The discourse around Biden exiting the race is moot because the only one who decides if he continues is Biden. Biden is still running so nothing changes. Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Biden had a bad debate performance. It was a missed opportunity to pick up new voters. Biden demoralized his base. But we’re still stuck with him, because there is no external mechanism to stop him from running.
The most effective tool we have to prevent the christo-fascist takeover this November is voting. The debate did not change that.
the only one who decides if he continues is Biden.
Got it.
Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Um, what? Vote Biden to save Democracy, and fuck you if you want a different candidate.
I’ll vote for Biden’s corpse in 2028 if it’s still the only way to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse, but give up the “save Democracy” schtick. That ship has sailed. Democracy is dead, and it’s not just the Republican’s fault.
Democracy is still alive for now. That’s why voting matters. Our flawed democracy is still our best chance at adverting fascism. Which is why the fascists want to take it away. Giving up early gets us nothing. So keep fighting.
I think his point is that, if our only alternative to fascism is to vote for a senile old man who was forced upon voters without a primary, then this system can’t credibly be called democracy.
We can still get back to democracy. This isn’t democracy. Did you even read my comment btw? This knee jerk canned response isn’t even human.
I don’t understand this chain of logic why we need to keep Biden:
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Biden isn’t the best candidate.
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Only Biden can drop (false)
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Biden will never make the adult decision to retire.
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We have to plow forward with Biden because he’ll never change his mind on anything.
Like, the argument for why Biden has to stay, is just reasons he shouldn’t stay…
And it’s not just up to him. It’s up to the DNC.
We are not stuck with Biden.
Biden and the DNC just know that’s the only way people will vote for him, so they’ve been reporting it for like 5 years now.
Only Biden can drop
This is a true statement. Biden won the primary. The delegates are pledged to him. Biden is the one who has to decide if he drops out.
Mostly true. The DNC is the organization that makes the rules and can change them at any time. That would be a pretty bad move though unless the party really felt united in needing to do a hostile expulsion. Realistically Biden needs to be on board for a change to work, so being able to play Calvinball with primary voting rules isn’t really an out.
Ah yes, the DNC, known for making good decisions for our democracy. How they trusted Hillary on us leading to the election of Trump.
We just need ranked choice voting at a national scale. Until that happens we’re going to keep dealing with this bullshit. A lot of Republicans don’t want to elect a fascist anymore than a lot of democrats don’t want to elect a geriatric. But just like democrats a lot of those Republicans think they have no choice. These could all have been avoided with a different voting system and the more moderate members of each party could have voted together.
I agree with you, but the system is just fucking broken.
Until that happens we’re going to keep dealing with this bullshit.
Bruh…
The current DNC is not going to support RCV. Some state parties might, but the DNC is run by moderates who know most of their votes are because literally the only other option is a Republican.
To get rcv, we need to get a progressive president who will actually try to fix the DNC.
Obama wasn’t perfect, and he made a lot of mistakes.
But the one that keeps fucking us over is instead of fixing the DNC when he had a shot, he just ignored them because they just ignored him in 08.
If Obama had tried to fix the DNC, Bernie would have won in 2016, would be exiting his second term, and likely handing the torch to president AOC.
trump would still be known as a shitty reality TV host, and we’d all be better off.
At this point tho, the DNC may be beyond saving.
The guy didn’t ace a debate with a sore throat and jet-lag so the media loses its shit. The orange liar has rape and 34 felony convictions- crickets. Nothing new here.
I searched for an editorial board opinion in the New York Times which said Trump should withdraw from the Republican ticket because he lied throughout the debate, but I couldn’t find one. Why didn’t they write one?
sounds like the party is dysfunctional if we can’t replace a candidate with 120 days of leadup. that’s longer than any other country’s election season. the inability of the democratic party to do good things on purpose makes a strong argument against their leadership if what they think they offer is competence
I thought the 2016 Bernie debacle was enough of a learning moment for the Democrats, yet 8 years go so long for memory lane. Biden is barely functional, anyone with old grandparents know how fast things accelerate, how is he even going to last 5 more years with that mental capacity? Isn’t this at the end blind party loyalty, the same thing the republicans are criticized for? I guess rules for thee but not for me.
Yep - if you are for Biden after that debate you’re just Blue MAGA, he is unfit for office at this point. That’s not a “bad night” , that’s an old man. I cant even believe these news articles, its outrageous. I basically support the guy and after that debate I don’t know how I cam cast a vote of confidence that he can do the job. We’re fucked.
I’m running on an independent ticket. My platform: Unlike the other two candidates no one wonders if I can physically handle the journey from back stage to the podium.
I’m fucking serious, one of the talking heads on the news said Biden needed to “remain upright” to come off well in this debate. That was said of the currently serving commander-in-chief!
Unlike the actual President Of These United States of America, the 24 hour news cycle probably expects more out of me than “can stand up straight for 30 minutes without incident.”
Remember when Trump made a point to demonstrate his ability to lift and drink from a glass of water?
Seriously next time these two appear on stage I want them to step through a hoop to prove there are no wires.
Can the party not compel him to step down and elect a more healthy replacement.
There is no mechanism at this stage that can force him to do so that I am aware of. They can of course try to convince him, but no one from Biden’s inner circle, like Jill Biden, or any of the hypothetical candidates people like to float, like Gavin Newsom, has expressed interest in doing that.
We’re past “preventing” the Christo-fascist takeover. We’re in damage control now.
VOTE.
Biden was tired from too many engagements, jet lag and a sore throat. You could see he was tried. On the other hand, the orange felon/rapist/liar had one job - to not be an asshole - he failed spectacularly.
the only one who decides if he continues is Biden … vote for to keep our democracy.
I … I don’t think that’s a democracy.
Biden won the Democratic Party’s primary election so he is going to be the Democratic Party’s candidate. That is democracy.
I pessimistically expected that.
If he bowed out and the Dems nominated a halfway decent candidate (which they likely wouldn’t do, but that’s a different subject), they’d demolish Trump. He’d lose so badly he couldn’t even pretend it was fraudulent (though of course he’d claim that anyway, since he has the emotional maturity of a spoiled five-year-old). The race would instantly go from a terrifying risk to a complete rout.
But between Biden’s ego and the DNC’s determination to stick with a wholly-owned establishment neoliberal hack at all costs - even if it means losing - I expected that they wouldn’t take this golden opportunity.
On the stream of the debate I was watching, when they took a break they showed clips from previous debates and the difference was kind of mind-blowing.
I honestly kind of think that even a mid-level candidate who didn’t make it like Romney or Kerry probably could have mopped the floor with either one of them.
Also as a side note, how lucky is Donald Trump? Just a whole life of being handed infinite money no matter how many times he fucked up a business, a bewildering assortment of crimes with essentially no hard consequences, and two presidential runs against pretty much the only two people he has any chance of beating in a debate.
He’s had a life of almost non-stop softballs. It’s kind of wild really.
But between Biden’s ego and the DNC’s determination to stick with a wholly-owned establishment neoliberal hack at all costs - even if it means losing - I expected that they wouldn’t take this golden opportunity.
Biden has objectively been the most progressive president since LBJ, and the most effective progressive president since FDR. And he did it with about the slimmest possible congressional margins, a situation which would have made it very easy for an actual “establishment neoliberal hack” to say “my hands are tied” and accomplish nothing of substance. Instead we got the biggest climate reform package ever, the biggest infrastructure package since the Interstate Highway system, a child tax credit that massively reduced child poverty, the most significant industrial policy in decades (CHIPS and Science), a veritable bulldog FTC chair with an aggressive anti-monopoly stance, and that’s just for starters.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” the 81-year-old Biden said Friday. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong and I know how to do this job.”
trump didn’t think he was wrong when he was breaking human rights laws on our southern border.
And Biden apparently doesn’t either now that he’s doing it.
My point being the people who do evil shit, usually dont think of themselves as evil.
The problem with Biden, is on issues like Israel where the vast majority of not only his party but the country won’t him him to calm the fuck down. He never will
Because he is absolutely sure his outdated morals are the best, and he’s not listening to anyone that disagrees with him.
This gonna be the first time you have to choose between the lesser of two evils?
Personally, that has been the only way I’ve ever been able to fucken vote and I’m sick of it.
The lesser of two evils is exactly how we fucking got her in the first place.
You get a chance to vote for your dream candidate in the primary.
If they’re not on the ballot in the general, that’s because other voters didn’t find your dream candidate so dreamy.
I mean, the greater evil would presumably have gotten us worse. And in a system that is set up so as to inevitably produce two viable parties, and where “good” is not on the ballot from either, what else do you expect people to do?
Maybe everybody should just vote for me. I’ll end our support for Isreal. I’ll massively increase our support for Ukraine, and I’ll send George Clooney a birthday card every year with a pop-up middle finger, that pops out of a card that says “You’re getting older, you smug fuck!”
Also bacon. Just…just bacon.
Maybe he just knows more than you about this, and you’re the one that’s got it wrong.
At least he sounded a lot more energetic and present in this speech. What happened on stage?
You also don’t really need to think for a speech. You’ve got a friendly audience who won’t challenge you and you know exactly what the next topic is, so you can focus on inflection and timing and emotion. It’s good to see him have some life in the speech, but it’s not really much of a counter to his terrible debate performance.
And incidentally, that’s probably why Trump’s performance sounded better. He also didn’t really need to think about substance because he was just speaking to whatever topic he felt like and making things up without concern for truthfulness or challenge.
Biden could commit to only serving one more year and let the VP pick go to a brokered convention.
He has to put up a strong front at this point, to keep the confidence of voters. But he could absolutely resign a year in… either planned or due to some new development, e.g. illness.
I think most Democrats are worried about him being elected more than will he be able to be president for four years. Like he probably won’t, but there’s lots of structure and support to prevent a failing Biden from a catastrophic presidency. There’s basically none to prevent him from tanking his reelection campaign.
