.
Sister Golden Bear
Republicans’ Radio Rwanda demonization of trans/non-binary people is having its predictable — and to them, desirable — effect.
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools — same guy who hired Chaya “LibsOfTiktok” Raichik to the state’s Oklahoma Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee — put out a video in June 2023 calling transgender students a threat to the physical safety of other students.
Earlier this month a nonbinary teenager* was brutally beaten to death in the school bathroom by their classmates, whose identities are being carefully protected. Nex’s head was slammed into the ground over and over and over, their injuries so severe that they couldn’t stand up afterwards. The teacher who finally intervened didn’t even assist Nex to the nurse’s office. Another student had to step in. The school didn’t call an ambulance.
None of the school teachers or staff reported the assault to the police at the time. One of Nex’s relatives had to call the police from the hospital, and a school resource officer was sent to take a statement from Nex’s parent.
The hospital sent Nex home despite — ”one of the girls was pretty much repeatedly beating her head across the floor.”
Nex died the next day
Local media stories refer to it as an “unexpected death” in their headlines, investigators are not sure if the fight played a role in [their] death.”
This is the future Republicans want.
*Nex, the name they went by, had been assigned female at birth and was in the girls bathroom. The linked news story, as well as other local media continue to deadname and misgender them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TheOtherHank:
Ah yes, young Ezra in the early days of blogging with his long-gone creation, Pandagon.
Ezra was a careerist, as you say, it was clear from the gitgo that he viewed the blog as simply a tool to get his name out there so he could fail upward carving out a niche writing “think” pieces for the Totebagger Radio crowd.
Jinchi
As someone who read Ezra in the early years, when he was tossing ideas back and forth with Matt Yglesias and Megan McCardle on various blogs, I absolutely believe this is all him.
He and Matt always gushed over political procedure and would calmly explain how things really worked and why voters were just a minor part of it all.
That said, it’s probably what he was hired for
Geminid
@Barbara: I talk politics with 7 Democrat friends, and not one of them wants Joe Biden to step aside, not even the two who fault him for his approach to the war in Gaza. This is a small sample, but I bet it’s a lot more representative than the people Klein talks to.
But he wants to walk all over them and those like them. Klein is just an arrogant, elitist asshole and he can get lost.
Hoodie
@TheOtherHank: I’d say that’s a critique applicable to pundits in general.
Jinchi
@Sister Golden Bear: Terrible news. It’s awful that another generation is being put through all this.
jackmac
Just what the hell happened to writers/pundits like Ezra Klein, Matt Taibbi and Matt Yglesias? They were once insightful and worth reading. Not for quite a while.
I’ll throw in Nate Silver and his vagabond 538 site. I was never a fan of data-driven journalism that he specialized in. The whole approach — an over-reliance on numbers and statistics–seemed to lack a human touch.
Frank McCormick
I guess “It’s not my job to support political candidate X” is the new “Are you telling me to vote harder?”.
I’ve made my share of “You’re not helping” comments to people forcefully criticizing the presumed/nominated Dem candidate. (Notably Beto for governor of Texas). And they can never admit that “X was a bad choice and is going to lose. Here’s why.” all the way up until election day is a self-fulfilling prophecy AT BEST. It’s essentially campaign sabotage. And the intentions of the writer are irrelevant. Whether they truly believe that they “just want what’s best for the Party” or not, the effect is still the same.
Years ago, when a manager told me “never come to me to complain about a problem without a workable proposed solution in mind” and after a beat I realized this was advice and not a correction. After an immediate flood of empathy over how exhausting it must be for her to hear endless complaints from everyone along with the dread of yet more items on the already lengthy to-do list, I realized the problem I was reporting to my conscientious manager was in one of two states. Either she was completely unaware of an issue I could see plainly, in which case I was also in the right place to see the solution OR she already knew about it and there was no acceptable/workable remedy.
There is no solution for “Biden is old”, and yes Ezra et al, we were already quite aware of that fact.
Why is it so hard for so many smart and informed people to think strategically about political campaigns?
Galen’s advice applies to more than Healthcare.
DO NO HARM.
Hoodie
@jackmac: They’re like one-hit wonder bands. One decent album – or even one or two decent tracks – is all they ever had in them.
Kathleen
@Frank McCormick: They’re not paid to care, think or write about political strategy. I agree with everything you said.
Another Scott
@Frank McCormick: Nicely said.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Sister Golden Bear: Jesus, that’s heartbreaking. I cannot fathom that hatred, and that tragedy. And such a shameful (and criminally neglectful) response by the school.
Alice
What a frisky, cozy puppy pile this is.
I don’t know if Ezra Klein’s idea has any value, but I would hope for some serious discussion of it. And anyone else’s ideas. Facing fascism and the reversal of our last-ditch efforts to keep the Earth livable, all that matters is beating Trump. At this late date, it’s horrifying how wobbly that looks. We need every idea we can get.
So we’ve put our collective minds together here, and come up with 50 clever ways to call Klein stupid, starting with the tried-and-true masturbation reference and leaning heavily on the obligatory flogging of all media. Yay, us.
Kathleen
@Sister Golden Bear: That’s beyond sick, twisted and evil. I know this is especially hard for you and I’m sorry.
WaterGirl
@Alice: Welcome to commenting.
What else can one call this from Ezra Klein, but stupid?
Matt McIrvin
@eclare: The bit about Joe who gotta go and the Central Line is a parody of “Downbound Train”.
Slightly_peeved
@jackmac:
538’s not his anymore. His sometime-antagonist G Elliott Morris now runs it.
This is his take on all the “say you will go, Joe!” Punditry:
https://x.com/gelliottmorris/status/1759719457562239416?s=20
Shalimar
I have no idea who Klein’s Superspiderman candidate is, and I won’t listen to find out, but my money is on a white guy between 50 and 70.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
As someone not all that far behind President Biden age wise I see this more and more. I know people not all that younger than me think that everyone on social security is senile. And I know a number of people who are older than him and are not senile in any sense of the word. And I know from senile – I live in a senior’s apartment complex and I was a mental health counselor in a local clinic for a number of years and have seen people far older than him who were in no way senile. We have a 97 yr old woman who lives here and she still rides around on her 4 wheel electric scooter. She’s not going to run for president but still, she’s going pretty strong and not senile. We have others in their late 80s and slightly earlier 90s. None of them are going to run a marathon either but then SFB isn’t going or is able to walk one. I walk 2 miles regularly, several times a week. I seriously doubt SFB could do that once a month. I’m 1000% sure he’d never try – that’s “beneath” him.
wjca
It should perhaps be noted at a brokered Republican convention in 2016 would have been a good thing for the country. TIFG would be out grifting the rubes still, instead of trashing the nation.
Citizen Alan
@hrprogressive:
He also surrounded himself with cosplay Marxists who made no secret of their desire to literally destroy the Democratic Party in the belief that it’s the sole obstacle to Socialist Utopia. I will hate him from beyond the grave for making sure the 2016 Dem convention was packed to the rafters with patchouli-soaked 20-something morons who booed our nominee every time her name was mentioned, including during a presentation by the BLM mothers!
Princess
@Sister Golden Bear: I saw a photo of Nex moments before I read your comment. Nex looks just like one of my step children. Heartbreaking. They killed Nex.
Barbara
@Alice: Hey Alice, if you want serious discussion it helps to actually engage in some serious discussion. Instead of, you know, expecting the rest of us to step up and do it for you.
Gin & Tonic
@Alice: Stick around for a while, and you may learn about this community’s prodigious fund-raising and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Glory b
@UncleEbeneezer: Exactly. On several occasions Trump said “You gotta believe Hillary is corrupt! Bernie Sanders says so too!” I hated that then, you can’t drag your fellow Dem so hard that you damage them in the general. Also the same thing Ted Kennedy did to Carter.
And as a black person, I’m afraid the “Genocide Joe” will do in Biden too. There was a large contingent of Republican Muslims before 9/11, and there were observations as far back as 2022 that many of them were returning to the Republican party based on their shared animosity towards LGBTQ Americans. The current city council in Hamtramck MI is 100% Muslim Republicans, who have had meetings with QAnon crazy Mike Flynn.
I’m kind of getting resigned to the idea that Biden will likely lose because too much “Genocide Joe” has been established. Disappointing that in the last thread everyone mentioned the plight of Palestinians but no one thought of the potential plight of marginalized Americans if Biden loses.
mrmoshpotato
Could someone with a Twitter account check Last Week Tonight’s account for any update on uploading last night’s main story?
CarolPW
@Sister Golden Bear:
I saw the story early this morning, and it broke my heart. In their photos (from pre-beatdown) they looked like such a happy imp.
Another Scott
@mrmoshpotato: nitter.unixfox.eu still works.
There’s a link saying that they can’t put it on YouTube until Thursday (new policy).
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: They don’t care. They will ridicule you if you raise any concerns. I don’t think they care much about living breathing Palestinians either. This is just the issue in vogue. Wear a checkered scarf. Raise some anti-Israel slogans be condescending to anyone who disagrees . They are drunk on their own righteousness.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Full show on YouTube (don’t know how long that link may remain good).
Glory b
@hueyplong: Thank you!
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott: Thank you, and thanks for a new Nitter link.
Shalimar
@Alice: Fine. Serious discussion. We all voted on this in 2020 when there were several dozen candidates. Biden is the one we came up with, and few people even remember who the 2nd choice was because it was so jumbled. Biden won. He is the president, and he has done a great job. If he becomes incapacitated for any reason, he also chose a vice-president who will take over. She also seems very competent and i am sure she will do a capable job until 2028.
There is no magical replacement candidate who would do better than Biden. Switching candidates now would necessitate a grueling intra-party fight which would seriously harm chances of the Democrat winning in November. It is fantasy stupid pony land. And we already have a place for the dumb ponies. In Congress.
Baud
@Glory b:
Keep the faith, GB.
Glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Yep. I remember after the first ceasefire was announced, I saw that many complaints socialists immediately pivoted to not voting for Biden because he didn’t forgive their student loans. When it fell apart, they immediately pivoted BACK to Palestine.
The “alright” kids find it easier to advocate for people on the other side of the globe than consider the possible detriment to the black people a few neighborhoods away who are being dragged back to the pre civil rights era.
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: Its their version of white man’s burden. It was the cosplay socialists that started Biden is too old business in 2020 primaries along with Kamala is a cop.
Ruckus
@Jinchi:
Yes I used to read his stuff on occasion as well. He seemed like he was sort of making a name for himself rather than actually being whatever it is that he wanted to become. Like being important was all there was to it. Which is what comrade scotts agenda of rage was basically saying. He’s important because he’s important, not because he does or says anything worth seeing or listening to.
Tom Q
@NotMax:
Just to note that, post-1880, the only successfully elected in this group (including FDR) were those representing the out-party. Another Scott mentioned above that Intra-party Challenge is one of Lichtman’s negative Keys, but he specifies that it only applies to the incumbent party. FDR in ’32, Eisenhower in ’52, even Reagan in ’80 didn’t win their conventions overwhelmingly…but it didn’t matter, because voters were anxious to oust the incumbent parties and went with the challengers.
Put another way: one of the reasons incumbents most often get re-elected is they don’t get banged up in party primaries. One of the reasons the ’32-’52 Dem streak of holding the White House came about is, in ’32 FDR was running against an unpopular incumbent, and then a popular-enough/unchallenged incumbent ran in the next four contests. The reason it’s so hard for parties to win third consecutive terms is because (after the 22nd Amendment) they need to replace their incumbent, and the process can be bruising.
Biden holding the incumbency is an asset. Naturally, the pundit class thinks Dems should toss that away. Because none of them know what they’re talking about.
Glory b
@Baud: Thank you, I try.
schrodingers_cat
Former FPer on BJ dengree on Twitter, sums it up well.
Ruckus
@Frank McCormick:
Why is it so hard for so many smart and informed people to think strategically about political campaigns?
Because they want what they want but would never attempt or think about attempting to get it done, it’s not in their scheme of life. Some things in life are hard, depending on who you are and what you’ve learned. And some things are just hard. Getting elected and actually doing the job is hard. Harder for some than others but it isn’t easy to convince a lot of people that you have even a clue. And likely just as often your idea doesn’t actually align with their’s. Politics is often a choice of the least worst not the best. Say in the choice of ShitForBrains or Joe Biden. OK in that case there is a very, exceedingly easy choice. It’s the guy with a proven ACTUAL record, not the retard with a big mouth and an actually insane view of himself, SFB.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar:
I had to look it up: It was Bernie Sanders, and while he wasn’t actually a serious threat to Biden once things started to shake out, he was way ahead of all of the other alternatives in actual votes and delegates. The other candidates who got delegates were Warren, Bloomberg and Buttigieg. (Harris dropped out early, early enough that I remember being surprised.)
But Bernie doesn’t work as an answer to the “too old” complaints, and nobody’s seriously proposing him as a replacement.
Cheryl from Maryland
@RaflW: I await the fire sale of paintings o depicting nudes in West Virginia’s few art museums, as well as a future bill dealing with nudie public sculpture. It will make John Ashcroft dealing with a bare breasted Justice seem positively enlightened.
Uncle Cosmo
FTR it appears not to be from either Galen or Hippocrates:
(As Casey Stengel and before him James Thurber used to say, You could look it up.)
Miss Bianca
@Glory b: Believe me, the plight of marginalized Americans has been on my mind.
That said, I still think Biden will win. But yeah, no thanks to some.
Miss Bianca
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, saw plenty of that growing up in that area in the 70s/80s.
There’s a reason that the term “Grosse Pointe Marxists” came into vogue.
Manyakitty
@Miss Bianca: two words the republican have internalized: MESSAGE DISCIPLINE. We need to stay focused with a few clear phrases. Yeah, President Biden’s old but MVP Harris is excellent. They’re both threading one zillion needles and more effectively that I imagined.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Quasi-topical.
:)
eponymous coward
So who’s chairing this brokered convention, Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?
(Because all three have about the same probability of existing.)
NotMax
@eponymous coward
Yup yup. With the changes instituted since 1960 (superdelegates), not bloody likely.
Barbara
@Glory b: I think about this very thing a lot too.
Ruckus
@Alice:
Most of us are likely citizens and have a vote (some of course possibly not). That does not mean that all of us will like or think 100% positive of our candidate. Because really there are often/always very few choices and it gets narrowed down often not in the way we’d like it. For someone say not yet in their 20s it might be difficult to see someone possibly older than their grandparents to be cognizant and reasonable for the job. Hell I’m not a hell of a lot younger than Joe Biden, my sister would be six months older if she was still with us. The voting age of our citizens is 18. A parent might not be 40 and a grand parent might not be old enough for Social Security. I can see how someone might be wary of Joe Biden’s age. But we all age differently. And Joe Biden seems to be doing it very well.
Paul in KY
@hueyplong: I like your logic!
Paul in KY
@NotMax: And it took FDR to do that!
Paul in KY
@Gretchen: All true! The Ted in 80ers still angry up my blood!
Paul in KY
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Oklahoma, in general, is a shitty state with many shitty people living in it.