forgetting that the house has to weigh in on this (and adding it as a one-off after the fact without noting it) is a pretty fucking critical omission, man, it is not a small thing, it changes the entire scope of outcomes.
That was added in the last 20 minutes. The next sentence for me (on the copy of the page I loaded before writing that comment) changes topics entirely.
if i were under the impression that the senate and only the senate had to confirm a new VP for harris were biden to resign, i might be more amenable to the argument, but that isn’t the case, and that makes the entire case *significantly* weaker
the biden should not only step aside, but resign, seems somehow even weirder to me. like why on earth do you think biden is going to be willing to do both of those things. and why is that now your marker?
i like sewer and find him usually clear headed but man oh man
there’s a consistent logic that if he’s unable to campaign, he’s unable to lead — i legit think that’s a better faith argument than most are making. but, boy, to just handwave away the house entirely and blithely mention that you can bypass the filibuster in the senate is something else.
and in addition to having a R majority, the House is much more likely to just completely refuse to do it because it's full of maniacs
whereas in the Senate you probably get Romney and Murkowski and maybe a couple others to straight up vote to confirm even if you have to change the filibuster rules
this is where my brain starts throwing sparks, because the logic of “biden must step down and also must resign” is consistent but the immediately, extremely predictable outcome of that is total fucking chaos
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
I would have more respect for these takes if they took the enormous risks of their idea seriously instead of just acting like it's self evidently the only possible right choice
one of the things I have tried to make extremely clear in my posts about this over the last few days is that I have no fucking clue what the right path is and neither does anyone else
this is an unprecedented situation with no good options and we're all flying blind
everything is risky as hell
yeah thats like a big part of what i wish people would acknowledge. there's no magic wand out and pretending there is as a thought leader is deeply wrong. people with power should use it to inform not delude.
like part of this is, these are not real journalists (which ofc doesn't matter given the idiots who are), but like they should be using their platform to layout why the party and joe biden should take these risks vs the risks of him stayin in, and that requires you to be honest about those risks
I think Biden stepping aside is all downsides. Hell there is even a super bad downside: republican legislatures using it as a reason to deny whoever replaces him ballot access.
The only downside of him staying in is he falls of a cliff cognitively and that has a negative impact on the campaign
Him having to step down is bad, regardless of when it happens, and in my eyes giving the press months to attack whoever replaces him is far worse. And they will attack whoever replaces him without mercy.
