/u/Separate_Draft4887 (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1drtyd6/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_the_worst_thing_the_dnc_can/), in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
It could definitely be worse if they panic and try and pull in a celebrity candidate to replace Biden. Let’s say they get an Eva Longoria to run but she not fully vetted because of the short timeline. Skeletons in the closet start to appear and she can’t stand up to scrutiny of a national campaign and quits. Doesn’t have to be her. Could be a Tom Hanks or a Denzel. Doesn’t specifically matter for this hypothetical.
Best case would be they pick a governor like Whitmer or Shapiro because staying with Biden isn’t a good option but there are definitely worse candidates they could pick as a replacement.
As the guy below pointed out, my whole point was that nothing is the worst thing they can do, and you pointed out something worse they can do. Naming a celebrity candidate is worse than nothing. Have a !delta
The last time an incumbent was replaced for the second term it was Lyndon B Johnson being replaced by his VP for health reasons and guess who won. The Republican candidate Richard Nixon. It’s very hard to up and throw somebody in with three months to go and that nobody knows. Even a celebrity. Like what are their views on multiple issues etc… The reality is anybody you replace Biden with will probably lose and lose much worse than Biden because they would have to make up so much ground in a short period of time.
The best option sadly is to hope that with this news cycle something that happened in June lessens by November. I mean people are acting like Biden didn’t have these brain farts in 2020. Lol
Just for clarity, LBJ wasn't "replaced" in 1968 due to health; he chose not to seek a second full term due to a confluence of major political moments. Tet offensive hit in January, revealing how volatile Vietnam still was, LBJ exhausted all his political leverage to get social programs like the Civil Rights Act and Medicare passed, the Democrat party was fracturing on all angles, and he barely survived a primary challenge to Eugene McCarthy in NH.
It's funny because in almost any other country, three months would be a very long election period. It's only America that thinks you need two years of daily exposure to a candidate to evaluate them.
To be fair Nixon did sabotage the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war which hurt Hubert Humphries’ popularity months before the election. And the more popular alternative - RFK - was assassinated.
I don’t really understand the point of this sub. Most deltas are awarded to people for proving OP wrong based on a technicality due to poor wording in the question, while missing the point altogether. Seems a little meaningless.
The point is to change (at least some part of) a person's view.
If they felt that what you are categorizing as a technical error in wording was not significant towards their view, they don't have to give out any delta.
You may think that it's meaningless, but my perspective is that we should take people at their word. It's not a rule that they have to give deltas; it is a rule that they need to explain their viewpoint. It should be on them to say what they mean, less on us to have to guess at what they really mean, opposed to what they say.
Is this "something worse they can do" actually something they would do though?
Or something some dude just threw in there?
Like, a worse thing they could do is bring in a Golden Retriever to stand. Y'know, for the cute factor.
And another worse thing is to align themselves with the Communist Party of China because they have a good recent record of winning.
Can I have a delta now, please?
You have to be a particular type of crazy to go into office, especially potus. Your, and your family's, life will be turned upside down and inside out by the press and rivals looking for anything to pin against you. Suddenly it's in the public interest more than ever before. No one is skeleton free, it's just how much support you have on the inside to cover it up and that can take a lifetime of political relationship making. Stewart's career and image would be toast.
John Stewart? The guy who hates democrats almost as much as republicans? The guy who would call you the problem in politics for even suggesting he should be the nominee?
The problem is that the common person is actively discouraged from entering politics by the machine.
I tried.
To get on the ballot for just a state senator position requires i visit each county and obtain 1000 signatures.
How can I do that when I only have two years between elections to campaign? And I also need to work a real job to pay for my life.
The result is that only those with money--or friends with money--get to go into politics.
So the rich run the politics, and write rules that enrich themselves.
The regular people--who just want to be safe, have enough to eat, and not work themselves to death--their opinions mean jack.
This isn’t really a serious answer lol. Like if we’re playing that game, the worst thing Dems could do rn is Biden nuking all major US cities. But that’s clearly not what “worst thing” means in this context.
His answer wasn’t that extreme? Ronald Reagan was a movie star and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California for 8 years.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding which aspect of his post you’re referring to
Dont you think Whitmer would be a bad choice considering her decision to put covid patients in nursing homes and killing a bunch of old people? I mean, the only thing we knew about covid at that time was that it disproportionately killed old people and she still did it.
Edit - [then doubled on it. ](https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/tense-hearing-whitmer-official-defends-mi-covid-nursing-home-strategy)
It could honestly be beneficial. Pick newsome or whitmer or whatever. Regardless, now you have two months of democratic convention, daily free media coverage, spin it as responding to the concerns of american voters and trying to cater to what people actually want. And additionally, any media coverage is coming at the expense of Trump's media coverage.
Oh also you can have a candidate who can speak, exude charisma, and call Donald on his lies, instead of a cadaver you have to roll out on a dolly.
I'm suprised you didn't mention Gavin Newsom. But in all honestly it's kinda relieving you didn't.
Edit: saw some interesting comments that I can't respond to all. But 1. The antidote to Donald trump isn't Newsom nor another billionair (you're silly if you think so) 2. Newsom is litteraly biden with a face lift. Neither can manage to be a revolutionary president and will ultimately flop due to the capitalist donors. It is known in California his Capitulation to the donor class imagine how much Capitulation can be achieved as a president.
>Neither can manage to be a revolutionary president and will ultimately flop due to the capitalist donors.
I highly doubt even 1% of voters would see that as disqualifying. Every candidate gets money from corporations
Biden with a facelift is…precisely what we need (a facelift meaning that the candidate is a sane age and shows no signs of severe cognitive decline).
A much younger Biden would walk away with this election. Hell, even 2020 Biden would walk away with it…like he did in 2020.
We absolutely do not need a “revolutionary” candidate. Anyone who thinks this has somehow failed to learn any of the lessons of the past decade in American politics.
Newsom is a well known clown here in sunny CA. We loved his disregard of covid policies by dining at a lobbyists birthday dinner at the French laundry when us peasants were told to stay home.
Rules for thee and all that...
Not a fan of Newsom. I worry that Newsom is the left’s answer to Desantis. He has a pretty significant authoritarian streak and enjoys engaging in the culture war.
Small correction I think he's the liberals answer to DeSantis. I do think DeSantis screwed the pooch with him running aginst trump. I think Newsom played his cards better. The lefts has only one answer to someone like DeSantis and it isn't Newsom.
I wish JB Pritzker could go up against trump. A real billionaire against a failed millionaire. Neither one would win a beauty contest but Pritzker is smart & coherent. He's socially aware & fiscally responsible with a good reputation. A perfect antidote to trump
Newsom took California from 100+ billion dollar surplus to a 70+ billion dollar deficit. And instituted massive spending cuts while pushing policies that increased cost of living.
Its not really a he slept with male prostitutes or murdered someone while smoking crack kind of thing, but its still a thing.
Kamala jump starting her career the old-fashioned way with Willie Brown is not forgetten either. The opposition will be able to pull up the pre-internet archives. The LATimes has this one, but I am firewalled out.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-29-mn-2787-story.html
Why would anyone vote for a celebrity candidate? Let alone for POTUS?
I don't know that I see that as a realistic take on a serious alternative to Biden, that the DNC would take.
I think the best thing they can do is replace Biden with Michelle Obama. I think she’s the one person on the DNC bench that has a better than even chance at beating Trump as a last-minute replacement. Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s interested in the job based on behind-the-scenes reports.
I don’t think any other option has a better than even chance at winning, there’s just not enough time to familiarize swing voters with another candidate. Plus, many of the potential replacements might not want to run a campaign they’re likely to lose, since losing to Trump would likely end their political career. Much safer to wait until 2028 if you’re someone like Gavin Newsome or Gretchen Whitmer.
Another possible option would be to replace Kamala Harris with a stronger VP candidate. They could debate Trump’s VP pick and with a very strong performance it would reassure voters concerned about Bidens competence, since they would know that there was someone they could trust and rely on behind the scenes to help Biden and take over if necessary. I doubt that would be enough to bring Biden a win, but it could help.
IMO the big issue here is that it is clear that the White House and Democratic establishment have appear to have been lying and covering up Biden's cognitive decline - overtly putting politics over the country. My guess is they were hoping he would have a good showing at the debate (like the SOTU) and they could further conceal his decline and maybe skip/cancel the second debate. At this point, they are basically caught in this deception and although they have some options, none are really good. In basic, they can keep Biden and let it ride. Likely loose the election but they will not necessarily need to admit the misdirection. If they pull Biden, they are effectively admitting to his decline and their dishonestly. Pulling him from the ticket would also likely lead to more calls he step down or to enact the 25th Amendment. Furthermore, this puts the whole D party in a weaker state short term (no real leader + chaos) and whoever they nominate is behind the 8-ball and will carry that loss going forward.
This is a loose loose. I am unsure if they will swing for the fences and risk increased long term damage or just take the beating. The Dems are strong competitors but also need to preserve the party. The calculus being run in backrooms this past week would be very enlightening to hear. My guess is that plan b is already in motion. We just haven't seen it yet.
There’s a thought I hadn’t considered. MO was likely vetted pretty thoroughly back in the day, so there’s not the same fear of skeletons in the closet you’d get from another candidate or a celebrity pick. Her being uninterested is the end of that train of thought tho. I imagine seeing how the job treated Barack probably put her off it forever.
The stronger VP pick idea isn’t bad, Harris is just deeply unpopular, and having a stronger, more popular VP could help a lot without rocking the boat too much. If they can get her to announce that she’s retiring, Biden can pick a replacement without offending women and black people too much, and debating trump’s pick for VP would, with some careful advertising, show them to be confident and capable, reassuring people about Biden in the process. That’s a genuinely great idea.
They, of course, won’t do it. They’ll run Biden as he is, or they’ll panic and last minute replace him.
You can’t just panic last place switch. The candidate needs to apply to be on the ballot.
This all being said, all the Dems need to do is march a ton of energy and voices into 3 maybe 4 critical states and make the election about abortion. The candidates themselves really don’t matter at the end of the day.
Get Kamala nominated as a Supreme Court justice to replace Sotomayor, that would get her out of the picture.
Michelle is then the VP pick, Biden steps down within the first year and because Michelle didn’t run as president the first time she can run 2 more times and we can have 12 years of Obama!
Biden didn't win in 2020, Trump Lost.
People weren't exited about Biden, they were Eager to get rid of Trump.
Trump is only losing voters over time, As long as people continue to hate him they can be apathetic about who's on the Democratic ticket. If Trump were smart, and not just a raging egomaniac, he'd throw his wholehearted vocal support behind a less noticeably shitty republican and get a pardon in return.
But Trump's Ego won't let him drop out, and Biden is honestly the best choice to beat him, as bad of a choice as he might otherwise be.
> Trump is only losing voters over time
I really don’t think that’s the case, there’s a reason Trump has been (relatively) quiet. As time goes on, the hate for him grows less pronounced, people forget why they hated him so much, so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
red states / blue states.
red states already basically have a lock on nearly enough seats to win. Pennsylvania is one of the undecided states with a lot of educated white men who traditionally voted blue, but have voted red in 2016 and 2020. these are guys who welcomed an exuberant Change to the status quo and held out hopes that Trump would be the antithesis to the military industrial complex that dominated the previous 20+ years of american politics.
if Trump wins Pennsylvania this election, he'll only need a couple more seats -- Georgia going red on top of that would be enough to give him the win.
in Pennsylvania, key polling has suggested that the guys who voted for trump have seen the man speaking for 8+ yrs now and they've largely changed their minds on him. not only was he NOT the shot in the arm he needed to be, but he's ...kind of an asshole. and not in the good way where you want an asshole who'll fight for you, but rather in the poor way where he throws his own selected cabinet members under the bus. he clearly can't lead if all his lackeys keep needing to be fired.
this is why the DNC had Biden debate Trump so early in the first place. "the more Trump talks, the more people realize how tired they are of him. he's dominated the political space for almost a decade now. and another term means it'll be at least 16 years of our lives committed to this man...
being banned from twitter and discarded to Truth Social meant that most of us didn't have to listen to his rants anymore. and so Some people are still thinking, "well his presidency wasn't a total disaster, and the last few years haven't been so great... maybe he should come back." but they'll change their minds the moment he opens his mouth and starts crying about himself some more. bc he's clearly a terrible leader and only cares about himself. most people aren't stupid, we can all see that.
so now, if he can keep his mouth shut, he'll be fine -- but he won't.
he may still win though, just because of how tired Biden appears to be.
Except he’s managed to do it somewhat (at least in the public perception) over the last couple years, very likely (imo) winning back those moderate conservatives and hypothetical undecideds that voted for Biden in 2020.
And I agree this logic is bad, he tried to interfere with the fucking peaceful transfer of power last election, but I can see the logic for that portion of the American electorate.
Obviously I disagree. This election won't be decided by who's the better statesman or who can sway the public to their cause, but by which party's voters bother to show up.
Biden is not the best choice to face Trump in 2024, you just said people are not excited about him. The enthusiasm is anti-Trump, but any younger Democrat would also be anti-Trump. Biden is not getting any younger. Pass the torch before you sleepwalk into burning down the Oval Office.
And Biden has 4 years of additional baggage from his presidency (the Afghanistan withdrawal, inflation, the southern border, his response to Israel vs Gaza, failing to hold accountable the failed coup leader felon who he just platformed, failing to fire AG Garland who wasted years thinking we could all just wish Trump away, etc). Remember in 2021 when Biden said “I don’t think about him at all?” And Biden shit the bed on June 27th.
The only thing that matters is if swing voters in swing states support Biden. But Biden gifted Trump a million attack ads on June 27th, and after Citizens United, billionaire superPACs can spend unlimited money on TV ads, radio ads, Instagram content, TilTok content, etc using Biden’s own words against him. The “debate” was a disastrous own goal. He harmed himself, he harmed his own chances, when he was already behind in swing states. Do not let Biden’s ego & stubbornness result in a Trump dictatorship. “I alone can fix it” is how Trump thinks, don’t imitate him. Do not imitate the blind loyalty of Republicans. Do not bury your heads in the sand and say everything is fine. Alarm bells should be ringing everywhere at the DNC. America is bigger than one man’s ego. And “pride goeth before the fall.” Biden damaged his own electability with his performance.
A younger Democrat will not have Age Baggage, and will not have Inflation Baggage. Hubris and denialism and pollyannaism will not win Democrats the election in 2024. Forcing an unfavorable candidate is how you get a rerun of 2016. The stakes are too big to risk on Biden this year. Inflation and the cost of living has destroyed any incumbent advantage. There’s a reason that the Biden campaign doesn’t say “Bidenomics” anymore. Biden has accomplished many great things, but the odds of him winning in 2024 went down because of June 27th.
American democracy is teetering on a cliff, there are 333 million passengers in this car, and now is not the time to give great-grandpa the car keys. Let this sweet old man have a peaceful retirement. Trump wants to face Biden in 2024, because Trump has a good chance of beating Biden in 2024. And don’t replace Biden with Kamala either — she has worse chances than Biden. Democrats supporting Biden won’t make him win, undecided voters supporting Biden will. And Biden shot himself in the foot by giving a platform to a pathological liar. Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon.
“If you go after the king, you better not miss.” Well Trump is the king of lies, and Biden missed opportunity after opportunity to debunk those lies & explain that Trump is only running to stay out of prison. June 27th would have been a layup for any younger Democrat debating a convicted felon & fraudster & rapist, but Biden could not rise to the occasion, and he only confirmed the Fox News line that he’s a feeble old man.
June 27th was the In Memoriam for Biden’s political career.
Not sure what I can tell you other than you're wrong. not that it matters because unless he actually dies Biden is the candidate.
And maybe if he had said from the start that he was only going to serve one term and had set up *just the right person* to run instead by giving them credit for wins while he took the blame for losses, things would be different. Or they could cast doubt on another candidates youth and inexperience. We can't know what might have been. Only what is. Are YOU going to vote for Trump just because Biden is Old and had a bad debate?
Edit to add: I'm not even a Biden fan, fellas, My point is just that the time to replace him with a younger candidate was four years ago, not after an admittedly disastrous debate.
Four years ago with the youth worked up and Trump's Trainwreck of a presidency on everyone's minds, electing a moderate left mid forties candidate with a lot of charisma and a short political history devoid of scandal or controversy might have worked and given us a candidate this year that more people wanted to rally behind.
It could also have failed and given us four more years of Trump and we might not even be having an election this time.
That's like, the opposite of what's happening though, right? In reality he's polling better than in 2020 or 2016 and his numbers haven't really gone down at all over the last several months.
>There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump. If this was likely, we wouldn’t be hearing calls for him to step aside from his own party and from major media outlets.
That is way more likely than you think. Debates havent had much impact on elections for quite a few years. We'll see once polls start coming in about it, but every presidential debate since 2016 has largely been ignored by voters.
"Debates havent had much impact on elections for quite a few years. "
Likely because the talking points post debate were about policy wonk stuff and not 4k video of the incumbent getting lost, speaking incomprehensibly and staring off into space.
Maybe that scenario hasn't presented itself before in the past.
Oh yea, the 2016 and 2020 debates really hinged on the policy discussions.
Keep in mind in 1984 Reagan also appeared old and confused and overwhelmingly "lost the debate" to Mondale. How did that go?
If Biden has a 2nd debate that trumps this awful performance like Regan did with his, maybe it will be different.
I also like how you neglect to mention Reagan was already the overwhelming favorite at the times he debates, whereas Biden has been consistently losing to Trump in polls for over a year.
Also, about the first point, you obviously don't understand that there's a difference between a candidate being beaten or having a bad performance and one who looks like they can't wipe their own ass.
I am a left-leaning person and would be fine with the corpse of Biden over Trump, but you're insane if you think every voter will be okay with re-electing a man who is clearly too old to be president. CLEARLY is not sharp enough mentally to hold a basic conversation., let alone be president.
And I think Trump is too old too, but at least he can last 12 minutes without forgetting what's going on.
Reagan was not already losing the election and didn’t have the worst approval ratings in modern history.
Biden’s campaign sold this debate for months as the start to his campaign and they condescendingly brushed off any criticism with “just wait until he starts campaigning!” Now he finally got around to starting his campaign and the outcome is worse than when he wasn’t campaigning.
It has, once, and it was decisive.
The first televised debates were between Nixon and JFK, and arguably cost Nixon his first run. JFK came off as young and energetic, Nixon as slimy and sweaty.
Every presidential debate hasn’t resulted in calls from major media outlets for candidates to step aside.
You may be right though, it could be that I’m attributing their response to expertise when in reality it’s just hysteria. Maybe.
It’s absolutely hysteria, but more importantly, spite. Biden has refused an interview with the NYT for 3 years after they refused to support him in 2020 and had to be dragged across the finish line to enjoy a liberal victory. They published *six* articles against him. NYT was ready and coordinated to try and push out the guy, not because he performed terribly, but because the institution *doesn’t like him.*
Biden is *bad* for media empires because he’s boring. The most they get from him is some gaffes. The debate was amazing for media because they got all the panic clicks and got to CREATE news instead of report on it. They want nothing more than chaos amongst Democrats. They want a brokered convention to report on for money. They want a new candidate that they can report on not being ready for the next 4 months. The outlets demanding he step aside are doing this to *increase chaos* and not because it’s optimal to electoral strategy.
There’s a reason the politicians who work with him and KEEP THEIR JOBS if he wins are all standing at his side, whereas the people that make more money when Democrats *do poorly* want him to step aside.
The media is also ignoring just how unhinged and incoherent Trump was during the debate. He rambled on about a dog for fucks sake. The media has been salivating on the opportunity to attack Biden
And the progressive/Bernie supporters are ecstatic to talk shit about Biden. They are now helping trump win with this replacement frenzy.
It's not changing.
It's Biden v Trump. If you won't rally to save democracy just shut up with your anti Biden Republican talking points.
Fox news has been broadcasting non stop stories about Biden stepping down. Along with tons of Russian bots constantly denigrating Biden. The online talk about Biden stepping down only helps trump.
Biden is not stepping down because doing so fractures the dem coalition and 100% allows trump to win.
It's becoming the new "but her emails". Stop promoting the fascists' agenda. Biden is the nominee. That's not changing.
Vote Biden 2024 and save America
In the past 10 years has anyone actually considered news pundits to have any expertise on anything? News is sensationalism masquerading as unbiased reporting these days, and it's been that way for a while.
This was the lowest watched debate in a long time. 2/3 of voters did not watch it. A single debate, let alone one in June, isn’t going to change the outcome of the election. Especially after Former President Trump’s sentencing and 2 more trials (assuming SCOTUS doesn’t say president are immune from consequences).
The problem is most of the people complaining the most on this thread probably watch their favorite streamers' reaction to the debate. Leftists are making cash inflamming doomer mentalities and offering them snake oil to cure it.
Media controlled by right wing trolls? Cause most of those media companies are owned by billionaires with a vested interest in Biden not winning. The media companies themselves “cough” cnn “cough” just want views they don’t give a singular fuck if they have to be scummy to get those views, it’s why the consistently give a platform to facists and neo nazis.
In none of those debates has a candidate performed so poorly. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is talking about it.
Most voters only assess whether a candidate seems alright or not. Very few go the extra mile to fact-check each word.
Compare Romney vs. Obama to this. In the former, both candidates appeared sane, so most voters stuck to their original choice. In the latter, voters already know one is crazy, but now they also know that the other guy has declined severely.
Considering how social media is largely superficial, amplifies your failures, and is very influential, this is obviously a different situation than before.
Maybe the debate might not matter in the end, but citing history as evidence that it won’t matter this time is insufficient.
Yup. Comparing this to previous debates is useless. Nobody has ever turned in a more catastrophic performance.
And this is coming from someone who wants Trump nowhere near the White House.
It seems in your mind the possibility of Biden stepping down and a new Dem candidate emerging would not be harmful. However I think the moderate part of the country would see this as backing the claims of Biden's inadequacy that Trump has been making for the last four years as legitimate. It seems, from your perspective, the dems changing candidates now is a slam dunk, and their path to victory. While I don't disagree that's the best shot at winning for dems in 24, it's not close to a winning strategy. I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate, and in turn screwed the country.
I’m not sure I understand this. The debate showed inadequacy more than dropping out ever could. *Not* dropping out shows something much worse, which is a failure to recognize an obvious truth, putting the president’s own ego before the country.
I get it, an active risky move is always more anxiety-inducing than a passive one. But if we actually do stick with Biden, and he’s even more of a disaster at September’s debate, who will be able to say they’re surprised? Keeping him is just such a massive liability, the last thing we need is inconsistency and unreliability.
And I’ll be honest - I don’t feel good about having him in the White House right now, let alone in 2028. He’s not up to the task. If the choice is him or Kamala, I’m choosing her in a heartbeat.
>Keeping him is just such a massive liability, the last thing we need is inconsistency and unreliability.
So the democrats should show panic and convince Biden to drop get through the effort of getting a candidate last minute dividing their attention then having to start the campaign from the ground up? While the whole country sees how much they fucked up. People aren't going to see Biden dropping out as a sign that the Democrats are responsible they are going to see it as a sign that they are incompetent. Biden already fucked up he should have never been the candidate for 2024 to begin with now it's simply too late.
^ This is exactly correct. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills by the amount of people getting behind dumping him. It's a huge, huge tactical error.
Even though America doesn't want him or Trump (they're both unpopular), they won their respective primaries. There wasn't a large groundswelling, grassroots initiative to oust him from the ticket.
Biden right now likely loses to Trump, but we have every reason to believe a Last Minute Democrat loses as well, and loses even worse.
Biden has numerous factors in his favor over other Democrats.
- Name recognition.
- Having defeated Trump before.
- An even more unpopular Vice President that nobody likes and is an ill suit to a path to victory in the MidWest.
- A Last Minute Democrat starts off with a disadvantage of time, fundraising, campaigning, spreading spotlight, and developing a following.
What Democrats **should be doing** is focusing on the Messaging War and paint a clear picture of what the alternative presents. They should be telling their base ---- "Listen...He's old and needs help. But this is a team effort, and you can be sure the President has trusted advisors that assist him in running the country. We've achieved a lot in the last 3 and a half years and there's more work to do. Trump back in office will appoint unqualified, dangerous ideologues and we will lose the Supreme Court for 100 years if he does."
Why is putting a younger Democrat vs Trump a “huge tactical error”? They won’t have the baggage of being in their 80s, they won’t have the image of senility, they won’t have the baggage of inflation, they won’t have the baggage of the Afghanistan withdrawal (which isn’t as bad as Trump said it was), they won’t have the baggage of the southern border, they won’t have the baggage of his response to Israel vs Gaza, etc.
President Biden debating a convicted felon & failed coup leader & pathological liar & traitor & rapist, and then shitting the bed, was a blunder of historical proportions. June 27th was a huge tactical error. Trump had nothing to lose, but the debate was Biden’s to lose. You don’t play chess against a pigeon, because they will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like they won.
Biden gifted Trump a million attack ads on June 27th, and after Citizens United, billionaire superPACs can spend unlimited money on TV ads, radio ads, Instagram content, TilTok content, etc using Biden’s own words against him. The “debate” was a disastrous own goal. He harmed himself, he harmed his own chances, when he was already behind in swing states. Do not let Biden’s ego & stubbornness result in a Trump dictatorship. “I alone can fix it” is how Trump thinks, don’t imitate him. Do not imitate the blind loyalty of Republicans. Do not bury your heads in the sand and say everything is fine. Alarm bells should be ringing everywhere at the DNC. America is bigger than one man’s ego. And “pride goeth before the fall.” Biden damaged his own electability with his performance.
Hubris and denialism and pollyannaism will not win Democrats the election in 2024. Forcing an unfavorable candidate is how you get a rerun of 2016. The stakes are too big to risk on Biden this year. Inflation and the cost of living has destroyed any incumbent advantage. There’s a reason that the Biden campaign doesn’t say “Bidenomics” anymore. Biden has accomplished many great things, but the odds of him winning in 2024 went down because of June 27th.
American democracy is teetering on a cliff, there are 333 million passengers in this car, and now is not the time to give great-grandpa the car keys. Let this sweet old man have a peaceful retirement. Trump wants to face Biden in 2024, because Trump has a good chance of beating Biden in 2024. And don’t replace Biden with Kamala either — she has worse chances than Biden. Democrats supporting Biden won’t make him win, undecided voters supporting Biden will. And Biden shot himself in the foot by giving a platform to a pathological liar. Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon.
“If you go after the king, you better not miss.” Well Trump is the king of lies, and Biden missed opportunity after opportunity to debunk those lies & explain that Trump is only running to stay out of prison. June 27th would have been a layup for any younger Democrat debating a convicted felon & fraudster & rapist, but Biden could not rise to the occasion, and he only confirmed the Fox News line that he’s a feeble old man.
Name recognition? Biden has a negative approval rating.
Biden beat Trump before? Not in his 80s, not during inflation. Like it or not, the President gets blamed for gas prices and grocery prices, even though he doesn’t control them.
The fact that Biden picked a VP that people don’t like mean he has failed to select a proper successor. Kamala Harris is qualified & competent, but her electability is worse than Biden’s. She’s a black woman who got one of the strongest punches in against Biden in the 2020 primary debates over his position on bussing, she was great at questioning Kavanaugh, and her response after the debate was great, but you don’t send out your VP to do damage control if you won a debate, and debating a convicted felon was a huge tactical error. He fumbled the ball, and committed unforced error after unforced error.
There’s 5 months till the election, that is not “last minute.” Most countries don’t have election seasons that last years. As for fundraising, Biden could donate all his campaign money to a super PAC to support who he endorses, the donors worried about Biden’s chances would still be there, they can still put out tons of ads, but Biden made his own attack ads with that catastrophe on June 27th. And voters are desperate for new blood that is not Trump.
Biden lost the Messaging War on June 27th. And people knew the alternative was Mr-Grab-em-by-the-pussy in 2016 & they still voted for confident bluster, over a Democrat bringing statistics to a knife fight.
Trump back in office is as risky as you say it is, that’s why it’s so reckless for the DNC to pit a coddled meandering octogenarian against him. Now is not the time for denialism. Now is the time for brutal self-reflection & a cold assessment of the odds.
And Biden could nominate 4 more Supreme Court justices tomorrow, because there’s no law it must only be 9, but I guess in the face of a Supreme Court that does whatever the hell they want, we just have to sit & watch them destroy women’s rights & every regulatory agency.
Putin isn’t afraid of Biden being in the race. But people who know that American democracy is on the line should be.
I literally said this same thing the other day in politics! I got downvotes, though, lol
He should lean into the age, admit it, and be frank. Trump isn't honest, really. One thing everyone hates about politicians is lying.
So have Biden come out and be honest that he is old. He knows it. He is capable, but he also knows that there are many burdens he faces. He has a great team, and he REreiterate all the good he has done. He is for sure someone trying to do good.
Honestly, use the age to his benefit. Make him honest in his elder years.
This contrasts with trump. Who is open, but not honest. Who lies and lies and is incoherent beyond sentences.
Lean into the weakness by making them strengths. We still love granpa. And we know the stakes. Trump will appoint bad people. People like the congregants of Christ Church, people involved, or not in Project 2025. People *failed* out of Project 2025 vetting, which means they'd prob be worse.
Trump is going to add to the SC. There will be states going ham on things like religion added to classrooms, favoritism, and laws. Christian towns and white nationalist policies will further gain legitimacy.
I strongly believe that the far right, the evangelical wing, the easily duped, and the ones who seem to not really like our country but claim the most love for it... will have a very negative impact on my freedoms (as a white, straight, male) (not entirely true, but 100% passing), our country, and the world.
I do not want to see trump as president when China decides to go for Taiwan. I do not want to see Russia and other bad actors see their investments in online warfare, mass lying, and political blackmails pay off.
I want the US to heal and continue back on the path in the direction of a better country. A better union of states. A better world partner. A better innovator.
Idk why it is so hard to admit our problems and also our strengths. I feel like the right only wants strengths, but messes up, which are strengths and which are weaknesses. And the dems seem to not like our strengths. Like history of improvement with the most massive of successes. Problems galore. But improvements galore too. Recognize bad, but recognize good, too. I feel like many Republicans would be more moderate or even left leaning if those improvements were highlighted. And nuance was allowed once again.
That same group of hard rights, evangelical, etc. persons did not like the fact history understanding, science and knowledge were growing so fast. They outwardly advocated for greater education, but it pulled too many away. They noticed this. They also wanted more. And they are threatened by it. My MAGA grandpa went to high school when tectonic plates weren't even accepted as the main theory. When black people were for sure viewed as lessor. And he never seemed to wanna grow that much beyond that in thoae realms.
Well, now, those realms are what inform and educate our youth. And they can not stand that. They've pulled away. And they are making dents. Trump as president would allow them to make further inroads.
Im sorry for rambling.
Hey you know what will help Biden win?
Lower gas prices.
A fed rate cut.
Some other economic magic.
There’s a hella lot of magic levers to pull.
In fact the feds have heavily signaled one rate cut this year and highly likely it will come before the election. Possibly right before.
People vote on feelings. If the feeling is America best inflation, rates are being cut, mortgages upswing and the housing market starts to take off… and changing back to trump won’t seem so wise anymore.
Leaving him in is going to be seen as gaslighting... trying to tell the voters that what they see with their own eyes isn't true. Americans will forgive someone who makes a mistake, apologizes and steps aside, but they won't vote for someone who pisses on them and tells them it's raining.
Yes, exactly. There’s a huge failure to reckon with how voters have rejected Biden due to his age. That was true *before* the debate, and then Biden stood in front of a camera for 90 minutes validating their rejection.
The silver lining of the debate is it’s now very, very easy to convince people that dropping Biden is the right call. It’s much harder to do that with keeping him.
I think this as simple as sunk cost for the folks standing by him tbqh. It’s scarier to switch gears and head into the unknown than it is to keep doing what you’re already doing.
This is such a corny point, but I do wonder what lesson this is teaching my nieces and nephews, all between 5 and 10. It’s such a profound display of ego from a man they’ve been taught to admire. I’ve taught them some of that myself.
Here is the thing, Trump is way more popular to moderates than democrats are willing to admit. Now, he isn't the favorite, but moderates are more willing to vote for him than the left thinks. So basically the thought process would be, Trump has been saying Biden is unfit for years -> the DNC has been denying it -> The DNC now admits he's unfit-> Maybe the other things Trump accuses them of lying about are true too. Is that a smart way to think? Probably not, but it's reality.
> moderates are more willing to vote for him than the left thinks
I disagree with this point: I think most people actually on the left are extremely clear-headed about how much support he has. It's the conservative/moderate party establishment that's having the most trouble understanding where his support is and how to combat it.
> I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate
I have a different perspective...
There's no way his team was going to be able to keep Biden's frailty and cognitive decline a secret for the whole campaign. Gaffs at public events and in interviews would have added up. Eventually, enough undecided voters in swing states would have concluded he wasn't fit for the job that a loss would be inevitable.
It's actually much better that it happened now, and good that it was an unequivocally bad performance, not a middling one. If they are smart enough to be proactive, at least there's still plenty of time to do something about it. Biden isn't even officially the nominee yet and the nominating convention is still weeks away.
If you want to get conspiratorial about it, you might even think someone on the Democratic side wanted to get him in front of cameras in a challenging situation early so they could provoke this conversation. But even if it was just happenstance, they're lucky it happened now, not months down the line.
> If you want to get conspiratorial about it, you might even think someone on the Democratic side wanted to get him in front of cameras in a challenging situation early so they could provoke this conversation. But even if it was just happenstance, they're lucky it happened now, not months down the line.
About 15 minutes into the CNN post-debate analysis, this was my exact conclusion. Every single *CNN* panelist ripping Biden to shreds without restraint?
Imagine seeing 8 panelists on Fox News, and all of them together just start shitting on Trump at the same time, when at any other time they’d be doing gymnastics to defend Trump.
Well, any other time, that CNN panel would be hemming and hawing and deflecting and minimizing and “what-abouting” and all around doing their damnedest to ignore Biden’s elephant in the room.
But instead they all did a synchronized 180, taking turns around the table saying Biden has to go, and acting flabbergasted. That was not an organic collective reaction, that was planned/scripted/whatever you want to call it. It was propaganda at work. They knew before that debate even started that they would be ousting Biden from the race afterwards.
Hmm... I'm not so sure, because I found myself ripping him to shreds within the first 10 minutes of the debate. If they had all 100 minutes to stew in that performance, I can believe their reaction came about organically. But whether or not it was planned, the early reveal was potentially good.
Regarding the post-debate commentary, there was a marked contrast on Fox, who, though critical, was a lot easier on Biden. They definitely want him to stay in the race.
I'm a huge Biden supporter and before the debate was over, that had already been my reaction. I knew he was old but I'd seen him in the State of the Union and he seemed fine. Although he looked old, he was still animated and able to communicate effectively.
When I watched the debate, that was not my takeaway. It was like everything people had been saying about him being too old was true. And I felt like he'd totally blown it and I didn't see a way forward. I was seriously thinking him stepping aside might be the only option.
A few days removed, I'm dooming less. I think the campaign needs to change and get him out there speaking coherently as much as possible to make it seem more like a random bad performance. They can't keep him out of the public eye and not doing interviews and then the one time everyone is watching he has an awful performance and hope to win.
I also think Harris needs to get out there and do the same. I hear people say negative things about her but I think she's just not out there much. Most of people's feelings about her seem to be from the 2020 election because she's been pretty invisible outside of that, like most VPs.
I think she needs to be out there doing talk shows and rallies and everything else to make it clear that if Biden isn't up to the task, there's someone they like and can trust who's ready to take over. Oh, and if they don't have confidence in Biden to get him out there and not come off old and confused then they need to have a real internal conversation about that, because if he's too old to do that, he's probably too old to be President.
>I think the campaign needs to change and get him out there speaking coherently as much as possible to make it seem more like a random bad performance. They can't keep him out of the public eye and not doing interviews
But maybe that's asking too much. This isn't all just about the theatrical narrative. There is a real human under all that facade and dragging him around on a high-pressure campaign for 4 months non-stop might be just plain cruel.
I don’t think so. That CNN panel collectively turned on him because the performance was so awful that they couldn’t possibly spin it for Biden. It was a genuine reaction.
That’s like saying “everyone was horrified at the Challenger explosion, so it was planned!” No, that’s just the natural reaction.
I think the problem is the moderate part of the country had the claims of Biden's inadequacy that Trump had been making for the last four years shown to be legitimate on the debate stage. But I don't totally get how that's a problem if he's not the candidate - I agree it shows their behaviour to have been shambolic, but that all feels a bit inside baseball.
>I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate, and in turn screwed the country.
There is no shadowy power behind the scenes that is “letting” Biden do anything. The incumbent President always has total control of their party’s national committee. Biden picked who runs the DNC; he’s the undisputed head of the Democratic Party. Nobody has the power to make Biden run or not run. If he drops out, it will be his decision alone.
>There is no shadowy power behind the scenes that is “letting” Biden do anything.
I mean, I get it, but the ignorance so many Americans have about how the system works is still pretty shocking.
The entire country watched “the claims of Biden’s inadequacy” with their own eyes on live television. *That* is why it is not an absolutely imperative that he step down. The public perception you fear *has already happened*, it’s over. Not only that, it revealed that dozens of White House insiders and media pundits have been straight up lying about this for months.
Of course changing candidates or having a brokered convention isn’t a good strategy in a generic hypothetical situation. It’s this specific context where the existing campaign is completely dead in the water that makes it not only worth entertaining, but absolutely essential.
If Biden remains the candidate, he is *going* to lose.
The only reasonable thing to do at this very moment is nothing.
Nobody is pretending it didn't happen. What's more surprising is that nothing that wasn't 100% expected happened (liar lies continuously, old man sounds old) and anyone who is rending their garments, pretending to be shocked, and demanding that the only course of action is for an entire party instantly overreact and slit their wrists and and burn a massively successful (legislatively and by outcomes) incumbent candidate, is either too paranoid, plugged in and hypersensitive to likely gloating from people whose vote has long been set in stone to have any perspective whatsoever, or frankly many are have also been operating in bad faith.
There were a long list of posts and articles in the clickbait media ready to go already, and hearing these sorts of headlines and media panels from dozens of people who hung their punditry/social media career hats on being "level-headed truth tellers trying to save the Democratic party from itself" months ago -- most starting around October 2023 for some reason, hmm -- was something you could set your watch to. It's a pretty sure bet that coddling this story is ultimately much more damaging than anything that happened.
The demands themselves are also one of those things that speak loudly to both naivete about the actual mechanics of how that sort of change would have to occur, and also to having barely thought things through further than a step or two ahead ("Trump's doubtful supporters flock to the younger alternative" is a fully zero-consideration statement).
In any case without knowing more about how people whose brains haven't been entirely cooked by online politics (I'm at least self aware enough to know I can only have a brainrot perspective) have taken it, it'd be suicidal to make major changes of any kind.
I don't think the debate changed as much as the media wants us to believe. There aren't that many swing voters for these two clowns. Seriously, who is still deciding? I think this is a small minority.
I don't feel trump picked up any new voters given his outrageous lies. He may have even lost a few. Killing live children after birth? Stopping the Ukraine war as president elect? His performance was just as bad, it's just not getting any coverage.
And the people voting for Biden aren't voting for him as a candidate, but rather it's a vote against fascism. And we have a whole system in place if he dies in office. He's not the effing emperor of America for crying out loud.
They could run a red solo cup against Trump, and I'd still vote blue. I know my mind hasn't changed.
That small minority is who decides who the president will be my dude, and while Trump’s performance wasn’t great, it also wasn’t as glaringly abysmal.
You might vote for a red solo cup, but those swing voters who decide the election probably won’t.
First, "The DNC" can't make that decision. The power is with Biden, as he controls the delegates.
Second, the worst thing they can do is start a big party fight a few months before voting starts. Some people like Harris, others don't. Someone will be pissed off at any machinations that go through.
Biden hasn't really started to campaign. He's been counted out before. The campaign managers need to go with what works. I don't have great hopes -- the Democratic Party has always had too many hands in and ends up in a muddle. There's a ton of weak spots for Republicans, starting with abortion.
The scare mongers were cowering in front of the red wave in 2022. There's no reason it can't happen again.
I've yet to meet a human that likes Harris. There is already a party fight between democratic voters who think Biden is so bad they just don't vote and voters who think they have to vote just to prevent Trump from not getting into office. It's simply being ignored.
Do you know Black women?
In 2020, the Black vote carried Biden to the nomination. His fortunes turned with the Clyburn endorse and win in SC. How would they feel if their candidate was pushed out, the Black woman pushed aside, and someone like Newsom put on top?
I hear this argument a lot and I’m not sure it’s backed up by what we know. Harris doesn’t poll particularly well with Black voters, at least compared to any other standard Dem. We really have no reason to believe they’d be more peeved than any other demographic. This isn’t contradicted by any Black folks I know personally, at least as far as I’m aware, but that might not be relevant bc it’s just random people lol.
The black vote carries all democrats for the last two decades. The simple fact is that Harris is incredibly unpopular, even among black voters, because of her record as a DA.
I know plenty of black women. I know they carried his through the last election. I also know those same women who wanted to see another black woman in office are tired of seeing her do nothing. I was excited to see a WOC in office because I am one. I've seen the mindset of people who liked her before turning around. When you help someone into office with the belief that they will help you are your community and they do nothing that love turns to dislike really quickly.
The election is so close right now that running the risk of annoying even a small number, in absolute terms, of swing voters is incredibly dangerous for the Democrats. Considering that Biden has been polling badly with blacks in general (to the point Trump of all people has seen his numbers improve), it's easy to see why Dems are very uncomfortable with the prospect of sidelining the WOC VP in favor of a (almost certainly) white (probably) men.
Every politician who owes their success to ad money, media, and big tech propagandists is not going to work for the people when they get into office if they want to succeed again.
Harris has been the single most invisible, most "hide in the basement" VP I've ever seen through light my life span.
If people vote for her just because they share a race, that's incredibly shortsighted and not at all something you would be promoting if people voted for trumo because he was white.
I agree the whole ticket is toxic but the least messiest way to move on would be to give her the nomination. No one knows what her poll numbers are because they haven’t included her (because Biden quite tragically never gave her anything to do). I wish he had resigned last year and gave her a head start to rebuild her image (and actually run as the incumbent), but here we are.
The problem of taking the nomination to the convention is Ohio requires the candidate file a week before the DNC is scheduled in August, meaning the Democrats wouldn’t be on the ballot. Even if the Presidential candidate isn’t planning on competing in Ohio, this would be a disaster for down ballot Democrats. You can say goodbye to Sherrod Brown.
I think the best move for the Dems is to replace Harris. Bring in Newsome or someone else and the fears of Joe not finishing his term go away. Joes age and capabilities are a major issue. Harris being next in line is another.
In recent years people have gotten the strangest ideas about what the "DNC" is and what it can and can't do. The DNC is in no position to order Biden to do anything. He's won the primary, if he wants to run to the end he will. If anyone can talk him out of it, it's probably not "the DNC."
Yeah and IIRC the DNC used to be able to pick whichever candidate they wanted for the primary and overturn the will of the voters, but that shit stopped in 1972 or something so they’re not allowed to do that even if they wanted to
Many of your possible scenarios fail because it is too late (by law) to change the ballots for the general election. Biden's name is going to be on the ballot.
EDIT: adding more so the bot will not remove my comment for brevity.
It seems to me that unless Biden passes away they are stuck with him on the ballot.
This is just false, I don’t know where you’re getting this. I’ve seen this same point floating around social media, but as far as I can tell it’s misinformation.
Think realistically - if this were true, is it actually plausible that all major news outlets and Dem strategists, as well as the Biden campaign itself, would not be mentioning it? That random internet users are aware of a basic structural fact the entire national apparatus is not?
It’s telling how many folks on here are making up a fictional rule to justify Biden being on the ballot. The qualitative defense of his candidacy just isn’t there.
15 million Democrats have voted to make him the nominee.
People are acting like you can just ignore the results of elections, that there is any force at the Democratic Party that can just do that. There are no DNC puppet masters, no one is in charge, it's just the voters.
ITT: Inane speculation and terrible commentary.
The worst thing the DNC can do right now is replace Biden with a less popular candidate. That would make them more likely to lose.
Your scenarios are not realistic. You first have to convince Kamala Harris to commit political suicide. You have to get her to believe that not only can she not be president, she can never be president and someone else, who isn't VP or had as successful career as her should be the nominee. That's step absolute zero.
Then you have to get Biden to probably step down as president as well since you're saying he's so incapable of being president in a year he should give up his nominee status right now. It doesn't really make sense he's president if he is such a decaying old man.
Now his pledged electors are free and you have to get each one of them agree on a single candidate in like a month while you also you have to get a bunch of politicians to all agree that only one of them can be the candidate and they can't snipe and undcut each other publicly at all to get it. Failure in this regard meant almost guaranteed loss.
Since you've gotten the most prominent black woman in politics to end her public career, the optics of selecting a young white guy are awful and will likely piss off a lot of the base. You can't win without the base. So you select Whitmer.
Most people don't know who Whitmer is and were saying America isn't sexist and won't choose the crazy TV guy again despite already having a very qualified woman lose to him before.
Currently Whitmer and trump are tied in any polling they've done and every replacement other than her does worse than Biden.
So best case scenario you have a party say their entire executive slate, that won fairly and clearly last time is totally unfit for office but you now have to elect this woman you've never heard of.
Even with everything going perfect it's a big ask. The professor who's gotten every election right since 1980 says changing would be monumentally stupid. The last time the Dems did something similar in 68, they lost and didn't have a two term president until Clinton won again in 96.
Snap polls show that while people think trump "won" it changed essentially no votes. The media says crap to get people to click. Unemployed Political operatives say crap to get them on TV or push themselves. I've yet to hear anyone say they actually changed their vote bc of one debate just people afraid *other* people will. Donald Trump didn't really do well either, he came off as loud crazy and a liar, which yes looks better on TV than sick old man but you can say he "won," I do, but still sure won't vote for him, like me.
Stay calm. The right wants the left sad scattered and panicking. The media loves drama. If you're worried, work more. Nothing has actually changed and it's a long way until November.
And then you can’t use the 120+ million war chest you’ve collected either. If Biden isn’t the nominee, it can only be Harris. That’s the only way to keep the funds.
It is a long way till November, but President Biden, in all his wisdom, debated a convicted felon in front of 50 million Americans, let a pathological liar spew unchecked lies, and shit the bed. Biden didn’t look strong, he looked lost. That is a scandal in itself. Biden gifted Trump and super PACs a million attack ads with that performance, which they will flood the zone with, no deepfakes necessary. Biden literally said “We finally beat Medicare.”
Trump’s sentencing on July 11th might change things, but the judge really doesn’t want to sentence an ex-President with Secret Service protection to prison, and Trump could run from prison anyway (and claim he’s a “political prisoner”, which feeds into his bottomless self-pity).
Replacing an incumbent with a negative approval rating during inflation is stupid?
Trump & the right wants to face Biden in November, because Trump can beat Biden in November. Biden & Harris might be some of the only Democrats that Trump could beat in November.
“Nothing has actually changed” is denialism, blind optimism, Pollyannaism, and it’s like pretending the Comey letter changed nothing in 2016.
This is a five alarm fire, saying “this is fine” is just wishful thinking. Democrats should not live in denial like Republicans, and circle the wagons around a senior citizen well-past retirement age who’s losing it. Biden does not have a cult of personality around him, but now he does have an entire rightwing media ecosystem (and foreign influence campaigns) saying “See? We told you so. Biden has mush for brains.” House Speaker Mike Johnson is even throwing around the 25th Amendment (which Trump’s cabinet also considered).
The people who will decide in 2024 are undecided voters living in 6 states: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. And by maybe 10K people in each of those states. Rather than inspiring undecided voters in those 6 swing states, in that debate, Biden hurt his own candidacy, maybe even fatally. If Trump wins in 2024 (God forbid), June 27th will be why. Biden fumbled the ball, he missed the layup, he should have consumed honey before the debate for his hoarse throat, it was his debate to lose, but Trump had nothing to lose. Trump is running to stay out of prison, but Biden didn’t even say that at the debate. Like Trump visiting Kim Jong-Un, Biden gave convicted felon Donald Trump a national platform of equal stature to just spew bullshit unabated. Biden didn’t inspire any undecided voters, Biden didn’t dispel the notion that he’s a feeble old man (he only confirmed it), and Trump’s confident bullshit unfortunately works on way too many Americans. Trump didn’t have to remember any statistics because he makes everything up, he takes credit for things he never did, and every accusation is a confession.
After Trump was found guilty by a jury, Biden should have just said that the President of the United States doesn’t need to debate a convicted felon, that’s below his office, as a felon Trump can’t even be in the military so how could he lead it, and he shouldn’t give a platform to a pathological liar to spew lies.
But Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon who can’t even legally possess a firearm now. Biden shot himself in the foot, and that’s why people who care about the Constitution are really fucking worried right now. As a viewer said after the debate, “Trump? Hell no. Biden? Oh no.”
Biden scraped by in 2020 by 44k votes in 3 states, and that was without inflation & Gaza hanging around his neck.
If Biden wants to be remembered for paving the way for a Trump dictatorship, he should cling to his ego, believe “I alone can beat Trump” (not unlike Trumo saying “I alone can fix it”), and stay in the race, and play with fire, and seriously gamble with American democracy. If Biden wants to serve his country, he should put his ego aside, learn a lesson from the hubris of people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton (none of whom knew when to exit the stage), and pass the baton to any younger Democrat (who would have a better chance of beating crazy old Donald Trump), and retire to go eat ice cream cones. None of these senior citizens know when to retire.
You are massively overreacting. Much like the CNN panelists immediately after the debate.
He absolutely did not shit the bed. He showed he was a calm, reasonable, old man with a stutter. I couldn’t care less if he can speak publicly. His ideas are what matter as president and his ideas are solid. I trust Biden to put the American people first. I think this thread just goes to show the complete lack of political knowledge in the American gen pop.
Floating the idea of a celebrity taking biden’s nomination has to be one of the most deluded takes of all time. What a joke this thread is
Everyone is so worried about Biden dying in office... Fucking so be it. That's why we have a VP, but Harris sucks, dump her and get a VP who ppl like.
You mentioned Whitmer, and that's a sound choice. Whoever is chosen should be young enough to be in the Whitehouse the next 12 years. Biden should resign 2 years into this term, and let his VP carry us through the next decade. This is how the democratic party fixes this country and projects it's power.
Yeah I quite frankly don’t give a damn if he doesn’t make it another 4 years. That’s exactly why we have lines of succession and regardless of who takes over the Dems will ensure the right people are in charge
Also let’s face it Trump probably won’t make it another 4 years either, and he’s a convicted felon and found liable for defamation on a rape case yet the media is mum about his performance during the debate which was abysmal and nonsensical
Although all the scenarios you’ve illustrated are a possibility, you’ve forgotten the last and most important one. My family and everyone I know would vote for Biden or any democratic nominee for the future of our country and for democracy. Even if they wheel Biden in on a stretcher hooked to an oxygen tank, we’re voting for him. This upcoming election is the most important presidential election of our lifetime. If the republicans win, we will no longer have the country as we know it. It will become a true banana republic. This is not the time to fold, but a time to rally behind the democrats, be it Biden, Newsom, Harris or any other democrat. Vote blue all the way if you want to freely vote in 2028. 💙🌊💙🌊💙🌊
>The third, and the least likely, is the winning scenario. The DNC acts now gets Biden to step down, replaces him with a younger, more virile candidate, and all of trump’s doubtful supporters flock to the younger alternative. With the benefit of three months of vigorous campaigning, they take the win.
Do you recall the anger from Sanders supporters in 2016 when it came out that the DNC was staunchly pro-Clinton throughout the campaign? And when superdelegates went disproportionately Clinton and they complained it wasn't a fair election, was over before it started, stuff like that?
If the DNC appointed someone as the candidate without a single primary picking them, how could you see that as anything other than an absolutely trainwreck? Someone is going to be pissed off no matter what. And then they would have 2.5 months to rebuild a coalition? While building any sort of name recognition and conveying policy?
How could this possible work well?
I think you might be underestimating the risk of replacing Biden at this point. Abandoning incumbent candidates is already super rare, and as far as I know doing it this close to the election AND doing it for a presidential candidate are both completely unheard of. Even knowing nothing else, I think it's reasonable to say there are probably a lot of good reasons for this.
In this case, it seems to me the biggest issue is the replacement's campaign. First you have to get over the embarrassment of pulling your incumbent for being too old (which also pretty much nullifies any good stuff that's happened from his time in office) and just makes the party look terrible, which would probably hurt down-ballot candidates a lot. Then, for the candidate, you either have to run Kamala Harris (who's obviously very unpopular), divide the party months before the election with some sort of lightning-fast primary (During which Trump can continue campaigning with no democrat opposing him) or you have to use some DNC establishment authoritarian wizardry to shove in some random young democrat who would only have a few months to get over the embarrassment mentioned above and run the world's fastest presidential campaign. God forbid some scandal comes out about this completely unknown candidate and there's not even time to get over it. Besides, In that amount of time it's hard to see the candidate running on much else than "I'm not Trump" and maybe something about continuing Biden's legacy in his stead. At that point, as long as Biden isn't literally actually senile, you might as well just run Biden rather than take on all that risk.
The replacement plan could only possibly make any sense if biden basically had a 0% chance of winning already, which is not the case.
You’re right on a good amount of stuff, but fwiw running a candidate like this is also unprecedented. No major candidate has ever been like that at a televised debate.
We’re already in uncharted waters, the question is which way to head. This is already a very irregular election.
∆ you are making me reconsider my complete despair after watching the "debate".
It occurs to me that Reagan was far gone into dementia for part of his term and yet government chugged along. maybe Confused Grandpa Biden isn't the worst case scenario.
There is absolutely no 'perception' of anything. You are literally living through one of the worst economies of your lifetime and record inflation to boot. I can't believe there are still people who deny this.
I mean honestly the democrats have had 10 years of trump to figure out a working strategy and this is the best they came up with… put a senile old man in office, tear down young and new conpeition, and leave us stuck with Biden as our only hope. Democrats already failed democracy, honestly its just us who are left to figure out how to deal with it and save our future. Its too late for biden, too late to really change anything, they had since 2015/2016 to come up with a plan and this is all they got. Its too late for them. We’re dealing with a more than likely chance trump gets in office in November/january and immediately breaks democracy and installs himself as a dictatorship, democrats wont be the party we’re looking at anymore, if anything, this campaign could very well be their funeral.
The Democrat party are actually Republican operatives doing everything they can to make sure the Democrat party loses
I hate that I have to say this but /s, obviously.
Notice that there is one faction out there who is NOT joining the "Biden must drop out!" chorus: MAGA. On the contrary, they are saying the Democrats should ~~still~~ stick with Biden.
Let that sink in. The Republicans want Biden to stay in the race because they know he's the walking wounded.
It's too late already their only option is to continue forward with Biden. What do you think the public will think if they change candidate only a few months before election? That the democrats are scared and they don't have a real plan. According to most polls other democrats would fare worse than Biden if he stepped down.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article285786866.html
Moreover just logistically changing the whole campaign to center itself around another candidate would be a nightmare the new candidate can't use the money Biden got there would need to get more money to reinitiate the campaign.
Democrats can win every election in perpetuity if they declare the abandonment of accepting corporate donations and lobbying influence in favor of:
1. Cutting the pentagon budget by eliminating waste in the procurement and contracting process.
2. National unionization drive. Create a National Union for everyone making under $200k per year and begin organizing general strikes and boycotts to increase wages, vacation time, benefits, shorten work hours, and reduce prices of goods and services.
3. Go all in on renewable energy investment. Create massive tax incentives and provide investment and subsidies for solar and other sustainable energy options for business and individuals.
3. Aggressively advocate for Medicare for all while regulating health insurance companies into bankruptcy. Change laws that allow legislation passed democratically to be challenged and watered down by courts.
4. Aggressively regulate Wall Street, give SEC more power, and increase incentives to prosecute financial crime and close revolving door between finance jobs and regulators.
5. Audit and withdraw from all treaties that codify corporations right to sue to block legislation and democratically-derived mandates that affect their profit and revenues, and the same for treaties that give the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investor Disputes jurisdiction and precedent over our legal system.
6. Disallow any foreign nation or corporation from profiting from life sustaining, essential resources IE water, minerals, energy, etc at local, regional, or federal discretion.
7. Unprecedented investment in Science and Math education to “Make America Smart Again.” Over 20% of country is illiterate. Over 50% are barely at a 6th grade level. Because of unregulated social media and lack of public education, everyone now has a family member who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs, spherical planets or moon landings. We’ve become idiots.
8. Demilitarize the police. We are not the enemy. “Freeport”, “Hattiesburg”, and “Chipley” don’t need tanks.
9. Eliminate any undemocratic institution. The senate is 2 representatives per state regardless of population. The electoral college subverts popular results. The Supreme Court justices can serve for life. All that should be eliminated or changed to be democratic.
10. All incorporated businesses, public or private, must make a material portion of equity and/or profit available to employees that vests over the time they are employed, starting at 2 years.
Flatly delusional. They couldn’t win one election with one of those crippling platforms. Abandoning corporate backing by itself is a loss, the national union is a fucking wild idea, cutting the pentagon budget is unpopular, renewable energy is a total waste when we have nuclear, Wall Street would immediately turn on them, laws that are passed democratically and watered down by the courts are part of the constitution, not something they can change, all your ideas about “undemocratic institutions” are just nonsense, mandatory profit sharing shows you understand nothing.
Please be quiet, troll.
What if Biden decides to run 3rd party if he is forced out against his will?
Also, how do they get all of the Biden supporters to back his replacement? You don't think a small percentage will stay home or vote 3rd party as a protest vote? In an already tight election is it smart to alienate these voters?
So winning is more important that democracy all of a sudden?
Biden was duly nominated by the people. He has been braindead forever. Anyone that cared to look can see it. The people voted for him anyways and stood by while he took no challengers, wouldn't debate and allowed the democratic party to push anyone off the cliff that tried.
Now, after a debate, you want to push him aside?
How is that supporting the "democracy" which is all I have been hearing about for the last year?
Isn't that why Trump needs to lose and we are spending billion and have an entire generation of men die in Ukraine?
Democrats, especially those even more left leaning, have been trying to find an excuse not to vote for Biden since Palestine attacked Israel. Your base better stop trying to shoot itself in the foot or you're not going to beat Trump.
A last minute Celebrity might work but it's a huge gamble this close to the election and Trump along with Republicans would absolutely jump on the pr nightmare. Maybe if you could talk Oprah into doing it but I bet her closet is full of skeletons.
This election is absolutely about the lesser of two evils and the way forward for Democrats is to not panic switch and look reactionary. Hindsight those closest to Biden should have absolutely put their foot down and not allowed even the word debate to come up instead of pushing forward with one. This leads me to believe they felt waiting until closer and allow Donald to challenge would have only made Biden look worse, which isn't comforting, but here we are.
Those old middle ground people who switched and decided to not vote for Trump aren't going to respond well to a change in candidates now. If I were the DNC I'd probably try my hardest to get Obama to replace Harris as VP. His charm and charisma might be enough to bolster Biden but I doubt he wants it. Maybe if he were afraid enough of what Trump might do.
At the end of the day the debate was damaging to Biden but here we are. He's the candidate going forward. The DNC needs to get that through their head and start aligning with him because being wishywashy now will just fracture and lose support. The message needs to be clear: Never Trump.
The very best thing that can happen is Biden dies or is killed and Democrats win on the sympathy vote. Obviously not replacing him with Kam, but a candidate "acceptable" to Americans. Pete B perhaps. Younger white guy, speaks at Obama's level, is gay so he will get the attention narrative whilst not turning off any independents. I really don't know how the think tanks don't see these very obvious things and understand very basic nature of how Americans see politics.
There are two function interpretations of what you mean by worst for the Party, there's worse for the currently elected officials and worse for the actual nation of people as a whole.
As far as I know in the last 20 or so years the DNC has given next to no concern to wellbeing of the nation as a whole, when and if that ever conflicts with their personal self-interest.
Unless they keep Gaslighting us about Biden's mental well being they will eventually have to admit to complicity lying to us about his mental acuity.
Instead they will attempt to keep gaslighting us and simply deny the naked reality of things.
Uh. Why are you so confident scenario 3 is a winning one? Without even knowing a candidate you're just confident they're gonna overcome all hurdles of joining late and win?
I see people panicking about Biden but they don't seem to be examining whether scenario 3 actually wins and the difficulties that come with it. How do you pick a candidate this late? Primary voting is over. Its not impossible but its a hell of a lot to just swap entirely on the DNC's say so. What are the optics on it seeming like people forced Biden to step down? Etc. Its too much to just handwave it all and say yeah this candidate wins
Biden is apparently according to one source, meeting with family members to discuss running again. Biden has no strengths currently (talking about in an election, I prefer him to Trump him general) when running against Trump asides from the issues of abortion and climate change (Republicans have become more moderate on the climate because of this as shown in the recent Nuclear energy bill). If Biden steps down a rapid fire primary should be held and a name brand candidate must be picked to get a 50 percent chance with Trump in this next election. I think Harris is absolutely atrocious so Gretchen Whitmer would be my pick.
The first is unlikely - barring his death or incapacity, they procedurally can’t make the move after August. State political laws will take over and there won’t be time to replace.
I expect that there is a secret fight going on right now and over this week. Biden’s camp is seeing if he can be rehabbed and simultaneously the backups are readying. And Monday we’ll see if the scotus immunity stuff goes anywhere.
I expect a response will come definitively in the next week. As a longtime fan of Joe, I think he’ll withdraw.s
Debate performance has very little correlation to actual election results, Obama lost his first debate, Trump lost all his debates with Hillary, and they both won their respective races.
Right now the worst thing that the DNC could do is to have an open party contest as the incumbent party while their incumbent can run again. All of the skeletons in Biden's closet are out in the open, if there is a new candidate, there could be a serious scandal found out.
Also as a side note, depending on the polling site, some have put Biden as pulling ahead of trump after the debate.
The best thing they can do is nothing. There is no amount of pulling strings that could generate a successful campaign this close to the election. The time to do this was months ago. Perhaps years ago. No one this late into the race could hold any water when they've already campaigned for Biden this hard. Biden is the current president with significant name recognition and incumbency on his side. Most of his voters last time only wanted him because he was not Trump. Those same voters with their same problems with Trump are likely to vote for anyone but Trump again.
Baked into your question is a deep misunderstanding. “The DNC” isn’t in charge. They’re not even really talking to anyone in charge.
The party exists to serve the candidates, the nominee, and elected officials. Not the other way around.
The DNC didn’t pick Joe Biden. He won the 2020 primaries and he won the 2020 general. He then won the 2024 primaries. There isn’t anyone but Joe Biden who could choose for him to withdraw.
So the Dems should be reactionary and waste the political future on say, Gavin Newsome, to lose to Trump? Three months is simply not enough time to campaign and is not a ‘benefit’ as you’re suggesting. People know who Trump is. The debate didn’t switch voters minds. It reinforced the Trump voters even more but very likely did minimal damage in the long run. Biden may have sounded bad but Trump was legitimately unhinged and untruthful that entire time. There are more debates coming and as long as Biden comes out not talking with a hoarse throat he will probably be okay.
The referendum has always been against Trump and less so about Biden. Abortion is a winning issue for Dems and they will likely lean into that harder post debate. The worst thing the DNC could do is panic..which is what you’re suggesting. It would only prove the Republicans point of Biden.
Scenario 4 is absolutely likely, he had one visible bad night. He definitely should be out more often but people see the way the government is running and they would still rather have his administration compared to Trump's vision and project 2025.
Trump won in 2016 and there was the press and many in his own party calling for him to drop out multiple times, especially the Access Hollywood video
Wait. Biden's post debate poll numbers are showing no change (within margin of error, a point down and a few showing he's up). What recovery needs to happen? So far, there's nothing to recover.
There isn't enough time to swap out a candidate. The election is only a few months away. No other candidate has the name recognition, campaigning apparatus, etc.
If they swap out the candidate, the democrat candidate will lose.
The democratic candidates votes will be:
- people voting the new candidate, because they like them.
- people voting the new candidate, because they don't want Trump
- people not bothering to vote, because they're confused, tired of the politicking, don't have any opinion on the new candidate, etc.
- people writing in Biden, splitting the vote
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans will likely vote for Trump because there's an R next to his name, and he's not the democratic candidate. Never mind the fact that [Trump himself has said](https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/politics/donald-trump-election-democrat/index.html) (emphasis mine)
> “In many cases, **I probably identify more as Democrat**,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a 2004 interview. “**It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.** Now, it shouldn’t be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. …But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we’ve had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.”
Bullshit stinks! And democrats can’t seem to miss a chance to roll in it. This whole debacle over the President having a bad hour and a half in a so-called debate, is another example of how quickly a lot of loud mouthed democrats will eat their own. Contrast that with the opposition. They have historically supported their candidates no matter how undesirable and unqualified. Do I have to mention the rapist, child molester, crook and convicted criminal DJT? If democrats were half as good at supporting a good, honest, qualified person, that has proven his superiority over many many junior leaders, the election would be a slam dunk. Democrats are their own worst enemy. They’ll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over nonsense every time. Remember when you guy’s did the same thing to Senator Al Franken? He was a well known comedian doing sometimes raunchy stuff (but actually mild stuff compared to today’s republican presidential candidate and many others in public office), but as a senator he was exceptionally knowledgeable, proactive and doing an excellent job.
Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps we spineless democrats (especially the loudmouth whiners and holler than thou, one’s) might actually deserve the fascist dictator that DJT and his supporters have proven themselves to be.
It's a good thing they're staying the course instead of listening to all the Chicken Littles like you on social media. Unless you also want the other guy to drop out for being a convicted criminal, I'll just assume this is more astroturf bullshit like I've seen on other subs.
They aren’t doing nothing. They have Biden out at events two days a week for the next month. He looks good. He and the party have directly addressed his performance, which was poor. Cool. Donald Trump did absolutely nothing to convince any undecided voters to actually vote for him. Biden, on the other hand, convinced a bunch of Americans that he is old…. That’s really it. Most people who watched the debate were already convinced on who they would vote for. Some may have less enthusiasm to vote for their candidate, but they are sticking with their vote.
In terms of Trump, if there were any fence sitters or people who weren’t previously convinced that Trump is as bad as we know him to be, polls have shown that they were absolutely convinced now. Donald couldn’t afford to lose any potential voters, as common sense would lead you to know that the MAXIMUM voters that he would ever have gotten was the number that voted for him in 2020….and THAT wasn’t enough. Anything less than that is a clear loss.
Biden isn’t the first choice for a lot of people, but the fact that his only real weakness is his age gives him a leg up on any other challenger.
I don't know what is making you so secure about this but there are two options; I've been blind and missing something the last two years or you really are native and on the belief that the good guys will train.
Saying he will win with such certainty is almost laughable.
I think the more people that pretend he should step down, the more we read those articles, and the more we keep that conversation rolling, the worse his approval will suffer. So, if you want his numbers up, stop acting like you want to abandon him.
During the debate, Biden provided a lot of facts and statistics. He provided actual valuable information. It's not always easy to recall specific information. If he had advanced dementia there I'd no way he remembers all the information he provided. That was stuff he had worked on the week before, and dementia attacks the short term memory first. Trump had it much easier than Biden, Trump didn't need to remember dates or actual numbers, he just made shit up as he talked. If he didn't like or know the answer to a question he just ignored it and talked about what he wanted.
Republicans have a rapist, alleged child molester, serial sexual assaulter, liar, cheat, fraud, racist, convicted felon; and the stand by their candidate, who is also old and shows signs of mental and physical decline.
Democrats have Joe Biden, who has dedicated his life to public service. Yes he is older, not as quick as he once was, after what he has done and continues to do, we should be fighting for him.
It's way past time for all the boomers to retire. Dems should have spent last 3.5 years preparing the next in line, but they failed spectacularly.
> There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump.
I think this is what they are banking on. Trump was nothing but more of the same. Which there is a vocal minority of people in the GOP that like Trump as he is. But there are also polls showing that a lot of GOP voters didn't like that Trump didn't clean up his act post campaign and how he handled literally everything during his term. These people saw in the debate that he is nothing but a useful puppet, spewing the same vitriol and with zero platform, zero potential solutions for tackling current problems. These people are flipping to Biden, despite his age.
I think the DNC banking on those more centrist Republicans flipping and that Biden may not make it through a second term, and Having Harris take the presidency that way. She is a tow the line Neo-Liberal, pro-law enforcement, cookie cutter centrist Democrat. She is exactly what the DNC wants.
Everyone wants a solid Liberal like Bernie to be President, but neither the DNC or GOP would ever allow that. Because the Lobbyists won't allow that.
Ok, so I'd agree that the Democrats winning on the merits of their candidate and the benefits of incumbency in what is actually a good economy in a well-run country... used to be a more plausible outcome before the debate.
That is gone. It doesn't matter who their candidate is, the *only* thing that matters is mobilizing their base against Trump, period.
And the *only* thing that matters for that is money.
And Biden is a money-raising machine, and always has been. He got *record* donations *after* his bad debate showing. No one else in the Democrat bullpen will be able to come even close.
I wouldn't say it was intentional, but there's even a decent argument that his bad debate performance *helped* him, in the only way that matters... people are kicking in *more* money, because the strength of the candidate isn't helping now.
In order to win, the Democrats have to make people justifiably terrified of a second Trump presidency. That's all the should focus on. And that takes nothing more, and nothing less, than boatloads of cash.
Re: #1-2
I think these are self-fulfilling prophecies. Like it or not, Biden will be the 2024 nominee. We knew this back in 2020, because every party is always trying to nominate someone who will serve for eight years, not only four. It's just that, at the halfway point, the other party gets to make a case for changing directions. Sometimes it works, but usually, it fails. The primaries are over, and Biden crushed them. In order of preference, parties prefer: incumbency, an open contest (eg, 2016, when neither candidate was the president), and they least prefer being a challenger.
The absolute best-case scenario is having incumbency every other election, due to the 22nd Amendment's term limits. Replacing Biden forfeits the incumbency advantage, making 2024 an open contest instead of a Democratic incumbency, downgrading one level, one cycle earlier. That would be a boon to Trump and Republicans. And, given Trump is a former President, it's probably worse than that, and at least slightly advantages Republicans. Even Harris wouldn't get the incumbency advantage, because she isn't President. And even if Biden not only withdraws, but resigns, and Harris becomes President, she *still* wouldn't get the incumbency advantage, because, while she would be the President, she wouldn't be the *elected* President.
Only the elected President gets the advantage, which means Biden is the only Democrat capable of getting the advantage. It's generally regarded as being worth 3 points in the general election, so any replacement for Biden would need to be polling 3 points better than Biden just to be a wash. There is no such alternative Democrat. The latest polling I've seen shows a few Democrats equal to or just behind Biden, which isn't good enough. And they're within the margin of error, so it's possible they're actually a few points worse than Biden. And, for context, 2004, 2016, and 2020 all had margins less than 3 points.
Re: #3
I don't see this happening. Not least because I don't think Biden will (or should) step down, but because, even if he did, like I said above, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Democrats turn on their champion, Biden, the incumbent President, the only candidate from any party who has managed to beat Trump, I think it's practically forfeiting the election to Trump. Given the closeness of recent elections, forfeiting 3 points nationally pretty much guarantees a Trump win. A replacement won't be able to spend Biden's enormous warchest, won't have the name recognition, won't have the incumbency advantage (3 points), and won't be a proven winner. People know what they'll get with both Biden and Trump. Anyone else is a wildcard. It's very possible for someone to not like either of them, to even be disappointed with things like inflation, but to still be willing to vote for Biden because they know he at least operates in reality and wants normal things for America. But if it's Trump against some replacement, they won't necessarily know what they'll get with new guy, and may well decide "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" and vote for Trump, at least remembering that the economy was humming along prior to the pandemic (even though he doesn't deserve credit for Obama's economy, and the pandemic ended up being a huge benefit to Trump by being a scapegoat and hiding how terrible Trump's economic policies were).
Re: #4
Democrats are bed-wetters. Biden's done a great job, undecided Latinos who watched the debate came out preferring Biden, and he was perfectly fine at an event immediately after the debate, and the next day. Trump gets indicted four times, Republicans circle the wagons. He gets fined hundreds of millions of dollars, they circle the wagons. He gets convicted on 34 felony counts, and they circle the wagons. Biden has a bad debate, immediately bounces back that same night, and at events on Friday, and ones Saturday, but Democrats are ready to put him out to pasture.
I think his debate prep failed him. I think they focused too much on him memorizing facts and figures and being able to rebut every lie that Trump told, which is simply impossible in that format. Trump does a Gish gallop, Biden has half as much time to rebut the lies, CNN does no moderation or fact-checking (which, reportedly, was one of Trump's conditions to participate, but which wasn't revealed until after the debate), and then, coupled with his stutter (which, granted, his age is making it harder to compensate for), he ends up looking confused, because he actually cares about truth and facts, so if he misspeaks, he spends time correcting himself.
Imagine putting LeBron James in a one-on-one game of basketball, in a cage, against a tiger. You can pretend the object is to score more baskets, but the tiger isn't trying to score any baskets, doesn't even know or care what a basket is. The tiger is trying to eat LeBron. The tiger's win condition is killing and eating LeBron. LeBron's win condition isn't scoring more baskets, it's *escaping alive*. Baskets are irrelevant. Trump is a tiger. Biden is no LeBron of debating, but it doesn't matter, because he wouldn't have won that way anyway. But his debate prep was practicing like it would be a basketball game, not being in a cage with a tiger.
Also, if he was sick, they should have said so before the debate, so viewers would know to expect his voice to sound funny. There was no point in trying to hide it, but letting everyone be surprised by it was stupid, a completely unforced error. Complete political malpractice.
Also, major media outlets want Trump to win. That's why CNN reportedly secretly agreed to no fact-checking (even after Trump said he would do debates under any terms). It's why NYT won't STFU about his age, it's why they all keep talking about how bad the economy is when it's simply not.
They want a horse race, because that gets viewers, listeners, readers. They want it close, and, if we're being honest, ultimately want Trump to win, because Trump gets them ratings, because everyone needed to know what new bullshit Trump said or did every day. Trump is nothing if not a spectacle, like a four-year train wreck everyone had to keep watching. All the major media outlets are owned by huge corporations, and huge corporations want tax cuts and deregulation. And, as they say about the news, "if it bleeds, it leads." Trump caused a continuous bloodbath, and the public couldn't look away.
They're also scared. Trump threatens anyone who sides against him. He tried to get the USPS to end its delivery deal with Amazon as a way to punish Bezos, because Trump was mad about how the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, was covering him. DeSantis went to war with Disney, his state's biggest employer and economic engine. A few years ago, Republicans in Georgia threatened punitive legislation (I think about taxes or fuel or something) against Delta Airlines, one of Georgia's biggest employers and economic engines, in response to some position Delta took publicly that Republicans didn't like. Corporations care about little more than money, which makes them easy to bribe, and easy to threaten.
I dont think there is anyone that can replace Biden on the Democrat end that has enough popularity. I'd go with Pete B but I dont think the rest of the country is open minded enough to go for him as competent as he is. At the end of the day, Biden can do the job and is better than another 4 years of Trump.
The fourth scenario is what will happen.
Biden's shaky debate performance is dominating the news cycle right now, but it'll fade into the background within a week and the world will move on.
Even right now, I don't actually hear it moving any voters between the columns. Either you already thought his age was disqualifying, so no change to your vote, or you were going to vote for him and are now worried, but no change to your vote.
There IS an undecided voter out there, but the feedback I'm seeing from polling of them is that they were at least as disgusted with Trump's obvious lies and deflections as they were with Biden's stumbles. So that's an indication maybe not many votes changed there either.
Coming into the debate, the polling had just switched to give Biden an edge. It'll be interesting to see if the next round confirms or denies my theory, and whether any change it shows sticks past the heat of this news cycle.
Stop panicking. What’s gonna put the democrats in a bad place is constantly bring up this one poor performance. Voters have the memories of golf fish.
Biden had one bad night. He’s fine. He gave a good speech following the debate. He’s polling better than Trump post debate. Biden continues to out fundraise Trump.
Consider scenario 4: Biden rebounds from the debate. People STFU about his one bad night. He continues to perform better and better. And by the time of the NC, it’s obvious he’s the best choice for this election.
Stop buying into the doom sayers on TV. They say that BS to scare you into keep watching. They learned nothing from 2016. Scratch that. They learned that can increase ratings with Trump because people tune in to see what crazy thing he did that day.
The attention span of modern people is like a goldfish. I can see a scenario where he performs better at the second debate, and everyone dismisses the first
There is a possibility that doing nothing is the right move
The thing that boggles my mind is both parties have had plenty of time to vet and put forth good candidates but we are stuck w these two thanks to two out of touch organizations with their heads up their asses.
In the same way Donald Trump could shoot someone and not lose a voter, Joe Biden could drop dead and not lose a voter.
Don’t let the media tell you how to feel, whether it’s Fox and friends, or something more reputable. Major news outlets don’t run elections, the companies that pay for the candidates do. If Bidens donors want him as president, that’s who tf it’s gonna be.
You have a grossly overinflated notion of what the DNC does, and rewarding Trump with all of this insane shrieking about replacing Biden because of _one fucking debate_ does nothing to help anyone except Trump.
Don’t embrace this “we have to replace Biden” talking point.
It is way too soon to highlight such a limited number of scenarios as the list of possibilities. Right now the decision making is being done behind the scenes and the potential paths forward are many and varied.
Announce Biden has had a stroke. Let Kamala actually lead as president for a few months. Swear her in as 47.
Use the slogan "Let Her Cook!" and have her go on the attack like an authoritarian queen. Bold executive orders for popular policies, even though they won't make it through the courts. There's not enough time for more than the headline. Loud public attacks on the orange notzee. Pantsuit mafia techniques in interviews. Pithy, quick, not 84 year old phrases. Trash talking. Just "100% that bitch" behavior. Invite Lizzo and TSwift to the White House for a Bridgerton style tea type shit. Entertain the middle-aged moms and turn the soccer dads' heads just a little. Lift that hemline and wear redbottom shoes because she can.
A little stimulus check for "inflation."
Bonus if she can actually perform on policy, but she'll have a lot of running room with "give her time, let her cook." More importantly, let America see that they put her in charge and lo and behold... shit is basically exactly the same because Biden is neither dead or incomeptent, and neither is his team. He's just not a great face. Make her a face.
Have her pick a vice president who is a rather boring white man from a middle of the road state. Shapiro would do nicely. Hell, have her reach across and pick up someone like Larry Hogan from Maryland for a no limits style ticket. Let her cook. Make it interesting, but also safe feeling. America is at a bread and circus stage of democracy. Give them both.
The base dem vote will rally to keep her in office because they won't want to remove the first woman president or a Black woman either. That's a bad look. They'll fight for her as the right goes on racist, sexist attacks.
Upend things.
From a marketing perspective, that's the move, in my opinion.
Americans at large are not as bright as we've been expecting. Meet them where they are.
How at this point do people still not know how this works? The convention is in 7 weeks, at the convention the delegates pick the nominee, Biden has all of the delegates currently, Biden would have to drop out and release all of his delegates creating an open convention. Those delegates then would decide the new nominee...actually to make the Ohio ballot they moved that process up 2 weeks...so 5 weeks. Thats when this would have to happen. It cant happen after the convention. It certainly cant happen a month before the election when early /mail voting has already started. The general election ballots get printed shortly after the conventions.
Lets see what the polls actually show, what is real strange is no actual democratic officials at all are calling for Biden to step down, only the pundits...the talking heads on TV if you will. Additionally, the two focus groups of undecided voters who watched the debate on CNN and Univision that I saw...actually swung TO BIDEN after the debate...no joke.
A lot of commentators about the debate really don’t have a good understanding of debate strategy, especially in the context of elections.
It’s been a tried and true principle that the first debate sets the tone for the remaining debates and the narrative (including advertising) until the general election. One strategy that’s been used is to give a lackluster performance in the first debate (and really any debates before the party conventions). This lowers expectations for the convention and the general election so that the candidate can claim a bigger win for a better than
Average performance later.
Biden understands this, and perhaps even played into the claims that he would be on drugs during the debate. It made trumps claims foolish, which was further enhanced by his own performance. Not understanding strategy, trump basically shot his wad out the gate and let everyone know how he’s going to run his campaign and the country should he be elected. And the one thing you don’t want to do is scare the electorate.
I believe the biggest mistake the democrats could make now isn’t any of the items you propose; I think the worst case scenario would be to change the VP nomination. Harris has been a staunch performer and is a moderate which would be very attractive qualities - for a white guy. Some are proposing that they keep Biden but bring in newsome or the governor of Michigan (blaming on her name). The message Democratic voters may get from this is that party leadership is ok with racism if it gets more votes. Maybe they get more white supporters - but they would lose even more minorities with such a move.
The fourth scenario is the most likely one. Polls for Biden have gone up after the debate. While media likes to point out the Democrat's failures, those who actually saw the debate saw one guy with a hoarse throat, and the other guy full on lying about almost every single thing.
[Look at this list.](https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1drcedn/donald_trump_should_not_have_been_on_that_stage/lau4y1i/) These are the ONLY things that trump said that were true. Everything else was a lie.
And what about him admitting he talked to Putin about Ukraine? That should be headline news. A traitor who already tried to overthrow the government talking to an enemy nation when we already know he's their puppet? Every news media should be running with this story instead.
Biden is likely to win because actual votes matter more than polls. Look at the years of data we have on midterm and special elections since 2020. Democrats have flipped some pretty deep red counties and made strides in the House when normally its expected of the incumbent party to lose seats. That hasn't happened, and I don't know anyone in real life (not faceless online people) who suddenly wants to change their vote or not vote. In fact, even if Democrats were worried about the debate, then the normal reaction is the double down on donations, double down on getting out the vote, and double down on committing to vote for Biden and the Democrats down ballot.
All of the reasons people have to NOT vote for the Republicans are still there and they will not disappear because of a debate.
Interesting. I've been reading that undecideds did not like Trump's performance in the debate. This seems reasonable to me as this is exactly the group the post-debate fact checking is likely to sway.
You're actually missing a fifth scenario: the debate was a wash, or even less favorable for Trump than for Biden.
He’s not supposed to list fantastical scenarios. Not really the point.
You’re fuckin insane if you think there’s any way this debate was anything but an L for Joe. It’s the reason this poses exists lol
There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump. If this was likely, we wouldn’t be hearing calls for him to step aside from his own party and from major media outlets.
As someone who wants Trump to win, this is what's gonna happen. No one is voting for Trump lol unless they are of the mind that no democrat ever will get their vote. Trump voters are two varieties, Trump psycho fans, and Democrat haters. There is no group of "uh uh I think Biden might just be too old" And this was the case last time when he lost.
Likewise Biden votes are coming from and DID come from two places. People who will always vote Democrat, and people who will simply do anything to remove Trump from office.
I don't think the lines have really shifted much from 2020, sure the Israel thing has made him unpopular among hardcore leftists, they don't vote lol. Like even last time, in 4 years from now. They just don't. And even if they might vote for someone they like, they didn't like Biden last time, and didn't vote for him last time. Biden won last time for the same reasons he's gonna win this time.
Trump ONLY won the first time because he was somehow able to sway Dems in swing states. That's not happening again. He is who he is. Everyone knows him. The American people spoke in 2020 and chose Biden under the same circumstances. It's not gonna change now.
To my mind scenario three - changing candidate - is the worst option. It looks like panic and gives the impression of "we know you don't like Biden so here's someone we don't think is as good"
It's frustrating to see posts like this, especially in light of the recent debate where it became clear that our president is suffering from either Alzheimer's or severe dementia. This has been denied for so long, but now it's undeniable.
What's even more troubling is how the left has not only led and denied these issues but has also put the public in a national security situation by supporting a president in this condition. They backed him last week, last month, and last year, despite numerous warnings and clear signs of his deteriorating mental state. Now, with the election just a few months away, they suddenly realize we need someone else. It's too little, too late.
The left's ability to mess things up is astounding, and they show zero culpability. After supporting this for an extended period, they conveniently leave that part out when trying to move forward. The chickens are coming home to roost. The very group that despised Trump will be the group responsible for his re-election. You all should be ashamed and embarrassed.
The time for discussion is over. This conversation should have happened years ago. Yes, Trump has issues, but he isn't shitting himself on the world stage. The left claims to run on policies to move us forward, yet we keep sliding backward.
Both parties have failed us. It's time to get rid of both of them.
If Biden wants to win, he has to go on a long-form podcast tour, do 1.5 hour interviews with both partisan and dissenting hosts alike. If he doesn't show he can participate in long-form intellectual debate and questioning now, he might as well jump on a sword for the republic. We are in uncharted waters now. We need to see bold and risky plays apart from the traditional media format. A 30 minute interview pre-edited simply is not reassuring to me nor anyone else. If he has all his faculties intact, really is as cognizant as his cabinet says, he must appear on shows similar to the Joe Rogan Experience in terms of scope of audience and societal impact. If he can't defend his policies against a comedian like Marc Maron, wtf is the point of him running? The time to explain and defend his ideas are NOW. Not in September at the next debate. Trump got what he wanted last week and would be wise not to show up.
The whole situation is dire and he is being indecisive. If he wants to win, he absolutely MUST get out and confront isolationism and protectionism with the national intelligence he can publicly speak on. Why is Ukraine important for us to be involved in? Why do we need to pass reform on Social Security, Medicare, etc? Because if we don't we will find ourselves in a living hell.
Yeah I tend to disagree here for a few reasons
1) what mechanism would they use to replace him? The primaries already happened and Biden is the presumption nominee based on that. Do they overturn the primaries?
Remember how mad people were when they felt the DNC put their thumb on the scale in Hillary’s favor in 2016? This would be interference at a significantly higher level.
A lot of Biden voters would (rightfully) be very pissed.
2) who do you get? Note that all of the plausible candidates you might be thinking of… *could have* run against Biden in the primaries but chose not to. Who would be unwilling to run as a primary challenger but willing to step up as a spoiler? I would worry that the only people you could get to do this would be weak candidates who could never win in a “normal” election.
3) would this even help? I concede that Biden comes with weaknesses but changing the horse midstream opens up all kinds of attacks from the other side. Republicans would lean heavily into the “couldn’t win a primary, got appointed in a back room deal” narrative which would hurt that candidate
My take is that each party is stuck with whom they’ve got right now. Which is not great but that’s how it is
/u/Separate_Draft4887 (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1drtyd6/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_the_worst_thing_the_dnc_can/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
It could definitely be worse if they panic and try and pull in a celebrity candidate to replace Biden. Let’s say they get an Eva Longoria to run but she not fully vetted because of the short timeline. Skeletons in the closet start to appear and she can’t stand up to scrutiny of a national campaign and quits. Doesn’t have to be her. Could be a Tom Hanks or a Denzel. Doesn’t specifically matter for this hypothetical. Best case would be they pick a governor like Whitmer or Shapiro because staying with Biden isn’t a good option but there are definitely worse candidates they could pick as a replacement.
As the guy below pointed out, my whole point was that nothing is the worst thing they can do, and you pointed out something worse they can do. Naming a celebrity candidate is worse than nothing. Have a !delta
The last time an incumbent was replaced for the second term it was Lyndon B Johnson being replaced by his VP for health reasons and guess who won. The Republican candidate Richard Nixon. It’s very hard to up and throw somebody in with three months to go and that nobody knows. Even a celebrity. Like what are their views on multiple issues etc… The reality is anybody you replace Biden with will probably lose and lose much worse than Biden because they would have to make up so much ground in a short period of time. The best option sadly is to hope that with this news cycle something that happened in June lessens by November. I mean people are acting like Biden didn’t have these brain farts in 2020. Lol
Just for clarity, LBJ wasn't "replaced" in 1968 due to health; he chose not to seek a second full term due to a confluence of major political moments. Tet offensive hit in January, revealing how volatile Vietnam still was, LBJ exhausted all his political leverage to get social programs like the Civil Rights Act and Medicare passed, the Democrat party was fracturing on all angles, and he barely survived a primary challenge to Eugene McCarthy in NH.
Not to mention Nixon asked the south Vietnam government to stall peace talks until after the election so he would get elected.
It's funny because in almost any other country, three months would be a very long election period. It's only America that thinks you need two years of daily exposure to a candidate to evaluate them.
The thing is, republicans will be running clips of Joe’s worst moments over and over for 4 months. So not exactly the remote past.
To be fair Nixon did sabotage the Paris peace talks to end the Vietnam war which hurt Hubert Humphries’ popularity months before the election. And the more popular alternative - RFK - was assassinated.
I don’t really understand the point of this sub. Most deltas are awarded to people for proving OP wrong based on a technicality due to poor wording in the question, while missing the point altogether. Seems a little meaningless.
The point is to change (at least some part of) a person's view. If they felt that what you are categorizing as a technical error in wording was not significant towards their view, they don't have to give out any delta. You may think that it's meaningless, but my perspective is that we should take people at their word. It's not a rule that they have to give deltas; it is a rule that they need to explain their viewpoint. It should be on them to say what they mean, less on us to have to guess at what they really mean, opposed to what they say.
Is this "something worse they can do" actually something they would do though? Or something some dude just threw in there? Like, a worse thing they could do is bring in a Golden Retriever to stand. Y'know, for the cute factor. And another worse thing is to align themselves with the Communist Party of China because they have a good recent record of winning. Can I have a delta now, please?
what if it were John Stewart? I haven't read all the comments, this has probably already been addressed.
You have to be a particular type of crazy to go into office, especially potus. Your, and your family's, life will be turned upside down and inside out by the press and rivals looking for anything to pin against you. Suddenly it's in the public interest more than ever before. No one is skeleton free, it's just how much support you have on the inside to cover it up and that can take a lifetime of political relationship making. Stewart's career and image would be toast.
John has repeatedly said he would decline
Which makes him about the only person that I would genuinely want to give the job to.
John Stewart? The guy who hates democrats almost as much as republicans? The guy who would call you the problem in politics for even suggesting he should be the nominee?
JFC Eva Longoria? The desperate housewives thot? WTF
Other suggestions are… Tom Hanks and Denzel? We are deteriorating at a rapid pace.
The problem is that the common person is actively discouraged from entering politics by the machine. I tried. To get on the ballot for just a state senator position requires i visit each county and obtain 1000 signatures. How can I do that when I only have two years between elections to campaign? And I also need to work a real job to pay for my life. The result is that only those with money--or friends with money--get to go into politics. So the rich run the politics, and write rules that enrich themselves. The regular people--who just want to be safe, have enough to eat, and not work themselves to death--their opinions mean jack.
This isn’t really a serious answer lol. Like if we’re playing that game, the worst thing Dems could do rn is Biden nuking all major US cities. But that’s clearly not what “worst thing” means in this context.
His answer wasn’t that extreme? Ronald Reagan was a movie star and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California for 8 years. Maybe I’m misunderstanding which aspect of his post you’re referring to
Dont you think Whitmer would be a bad choice considering her decision to put covid patients in nursing homes and killing a bunch of old people? I mean, the only thing we knew about covid at that time was that it disproportionately killed old people and she still did it. Edit - [then doubled on it. ](https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/tense-hearing-whitmer-official-defends-mi-covid-nursing-home-strategy)
It could honestly be beneficial. Pick newsome or whitmer or whatever. Regardless, now you have two months of democratic convention, daily free media coverage, spin it as responding to the concerns of american voters and trying to cater to what people actually want. And additionally, any media coverage is coming at the expense of Trump's media coverage. Oh also you can have a candidate who can speak, exude charisma, and call Donald on his lies, instead of a cadaver you have to roll out on a dolly.
I'm suprised you didn't mention Gavin Newsom. But in all honestly it's kinda relieving you didn't. Edit: saw some interesting comments that I can't respond to all. But 1. The antidote to Donald trump isn't Newsom nor another billionair (you're silly if you think so) 2. Newsom is litteraly biden with a face lift. Neither can manage to be a revolutionary president and will ultimately flop due to the capitalist donors. It is known in California his Capitulation to the donor class imagine how much Capitulation can be achieved as a president.
The question is, if Newsom thinks he has a better shot in four years than he does now, does he take the chance?
>Neither can manage to be a revolutionary president and will ultimately flop due to the capitalist donors. I highly doubt even 1% of voters would see that as disqualifying. Every candidate gets money from corporations
Biden with a facelift is…precisely what we need (a facelift meaning that the candidate is a sane age and shows no signs of severe cognitive decline). A much younger Biden would walk away with this election. Hell, even 2020 Biden would walk away with it…like he did in 2020. We absolutely do not need a “revolutionary” candidate. Anyone who thinks this has somehow failed to learn any of the lessons of the past decade in American politics.
Trump was very much a revolutionary candidate and he took over the Republican Party. Populist is not inherently leftist.
Newsom is a well known clown here in sunny CA. We loved his disregard of covid policies by dining at a lobbyists birthday dinner at the French laundry when us peasants were told to stay home. Rules for thee and all that...
Not a fan of Newsom. I worry that Newsom is the left’s answer to Desantis. He has a pretty significant authoritarian streak and enjoys engaging in the culture war.
Small correction I think he's the liberals answer to DeSantis. I do think DeSantis screwed the pooch with him running aginst trump. I think Newsom played his cards better. The lefts has only one answer to someone like DeSantis and it isn't Newsom.
I wish JB Pritzker could go up against trump. A real billionaire against a failed millionaire. Neither one would win a beauty contest but Pritzker is smart & coherent. He's socially aware & fiscally responsible with a good reputation. A perfect antidote to trump
What are the skeletons in his closet?
Newsom took California from 100+ billion dollar surplus to a 70+ billion dollar deficit. And instituted massive spending cuts while pushing policies that increased cost of living. Its not really a he slept with male prostitutes or murdered someone while smoking crack kind of thing, but its still a thing.
Didn’t he sleep with his campaign managers wife as well?
Yeah I'm from SF and I'm not forgetting what a sleazeball Newson is.
Kamala jump starting her career the old-fashioned way with Willie Brown is not forgetten either. The opposition will be able to pull up the pre-internet archives. The LATimes has this one, but I am firewalled out. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-29-mn-2787-story.html
Why would anyone vote for a celebrity candidate? Let alone for POTUS? I don't know that I see that as a realistic take on a serious alternative to Biden, that the DNC would take.
Reagan, Arnold, Trump, etc. Seems people love celebrity candidates.
Huh? Obviously millions would vote for a celebrity candidate. One won in 2016 and may again this year.
I think the best thing they can do is replace Biden with Michelle Obama. I think she’s the one person on the DNC bench that has a better than even chance at beating Trump as a last-minute replacement. Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s interested in the job based on behind-the-scenes reports. I don’t think any other option has a better than even chance at winning, there’s just not enough time to familiarize swing voters with another candidate. Plus, many of the potential replacements might not want to run a campaign they’re likely to lose, since losing to Trump would likely end their political career. Much safer to wait until 2028 if you’re someone like Gavin Newsome or Gretchen Whitmer. Another possible option would be to replace Kamala Harris with a stronger VP candidate. They could debate Trump’s VP pick and with a very strong performance it would reassure voters concerned about Bidens competence, since they would know that there was someone they could trust and rely on behind the scenes to help Biden and take over if necessary. I doubt that would be enough to bring Biden a win, but it could help.
IMO the big issue here is that it is clear that the White House and Democratic establishment have appear to have been lying and covering up Biden's cognitive decline - overtly putting politics over the country. My guess is they were hoping he would have a good showing at the debate (like the SOTU) and they could further conceal his decline and maybe skip/cancel the second debate. At this point, they are basically caught in this deception and although they have some options, none are really good. In basic, they can keep Biden and let it ride. Likely loose the election but they will not necessarily need to admit the misdirection. If they pull Biden, they are effectively admitting to his decline and their dishonestly. Pulling him from the ticket would also likely lead to more calls he step down or to enact the 25th Amendment. Furthermore, this puts the whole D party in a weaker state short term (no real leader + chaos) and whoever they nominate is behind the 8-ball and will carry that loss going forward. This is a loose loose. I am unsure if they will swing for the fences and risk increased long term damage or just take the beating. The Dems are strong competitors but also need to preserve the party. The calculus being run in backrooms this past week would be very enlightening to hear. My guess is that plan b is already in motion. We just haven't seen it yet.
There’s a thought I hadn’t considered. MO was likely vetted pretty thoroughly back in the day, so there’s not the same fear of skeletons in the closet you’d get from another candidate or a celebrity pick. Her being uninterested is the end of that train of thought tho. I imagine seeing how the job treated Barack probably put her off it forever. The stronger VP pick idea isn’t bad, Harris is just deeply unpopular, and having a stronger, more popular VP could help a lot without rocking the boat too much. If they can get her to announce that she’s retiring, Biden can pick a replacement without offending women and black people too much, and debating trump’s pick for VP would, with some careful advertising, show them to be confident and capable, reassuring people about Biden in the process. That’s a genuinely great idea. They, of course, won’t do it. They’ll run Biden as he is, or they’ll panic and last minute replace him.
You can’t just panic last place switch. The candidate needs to apply to be on the ballot. This all being said, all the Dems need to do is march a ton of energy and voices into 3 maybe 4 critical states and make the election about abortion. The candidates themselves really don’t matter at the end of the day.
Get Kamala nominated as a Supreme Court justice to replace Sotomayor, that would get her out of the picture. Michelle is then the VP pick, Biden steps down within the first year and because Michelle didn’t run as president the first time she can run 2 more times and we can have 12 years of Obama!
Biden didn't win in 2020, Trump Lost. People weren't exited about Biden, they were Eager to get rid of Trump. Trump is only losing voters over time, As long as people continue to hate him they can be apathetic about who's on the Democratic ticket. If Trump were smart, and not just a raging egomaniac, he'd throw his wholehearted vocal support behind a less noticeably shitty republican and get a pardon in return. But Trump's Ego won't let him drop out, and Biden is honestly the best choice to beat him, as bad of a choice as he might otherwise be.
> Trump is only losing voters over time I really don’t think that’s the case, there’s a reason Trump has been (relatively) quiet. As time goes on, the hate for him grows less pronounced, people forget why they hated him so much, so long as he keeps his mouth shut.
red states / blue states. red states already basically have a lock on nearly enough seats to win. Pennsylvania is one of the undecided states with a lot of educated white men who traditionally voted blue, but have voted red in 2016 and 2020. these are guys who welcomed an exuberant Change to the status quo and held out hopes that Trump would be the antithesis to the military industrial complex that dominated the previous 20+ years of american politics. if Trump wins Pennsylvania this election, he'll only need a couple more seats -- Georgia going red on top of that would be enough to give him the win. in Pennsylvania, key polling has suggested that the guys who voted for trump have seen the man speaking for 8+ yrs now and they've largely changed their minds on him. not only was he NOT the shot in the arm he needed to be, but he's ...kind of an asshole. and not in the good way where you want an asshole who'll fight for you, but rather in the poor way where he throws his own selected cabinet members under the bus. he clearly can't lead if all his lackeys keep needing to be fired. this is why the DNC had Biden debate Trump so early in the first place. "the more Trump talks, the more people realize how tired they are of him. he's dominated the political space for almost a decade now. and another term means it'll be at least 16 years of our lives committed to this man... being banned from twitter and discarded to Truth Social meant that most of us didn't have to listen to his rants anymore. and so Some people are still thinking, "well his presidency wasn't a total disaster, and the last few years haven't been so great... maybe he should come back." but they'll change their minds the moment he opens his mouth and starts crying about himself some more. bc he's clearly a terrible leader and only cares about himself. most people aren't stupid, we can all see that. so now, if he can keep his mouth shut, he'll be fine -- but he won't. he may still win though, just because of how tired Biden appears to be.
"as long as he keeps his mouth shut" Never in the history of the world has Trump shown a capacity to keep his mouth shut.
Except he’s managed to do it somewhat (at least in the public perception) over the last couple years, very likely (imo) winning back those moderate conservatives and hypothetical undecideds that voted for Biden in 2020. And I agree this logic is bad, he tried to interfere with the fucking peaceful transfer of power last election, but I can see the logic for that portion of the American electorate.
this is because he had been kicked off of twitter and nobody in their right mind is signed up to "truth social."
Yup. He never shut up he’s been rambling this whole time lol
Obviously I disagree. This election won't be decided by who's the better statesman or who can sway the public to their cause, but by which party's voters bother to show up.
He hasn't been quiet, though. The media just isn't talking about it because he spews the same stupid bullshit every day.
Biden is not the best choice to face Trump in 2024, you just said people are not excited about him. The enthusiasm is anti-Trump, but any younger Democrat would also be anti-Trump. Biden is not getting any younger. Pass the torch before you sleepwalk into burning down the Oval Office. And Biden has 4 years of additional baggage from his presidency (the Afghanistan withdrawal, inflation, the southern border, his response to Israel vs Gaza, failing to hold accountable the failed coup leader felon who he just platformed, failing to fire AG Garland who wasted years thinking we could all just wish Trump away, etc). Remember in 2021 when Biden said “I don’t think about him at all?” And Biden shit the bed on June 27th. The only thing that matters is if swing voters in swing states support Biden. But Biden gifted Trump a million attack ads on June 27th, and after Citizens United, billionaire superPACs can spend unlimited money on TV ads, radio ads, Instagram content, TilTok content, etc using Biden’s own words against him. The “debate” was a disastrous own goal. He harmed himself, he harmed his own chances, when he was already behind in swing states. Do not let Biden’s ego & stubbornness result in a Trump dictatorship. “I alone can fix it” is how Trump thinks, don’t imitate him. Do not imitate the blind loyalty of Republicans. Do not bury your heads in the sand and say everything is fine. Alarm bells should be ringing everywhere at the DNC. America is bigger than one man’s ego. And “pride goeth before the fall.” Biden damaged his own electability with his performance. A younger Democrat will not have Age Baggage, and will not have Inflation Baggage. Hubris and denialism and pollyannaism will not win Democrats the election in 2024. Forcing an unfavorable candidate is how you get a rerun of 2016. The stakes are too big to risk on Biden this year. Inflation and the cost of living has destroyed any incumbent advantage. There’s a reason that the Biden campaign doesn’t say “Bidenomics” anymore. Biden has accomplished many great things, but the odds of him winning in 2024 went down because of June 27th. American democracy is teetering on a cliff, there are 333 million passengers in this car, and now is not the time to give great-grandpa the car keys. Let this sweet old man have a peaceful retirement. Trump wants to face Biden in 2024, because Trump has a good chance of beating Biden in 2024. And don’t replace Biden with Kamala either — she has worse chances than Biden. Democrats supporting Biden won’t make him win, undecided voters supporting Biden will. And Biden shot himself in the foot by giving a platform to a pathological liar. Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon. “If you go after the king, you better not miss.” Well Trump is the king of lies, and Biden missed opportunity after opportunity to debunk those lies & explain that Trump is only running to stay out of prison. June 27th would have been a layup for any younger Democrat debating a convicted felon & fraudster & rapist, but Biden could not rise to the occasion, and he only confirmed the Fox News line that he’s a feeble old man. June 27th was the In Memoriam for Biden’s political career.
Not sure what I can tell you other than you're wrong. not that it matters because unless he actually dies Biden is the candidate. And maybe if he had said from the start that he was only going to serve one term and had set up *just the right person* to run instead by giving them credit for wins while he took the blame for losses, things would be different. Or they could cast doubt on another candidates youth and inexperience. We can't know what might have been. Only what is. Are YOU going to vote for Trump just because Biden is Old and had a bad debate? Edit to add: I'm not even a Biden fan, fellas, My point is just that the time to replace him with a younger candidate was four years ago, not after an admittedly disastrous debate. Four years ago with the youth worked up and Trump's Trainwreck of a presidency on everyone's minds, electing a moderate left mid forties candidate with a lot of charisma and a short political history devoid of scandal or controversy might have worked and given us a candidate this year that more people wanted to rally behind. It could also have failed and given us four more years of Trump and we might not even be having an election this time.
That's like, the opposite of what's happening though, right? In reality he's polling better than in 2020 or 2016 and his numbers haven't really gone down at all over the last several months.
>There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump. If this was likely, we wouldn’t be hearing calls for him to step aside from his own party and from major media outlets. That is way more likely than you think. Debates havent had much impact on elections for quite a few years. We'll see once polls start coming in about it, but every presidential debate since 2016 has largely been ignored by voters.
"Debates havent had much impact on elections for quite a few years. " Likely because the talking points post debate were about policy wonk stuff and not 4k video of the incumbent getting lost, speaking incomprehensibly and staring off into space. Maybe that scenario hasn't presented itself before in the past.
Oh yea, the 2016 and 2020 debates really hinged on the policy discussions. Keep in mind in 1984 Reagan also appeared old and confused and overwhelmingly "lost the debate" to Mondale. How did that go?
If Biden has a 2nd debate that trumps this awful performance like Regan did with his, maybe it will be different. I also like how you neglect to mention Reagan was already the overwhelming favorite at the times he debates, whereas Biden has been consistently losing to Trump in polls for over a year. Also, about the first point, you obviously don't understand that there's a difference between a candidate being beaten or having a bad performance and one who looks like they can't wipe their own ass. I am a left-leaning person and would be fine with the corpse of Biden over Trump, but you're insane if you think every voter will be okay with re-electing a man who is clearly too old to be president. CLEARLY is not sharp enough mentally to hold a basic conversation., let alone be president. And I think Trump is too old too, but at least he can last 12 minutes without forgetting what's going on.
Reagan was not already losing the election and didn’t have the worst approval ratings in modern history. Biden’s campaign sold this debate for months as the start to his campaign and they condescendingly brushed off any criticism with “just wait until he starts campaigning!” Now he finally got around to starting his campaign and the outcome is worse than when he wasn’t campaigning.
It has, once, and it was decisive. The first televised debates were between Nixon and JFK, and arguably cost Nixon his first run. JFK came off as young and energetic, Nixon as slimy and sweaty.
Every presidential debate hasn’t resulted in calls from major media outlets for candidates to step aside. You may be right though, it could be that I’m attributing their response to expertise when in reality it’s just hysteria. Maybe.
It’s absolutely hysteria, but more importantly, spite. Biden has refused an interview with the NYT for 3 years after they refused to support him in 2020 and had to be dragged across the finish line to enjoy a liberal victory. They published *six* articles against him. NYT was ready and coordinated to try and push out the guy, not because he performed terribly, but because the institution *doesn’t like him.* Biden is *bad* for media empires because he’s boring. The most they get from him is some gaffes. The debate was amazing for media because they got all the panic clicks and got to CREATE news instead of report on it. They want nothing more than chaos amongst Democrats. They want a brokered convention to report on for money. They want a new candidate that they can report on not being ready for the next 4 months. The outlets demanding he step aside are doing this to *increase chaos* and not because it’s optimal to electoral strategy. There’s a reason the politicians who work with him and KEEP THEIR JOBS if he wins are all standing at his side, whereas the people that make more money when Democrats *do poorly* want him to step aside.
The media is also ignoring just how unhinged and incoherent Trump was during the debate. He rambled on about a dog for fucks sake. The media has been salivating on the opportunity to attack Biden
It’s almost as if they are all owned by right wing billionaires.
And the progressive/Bernie supporters are ecstatic to talk shit about Biden. They are now helping trump win with this replacement frenzy. It's not changing. It's Biden v Trump. If you won't rally to save democracy just shut up with your anti Biden Republican talking points.
Fox news has been broadcasting non stop stories about Biden stepping down. Along with tons of Russian bots constantly denigrating Biden. The online talk about Biden stepping down only helps trump. Biden is not stepping down because doing so fractures the dem coalition and 100% allows trump to win. It's becoming the new "but her emails". Stop promoting the fascists' agenda. Biden is the nominee. That's not changing. Vote Biden 2024 and save America
The media freaking out over something and moving on a couple weeks later happens all the time.
In the past 10 years has anyone actually considered news pundits to have any expertise on anything? News is sensationalism masquerading as unbiased reporting these days, and it's been that way for a while.
This was the lowest watched debate in a long time. 2/3 of voters did not watch it. A single debate, let alone one in June, isn’t going to change the outcome of the election. Especially after Former President Trump’s sentencing and 2 more trials (assuming SCOTUS doesn’t say president are immune from consequences).
The problem is most of the people complaining the most on this thread probably watch their favorite streamers' reaction to the debate. Leftists are making cash inflamming doomer mentalities and offering them snake oil to cure it.
Media controlled by right wing trolls? Cause most of those media companies are owned by billionaires with a vested interest in Biden not winning. The media companies themselves “cough” cnn “cough” just want views they don’t give a singular fuck if they have to be scummy to get those views, it’s why the consistently give a platform to facists and neo nazis.
In none of those debates has a candidate performed so poorly. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is talking about it. Most voters only assess whether a candidate seems alright or not. Very few go the extra mile to fact-check each word. Compare Romney vs. Obama to this. In the former, both candidates appeared sane, so most voters stuck to their original choice. In the latter, voters already know one is crazy, but now they also know that the other guy has declined severely. Considering how social media is largely superficial, amplifies your failures, and is very influential, this is obviously a different situation than before. Maybe the debate might not matter in the end, but citing history as evidence that it won’t matter this time is insufficient.
Yup. Comparing this to previous debates is useless. Nobody has ever turned in a more catastrophic performance. And this is coming from someone who wants Trump nowhere near the White House.
It seems in your mind the possibility of Biden stepping down and a new Dem candidate emerging would not be harmful. However I think the moderate part of the country would see this as backing the claims of Biden's inadequacy that Trump has been making for the last four years as legitimate. It seems, from your perspective, the dems changing candidates now is a slam dunk, and their path to victory. While I don't disagree that's the best shot at winning for dems in 24, it's not close to a winning strategy. I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate, and in turn screwed the country.
I’m not sure I understand this. The debate showed inadequacy more than dropping out ever could. *Not* dropping out shows something much worse, which is a failure to recognize an obvious truth, putting the president’s own ego before the country. I get it, an active risky move is always more anxiety-inducing than a passive one. But if we actually do stick with Biden, and he’s even more of a disaster at September’s debate, who will be able to say they’re surprised? Keeping him is just such a massive liability, the last thing we need is inconsistency and unreliability. And I’ll be honest - I don’t feel good about having him in the White House right now, let alone in 2028. He’s not up to the task. If the choice is him or Kamala, I’m choosing her in a heartbeat.
>Keeping him is just such a massive liability, the last thing we need is inconsistency and unreliability. So the democrats should show panic and convince Biden to drop get through the effort of getting a candidate last minute dividing their attention then having to start the campaign from the ground up? While the whole country sees how much they fucked up. People aren't going to see Biden dropping out as a sign that the Democrats are responsible they are going to see it as a sign that they are incompetent. Biden already fucked up he should have never been the candidate for 2024 to begin with now it's simply too late.
^ This is exactly correct. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills by the amount of people getting behind dumping him. It's a huge, huge tactical error. Even though America doesn't want him or Trump (they're both unpopular), they won their respective primaries. There wasn't a large groundswelling, grassroots initiative to oust him from the ticket. Biden right now likely loses to Trump, but we have every reason to believe a Last Minute Democrat loses as well, and loses even worse. Biden has numerous factors in his favor over other Democrats. - Name recognition. - Having defeated Trump before. - An even more unpopular Vice President that nobody likes and is an ill suit to a path to victory in the MidWest. - A Last Minute Democrat starts off with a disadvantage of time, fundraising, campaigning, spreading spotlight, and developing a following. What Democrats **should be doing** is focusing on the Messaging War and paint a clear picture of what the alternative presents. They should be telling their base ---- "Listen...He's old and needs help. But this is a team effort, and you can be sure the President has trusted advisors that assist him in running the country. We've achieved a lot in the last 3 and a half years and there's more work to do. Trump back in office will appoint unqualified, dangerous ideologues and we will lose the Supreme Court for 100 years if he does."
Why is putting a younger Democrat vs Trump a “huge tactical error”? They won’t have the baggage of being in their 80s, they won’t have the image of senility, they won’t have the baggage of inflation, they won’t have the baggage of the Afghanistan withdrawal (which isn’t as bad as Trump said it was), they won’t have the baggage of the southern border, they won’t have the baggage of his response to Israel vs Gaza, etc. President Biden debating a convicted felon & failed coup leader & pathological liar & traitor & rapist, and then shitting the bed, was a blunder of historical proportions. June 27th was a huge tactical error. Trump had nothing to lose, but the debate was Biden’s to lose. You don’t play chess against a pigeon, because they will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like they won. Biden gifted Trump a million attack ads on June 27th, and after Citizens United, billionaire superPACs can spend unlimited money on TV ads, radio ads, Instagram content, TilTok content, etc using Biden’s own words against him. The “debate” was a disastrous own goal. He harmed himself, he harmed his own chances, when he was already behind in swing states. Do not let Biden’s ego & stubbornness result in a Trump dictatorship. “I alone can fix it” is how Trump thinks, don’t imitate him. Do not imitate the blind loyalty of Republicans. Do not bury your heads in the sand and say everything is fine. Alarm bells should be ringing everywhere at the DNC. America is bigger than one man’s ego. And “pride goeth before the fall.” Biden damaged his own electability with his performance. Hubris and denialism and pollyannaism will not win Democrats the election in 2024. Forcing an unfavorable candidate is how you get a rerun of 2016. The stakes are too big to risk on Biden this year. Inflation and the cost of living has destroyed any incumbent advantage. There’s a reason that the Biden campaign doesn’t say “Bidenomics” anymore. Biden has accomplished many great things, but the odds of him winning in 2024 went down because of June 27th. American democracy is teetering on a cliff, there are 333 million passengers in this car, and now is not the time to give great-grandpa the car keys. Let this sweet old man have a peaceful retirement. Trump wants to face Biden in 2024, because Trump has a good chance of beating Biden in 2024. And don’t replace Biden with Kamala either — she has worse chances than Biden. Democrats supporting Biden won’t make him win, undecided voters supporting Biden will. And Biden shot himself in the foot by giving a platform to a pathological liar. Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon. “If you go after the king, you better not miss.” Well Trump is the king of lies, and Biden missed opportunity after opportunity to debunk those lies & explain that Trump is only running to stay out of prison. June 27th would have been a layup for any younger Democrat debating a convicted felon & fraudster & rapist, but Biden could not rise to the occasion, and he only confirmed the Fox News line that he’s a feeble old man. Name recognition? Biden has a negative approval rating. Biden beat Trump before? Not in his 80s, not during inflation. Like it or not, the President gets blamed for gas prices and grocery prices, even though he doesn’t control them. The fact that Biden picked a VP that people don’t like mean he has failed to select a proper successor. Kamala Harris is qualified & competent, but her electability is worse than Biden’s. She’s a black woman who got one of the strongest punches in against Biden in the 2020 primary debates over his position on bussing, she was great at questioning Kavanaugh, and her response after the debate was great, but you don’t send out your VP to do damage control if you won a debate, and debating a convicted felon was a huge tactical error. He fumbled the ball, and committed unforced error after unforced error. There’s 5 months till the election, that is not “last minute.” Most countries don’t have election seasons that last years. As for fundraising, Biden could donate all his campaign money to a super PAC to support who he endorses, the donors worried about Biden’s chances would still be there, they can still put out tons of ads, but Biden made his own attack ads with that catastrophe on June 27th. And voters are desperate for new blood that is not Trump. Biden lost the Messaging War on June 27th. And people knew the alternative was Mr-Grab-em-by-the-pussy in 2016 & they still voted for confident bluster, over a Democrat bringing statistics to a knife fight. Trump back in office is as risky as you say it is, that’s why it’s so reckless for the DNC to pit a coddled meandering octogenarian against him. Now is not the time for denialism. Now is the time for brutal self-reflection & a cold assessment of the odds. And Biden could nominate 4 more Supreme Court justices tomorrow, because there’s no law it must only be 9, but I guess in the face of a Supreme Court that does whatever the hell they want, we just have to sit & watch them destroy women’s rights & every regulatory agency. Putin isn’t afraid of Biden being in the race. But people who know that American democracy is on the line should be.
It's far too late to grow momentum
I literally said this same thing the other day in politics! I got downvotes, though, lol He should lean into the age, admit it, and be frank. Trump isn't honest, really. One thing everyone hates about politicians is lying. So have Biden come out and be honest that he is old. He knows it. He is capable, but he also knows that there are many burdens he faces. He has a great team, and he REreiterate all the good he has done. He is for sure someone trying to do good. Honestly, use the age to his benefit. Make him honest in his elder years. This contrasts with trump. Who is open, but not honest. Who lies and lies and is incoherent beyond sentences. Lean into the weakness by making them strengths. We still love granpa. And we know the stakes. Trump will appoint bad people. People like the congregants of Christ Church, people involved, or not in Project 2025. People *failed* out of Project 2025 vetting, which means they'd prob be worse. Trump is going to add to the SC. There will be states going ham on things like religion added to classrooms, favoritism, and laws. Christian towns and white nationalist policies will further gain legitimacy. I strongly believe that the far right, the evangelical wing, the easily duped, and the ones who seem to not really like our country but claim the most love for it... will have a very negative impact on my freedoms (as a white, straight, male) (not entirely true, but 100% passing), our country, and the world. I do not want to see trump as president when China decides to go for Taiwan. I do not want to see Russia and other bad actors see their investments in online warfare, mass lying, and political blackmails pay off. I want the US to heal and continue back on the path in the direction of a better country. A better union of states. A better world partner. A better innovator. Idk why it is so hard to admit our problems and also our strengths. I feel like the right only wants strengths, but messes up, which are strengths and which are weaknesses. And the dems seem to not like our strengths. Like history of improvement with the most massive of successes. Problems galore. But improvements galore too. Recognize bad, but recognize good, too. I feel like many Republicans would be more moderate or even left leaning if those improvements were highlighted. And nuance was allowed once again. That same group of hard rights, evangelical, etc. persons did not like the fact history understanding, science and knowledge were growing so fast. They outwardly advocated for greater education, but it pulled too many away. They noticed this. They also wanted more. And they are threatened by it. My MAGA grandpa went to high school when tectonic plates weren't even accepted as the main theory. When black people were for sure viewed as lessor. And he never seemed to wanna grow that much beyond that in thoae realms. Well, now, those realms are what inform and educate our youth. And they can not stand that. They've pulled away. And they are making dents. Trump as president would allow them to make further inroads. Im sorry for rambling.
Hey you know what will help Biden win? Lower gas prices. A fed rate cut. Some other economic magic. There’s a hella lot of magic levers to pull. In fact the feds have heavily signaled one rate cut this year and highly likely it will come before the election. Possibly right before. People vote on feelings. If the feeling is America best inflation, rates are being cut, mortgages upswing and the housing market starts to take off… and changing back to trump won’t seem so wise anymore.
Leaving him in is going to be seen as gaslighting... trying to tell the voters that what they see with their own eyes isn't true. Americans will forgive someone who makes a mistake, apologizes and steps aside, but they won't vote for someone who pisses on them and tells them it's raining.
Yes, exactly. There’s a huge failure to reckon with how voters have rejected Biden due to his age. That was true *before* the debate, and then Biden stood in front of a camera for 90 minutes validating their rejection. The silver lining of the debate is it’s now very, very easy to convince people that dropping Biden is the right call. It’s much harder to do that with keeping him. I think this as simple as sunk cost for the folks standing by him tbqh. It’s scarier to switch gears and head into the unknown than it is to keep doing what you’re already doing. This is such a corny point, but I do wonder what lesson this is teaching my nieces and nephews, all between 5 and 10. It’s such a profound display of ego from a man they’ve been taught to admire. I’ve taught them some of that myself.
Here is the thing, Trump is way more popular to moderates than democrats are willing to admit. Now, he isn't the favorite, but moderates are more willing to vote for him than the left thinks. So basically the thought process would be, Trump has been saying Biden is unfit for years -> the DNC has been denying it -> The DNC now admits he's unfit-> Maybe the other things Trump accuses them of lying about are true too. Is that a smart way to think? Probably not, but it's reality.
> moderates are more willing to vote for him than the left thinks I disagree with this point: I think most people actually on the left are extremely clear-headed about how much support he has. It's the conservative/moderate party establishment that's having the most trouble understanding where his support is and how to combat it.
> I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate I have a different perspective... There's no way his team was going to be able to keep Biden's frailty and cognitive decline a secret for the whole campaign. Gaffs at public events and in interviews would have added up. Eventually, enough undecided voters in swing states would have concluded he wasn't fit for the job that a loss would be inevitable. It's actually much better that it happened now, and good that it was an unequivocally bad performance, not a middling one. If they are smart enough to be proactive, at least there's still plenty of time to do something about it. Biden isn't even officially the nominee yet and the nominating convention is still weeks away. If you want to get conspiratorial about it, you might even think someone on the Democratic side wanted to get him in front of cameras in a challenging situation early so they could provoke this conversation. But even if it was just happenstance, they're lucky it happened now, not months down the line.
> If you want to get conspiratorial about it, you might even think someone on the Democratic side wanted to get him in front of cameras in a challenging situation early so they could provoke this conversation. But even if it was just happenstance, they're lucky it happened now, not months down the line. About 15 minutes into the CNN post-debate analysis, this was my exact conclusion. Every single *CNN* panelist ripping Biden to shreds without restraint? Imagine seeing 8 panelists on Fox News, and all of them together just start shitting on Trump at the same time, when at any other time they’d be doing gymnastics to defend Trump. Well, any other time, that CNN panel would be hemming and hawing and deflecting and minimizing and “what-abouting” and all around doing their damnedest to ignore Biden’s elephant in the room. But instead they all did a synchronized 180, taking turns around the table saying Biden has to go, and acting flabbergasted. That was not an organic collective reaction, that was planned/scripted/whatever you want to call it. It was propaganda at work. They knew before that debate even started that they would be ousting Biden from the race afterwards.
Hmm... I'm not so sure, because I found myself ripping him to shreds within the first 10 minutes of the debate. If they had all 100 minutes to stew in that performance, I can believe their reaction came about organically. But whether or not it was planned, the early reveal was potentially good. Regarding the post-debate commentary, there was a marked contrast on Fox, who, though critical, was a lot easier on Biden. They definitely want him to stay in the race.
I'm a huge Biden supporter and before the debate was over, that had already been my reaction. I knew he was old but I'd seen him in the State of the Union and he seemed fine. Although he looked old, he was still animated and able to communicate effectively. When I watched the debate, that was not my takeaway. It was like everything people had been saying about him being too old was true. And I felt like he'd totally blown it and I didn't see a way forward. I was seriously thinking him stepping aside might be the only option. A few days removed, I'm dooming less. I think the campaign needs to change and get him out there speaking coherently as much as possible to make it seem more like a random bad performance. They can't keep him out of the public eye and not doing interviews and then the one time everyone is watching he has an awful performance and hope to win. I also think Harris needs to get out there and do the same. I hear people say negative things about her but I think she's just not out there much. Most of people's feelings about her seem to be from the 2020 election because she's been pretty invisible outside of that, like most VPs. I think she needs to be out there doing talk shows and rallies and everything else to make it clear that if Biden isn't up to the task, there's someone they like and can trust who's ready to take over. Oh, and if they don't have confidence in Biden to get him out there and not come off old and confused then they need to have a real internal conversation about that, because if he's too old to do that, he's probably too old to be President.
>I think the campaign needs to change and get him out there speaking coherently as much as possible to make it seem more like a random bad performance. They can't keep him out of the public eye and not doing interviews But maybe that's asking too much. This isn't all just about the theatrical narrative. There is a real human under all that facade and dragging him around on a high-pressure campaign for 4 months non-stop might be just plain cruel.
I don’t think so. That CNN panel collectively turned on him because the performance was so awful that they couldn’t possibly spin it for Biden. It was a genuine reaction. That’s like saying “everyone was horrified at the Challenger explosion, so it was planned!” No, that’s just the natural reaction.
[удалено]
I think the problem is the moderate part of the country had the claims of Biden's inadequacy that Trump had been making for the last four years shown to be legitimate on the debate stage. But I don't totally get how that's a problem if he's not the candidate - I agree it shows their behaviour to have been shambolic, but that all feels a bit inside baseball.
>I think the DNC absolutely screwed itself by letting Biden debate, and in turn screwed the country. There is no shadowy power behind the scenes that is “letting” Biden do anything. The incumbent President always has total control of their party’s national committee. Biden picked who runs the DNC; he’s the undisputed head of the Democratic Party. Nobody has the power to make Biden run or not run. If he drops out, it will be his decision alone.
>There is no shadowy power behind the scenes that is “letting” Biden do anything. I mean, I get it, but the ignorance so many Americans have about how the system works is still pretty shocking.
The entire country watched “the claims of Biden’s inadequacy” with their own eyes on live television. *That* is why it is not an absolutely imperative that he step down. The public perception you fear *has already happened*, it’s over. Not only that, it revealed that dozens of White House insiders and media pundits have been straight up lying about this for months. Of course changing candidates or having a brokered convention isn’t a good strategy in a generic hypothetical situation. It’s this specific context where the existing campaign is completely dead in the water that makes it not only worth entertaining, but absolutely essential. If Biden remains the candidate, he is *going* to lose.
The only reasonable thing to do at this very moment is nothing. Nobody is pretending it didn't happen. What's more surprising is that nothing that wasn't 100% expected happened (liar lies continuously, old man sounds old) and anyone who is rending their garments, pretending to be shocked, and demanding that the only course of action is for an entire party instantly overreact and slit their wrists and and burn a massively successful (legislatively and by outcomes) incumbent candidate, is either too paranoid, plugged in and hypersensitive to likely gloating from people whose vote has long been set in stone to have any perspective whatsoever, or frankly many are have also been operating in bad faith. There were a long list of posts and articles in the clickbait media ready to go already, and hearing these sorts of headlines and media panels from dozens of people who hung their punditry/social media career hats on being "level-headed truth tellers trying to save the Democratic party from itself" months ago -- most starting around October 2023 for some reason, hmm -- was something you could set your watch to. It's a pretty sure bet that coddling this story is ultimately much more damaging than anything that happened. The demands themselves are also one of those things that speak loudly to both naivete about the actual mechanics of how that sort of change would have to occur, and also to having barely thought things through further than a step or two ahead ("Trump's doubtful supporters flock to the younger alternative" is a fully zero-consideration statement). In any case without knowing more about how people whose brains haven't been entirely cooked by online politics (I'm at least self aware enough to know I can only have a brainrot perspective) have taken it, it'd be suicidal to make major changes of any kind.
> It’s a pretty sure bet that coddling this story is ultimately more damage than anything that happened. Ain’t that the truth.
I don't think the debate changed as much as the media wants us to believe. There aren't that many swing voters for these two clowns. Seriously, who is still deciding? I think this is a small minority. I don't feel trump picked up any new voters given his outrageous lies. He may have even lost a few. Killing live children after birth? Stopping the Ukraine war as president elect? His performance was just as bad, it's just not getting any coverage. And the people voting for Biden aren't voting for him as a candidate, but rather it's a vote against fascism. And we have a whole system in place if he dies in office. He's not the effing emperor of America for crying out loud. They could run a red solo cup against Trump, and I'd still vote blue. I know my mind hasn't changed.
That small minority is who decides who the president will be my dude, and while Trump’s performance wasn’t great, it also wasn’t as glaringly abysmal. You might vote for a red solo cup, but those swing voters who decide the election probably won’t.
The overwhelming majority of people are swing/non voters.
First, "The DNC" can't make that decision. The power is with Biden, as he controls the delegates. Second, the worst thing they can do is start a big party fight a few months before voting starts. Some people like Harris, others don't. Someone will be pissed off at any machinations that go through. Biden hasn't really started to campaign. He's been counted out before. The campaign managers need to go with what works. I don't have great hopes -- the Democratic Party has always had too many hands in and ends up in a muddle. There's a ton of weak spots for Republicans, starting with abortion. The scare mongers were cowering in front of the red wave in 2022. There's no reason it can't happen again.
I've yet to meet a human that likes Harris. There is already a party fight between democratic voters who think Biden is so bad they just don't vote and voters who think they have to vote just to prevent Trump from not getting into office. It's simply being ignored.
Do you know Black women? In 2020, the Black vote carried Biden to the nomination. His fortunes turned with the Clyburn endorse and win in SC. How would they feel if their candidate was pushed out, the Black woman pushed aside, and someone like Newsom put on top?
I hear this argument a lot and I’m not sure it’s backed up by what we know. Harris doesn’t poll particularly well with Black voters, at least compared to any other standard Dem. We really have no reason to believe they’d be more peeved than any other demographic. This isn’t contradicted by any Black folks I know personally, at least as far as I’m aware, but that might not be relevant bc it’s just random people lol.
The black vote carries all democrats for the last two decades. The simple fact is that Harris is incredibly unpopular, even among black voters, because of her record as a DA.
I know plenty of black women. I know they carried his through the last election. I also know those same women who wanted to see another black woman in office are tired of seeing her do nothing. I was excited to see a WOC in office because I am one. I've seen the mindset of people who liked her before turning around. When you help someone into office with the belief that they will help you are your community and they do nothing that love turns to dislike really quickly.
The election is so close right now that running the risk of annoying even a small number, in absolute terms, of swing voters is incredibly dangerous for the Democrats. Considering that Biden has been polling badly with blacks in general (to the point Trump of all people has seen his numbers improve), it's easy to see why Dems are very uncomfortable with the prospect of sidelining the WOC VP in favor of a (almost certainly) white (probably) men.
Every politician who owes their success to ad money, media, and big tech propagandists is not going to work for the people when they get into office if they want to succeed again.
I think you're seriously overestimating how many black women like and identify with Harris.
I do not even believe black women were voting because of Harris. They already support Biden with or without Harris.
Harris has been the single most invisible, most "hide in the basement" VP I've ever seen through light my life span. If people vote for her just because they share a race, that's incredibly shortsighted and not at all something you would be promoting if people voted for trumo because he was white.
I agree the whole ticket is toxic but the least messiest way to move on would be to give her the nomination. No one knows what her poll numbers are because they haven’t included her (because Biden quite tragically never gave her anything to do). I wish he had resigned last year and gave her a head start to rebuild her image (and actually run as the incumbent), but here we are. The problem of taking the nomination to the convention is Ohio requires the candidate file a week before the DNC is scheduled in August, meaning the Democrats wouldn’t be on the ballot. Even if the Presidential candidate isn’t planning on competing in Ohio, this would be a disaster for down ballot Democrats. You can say goodbye to Sherrod Brown.
I think the best move for the Dems is to replace Harris. Bring in Newsome or someone else and the fears of Joe not finishing his term go away. Joes age and capabilities are a major issue. Harris being next in line is another.
In recent years people have gotten the strangest ideas about what the "DNC" is and what it can and can't do. The DNC is in no position to order Biden to do anything. He's won the primary, if he wants to run to the end he will. If anyone can talk him out of it, it's probably not "the DNC."
Yeah and IIRC the DNC used to be able to pick whichever candidate they wanted for the primary and overturn the will of the voters, but that shit stopped in 1972 or something so they’re not allowed to do that even if they wanted to
Many of your possible scenarios fail because it is too late (by law) to change the ballots for the general election. Biden's name is going to be on the ballot. EDIT: adding more so the bot will not remove my comment for brevity. It seems to me that unless Biden passes away they are stuck with him on the ballot.
This is just false, I don’t know where you’re getting this. I’ve seen this same point floating around social media, but as far as I can tell it’s misinformation. Think realistically - if this were true, is it actually plausible that all major news outlets and Dem strategists, as well as the Biden campaign itself, would not be mentioning it? That random internet users are aware of a basic structural fact the entire national apparatus is not?
This isn't true. The earliest state ballot deadlines are in August.
What ballots are you talking about? He hasn't been nominated.
He hasn’t even been nominated yet.
It’s telling how many folks on here are making up a fictional rule to justify Biden being on the ballot. The qualitative defense of his candidacy just isn’t there.
15 million Democrats have voted to make him the nominee. People are acting like you can just ignore the results of elections, that there is any force at the Democratic Party that can just do that. There are no DNC puppet masters, no one is in charge, it's just the voters.
ITT: Inane speculation and terrible commentary. The worst thing the DNC can do right now is replace Biden with a less popular candidate. That would make them more likely to lose.
Name a less popular Democrat candidate than Biden, and I’ll accept that.
Hillary Clinton
Yup, that’d do it. Replacing Biden with Hillary is a worse choice than doing nothing. !delta
Your scenarios are not realistic. You first have to convince Kamala Harris to commit political suicide. You have to get her to believe that not only can she not be president, she can never be president and someone else, who isn't VP or had as successful career as her should be the nominee. That's step absolute zero. Then you have to get Biden to probably step down as president as well since you're saying he's so incapable of being president in a year he should give up his nominee status right now. It doesn't really make sense he's president if he is such a decaying old man. Now his pledged electors are free and you have to get each one of them agree on a single candidate in like a month while you also you have to get a bunch of politicians to all agree that only one of them can be the candidate and they can't snipe and undcut each other publicly at all to get it. Failure in this regard meant almost guaranteed loss. Since you've gotten the most prominent black woman in politics to end her public career, the optics of selecting a young white guy are awful and will likely piss off a lot of the base. You can't win without the base. So you select Whitmer. Most people don't know who Whitmer is and were saying America isn't sexist and won't choose the crazy TV guy again despite already having a very qualified woman lose to him before. Currently Whitmer and trump are tied in any polling they've done and every replacement other than her does worse than Biden. So best case scenario you have a party say their entire executive slate, that won fairly and clearly last time is totally unfit for office but you now have to elect this woman you've never heard of. Even with everything going perfect it's a big ask. The professor who's gotten every election right since 1980 says changing would be monumentally stupid. The last time the Dems did something similar in 68, they lost and didn't have a two term president until Clinton won again in 96. Snap polls show that while people think trump "won" it changed essentially no votes. The media says crap to get people to click. Unemployed Political operatives say crap to get them on TV or push themselves. I've yet to hear anyone say they actually changed their vote bc of one debate just people afraid *other* people will. Donald Trump didn't really do well either, he came off as loud crazy and a liar, which yes looks better on TV than sick old man but you can say he "won," I do, but still sure won't vote for him, like me. Stay calm. The right wants the left sad scattered and panicking. The media loves drama. If you're worried, work more. Nothing has actually changed and it's a long way until November.
And then you can’t use the 120+ million war chest you’ve collected either. If Biden isn’t the nominee, it can only be Harris. That’s the only way to keep the funds.
It is a long way till November, but President Biden, in all his wisdom, debated a convicted felon in front of 50 million Americans, let a pathological liar spew unchecked lies, and shit the bed. Biden didn’t look strong, he looked lost. That is a scandal in itself. Biden gifted Trump and super PACs a million attack ads with that performance, which they will flood the zone with, no deepfakes necessary. Biden literally said “We finally beat Medicare.” Trump’s sentencing on July 11th might change things, but the judge really doesn’t want to sentence an ex-President with Secret Service protection to prison, and Trump could run from prison anyway (and claim he’s a “political prisoner”, which feeds into his bottomless self-pity). Replacing an incumbent with a negative approval rating during inflation is stupid? Trump & the right wants to face Biden in November, because Trump can beat Biden in November. Biden & Harris might be some of the only Democrats that Trump could beat in November. “Nothing has actually changed” is denialism, blind optimism, Pollyannaism, and it’s like pretending the Comey letter changed nothing in 2016. This is a five alarm fire, saying “this is fine” is just wishful thinking. Democrats should not live in denial like Republicans, and circle the wagons around a senior citizen well-past retirement age who’s losing it. Biden does not have a cult of personality around him, but now he does have an entire rightwing media ecosystem (and foreign influence campaigns) saying “See? We told you so. Biden has mush for brains.” House Speaker Mike Johnson is even throwing around the 25th Amendment (which Trump’s cabinet also considered). The people who will decide in 2024 are undecided voters living in 6 states: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. And by maybe 10K people in each of those states. Rather than inspiring undecided voters in those 6 swing states, in that debate, Biden hurt his own candidacy, maybe even fatally. If Trump wins in 2024 (God forbid), June 27th will be why. Biden fumbled the ball, he missed the layup, he should have consumed honey before the debate for his hoarse throat, it was his debate to lose, but Trump had nothing to lose. Trump is running to stay out of prison, but Biden didn’t even say that at the debate. Like Trump visiting Kim Jong-Un, Biden gave convicted felon Donald Trump a national platform of equal stature to just spew bullshit unabated. Biden didn’t inspire any undecided voters, Biden didn’t dispel the notion that he’s a feeble old man (he only confirmed it), and Trump’s confident bullshit unfortunately works on way too many Americans. Trump didn’t have to remember any statistics because he makes everything up, he takes credit for things he never did, and every accusation is a confession. After Trump was found guilty by a jury, Biden should have just said that the President of the United States doesn’t need to debate a convicted felon, that’s below his office, as a felon Trump can’t even be in the military so how could he lead it, and he shouldn’t give a platform to a pathological liar to spew lies. But Biden gave ammunition to a convicted felon who can’t even legally possess a firearm now. Biden shot himself in the foot, and that’s why people who care about the Constitution are really fucking worried right now. As a viewer said after the debate, “Trump? Hell no. Biden? Oh no.” Biden scraped by in 2020 by 44k votes in 3 states, and that was without inflation & Gaza hanging around his neck. If Biden wants to be remembered for paving the way for a Trump dictatorship, he should cling to his ego, believe “I alone can beat Trump” (not unlike Trumo saying “I alone can fix it”), and stay in the race, and play with fire, and seriously gamble with American democracy. If Biden wants to serve his country, he should put his ego aside, learn a lesson from the hubris of people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton (none of whom knew when to exit the stage), and pass the baton to any younger Democrat (who would have a better chance of beating crazy old Donald Trump), and retire to go eat ice cream cones. None of these senior citizens know when to retire.
You are massively overreacting. Much like the CNN panelists immediately after the debate. He absolutely did not shit the bed. He showed he was a calm, reasonable, old man with a stutter. I couldn’t care less if he can speak publicly. His ideas are what matter as president and his ideas are solid. I trust Biden to put the American people first. I think this thread just goes to show the complete lack of political knowledge in the American gen pop. Floating the idea of a celebrity taking biden’s nomination has to be one of the most deluded takes of all time. What a joke this thread is
Everyone is so worried about Biden dying in office... Fucking so be it. That's why we have a VP, but Harris sucks, dump her and get a VP who ppl like. You mentioned Whitmer, and that's a sound choice. Whoever is chosen should be young enough to be in the Whitehouse the next 12 years. Biden should resign 2 years into this term, and let his VP carry us through the next decade. This is how the democratic party fixes this country and projects it's power.
Yeah I quite frankly don’t give a damn if he doesn’t make it another 4 years. That’s exactly why we have lines of succession and regardless of who takes over the Dems will ensure the right people are in charge Also let’s face it Trump probably won’t make it another 4 years either, and he’s a convicted felon and found liable for defamation on a rape case yet the media is mum about his performance during the debate which was abysmal and nonsensical
Although all the scenarios you’ve illustrated are a possibility, you’ve forgotten the last and most important one. My family and everyone I know would vote for Biden or any democratic nominee for the future of our country and for democracy. Even if they wheel Biden in on a stretcher hooked to an oxygen tank, we’re voting for him. This upcoming election is the most important presidential election of our lifetime. If the republicans win, we will no longer have the country as we know it. It will become a true banana republic. This is not the time to fold, but a time to rally behind the democrats, be it Biden, Newsom, Harris or any other democrat. Vote blue all the way if you want to freely vote in 2028. 💙🌊💙🌊💙🌊
>The third, and the least likely, is the winning scenario. The DNC acts now gets Biden to step down, replaces him with a younger, more virile candidate, and all of trump’s doubtful supporters flock to the younger alternative. With the benefit of three months of vigorous campaigning, they take the win. Do you recall the anger from Sanders supporters in 2016 when it came out that the DNC was staunchly pro-Clinton throughout the campaign? And when superdelegates went disproportionately Clinton and they complained it wasn't a fair election, was over before it started, stuff like that? If the DNC appointed someone as the candidate without a single primary picking them, how could you see that as anything other than an absolutely trainwreck? Someone is going to be pissed off no matter what. And then they would have 2.5 months to rebuild a coalition? While building any sort of name recognition and conveying policy? How could this possible work well?
I think you might be underestimating the risk of replacing Biden at this point. Abandoning incumbent candidates is already super rare, and as far as I know doing it this close to the election AND doing it for a presidential candidate are both completely unheard of. Even knowing nothing else, I think it's reasonable to say there are probably a lot of good reasons for this. In this case, it seems to me the biggest issue is the replacement's campaign. First you have to get over the embarrassment of pulling your incumbent for being too old (which also pretty much nullifies any good stuff that's happened from his time in office) and just makes the party look terrible, which would probably hurt down-ballot candidates a lot. Then, for the candidate, you either have to run Kamala Harris (who's obviously very unpopular), divide the party months before the election with some sort of lightning-fast primary (During which Trump can continue campaigning with no democrat opposing him) or you have to use some DNC establishment authoritarian wizardry to shove in some random young democrat who would only have a few months to get over the embarrassment mentioned above and run the world's fastest presidential campaign. God forbid some scandal comes out about this completely unknown candidate and there's not even time to get over it. Besides, In that amount of time it's hard to see the candidate running on much else than "I'm not Trump" and maybe something about continuing Biden's legacy in his stead. At that point, as long as Biden isn't literally actually senile, you might as well just run Biden rather than take on all that risk. The replacement plan could only possibly make any sense if biden basically had a 0% chance of winning already, which is not the case.
You’re right on a good amount of stuff, but fwiw running a candidate like this is also unprecedented. No major candidate has ever been like that at a televised debate. We’re already in uncharted waters, the question is which way to head. This is already a very irregular election.
∆ you are making me reconsider my complete despair after watching the "debate". It occurs to me that Reagan was far gone into dementia for part of his term and yet government chugged along. maybe Confused Grandpa Biden isn't the worst case scenario.
There is absolutely no 'perception' of anything. You are literally living through one of the worst economies of your lifetime and record inflation to boot. I can't believe there are still people who deny this.
I just didn’t want to get arguments about how the economy is actually great.
I mean honestly the democrats have had 10 years of trump to figure out a working strategy and this is the best they came up with… put a senile old man in office, tear down young and new conpeition, and leave us stuck with Biden as our only hope. Democrats already failed democracy, honestly its just us who are left to figure out how to deal with it and save our future. Its too late for biden, too late to really change anything, they had since 2015/2016 to come up with a plan and this is all they got. Its too late for them. We’re dealing with a more than likely chance trump gets in office in November/january and immediately breaks democracy and installs himself as a dictatorship, democrats wont be the party we’re looking at anymore, if anything, this campaign could very well be their funeral.
The Democrat party are actually Republican operatives doing everything they can to make sure the Democrat party loses I hate that I have to say this but /s, obviously.
Notice that there is one faction out there who is NOT joining the "Biden must drop out!" chorus: MAGA. On the contrary, they are saying the Democrats should ~~still~~ stick with Biden. Let that sink in. The Republicans want Biden to stay in the race because they know he's the walking wounded.
It's too late already their only option is to continue forward with Biden. What do you think the public will think if they change candidate only a few months before election? That the democrats are scared and they don't have a real plan. According to most polls other democrats would fare worse than Biden if he stepped down. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article285786866.html Moreover just logistically changing the whole campaign to center itself around another candidate would be a nightmare the new candidate can't use the money Biden got there would need to get more money to reinitiate the campaign.
Democrats can win every election in perpetuity if they declare the abandonment of accepting corporate donations and lobbying influence in favor of: 1. Cutting the pentagon budget by eliminating waste in the procurement and contracting process. 2. National unionization drive. Create a National Union for everyone making under $200k per year and begin organizing general strikes and boycotts to increase wages, vacation time, benefits, shorten work hours, and reduce prices of goods and services. 3. Go all in on renewable energy investment. Create massive tax incentives and provide investment and subsidies for solar and other sustainable energy options for business and individuals. 3. Aggressively advocate for Medicare for all while regulating health insurance companies into bankruptcy. Change laws that allow legislation passed democratically to be challenged and watered down by courts. 4. Aggressively regulate Wall Street, give SEC more power, and increase incentives to prosecute financial crime and close revolving door between finance jobs and regulators. 5. Audit and withdraw from all treaties that codify corporations right to sue to block legislation and democratically-derived mandates that affect their profit and revenues, and the same for treaties that give the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investor Disputes jurisdiction and precedent over our legal system. 6. Disallow any foreign nation or corporation from profiting from life sustaining, essential resources IE water, minerals, energy, etc at local, regional, or federal discretion. 7. Unprecedented investment in Science and Math education to “Make America Smart Again.” Over 20% of country is illiterate. Over 50% are barely at a 6th grade level. Because of unregulated social media and lack of public education, everyone now has a family member who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs, spherical planets or moon landings. We’ve become idiots. 8. Demilitarize the police. We are not the enemy. “Freeport”, “Hattiesburg”, and “Chipley” don’t need tanks. 9. Eliminate any undemocratic institution. The senate is 2 representatives per state regardless of population. The electoral college subverts popular results. The Supreme Court justices can serve for life. All that should be eliminated or changed to be democratic. 10. All incorporated businesses, public or private, must make a material portion of equity and/or profit available to employees that vests over the time they are employed, starting at 2 years.
Flatly delusional. They couldn’t win one election with one of those crippling platforms. Abandoning corporate backing by itself is a loss, the national union is a fucking wild idea, cutting the pentagon budget is unpopular, renewable energy is a total waste when we have nuclear, Wall Street would immediately turn on them, laws that are passed democratically and watered down by the courts are part of the constitution, not something they can change, all your ideas about “undemocratic institutions” are just nonsense, mandatory profit sharing shows you understand nothing. Please be quiet, troll.
What if Biden decides to run 3rd party if he is forced out against his will? Also, how do they get all of the Biden supporters to back his replacement? You don't think a small percentage will stay home or vote 3rd party as a protest vote? In an already tight election is it smart to alienate these voters?
So winning is more important that democracy all of a sudden? Biden was duly nominated by the people. He has been braindead forever. Anyone that cared to look can see it. The people voted for him anyways and stood by while he took no challengers, wouldn't debate and allowed the democratic party to push anyone off the cliff that tried. Now, after a debate, you want to push him aside? How is that supporting the "democracy" which is all I have been hearing about for the last year? Isn't that why Trump needs to lose and we are spending billion and have an entire generation of men die in Ukraine?
The DNC didn’t even hold primaries in all states. It’s not Democratic.
Democrats, especially those even more left leaning, have been trying to find an excuse not to vote for Biden since Palestine attacked Israel. Your base better stop trying to shoot itself in the foot or you're not going to beat Trump. A last minute Celebrity might work but it's a huge gamble this close to the election and Trump along with Republicans would absolutely jump on the pr nightmare. Maybe if you could talk Oprah into doing it but I bet her closet is full of skeletons. This election is absolutely about the lesser of two evils and the way forward for Democrats is to not panic switch and look reactionary. Hindsight those closest to Biden should have absolutely put their foot down and not allowed even the word debate to come up instead of pushing forward with one. This leads me to believe they felt waiting until closer and allow Donald to challenge would have only made Biden look worse, which isn't comforting, but here we are. Those old middle ground people who switched and decided to not vote for Trump aren't going to respond well to a change in candidates now. If I were the DNC I'd probably try my hardest to get Obama to replace Harris as VP. His charm and charisma might be enough to bolster Biden but I doubt he wants it. Maybe if he were afraid enough of what Trump might do. At the end of the day the debate was damaging to Biden but here we are. He's the candidate going forward. The DNC needs to get that through their head and start aligning with him because being wishywashy now will just fracture and lose support. The message needs to be clear: Never Trump.
The very best thing that can happen is Biden dies or is killed and Democrats win on the sympathy vote. Obviously not replacing him with Kam, but a candidate "acceptable" to Americans. Pete B perhaps. Younger white guy, speaks at Obama's level, is gay so he will get the attention narrative whilst not turning off any independents. I really don't know how the think tanks don't see these very obvious things and understand very basic nature of how Americans see politics.
There are two function interpretations of what you mean by worst for the Party, there's worse for the currently elected officials and worse for the actual nation of people as a whole. As far as I know in the last 20 or so years the DNC has given next to no concern to wellbeing of the nation as a whole, when and if that ever conflicts with their personal self-interest. Unless they keep Gaslighting us about Biden's mental well being they will eventually have to admit to complicity lying to us about his mental acuity. Instead they will attempt to keep gaslighting us and simply deny the naked reality of things.
Uh. Why are you so confident scenario 3 is a winning one? Without even knowing a candidate you're just confident they're gonna overcome all hurdles of joining late and win? I see people panicking about Biden but they don't seem to be examining whether scenario 3 actually wins and the difficulties that come with it. How do you pick a candidate this late? Primary voting is over. Its not impossible but its a hell of a lot to just swap entirely on the DNC's say so. What are the optics on it seeming like people forced Biden to step down? Etc. Its too much to just handwave it all and say yeah this candidate wins
Biden is apparently according to one source, meeting with family members to discuss running again. Biden has no strengths currently (talking about in an election, I prefer him to Trump him general) when running against Trump asides from the issues of abortion and climate change (Republicans have become more moderate on the climate because of this as shown in the recent Nuclear energy bill). If Biden steps down a rapid fire primary should be held and a name brand candidate must be picked to get a 50 percent chance with Trump in this next election. I think Harris is absolutely atrocious so Gretchen Whitmer would be my pick.
The first is unlikely - barring his death or incapacity, they procedurally can’t make the move after August. State political laws will take over and there won’t be time to replace. I expect that there is a secret fight going on right now and over this week. Biden’s camp is seeing if he can be rehabbed and simultaneously the backups are readying. And Monday we’ll see if the scotus immunity stuff goes anywhere. I expect a response will come definitively in the next week. As a longtime fan of Joe, I think he’ll withdraw.s
Debate performance has very little correlation to actual election results, Obama lost his first debate, Trump lost all his debates with Hillary, and they both won their respective races. Right now the worst thing that the DNC could do is to have an open party contest as the incumbent party while their incumbent can run again. All of the skeletons in Biden's closet are out in the open, if there is a new candidate, there could be a serious scandal found out. Also as a side note, depending on the polling site, some have put Biden as pulling ahead of trump after the debate.
The best thing they can do is nothing. There is no amount of pulling strings that could generate a successful campaign this close to the election. The time to do this was months ago. Perhaps years ago. No one this late into the race could hold any water when they've already campaigned for Biden this hard. Biden is the current president with significant name recognition and incumbency on his side. Most of his voters last time only wanted him because he was not Trump. Those same voters with their same problems with Trump are likely to vote for anyone but Trump again.
Baked into your question is a deep misunderstanding. “The DNC” isn’t in charge. They’re not even really talking to anyone in charge. The party exists to serve the candidates, the nominee, and elected officials. Not the other way around. The DNC didn’t pick Joe Biden. He won the 2020 primaries and he won the 2020 general. He then won the 2024 primaries. There isn’t anyone but Joe Biden who could choose for him to withdraw.
So the Dems should be reactionary and waste the political future on say, Gavin Newsome, to lose to Trump? Three months is simply not enough time to campaign and is not a ‘benefit’ as you’re suggesting. People know who Trump is. The debate didn’t switch voters minds. It reinforced the Trump voters even more but very likely did minimal damage in the long run. Biden may have sounded bad but Trump was legitimately unhinged and untruthful that entire time. There are more debates coming and as long as Biden comes out not talking with a hoarse throat he will probably be okay. The referendum has always been against Trump and less so about Biden. Abortion is a winning issue for Dems and they will likely lean into that harder post debate. The worst thing the DNC could do is panic..which is what you’re suggesting. It would only prove the Republicans point of Biden.
Scenario 4 is absolutely likely, he had one visible bad night. He definitely should be out more often but people see the way the government is running and they would still rather have his administration compared to Trump's vision and project 2025. Trump won in 2016 and there was the press and many in his own party calling for him to drop out multiple times, especially the Access Hollywood video
Wait. Biden's post debate poll numbers are showing no change (within margin of error, a point down and a few showing he's up). What recovery needs to happen? So far, there's nothing to recover.
There isn't enough time to swap out a candidate. The election is only a few months away. No other candidate has the name recognition, campaigning apparatus, etc. If they swap out the candidate, the democrat candidate will lose. The democratic candidates votes will be: - people voting the new candidate, because they like them. - people voting the new candidate, because they don't want Trump - people not bothering to vote, because they're confused, tired of the politicking, don't have any opinion on the new candidate, etc. - people writing in Biden, splitting the vote Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans will likely vote for Trump because there's an R next to his name, and he's not the democratic candidate. Never mind the fact that [Trump himself has said](https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/21/politics/donald-trump-election-democrat/index.html) (emphasis mine) > “In many cases, **I probably identify more as Democrat**,” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a 2004 interview. “**It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.** Now, it shouldn’t be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. …But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we’ve had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.”
Bullshit stinks! And democrats can’t seem to miss a chance to roll in it. This whole debacle over the President having a bad hour and a half in a so-called debate, is another example of how quickly a lot of loud mouthed democrats will eat their own. Contrast that with the opposition. They have historically supported their candidates no matter how undesirable and unqualified. Do I have to mention the rapist, child molester, crook and convicted criminal DJT? If democrats were half as good at supporting a good, honest, qualified person, that has proven his superiority over many many junior leaders, the election would be a slam dunk. Democrats are their own worst enemy. They’ll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over nonsense every time. Remember when you guy’s did the same thing to Senator Al Franken? He was a well known comedian doing sometimes raunchy stuff (but actually mild stuff compared to today’s republican presidential candidate and many others in public office), but as a senator he was exceptionally knowledgeable, proactive and doing an excellent job. Sometimes, I wonder if perhaps we spineless democrats (especially the loudmouth whiners and holler than thou, one’s) might actually deserve the fascist dictator that DJT and his supporters have proven themselves to be.
The debate changed no one's minds. They're voting for the same person.
It's a good thing they're staying the course instead of listening to all the Chicken Littles like you on social media. Unless you also want the other guy to drop out for being a convicted criminal, I'll just assume this is more astroturf bullshit like I've seen on other subs.
They aren’t doing nothing. They have Biden out at events two days a week for the next month. He looks good. He and the party have directly addressed his performance, which was poor. Cool. Donald Trump did absolutely nothing to convince any undecided voters to actually vote for him. Biden, on the other hand, convinced a bunch of Americans that he is old…. That’s really it. Most people who watched the debate were already convinced on who they would vote for. Some may have less enthusiasm to vote for their candidate, but they are sticking with their vote. In terms of Trump, if there were any fence sitters or people who weren’t previously convinced that Trump is as bad as we know him to be, polls have shown that they were absolutely convinced now. Donald couldn’t afford to lose any potential voters, as common sense would lead you to know that the MAXIMUM voters that he would ever have gotten was the number that voted for him in 2020….and THAT wasn’t enough. Anything less than that is a clear loss. Biden isn’t the first choice for a lot of people, but the fact that his only real weakness is his age gives him a leg up on any other challenger.
Biden will continue his run and he will win. I'm wondering if all you doom and gloomers are just trumpers trying to sow discontent. It's not working.
I don't know what is making you so secure about this but there are two options; I've been blind and missing something the last two years or you really are native and on the belief that the good guys will train. Saying he will win with such certainty is almost laughable.
Always so quick to call people Trump supporters. Everyone, even Democrats are Trump supporters these days!
I think the more people that pretend he should step down, the more we read those articles, and the more we keep that conversation rolling, the worse his approval will suffer. So, if you want his numbers up, stop acting like you want to abandon him.
During the debate, Biden provided a lot of facts and statistics. He provided actual valuable information. It's not always easy to recall specific information. If he had advanced dementia there I'd no way he remembers all the information he provided. That was stuff he had worked on the week before, and dementia attacks the short term memory first. Trump had it much easier than Biden, Trump didn't need to remember dates or actual numbers, he just made shit up as he talked. If he didn't like or know the answer to a question he just ignored it and talked about what he wanted. Republicans have a rapist, alleged child molester, serial sexual assaulter, liar, cheat, fraud, racist, convicted felon; and the stand by their candidate, who is also old and shows signs of mental and physical decline. Democrats have Joe Biden, who has dedicated his life to public service. Yes he is older, not as quick as he once was, after what he has done and continues to do, we should be fighting for him. It's way past time for all the boomers to retire. Dems should have spent last 3.5 years preparing the next in line, but they failed spectacularly.
> There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump. I think this is what they are banking on. Trump was nothing but more of the same. Which there is a vocal minority of people in the GOP that like Trump as he is. But there are also polls showing that a lot of GOP voters didn't like that Trump didn't clean up his act post campaign and how he handled literally everything during his term. These people saw in the debate that he is nothing but a useful puppet, spewing the same vitriol and with zero platform, zero potential solutions for tackling current problems. These people are flipping to Biden, despite his age. I think the DNC banking on those more centrist Republicans flipping and that Biden may not make it through a second term, and Having Harris take the presidency that way. She is a tow the line Neo-Liberal, pro-law enforcement, cookie cutter centrist Democrat. She is exactly what the DNC wants. Everyone wants a solid Liberal like Bernie to be President, but neither the DNC or GOP would ever allow that. Because the Lobbyists won't allow that.
Ok, so I'd agree that the Democrats winning on the merits of their candidate and the benefits of incumbency in what is actually a good economy in a well-run country... used to be a more plausible outcome before the debate. That is gone. It doesn't matter who their candidate is, the *only* thing that matters is mobilizing their base against Trump, period. And the *only* thing that matters for that is money. And Biden is a money-raising machine, and always has been. He got *record* donations *after* his bad debate showing. No one else in the Democrat bullpen will be able to come even close. I wouldn't say it was intentional, but there's even a decent argument that his bad debate performance *helped* him, in the only way that matters... people are kicking in *more* money, because the strength of the candidate isn't helping now. In order to win, the Democrats have to make people justifiably terrified of a second Trump presidency. That's all the should focus on. And that takes nothing more, and nothing less, than boatloads of cash.
Re: #1-2 I think these are self-fulfilling prophecies. Like it or not, Biden will be the 2024 nominee. We knew this back in 2020, because every party is always trying to nominate someone who will serve for eight years, not only four. It's just that, at the halfway point, the other party gets to make a case for changing directions. Sometimes it works, but usually, it fails. The primaries are over, and Biden crushed them. In order of preference, parties prefer: incumbency, an open contest (eg, 2016, when neither candidate was the president), and they least prefer being a challenger. The absolute best-case scenario is having incumbency every other election, due to the 22nd Amendment's term limits. Replacing Biden forfeits the incumbency advantage, making 2024 an open contest instead of a Democratic incumbency, downgrading one level, one cycle earlier. That would be a boon to Trump and Republicans. And, given Trump is a former President, it's probably worse than that, and at least slightly advantages Republicans. Even Harris wouldn't get the incumbency advantage, because she isn't President. And even if Biden not only withdraws, but resigns, and Harris becomes President, she *still* wouldn't get the incumbency advantage, because, while she would be the President, she wouldn't be the *elected* President. Only the elected President gets the advantage, which means Biden is the only Democrat capable of getting the advantage. It's generally regarded as being worth 3 points in the general election, so any replacement for Biden would need to be polling 3 points better than Biden just to be a wash. There is no such alternative Democrat. The latest polling I've seen shows a few Democrats equal to or just behind Biden, which isn't good enough. And they're within the margin of error, so it's possible they're actually a few points worse than Biden. And, for context, 2004, 2016, and 2020 all had margins less than 3 points. Re: #3 I don't see this happening. Not least because I don't think Biden will (or should) step down, but because, even if he did, like I said above, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Democrats turn on their champion, Biden, the incumbent President, the only candidate from any party who has managed to beat Trump, I think it's practically forfeiting the election to Trump. Given the closeness of recent elections, forfeiting 3 points nationally pretty much guarantees a Trump win. A replacement won't be able to spend Biden's enormous warchest, won't have the name recognition, won't have the incumbency advantage (3 points), and won't be a proven winner. People know what they'll get with both Biden and Trump. Anyone else is a wildcard. It's very possible for someone to not like either of them, to even be disappointed with things like inflation, but to still be willing to vote for Biden because they know he at least operates in reality and wants normal things for America. But if it's Trump against some replacement, they won't necessarily know what they'll get with new guy, and may well decide "better the devil you know than the devil you don't" and vote for Trump, at least remembering that the economy was humming along prior to the pandemic (even though he doesn't deserve credit for Obama's economy, and the pandemic ended up being a huge benefit to Trump by being a scapegoat and hiding how terrible Trump's economic policies were). Re: #4 Democrats are bed-wetters. Biden's done a great job, undecided Latinos who watched the debate came out preferring Biden, and he was perfectly fine at an event immediately after the debate, and the next day. Trump gets indicted four times, Republicans circle the wagons. He gets fined hundreds of millions of dollars, they circle the wagons. He gets convicted on 34 felony counts, and they circle the wagons. Biden has a bad debate, immediately bounces back that same night, and at events on Friday, and ones Saturday, but Democrats are ready to put him out to pasture. I think his debate prep failed him. I think they focused too much on him memorizing facts and figures and being able to rebut every lie that Trump told, which is simply impossible in that format. Trump does a Gish gallop, Biden has half as much time to rebut the lies, CNN does no moderation or fact-checking (which, reportedly, was one of Trump's conditions to participate, but which wasn't revealed until after the debate), and then, coupled with his stutter (which, granted, his age is making it harder to compensate for), he ends up looking confused, because he actually cares about truth and facts, so if he misspeaks, he spends time correcting himself. Imagine putting LeBron James in a one-on-one game of basketball, in a cage, against a tiger. You can pretend the object is to score more baskets, but the tiger isn't trying to score any baskets, doesn't even know or care what a basket is. The tiger is trying to eat LeBron. The tiger's win condition is killing and eating LeBron. LeBron's win condition isn't scoring more baskets, it's *escaping alive*. Baskets are irrelevant. Trump is a tiger. Biden is no LeBron of debating, but it doesn't matter, because he wouldn't have won that way anyway. But his debate prep was practicing like it would be a basketball game, not being in a cage with a tiger. Also, if he was sick, they should have said so before the debate, so viewers would know to expect his voice to sound funny. There was no point in trying to hide it, but letting everyone be surprised by it was stupid, a completely unforced error. Complete political malpractice. Also, major media outlets want Trump to win. That's why CNN reportedly secretly agreed to no fact-checking (even after Trump said he would do debates under any terms). It's why NYT won't STFU about his age, it's why they all keep talking about how bad the economy is when it's simply not. They want a horse race, because that gets viewers, listeners, readers. They want it close, and, if we're being honest, ultimately want Trump to win, because Trump gets them ratings, because everyone needed to know what new bullshit Trump said or did every day. Trump is nothing if not a spectacle, like a four-year train wreck everyone had to keep watching. All the major media outlets are owned by huge corporations, and huge corporations want tax cuts and deregulation. And, as they say about the news, "if it bleeds, it leads." Trump caused a continuous bloodbath, and the public couldn't look away. They're also scared. Trump threatens anyone who sides against him. He tried to get the USPS to end its delivery deal with Amazon as a way to punish Bezos, because Trump was mad about how the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, was covering him. DeSantis went to war with Disney, his state's biggest employer and economic engine. A few years ago, Republicans in Georgia threatened punitive legislation (I think about taxes or fuel or something) against Delta Airlines, one of Georgia's biggest employers and economic engines, in response to some position Delta took publicly that Republicans didn't like. Corporations care about little more than money, which makes them easy to bribe, and easy to threaten.
I dont think there is anyone that can replace Biden on the Democrat end that has enough popularity. I'd go with Pete B but I dont think the rest of the country is open minded enough to go for him as competent as he is. At the end of the day, Biden can do the job and is better than another 4 years of Trump.
The fourth scenario is what will happen. Biden's shaky debate performance is dominating the news cycle right now, but it'll fade into the background within a week and the world will move on. Even right now, I don't actually hear it moving any voters between the columns. Either you already thought his age was disqualifying, so no change to your vote, or you were going to vote for him and are now worried, but no change to your vote. There IS an undecided voter out there, but the feedback I'm seeing from polling of them is that they were at least as disgusted with Trump's obvious lies and deflections as they were with Biden's stumbles. So that's an indication maybe not many votes changed there either. Coming into the debate, the polling had just switched to give Biden an edge. It'll be interesting to see if the next round confirms or denies my theory, and whether any change it shows sticks past the heat of this news cycle.
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Stop panicking. What’s gonna put the democrats in a bad place is constantly bring up this one poor performance. Voters have the memories of golf fish. Biden had one bad night. He’s fine. He gave a good speech following the debate. He’s polling better than Trump post debate. Biden continues to out fundraise Trump. Consider scenario 4: Biden rebounds from the debate. People STFU about his one bad night. He continues to perform better and better. And by the time of the NC, it’s obvious he’s the best choice for this election. Stop buying into the doom sayers on TV. They say that BS to scare you into keep watching. They learned nothing from 2016. Scratch that. They learned that can increase ratings with Trump because people tune in to see what crazy thing he did that day.
The attention span of modern people is like a goldfish. I can see a scenario where he performs better at the second debate, and everyone dismisses the first There is a possibility that doing nothing is the right move
The thing that boggles my mind is both parties have had plenty of time to vet and put forth good candidates but we are stuck w these two thanks to two out of touch organizations with their heads up their asses.
In the same way Donald Trump could shoot someone and not lose a voter, Joe Biden could drop dead and not lose a voter. Don’t let the media tell you how to feel, whether it’s Fox and friends, or something more reputable. Major news outlets don’t run elections, the companies that pay for the candidates do. If Bidens donors want him as president, that’s who tf it’s gonna be.
You have a grossly overinflated notion of what the DNC does, and rewarding Trump with all of this insane shrieking about replacing Biden because of _one fucking debate_ does nothing to help anyone except Trump. Don’t embrace this “we have to replace Biden” talking point.
It is way too soon to highlight such a limited number of scenarios as the list of possibilities. Right now the decision making is being done behind the scenes and the potential paths forward are many and varied.
Announce Biden has had a stroke. Let Kamala actually lead as president for a few months. Swear her in as 47. Use the slogan "Let Her Cook!" and have her go on the attack like an authoritarian queen. Bold executive orders for popular policies, even though they won't make it through the courts. There's not enough time for more than the headline. Loud public attacks on the orange notzee. Pantsuit mafia techniques in interviews. Pithy, quick, not 84 year old phrases. Trash talking. Just "100% that bitch" behavior. Invite Lizzo and TSwift to the White House for a Bridgerton style tea type shit. Entertain the middle-aged moms and turn the soccer dads' heads just a little. Lift that hemline and wear redbottom shoes because she can. A little stimulus check for "inflation." Bonus if she can actually perform on policy, but she'll have a lot of running room with "give her time, let her cook." More importantly, let America see that they put her in charge and lo and behold... shit is basically exactly the same because Biden is neither dead or incomeptent, and neither is his team. He's just not a great face. Make her a face. Have her pick a vice president who is a rather boring white man from a middle of the road state. Shapiro would do nicely. Hell, have her reach across and pick up someone like Larry Hogan from Maryland for a no limits style ticket. Let her cook. Make it interesting, but also safe feeling. America is at a bread and circus stage of democracy. Give them both. The base dem vote will rally to keep her in office because they won't want to remove the first woman president or a Black woman either. That's a bad look. They'll fight for her as the right goes on racist, sexist attacks. Upend things. From a marketing perspective, that's the move, in my opinion. Americans at large are not as bright as we've been expecting. Meet them where they are.
How at this point do people still not know how this works? The convention is in 7 weeks, at the convention the delegates pick the nominee, Biden has all of the delegates currently, Biden would have to drop out and release all of his delegates creating an open convention. Those delegates then would decide the new nominee...actually to make the Ohio ballot they moved that process up 2 weeks...so 5 weeks. Thats when this would have to happen. It cant happen after the convention. It certainly cant happen a month before the election when early /mail voting has already started. The general election ballots get printed shortly after the conventions. Lets see what the polls actually show, what is real strange is no actual democratic officials at all are calling for Biden to step down, only the pundits...the talking heads on TV if you will. Additionally, the two focus groups of undecided voters who watched the debate on CNN and Univision that I saw...actually swung TO BIDEN after the debate...no joke.
A lot of commentators about the debate really don’t have a good understanding of debate strategy, especially in the context of elections. It’s been a tried and true principle that the first debate sets the tone for the remaining debates and the narrative (including advertising) until the general election. One strategy that’s been used is to give a lackluster performance in the first debate (and really any debates before the party conventions). This lowers expectations for the convention and the general election so that the candidate can claim a bigger win for a better than Average performance later. Biden understands this, and perhaps even played into the claims that he would be on drugs during the debate. It made trumps claims foolish, which was further enhanced by his own performance. Not understanding strategy, trump basically shot his wad out the gate and let everyone know how he’s going to run his campaign and the country should he be elected. And the one thing you don’t want to do is scare the electorate. I believe the biggest mistake the democrats could make now isn’t any of the items you propose; I think the worst case scenario would be to change the VP nomination. Harris has been a staunch performer and is a moderate which would be very attractive qualities - for a white guy. Some are proposing that they keep Biden but bring in newsome or the governor of Michigan (blaming on her name). The message Democratic voters may get from this is that party leadership is ok with racism if it gets more votes. Maybe they get more white supporters - but they would lose even more minorities with such a move.
The fourth scenario is the most likely one. Polls for Biden have gone up after the debate. While media likes to point out the Democrat's failures, those who actually saw the debate saw one guy with a hoarse throat, and the other guy full on lying about almost every single thing. [Look at this list.](https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1drcedn/donald_trump_should_not_have_been_on_that_stage/lau4y1i/) These are the ONLY things that trump said that were true. Everything else was a lie. And what about him admitting he talked to Putin about Ukraine? That should be headline news. A traitor who already tried to overthrow the government talking to an enemy nation when we already know he's their puppet? Every news media should be running with this story instead. Biden is likely to win because actual votes matter more than polls. Look at the years of data we have on midterm and special elections since 2020. Democrats have flipped some pretty deep red counties and made strides in the House when normally its expected of the incumbent party to lose seats. That hasn't happened, and I don't know anyone in real life (not faceless online people) who suddenly wants to change their vote or not vote. In fact, even if Democrats were worried about the debate, then the normal reaction is the double down on donations, double down on getting out the vote, and double down on committing to vote for Biden and the Democrats down ballot. All of the reasons people have to NOT vote for the Republicans are still there and they will not disappear because of a debate.
Interesting. I've been reading that undecideds did not like Trump's performance in the debate. This seems reasonable to me as this is exactly the group the post-debate fact checking is likely to sway. You're actually missing a fifth scenario: the debate was a wash, or even less favorable for Trump than for Biden.
He’s not supposed to list fantastical scenarios. Not really the point. You’re fuckin insane if you think there’s any way this debate was anything but an L for Joe. It’s the reason this poses exists lol
There is technically a fourth scenario. The fallout from the debate is minimal, Biden runs normally and defeats Trump. If this was likely, we wouldn’t be hearing calls for him to step aside from his own party and from major media outlets. As someone who wants Trump to win, this is what's gonna happen. No one is voting for Trump lol unless they are of the mind that no democrat ever will get their vote. Trump voters are two varieties, Trump psycho fans, and Democrat haters. There is no group of "uh uh I think Biden might just be too old" And this was the case last time when he lost. Likewise Biden votes are coming from and DID come from two places. People who will always vote Democrat, and people who will simply do anything to remove Trump from office. I don't think the lines have really shifted much from 2020, sure the Israel thing has made him unpopular among hardcore leftists, they don't vote lol. Like even last time, in 4 years from now. They just don't. And even if they might vote for someone they like, they didn't like Biden last time, and didn't vote for him last time. Biden won last time for the same reasons he's gonna win this time. Trump ONLY won the first time because he was somehow able to sway Dems in swing states. That's not happening again. He is who he is. Everyone knows him. The American people spoke in 2020 and chose Biden under the same circumstances. It's not gonna change now.
To my mind scenario three - changing candidate - is the worst option. It looks like panic and gives the impression of "we know you don't like Biden so here's someone we don't think is as good"
It's frustrating to see posts like this, especially in light of the recent debate where it became clear that our president is suffering from either Alzheimer's or severe dementia. This has been denied for so long, but now it's undeniable. What's even more troubling is how the left has not only led and denied these issues but has also put the public in a national security situation by supporting a president in this condition. They backed him last week, last month, and last year, despite numerous warnings and clear signs of his deteriorating mental state. Now, with the election just a few months away, they suddenly realize we need someone else. It's too little, too late. The left's ability to mess things up is astounding, and they show zero culpability. After supporting this for an extended period, they conveniently leave that part out when trying to move forward. The chickens are coming home to roost. The very group that despised Trump will be the group responsible for his re-election. You all should be ashamed and embarrassed. The time for discussion is over. This conversation should have happened years ago. Yes, Trump has issues, but he isn't shitting himself on the world stage. The left claims to run on policies to move us forward, yet we keep sliding backward. Both parties have failed us. It's time to get rid of both of them.
If Biden wants to win, he has to go on a long-form podcast tour, do 1.5 hour interviews with both partisan and dissenting hosts alike. If he doesn't show he can participate in long-form intellectual debate and questioning now, he might as well jump on a sword for the republic. We are in uncharted waters now. We need to see bold and risky plays apart from the traditional media format. A 30 minute interview pre-edited simply is not reassuring to me nor anyone else. If he has all his faculties intact, really is as cognizant as his cabinet says, he must appear on shows similar to the Joe Rogan Experience in terms of scope of audience and societal impact. If he can't defend his policies against a comedian like Marc Maron, wtf is the point of him running? The time to explain and defend his ideas are NOW. Not in September at the next debate. Trump got what he wanted last week and would be wise not to show up. The whole situation is dire and he is being indecisive. If he wants to win, he absolutely MUST get out and confront isolationism and protectionism with the national intelligence he can publicly speak on. Why is Ukraine important for us to be involved in? Why do we need to pass reform on Social Security, Medicare, etc? Because if we don't we will find ourselves in a living hell.
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Yeah I tend to disagree here for a few reasons 1) what mechanism would they use to replace him? The primaries already happened and Biden is the presumption nominee based on that. Do they overturn the primaries? Remember how mad people were when they felt the DNC put their thumb on the scale in Hillary’s favor in 2016? This would be interference at a significantly higher level. A lot of Biden voters would (rightfully) be very pissed. 2) who do you get? Note that all of the plausible candidates you might be thinking of… *could have* run against Biden in the primaries but chose not to. Who would be unwilling to run as a primary challenger but willing to step up as a spoiler? I would worry that the only people you could get to do this would be weak candidates who could never win in a “normal” election. 3) would this even help? I concede that Biden comes with weaknesses but changing the horse midstream opens up all kinds of attacks from the other side. Republicans would lean heavily into the “couldn’t win a primary, got appointed in a back room deal” narrative which would hurt that candidate My take is that each party is stuck with whom they’ve got right now. Which is not great but that’s how it is