Lichtman thinks Dems would be slitting their own throats by dumping Biden
invidious.darkness.services
I honestly don't know what to think at this point; just putting this out there.
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I honestly don't know what to think at this point; just putting this out there.
I think there’s a narrow way through, by fielding a candidate that most democrat voters actually like (or tolerate at the minimum). It can have the positive effect of actually re-energizing voters to go out and vote if there’s a fresh face. As to who that person should be, I’m not really sure.
This right here is the crux of how the dems fucked up so, so badly. Why they went into this election season without even attempting to run anybody aside from Biden I'll never know. All that it's reaped is all us know of not knowing anybody else and the federal party managers seem to be just as clueless (generally clueless, yes, but especially and specifically clueless here)
They learned the wrong lesson from 2016 and Bernie/Hillary. They knew the candidate they wanted, and didn't even need to maintain the pretense of democracy, so just ran effectively one candidate, failing to consider that the more popular candidate than Hillary was more popular for a reason, and so in this cycle any other candidate would have looked amazing next to Biden, who again they already knew they wanted to run.
Obama didn't have a real primary challenger either, or Clinton before him. There's nothing unusual about an incumbent president not being challenged. Where they fucked up was treating it as business as usual when the president's age was such a big risk.
There's nothing unusual about it, but it's still a bad system. Primaries are about both finding the most actually popular nominee (which may or may not have changed), but also seeing the level of actual voter support for different issues based on the candidates pushing for them, which allows other candidates to adopt or shift towards those positions themselves.
Sadly, Biden would very possibly have won even in a crowded primary field, but he'd have gotten absolutely trounced on a bunch of issues he falsely claims he has 'silent majority' support for, like Gaza.
When has either party ever run a credible candidate against their own incumbent?