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Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

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Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#501

Post by woodruffw »

slantaclaus wrote: post #494
woodruffw wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ? I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this. > Has it ever been done? Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the VP came from the opposing party[1]. This didn't work particularly well in practice, which is why nobody remembers…

It’s not the base that would need to be convinced, it would be the DNC

I don't think this is even remotely true. The DNC leadership is skewed towards the liberal-centrist wing of the party with significant (but not controlling) progressive representation.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#502

Post by smsm42 »

scoofy wrote: post #416
wilg wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But he did campaign on a single term. He did not really do this.

His campaign HEAVILY implied this, but no, he never said it. It’s definitely one of those thing that make people like me, who want good faith honesty in politics angry, because “he didn’t actually say it” politics is why gotcha politics exists.

I remember that too, it was never said explicitly but heavily implied like "he'll return things to normal and then pass the torch to the younger generation" and such comments. I remember being slightly surprised by it because the traditional way was to renominate the sitting president, but a lot of things weren't as they used to in 2020.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#503

Post by netsharc »

dimal wrote: post #479
gumby wrote: post #32

One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.

> probably Harris is the simplest answer And probably the wrong answer. I don’t see her winning over swing voters. Gretchen Whitmer seems like the best option to me. I’d enjoy watching her debate Trump.

The 2 parties' bases will vote for whoever their candidate is, and their work is just to convince the undecideds. An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. I feel like to win them over, the candidates have to rely on the halo effect, ie. sadly even just on looks. The young and fit-looking Whitmer, or Newsom, seem to be the best candidates. It's shallow, but consider the voters.

Obama's charisma and youth surely helped a lot. Trump is tall and he was a good-looking young man, and his swagger has let him get away with being a total POS for 77-78 years.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#504

Post by SubiculumCode »

jzb wrote: post #399
gumby wrote: post #32

One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.

Simplest may not be best here. Is Harris the person who is most likely to get people to the polls and vote Dem? Is she someone who can convert independent/undecided voters? etc. IMO those are not easy "yes, absolutely" answers. Does the Democratic party have anyone in the wings who is more likely to win than Harris? Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to thi…

Harris at least has legitimacy as having received votes as the vp, and extra scrutiny given Biden's age. The optics of pushing her out would be tragic.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#505

Post by rsynnott »

proc0 wrote: post #332
selfmodruntime wrote: post #3

My god. I really didn‘t think he would actually do it.

I don't think he did. The timing is too convenient after two weeks of him reassuring people he would win over and over.

That’s just how you do it. It would have been far, far more damaging for him to spend a few weeks going “ah, well, maybe I won’t run”. It always looks a bit silly in retrospect, but total confidence right up until you change direction is just how you have to do politics, in general.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#506

Post by kristjansson »

echelon wrote: post #38
nailer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules allow the DNC to have an open convention. They just haven’t had one for more than half a century. the interesting thing is apparently if they do that its available to all candidates. So it’s possible that somebody that is well liked by the public, but not by the DNC becomes the leader ie Bernie sanders. The tough thing though is that money donated to Biden doesn’t transfer to other candidates. The daily wir…

> money donated to Biden doesn’t transfer to other candidates. That's wild and should be fixed.

That's the way it should be? Donations to a candidate's reelection committee are for the benefit of that candidate and severely limited by law ($3300 per donor per candidate per election). Treating inter-committee transfers as something other than donations would allow trivial circumvention of the 'per candidate' restriction - just run a bunch of nobodies, fill their coffers, and then have them drop and transfer to a single candidate

I'll admit this is a bit silly in light of PAC/SuperPAC spending now, but we did have election spending rules at one point and this was one of them.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#507

Post by stouset »

jzb wrote: post #399
gumby wrote: post #32

One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.

Simplest may not be best here. Is Harris the person who is most likely to get people to the polls and vote Dem? Is she someone who can convert independent/undecided voters? etc. IMO those are not easy "yes, absolutely" answers. Does the Democratic party have anyone in the wings who is more likely to win than Harris? Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to thi…

The fundamental problem is that nobody but Biden won the primary. The time to debate over and vote on an alternate has come and gone, and this (along with his decision to run at the last minute in 2020) are things I don’t know I can ever forgive him for.

At this point the VP has the most legitimacy as a successor and given the situation we’re forced into she’s unambiguously the option. That doesn’t make it good, but it makes it better than all the other terrible options that involve a free-for-all between candidates with no opportunity for voters to weigh in.

The best possible outcome at this point is for the establishment to quickly and unanimously get behind Harris. Again, it’s not necessarily a good outcome. But it’s the best available to us thanks to Biden waiting for the last possible moment (again) to come to this realization.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#509

Post by Jensson »

haunter wrote: post #439
woodruffw wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ? I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this. > Has it ever been done? Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the VP came from the opposing party[1]. This didn't work particularly well in practice, which is why nobody remembers…

> liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) ? I thought the core of the party is establishment centrist gerontophiles. If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.

> If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.

He meant socially, not economically. Democrats are made up of very left social issues and centrist economic issues, Bernie who is very left economically of course has a hard time there. But still the Democrats are very left, just not in terms of taxes, but in terms of affirmative action etc.

Those are very left wing and USA is more left wing on those issues than most of the world, even Europe is much more reluctant to go that hard on those things. So yes, Democrats are very left wing, just not in the ways that makes things better for poor people, they are social signaling kind of left wing and center/right on taxes and wealth transfer.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#510

Post by kristjansson »

nailer wrote: post #13
moralestapia wrote: post #5

(No intend for this to be a controversial statement) I only want to express my opinion that he (and the Democratic party) took a while to make this decision, to their detriment. Interesting to see who their new candidate is going to be.

The rules allow the DNC to have an open convention. They just haven’t had one for more than half a century. the interesting thing is apparently if they do that its available to all candidates. So it’s possible that somebody that is well liked by the public, but not by the DNC becomes the leader ie Bernie sanders. The tough thing though is that money donated to Biden doesn’t transfer to other candidates. The daily wir…

Ben Shapiro is ... perhaps not an unbiased source on this topic.
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