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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   38087 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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What's Biden's survival path? Manifold's currently putting him at 41% chance, but I'm not seeing a likely way for that to happen.

Things look to me like:

  • Democrats express displeasure.

  • Biden refuses to drop out.

  • Democrats adjust convention rules to free up delegates.

  • Delegates reject Biden.

Are people thinking that Democrats won't allow the convention to nominate someone other than Biden? Or that delegates will vote for Biden?

Neither of those seem especially likely to me, especially when Kamala's an easy default option to unify around, even if her reputation is that she's unpopular. So I guess I'm not seeing where it's coming from. Are there convention rules that are problematic? I'm wondering whether them meeting early due to the Ohio deadline being earlier is a factor, but Ohio moved it back, so they can just cancel their early meeting, right?

But, this is not the best development for the Trump campaign.

I continue to think Biden is more likely than not to hold on (and probably lose).

The easiest and cleanest way for democrats to remove him is for him to willingly step down. So far he has been steadfast in refusing to do so. I've heard some wishcasting that "well of course he's going to dig in his heels until the moment he doesn't" still thinking pressure on him will prevail. I don't believe it will. Politicians in general are very self centered and egotistical, and I've seen nothing to indicate Biden is an exception.

As you say, the next step in escalation is for Democrats to take him on at the convention. He's clearly thought ahead that far and is openly daring someone to try it. So far no one has thrown their hat in the ring, not even Dean Phillips. Biden is signaling that this option will be a real fight, it will be messy, and he will damage whoever comes for him as much as possible. He also starts with a big advantage given that almost all the delegates are pledged to him. The "good conscience" clause in their pledge is a loophole that could be exploited if enough people want to exploit it... but will they?

My expectation at this stage is that no one actually challenges, and Biden is coronated. Taking him on is a highly risky option - if you fail and Biden loses some people will blame you for the loss, potentially killing your future prospects. If you take him on and he wins that's even worse - now the President has a very personal grudge against you.

He's still not completely out of the woods if he gets through the convention - there's still the 25th Amendment option. But the convention is probably the biggest point of vulnerability left and if he survives that he probably survives to November.

Taking him on is a highly risky option - if you fail and Biden loses some people will blame you for the loss, potentially killing your future prospects. If you take him on and he wins that's even worse - now the President has a very personal grudge against you.

Also if you provoke an open nomination and you personally don't get it, it's likely to torpedo your personal chances of being President if that nominee ends up winning the election since they'll likely get to run twice at which point it's 2032 and your political ambitions are probably fucked.

My expectation at this stage is that no one actually challenges, and Biden is coronated. Taking him on is a highly risky option - if you fail and Biden loses some people will blame you for the loss, potentially killing your future prospects. If you take him on and he wins that's even worse - now the President has a very personal grudge against you.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the american system, but rebelling at the convention does not actually directly impact Biden's chances at the general election, right? At most indirectly since it makes the democrats look chaotic.

But the popular impression & even the mainstream media is sufficiently critical of Biden at this point that I think there is a good chance that if someone already sympathetic challenges Biden, and Biden wins the convention anyway, but then proceeds to lose the general election, that person will get a large boost in popularity and media pieces about "if only so-and-so had won the convention, everything would have been different". It might even be better for the person than winning the convention outright, since no potential democratic nominee has a >50% chance of beating trump. Better make a good impression now and then fight against someone else in the next election.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the american system, but rebelling at the convention does not actually directly impact Biden's chances at the general election, right? At most indirectly since it makes the democrats look chaotic.

Chaos at the convention is what would impact the general election prospects, as the convention is where the wings of the Democratic Party come together to commit to a choice, and a chaotic convention means that there are not only winners, but losers, and losers who are angered or just unmotivated to come back to the polls on election day have- in this context- a real impact on the general election.

Biden's election prospects hinges on him outperforming his polling in multiple key battleground states, where any decline in the Democratic base turnout would be fatal. This is why the pro-Palestinian wing on the party was able to influence various aspects of Biden's policy towards the Israel-Hamas conflict, as Biden was naturally inclined/desired to be even more pro-Israel, but the pro-Palestinian wing was threatening to decrease turnout if they didn't get... well, they didn't get what they wanted, but they got concessions in the form of Biden pressing the Israelis to shape their operations.

A contested convention is that, but at a larger scale. Given that the most loyal part of Biden's democratic party base / his closest allies are the African-American wing of the party, anyone overthrowing him is also overthrowing the position his faction has in the party, and the Party mathematically can't win in as many places as it needs to without the African-American wing.

But the popular impression & even the mainstream media is sufficiently critical of Biden at this point that I think there is a good chance that if someone already sympathetic challenges Biden, and Biden wins the convention anyway, but then proceeds to lose the general election, that person will get a large boost in popularity and media pieces about "if only so-and-so had won the convention, everything would have been different". It might even be better for the person than winning the convention outright, since no potential democratic nominee has a >50% chance of beating trump. Better make a good impression now and then fight against someone else in the next election.

The issue is that the mainstream media doesn't control the Democratic party apparatus- the Biden-Obama wing does, and they and their allies will close institutional doors / donor venues / primary the people who broke ranks with the party, in favor of political allies and partners who didn't. We've already seen this within the Democratic Party just over the Israel-Hamas War, as the (allied to the Biden Wing) AIPAC-wing of the Democratic Party has been primarying the pro-Palestinian wing, including notable members of The Squad, who have repeatedly been oppositional to Biden and attenmpted to leverage electoral turnout as political blackmail.

You also saw this in the Republican context of the last decade. When Trump started to win, there was a substantial part of the wing, the Never-Trumpers, who were sufficiently critical of Trump to challenge, get tons of media support, and boosts in popularity. They are practically extinct, not because they aren't popular with a great many people, but because the people whose approval they sought were not the ones who mattered for maintaining a stake in the Republican Party political machine.

No direct impact, sure, but if some higher-ups in the party wanted a non-Biden scapegoat to punish then a convention challenger would be the obvious choice.

The "good conscience" clause in their pledge is a loophole that could be exploited if enough people want to exploit it... but will they?

He... kind of said that it would be OK with him if they did, in his 'big boy' press conference today. It was a little hard to parse, but he did use the words 'of course they can' -- so I guess he's sort of blessed an open convention? (unless of course he's senile and can't articulate his thoughts properly!)

Is it just me or does this "good conscience" clause talk really remind anyone else of the "regularly given" clause talk back in 2020? Of course, because the script writers for reality are so stinking good at their jobs, the partisan valence is somewhat switched.

It certainly could, in theory, result in the convention ending in a lawsuit by Biden trying to force delegates to vote for him.

I find it very fascinating that people are yelling about which of two elderly white men with questionable cognitive abilities should run our country. It just blows my mind that our politics have gotten to this point.

I do not see the evidence that Trump has any fading cognitive abilities. He is likely not as smart as he was at 30. He doesn’t drink. He still steps on stage and gives a speech often. He has been a loudmouth his entire life. It’s his personality. Not the same thing as cognitive decline. He is just old. We all age differently.

I do not see the evidence that Trump has any fading cognitive abilities.

He is likely not as smart as he was at 30.

How can you hold both of these views?

Language precision issue.

Trump has normal decline. Like he was IQ 135 at 22 and now he’s probably 125. Biden has the gappy decline where he doesn’t know where he’s at sometimes.

Categorically different.

Cognitive decline is an unavoidable part of aging. Every 70 year old i have ever talked to about it will admit they used to be sharper when they were younger.

In races where no other information is available, I vote for the more conventionally white and male seeming candidate. I am not alone in this prejudice and trying to push DEI in democracy seems suspect.

I think that's fair enough as carefully worded, but a presidential race (even the primaries) has almost the most information possible available out of any election you will ever encounter, so.... "no other information" is almost never the case, thus this whole vote-tendency is almost entirely irrelevant? So I fail to see how this statement is relevant at all.

I mean if you're taking into account race and gender to vote for white men, why can't other people to vote for a black woman or what have you?

You're already following essentially DEI for white men, therefore you're a prime example of why people might think pushing DEI for others might be needed. You are creating that which you dislike.

You said it was valid in the first place, aren't you just appealing to principles you don't hold (and in fact mock?) in order to exploit someone?

I don't mock principles generally, so I am not clear exactly what you are saying here. Can you rephrase for clarity?

It’s perfectly fair for you to prefer voting for black women when you don’t have other information available. But many more people share my prejudice of ‘white men are less likely to misappropriate public funds and are just generally more competent’ than do what you do. That’s what makes DEI in candidate selection kinda dumb.

I think if you were correct the Democrats would not be punching above their weight in reference to the EC. Or at the very least the people who believe as you do, do so only very weakly and it is out-weighed by the actual political affiliation of the candidates.

Democrats are not punching above their weight in the EC, and my belief- that in the absence of other information, you should prefer a white man because he’s likely to be more competent and honest- is itself a bounded belief that can be readily outweighed by other considerations, notably including the letter after their name.

You've got it backwards. The open advocacy for voting for, nominating, or appointing people because they are black and/or female is what prompted this.

And where did that come from? Just happened for no reason? Or did that happen because of open discrimination legal and otherwise against black people in the US? The Civil Rights Era occurred for a reason. DEI and wokism is a response to what came before.

  • -10

Just happened for no reason?

It happened because

  1. Black people believe voting tribally is perfectly valid, just like pretty much every other racial group except white people and

  2. The Democratic party's long-term strategy involves spoils for women and minorities.

And why do they feel that way in the United States of America? Why is the strategy that way? What formed some kind of divide between black and white people in the US of A? Any kind of situation or series of events that may have had some kind of impact on race relations? Something even the Founding Fathers thought might become an issue down the line? Might have caused a mild civil contretemps? Something that created a coalition of minorities? Something about discrimination being legally enshrined, one race being owned by the other?

The USA is the way it is because of the history of slavery and everything that came from it. Jefferson recognized it. So did many others from then until now. Saying Oh people prefer white candidates because Democrats push non-white candidates but refusing to go back the extra step as to WHY that coalition happened the way it did is probably the biggest frustration I have with parts of the right in America. You don't have to support how things are now (wokism etc.), to at least understand the chain of events that led to it. This didn't just spring up out of thin air due to racial spoils on behalf of black people. It was racial spoils on behalf of white people first, that was legally enshrined that then was overturned, over a long period of time. And the USA has been unable to escape that history. But ignoring that is not going to make it go away. And because Democrat's don't ignore it is why they punch above their weight. Like it or not, many white Americans do feel significant white guilt and that includes many conservatives who buy into the "All men are created equal" founding mythos. Whether they should feel that way or not is irrelevant, they do.

Wokism and DEI emerged in the US and not in say the UK because of the specific history of the United States. If you want to cut history off at a certain point and complain about how Democrats pushing DEI pushes you into preferring white candidates but without thinking about the extra cycle about what historical events caused them to push DEI in the first place, then you are going to struggle to attract people to your side, who do see those epicycles.

  • -11

I can criticize old, white men until the day is dead on whatever policy they have.

I can't do that with black men and/or women. Unless I have a D next to my name, in which case I can call Ben Carson an Uncle Tom or House Nigger and not receive one iota of pushback.

Spare me the entire guilt on slavery and racism speil. I don't care. The past two decades have made it clear that every ethnicity will follow along tribal guidelines - so I will take that lesson to heart and move forward with that in mind.

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Black people feel voting tribally is perfectly valid because that's the general rule. No explanation is needed, that's how people normally act. It is white Americans who are unusual here. It's not slavery that resulted in anything different, it's the Civil Rights era which resulted in whites being taught it was not right for them to act in their own racial or ethnic interest (either "white" or their own particular ethnicity, though the latter took longer to fade).

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elderly white males

Would it be less fascinating or mind-boggling if the two candidates were equally senile Latinas?

No

Yeah, that’s fair. For whatever reason, the words “white male” are a bit triggering to me, so sorry if my reply came off as rude.

There was a conventional GOP primary, the party wanted Trump. Because he says loudly and clearly that it is unacceptable that millions of people have illegally entered our country and they have to go back

The other guy not so much

I don't know for sure. Right now, I'm just darkly amused at the fact that the most devoted anti-Trump faction of the Democrats is currently engaged in frantic scheming to keep Joe Biden from being certified as the winner of an election that he did, rightfully, win.

Yes, yes, of course, This Is Different (really). But what an ironic rhyme.

Don't die in the next 3 weeks, refuse to resign. Checkmate.

I don't understand how the US state machinery can withstand the humiliation of Biden constantly saying dumb stuff. It was pretty bad when Bush went

"The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine," Bush said.

Biden's just done the same thing: https://x.com/FunNormalGuy/status/1811518090355614120

"I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin"

The trained seals clap anyway because why not? About 2 seconds later Biden realizes and tries to undo it, 'no he's gonna beat President Putin, its President Zelensky!' And the man he's just humiliated is standing right there, ready to come on stage! Nobody is going to be thinking about what Zelensky has to say.

This silliness is actually dangerous, it renders the US unpredictable and volatile. When Biden says stuff like 'we're gonna defend Taiwan' and the White House clarifies it as 'no the one China policy hasn't changed and we've signed no treaty' what does that mean? Who is to be believed? Is it a strategy of strategic ambiguity or is it strategic schizophrenia? Who is making decisions and drawing up policy? How can you negotiate with a leaderless country?

Next he's going to praise America's best buddy in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran!

The crown prince of Iran is a Republican, so I don’t expect Biden will praise him. But you never know these days.

"I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin"

Set aside the kayfabe that a president is the one in charge and making all the decisions in the executive branch. The main part of his role is as a figurehead and he can't even do that. Making clownish mistakes like this in matters of high end foreign policy is terrible optics for the US like you've said.

I can only image some PR wonk in his team came up with the idea of "Joe, you need a win to distract from this whole senior thing, so lets try to set up a show where you're brokering peace in the Ukraine" or some such nonsense. Then Biden does what he does and digs his hole even deeper.

When Biden says stuff like 'we're gonna defend Taiwan' and the White House clarifies it as 'no the one China policy hasn't changed and we've signed no treaty' what does that mean?

To be fair, Trump used to fire from the hip with comments and tweets and the white house would then have to scramble to realign and 'clarify' his statements.

The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine

Bush said that, but it was many years after he left office, in 2022. So that, at least, has nothing to do with US state machinery; if your elder statesmen are a little more elder than statesmen, that's no big deal. You left off the best part: he added "Iraq too."

True, I knew that. But that doesn't exactly come out in the post does it, it reads that I was drawing a direct equivalence. I guess I thought it was pretty bad to give these washed-up old guys a big podium and have them mess up their lines.

Bush said that, but it was many years after he left office, in 2022.

TBH, if a politician in their mid 70s who's been retired for well over a decade makes such a gaffe, that's just life as usual and there's nothing really wrong with it.

I find it ironic that Bush was known for gaffes but those are small potatoes compared to what you get all the time from both Biden and Trump.

I am somewhat baffled about why people would think that Kamala isn’t implicated in the coverup of Biden’s deterioration. Either she was totally fine with continuing a charade of Biden being compos mentis, or she is such a naif that we might as well just tell Taiwan to start playing nice with Xi now. Same goes for Buttigieg, Newsom, Milley and every other mouthpiece who swore up and down that Biden was in command and showed no signs of slowing down.

I don't think "implicated" is the right word. Reporting suggests that "loyalty" was a key part of Kamala's own pitch to become VP in the first place, almost explicitly. She's not intimately involved in the inner Biden circle. Thus, "remaining silent" is I guess a form of complicity, but it's not nearly as active in the way Jill Biden's would be.

Kamala's incentive is to ride with Biden so that she will become President after he dies or is incapacitated. She likely knows that her odds are worse if she's at the top of the ticket.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not aware of Newsom commenting on biden's health one way or another.

Newsom, in fairness, has a plausible sounding story that he didn’t know.

What's Biden's survival path?

Nothing happens? Under current DNC rules Biden is the guy that 90+% of delegates are pledged to vote for and will win, absent some change in DNC rules. For Biden to not be the nominee the status quo needs to change in some way. There are 10 days left until the virtual nomination so if something is going to happen to get rid of Biden it needs to happen soon.

Easy. Dems invoke the 25th. He can’t survive that.

Dems wouldn't survive that either. It could destroy the party.

Ironically, he could in theory:

  1. assuming the VP and executive branch heads declare POTUS incompetent,
  2. POTUS can simply transmit to Congress that he is in fact competent
  3. VP and executive branch heads now have to reassure Congress that POTUS is in fact incompetent
  4. Congress now gets to decide the issue. They have to declare by a majority that POTUS is in fact incompetent
  5. Hilariously they might not (Republicans have majority in the house and might prefer Biden running)
  6. if POTUS retains seat, all the cabinet heads might roll at this point (which does create some liability for cabinet members at steps 1 and 3).

At least, this is my read of the 25th, but it's past my kid's bedtime, so I might be missing something.

Republicans can’t declare Biden competent and survive politically. I’d guess the house declares Biden incompetent and there’s drama in the senate, clear majority for removal but getting to two thirds might be a stretch.

I think they could: everyone would know that it was about winning the election in 2020, so their base would think it was hilarious. "You ordered it, you eat it" etc.

But who knows. The next-level play on their part in this situation would probably be to try to stall the entire thing until POTUS is irreversibly on the ballot and then go for removal. Right now I don't think they could stall that long on the 25th but give it another 30 days and it looks like they would be able to do some damage that way.

They can vote "present" and make the Democrats get a supermajority on their own.

Republicans can do anything and survive politically. We've seen it fifteen times in the last ten years.

Yes there is a constitution to adhere to etc etc. But when your own party says “you aren’t mentally fit” no way you can win an election.

I'd add to your number 4 that it's not just a majority that has to find him incompetent -- it's a 2/3 supermajority in both houses, a stricter requirement than impeachment. If he needs to go and he won't choose to go, the easier path is to impeach and remove him that way -- no need for cabinet drama.

But I also posted my own take on the 25th idea in a subthread but it got buried. Here's my take:

Invoking the 25th would make Democrats look weak and their administration look incompetent. Because it would be a declaration that its headman is incompetent, in the literal meaning of the term. Invoking the 25th also normally requires the consent of the President -- that's the only way it has been used in the past -- and to do it over his refusal would require a whole rigamarole where the Cabinet tries to argue with the Congress and Biden attempts to convince them he's actually competent.

It would be an absolute shitshow of constitutional and political maneuvering that would make even the most insane Brexit deliberations across the pond look like normal legislative operations, with the executive fighting against itself and the Congress held up from all other activity while members get prime time TV slots grandstanding about the administration. In the worst case, this would lead to the nuclear football being tossed back and forth between Biden and Harris like an actual football.

If they have Biden's consent, he can just do the normal, expected thing and resign. Which would also put Harris at the top of the ticket, but at least without the insane constitutional boogaloo that the 25th Amendment process would require. But the 25th Amendment process is pretty involved, to prevent coups. Harris can't just up and declare herself the Big Cheese.

The 25th invocation suggestions aren't a serious threat to Biden.

Republicans voting Biden as competent would be an excellent news cycle (for dramacoin).

We are exercising all these dusty parts of the constitution, maybe we can have a convention in my lifetime.

Yeah, I really don't understand what all the discussion about Biden somehow being removed from the ticket is coming from. It can't happen. The rules are designed to make that impossible. Are the Democratic leaders/influencers calling for it trying to set themselves up to appeal to a hypothetical future nominee for 2028? Biden's already made it clear he won't step down voluntarily.

If the Democratic party loses in November, he's going down with the ship. And I guess we'll find Harris laying on a door frame in the middle of the ocean.

The rules of the Democrat Party are just made up - they're not the Constitution or even the law.

The only thing actually constraining them is deadlines to get on the ballot. But in the past, states have been quite generous about accommodating the two big parties.

At the end of the day in politics, the rules are more like guidelines, unless there's an army enforcing them.

At the end of the day in politics, the rules are more like guidelines, unless there's an army enforcing them.

In 2002 the NJ Senate race had passed the nomination deadline, when incumbent Senator Torricelli was headed for a certain loss following corruption charges. The Democrats asked the New Jersey Supreme Court if they could pretty please have an exception made and the court declared an "emergency resignation exception." The Democrats replaced Torricelli on the ballot with the recently retired Senator Frank Lautenberg, who won by almost 10%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lautenberg#2002_election

You can think of the rule-change commentariat as the IQ bell curve meme, where the stupid and the super-intelligent both approach the same conclusion while the median/normie takes the 'smarter' route that is itself implicitly not as smart as the high-IQ side.

The low-IQ end of the bell curve is the 'we have to try' commentariat, who think they need to change the candidate to win but don't realize that they don't have the mechanisms to actually do it.

The median-IQ majority is the gritting-teeth-and-crying face crowd, which know they can't change and so have to make do with Biden and are trying to urge everyone to get in line.

The high-IQ end of the bell curve is the 'we have to appear as if we're trying' maneuvers, who know that changing the candidate is impossible but are also positioning to survive the fallout when the median-IQ enablers get stuck with the blame for standing by Biden.

There's a degree of conformist-shock in the commentariat rebellion, but there's also some indications that some elements of the Democratic party as thinking much more in terms of the aftermath. Obama, for example, is very much setting himself on both sides: publicly staying on brand vocally supporting Biden, which will be remembered if Biden wins, but also implicitly endorsing (by not pushing back against) personally screened media articles calling on Biden to resign. If Biden wins, he always spoke in Biden's favor, and if Biden loses, he was not an enabler and supported the Right Side trying to raise concerns.

Now adopt that framing to other actors. One way or another, there are about to be a lot of losers from the current party-rebellion, and people aren't just taking stances on Biden for the election in and of itself, but for how it will reflect in the fallout. If, for example, Biden were to win, you can rest assured he'll take revenge on various party members who denounced him. But if he loses, people who denounced him will have significant ammo on the people who were loyal.

What we're seeing now is a lot of future positioning, as people try and angle to alternatively cover their basis, or double-down on one side or another. The 'Biden must be replaced' crowd- whether Biden is actually replaced or not- is part of a stance on which wing(s) of the party will rise or fall after this election.

Its interesting, because when you brought up the IQ meme I thought you would do the total opposite with it. So probably it doesn't apply here.

Yeah, I was expecting it to go more like this:

Low: wants Biden replaced, not knowing the rules prevent it

Mid: must support Biden because the rules prevent replacing him

High: wants Biden replaced, because rules are made by man and can be changed if extreme circumstances require it

Simply added a higher-high, of supporting Biden because the Biden will win the inner-party power struggle regardless and target the high for retaliation regardless of overall election results.

Your framing is assuming that the priority is winning the presidential election, as opposed to control of the Democratic Party.

if Biden looses

*loses

Good point on some of the pressures facing the people involved.

Ezra Klein just said today that he thinks there’s a lot of inertia in the party about this and nobody seems to realistically have a good plan to replace Biden. I guess we’ll see if that pans out.

The Biden nomination relies merely on Democratic indecision and cowardice which... Seems like a generally good bet. For the most part good strategy is to turtle, run out the round, and be saved by the bell. For the most part I agree that it might be too late to win the presidency, and every week that passes it's later.

In particular Biden just needs Democrats to collectively hesitate out of a sense of MAD, which can be achieved by empasizing that some voters would only vote for Joe. There apparently exist people like that. I can't comprehend it. But showing enough of them makes Biden unremovable. If removing him costs 5% of the vote, it's pointless to try.

The amount of people who won't vote for a senile candidate but would vote for someone else must be greater than the Biden loyalists, right?

It doesn't really matter as long as the raw number of people who will throw a tantrum and refuse to vote for the D candidate is large enough that you'll lose.

If a sufficient percentage of people, see this insane person (aside to @2rafa, this is the straw-donor plaintiff for a future lawsuit against the Biden campaign for passing funds to a new candidate illegally), will only vote for Biden and not for a new candidate for reasons that might be absurd; then it doesn't matter if the group of people who won't vote for a senile candidate is larger or smaller. The Democrats can't afford to lose any part of the party, or they lose the election. They're going to try very hard to thread the needle and get everyone on board before they give up and make the Sophie's Choice of whether to lose by a lot or a little.

A handful of insane people on twitter may not represent a large enough voting bloc to matter. Also the person in that tweet would definitely vote for any dem, I'm guessing.

The Biden camp isn't simply Biden loyalists, but the broader Obama wing of the party. An institutional rebellion of scale sufficient to topple Biden also topples a lot of them.

Their place in the party is more or less still secure whether Biden wins or loses the election. It's far less secure if the party is subject to a sudden takeover, who then needs to go through the long and disruptive process of establishing their own loyalists and their own allies across the party machinery.

I don't think its simply MAD or hesitation. Its that there is no consensus candidate to replace him. Lets say that Trump has a stroke right now. I think the GOP would face a similar, but less difficult position. It would clearly be Desantis vs. Haley. The people's candidate (assuming Trump is totally out) vs the establishment. Right now with the DNC we have Biden who is the candidate, and the people's candidate; Harris, the DEI candidate; Newsom, the California money candidate; Michelle Obama, the other establishment candidate; Whitmer, the fake reasonable candidate; Hillary, the other other establishment candidate; and Polis the actually reasonable candidate. We will note, there is no people's candidate right now in the running to replace Biden. He's like the only popular guy in the party. Bernie would probably beat all the people ranked ahead of him on Predictit in an open primary. That is how fractured the situation is.

Harris is not just the DEI candidate but the heir apparent; otherwise she'd be out of the running (maybe there'd be a different DEI candidate)

I suppose. There certainly would always be a DEI candidate. The real question is when are Democrats going to figure out how to elevate a politician that people don't dislike? Who's the next Bernie? Bernie?

Biden controls the war chest, and second, forcing him out is not the same as him stepping down for the good of the country. One is Brutus, the other heroic. Superdelegate2.0 won’t go over better. Besides, you can’t defect until you can coordinate universal defection or you get punished.

One is Brutus, the other heroic.

Brutus was a hero, to be fair.

Brutus was a vacillator who sided with the killer of his father to throw the Republic into the hands of Augustus. Hardly heroic, in my book.

I don't think Brutus intended for things to just wind up in Augustus' hands. The point is that he tried to do something to save the Republic, even if he ultimately failed. I call that pretty heroic.

Hitler tried to do something to save Germany. His ideas were bad and his implementation was worse. No one Almost no one would call that heroic. Likewise Brutus.

Bruh. In no way is Brutus comparable to Hitler.

And an honorable man.

Biden controls the war chest

What he has. Anything else comes from donors who don't like him very much right now.

I think the logic of Biden's team is sound here.

While Biden is losing, there is a lot of time before the election. If he can get the nomination, the media will rally to his corner. Maybe there will even be an October surprise like a war with Iran or they can gin up another Donald Trump hoax. All in all, if Biden gets the nom, he still has something like a 30% shot of winning. It's not bad.

If the Dems knife him in the back and overturn the will of the voters, it's going to look bad. They will probably lose a good share of their elderly base who look at Biden and see themselves. The odds of winning go down.

So I think MAD works here.

What surprises me is that Biden doesn't step down "for the good of the country". Sure, he wouldn't be President anymore, but it secures his legacy. With the academy fully captured by the left, Biden would go down as a Top 10 President who defeated the evil Donald Trump and stepped aside in favor of a woman of color.

I advocate the other approach simply because there are a lot of unknowns here and very little upside.

Biden is basically only plausible if he has absolutely no more memory or misspeaking issues which given the fact that he referred to Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump isn’t looking that good. If he wonders about and looks confused, if he issues a word salad, or messes up grammar, etc. then he’s not going to carry the election. And given 6 months to go, he’s probably not going to be able to not have those kinds of moments. So we’re talking about a near certain loss for Biden unless he makes a miraculous recovery.

Another huge problem is that even if you’re avoiding the obvious signs of dementia being put on display, you’ll still always be on defense with Biden. They haven’t been able to pivot to “and this is why you shouldn’t vote for Trump” since the debate. They can’t attack Trump on tariffs or abortion or anything like that because they’re still trying to convince people that Biden isn’t senile. They can’t talk about their plans for the future because they’re stuck talking about whether or not Biden is cognitively competent to run the country.

Even with an initial bit of discord around picking someone else, at least you can start to run a proper campaign here. You can forward a plan for the county and pivot toward why you’re the best guys for the job. You can talk about the student loans crisis, Gaza, Ukraine, the economy, inflation and so on. Even if it’s Buttigege or someone that takes the senility off the table. It’s not a millstone around the democrats’s neck. If the person chosen comes out swinging and on message, I think most of the unity issues solve themselves.

What surprises me is that Biden doesn't step down "for the good of the country".

Biden is old, ornery and wants to prove the people who thought he couldn't win wrong. His Stephanopoulos interview involved him claiming he was always down in the polls and that he was attacked by the elites (when he was the beneficiary of an elite attack on Sanders and RFK and Dean Phillips and...)

I think he's become much more cantankerous and resentful in his old age. If he steps down, maybe Obama and everyone else were right...It's better to seize victory than be bequeathed a legacy by people you loathe I suppose.

when he was the beneficiary of an elite attack on Sanders and RFK and Dean Phillips

Do the elites now include random middle class people in the mid west who don't like the anti-vaxx guy who had a worm starve to death on his brain or an avowed socialist? If the elite defended him against some of these people it's because of how incredibly embarrassing they are.

Biden benefited the party from suppressing any real primary because they thought it'd weaken the incumbent (and consolidating the anti Bernie vote last time)

I don't care about RFK, personally. But it's a bit rich for the guy who benefited from party grandees, media figures and candidates pragmatically lining up behind him trying to sound like Bernie whining about elites Mika Brzezinski when they do the math again and decide he's a bad bet.

It goes both ways. Or should, anyway.

Do the elites now include random middle class people in the mid west

Yes. From a right-populist perspective, anyone with a conventional 4-year BA is presumed to be an out-of-touch elite until proven otherwise. It is worse in the UK, where to make the maths work on "Brexit is a revolt of the people against the elites" you have to treat anyone with a job as an elite.

I knew the UK economy was bad, but was the unemployment rate really 50%?

No, but exit polls suggest that economically active people voted 55-45 for remain and, anecdotally, people with jobs were more remainery than freelancers and small business owners.

In my social circle which, consistent with the results for Greater London was about two thirds remain, one third leave, precisely zero of the leavers had a PAYE job. They included pensioners, self-employed tradesmen, and an only son whose "day job" was caring for his elderly parents while trying to use the imminent inheritance to pick up an e-bride from Thailand and engaging in less-pozzed science fiction fandom.

So there were in fact quite a few people with jobs voting Leave.

What surprises me is that Biden doesn't step down "for the good of the country". Sure, he wouldn't be President anymore, but it secures his legacy. With the academy fully captured by the left, Biden would go down as a Top 10 President who defeated the evil Donald Trump and stepped aside in favor of a woman of color.

This was somewhat surprising to me as well. Obviously, I can't know how I'd feel in the same situation since no one can, but I imagine that if I were 81 years old with as storied career as Biden's, I'd figure it'd be a good time to sail off into the sunset, hoping I have at least a decade or two left to spend with my grandkids and great-grandkids, instead of spending all my time and energy working what is reasonably considered one of the toughest, most scrutinized jobs in the world. Heck, even if it were a disgraced retirement instead of one where the history books will lionize me as the Fascist-Defeater who seamlessly transitioned the USA to a new, golden age of a black female POTUS, I'd think that'd be worth it.

But clearly, Biden thinks differently. I find myself thinking that there really are people who are just fundamentally different from most of us in terms of their ambition, that they would see working, again, one of the hardest jobs in the world, until their dying breath to be worth it for the... what, prestige? Status? Power? even if it means sacrificing a relaxing, luxurious, and potentially love-filled retirement. I see that in Trump, too, in his own political ambitions in the past decade, though he doesn't look quite close to his end as Biden is to his. Or maybe I'm just the unambitious weird one, and actually most of us would do the exact same thing and consider holding onto that power until my last, exhausted breath to be well worth the sacrifice. There certainly seem to be no shortage of rich and well-respected celebrities who have ruined themselves or at least severely harmed themselves by risking things to reach for even more.

Marius really wanted that seventh consulship and it killed him

It's legacy, that's what they want, at that level. No one wants to be a one term president that handed over a massive mess. No one wants to be the next Jimmy Carter.

Neither Trump or Biden has secured a positive legacy. Trump wants to be remembered at least like a Reagan, a president at least half the US remember fondly, not a one term president impeached twice. Biden's legacy if he doesn't win is that he's the guy who people elected to replace the Big Bad Trump but was such a failure that the people prefered re-electing Trump over him.

If Trump wins, and the Democrats get the House, I predict he'll be impeached at least three times (one additional one), with the NY felony conviction being the stated reason. That's gotta be some kind of accomplishment.

As for Biden, he started out looking like Carter (high inflation and a disastrous military operation) and still does.

If Democrats had allowed some sort of positive legacy to survive from the Trump presidency and hadn't made it so personal with the lawsuits, maybe he wouldn't be so incentivized to run again. But they went and reversed everything and even deny him the objective foreign policy wins that aren't partisan politics. Likewise, for Biden, if he wasn't running against Trump the election wouldn't feel to him like a direct referendum on whether he ended up being worse than the guy he was supposed to fix the messes of; if he was facing anyone else, or was polling above Trump, he could ride into the sunset with the satisfaction of having done his job.

The way Kruschev chose to gave up power without a fight comes to mind, if you know that story.

Kruschev came to power because Georgiy Zhukov’s troops massacred his opponents in front of the politburo and coronated him.

Brezhnev’s suggestion that he resign to spend more time at his dacha with the grands comes off differently in such circumstances.

I think he ran in 2020 hoping to be able to pass the baton. But then by even late 2022 it was obvious there was no one to pass it to. He didn't want to be the guy who beat Trump then stepped aside only for Trump to prevail. So he correctly evaluated he was the best chance against Trump. Even now there is no obvious replacement that would defeat Trump. All the Democratic governors who have hype/juice only have it for reasons that appeal only to progressives. Whitmer and Newsom are major turn offs to anyone who doesn't think Covid lockdowns needed to be harsher and longer. Kamala has all Bidens policy problems, with the additional inability to appeal to anyone on stage.

But clearly, Biden thinks differently. I find myself thinking that there really are people who are just fundamentally different from most of us in terms of their ambition, that they would see working, again, one of the hardest jobs in the world, until their dying breath to be worth it for the... what, prestige? Status? Power? even if it means sacrificing a relaxing, luxurious, and potentially love-filled retirement.

Actually a bit of a whitepill tbh.

Biden is ambitious, but one reported aspect of that ambition is that he's wanted to establish a political dynasty, as a sort of a post-Kennedy Kennedy clan. That dream largely died with the death of Beau in 2015 when Beau was trying to run for Governor of Delaware (a governorship that's been solidly Democrat since 1993 and which would have put Beau on the bench for potential higher offices), and the less said about Hunter the better, but off and on there's long been reports / rumors that there's a family-level emphasis rather than just personal ambition.

That matters, because that would make his quitting not just a personal failure, but a dynastic failure. And, in turn, it gives the family members- especially Hunter and Jill Biden- substantial incentives to encourage him, as they would have none of the access, and none of the protections, that they've enjoyed with him.

I think him staying in reflects less the feeling of being old and more that he’s in a bubble where he’s no seeing the polls and I’d surrounded by people who are telling him everything is fine. Supposedly his two bigg Confidants at the moment are Hunter Biden and Jill Biden — both of whom have fairly obvious conflicts of interest here. Hunter can get a pardon from his father, but is unlikely to from anyone else. Jill is nobody without Joe, so she won’t get attention if she’s no longer First Lady. Power is addictive and more so than a lot of drugs, most people don’t give it up willingly. I mean who is retired Joe Biden sitting in a care home? President Joe Biden is definitely someone important.

I don't think RFKs polling means much. It's caused by Democrats shocked by Biden's performance looking for another Democrat to say they support. At the end of the day nearly all of those people will not vote third-party; they'll hold their nose and vote for Biden or they'll stay home.

And some who would otherwise vote Republican, because they like RFK's vaccine skepticism.

Yes, I should have distinguished between the pre-debate RFK supporters, who are likely mostly single-issue anti-Covidians from both sides (still probably leaning Democrat, though), and the large bump from the debate, which is what I said above.

I live in a red tribe crank bubble- 0% of the people I know well enough to have talked about it with will vote RFK. The like two red tribe leftists will vote Biden and everyone else will vote Trump.

In real life republican conspiracy theorists have issues other than vaccines that they care about(abortion, guns), accept that Trump will stay within acceptable bounds on vaccines, and don't trust RFK.

I live in a red tribe crank bubble- 0% of the people I know well enough to have talked about it with will vote RFK. The like two red tribe leftists will vote Biden and everyone else will vote Trump.

I'm in a similar bubble in a blue state, but at least half of the red tribers close to me are voting RFK as a protest vote. My wife -- who campaigned against state vaxx laws a few years ago -- has an RFK sign and is putting it in our lawn.

I try to tell them that absent vaccines they would loathe RFK, but it's hard to draw that distinction when the other options are so revolting.

Blue states probably have different dynamics.

I've totally lost touch with almost everyone who got fired for not getting jabbed (a lot of them were basically migratory workers or ready to retire and leave this blue hellstate anyway). Are people still so single-issue about it?

Maybe that's the wrong way to put it... The whole thing just fed into my existing partisanship along with all the other 2020 insanity. I can't imagine picking out the vax as the One Thing that radicalized me about that year. Aren't lockdowns just as big an issue?

Kind of a shocking reminder of Scott's old "different worlds" essay (which, holy fuck, has a David Gerard quote in it, talk about bubbles)

Yes, there are a lot of young male republicans for whom the vaccine was the government trying to force us to poison ourselves.

But trump is anti-mandate, so these people are voting for him because guns, even if the vaccine is a top issue for them.

Personally, I find nowadays that anything relating to COVID and/or vaccines for it just makes my eyes glaze over, as a result of hearing about it constantlly for two years.

I'm rather surprised that there still seem to be so many cranks who are obsessed with being anti-vax or anti-lockdown after this much time has passed.

To be otherwise is to be fiscally irresponsible, I’d argue.

20% inflation over 2 years while saving no lives and being forced at gunpoint to inject myself with something that doesn’t help, as well as being a prisoner in my own home?

Never Again.

People are also still obsessed with slavery, government treatment of natives, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Jim Crow, and apartheid, and much more time has passed for each of those. It’s not surprising that some people who feel that their rights were violated will hold a grudge and want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Not quite single issue, but the COVID-19 vaccines are still a no-go in most of the Trump crowd. The phrase “turbo-cancer” has joined “died suddenly” in the vocab of people convinced the jab is the greatest threat to public safety since AIDS.

greatest threat to public safety since AIDS

I mean unless you're a gay man or shoot up heroin, has AIDS ever really been much of a threat?

More comments

I think RFK could end up being pretty bad for the Democrats. Many of his policy positions are conservative adjacent (anti-vaccine, pro-Israel). But the real risk is low-information Democratic voters getting to the polls and seeing the name “Bobby Kennedy Jr.” on the ballot. That’s why Democrats have been freaking out about him so much more than Republicans lately.

Hard to call Democrats anti-Israel. There might be a lot of pro-Palestine rhetoric in the voting base but I've yet to see that born out in any policy or elected official rhetoric outside of 'the squad'.

And even the Squad are having their wings clipped. Bowman was disposed of, AOC (always the most pragmatic one of the bunch with the highest potential ceiling) had to make some moderate comments condemning antisemitism.

The Left is arguably anti-Israel but I suppose it hasn't saturated the Democratic Party yet.

Are people thinking that Democrats won't allow the convention to nominate someone other than Biden? Or that delegates will vote for Biden?

Both.

Due to various party rules and past reforms, the Democratic Party's delegates elected during the primary season are considered Pledged Delegates. Delegate rules vary by state to state, but generally pledged delegates have to vote for whoever won them in the primaries, at least in the first vote.

The issue on a procedural level is that the convention is won by the first candidate to reach a majority of the delegates in the round of voting. Due to functionally running unopposed, Joe Biden won 3,896 of the 3,903 pledged delegates.

In order for the convention to even get to a second round of voting, nearly half of all the Biden-faction delegates would have to be (a) able, and (b) choose to be faithless electors, when doing so would open them up to great personal and professional political risk to their prospects of Democratic Party members in the party hierarchy, particularly if the mass-defection failed to be a majority.

But, this is not the best development for the Trump campaign.

"Other party distracted by infighting over which of a smallish number of fairly unpopular candidates to chose until a couple of months before the election" seems like a pretty good development to me?

The problem (for Trump) is the Democrats might be able to find someone better than Biden or Harris. Democratic and swing voters will vote Democratic versus Trump unless the particular candidate is really, really bad. So the Democrats just need a nullity and they win. So probably not Harris, Clinton, or Buttigieg, but maybe Newsom or Whitmer (who have negatives but not quite so bad)

Kamala is the only person with democratic legitimacy to replace Biden. Everybody knows that the one job of the vice president is to take over if the president dies or quits. Everyone who voted for Biden had that understanding.

Maybe. Or maybe the fact that the Democrat's nakedly lied to the American people about Biden's fitness to serve for years brings shame on the party, regardless of who the candidate ultimately ends up being. They all stink of complicity. Some more than others, granted.

I remember my father, a lifelong Republican, talked about how the only time he ever voted Democrat was for Carter, because of how deeply ashamed he was of the entire Republican party after Nixon. He regretted that vote until the day he died, but he was still demoralized enough at the time to have made that decision.

Right -- and if they'd hit Biden with the 25A two weeks ago (or earlier ideally, given that his cabinet has obviously known what he's like for some time), let Kamala have her 'first Black Woman President' and pulled off some sort of quicky primary/open convention resulting in Newsom or an even more generic Dem-bot as the candidate going forward -- that would have been a bad development for Trump.

As it is they are either continuing to ride Biden (pretty good for Trump) or squabbling over an ineffectual coup for several more weeks (during which time any campaigning Biden might do will be of questionable-to-negative value) then (probably) putting up one of the unpopular people.

This seems pretty good for Trump too!

Maybe even better than facing Biden, since it puts the lie to the Democrats as a whole being anti-chaos and/or trustworthy.

On the other hand, the earlier the democrats have a candidate, the earlier you the republicans can prepare attacks, see what sticks, target voters, see how things are going, rather than only have a short period of time to work that out. You lose out on all the "he's too old" concerns that everybody's been convinced of, with now your own candidate looking weaker in that respect comparatively.

I’d be shocked if republicans didn’t have attack ads ready to go on a moment’s notice against Newsom, Harris, big gretch, buttigieg, etc.

But do they work? What would the actual voting shares be? Things look different, I think, when you're talking about hypothetical candidate Newsom/Harris/etc. versus actual candidate Newsom/Harris/etc.

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