there’s a sort of absolutist logic to the idea that if he’s unfit to campaign now, he’s unfit to serve now, and that means now, right now, that i can (sort of) begrudgingly respect, but if the purpose of that is fidelity and duty to the country, you simply cannot handwave away the chaos that follows
yeah we've already got enough chaos with just a candidate swap, trying to also have Kamala immediately become the President is a whole other level of chaos and room for ratfuckery
also "Biden can't do the job four more years" and "Biden can't do the job four more months" are different things
what it comes down to for me on every level is pragmatism
if Kamala gives us a better chance to win, swap in Kamala
but I am extremely unconvinced that Biden also resigning the presidency will help her more than hurt her given the resulting chaos
if he’s not going to run he should simply say “i will focus on finishing out my term, and kamala will be our nominee. trump is an existential threat, and stopping him is too important” and that’s that imo
the problem is that unless the bottom drops out—or it is clear behind closed doors that the debate performance was not an anomaly and it will only get worse—“does Kamala give us a better chance to win?” does not have a definitive answer.
status quo, I wouldn’t risk the unknown unknowns w/ a swap.
Long ago I was at a college parli debate tournament, one team brought "logically defend atheism, theism, or agnosticism."
The opp team chose agnosticism, and the gov team clearly hadn't thought anyone would voluntarily say "I don't know and neither do you."
Somehow thought of that this week.
Him flat out resigning would be catastrophic. If, IF, he decides to drop out of the race the reasoning has to be “I can be president or I can campaign, but for the good of the country and democracy I cannot do both, so Kamala is taking over as the Dem nominee.”
I just keep thinking that if he does decide not to run, he has to pull the party behind him like he did in the 2020 primary. If he can do that, it will quell most of the chaos. (Still doubt he will drop out though)
I was all for it until someone pointed out that the House has to sign off on a new VP and until they do, we are one bullet from President Mike Johnson.
serwer’s argument is explicitly that he is both unfit to campaign and unfit to serve, effective immediately. unless, of course, he’s wrong, in which case, he’s happy to correct.
