Get a Grip, Democrats. You Can Still Win This | Washington Monthly

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Get a Grip, Democrats. You Can Still Win This | Washington Monthly
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I'll say it to I'm blue in the face:

Either party can guarantee victory by running literally anyone except Biden or trump.

*Obviously not Hillary tho

If Biden steps down, trump is toast if he stays.

If trump steps down, there goes Biden's entire campaign.

The crazies want Trump.

Who are they going to vote for? If Trump isn’t the Republican candidate, you think they would vote for a Democrat?

They'd vote for Trump. We both know he wouldn't stop running. Vote splits, dems win.

The pro-trump crazies aren't the majority of the Republican party anymore.

One of them literally just shot him a couple days ago in case you haven't heard...

The pro-trump crazies aren't the majority of the Republican party anymore.

this is an underappreciated truth, but they quite clearly control the party. the dems need to give a reason for a solid majority of people to get off their asses and vote - apparently the threat of a literal fucking fascist takeover isnt quite enough.

"I'm not trump!" is typical dem fantasy BS at this point. the maga crazies taste blood and are about to frenzy feed.

this is an underappreciated truth, but they quite clearly control the party

Moderate Dems don't represent the Dem party either. But they control it.

Both parties are controlled by the most rightwing factions, even tho most of the voters don't like it.

So we end up with most people voting against someone and not for anyone.

That's how we end up with 2/3s if the country not being happy if either of the two main parties win.

Why are you so certain that people would instantly vote for a new candidate more than the incumbent president? I have only seen polls saying the exact opposite.

Regardless, time is ticking out. If a new candidate is gonna have time to build any sort of support or momentum, they need to get started yesterday and hit the ground running, the election is just getting closer.

I have only seen polls saying the exact opposite

An incumbent with what? A 34% approval rating?

Biden isn't a normal incumbent he's literally a historically unpopular incumbent...

And for months now polls have been showing a smaller gap between almost anyone else and trump.

Like, do you not understand this is Biden with the campaign and DNC behind him versus people who can't even say they're thinking about running yet?

You don't think that would give them even a 5% boost?

I've seen polling that says that Michelle Obama wins by like 20 points, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that polling.

There's so much "not Trump" feeling in this country, but running a doddering octogenarian against him decreases those people willing to vote for "not Trump". I'm absolutely voting for the Dem candidate, but I have some very real concerns about it.

There's four months to go, that's a long time to campaign. We've gotten used to these super campaigns but countries routinely hold them inside a couple months.

While the US campaign cycle is more extended than other countries', even then the people who are going to be the main candidate for their respective parties (party leaders for example) are usually known well in advance and have managed to build up a reputation with their constituents before they even start campaigning. In this situation, you'd have to start way further back.

I'm not saying it's the wrong way to go, but everyone should be aware that changing candidate to someone completely new this close to the election absolutely won't be a cakewalk.

We have plenty of party leaders. We're not starting with unknowns. The people we're talking about are 90 percent of the way there.

Dems: So hillary then? Gotcha.

Hillary with Joe as VP, then in 2028 they'll say it has to be Hillary again because for some reason no one under 70 has enough experience...

I just like reminding myself that it can always be worse.

Naw, let's really monkey paw this, Hillary/Schumer, with 3 more sham primaries. Although I'm not sure there would be a party that long if they kept going at that.

blue in the face

I'm now imagining a debate where the republican candidate is red faced screaming and the democrat candidate is turning blue due to screaming and forgetting to breathe.

I know Michelle Obama doesn't want to run, but like, please Michelle? Would you think about it? Things are getting pretty desperate here. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/03/michelle-obama-would-beat-trump/74289680007/

If you really don't want to do it, you could just win handily and then resign the first day and hand it off to someone else.

I'm also surprised at how much worse some Biden alternates do in the polling given people's reported desire for a switch, but maybe in time they'd have a higher support ceiling than Biden as people get more familiar with them.

What a lot of news doesn't report is the Undecided/Don't Know category grows in lockstep with the drop in existing support for these other names. Trump's support stays locked on at ~40-44 percent. So what's really happening is a name brand gap. Some people just don't know these other candidates and that's easily solvable with four months and the DNC's entire war chest.

That could certainly be the case, I was trying to get at that with the second part of the comment. I'll link the poll below directly for people where that can be seen easier. I wish we had some more people who already could poll better though. I was also hoping that Trump's support might drop some with some of the other choices though, with some moving to the not sure category when a different democrat was proposed. Unfortunately it was looking like the "not sure" people are mostly coming from the previously Biden category, with Trump staying locked in at 40 like he is with Biden, or even higher for some of them. Michelle Obama was the only to get that to drop, and only to 39%.

The "wouldn't vote category" also dropped by a percent or 2 for some of them, so a few voters at least might be pulled of the sideline with a new candidate if they can manage to keep all the Biden voters. It was pretty impressive for Michelle Obama again, lowering from 8% to 4% not voting for the poll-takers in the case of Michelle Obama. She seems to pull her extra support over Biden from the current "won't vote" and third party voters. Some of the other potentials also peeled off a percent or two from the third party voters too into the not sure category. These are the people that really need to be convinced if we're going to beat Trump, and some of them at least seem to at least think about it when a new democrat is proposed.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/only-michelle-obama-bests-trump-alternative-biden-2024

Then name a name.

Who has that kind of charisma and name recognition, with no baggage, that they can storm in like the Koolaid man and take this election?

No? Yeah, I didn't think so. You have been shitting on Biden every thread, even non-Biden related posts, for this entire election year and have never offered an alternative.

You'd have to be blind not to see the news articles dropping names for the past few weeks.

Whitmer

Newsom

Shapiro

Walz

Buttigieg

Generic Democrat

Even Harris polls better than Biden

Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Buttigieg all don't have the nationwide name recognition needed to hit the ground running with so little time before elections.

Newsom only has name recognition because the Right has been demonizing him for years because they recognized him as a threat. We'd just have a repeat of Hillary.

I'm not saying that these wouldn't make decent candidates in a normal Primary time frame. But it would spell disaster to pivot to any of these candidates this late in the race.

Four months is not "so little time". And I agree that Shapiro and Walz have branding issues, but 4 months, the entire news media and DNC war chest would be enough to solve that. Newsom doesn't have nearly the baggage Hillary had either. Hillary had baggage going back to 1992. Newsom has baggage from ~5 years ago? At that point there's no one qualified to run, not even Biden.

It's short enough time that a new nominee would literally be disqualified from the ballot in some states.

The only state that requires certification before the convention is Ohio. A state we aren't counting on and have little to no chance to win unless we suddenly run Reagan 2.0.

There's 49 other states that would still be in play, including all of the normal blue states and swing states.

Ohio even passed a special exception to extend the deadline to after the convention, though it's unclear from the news I read whether there might be some risk of it being overturned by the court if Democrats needed it.

Oh I don't think anyone is really depending on Ohio to keep its word on that. But there's definitely a cursed timeline where Harris is the nominee out of the convention, Ohio withdraws their promise, and Democrats get close enough with a write in campaign that it's plausible she would have taken Ohio. Cue more political violence.

At any rate I'm sure that has no chance of happening in our timeline, none whatsoever. Definitely not.

Well, they did pass the law. It's just whether it can be invalidated in courts because they poisoned it with a provision to bar permanent residents (green card holders) from contributing to campaigns, which is likely unconstitutional. In a normal world, the individual ban would be thrown out, as it doesn't really have anything to do with ballot registration, but there's little reason to think the Supreme Court wouldn't rule in a way that disadvantages Democrats.

This is a lie. It's been a lie, and you should know better by now rather than repeating it.

Literally true. In Ohio for sure that I'm aware of

Nope, it's a lie. The date to appear on the Ohio ballot is still in the future. A new candidate could appear on it without issue.

I'll let some shit slide, but you just keep doubling down here

The properly-completed and signed forms must be filed no later than 4 p.m. on December 20, 2023 with the Ohio Secretary of State’s Elections Division.

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_presidential_candidates_in_Ohio

Reporting you for misinformation.

That's for primary candidates. Maybe actually read the source you're quoting before you "double down". There are no states with requirements that would prevent a new candidate from appearing on the general election ballot.

Reporting you for misinformation.

Fucking LOL. Hears some trivia on social media that reinforces his biases and doesn't wonder why no legitimate sources point it out as a problem and then jumps to calling the mods for "misinformation" when his wrong fact is rejected.

There are no states with requirements that would prevent a new candidate from appearing on the general election ballot.

What as a fucking independent? As a "minor political party"? (deadline for those is Aug 7 btw)

The deadline has passed for anyone other than Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee, and the deadline is rapidly approaching for ANYONE to be on the ballot, of any party.

I suppose the DNC could just nullify all its own rules and send a different candidate to the Secretary of State within the next 3 weeks. How well do you think that would play over? "DNC rigs its own process to force through [candidate name here]".

What the fuck are you talking about? There is no Democrat specified in any sort of rules or paperwork for Ohio. The Democratic nominee is decided by the delegates. They have a deadline for submission, but not one that in any way has locked in Joe Biden. Joe Biden could withdraw or release his delegates and we could have a different candidate with no issue whatsoever.

Amazing how you keep at this after being embarrassingly wrong about your first justification. You're somehow committed to try to keep making a procedural argument despite being wrong about the rules you thought caused the problem. You just smoothly move on to an entirely different objection without ever recognizing that you were the one spreading misinformation. I thought misinformation was a bad thing that was important to combat, but somehow I see no edits, no mea culpas, no clearing up that you were spreading it. How are you not embarrassed?

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Cory Doctorow.

Lmfao

I'm entirely serious. The Republicans can rally around a criminal billionaire and still expect to take the white house, so why can't the Democrats run an intellectual Canadian? I trust the guy that coined the term "enshittification" a whole lot more than the politicians who have been enabling it, anyhow.

If you're "entirely serious" in the literal sense, just to be super clear the answer to "why can’t the Democrats run an intellectual Canadian?" is that a Canadian is disqualified from the office of the President in the Constitution. Unfortunately, they didn't think to prohibit megalomaniac felons. That's apparently on us. :(

The writers of the 14th Amendment did, but for some reason they figured the president didnt need to be called out specifically in the final draft; probably figured it was obvious the president is an officer of the state. But well, we know how scotus took that

The sad thing is, I do think you're serious, and it speaks to the overarching theme of REALLY REALLY STUPID voters this election, on both sides.

Then maybe it's time for you to admit that there's nothing Democratic about elections in this country and to start treating them with the contempt that they deserve.

Elections don't exist to pick leaders, that's a mere side effect of their real purpose: the reification of the implied consent of the governed.

I trust the guy that coined the term "enshittification" a whole lot more than the politicians who have been enabling it, anyhow.

Cool so he has your vote. Who else? As expected the people who want Biden to bail at the 11th hour have no actionable plan.

The problem with demanding "actionable plans" is that the only person who could enact them is the DNC chairperson, who currently reports to the incumbent.

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