As I mentioned in the comments yesterday, Jaime Harrison called the question on the people pressuring Biden to quit by specifying that the nomination vote will be done by August 5. So it’s fish or cut bait, and Schumer and Jeffries have apparently both asked Biden to step aside. If it happens, it will happen soon. I still think it will be chaos, but I’m pretty much at the point where anything that happens needs to happen so we can regroup and get on with the business of winning elections.
Biden has COVID, which will take him off of the campaign trail for a few days. Whether or not he steps down, what I’m looking for from his campaign is to give Kamala Harris a bigger role. As the VP candidate, her job is to go after Trump and Vance hammer and tongs. Vance, especially, is little known by normies, and he’s basically the worst kind of privileged white man. The VP’s role is to fill in for the President when he’s not able. He’s not able for a couple of days, so she needs to hit that Yalebilly as hard as she can in the events that Biden would have attended. And don’t doubt that she’ll get attention, because of course the press will make a huge deal of her taking over.
I think the “hit” of press speculation about Harris’ role in the campaign going forward — if it is even a hit — is worth taking to get some attention on the deep misogyny of Trump/Vance. Vance wants to be part of the Paw Women’s Uteri Patrol, and there’s nobody better than Harris to make the case of how awful he is, and how much worse he makes the ticket. Also, the reality is that there’s a decent chance that the VP will become the President in the next four years, no matter which ticket is elected. Harris needs more exposure to show that she’s by far the better choice as a potential replacement for the President.
If the Biden campaign is so wrapped up in protecting him that they can’t deploy Harris, this indicates a real problem to me.
This Will Be the Last Word on This from Me, and I’m (mostly) Outsourcing it to Eolirin
TaMara
Define deploy, because she’s already attacking Vance this morning and has been at campaign events consistently for the past few weeks. And she’s been heavily campaigning for women’s rights all over the country. What specifically do you want to see from her, proving there’s not a problem?
syphonblue
Schumer and Jeffries need to shut the fuck up
I say that with all due respect
BR
I am a bit surprised that Harris isn’t on the campaign trail doing 2-3 campaign stops a day at this point. I hope that she will be. Right now it’s more like 4 a week.
gene108
If Biden decides to step aside, the party has to agree to fully support VP Harris.
At this point, I’m beginning to favor Biden stepping aside.
His biggest negative is he’s 81. He’s not getting any younger.
This is a problem. Voters don’t want to have to hope old age doesn’t catch up with their choice for president during their term in office.
$8 blue check mistermix
@TaMara:
What I mean is if there’s a big event scheduled for Biden today, and he’s sick, she should go instead.
Agree that she’s been at all kinds of events, but they’re not big rallies like the Biden events.
gene108
@syphonblue:
The House and Senate polls for this cycle must be looking very bad for Schumer and Jeffries to take this position.
They were not in the “bedwetting” group calling for Biden to step aside during or shortly after the debate.
Something changed their minds.
rikyrah
José
@josecanyousee
This recent swing state poll was sponsored by Democrats for the Next Generation which is spearheaded by Mike Novogratz a crypto investor. Anyway he is complaining about the Biden administration’s stance on cryptocurrency. Y’ALL ARE GETTING PLAYED OVER CRYPTOCURRENCY?!
https://x.com/josecanyousee/status/1813944471257743400
Belafon
@gene108: Neither is Trump. Or Harris. Or you. Or me.
BR
@gene108:
Contra all the donors who think Biden dropping out gives them a fresh crop of candidates, I actually don’t see anyone I like out there to be Harris’s VP if Biden were to drop out. They’re either too centrist for my taste (Beshear, Shapiro), too centrist and not eligible (Newsom), and generally all of them are untested in a national context.
WereBear
Biden has a backup and I’m sure she can be up to the job. Expect to hear how harsh and shrill she will be, but yes, we want that smarmy Vance to take over when the 78 year old keels.
Belafon
So, what are you going to do, and what are you going to do differently now that you would have done before the debate? Are you going to vote, tell your friends and family to vote. GOTV, fundraise, etc.?
$8 blue check mistermix
@gene108:
According to the Guardian story, one contributor was a terrible poll in Virginia showing Biden down by 2 in a state he won by 10 in 2020.
Belafon
@WereBear: She’s beating Trump right now because she’s not the candidate.
syphonblue
@gene108: We JUST went through this 2 years ago. Remember all the bed wetting about the gigantic red wave that was coming? Polls right now are broken. Like the one yesterday from GA showing Biden down by 3 points, where black voters – who were 28% of the GA electorate in 2020 – were only 2% of the 800 respondents. So, 16 people. They asked 16 black people. In all of Georgia.
And yet Dems keep overperforming in ACTUAL ELECTIONS.
Belafon
I do like the dueling front pager posts we have here. /snark
What’s the latest news on the horror that is Project 2025?
rikyrah
Dr Sarah Taber
@SarahTaber_bww
You know how people are worried about foreign investors buying up US farmland?
There’s a company that helps them do that! It’s like Uber for buying US farmland.
And who’s one of its key investors, profiting off of every sale?
J.D. Vance.
https://x.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1813656180528755061
Percysowner
@gene108:
His biggest negative is that the media won’t shut the fuck up about it.
Yes, I’m becoming resigned to the idea that he will be forced to resign. I also know, that unless the Democrats sweep the elections, Biden will be blamed for the loss. If he doesn’t resign, any loss will be because he didn’t resign. If he resigns now, any loss will be because he didn’t resign soon enough or should never have run. Whatever happens, his legacy will be one of being the reason the Democrats lost, instead of being the most effective President in 60+ years and that is the saddest part. What he has accomplished will be dwarfed by this.
@gene108: What changed was the megadonors announcing they will not support any Democrat unless Biden is OUT. We can argue as to their motives, but that is a big stick being used to get him to quit.
TaMara
@$8 blue check mistermix: Okay. That makes sense. It looks like she’s going to NC today for a campaign event. But I agree, if Biden is missing events, she should go instead.
rikyrah
The Associated Press
@AP
Trump has given no official info about his medical care for days since an assassination attempt
https://x.com/AP/status/1813725590899368023
$8 blue check mistermix
@Belafon:
I don’t think it’s a duel at all. I’m as sick of this as Watergirl is. But no message, including our Project 2025 messaging, is going to break through in the MSM until the Democrats settle this. My thought is that subbing Harris for Biden at rallies for a couple of days will at least start to get our message out, with her as the messenger.
rikyrah
Contented Independent
@ContentedIndie
What you are seeing is a power struggle.
The Old Money, old guard, have staked everything on this guy losing.
And he’s proving he’s not going to.
And they’re *furious*.
Because his reelection means it’s over for them. A new era begins.
10:54 PM · Jul 17, 2024
https://x.com/ContentedIndie/status/1813784426289168766
Chris
Random question:
I just read WaterGirl’s post before yours asking for no more Biden comments in her threads. Have you front-pagers considered having just one thread each day about the whole “is Biden stepping down?” thing? This is clearly going to continue being a big story, and people are going to want to keep talking about it for various reasons. But rather than making some threads off limits, just put up one thread every morning, and for the rest of the day, anybody who wants to discuss any new developments or just feels the need to talk about it can go there?
Not speaking on behalf of anyone but myself. It’s just something that it occurred to me might be the best option for everyone frustrated at this. This way, the blog as a whole (meaning not just comments but front-page posts) doesn’t get bogged down in DebateGate.
syphonblue
@Percysowner: Dems should tell them to go pound sand. Why are we letting a bunch of rich assholes hold the party hostage?
Jackie
@BR:
Big Gretchen? Or is that one woman too many on the ticket? //
I’ve been casually thinking about the “just in case” scenario, and thought of Beto – but I think his sell by date has expired as a national candidate.
Belafon
@Percysowner: And the legacy of all of the Democrats calling for him to resign will always be that they called for him to resign.
superdestroyer
@gene108: Almost all Democrats running for the Senate are polling ahead of Biden. See Penn, Nevada, Wisconsin, and even Ohio.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: People will talk about it in virtually every thread anyway.
Darkrose
If Biden has deteriorated to the point that he can no longer run for re-election, doesn’t that imply that he should not be president? Do the congressional Democrats think it’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment? And if so, how do we handle the fact that a Republican-held Congress won’t vote to confirm a vice-president, so Mike Johnson will effectively be president should something happen to Harris?
WereBear
We are either puppets of the MSM, or we are not.
Belafon
@Chris: It would be impossible to keep it to that thread unless the front pagers started deleting comments.
MisterForkbeard
A day or so ago, I just decided to not bother with all of this.
My opinion on this is that Biden is fine and that if the party had actually stepped up to his defence in late June and early July we wouldn’t be in this mess. But they did and we are, so we need a resolution. The party needs to get their shit together and fervently and publicly back the candidate. If Biden stays, they need to do that for him. If it’s not him, they need to do it for Harris.
The rest is just wanking. I’ve decided not to get angry or outraged by any of the rest of it and just work for a better conclusion.
superdestroyer
@syphonblue: The pollsters do corrections to allow for only 2% of respondents being blacks. The issue comes from how to that calculate the uncertainty with all of the weights.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Darkrose:
This is the point I make to my friends and family when they ask about Biden dropping out.
TaMara
@Chris: LOL, this would mean we actually coordinated with each other. We can barely miss stomping on posts – though with the exception of the blog father we all try not to – and not to mention threads getting hijacked by trolls regardless and people insisting on feeding them.
It’s a losing battle 😁
rikyrah
Can one of the FrontPagers find the clip of Jaime Harrison on MSNBC last night?
His defense of the President was on point.
Jackie
@rikyrah:
He got a bandage for his ear and Tylenol for the bruising he might have accrued from being roughly shoved down by SS.
What other reports of medical care should we expect???
$8 blue check mistermix
@superdestroyer: I was listening to the LGM podcast when they talked with their former FP who lives in England about the British elections. He said he was looking at a poll with 20,000 respondents. That’s right – 20X the average US poll. In a parliamentary system with like 750 seats, that’s probably a necessity. But maybe we need a better standard for a “high quality” poll.
Percysowner
@Darkrose:
I have seen people arguing that he should quit which is the STUPIDIST thing ever, because of the Mike Johnson angle. To be fair, I don’t think anyone is arguing that Biden is incompetent NOW, just that he can’t be reelected.
West of the Rockies
@$8 blue check mistermix: i thought Biden saying he would not step down (period) settled it.
jonas
Schiff too, I reckon. The internal polling on downballot races in a lot of places is looking rough, I suspect.
I agree with mistermix here. Harris needs to come out swinging and giving a blistering response to Trump’s speech first thing tomorrow would be a good place to start. Regardless of who is at the top of the ballot, people need to understand that if we lose the House and Senate, they’re still going to push through Project 2025 and a nationwide abortion ban regardless of Trump’s ridiculous attempts to disavow them.
TaMara
@Darkrose: Hahahahaha – facts about Biden not in evidence, but sure go ahead and “speculate” just for doom and gloom fun. Meanwhile, I suggest to all that pie is good
gene108
@syphonblue:
I live in NJ. We had a statewide election in 2021. Republicans over performed.
VA also had a statewide election in 2021. Republicans won the governorship and retook a chamber of the legislature.
Based on these limited results, it seemed Republicans were a lot more fired up than Democrats because Republicans wanted to avenge Trump’s loss.
Dobbs changed the dynamics and Democrats kept the Senate. Democrats lost the House, which isn’t a sign of Democratic dominance to me.
To me, 2022 showed enough people were angry about Dobbs to blunt Republicans taking over all of Congress and some state elections.
2024 isn’t 2022.
Biden’s debate performance was the first time most people paid attention to what Biden’s like this year. It was basically a “first” impression. It was awful. Sometimes people don’t overcome a bad first impression.
Also, in 2022, President Biden was bicycling around Rohoboth beach in the summers. He doesn’t do this anymore because of neuropathy in his feet. As Biden pointed out in his campaign stop in Raleigh, NC, the day after the debate, he’s older, his voice is weaker, and his steps are slower, ie the signs of aging are noticeable versus 2020.
There’s no good solution at this point in time. Every choice has its downsides, including sticking with Biden.
M31
i get it, Biden couldn’t choose not to get old
but you know what? Trump could have chosen not to be a rapist, or a felon, or treasonmongering insurrectionist, or enable and then cheerlead the repeal of Roe v. Wade, or bungle the covid response so mightily that at least a million people died who didn’t need to, or passed a multi-trillion dollar tax giveaway to the wealthy and huge corporations, or kiss up to dictators, etc. etc.
jonas
Agreed — there’s absolutely no reason to doubt he could finish his term. All things being equal, stepping aside for Harris might allow her to get a boost from being the current commander-in-chief, but I do have serious concerns about the Speaker Johnson situation in the House. They tried to default on the debt. They wouldn’t think twice about denying Harris a VP and putting Johnson first in line because they are traitorous shitweasels above all else.
Omnes Omnibus
You say that, but I am not sure that he could have. He is who he is.
Eolirin
@superdestroyer: 2% being 16 people is a problem no matter what they use to adjust. The margin of error on that group is much larger than for the entire poll, and runs the risk of skewing things badly if it’s adjusted to more closely match the population size.
And that’s before response bias enters the equation.
It’s not a good poll.
Belafon
@TaMara: Once again, I like to compare us to the Avengers: We all have the same ultimate goals, we just disagree on how we should get there and sometimes are at each others’ throats (whole movies could be made about it), but I believe in the end we’ll come together, though it will cost more than if we were better coordinated.
Tractarian
@Darkrose:
It sure does. The problem is, this mess only gets resolved with Biden’s agreement. And stepping down as nominee is a totally different proposition than resigning the presidency.
If he steps down as nominee, he can easily cite his age, his health, and his desire to focus on the job he was elected to do rather than campaigning. It would not significantly damage his legacy any further than it has already been damaged. Resigning the presidency without completing a term, on the other hand, would be world-historically embarrassing.
I do think, if Biden were to resign, Harris would benefit strongly from incumbency. But it’s just impossible to see him doing it.
Given the Schumer/Jeffries news, I think the most likely outcome at this point is Biden agreeing to step down as nominee on condition that Harris is named as his replacement.
WereBear
Vance’s wife is a high powered attorney. Where is the Vanity Fair article about how she feels about losing her vote?
MNDoug
@superdestroyer: I’m seeing a lot of that. Hard for me to imagine that many folks who are voting for a D Senator are going to turn around and vote for Trump. So wouldn’t a reasonable interpretation be that the D Senator polling numbers are the ‘real’ numbers for Biden and that his polling numbers are just from relentless negative coverage? Basically Biden using the Senate candidate’s coattails.
MisterForkbeard
@$8 blue check mistermix: There’s probably an opportunity there with Covid that wasn’t there before. Biden has a plausible out: He could say that he hasn’t fully recovered from Covid – he can more than fulfill all his presidential duties but he doesn’t have the health for a sustained, 7-day-a-week campaign of flights and travelling. So he’s going to bow out of the campaign and give it to Kamala, and will be campaigning with the nominee as much as he can.
Again, I think this is dumb. But I suppose there’s an opportunity there that wasn’t there last week.
M31
I mean, maybe? But I’m hearing justifications for dumping Biden being that he’s polling behind other Dems (Senate races in swing states is what I saw). Which is the exact opposite of “Biden dragging down downballot Dems”.
Which to me is more evidence that the drop-Biden folks start with the conclusion “drop Biden” and then cite misc. data to justify it, even if the misc. justifications are contradictory.
MisterForkbeard
@West of the Rockies: The fact that it didn’t really is a problem. Both for the party and for Biden. Him lacking perceived authority is not a good look.
Tractarian
@jonas:
Why? Of course the R-majority house wouldn’t confirm a VP for Harris, but the vice presidency ain’t worth a bucket of LBJ’s warm spit. The nation can survive a few months without a VP.
zhena gogolia
Where are the public statements by Schumer and Jeffries? I’d like to read them
WereBear
Trump can afford indoor rallies now? Can’t manage security outdoors.
Will he Zoom campaign?
Or risk death with Vance as his replacement?
OId Man Shadow
Hmm… not in a regrouping mood.
If this happens… is there any way I can vent my utterly seething anger, contempt and a desire to tell all of the fuckers driving this shit to go fuck themselves with a big thick prickly barrel cactus without dooming Latinos, LGBTQ people, women, and the planet?
gvg
I have not seen ONE official on the record story that really showed the big democrats had really asked Biden to step down, just constant unnamed sources saying so. Past experience has shown me that can be people who don’t really know, just a few, repeating it to multiple outlets, pretending to be multiple different sources, and then quoting themselves.
I also remember that in the past big donors don’t mean as many votes as lots of little donors.
I really, really do not want primary voters votes to be thrown out. THAT is old time power smoke filled room politics not democracy. That is why IMO I say it’s too late. In fact, I don’t think electors or delegates should still exist at all, just votes and totals.
I’d also like to know some more confirmed facts, like which donors supposedly have stopped giving for what reason. Shine a light on them.
IMO anything other than supporting Biden and fighting off these false attacks is losing.
Old School
If only there was a “Biden is too old” candidate on the Democratic primary ballot a few months ago. You know, someone with no policy differences and couldn’t really say that they’d change anything about Biden’s actions. Someone whose argument was “Vote for me! I’m younger!”
I’d bet that candidate would have attracted endorsements, donors, and voters.
I guess we’ll never know.
Eolirin
@OId Man Shadow: No, there isn’t.
Lapassionara
The 2016 election convinced me that we will not have a woman president in my lifetime. I think the freakout about Biden’s age is the fear that Harris might become president if something happened to him. I think he is great and his age does not bother me since I am a few months older than he is. I am confident he will be fine if he is permitted to run. I like Harris, but I don’t think the country as a whole is ready to have a woman at the helm.
I think the wall street types definitely want to put their weight on getting a new ticket, and I think they are doing what they can to insure a second Trump term. This is heartbreaking and demoralizing.
When I consider all the times the NYTimes has been wrong in this millenium (Iraq, Hillary’s e-mails) and the evils that have followed, I just shake my head at the way its slant has driving public opinion.
If Trump wins, Vladimir Putin will have succeeded in undermining the US’s standing in the world, and he will have done so without firing a shot.
BethanyAnne
@WereBear: Perfect. Just the perfect response. The response to “Biden blah blah” or “Will he or won’t he?” is TRUMP BAD!
Like 4 or 5 comments from you just nailing it. No sarcasm, no notes. I love to see it.
M31
@Omnes Omnibus: yes you are right, rape and treason are pretty baked in to Trump’s personality
Christ, what an asshole. I can’t believe that the current timeline means not only do I know all about what goes on in Trump’s brain but also details of what his stupid penis looks like
I mean, WTF, I’m a sinner like all the rest but I don’t think I did anything to deserve THAT
Comrade Scrutinizer
This version of “Butter emails” is working even better than the last one. We’re going to let fear sink this. What’s for sure is that we’re looking at a bunch of rich fucks pulling the strings on the election: if the Dems win, which seems unlikely if primary results are disregarded and an entirely new campaign team has to pick up the reins three months before the election amid continued GQP ratfucking, then the donor class has their hooks in deep. If Trump wins, we’ll see the same thing along with overt totalitarianism thrown in.
What I haven’t seen is anyone in the “throw Biden out” camp present any kind of roadmap to victory. It’s all wishful thinking and fairy dust. But persist, because the difference between an 81 year old and a 78 year old reprobate is a vast chasm.
Suckers.
Jackie
@$8 blue check mistermix:
That would fire up the “Harris is replacing Joe!!!” conspiracy theories by BOTH SIDES.
jonas
@Jackie: The only updates about his condition were his own posts on Truth Social, nothing official from the campaign or a medical professional. You’re right that, all things being equal, this probably isn’t a big deal, but you can bet if Biden had a minor injury and his campaign was mum like this, there would be 45 hysterical headlines about it the next morning in the FTFNYT.
Omnes Omnibus
@OId Man Shadow: No, there really isn’t right now. But you can let them know that you will remember them and vote/donate accordingly.
gene108
@rikyrah:
Trump’s never given any info about his health, other than reports by his doctor in 2016 and Ronny Jackson, in 2020, that are some variation of “he’s the healthiest human being that’s ever lived”.
Trump keeps a light schedule. He did this even as President. When he has to deliver speeches in public he doesn’t come of any worse than he has for the last 9 years.
Also, life’s not fair. If it were, Trump wouldn’t be where he is in life.
We just have to deal with it.
@Percysowner:
And they expect a new Democratic nominee to abandon everything the party’s accomplished and tried to accomplish over the last four years?
What do they expect a new nominee to drop? Voting rights legislation? Protecting abortion rights? Unwinding Dodd-Frank?
Okay, the new nominee drops regulating crypto to the bottom of the list, if all this talk is driven crypto dealers. So what? Most people, including myself, do not really understand crypto. Ordinary people avoid it. It’s there and not directly impacting my life, as far as I know.
Sean
@gene108:
This is pretty much where I’ve been. I’m not in the Biden must step down camp. I like Biden. But this tension cannot be allowed to continue. Collectively, Dem leadership needs to stop the Politico tour and make moves, or lock it all down, rally the unfaithful and forcefully make the case for Biden. This absurdity has to end. I can’t see any choice being “good” in the sense that we know it will work. One pro for Kamala is the whole ageist angle would go away and the 900 prewritten stories from the MSM would go up in smoke (although the 900 prewritten “but she’s a woman” stories would flourish instead). I wish Dems would have fought for and defended Biden from the debate forward. I think we’d be in a much better place. But regrouping and moving forward is necessary, whomever is at the top of the ticket.
guachi
@gene108:
The people who think Biden is “too old” to be President now, or be President for 4 more years, or effectively run against Trump can’t really be persuaded to change their mind on this because, as you say, he’s not getting any younger.
It’s a negative that’s impossible to fix and will only get worse. At least if your negative is “she’s a Black woman” that’s also unfixable but unlikely to get any worse.
Biden’s other problem is that in order to overcome the “too old” label he has to campaign a lot. And every time Biden does basically anything it reminds people he’s old.
Eolirin
@gvg: For nomination contests you either need delegates that can go onto a second round of voting if there’s no clean majority or ranked choice voting. It’s not good if someone can win a nomination for something like the president with only a plurality of the vote.
Darkrose
But they kind of are. The entire argument for why he can’t be re-elected is that he’s old and decrepit and experiencing such severe and rapid cognitive decline that he wouldn’t be able to serve as President.
Lyrebird
YES.
In some ways I totally agree. Concerns: I mistrust the MSM, so I am not confident that the messaging will get through their tornadoes of spin even if Biden steps down. I do not think the crypto speculators and disinformation pros are the only reason for the calls to step down, but I do think they’re part of it. And the open-convention talkers are shttng on our Veep and on the entire administration’s record. I still agree that Harris has to go on those stages where POTUS was scheduled, I just don’t know if any of it will pull the media narrative back to a more constructive track.
Tractarian
@Old School:
Dean Phillips was not a serious candidate. Harris (or one of the young-ish senators or governors) would have been a serious candidate. Those people did not run, however, because there was no sense within the party at the time that Biden’s age and health would prevent him from being an effective campaigner.
I think it’s fair to say that things have changed in the last six months. This is the risk inherent in this system – the candidate who looks the best to primary voters in January is not necessarily the candidate who is the best to run in November.
Percysowner
@Tractarian:
Yes, because the Republicans are SO vocal about their opposition to violence against the people they don’t think should be in power, i.e. black, female, Democrat. NONE of them would take a shot at making Johnson President for the last months of this Presidency.
At the very least, the Secret Service would probably start recommending that Harris “cut back” on public appearances. Think this THROUGH people.
Eolirin
@guachi: Or, you know, we stop focusing on the Biden’s too old thing and get people really worried about the whole wannabe Hitler thing. If the American public is more okay with Hitler than a dude being old and his replacement being a black woman, we just lose.
And we’ll deserve to lose. And that’s the end of the story. All we can do is make that choice clear. If America decides to choose fascism, America chooses fascism.
Jackie
@M31: TCFG was born that way. It’s in his DNA. Look at his dad and granddad.
And, remember: He is ABOVE THE LAW! Says the SC of the this here US of A.
Old School
@Tractarian:
Why? Because he couldn’t attract endorsements, donors, and voters?
Chief Oshkosh
@superdestroyer:
I think the problem might be that one must “do corrections to allow for” the reality that the pollsters have been amazingly WRONG for the last several elections.
Their “corrections” need correcting.
Kay
@Sean:
I think they haven’t come at him more directly because they believe that approach will only make him dig in further. Pelosi hates public airing of disunity. She wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t think she had to.
OId Man Shadow
@Omnes Omnibus: That is, of course, assuming that it will matter and the opposition party won’t be a powerless, toothless mirage set up to give the illusion of democracy without any chance of actually winning.
Of course, the current Democratic party is really starting to feel that way right now.
Harrison Wesley
So the next 3 weeks will be round after round of Groundhog Day Doomers? Lovely.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
My question is, why hasn’t anyone put themselves out there as an alternative to Biden? If he were as bad as he’s made out to be you’d think there would be any number of big egos proclaiming their ability to do the job. Instead: crickets.
gene108
@MNDoug:
People can always leave the presidential line blank and vote for all the down ballot races.
I think this will be the most likely outcome for Biden.
Lyrebird
@Tractarian:
@Percysowner:
I think the next time the front pagers are short of pet pic contributions*, we should have a “best VP for Harris” suggestion thread for people who want it. Has to be open to ridiculous as well as serious suggestions. I think the temporary junior Senator from California might be the possibility who would make the most wingnut heads explode figuratively speaking.
*have we already seen the next installment of Ferd’s puppy photos?
RaflW
The photos of the happy, mostly white, mostly women, lotta blondes holding “Mass Deportation” signs at RNC are getting a LOT of traction on Bsky today.
We need a full-court press on our media morons to f—ing cover this. Thoroughly. And not in some bullshit NPR, “but how will the courts react to this” hypothetical. We need the antecedents discussed in terms of why this is like other genocides-in-the-making in world history.
It’s that bad. A very kindly travel blogger I follow, who is of Armenian heritage, said this on Bsky today (he has been political before, but not like this):
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: And a campaign of leaks won’t make him dig in as well?
Other MJS
@Darkrose:
No.
CaseyL
Sigh. Always a good idea to visit liberal-leaning sites to greet the day with a primal scream of existential despair.
Some weird discussion going on at dKos, that this is also about positioning for 2028. Many ambitious Democrats don’t want Kamala Harris to be in their way for 2028 (either as the incumbent if Biden has to step down, or as the VP of a spectacularly successful 2-term Administration), and are willing to risk a second Trump Administration to forestall that outcome.
I hate that as much as I hate the idea that it’s The Monies dictating the current crisis.
Thanks, Democratic politicians, who I am also beginning to loathe and despise. JFC.
Jackie
@WereBear:
Who, I believe, clerked for Alito.
She’s all in.
ETA I stand corrected: clerked for multiple federal judges, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Sean
@Kay: The clock is about to strike midnight on the whole endeavor. So, while disunity sucks – a will he won’t he, backbiting narrative for 3 weeks where no Democratic message breaks through isn’t exactly better. (One might call it disunity even)
So, either get on with it, or get back to pushing the Democratic message and supporting Biden. We’ve seen some polls showing Biden gaining in some swing states, even in spite of all of this absolute shit show. If we do this until the convention we’re going to be in full blown self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, this shit makes me as miserable as I’m sure it does all of you. I hate it. I thought we’d crested the wave and maybe were moving towards a coherent strategy, but the other guy was NEARLY FUCKING ASSASINATED and it was only a story for 2 days before we were back to this.
JESUS CHRIST.
OId Man Shadow
@Other MJS: If he’s too old and feeble to run a campaign, he’s too old and feeble to be president.
RaflW
@rikyrah: Trump fell asleep during his son’s speech this week. It’s not the first time he’s dozed just at the RNC. He nodded off several times at his own trial.
But our godforsaken press doesn’t give a shit.
slightly_peeved
@Tractarian:
I like that, because that means we’re ridin’ with Biden, baybeeeee…
No-one will give him that promise. Everyone who wants him out that I’ve checked either says nothing about the replacement or talks about open primaries.
Jeffro
This whole “Mike Johnson won’t allow Candidate/President Harris to nominate a VP” seems off. I know Rs don’t care much about public opinion in general, but…refusing to hold a quick hearing and confirmation vote on a Veep?? It’d be a really, really bad look for the whole party. And there’s really nothing to gain – this isn’t like holding up a SCOTUS nominee.
A really, really bad look as in, “bad enough that even trump might say, ‘whatever Mike, let her pick someone…just rough them up in the hearing’ ”
Or maybe I am giving Susie Wiles & Co too much credit, but she would probably weigh in and tell trump to tell Johnson to proceed. They’re sure they’re going to win anyway, right?
Jeffro
I think they have him pretty well tranked up most days.
Another Scott
https://nitter.poast.org/whereiskamala
Rollcall.com/FactBase has “consolidated releases” of WhiteHouse announcements, including MVP’s “Daily Guidance”.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
OId Man Shadow
@Jeffro: No fair. I want some.
Other MJS
@CaseyL:
“Risk”? Like there will be an election in 2028 if Trump wins.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know Omnes
I think they know him pretty well. They started gently and now they’re escalating but none of them “want” to do this. They believe they have to. I agree. We’re not even talking about the whole second tier of states anymore – GA, AZ and Nevada
We’re down to the blue wall and he’s at least 5 points back in all those. VA is now in play and CO must be tipping to get Hickenlooper to come out. They have to stop the bleeding. But no one eagerly did this – they did it because they have to. You know Pelosi – it’s “just win” she’s never pretended to be anything other than tough as nails.
rb
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
It Biden is seen as being thrown out, we cannot win.
Also I think there is no universe in which Biden is somehow “thrown out” and Kamala goes along with it.
The way things look now, I think in order of chance of victory, the options are:
1. Biden ends his candidacy of his own accord and passes the torch to Harris. Harris becomes the nominee by acclaim at the convention, some chance of victory.
2. Biden remains the nominee through the election, some chance of victory.
3. Various other things that have no chance of winning, loss.
4. Biden steps down voluntarily, but Harris is not nominated. Open primary bloodbath, blowout loss.
5. Biden is ‘thrown out’ and <insert some schmuck not named Kamala Harris> becomes the candidate by open primary, catastrophic blowout loss.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: Well, if it about positioning for 2028, Schiff will be very near the bottom of any list that I have for the primary. I doubt that I am alone.
Old School
@Jeffro:
How many Republicans representatives do you think want “Voted to confirm Whitmer as Vice President” on their records?
MisterForkbeard
@Other MJS: Oh, there’ll be an “election” for sure
Bupalos
@gene108: We should be hammering that message that neither Trump nor Biden is likely to finish the term, one way or the other, because Harris v. Vance I’m pretty sure is a winner for us.
Thiel bought Vance onto that ticket, the dude has general negative charisma
WereBear
Who managed that NATO conference, then?
M31
when there is no incumbent, then the ability to put together a broad, well-staffed, effective campaign tells something about how the person would be a president (and in fact, I was somewhat wary of Harris in 2020 for that reason, her campaign had issues and some public strife; the counterexample being Obama in ’08, where he had good staff in all the states etc. etc.)
we already know, though, that Biden is and has been an EXCELLENT president, and I’m firmly in the “absolute best since FDR” on that, so “oh noes he can’t go out and do a grueling campaign whirlwind and give inspiring speeches and debates and rallies every single day with not one slip up or else we dump him” because campaigning is (to me anyway) a diagnostic as to organizational skills and I already know Biden has top-notch organizational skills, he’s the biggest winner there in decades! (Obama had some terrible hires and we all know it; and Trump’s hires were a freakshow of treason, corruption, and outright evil)
Jackie
@jonas:
I don’t subscribe, but I’m SURE they mentioned the covid word somewhere in this morning’s edition? 🤷🏼♀️
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Maybe I am wrong, but I think that voters want someone who will fight for them. The top Dems who are leaking now do not give the impression that they will fight. This is, IMO, remarkably unhelpful.
Citizen Alan
@BR: IF (and I do not support Biden dropping out) Biden drops out and is replaced by Kamala, I would hope that the VP nominee is Buttegieg, if only because the team of a black woman and a gay man would drive the GOP even more insane and make them even more repellant to normies.
But I am still Ridin’ with Biden.
guachi
@Eolirin:
How is Biden supposed to stop people thinking he’s too old when every time he does basically anything on the campaign trail it will remind people he’s old?
Biden is deeply unpopular. If the only way Biden can win is to campaign against Trump then that case doesn’t need Biden at the top of the ticket to do it.
Biden is running well behind Senate Ds in every race by about 10 points. The problem isn’t the message; it’s the messenger
gene108
@Darkrose:
You miss the point.
Biden can finish this term. People believe this.
They aren’t sure an 82 year old man, when he’s inaugurated, can serve effectively up to the age of 86.
Most people don’t make it out of their 80’s alive. When in their 80’s does the decline hit isn’t predictable.
This scares people about a Biden second term.
Tractarian
@rb: Your list of potential paths and their outcomes is spot on.
I’m curious, though, as to what “Biden is seen as being thrown out” means to you.
Biden’s delegates will make him the nominee unless Biden doesn’t want them to. And if Biden doesn’t want them to, it’s obviously because of the pressure brought to bear in the last few weeks. So I don’t really see a scenario in which Biden withdraws from the race but is not “seen as being thrown out.”
Kay
@Sean:
He’ll step down. He’s a loyal Dem. I agree it’s a mess but I think it’s understandable. I think there was real decline in the last 6 months
This just isn’t the 2020 Biden. This is a much weaker candidate who I believe can simply not handle the rigors of a campaign.
$8 blue check mistermix
The Post just posted this:
https://wapo.st/3ybtMfd (Gift Link
Edited to add: Obama, Schumer and Jeffries are not on the record but they’re not denying it either. Overall, to me, that means the stories are more-or-less right.
Salty Sam
THIS right here!
Before they had the horse, Indigenous Americans would spook and stampede herds of bison to a nearby cliff, where the bison would go over the edge and die by the thousands. The indigenous tribes would feast for days.
Anonymous quotes and unsourced rumors are being used to stampede Dem pols off the cliff. The donors and media will feast.
The bison never figured out that if they just stood strong and ignored those silly yelling arm-waving humans, they’d be just fine.
Kay
And here comes the Obama leak. I knew he would do it. It has to be done.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: for the money/donor class, this is literally the only issue they are voting on in this election.
Trnc
@syphonblue: Dems did not over perform the polls in 2022. They over performed the media predictions that ignored the polls.
guachi
@Kay: Tom Nichols has been hammering on Twitter that being President and running for office are two different things. If Biden were ahead in the polls and Trump was heading to jail then Biden not being up for the rigors of a campaign just wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t be saying one word about Biden dropping out at that point.
But the twin blow of Biden’s poor debate and an unhinged Supreme Court ruling that will see the NY verdict tossed out changed my mind.
Kay
@$8 blue check mistermix:
I don’t think Clooney would have come out without clearing it w Obama.
M31
@$8 blue check mistermix:
“Because of all the insiders telling allies that Biden’s path to victory has diminished, Biden’s path to victory has diminished, insiders tell allies.”
Sean
@Kay:
I am certain of nothing, other than my vote, which will be for whomever the nominee is.
Biden’s loyalty undoubtedly fuels his desire to stop Trump, too. And how Biden views that, only he truly knows. I’m just ready to see Democrats making moves against Trump, rather than our own interests.
OId Man Shadow
Great. We are going to lose.
I won’t forget that we had a moment to rally and people failed to do it.
And I probably won’t live long enough to see another free election in my lifetime.
Kay
@guachi:
I actually worry a little about him just generally. His getting into the car last night, needing so much assistance, breaks my heart
He deserves more dignity than that. I can’t watch it anymore.
Tractarian
@$8 blue check mistermix: The dam appears to be breaking.
Pelosi… Schiff… Schumer… Jeffries… Obama?
At this point, Biden’s merits as a nominee are irrelevant. No one can survive this level of intra-party dissent.
Elizabelle
Fuck the major donors. I am serious. If Democrats cannot win with Dobbs, and immunity, and Biden’s strong economy and record? Do not run away from that.
Maybe everybody needs to point and laugh at the media. And name names of these reticent anti-Biden Democrats.
Also. Do not forget that too many Democratic politicians and their senior staff are media adjacent. Note that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet was one of the earlier Biden should step down people. His younger brother is James Bennet. Now with The Economist. Forced out of the New York Times opinion page editor slot. You’ll recall that James okayed a column by Tom Cotton, suggesting the military be used against the George Floyd protesters. And James Bennett was previously with the Atlantic. And Washington monthly are you getting a strong stench of Villager here?
Belafon
@Other MJS: So you changed the meaning of the sentence and then answered your own?
laura
I don’t think I’ve ever felt such loathing for the party – I’m absolutely broken and I hate everything/everyone.
BR
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Oof. Ok, I was waiting for the Obama shoe to drop. That might be it. If Biden still holds on, we’re going to see lists of hundreds of members of congress saying they want him to drop out.
Edit: if this is real from Obama, then I want to see a “and nobody but Harris” statement from Obama to put a line in the sand for the donor class. If we don’t see that, they’re all worthless to me.
Frank Wilhoit
At this point, the Press are simply trying to collect a scalp. Forcing Biden out will not result in a more exciting horse race, more eyeballs, more clicks, but in a race that is not remotely competitive.
Jackie
@Jeffro: I got a thought about Harris’ VP: Liz Cheney. I spewed coffee over myself visualizing the reactions from the GQP and MAGA!😂
Of COURSE, many, many Dems would lose their collective💩, too!😁
Kay
@Sean:
Theres some positive news. The MI senate race and the OH senate race look good.
frosty
Oh, God, another one of these back-and-forth comment threads. I’m with WaterGirl in her last post, this is stupid and demoralizing and you all should just shut up or walk away. It’s going nowhere and I’m off until a post comes up that doesn’t trigger the same circular firing squad.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: And Benet was defeated by Biden in the 2020 primaries, same with Tim Ryan.
Elizabelle
@BR: welcome to the pie safe
schrodingers_cat
@Jackie: Villagers will want a Romney-Cheney ticket. Both these have been floated as potential VPs by VSP of the MSM.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
good to see you.
Eolirin
@guachi: He doesn’t need to. He just needs to get them to vote against Trump. It doesn’t matter if people would rather it be someone else as long as they do that.
This isn’t a fucking hard concept.
Trump is also hugely unpopular and his policies scare people. We can either be a serious country with serious people who make serious decisions based on what the expected and obvious outcomes of those decisions will be or we can focus on reality show level bullshit and give the election to a literal Hitler wannabe that’s handing out Mass Deportation Now signs for people to wave around.
That’s the choice we have to make as a country. If we choose the latter it’s really not going to matter who we’re running on the Dem side, we will lose. If not this cycle then the next. We won’t do what we need to do to avoid falling into fascism. It’s game over for the country.
And I think it’s time we start fucking focusing on that instead of trying to find perfect candidates. The electorate needs to grow the fuck up and do the right thing. Their feelings don’t fucking matter. The old dude isn’t going to put millions of people in camps. The other guy is promising to. The old dude isn’t going to break the law like crazy, the other guy just got the okay from the Supreme Court to break it to his hearts content and he will.
We do not let the American people off the hook for choosing Trump here. We need to hold them to account for even thinking about it.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: What?? Bennet is still there. You are maybe thinking of someone else???
Quinerly
@BR: Mark Kelly from AZ would make an excellent VP when Harris is our nominee.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Ryan and Bennet were Biden’s opponents for the 2020 presidential primaries.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Kay:
Probably right.
I think this is the beginning of the end for Biden.
Jaime Harrison did us all a solid by calling the question, IMO. This needed to end
Also, the whining and bitching from the people in lala land who think it’s going to be a whole new ticket without Kamala Harris will be something to behold when she steps up.
VP will be some white dude from a swing state like Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro.
Geminid
@Percysowner: Regarding the megadonors, we do not know how many are pushing for Biden to step aside and how many more are not. I read about a phone call between one of the donors and New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich and my was was the guy was just a pushy asshole trying to throw his weight around. If he is at all representative of that group this kind of pressure must be rejected out of hand, I think.
There is no reason for a donor to know practical national politics better than any other engaged Democrat. But just try telling them that! They’re amateurs who think they are pros. The political professionals who hobnob with donors may bear some of blame here for humoring their pretensions.
zhena gogolia
@M31: EXACTLY
zhena gogolia
@OId Man Shadow: That’s how I feel. Fuck all these quislings.
Chris
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
It’s increasingly clear that that’s intentional, at least as far as the public figures are concerned.
They’re not going to commit to any plan for replacing Biden, because if they commit to any such plan, they have to take some sort of responsibility. They know damn well that there’s no plan to replace Biden that isn’t at least as risky as “keep Biden on the ticket and actually try supporting him for a change,” and based on everything we’ve ever learned about electoral politics, they’re all probably more risky. They also know that if any plan they commit to fails in November, that means a fascist government backed by a fascist Supreme Court and more than likely a fascist Congress, which barring something unforeseeable, means the end of American democracy even in its imperfect founding-father-inherited form for the immediate future. And, well, these people are pants-wetters. That’s the whole reasons they’ve reacted this way in the first place. They don’t have the constitution to take that sort of responsibility when there’s that sort of risk.
“The plan” is to spend every day from now to November screaming about the end of the world and how it’s all the fault of somebody else, preferably whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being.
schrodingers_cat
I am done with the Democratic party if they force Biden out. Barack Obama is a private citizen now. I am with Biden until he is in the race.
Elizabelle
Fuck the major donors. Run on expanding the Supreme Court and overturning Citizens United and all the other dangerous decisions these GOP whores in judicial robes have foisted on us.
Belafon
It’s also weird to me how many of these high level Democrats aren’t imaginative enough to know that Paxton is waiting to run to a certain judge in Amarillo to block Biden being replaced on the ballot, which he will grant, and Dems either choose not to appeal, or the Six on the Supreme Court will review that weekend and determine it applies nationally.
Salty Sam
Names, or it didn’t happen.
Mai Naem mobile
I just feel like we’re all being played here. I also don’t like this bullying of Biden to drop out. At the end somebody here said yesterday that the big donors were expecting Senator Corporate Delaware Biden and instead they got Union supporter Scranton Joe. I also think it has to do with TFG’s tax cuts coming up for a redo in 2025. BTW whoever’s voting for TFG because of inflation, Vance wants to devalue the dollar. Have fun taking a wheelbarrow full of dollar bills to the grocery store for a dozen eggs.
guachi
@Kay: Yes. But I worry far less about Biden being President for 6 more months than I do 54 more months. What I worry most about is Biden’s ability to campaign hard for 3.5 months while also being President.
It’s a heavy lift when you have to fight your age, the media, and the Supreme Court. Can anyone do it? It will require a level of skill I’m not sure anyone who can run possesses (Obama could) but I don’t think Biden possesses it
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: I will vote, but cannot respect them either.
This is the MSM and their owners, the plutocrats, driving a wedge to destroy the Democratic party. A lot of whose “leaders” should be a lot smarter.
Sure Lurkalot
@superdestroyer:
Ah, the all mighty algorithm! Like the one that figured from my FB page with virtually no posts and liberal “friends” that Epoch Times would be exactly the news I was looking for.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@frosty: It does give new context for William Safire’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” though.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Belafon:
Nope. The reason this is happening now is because whomever the Democratic Party nominates at their convention is our candidate. I mean, assholes can file whatever lawsuits they want, but all the state laws are written such that the party picks the candidate. We’ve had our primaries, but we haven’t formally picked yet. That happens the first week of August, per the DNC.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: I do think that many of those who support pushing Biden out are far more comfortable with the idea of losing the 2024 election than I am. And, if we are going to lose, I would prefer to go down fighting.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Apparently Obama’s daughter is trying to make it in Hollywood as a script writer. And he has a couple of streaming showing IIRC. He is more a content creator and a media person now.
Kay
@$8 blue check mistermix:
agreed. Has to be Harris on top
I don’t care about the VP that much – they never seem to matter in elections. I wish they did because Vance is a terrible pick but I don’t think they do.
we can still win this w Harris
UncleEbeneezer
@Darkrose: In an environment where we just had an attempted assassination like less than a week ago, this is another (of countless) reasons ReplaceBiden is dumber-than-hammered-shit. If Mike Johnson gets to VP, there is a very clear incentive for literal assassination attempts of Harris.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I am with you on this.
Kay
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Yup. Courts won’t touch a party decision.
Tractarian
@schrodingers_cat: Are you saying you would refuse to vote for any Dem for president other than Biden?
I have not seen that position explicity articulated by anyone!
Seems like, if you care that much about Biden’s post-2024 political future now, you’d hold your nose and pull the lever for whoever has a D next to their name in November.
Chris
@Salty Sam:
As luck would have it, the same week the debate happened, I was watching the new National Geographic documentary on the wolves of Ellesmere Island. The point they made about the wolves hunting musk oxen is that as so long as the herd sticks together, there’s almost literally nothing the wolves can do. The only way it works is if they can somehow spook the musk oxen into stampeding, at which point singling out their prey and taking it down becomes easy.
Why did this seem especially resonant that week? Oh, no reason.
BR
I do think about the counterfactual that Biden could have canceled his debate appearance with the self awareness that he was really not feeling well, and then intentionally lowered debate expectations, and then come back a week later with a strong debate performance. It’s a shame that didn’t happen, because it totally could have — it was within his power to do so. Everyone shares some blame here, the media and Dem insiders foremost.
OId Man Shadow
And it’s too late to do that now. The media sharks already smell blood and they’ve spent the last three weeks tossing Republican created chum into the waters.
They’ve created the conditions where “Joe Biden is going to lose” is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Tractarian
@Chris:
You may believe that, but the extremely high-profile Dems calling on him to step down as nominee clearly do not believe that. Unless you think they’re all doing it out of personal animosity?
schrodingers_cat
@Tractarian: No I will vote D. But that’s all I will do. I will resign as a member of my Democratic Town Committee. And register as an independent
A party that betrays its own incumbent President and its own primary nomination process cannot and will not be trusted by voters to protect their interests. Especially those who are vulnerable to MAGA policies.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Kay:
Chris
@M31:
“Posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky.”
“Consequence: people start to withdraw their money.”
“Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky.”
“Conclusion: you can make banks fail?”
“Bzzt. I’ve already done that. Maybe you’ve heard of a few? Think bigger.”
“Stock market?”
“Yes.”
“Currencies market?”
“Yes.”
“Commodities market?”
“Yes.”
“Small countries?”
Percysowner
@schrodingers_cat: I will vote. I will write post cards. I will, probably, make phone calls. This is too important to take my ball and go home. I won’t like it and I will have to psych myself for 2028 and 2026, but with the stakes as they are, I’ll push through.
I’m still ridin with Biden and think this whole shebang is making the Party weaker, but If I have to switch I will.
Geoduck
Jefferies, Pelosi, Schumer, Obama, they all need to come out right now in public and end this garbage one way or the other. Explicitly say whether they’re supporting Biden or not.
I think dropping Joe would be a disaster, but let’s hear it, if that’s what they want.
BR
@Percysowner:
All I want is this nonsense to be over with. I’d like Biden as the nominee, but Harris is fine too. I don’t care anymore, just want to unify like France did and win the most important presidential election since Lincoln.
schrodingers_cat
@Percysowner: You must be white.
WereBear
Perhaps one thing we can all agree upon is that whatever is going on, it was handled very badly for so-called professionals.
Were they crossing their fingers? What about the primaries? Did he do NATO by himself or was he remote controlled?
I’d like some honesty from somewhere.
Also, this is exactly what happened in the run up to what will probably be known as the First Civil War. Two parties broke into four chunks.
Quinerly
@$8 blue check mistermix:
There are many of us, just regular folks, who feel that Biden should drop out and Harris be our nominee. It has nothing to do with “deterioration” or our being ageist. He is very capable to being president until inauguration day. The issue with Biden is his inability to prosecute a case against Trump….he can’t seem to articulate why he is a better pick for president than Trump. He sounds weak and ineffective.
Certainly not a scientific poll. But, everyone I talk to everyday wants Harris instead of Biden. Everyone loves Biden and appreciates what he has done. No one is saying he shouldn’t continue because he is old, except my friend who is in her 80’s herself. All have been strong Biden supporters. My circle of friends, neighbors, FB friends are all saying the same thing…. which includes that Schiff, Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer (and perhaps Obama) know a lot more than just random Biden supporters who are dug in commenting on line.
I am sad for Biden. Very, very sad. I think we lose with Biden. We win with Harris. I really like a Harris/Kelly (AZ) ticket. Proceed to pile on, throw pie. I have a full day without BJ.
Larch
I wonder if anyone’s gamed out simply flipping the ticket — Harris runs for Pres, Biden runs for VP; they switch on Jan 20 next year. Eliminates the issues with finding a new VP, keeps Biden connections and skills on the ticket and in the administration, gives him an easier job to do. Most pols wouldn’t go for it, but Biden might be able to do it gracefully.
Still lots of downsides, and to be clear, my preference is for keeping the ticket as is &, as mistemix advocates, send Harris to all the events Biden’s missing due to Covid, but it’s worth thinking through.
guachi
@BR: I’ve long said to my mom, who has thought for months and months that Biden was too old to be the nominee, that Biden picked good people so it wasn’t a worry. Then the debate and the aftermath happened. Biden’s people failed him. They did terrible prep (for a week!) and let him go on stage to fail. No one resigned. No one was fired. Nothing. No change.
Biden never should have done the debate. Cancel for a day or two. Call out Trump for not cancelling when he knew he had COVID and tried to kill Biden and then say you don’t want to infect Trump. Any blowback would have been far better than what we ended up with.
bbleh
@Percysowner: concur with both these things. And it’s not like the megadonors have any special political talent — they THINK they do because they’re MOTUs after all, good at everything! — and there’s no WAY they would get swept up in some kind of fad or panic — the techbros never succumb to fads, and the financial community especially is immune to panics — and alas, their money talks loudly.
A Harris candidacy would REALLY light things up, because it would put Republican misoygny, racism and xenophobia SQUARELY on the table, but the blithe assumption that the party — donors included — will automatically unite behind her is just laughable. (And of course if they don’t, bye-bye huge chunks of Black AND women voters.)
Well, Biden’s the President, and they make the hard decisions — that’s their job. So far he’s stuck to his guns (and good on him!), and we pretty much gotta know within the next week or so.
Geminid
@Kay: Virginia is not in play.
Percysowner
@schrodingers_cat:
Being willing to fight to make Harris President is disqualifying? Because I can’t see them replacing Biden with anyone else.
ssdd
@OId Man Shadow: yup, yup and yup. What a shitshow.
CaseyL
@Other MJS: They obviously don’t think that will happen.
They’re wrong, but try telling them that.
Sean
Some good thoughts here from Josh Marshall that encapsulates a lot of the discussion.
God this fucking sucks in every imaginable way.
M31
@Geoduck: Yes. Except for Schiff, the others are all being cited in unsourced reports in the WaPo and elsewhere, and some, like Pelosi and Schumer, have denied anything strongly worded. (Schumer, “I told Biden the opinion of our caucus” or something, no more)
How much of this is made up completely is hard to tell, and some of our mealy-mouthed wait-to-see-which-way-the-frog-will-jump pols are making it worse.
WereBear
I’m fine with Harris and always was. I’m saying this “handling” of the situation isn’t a trust-builder.
Eyeroller
@Sure Lurkalot: I’m sure it’s more sophisticated than this, but basically what they do is multiply the number of respondents in a subgroup by whatever it takes to make that subgroup representative. What that means is that each person polled in that subgroup is “worth” more than in the larger group. E.g. if you have 3 Black respondents and you should have 12, each one “speaks for” 3 others. This massively increases the margin of error within that group.
Chris
@Tractarian:
Of course they do. If they didn’t, they’d have committed to some kind of plan by now other than “scream, scream, scream, give an interview, scream some more.”
schrodingers_cat
@Percysowner: I have anwered this question 2 threads ago.
.
schrodingers_cat
A large subsection of this group have been slagging Kamala Harris since 2020 when she was running for President and in the fall when she became Biden’s VP pick. Check their prior comments on social media platforms and blogs etc about KH.
This new found love seems suspicious. Its a means to an end. To get Biden out of the picture. Then they will go after her too.
The ones who are serious, if they are too lily livered to stand by a successful incumbent President who is a white man, am I to trust them to have KH’s back? I can’t. Not with the evidence at hand.
I am begging the white people on this blog to listen to how the non-white people in the coalition are feeling. We are feeling betrayed. Its not just about Biden
schrodingers_cat
I am done arguing this.
Tractarian
@schrodingers_cat: The reason they would even consider “betraying” the incumbent president and primary voters is to maximize their chance of winning the election, which is the only way to protect their voters’ interests.
You may disagree that choosing a new nominee is the best way to get there, but you have to agree that winning is their sole motivation.
BR
If they force Biden out it would be nice to thumb their noses at the donor class by picking AOC as the VP candidate for Harris. Of course — never going to happen. But would be great and cement the leftward shift Biden started.
Eyeroller
@Chris: These “party elites” keep citing “terrible polls” but don’t take this exact phenomenon into account, that their perfidy is creating the environment for bad polls.
The whole push seems to be based on “janky” (as some guy put it) polls and hunches, and very likely financial motives.
Kay
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
He isn’t the nominee until he’s nominated. This just isn’t complicated.
You’re not taking him off the ballot because he wasn’t on it yet.
He would have to release his delegates, which he will do.
guachi
@Quinerly: I agree with everything you wrote. Yes, it’s anecdotes. But it’s basically the same with me, my mom, dad, and sisters. They are Democrats. But our feelings are the same as what you’re expressing.
We can’t be alone. My mom was an avid MSNBC watcher for years and the debate crushed her. She hasn’t watched one second of news since then.
If Biden does step aside it needs to be a huge deal where Democrat after Democrat stands up and says something awesome about things Biden has done. It’ll get millions of viewers. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll help separate people’s feelings about Biden’s age from his accomplishments. Then Biden endorses Harris and all the Democrats applaud. End scene.
jowriter
I am way past angry. Don’t the voters decide? I hate these big money boyz in the backroom making moves. And then all our Dem leaders, with all their “private” encouragements. Y’all make me sick. Give it up, gentlemen and lady. Listen to the voters who have supported you all these years, pre- and post-Citizens United. I will NEVER vote for a Republican but I don’t remember ever feeling this enraged. Support Harris with all your voices and your $$$ and I might calm down. But right now, I am furious for the President who has done so much for all of us. Someone who actually cares about people. We are risking the best and most loyal part of our base, as voters and as fellow citizens. The other side puts them in danger. Money ruins everything.
BR
@Kay:
If he were to do this, Biden and all the other party leadership would have to unequivocally back Harris. Otherwise delegates no longer bound to Biden would vote for random Dem governors and it would be a floor fight.
Kay
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Bernie sanders campaign actually did that – they deliberately conflated state laws with Party rules to claim they had been “disenfranchised” . It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
Steve LaBonne
@Tractarian: I certainly don’t agree with that- it’s quite naive. They’re responding to pressure from big donors who would be perfectly comfortable with Trump winning- they get to keep their tax cuts. (Many of them also donate to Republicans.) And at least one officeholder in the Democratic Do-Nothing Caucus, Rep. Jared Golden, has come right out and said he’s OK with Trump winning.
Jackie
@Geoduck: Surely, they’d be willing to wait until Biden’s Covid is over?
Or, it’s okay to create the equivalent of Caesar’s death scene and attack him when he’s unable to respond due to being under isolation?🤦🏼♀️
Fair Economist
@Belafon: Harris isn’t beating Trump. Her polling is slightly worse than Biden’s.
The harm to Democratic polling, if any, is coming from Democrats asking Biden to step down. Trump’s polling shows voters ignore much worse issues when the party stays unified behind the candidate.
Kay
@BR:
Agree. Although I think Harris would win that in a walk, especially a plurality among 6 or something. She’ll pull 50% easily. So it would be like “10%, 5%,6%” etc and he comes Kamala with 50% – womp – it’s over
But the delegates are bound – that is true.
WereBear
Now, if history follows, the Republican party will fracture. They do want to, very much. Why aren’t we exploiting these cracks? Why aren’t these whiners out there campaigning?
What are they doing to help? That’s what I want to hear.
schrodingers_cat
@Tractarian: It looks like you didn’t read a word of what I wrote. I want to win too and I think Biden-Harris is our best chance of winning. Ousting Biden is the first step to get rid of Harris.
You think minorities like me will vote for whichever door knob you guys select because heh what choice do we have?
zhena gogolia
I just got a “Pass the Torch, Joe!” e-mail. I unsubscribed with extreme prejudice.
Eyeroller
@Fair Economist: The zone is also being flooded with questionable polls funded by PACs with a dump-Biden agenda. And Dems trusting those magic internal polls over public polling.
I know that it’s a 90-year-old joke to say “I don’t belong to any organized political party, I’m a Democrat” but this is insanity.
BR
@Fair Economist:
I think you are right about that. Harris doesn’t poll better than Biden. I’ve seen her roughly tied with Biden, generally speaking.
What I don’t understand is these mystical internal polls that always get cited. How can they be showing something totally different from public polling?
I don’t think Harris will do better than Biden if she were the nominee. Neither worse. Just different.
Ishiyama
You want the Democratic Convention to be a sh*t show? Dumping the candidate whom the delegates were elected to vote for? At the behest of big money donors? With no “evidence” except polling, months before the actual election? At Chicago in 68, the protestors were beaten back by the cops, outside the convention. What do you think you will see, this time, inside? Do you think the Biden hold-outs will go down quietly?
We see the corrupting effects of money in Democratic primaries, already – now we see the end game of donations by Richie Rich. “You will all work for me!”
Whereaway
I am not happy about how the push to have President Biden withdraw, I think we democrats are shooting ourselves in the foot.
I tried to send an email to Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, but I’m not in their district and they screen I think not only by zip code but by IP address before giving out their emails to ensure those who email them are actually in their district. This is frustrating for me as a person in a deep red district in that it blocks me from access to Democratic leadership.
Here’s what I wanted to say, and I’d be interested in commentariat thoughts.
To ….
I am reaching out to you because I’m a Democrat in a deep red district, and I’m certain Doug Lamborn would not be interested in my thoughts.
I think you are making a profound mistake by pushing for President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and making a mistake in making the election about Biden, when I believe the focus should be on making the election about Trump and his, and the Republican party’s profoundly destructive agenda.
I understand and share concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities. But, from what I’ve seen, he’s not lost and confused, and doesn’t seem to make any more verbal mistakes as I do as a 70-year-old man. Trump displays far more evidence of cognitive decline than President Biden, and by focusing on Biden you take focus off Trump, effectively boosting Trump.
It is my perception that the current approach being taken by you and other leading Democrats is increasing Trump’s chances of winning the elections.
I think there’s a better way to address this issue.
The cognitive capabilities of any sitting president are always of concern. Nixon was breaking down before he retired. Reagan was slipping into Alzheimer’s, and his presidency was being run by unelected members of his administration.
I think that Democrats should raise this issue as, not an issue with Biden, but a concern about ensuring anyone who is president is capable of filling the role.
In this specific circumstance, I believe that a better way to address this issue is as follows:
This shifts the focus away from Biden, also puts Trump in the spotlight for cognitive concerns, and puts the focus for cognitive issues on both candidates.
It’s also my belief that Trump will likely refuse this, and that becomes an attack point against him.
I think the survival of democracy in the United States is at risk in this election, and the current Democratic approach to dealing with Biden’s competency is only increasing Trump’s chance of winning.
Sincerely,
(Whereaway)
Colorado Springs
Lifelong Democrat
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: So who is giving Dem fundraising lists to “Pass the Torch, Joe”?
Lapassionara
@Eolirin: I sometimes try to imagine the events that start happening if and when Trump gets his guys in positions of power.
Biden arrested? NYTimes headlines go “tut tut” that is not the kind of country we are.
Trump pardons himself. NYTimes headlines go “unprecedented.”
Kagan and Sotomayor forced to resign from the Supreme Court, Federalist Society hacks appointed to replace them. NYTimes headlines go “tut tut,” no one could have predicted.
Trump imposes 10% ? tariffs across the board, stock market crashes. NYTimes headlines go WTF?
Trump begins massive deportations of people with last names that sound Hispanic or foreign. NYTimes headlines go “we didn’t think he really meant it.”
I could go on. I just cannot believe people dont realize what’s at stake.
OId Man Shadow
@Fair Economist: Yeah, but asking Democrats to unite behind their chosen leader and fight is apparently asking them to be unthinking cultists or some bullocks.
Tractarian
@Eyeroller:
True, but the polls looked bad even before the high-profile defections. Plus, as they say, the only poll that matters is in November. Once the delegates formally select a nominee, the party will be more-or-less united.
They seem to be based just as much on observations of the president’s recent behavior.
As for financial motives, why would anyone in their right mind think that a Biden replacement would be any better for them, policy-wise?
It may sound naive, but to me, the most plausible explanation for all of this is that influential people (who generally know a lot more than me about the national political climate and Biden’s abilities) genuinely believe a different nominee would have a better chance to win in November.
guachi
@Kay: The other reason Harris wins is that I can’t see any prominent D putting their name into the hat. It’ll be a number of people declining.
When I went to Senator Coons’s office last week and talked with a nice staffer she asked if I wanted an open convention. I said “no”. The team was Biden/Harris. No one else decided to run except Phillips. If it’s not Biden then it’s Harris.
zhena gogolia
@Lapassionara: Don’t worry: when the roundups begin, Clooney will let us all stay at his house on Lake Como.
Belafon
The simplest solution would have been for the entire party to go “He had a bad night. He’s been a great president, and one event doesn’t define him. We’re standing behind him.” But nope, we’re the Democratic party.
UncleEbeneezer
What are all the people who have been pushing this shit committed to do for the Dem ticket if you get your little fantasy come true? Are you gonna canvass? Are you gonna phone-bank? Are y’all gonna put half as much energy into electing Harris as you did trying to make this happen? Let’s get some on-the-record commitments with a pledge to show us all receipts afterwards proving whether or not you follow through. Because I don’t know about everyone else here, but I very much suspect the answer is “nothing.”
UncleEbeneezer
@OId Man Shadow: Sheeple!!1!
Eyeroller
@Tractarian: What “recent behavior”? Hosting a NATO summit? Giving a one-hour press conference talking about nuances of foreign policy? Doing lots of interviews? Catching Covid? Or are you still hung up on 20 minutes 3 weeks ago?
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Its lead by a Dean Philips guy IIRC.
$8 blue check mistermix
Two things. First, I just told my wife that it looks like the push to get Biden is on. She’s a normie but a solid Democrat who would vote for any D. She was excited to think that Harris could take over. I have other normie family members in the same camp.
Second, this is from Atrios and I think he’s got it right, especially the first point.
Old School
@Sean:
I have no clue how that would be possible.
Anyway
@Belafon:
Exactly – and continuing this for 3 bloody weeks. They’re (we?) destroying our coalition for the next few election cycles.
Karl Rove must have the biggest grin on his face
Citizen Alan
@laura: I think it was Susie Madrak who exclaimed in a moment of despair sometime around 2004:
raven
@Quinerly: “There are many of us, just regular folks,” who don’t give a fuck what people on this blog think.
Kay
@guachi:
agree. The governors are very strong in their own right. This is all risk, little reward.
I’m excited about Harris. She’s crisp and warm and engaging. I know the concerns with gender/race but a lot of Republicans backed Haley. This is not the impossible dream. I would hope D voters would be as least as open minded as GOP voters. They elected Haley twice. Surely we can do better than them.
Eyeroller
Stuart Stevens just tweeted “My one piece of advice to the Democratic Party is that people who think they can’t win are seldom disappointed.”
Xentik
I don’t post often, but I wanted to ground this discussion about Biden stepping down in reality. (Note: I am strongly opposed to his stepping down)
For those pro-dumping Biden, the rules for the Democratic convention/nomination process are available online. There are two important things to know about them:
1. There is no rule assigning the delegates of a candidate who drops out to anyone, nor a rule allowing them to designate to whom their candidates should be pledged. Thus Biden stepping down releases all the delegates and does nothing to restrict who they can vote for in the first round.
2. Per the rules, Section IX, Subsection C, paragraphs 6a-6c (p 16), up until 6PM the day before the convention, anyone who can get 300 delegates to sign on can officially be added to the list of nominees that will be voted on.
Taken together, this means that regardless of what anyone says, Biden stepping down can (and likely will) result in a contested convention. Donors seeking to oust Harris can place a nominee up at the last second without any input from Democrats, and if they can pull off a majority vote they win, period. Since delegates could easily be lobbied behind the scenes, a party coup could happen before there was any chance to respond.
These are the rules as they stand now. Anyone arguing Biden should dropout needs to put their money where their mouth is and push to fix this immediately. Advocate for an addition to the rules that requires two things:
1. If a candidate steps down, their delegates are pledged to their VP candidate automatically, and thus must vote for the VP (i.e. Harris) at the convention.
2. Anyone wishing to be added as a nominee for the convention should have their request turned in 2 weeks in advance, with the current requirement of at least 300 delegates signing on. These requests and the list of delegates signing on must be made public.
These will make Harris the default candidate, and prevent a coup using some unknown candidate added at the last second by donors. Get those added and then we can have a reasonable discussion about whether Biden should step down. I suspect, however, that if they were to get added, all of the pressure on Biden would evaporate immediately.
Martin
@$8 blue check mistermix: Yeah, it certainly seems like things are inevitable now. I’m neutral on the idea of replacing him – it’s a lot riskier to do now, and if they’re going to do it, they need to wrap this shit up now.
I don’t think Obama and Jeffries and Pelosi (if reporting is correct) would be pushing the idea if polls weren’t showing that the majority of Democratic voters thought Biden should be replaced (and from what I’ve seen, about ⅔ of registered Democrats polled want Biden to step aside). That’s the only poll that matters right now, and if the party is going to squelch their primary process, that opens them up to having to do these sorts of things if polling suggests that their voters are unhappy with the candidate. Biden doesn’t really have an argument against that.
I think too many people believe that odds of winning is some kind of preordained thing. From this position there are avenues both for Biden to win or lose, and also for a replacement ticket to win or lose. But having democrats enthusiastic for their ticket is pretty instrumental to winning, and Biden hasn’t been able to shore that up. It’s unknown if a replacement ticket would fare any better. I can’t imagine it would be much worse. Having ⅔ of the party wanting the candidate replaced can’t be ignored.
Belafon
Also, this is why I consider this and the last one to be competing threads
Last thread: We need to stop yelling at each other and get Biden elected.
This thread: But have you considered that we shouldn’t get Biden elected.
And I know you want to deny it, but your last paragraph is more of this thinking.
BethanyAnne
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/18/2255234/-Allan-Lichtman-the-historian-who-predicted-Trump-s-win-and-every-win-since-1984-speaks
Ishiyama
Why does our joyless President never dance? https://www.theonion.com/june-23-1939-1819588624
Omnes Omnibus
They elected Haley twice to what? Nationally? Dems have elected female governors as well. Total non sequitur.
Tractarian
@schrodingers_cat:
I tend to agree! However, a lot of people (who are in a better position to know) do not agree.
Huh? Pelosi and co. want to get rid of Harris now? This is fever dream conspiracy stuff.
That was uncalled for. I think Democrats of all stripes should and will vote for the Democrat who is on the ballot in November. Period.
Kay
@Geminid:
okay. I’m simply believing Pelosi/Schumer/Jeffries and Obama over Ballon Juice. We disagree. If they think VA is in play then I do too.
slightly_peeved
@rb:
Hopefully this isn’t true, because I think the public are going to assume that now regardless of how Biden pitches it. And the NYTimes isn’t going to try hard to disabuse them of that.
Citizen Alan
@Tractarian: I think the majority of them are doing it because their biggest backers (“the good oligarchs” I alluded to earlier) are leaning on them out of (a) fear of a black female president, and/or (b) sweet tax cuts from President Trump.
Eyeroller
@Martin: Does it ever occur to these galaxy brained political geniuses that three weeks of leaking and whispering and writing op-eds and furthering the media narrative makes voters think Biden should be replaced?
Also there are polls that aren’t so solid on that part.
What is causing Biden’s polls to drop right now is people moving from D to “undecided.” Wonder what might be driving that.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
She was the only real challenge to Trump. Moderate Republicans embraced a woman of color. This is just a fact. I think we will too.
zhena gogolia
@raven: Well put.
Tractarian
@Old School:
Simple – blame it on COVID. An isolated Biden can perform the duties of the presidency, but cannot run an effective campaign.
guachi
@Kay: I mentioned earlier about my dream scenario for Biden dropping out and being honored at the same time. Bring out prominent Ds. Get EVERY potential rival to Harris to praise Biden and say something great he’s done for their state. Have Obama talk. Then Biden withdraws and endorses Harris. Harris smiles and waves. Everyone on the stage applauds.
It would be earned media and the press would eat that shit up. Especially if you say “Biden dropping out” they’d all cover it live and then have to listen to people praise Biden for an hour. Fuck the press.
If that doesn’t shut everyone down nothing will. It will make it obvious that Harris has no rivals.
tam1MI
Good question. I mean, if what the people advocating to oust Biden was true, if 189% of all Democrats or whatever similarly unbelievable number those folks are citing are so determined that Biden has to go, you’d think there would be a mad scramble to be first to announce that they will take up the mantle and run in Joe’s stead. And the first to do so would ride into the convention and the nomination on a wave of acclamation. And yet every single person mooted as a possible Biden replacement has stated flatly that they are not interested in running for President, up to and including Kamala Harris.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Continuing to ignore that the GOP is more diverse than it was does not make it untrue.
They had a diverse field. We can too.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: At least one of the people pushing Harris has said she will work for Democratic candidates like she always does, but concentrate on the Ohio and Michigan Senate races. This seems a respectable position, especially for someone who works for the Democratic party year in and year out. That’s way more than I do.
rb
@Tractarian:
It’s a good question.
But consider. At the moment, I am trusting Biden to run a campaign against a violent demagogue who was also the near-victim of a fatal shooting last week; to ‘fight’ while keeping a ‘tone’ acceptable to swing voters and a prestige media that never saw a pearl it couldn’t clutch; to seem like the experienced adult in the room while not drawing attention to his age; to speak off the cuff and cross swords with hostile questioners while dealing with a speech impediment and the general demands and distractions of being the actual president; etc. etc.
So what I would hope is that I can also trust Biden himself to convince us that he is leaving of his own accord. it is obvious that the momentum for his leaving was not his own creation; I would want him to say truthfully that he’s nevertheless searched himself and looked at the hard realities and come to the conclusion that this is the best course of action.
If there’s one thing I trust President Biden with it’s the emotional bandwidth to communicate and rally supporters around the prospect of making a hard choice and then backing that choice to the hilt.
It’s both up to him to make the decision, and on him to make the selling of it.
There will of course be some supporters that will never be convinced. I am hoping that if they are that devoted to the prospect of a Biden second term then they will follow his lead even in their frustration and disappointment, and I mean that sincerely and without snark. This isn’t a sit-on-your-hands kind of election.
Kay
@guachi:
Agree. It’ll be exciting. People are desperate for something positive. I’ll put Kamala up against that fucking gargoyle any day of the week
WereBear
@BethanyAnne:
Tractarian
@Belafon:
That is absolutely correct. And that ship has absolutely sailed.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve noted in the past that the history of the Republican Party actually is what the too-left-for-the-Democrats crowd accuses the Democratic Party of being. A DLCish faction that cared about sucking up to the rich and not much else got its hooks into the party, and the party spent decades gradually losing interest in anything else. So one by one, all their worthwhile causes got poached away from them, along with these causes’ voters, to the point that by the interwar era even black people were so sick of them they started to jump ship. (This came before the Democrats’ pivot towards civil rights, not after, and was in fact what led to it).
Is this, in fact, what the Democrats are becoming? Well, until now, I’d have said “don’t be ridiculous.” If this coup succeeds, and especially if whoever we get goes on to lose in November? All bets are off. You can’t keep a “party of the people” coalition together in the long run when said party will roll over and show its belly to the media and donors just as long as they crack the whip enough times. It’s just not sustainable.
Princess
Chyron on a tv station in Canada saying “Biden newly open to stepping down.” I have no clue.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I find that painfully naive.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay:
I don’t think voting for the circle jerk party is the motivator you think it will be.
Eolirin
@Chris: If we lose it won’t matter. There won’t be another real election for us to lose going forward. If people are okay with that we’ll lose, regardless of who we run. If they’re not we’ll win, regardless of who we run. That’s the whole election.
rikyrah
Michelle_BYoung (@michelle_byoung) posted at 8:41 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
Dems our STRONGEST argument AGAINST Trump is that he is anti democracy. Jan 6, Project 2025, dictator day 1 this is what resonates with VOTERS. We cannot make the anti democratic argument IF WE NULLIFY THE WILL OF OUR OWN PRIMARY VOTERS! We CANNOT LOSE the democracy argument!
(https://x.com/michelle_byoung/status/1813932006960738617?t=Ejocq254155__p-8mfDQRw&s=03)
Eyeroller
@Princess: It’s the latest rumor.
rikyrah
Tim
@trouble_man90
Rich donors didn’t rebuild the blue wall, flip Georgia and Arizona blue, and stave off a red wave; democratic voters did that. And no amount of money can save you if you betray your own voters.
8:28 AM · Jul 18, 2024
https://x.com/trouble_man90/status/1813928733616853219
Another Scott
So many candies and pastries and pies.
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
There’s always stuff to learn, and physics that we understand here on Earth continues to work way, way out in space (and vice versa).
Just amazing stuff.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
Another reason big money in Silicon Valley is working so hard to get Trump elected:
rikyrah
L. Joy Williams (@ljoywilliams) posted at 11:45 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
Letting opinion polls of a few vs actual primary votes of millions dictate election outcomes is nasty undemocratic work.
(https://x.com/ljoywilliams/status/1813978370570686634?t=kuQBWpaaiJHIsM4y8Cf4gg&s=03)
Tractarian
@Eyeroller:
Basically, yeah. It was an historic f*ck-up. Personally, I still have confidence that Biden can be an effective president, for the rest of this year and beyond. But campaigning is different.
rikyrah
(((Rep.Alma Hernandez))) (@almaforarizona) posted at 10:24 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
I am beyond disappointed to see Dems calling for President @JoeBiden to step aside when we are 109 days away from the election. It is delusional for anyone to think we can pull someone through without an infrastructure or resources. To all the older electeds who have the gall to say he needs to go for it, maybe you all should step aside as well. To all the electeds in swing districts who he uplifted and helped get there, you too can go. To all the ignorant young voters who are mad that he supports Israel’s right to exist, good, don’t vote. Stay home. And to all those trying to push @KamalaHarris aside, you should be embarrassed. I have been involved in the party since I was 14, literally more than half of my life, and I’ve never been so disappointed. Wake the F up. I’ve been team Biden since day one I’m not backing out now.
(https://x.com/almaforarizona/status/1813957974337204280?t=inn9U7wC2LmJ_GMzHZQwAA&s=03)
OId Man Shadow
And “But the fascists…” only works when the people saying it take it seriously enough that they don’t spend three fucking weeks undermining the position of the only party available to stop the fascists thereby helping the fascists.
But what the fuck do I know?
RL
I called Shumer, Pelosi, Jeffries, Sh*tty Schiff and all my Georgia reps to let them know we support Biden in this house and it will be extremely demoralizing if he is replaced. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. I thought the post-Lieberman era would be better.
Archon
@Chris: I never liked the left-wing interpretation of the Democratic Party as weak, elitist, and unable to make a compelling case against the right which would inevitably move us towards some form of right-wing authoritarianism.
Boy are my eyes open now.
Eyeroller
@Tractarian: Only because people in his own party made it into one. The “normie” response of the relatively few who actually watched wasn’t one of alarm. They were more concerned about Trump’s lies and idiocy. But the Democratic pundit firestorm started immediately. That is why I think it was pre-planned and just waiting for any stumble on Biden’s part.
OId Man Shadow
@rikyrah: No, no, you see, we have to destroy democracy and embrace oligarchy to save democracy from the oligarchs!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Defense.gov:
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Good statement.
WereBear
Look, someone has to step forward and say “Come with me if you want to live.”
Have all their brains fallen out? Forgotten how to politic? Whatever Biden’s health challenges, that doesn’t explain what is clearly a screwup.
Chris
@Lapassionara:
“All around the nation, appalled Democrats wonder how they could ever have been bamboozled into putting this senile criminal on the ticket. Anonymous sources in the party call for congressional hearings to determine what Kamala Harris knew and when she knew it.”
“Defiant Trump embraces unorthodox tactics. Democrats at a loss how to respond.”
“Democrats’ chicken come home to roost: this would never have happened if they hadn’t spent the entire Biden administration trying to politicize the Supreme Court!”
“Biden recession materializes as predicted! Where does the Wall Street Journal go to get its apology? And will Republicans finally have the boldness to do what even Reagan couldn’t and privatize Social Security and Medicare in the nation’s most long-overdue act of belt-tightening?”
“Trump moves decisively to resolve border crisis.”
Martin
@rikyrah: I would argue that the Democratic party’s efforts to squelch an actual primary process has put them in this situation. It was viewed that a primary fight would have looked bad, and maybe that’s the case, but instead they’ve delayed it and turned it into a whisper campaign, which I certainly don’t think is better.
The truth is that we don’t know what actual primary votes would have produced because the party canned that process. People are being very selective about when we should have a democratic process and when we shouldn’t.
Geminid
@Kay: I have not seen Jeffries or Schumer say Virginia is in play and I think they are too level-headed to believe the state is in play. This is the same highly-polarized state that Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020, and the issue of Biden’s capabilities will not change that equation. Donald Trump was never popular here even among Republicans, and he’s been the best GOTV force Virginia Democrats have ever had.
rikyrah
Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) posted at 10:35 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
Trump has been caught sleeping several times at the convention, which apparently is not a crisis or a sign that he’s too old to serve.
(https://x.com/nhannahjones/status/1813960845220839439?t=F9OybAa9705GPlk5ODuw3w&s=03)
Eyeroller
@Martin: This myth again? The reality is that nobody but Dean Phillips and a few crackpots were interested. Why does this “rigged primary” bullshit keep getting repeated?
WereBear
They are the professionals. I want to see them clean up this mess.
Who has been doing all the good work? is the next question to move to. And can we have them work on this thing?
Chris
@BethanyAnne:
My alma mater has some smart professors, and he’s one of them. Never had him myself, sadly.
Xentik
@WereBear: No one is coming forward, nor will they, because they don’t have to. The rules of the convention give a deadline of 6pm the day before to be added. Why put your name out there and risk your reputation if Biden refuses? Why give others time to attack you?
Like others here, I agree that this is being orchestrated by donors, and it’s in their interest to have their candidate added at the very last second and no sooner.
rikyrah
Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) posted at 6:15 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
I am old enough to be having terrible flashbacks to 1968. I was a naive teenager among those who marched against Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam. Johnson had given us civil rights law but was hounded from the ticket, a tragic character. The result: the Chicago convention disaster, Richard Nixon, his Southern strategy, leading to civil war today. The short-sighted rush to push Joe Biden out is filled with such peril. And if Kamala Harris and Black voters are in turn bypassed, we lose the election and everything for generations. We lose democracy. Stop. Think.
https://t.co/ZBR5PRCf2v
(https://x.com/jeffjarvis/status/1813895278711144832?t=cm7-MSX5aLgF5agv7VPv9w&s=03)
Eolirin
People are also responding to a choice that they don’t want to have to make, as if there’s an alternative. It’s not as predictive of what they’ll do once it’s clear there’s no alternative. There’s risk in that, but there’s risk in doing something else too.
Counting on the media to not exclusively focus on Dem weakeness and ignore everything about the Republicans is a losing bet though. They’ll find something to drum beat on about another candidate too. It’s what they do.
So if the argument is that we can’t break through the media focus on this issue and we need a change because of that, we’ll never be able to do it. Communication through the media is impossible to accomplish for Democrats period. We have to be able to win using other channels and without them. If we can’t, we can’t. It won’t matter who the candidate is.
It’s always going to be nonstop slander. It’s been nonstop slander since Bill Clinton. Every single election. If we need to always be running generational charismatic talents to win elections, we can’t hold on to democracy. We need to figure this out, and it’s not going to be the top of the party that solves it. It’s going to need to be the voters and the organizers and the volunteers.
It’s the core failing of white middle class democrats; there’s no sense of responsibility, but instead a demand to be catered to. If more white people put in more of the work we’d win more of the elections we need to. Where work in many cases is just showing up to vote. Every election. For every candidate.
It’s not that onerous. And it’s the bare minimum. And a lot of the country fails at it. If we lose our democracy it’ll be because of this utter disregard for our own agency and the responsibility that gives us for maintaining our country.
Government is us. We get exactly what we put into it.
Fair Economist
@WereBear:
This isn’t being driven by voters not wanting Biden nor by pols who have a better plan. It’s blackmail by megadonors and media tycoons who very much do not have the interests of the Democratic party – or the country – in mind.
rikyrah
Brother Mouzone’s Bow Tie (@jahsounds) posted at 3:50 AM on Thu, Jul 18, 2024:
I need people to recognize that the ownership class has instructed their vassals in the mass media, and their agents within govt to engage in the psyop of getting us to stop fighting for our democracy. That’s why you see all these people coming at Biden.
Don’t give up.
(https://x.com/jahsounds/status/1813858911667298785?t=sMFbC5IMmLLJkVsyAggJ3A&s=03)
Another Scott
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Denying it is a mug’s game. There’s no end to it (“they didn’t deny it the right way!!11” “Ok, what about what this other anonymous person said?? Hmm???!!”), and they know that. We know that.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance!!?? (0:32)
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
@Eolirin: Utterly so.
Citizen Alan
@Martin: No one ran against Biden in the primary because everyone who might have has actually opened a history book. No insurgent has ever unseated an incumbent president and gone on to win in the general. And no incumbent who ever had any serious primary challenger has ever been reelected. Therefore, the best chance of a Dem winning was Biden. I knew all this in 2020 and I still voted for him knowing he would be unopposed in 2024, just as I knew Obama would be unopposed in 2012 despite any weaknesses he might have shown in the meantime.
Jeffro
@Lapassionara:
Great minds and all that – I have been working on 2 op-ed pieces, “Failures of Imagination, parts 1 and 2” (seriously)
Part 1 is all the very valid concerns we had heading in to trumpov’s 1st term…which he blew past and exceeded. (Ironically enough, the NYT just this afternoon put up a very good ‘reminder’ of just how bad trumpov was’)
Part 2 is much like your list, only it includes a) throwing Obama in jail for ‘spying’ on trumpov’s 2016 campaign, and b) checkpoints. LOTS and lots of checkpoints across our fair land. “Papers, please”. Women, POC, gay/trans folks, hell let’s just add ‘high-priority Dem officials and sympathizers’ while we’re at it.
Old School
@Martin:
How did the Democratic party do this?
Who are the candidates who you think wanted to run but were thwarted by the Democratic party?
Lee
So, for my own clarity, in future if we don’t like the polls, we just dump the primary winner? Or nah, this is not “precedent” a la Bush v. Gore? Cause I feel like that’s gonna be hard, if not impossible, to justify to people who voted for him even knowing he was old.
Fair Economist
@Martin: We still got Preston in the primary, and he was a reasonable candidate. Dem voters *so* preferred Biden Biden even beat him soundly as a write-in in NH, a state favorable to a more-centrist candidate like Dean Preston.
We know Democratic voters wanted Biden, and wanted it knowing Harris would step in if needed.
Chris
@Archon:
An anti-war blogger I used to read in the 2000s, borrowing from Karl Marx, had this to say about the Democratic Party: “while the Democrats are undoubtedly a party of themselves, there is little evidence that they’re a party for themselves.”
Yeah, I’ve thought about that quote quite a bit in the last few weeks too.
rikyrah
James Fallows (@JamesFallows) posted at 9:04 PM on Wed, Jul 17, 2024:
Gov Wes Moore just now:
“I’ve known JD Vance for a very long time. That’s why I could never support him.”
(https://x.com/JamesFallows/status/1813756683807838605?t=gFtuCcPnztsDHEOOIfcmXQ&s=03)
Eyeroller
@Fair Economist: Just saw an excerpt from some article that the Biden campaign was picking up on “voter anger” in the battleground states over the feeling that Biden is being chased off the ticket. And that as of this past weekend, there has been no detailed plan for an alternative to Biden.
Contrary to what some have been claiming, there’s no consensus among the various “dump Biden” factions that Harris should be the nominee. In fact it seems that the most powerful ones (the donors) want her gone as well. They say we need a ticket untainted by the incumbents.
KRK
Loads of people have commented recently about how un-motivated Trump voters around them are…Harris at the top of the ticket will turn that around in a flash.
Subsole
@gene108:
Their donors are threatening to cut off their money spigot if they don’t get a shiny new all-white ticket.
They folded.
CaseyL
I’m thinking of all the righteous anger I vented on the Leftier-than-Thous who’ve spent years telling us there’s no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
And we’re faced with the possibility of megadonors and spineless scared Democrats tossing out Biden-Harris for a pair of white male moderates to run on the Democratic ticket.
When the Democratic Party says it will “fight” for our civil rights, the only thing I can think of is, “Yeah. Like you ‘fought’ for your own goddamn President and Vice President.”
I owe the Leftier-than-Thous a big fat apology.
BarcaChicago
There is no viable road forward to changing candidates at this time in a national election – procedurally or politically. No one can explain how it would work because there is no way for it to work. Procedurally : You can’t change 50 state ballots, Republicans are waiting to challenge any change that we try to make in the courts, access to the huge campaign funds, etc. Politically: Disenfranchising all of the primary voters, creating huge chaos and descension. And corporate media will feast on all of this: Democrats in disarray, Dems weak, etc etc. Makes no sense on any level. And it doesn’t feel organic to me – I think there are outside forces pushing for this to ensure a Republican win.
LAC
@schrodingers_cat: I repeat what I said earlier and thank you for trying. But the usual suspects are here dooming and we are collectively pretending that BJ is not LGM or whatever circular firing squad blogs out there.
“All this excuse making about well meaning liberals yadda yadda…we are going to be well meaning ourselves into the stupid version of Gilead/Third Reich and then what? Join in another nation-wide protest movement sponsored by birkenstock and starbucks? With the added fun of perhaps having troops shoot at us? No thank you!”
This is my response to the arrogant fuckery that continues here. All I have gotten out of this is agita and a damn virtual bakery.
Elizabelle
@LAC: Hello LAC. Lovely to see you. Give Maggie Dog some pets from me. And maybe some ice cubes, if she likes them.
Ridin’ with Biden. Stay strong Joe.
schrodingers_cat
Am I supposed to take this on faith, that the Democratic party who tosses their successful white President is going to make a black woman with immigrant heritage, whose parents were not citizens their standard bearer. And stand by her when the inevitable birther attacks and other vile attacks begin.
Yeah I was born yesterday.
Another Scott
ActBlue Blog: (from April 25):
We don’t need the anonymous bazillionaires who only care about the value of their Bitcoin stash.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Eyeroller: Untainted by the incumbents. When Biden-Harris has been the second coming of FDR. Jebus.
Princess
@$8 blue check mistermix: Yeah, I’m coming round to this view. It’s all anonymous high placed Dem sources — but Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, and Obama could deny it. They are emphatically not denying it.
BJ better get through our denial, bargaining, grief and anger pretty quickly and be prepared to support Harris 200%. I can see a way this works. I dunno, I’m broken hearted. Best president of my lifetime.
Xentik
@Eyeroller: The lack of a consensus candidate is telling isn’t it? The convention rules as currently written make it trivial to force a contested convention if Biden drops out. I don’t see why the megadonors wouldn’t just wait until the last second to add their preferred candidate.
If there was serious support for passing the torch to Kamala the people calling for Biden’s scalp could change the convention rules right now to ensure she gets the nomination if he decides to step down.
Eolirin
@CaseyL: No you don’t. They’re still very wrong.The parties are completely different.
The Republicans would never do this to one of their own.
Lapassionara
@Kay: I think your political instincts are usually good. In this case,I think you are overvaluing Harris. I don’t think people would care about Biden’s age if his Veep were a white guy. This freak out is primarily not just, oh my Biden is old, but also, omg, Harris might become president.
O’bama was a once-in-a-century charismatic talent that came along when Bush had screwed up everything. Harris does not have that kind of charisma.
schrodingers_cat
@Lapassionara: White women who didn’t turn out for Hillary are going to turn out for Harris.
Bill Arnold
@syphonblue:
Senator Chuck Schumer signed off on the Netanyahu invite. He at that point lost this NY State resident’s respect. I now loathe him.
(ETA. Netanyahu is an enemy of both Israel and good, IMO.)
BarcaChicago
@Eyeroller: THIS. Everything I see from Democratic voters indicate that they’re extremely angry and shocked by this becoming something that’s taken seriously after just being another bullshit corporate media narrative. And let’s take a look at that: I saw no talk of any radical dumping of a candidate until corporate media started pushing for it. Not on this blog, not on social media, not in a political sphere – nowhere. People do not understand how anyone could fall for this, and I certainly don’t. It’s a recipe for disaster on every level, even beyond this existentially important election. Personally, this lifelong dedicated and very active Democrat would leave the party. Because they would’ve shown me that they’re not viable as a political party. Meanwhile, there’s no way to do this procedurally, so I won’t take it seriously until it someone solves that obstacle.
Martin
@Eyeroller: Oh bullshit. You’re trying to tell us that the Democratic Party sent out a call ‘any Democrats out there want to be President’ and everyone said ‘nah, busy’. We’re to believe that Newsom doesn’t want to be president? Pete. Gretch. Give me a fucking break.
The party signals whether it is open to a primary and when it is not – and it controls that by where support goes. If you primary Biden you will be punished in terms of funding and support. C’mon, we know how this works. The party can also be open to primary challenges and not do that – say that our nominee is an open question. Democrats absolutely did not do that. There was no opportunity for a primary challenge.
But I don’t know how anyone can argue ‘why listen to polls instead of primary voters’ when there was no choice in the primary. There is no validity to the primary results with no choice presented. They cannot be more valid than the polls. You cannot credibly claim that Russians clearly love Putin because they keep voting for him (nevermind Navalny’s body decomposing in the corner.)
Jesus Christ people. When we talk about policies like DEI, we don’t mean what the GOP argues it is, shoving out the deserving white candidate to insert a black one. It’s about looking at an applicant pool of nothing but white guys and saying ‘we’re not going to start this process until we have a diverse pool of candidates’ and then doing that. We know, from studies, that if there is one woman in a job pool, her chances of getting hired goes up approximately 50 TIMES if there is a 2nd woman in the pool. The whole argument from the left is that you get better decisions when you provide real choice. This is not easy to do. I’m not arguing that it is. What I’m arguing is that all of the arguments to oppose DEI are being used in this thread in one form or another.
I’m not arguing that Biden isn’t the best candidate. I’m arguing it’s impossible to know if he is because no process was allowed to play out to defend that argument. And the process here does matter. A LOT of Democrats were not enthralled with Biden during the 2020 primary process, but he won in November with a record number of Democratic votes. You can argue that was because he was the best candidate. I would argue that was because we had a process that Democratic voters saw as fair and complete and having a nominee chosen, voters rallied behind that person, even if he wasn’t their first choice. His validity as the nominee DERIVES from the process. That’s the whole fucking theory of democracy, folks – that the process validates the result. If you remove the process, you invalidate the result.
I agree that polls are a bad substitute, but decisions were made that leaves us where we are. Had Biden won a primary process where Democratic voters felt they had a real choice in 2024, I argue that voters would be rallying behind Biden instead of questioning him. Just like what happened in 2020.
KRK
@OId Man Shadow:
Exactly.
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle:
Well, yes. The megadonors and tycoons fueling this *don’t* want the IRS to catch tax cheats, the SEC to stop crypto fraud, or researchers to figure out what they’re doing with AI.
Archon
@KRK: I feel much better about the “dump Biden for Harris” crowd if they at least acknowledge Harris at the top of the ticket will come with it’s own challenges and that the hope is on balance Harris will gain more voters than she loses, but she will lose votes because, you know, racism and sexism.
BR
@Martin:
Fair enough. He would have had to have campaigned and built up more grassroots support during the primary (and also, to his detractors, had opportunities to stumble earlier than a general election debate).
Water under the bridge. Biden or Harris, I don’t care. No more of this nonsense.
Ruckus
I typed up a comment but I’m sure no matter what I type, it would be rejected by many and accepted by many. I believe that the person that knows the most is Joe Biden. And Joe Biden has selected a very good choice as his back up, so unless he is actually incapable to sit on his ass and do his job, in which case we have a very viable person to take over. Now many are very likely to want to argue with me over this but I ask you, in the history of this country has there EVER been a person in this office that is everyone’s first choice? Yeah I didn’t think so. Will there ever be a time that this will happen? Yeah I didn’t think so.
So.
Has Joe Biden been a bad president? I think not. Has he been a good president? I think so. Can he still do the job? I think so. What if that changes? We have a positive replacement standing next to him.
So.
What happens if we elect the other guy? Is he better or far worse? I think far worse and we have his term and his everything else to show us that.
So,
It’s Joe Biden or shitforbrains. Joe Biden has a very good back up. shitforbrains has nothing, in first or second place. The choice looks pretty damn easy to me.
It comes down to do you, each one of you, trust his judgement? I do. Do you trust shitforbrains? I do not in any way, shape or form, trust him to do anything at all positive for any one but shitforbrains and in fact I expect him to be the vindictive ass he has shown himself to be prior.
What else ya got?
OId Man Shadow
I’m doubting it will be Harris.
It just seems unlikely the big money boys will want to replace old white guy with Black woman.
I imagine they have young white man with central casting presidential hair in mind and I hope it’s not my state’s governor.
BR
@Lapassionara:
Agreed. I wrote that the other day. Biden and Harris are about equal in campaigning ability — neither is amazing but they have their good moments. Neither is Obama or Clinton in the ability to rally a crowd or to craft an argument.
CaseyL
@Eolirin:
They did it to Bush the Elder, when they turned on him for “breaking” his no new taxes pledge. I think that’s who most of Ross Perot’s votes came from.
And they’ve done it ever since 2016, purging the Party of anyone not a raving RW loon.
Who they don’t turn on are the ones who encourage them to be their worst possible selves.
Funny, that.
BarcaChicago
@Citizen Alan:
@Another Scott:
@rikyrah:
@Fair Economist:
@rikyrah:
Thank you all for being reality-based. It’s been a bit shocking to see people on this blog fall for things that don’t make any sense in the real world.
Jackie
Saw this, and rubbed my hands gleefully:
Is there gonna be a brawl during the convention today?
Sean
@Old School:
I don’t either. It would be asking Biden to unite the party while simultaneously throwing him overboard. There is no good resolution. Dems have harmed Biden via this whole spectacle, maybe mortally (candidacy wise) and replacing him is a giant question mark with no actual plan being advocated on next steps. I’ve been around long enough to see Dems fuck things up a lot of times, but this is some next level shit.
UncleEbeneezer
Oh FFS can we please stop pretending like The Left has not been one of the big parts of this shit-storm.
Briana Joy Grey, Nina Turner, Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, Matt Duss, Erik Loomis, Scott Lemieux, Paul Campos, Zaid Jilani, Medhi Hassan, Brian Beutler, Cenk Uygar, Ana Kasparian, Eric Alterman, Arnie Arnesen, Salon, The Nation, Jacobin, Intercept…
All of these people/orgs clearly identify as Progressive and some part of The Left. Not Centrist or Conserva-Dems. They are Progressives and have been constantly pushing this shit at every turn.
This notion that the whole mess is the fault of Media, Centrist Dems, but not Progressives, is fucking ludicrous. Whether it’s on podcasts, in Front-pager posts, in the comments here or in real life, Progressives have been very well-represented and complicit in creating this problem.
They aren’t the ONLY faction who caused this, but they’ve been an equal partner.
Note: Progressive elected officials have actually been very good, for the most part, which is awesome.
Fair Economist
@OId Man Shadow:
Especially not a Black woman even more liberal than the (surprisingly) liberal Biden.
Eyeroller
@Martin: Please see earlier comment by somebody (I can’t scroll and type at the same time and we don’t do threaded comments here). Nobody in history who knocked off an incumbent President has ever won the general, and no incumbent who faced a significant primary challenge has won the general. And if the primary challenger loses he doesn’t get another chance. People like Newsom are aware of this. They would much rather run in a “clean” primary without an incumbent.
There is no way the Democratic Party could have stopped Newsom from running if he’d wanted to do so.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Martin: I have a different take: as soon as Biden said he’s running again, anyone serious about being President decided that 2024 wasn’t their year. The party had little to do with it – enlightened self-interest did the work for them.
I also think in mid-year 2023, when Biden would have to signal that he wasn’t running again, he was doing a lot better than he’s doing today and everyone around him thought he’d be fine in 2024.
cintibud
Dammit, that’s it. Going kayaking and camping for the weekend, gonna forget about everything for awhile. If anything happens I’ll guess I’ll hear something about it before I come back.
I think I’m even going to close the BJ tab. I’ll probably be back Monday
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: Cosign.
Most commenters here on the dump Biden bandwagon are from the left wing of the party.
Eyeroller
@UncleEbeneezer: A bunch of those people are “horseshoes” or what might better be called the “authoritarian left” types. Briana Joy, Nina Turner, especially Cenk Uygur, maybe Mehdi Hassan. But yeah, even excluding them, there are a lot of people who are in most ways “normal” leftists who have been hyping this.
delphinium
@Eolirin: Agree, it’s pretty much this.
BarcaChicago
@Another Scott: When we look at the surge in small donor fundraising after the debate and during these weeks of attacks on Biden, we see no sign of wanting to change candidates. In fact, the surge indicates quite impressive SUPPORT from the electorate for keeping our ticket intact – you know, the voters that actually decide the election results. Sheesh.
Martin
Because it is only ever done as an insurgent campaign. The party doesn’t invite this sort of thing to happen. That’s my point. The party closes ranks, which generally is a winning strategy, but also closes off opportunities when problems arise.
And understand, the party has unlimited options here. They can take any process they desire to evaluate if the incumbent is their best candidate, however, the incumbent always controls that process under the current systems, so it always favors what happens.
My argument here is that NOBODY can made a democratic defense of Biden as the candidate, or for his replacement, because no democratic processes have occurred. There is nothing here which is democratic – at all. That’s my argument. Using polls to argue he should drop out are no more invalid than any of the arguments for why he shouldn’t. We fucked the whole process, and we now need to live with that as best we can.
And Democrats do better when they don’t fall back on ‘well, it’s not our fault all of the applicants were white men’ argument and instead take the proactive stance that if you want an actual choice for primary voters that you can proactively recruit good candidates and create a process that fosters that. The Democratic Party is almost as fast as every other institution to fall back on the lazy solution. I argued two years ago that Democrats, handed the Dobbs decision and an energized female electorate, would be well served by having a woman at the top of the ticket to take that opportunity and run with it and shove it non-stop down Republicans throats. Maybe I was wrong, but nobody knows because Democratic voters were never asked. That was a sea-change in how Democrats would compete in elections and where Biden was the steady hand voters were looking for in 2020, a firebrand Harris or Whitmer demanding that women not take a back seat to policy decisions on their own health and rights sure looked like the fit for a post-Dobbs America. I wasn’t hardly the only one arguing that. Whether Biden should run was an open question in 2022. The DNC ensured that they were the only ones who got a say in that.
Eyeroller
@BarcaChicago: Another excerpt from some article (maybe the wapo one about Obama): The expectation is that Biden will get only 25% of the big-donor money it had expected to raise in July–down from an original projection of 50%. And this in turn is expected to increase calls for him to drop out.
So yeah, this is almost entirely about the big donors. “But mah poles” is probably the cover story, since the donors are refusing to give to anybody.
And yes, this is straight-up extortion.
Quinerly
@raven: thanks for my laugh.
* I quit reading the comments again about 10 days ago. Pretty much same old same. Today, I had a few mins and came here actually looking to see if there was a discussion about something else. In the past 3 weeks, I haven’t been running around asking outsiders. But, have had houseguests, a brunch, and a lunch…so a lot of folks coming and going. Lots of entertaining. All strong Dems. All think Biden should go…I didn’t ask. People just volunteering their feelings. And, funny thing….no one attacked them. Age ranges 32 to 86. All gave thoughtful reasons backing up their thoughts.
All supported him at one time.
Van Buren
@Lapassionara: Bingo
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Yes. You can’t unsee that. Why can’t others?
Princess
@Martin: That’s crap. There was a primary. Anyone could enter. It had rules and a prize. People voted; Biden won.
But I guess this is the argument the big California donors are making.
Elizabelle
A jackal mentioned this yesterday. Is there any chance AIPAC is driving this too??
BR
I called my senators and said that if they’re going to force out Biden then they better openly back Harris or I’m done with them.
schrodingers_cat
@BR: Just tell them to stand by Biden. Don’t muddy the message. My 2 cents.
One of the Many Jens
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I’m shoulder to shoulder with you on that one, for one.
BR
I’m looking forward to the “NYT: Harris untested on the stump, stumbles like Biden”
BR
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve already called them daily saying to back Biden. But they’re already hedging the bets and I don’t want them getting any ideas about bypassing Harris.
Xentik
@BR: The way to prevent bypassing Harris is to demand changes to the convention rules.
Currently whatever they may say, there is nothing in the rules preventing a contested convention if Biden drops out, and there is no reason to believe that the donors won’t make a play to oust Kamala.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
Not me.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: Duly noted. That’s why I noted most not all.
schrodingers_cat
I am backing Biden. He is still standing strong. This episode has made me a much stronger Biden supporter than I was before.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: that may be happening for a lot of us.
and I think they’re taking him down because he’s actually the strongest candidate. The polls have not been picking up Dobbs, and Trump is a cluster fuck. Maybe he does have his floor of 40% but we remember what he was like. The fact that none of his former cabinet and military officials are backing him should shout how unqualified he is.
Ridin’ with Biden.
ssdd
@schrodingers_cat: same. And I don’t see a path to victory in November if they chase him out.
prostratedragon
Lukovich
Bupalos
@Tractarian: The pols aren’t just scared by the 20 minutes. The reason this was teed up to be a shitshow was that there were a few other disconcerting events that pols attended or were privy to so that going into the debate he was in the same position (actually worse) as going in to the SOTU, which he did well at.
It was compounded by it being an oddly timed event that the Biden camp had pushed for because this was their theory of victory- that this kind of direct communication contrast and exposure would turn the tide on Trump, who has been leading for a year. Obviously it was a massive disaster, and while subsequent mostly-not-disasters like the interviews and appearances can quell the fear among engaged D partisans, that’s not true for the pols. For the former, they’re mostly erasing one isolated event. For the pols, they’re plotted on a trajectory that has more points on it- the fundraiser, Juneteenth, rumblings about strange interactions with euro leaders, maybe other stuff we don’t hear about….and THEN the debate. It looks like a line going down. A trajectory. A trajectory you were already waiting for with an 81 year old. A trajectory you want no where near your own campaign. At the least, they’d have to be shown multiple points that promise the line is going up and that hasn’t happened.
Martin
@$8 blue check mistermix: Those are the same thing. The incumbent controls the party. So I agree, when Biden said he was running, all avenues for another candidate were cut off.
Somehow people are arguing this is evidence of primary voter intent in favor of Biden. The reality is that when an incumbent is involved, primary elections are roughly as democratic as anything that Russia produces. That is not a good argument for ‘the voters decided’ as a defense. It is a good argument for Democrats to say ‘wait, we decry this process in these other situation, maybe this is bad. Maybe this should change.’
Again, I’m not arguing that Biden is a bad candidate. I do argue he’s been a very good president.
My post a while back about how ‘Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.’ applies here. An incumbent primary process spit out the incumbent because it’s designed to do that. It does not seek democratic consensus, it seeks reinforcement for the incumbent. Make the king look good. That’s the prudent strategy because we don’t want to muss the candidate up before the general. Ok. Sure.
But my argument is that the process has costs that are independent of the result. Democrats are not going to suddenly view USSC as being legitimate just because it spits out results that Democrats like – you can’t just sweep under the rug the corruption and bribery, the process that caused the court to be made up this way. Look at the comments up thread of people who are ready to write off the party entirely, or refuse to back a Biden replacement without even knowing who that replacement is. Those are reactions PURELY to the process. This manner of solving problems feels unfair. Because it is. That’s legit. My argument is to calm down – it’s not like any other part of the process is any more fair or legit here and there are lots of folks who are thinking that if there was a proper primary process, that debate performance probably would have surface during a primary debate (given how early that debate took place) and they would have had an opportunity to make a choice on who should be the nominee, and that opportunity was denied to them. And had there been a bunch of primary debates that Biden did fine in and then bombed the first general one, they could have fallen back on it being a bad night, but voters have no way to contextualize that performance because we skipped an entire primary process. And that decision impacts how voters respond.
And I would argue that Democrats are MUCH more sensitive to the process than Republicans are. I see that in the comments constantly. You see that from the talking heads in agreement that Republicans will always coalesce around their candidate – they always fall in line. They only care about results, but Democrats care about the process. It opens opportunities to question the results, and so the results are now being questioned.
Does it suck? Yeah, but it’s not because voters are ‘bad’. It’s because the party doesn’t know how to reliably construct a process that gives voters a foundation to believe in and defend the validity of the result.
gvg
@Jeffro: I amazed you think this. It seems obvious they will obstruct the pick and people will mostly think its normal for them. After all they routinely shut down the government or threaten to or threaten to default on the national debt which would cause massive economic losses to Americans for decades. We have gotten used to that. They stalled Supreme Court picks and people mostly forgot that. This has been going on and getting worse since the 90’s.
If there is no VP the next in line is the speaker of the house, so Johnson has NO incentive to allow anyone’s approval. Republicans might actually encourage assassination and we might want Harris to stay safe which would make campaigning hard.
The only upside is a possible revolt and new fight over who is speaker of the house.
BR
I just looked at Harris’s polling and it’s not stronger than Biden. If anything she polls worse. This is going to be a slog if they force Biden out and a slog it they don’t.
One of the Many Jens
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly this.
I am so angry right now. How precisely can Democrats claim to be fighting for democracy, if they’re willing to negate votes like this. And how can I trust them to fight for the other causes they claim to stand for, when they roll over at the least sign of adversity. The answer at the moment, is that I no longer do.
Doesn’t mean the forces of bigotry and fascism don’t still need to be defeated, and doesn’t mean I won’t still be in that fight. It does mean that there are now a hefty stack of people whom I no longer trust, and from whom I will for the foreseeable future be expecting/guarding against a shiv in my back.
Chris
@Eyeroller:
And a disaster for the party’s legitimacy. Parties have survived bad candidates. This is a whole other level of problem. Cynicism about corporate influence in politics and politicians only listening to elites and not voters are already sky high, both in the Democratic Party specifically and in politics in general. If you demonstrate that big donors can effectively kneecap any candidate any time they want? Nobody’s going to trust the party again. Republicans may be able to weather this; they’ve got a stupendous amount of their ideology wrapped up in the idea that the rich know best. Democrats, the people whose legitimacy is based to a stupendous extent on telling people “vote for us, we’ll protect you from the rich?” Nah.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: This spineless behavior is not going to be rewarded at the polls. By which I mean the actual elections not opinion polls.
schrodingers_cat
This is the drum I have been beating as well. But no one seems to be listening. This will destroy the Democratic party. Not just for one Presidential election but for a long time to come.
Xentik
@BR: All if the candidates that are named do worse than Biden. Even in the poll where Harris is shown as +3 over Biden her favorability is worse than Biden’s.
And all that is before the media shifts gears to “Is the new candidate competent to be president?” or whatever contrived thing they can come up with. And if the new candidate has a *real* scandal because they weren’t vetted properly it’s over.
Literally the worst thing Republicans have to run on against Biden is his age, which is why the media is all over it. They don’t have any better ideas. For any new candidate they will dig out everything they can to attack them.
Bupalos
@Quinerly: I really am surprised at the vehemence we’ve seen here at BJ on this. In my meatspace it’s overwhelmingly the case that people want someone else. Not rabid about it, just like “of course.” Some of that may be unfair because of the “someone else” part doing some work, and I’m often with a lot of younger folk and doing registration drive at Kent State. But it’s like the inverse proportion to here. 10-90 here, 90-10 there? And I’m kind of making up that 10, because I just haven’t heard anyone actually say NO! we need to hold the line! kind of thing.
My kids (only 1 old enough to vote) think it’s odd that it could even be a question, almost like they assume it’s simply against the law for someone this old to run.
Quinerly
Raskin
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/18/us/politics/jamie-raskin-biden-letter.html
tam1MI
14 million people. 14 million people who took time out of their day, who found a sitter for their kids, who took the crosstown bus full of coughing people, who walked to the polls in the rain… 14 million people who voted for Joe Biden in the presidential primary WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO, who wrote in Joe Biden’s name WHEN IT WASN’T ON THE BALLOT AND THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO.
The Democratic Party is about to tell those 14 million people that, as far as the party that was supposed to represent them is concerned, they might as well have stayed home.
I am FURIOUS with the party right now. The second the Coup D’Etat Caucus succeeds in ousting Biden from the ballot, my vote goes up for grabs. When voting day rolls around, I go into the booth and write in the name “Joe Biden” on the Presidential line. The rest of the ballot? Blank. Let the Coup D’Etat Caucus drag the sorry asses of Hillary Scholten and Elissa Slotkin and the Manchin-Sinema presidential ticket over the finish line.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: Well you guys don’t seem to be listening or accepting that it’s not some big fatcat donors. There’s pretty overwhelming evidence in polls and reactions and mealy mouth statements from polls (basically zero taking your line) that this is the opinion of a majority of the party. The sentiment seems to run high in every segment.
Xentik
@Bupalos: You are asking them a fantasy football question, basically “If the candidate fairy came today and waved their wand to give you your dream candidate, would you take them over Biden?”
Try asking them after explaining the logistics of switching candidates and the guarantee of a contested convention, possible issues with ballot access, and the fact that none of the posed names are polling better than Biden.
Bupalos
@tam1MI: OK I’m going to assume this is manipulative posturing trying to convince people there is a kamikaze caucus they need to flatter. Because if you’re really casting a vote for Biden in the case where he’s not the nominee… you’ve lost the plot and need to revisit proper labeling for someone who doesn’t oppose Nazis. It’s “Nazi.”
Bupalos
@Xentik: I tipped my hat to that. I’m not ASKING anything though, I don’t think I’ve posed a question to one person. People know I’m a junkie or when registering they assume I’m some kind of party official or something, so in a few cases it’s been them asking me “ugh, is he going to stay?” At the grad party I attended where it’s like 20 seniors sitting around they’re actually passing around agenda 25 on their phone, talking about fleeing the country, and saying it’s impossible Biden is running. One thing that strikes me is no one seems aware that there is some oppositional effort to get biden out.
But I could be in a bubble. I just really do wonder what people’s interactions outside here have been. They obviously can’t be like mine.
BarcaChicago
@ssdd: Agreed on all points. It’s about winning. I’m not sentimental regarding politics: I vote for who can win and will then enact policy I think best for the country. I was a Warren supporter and when she pulled out, I adjusted and moved forward. The lack of realism from the “dump the incumbent” crowd boggles my mind
PS I run in Democratic circles – everyone I have contact with feels the same and thinks that changing would be political suicide. They are also pissed off, at both the lack of judgement and also the disregard for their primary votes. Add that the the anecdote mill…
Quinerly
@Bupalos:
I mistyped when I said I quit reading comments 10 days ago until today. I quit reading after a (“valued”???) commenter wished a Biden should drop out commenter and that commenter’s mother death. I think that has been about a week. Just seems longer.
I have been reading this blog since its inception. Have actually met quite a few commenters in person in my travels. I guess I thought I knew the place and the kind of people here. Very few people commenting now would I ever want to meet in person. I kinda don’t even feel comfortable with my nym showing up in most of these threads. I wasn’t very imaginative when I picked my nym.
I have resisted commenting for several days because of that. I am just sick of people accusing those of us who have come to the painful conclusion that Biden should drop out as being ageist. So I jumped in on this thread.
It’s quite simple to me…Biden has lost the skill set to attack Trump. He is weak. If Biden steps aside and Harris is our candidate. Weakness and age is taken out of the equation.
Kathleen
@WereBear: Or not being able to cross state lines because she’s of child bearing age (I’m assuming)? I read that was one of Vance’s proposals.
Chris
@Xentik:
The even bigger problem is that they can’t tell you how they’re going to feel about any replacement candidate once they’ve been put through the same media wringer.
The real question isn’t “would you rather replace Biden.” It’s “so a month from now, when all we’ve had for a week is wall-to-wall coverage of how John Kerry Lied About Being Injured, or Hillary Clinton Has A Private Email Server, or Al Gore Sounds Professorial And Sighs A Lot, and the polls still haven’t improved, what are you going to do then? Ask for another convention?”
ssdd
@Bupalos: eh, maybe, maybe not. Emerson numbers out today:
When asked if President Biden should withdraw from the race, 52% nationally think he should and 48% think he should not. Regarding whether former President Trump should withdraw, 56% think he should not and 44% think he should.
raven
@Quinerly: Re-register.
gwangung
@Tractarian: You really don’t seem to be listening.
POCs are used to this, however.
prostratedragon
Think it’s not an op?
Bupalos
@Quinerly: I’ve noticed other names staying out of it. The mix is definitely different. I’m not taking anything here personally, my working theory is that everyone is freaking out, and a majority here have just convinced themselves they are not and that this hyper-certain LET ME GUARANTEE YOU WHAT WILL HAPPEN YOU TRAITOR SHITHEAD TROLL stuff is just because they need to feel certainty and vent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Bullshit right back atcha. Someone could have done a Teddy Kennedy 1980 if they wanted to. They didn’t.
Ruckus
@BR:
I want REASONABLE leadership.
Many have lived under unreasonable leadership in the WH and it isn’t good for anyone. I’ve done the same in the USN and it isn’t good for anyone. Actually to be honest neither of those cases were there actual leaders in the position, which is a big part of what made them unreasonable.
The people you name know how to lead, which they do, not demand obedience. Even in the military leading is what works, demanding does not. Sure, in the military one has to do what one is told but if one is told wrong things to do one is supposed to know when to not do so. Some call it mutiny but getting one’s self killed for someone else’s ego is not good leadership. We are all a part of this, and we elect someone to do the actual job because 250,000,000 or more people trying to run a country is impossible. But having one ignorant egomaniac run it doesn’t work well either.
gvg
@Martin: You are IMO wrong. The candidates you named are probably going to challenge Harris in 2028. They didn’t now because they looked at the overall picture and decided the best odds for the democrats to win the Presidency was Biden and they have all been very conspicuous in supporting the whole party, more so that most did in the past. I think that is because of the times we live in and the danger. It is not the time for ego. The whole party has been working together more than in the past….up until now.
There is also history. The odds of beating an incumbent are just never very good.
The odds of doing it in such a hinky unofficial ways are really bad. This donor revolt/media frenzy can only hurt the party. It won’t actually result in a good alternative candidate. Even if they start to seriously talk about someone else, when they realize they can’t agree who, they will be forced back to Joe, but he will be weakened by this. And that I think is the point of this.
You obviously don’t really like him. But seriously, don’t fall for the idea we can change now. He can resign a year or so after inauguration if need be. Right now, we all need to spit in the faces of the media, foreign trolls and spies and the rich who don’t want taxes and rules.
Bupalos
@ssdd: That’s interesting. Basically inverted numbers from earlier D polls yesterday. At any event, my point there was that it’s not like some very small portion of voters. I guess we have a new low range here, but basically more or less half. Reporting from Kate Riga and Ezra Klein is that with d pols it’s truly overwhelming on what they want him to do. There’s just no mechanism to make it happen and a common action problem with raising their heads up to get them chopped off.
Sure Lurkalot
@Quinerly:
Biden’s weakness and age. Not Trump’s, because that’s not the entree being served for dinner.
And one FTFNYT minute later the equation will pivot to a black woman of immigrant parents with the Jew(ish) spouse.
Ksmiami
@gene108: I highly highly doubt that.
schrodingers_cat
I am a member of my town DTC. I was 3 time delegate at the State convention. I have canvassed for the Ds, donated to them. But this spineless turncoat behavior by top Ds are making me reconsider my involvement with the party.
They are telling my time, money and vote matters less to them than $$ from top donors.
schrodingers_cat
@Sure Lurkalot: Yep the Rs will call her an anchor baby and “progressives” will call her Kopmala and white liberals will flash polls in front of you telling you that she can’t win.
Bupalos
@Sure Lurkalot: Trump’s age will be an issue we can exploit if Biden withdraws. It’s no slam dunk we can get traction, but I wouldn’t sleep on it as a potential generator of some turnout among young folks. I’m with folks just coming to voting age most days. We’re sleeping on this issue for them.
Bupalos
@BarcaChicago: I’m honestly shocked at the ps there. If that’s people’s experience, I can’t blame them for being as strident as they are. It’s just truly 180 from mine.
We need to ask only D’s in Michigan, Penn, and Wi.
jefft452
@gene108: “Something changed their minds.”
The Trump tax cuts are set to expire
They dont want then to expire, and they dont want to have their fingerprints on extending them
If Biden is elected the cuts expire
So in their mind Biden must go
Darkrose
@Sure Lurkalot: Don’t forget the “She slept her way to the top!” narrative. Or the “Her office is dysfunctional and chaotic!” stories–all anonymously sourced, of course–that the Guardian was pushing as recently as last month. Hell, there were even stories about her laugh being “inappropriate”! Why do people not get how much a big chunk of this country hates Black women?
jefft452
@schrodingers_cat: plus 1
Darkrose
@jefft452: Also, the big donors HATE that Biden is pro-labor. Hollywood is livid about the gains the writers and actors made during last summer’s strikes; they want to replace the creatives with AI to make number go up even more. Silicon Valley doesn’t want their employees to unionize. Amazon is suing to break to NLRB and OSHA.
LanceThruster
Permission to speak freely, sir.
No? Never mind then (How I see the angst requiring kid glove treatment in the rough and tumble world that is politics)
Pie filter your way to victory!
I’ll be in my K-hive if anyone needs me. As a former Bernie supporter and continued supporter of those policies he tried to make happen, I’m quite used to seeing specious arguments made by VSPs having determined the limits of the possible. “Bless your heart” and “I love pie!” and “Magic Grampa isn’t even a Democrat”… “too old” was definitely used as a rationale for him not to even be considered. He must be out to pasture somewhere by now, with a blanket oh his lap, staring off into space like Capt. Pike.
In three successive Democratic primaries, there were some “safeguards” to help ensure those voting in the primaries came to the correct conclusions as to the ultimate party nominee. While the individual votes of the base count for something I suppose, so does the ability to garner support from the large donors, and the ability of a candidate to tap into the party apparatus.
This apparatus, while it sometimes seems a benevolent and neutral overseer, there to support the advancement of whichever of its hopefuls has most successfully captured the attention and support of the base, in actuality is a reflection of the group within the party with the most power and control, both exerted to maintain/increase the other.
It isn’t just about a win against the opposition, that victory must come by way of it maintaining the status quo of the dominant power block. Even when that power block loses, the “lesson” most often promoted as the one needing to be learned is that the failure is from not listening to the power block and whatever rationale a voter might have had for ignoring their obligation to deliver that vote as instructed, it was not valid. Just because in the privacy of the voting booth a free choice can be made… one person, one vote… does not mean that person has a right to ignore the vote shaming that should have made it clear who was entitled to that vote.
It’s as if that voter just did not understand the process as well as the party leadership. It goes without saying and simply cannot be denied that the *only* reason the party ever loses is they did not get enough votes from the people they needed, in the places they needed, at the time that they needed them. Clearly, the electorate is the weakest link in the chain, and to fault the party in any way, shape, or form, ignores that reality.
Vote harder… because “earning votes better” is simply not an option.
Quinerly
@Sure Lurkalot: I obviously meant our candidate’s weakness and age is taken out of the equation.
I think Harris will bring in new voters and voters not planning on voting because of the “two, old white guys.” I just don’t believe Biden voters will suddenly switch to Trump if it is a Harris vs Trump race. And this isn’t 2016…Harris isn’t HRC….plus, Dobbs.
I have never run a campaign. I’m not a political operative. Seems a lot of BJ commenters somehow know more than the people who do campaigns for a living, though. I’ll take my chances siding with Pelosi, Schumer, Raskin, Jeffries and Schiff and whatever they know that’s making them think we need to change horses. They have actually won campaigns and personally know Biden.
One of the Many Jens
@Bupalos: Percentages are one part of the story, but depth of sentiment here is another. Someone can think Biden isn’t the best candidate, and that’s pretty normal. I’ve cast plenty of votes in my time for folks who weren’t my first choice. Trying to push Biden out like this is not normal, and it weakens him and the party if he stays in. If they succeed in pushing him out, you have people like me who support him being and feeling betrayed.
Plus if you think the FTFNYT isn’t going to weaken whoever succeeded him with the (true, if possibly incomplete) narrative of Dems caving to rich donors to force this, then I have some Arizona ocean-front property to sell you. Precisely how do you think those young folks (I never saw a comment indicating how many of them actually vote) will respond to that?
tam1MI
I live in Michigan. I can only speak for myself and the people I know, but the people I know are telling me they are planning to stay home in November. And I had them ready to vote Dem. But not any more. They are back to believing that there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between the parties. And at this point I can’t really tell them different. I mean hell, the Republican party at least confines their disenfranchisement to the people who don’t vote for them.
Chris
@Bupalos:
Okay, so you believe in the tooth fairy.
Quinerly
@Bupalos:
One thing that gets me…the snowflakes who can’t handle dissenting opinion. That silly pie being thrown around.
Some very immature people here. If a true troll, scroll on by. Don’t engage. If it is a commenter who has posted here over the course of years, don’t lose your shit if you don’t agree 100% with that commenter. BJ has become too insular. And everybody seems to be an expert on Biden and his ability to win….kinda like “only he can save us.”
Hmmmmmm…………I’m off….Life to live. Have a nice rest of your week.
LanceThruster
@Martin: [slow clap] Thank you.
Sure Lurkalot
@Bupalos:
Trump survived an assination attempt and Biden caught Covid. Right there’s our legacy media, no matter how much such drivel is being ratioed on Musk’s propaganda machine.
So yes, absolutely, the press will pivot to Trump’s age, inability to walk 250 feet and word salad before they pivot to Kamala Harris’ skin color and heritage. Sure thing.
BarcaChicago
@Bupalos: They aren’t strident. They have no sentimental connection to this, they simply see how it would be a disaster politically and electorally. It’s not about Biden, it’s about winning the election. And they see the strong cohesion in the party over the last 3.5 years being utterly lost with such an impulsive and frankly bizarre decision to change candidates at this point. BTW, they are almost all Wisconsinites. And I think the surge of small donor donations in the past weeks indicates that this opinion is also held by a majority of the Democratic electorate.
BarcaChicago
@gvg: Thank you for this. We need more cool heads and pragmatism.
Steve LaBonne
Sigh. I promised myself that after I left LGM I wouldn’t get into another one of these quagmires. And I am really not going to get into the back and forth, but I do want to repeat what I just posted on my own FB page, and I would welcome cogent replies.
So let’s say Biden succumbs to the pressure to drop out. He endorses Harris and she’s duly nominated on the first ballot. (Any other scenario is a guaranteed catastrophe and I refuse to even think about it.) So the theory of why this is a good thing is:
1. Replace Biden with a candidate who doesn’t poll any better (neither approval nor head to head with Trump)
2.???????
3. Victory!
But even this is too generous. People proposing this imagine that Harris will improve her polling (but if so why can’t Biden? It’s only July!). Isn’t it at least as likely that when she has the media bullshit firehose turned on her at full force for really the first time, her position will worsen?
I don’t believe the fat cats and the elected members of the Do Nothing Caucus are on the level, but I do recognize that there are people who genuinely want to beat Trump and think this is the way to do it. What I haven’t seen is any argument for that proposition that makes any sense at all.
LanceThruster
@tam1MI: there were multiple instances where the feedback of those doing the work on the ground was ignored because it didn’t mesh with the metrics those at the national HQ were reading. Those groups mentioned were ignored or dismissed, right up to the point that the primary results came in and the number who had voted “uncommitted” or equivalent from a campaign put together on incredibly short notice made waves.
Attempts were made to bring them back into the fold, reminding them that everything possible must be done to keep Trump out of office, as long as “everything possible” did not include any changes of administration policy that they were committed to “no matter what”.
That the “Biden or Bust” question shifted to “age is just a number” will, if nothing else, again consign other considerations as playing no part in determining what any downward shift in support was ultimately due to.
Even without Biden as the figurehead of his administration or the party, his “Nothing will fundamentally change” lives on. That may not be the flex the party thinks it is.
Geminid
@Quinerly: A friend texted me about Kamala Harris’s speech in North Carolina today. He was impressed. He was Harris-sceptical coming into this controversy and I told him to watch her and now he’s a fan.
This is not to weigh in on the more general question at issue these days, just to note that this is a good moment for Harris. With Joe Biden sidelined with Covid she is now our defacto leader. The CBS hourly radio news news report just featured Harris 2nd, following a report from the Republican convention. They gave a soundbite of her talking; a good, punchy attack on Trump.
My friend is agnostic about subbing Harris in for Biden, and while I incline towards Biden I think we can win either way. But either way, this is a good moment for Harris especially now that the Republicans have rolled out her unimpressive opponent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: Have you considered that for many people this election and the sanctity of their vote is not merely an intellectual exercise? Not because they are Biden stars, but rather because of 1. their perception of the consequences of a Trump victory and 2. the fact that they or their ancestors fought and bled to ensure that they had the right to vote.
PatD
@MisterForkbeard: Biden is most certainly not fine. He’s old and his debate performance caused a widespread loss of confidence in that it validated many claims from the right over the years. There’s is almost nothing Biden can do before the election to regain that trust with voters, let alone his own voters.
Quinerly
@PatD: Unfortunately, you are mostly correct.
PatD
@Steve LaBonne: it is not merely about polling but your
@Steve LaBonne: The polling reflects a loss of confidence in Biden. Harris has work to do but age and clarity of thought are not obstacles for her.
Steve LaBonne
@PatD: As of now the polling simply does not reflect any greater confidence in Harris, and that’s before she’s fully in the spotlight. So that doesn’t work as an argument.
PatD
@Steve LaBonne: of course it’s not going to work as an argument if you reject the premise involved. Biden is critically damaged due to factors that he cannot change. Harris does not have the same critical vulnerabilities.
Steve LaBonne
By the way as an old person I’m truly delighted to see that ageism is the last form of bigotry that’s acceptable to much of the left. Well there’s some ableism in their too (the stutter). Inspiring!
Ksmiami
I just yelled at a Jeffries staffer to tell his boss to stop undermining Our president and the party
Quinerly
@Geminid: thank you.
I think Harris can easily handle this.
I ain’t scared of Sebastian Gorka calling her “colored.”😉
And the folks who are going to call her a slut because of dating Willie Brown weren’t our voters to start with.
Since my move to NM, my circle has been broadened to include a lot of under 45 yos. Hiking, music, art, crafts, gardening. Plus, my little yard/construction crew. And LGBTQ acquaintances. All young. Everyone I meet is excited about Harris. Seem more inclined to make the effort to vote for her.
Have a nice day. Take care.
Steve LaBonne
@PatD: Harris is much too untested to have any real understanding of what her vulnerabilities are. (She was my second choice after Warren in 2020, but her campaign was unimpressive to say the least.) This is just wishful thinking. I appreciate that it comes from a place of badly wanting to beat Trump (as we all do) but it isn’t persuasive based on the available evidence.
Quinerly
@Steve LaBonne: my issues with Biden aren’t ageism. If some of you would stop saying that and actually listen to people, you might learn something.
Steve LaBonne
@Quinerly: I listened to you and told you exactly what I heard.
LanceThruster
@Steve LaBonne: VBNMW is regularly employed by Dems as a rationale for supporting their candidate with any other considerations being secondary. Biden’s “occasional” impairment (it’s reflective of his lifelong stutter, it’s a one-off, it’s only a big deal because people are being fooled by bad press and deceptive editing) should not be an issue because we’ve already said it’s not.
Biden’s performance post debate shows it was entirely a fluke (other curious gaffes notwithstanding). Biden being constantly on the defensive has no bearing on the general election and this includes party bedwetters, the problem being exclusively not listening to those telling you it’s not a problem. It’s not valid to speculate on Biden’s condition in any manner, and our diagnosis using the same observations that everything is fine should be enough. How much more conclusive could it be that no cognitive tests will be done because they’re not needed? If Harris is not prepared to step up, direct your anger at whoever placed her in that position. Our guy knows what he’s doing and even God himself knows when to just dummy up. And your arms are too short to box with God.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Chuck Schumer can get fucked. I have never liked the guy (mealy-mouthed is a fair descriptor) and dreaded it when he became the Majority Leader in the Senate. He’s another Senator for Israel and I’m sure that has a lot to do with his calling for Biden to step aside. How about Schumer do our nation a favor and go fuck himself. This bullshit is exposing the Tonya Harding Democrats in the party. I will never donate a single penny towards the reelection of one of these whiners.
There are better Democrats out there. Far better than this shit.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Don’t forget classism as well
geg6
I’m done with this whole thing and, in many ways, I’m done with the leadership of this so-called party. I will no longer donate to or praise publicly or privately or in any way support any of them ever again. There may be individual candidates I will still support with everything I have, but working on behalf of or donating to the DSCC, DCCC or the DNC is out of the question. No boots on the ground for them from me. They can all go fuck themselves sideways with a rusty chainsaw. And yes, that includes Pelosi, Jeffries and Schumer. Thankfully, neither of my two senators seem to have joined the money guys in gutting any semblance of democracy within the party (for which a name change is obviously needed since “democratic” has gone out the window). Not sure about my rep, since he’s kept out of it publicly, so DeLuzio may be okay, too. But fuck the rest of them. Just fuck them.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: I can think of one in particular…
Geoduck
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Has Schumer explicitly come out and said Biden should quit, or is this more “sources say” he’s saying it in private.
And I see Bob Newhart has died. Sigh. Along with Lou Dobbs, no loss there.
Quinerly
@raven: heard you loud and clear. I chose to laugh.
Captain C
@Geoduck:
Anon sources, I think. He or his office termed it “idle gossip.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Steve LaBonne: It’s gross for sure. And the Ableism against people with stutters.
That said, glad to see you here. Always enjoyed your stuff at the other place.
O. Felix Culpa
Has anyone asked Kamala what she thinks? So much talk about her, without actually consulting her. Seems to me her opinion might matter. Does she even want to run this year?
$8 blue check mistermix
@Martin:
Thanks for the clarification.
I think you have a better argument if you choose 2016 instead of 2024. Incumbency is a huge advantage and a party processes that are structured to favor the incumbent are not so anti-democratic, IMO. I can see that reasonable people could differ on that. But certainly non-incumbent cycles should lead to a big primary field that is winnowed down in primaries reflecting voter choice.
In 2016, why was there only one challenger to Clinton, and he was a challenger that wasn’t considered “serious” by the party? I mean, Bernie is no Dean Phillips, but there should have been a big field going after the nomination that year. Instead, a group of insiders decided that Clinton deserved the nomination and the enlightened self interest of the other candidates made them pause on running against her.
I blame donor capture, fueled by the 2009 Citizens’ United decision. 2016 was the first Democratic primary where big donors could have major sway. Now the same donors are trying to oust Biden and replace him with some white savior ticket — these people do not want Harris. If the ousting is followed by some machinations that produce a ticket that doesn’t have Harris leading it, we’re going to have the disaster that they’re all predicting. If Harris leads the ticket, who knows?
Quinerly
@UncleEbeneezer: so Pelosi and now Sharpton have suddenly become ageist?
Geminid
@Quinerly: You’re welcome. Or as the youngs say, no problem.
Now that you have been outed as a Leftist I will call you “Red Quinerly.”
Steve LaBonne
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you!
LanceThruster
@PatD: it also erodes trust further that the defensiveness over Biden’s apparent decline (some might be so ungenerous as to call it “gaslighting”) has people berated to not trust their eyes and ears, but rather to trust the people telling them not to trust their eyes and ears.
Any speculation as to what is causing his difficulties (that supporters insist do not exist, save for that *one* time that everyone is making such a big deal about) is unacceptable because is ignores the reality that everything is fine. Thinking it’s not is the problem.
The only way we can prove that is keeping things just the way they are. Naysayers should stick with us because the only definitive way to prove they are right is keeping things just the way they are.
So in the end, what’s most important is being able to prove we are right with all other considerations being secondary. It’s good we’re finally all on the same page.
PatD
@Steve LaBonne: you are incredibly silly to play this card. I’m sure there are many effective and capable people over 80 who are sharp and clear at all times. Biden is and was not that person at the worst possible time when all the attention was on him. Either Trump is an existential threat or you are risking the country for the sake of one person who cannot perform adequately.
LanceThruster
@Quinerly: Pelosi’s support for DiFi never wavered up to that point DiFi’s signal dropped and she merged with the infinite… so if Nancy SMASH! thinks it’s time to jump ship from the Joe-Boat, it probably is worth taking into account. It can’t be ageism because she herself is running for reelection.
PatD
@O. Felix Culpa: She shouldn’t be VP if she weren’t willing and capable of stepping up to do the job.
Steve LaBonne
@PatD: I watched the whole debate (after the fact) and read the transcript, and I simply don’t agree. And all the while Trump made no kind of sense (“we bought the certain dog”) and never even attempted to answer a question. But certainly calling me silly is a very persuasive argument.
PatD
@Steve LaBonne: Steve, I’d argue this isn’t about Trump at all. It’s the fact that many voters don’t see Biden as up to the job anymore. There’s no putting a good spin on that. Your personal view of his performance doesn’t outweigh what the broad electorate thinks either having watched the debate or the media narrative following it. Instead you’re putting your hopes in voters having to settle for Biden against Trump. That is very risky.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: ooh, it’ll be “exciting”. It will be so EXCITING to watch the Democrats commit Hari-Kari by ditching the best President of our lifetime. Ooh, it will be so “exciting” to watch the bloodbath that is going to ensue when the big donors decide that Harris needs to go as well. Ooh, a contested convention! Ooh, so EXCITING! Oh yeah, I just can’t wait for the end of democracy because the fucking Democratic Party are committed to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Christ,.maybe I’ll get lucky and be diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2025.
Steve LaBonne
@PatD: Anecdotes are not evidence but here’s another to counter yours: actual undecided voters who watched the debate were evenly split on who “won”. What’s going on here is a media shitstorm that has been greatly prolonged by fatcat donors and chickenshit Democrats (many responding to threats from those donors) throwing fuel on the fire.
Ksmiami
@tam1MI: this is ridiculous. If ppl can’t be arsed to do the bare minimum required in a democracy, then they deserve to lose it.
LanceThruster
@geg6: PUMA-POW!
LanceThruster
@Steve LaBonne: how about the transcripts of post debate appearances?
LanceThruster
@PatD: when a pre-debate ad included the smack talk “Bring it, pal!”, you pretty much have to deliver at that point, golf handicap notwithstanding.
LanceThruster
@Miss Bianca: – only those lacking in IQ cannot see the emperor wears the finest reelection garment in the land!
Old School
@LanceThruster:
Really? You’re going to go for Biden stutters a lot?
How about linking to the actual transcript?
Quinerly
@Geminid: 😎
PatD
@Miss Bianca: what jaws of victory do you speak
@Steve LaBonne: I’m sure that’s all part of it. I can tell you that the primary reason for this “shitstorm” is the candidate’s performance at the debate and his inability to move the conversation beyond his own infirmity. It simply does not happen without that. I want the Democrats to put forward the best and most capable candidate possible to win what should be a very winnable election.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: There are many more but the one you are thinking of is particularly strident.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@geg6:
I’m a registered Democrat until after the election. There’s no way I am putting my direct support behind this feckless, weak-kneed party by being a member of it after that. Why bother to vote in a primary if they are just going to come along and take away your choice? The rest of the family seems to be leaning the same way. Support the party/Biden through November and then back to small i independent (no party affiliation).
Fuck this noise.
@PatD:
Troll troll troll your boat…
Now go the fuck away, Tonya.
LanceThruster
@$8 blue check mistermix: while in the 2020 primaries, unprecedented steps were taken behind the scenes. Phones calls were made and the candidate with a faltering 4th place showing and about out of campaign cash as large donors weren’t sinking any more into to it at that point, was dragged to the front of the line as younger hopefuls were all persuaded to drop out in unison giving Joe their endorsements upon exit, and Clyburn’s endorsement the day before Super Tuesday showed the minority support Biden would have gotten anyway (so we’re told). To paraphrase Molly Ivins, Biden was carried to second base and thought he got a triple.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: I hope the Pod Bros have gamed out possible legal challenges from Rethugs in different states and developed strategies. If you don’t want to be a player who runs with the big dogs stay in your studio.
Miss Bianca
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah, me too. Go team.
Now I am trying to imagine the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention telling 84-year-old Ben Franklin, “Go home, Grandpa, we need younger, kickier, prettier people to run this show.”
tam1MI
@Ksmiami: Why should they bother to vote if the Democrats are just going to throw their vote in the trash? I’ve read up and down this thread that my primary vote should be nullified because I voted for Biden. I was well aware that his was the only name on the ballot when I cast my vote. I got out of work bone tired and ready to drop but still made my way to the polls to vote for Biden. I didn’t do that because I had to, I did it because I wanted to, because Biden was my choice. And now I am being told that my vote will not count and disenfranchising me is some sort of actual positive good.
Why does the Democratic Party hate democracy?
geg6
@Steve LaBonne:
I hear it, too. Sick of it.
geg6
@Quinerly:
No, political grifters. More worried about money than anything else.
PatD
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Is this really the best you can do? Feel free to put your head in the sand and pretend people aren’t legitimately concerned that Biden isn’t hopelessly compromised and it’s going to lead to disaster at all levels.
LanceThruster
@schrodingers_cat: is the GOP-Lite wing of the party tired of winning? Schumer’s past assurances of “moderate” Republicans coming through for Hillary has not aged well either.
People are mocking Trump for bringing on board people who previously were on record for how much they couldn’t stand him, one even getting the #2 nod.
Hillary famously declared her primary victory was so conclusive that she didn’t need to do anything to win over progressives. This in response to Rachel Maddow’s question of how she might earn their support. Those that could not see already that they had no other option weren’t needed. All that was left was the mere formality of election day itself. Bernie campaign operatives who came over to the Clinton team and were on the ground in key districts saw the early warning signs and directed canvassers to increase their efforts there, but were called back upon instructions from the national HQ. These were the smartest people in the room and they trusted their metrics. There’s always a few bedwetters, and the sky was not falling.
Neoliberalism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
schrodingers_cat
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I am leaning the same way.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
Fuck off. I’m protective of my vote (and that of others). If the party leadership don’t give a shit about it, they don’t deserve the donations and the hard work I’ve put in over decades. I’ll save that for those who do. So Bob Casey and Chris Deluzio will benefit from that. I’ll vote for whomever the money boys settle on because, well, Trump. But I will not reward these assholes with my money and labor. Opens up my schedule quite a bit this fall and saves me quite a bit of cash over years.
Miss Bianca
@LanceThruster: only those lacking in IQ look at your self-infatuated logorrheic dribblings and think, ‘yeah, this guy’s opinion is worth jackshit about anything.’
Chris Johnson
Yo, Mistermix, I read your ‘apparently’ link.
NO sources. That was entirely composed of press, saying THEY HAD HEARD thus and so.
I’mma need you to read more closely. That proves nothing. You seem to be under the misapprehension that the ‘butter emails’ media will not LIE.
If anybody comes up with video clips I’mma need them to show the WHOLE clip because I have already seen one misleadingly edited clip and the context that inverted their message.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
My kids love her and she has been speaking at colleges with a message that really resonates with them. She doesn’t just talk about Dobbs, she also talks about gun safety and ties it to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To a whole generation of young people traumatized by school mass shootings, she gets it.
Sometimes the universe conspires to assist us (apologies to Goethe) and I really think that is the case with Harris in this moment. She was a prosecutor who will absolutely tear apart the sexual predator and convicted felon Donald Trump.
Geminid
@geg6: This guy does not care about the Democratic party, at least not like you do. A Stein voter.
LanceThruster
@tam1MI: do you know when superdelegates were incorporated into the Democratic primary process? It was after George McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide. The party felt it could no longer risk a populist becoming the nominee based on primary votes alone. Something else needed to be a factor in choosing the nominee, otherwise, the base would have too much say in rejected who the party leadership preferred. In 2016, superdelegates were added to Clinton’s delegate count making her lead look greater than it actually was as they had not actually voted yet. It was only presumed that’s how they would vote because of the way superdelegates get selected in the first place. Some delegates were awarded to Clinton for states she did not win, or in proportions not matching the vote tally. Even got some on a coin flip if you can believe it.
So whenever someone is shocked by how the DNC can nullify primary votes at will (ignoring how their thumb is on the scale all throughout the process itself), my first thought is of that James Franco meme in the old West with the noose around his neck looking over at the other prisoner about to be hung and saying, “First time?”
The lawsuit filed against the DNC after the 2016 primary established that as a private corporation, they have no obligation to anyone to run the process in a manner *they* think is fair. They can make the nominee any candidate of their choosing irrespective of the outcome of the process.
That was the court’s ruling.
Martin
I don’t deny the advantage of incumbency, but that advantage needs to be internalized by voters. It can’t be an article of faith by the kingmakers of the party. There are a lot of ways to achieve that – primaries being one. If the incumbent indeed has that advantage, they should be able to clearly articulate that and win the primaries, leaving voters with a sense that the incumbency advantage has been presented as an argument and agreed to by the voters.
But incumbency advantage is not a given. I don’t think anyone would argue that Menendez carries an incumbent advantage right now. That advantage still needs to be earned and demonstrated.
Again, Democrats don’t need to rely on a primary process. They are free to use whatever mechanisms they desire to give voters the opportunity to provide feedback on the candidate and to leave voters assured of their choice.
Put another way, I don’t think that half the Demcratic party freaked the fuck out over a single debate performance if that was their sole concern. I think they freaked out because they had an accumulating pile of concerns that stem from a variety of sources (lack of agency being one of them, lack of action by Democrats more broadly to stem institutional capture by the GOP, inability to hold Trump accountable, failure to articulate a vision, decisions on Israel/Gaza, decisions on immigration, and so on) none of which had a adequate outlet because none were provided, which all got concentrated in that 20 minutes into an epic freakout because all of that generalized, accumulated anxiety were given no other place to go and were largely left unaddressed. I think a lot of the unwillingness to hear these concerns by the ‘I’m done with everything if Biden gets pushed out’ stem from some of the same thing – they’re just choosing a different outlet.
I’ve argued for a while now that poor polls for Biden are a byproduct of Democrats having no other mechanism to express displeasure with policies and campaign direction other than to tell pollsters that they won’t vote for him (even if they don’t mean it). There’s just no other way to register a protest vote – because it’s pretty clear that expressing it here in the comments just results in half the community accusing you of sabotaging the party and attaching whatever conspiracy theory occupies their mind at that moment. If the movement in the Michigan primary didn’t get through, I don’t know what to tell folks here. You need to give your base appropriate venues for honest feedback and a pretty big subset of Michigan Dems created their own mechanism to try and get that message out – and 13% of voters chose ‘uncommitted’. A lot of people waved that away as not a big deal, but to me, that was a sign that something was very wrong – the voting base had things to say and no way to say them, and you don’t deal with that you run the risk of those people making their concerns clear by not showing up on Election Day – because that’s the only avenue you’ve given them. In fact, Democrats have a LONG history of displeasure being expressed in precisely that way.
I think a LOT of mistakes were made to create this moment. I agree that donor capture hasn’t helped, but donors can’t capture the party unless the party makes itself available to be captured.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
Same here although I think the left/right framing is tired. I was an enthusiastic Harris supporter, then Biden and then enthusiastic Biden Harris.
I was called a troll for my criticism of Warren on this blog. It’s no secret I loathed Sanders. It feels like people are looking for all sorts of ulterior motives rather than listening to what we are actually saying.
MomSense
@Martin:
Turnout for the primaries was really low, historically low in many states.
MomSense
@Bupalos:
You are at Kent State? My parents met there in ’66. My dad had a campus ministry group there and was the Conscientious Objector and my mom went their for her BA and MA and worked for the administration. His campus ministry morphed into the anti-Vietnam movement there. SDS met in our basement. My mom made sure all their protests were approved.
Then we moved to west Texas and – well everyone knows what happened next.
Martin
@MomSense: and why do we think that was?
Chris Johnson
@LanceThruster: You mean after George McGovern replaced half of the ticket at the last minute, dumping Eagleton and coming up with Sargent Shriver?
Instructive. GTFO with that stuff.
Ksmiami
@tam1MI: I mean I agree on that and I’m Biden/Harris all the way. I guess I’m just saying that the choice on Nov 5 is a decent society or dictatorship that will hurt so many people. I can’t just not vote. Use it or lose it.
MomSense
@Martin:
Lack of choice and lack of enthusiasm. Why show up when there is no contest?
Quinerly
@MomSense: truth
Quinerly
@MomSense: 🧡💛💚💙🩵
Sister Golden Bear
@MomSense: There was also nothing at stake in the primaries.
People might not be enthusiastic about Biden, but I’d like to think come November they’ll still plan to vote for him. (And in fact that’s where seeing both anecdotal and in focus groups.)
Black voters have always been good about do this. We’ll see if white voters have the same sense of pragmatism and self-preservation.
Quinerly
@geg6: politely disagree.
Citizen Alan
@PatD: Okay, done with you.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: Hardly the last kind of acceptable bigotry. At east none of the candidates are fat.
Quinerly
@Sister Golden Bear: sooo….why are Dems that we all used to “love” calling for him to step aside? Pelosi and Sharpton suddenly ageist? Schiff who will win by 30 points decides to expend political capital to take down Biden?? Schiff has a lot to lose under a Trump presidency…probably will be arrested by Trump’s DOJ. What are his reasons for calling for Biden to step aside????
Suddenly big money donors realized tax cuts will end? I keep seeing that floated. Geez…
I am not looking to burn bridges with commenters here I have respected for years. I keep saying that we are all on the same side. I’m frightened by the prospect of a Trump presidency. Harris NEEDS to be our candidate.
Citizen Alan
@LanceThruster:
SHE LET THAT MOTHERFUCKER CORNELL WEST WRITE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM!!!
Quinerly
@Citizen Alan: throw some pie. Won’t have to read a comment that you disagree with.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quinerly:
People like Schiff have enough money that they can flee the country if they need to. And the Heritage Foundation has already said that they will sue if the Dem ballot is changed
MomSense
@Sister Golden Bear:
People like you and me will vote for the Democrat no matter what. We are not the problem. Swing voters. Undecided voters. They are not making the same calculations we are. We are not doing well with those voters. We are in trouble. We have to make a major shift and fight for those people or we will lose the election. They know Biden. They thought he was too old in 2020 and now they aren’t persuaded that he is a better option. The ad buys didn’t help and the debate made it much worse. Negative partisanship doesn’t motivate them the way it does for us.
MomSense
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The ballots haven’t been printed. We do not have a nominee. That is what the delegates we voted for will decide at the convention.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MomSense:
Then why would they say that if that’s the case?
Quinerly
@MomSense: well said.
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): not buying your argument.
Highly and respectfully recommend getting out of the BJ echo chamber.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quinerly:
Telling someone they’re “in an echo chamber” isn’t exactly compelling either. Or respectful
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): it has become what it is. Mostly unreadable and cultist. That’s my not so polite side typing.
Give it a name then….any dissent, thoughtful or otherwise, is attacked with name calling, insults. Or just blocked with “pie.”
No respect for dissent…whether it be commenters or elected Dems who have been Biden supporters in the past.
I defer to you as to what to call it.
Manyakitty
@OId Man Shadow: oh my god. Say that again. 10/10 no notes
Manyakitty
@WereBear: right? His NATO conference was triumphantly good and should have dominated the news. Instead all the headlines and talking heads yakked about the bullshit.
Manyakitty
@Elizabelle: oh fuck.
Yeah. I think it’s time to break up with the big money donors. Now’s the time to move the voice back where it belongs.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@$8 blue check mistermix: this is probably a dead thread, but FFS!!!
there were six, SIX candidates in 2016. bernie, clinton, lessig, webb, chaffee and o’malley.
if you can’t remember, fucking google before you try talking shit.
TerryC
@Bupalos: Here is a D in Michigan who is PISSED at talk about Biden stepping down. I’m $280 into donations so far this year but that will stop if Biden drops our, and especially if then Harris is not at the top. The Democratic Party will be dead to me.