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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29974 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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but how will the bureaucratic weirdness that would be necessary to do this affect the voters' confidence in the Democrat ticket

I don't really buy this. People are voting against Biden and Trump more than they're voting for them, and a young and confident voice saying all the right things will pick up a lot of votes, I think. "They're both too old" is an extremely common position, and I think that'll dominate any concerns about someone who wins a second "primary".

How much of a mess might Biden and/or Harris make on the way out

In terms of accusations / insults, past Dem nomination fights were bloody but that didn't really spill over into the general. And we're still months out, elections take around a month in some nations. In terms of throwing up procedural / legal issues, I doubt that's too big of an issue.

Not to mention the optics of kneecapping the female POC with the progressive wing.

I think it's a much bigger problem with the progressive wing of the elites than it is with the voters. Could just go Whitmer w/ black VP or something.

In terms of accusations / insults, past Dem nomination fights were bloody but that didn't really spill over into the general. And we're still months out, elections take around a month in some nations. In terms of throwing up procedural / legal issues, I doubt that's too big of an issue.

What I'm talking about is, most of the discussion has assumed that both Biden and Harris agree to step down voluntarily. What happens if one or both of them don't? Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation? How long would that process take, and how sketchy would it look?

If anything like that happens, I would presume the Dem party leadership expects it to all happen behind closed doors. If it ends up taking months and has at least bits of it leaking out into the public, well, it looks pretty banana-republic to me. Though maybe not necessarily more so than all the other stuff that's happened over the last 8 years? Maybe the voters won't care that much if they manage to get somebody young and confident in there somehow, or maybe not.

What happens if one or both of them don't

Yeah, most Biden-alternative discussion is premised on Biden choosing to back out, since he controls the delegates. There's a general sense there's a solid chance this happens.

Does the Democrat party actually have good options to replace them without their cooperation

Delegates could, in theory, reject Biden, the delegates are only obligated to "in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them". This seems difficult and unlikely though.

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