Am obviously just one of many many reporters getting their phones blown up by elite Dems in positions of influence, power, money freaking the fuck out tonight. All I’ll say before pivoting to writing copy is this is Not the usual bed wetting, Biden should step aside fan fic.
Tonight was different
If you are someone who wants to argue Biden has survived before and proved the doubters completely wrong a number of times, fine. I’m just relaying what is happening in the corridors of Democratic power rn, and it’s extremely, no-shit panicky in a significant way.
Kinda, yeah. If all we got was Biden being a jerk to Trump and throwing in "What are you talking about, jack?"s it would have been better than what we got.
Except it’s too late. There was a chance for a concerted push to get Biden to step aside. The kind of people who are now freaking out were likely among those loudly objecting to that possibility, saying instead it’s Biden or bust.
The hard truth about that is the right has done a really nasty job of sliming Kamala over the last four years, so she’s inviable as a general election candidate, and you can’t simply pass her over, especially for the dreamy midwestern white candidate Axelrod, et al, are imagining in their heads.
This is very true. With a more popular VP (and Harris’s unpopularity is a product of both smears/bigotry and her own political ineptitude, though maybe she’s getting better), we would have heard a lot more calls for Biden to step aside months ago.
Exactly and that’s why it was always insane to nominate Biden in the first place knowing this was on the horizon. Voluntarily giving up incumbent advantage is political malpractice
We could've done Bernie or Warren in 2020 (or, hell, both - a Warren/Bernie ticket would've KILLED), still won, and been in a *lot* better position right now.
You mis-typed “2016.” Could have avoided the whole clusterfuck. Run a populist against a populist.
And if he loses? Oh my god, you as a neoliberal Democrat now own the next three decades (as happened with McGovern)
These craven invertebrates could have spoken up a year ago when it might have made a real difference, and now they’re pissing their pants like little babies.
This.
I'm not happy Biden is running again. I wasn't happy he was running again before tonight. But if he wasn't running again, he should've been grooming a successor 2+ years ago, and the night after a bad debate is the wrong time to change horses. People who had his ear should've said something.
Well they just trotted Kamala out on CNN to try to force feed people the idea that Biden did well and that he's still a strong candidate. Surely that'll help
almost certainly not. they barely even had anyone running against him in the primaries and it's completely unclear who they might even replace him with
theoretically, yes, they could ignore the primaries and the 99% of total delegates pledged for biden, reverse course, plan an open convention where delegates vote for whoever they want, and there's a tiny chance they wouldn't just choose biden again. but realistically i find the idea impossible
that's not to say i don't want them to do that or wouldn't prefer to live in the timeline where some non-terrible candidate gets picked, i just think its vastly outnumbered by those in which they stick with biden and/or somehow make things even worse with a brokered convention
that would require them to either postpone the convention significantly or unite around another candidate in the next two weeks, neither of which i consider likely at all. is it possible? sure. a better option? probably. i just don't think any of them will be able to come to a consensus
i don't really agree! maybe if there was more time than a couple of weeks, maybe if it'd been the plan since the get-go but it's hard for me to see a voters and DNC insiders rallying around a candidate who was seen as uncharismatic and unpopular even outside such an unprecedented shift in candidates
assuming it was an entirely free and consequenceless choice, which is to say ignoring any potential blowback that could arise from changing up so late, i would not choose biden over basically anyone. i wouldn't be particularly excited for harris but i'd prefer basically anyone who wasn't an 80 y.o.
Just theoretically... if he drops out after the convention... it would be Kamala.
That's the only realistic option of 'someone else' that Democrats have. Any other idea is just wishful thinking.