You are being inundated with post-debate commentary on Joe Biden 's performance. (My take: it wasn't great!) I'll try and spare you debate specifics and just make this point about the dilemma facing the Democrats. In 2016, the primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was particularly ugly - not so much because of the animosity between the candidates and the campaigns, though there was plenty of that, but because of that between the supporters of each. You probably don’t need this rehashed: Clinton was an emissary from the centrist, triangulating wing of the party who had (while serving as the most-involved First Lady in American history) been a constant champion of her husband’s conservative policies on crime, gay marriage, “welfare,” and more. And the Barack Obama years had, for many voters, gone from being a beacon of hope and change to a reminder of the inescapable institutional capture of the Democratic party. Sometimes, worthwhile reforms escaped, but they did so only in the most meek, corporate-friendly way. The Affordable Care Act was the apogee of what could be accomplished under those conditions: some good reforms that were utterly insufficient to fix a notoriously broken healthcare system which were passed only because the health insurance industry had essentially been given veto power over the bill. Meanwhile, Obama had not even tried to meaningfully reform the banking sector that had broken the economy or help out ordinary homeowners who faced foreclosure after the financial crisis.
If any one of Biden, Trump, RFK, or Kamala could just perform bare minimum pleasant, normal-seeming political pablum, they would waltz to the presidency. For four entirely distinct reasons none of them is capable of it.
That's a comment on the handlers and the voters as much as it is on the candidates. For one thing, money in politics would be practically irrelevant, rather than the absolute doom that it is, if a sizeable majority of voters simply did their civic duties.
I disagree with that. Our system is so overwhelming biased towards a 2-party framework it's nearly impossible for a 3rd party candidate to even get on the ballot. Much less a 4th or 5th party.
Extremely simple fixes like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation would immensely help to alleviate this, but we can't have that. Why? Because both parties are in charge of which laws get passed and they sure as hell aren't going pass anything that might curtail their own power.
"Extremely simple fixes like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation would immensely help to alleviate this, but we can't have that."
First, a significant majority of voters have to know sufficiently what's going on -- the political/societal context, the system (as you point out), the candidates. Although I fully agree the current voting system distorts the decision process, I believe the primary problem is still the low-information voter and the manipulators taking advantage of that.
This cannot change until the population is sufficiently motivated, that is, until we've completed going through (the latest) complete trial-by-fire to care enough about it. (Late 20th-century America going into the 21st was the most pampered society in world history, quite a hole to dig out from.) Then, "ranked-choice voting and proportional representation" will be part of everything else they suddenly care enough about to march in the streets.
Well yeah but that's not something that can really be achieved by voting, is it? If both parties never make it an option, and 3rd party candidates never have a chance, you can't really vote to change it can you? You can try to find a candidate in either party that would be open to this, but how many times do you know of that they go against their own party-line vote?
Marching and protesting may be some of your only options. And perhaps eventually rioting...we know how that goes these days!
"[T]hat's not something that can really be achieved by voting, is it?"
Correct. We need to up our game -- badly. That is, if we really want to get the general public to wake up more quickly than organically. Street marches and rioting are rather old-school, and, as you know, their visibility is easily modulated by MSM to shape popular opinion. Get creative, very creative. The goal is to finally beat the propagandists at their game.
Alaska has ranked-choice voting. If we can get more states to implement it at the state level, we can probably get candidate in who will support it at the federal level. it will be really, really hard, but that's not the same as impossible.
At this point the average of the betting markets in something like 50 Trump 20 Biden. Nate Silver had Trump as a two to one favorite before the debate.
I don't know about "waltzing in" but there is clearly a favorite.
I don't think this (their inability to perform the bare minimum pablum) is an accident. Our current online cultural world drives exactly these kinds of extremes. To be "normal" is to be boring, and to be boring is lame and unelectable.
I agree; but I do think that a savvy communicator could dress up smart/boring/sensible and make it snazzy. Not glamorous, but substantive straight-talk that mirrors the experience of ordinary ppl without exploiting it. I think the country is dying for it.
I agree entirely. I suspect such a candidate with substantive straight talk would find a very welcome reception. I'm pointing out the forces that I believe have resulted in no such candidates appearing.
Yes! I know! It’s tragic. I often think about what I would say if I had a podium, and I can even feel my own convictions, which have emerged from a lot of deep study plus a lot of “on the ground” conversations with people of all stripes, and I feel the “over my shoulder” disappointment of dear friends and supporters (from my own campaign) who might think I have abandoned some progressive ideals. I haven’t; I just, as I said somewhere else yesterday, think that people who passionately, rightly believe in the overarching vision of a just society were lulled, even if unintentionally, to look at things through a personal/moral lens rather than, broadly speaking, cultivating the specific musculature needed to buffer the structures that uphold morality. In other words, we can’t do “the work” (a phrase that needs to be put out to pasture, and fast) if we don’t have a container.
I know you agree! I’m just sitting here wringing my hands.
This is a fascinating point to me - high level politicians often do not improve their presentations over time. You would think with coaching and handling that it would naturally happen. With Kamala as just one example - I am guessing her staff did not get there by stating hard truths or providing tough love - I am amazed that she keeps operating at the same level after some years now on the national stage.
Cali superstar - multi-term mayor, assemblyman, etc - Willie Brown was her mentor and paved her way. Reputedly a very hands-on relationship. She looks good getting to the podium but is an underwhelming persona otherwise. As noted, she isn’t tremendously popular here in her home state.
His vocal cord thing makes him and awkward and stilted speaker, ironically the very flaw in Biden that's creating such an opening for alternative opponents to Trump.
There are certainly myriad other problems between him and mass popular appeal (he's a septuagenarian himself of course, besides all the substantive stuff). But boy if he could stand up at a podium and speak in a way that gave people vibes of comforting normalcy there would be a real opening here. But he can't.
He can, and does. The vocal thing is barely a glitch. It's the WHAT being said, not the HOW. Dude is amoderate Dem, and not bring allowed into the Room. Same as with Gabbard, et al
I don't want to be cruel about someone's speech impediment, but "the vocal cord thing is barely a glitch" = "Biden just has a childhood stutter".
New people get exposed to RFK and go "wait, why does he talk like that?"
Take his name and his politics and put them in a smooth and charismatic speaker and it's a different scenario.
Which again, is not to ignore some of RFK's views which make him toxic among various constituencies. But this is an unusual election offering unusual possibilities.
Biden issue is cognition, not a speech impediment. Among other things. At this point, I don't think most folks give a crap about charisma and a package. We are watching a shitshow spin out of any semblance of control. Kennedy would be a stabilizing force.
You say "which is not to ignore some of RFK's views which make him toxic among various constituencies" and then basically ignore that. To me at least, RFK seems just as impervious to reality as Biden and Trump.
Impervious to reality? Wtf are u talking about? This is a fairly salient 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good' moment. Stability and a bit of restoration in institutions is the goal now. Policy, politics, bullshit all go to the backseat at this point. The alternative is ever more escalation of chaos. Cultural and political cancer describes our current situation.
A good friend of mine has the same vocal cord condition that afflicts RFK Jr. And there's a treatment for it, which is quite effective. I've wondered why RFK doesn't do the treatment.
Perhaps so. It'll only be one more term anyway. There's something to be said about how different it feels when you know it's the final term versus "Oh my God we can't let him win another one." 2028 will feel different from 2020 in that regard.
Trump's choice for VP is going to hugely important. If Vance or Rubio can get in that will be Trump's de facto second or third term, depending on how you want to count it.
I don't think either of them are nearly as unstable, vengeful, or frankly as unintelligent as Donald Trump. I would a thousand times take either of them over Trump. JD Vance has become a Trump sycophant, but having read his book, and heard him speak before his political career took off, I can tell he has a normal functioning brain in there. And Rubio is clearly putting on a show as well given his past comments. Trump has a broken brain, they have just have broken moral compasses. I don't think they will be beholden to Trump any longer than they have to in order to become president. If they ever wanted a second term they can't outright insult him or throw him aside, but they won't make the same choices, or reason the same way, that Donald Trump does.
Exhausted weeping. We've seen this coming for 2 years. If the Democratic Party doesn't get religion soon, there needs to be serious consideration of a new party. The Republicans are virtually gone. They're now MAGA.
Hysterical violence similar to what we saw in 2016 but amped to 11. The noisy part of the Democrat coalition have convinced themselves that a Trump victory will herald the end of the world as they know it. They will be unable to accept it quietly and will take to the streets in an orgy of indiscriminate violence. Good thing that the Republicans have most of the guns so we shouldn’t have to worry about an actual, you know, insurrection.
I'm not running around tearing my hair out about Trump, but I am very worried about how he will approach the world concerning Russia and Israel, and most other tense international relationships.
Anyway, entrenched interests make the current system unreformable. The time for a mild-mannered, rule-following norms-adhering milquetoast like Sanders is long past.
Revolutions eat their own children. Look at what the Arab Spring brought, nothing good. Incremental change, hopefully in a positive direction. Revolutionaries aren't good at governing.
I'm glad I live in a blue state (though my county is controlled by MAGA zealots who are against the master gardeners, libraries and the 4-H, Conservative Christian organizations only).
I know why revolutions happen, widespread discontent. I think evolutionary politics work better. Trying to find a "strong man" a "good king" to come and fix all of your problems is a recipe for disaster. They're usually good at stirring up the shit, but aren't good at compromise and consensus.
You know, conservatives come in many different shapes and sizes. And operational beliefs. I personally do not know any MAGA zealots well, but my Democrat friends see them everywhere and are surprised to find that I function as a quasi-normal female being, despite having voted for Trump twice.
Two of the three county commissioners are against the master gardeners and 4-H because they're associated with the University Extensions programs which are things like how to prune your trees and deer proof plantings. They've done everything they can to shut down the local library because they're "liberal". They refused state funds for homeless shelters. They didn't get state money for water and sewer projects because they offended the rest of the legislatures.
I grew up with conservatives and red necks. I have Trump supporting friends. We agree to disagree. The dogmatic, arrogant stance of some liberals is infuriating.
I do know MAGA folks, although I'm more accurately characterized as a Trump voter, and they're mostly normal. But yeah, people are so bizarre. Roughly half the country voted for Trump twice--a lot more the second time, even. But their brains can't conceive of anything other than a Confederate flag toting monster voting for Trump.
I'm a teacher in a 90% non-white school district. Worked high poverty schools for nearly 15 years. I've helped more non-white, low income, immigrant kids in 30 minutes of my day than most people in the country manage in several years--almost certainly more than the vast majority of people commenting (although not Freddie, who's worked in that field).
Might be useful for some of you to wrap your head around the fact that many happy suburbanites who know the difference between cold brew and espresso, have a regular sushi bar, and don't own any guns (despite supporting second amendment rights) vote for Trump.
Call me ageist if you like, but declines during someone's 80s are very common. That's a risk that's not worthwhile for presidents. There's a reason we don't allow someone younger than 35, and it's not because there's no one below 35 who would make a good president.
Is there really a vociferous fan base for Kamala Harris? I've never met anyone like that and can't recall seeing anything like it online. I hear a lot of fear that dropping her will infuriate black voters, but I don't believe it. They largely didn't vote for her in the 2020 primary! The logic that, if you don't nominate Biden, you MUST nominate Kamala seems like the same lazy successionism that got us Hillary and Biden 2024.
Again, this seems like a dogged insistence that the Democratic Party operates according to 1990s rules. WHY DO YOU THINK KAMALA HARRIS IS THE CURRENT VICE PRESIDENT?
Well, I’m just asking it to be better — I don’t know why its insiders and elites are such pansies. But it’s my party and I’d like to say loudly and clearly I’d like the party to operate with more ruthlessness, less insiderism, and just smarter.
As to why: I think Biden got cowed, first by the progressives into committing to picking a black woman, then by the groups, into picking Kamala specifically.
It's a rhetorical question, but I can't help myself. She is a symbolic VP, brought in because of Party symbology (not reality BTW). I am an independent operating in this deBoer world, but symbols do not represent 1990's thinking, do they? Figureheads chose to represent what are thought to be ideologic goals seems very 2000s to me. It is a marketing strategy and that is one reason it does not work: too blatantly superficial.
I'm a white woman and Marjorie Taylor Greene is a white woman, that doesn't mean we are on the same page about anything. It's pretty rich to suppose that Kamala Harris has anything to do with working class black women. She's total academic west coast elite with a bit of aggressive prosecuting under her belt to make her look "tough on crime".
Black voters are already defecting to Trump in droves.
I doubt keeping Kamala Harris on the ticket is keeping black voters who are fed up with everything else about the last four years to say, "you know what, I hate everything, but since she's also theoretically black, so I guess I'll have no choice but to vote for any ticket she's on."
The latest NYT/Siena College poll shows 26% of black likely voters for Trump right now (June of 2024) compared to only 5% in June of 2020. And keep in mind, this was taken right *before* Joe Biden's dementia fueled self-immolation in the debate.
Trump is currently poised to capture a larger percentage of the black vote that any Republican has had since Richard Nixon, who got about 1/3rd of black voters in 1968. Trump's massive gains with Latino voters, especially Latino men, is old news, but it's pretty difficult to imagine he's going to lose them to Biden going forward either.
At a high level, Trump is kind of like the late mayor of Providence, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.
Both well educated rich kids, both growing up in heavily ethnic white neighborhoods. Buddy growing up in Silver Lake/Olneyville/Federal Hill, and Trump growing up in Queens. It's almost quaint now. It's a thing that gets no attention now in a hyper homogenized age of rich white mega-politicians.
Cianci and Trump both grew up meeting all sorts of different people at all levels of the social and economic spectrum in a way that the current crop of Acela Corridor ultra rich who have never even visited a place in the lower quintile of American GDP before running for office can even comprehend. It's part of Trump's appeal with working class voters as much as it was part of Cianci's.
I don't think dropping Harris from the ticket will infuriate black voters, at least not that many of them. But it will infuriate lots of Good White Liberals though. All the good white people that made Robin DiAngelo and Kendi Ibram best selling authors.
And people like that, the "good white liberals of the progressive persuasion" are why I left the Democrat party. Weak minds, IMO. And if any dem actually listened to Trump's words while he is riffing at rallies, they would discover that his ideas for improving the opportunities for black Americans are practical and operate in a real, functioning society, not a nonexistent confabulation.
I'd caution anyone against strongly believing, based on polling taken six months before an election, that Sanders would have defeated Trump. That was a hypothetical question posed well before people were ready to vote, and IMO the responses should be taken well salted.
It seems entirely plausible to me. In conservative Idaho I talked to more than one Trump voter that bitterly hated Hillary but liked Bernie. Freddie's point seems to me that it is not so much that Bernie was wildly popular, but that Hilary was uniquely unpopular. Trump, also, had a lot of unfavorables, but could never complete with Hill in that regard. Bernie did not suffer such unfavorables. Maybe he would have eventually, but he got to pretty high name recognition by the end without those numbers spiking
Agree. I'd bet my house (if I had one) that a crapton of 2016 Trump voters were of the "anyone but her" variety. For all of her qualifications and experience (which is quite a lot) she simply wasn't likable to most of the electorate. The reasons for that can be debated until the cows come home, but it is what it is.
Nobody cares about that label. Again, so many of you seem to have 1990s political logic glued permanently to your brain. Do you think the American people care at all about ideology?
I'd agree they don't care about ideology exactly. But I think people do care about labels, especially self-given ones. And I think that's reasonable. I think if you choose to call yourself a Socialist or a Libertarian or a Green, you are trying to communicate something. And I think that's especially true if you choose a label, like Socialist, that historically has been used as a term of opprobrium (at least in the U.S.).
It's not like Sanders couldn't have chosen the exact same policies throughout his career but always called himself a Democrat. He chose to call himself a Socialist because he wanted to communicate something, to signal he was somehow different. On the one hand, I think that was appealing to a bunch of folks; it's part of what got him the support he received from his base. But I think in a general election, it would been used against him (successfully) by Republicans to indicate to folks in the center that he wasn't someone who could be trusted with the Presidency.
I agree with your point, but I do think Sanders had a good shot. At least as good as Clinton. And then at least we could have some real conversations about policy and not just bullshit.
I think literally ANY other Democratic nominee other than Hillary would have won. I don't fully understand why, but she was hated by a significant percentage of the electorate.
And that is why I think that if Biden won't step down, Kamala Harris needs to be replaced as VP on the ticket, whether she likes it or not. If people see a VP candidate who is both younger than Biden, competent, AND who is relatively likeable, they'll be more likely to take a chance and vote for Biden. (John McCain learned that the hard way when he made the mistake of picking Sarah Palin without thoroughly vetting her; once she showed herself to be an airhead in public, a lot of people who might have voted for McCain changed their minds because they didn';t want to take the risk of her winding up as President if anything bad happened to McCain.)
Well, that's one point of view, I suppose. Another is that political scientists are well aware that polling hypotheticals is notoriously unreliable. Jonathan Bernstein writes frequently about this, and I recommend giving him a read.
yeah I don't get that. Bernie lost because all other candidates dropped out so he was left with a one-on-one contest against Biden. Which realistically is exactly what you have to be able to win. Sure you could argue that that as foulplay but it's a pretty small foulplay by the standards of politics. And all of this was before Republicans bothered attacking him at all. Imagine the kind of attacks against an old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn who until pretty late in life was basically the mayor of a hippie college town.
Polling aside I think Clinton was just the wrong candidate for that cycle. She could have won in another election but right now we are seeing a global populist movement (EU elections anyone?) and she was the consummate insider running in a year for outsiders.
White non-college educated voters liked Sanders, which is the exact group the democratic party has strayed from, and who cost them the 2016 election. Unless you really think more educated voters or voters of color would have fled from Sanders I don't see why it wouldn't be true.
What I think is that I don't know what would have happened had Sanders won the nomination, and neither do you. No one knows. Maybe Sanders would have defeated Trump, maybe not, but polling taken six months before an election, between a hypothetical matchup, is a poor basis for being too sure of anything.
Sure, it is reasonable speculation. As I said in my initial comment, however, I advise anyone against being too sure of that conclusion, and I stand by that.
Agreed. People really need to drop this argument, because we will never know.
I think that Trump presented something very unique at the time, being able to capture audience using media in a viral manner, and although Bernie was sort of in the space, I don't think anyone could have beat Trump at that game.
The worst possible outcome for the Democratic Party is an internal civil war over who gets to replace Biden followed by a loss in November anyway. The problem is that Harris, as the vice president, is the obvious and natural successor to Biden. If she's passed over I think there will be chaos.
At least if she loses in 2028 Democrats will be able to argue that she simply was not competitive in an open and fair nominating process.
People take as given that an "internal civil war" in the party is bad, but I just don't see evidence of this. Obama v Hilary in 2008 brought *tons* of people into the electoral process. They phone-banked and volunteered. Caucuses were packed full with record numbers of participants. Sure, I don't think the party did a good job of retaining that energy, but I don't see any evidence at all that it was harmful to the party itself
I think the issue is that, unlike in Obama versus Clinton, the racial minority would lose this time out. Cue the inevitable cries of "racism".
Would it prove fatally disruptive to November or the Democratic Party? I don't know but I suspect it circles back around to the question a lot of observers have been asking for a while now: has woke peaked?
I also think Obama was a talented orator and inspirational candidate (quite aside from his race). No such candidate appears waiting in the wings at the moment.
No, that is not the worst possible outcome. The worst possible outcome for the party is that Biden wins. Then nothing will be learned. I think, long term, a nasty war is the best thing for the party. Yeah, it won't win them 2024 (barring some miracle), but it will provide a badly needed sense-making process.
Yeah, I think it's very possible that after November centrists like Ruy Texeira, Carville, etc. take the reins of power and the woke set is banished out of the political sphere and back to college campuses. Bill Clinton represented the Democrats deciding that they were sick of losing because of political correctness. I have to wonder if somebody like Fetterman will play that role in 2028.
It's only the worst possible outcome if you see the party's direction as self-destructive, and if you can see beyond the results of any given election.
I agree Harris loses to Trump, which is why I don't think they should or will choose Harris if/when Biden steps aside. As I said in another comment - yes, Harris and her fans would then be a problem, but it's a problem you just have to live with by nominating someone like Whitmer and hoping you pick off enough votes at the margins in the key states.
Now, I could be wrong, and Whitmer could still lose, but I'm 100% positive that Republicans and Trump would very much NOT prefer someone like Whitmer, which tells you everything you need to know.
The obvious question is why Biden should serve out the remainder of his _current_ term if he is too diminished to run a campaign. And jn the hypothetical where he does step aside who would take over as President?
I honestly don't think Trump cares who the Democrat is if it's not Biden. They're still going to own the economy and the border.
There is an obvious reason Trump was pulling his punches last night. He and his campaign (and everyone else that wans him to win) would love nothing more than Biden staying in.
I think it's a fair question about Biden finishing out his term, but I think it's one that largely goes away if he comes out and says he's not running again, and say something along the lines that he's not up for campaigning and is going to focus on strictly governing for the last X amount of months.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's a great answer in substance, but something like that would work politically to open up the convention. There would still be chaos, but much preferred to Biden staying in. Obviously.
I'm a stranger here, as in being independent leaning right of center on some things and left of center on others. Pretty typical of free-thinkers, but I'm old; from the days where people sometimes considered voting for an individual that they liked rather than straight party ticket. Today, this would be considered -- maybe anathema? My Dem friends (with whom I cannot have political discussions) certainly think that way of political thinking to be outrageous.
"The problem is that Harris, as the vice president, is the obvious and natural successor to Biden."
That attitude right there IS the problem. FDR had three different VPs in his four terms. The party should be able to replace the VP candidates (and for that matter, the presidential candidate) running on its ticket if the party feels that it is its interest to do so. no one is owed the spot!
I don't think Kamala is a good candidate at all, but at this point she's better than Biden, which is an extremely low bar. Outside of the KHive, I find it extremely unlikely the loose patchwork of donors, Senators, NGO leaders, and media figures who make up the Democratic establishment will agree on a single alternative, even if many such candidates would perform better than Kamala. So despite her terrible poll numbers, if it's her or Biden she's the only choice at this point.
"Clinton had always been divisive, going back to her husband’s first 1992 presidential campaign; this was frequently said to be the product of sexism, which may have been true but was irrelevant to the outcome of the race."
This weird denial of reality suffuses left-identitarian spaces. They put out shitty products into media, and then blame the fans of those media when their shitty products fail. (Simply look at some of the latest from Marvel or Star Wars.) When there is no accountability for failure, there will never be a correction of the behavior that leads to failure. To be clear, the behavior that leads to failure is not identitarianism (though I believe it contributes); it's incompetence. Identitarianism provides cover for image-savvy but skills-poor executives of all kinds. The idea of Hillary being a victim of sexism is similar: yes, I have no doubt that sexism played some role in her defeat. But if she'd run a great campaign and been a great leader and candidate, sexism wouldn't have mattered at all (much like identitarianism didn't hurt the series Arcane, which was brilliant).
It's all the same attitude: it's okay to be incompetent as long as you have the right politics, mouth the right platitudes. That only works if everyone around you believes the platitudes are more important than the reality, and that's simply not true of the larger population.
The incompetent have limited ability to correct themselves even with feedback.
My impression is that most everybody (even those in power) know something is wrong, but they also have no idea how to fix it. They cover up the fear of their own powerlessness, and their fear of losing their positions, by playing the blame game.
True, but their consistent failures can give others the courage to challenge them, which is ultimately the kind of accountability that might win out. Or, perhaps the parties will end up dying. It's very hard to have a new party emerge in a winner-take-all system like ours, but it's not impossible if it doesn't become a third party, but rather effectively supplants one of the existing two.
Just to rehash 2016, I was a strong Obama supporter and someone who was tired of the family dynasty of the Bushes and Clintons and so was not disposed naturally toward Hillary. And while generally a centrist, the one issue where I'm far, far to the left is on taxes. Which theoretically should have made me open to supporting Sanders.
But I never even considered supporting Bernie. For me, the Socialist label he had chosen was a deal breaker. Not so much because of the policy implications, but because it was a signal to me of someone who considered himself at war with the political system and unwilling to compromise in a way that made him unfit to be President.
And while I certainly would have voted for him over Trump (I would literally have voted for every Democratic or Republican candidate I can remember over Trump, with the possible exception of Ted Cruz), I'm always very skeptical of the "Bernie would have won in 2016" folks. I think if Sanders had been the nominee the Republicans would have relentlessly campaigned on running against a "Socialist" and I think for many folks in the center who ended up voting for Clinton, it would have been a successful strategy.
The irony of that though is that Bernie has demonstrated time and again that he *is* willing to compromise - he voted for Obamacare and the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet the socialist label makes him seem more unreasonable than he actually is.
Agreed. While cranky, Sanders has demonstrated over time that he is a reasonable guy, who I think would have done fine as President. But back in 2016, I had more questions about him. And while I would certainly have voted for him over Trump (and almost certainly over any of the Republican candidates), I'm one of those "independents" who in practice pretty much always votes Democratic. But I think a lot of folks who genuinely go back and forth between the parties would have found voting for a "socialist" difficult.
Leaving aside moral questions, a more adept politician than Harris might be able to lean into her history as a tough-on-crime prosecutor to do some Clintonian triangulation. A big ol' middle finger to your average FdB subscriber, sure, but there's a reason Biden won the primary.
But that's not something I think Harris, specifically, could execute. And I'm not sure her echo chamber of minions would approve.
He still suffers major speech issues from his stroke. If those don't significantly improve by 2028, he's not going to look like the best candidate on the stage.
You state that “Biden is the best president of my lifetime.”
This is an absurd statement, and I’d encourage you to reconsider this opinion. Obama was far and away a much better president.
Biden has had 3 foreign policy disasters, any of which would sink the credibility of any president, and he’s had three on his watch.
Antisemitism is running rampant through America and American institutions, and Biden does nothing to stop it. In fact, he’s done everything in his power to give the antisemites a seat at the table, so to speak, in order to court more votes.
Inflation has been at historic highs for most of Biden’s presidency, housing prices are through the roof, and good luck getting a house loan for under 9% interest.
And if it wasn’t already clear to you years ago, Biden isn’t in charge. He isn’t running the country.
So when you say “Biden is the best president in my lifetime,” what you are really admitting is that you believe the unelected bureaucrats running the Biden administration are the best administration of your lifetime.
You believe unelected “party” members are a better option for America than elected officials.
These unelected “party” members are unaccountable to the American people.
And this debate, the earliest in history, was set up by team blue as a coup attempt to replace Biden with a candidate of their choice.
Instead of giving the American people a choice in their candidate, it was much more preferred by the party that claims to defend democracy to install the candidate of their choice at the Democratic convention.
See letting the citizens vote in primaries is messy, as we saw with Bernie Sanders during the last two democratic primaries.
I’d really encourage you to reconsider your opinion of Biden being the best president of your lifetime.
' So here’s the question: if you try to replace Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024, how do you push aside sitting Vice President Kamala Harris without destroying the party? '
I'm glad you asked that question. IMO the push to get Thomas to retire from SCOTUS has been to get a spot to move Harris. Yes, she's an intellectual light-weight, but would be a reliable left wing vote on anything that mattered to the Dems/leftists. Why would she turn a sure thing down now for a maybe election later? Plus a Black man is being replaced with a minority woman so no fallout there.
The people who have been running the US - it's been clear that Biden isn't one of them - could make their decision as to who looks good for President and make him/her VP, Biden steps down, new VP is nominated, and deal done. It is also clear to me Biden won't go w/o a fight. A combative nature is a common trait in people suffering from various forms of dementia. I feel sorry for Biden myself - it's elder abuse.
This debate may have made the above impossible at this late date.
I have a conspiracy theory about the debate, btw. Trump sent out a fundraising email this morning titled "I love CNN". Jake Tapper and Dana Bash earned a lot of kudos from conservative commentators last night--Sean Hannity praised them on Fox in his post-debate show.
I have to wonder if CNN sees the writing on the wall. Trump likes to talk. Do you want the crown jewel of getting his first post-victory interview after November? If you're CNN you could plausibly approach him with a line like "We turned it around for you. Remember the town hall where you slayed? And then the debate where Biden's mind broke? Everybody expects you to talk to Fox. What a surprise if you gave it to us instead! You know we'll treat you right."
And maybe, just maybe, it's a hopeful sign that the media landscape (and maybe the country at large) is resetting after the insanity of the past few years.
I wonder what the commentary from the Sean Hannitys of the world would be if Biden had a coherent and sound debate performance? My guess is either crickets, or they would have pointed out things like the lack of a live audience as them stacking the deck against Trump. It's possible that's not the case, but it's hard to listen to someone whose opinions on any given thing seem to so effectively reflect whether or not they think said thing was good for their side.
I think those commentators just had the same emotional reaction that most of us had watching Joe Biden last night. They weren't planning that far ahead. If he hadn't totally bombed and even done a half-way decent job they would not have been saying that.
If any one of Biden, Trump, RFK, or Kamala could just perform bare minimum pleasant, normal-seeming political pablum, they would waltz to the presidency. For four entirely distinct reasons none of them is capable of it.
That's a comment on the handlers and the voters as much as it is on the candidates. For one thing, money in politics would be practically irrelevant, rather than the absolute doom that it is, if a sizeable majority of voters simply did their civic duties.
I disagree with that. Our system is so overwhelming biased towards a 2-party framework it's nearly impossible for a 3rd party candidate to even get on the ballot. Much less a 4th or 5th party.
Extremely simple fixes like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation would immensely help to alleviate this, but we can't have that. Why? Because both parties are in charge of which laws get passed and they sure as hell aren't going pass anything that might curtail their own power.
It's quite embarrassing really.
"Extremely simple fixes like ranked-choice voting and proportional representation would immensely help to alleviate this, but we can't have that."
First, a significant majority of voters have to know sufficiently what's going on -- the political/societal context, the system (as you point out), the candidates. Although I fully agree the current voting system distorts the decision process, I believe the primary problem is still the low-information voter and the manipulators taking advantage of that.
This cannot change until the population is sufficiently motivated, that is, until we've completed going through (the latest) complete trial-by-fire to care enough about it. (Late 20th-century America going into the 21st was the most pampered society in world history, quite a hole to dig out from.) Then, "ranked-choice voting and proportional representation" will be part of everything else they suddenly care enough about to march in the streets.
Well yeah but that's not something that can really be achieved by voting, is it? If both parties never make it an option, and 3rd party candidates never have a chance, you can't really vote to change it can you? You can try to find a candidate in either party that would be open to this, but how many times do you know of that they go against their own party-line vote?
Marching and protesting may be some of your only options. And perhaps eventually rioting...we know how that goes these days!
"[T]hat's not something that can really be achieved by voting, is it?"
Correct. We need to up our game -- badly. That is, if we really want to get the general public to wake up more quickly than organically. Street marches and rioting are rather old-school, and, as you know, their visibility is easily modulated by MSM to shape popular opinion. Get creative, very creative. The goal is to finally beat the propagandists at their game.
Alaska has ranked-choice voting. If we can get more states to implement it at the state level, we can probably get candidate in who will support it at the federal level. it will be really, really hard, but that's not the same as impossible.
We can have that if we demand it through the initiative system locally and state wide; and ultimately congressional races.
Nevada is voting this year on top 5 open primaries with ranked choice voting.
Alaska already passed similar reform.
Even ultra-liberal Portland Oregon is switching to multi-representative districts with RCV for city offices.
Hopefully these efforts represent the tip of the iceberg of election reforms.
Look up your local/state initiatives and support reform that way, do not wait for the corporation to reform itself
At this point the average of the betting markets in something like 50 Trump 20 Biden. Nate Silver had Trump as a two to one favorite before the debate.
I don't know about "waltzing in" but there is clearly a favorite.
I don't think this (their inability to perform the bare minimum pablum) is an accident. Our current online cultural world drives exactly these kinds of extremes. To be "normal" is to be boring, and to be boring is lame and unelectable.
I agree; but I do think that a savvy communicator could dress up smart/boring/sensible and make it snazzy. Not glamorous, but substantive straight-talk that mirrors the experience of ordinary ppl without exploiting it. I think the country is dying for it.
I agree entirely. I suspect such a candidate with substantive straight talk would find a very welcome reception. I'm pointing out the forces that I believe have resulted in no such candidates appearing.
Yes! I know! It’s tragic. I often think about what I would say if I had a podium, and I can even feel my own convictions, which have emerged from a lot of deep study plus a lot of “on the ground” conversations with people of all stripes, and I feel the “over my shoulder” disappointment of dear friends and supporters (from my own campaign) who might think I have abandoned some progressive ideals. I haven’t; I just, as I said somewhere else yesterday, think that people who passionately, rightly believe in the overarching vision of a just society were lulled, even if unintentionally, to look at things through a personal/moral lens rather than, broadly speaking, cultivating the specific musculature needed to buffer the structures that uphold morality. In other words, we can’t do “the work” (a phrase that needs to be put out to pasture, and fast) if we don’t have a container.
I know you agree! I’m just sitting here wringing my hands.
Have you been reading the recent profiles of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez?
This is a fascinating point to me - high level politicians often do not improve their presentations over time. You would think with coaching and handling that it would naturally happen. With Kamala as just one example - I am guessing her staff did not get there by stating hard truths or providing tough love - I am amazed that she keeps operating at the same level after some years now on the national stage.
Cali superstar - multi-term mayor, assemblyman, etc - Willie Brown was her mentor and paved her way. Reputedly a very hands-on relationship. She looks good getting to the podium but is an underwhelming persona otherwise. As noted, she isn’t tremendously popular here in her home state.
Say more. Specifically re: RFK
His vocal cord thing makes him and awkward and stilted speaker, ironically the very flaw in Biden that's creating such an opening for alternative opponents to Trump.
There are certainly myriad other problems between him and mass popular appeal (he's a septuagenarian himself of course, besides all the substantive stuff). But boy if he could stand up at a podium and speak in a way that gave people vibes of comforting normalcy there would be a real opening here. But he can't.
He can, and does. The vocal thing is barely a glitch. It's the WHAT being said, not the HOW. Dude is amoderate Dem, and not bring allowed into the Room. Same as with Gabbard, et al
I don't want to be cruel about someone's speech impediment, but "the vocal cord thing is barely a glitch" = "Biden just has a childhood stutter".
New people get exposed to RFK and go "wait, why does he talk like that?"
Take his name and his politics and put them in a smooth and charismatic speaker and it's a different scenario.
Which again, is not to ignore some of RFK's views which make him toxic among various constituencies. But this is an unusual election offering unusual possibilities.
Biden issue is cognition, not a speech impediment. Among other things. At this point, I don't think most folks give a crap about charisma and a package. We are watching a shitshow spin out of any semblance of control. Kennedy would be a stabilizing force.
You say "which is not to ignore some of RFK's views which make him toxic among various constituencies" and then basically ignore that. To me at least, RFK seems just as impervious to reality as Biden and Trump.
Impervious to reality? Wtf are u talking about? This is a fairly salient 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good' moment. Stability and a bit of restoration in institutions is the goal now. Policy, politics, bullshit all go to the backseat at this point. The alternative is ever more escalation of chaos. Cultural and political cancer describes our current situation.
A good friend of mine has the same vocal cord condition that afflicts RFK Jr. And there's a treatment for it, which is quite effective. I've wondered why RFK doesn't do the treatment.
If Trump is a lock for November maybe the thing to do is just let Biden lose and gear up for 2028.
Perhaps so. It'll only be one more term anyway. There's something to be said about how different it feels when you know it's the final term versus "Oh my God we can't let him win another one." 2028 will feel different from 2020 in that regard.
Trump's choice for VP is going to hugely important. If Vance or Rubio can get in that will be Trump's de facto second or third term, depending on how you want to count it.
Yep
I don't think either of them are nearly as unstable, vengeful, or frankly as unintelligent as Donald Trump. I would a thousand times take either of them over Trump. JD Vance has become a Trump sycophant, but having read his book, and heard him speak before his political career took off, I can tell he has a normal functioning brain in there. And Rubio is clearly putting on a show as well given his past comments. Trump has a broken brain, they have just have broken moral compasses. I don't think they will be beholden to Trump any longer than they have to in order to become president. If they ever wanted a second term they can't outright insult him or throw him aside, but they won't make the same choices, or reason the same way, that Donald Trump does.
I'd be comfortable placing a large wager that timid empty suit Marc Rubio will never be president
There's too much doomerism in the base to gracefully concede to 4 more years of Trump. Project 2025 might as well be the apocalypse for them.
I am curious to see the opposition will react in November if Trump wins. Hysteria...or exhaustion?
Exhausted weeping. We've seen this coming for 2 years. If the Democratic Party doesn't get religion soon, there needs to be serious consideration of a new party. The Republicans are virtually gone. They're now MAGA.
Hysterical violence similar to what we saw in 2016 but amped to 11. The noisy part of the Democrat coalition have convinced themselves that a Trump victory will herald the end of the world as they know it. They will be unable to accept it quietly and will take to the streets in an orgy of indiscriminate violence. Good thing that the Republicans have most of the guns so we shouldn’t have to worry about an actual, you know, insurrection.
I'm not running around tearing my hair out about Trump, but I am very worried about how he will approach the world concerning Russia and Israel, and most other tense international relationships.
No, if Trump is a lock, run Harris and gear up for 2028.
“ while serving as the most-involved First Lady in American history”
I have Edith Wilson on line two.
Ha my first smile of the (angst-ridden) morning
Gretchen Whitmer
and
Wes Moore
for ticket? What do you think
I think I'd rather funnel fire ants into my urethra.
Ouch!
Whitmer. Let's see, the governor who forbid the buying of SEEDS during the covid lockdowns?
Even if Team D were to allow a Sanders to get the nomination and he were to win, he would not be allowed to govern.
Exactly. Just as with Trump.
Anyway, entrenched interests make the current system unreformable. The time for a mild-mannered, rule-following norms-adhering milquetoast like Sanders is long past.
The time has come for a Huey P. Long.
Revolutions eat their own children. Look at what the Arab Spring brought, nothing good. Incremental change, hopefully in a positive direction. Revolutionaries aren't good at governing.
I'm glad I live in a blue state (though my county is controlled by MAGA zealots who are against the master gardeners, libraries and the 4-H, Conservative Christian organizations only).
lol
Ask *why* do revolutions happen.
Although you first mentioned "revolution".
I know why revolutions happen, widespread discontent. I think evolutionary politics work better. Trying to find a "strong man" a "good king" to come and fix all of your problems is a recipe for disaster. They're usually good at stirring up the shit, but aren't good at compromise and consensus.
Evolutionary politics reaches a dead end, once.the sociopaths take over.
You know, conservatives come in many different shapes and sizes. And operational beliefs. I personally do not know any MAGA zealots well, but my Democrat friends see them everywhere and are surprised to find that I function as a quasi-normal female being, despite having voted for Trump twice.
Two of the three county commissioners are against the master gardeners and 4-H because they're associated with the University Extensions programs which are things like how to prune your trees and deer proof plantings. They've done everything they can to shut down the local library because they're "liberal". They refused state funds for homeless shelters. They didn't get state money for water and sewer projects because they offended the rest of the legislatures.
I grew up with conservatives and red necks. I have Trump supporting friends. We agree to disagree. The dogmatic, arrogant stance of some liberals is infuriating.
I do know MAGA folks, although I'm more accurately characterized as a Trump voter, and they're mostly normal. But yeah, people are so bizarre. Roughly half the country voted for Trump twice--a lot more the second time, even. But their brains can't conceive of anything other than a Confederate flag toting monster voting for Trump.
I'm a teacher in a 90% non-white school district. Worked high poverty schools for nearly 15 years. I've helped more non-white, low income, immigrant kids in 30 minutes of my day than most people in the country manage in several years--almost certainly more than the vast majority of people commenting (although not Freddie, who's worked in that field).
Might be useful for some of you to wrap your head around the fact that many happy suburbanites who know the difference between cold brew and espresso, have a regular sushi bar, and don't own any guns (despite supporting second amendment rights) vote for Trump.
I would be thrilled if just one of them asked you why, and then actually listened to you; instead of the usual Donald Pleasance point and scream.
If we're worried about Biden and Trump's age (as we should be) the same is even more true for Sanders. No more presidents over 80.
I'm not worried about age as much as mental acuity. Talked to a 93 year old human who is as sharp as a tack.
Biden ain't. "His best days were long ago, and, frankly speaking, his best days were never very good."
Call me ageist if you like, but declines during someone's 80s are very common. That's a risk that's not worthwhile for presidents. There's a reason we don't allow someone younger than 35, and it's not because there's no one below 35 who would make a good president.
Is there really a vociferous fan base for Kamala Harris? I've never met anyone like that and can't recall seeing anything like it online. I hear a lot of fear that dropping her will infuriate black voters, but I don't believe it. They largely didn't vote for her in the 2020 primary! The logic that, if you don't nominate Biden, you MUST nominate Kamala seems like the same lazy successionism that got us Hillary and Biden 2024.
I feel like there is a fan base for her, but thanks to the dynamics of pre-Elon Twitter, they punched WAY above their weight.
Again, this seems like a dogged insistence that the Democratic Party operates according to 1990s rules. WHY DO YOU THINK KAMALA HARRIS IS THE CURRENT VICE PRESIDENT?
Well, I’m just asking it to be better — I don’t know why its insiders and elites are such pansies. But it’s my party and I’d like to say loudly and clearly I’d like the party to operate with more ruthlessness, less insiderism, and just smarter.
As to why: I think Biden got cowed, first by the progressives into committing to picking a black woman, then by the groups, into picking Kamala specifically.
It's a rhetorical question, but I can't help myself. She is a symbolic VP, brought in because of Party symbology (not reality BTW). I am an independent operating in this deBoer world, but symbols do not represent 1990's thinking, do they? Figureheads chose to represent what are thought to be ideologic goals seems very 2000s to me. It is a marketing strategy and that is one reason it does not work: too blatantly superficial.
I'm a white woman and Marjorie Taylor Greene is a white woman, that doesn't mean we are on the same page about anything. It's pretty rich to suppose that Kamala Harris has anything to do with working class black women. She's total academic west coast elite with a bit of aggressive prosecuting under her belt to make her look "tough on crime".
I so agree.
Black voters are already defecting to Trump in droves.
I doubt keeping Kamala Harris on the ticket is keeping black voters who are fed up with everything else about the last four years to say, "you know what, I hate everything, but since she's also theoretically black, so I guess I'll have no choice but to vote for any ticket she's on."
That's not just not how that works.
Schrodinger's Black person. You have to open the box at any given moment to see if Harris is lack or Indian ...
Or as the inimitable Byron Crawford would say, "Halfrican-American".
Care to share where you're getting that "droves" of black voters are going to Trump?
The latest NYT/Siena College poll shows 26% of black likely voters for Trump right now (June of 2024) compared to only 5% in June of 2020. And keep in mind, this was taken right *before* Joe Biden's dementia fueled self-immolation in the debate.
Trump is currently poised to capture a larger percentage of the black vote that any Republican has had since Richard Nixon, who got about 1/3rd of black voters in 1968. Trump's massive gains with Latino voters, especially Latino men, is old news, but it's pretty difficult to imagine he's going to lose them to Biden going forward either.
Trump does the macho thing very well. He certainly talks the talk. I can see that being very appealing to a lot of men and some women.
At a high level, Trump is kind of like the late mayor of Providence, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.
Both well educated rich kids, both growing up in heavily ethnic white neighborhoods. Buddy growing up in Silver Lake/Olneyville/Federal Hill, and Trump growing up in Queens. It's almost quaint now. It's a thing that gets no attention now in a hyper homogenized age of rich white mega-politicians.
Cianci and Trump both grew up meeting all sorts of different people at all levels of the social and economic spectrum in a way that the current crop of Acela Corridor ultra rich who have never even visited a place in the lower quintile of American GDP before running for office can even comprehend. It's part of Trump's appeal with working class voters as much as it was part of Cianci's.
I don't think dropping Harris from the ticket will infuriate black voters, at least not that many of them. But it will infuriate lots of Good White Liberals though. All the good white people that made Robin DiAngelo and Kendi Ibram best selling authors.
And people like that, the "good white liberals of the progressive persuasion" are why I left the Democrat party. Weak minds, IMO. And if any dem actually listened to Trump's words while he is riffing at rallies, they would discover that his ideas for improving the opportunities for black Americans are practical and operate in a real, functioning society, not a nonexistent confabulation.
I'd caution anyone against strongly believing, based on polling taken six months before an election, that Sanders would have defeated Trump. That was a hypothetical question posed well before people were ready to vote, and IMO the responses should be taken well salted.
It seems entirely plausible to me. In conservative Idaho I talked to more than one Trump voter that bitterly hated Hillary but liked Bernie. Freddie's point seems to me that it is not so much that Bernie was wildly popular, but that Hilary was uniquely unpopular. Trump, also, had a lot of unfavorables, but could never complete with Hill in that regard. Bernie did not suffer such unfavorables. Maybe he would have eventually, but he got to pretty high name recognition by the end without those numbers spiking
Agree. I'd bet my house (if I had one) that a crapton of 2016 Trump voters were of the "anyone but her" variety. For all of her qualifications and experience (which is quite a lot) she simply wasn't likable to most of the electorate. The reasons for that can be debated until the cows come home, but it is what it is.
Well, I do have a house, and I agree. She projects the cold and fearsome political presence that many Americans privately fear about government.
definite "X-Files villain" demeanor--and not the smart MIBs, I mean the ones who found out the Reticulians had changed the bargain at the last minute
Agree. Made the same point in a different comment. I think the "Socialist" label would have been a huge albatross around Bernie's neck.
Nobody cares about that label. Again, so many of you seem to have 1990s political logic glued permanently to your brain. Do you think the American people care at all about ideology?
Lots of older voters do, even though they love "socialist" policies.
I'd agree they don't care about ideology exactly. But I think people do care about labels, especially self-given ones. And I think that's reasonable. I think if you choose to call yourself a Socialist or a Libertarian or a Green, you are trying to communicate something. And I think that's especially true if you choose a label, like Socialist, that historically has been used as a term of opprobrium (at least in the U.S.).
It's not like Sanders couldn't have chosen the exact same policies throughout his career but always called himself a Democrat. He chose to call himself a Socialist because he wanted to communicate something, to signal he was somehow different. On the one hand, I think that was appealing to a bunch of folks; it's part of what got him the support he received from his base. But I think in a general election, it would been used against him (successfully) by Republicans to indicate to folks in the center that he wasn't someone who could be trusted with the Presidency.
I'm afraid American voters care about Entertainment and are ignorant about most everything else.
I think the American people absolutely care about ideology, since it has been thrown in our faces for the last 4 years, whether we like it or not.
I agree with your point, but I do think Sanders had a good shot. At least as good as Clinton. And then at least we could have some real conversations about policy and not just bullshit.
I think literally ANY other Democratic nominee other than Hillary would have won. I don't fully understand why, but she was hated by a significant percentage of the electorate.
And that is why I think that if Biden won't step down, Kamala Harris needs to be replaced as VP on the ticket, whether she likes it or not. If people see a VP candidate who is both younger than Biden, competent, AND who is relatively likeable, they'll be more likely to take a chance and vote for Biden. (John McCain learned that the hard way when he made the mistake of picking Sarah Palin without thoroughly vetting her; once she showed herself to be an airhead in public, a lot of people who might have voted for McCain changed their minds because they didn';t want to take the risk of her winding up as President if anything bad happened to McCain.)
... because you preferred Clinton
Well, that's one point of view, I suppose. Another is that political scientists are well aware that polling hypotheticals is notoriously unreliable. Jonathan Bernstein writes frequently about this, and I recommend giving him a read.
yeah I don't get that. Bernie lost because all other candidates dropped out so he was left with a one-on-one contest against Biden. Which realistically is exactly what you have to be able to win. Sure you could argue that that as foulplay but it's a pretty small foulplay by the standards of politics. And all of this was before Republicans bothered attacking him at all. Imagine the kind of attacks against an old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn who until pretty late in life was basically the mayor of a hippie college town.
Polling aside I think Clinton was just the wrong candidate for that cycle. She could have won in another election but right now we are seeing a global populist movement (EU elections anyone?) and she was the consummate insider running in a year for outsiders.
I am not sure she could have won in any election cycle. A lot of people just HATED her, for reasons I have never been able to fathom.
White non-college educated voters liked Sanders, which is the exact group the democratic party has strayed from, and who cost them the 2016 election. Unless you really think more educated voters or voters of color would have fled from Sanders I don't see why it wouldn't be true.
What I think is that I don't know what would have happened had Sanders won the nomination, and neither do you. No one knows. Maybe Sanders would have defeated Trump, maybe not, but polling taken six months before an election, between a hypothetical matchup, is a poor basis for being too sure of anything.
I mean of course we can't know. But it's a very reasonable thing to think based on the evidence we have. That's really all we can say about it.
Sure, it is reasonable speculation. As I said in my initial comment, however, I advise anyone against being too sure of that conclusion, and I stand by that.
Agreed. People really need to drop this argument, because we will never know.
I think that Trump presented something very unique at the time, being able to capture audience using media in a viral manner, and although Bernie was sort of in the space, I don't think anyone could have beat Trump at that game.
We'll never know if Sanders could have beaten Trump. But we do know that Clinton couldn't.
The worst possible outcome for the Democratic Party is an internal civil war over who gets to replace Biden followed by a loss in November anyway. The problem is that Harris, as the vice president, is the obvious and natural successor to Biden. If she's passed over I think there will be chaos.
At least if she loses in 2028 Democrats will be able to argue that she simply was not competitive in an open and fair nominating process.
People take as given that an "internal civil war" in the party is bad, but I just don't see evidence of this. Obama v Hilary in 2008 brought *tons* of people into the electoral process. They phone-banked and volunteered. Caucuses were packed full with record numbers of participants. Sure, I don't think the party did a good job of retaining that energy, but I don't see any evidence at all that it was harmful to the party itself
I think the issue is that, unlike in Obama versus Clinton, the racial minority would lose this time out. Cue the inevitable cries of "racism".
Would it prove fatally disruptive to November or the Democratic Party? I don't know but I suspect it circles back around to the question a lot of observers have been asking for a while now: has woke peaked?
I also think Obama was a talented orator and inspirational candidate (quite aside from his race). No such candidate appears waiting in the wings at the moment.
No, that is not the worst possible outcome. The worst possible outcome for the party is that Biden wins. Then nothing will be learned. I think, long term, a nasty war is the best thing for the party. Yeah, it won't win them 2024 (barring some miracle), but it will provide a badly needed sense-making process.
Yeah, I think it's very possible that after November centrists like Ruy Texeira, Carville, etc. take the reins of power and the woke set is banished out of the political sphere and back to college campuses. Bill Clinton represented the Democrats deciding that they were sick of losing because of political correctness. I have to wonder if somebody like Fetterman will play that role in 2028.
There is no scenario in which your nominee winning an election is the worst possible outcome.
It's only the worst possible outcome if you see the party's direction as self-destructive, and if you can see beyond the results of any given election.
I suspect you likely think this because you very much want Biden to stay in so Trump wins more easily. That's just my hunch.
Harris loses to Trump too. Anybody who takes up the Democratic nomination for this election is going to be tainted.
How? Here's one obvious question: "Did you state in the recent past that Biden is completely healthy?"
I agree Harris loses to Trump, which is why I don't think they should or will choose Harris if/when Biden steps aside. As I said in another comment - yes, Harris and her fans would then be a problem, but it's a problem you just have to live with by nominating someone like Whitmer and hoping you pick off enough votes at the margins in the key states.
Now, I could be wrong, and Whitmer could still lose, but I'm 100% positive that Republicans and Trump would very much NOT prefer someone like Whitmer, which tells you everything you need to know.
The obvious question is why Biden should serve out the remainder of his _current_ term if he is too diminished to run a campaign. And jn the hypothetical where he does step aside who would take over as President?
I honestly don't think Trump cares who the Democrat is if it's not Biden. They're still going to own the economy and the border.
There is an obvious reason Trump was pulling his punches last night. He and his campaign (and everyone else that wans him to win) would love nothing more than Biden staying in.
I think it's a fair question about Biden finishing out his term, but I think it's one that largely goes away if he comes out and says he's not running again, and say something along the lines that he's not up for campaigning and is going to focus on strictly governing for the last X amount of months.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's a great answer in substance, but something like that would work politically to open up the convention. There would still be chaos, but much preferred to Biden staying in. Obviously.
I'm a stranger here, as in being independent leaning right of center on some things and left of center on others. Pretty typical of free-thinkers, but I'm old; from the days where people sometimes considered voting for an individual that they liked rather than straight party ticket. Today, this would be considered -- maybe anathema? My Dem friends (with whom I cannot have political discussions) certainly think that way of political thinking to be outrageous.
Not exactly sure what statement of mine this is a response to. Saying that genuinely and not in a smartass way.
Also, I don't think your hypothetical question is as good of a 'gotcha' as you think it is.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lpNCwUzIPtU
"The problem is that Harris, as the vice president, is the obvious and natural successor to Biden."
That attitude right there IS the problem. FDR had three different VPs in his four terms. The party should be able to replace the VP candidates (and for that matter, the presidential candidate) running on its ticket if the party feels that it is its interest to do so. no one is owed the spot!
I don't think Kamala is a good candidate at all, but at this point she's better than Biden, which is an extremely low bar. Outside of the KHive, I find it extremely unlikely the loose patchwork of donors, Senators, NGO leaders, and media figures who make up the Democratic establishment will agree on a single alternative, even if many such candidates would perform better than Kamala. So despite her terrible poll numbers, if it's her or Biden she's the only choice at this point.
"Clinton had always been divisive, going back to her husband’s first 1992 presidential campaign; this was frequently said to be the product of sexism, which may have been true but was irrelevant to the outcome of the race."
This weird denial of reality suffuses left-identitarian spaces. They put out shitty products into media, and then blame the fans of those media when their shitty products fail. (Simply look at some of the latest from Marvel or Star Wars.) When there is no accountability for failure, there will never be a correction of the behavior that leads to failure. To be clear, the behavior that leads to failure is not identitarianism (though I believe it contributes); it's incompetence. Identitarianism provides cover for image-savvy but skills-poor executives of all kinds. The idea of Hillary being a victim of sexism is similar: yes, I have no doubt that sexism played some role in her defeat. But if she'd run a great campaign and been a great leader and candidate, sexism wouldn't have mattered at all (much like identitarianism didn't hurt the series Arcane, which was brilliant).
It's all the same attitude: it's okay to be incompetent as long as you have the right politics, mouth the right platitudes. That only works if everyone around you believes the platitudes are more important than the reality, and that's simply not true of the larger population.
The incompetent have limited ability to correct themselves even with feedback.
My impression is that most everybody (even those in power) know something is wrong, but they also have no idea how to fix it. They cover up the fear of their own powerlessness, and their fear of losing their positions, by playing the blame game.
True, but their consistent failures can give others the courage to challenge them, which is ultimately the kind of accountability that might win out. Or, perhaps the parties will end up dying. It's very hard to have a new party emerge in a winner-take-all system like ours, but it's not impossible if it doesn't become a third party, but rather effectively supplants one of the existing two.
Just to rehash 2016, I was a strong Obama supporter and someone who was tired of the family dynasty of the Bushes and Clintons and so was not disposed naturally toward Hillary. And while generally a centrist, the one issue where I'm far, far to the left is on taxes. Which theoretically should have made me open to supporting Sanders.
But I never even considered supporting Bernie. For me, the Socialist label he had chosen was a deal breaker. Not so much because of the policy implications, but because it was a signal to me of someone who considered himself at war with the political system and unwilling to compromise in a way that made him unfit to be President.
And while I certainly would have voted for him over Trump (I would literally have voted for every Democratic or Republican candidate I can remember over Trump, with the possible exception of Ted Cruz), I'm always very skeptical of the "Bernie would have won in 2016" folks. I think if Sanders had been the nominee the Republicans would have relentlessly campaigned on running against a "Socialist" and I think for many folks in the center who ended up voting for Clinton, it would have been a successful strategy.
The irony of that though is that Bernie has demonstrated time and again that he *is* willing to compromise - he voted for Obamacare and the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet the socialist label makes him seem more unreasonable than he actually is.
Agreed. While cranky, Sanders has demonstrated over time that he is a reasonable guy, who I think would have done fine as President. But back in 2016, I had more questions about him. And while I would certainly have voted for him over Trump (and almost certainly over any of the Republican candidates), I'm one of those "independents" who in practice pretty much always votes Democratic. But I think a lot of folks who genuinely go back and forth between the parties would have found voting for a "socialist" difficult.
Leaving aside moral questions, a more adept politician than Harris might be able to lean into her history as a tough-on-crime prosecutor to do some Clintonian triangulation. A big ol' middle finger to your average FdB subscriber, sure, but there's a reason Biden won the primary.
But that's not something I think Harris, specifically, could execute. And I'm not sure her echo chamber of minions would approve.
Fetterman 2028. He's clearly setting himself up to run with his attacks on elite colleges, wokeness, etc.
He still suffers major speech issues from his stroke. If those don't significantly improve by 2028, he's not going to look like the best candidate on the stage.
Freddie,
You state that “Biden is the best president of my lifetime.”
This is an absurd statement, and I’d encourage you to reconsider this opinion. Obama was far and away a much better president.
Biden has had 3 foreign policy disasters, any of which would sink the credibility of any president, and he’s had three on his watch.
Antisemitism is running rampant through America and American institutions, and Biden does nothing to stop it. In fact, he’s done everything in his power to give the antisemites a seat at the table, so to speak, in order to court more votes.
Inflation has been at historic highs for most of Biden’s presidency, housing prices are through the roof, and good luck getting a house loan for under 9% interest.
And if it wasn’t already clear to you years ago, Biden isn’t in charge. He isn’t running the country.
So when you say “Biden is the best president in my lifetime,” what you are really admitting is that you believe the unelected bureaucrats running the Biden administration are the best administration of your lifetime.
You believe unelected “party” members are a better option for America than elected officials.
These unelected “party” members are unaccountable to the American people.
And this debate, the earliest in history, was set up by team blue as a coup attempt to replace Biden with a candidate of their choice.
Instead of giving the American people a choice in their candidate, it was much more preferred by the party that claims to defend democracy to install the candidate of their choice at the Democratic convention.
See letting the citizens vote in primaries is messy, as we saw with Bernie Sanders during the last two democratic primaries.
I’d really encourage you to reconsider your opinion of Biden being the best president of your lifetime.
Kudos. (This is me, liking this post on an old laptop without button capabilities on this platform, apparently.)
' So here’s the question: if you try to replace Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024, how do you push aside sitting Vice President Kamala Harris without destroying the party? '
I'm glad you asked that question. IMO the push to get Thomas to retire from SCOTUS has been to get a spot to move Harris. Yes, she's an intellectual light-weight, but would be a reliable left wing vote on anything that mattered to the Dems/leftists. Why would she turn a sure thing down now for a maybe election later? Plus a Black man is being replaced with a minority woman so no fallout there.
The people who have been running the US - it's been clear that Biden isn't one of them - could make their decision as to who looks good for President and make him/her VP, Biden steps down, new VP is nominated, and deal done. It is also clear to me Biden won't go w/o a fight. A combative nature is a common trait in people suffering from various forms of dementia. I feel sorry for Biden myself - it's elder abuse.
This debate may have made the above impossible at this late date.
I have a conspiracy theory about the debate, btw. Trump sent out a fundraising email this morning titled "I love CNN". Jake Tapper and Dana Bash earned a lot of kudos from conservative commentators last night--Sean Hannity praised them on Fox in his post-debate show.
I have to wonder if CNN sees the writing on the wall. Trump likes to talk. Do you want the crown jewel of getting his first post-victory interview after November? If you're CNN you could plausibly approach him with a line like "We turned it around for you. Remember the town hall where you slayed? And then the debate where Biden's mind broke? Everybody expects you to talk to Fox. What a surprise if you gave it to us instead! You know we'll treat you right."
And maybe, just maybe, it's a hopeful sign that the media landscape (and maybe the country at large) is resetting after the insanity of the past few years.
I wonder what the commentary from the Sean Hannitys of the world would be if Biden had a coherent and sound debate performance? My guess is either crickets, or they would have pointed out things like the lack of a live audience as them stacking the deck against Trump. It's possible that's not the case, but it's hard to listen to someone whose opinions on any given thing seem to so effectively reflect whether or not they think said thing was good for their side.
If Trump had lost I'm sure his partisans would have blamed the moderators abd CNN.
But watching the debate myself I thought that Bash and Tapper were pretty fair. So maybe something is genuinely changing.
We can hope.
I think those commentators just had the same emotional reaction that most of us had watching Joe Biden last night. They weren't planning that far ahead. If he hadn't totally bombed and even done a half-way decent job they would not have been saying that.