Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate after the party’s two main congressional leaders told him they doubted his ability to beat Donald Trump.
While continuing to insist he will be the party’s nominee in November, the president has reportedly started asking questions about negative polling data and whether Vice-President Kamala Harris, considered the favourite to replace him if were to withdraw, fares better.
The indications of a possible rethink come after Biden tested positive on Wednesday for Covid-19, forcing him to isolate for several days while curtailing a campaigning visit to Nevada that had been part of a drive to show his candidacy was very much alive.
It also coincides with fresh polling data showing that he now trails Trump by two points in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points in 2020.
I’m really worried about his campaign and white house staff at this point. It seems like it took the in person interviewers telling him about the bad polling. Like he looked genuinely surprised to hear about it.
If that’s true they need to go. We cannot have staff that lie to the president.
it took the in person interviewers telling him about the bad polling.
lmao what the fuck? No it absolutely was not, it was all of the high ranking sitting dems like Schiff, Pelosi, Obama.
interviewers? polling?? Jesus fucking Christ.
Okay? The point is, why was this needed? What are the people around him telling him?
This is on Biden, not on the staff. The calls for him to drop out were ALL OVER the place, including popular media.
No. This is on the team, not just Biden. Being surrounded by people who won’t tell you the actual truth would make most of us blind to real issues. As people on the left, as voters in general, we need to stop pointing fingers at a person and begin pointing fingers at the processes and issues that cause bad individuals to be placed in positions of authority, and the reasons why the teams behind even the good ones may not wish to speak out. This is systemic and mass recognition is the first step to a solution.
Staff fudge the truth to bosses all the time. The issue doesn’t lie with the staff because it is the boss’ responsibility to understand the power disparity and do their best to mitigate it.
The way to do that is have a small contingent of 2-3 people who will ALWAYS tell the truth to the boss no matter what.
But again, that willingness to hear the truth and have those people around starts with the boss. And if they just want yes men around, that’s what will happen.
Not even counting the debate the man has straight up asked for people that have died during press conferences and mixed up Putin and Zelenskyy. I don’t think it’s out of line to question how much of policy and press releases he’s cognizant of, much less staffing decisions. Even if they are updating him about polling data he may not be processing it. I have a 94 yr old grandpa with a live in nurse and a 80 year old aunt in hospice (different sides of the family) and the disorientation is disturbingly familiar.
It seems insane to bet that he will have 4 more high pressure years to give. Or betting on him making it long enough for a VP to take over. RBG should be a warning, not a template.
It appears at this point that US presidents have this problem more than half the Roman emperors.
(Just remembered reading about Julian)
EDIT: I meant - Julian had people follow him who’d tell him when he was making a mistake, and he’d always listen and take time to think. While for him it was more real than for other emperors (some of whom would still do the same), I even wonder whether jesters in European courts are some perverted continuation of such a tradition. Perhaps at some point pointing out mistakes came out of fashion, but scolding the monarch - still a tradition, and then it turned into a way of have fun, and such a follower, and not the monarch himself, took the role of the fool.
this was exactly the purpose of jesters. a link.
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Biden’s domestic policies have been great for the American people. His international ones have been a major mix bag. Palestine is his internment of Japanese moment. Biden’s legacy will be an interesting one. Just like FDR, he will be a polarizing figure.
It’s odd to see you put so much of Palestine on Bidens lap. It’s been an issue for at least 40-50 years.
I remember what Obama said in his memoir about Isreal, how that is such a tricky issue for Dems. Isreal is the only consistent military ally in the region. A President has an obligation, as commander and chief of the military. You have into major consideration in the area of the region that’s is most likely to commit act of foreign terrorism against the US.
Just seems like we’re feeding them weapons like drugs to an addict. With how fervent the Israeli government’s rhetoric has been, calling for the genocide of Palestinians and lashing out against non-zionists & Jewish people who won’t comply, I feel like Israel is itself at risk of producing terrorism/more war.
Has anyone stopped to ask what will happen if they do somehow manage to take over all of Palestine? Has any conquesting nation just stopped after their first target?
We have bases in damn near every country in that region. They are not a good ally if the keep starting shit. When Iran is the bigger person in a dispute, you have problems.
yeah how dare biden push for a ceasefire while literally building new infrastructure to go around israel and get aid to palestinians.
That dock never worked right and they’ve removed it. For the record, if the US military did a standard aid operation it would be fine. It’s his insistence on this special system that fucked it.
Other than that, he’s completely blocked any actual Leahy Law or Foreign Assistance Act Human Rights reviews and consistently repeats IDF propaganda that’s quickly debunked by literally every other stakeholder.
Every cease fire he’s pushed, he blames Hamas for the failure, even though Hamas publicly says they want it and Israel publicly says they don’t. When Hamas actually refuses, you find out the “deal” is to release the hostages in return for not starving to death.
So yes. It’s pretty fucking bad.
You left out the part about sending more bombs to Israel, to replace the ones used to kill civilians, knowing full well they’d be used to kill more civilians.
congress does that; and it’s been the policy of every president… and the last president was impeached for withholding aid.
Except in this case it’s actually against the law to continue supplying military aid
Except under circumstances specified in this section, no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
You missed the US repeatedly voting against Palestine getting state hood in the UN and ceasefire.
https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/
https://apnews.com/article/un-vote-palestinian-membership-us-veto-8d8ad60d8576b5ab9e70d2f8bf7e2881
The un ambassador reports to the president and the secretary of state. Though many foreign policy decisions are made by congress, the UN is not one of them. The choice to directly oppose the the two-state solution in the UN is entirely a choice of biden’s executive branch.
This is just the media gassing themselves up.
If we can come up with a cohesive plan that works, great. I just don’t understand why the democrat leadership didn’t even try having this conversation before the primaries. Being the president is a bummer. You have to be a truly sad person to even want the position. I’m not stunned at all to hear Biden would feel cooperative with a movement that let’s him just kick back in a rocking chair and enjoy the time he has left.
I just don’t understand why the democrat leadership didn’t even try having this conversation before the primaries.
They may have tried in private, but “The incumbent has an advantage, and we need every advantage we can get” is compelling conventional political wisdom.
It is conventional wisdom, but not particularly compelling if you’re actually looking at presidential races. 3 of the last 7 incumbent presidents have lost. But then people will say “the ones who lost weren’t popular”. Except that’s Joe Biden too.
I think the answer to the “why” question is simply that Biden didn’t want to step down, and a serious challenge against an incumbent president is politically terrible. Biden’s defenders are getting unhinged now, after having very obvious issues everyone got to see, imagine if it were coming just because his age was a high number. That’d be a nasty affair. If the incumbent wants to run there’s just no way to challenge them without massively damaging them and causing a rift. Before it was obvious Biden would be basically incapable of winning, it’d make sense to think that would obviously be worse than just having a guy who looks and acts old and might mess up some words.
I’m still hoping for the scenario were Biden wins and AOC, pelosi or some other woman becomes speaker of the house and Biden steps down early on to see the GOP collectively loose their shit as they have both a woman for president and VP.
I’m with ya, however a new VP is just appointed. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the speaker of the house.
That makes sense otherwise each person would move up. In that case Harris as the President then Whitmer at the VP appointee. It would still put the GOP knickers in a bunch. Then keep AOC in the house and let her keep the dogs at bay there.
Jesus christ, please not fucking Pelosi.
yeah, she’s not even old enough to be president!
Since AOC / Bernie is out of the question for now, I think Newsom makes a good pick. If they nominate him, wonder who might be his running mate, he might bring in someone completely fresh so that’s fair
While I do think he’s an effective bureaucrat and statesman, Newsom is genuinely reviled by California Republicans. Republicans not liking their Democrat governor is obviously nothing new, but there was nowhere near even 1% of the same vitriol being directed towards Jerry Brown, his predecessor and also a Democrat.
I kind of feel like Newsom doesn’t really have the chops for the national stage yet. He doesn’t have any accolades to his name, was mired in a scandal during Covid, and California is not doing so hot on the issues that the Dem establishment are trying hard to tackle. Chiefly among those issues is rampant homelessness and drug addiction, which the state has funneled billions into trying to solve and so far gotten nowhere fast. The attack ads almost write themselves.
To be clear, I do find him appealing (at least more than Biden), but I think he’s going to have an uphill battle at unifying the disparate Democratic party if he’s given 4-ish months to mount a campaign.
Honestly, I don’t know why the Dems care so much about how their candidate will be perceived. Nobody cares as much how Trump is perceived. Dems need to go hard like the Reps have, you can’t pull back punches when the opposition is striking hard
Dems just have to get as passionate about their guy as the Reps are about Trump. Tbh, there’s no one more inspiring than Bernie and AOC in American politics at the present moment because they talk about the vision they have for various topics, and not just that they’re not Trump
But Newsom has appeal for Dems, so maybe that’s all it’ll take, idk 🤷♀️ Just have to pump up the turn out by getting people to the polls
I agree with this. While I have no problem with the idea of a female President, I think every vote is going to count against Trump. A lot of old dems might stay home if they run Harris.
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Honestly, given the amount of news that this is getting, I’m starting to think that a decision has already been made, and that the Dems are either:
- Waiting for it to blow over, and for Biden to stay and fight
- A transition candidate has been picked, and it’ll be either Harris or another candidate to announce themselves with an immediate campaign.
The former seems like a terrible idea. Before the debate Biden was “fine” as a candidate, and debates don’t really affect much in terms of voting intention - but dragging this out and staying on just looks bad with Trump having the (I can’t believe I’m writing this) near-assassination high after his convicted felon low.
Depending on the candidate, the latter could be a fantastic move. I’m not convinced that Kamala Harris could beat Trump, but a double-ticket of someone like AOC with either Biden or Harris as VP could be a winner. Play things coy, have Biden come out right at the end, say he’s staying on…as a VP to your new candidate, and start flooding the news and socials with the new candidate. Trump will lose his shit because the news is no longer on him.
Open the convention.
All the news coverage about who the democratic nominee will be has been and will sap the life blood of Trump’s campaign: coverage.
When they aren’t paying attention to him, he becomes ever more unhinged and his mask slips even more.
Chaos in the democratic party can work for us for once.
100% agree with this sentiment. 1 day debate, 2nd or third day, delegate vote. Imagine a national conversation where the cornerstone is about the policies of the democratic platform. Compare them to the policies of the GOP. That will be a huge W for the party, especially down ticket.
Imagine a national conversation where the cornerstone is about the policies of the democratic platform.
They are decided by major donors and superPACs, not conventioneers.
Yeah but they could pretend for a bit, just for the cameras.
Harris/Kelly
Harris will absolutely lose this election worse than Biden.
Let’s see Whitehouse or Warren or someone else that is focused on issues young Americans really care about. Our platform should be consumer protection, workers’ rights, or climate change.
See this is an issue because it’s going to end up being harris and people won’t be happy hopefully they still support whoever though. I think most people are on the same page though
I’m laughing at all the people who would vote for Biden’s dead body but suddenly have an issue with Harris.
Because we’re sooo fucked.
I feel like any liberal voter with even mush between their ears should realize that Biden completing a full term is not overwhelmingly likely and we’d get Harris anyways.
You would think.
I’m sure they were making VBNMW statements a month ago and decrying infighting since the debate. VBNMW, Trust Black Women, party unity, etc. are all just tools to defend the establishment leader, not actual statements of policies.
Absolutely not. Elizabeth Warren would violate the one rule about replacing Biden, no more old people! She’s great, but she’s 75.
Also Harris actually polls well. Her, Whitmer, and Newsom are the big names and they’re all in their 50’s.
You’re overlooking reproductive rights which should be a huge deal this election and imo gives Harris a bump ya’ll aren’t considering.
I’ve seen Warren go on the fucking war path about Roe - I have not seen the same by Harris.
Harris’ main job as VP is to STFU and stay in the background unless needed, and yet…
A look at the conversations Vice President Harris has been having on abortion (way back in '22)
Not to mention her platform is going to be very similar to Bidens current platform but with some improvements as you pointed out. Which means she will likely retain all of the current voting platform and then gain the people who like the platform but are voting based on age related stuff.
You can put literally anyone up there that is below the age of 65 and they should have no issue convincing moderates that their 80 year old Republican candidate has soup for brains.
I’ll vote for Biden over Trump or not voting any day. But I’d be more excited to vote for a Harris/Shapiro or a Whitmer/Shapiro ticket.
Okay, so I don’t follow politics all too closely, and I don’t live in or near Pennsylvania, and the person that came to mind when I read “Shapiro” was “Ben” since I’d never heard of “Josh”.
This confused me. Now I know more.
Whitmer/Harris FTW
Kamala Harris - Michelle Obama 2024
That’s hilarious lol
It’s worth it just to make them mad at this point
Yes, I’m aware of the irony.
Mrs. Obama has made it very clear that she I’d not interested in the White House.
Kamala Harris - Mark Kelly ‘24
OK so who takes the torch this late in the game though? Kamala? Has to be Kamala, right?
Basically yeah. They could do a brokered convention though.
I’m holding out hope for Newsom. The unfortunate truth is that too many Americans are racist and/or sexist, and the combination of those factors could sink Harris (who, it should be said, I would happily vote for).There are a lot of people out there who are desperate to vote for someone who isn’t Biden or Trump. The buzz and excitement generated by an entirely new ticket (Newsom-Whitmer?) would blow Trump out of the water.My stupid hot take was stupid. I am fully coconut pilled.
I don’t know specifically about Newsom but I do have to agree that there may be people in the middle who really don’t want to Trump but really won’t vote for a woman, let alone one who isn’t lily white. They won’t necessarily vote for Trump but they don’t necessarily need to. Just not voting at all could do it. That said anyone who isn’t an independent is (I effing hope) voting against Trump no matter what.
Yes, surely bypassing the current VP who is both black and a woman in favor of a white man will go over super well.
It’s Harris or Biden. That’s the choice.
No it fucking isn’t. The only thing Harris is good at is being an argument that Biden should stay in the race because she’d lose it even worse.
Ok, so voter groups aren’t monolithic but do you honestly think the optics of passing over a black woman who currently is #2 to have two wholly unrelated candidates be on the ballot (or keeping her as the VP choice) will be lost on black voters?
Just like everyone else here- people are throwing out wishlist bullshit without thinking of the actual political ramifications.
If you were to listen to half the people here you’d have tossed the incumbency advantage even before Biden did that debate, nominated AOC, and ensured a Mondale style wipeout repeat.
I think that Harris is an extremely hard sell as a former prosecutor who has really poor approval polling. If we made sure the ticket included someone who has done real work for minority communities then I don’t think it’d be a serious issue.
I was strongly opposed to Harris getting the VP slot in the first place and I think she’d genuinely struggle to win against Trump.
I never liked Harris because she ran against Bernie and she seemed very fake and forced in 2019, on top of the prosecutor stuff making me think she was moderate.
However recently I actually looked at her voting record in the senate. She is more progressive with her votes than 99% of the senate, and there are only 100 of them. Right up there side by side with Bernie. She is even an original backer of the Green New Deal.
She has also seemed to have relaxed some, seems way less forced. Most importantly she isn’t in her 80’s and can actually complete sentences unlike anyone else running this decade.
The prosecutor stuff was a long time ago, and she has already been voted in as VP to step up for Biden if he gets too old. The tough on crime stuff might actually help her with independents and conservatives who don’t like Trump.
Since I never hear anything about this angle-
The other reason it kinda “has to” be Harris if it isn’t Biden, relates to campaign finance rules. If he steps aside, she can continue to use their campaign funds.
If it’s neither, then whoever is nominated basically has to start fresh raising money, and with a huge time disadvantage.
ELIF why they’d have to raise money? Campaign money is used to campaign, which you also said they wouldn’t have much time to do. So… Why would they need gobs of money?
Not a campaign expert, but there are tons of things that political campaigns need to do in the 3 months leading up to an election -
Conduct national and local ad buys on TV, radio, and social media.
Orchestrate volunteers to call voters and knock doors.
Print promotional materials such as signs and shirts.
Conduct candidate appearances (speeches, public forums, rallys) which includes travel costs, event space, logistics.
Coordinate and encourage voter turn out (includes a lot of research, planning, data analysis).
Prepare any legal challenges related to the ballots and election procedures (this could get very complicated and expensive in a national campaign as there are so many venues; Imagine having to retain teams of lawyers and potentially file suits in all 50 states).
All that stuff costs money. Usually a re-elect campaign has years to raise money so jettisoning the entire warchest with 3 months left isn’t a good idea. Granted there is so much PAC money in national races, maybe it doesn’t matter as much as it used to.
Not only that but Republicans have already said they would take it to the supreme court if anyone else is on the ballot.
Plus a completely new person might not even be on the ballot in multiple states being this late into the process. Harris can keep all the donations and is certified to be on the ballots.
Is that true regardless of her VP?
Yes as president she can select whoever she wants as VP.
As a Californian, I’m always surprised when people think Newsom has a chance. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say I’m a fan but I think he’s done a lot of good (just wish he’d distance himself from PG&E especially) but I always rather assumed that in today’s political climate, anyone from California is considered toxic. Is that not the case?
Among the GOP certainly. But we aren’t counting on their base voting for him.
anyone from California is considered toxic
Harris is from CA too.
I’m quite aware; I voted for her!
I dont know why anyone likes Newsom. Whitmer is a far better choice.
You and I are in lockstep on this. Whitmer, I think, would help to deliver Michigan.
I still would like to see Kamala in the Cabinet. She now has plenty of foreign experience. I think she would do well as Secretary of State or perhaps even Attorney General.
I think it’s hilarious that just a few days ago he said if he had a medical condition that forced him to step away he would.
I don’t know if COVID qualifies but I think it’s ironic. Maybe even a sign from God lol
That could very well be how he’s seeing it now. He is religious.
corporatists and centrists will do anything to try and purge the most pro labor, pro union, pro worker president from the race in the us just like they did to corbyn in the uk… all for their tax cut.
The guy that outlawed a union strike?
i mean that was congress and biden kept working to get the deal done and the unions specifically thanked him for it
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Still a net loss for the rail union.
getting everything they wanted is a net loss ok
They undercut the effectiveness of any future strike by intervening on the railway’s behalf.
No that was predominantly Biden himself, who issued an executive order to create a presidential emergency board to intervene in the negotiations, and proposed a deal. Union workers did not accept the deal and planned to strike, and Biden requested democrats force the unions to accept the deal and outlaw the strike. Notably, against the wishes of Bernie who opposed the legislation for containing zero sick days for rail workers.
Also notably, IBEW was in favor of that deal from the start, and they are an electrical workers union. They always had the sick days. Not all rail workers got sick days, they didnt get as much as if they had the ability to strike, and most importantly of all lost all of the future leverage that comes with collective bargaining.
Biden outlawed a union strike, period.
lolwut.
