The first presidential debate is done and the aftermath has not been good for the incumbent, Joe Biden.
Some Democrat politicians and operatives reportedly texted CNN commentators with hopes that Mr Biden, 81, would step aside. Some floated the possibility of going to the White House and publicly stating concerns about him remaining as candidate.
But if Mr Biden were to drop out, it would be a free-for-all. There is no official mechanism for him or anyone else in the party to choose his successor, meaning Democrats would be left with an open (Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19-22.
How about Jimmy Carter?
Lol 99 I’d too young!
He can still serve one more term! Why don’t we dig up Mondale while we’re at it
Lol you are right nothing, stopping carter legally. I just don’t wanna see Jimmy do more work. Dude just seems too nice.
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
That doesn’t hold up logically. Editors can ask any question they want in a headline.
The Democrat plan is to replace him just like they did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by waiting for him to die and then hoping for the best.
Most idiotic plan, of course it’s hatched by the Dems.
Out of respect for a great woman/man! Not being disrespectful to important people is much more important than human rights or democracy.
I don’t really follow. Didn’t Obama ask RBG if she wanted to retire so he could put up a left leaning judge? That’s not disrespectful nor respectful, it’s just sensible.
She refused, predictably precipitating the current shit show out of hubris.
She may be a great woman deserving of respect but she fucked up, bringing harm to an entire generation of women.
The “respect” is letting her decide and then dropping the issue. After she refused she should have received more pressure, first in private and then, if necessary, in public. She should have been disrespected for the good of the nation.
John Stewart.
If the Democrats could ever get to that choice it would be an autowin and an instant rejuvenation for the party.
Stewart (and Colbert) are literally a clown (TV Comedian) who is refusing to ever make a serious political moves. Neither of them have any legislative experience or executive experience either.
The fact that modern people always choose TV Personalities (like Trump, Stewart and Colbert) is part of the same problem of ignorance of our Political system and what this job even freaken entails.
Perhaps, but even with these alleged shortcomings, either would be so much better equipped for the job than the 2 senile geezers.
If wielding power in our “democracy” is so complicated that we must exclude non-experts isn’t that an indictment of our democracy? What is it about the legislative and executive process that people are ignorant of?
While I am skeptical of the celebrity as politician trend which has been prominent over the last few decades; especially on the right. I don’t think lack of experience is the problem with the trend.
Put aside what you think about Trump’s political project for a moment. He was effective at giving conservatives what they wanted. Tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Despite having zero legislative and executive experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and perhaps Schwarzenegger.
I agree, expecting a strongman to come in and save us from all our political issues is problematic. We shouldn’t recreate feudalism. We need to learn to organize ourselves into a base of democratic power that we can wield towards our broad economic interests.
But at the same time our media apparatus runs on spectacle, it takes someone with the charisma of John Stewart to be taken seriously by mainstream power brokers. Perhaps he could breakthrough the spectacle and kickstart a new progressive era that could enable those democratic ends.
Because the alternative to charisma for gaining political legitimacy is going through the political system. And the longer you’re in that system the more time that system has to influence you towards ends that want to stop progress. Just look at Jamal Bowman and John Fetterman.
Hey, it worked for Ukraine.
Modern? where do you think Reagan came from? At least Stewart and Colbert are versed in the political and policy stuff from having been immersed in it for decades.
Strange that an ailing old man has his administration behind him to do all the gruntwork but an actually popular candidate wouldn’t
Why wouldn’t they have an administration? Any president will hire a cabinet and advisors.
Yes, indeed. So really what you need from a president is a trustworthy image and a baseline moral character, because all the actual governance minutiae is handled by the staff.
So why is it that all these people come out of the woodwork to insist the president NEEDS to be mired in one of the most corrupt political systems in the developed world?
Didn’t stop Al Franken…
Al Franken graduated cum laude with a poli sci degree from Harvard. I’ll let Jon Stewart himself tell you about his education.
“My college career was waking up late, memorizing someone else’s notes, doing bong hits, and going to soccer practice”
George Washington wasn’t able to attend school after the age of 11, because his father died and he had to take over running the family farm.
https://www.georgewashington.org/education.jsp
Despite being the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and the first President of the United States, George Washington’s level of education was far lower than any of the other Founding Fathers of the United States. In fact, he was often scorned by some of the other Founding Fathers for this inadequacy. However, this lack of education was not George Washington’s fault. Upon the death of George Washington’s father in 1743, George’s formal schooling ended. He is thought to have attended the nearby grammar school run by Reverend James Marye, the rector of St. George’s Parish, up until this time. Therefore, the extent of young George’s formal educational training was in basic mathematics, reading, and writing.
Although his older half-brothers had the opportunity to gain a formal education over in England at the Appleby School, George was required to take on the responsibility of running the family farm after his father’s death.
On this list, every ranking here places him as the highest-ranked President to ever serve other than one that places him at #2 and one that places him at #3:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Didn’t stop Donald Trump or Ronald Regan.
My point is that there’s more bad examples of Hollywood Actors or Reality TV stars becoming President for the worse of America, than the reverse.
You have two counter examples, and one of them was incredibly successful, just for the side where success is bad for the country. Reagan wasn’t ineffective, he was effective for evil purposes.
Stewart (and Colbert) are literally a clown
what this job even freaken entails.
You know Volodmyr Zelenskyy, current president of Ukraine?
He’s a comedian who did a political satire TV series about being president of Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy
Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. Before his acting career, he obtained a degree in law from the Kyiv National Economic University. He then pursued a comedy career and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played a fictional Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party with the same name as the TV show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.
EDIT: Darn, someone else apparently mentioned it as well, checking their link. I’m still gonna leave this text up, though.
This one was also pretty good.
Ah, but Robbin Williams didn’t go on a year later to actually BECOME president.
very much doubt Stewart would want to finish himself off doing a presidential term
I know he doesn’t want too which is another reason why I want him. He could announce himself right now and still pull tons of votes to be a threat to both parties.
The guy is an effective cheerleader for any cause he really believes in. I mean he almost singlehandedly extended benefits to 9/11 first responders on the strength of his eloquence.
Thing is he doesn’t want to do it. Which makes me want him to do it even more. Something about great leaders not seeking power but having it thrust upon them in times of need like a George Washington
I know he doesn’t want to run which just like you only makes me want him to run even more. He’s smart enough to know that he doesn’t know everything and never will.So he will surround himself with people who know what they’re talking about and listen to their advice.
Sounds like the perfect leader.
I’m tempted to really believe in Biden taking the loss and just going absolutely balls to the walls with harsh ads aimed at the GOP and Trump, hitting dozens of speaker events at high levels of energy, and becoming what we wish the Democratic party would become to win this thing.
Realistically though, I’d prefer a sound, harder left leaning, less bipartisan nominee. It’s a safer and surer bet, unfortunately.
There’s no time. Democrats, I swear, just can’t see past one election at a time. They’re literally not prepping someone else. What they think will happen is KH will be the next person and they’re flat wrong. She can’t win. But they’ll dig their heads in the sand and put her up anyway.
So, now, because they put an old guy up last time they’re stuck. They have zero choice but to run what the brung.
They do far too much of it’s their turn in the big chair and not enough who is the best candidate. They cannot see past Trump as an absolutely terrible choice and think anyone else would be the automatic winner like 2016 didn’t just happen because of that shit.
Macron is going through the same bullshit, thinking that the electorate would rather support him than literal racists. Guess what fuck nuts, the electorate is about to call you on that, as dumb a decision as it is.
That’s an astute observation. The Democrats are like the perpetual optimist from 90s cartoons that think the story always ends happy, the good guys win, and all you need is honor and trust and a good soundbite to pull through, instead of actually playing chess, or checkers, or perhaps politics with enough forward thinking to actually plan a few moves ahead for once. Perhaps they should hire an evil person to teach them how the R’s think.
Me
Because it is sooo late in the arbitrary-election-cycle, no matter what the Dems do, they’re fucked.
Go with Biden?
Then they’re fucked.
Go with Kamala Harris, whom the white-supremacists have been working against for years?
Then they’re fucked.
Find somebody else?
There isn’t time, so then they’re fucked.
This highlights the category of political-lesson that you have to “fail early & fail often” ( to use a phrase from successful serial-startup founders ) in order to find the robust candidates whom you can currently win with.
UNlike the way the Dems have played.
The CNN+NYT “shutting down” of progressive-issues & progressive-voices, in the last election, burned too much potential out of existence, and that traction is gone: non-recoverable.
The mega-entitlement of the Biden insitution is buckling & collapsing with increasing obviousity.
I fucking told everyone so, again & again & again, but it was all my “delusion” & “incompetence” & “defectiveness” & “lies”, was it??
Trump is going to become the US’s dictator,
& is going to begin the 2nd half of the US’s Civil War ( the Confederates only pretended to surrender, & now are earning a “reverse takeover” ), & the butchery will probably reduce the US’s population by 2/3rds, within 12y, counting all the consequences both direct & indirect ( complete failure to manage a hurricane’s landfall costs much more life than does managing it competently: multiply that by a dozen per year, & you’ve got human-costs up the gills, without even considering atmospheric-rivers, megadroughts, quakes, wildfires, or any other kind of disaster to multiply costs on, right? ).
it is infuriating to see people insist that “social pressure will make this work”, millions of times,
while it measurably, proveably, isn’t working, but that is what Natural Selection at the species-level means, isn’t it?
Terminal Species-ending Butchery.
Sunak’s obliteration of his own party, Kim Campbell’s obliteration of her own party, what was that Liberal premier who wiped out her own party, in Ontario, can’t remember that one’s name…
Social-pressure never acts when it is needed, it only acts when it gets around to feeling comfortable with acting, and that is consistently too-late.
So, when will the Democratic Party admit they need to change gears??
After they’ve fundamentally lost, is when.
Imagine running a bunch of freight-trains that way: “oh, we’ll slow-down when we feel a collision beginning, but until then, we’re really fine, & there’s no indication of any real need to be doing anything different, is there?”
Feelings are the wrong metric for preventing this kind of catastrophy.
frustration-rage
Authority needs to have hard walls, bright lines, & deadly-force biting its corruptions/entitlements/dishonesties/DarkHexad enactments, etc.
Political-process won’t ever allow any such rule, in its dominion, of course…
And that is why political-process cannot be permitted to own our world’s fate: its conflict-of-interest, & its inescapable-corruption disallow integrity from ruling, & without integrity, then only “Justice”, with falsifying-quotes, the phony version of Justice, remains…
So, The Great Filter’s going to extinguish yet another world, from this Universe, is it?
Political-machiavellianism/dishonesty’s going to snuff all LivingPotential, LivingWorth, LivingOpportunity of this whole world, while the “social consensus” indulges in orgiastic clusterfucking, until existential-viability itself is gone…??
Ah, but at least everyone will be able to feel that they “weren’t responsible”, right?
Social-feelings: that’s the real LORD, and so long as it’s happy, then existence, itself, isn’t actually necessary, right??
bitterness
It’s hard being intelligent enough to see the problems but lack the political will power and opportunity to change them.
I believe you. I think Trump has a very good chance of winning and the result could be conflict among different states or groups within them. Unless the conspiracy theorists are right and the Gavin/Kamala ticket is already selected for the ballot and the win. But it seems likely Trump will win. The upper classes have engaged in price gouging because a Democrat was in office, Biden never called them out on it in aggressive way because he lacked the aggressive nature and rage and gall to do it, and an incredible number of people are feeling stressed out by price changes. There are also many swing voters unhappy with immigration policies and think they are too mild. Between the two issues, Biden would lose even if he did seem energetic and lucid.
Do you think it’s bad enough that it makes sense to flee the US? And to where would one even flee? There are wars in Eastern Europe, it’s not even clear Western Europe is safe. I have always though Trump was likely in the pocket of Russia or an actual Russian Spy, so when Trump wins he will unequivocally support Putin, which will be a disaster because Western Europe can’t stand up to the evil of Putin and Trump alone… especially not when there are Chinese and Saudi alliances that Putin has been working on.
It’s terrible but the best option is probably for Biden to escalate the war now, which he is unlikely to do since he’s sort of become a bit of a hippy. Putin sees Biden’s hippy weakness as well. If Trump is a Russian spy, the US intel agencies likely know and have to decide whether to do something to protect the country, even something that some might seem nefarious.
It’s a terrible situation and mostly a distraction from the environmental catastrophy on the horizon.
Do you think it makes sense to leave the US now? I am not that attached to anything and could go anywhere. I am white but don’t like bigots, which may impact my options.
Bro had absolutely zero business writing this banger but he did it anyways, what a madlad.
Respect
I mean, I think it devolved into a literal mental breakdown at the end. That or it was just a freeform poem all along.
Nah he’s basically saying people mind more to stroke their egos and what others in their in-group think of them , so much in fact, they be willing to risk humanity itself just to not give their perceived enemies the satisfaction
Is it really feasible to replace Biden at this point? I didn’t watch the debate last night but from what I’ve heard it was not good for Biden. Nonetheless, I think Biden remains the Democrats’ best option. They’re just going to have to rely on the electorate recognizing that Biden is still the better of the two choices, as pathetic as that reality may be. However, even if that strategy is somehow successful, again, and Biden does manage to get reelected, the Democrats MUST nominate a better candidate in 2028. I don’t think the Democrats can continue with their strategy of just being better than terrible, indefinitely.
Unlikely. People keep pointing to the two times it has happened in the past but they NEVER say anything about how THEY FAILED BOTH TIMES lmao
No party has ever tried changing a candidate at this point. It’s not even clear how the Primary / Conventions should go legally speaking.
?? It’s extremely clear. The Democratic nominations are not a legal matter. The Democratic party is not an arm of the government, they are a private entity. They are free to choose a nominee however they wish, like always.
Which normally is not something I particularly love about the DNC but it may actually be the thing that saves us from Trump
And notably it wouldn’t just be a decree from on high, it’d be officially picked by the delegates. There was still (technically) a primary this year, with delegates heading to a convention to vote on who becomes the nominee. I’m sure there will be a lot of backroom plotting to try to figure out a good replacement before the open votes start, but at least there’s an air of legitimacy as (many of) the people who officially make the decision have some connection to votes cast. It’s more an appearance thing than actually separating the pick from “the party establishment”, but that’s a pretty important aspect.
We didn’t always have a primary system, that’s relatively recent.
In the past, the candidate would be picked at the convention after much wheeling dealing. “Smoke filled rooms” and all that.
Yeah, and Progressives don’t like that. Heck, progressives don’t like anything. So its kind of delicious for me to see them ask for a backroom selection at the primary (throwing out all of the Primary Votes until now) and just picking something else.
You know just as well as I do that it’d only piss off the caucus in general. Look at this topic: there’s no unity on who’d even replace Biden right now.
There’s a reason Progressives don’t like it. It’s that same attitude that led to Biden being picked in the first place, and Clinton before him. They pick the senior person in the Party and then elevate them through donations, the Party apparatus gives them staff, email lists, endorsements, connections to media to push them up, and more to reward them for years of service.
People are finally realizing maybe we don’t live in a great democracy just in time to lose it. At this rate, I’ll take anyone who can beat Trump. If it’s Biden I’ll take it. But I’m not sure it is…
Are you sure anyone who actually gets picked in such a deal could unite the Democrats on Ukraine, Israel, Roe v Wade, LGBT, Unions, Trade issues like Biden has?
The reason why Republican support is strong is because Republicans rally when Trump makes a mistake or stumbles. Democrats do this shit. Yall just backstab the party leader in vain attempts to pull the party left. You think Republicans aren’t keenly aware of Trump’s failings in this last debate? They’re mostly happy because of topics like this one, clearly showing Democrats are a group who get easily shaken. They know they can use this public display of worries against you guys.
In any case, I’m voting for “Not Trump”. If its Biden, so be it. If its someone else… no promises I can vote for them too. (Biden ultimately has done a lot of stuff to pull me over from the Republican side and join your cause this year. But my vote is severely at risk if you push too far left). I’ve considered myself a lifelong Republican before this bullshit from Trump these past 8 years.
unite the Democrats on… Israel… like Biden has?
Wut? Not being Biden on Israel is one of the major benefits of a different candidate. And all the other things are stuff the Democrats are already unified on, not some miracle of Democratic leadership.
Jamaal Bowman losing his New York Primary would like a word with you.
Biden is closer to the Democrat mainstream.
Most of the party is not in favor of Israel.
“Not good” is an understatement. Potential career ender.
If Trump wins in November, this debate will be exhibit #1.
At his age the cold he supposedly had is a potential career ender. “He just had a cold that made him feeble” isn’t a great alternative explanation when you’re talking about an 81 year old.
Who has the most important and powerful job in the world…
All you have to do is imagine Putin manages to convince Cuba to let him put some nukes in there. Instead of being able to act effectively, Biden is dealing with a cold at the time. Just the shittiest luck. We need a president that can show up when they’re needed.
It’s absolutly possible, here’s my comment on it.
I really don’t think it would work at this point, but if I were to pick someone to replace Biden it wouldn’t be Gavin Newsom, it would be Andy Beshear. But that’s just it, this country is so divided we can’t find a consensus candidate.
Trump and Biden aren’t consensus candidates either. We don’t need to find the second coming of JFK to make it work.
There are absolutely zero good options this late in the game, but I feel someone like Sherrod Brown has to be a million times better than Biden. Either way yeah, they need to start merchandising their wins and develop a real platform that is “proactive” for ‘28.
I don’t really understand how it could be too late.
Float a candidate under 60 and they win riotous support from Democrats and undecideds.
Biden is the only Democrat that Trump has a chance of beating.
Perhaps there has never been changes this late in the cycle, but come on… we’re breaking new ground in so many ways.
Float a candidate under 60 and they win riotous support from Democrats and undecideds.
But who would that be? Do you remember the 2020 primaries? They started out with 29 candidates, the most since the modern primaries began back in 1972, and several of them were under 60, including Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kamala Harris. Only Pete Buttigieg won any delegates (29 out of a possible 3,979). The Democrats have had many years to find a younger candidate who could unify the party. No such candidate has emerged, that I’m aware of, and so Biden, at 81 years old and showing signs of rapid cognitive decline, ran essentially unopposed in this year’s primaries.
Shillary Clinton will be the DNC nominee again if too many people complain about Joe.
However, even if that strategy is somehow successful, again, and Biden does manage to get reelected, the Democrats MUST nominate a better candidate in 2028.
The Constitution mandates a maximum of two terms for a President. If he wins, he can’t run again. He can technically additionally serve up to half of a term without “using up” one of his terms if he’s vice-president and the serving President dies.
The two-term limit was originally purely a convention that had been set by George Washington, who was getting on in years, wasn’t many years away from his death, really wanted to retire to his plantation (as in, he didn’t even want to serve a second term, and was only convinced to do so by politicians arguing that without him, there might not be sufficient unity), and was also extremely popular and would have been re-elected again.
That convention held until FDR broke it and ran for four terms. In response to that, the Twenty-second Amendment was passed, prohibiting anyone from having more than two terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The Constitution mandates a maximum of two terms for a President. If he wins, he can’t run again.
I know, I didn’t mean to imply that the Democrats would try to run Biden again, only that they might try to run a similarly “weak” candidate in 2028, believing that the American people will vote for the candidate simply because they are Democrat and not Republican. I think that would be a mistake.
I’d go for Bernie myself.
I mean just imagine that! In a year of some of the worst and craziest ‘first-time-evers’ Sanders could be the DNC’s candidate.
You’d go for someone older than Biden?
I like Bernie, but that’s a ridiculous replacement.
I think at this point he has a lot going for him, ie: he’s recognizable, he’s popular with a large segment of Americans, he can play the game well (as seen when he graciously accept the DNC’s bs in 2015), he’s kind, he’s rarely (if ever) been known to publically lie, he’s smarter than at least half of Congress and the House of Reps, etc etc.
You can’t simultaneously argue that Biden is too old to be president and that we should have someone even older instead.
Biden isn’t too old, he’s too mentally incompetent and decrepit.
Good luck convincing all the people who have spent months saying that Biden is too old to be president to accept someone even older.
You do realize that age is not a perfect proxy for mental competence? A good number of people remain mentally sharp well into their 90s, while others experience rapid dementia as early as their 60s.
I’m not saying his age wouldn’t be a talking point, but I’m damn sure Bernie could express his platform with more clarity and vitality than Biden at this point. Unfortunately I dont think it’s a real possibility, but it’s stupid to act like the the actual birth date matters. It’s the signs of cognitive decline that are problematic.
When people are repeatedly arguing that Biden (and Trump as well) are too old to be president, I’m not sure why that wouldn’t matter.
I never argued Biden was too old.
But if I had I would have argued that of any candidate in that age group, Bernie could defy the odds as far as ageism goes.
I hear you buddy, but I think that chance was squashed by the DNC last time around. He was old when he ran, and he’s 8 years older than that now. Besides, “the South won’t vote socialist” is still just as true now as then.
I wish it weren’t so!
Bernie is sharper on his worst day than Biden or Trump are on their best day.
I think it’s Bernie’s competency that’s appealing. Sure he’s older, but he’s in touch with reality and has never stopped fighting tangible as well as progressive ideals.
Once again, we agree.
Why always with the old white men, when we have prominent politicians like Yang, Buttigieg, Klobuchar? And as for Bernie, if you want a firebrand who’s going to alienate moderates, why not AOC? Well, she’s too young to run, but she’s not the only truly liberal option. Warren is old enough, progressive enough, and a woman. But, no, Bernie Bros gotta Bro.
Yang’s a grifter.
Why?
I’m honestly trying to think of who they could run this late and I’m coming up short. Gavin Newsom is terrible idea in my opinion. Like you said, AOC is too young. Kamala Harris? People hate her.
Def not Kamala. A buddy and I were throwing around ideas earlier and he mentioned Michelle, which threw me off but I think she would have just as much of a chance as anyone.
The age specifics might be important. AOC turns 35 in October, before she’d take office if elected. And therefore might actually be eligible.
That would be the sort of legal battle that I could see taking too long to resolve.
There’s no battle to be had. You can be elected at 34 and you have to be 35 to serve. As long as you are 35 before inauguration, you are good. There is nothing to challenge. It’s cut and dry.
None of it is cut and dry. It never is. You must realize that.
Agreed, and agreed.
Why not Klobuchar? She’s got some national recognition from the 2019/20 cycle, politics are acceptable to moderates, progressive (enough), and she’d eat Trump for lunch in debates and on social media. Plus, she’s from the Midwest, and might pick up some folks for regional loyalty, and could play against the “slick New Yorker” which might still work.
The bases are going to vote party lines. I think undecideds and wavering moderates are the pick-up points, and I think Klobuchar could do that.
I like Yang’s politics, but he’s got a popularity problem, and Buttigieg - Trump would just harp on his sexual orientation, and I’m not confident enough that America’s ready yet to vote for a gay president. Hell, we can’t even get a woman into office.
IMO Klobuchar’s the safest bet against Trump.
Klobuchar is definitely a good idea. Although I’m not convinced that replacing Biden this late in the game is going to save the presidency either. I don’t know what should be done.
The only reason to vote for Biden at this point is anti-Trump and Blue No Matter Who. Those still apply to anyone else that the DNC puts forward, as a base score, with any actual merits, charisma, or vigor adding to that. This should have been an easy decision six months ago and doing-nothing-and-hoping-for-the-best doesn’t seem to be making the prospects any better.
anti-Trump sounds like a pretty damn good reason for me. Unless you think there’s a good reason to let a dictator win.
🙁 🤝
Lemmy really, really needs emoji responses that don’t require and entirely new comment.
You could just upvote it.
Trump won’t agree to a debate with a new candidate. I doubt that there be another debate at all as is.
For sure. But there will be a lot of indirect debate on social media, because Trump can’t keep his burger-hole shut, and Klobuchar’s free to murder him (metaphorically) on public platforms. Even if he only posts to TruthSocial, everything he says gets parroted on X and Facebook, and that’s still where the most eyeballs are.
And old school public media picks this stuff up and repeats it - that’s mostly what they’ve been reduced to -but it still reaches a lot of eyes and ears.
And: Trump refusing another debate, she could just hammer on his cowardice, over and over. That’d be a win.
Klobuchar is tough. If nothing else, I’d love to see that fight. Only slightly less than I’d love to see an AOC v Trump fight; that’d be like watching a skinny junkie enter the MMA ring against Holly Holm. It’d be hilarious. But AOC is too young, and Trump will be either dead or in a home by the time she’s old enough to run. I just hope Bernie is still active enough by then to support her. I don’t know that she could get elected - she’s too polarizing - but it would be a marvelous spectacle.
Anyway, I prefer Yang’s politics, and I’d be thrilled to see Buttigieg in the White House, but I stand by Klobuchar as the best bet.
AOC turns 35 before the election, so she’s eligible. She might be “too young” to vote for but not too young to run.
Tim Walz. Minnesota has been kicking ass with progressive legislation these past few years, and here in Minnesota we’ve been wondering if he’s been quietly trying to get his name out there to run for President. (And the general consensus is that we don’t want to lose him as governor, but I guess we’ll give him up to save US democracy, lol.) On paper he’s fairly moderate too.
I’ve never even heard of him and I’m more politically in the know than a lot of people.
Is that really a bad thing, though? Generic Democrat polls really well against Trump. The people who know of Walz really like him, even the more reasonable rural Republicans here grudgingly admit that while they don’t agree with him politically he clearly cares about Minnesotans. Newsom doesn’t have that. The past couple of years have seen some semi-viral quotes from him poking at politicians in red states, mostly along the lines of “we fed children, what have you done?”, and I’ve seen them posted here. The people who know him like him. For the people who don’t, he’s Generic Democrat. He’s well spoken enough to handle the discussions around the George Floyd protests (which already came up in the first debate but Biden didn’t address directly). He’s well spoken, smart, kind, and down to earth - everything Trump isn’t.
Also, I hadn’t heard of Obama before he ran for president. For a sufficiently likable candidate, it’s not a deal breaker.
Then there’s this little time to campaign? I’d say yes. You had a lot more time to learn about who Obama was.
With the way the DNC is it would be Harris or, more likely, Hillary Clinton.
Your comment makes me feel unwell
We’re all feeling unwell I think.
And Hillary is the only candidate to ever lose against Trump lol
Pls no.
This is a fella with unquestionable principles. I love the guy.
But we really need someone like you know, younger or were gonna run into the same cryptkeeper problems very soon.
He’d have to resign as Governor first, and seeing as the convention is less than 2 months away it’s unlikely he would/could do it.
Quick, change the law so he can run for president whilst being governor, worked for Florida.
Any one 40-60 yrs old with moderate politics and an unobjectionable personality supported by a major party would really cause a splash.
It’s weird that you specify 40 when the Constitution says they only need to be 35. Doesn’t all of our recent political history show we need younger politicians?
with moderate politics
They’ll do great for one campaign until they actually have to govern and then it’s going to be 1996 and 2012 all over again and we’ll barely scrape by (if we’re lucky) against extremely beatable candidates. Moderates run good campaigns and terrible administrations because the average American voter has been propagandized into believing they want bipartisanship and small government when what they actually want is some affordable healthcare and housing which moderate politics are not going to deliver to them.
e; and actually the “do great for one campaign” thing might be optimistic or antiquated thinking based on how Biden barely won in 2020
Of course we want affordable health care and housing, but I’d absolutely kill for a Bill Clinton or Bush Sr over a Trump any day.
Oh they could win alright. Literally all they have to do is be leftist.
“We’re gonna keep your kids healthy, in a good daycare while you work, educated and fed, and your fucking boss is gonna pay for it all” is a simple mantra well used by unions.
Except they don’t do that. The purpose of a system is what it does, and liberals have done nothing but protect capital since FDR died.
It’s time for Warren to step in!
Elizabeth Warren is just as old.
She’s too old to replace a president for being too old, but she’s younger than Biden was when he was nominated.
Who then?
She was my favorite in 2020 and I’d personally love Warren to be picked. She’s got the stature, ability to draw volunteers and donations, and could put together the campaign infrastructure quickly. I just think Biden stepping aside puts a bad highlight on age that despite her being obviously more vital makes her a poor choice. Plus there’s no possible way the moderate establishment that runs Biden’s Democratic party would ever voluntarily choose her.
I’m at the point where anyone who’s younger and not a RINO is a valid choice. I found Buttigieg and Harris to both be uninspiring political chameleons without any core beliefs in 2020, but if that’s what it takes, so be it. My dream, but only minutely realistic pick for an under 70 replacement? Katie Porter.
It’s time for Warren G to regulate!
There is no official anything when two duopolic corporations (with wildly similar interests) decide which candidates to bring forward. They decide which two will be the only viable choices.
Afaik there are no legal requirements binding them except the restrictions who is eligible (“being born in USA”, that sort of arbitrary weirdness).
being born in USA", that sort of arbitrary weirdness
The actual requirement is “natural-born citizen”, which doesn’t really have a definition. John McCain was born on a US military base in Panama, Rafael Edward Cruz was born in Calgary, yet both were citizens at birth and nobody contested their status as “natural-born” when they ran for President
So vaguely USA flag styled placenta & a gun, got it.
I remember the McCain debate, yes, it makes sense for the ‘citizen’ part. Not sure why does it have to be from birth tho. But it was prob written in colonial times or something.
Are we sure that Ted Cruz was born and not hatched?
Being born in the US is such a stupid requirement. Someone who immigrated here as a child in a relatively non-wealthy family would understand the average american so much better than the super wealthy politicians we have now
Bernie.
Just made a large post on this elsewhere, but the TL;DR is that the party can’t just replace Biden. He has all the delegates from the primaries. Do you really think the party that is campaigning on preserving Democracy can get away with ignoring elections?
Now, it’s possible that Biden gets diagnosed with a severe case of not-gonna-win-itis which adversely affects his health to the point that he has to resign not only from the campaign, but from the Presidency. If that happens, Kamala Harris becomes the 47th President, and has the only real claim to take over the ticket. It has the fun side effect of making Trump reprint all his hats to say “45 - 48” instead of “45-47”.
(The Secret Service better take good care of President Harris, because whatever VP she appoints to take over that role needs to get a majority vote in both houses of Congress, and the House will never do it.)
The primaries aren’t actually legally binding. This is a misconception that keeps going around but the party makes the rules for the convention and it’s the convention that nominates the candidate. Furthermore, Russia has more democratic elections than the primary we got this year. A single name on the ballot isn’t an election. It’s a roll call.
Yep. It’s too late. Should’ve done this ages ago if you were going to do it.
the TL;DR is that the party can’t just replace Biden.
The Democratic Party can run whoever it wants. The primaries and party nomination are party-internal processes. They could say “now the rules are we choose a random US citizen”. They don’t have to do a primary at all. Some parties don’t. There was a point in time in US history when primaries weren’t a thing, and parties were quite happily doing their thing back then.
kagis for a starting date
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election
The direct primary became important in the United States at the state level starting in the 1890s and at the local level in the 1900s.[17] The first primary elections came in the Democratic Party in the South in the 1890s starting in Louisiana in 1892.
The United States is one of a handful of countries to select candidates through popular vote in a primary election system;[12] most other countries rely on party leaders or party members to select candidates, as was previously the case in the U.S.[13]
EDIT: As a good example, the Libertarian Party – though much smaller than the Big Two – is the next closest. Under their rules, they participate in primaries, but they treat the primary simply as a way to obtain the preference of the electorate; the primary doesn’t bind the party, under their rules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Libertarian_Party_presidential_primaries
The Green Party has a mix of conventions and primaries, depending upon state; a random member of the electorate may-or-may-not directly vote to select their party’s candidate.
Also, fun trivia bit:
They could say “now the rules are we choose a random US citizen”.
There were historically some systems of government who not merely had random people chosen as candidates, but random people chosen to run the society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, democratic lottery, and lottocracy) is the selection of public officials or jurors using a random representative sample.[1][2][3]
In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.[4][5] Sortition is often classified as a method for both direct democracy and deliberative democracy.
I’d add that I don’t at all agree with some of the people in this thread, who are on the left end of the spectrum and mainly seem to be hoping that the Democratic Party will select someone further left than Biden because they personally would prefer a further-left candidate. In the American electoral system, voting is FPTP. That means that you tend to wind up with two large, big-tent, fairly centrist parties (which approximate party coalitions in parliamentary systems), and the smart move for each to win general elections is to run a centrist candidate.
A Big Two party can nominate someone out on the fringes, but then they will cede the general election to the other party if the other party runs a centrist candidate.
In fact, a major argument against primaries is that they may tend to choose a suboptimal candidate for the general election, since they tend towards electing candidates towards the center of the political party, and that that a more-winning strategy for a party is to choose someone not at the center of their party’s views, but between that and the center of the general electorate, and that the party members are more-likely to make use of strategic voting than are members of the electorate that votes for their party’s candidate.
A Big Two party can nominate someone out on the fringes, but then they will cede the general election to the other party if the other party runs a centrist candidate.
Phew, I’m glad we could never end up with a President Trump leading Republican party running rightward as fast as possible then.
Maybe centrist political wisdom is actually just trash and things like charisma, inspiration, and vision actually matter rather than some idea that all voters are on a single axis “politics” line.
Trump’s run on pretty anti-immigrant speech, but he’s pretty moderate in most other respects. He’s probably the least-religious president we’ve ever had, and ran for the “religion party” ticket; he had to run with Pence to make up for lack of appeal to social conservatives. He advocated for (well, or at least gave the impression of) fairly-protectionist policy and ran for the free trade party’s ticket. Since the start of the Cold War, the GOP’s tended to be the hawkish party, and he ran on a relatively noninterventionist platform (though I’ll concede that there’s always been a paleoconservative isolationist faction, but it’s been relatively weak for quite some decades).
Trump constantly says outrageous stuff – he definitely makes it a point to be politically incorrect – but his policy is actually not especially exciting.
I looked at his website way back in the 2016 election before he’d had any steam. This was back when Hillary was running a nice, typical website, long list of issues, you know what campaign websites normally look like. At that point in time, he – hillariously – had only three issues on his campaign website. And none of his actual positions represented much of a change from the status quo:
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Opposition to FTAs; at the time, we had been negotiating TPA with the Pacific Rim countries and TTIP with the EU. Both had effectively failed already at this point. Trump gave the public the impression that he was responsible for this, but it was something that was going to happen under Obama or not. He also spent a long time complaining about NAFTA. Thing is, I already had listened to speeches from a few politicians who had played this game with NAFTA (e.g. Ron Paul complains a lot about NAFTA but is quieter about why he opposed it, because it wasn’t permissive enough, whereas most people listening to him are upset that it isn’t restrictive enough). I had a pretty good guess that Trump was going to pull similar shennanigans on policy, looked at his white paper and sure enough, no specific changes, just lots of fluffy emotional text giving the impression that he was in opposition. And in office, he took NAFTA, negotiated a few minor changes, and then renamed it to USMCA. Having kicked the legs out from decades of time that manufacturing unions had built opposition to NAFTA, he left the thing alone. So, he advocated for a position that sounded unusually close to the position that the folks on the left side of the spectrum wanted and, in fact, essentially left existing policy alone.
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Opposition to immigration. Now, you could make a fair argument that he worked pretty hard to sell a nativist image. But his actual policy also wasn’t particularly notable. He put through one regulation that SCOTUS was pretty sure to shoot down and kept it a constant source of political theater for a significant chunk of his term. He made an enormous deal out of his wall, kept it in the news, gave the impression without ever saying so that he was going to build a wall along the entire border. But this isn’t even a new game to play from Trump. Bush Jr used the same shtick back when he ran. In his case, it was a “fence” and played a less-prominent role in his campaign.
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Gun rights. He has no specifics and this is trivial to do: just don’t involve yourself in additional restrictions. This has been a pretty stock generic Republican point because it costs nothing to do ever since the Democrats did the federal Assault Weapon Ban, which was not popular and sunsetted; it’s something that every candidate just slaps on their page.
Hell, Trump was a Democrat back when Bush Jr was in office.
But Trump is far right. The news says so.
If you read news media that favors the Democratic Party, it will say that Trump is far right. If your regular news sources favor the Democratic Party, you have probably read a lot of articles over past years that say that.
If you read news media that favors the Republican Party, you will find plenty of material that will say that Biden is far left.
But Biden’s not far left! That’s ridiculous!
Yup. But presenting someone as being extreme is a good way to make them less appealing. You can find people who will self-identify as “left-of center” or “right-of-center”, even “left” or “right”. But very few politicians will call themselves “far left” or “far right”. That’s usually a label used by the media favoring the other side.
There are a lot of things that I don’t like about Trump. But they mostly deal with his presentation and the tactics he uses. I dislike his willingness to make contradictory statements. I don’t like the fact that he tries to piss people off about someone else – especially via dishonest claims – and exploit that anger. But he’s extraordinary mostly in his presentation, not in the policy that he’s adopted. We had him for four years. US policy didn’t change much, certainly not from mainstream Republican Party policy.
When Trump first ran for office, I remember Bill Kristol – a conservative commentator who really dislikes Trump – stating that most of what Trump says is misdirection. Basically, Trump can’t force the media to say what he wants. But he can make a colossal amount of noise about something outrageous that they cannot resist covering, so that they talk about that instead of whatever meaningful actual policy stuff is going on. The coverage may not be positive, but it lets him direct the media narrative – it’s all about whatever outrageous thing he said on Twitter. I was a bit skeptical at the time. I could believe that Trump wouldn’t change much on NAFTA because I’d seen other Republican politicians play the same game he was, but had a harder time buying that on immigration. But that was, I think, pretty accurate as an assessment.
LOL. Yeah, sure thing bud. People could be excused for believing this fantasy before his election, but they were dumb then too. And he’s on track to win again after everything he did and the transformation of the party into the vision that matches his fascist rhetoric.
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