Bernie Sanders: Joe Biden for President
mozz@mbin.grits.dev to 
nytimes.com
I hate that this is the debate we’re having now
I also hate that I’m feeding into the NYT’s lazy and transparent attempt to undo their previous partisanship with new opposite partisanship like those two things cancel out and add up to journalism
But what the hell, if that’s where we’re at, this is a relevant data point about the landscape
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~Fuck yeah~ (Edit: I had misread the last part of the comment I was replying to)
If he’s too old and someone else is better, then let’s do someone else. Figure out the plan, rock and roll with it, and get moving. Maybe Biden will or won’t be on board for that but that’s on him at that point.
But this idea that in response to a transparently partisan hit job, Biden is supposed to wander away from the campaign a few seconds before the motorcycle hits the jump-ramp and hope the most incompetent single faction in Washington puts together a last-minute clutch plan for victory - when they JUST DEMONSTRATED that they are gullible to bad ideas being force-fed to them by their enemies, and are in all likelihood going to bumble around trying to nominate Michelle Obama, or suddenly blame the whole mess on Biden for resigning, or whatever the fuck they do, for a while before finally just putting Kamala in place and watching her crash and burn because few of the problems Biden was facing were caused by anything about Biden - is absurd, and Biden is right to laugh it out of the room and continue campaigning.
Figure out an actual plan which you can pitch in all these anguished op-eds, or start trying to poach his delegates to usurp him, or fuckin do SOMETHING other than running around doing your best to lose the election
I think the main issue is that it would be much, much better if Biden stepped aside willingly. As in, better enough that it will significantly impact election results. I think this is largely a pressure campaign to get him to do that.
The problem is that many of us believe that Biden is our best hope even still.
If we had a strong candidate that we felt could rally the party this late in the game, that would be one thing. But IMO, we don't. Every potential candidate has major hurdles that would take more than 4 months to smooth out.
Newsom is already the Right's boogeyman. They targeted him years ago and made him the next Hillary Clinton because they saw him as a threat. I think he's a generally strong Dem candidate for the future, but the Right has managed to brute force negativity to his name that it's going to take some time to fight.
Harris just isn't well liked. She's a bit of a dead fish candidate. I have no idea what she has been up to, all interviews I've seen of her, she holds her cards very close to her chest, and because of it, comes off bland and uninteresting. I do not see her doing well against Trump at this point.
Whitmer just isn't recognizable enough at large. She'd need more time to establish herself.
Honestly, despite the very legitimate concerns with Biden after the debate and following appearances, he's still the strongest candidate IMO. There could have been stronger candidates had he stepped down from the beginning, but the time left is insufficient for the front runner candidates, even if we picked one today.
I understand that a lot of people still think Biden is the best foot forward, but he's losing right now and nobody has been able to even give me an outline of how that could get turned around. I can think of no realistic strategy for getting the concerns around his mental fitness to go away.
You only flip the board when you're losing, and we're losing. Yes, switching candidates is a risk, but polls suggest it's a viable, calculated one.
He's not. He's in a statistical tie in the polls, even when looking at swing states. And that assumes the polls are accurate.
Just yesterday I got a text message to "take a poll". I'm not clicking on any link texted to me, so I won't show up in any of those polls. Also, I don't pick up any numbers that I don't know. They're 90% scams and the rest are wrong numbers.
There's no way for a pollster to get my opinion because they rely on methods from last century.
I hope you're right, but if the margin between the polls and election day is similar to how it was in 2016 and 2020 then Biden is about to get blown out.
Ranked Choice voting would give people more options, giving us more chances to beat trump.
I think that's a fair opinion that I just disagree with. Right now, we're in a very awkward situation that doesn't have much precedent to rely on, so no one really has much to rely on besides their instincts in public opinion, which is extremely unreliable.
I'll say that I personally disregard polling out of hand because I personally find it extremely unreliable, even when the polls are conducted with the intent of impartiality. When I also don't believe is commonly the case.
Oh we do have enough precedent: Donald Trump as a president.
I'll vote for a potato if it's our only choice to keep that deplorable from stepping into the WH again.
I meant about dropping the presumptive nominee last minute when there wasn't a real primary to have a 2nd place with momentum to fallback on
I know what you meant. My point is that we don't need to have a precedent for a scenario that will clearly fail. I don't like Biden. I'd prefer Bernie. But at this point, if he drops the race (which he won't), Trump will win. And screw that.
Nope.
If trump were forced out as candidate, then he'd go thermonuclear and destroy the Republicans.
If Biden were forced out as candidate, he'd get a heads up and claim it was his idea and work with the party to transition.
There's no way he'd leave kicking and screaming, though at the same time unless it was a done deal, he's going to claim to be 100% in, cause the second he starts to show any doubt, he's already destroyed his campaign.
If he does this, we'll lose to Trump.
Google "professor who correctly predicted almost all presidential elections."