Atrios: Why didn't this crowd start the dump biden movement in jan 2023 when there were reasonable scenarios

bouie is literally the only person on the NYT board who is behaving and responding to the debate like a professional that has followed and covered a presidential election. i mean that seriously, i'm not being snarky.

if you actually get *paid* to write about politics for a living, screaming that the nominee has to drop out after one bad debate *in june* (and one in which the challenger did not do well, either), you are unqualified for your job and your salary

He had freaks melting down in his replies simply from asking “why wouldn’t it be Kamala then?”

Because she polls even worse than Biden. Do you want to win or be politically correct?

Biden steps down. Harris is muscled aside in favor of Andy Beshear. Jim Clyburn and other high ranking blacl Democrats says “wait a sec, why are we elevating Harris?” what happens next?

“buh you just love identity politics” doesn’t get around the fact that parties are coalitions, Harris has a real and influential constituency, and ignoring it could prove a problem.

(also, no real evidence that a non-Harris Democrat would not also be saddled by the unpopularity of the Biden administration)

right, like, the natural question to this hypothetical replacement candidate is "what would you, as president, do differently than the biden administration has done", and i doubt you find anyone willing to discuss that

people want to believe that you can just swap out biden no harm no foul, but there is nothing about this system as constituted that allows that. but rather than grapple with this, the response is basically to scream “nuh uh”

Why didn't this crowd start the dump biden movement in jan 2023 when there were reasonable scenarios

My humble opinion is that Biden beat trump. No one else has yet.

Technically Romney did in the 2012 primaries.

Let's face it, Obama beat him in the 2012 primaries. Literally and figuratively laughed him out of the race.

And then he just came back as more of a bastard the next round. And the fact that the DNC seemed unprepared for him to do just that THIS time is just baffling.

Huh?

Trump ran in 2012 largely on a birther platform before dropping out making Romney the GOP nom.

He never ran in 2012, he only slung around the birther BS. He announced in May 2011 that he wouldn't seek the nomination, well before any of the GOP primaries. It took until May 2012 for Romney to beat Newt, Ryan, and Santorum. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Re...

2012 Republican Party presidential primaries - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Because they're all part of the effort to get TFG back in. I'm all-in on Occam's Razor this year. Seven dimension chess doesn't exist and the most obvious reason is the most likely. There's no scenario where that's not the outcome, so that's what they want.

One of this crowd's key tactics is to deliberately and shamelessly stall during any period in which action is possible. Then the moment it's effectively too late to do anything, they put on a sad wide-eyed expression and say there are just no changes they can make.

I think we all know the answer to that — these are all, every last one of them, people who don't care about solutions or results whatsoever, they just want to loudly hate whatever Democrat is in power because clinging to Magical Fantasy Democrat who solves all their problems is easier.

And the second Magical Fantasy Democrat turns out to be a real person who actually wants to do the work, they immediately turn on that person. (Look at how quickly AOC fell out of favor with the Bernie Bro crowd)

Because none of the other logical picks for the nomination wanted to run

Arguably not part of ''this crowd", but @perrybaconjr.bsky.social did float the idea before then. bsky.app/profile/perr... Probably a coincidence, but he also used to work for Nate Silver, who came later to the idea but has since been obsessed with it.

Ha. Yes. I have received quite a few, "Maybe you were right" messages in the last 24 hours. But I would rather not be right about this! I wish Biden had been better. Alas. But I have been saying this since January 2022. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | If Biden doesn’t run, Democrats have plenty of strong candidates for 2024www.washingtonpost.com One of them, of course, is Kamala Harris. But she's not the only one, and that's okay.

"Its too early to call the 24 election, we cant give up the incumbent advantage! (even though we just lost the House in the Midterms) your just being a spoiler, youre actually a Trump Supporter!"

Because of the Democrat’s slavish devotion to norms, the only way to ditch Biden was, and is, to get him to drop out. Democratic leaders didn’t want to make him do that, now it is obvious they need to (but they probably still won’t).

Ok, but he’s also declined a lot in the past 18 mos.

Not that he was exactly freewheelin’ Onion Biden back in 2023. But to me it’s this frog-boiling thing where every couple of weeks he’s just a -little bit- more spaced out. I bet that if you’re too close to it, you can miss it until something forces you to see him like a normal person would.

no he hasn’t

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