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OK, guess I have to speak up as probably the only actual social democratic partisan Democrat here -
The reason Joe Biden is running for reelection is because he's the incumbent President and wants to run for reelection, and primary challenges agains incumbent President's go badly, and most importantly, nobody would beat him. Like, contrary to popular opinion, there is no secret Deep State Cabal of Obama, Hillary, and whomever running the country. No, it's the codgy old guy, the people who have been around him for years, and a bunch of former Warrne staffers. Secondly, even if he did step down, Kamala's the nominee because she's the VP, still has good approvals among Democrat's, and so on.
Now, we're probably going to disagree on the fundamentals on who's smart or not, but going to the bench - the thing people miss is much of the current Democratic bench is in the states - Whitmer in Michigan in the same state Biden barely won, wins by ten, and also turns the Michigan legislature entirely blue for the first time in decades, Shapiro in PA wins by a landslide, Pritzer in Illinois's a little more controversial but you beat a bad billionaire with a good class traitorous billionaire, there's Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina who has won two terms in a light-red state, while running as a standard issue liberal, Andy Beshear in Kentucky is a pro-choice and pro-LGBT Governor of that state about to win reelection, Tim Walz has been a solid governor of Minnesota, and for more well-known folks, there's Newsom in Cali, and for the more moderates/neoliberals, Polis in CO. In the Senate, even then, there's Raphael Warnock, a pretty down-the-line liberal Senator who won in Georgia.
Like, on pure electoral talent, 2022 shows the Democrat's have plenty of it, simply looking back at the historical record of midterms.
I also, frankly, think people have gone so over the board underestimating Kamala, that they'd assume she'd lose in some 40-state landslide. As a social democrat, she wouldn't be my preferred candidate in 2028 (Whitmer or Warnock for me), but at worst, Kamala loses the EC 312-226, and even then, still only narrowly loses the popular vote, and that's if the GOP doesn't nominate somebody Trump-adjacent or somebody with no charisma like DeSantis. So yeah, a boring ticket like I don't know Brian Kemp/Kim Reynolds probably wins that election that way, but Tucker/Vivek, or something like that - Kamala can totally win because people will choose cringe they're embarrassed guy by the weirdos, and as seen by some of the right's reaction to the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce thing, they're entirely too much the weirdos.
Finally, probably most controversially, Fetterman. He outran Biden in Pennsylvania and has the look much closer to the median American than anybody else. Hell, polling showed the stroke made voters more sympathetic to him, as the elite media was telling him to withdraw, savaging his debate performance, and so on.
I'm not somebody who says the GOP can't win in 2024 or 2028, but this weird idea, because Biden's the nominee there is no bench is simply false, and I'd make the opposite argument for the GOP. Whose somebody that can win a primary with a Trumpian base, that can actually win a national election?
Most of those people won because their opponent sucked. Some of them even got to choose their opponent, like Pritzker.
I don't think any of these people could get serious traction nationally, except maybe Shapiro or Newsom (and Newsom has some hard caps nationally). The rest would be running, at best, as 'Generic Democrat'.
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Assuming trump’s not running, Hawley, Youngkin, Cruz, Abbott, all come to mind as normal candidates who can win the trump base.
To say nothing of the fact that based on current polling, the winner of both the trump base and the general is… trump.
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Gop does have a bit of personality cult now which helps trump.
Perhaps no one has emerged since there is an incumbent but it still feels weak to me and Joe wasn’t all there in 2020. A lot of the GOP generally does like Trump while Joe always felt like a figurehead and why there couldn’t be some Harvard trained PMC to take the job from him in 2020.
Especially at the top the Dems field looks low IQ to me. None of the top 3 went to an elite school. While all the GOP top 3 went to the schools you would expect them to for a highly motivated high IQ person. Yet people are telling me the left owns the institutions.
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Aren't the super-delegates effectively a cabal of elite officials that have significant influence on picking at least one major party's presidential candidates?
Super-delegates are now prevented from voting on the first ballot. They only come into play if the primary voters don't give any candidate a majority of pledged delegates.
Aha, well that's a good change.
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