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
Trump led her by six points in the Times poll and five points in the Fox News one. Biden trailed Trump in those polls, too: by four points in each. So Harris fares only one or two points worse than Biden in polls with margins of sampling error that are much larger than that
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.
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”
Plus the Republican noise machine can now make any Democrat a monster to their base and “divisive” to elite opinion in a matter of days. It used to take them months, then weeks.
I’m disappointed that the thinking from the start wasn’t Biden does a single transition term, lean on a strong/talented coalition (which we actually have!), and set Harris up to be top of ticket this year. Would be nice to have a party that understands math and linear time.
We're not talking about the day-to-day anymore. It's how to keep Trump out if the White House.
I'm sure whoever Biden would hypothetically hand it to could easily say, "nothing! I'm hoping to continue the great work he's done and honor his legacy" and then go do 10x the campaigning Biden can atp.
I’m torn on this question and think you’re making a compelling serious argument. But I will say the one bit of evidence we *do* have that a non Biden D would not be saddled with the unpopularity is that D’s are polling like 5-7 points ahead of Biden in basically every statewide race.
Why are people even considering this? It's bizarre to me. Biden's been perceived as a shambling corpse for basically his entire presidency, but there's also no clear substitute that can be produced at this time. I assumed everyone understood that a Guy Who Acts Old is what we were getting?
But isn’t that an unfair comparison, since they don’t have the MSM or Republican $ gunning for them the same way they are Biden? All Democratic politicians start to lose popularity when they become the main grist in the conservative/MSM mill.
Let Biden do his thing. All of you have your knickers twisted into knots! This is the time to stand behind him, NOT abandon him. He's had our backs for 4 years and the best Dems can do is run around like blue arse flies looking to replace him.
But don't you think that dropping the incumbent -whose record isn't actually bad in many areas - 5 months before the election is kind of the stupidest thing any party could do? It screams we have no idea what we're doing.
C'mon.
Once Whitmer (or whoever) becomes the national nominee, people will start picking at her resume and Republicans who didn't care when she was just a governor will now hate her.
It's just like Hillary being popular as a Senator and Sec of State, but as a prez candidate, her negatives shot up.
The statewide contenders do not get the 24/7 onslaught of right wing media fury that President Biden receives. Even someone they despise as much as Gavin Newsom gets a fraction of the attention President Biden does.
Any replacement moves to the #1 position, & polling will go down accordingly
Has anyone polled how the democratic base—Black people—would feel about having the incumbent president and his Black VP tossed in the garbage in favor of "Non Biden D"?
If someones position is that Joe Biden needs to drop out for the sake of the nation, but that Trump is fine to stay in, they're not a serious person, because Trump has no business managing a book club, let alone a nation-state. But Dems must do the right thing and be adults, and Repubs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Trump could fuck the wives of the editors of all the major newspapers on live TV and they’d still ask Biden to resign because they hate him more. Like Israelis hatred of Palestinians and Palestinians hatred of Israelis, there’s something more sinister and sectarian about their dissonance.
Meanwhile CNN continues to get away with their farcical attempts at hosting Trump. No real time fact checks. Leading questions. If America does become a dictatorship, they need to take some of the blame for facilitating Trump’s propaganda and for missing the ethical dilemma of enabling a rapist.
The sheer glee of Biden’s failure by his spin Dr’s. on CNN, despite Trump being a truly awful candidate, shows that US politics is all about the oppression of one group of Americans over another not the seeking of compromise for an alternative point of view. This will lead to violence. Lots of it.
It's probably easier to be popular in one state than 25 states. I also think Biden is subject to disapproval from both the right (often labeled moderate) AND the left of his own party.
Look, you all can go round and round on this all you want, the people who aren't partisans are not going to vote for the guy who was on stage last night, no matter how absurd Trump is, he looked vibrant and did not seem diminished
To casual voters, independents, and undecideds, that will matter
The median outcome is going through the pain of a renomination process, getting Mayor Pete up there then a bunch of polls are like yep still Trump +2, sorry, bud
Also, like, if Harris also couldn’t win, doesn’t that kinda run counter to the whole “Biden is a uniquely bad candidate fumbling an easy win because of his age” argument that is the whole premise for replacing him on the ballot anyway?
