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The average voter is assuredly paying attention to Biden being way too old. That includes people who have no intention of supporting Trump but who now can’t support Biden either- no small number. I agree that democrats are between a rock and a hard place but the idea that this can all blow over if they ignore it is not the best of a bunch of bad options.
Instead there’s a senile old man who’s closest adviser is a crack addict and who’s obvious successor is an obvious bimbo widely perceived as selected due to her(frequently disliked by the general public) race and gender. Leaving that in place is probably worse for the democrats than any possible replacement, or possibly even multiple replacements. Unironically it’d be better for democrats to have a Newsom v big gretch v Biden/Harris fight than to have a straight Biden v Trump showdown.
It only a rock and a hard place because they lack the will to do anything about it. If they wanted Biden out, they’d have pushed him out. If these were republicans, he would be out by now simply because republicans are much more focused on winning the election. Instead, they’re publicly hand wringing while the clock ticks down and they lose support from average people who don’t want to be ruled by a guy who can’t string a paragraph together. It’s really hard to sympathize with an entire party too worried about being mean to a guy with obvious dementia to kick him out and take control before their chances tank completely.
...Huh? What Establishment Republicans are you talking about who are very good at getting candidates who don't help them win elections off the ticket? The same ones who kicked Trump out, along with Oz, Mastriaono, Masters, and every other nincompoop that threw away a winnable seat in 2022?
Yeah I’d argue republican elites have even less control of their party. The GOP is captured by the % of the base who loves Trump.
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I read it as Republicans are disciplined this round. And observably the friendly fire and unforced errors seems pretty D in 2024 in a way it didn't in 2022.
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Who is "they" in this? Team Biden has all the cards here; any attempt to get him off the convention floor without his consent is likely (certain?) to fail. Even if there were a way to, there would need to be some leader for people to coalesce around as an alternative, and anyone who took up that mantle would be trashing the remainder of their political career. And even if someone successfully navigated all of that, there's still the small matter of actually beating Trump in the wake of a nasty, chaotic convention (losing to him also being the end of a political career).
As someone who thinks Biden should go, I think you’re wrong about the division simply because if they beat Trump they are heroes. And I think given the urgency most of the rank and file feel about Trump, I think once they have a candidate, the sniping stops in short order.
As far as going after Trump, democrats can’t do that now. Biden lacks the mental capacity to turn the conversation to Trump, he can’t even get the focus off his dementia symptoms even on the left (lots of speculation on the cause with a lot of people saying Parkinson’s or Lew Body dementia). All of the energy from the party from here until election night is going to be spent on defense — proving Biden fit — rather than trying to defeat Trump. And all the while, Trump can spin every attack in him as a desperate attempt to deflect from Biden being unfit for the job. That’s unwinnable to my mind.
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At this point, it's unclear to me that Kamala is worse than Biden. All of that was based on polling from back when the media and party thought the age issue was manageable and so tried to contain it. The cat's out of the bag now.
Though I have to grant that there is a risk that she'll be framed as the worst of all worlds: complicit in Biden's deception but not in his actual successes.
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