: “I worked in five presidential campaigns for Republicans and helped elect Republican senators and governors in more than half of the country. For decades, I made ads attacking the Democratic Party. But in all those years, I never saw anything as ridiculous as the push, in the aftermath of last week’s debate, to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.”
“For many in the party, the event raised genuine concerns about the incumbent’s fitness for a new term. But a president’s record makes a better basis for judgment than a 90-minute broadcast does. Biden has a capable vice president, should he truly become unable to serve. The standard for passing over Democratic voters’ preferred nominee should be extraordinarily high—and has not been met.”
I can’t read the article myself due to the paywall. But presumably these quotes are by the same individual? Why would any Democrat campaign take the advice of someone who has spent decades helping to get Republican presidents elected? Why would he offer his advice to them at all? Certainly not in good faith. And why would he be an expert at what makes a good choice regarding nominees? His campaigns have presumably lost as many as they’ve won and their electorate is motivated by fundamentally different things. And never has there been a situation like this for either party during an election, a former president and convicted felon and current president circling the drain.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but given the source I don’t give the slightest fuck what his view point is on matters of the Democratic Party.
You’re right. He consulted on campaigns for some pretty vile sons-of-bitches, but at least he’s a member of the Lincoln project who endorsed Biden in 2020 and voted a straight-D ticket, so in that way he’s one of the few who’s putting his money where his mouth is.
Stuart Stevens is fairly well known as Mitt Romney’s top strategist. He is a straight shooter, and his opinion is in good faith.
Did he even watch the debate? Biden played right into the right-wing narrative about him. The only way Biden wins this thing is by getting out there, talking to every reporter, holding every baby, and proving that the debate was a fluke. I don’t think he can do it.
It’s not like it’s a singular action he can take. It’s going to take weeks of consistent behavior before people believe any kind of short-term issue like a cold.
Can he do it is one question. Is there enough time is another.
Exactly, it’s not about a single thing he can do. But more importantly there’s nothing anything anyone else can do but point out his shortcomings…
Also, it’s not about anything specific he could have done… after all he can only do the one specific thing I’ll allow… but he’s not allowed to do anything else anyone could do about anything… that wouldn’t be fair.
Biden should have booked a tough sit down interview for the weekend after the debate to show he has the mental chops and ability to communicate the stakes of this campaign. Instead it’s been five days now since the debate and Biden hasn’t spoken publicly without a teleprompter. Hell dem governors and members of congress, including party leaders, have not spoken to Biden since the debate. Biden is doing basically nothing to calm people down. Hiding him and only rolling him out with a teleprompter in tow just plays into the republican conspiracy that Biden has had a significant decline. To the point that it’s starting to not seem like a conspiracy. If Biden wants to stay in the race, he needs to fix this, like yesterday. Is the reason he hasn’t done so yet because he can’t do it? If so, wtf is he still in the race??
When he’s lucid, he’s on drugs. When he’s not, he’s sleepy Joe. You can’t win by placating the right. Independents and democrats do have real concerns, and the DNC can ignore them at their own peril.
Independents and democrats do have real concerns, and the DNC can ignore them at
their ownour peril.
FTFY
Long story short is splitting up the Democrats is exactly what conservatives want, to the point I wouldn’t be surprised if media moguls are spending millions to protect their billions by giving this movement any traction at all.
There was an event the next day where he gave a speech to a friendly crowd and by comparison he sounded like a spry well organized guy half his age. Hardly a mention of that out there though. I’m not a big fan of his miliqtost, half steps on a lot of things but it’s playing the game with what cards are available and having decades in political office gives you the experience to do it. I’m largely willing to write off the debate as being so flustered with the torrent of bullshit coming from Trump that it put him off balance.
Yeah, that event was also early in the day and all he had to do was read from a teleprompter. I guess it’s good to know he can still read but that certainly doesn’t erase the 90+ minutes of him not being able to think on his feet, going off on tangents, kneecapping his own responses, looking like a fucking corpse, and somehow managing to make Trump look eloquent by comparison.
If he was put off balance by the same torrents of bullshit Trump has been spewing for eight years then I’m even more concerned about his mental facilities.
I’m not a dem but will vote for anyone with a pulse that isn’t trump. Dems are deluding themselves if they think Biden is their best or even only candidate that can beat Trump. I want someone that will instill confidence and contrast with Trump. Biden ain’t it. I’ll still vote for whoever isn’t trump on the ballot though.
This movement wouldn’t have any traction if Biden put on even a middling debate performance. We all saw Biden start to answer a question about abortion, then get confused and switch midway into talking about some woman killed by an immigrant. You don’t need a grand conspiracy, it’s a simple case of grandpa being too full of pride to give up his car keys. Except in this case the car is American democracy.
Biden was a great president. He should have asked in his accomplishments and set up a new generation of dem leaders. Instead, he let his pride get in the way, ignored his own decline, tried to hide it by refusing interviews and non-scripted public events, even the softball traditional pre superbowl interview, and then had that disaster of a debate. Yes, I’ll still vote for the corpse of Biden if it means stopping Trump. But will swing voters? What about Trump to Biden voters in purple districts? What about young people and anyone already pissed about the genocide in Gaza? Is the “corpse is better than Trump” argument going to motivate infrequent voters to turn out? Better fucking hope so, cause Biden has us in this fucked position, is refusing to back down, so I guess we’ll find out.
We (read: Dems) can rally around him all we want. The point of the debate was to convince independents, uninformed voters never-Trumpers so that the polls start to look more favorable. Biden failed to do that and has no meaningful opportunity to do so for the rest of the campaign.
The informed Democrats can rally around him as much as they want, but he is still falling short, which is why a pivot seems risky but like the only real shot left
This is just braindead gaslighting. We all saw his performance. Dedicated Democratic cheerleaders like the Pod Save America guys think it’s the worst debate performance ever and needs to be carefully considered whether he can turn things around (and frankly, are leaning toward the “he can’t” side). Democratic leaders have been giving guarded answers about how they support Biden’s decision on whether to stay in, not that he should of course stay in. This isn’t remotely “media moguls” doing. The wagon circling is transparent and stupid and not working.
Ditching Biden is the only way to unite two important groups of Democrats: those with some grasp of reality, who recognize that Biden is far too old to run again, and those who still have their head in the sand about the issue, but will rally around anyone who isn’t Trump.
If we stick with Biden the election is lost. This will not be the last time Biden has a poor showing in public, revealing just how hard it is for him to speak and think at his advanced age. Every time it happens, more voters pay attention, and his poll numbers will sink more.
DNC Leadership: We won’t have a real primary, that’ll weaken the incumbent, who’ll probably win anyway. And remember, if you don’t get behind our anointed candidate, you’re anti-democratic.
The numbers are already coming in, the debate hurt Biden, and badly. Why does “Democracy is on the line” only mean voters are required to show up to vote for whoever DNC Leadership chose for us? Why do they have no obligation to put their best foot forward?
They’re gonna bet democracy on “We don’t really have a plan to turn this around, we’re just gonna keep doing what we’ve been doing and hope things get better.” The man is ancient, his brain is not gonna suddenly start improving. People know how aging works, and know that even if he never flops that badly on camera again, it’s just because he was never on camera at the wrong time.
It’s 4 months before the election.
Edit: Look at this - a classic case of a basic fact being down voted on Lemmy.
And the national convention hasn’t happened yet. He’s not officially the candidate until appointed at the convention.
I guess the point is that to replace Biden would drive chaos that would last longer than 4 months and be self defeating.
Edit: Look at this - a classic case of a basic fact being down voted on Lemmy.
Fuck off with that. People aren’t downvoting a basic fact, they’re downvoting the implication that 4 months means we’re stuck with Biden.
You make your own implications.
That’s called a fact and there is literally nothing you can do about it.
I don’t think people are downvoting a fact; I think they’re downvoting a comment which doesn’t meaningfully contribute to the discussion, since by your own admission it’s a just a fact and a fact without context or stated implications is virtually meaningless.
The Democratic Party held 57 primaries and caucuses; voters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories had their say, as did Democrats abroad. Joe Biden won 87 percent of the total vote.
The fuq? There weren’t any challengers except for a guy with a brain worm. We didn’t have a primary, and now we are seeing the consequences of not having a primary.
Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are very confused about this statement. They both primaried Biden. Phillips got 20% in NH
Williamson was kept off the ballot in almost half of all states. Phillips was kept off the ballot in more than half of them. It’s hard to believe it’s a real primary when only one candidate has universal ballot access.
Candidates have to get a certain amount of signatures before getting ballot access on the primary in a state.
Williamson and Phillips weren’t able to do that everywhere, and Biden was, that’s on them not having as many campaign resources as a literal incumbent U.S. President, not the DNC somehow keeping them off the ballot.
