Burnt toast at that
We’re doomed. Toast. Dead in the water.
While Republican candidate Donald Trump faces criticism for the number of falsehoods he uttered, much of the attention has been focused on President Joe Biden’s poor performance.
Biden appeared to struggle in several of his answers. As a result, concerns about his age and mental fitness have only risen further. Some Democrats have even asked after the debate whether the president could be replaced as the party’s presidential candidate.
Toast.
IF Biden decided to step back, he would likely endorse his Vice President. I could see her cheerfully announcing her candidacy at the democratic national convention with “Hi, I’m Kamala Harris and my pronouns are She/Her” — thus handing the election to Trump and sealing our national doom.
The left panics too easily, treating every setback as proof of imminent doom.
Obama performed badly during his first debate with Romney in 2012. Everyone panicked then, too. He upped his game and recovered. In the end, the debates probably had very little impact on the actual election result one way or the other.
We don’t yet even have any hard data from competent polling about the voters’ (as opposed to pundits or media) reaction to the debate. Let’s wait and see what they think.
This election is still going to be mostly about abortion rights.
Well yes but that was Obama. I haven’t seen the damn debate and won’t, I never bother with them, but I’m aware that other people do. Biden is not Obama, and Biden is especially not Obama 2008.
Sastra # 1:
Kamala Harris is unpopular with the voters though:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/12/kamala-harris-favorability-poll-00162093
Plus, replacing Biden as Democratic Presidental candidate *now* would look very bad, as the Democratic honchos have been insisting that there’s nothing wrong with Biden for years. It would raise the question “Why didn’t you do this in 2022?”
National leaders resigning due to ill-health isn’t unknown in other countries (Winston Churchill springs to mind) but it’s never happened before in the US.
Calling it a poor performance is misleading, making it seem like the problem was lack of confidence or zingers.
That plus I hate the use of “poor” as a euphemism for “bad.” Just say bad, dammit.
The Dems should have foreseen this mess years ago and dealt with it. A completely broken party.
And now there aren’t many good alternatives available. Harris is deeply unpopular. No one will vote for her. Newsom is too California. People are leaving California in droves for a reason. Bernie Sanders is older than Joe Biden, so nix that. Warren’s too woke. Buttigieg is too gay. Not now, with all that’s going on.
So… Klobuchar? That’s pretty much the last other Democrat I could even name. And I know next to nothing about her.
Hillary Clinton? Sorry to disappoint the “Still With Her” brigade, but Hillary lost to Trump the last time. Why do you think her running again would be any different?
Michael Bloomberg is too old.
Nancy Pelosi’s also too old.
And Beto O’Rourke got trashed by Greg Abbott. So he’s out.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is too young (and more interested in Met Gala social-climbing than politics) so that’s her out too.
Michelle Obama? She seems nice, but I don’t think she’s cut out for politics. Plus they’d say she only got nominated because of her husband.
So that leaves…er…Tom Steyer? Deval Patrick?
No, I definitely didn’t buy a party pizza after work and go home and eat a 10mg gummi, why do you ask?
So first, mea culpa. I thought Harris was a good idea as a box ticker back in 2020 but well fuck me, I was wrong. I assumed the Dems would have a plan and Trump would be out of the picture… Way to fucking go there.
The Persuasion crew came out right away and said we’re fucked; the Europeans are shitting themselves.
Scaramucci (yes that Scaramucci) name dropped Whitmer and Shapiro, which just underlines the conventional wisdom that we need an executive as a replacement, but how do you fight that momentum? There are no good options; there may be no less bad options.
1. Stay the course and hope Biden does better in September.
2. Replace him now or at the convention (how you wrangle that amongst competing factions I dunno)? Two obstacles there, namely Biden and Harris. You’re skipping further debates as Trump won’t debate anyone else.
3. Do Un-American things to Trump in order to keep him out of office. Dunno how you do that without destroying the Republic in the process.
Am I missing something?
3.
Ezra Klein in the New Yorker nails the problem:
Seems like a classic case of preference falsification. Everybody quietly knows Biden is a weak candidate; nobody has the will to speak up. This is a pattern we’re seeing across the left as it spirals into disrepute. Insecurity causes people to quiet down right at the moment when they need to do the opposite: they should be speaking up to steer the crowd in the right direction. See also: gender ideology.
It’ll be interesting if the Dems find the collective will to come together and solve this problem.
I saw the debate, and calling Biden’s performance “poor” is far too kind. He looked confused, struggled to complete sentences, couldn’t find the words he wanted, said things I’m confident he didn’t mean. I, along with my partner and son cringed through the whole thing. Perhaps this was an off day, but I doubt it. His performance casts doubt on his ability to govern now, not just if re-elected.
Trump, for his part, was oddly restrained (for Trump). He lied as usual, said things that provoked a what-is-he-even-talking-about reaction (alleged killing babies after birth as abortion), but he didn’t yell and bluster and talk over Biden or the moderators, even though that was partly the rules and mic muting.
That Biden looked shockingly bad next to Trump is saying something. Biden was genuinely awful.
Artymorty #10 :
“Seems like a classic case of preference falsification. Everybody quietly knows Biden is a weak candidate; nobody has the will to speak up.”
This reminds me of a quote by Frank Herbert:*
“”Dune” was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.”
Many high-ranking Dems knew Biden wasn’t well, but they kept quiet about it because it would threaten their careers. Ironically, many of these Dems also said American democracy would end if Trump was elected President again. So if they really believed the US was in a “Spain in the early 1930s” situation where its democracy hung on a knife-edge, why did they pick the elderly Joe Biden and the unpopular Kamala Harris as its defenders?
Mistakes “amplified by the numbers who follow without question”, indeed.
* Herbert was a Republican, but he hated George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. I don’t think he would have liked Donald Trump either.
We’re TOAST.