The 2024 Presidential Election - Oops, We Did It Again

[Crolis]

If Biden stays in and loses, you'd hear "he should have dropped out."

If Biden dropped out right after the debate and was replaced by Harris and she loses, you'd hear "I told you she wasn't liked. They should have held chosen someone else."

If Biden dropped out and the DNC anoints someone other than Harris (for the record I don't think Harris getting the baton is an anointment per se) and they lose, you'd hear "You should have held a snap primary."

If Biden drops out and they do a snap primary (like those who seem absolutely new to American politics thinks it just going to easily happen) and the chosen candidate loses, you'd hear "Well maybe you should have had a real primary."

If they had a "real" primary and the chosen candidate lost, you'd hear "But it should have been THIS candidate."

The cynic brigade doesn't give a fuck about the outcome. They exist to whine and feel/appear correct as their cynicism creates several layers of "I told you so" to fall back on. Most of them know they'll personally be fine so this is more amusing than anything.

You are absolutely right, plenty of opportunities for cynics to say whatever. However there are a couple of things I do know:

1) geriatric man who can’t do shit past 8 should not be president of the United States. If Trump didn’t exist this would be preposterous for any of you to defend Biden.
2) Biden is going to lose so wtf ever. It’s not even a toss-up at this point so you are rooting for the underdog incumbent highly unpopular person. So….enjoy that hand I guess.

 

[blindbear]

No, the entire gambit of MAGA relies on people being people with short memories and forgetting or ignoring what Trump's first term was.

And for all the whining about Democrats surrendering, again, look at history--no party claims the presidency indefinitely. In the modern era, is the longest a party has held the presidency 12 years? Control will shift because due to human nature and boredom or dissatisfaction (manufactured or otherwise) with the status quo.

Without voting right reform, it is very possible that USA can head towards the direction of many dictatorships. It really depends on how successful 2025 projects is. Free election is not something inevitable.

 

[N4M8-]

Without voting right reform, it is very possible that USA can head towards the direction of many dictatorships. It really depends on how successful 2025 projects is. Free election is not something inevitable.

No it isn't. And one of the things which goes least examined in US education and discussion is how other countries have lost their democracies.

Which brings me back to where I started...you cannot save a country/democracy whose citizens are determined to pull it down.

 

[NewNinetyNine]

No, the entire gambit of MAGA relies on people being people with short memories and forgetting or ignoring what Trump's first term was.

Which part? If you write off the pandemic as an "act of god," many people were fine with their personal quality of life from 2017-2019. MAGA relies on a well of popular frustration with the DC status quo, allowing Trump to cast himself as the unique savior/champion.

 

[Lt_Storm]

allowing Trump to cast himself as the unique savior/champion

While selling everyone to that same status quo. Indeed, that's the important thing about fascism, it feel fresh and new while still selling everyone to basically the same rich assholes (minus the one or two who didn't survive the culling, along with countless poor people).

 

[N4M8-]

Which part? If you write off the pandemic as an "act of god," many people were fine with their personal quality of life from 2017-2019. MAGA relies on a well of popular frustration with the DC status quo, allowing Trump to cast himself as the unique savior/champion.

The pandemic can be an act of god but the question is how it was handled. Trump handled it poorly. Are we electing a president to coast and hope nothing bad goes wrong that requires presidential direction and leadership?

Materially I was better off, but that had nothing to do with Trump. And mentally, putting up with non-stop Trump misbehavior being non-stop daily news...definitely not worth it for me.

 

[breze]

If Biden stays in and loses, you'd hear "he should have dropped out."

If Biden dropped out right after the debate and was replaced by Harris and she loses, you'd hear "I told you she wasn't liked. They should have held chosen someone else."

If Biden dropped out and the DNC anoints someone other than Harris (for the record I don't think Harris getting the baton is an anointment per se) and they lose, you'd hear "You should have held a snap primary."

If the party chooses a bad candidate without asking the voters, or after misleading the voters as to the state of that candidate, deserve much worse than a bunch of annoying “I told you so”’s. That would be a massive betrayal.

If Biden drops out and they do a snap primary (like those who seem absolutely new to American politics thinks it just going to easily happen) and the chosen candidate loses, you'd hear "Well maybe you should have had a real primary."

If they had a "real" primary and the chosen candidate lost, you'd hear "But it should have been THIS candidate."

People have a right to have opinions about candidates, so you’ll get some people saying that their pick was best. But if the process is as democratic as we can accomplish within reason, they basically don’t have any grounds to complain about the procedure.

The cynic brigade doesn't give a fuck about the outcome. They exist to whine and feel/appear correct as their cynicism creates several layers of "I told you so" to fall back on. Most of them know they'll personally be fine so this is more amusing than anything.

It’s really just one layer, over and over: the Democratic Party seems to have around a 50% chance of picking a really bad candidate, so yeah, the people who want to say “I told you so” get a ton of excuses to say it. It is like the second most annoying thing about being a member of this party (the first most annoying thing is losing all these extremely winnable races).

 

[NewNinetyNine]

The pandemic can be an act of god but the question is how it was handled. Trump handled it poorly. Are we electing a president to coast and hope nothing bad goes wrong that requires presidential direction and leadership?

Materially I was better off, but that had nothing to do with Trump. And mentally, putting up with non-stop Trump misbehavior being non-stop daily news...definitely not worth it for me.

Sure, but we're talking about he median swing voter, who knows that both sides blame each other on the pandemic and that Trump did some stuff, but the blame on that is both sides, too. I trust that you are not a median swing voter!

 

[Papageno]

Which part? If you write off the pandemic as an "act of god," many people were fine with their personal quality of life from 2017-2019. MAGA relies on a well of popular frustration with the DC status quo, allowing Trump to cast himself as the unique savior/champion.

"Many people" no doubt made up of a lot of unreconstructed Neo-Confederates and other kinds of bigots who were now given free rein to "say the quiet part out loud."

Some "champion."

I'm not entirely convinced that some of the people in this very thread thought everything was just peachy under Trump, and can't wait to enjoy four more years of his tender mercies, but with even fewer guardrails, and that some of those may be among the loudest of the "Dump Biden" brigade.

 

[fractl]

The pandemic can be an act of god but the question is how it was handled. Trump handled it poorly. Are we electing a president to coast and hope nothing bad goes wrong that requires presidential direction and leadership?

Materially I was better off, but that had nothing to do with Trump. And mentally, putting up with non-stop Trump misbehavior being non-stop daily news...definitely not worth it for me.

I’m way better off under Biden than Trump, but even if the opposite were true, I still wouldn’t vote for a wanna-be dictator.

During the run-up to the 2016 election, my dad’s wife was trying to sell Trump to me. I told her that I did the math and that Bernie‘s policies would cost me around $40000 and that I would happily vote for that if it meant less war, cheaper college, etc. I voted for Hillary because I would certainly take a competent corporate Democrat over an idiot like Trump.

 

[NewNinetyNine]

"Many people" no doubt made up of a lot of unreconstructed Neo-Confederates and other kinds of bigots who were now given free rein to "say the quiet part out loud."

Some "champion."

I'm not entirely convinced that some of the people in this very thread thought everything was just peachy under Trump, and can't wait to enjoy four more years of his tender mercies, but with even fewer guardrails, and that some of those may be among the loudest of the "Dump Biden" brigade.

I doubt anyone in this thread is a median swing voter! But clearly there are enough folks who miss the Trump years that such a sentiment shows up in polling. E.g., Biden’s growing challenge: Voters are warming to Trump’s presidency. If you write off every Trump-leaning swing voter as a "neo-Confederate" or "bigot" you're creating a blind spot for yourself.

During Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, he was famously the only president whose job approval rating never reached 50% in Gallup Organization polls since the firm began systematically tracking that measure in the 1940s.
But now more positive retrospective assessments of Trump’s record in office are setting off warning flares for Democrats — especially as President Joe Biden’s own approval ratings remain stuck at historically low levels. In a CNN poll from April, 55% of Americans said they considered Trump’s presidency a success — a big jump from the 41% who viewed his presidency so positively when he left office in January 2021, according to a CNN survey from the time.

Almost every president sees their retrospective approval ratings improve after they leave office; when Gallup last measured views of former presidents in 2023, each one it included except for Bill Clinton received a higher approval rating than when they left the White House. Even Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, the previous two one-term presidents before Trump, were each much more popular in the poll than when they lost their reelection bids. Trump’s recovery since leaving office is “not a completely new phenomenon,” said Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, who specializes in studying presidential approval.
Other surveys suggest the backward-looking judgments on Trump have further improved since then. In an April national New York Times/Siena College survey, for instance, slightly more registered voters (48%) now say Trump left the country better off than worse off (46%) after his presidency.
Nearly two-thirds of voters in the April New York Times/Siena survey said they approved of how Trump handled the economy and about half said they approved of his handling of both immigration and crime.

 

[DarthSlack]

Which part? If you write off the pandemic as an "act of god," many people were fine with their personal quality of life from 2017-2019. MAGA relies on a well of popular frustration with the DC status quo, allowing Trump to cast himself as the unique savior/champion.

This is quite possibly one of the most mistaken characterizations of MAGA ever.

MAGA is a malignancy of the Tea Party movement, which itself resulted from the horrific incident of a Black man with a funny name being elected President. The Tea Party itself arose much more slowly as a result of Nixon's Southern Strategy to bring Democrats who were pissed off by the party's embrace of civil right, into the Republican tent. QAnon, which provided a great deal of the MAGA creed, is nothing but recycled anit-Semitism dating back centuries.

tldr; MAGA is a child of racism, period.

Sure, it's attracted a bunch of related wingnuts, but at its' core, it's pure, unadulterated, racism. It's attracted people who want nothing more than free reign to let their hate flag fly in public without retribution. Trump among them.

 

[Sajuuk]

If Biden stays in and loses, you'd hear "he should have dropped out."

If Biden dropped out right after the debate and was replaced by Harris and she loses, you'd hear "I told you she wasn't liked. They should have held chosen someone else."

If Biden dropped out and the DNC anoints someone other than Harris (for the record I don't think Harris getting the baton is an anointment per se) and they lose, you'd hear "You should have held a snap primary."

If Biden drops out and they do a snap primary (like those who seem absolutely new to American politics thinks it just going to easily happen) and the chosen candidate loses, you'd hear "Well maybe you should have had a real primary."

If they had a "real" primary and the chosen candidate lost, you'd hear "But it should have been THIS candidate."

The cynic brigade doesn't give a fuck about the outcome. They exist to whine and feel/appear correct as their cynicism creates several layers of "I told you so" to fall back on. Most of them know they'll personally be fine so this is more amusing than anything.

Most of them know they'll personally be fine so this is more amusing than anything.

You know, as a proud cynic, I don't actually believe this at all. I'm, quite honestly and frankly, genuinely terrified of our political prospects. When people tell you who they are, you should believe them. There's no hyperbole in saying they literally want us dead anymore, and people will pretend it's just rhetoric right up until our day of the rope.

I think Biden is a perfectly amicable human being who happens to be a career politician and categorically incapable of treating the American conservative project as the existential threat it is.

 

[sword_9mm]

That's why you have to use the power you have, when you have it, to unf*ck the radical rightward shift... upto and including the powers granted to you by said radical rightward shift.

This entire gambit of MAGA fundamentally depends on Democrats being feckless, navel gazing institutionalists. Which is of course a very safe bet, but Democrats don't have to play along by unilaterally disarming and proactively surrendering. They just will.

Being a maintainer of the status quo is to be a fundamental enabler of the trajectory toward fascism. Which unfortunately at present is what many high-ranking Democrats appear more than willing to be.

Thanks to SCOTUS, President Biden has nearly infinite degrees of freedom to get us out of this mess, and he's resolute to use exactly none of them to do so. For my money that's a significantly more damning indictment of him as both a President and Presidential candidate than his being 81 years old.

He's being a salty, ornery, angry grouch to entirely the wrong people.

How does any of that placate the side that wants what you don't want?

Use the king powers to hand out a million dollars to every voter that votes Democrat?

Use the king powers to push through real healthcare reform that cannot be rolled back/changed by the next clown?

Use the king powers to line 40% + of the US voting population, shoot them then shoot the corpses into the sun?

Use the king powers to ?????

I assume you mean using the king powers to do something. What is that something? Or is this just complaints against the party for the last 50+ years of doing nothing?

 

[Shavano]

This is quite possibly one of the most mistaken characterizations of MAGA ever.

MAGA is a malignancy of the Tea Party movement, which itself resulted from the horrific incident of a Black man with a funny name being elected President. The Tea Party itself arose much more slowly as a result of Nixon's Southern Strategy to bring Democrats who were pissed off by the party's embrace of civil right, into the Republican tent. QAnon, which provided a great deal of the MAGA creed, is nothing but recycled anit-Semitism dating back centuries.

tldr; MAGA is a child of racism, period.

Sure, it's attracted a bunch of related wingnuts, but at its' core, it's pure, unadulterated, racism. It's attracted people who want nothing more than free reign to let their hate flag fly in public without retribution. Trump among them.

I agree that's true, but Trump couldn't have won or come close to getting re-elected without a large number of people who were only OK with the racism. You know, the kind that 'don't see race' (which effectively means they turn a blind eye to racism) and vote on what they see as their own economic interest. Lower taxes, less business regulation - that kind of thing. Also the kind that saw the racism/jingoism as an acceptable price for achieving their goals of religious dominance and punishing people for abortion.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

This is quite possibly one of the most mistaken characterizations of MAGA ever.

MAGA is a malignancy of the Tea Party movement, which itself resulted from the horrific incident of a Black man with a funny name being elected President. The Tea Party itself arose much more slowly as a result of Nixon's Southern Strategy to bring Democrats who were pissed off by the party's embrace of civil right, into the Republican tent.

It literally wasn't this at all. Like, at all.

It was an offshoot of Ron Paul's failed Presidential candidacy.

The grievances were all around government interference in the "free market" ranging from soda pop bans to bank bailouts. The latter of which catapulted the "movement" onto the national scene in a big, BIG way.

 

[karolus]

If you are referring to the bank bailouts post-GFC, it would be an understandably catalyzing event. Many Americans were financially devastated—precisely the type of situation that political demagogues can use to their advantage. Whether what they promote helps their supporters is secondary—they have appeal because they have something different to offer than the establishment.

 

[Tom Foolery]

If you are referring to the bank bailouts post-GFC, it would be an understandably catalyzing event. Many Americans were financially devastated—precisely the type of situation that political demagogues can use to their advantage. Whether what they promote helps their supporters is secondary—they have appeal because they have something different to offer than the establishment.

They have appeal because we chose to bail out the banks and let the poorest among us twist in the wind.

 

[DarthSlack]

It literally wasn't this at all. Like, at all.

It was an offshoot of Ron Paul's failed Presidential candidacy.

The grievances were all around government interference in the "free market" ranging from soda pop bans to bank bailouts. The latter of which catapulted the "movement" onto the national scene in a big, BIG way.

You can believe that if you want, but the extremely close association between MAGA and QAnon, including Trump spouting QAnon phrases, wasn't an accident. And QAnon really isn't a "free market" organization at all. And any "free market" roots the Tea Party may have had were quickly overwhelmed by mindless opposition to the Obama Presidency.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

If you are referring to the bank bailouts post-GFC, it would be an understandably catalyzing event. Many Americans were financially devastated—precisely the type of situation that political demagogues can use to their advantage. Whether what they promote helps their supporters is secondary—they have appeal because they have something different to offer than the establishment.

Yes, I've been saying this for years. The fact that Barrack Obama is black is a wildly overstated origin of our current ills.

The fact that Barrack Obama put on full display the government's role in protecting AND further enriching of both the perpetrating institutions & their principal malefactors with absolutely zero accountability, while whole regions of the country were financially decimated, is precisely the sort of acute failure of government that presents fertile soil for radical populist movements to grow like weeds.

Remember all those parts of the country that used to be battleground states back then? Ohio, Florida, etc. Places that used to be purple and are now deep blood red?

It's not a coincidence that those were areas of the country where the only real basis for people feeling growth and prosperity were built on practically nothing but the back of the housing bubble. Then in the wake of the collapse and being left to twist in the wind they eventually succumbed totally to a grievance/vengeance populist movement whose core message has ways been, "They're corrupt. Look at what they did to you and they're letting the bad guys get away with it. I know because I've been one of those bad guys, and they let me get away with lying and cheating just like them. But now I want to be your bad guy! Let me go beat them up and take their lunch money for you."

Some people latched on to Bernie Sanders as their populist leader and standard bearer of grievance. Many, many more latched onto Donald Trump.

The same sh*t happened internationally too along precisely the same trajectory.

 

[Thank You and Best of Luck!]

You can believe that if you want, but the extremely close association between MAGA and QAnon, including Trump spouting QAnon phrases, wasn't an accident. And QAnon really isn't a "free market" organization at all. And any "free market" roots the Tea Party may have had were quickly overwhelmed by mindless opposition to the Obama Presidency.

I don't have to believe if if I want to. I can believe it because it's factually true.

There was a broad multi-national backlash to failure of Neoliberal governance and institutions that came on the heels of the crisis in 2007-2009 that happened almost all the same way on almost exactly the same timeline. The US wasn't special.

I mean I guess it's entirely possible that Brexit was because Dixiecrats had migrated back to England en masse, and by George they simply could not countenance their former homeland having a black President.

 

[DarthSlack]

I don't have to believe if if I want to. I can believe it because it's factually true.

There was a broad multi-national backlash to failure of Neoliberal governance and institutions that came on the heels of the crisis in 2007-2009 that happened almost all the same way on almost exactly the same timeline. The US wasn't special.

I mean I guess it's entirely possible that Brexit was because Dixiecrats had migrated back to England en masse, and by George they simply could not countenance their former homeland having a black President.

You know that more than a single thing can be true at once, right? That people were both upset about bailouts AND that MAGA is driven largely by a racist reaction to Obama?

But more seriously, just when have you seen any MAGA politician actually propose solutions to the 2008 crisis? Or adjust neoliberalism in any way that doesn't profoundly favor the rich. Just look at the Trump tax cuts, do you really think that approach was driven by any sort of opposition to neoliberalism? Or having Steven Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary? Seriously, just what about the Trump administration economic policies indicates they're anything other than bog-standard capitalists?

 

[karolus]

Yes, I've been saying this for years. The fact that Barrack Obama is black is a wildly overstated origin of our current ills.

The fact that Barrack Obama put on full display the government's role in protecting AND further enriching of both the perpetrating institutions & their principal malefactors with absolutely zero accountability, while whole regions of the country were financially decimated, is precisely the sort of acute failure of government that presents fertile soil for radical populist movements to grow like weeds.

Remember all those parts of the country that used to be battleground states back then? Ohio, Florida, etc. Places that used to be purple and are now deep blood red?

It's not a coincidence that those were areas of the country where the only real basis for people feeling growth and prosperity were built on practically nothing but the back of the housing bubble. Then in the wake of the collapse and being left to twist in the wind they eventually succumbed totally to a grievance/vengeance populist movement whose core message has ways been, "They're corrupt. Look at what they did to you and they're letting the bad guys get away with it. I know because I've been one of those bad guys, and they let me get away with lying and cheating just like them. But now I want to be your bad guy! Let me go beat them up and take their lunch money for you."

Some people latched on to Bernie Sanders as their populist leader and standard bearer of grievance. Many, many more latched onto Donald Trump.

The same sh*t happened internationally too along precisely the same trajectory.

Yes—it didn't help that here in the US, there also was a revolving door between regulatory agencies and the major financial insitutiitions. While there were some government initiatives such as Recovery.org, this wasn't viewed as enough by many who were left out in the cold financially—creating an inroad for political opponents to take advantage of. FDR faced similar challenges, but pushed harder to connect with the dispossessed—and provide tangible benefits.

It was a bizarre scene—remember seeing tents in highway interchanges from the worst hit. Similar to what happened during the pandemic in the PNW. People with no jobs, money or hope.

 

[Sajuuk]

It literally wasn't this at all. Like, at all.

It was an offshoot of Ron Paul's failed Presidential candidacy.

The grievances were all around government interference in the "free market" ranging from soda pop bans to bank bailouts. The latter of which catapulted the "movement" onto the national scene in a big, BIG way.

Ah, yes, the "birther" movement was just a matter of genuine grievances and economics. Obviously.

 

[karolus]

Annnnd it should be pointed out again that Trump was also a facilitator in said birther movement—long before he even considered the White House.

 

[Tom Foolery]

Yes—it didn't help that here in the US, there also was a revolving door between regulatory agencies and the major financial insitutiitions.

Is, not was. There is a revolving door between regulatory agencies and the major institutions that said agencies are supposed to regulate.

 

[breze]

You know that more than a single thing can be true at once, right? That people were both upset about bailouts AND that MAGA is driven largely by a racist reaction to Obama?

But more seriously, just when have you seen any MAGA politician actually propose solutions to the 2008 crisis? Or adjust neoliberalism in any way that doesn't profoundly favor the rich. Just look at the Trump tax cuts, do you really think that approach was driven by any sort of opposition to neoliberalism? Or having Steven Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary? Seriously, just what about the Trump administration economic policies indicates they're anything other than bog-standard capitalists?

I think some people in the MAGA orbit are explicitly anti-liberal (in the normal sense of the word liberal, not the weird American thing). Bannon types and other fringe hangers-on.

Trump didn’t govern that way I guess because it is really not a position held by people who you can put in an administration (which is really saying something considering how low the bar was for his administration).

Racism and liberalism are basically opposed because one of the main conclusions of liberalism is that everyone ought to be treated equally. So it doesn’t seem like a huge distinction to me. The Republican Party mostly tries to cloak their racism in more acceptable language, Trump’s main break with them has always been saying the quiet part out loud.

Collections: The Philosophy of Liberty – On Liberalism

It is once again the week of July 4th and so, as is customary here, I am going to use this week’s post to talk about the United States or more correctly this week about the political philosop…

acoup.blog

 

[AmanoJyaku]

Ah, yes, the "birther" movement was just a matter of genuine grievances and economics. Obviously.

Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----, n-----, n-----". By 1968, you can't say "n-----"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----, n-----". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.

Lee Atwater, Chairman, Republican National Committee

Replace African Americans with any other persecuted group, it's the same thing: bigotry presented as "the economy".

 

[BurntToShreds]

I really hope that The New York Times goes down in flames somehow. Them, and CNN. They care so much about subscribers and readers and viewers for these next few months that they're willing to plunge the country into fascism to do so with their power to craft bullshit narratives around the election. If Harris becomes the nominee, they're going to hammer on "But is she ready to fill Biden's shoes?!?!1?" shit and more to keep her down because that sells papers and subscriptions and gets people glued to their TV screens and ad-filled browser pages.

I am just so tired. Just so tired and afraid.

 

[sword_9mm]

I really hope that The New York Times goes down in flames somehow. Them, and CNN. They care so much about subscribers and readers and viewers for these next few months that they're willing to plunge the country into fascism to do so with their power to craft bullshit narratives around the election. If Harris becomes the nominee, they're going to hammer on "But is she ready to fill Biden's shoes?!?!1?" shit and more to keep her down because that sells papers and subscriptions and gets people glued to their TV screens and ad-filled browser pages.

I am just so tired. Just so tired and afraid.

I don't care what 'news' outlets go down the shitter but how are they 'plunging the country into fascism'?

Look to your left; now look to your right. Those people are the problem (if there is one; I'm not 100% sold).

 

[CPX]

I don't care what 'news' outlets go down the shitter but how are they 'plunging the country into fascism'?

Look to your left; now look to your right. Those people are the problem (if there is one; I'm not 100% sold).

I've seen countless people claiming Biden or Clinton or any part of the Democratic Party having no agency, but your doing so for news media companies is a rare, if not first, occurrence to me.

 

[GohanIYIan]

I really hope that The New York Times goes down in flames somehow. Them, and CNN. They care so much about subscribers and readers and viewers for these next few months that they're willing to plunge the country into fascism to do so with their power to craft bullshit narratives around the election. If Harris becomes the nominee, they're going to hammer on "But is she ready to fill Biden's shoes?!?!1?" shit and more to keep her down because that sells papers and subscriptions and gets people glued to their TV screens and ad-filled browser pages.

I am just so tired. Just so tired and afraid.

This isn't the media's fault. The whole purpose of holding this unprecedentedly early debate was to garner attention and generate news. The media did not force Biden to turn in a terrible performance, and the fact that it happened is legitimately news.

 

[sword_9mm]

I've seen countless people claiming Biden or Clinton or any part of the Democratic Party having no agency, but your doing so for news media companies is a rare, if not first, occurrence to me.

Folks can think for themselves right? Media congomos don't vote.

Or did that change too? The SC can get up to all sorts of silliness I spose.

 

[DarthSlack]

Folks can think for themselves right? Media congomos don't vote.

Or did that change too? The SC can get up to all sorts of silliness I spose.

Tell that to Fox News and its viewers.

 

[blindbear]

This isn't the media's fault. The whole purpose of holding this unprecedentedly early debate was to garner attention and generate news. The media did not force Biden to turn in a terrible performance, and the fact that it happened is legitimately news.

At least that shows the administration is not hiding the decline. So either the decline is recent or his inner circle are disillusioned.

 

[sword_9mm]

Tell that to Fox News and its viewers.

I guess they're either non-thinking robots in which case why do they get to vote; seems dumb; why can't my dog vote?

Or they like the trajectory the country is on and are voting how they want; which is perfectly cromulent.

 

[TheGnome]

The cynic brigade doesn't give a fuck about the outcome. They exist to whine and feel/appear correct as their cynicism creates several layers of "I told you so" to fall back on. Most of them know they'll personally be fine so this is more amusing than anything.

If by 'cynic brigade' you're referring to people calling for Biden to be replaced, I don't think this is a fair characterization. I'm a Canadian, so I don't get a vote in this, and while a Tump victory probably won't affect me much in the short term, I see the collapse of American Democracy as a catastrophically bad thing that will affect almost everyone on the planet eventually. So I'm just cheering for the Democrats, and endorsing the strategy I think gives them the best chance of winning another 4 years of survival; which is to replace Biden.

Mechanistically, replacing Biden with Harris seems simpler, but I can see the argument for other alternatives. It just seems to me that other alternatives are going to cause even more serious fractures in the Democratic party, give more ammunition to its enemies, and there just isn't enough time.

So at this point I think the best case scenario is: Joe Biden announces that he's suffering from [health issue] and that he can no longer endure the rigours of Presidenting/Campaigning; Kamala Harris becomes President and Biden gives her his full and unequivocal endorsement. The DNC puts all its weight behind building Harris up and giving her lots of opportunities to shine; she isn't great at this sort of thing, but she's better than Joe and she's just turning 60 this fall. The Republicans will through all the shit at her that they would through at any Democrat, but their narrative of "he's old and feeble and suffering from cognitive decline" just became useless... the Democrats have been dealing with the rest of the Republican arsenal since forever and they'll do about as well as they've ever done. Harris retains the Biden Team (and warchest) and can legitimately claim that her Team has a long and impressive list of accomplishments over the previous 4 years, and campaign on more to come. Ideally, she challenges Trump to another debate... she'd eat him alive. Sure she isn't as exciting to some as Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Stacy Abrams, or [insert your favourite up-and-coming D], but maybe she can bring one of them on board as her VP. She's certainly got better odds than Biden.

Think about it this way; anyone who's currently voting for Biden is going to be doing so for one of two general categories of reasons: they're genuinely stoked about having Biden as President, or they may not like Biden much but he's clearly better than Trump. I think the vast majority of Biden voters are in the latter category. Anyone in the latter category (actually anyone with a functioning brain) is also going to see Kamala Harris as better than Trump, so she looses none of that support. The vast majority of the people who really like Joe Biden are also going to vote for his VP rather than Trump. So Harris has at least as much support as Biden, and offers lots of things voters have never had an opportunity to vote for before (female, POC, under 60 etc.). If she has someone like Buttigieg as VP, she might even excite the under-35s that the Democrats so desperately need to turn out.

This seems like a no-brainer to me.

{edit:typos}

 

[CPX]

Folks can think for themselves right? Media congomos don't vote.

Or did that change too? The SC can get up to all sorts of silliness I spose.

"Media congomos" as you call them make a specific business model of influencing how folks think. They've done that since the early days of the printing press. We may as well absolve the Heritage Foundation for Project 2025 and the Federalist Society for Trump v US. It wasn't their fault at all. It's all voters and no one else.

 

[CPX]

I see the collapse of American Democracy as a catastrophically bad thing that will affect almost everyone on the planet eventually.

This is the point where Biden's hubris regarding this election gets me. This is a global issue.

 

[BurntToShreds]

This isn't the media's fault. The whole purpose of holding this unprecedentedly early debate was to garner attention and generate news. The media did not force Biden to turn in a terrible performance, and the fact that it happened is legitimately news.

When the media like the NYT run bullshit stories about the President having Parkinsons in order to sow FUD, it is their fault. They're just greedy companies that are shit at their jobs for the sake of injecting that sweet, sweet money into their veins.

They took the bad performance at the debate as their chance to make bank at the expense of properly informing the American electorate about the stakes of this election.

Do you think that the NYT is going to look at Harris or someone else stepping in and say "Good job, Democrats, you did what our horseshit articles and news segments told the public to tell you to do! We shall reward you with coverage that isn't lies that spread around the world before truth can get its underpants on, as well as covering Trump and his horrid views and scandals and shit more heavily on how they're bad!" or will they keep drilling on the idea that the Dems are out of focus or in disarray, even if Harris runs a solid campaign in these next few months?

Any plan to replace Biden as the candidate needs to also come alongside a plan to disarm the media machine that puts ratings and readership above a functional democracy.