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Après Biden, le déluge
The Dems have been caught on their back foot. Many of them want Biden out, but little thought has been given to what comes next. It’s proving to be an entertaining time to observe the Dems.
For better or for worse, Kackling Kamala would be the natural heir. She checks the intersectional DEI (Didn’t Earn It) boxes. She would legally be able to assume the Biden/Harris campaign organization and the $212 million pot of cash that the campaign has. BUT she never made it to Iowa in the 2020 primaries, she acts like a buffoon, and many Dems hate her. Her polling is atrocious. And no one has suggested her.
There is little discussion of other options. One of the first discussions was initiated by Bill Harris, former CEO of Paypal and Intuit. He’s suggesting a series of mini-debates somehow to select the candidate and has put up $2 million to back it. He mentioned 10 potential candidates, ranging from the wacky AOC to the centrists Josh Shapiro and Andy Beshear.
But this effort suggests the scale of the problems. How do you select a candidate when you have to satisfy both the Antifa wing of the party and a majority of independents? How do you build an organization to contest an election in four months? How do you raise the money? How supportive will Joe be if the Dems have just pushed him off the cliff? Is anyone working Joe’s delegates to see whom they would back? What will the factional recriminations be, regardless of the candidate chosen? How can you avoid anything but a deluge if you choose this strategy?
This is the kind of thing you slap together if a candidate dies just before the election. It’s not something you would choose to do. The Dems would do better to make the best of a bad situation and keep Joe. They should focus on winning congressional races to keep control of either the Senate or House or both instead of trying to build an instant presidential campaign that is nearly certain to lose. And perhaps Joe might still win – Trump is not young either and there is a non-zero chance that he could have a serious health crisis between now and November. (Wouldn’t it be ironic if Joe were the healthier candidate on Election Day?) Or maybe he’ll say something colossally stupid that will finally cost him the election.
But enough campaign advice for the evil party. I’ll enjoy the Dems being swallowed by a flood of their own making.
Published in Election 2024
It is better for the DNC to pick someone besides Harris, because Biden could give the money to the DNC and new person could raise money all over again (all donors at the limit would be reset).
It’s depressing, but I read the comments on X and youtube whenever a news article sends me in that direction. Depressing because it makes me realize how delusional Demo-rats are. Many Demos insist that Biden won the debate and that all Trump did was lie. Well, how about Slow Joe claiming that no American soldiers died on his watch or that he inherited a 9% inflation rate? No problem for Biden supporters; they swallow that stuff eagerly. OTOH, if Trump does what a real estate agent instinctively does and exaggerates, he must be a pathological liar.
But I’m beginning to wonder if we, and by “we” I mean those who are conservative or GOP-leaning, have our own delusions about how persuadable Demos are, or maybe even delusional about whether they believe in facts and/or political reality. Those people exist in a world I don’t recognize.
EDIT: I’m curious about how many of Biden’s
foolssupporters will buy into this lie. I watched the debate and don’t remember Trump shouting after his mic was muted.It is very interesting. They are stuck with Joe, if Joe wants to persist. He can fake it well enough and rules favor him. Not that rules matter. The GOP follows rules, while the DNC follows the narrative. Who controls the narrative these days? I kind of assume it is DoS/CIA (that specialize in color revolutions and coups) until proven otherwise.
FJB says something colossally stupid that should cost him the election, pretty much daily. But the media works to make sure the people don’t know about it.
Why should the Dems care who their candidate is? While well loved, Trump is even better hated, and will draw anti~Trump votes out of the woodwork. Biden has demonstrated that even a brain dead President can severely harm America, which is the Democrat goal.
Their best bet would be to have Kamala step down and put in a more acceptable VP. Get Joe elected with the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, knowing the new VP will be PotUS.
Biden was probably confusing the Camp David rehearsals, where some aide playing Trump shouted at him, with the actual debate where Trump never shouted at him or anyone else. Can Joe even remember what day it is?
Also the Dems swiped monies that were specifically given to Bernie Sanders in 2016, with Sanders not so much as issuing a peep. (The Hillary doctrine was employed: what Hillary wants or needs is hers.)
The DNC ignores all rules and regulations, including its own. I don’t know why it would suddenly need to start following those pesky items here in Election Cycle 2024.
Good point.
One reason Biden was behind before the debate was all the stupid things he had said. And the stupid things he said at the debate sealed his fate. So it has caught up to him.
In a sane world this would destroy the democrat party. However….
Pretty much every statement Joe Biden has made about Donald Trump since at least 2019 has been a lie. I’m not sure I could identify a single truthful thing Biden has said about Trump.
What Biden claims was the primary reason he ran in 2020 was a lie about what Trump had said. And he repeated that lie at the end of his campaign, and has repeated it multiple times since. In other words, Biden’s entire campaign is built on lies.
Years ago I heard a line from a Kentucky redneck that I still remember. He wasn’t talking about Biden, but he could have been.
“When they bury that [redacted], they can carve on his tombstone ‘Here Lies Truth‘, because it never came out of him.”
Every option is bad for them. Extremely bad.
So sit back and enjoy the show.
While it might be satisfying to watch the kerfuffle the Democrats are in, this Biden-is-not-home revelation happened too soon. There is still time to swap out Joe for someone who might be less objectionable to independents than Trump.
Maybe it was our confirmation bias against him, but we all thought that Biden was highly diminished as long ago as 2020. Every stumble and mumble confirmed our opinion. Somehow, many Democrats did not see this, or they refused to see it because the cognitive dissonance would be too painful. No doubt some knew it was bad, but hoped they could keep it under wraps through the election.
I was hoping that we would get through the conventions before this became so obvious that it could not be ignored. Biden cannot survive as the candidate without the support of the press. The press has turned quickly now because they know the Democrats must make the swap before the ballots get locked in. Had the revelation happened after the ballots were locked, the press would attempt to cover it up, but there is only so much they could do — there is no covid shutdown this year to keep Biden out of the public eye.
What if RFK Jr re-joined the Dems and got the nomination?
What’s disturbing is people treating this problem like it’s some sort of game.
We have a chief executive who publicly demonstrated he’s not operating at 100%. What’s the national conversation? Should he be replaced on the ticket or run for a second term. Our politicians are a disappointment and our media sucks its collective thumb and wonders how a ninny like Joe Biden has fooled them for 50 years.
This demonstrates two indisputable truths.
1. God has a sense of humor.
2. Trump is lucky in his enemies.
If people like that, think any other Dimocrat wouldn’t still be following the same program, they’re stupid.
Progressives live in cognitive dissonance. But recently progressive posts on X have revealed to me just how much they share their delusions. It’s frightening.
And let me contrast this with Trump supporters – is there anyone who supports him who wasn’t aware of his flaws? And yet Biden supporters bought into this whole avuncular uncle schtick which never made any sense. The guy has been a grasping, lying dirtbag for his entire political career. Everything about his personal and professional lives is horrifying.
The progressive agenda has always relied on belief in unicorns and fairy dust. Biden being revealed for who he is (and has been) is just another manifestation of the same.
Well, that has been the constant accusation against Trump supporters from the Against Trump right.
But you repeat yourself. 😸
Every time I see this title, I keep trying to make a French word out of Biden. Close as I’m coming is “bidet.”
The kneejerk auto-harvest-Dems plus the anti-Trump vote would not drop below 47% even if they nominated the corpse of Charlie Manson.
Polls reflect enthusiasm and in the old days before harvesting and robo registration enthusiasm affected turnout. Not so much anymore. The Democrats now have a higher floor. The 2022 congressional elections made that clear.
The left is a herd culture. They hate that the rich pervert elite has not yet selected a candidate for them so I expect that will happen soon, even if they decide to rally around zombie Joe, the herd wants to be told what to do.
As for the legality of access to the campaign war chest.. people, they are Democrats. They will do whatever.
I am terrified they will be smart/desperate enough to nominate a little known governor they can pass off as a centrist and the ruinous Obama/Biden agenda will persist.
I have considerable doubt that Biden, knowing his history of corrupt dealing for financial gain, would let up control of that money. My bigger concern is NOW. Every day Biden is functioning as our non compos mentis President each and every citizen is in danger.
Well, maybe not exactly suggested but among the people who put their money where their mouth is, she’s pulled ahead of Mumbly Joe, Big Mike, and all the other usual suspects. If Mumbly drops
deadout, it’ll be down to the Kackler and Big Mike according to the betting markets.Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Or, as Sondheim penned, “Smoke on your pipe and put that in.”
Great DEI-defining catch phrase.
The difference in 2022 was abortion rights. The stickiness of robo-registration + mail-ins post-pandemic has yet to be tested, and may only apply to top line national votes.
Yes, and an undemocratic one. This has never been clearer than in the Biden Debate Awakening. Most are now of a mind to defy their primaries, such as they weren’t, and select via appointment.
If they had actually primaried Biden, a moderate like Beshear or Polis might have emerged. They don’t let that happen.
Republicans can be a herd culture too on some issues.
Both parties have a large, media-silenced centers and media savvy cores: wokesters vs. Trump and his rally-goer chorus. Difference is the Trump core controls by voting, the wokesters by the Alinsky playbook.
The (D) center — as opposed to its Left — would welcome a return to Bill (not Hillary) Clinton’s policies. They’re old enough to remember those years. Some of their smart corporate leaders fit in that category, too.
The (R) center — as opposed to its Right — is not the RINO/WSJ/NeverTrump types whose bark is much louder than their electoral bite.
It’s a combination of slices such as pro-choice voters (some independently registered); pure self-interest voters without ideology; older voters whose best memories are from both the Reagan and Clinton years; and a very large bloc of working class occasional voters who think most politicians are BS artists, but Trump only sometimes.
So it turns out an open and honest party primary would have been a valuable thing on multiple fronts. The rank order of viable candidates would have been worked out in the light of day and the party identity would have been kneaded into a presentable form along the way. Instead, the pipeline for even semi-serious candidates is bone dry and the “party” is anything but. (By the way, the various one-on-one polls of various others vs Trump are a joke too. The tally for those others is alway a maximum. Every one of them starts going down the minute that candidate has to start talking from the big seat.)
This is getting surprising little consideration.
Here are four questions for Biden backers. Two about competence and Two about electoral prospects.
First. Does the president have the minimum cognitive function to handle the job of president on a day to day basis. Not just 10-4 4 days a week but 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I think the minimum level should be at a very high level for a job like president. I would answer no he does not (and didn’t since day 1) but it is a subjective evaluation with no clear boundary so I understand fooling oneself and saying he is good enough or there is not sufficient grounds to invoke the 25th.
Second. Given the probable trajectory of senility will Biden fall below the required mental function of the presidency in the next 4 years? If yes he should (be forcefully encouraged to) step down from running again and let the party pick someone else. I think most of the country outside Washington thinks yes. BTW: Given Trump’s similar age and inarticulateness it would be a fair question about where he will be in a few years. If the Dem’s do pull a switch, Trump will be the old geezer in the race
Third. Will Biden lose in November? If you are Dem, think Biden is competent but think he will lose you might be open to replacing him with someone with a better prospects. OTOH its hardly the end of the world, for a lame duck Republican to hold office for up to 4 years. Not risking a change is reasonable and some Dem’s are here.
Fourth. Will Biden lose in November with huge losses for down ballot candidates? The media, many donors and legislators appear to think yes he will lose big. So a change is worth the risk. The White House staff of course is against any change and cross their fingers about November.
The puzzle is why only questions three and four seem to be important in the discussion. My guess is the competence of a candidate doesn’t matter (to you getting a job and power) if the candidate doesn’t win. Competence as a selling point doesn’t hurt but hardly makes the difference (see DeSantis). Why do questions one and two about competence seem to matter less? Its been observed by others that rule by faceless experts rather than elected leaders is the progressive’s ideal government. To keep the the status quo you just need to win elections so that is the focus.