Philip Bump: The reason pundits like the contested convention thing is that it plays to their vanities: what if the smart people made a meritocratic decision about who’s best? This is driven, in part, by being mostly isolated from negative reactions to their opinions over the years.

The reason pundits like the contested convention thing is that it plays to their vanities: what if the smart people made a meritocratic decision about who’s best? This is driven, in part, by being mostly isolated from negative reactions to their opinions over the years.

I can’t imagine asserting with unwavering confidence that I knew who was or wasn’t the best candidate against Trump.

I see— important that the candidate has “the confidence of the party elite.” Not the base.

When asked to vote for Biden-Harris in the primaries, 90% of Dems said yes. That’s 90% more than anyone else being offered.

Not to quibble over maths, but it's over 800% more than anyone else.

Percent, percentage points, tomato, tomahto

Still not true. He was 83.8%pt. above Dean Phillips. You might think I'm splitting hairs when the majority was of the same order (after correcting for your initial misstatement), but given the urge over the last few days to explain the primaries system to an international audience, this does matter.

Slightly flawed metric anyway given that no one seriously ran as a challenger but you know, too late now

Nobody of serious mind wanted to walk face-first into the buzzsaw of offering a primary challenge to a successful President who was widely popular in his own party. That's not an argument /against/ Biden's strength as a candidate.

There was an organized campaign around uncommitted, and it got ~10%, basically the same as Obama faced in 2012 when there wasn’t an organized campaign.

The same elites who never retire, who keep telling us to hold our nose and keep turning out to vote for their picks.

If we are going to live in an imaginary world why don’t we just be unsentimental about making Donald Trump just disappear.

Well, depending on what SCOTUS says tomorrow...

Also, I haven't seen anyone in the "keep Biden" camp arguing from a place anywhere close to sentimentality.

In fact, sentimentality seems to be the hallmark of the people taking wild flights of fancy.

I am

Ed reveals himself as the persona behind the secretive masked politician known only as Generic Democrat

You left off the “Spartacus” part

Glad to hear you assert your case for who is.

wait, you're a foreigner like me! are you suggesting the USA should invite the British back?

Agree, and also: a democracy that depends on voters picking the person who has the most chance of winning, as opposed to the person they want to govern, is not much of a democracy. [consider this an indictment of 2-party system, electoral college, campaign finance, etc, etc, etc]

Anyone who didn't learn the lesson of 2016 -- none of us have any idea what the hell is going on -- should never be allowed to express an opinion about politics ever again.

Is there literally no one who understands that they all have different imaginary people? And that no real person competes with their imaginary person?

"we must save democracy by having the party elite pick the next president"

That's exactly what happened the day after the 2020 South Carolina presidential primary. The elite pressed all the candidates save Biden to drop out. www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/u...

How ‘Never Bernie’ Voters Threw In With Biden and Changed the Primary (Published 2020)www.nytimes.com After Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire and Nevada, his campaign hit a roadblock: a wide range of Democrats who would do anything to stop him. Joe Biden became their vehicle.

It's funny how a bunch of the same people who railed about party elites conspiring to exclude Bernie are now all-in for having the party elite pick the next candidate.

I have not seen this from leftists or Bernie supporters. I’ve only seen this take from centrist liberals

Lol, nah.

Well, they picked the current one

They have zero concept of epistemic humility.

Obsolete dogma indeed.

And this isn't even fully that. It's just "it's not Harris." I'd have a lot more respect for "Pritzker would be up by 10 points" speculation than this half-assed "these two are bad, nominate the good one."

Why are we all so faithless if not just ignorant of American political realities and resorting to vibing off?

with the good one being 'Johnny Unbeatable' and not an actual named real person

The answer is simple and it's time everyone got on board.

Or maybe, more accurately, this is the right pick.

Especially asserting with unwavering cofidence not just who was the best candidate to beat Trump, but that the guy who *wasn't* is also the guy that literally beat him last time. Like what is the basis for any of this.

It helps if you proceed from your own baseless premise and let no thoughts or facts intervene.

They get paid by the word and have to say *something*. To the extent I may speak for a rural American (I am, I may), no one pays any attention, *whatsoever* to these folks who prattle on day after day with nothing really to say. Space filler.

I could honestly say this in 2016 tho.

2016 seems like a good lesson about running the Dem elite's favourite candidate against Trump

Or, perhaps, pushing the media to elevate and enable Trump as a chosen opponent to enable sellout "centrist/moderate" "favs."

Just pissing in the wind and calling it an epiphany

The fact that these thoughts come from "Obsolete Dogma" should've stopped this thread in its tracks. Stop taking users like this seriously. These are the type of idiot who still think the NYT is the "paper of record."

This is why we need a wanking-hand-gesture emoji.

Gimme a hell yeah

👊💦?

It's also not sentimentality to want the system to work the way people expected it to work when they voted! We haven't had "party leaders pick the candidate" as our system in my lifetime. We specifically downgraded superdelegates because people were pissed that they could theoretically overrule vote

We've known for this whole election that both Biden and Trump are both old, and that "something happens to one candidate's health" was therefore an elevated option, so OF COURSE Biden can be replaced IF NEEDED, but we voted on him with Harris as his designated replacement.

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