I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on wisdom in this situation, but can we agree using polling as a heuristic is idiotic?
LBJ’s decision and the party intrigue that ensued led to bloody unrest in Chicago, and then Humphrey lost to Nixon—which was not a good result for America to put it mildly.
LBJ bows out and the replacement Dem candidate loses to a guy who was pretty sure he was cheated out of winning the previous presidential election in which he was the GOP nominee. Hmmm
The replacement who was only the replacement because the sure thing was assassinated 5 months after LBJ bowed out. And it's not like we have another RFK to... wait...
That’s a totally unfair comparison. It’s not like 1968, when the Dems were running against an unpopular and unethical Republican candidate, who had recently lost a closely-contested presidential election that was subsequently hit with widespread allegations of fraud…
Using polling as a heuristic is good, or at least better than vibes.
But it needs to be informative. A poll that says 57% want Biden to drop out is not meaningful unless accompanied by a question "Will you still vote for him if he doesn't?" and the responses are in the vicinity of, say,43%.
Yeah I don’t have a strong opinion on which path is better but I do think that the rush to declare the “replace Biden” as obviously correct and without very real risks is dumb
Another unnamed donor who suggests this but offers no alternative.
In the meantime, if all these opinion writers are so concerned about Biden winning the election because "too old," why aren't they suggesting he step down now? We have a capable Black woman VP . . . wait, someone handed me a note...
It's as though the newspaper demanding what kept Democrats from occupying White House for 12 of the next 16 years is owned by an oligarch who wants an oligarchy.
bsky.app/profile/nycs...
I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on wisdom in this situation, but can we agree using polling as a heuristic is idiotic?
LBJ’s decision and the party intrigue that ensued led to bloody unrest in Chicago, and then Humphrey lost to Nixon—which was not a good result for America to put it mildly.
In an 1864 speech Abraham Lincoln, in reply to a Delegation from the National Union League urging him to be their presidential candidate he said, “An old Dutch farmer, once remarked that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”
Who am I to argue with Lincoln?
The problem with Humphrey in 1968 was that out of loyalty to LBJ he refused to distance himself from Vietnam policy and the draft, which led to rejection by voters, particularly youth, who opposed the war in Vietnam.
Any resonances there?
