Here’s why Biden is toast: in this situation, any candidate in Biden’s shoes would do a series of events (interviews, press conferences, town halls, etc) to prove they are up to the task.
But, Biden isn’t doing that because he can’t. He’s not capable—and that’s not going to change.
I think when half your campaign and party leaders are leaking to the press that they're shitting bricks, and you're not putting it to bed with some urgency, there's a problem that's a lot bigger than a few folks on social media thinking the sky is falling
One blue dog said Trump would win but still backs him, one crazy House D called on him to resign, and Pelosi said something ambiguous. What other actual concrete statements have been made?
“Joe had a bad night, but he’s still our guy, now let’s talk about Trump’s fascism” should have been the unified message, repeated constantly, and that kind of coordination needed to come from the campaign within hours. Instead, we were left with scattered statements, some ambiguous.
If you can’t reassure Nancy Pelosi enough to get her to say something non-ambiguous (the president still hasn’t called her!), then it becomes a campaign issue, not just a media issue. Playing the media is part of comms.
I will hold the NYT in contempt for their coverage but it’s also a campaign’s job to push back on media narratives and create narratives of their own. Sulzberger wasn’t wrong when he said they can’t expect his paper to be part of the campaign.
Would be nice if they weren't part of Trump's. The Democratic party does need a plan for dealing with the NYT, the paper has clearly decided it has authority to punish the party. Not a big surprise for the Chris Rufo paper I guess.
Right. If folks want to say it's overblown, go for it. But the concerns here are plainly real, and plainly coming from a lot of folks who are concerned /because they are terrified of Trump winning/, not just trying to kneecap Biden or quietly pro-Trump folks, or a bit of a social media freakout
Part of the job is being party leader, and that's gone and it's not coming back. The party is practically in open revolt against him and, perhaps even more justified, his abysmal team. Right or wrong, that's what's happening. It has snowballed incredibly quickly and will only continue to ratchet up.
Yes. And ... not just in the wider party. Staff! Senior staff! *Current* staff! Like, sure, they're not putting their names on it in the newspapers because doing that is resigning, but I think folks are missing that this is very much not just a little social media storm. It's actually pretty serious
Over the space of about 72 hours we've gone from "that was bad but no way he drops out" to "eh, maybe a small chance, this isn't looking good" to "oh wow this might really be happening" to "it's very likely happening, should he also resign? And also it's Harris, stop fooling around about that."
I know people were pointing to Clyburn as being misquoted but he could have easily said, “It’s Biden. Stop with that.” Instead he said, “It’s Biden. Or Harris if he steps down.” You don’t say the “or” if you don’t want that to be the headline.
he does that and the story could be that Biden’s being propped up (possibly literally) for the sake of infighting and doesn’t have the ability to make the decision himself
The time between now and the DNC is roughly the same amount of time the UK had for its *entire* election season. It sucks, and I absolutely do not minimize the difficulty in climbing this mountain, to drop your candidate, but there *is* time if they do it now, but not time to delay it much further
four months to galvanize a party that's the political equivalent of herding cats behind an entirely new candidate would require uncharacteristic levels of unity, strategy and messaging competency and I understand completely why strategists aren't keen for it with fascism on the line
Is there any reason to think that the Dem's aren't simply going to pop open a Pandora's box of back-biting, sniping, etc., that further alienates large components of the base from whoever the winner is?
Is Harris really a shoe-in nominee with a purely formal round of approvals?
Or is asking wrong?
My take is he has to serve the remainder of this presidency, drop off fall ticket, kamala becomes top of ticket with another tbd dem as veep. Succession can’t be messed with so he can’t resign, we won’t get another veep and we’ll still have to fight like hell against Heritage to stay on 50 ballots.
I've asked this of others, and now ask it of both of you going back and forth:
What is a concrete thing that could happen, and a deadline by which it definitively either will or will not happen, that would be sufficient evidence for you to admit you're wrong?
This month, but that would be on if Biden just digs in his heels and refuses no matter how bad it gets. Doesn't change the point about how bad it already is and how unprecedented this degree of Dems signaling they want to do it is.
if the entire party was presenting a unified front against a NYT pressure campaign that's one thing
that is manifestly not what's happening, it's plain that most of the party is freaking the fuck out and the Biden folks have not reassured them at all
This all has a real "it's not the crime, it's the cover-up" feel. A great response after the debate might have quelled this. But having Biden (or, probably much more accurately, Biden's team) unable to deal with the concerns makes it seem that much more like he doesn't have what it's going to take.
If your saying his campaign operatives suck and that Biden himself isnt helping. Thats one thing. But if you are in the boat of he does not have the mental acumen to run, then you have to say that you think he should resign today. This minute.
Don’t these kind of go together? If he’s so sequestered and insulated that he can’t nimbly respond to a genuine crisis in his campaign, that does communicate concerns about his ability to run the office.
Absolutely. But all these pontificators dont seem to want to go to that next logical step. They want an option C where Biden stays President but doesn't run and some miracle candidate that no one has thought of gets 80% of the popular vote in November.
I think folks are divided about whether Harris should run as an incumbent or not. There are pros and cons to both. I think she should be in the Oval Office. But it’ll be her if it happens at all.
My question to all these folks who think an incumbent should step down mid campaign know the history of such a move. How many close seats have been lost to the party who had incumbency but ran someone other than the last winning candidate. Cause i may be wrong but im pretty sure its most.
