Will Joe Biden Drop Out of the Presidential Race

[meiam]

Biden is far from anybody idea of an ideal candidate, but ideal candidate don't win democracy. As much as it suck to hear for people who supported Bernie, he was going to lose the election hard, everything point to that simple conclusion (just check the poll). If the left wing of the dem really wanted to have a shoot at winning the election, they should have forced Bernie to drop and congregated around Warren, who actually had a fig leaf at winning the presidential election.

The youth vote does not vote, plain and simple. If a candidate key strategy is to capture the group that vote the less and ignore the vote that actual shows up, they'll lose hard. Modern election are won by getting your side to show up and the other side not to. Bernie wasn't able to get his side to show up during the primary and odds are very good he would have been excellent at getting republican to show up during the election.

You need to find a candidate whose just good enough for your side to show up but not so bad that he/she will energize the other side, and that's Biden, not Bernie.

 

[Seanchaidh]

If the left wing of the dem really wanted to have a shoot at winning the election, they should have forced Bernie to drop and congregated around Warren, who actually had a fig leaf at winning the presidential election.

She couldn't even come second in the state she represents as a senator. No, this is absurd. And kind of off-topic.

 

[fOx]

You know, ignoring the ethics for a moment, I'm curious why on earth anyone thinks that people are going to come out in droves to support Biden. Who is he supposed to be popular with?

Even the democrats aren't excited for him. It's not as bad as it was with clinton, but it's not good. No one is actually excited to vote for biden. Everyone just sees it as a duty. No one supports biden. Not even obama. They only oppose trump. What great message is biden even fighting for? If he wasn't obama's VP, he wouldn't be here at all. And there's the problem. Even if he could energize the base, that's not enough. You need to win over moderate voters. They're a third of the electorate. It's not enough to just have higher party turnout. People who believe otherwise have their head in the sand. Obama was able to do that. Biden can't. And "not being trump" isn't enough to win over moderates, who don't hate him as much as democrats do. People are deluding themselves into thinking that biden will be a shoe in, and its baffling.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

As much as it suck to hear for people who supported Bernie, he was going to lose the election hard, everything point to that simple conclusion (just check the poll).

What poll? If anything Biden was in big trouble until South Carolina. Bernie was dangerously close to snowballing Super Tuesday, but lost thanks to some DNC shenanigans, coordinated dropouts, and the media pushing the unelectability narrative. Bernie's core was the youth, but he was beating Biden, or polling dangerously close in Biden's firewall, and winning undecided/Biden supporters, ironically wary of Biden's unelectability.

What's stopping Biden supports/#nevertrump from voting Sanders? Nothing. When the media can control the conversation, they can paint Bernie Sanders as some communist/populist for inexperienced youths promising everything but delivering nothing, and then put a scary number next to his healthcare plan despite the status quo being more costly in the long run.

Keep pumping out hit pieces until you create the illusion of consensus. Smart chess man says Sanders is dangerous. Don't repeat my mistake like I did with McGovern. Corporate media? No such thing. We have enormous influence on the election process and can kill a presidential run for a simple gaff, but we would never do that, right?

All the sudden, Sanders doesn't sound so great anymore. You feel special for rejecting Sanders, like you have some special knowledge that puts you in the grownups section. They couldn't let Sanders win, not because of 2016, or that he was going to hand the victory to Trump, but because he was going to end the private health insurance industry.

 

[tstorm823]

That is not even remotely true about the elderly. Most of the elderly believe in the COVID-19 threat and many of them have lost loved ones due to their group being the highest risk, they also know many of the people actually dying here personally. I have been helping arrange care package drop offs here locally for elderly who should not leave their houses right now and they really are afraid right now and have good reason to be. It isn't the elderly storming the Michigan protesting the lockdown here.

It's the aged that are calling for reopening the country, it skews older.

Both of these things are true. People are pretty selfless. There are a lot of older people of the mindset that they are the risk and they know it and they have to be careful BUT they don't want to be the burden that shuts down everyone else's lives.

There was a Republican that got mocked for saying there are more important things than living, because the internet just pretended he thought money was more important than human life, but the rest of the sentence was that keeping the country together for his grandchildren was worth more than he was.

 

[Gordon_4]

When the DNC lose this election - and they will lose it - they should perhaps think about asking Martin Sheen to run for 2024 in-character as Jed Bartlett from The West Wing. Hell if Paul Eddington wasn’t long dead I’d suggest he stand for the British Parliament, likewise in-character as Jim Hacker.

I mean they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than the current crops could they?

 

[fOx]

Both of these things are true. People are pretty selfless. There are a lot of older people of the mindset that they are the risk and they know it and they have to be careful BUT they don't want to be the burden that shuts down everyone else's lives.

There was a Republican that got mocked for saying there are more important things than living, because the internet just pretended he thought money was more important than human life, but the rest of the sentence was that keeping the country together for his grandchildren was worth more than he was.

I mean, the actual issue is that the senator in question wouldn't be making the sacrifice. He's asking to open up society, putting large families and the elderly at risk, while he's assiredly able to practice social distancing himself. And if he somehow did get sick, he'd have access to the absolute best medical care and insurance available. It's a bougie rich guy who won't have to feel the brunt of his actions.

 

[SupahEwok]

I mean, the actual issue is that the senator in question wouldn't be making the sacrifice. He's asking to open up society, putting large families and the elderly at risk, while he's assiredly able to practice social distancing himself. And if he somehow did get sick, he'd have access to the absolute best medical care and insurance available. It's a bougie rich guy who won't have to feel the brunt of his actions.

Pedant notice, just cuz somebody else is gonna act like it's a point eventually: it was the Lt. Governor of Texas.

 

[meiam]

What poll? If anything Biden was in big trouble until South Carolina. Bernie was dangerously close to snowballing Super Tuesday, but lost thanks to some DNC shenanigans, coordinated dropouts, and the media pushing the unelectability narrative. Bernie's core was the youth, but he was beating Biden, or polling dangerously close in Biden's firewall, and winning undecided/Biden supporters, ironically wary of Biden's unelectability.

What's stopping Biden supports/#nevertrump from voting Sanders? Nothing. When the media can control the conversation, they can paint Bernie Sanders as some communist/populist for inexperienced youths promising everything but delivering nothing, and then put a scary number next to his healthcare plan despite the status quo being more costly in the long run.

Keep pumping out hit pieces until you create the illusion of consensus. Smart chess man says Sanders is dangerous. Don't repeat my mistake like I did with McGovern. Corporate media? No such thing. We have enormous influence on the election process and can kill a presidential run for a simple gaff, but we would never do that, right?

All the sudden, Sanders doesn't sound so great anymore. You feel special for rejecting Sanders, like you have some special knowledge that puts you in the grownups section. They couldn't let Sanders win, not because of 2016, or that he was going to hand the victory to Trump, but because he was going to end the private health insurance industry.

The voter who supported the people who dropped out were free to vote for whoever they wanted, they chose to mostly support Biden. I don't see how that's shananigans. "Damn those democrat bigwig, we would have won, if only it wasn't for those damn voter voting for the wrong candidate". The moderate vote were split among many candidate, most of them dropout and so the moderate all voted for whoever they wanted from the remaining candidate (ie mostly Biden). If Bernie can only win when his opponent vote is split, he's going to have a very bad time in the actual election. If you really believe that Bernie only lost because other candidate dropped out, that means you believe Bernie would have lost in a straight up Biden V Bernie vote in the democratic primary, whose electorate is much more left wing than the actual election.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

that means you believe Bernie would have lost in a straight up Biden V Bernie vote in the democratic primary, whose electorate is much more left wing than the actual election.

Of course (assuming Biden's allegations aren't brought to the center stage early on), but both candidates were projected to beat Trump. There is no electability issue. The democratic base will vote for Bloomberg in the general election if they have to, and that's directly admitting the system is an oligarchy.

I don't have any disdain for voters. Given imperfect information, you have to vote for the best candidate. Why would you vote for Sanders if you're told all his plans are unfeasible and that he will bring the country tens of trillions more into debt.

Biden wins big, and it's a miraculous comeback, but when Sanders wins, the headline is, "The Real Winner, Trump". When Sanders is the frontrunner, the democratic process is failing, but when Biden emerges victorious in South Carolina all things are right in the world.

The Biden campaign was responsible for calling the recount in Iowa, perhaps to obfuscate his terrible results. Yet the finger wasn't pointed at him, but rather the democratic party of Iowa. Sanders winning and Biden on life support was a "shameful showing for democrats" with "no real good candidates". Once it was painfully obvious who the frontrunner was, they wanted you to vote for Biden to avoid a brokered election.

Why does Biden get no hard questions? Why is he hidden from the public view, and the only reason we know about Biden's alleged dementia is because of Trump supporters memeing and shouting in the comment section, if there is one?

they chose to mostly support Biden

Of course, so undecided voters would have very little time to make up their mind and vote for their recommended candidate, Biden.

 

[Silvanus]

If you really believe that Bernie only lost because other candidate dropped out, that means you believe Bernie would have lost in a straight up Biden V Bernie vote in the democratic primary, whose electorate is much more left wing than the actual election.

Not necessarily. Sanders routinely polled better among voters without party alignment (y'know, the most valuable ones to convince in a General).

 

[Seanchaidh]

Another good article about Tara Reade, though it doesn't really go as in-depth as the Current Affairs one I already posted. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tara-reade-biden-allegations/

Didn't Clinton win like 17 states, not 2?

If "no one" were a candidate for president, they'd have won 2016 in a landslide.

 

[tstorm823]

I mean, the actual issue is that the senator in question wouldn't be making the sacrifice. He's asking to open up society, putting large families and the elderly at risk, while he's assiredly able to practice social distancing himself. And if he somehow did get sick, he'd have access to the absolute best medical care and insurance available. It's a bougie rich guy who won't have to feel the brunt of his actions.

The man is 70 years old. He's talking about himself. He's not thinking "I've got money, that makes me immune to death!" Because that's stupid. If anything, the opposite is true. He's old and well off and still working, he's basically unaffected by the shut down personally. Getting things moving again is much riskier for him than staying shut down.

 

[SupahEwok]

The man is 70 years old. He's talking about himself. He's not thinking "I've got money, that makes me immune to death!" Because that's stupid. If anything, the opposite is true. He's old and well off and still working, he's basically unaffected by the shut down personally. Getting things moving again is much riskier for him than staying shut down.

Nah.

You're omiting that he's a high public official in Texas, so lemme tell you how Texas works. The biggest political power is not the Governor, or even Lt. Governor (who in some ways has greater political power than the Governor). It's the Railroad Commission. Contrary to its name, it hasn't had anything to do with railroads in years. They run Texas' oil and gas industry.

The TRC just voted to not reduce oil production, despite literally everything about it cratering. They're pushing to keep Texas' biggest industry churning, pandemic or no pandemic.

The TRC Commissioners lean on the Governor and Lt. Governor even in normal times, to look after their interests. There is no way that the TRC weren't a big factor in their decision making for rhetoric and reopening the state.

 

[Hawki]

If "no one" were a candidate for president, they'd have won 2016 in a landslide.

Considering that about 40% of the population voted in 2016, arguably "no-one" won.

Fun fact, according to the Wikipedia chart, the percentage of the US population that's voted has never reached 50% in an election. The chart acknowledges issues such as property rights, slavery, women's sufferage and Jim Crow, but even so, geez...

 

[Schadrach]

He absolutely should, though I do fear who they'd replace him with a bit.

Obviously they wouldn't just move to second place - to abuse lil devil's analogy, that would allow Bernie Baggins to bring the ring to Mt. Doom. They can't have that.

Realistically, they'd find a different "safe" neoliberal who won't get much done to replace him with. Who will utterly fail to inspire turnout, and thus probably lose.

Anyone who seriously thinks Biden will drop out when he has no more challengers does not understand anything about politics.

I thought one of those "moral high ground" things about Democrats was pushing people with sexual misconduct allegations against them out of public service? I remember you ranting about absolutely definitely a rapist Kavanaugh and how he shouldn't be allowed into office on the basis of the allegations against him. I guess it's #BelieveWomenWhoHarmRepublicans rather than #BelieveWomen?

Republicans have lost any "moral high ground" for our lifetimes over this already.

Yeah, but Republicans don't claim to hold it, unless their making an overt claim as to their own religious piety, you know like certain folks a certain religious figure used as an example of how not to behave.

It is far more likely that a drunk, obnoxious college guy did something stupid and terrible at a party and not even remember it

At a party that occurred at at a time and place she doesn't recall that she doesn't recall how she got to or from and that the people she claimed were present don't remember ever being at a party with both of them present and that her friend that she named as someone who would back her story both doesn't recall the party and had never met Kavanaugh? So basically every detail of her claim either lacks details that could potentially be used to corroborate it (for example if you had a more narrow time range than "sometime that summer" you could potentially determine what Kavanaugh was supposedly up to at the time and look into that, if she knew how she got home it could possibly provide another witness [if she got a ride] or a proximate location which could be used to narrow down when and where and other potential witnesses) or is contradicted when those details are examined (for example, the other people she claimed were there not recalling being at a party with both Kavanaugh and Ford whatsoever, with her friend also claiming to have never met Kavanaugh before at all).

 

[Silvanus]

Yeah, but Republicans don't claim to hold it, unless their making an overt claim as to their own religious piety, you know like certain folks a certain religious figure used as an example of how not to behave.

Oh, they most certainly do. "Drain the swamp", "lock her up", etc are all appeals to a non-existent cleaner alternative.

For that matter, so is the manufactured outrage over the "deplorables" comment. The Republicans went to town on how much the left has supposedly debased political discourse-- before proceeding to debase it more than the left could have ever dreamed.

This is why Trump apologists do not outwardly revel in his corruption; they just endlessly deny it, beyond all credibility.

 

[meiam]

Of course, so undecided voters would have very little time to make up their mind and vote for their recommended candidate, Biden.

On one hand you claim that the media constantly hammer Sadners, on the other you claim that voter have just never heard of him and so can't vote for someone other than Biden. Which is it? You think people who would have voted Pete Buttigieg in the primary have just never heard of Sanders?

Not necessarily. Sanders routinely polled better among voters without party alignment (y'know, the most valuable ones to convince in a General).

Nah, those voter are worthless, because they don't vote come election day. Like someone mentioned, less than 50% of voter actually turn up on the day of the election. Sanders does well with people who don't show up (you can look up the youth vote for the dem primary to see just how dismal it was). You gotta win people who show up and you need to avoid energizing the other side to show up. That's just how it work. You can claim all you want that if 100% of people voted Sanders would win in a landslide, but that's just not going to happen.

 

[Silvanus]

Nah, those voter are worthless, because they don't vote come election day. Like someone mentioned, less than 50% of voter actually turn up on the day of the election.

The idea that they're not worth courting is absolute bunkum.

About 38% of American adults identify as "independent". Over 40% of those will vote-- which is lower than the average for party-identifiers, but not by a huge amount, and more than enough to decide an election.

To write off a chunk of the electorate that's larger than your own party faithful or your opponent's party faithful is absolutely nonsensical.

Sanders does well with people who don't show up (you can look up the youth vote for the dem primary to see just how dismal it was). You gotta win people who show up and you need to avoid energizing the other side to show up. That's just how it work. You can claim all you want that if 100% of people voted Sanders would win in a landslide, but that's just not going to happen.

Nobody is claiming that. But when you talk about passion, and an energised electorate, what world are you living in in which Biden energises people more effectively than Sanders? Even Biden's own voters are holding their noses.

 

[tstorm823]

Oh, they most certainly do. "Drain the swamp", "lock her up", etc are all appeals to a non-existent cleaner alternative.

We are, yet again, back to the overlooked truth. Donald Trump doesn't play by Republican rules. Donald Trump follows the Democrat playbook.