Lee Drutman: I agree with @ezraklein.bsky.social. Biden is an extremely weak candidate right now. Yes, a convention fight could be divisive. But factions in the party want to have at least a say. They will rally around the winner. They understand the stakes. Go ahead, ratio me. www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/o...

I agree with @ezraklein.bsky.social. Biden is an extremely weak candidate right now. Yes, a convention fight could be divisive. But factions in the party want to have at least a say. They will rally around the winner. They understand the stakes. Go ahead, ratio me. www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/o...

Opinion | Democrats Have a Better Option Than Bidenwww.nytimes.com It requires them to embrace an old-fashioned approach to winning a campaign.

I think this is right except I don't think Biden is as weak as he's been portrayed to be

Factions are absolutely willing to sandbag nominees, e.g. Corbyn in the U.K. The Democratic party is not well structured to do this and giving up the democratic legitimacy conferred by primaries is a huge drawback.

Give me a specific scenario in which that happens in 2024.

Candidate A wins. Supporters of Candidate B and C don't get what they feel are enough policy and staff line concessions, so they're less aggressive with fundraising, surrogate work, transferring campaign assets, etc. Pretty standard internal coalition friction b.s.

OK. That's abstract. Be specific.

I'm not sure what you mean. You could plug candidate names into the scenario, but we're talking about fantasy baseball politics here.

I mean, say Whitmer is the nominee, not Kamala. Do you really believe Kamala's people will tank Whitmer and try to hand the election to Trump?

I love that you’re taking the accepted conventional wisdom and presenting it as some sort of gutsy bold take. WOW, so brave for you to boldly say what pretty much everyone already knows.

Same person who said "I, for one, am glad to see Dean Phillips running for president."? Never change, Lee!

Biden would have made a great Cincinnatus and that's what I bargained for when I signed up.

im just here for the comments.

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