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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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It's officially Joever

Now we see if 3 months is long enough to rev up a credible presidential campaign.

He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.

E: He endorsed Kamala. Obama did not, calling for an "open nominating process", and didn't even mention Harris.

Obama is still holding firm, although I suppose he could capitulate at any time. I wonder what his game is, who his guy is.

The only top-level-ish comment I feel like making at the moment is that both Reddit and X are insane right now when it comes to politics, even more than usual. For X of course part of it is the algorithm showing me highly charged politics stuff based on my previous choices, but still. Both platforms seem to be overrun by some combination of delusional, hysterical partisans on both sides of the political spectrum, astroturfers paid by one or the other side, astroturfing bots, and fervid conspiracy theorists who do not understand how basic reality and politics work.

Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.

X is overrun by a variety of wild shrill nonsense... or, most charitably, rampant poorly-argued speculation... such as "The Democrats killed Biden and are hiding it", "Biden hasn't been told that he's been dropped out against his will", "The Dems pressuring Biden to drop out is equivalent to a coup", "The Trump shooting was a false flag done by the Republicans", "Kamala is not African-American because her father is Jamaican", "Trump should resign because he is the oldest candidate in history (haha I'm only saying it because you said it about Biden)", "Biden dropped out because he was behind the Trump assassination plot and it failed", "The New York Times is a right-wing organization that is responsible for forcing Biden out", and so on.

Reddit has been delusional and probably compromised for years. I had high hopes for X, but in practice, while I think that it's better than Reddit, it seems to be at the mercy of political campaigns that drown out organic discussion.

It's all kind of amusing, but tiresome, to expose myself to such a high level of inanity, insanity, and astroturfing. But I seem to be addicted to it on some level.

When you say “Reddit is compromised,” can you explain what you mean by that?

I mean astroturfed. I should have been clearer about that.

In internet slang, "astroturfing" refers to the practice of creating a false impression of grassroots support for a cause, product, or policy. This is often done by organizations, political groups, or companies that hire people to post favorable reviews, comments, or endorsements online, making it seem as though these opinions are coming from ordinary, independent individuals. The goal is to manipulate public perception and give the illusion of widespread support or opposition.

Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_tx6E3Gb78Q

We have some of those arguments here. Kamala (and Obama) not being ADOS has been well litigated here.

It is actually an interesting question why blacks in some areas seem to rise up faster than ADOS (Nigeria is mostly just a bigger filter). Kamala’s though is Tamil Brahmin class Indian elite married to an Askenazi Jew. Ethnically she has nothing in common in ADOS.

Obama isn't an ADoS, but Kamala is. It's not like Black people moved to Jamaica of their own volition.

ADoS refers specifically to descendants of slaves in the United States, not the Americas generally.

Yes, Kamala is an American Descendant of Slaves but not an official ADOS, which is confusing.

Fortunately for Trump's chances, the party's rapidly coalescing around Harris, with 125 endorsements from house democrats and a lot of state dems and delegates endorsing Harris. Dems weren't willing to rock the boat with the last terrible candidate, and when the debate forced them to notice, they immediately make the same mistake again and pick the obvious "consensus" candidate who happens to be mediocre. I'll again post How Democrats Got Here

Harris had just mounted an exceptionally lackluster bid for the presidency. Then a California senator, Harris had entered the race for the Democratic nomination with strong donor support and an early surge in the polls. Despite these early advantages, Harris failed to maintain — let alone build out — her coalition over the ensuing months, and her campaign collapsed before the primary’s first ballots were cast. Nor was Harris’s electoral track record before 2020 especially encouraging. She had never won an election in a swing state or competitive district. And in her first statewide race in deep blue California in 2010, Harris defeated her Republican rival by less than 1 percentage point. Two years earlier, Barack Obama had won that state by more than 23 points.

Given that Biden was 77 in August 2020, the likelihood that his running-mate would one day become his party’s standard-bearer was unusually high ... Biden’s primary consideration in choosing a running-mate should have been his or her electability. Instead, he put enormous weight on demographic considerations. “I think he came to the conclusion that he should pick a Black woman,” former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the New York Times in the summer of 2020. “They are our most loyal voters and I think that the Black women of America deserved a Black vice-presidential candidate.”

On Polymarket, Harris's chance of winning is 30%, to Trump's 64%. Trump was up 71% right after the debate. Better than Biden's conditional probability of 25%, and Harris'll probably go up a bit when she gets the nomination, conditionally that's 35% but while that's better than Biden's 25%, it's not a great outcome for dems.

In a way, though, I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

The reason 3 months will be long enough to run a campaign for president is because the party will quelch dissent in record time, disseminate new marching orders, and can generally expect their people to hop to it and follow through regardless of who the candidate is both because of fear of Trump and the unwavering belief that blue tribe has their best interests at heart.

And I wager that none of the rank-and-file democrats will be bothered by the fact that the party elites, including Kamala, were complicit in pulling the wool over their eyes and creating this situation.

That said, they're inheriting most of the same disadvantages Joe was already laboring under (sans the age/dementia one), and one hopes that independent voters are noticing both that they were lied to for months if not years, and that a party forcing a new nominee down their constituents' throats without primaries and 3 months to the actual election is a signal of deep dysfunction. Every other attempt at rehabbing her image has been a failure.

On the other hand, the independent voter who is looking for any excuse not to vote Trump has an easy out, the Harris administration would promise to be the most seamless transition and least disruption to whatever the Biden admin's goals were.

Indeed, one can argue that (modern) historically the VP is meant to perform this role, stepping right up to the plate to keep things humming along. Ehhh, except she's NOT getting to step up, unless Biden formally resigns or they 25th amendment him. Which, I'm willing to give you even odds that's the next big 'crisis.'

I mean, yeah, it is objectively unpleasant. Look at this guy, who shilled for Biden's fitness right until he dropped out, and pivoted to Harris, renaming his account, without even thinking about it.

On the other hand I don't think this is a Democrat thing, it's just as unpleasant how many anti-trump reps who had "principled disagreements" pivoted and fell in line behind trump when the party moved that way.

Such is the nature of power.

I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

One could perhaps say "unburdened by what has been".

I refuse to adopt the meme phrase, even if I find it funny.

That said, it is amazing to see that Party continue to march on as if past evidence has ceased to exist. Heel-face turns are common in politics. JD Vance has to contend with his history of anti-Trumpism, after all. But now there should be people wondering why Kamala got to get the nod WITHOUT going through the standard selection process, but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!

but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!

As a blue-teamer myself, that is definitely my view. And everyone else I know's view. Though there's also the notion that if you have a president and vice-president - or presidential and vice-presidential candidate - who are voted for, and the president/presidential candidate steps down, people expect the second-up to take their place.

Sure, I just haven't gotten a single good explanation for why you are ignoring that Dem elites, including Harris herself, lied to you guys and covered up Biden's condition for months or possibly years, and have caused the current bout of chaos by failing to get Biden to step aside earlier. I got into a long exchange on twitter where I pointed this out and repeatedly asked why Kamala should be able to skip the normal process one would go through to earn the nomination, especially when she has demonstrated incompetence in how this Biden situation was handled.

They skipped over the primaries, which means millions of Dem voters did not get to register their voice for whom they'd like to have as a candidate. The whole premise for skipping the primaries was that Biden was mentally fit and able to run. And this got revealed as false in the most spectacular way. Kamala, in particular, had to be aware of this issue, and yet never raised it once. Why is the outcome to reward her for this?

This should cause SOME kind of backlash from the constituency for both denying them a voice AND lying in such a way that now the Presidential race is in flux and may very well have handed it to Trump.

Serious question: why bother with primaries at all, going forward, if it is acceptable to just let the elite consensus dictate who gets the nod, and all you proles just fall in line? I can believe it if someone says "These are extraordinary circumstances, not to be repeated." BUT THE PARTY'S ELITES CREATED THE EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES. I think any reasonable read of this situation has to agree that it is anti-democratic.

My position is that I can't see myself supporting or voting for Harris given the apparent dishonesty around Biden's health (who knows what else), overall lack of competence for the job, and the fact that there's no demonstrated support for her candidacy since she hasn't gone through the process. Seemingly the only way you can overlook these factors is A) Abject fear of Trump, or B) just being so loyally committed to blue team that you'll suffer any abuse in silence. Both of these imply that there are no repercussions for blue team leadership abusing your trust, which is a recipe for disaster.

In a way, though, I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.

Republicans demonstrated much the same ability in 2016, though, albeit on a longer schedule.

And 2024. After the attempt by the Dems to lawfare into breaking up the GOP coalition the GOP quickly coalesced around Trump.

Politicians and voters are capable of reading the room. In the Dems case it’s on an accelerated timeline because the runway is short.

The republican case is actually more noteworthy IMO, given how much of a departure from typical Republican candidates Trump represented.

The situation neatly demonstrates both the advantages and disadvantages of highly centralized power.

On one hand as you say they will likely get everyone in line behind Kamala in time for the election and I'm already seeing people shift to commending Biden for having the humility to part with power. People who days ago all collectively had their knives out and were shivving him while shouting for him to step down. It'll all be memory holed by next week.

On the other hand if power wasn't so centralized there would've been more dissent in upper leadership as people who recognized how unhappy the base were with Biden and how poor his mental state was would be more willing to break rank. Instead all the higher ups in media and the Biden admin covered things up and pretended the emperor wasn't naked which got them into this predicament where 3 months short of the election the dissent from the rank and file got too extreme to ignore.

So I guess it's a double edged sword.

It is indeed.

The outcome we're seeing was set in motion almost directly as a result of the same mechanisms that originally cleared the way for Biden back before Super Tuesday in 2020. The same iron hand that brought all other candidates to heel and lined Kamala up for the VP spot is now having to execute some delicate maneuvers to oust one candidate and elevate another without generating more chaos than already exists and handing the election to the guy they were worried about beating all the way back when they originally coalesced around Joe.

The big failure of Dem's centralized leadership, in my view, was not holding Joe to his 'transitional' role. It would have been far more believable for Joe to declare that he had fulfilled his main objectives and now wanted to enjoy a well-earned retirement and either bow out entirely or anoint his successor than to cancel the entire primary season THEN 'decide' he wasn't cut out for running again.

But the OTHER feature of centralized leadership is never letting go of power once it has it, even if it has worn out its welcome or is incapable of wielding authority effectively.

It is really funny seeing Twitter accounts that just yesterday were decrying the campaign to remove Biden as playing right into Republican hands suddenly shift their tune and celebrate Joe heroically doing the best thing for his party.

Are you sure you're looking at the same people?

Yes! Why would that be in any way surprising?

We might just be seeing different Twitter posts because of the algorithm, from what I am seeing it seems to me that the people who were against removing Biden yesterday are largely now grumbling about how their guy got unfairly forced to quit, not celebrating him leaving.

I do wonder if it’s the algorithm. It’s weird seeing End Wokeness, Matt Walsh, and LibsOfTikTok as the top replies on every single Democrat tweet.

Yep. But that is just par for the course too. Such people only dared speak different opinions because there was an obvious breach in the consensus that made it 'safe' to deviate from the group. The group being in the process of coalescing once again is their signal to jump back in line.

I'm mostly amused by Aaron Sorkin suggesting that they should nominate Mitt Romney EARLIER TODAY then aggressively walking that back as soon as the decision was made.

I'd be disgusted at such spinelessness if I thought it mattered at all.

It's also amazing that they are managing to convert the "Biden and Co. hid his decline from us all!" into "he is a hero of democracy for nobly standing down." Although it shows a good grasp of classical conditioning. Reward the behavior you're trying to encourage.

Damn, I called this one wrong. I was convinced he wouldn't drop out until there was a declared candidate against him.

It's really weird that this happened by letter posted to twitter rather than an appearance in front of cameras. Almost makes you wonder if something happened e.g. the Covid got him harder than we all expected.

It's really weird that this happened by letter posted to twitter rather than an appearance in front of cameras.

Indeed. There’s a reason world leaders take more pics than a thirsty Instagram model on her first trip to Verona.

As much as we mock them, press conferences are as essential to the current political paradigm as PoW is to the Bitcoin blockchain. They are the mechanism by which consensus is demonstrated.

I am glad I didn't have any money on this. I have found no one can predict political outcomes reliably, and nothing confers an edge unless you are an insider.

5 hours later and there still isn't any announcement on Whitehouse.gov or joebiden.com, only twitter. All his staff are saying they found out from Twitter too. (Edit: an announcement popped up on Biden dot com about an hour after that)

I really am starting to wonder if Joe knows he's dropped out yet.

It would be interesting to go back and see when the paperwork for "Harris for president" was filed.

Don’t worry. Joe Biden dot com now redirects to act blue.

They probabaly held a gun to his head (figuratively) and he’s fuming mad and won’t/can’t get on camera.

Either that or the speculation of him being out of the loop in his own resignation are true.

He knows. If you watch his last few press appearances, he's slow and he loses track of his thoughts frequently but he's clearly not so far gone that he wouldn't notice if people dropped him out of the race without consulting him.

I don’t think he could make an announcement like that via WH.gov.

It does seem very odd to me that he announced this in twitter or all places.

There are some strong palace coup vibes here, in the sense that the decision of how to release the information wasn't Biden's, but on the part of whomever needed it released ASAP. If you want to put bad news, that'd typically be a Friday afternoon, not Sunday afternoon, and if you want a normal controlled release, you do it via press release on Monday business hours. Sunday afternoon is for if you want it done, and have a first-mover advantage when others are taken by surprise and not in work yet.

A more conspiratorial take might be that the release of the concession preceeded the actual capitulation- that Biden could have been shown the tweet and been forced into a position in which he'd have to reveal he lacked control of his own White House / social media platform if he wanted to compete against it, which would be further political kryptonite.

More likely, this is something more akin to the pro-Harris faction in the White House just marching it over to the Twitter-handler desk, which they could have access/control to, and releasing it as soon as Biden capitulated, but before any other planned event. This would allow the Harris-faction to steal that march on immediate coordinations to pressure others not to capitulate / not announce contestation this coming week.

(Harris has the lock on the Biden-raised money, reportedly, but several of the reported key players behind Biden dropping out are- allegedly- less committed to his replacement being her. Thus, the Harris-faction needs to work fast with the advantage of being the first aware of the concession.)

The whole bury it on Friday thing is old-fashioned in our era of 24 hour news and doesn't apply to major stuff like this anyway. Considering the major networks brought in their regular anchors and preempted programming, the day of release probably had little to do with anything. Waiting until today wouldn't have done anything, so they released the news as soon as the decision had been made.

The whole bury it on Friday thing is old-fashioned in our era of 24 hour news

The era of 24 hour news is precisely why the US political ecosystems continues to relies on the Friday news dump to bury bad news: because most people go home for the weekend, and by the time they come back the news cycle has passed on with at least 2x morning-news cycles having passed, minimizing the political impact. Not only the information proliferation muted due to fewer people tuning into it on the weekends, but the coverage is decreased as it's more 24-hour cycles out of date from being breaking.

Choosing to do it Sunday afternoon is the opposite, in that it makes it the primary topic of discussion for Monday morning news, which increases the political impact for shaping perceptions. It's an indicator that the people arranging for the timing didn't see it as bad news.

I really am starting to wonder if Joe knows he's dropped out yet.

I was stunned by Biden's withdrawal, though probably not as much as Biden himself.

He doesn't mention picking a successor...

To be clear, he didn't mention anything. I know we're all in habit of treating statements on Twitter as though they come from the principal agent that the account is listed as, but there's basically zero chance that Joe Biden wrote the letter involved and posted it to Twitter. The situation is much weirder when accurately described as, "an unspecified Biden staffer tweeted a letter saying that Biden is leaving the race".

So in the span of 8 days: trump assassination attempt, Cloudstrike, and now the presumptive democratic nominee steps down, a first in decades. I think you'd have to go as far back as LBJ the last time this happened. The big winner is Elon Musk and twitter by putting himself center in the media spectacle. In hindsight, it looks like his purchase will pay off as the news cycle continues to intensify and twitter surges in use.

MAU aren’t even up that much.

Twitter has done to traditional news media what TikTok has done to traditional entertainment.

Twitter is just way more addictive and informative than watching CNN or reading the NYT or whatever. I'm not sure it's good for the world, but Twitter will continue to eat away at news media's ratings/circulation. Why would I want to read yesterday's news written by biased journalists when I have the world on my phone right now?

It's hard not to see this as another massive win for Elon. The doubters were all wrong.

He still overpaid at least couple of billion more than needed.

What price can you put on being the most powerful man in the world? At a minimum number 2.

He toppled an Empire with the purchase. And it’s not like he needs more money.

Can you really put a price on being the only American citizen to whom the First Amendment meaningfully applies, though?

I'm not gonna believe this until he posts a tweet containing the word "nigger".

"So what, are you saying I'll be able to say the n-word on the Internet?"

"No. I'm saying that once you're ready, you won't have to."

Maybe. Keep in mind that at first the left was united against him buying it.

Then when he threatened to back out, they said “no you have to buy it”.

When he eventually did buy it, the left thought they had struck a great blow against him. Otherwise there’s a good chance that lawfare would have got in his way.

Some will say it’s not 4D chess just dumb luck. But isn’t it weird how the same guy just keeps being phenomenally, impossibly, successful at multiple different things?

But isn’t it weird how the same guy just keeps being phenomenally, impossibly, successful at multiple different things?

If there is any human being on earth who I might believe is actually playing some form of 4D chess at this point it'd be Elon.

The only other explanation is that he is actually from outside the simulation and has access to the in-game console.

elon is one of those people who can make anything work

Once in a century pandemic

Tempting fate here, with avian flu spreading freely in American cattle...

Is it really "tempting fate" or is it just battlespace prep for November?

Sorry, what do you mean?

Im asking a question is "avian flu spreading freely in American cattle" or are partisan operatives in the cdc trying to muddy the waters?

Fact is that the Influenza A pandemic of '68, and the swine flu outbreak of '09 were both more deadly on a case-by-case basis than covid-19 turned out to be. Covid was not unique in its risk factors, it was unique in that that it came at an opportune time.

Edit: given what we have since learned about the whole "lab leak theory" a cynic might fibd themselves suggesting that Fauci and friends are litteraly the bad guys from V for Vendetta.

Fact is that the Influenza A pandemic of '68, and the swine flu outbreak of '09 were both more deadly on a case-by-case basis than covid-19 turned out to be.

Source? My understanding was that Covid truly was more deadly (albeit slightly) than the ‘68 and ‘09 influenza viruses, but that might only be because we’re an older and fatter population now.

I think Covid is and always was significantly more infectious. Per-case deadliness doesn't matter if a virus can only get a small fraction of humanity to start with. And of course, the deadliness estimate for swine flu depend on the actual number of infections, which may be underreported. So either it's deadly but not very virulent, or it's virulent (but still less virulent than Covid!) but not very deadly. The original Covid had both virulence and deadliness, which justified the extreme response.

The highest estimates for H1N1 I can find are 10% of the population being infected. Do you know anybody who's never had Covid? Google puts the US at 77% with antibodies as measured in 2022. That's not comparable.

Hong Kong flu was up there too. And the world barely noticed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

The point of COVID was the noticing more than it having any insane outlier effectiveness as a disease

In the US, COVID was the most deadly pandemic since the Spanish flu of more than 100 years ago. That makes it an outlier in my book.

Had the most aggressive attribution modelling, the highest population of US citizens, incredibly fallow grounds in terms of the vulnerable (More obese, elderly, immunocompromised exist today than at any other point in human history). It was the biggest in a while (though I do think if the same laxitude of attribution was extended to other historic bad flus it'd likely be very similar), but was hardly an outlier.

It's the worst pandemic in the US since the Spanish Flu even in per-capita terms.

It wasn't. It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.

The US had higher excess mortality than some other countries, totally due to unnecessary and wrong measures taken.

It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.

Give an example of such a flu outbreak in the 1970s.

Here it is: http://avepri.com/a/sweden1.jpeg

Notice that the little COVID bump is bigger than the bumps under any of the three arrows showing the "Severe Flu Waves". It's just that the general level of deaths per capita was higher in the 70s and 80s, not that the flu waves were worse than COVID.

More comments

I think Trump is in trouble vs Harris. Especially if she picks the PA governor as her running mate. Trump is very unpopular but had the benefit of running against someone even more unpopular.

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

Either way 4 months is a lifetime in election politics and we are in for a wild ride to the finish.

I suspect otherwise. Kamala is not a very popular or effective politician. Her only election win was in deep blue California and it was very narrow. She did terribly in the primaries, where being Black And A Woman counts for much more than in the country as a whole. Though she does have a certain charm, she can also come off as off-putting. She neither has strong credibility as a progressive champion or as a moderate. Her record of executive experience or of campaign experience is also thin.

Kamala does have upside, she could surprise us all. But it would be a surprise if she turns out to be another Obama or Clinton (the first).

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

This is a common issue for vice presidents as presidential candidates- they can't just "untether" themselves from the president. For good or ill, they served him loyally as his #2. If they go on camera and say "actually I disagreed strongly with him on that issue, I just kept my mouth shut for the sake of public relations" it looks horribly dishonest. If they just want to say that they supported the president on everything and will continue to do more of the same, it's hard for them to come into their own as a real candidate, instead of just a weak shadow.

It can kind of work when the previous president is still popular (Reagan, Clinton, and Obama) but still leads to a fairly bland, forgettable candidate (HW Bush, Gore, and Biden).

It's certainly a bad situation to be in. If a Veep speaks up, they can be accused of being disloyal, ambitious, two faced, a snake. And they have nearly no official authority in the WH. The show Veep got it right - it's a terrible position to have.

Just ask Cactus Jack Garner.

Do you not remember her primary run? She is horrible in front of a camera. She has a tendency say absolutely nothing in an overly long way by repeating statements. Even the left made fun of her for it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=72vUngNA9RM

She has Hillary levels of charisma, and a weird mumble giggle that seems to pop up mid sentence for no apparent reason. Only thing she has over Biden is that she's unlikely to die in the next few years.

The giggle is what gets me. It is so distracting and cringy.

Harris' biggest advantage is the online right is going to be totally unable to hide their power level, in ways that will be negatively polarizing to the median voter. This is already happening in this thread.

Eh, I'd say that's unlikely. The amount of direct sway that the actions and memes of the "online right" have on the "median voter", positive or negative, is practically zero; it's easy for us very-online culture warriors to lose sight of sometimes, but these are two different worlds. To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless. The racist frog people Kamala-posting isn't going to move the needle.

They have a weird amount of negative sway over my mother, who is online enough to see the collected lolcow posts reposted and laundered through Democratic party mouthpieces, but not online enough to run into it in the wild. So she's saying stuff to me like what's with the Nazi frog?

To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless.

I remember scoffing at "Twitter is full of Nazis" for years, until it eventually became true.

Harris’s current numbers are bad, but I think she has upside once she’s untethered from Biden.

What makes you think so? It's her administration too. It's not just Biden having personally done something terrible, people are actually unhappy with the outcomes of the administration policies.

She's been mostly hidden during the administration; it won't be difficult for her to stake out different positions that people who don't particularly like Trump but really couldn't stomach voting for a guy who appeared to be non compos mentis will believe. This isn't an election about convincing anyone - Trump's taken all the political oxygen in the room for all but a couple of months for the past decade - but instead about limiting discouragement among supporters. Remember, both the 2016 and 2020 elections went to the candidate who avoided having the last negative news cycle.

She is non-senile and capable of staying on message and repeating a talking point without mangling it. Biden runs well behind Generic Democrat on Senate and House polls, and if she can successfully approximate Generic Democrat, she wins.

Oh, I like her chance to be better than Biden, but I don't see much for true upside. The most likely scenario seems like returning to the pre-debate status quo, which was quite bad for Generic Democrat because the majority of Americans think the results from the last four years aren't very good.

The most likely scenario seems like returning to the pre-debate status qu

I would probably agree, other events excepted -- now that ~30% of America probably thinks that the Deep State tried to have Trump offed, and the undecideds literally just saw him putting his life on the line for (his conception of) America on live TV, I think Generic D would have issues, and Uncharismatic Nobody D will struggle hard.

Except basically Generic Democrat's are running ahead in swing state Senate races.

“Generic X” always does better than any concrete candidate because people will think of their own perfect idealized person. Means very little other than as an upper bound.

The PA governor is Jewish. I wonder if having him on the ticket would hurt with turnout with a segment of the Dem base?

I think everyone's forgotten about Palestine already. I can't tell what the new current thing is yet, but the flags in bios have slowly started to change again.

but the flags in bios have slowly started to change again

At first I thought you were making a joke about NPC firmware updates being rolled out. Then again, maybe you were!

"bios flags" now have two different meanings.

Wait until the fall college semester starts.

It's possible, but I doubt it. I don't think the anti-Zionist segment of the Democratic Party are anti-Jew enough to stay home over a Jewish VP candidate. I'm not aware of Shapiro making any particularly egregious anti-Palestinian statements.

The Muslims in Michigan absolutely are.

If the candidate doesn't signal support for Israel or preferably explicitly signals disapproval, I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish. At least not enough for it to make them not vote.

I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish.

My sense at least is that politically active and religious Muslims are generally pretty abundantly anti-semitic. And we're not talking about a guy raised secular who doesn't identify at all with his background; wikipedia describes Shapiro as an observant Conservative Jew and quotes him as saying, among other things "Israel not only has a right, they have a responsibility to rid the region of Hamas and the terror that Hamas can perpetrate".

Even without the above statements, any image of him entering a Synagogue or near an Israel flag would likely spread around hardcore Muslim communities like wildfire as proof he's a bloodsucking Yahud Zionist who they have a duty to treat as an existential fundamental enemy in their Holy War.

That's fair due to his statements about Israel. (That Wikipedia article shows even more divisive examples than just saying Israel should wipe out Hamas.) I think if he were just a random Jew who hadn't commented on Israel or was somewhat more critical, they mostly would be fine with voting for him.

Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel. For some that may require active condemnation of Israel, but for others I think lack of explicit, vocal support is sufficient.

Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel.

It depends on how religious/political the Muslims in question are. If we're talking about people who are basically entirely secular, then maybe they wouldn't care. But I doubt that's the case for those seem to care strongly about Israel, which seem to be those causing headaches for the Democrats in Michigan etc. I'd be stunned if the fervour of their anti-Israel sentiment doesn't strongly correlate with outright Jew-hatred. I can't imagine, for instance, a prayer in an American Mosque for Palestinian victory in their quest to murder all Jews in the Holy Land to end with a reminder to the congregation that American non-Zionist Jews are decent people, and it's important to be nice to them.

Hmm. Maybe Harris is better off with Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, or Mark Kelly then.

The online Right has hypersensitive Jewdar, but I don't think the online Left is as attuned to whether random politicians are Jewish. He's not an Israeli. I'm trying to look up whether he has ever set foot in Israel. The answer appears to be not yet.

It might confuse voters who don’t want to vote for Ben Shapiro. I’m not kidding. It would be less stupid than the voters who couldn’t figure out what the giant arrows on the butterfly ballot meant.

An election’s outcome can potentially be flipped by bad ballot design – not just the misalignment of rows, but also choices as seemingly minor as the order of candidates’ names, which disproportionately favors those at the top of the ballot.

This sounds less like a ballot problem and more like an electorate problem.

On the one hand, I can totally believe this, but on the other hand I think anyone who would get confused by this probably doesn't know who Ben Shapiro is.

The evidence suggests Trump is more popular. Trump's turnout for 2020 was 10 million greater than 2016. You'd have to go as far back as Reagan for a candidate to be have a >55% of popular vote. Most candidates are not that popular, and the outcome comes down to the margins, like swing states, and that is where Trump shines.

He’s -12 in unfavorable/favorable on 538. It’s an improvement from when he was closer to 60/40, but he’s still very unpopular.

I also think trump is basically at his ceiling as people have very hardened views on him at this point. Was going to be enough to beat Biden but might not be enough to take on someone who isn’t 81.

I think Harris is less popular than Biden, or at least not significantly more popular.

I think Biden's popularity is lower than Harris's because his weakness and mental frailty has been in the news for a month. Meanwhile, she's been mostly out of the spotlight for years now, which is good, because when she's in the spotlight we're treated to monologues about the significance of the passage of time unburdening us from what has been.

Her favorability will go down once she has to speak extemporaneously and people have to actually evaluate her as a potential president rather than just someone with a pulse.

What do you think about this explanation for that recurring turn of phrase she uses?

https://x.com/conceptualjames/status/1815057918229975147?s=46

Is dude seriously saying she's doing a Luciferian incantation? That seems a very odd take.

Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.

My main issue with Kamala is how do we reconcile the “coconut” comments with the “unburdened by what has been” comments?

If we didn’t fall out of the coconut tree, we exist in the context. But isn’t existing in the context, in essence, very similar (if not the same) as being burdened by what has been?

Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.

Because everyone who thinks it’s paranoid delusion is just ignoring it.

I think Republicans should make this criticism central to their critique of Harris from now until the election.

People really overestimate the degree to which people plan their moment-to-moment actions/statements. 95% probability that someone wrote her that line in a speech sometime, she liked it/it stuck in her head, so it got filed away in her brain's library of verbal tics, the same way musicians fall back on favorite licks.

Can anti-Democrats ever stop making Democrats sound cooler? Esoteric incantations? I'm voting for those.

Seems like a stretch to me. She's just saying a random political slogan.

The whole "the elites are secretly occultist Satanists doing magic spells right in front of us" can seem kind of compelling but... I haven't found good enough evidence to buy it. Yet.

I think this particular gem of hers would fit pretty well on TimeCube:

It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.

Damn, I just checked and TimeCube is down! It's true. The internet really is dead.

https://timecube.online/ is a false archive of the TRUTH, a trap to make people educated stupid. Accept no imitations. https://web.archive.org/web/20160112193916/http://timecube.com/

I think that’s where the current polls are at. However, Harris is going to be able to launch a campaign that benefits from rock bottom expectations.

She could end up not improving her position but I think just based on those low expectations she has upside and it won’t take much of a gain to overtake Trump.

It won’t? He’s up 3-6 points in swing states. 3-4 on national polls where dems need +2 to break even.

I’m curious how you’re coming to “it won’t take much”.

Before the debate disaster it was much closer and 80% of the country thought Biden was too old to be president. Harris shakes that liability and will be able to actually campaign, unlike Biden.

Trump can still win but i believe Harris has a decent shot (unlike post debate Biden).

Trump was shot and showed real courage under fire. Biden dropping out doesn’t change that.

Would that gain him any new votes or make people who generally vote D but thought Biden was too old less likely to vote for Harris?

I think it might make on the margins some people more likely to vote for him

What about this idea: She picks a moderate Republican as a running mate. Boom.

I think the people people who voted for Haley are begging for any alternative to Trump. This would give them a way to vote Democrat in good conscience.

Joe Manchin is making noises about re-registering as a Democrat in order to contest the convention. Lawl.

TBF, Manchin would be one of the strongest nominees the Dems could field. But there's no way he gets it.

If Mario Cuomo was "Hamlet on the Hudson" for forever waffling about throwing his hat in the ring, what does that make Manchin - the Farmington Fence-Sitter?

A good running mate is someone who covers her weaknesses. So this would be be a center-leaning while male.

Are they going to try a George Floyd-like psyop to increase Democrat favorability like in 2020? They could do it from the perspective of Blacks, Indians, or Women. I can see something like a fraternity being falsely accused of raping an Indian woman, I can see Stop Asian Hate rearing its head again but the head being browner than before… I don’t know if bodycam footage of a black criminal will be as persuasive as it was in 2020. In New Jersey we had anonymous flyers show up that were anti-Indian but likely issued by Indians, maybe something like that will happen. So many different vantage points.

That was quick. For posterity’s sake: theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/22/biden-sonya-massey-police-killing-video + https://www.wcia.com/news/sonya-massey-should-be-alive-today-president-biden-speaks-out-on-death-of-springfield-woman-killed-by-deputy/amp/

I don’t think that kind of psyop is possible now that Elon owns twitter, they really would need absolute control over the narrative to pull something like that off now, and I just don’t see them getting that.

E: He endorsed Kamala.

So I suppose now we'll get to see what a presidential campaign can be, unburdened by what has been.

I like that line, I know it's corny that she says it all the time but you really have to understand that every politician probably repeats the same epithets, it's just that in the age of Television and the internet it's a lot easier to clown on people like this.

Its a good line, but its completely sabotaged by being surrounded by the paragraphs upon paragraphs of racial and gender grievences her speechwriters love to use. If you are going to talk about unburdening America from what has been, then you have to actually do that.

I actually think Kamala could be a somewhat decent speaker if she immediately fires all of her current speechwriters and hires the most cynical, chain-smoking, philandering, mercenary, SOB writer she can find in DC. She can't do "starry-eyed idealist", she can do "jaded cop stepping into the top job when her city needs her".

How long until Trump tells a joke about Kamala and Willie Brown? I bet he already has some prepared.

it would go down as one of his most original jokes

To be frank it’s just too deep a cut for anyone to care about. Only very online rightoids have any idea who that is.

I think that's why it will resonate. It might be "old news" to very online rightoids and old-time san francisco politicians, but most voters will be hearing about it for the very first time. Especially the low-news, marginal, swing voters who can actually change their mind. I think a lot of them will be learning about Harris in detail for the first time now and thinking:

"Hmm, she doesn't sound very smart or very presidential. How did she get picked to be vice pres?"

"Oh, Biden felt he needed a black woman. Not very fair, but I guess it makes sense. She had a long career in politics before being vice pres, right?"

"...oh. She only got elected in the first place by trading sexual favors to an old corrupt dude? That's pathetic and gross."

Trumps scandals, on the other hand, already "priced in." Everybody knows about them, at least the general sense of them. And they might be morally gross, they don't make him look incompetant.

And native Californians. But we don't matter in presidential elections.

Yeah, this is great because Trump is likely in the right-tail of Republican politicians willing to make jokes or allusions about any alleged sucking or casting couching her way to the top, as opposed to most Republicans who would prefer to take the high road of losing gracefully. I wish Election Betting Odds had a prop bets section for stuff like this, e.g., "Probability that the phrase 'casting couch' is mentioned in a debate."

The only way doing that helps Trump is if the media seizes on it to point out how horrible Trump is for suggesting such a thing, resulting in more voters finding out about it. Which is... not improbable.

Probably more effective for Republicans to call out the corruption around her appointment to various California agencies at the behest of Brown than explicit casting couch references. The former can gain traction, the latter is written off by the Vox set as sexism. And when voters ask "Why would Brown work to get some appointed with no real qualifications to well-paying part time gigs she barely performed anyway?" they naturally quickly find out "oh he was 30 years her senior while they were dating."

ETA: Hmm, or maybe not. I guess no one has really tested the latter line against her. Media will of course denounce it, but maybe that doesn't matter (or is even a pro).

Focusing on the age-gap instead of the casting couch part of that relationship risks leaving a reverse uno card on the table, a sitting high ball for the Media/Democrats to smash in the form of framing Harris as a brave survivor of vicious and predatory grooming.

The usual Schrodinger's Feminism of women simultaneously being strong independent #GirlBosses and vulnerable children: That sick fuck! She was only 30 and but a lowly deputy district attorney; her brain had only finished developing for five years. Unlike the recently discussed Djokovic in the athlete list thread, the Media/Democrats tend not to dump such overheads into the net.

Although this would involve throwing a black man under the bus, sometimes opportunistic under-bus-throwing of heterosexual black men is narrowly permitted in their capacity as straight men, for straight black men are the straight men of black people.

framing Harris as a brave survivor of vicious and predatory grooming.

After all, Harris was a poor defenseless 30-year-old minor who couldn't be expected to stand up for herself.

More seriously though, the problem with this strategy is that the “groomer” in this case is a Black man and a Democrat. I'm sure the Democrats would have no problem accusing a white Republican of grooming Harris, but are they willing to throw a Black Democrat under the bus like that? Is Barack Obama going to declare “It could have been me soliciting sexual favors from women half my age in exchange for political favors?”

Another issue is that Willie Brown is still alive, cogent (more so than Biden), self-interested, and most of all has a really big mouth. He's not the type to let himself get thrown under the bus without a fight.

He also really likes Kamala, even now.

Kamala is not going to win. She's going to say things like "space is neat" and "who doesn't love a big yellow schoolbus" on the debate stage.

What she might do is salvage some senate races for the democrats. This is unfortunate, but Hung Cao was a longshot anyways and he'd only be able to get one term.

Trump is not popular! His approval/favorability is terrible compared to past presidential candidates. He's only winning the election because Dems managed to nominate someone worse. Kamala isn't eighty, she can say more than ten words in sequence without pausing or stuttering. She's not a good Dem, but she's still just a mediocre generic Dem, and that's good enough for a lot of voters.

Trump wasn’t popular. I’m curious if his shooting / immediate reaction to it won’t change the popularity. Fifty Cent did a concert with Trump’s face superimposed on his face for a song.

The Dems are trying to create wild conspiracy theories precisely because otherwise they’d have to admire what Trump did.

I would expect it to boost him by a point or two, and for that boost to fade out over the next few months. He's down by much more than a point or two

I don’t think he is down — what’s your source

This requires independent voters to ignore that the Democrat party as a whole, INCLUDING Kamala, pulled the wool over their eyes and just created this mess without even putting the candidates through primaries.

In a sane world, this kind of chaotic revelation of the lie would result in a few weeks of terrible polling for the mainstream party until they manage to re-establish a cohesive narrative and/or Trump shoots his mouth off again. Misleading constituents this badly should provoke backlash.

I don't really know how it plays in our actual world.

How it plays is people thank God we finally have a normal candidate and no one cares how we got here (even if Kamala is a bit of an oddball) (just my prediction)

Yeah, my sense (which is admittedly based off of about two people on twitter) is that democrat voters aren't so angry because they were treated dishonestly but because the cover-up of Biden's cognitive state put the party in a much worse situation vis-a-vis the election against Trump. I don't think there's gonna be any electoral fallout for retributive reasons.

Hard to be certain of that when Kamala's got such low approval. I'm not sure if she qualifies as a 'normal' candidate, either.

But we're in weird times.

Kamala is not going to win. She's going to say things like "space is neat" and "who doesn't love a big yellow schoolbus" on the debate stage.

These pithy, assured pronouncements are tedious and call to mind the expression often wrong, but never in doubt. The betting market consensus now is that Harris has a nearly 40% chance of winning in November; it's moronic to declare that "Kamala is not going to win."

60-40 is a big lead but any election easily could be won by a major party candidate.

Debates do not matter that much. Even Biden's polls did not budge after the worst debate performance ever. Swing states are what matter, and this is why trump will win. Her problem is that expectations will be higher compared to Biden.

How do you reconcile this statement with what has unfolded over the last month or so?

If debates didn't matter, Joe Biden would be still favored to win the election in November.

meant in terms of polling. 538 unchanged

538 isn’t the five thirty eight of old. See Nate Silver’s recent post.

so what? does not change my point that biden did not see a polling decline after bad debate performance

There was a decrease. By about a point or two. That’s big when Trump already had a lead

That does not answer the question.

Ill ask again how do you reconcile your claim that debates dont matter with the observation that Biden's poor debate performance effectively killed his chances of winning the election come November?

my original post explicitly mentioned polling

Then we can reasonably surmise that to the degree that "debates don't matter" polling matters even less.

Serious question why are people quoting 538 at this point? Didn’t they recently have Biden up on Trump and it all boiled down to incumbent advantage?

I haven’t tracked them but it feels to me like that’s gone down as a purely partisan site at this point. Nate Silver himself has recently trashed 538. Now 2 people in this thread quote them?

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1814062597152600198?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

then what polling site is more accurate? even if the model does not work as well or nate is a partisan hack, the data clearly shows biden did not lose approval points after his bad debate

538 is a model, only slightly based on polling

Are you serious? Biden got kicked out by his party after the debate. Debates definitely matter.

meant in terms of polling. 538 unchanged

You should use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate your esteem of 538. Nate Silver left and it’s not what it once was.

OK, debates matter if they reveal your staff and inner circle has been engaged in a years-long conspiracy to hide the fact that you're non compos mentis and probably aren't actually capable of exercising the powers of your office consistently - let alone engaging in the strenuous work of campaigning.

I think if she debates Trump and makes it clear that we could have a 59 year old spring chicken like her leading the country there will be an excitement bump

Trump and allies will be spending BG millions upon millions introducing voters in swing states to Harris.

I'm picturing her own words with a subtitle of "Kamala Harris, presidential candidate".

it cannot be worse than Biden's performance.

Not when your dump stat is charisma. Then it is possible.

One man’s gaffe is another man’s folksy charm. I think people are overestimating the impact of things like this when compared to Trump or Biden

There's like four levels of jokes in:

Hung Cao: He's a Bull in a China shop!

She isn’t skilled enough to deal with the fact she’s going to have to eat a lot of lack of credibility for participating in covering up Joes decline.

Sure it was to a great extent her job, but a few median voters have lost trust.

Biden’s decline is now yesterday’s issue. This was a powerful issue for republicans 3 hours ago and just like that it’s over.

You realize that Biden's decline by itself is only one part of this drama, right? The rest has been watching the Democrat party panic without direction and reveal themselves as dishonestly providing cover for a senile old man.

As long as the party running in November is the party that managed this embarrassing shitshow, you might want to reassess how 'over' this is.

And now we get to gleefully hammer home the point that Dems are going to nominate for the position of Commander In Chief a casting couch girl. Any man with an ounce of testosterone will be viscerally repelled by the image of their Executive on her knees under a mahogany desk.

There's a way to make this argument as a legitimate (if debatable) talking point, and then there's culture warring as you gleefully sneer at a hated political enemy. This is way too much of the latter.

Any man with an ounce of testosterone

A man (generously, 6 L of blood) with a reasonably high amount of testosterone (1100 ng/dL) has about 2 * 10^-8 ounces of testosterone in his body.

Do you really think this passes an ideological turing test and accurately models the reaction of marginal democrats and independents? Also, why do you think a 30-year-old sex scandal would hurt Harris when multiple such scandals haven't hurt Trump?

There's a big difference between sex to get ahead and sex once you get ahead.

Harris is accused of using sex to get her first job in politics. Trump is accused of using his wealth/Fame/position to get sex.

This is mostly a gendered dynamic, but it's also more elemental than that. Consider: if instead of fucking Willie Brown to get ahead for politics, Kamala had used her position as Senator or VP to sleep with AJ Brown the eagles wide receiver for pleasure. Totally different dynamic, different accusations would be hurled towards her.

Sex-for-promotion has the principle-agent problem, absent in power-for-sex. Feminists might accuse Trump of abusing "power dynamics" and make Clinton's affair tantamount to rape of Lewinsky, but in the end the only victims are their sex partners.

But if Kamala got her job only because of her skills in bed, then the aggrieved party is the organization in which she was unfairly promoted by a guy she is said to have gave head to.

Men and women are not the same. A man sleeping around is powerful. A women using her sexuality for favors is not powerful.

Because there are fundamentally different optics for the two of them. They're competing for the office of the presidency, a position in which it helps to have a fearsome reputation among your enemies. Trump plowing through women is a sign of strength and vigor, moral arguments notwithstanding. Kamala sucking dick for clout makes her sound incompetent and submissive. These are not Commander In Chief qualities.

Because she's a woman.

Doesn't that just make people more sympathetic to her, and more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt?

While I think the extent of the double standard is overstated, it really is much more acceptable for a man to be promiscuous than a woman.

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Not in cases of sexual immorality. The double standard exists for a lot of reasons but it does exist.

The guys who care about that are already voting Trump. The vulnerability is more with female voters (ironically, likely more those who are of a racial minority).

During the debate, Donald Trump can sound the alarm that the country is in danger because the commander-in-chief is incapacitated, and then demand that Kamala Harris must either agree with him or give evidence to refute his claim.

I'm curious to see how the spacetime continuum is going to be changed. I expect the entire Biden administration - the last 1292 days, to be precise - to go straight down the memory hole. Joe who? Is that supposed to be somebody important?

Joe's decline is yesterday's issue. That VP Harris willingly concealed his decline is a now-issue. Plenty of footage of a grimace-wearing Harris standing next to doddering old Biden to sell the narrative that she's especially duplicitous. The emperor had no clothes and she knew. This will be the angle Republicans use against her.

"Loyalty"

"Trust in the system"

There are various ways this angle could be played to seem righteous and honorable.

"Conflict of interest"?

She should have said something, but she may be at the bottom of the list of people who should have. It would have seemed creepy if the only person sounding the alarm about Biden was the one person with the most to potentially gain personally from that.

You think the Democratic brand suffered 0% damage for doing a closed primary and protecting Biden who was mentally gone the entire time?

Kamala running as Bidens replacement isn’t the same thing as Kamala running after winning the primary. A lot of trust has been lost and now voters will rightfully asks what else are the Dems lying about.

In my view everything she says on stage will rightfully be question by all but the 30-40% of the solid blue electorate.

i don't think it matters that much. The debate performance already caused voters to lose confidence in him. Him stepping down does not come as a surprise.

It occurs to me that until we hear it out of the horse's mouth this all remains a (imo) grotesque, nebulous dance between people who nobody voted for (the media, the donors, and Aaron Sorkin's West Wing club staffing the WH).

Joe Biden did not actually write that letter or make that post. Has anyone told him yet that he's not running for re-election anymore?

Aaron Sorkin's West Wing club staffing the WH

Speaking of, he has a piece in the NYT arguing that the Dems should nominate Mitt Romney. I find this hilarious.

I know it sounds like TV fiction but... why is it hilarious? It seems to me like it would work. Romney would pull a good chunk of never-Trump Republican voters, plus all the loyal Democratic voters. Some people might splinter and go third party, but they're already doing that to RFK Jr who is... not doing well. Romney would win, and accomplish what Democrats always say is their main goal of "stopping Trump." It's quite possible the Republican party would completely shatter after that, too.

I think it'd be ironic, darkly-humorous, for the Democrats to turn to a man they once made their #1 adversary as their savior. As you say, it could actually work, but I think that's why they won't do it.

They could even give him a binder full of women to pick from for VP!

It is very "late-season West Wing," isn't it?

If you watch Biden's press conference from a couple weeks ago, it's clear that despite his physical and mental decline, he is not so far gone that he wouldn't be able to get word out to the press that people around him were releasing unauthorized announcements about his re-election campaign. He forgets what he is talking about, mis-speaks, and is generally not quick on his feet, but he is not completely detached from reality.

Has anyone told him yet that he's not running for re-election anymore?

They didn't even tell his staffers, why would they tell him?

More seriously--if this were an elderly man trying to make changes to his will, I'd have some hard questions about undue influence. That's been true throughout his presidency. He might very well be going along with this as the result of rational persuasion, but I don't believe for one instant that it was his idea.

Joe Biden did not actually write that letter or make that post. Has anyone told him yet that he's not running for re-election anymore?

If Joe Biden cannot control his Twitter then he might as well bow out.

I hope you are right. But I doubt it. it may be a case of bribed intern trying to force his hand, but the chances are slim.

He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.

CNN et al. have been trying to make Kamala happen. Even Drudge seems to be in on the "consensus is gelling around Harris!" false consensus-building rhetoric. I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation. She was explicitly chosen for her current position by virtue of her sex and skin color, and sex and skin color have been the driving factors in her entire political career. To my mind this is frankly disqualifying, but of course--many Americans disagree with me there.

The fact that the second most likely pick currently appears to be a governor around whom the FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers does embarrassing things to my "deep state" priors.

FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers

Full headline:

Lawyers: FBI lured men for Michigan Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot

That's what their defense attorneys say. Which is of course what they'd say. I'd recommend people read the full article to get a more comprehensive presentation.

That's what their defense attorneys say. Which is of course what they'd say.

And that defense was broadly successful, for several of the accused. Others took plea deals, and the convictions that stuck were, in the end, comparatively bland.

sex and skin color have been the driving factors in her entire political career

Yes. And also at the beginning of her career: her sexual availability for Willie Brown. What a great patron to start her off.

Brown unironically was just about the best mentor she could have gotten. The dude bestrode the state like a colossus, and even at 90 is still pretty sharp. And I admit this against interest, not being in favor of his political agenda.

Trump has been found liable for sexual misconduct in court so that has less resonance than you think.

Was she hotter when she was younger? Cause I can already see Trump making a joke about having a better taste in his proteges than Willie Brown.

Hu? She looks very well for a 59 years old, certainly she is more attractive than Trump ever was, and yes, almost every person was hotter when they were young.

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/913ca94/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1988x1118+0+0/resize/1200x675!/format/webp/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F62%2F2b%2F6e5e5d3ed119b7ebac744ed04df4%2Fla-1548054707-gcqxnc10qh-snap-image

Is the old man next to her her father?

No, that's Willie Brown, her then-boyfriend/political patron.

But harder now for the Dems to attack Trump for this.

No, it's even easier - Kamala can say she's prosecuted sex criminals and frauds like Trump before, and no, the Willie Brown attack is not going to work outside of the Republican base.

However, if you want suburban women to vote 75-25 for Harris, then go ahead and do that attack.

It's my impression that women hate women who use sex to get ahead in the way that Kamala did.

Married women for sure. It’s a threat to their marriage having other women sleeping with their men. Kamala did come a decade after his divorce but there they still don’t want formerly married men doing well.

Nit: he was separated when they dated, not divorced.

Both arguments sound plausible to me. This is why focus groups exist, I suppose.

Sure, in their own personal life, maybe. Not being told that by right-wingers who want to ban abortion as they're calling Kamala a DEI candidate.

But hey, as a left-wing social democrat, I can only hope the Republican campaign becomes all about Willie Brown, how Kamala is a DEI candidate, and so on.

What’s the difference between a R or D President for a left wing social democrat?

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I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation.

Does Trump?

I don't think this switch will be good for the Dems (Biden staying would also not have been good for them, it's a no-win situation), but at least they can now make the instant switcheroo to "It's Trump who is old and demented, HE should drop out now".

Trump has absolutely lost a few steps from even '20, much less '16. He does not have the intelligence or insight that he had as a younger man. Still definitely has what's required to lead tho, imo

Trump did actually take a small loan of a million dollars from his slumlord father and build an international megacorporation with hundreds of the most prime real estate properties on planet earth.

Kamala, the daughter of a McGill professor and a Stanford professor, graduated from Howard University and Hastings College without distinction or any accomplishments of note before starting a relationship with the mayor of San Francisco and beginning to receiving a series of political appointments.

Trump did actually take a small loan of a million dollars from his slumlord father and build an international megacorporation with hundreds of the most prime real estate properties on planet earth.

And still, he somehow managed to go bankrupt running a casino.

The casino went bankrupt. The real estate company that owned the building did just fine.

But being endorsed by God (or whoever runs the simulation) counts for a lot.

Not as much as you think -- He plays dice.

Then forward anthropic shadow means this timeline has more weight because of something Trump will do.

When the simulation runner is a degenerate gambler and just created a universe so he can embody into the meat npcs and throw dice.

I have never seen any evidence that Harris has the intelligence or insight required to lead a nation.

Does Trump?

Likely no--though he does possess a certain raw cunning, which served him reasonably well in his first term. I think his handling of COVID was pretty bad, but prior to that I had no serious complaints. Whether he actually has the insight or intelligence required to lead a nation, he has actually done so, which seems to qualify as at least some kind of evidence. Harris, by comparison, appears to have had basically every political position handed to her. Whitmer, at least, has some executive bona fides.

I don't think this switch will be good for the Dems (Biden staying would also not have been good for them, it's a no-win situation), but at least they can now make the instant switcheroo to "It's Trump who is old and demented, HE should drop out now".

Agreed--and really, I'd love it if Trump did drop out, too, though I have to wonder whether today's announcement was timed to make that maximally difficult for the Republicans to manage. I also wonder how thinking Democrats feel about having this happen now, after the opportunity to hold open primaries has passed. There's no way Kamala would have been the pick. It looks very much like the party is prepping a Clintonesque coronation, again--and there's nothing about Joe Biden's health today that wasn't known six months ago--or even four years ago. The tacit (and heavily papered-over) admission that Biden will not be fit to serve as President in January is also, I think, effectively an admission that he should probably have been removed from office for disability months, if not years, ago.

and there's nothing about Joe Biden's health today that wasn't known six months ago--or even four years ago.

Au contraire; there were all sorts of things that weren't publicly known. Four years ago Biden was obviously on the downslope, but still capable of speaking in public for more than 15 minutes without garbling half his words or having his vocal timbre described as a "whisper." Just pull up the footage yourself: even at his bumbling worst 2020 Joe is worlds above 2024 Joe. Even six months ago he was still doing ok. Something really changed in the last 6-12 months; his "wandering" moments got a lot more frequent, and his speaking just dove off a cliff.

It's also quite likely that Republicans were implicitly or explicitly saying that Joe is demented long before he was actually exhibiting signs of it, which must have created a bit of a boy-cries-wolf effect for many Dems.

I think a legitimate argument is stress over Hunter pushed him over the edge - there's interesting stuff that specific family stress can make otherwise fairly normal older people decline much quicker.

Trump got the 2 big things right on Covid. Project Warpspeed. And the initial shutdown with a quick stimulus package.

The bad things on Covid were not fixable. Not being an island nation we were never going to Covid 0. And the other big issue is the media. The very worst lockdown actions came because the media scared the shit out of people for politics. I am not sure how Trump could have solved this issue. If the msm worked with Trump on covid policy then we would have had a better covid response. Things like keeping more of society open and running policy to protect grandma.

The tacit (and heavily papered-over) admission that Biden will not be fit to serve as President in January is also, I think, effectively an admission that he should probably have been removed from office for disability months, if not years, ago.

They could go with "Biden still has enough juice to serve until 2025, but does not have enough juice that it would have last until 2029." Dunno how true it is, but they COULD go with that, and probably will.

Do they have to go there at all? The line is just that it's best if Biden doesn't stand again because it looks like he was going to lose, no reason to concede anything about his fitness to serve.

I think the issue there is doing it after the primaries.

"The candidate people voted for wasn't going to win, so we picked a different one for them" is kind of an awkward line to have to focus on.

I think it would be better if they had an open convention partly for this reason.

Oh please let it be Kamala. She’s a purely lateral move in terms of actually winning as far as I can see.

What a pathetic end to a political career. To be humiliated as an old, senile fool by your own party. Almost Shakespearean in its pathos: King Lear, abandoned by his daughters: and the only loyal one to remain to him is a crack-smoking adulterer.

Those saccharine smiles in the audience, that praise him as being an American hero, smiling as they stab him in the back. Ugly.

Ugly was parading him about, him obviously mentally declining just to squeeze out some more extra personal influence for his handlers.

Those saccharine smiles in the audience, that praise him as being an American hero, smiling as they stab him in the back. Ugly.

It's not stabbing Grandpa in the back to take away his car keys. It might feel like a betrayal, but it's for the best.

He'll be viewed with respect in hindsight if Trump ends up losing this election, at least. He'll be admired for stepping down when he could've pushed forward.

Now that he's quit, I'm sure people can find some tragedy in a guy who was certain he'd win in 2016 and felt discouraged going on to win in 2020 but too late to truly govern at his best before the very same people pushed him out again.

Shoot, I was looking forward to winning. I really hoped the Democrats didn’t have the capacity to force Biden out.

I can only hope they lack the competence to choice a “generic Democrat” candidate who has a chance of winning.

There's is some chatter (/ people are already making conspiracy theories) about Hillary making a comeback. I don't know if this would be good for Trumpcoin or not, but if it turns out our "we can't seem to make anything other than sequels and remakes" zeitgeist is not limited to media, I'd be extremely amused.

Hilary is in the potentially unique position of being the one of the only politicians in the US who is more polarizing than Trump.

I don't think they'll dare with Hilldawg, her health also seems to have declined perilously.

The only thing this chatter proves is that Hillary Derangement Syndrome is still going strong. A number of Republicans just can't let go of a long-time enemy, to the point of fantasizing about facing her yet again and again.

Its not Hillary derangement syndrome its Clinton derangement syndrome, just as CNN is the Clinton News Network. The GOP all through the 90s was best summed up by that Arron Paul meme "he cant keep getting away with it"

Hillary was their Hannibal. They're still chasing the dragon from that magical night in 2016.

I can not put into words the schadenfreude of Hillary's "deplorables" speech while some one in the crowd yells pepe. Hillary vs Trump was pure kino.

Could be, I just brought it up as an amusing idea. What are you going to say if it does happen, though?

That I was wrong?

About it not happening, or about Hillary Derangement Syndrome still going strong, or even being a thing at all?

About it not happening.

That's a shame. I think after dismissing someone's prediction on the basis of their psychological profile you came up with, you should update your profile if the prediction turns out to be right.

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I'm a Democrat but I'm not sure how I feel about this. Despite what feels like obvious intuition, it's not entirely clear a new candidate will fare better. There's really no way to know and I think he had no choice but to step down, but, yeah, the counterfactuals here are difficult to calculate.

Kamala brings new energy to the party, has the same platform as Joe for continuity, and the GOP only has three months to attack her (versus 20+ years for Hillary.)

Women are fired UP after the Roe decision.

Overturning Casey was already baked in.

How much energy did Kamala bring to the Democratic Party in the 2020 primary, exactly?

Her benefit is the extent to which she imperfectly represents the "generic non-senile Democrat," not any energy she brings. And that's a very real benefit, but no one is excited about Harris. No value over replacement.

I wonder if Trump and co. are going to regret some of their choices now (e.g. picking Vance instead of the most whitebread, "don't scare the hoes" candidate they could find).

Especially given that Trump-adjacent people like Vivek and Vance himself have been mocking the idea that Joe Biden was going to stay in the race.

Vance was picked to appeal to the white rust belt vote. If Kamala is indeed the successor this could turn out to be a pretty decent choice. I don't see the DEI president helping much with the blue collar vote. Given her history as attorney general I don't see her appealing to the minority vote that well either. Maybe she'd poll better in the great lake swing states since she's been less supportive of Israel and could get some of the black/muslim vote there? Israel will be throwing big money around if she doesn't pivot on this and is the nominee though.

Having trouble deciphering what your second point has to do with the first, mind saying more?

To your first point, anyone opposed to the media's current darling will always get the Mitt Romney 'roof dog, binder women' treatment. Vance is a "don't scare the hoes" candidate compared to anyone short of a Nikki Haley (which it breaks my heart to say, probably would have been the preferred choice of the modal swing voter)

Haley is entirely unlikeable and an obvious (even for political standards) grifter. I don’t know how people talked themselves into liking her.

Having trouble deciphering what your second point has to do with the first, mind saying more?

I'm saying Vivek has been saying for months it won't be Biden. I thought Vance sent out a catty letter denying Kamala a VP debate because she was going to be the Presidential candidate, but it was apparently actually from the Trump campaign

Their own public posture has been that Biden wouldn't be the nominee. They can't claim surprise.

Wasn't Trump caught on camera saying he was going to have to campaign against Kamala?

Thanks, although I still don't really see your point. If they had already calculated Biden wouldn't be the nominee, surely that factored into their VP pick? Although maybe not, it was braggadocio, and now they're the dog that caught the mailman.

But again Vance isn't going to get raked over any worse than any other straight white guy, imo

If they had already calculated Biden wouldn't be the nominee, surely that factored into their VP pick?

Yeah, that's the point. Losing after having advanced warning would be particularly inexcusable.

Vance as an anti abortion, anti gay marriage guy is absolutely scaring the hoes. Even Trump himself is against him on these questions.

JD Vance wrote a popular book turned into a popular movie where his inoffensive chubby momma's boy character saves the day. Yes, he will receive the Romney treatment, but I question how effective it'll be

Is the Romney treatment when people object to your views?

Popular movie

It made like $40K at the box office.

The Romney treatment is when the media takes a perfectly normal family man and calls them a nazi, using specific allegories to back up their assertion "he left his dog on the roof, he has binders full of women!"

It was a netflix release during corona dude. The book was a #1 best seller, the movie was nominated for academy awards, the audience reviews were high, and millions of people watched it...on netflix.

Nazis? Allegories? What are you talking about?

I'm talking about his actual, literal policy positions that are considerably to the right of the median voter.

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I think part of the Vance pick was to inject youth onto the ticket. Age now turns from a strength to a weakness for the Republicans.

I would just like to say the whole thing is bullshit. The sole reason he should drop out is because he isn’t fit for office. It would be illegitimate to drop out solely because “the polls are bad.” There was an election to determine a candidate. The pick was bad but the pick was made. Now the candidate drops out? Like I said only makes sense if Biden can’t serve the office.

I am (unreasonably often) subjected to MSNBC as my wife is a diehard Democrat. The hagiography of Biden as the most selfless hero to ever walk the planet is absolutely mind-boggling. Normally I try my damnedest to keep my mouth shut but I was cooking dinner and I couldn't help myself. Usually, I can rationalize where people are coming from, but the sheer effrontery to claim that he was somehow a great president with a great career is so counter to reality that my brain just shut down for a minute. I'm going to have to crank up the music in my home office even louder than usual for the next 4+ months.

It’s honestly a pretty easy case to describe him as a great or at least above average president if you’re a general democrat ideologically.

For example Noah Smith here:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-positive-case-for-joe-biden

I'm going to have to crank up the music in my home office even louder than usual for the next 4+ months.

Protip: Closed door + white noise machine + earbuds + music completely drowns out all other noise.

A boring dystopia.

It’s distressing how, even while confined to a corner of his own home, that he still can’t have quiet enjoyment and/or a peaceful working environment, and might possibly need 4+ layers of sound-barriers to manage MSNBC/wife noises.

Yes, I am usually either listening to music with headphones or playing guitar. The wife asked if I would prefer CNN and I of course said yes. So I sat for an hour or so and tried to read a book while it was on. On the plus side, they did have a few people in touch with reality which was mildly heartening. But I can't take four months of this.

Have you asked your wife to simply not watch the news on the TV (eg watch with a screen that can have ear buds)? Seems like a reasonable request (as I’m sure she wouldn’t like it if you watched 4 hours a day of some political show that she didn’t like).

Eh, this is one of those things that I will just deal with as part of married life. Otherwise she's honestly great. And I'm exaggerating my discomfort a bit - I will simply retreat to my office (where I prefer to be 90% of the time anyway) and we'll deal. Yesterday was an outlier with all of the news and Harris hype.

4 months? you wish. It'll 4 years of this if Trump wins.

I pretty much lost my mind after 5 years of incessant anti-trump deranged news.

This feels like a right-wing talking point to damage the lefts brand of being for Democracy. Biden dropping out today is a proper response. The crime here is not that Biden is dropping out today it’s the cover-up for atleast the past 6 months.

"Biden cover up" doesn't hold any water imo. Anyone with eyes could see his stiff shuffling walk and his doddering manner of speaking and draw their own conclusions. People believed what they wanted, and CNN et. al. gave them the respectable cover they needed. Even Scott apparently wrote a post about how it was the Republicans' fault he couldn't recognize it himself sooner.

"No the president is perfectly fit for the role," is simply what I expected any DC Democrat to repeat over and over, because of course, and so I'm not shocked or even mad that they did.

Yeah, it’s very hard for family members to accept dementia in their loved ones. Plus the voter deserves some of the blame for electing them.

Bottom line, the democrats and Biden have done the right thing here, they have de-clownified the world a little. It’s a low bar, but one I am not sure republicans could clear, if Trump was as decrepit.

They did, in the narrowest sense, the partial right thing for the wrong reason. The right thing was never to run him. The next best thing was to fully force him out (since he clearly can’t be president today).

And again, they did them because they thought they’d lose. Which tells us that if they thought it gave them an advantage, they’d happily embrace the dementia patient currently residing at the WH.

I award no points to the democrats.

I award some points to democracy because a monarchy or dictatorship would definitely be stuck with Robinette I the Senile.

Do you think the republicans could force an equally-impaired Trump to renounce earlier? I don’t.

  • Trump is more stubborn

  • Personality cult around him is stronger

  • Loyalty and respect for elders are right-wing values

  • Maga siege mentality

The republicans did with J6

The republicans stopped Trump from taking the crown after J6 because he’s senile?

And to follow up, again if Biden resigned today I wouldn’t be as upset. It’s that the reason for dropping out is allegedly the polls; not his pudding for brains.

Thanks for the kind remarks /s

This is one of the worst gotchas in the history of gotchas. I can’t believe people keep saying this. He’s fit for office for a few months, he’s not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year. There, I just drove a truck through the widest needle in the universe.

No. He is obviously not fit for office today. He hasn’t been fit for office for at least a year. He can’t put two sentences together.

This is one of the worst gotchas in the history of gotchas. I can’t believe people keep saying this. He’s fit for office for a few months, he’s not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year. There, I just drove a truck through the widest needle in the universe.

It's not a "gotcha," though, it's a serious question about predicting the future. The reasons we have to believe that Biden is "not fit to simultaneously run a campaign or for office for four more year" are the same reasons we had to believe that four years ago, and two years ago, and six months ago. What has changed now isn't Biden; what has changed now is that the Left has been forced to accept that these reasons are not "cheap fake videos."

It's hard to get people to change their minds, but it's not impossible. The weight of the evidence has long been against Biden's mental competence, but for a while there people could do the political thing and ignore that evidence as cheap political tactics. The problem is that now we can look back at all the evidence and see that it wasn't cheap political tactics; if it had been, then there would be no new reason for Joe to drop out now. Trump almost getting assassinated did not change Joe's mental fitness. Trump dominating the debate did not change Joe's mental fitness. If nothing has changed about Biden, then why drop out? If it's purely a question of trying to beat Trump, that makes strategic sense, but his withdrawal is not being phrased that way, either.

So we get this Schrodinger's excuse; the narrative is that Biden has decided it's time to retire for purely personal reasons, but also somehow that those reasons have absolutely no bearing on the remainder of his term in office. Those reasons are not new, and yet they are newly relevant, and which part of that narrative you deny depends on which political point you are trying to make.

It would be simpler to just be honest about it: he can't beat Trump, and that's all the Party cares about at this point. Whether Biden is mentally competent has never been the Left's concern; if anything, his lack of competence probably made him an easier puppet to ply.

Posters here and Vance are advancing the following logical argument: unfit to run implies unfit to be president for the next 6 months. It obviously doesn’t follow. You can argue about A and you can argue about B but A doesn’t imply B.

It obviously doesn’t follow.

But the same presently available evidence that supports the proposition "unfit to run" also supports the proposition "unfit for office." We don't actually know what Biden's mental state will be 6 months or 4 years from now. But the same evidence (from his speeches, debates, public appearances, etc.) that he won't be fit for office in six months, or four years, is also evidence that he isn't fit for office now.

If the same evidence supports both A and B, then discussions of A will naturally invoke discussions of B. Your ability to frame what is being argued in a way that does not logically follow is irrelevant to the arguments that do follow, and so your focus on this one particular framing looks like cherry-picking.

Would either American party preemptively defenestrate a President because of mental competence concerns? The Reagan experience in his second term suggests not, though I suppose one could argue Republicans have shifted to caring more about mental competence since then.

The Reagan experience in his second term suggests not

Not the same at all. Look at Reagan's press conferences in December of 1988...the dude obviously had command of himself and of detail.

Would either American party preemptively defenestrate a President because of mental competence concerns? The Reagan experience in his second term suggests not, though I suppose one could argue Republicans have shifted to caring more about mental competence since then.

No, I expect the "Reagan experience" is baseline; even the White House webpage has an entry praising Edith Wilson's handling of her husband's incapacity.

But the kayfabe is important; it may be the most important thing about the office of the President. When it falls apart, it is unlikely to fall apart selectively, in the way that is most politically advantageous for the people involved. That's what I'm pointing out here, I think, about "Schrodinger's excuse." Maybe it would be better put as "Schrodinger's dementia." The same evidence that supports Biden's withdrawal, supports his immediate resignation (or removal, or etc.).

An aside: interestingly, the first time the Edith Wilson page URL was saved on the Internet Archive was January 20, 2021.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210715000000*/https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/first-families/edith-bolling-galt-wilson/

I don't know if it's Schrodinger's dementia; there's a consistent position that looks something like "there's a baseline for mental competence; Biden is above it now, and two months ago we believed he would be above throughout his second term; the debate added new evidence to indicate he will not be above the baseline two years from now, but that he's still above it and would be throughout the remainder of his first term; so the change in candidate while Biden remains in office is perfectly reasonable."

This is pretty tenuous, to say the least, but it doesn't require holding mutually inconsistent positions. The issues in that argument are a willful misreading of evidence (both the debate and everything that preceded it) and a decision to choose a baseline in a very narrow, convenient interval.

Political considerations are, of course, what is driving this, not logical ones, but I don't think that's a surprise to anyone.

But how could one watch that debate, especially in light of other evidence, and conclude “he is fine now.”

Is there a theoretic argument that he is just above competency now but might not be in two years. But does anyone really believe that? Does anyone think they can calibrate that well? If Biden believes Harris should be the president, then why not give her the office given his advanced age?

It’s possible to believe that his decision making isn’t a particular concern but that his ability to speak under pressure is.

Personally I’m not afraid he’s going to cause some catastrophic error in the next 6 months, but I also don’t think he has it in him to effectively campaign especially while governing at the same time.

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I have a hard time imagining how someone could honestly conclude that, but then again I've thought Biden was obviously mentally incapable since long before the debate.

(And the same for Trump! To a much lesser extent: he roughly seems at the point Biden was in the mid to late 2010s.)

The whole purpose of a political party is to win elections. Biden isn't being forced out of office, he's stepping down as a candidate for reelection. While these specific circumstances are unique, it's not unprecedented for parties to not renominate a sitting president.

The fact that the Democrats already nominated Biden was a procedural and political problem for them, but if they convinced him to step down voluntarily, there is nothing "illegitimate" about it (though I understand why Trump supporters will be unhappy since it was obviously to Trump's advantage for Biden to stay in).

(though I understand why Trump supporters will be unhappy since it was obviously to Trump's advantage for Biden to stay in)

Not sure I agree with this or that the data does either. If there did exist 'Generic Democrat' waiting in the wings - a candidate everyone had been secretly hungry for in '20 that never threw in their hat - then maybe so. If Andrew Cuomo hadn't been MeToo'd and his corona press conferences in the windbreakers were everyone's last memory of him, maybe so.

But the democrat bench is structurally unsound to a degree that's been (imo) hidden by the conspiracy of silence surrounding the topic. The GOP in '16 (their last contested primary) had an embarrassment of riches, which the media lovingly referred to as the 'clown car.' Like 6+ popular governors running (Jindal, Perry, etc), some from non-traditionally safe republican states (Bush, Kasich, Walker, etc). All those guys are completely wiped out, granted, but the GOP has been consistently spitting out new guys like Vance, Hawley, etc for '28

The democrats have had exactly 1 clear-the-benches primary this entire century. '00 was smooth sailing for Gore, '04 for Kerry, '08 was Clinton-until-it-wasn't, '12 incumbent Obama, '16 Clinton-and-it-was.

But in '20 when the opportunity was ripe and it was all hands on deck, the democrats were running Joe, Bernie, Kamala, Warren, and the mayor of some town in Indiana. There was and is no Klobmentum.

Frankly, it seems to me as though their repeated decisions to 'clear-the-board' for their preferred candidate rather than the benches, the party may have cooked itself for the foreseeable future

  • Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania handily and has great approval ratings.
  • Jared Polis is a popular two-term libertarian-ish gay governor of Colorado who got Covid mostly right and is still only 49.
  • Andy Beshear won re-election as governor of KY by 5 even while the GOP kept a supermajority of the legislature.
  • Joe Manchin has an ego the size of the Appalachians, and a history as an effective legislator.
  • Gavin Newsom has failed to actually fix anything in CA, but he certainly looks Presidential, has boatloads of money, and is quite glib.
  • JB Pritzker has all the money in the universe and has run IL like his own personal fief for a while; he might have higher ambitions too.
  • AOC will be eligible in 2028 and remains very vivid and high-profile (though I can't vouch for whether the progressive wing of the party still likes her)
  • Gretchen Whitmer is also someone people still talk about, though I don't understand why.

And that's just off the top of my head.

/u/Outlaw83 "Yup!"

Shapiro by admission quite publicly of democrat party elders is a no go because he's a Jew

Polis (he changed his name from Schutz a few years ago 'because he liked it better'), see above. Also he's gay. A gay Jew for VP?? Maybe we're there already and I'm even more wrong then I thought I was, sure, but...to put him up as a bencher is bizarre

The rest of the 'top of your head' is the same. Beshear put all the kids in masks, closed all the small businesses, released uncountable numbers of violent criminals, and the day before it was all challenged...dropped it all. Machin is not even a democrat anymore dude. Newsome has failed to actually fix anything in CA so hard he's driven literally millions of taxpayers to other states. Pritzker is a 400lb Hermaeus Mora tentacle figure who nobody besides the two of us even knows, and if they did, I doubt they'd be enthralled. AOC???? And people still talk about Whitmer because she faked a kidnapping plot.

Yup, this weird view the Democrat's have no bench just isn't true. Roy Cooper, Tim Walz, Mark Kelly, and others you haven't listed are also reasonable contenders.

The actual dirty little secret is the GOP bench is kind of bare, when it comes to people who appeal to the median voter - yes, there are plenty of candidates who win red states by 20, but outside of that, when it comes to swing state or blue state Republican's with any crossover appeal who have a chance of winning a MAGA-tilted primary, there's Brian Kemp from Georgia and that's about it, and even he has obvious issues with the whole "not going along with Trump after 2020."

The reality is, in 2028, if Kamala wins this time, and the ticket is say, J.D. Vance/Kristi Noem, I'll have zero worries about that ticket outside of a 2008-style economic collapse.

It's a shame that DeSantis flamed out so spectacularly against Trump - someone who can take a purple state and turn it blood red through competence and effective culture-warring, as DeSantis did in FL., would definitely belong on that list.

I’m not sure he is dead. If Trump loses, then he is the favorite for 2028. He lost due to the cult of Trump (RDS still had high favorables among the base—just they preferred orange man).

I hope you're right.

Oh, I am not saying the Democrats had a particularly better candidate. But Biden in his current state was about the worst candidate they could have - just about anyone else will give them more of a fighting chance. You are right that the Democrats have left themselves with no real good options.

It might be legal and make sense from the view of the party but it's pretty skeezy from just an average citizens pov. There is no time for any democratic process to be involved in picking a successor, which is pretty amusing from a party that is "saving democracy." Also, the polls are bad because he's senile. Staying in as the president while dropping out of the race and claiming it's just has to do with the polls conveniently ignores the context around the polls. They don't exist in a vacuum.

Of course there is something illegitimate about it. There was a process to determine a candidate. After that process was followed (and that process has been followed for decades now) the democrats decided “it was no longer in our best interest to follow the process.” They then used a lot of political pressure to force Biden out.

It would’ve been legitimate if the democrats did this during the primary. The whole reason why it is illegitimate me is they broke with decades old practice because they were afraid they’d lose.

It's not illegitimate for a candidate to withdraw. Was he pressured? No doubt. But who actually disagrees that, even if the polls weren't bad, he's not fit to be President for another four years?

I just don't believe anyone is honestly upset at any alleged violation of democratic norms. Notably, I don't see many Democrats complaining about this turn of events. I see Trump supporters mad that the Democrats found an "out."

Of course democrats aren’t mad. They want to win an election! But for the party to claim “democracy is on the ballot” and then through machinations reject the result of their election…it is rich.

Party elections are as democratic as the party wants them to be. "You ignored your own democratic procedures" is certainly a charge the Republicans can use against them as a talking point, but it probably won't get much traction because no one cares about the Republicans complaining about how the Democrats select their candidates.

Except no, it isn’t a private roll call. It is a weird mixture between private and public entity. The idea that this is solely an internecine conflict is weird. We as a country believe elections are good tools for figuring out the best candidates. The democrats on the one hand claim to believe this but on the other hand did an end around that process for their primary. Do they believe democracy is not suited for the task? If so, why for the general? If not, why isn’t what they are doing a national embarrassment as it may foist on the country an untested un-vetted candidate who easily could become president?

We had this discussion a few weeks back. Legally, political parties can use whatever process they like (that isn't illegal in itself) to select candidates. Including picking names out of a hat. Literal bribery and certain forms of influence are probably illegal , and in practice they try to do what makes them look "democratic" (and avoid pissing off the party faithful), but I fail to see what law you think the Democrats are breaking. Are they "hypocrites" for not being more "democratic"? I guess, maybe - see if that sticks. But it probably won't, because Democrats will see it as the concern-trolling it is.

And you aren't even clearly articulating how you think this "anti-democratic" decision came about. The actual problem for the Democrats was that there is no mechanism under the party's own rules for them to replace a candidate after he's been selected, even if the entire party leadership wanted to. That, you are correct, they couldn't have done without probably breaking some laws (or at least triggering lawsuits that would have sunk the party).

But the candidate can choose to withdraw. There could even be a good reason. Maybe Biden really does know his health won't last and he can't handle another election campaign - supposing for a moment he really believes this and is mentally competent to make that decision, would you claim he doesn't have a right to make it and that it's "undemocratic" for him to step down?

Now supposing it wasn't entirely his own choice - putting political pressure on Biden to "voluntarily" withdraw is also not against the rules. Does it strike you as sleazy and anti-democratic, reminiscent of smoke-filled back rooms? Maybe it is! Some Democrats might feel that way too. Still not illegal, and I suspect Democrats will generally prefer a chance at winning over your notion of what they aught.

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I just don't believe anyone is honestly upset at any alleged violation of democratic norms. Notably, I don't see many Democrats complaining about this turn of events.

I don't think the violation of norms now is really a big deal, and it's a lot of R's concern-trolling. But on a more nuanced level, it is representative of an avoidable past failing.

Unless Biden suddenly became much worse timed exactly with the debate itself, (which is possible tbf), the issue is best summed up as "They didn't pull biden because he had dementia, they pulled him because the voters found out". The argument is that could have forseen this and pulled it when there was still time for a democratic process.

I think the correct response should be, it's not a big deal that they have to circumvent norms at this hour. But it is a big deal that it was allowed to get this late.

Suppose I urge everyone to go to the pool and shut down debate about alternative activities. Then, when we're at the pool, it starts thundering. We have to pack it in fast, and the bowling alley is next door so we go there without a vote.

Now when we get there, you find out that I had seen the weather forecast and knew there was a strong chance of storms. Simultaneously, you can agree with my decision to call it on the pool when the thunder starter, agree that once there, the bowling alley was the only logical backup, but still be very very angry with me for hiding the forecast.

I think the correct response should be, it's not a big deal that they have to circumvent norms at this hour. But it is a big deal that it was allowed to get this late.

Correct. But that's an issue for the Democratic party, and should be punished by Democratic party members and donors.

Nobody outside the Democratic party has any legitimate reason to care if Biden's team hid the truth from their supporters. (As opposed to caring that the President of the United States might have been unfit for duty.) Republicans saying "How dare you remove the senile old guy we were almost certain to beat?" is, as you say, concern-trolling.

I'm somewhere between you and zeke's objection on this. Closer to you, and think the concern trolling is phony. But I thikn the point about neutralizing the 'threat to democracy' rhetoric has some validity.

It is gross to criticize another’s motives when you don’t know.

Look, no one ex ante would say the Dems process was good or even legitimate. This shitty process has left us with the real possibility that Harris will become president. I don’t like many Dems, but there are some I can stomach (eg Polis). A normal process might have resulted in losing not being too bad. But now?

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Democrats claim “we are the party of protecting democracy.” Yet their actions — taken from the big view — show they are full of shit. I don’t really care too much about democracy qua democracy but democrats hypocrisy on the issue is legitimate.

The other potential concern for republicans is that there can be a honeymoon phase for candidates. If playing this shell game benefits the Dems, the. Republicans are right to call foul play.

C'mon, both parties claim they are the party of democracy and America and puppies.

You can go for the "Democrats are hypocrites" angle, but no one's going to care since they didn't break any laws and unless you can prove someone literally held Biden's hand and forged his signature, they didn't even break their own rules. The candidate is actually allowed to withdraw, even if his opponents would prefer that he didn't.

If playing this shell game benefits the Dems

Yeah, there it is, the real issue. Of course you'd prefer the Democrats just lose, and of course they are going to look for a way not to lose.

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I just don't believe anyone is honestly upset at any alleged violation of democratic norms.

Nobody is. The news is too fresh and they haven’t coalesced around the new talking points yet. They’re in the throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks phase.

A party breaking with their own internal practices because they’re afraid they’ll lose is, again, the most legitimate action for a party to take because the entire purpose of political parties is to win. They only started doing “democratic” primaries like this since the fiasco with Hubert Humphrey, if they think going back to the smoke filled room this time around increases their odds of winning then why shouldn’t they?

After awhile, a norm is established. That norm should be followed.

But i reject the basic premise. This is like saying the sole purpose of a corporation is to create profit so if it is profitable to Jill people corporations should kill people. No — the sole purpose of a corporation is to make profit within a certain scheme and norms. Killing is outside of that scheme and therefore is not legitimate even if killing would increase profit. So to here — the party’s job is to win within democratic norms. Violating those norms to win seems illegitimate unless you are willing to bite the bullet and say “Biden isn’t fit for office including today.”

Political parties exist to win elections and gain power. If the party doesn’t think a candidate is likely to win then that’s the most legitimate reason for a party to force that candidate out.

See my comment Amadan.


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