Biden’s exit from the race is just what Trump feared
The former president has always considered himself to be the ultimate disrupter. But this time, the disruption is on the other side.
Through the weekend, there were an awful lot of questions that were going back and forth from people in the president’s tightest circle, and one of the questions that kept being asked was whether Joe Biden was going to endorse Kamala Harris or not. And the question didn’t revolve around whether he wanted to or not, but whether people in her camp thought it would be better for her to fight for it, win it on her own, and not be seen as somebody who was tapped by President Biden and so, in her own way, have a fresh start going into the campaign.
So the timing seems to be about as good as it could have been to end what has just been one of the craziest two or three weeks in American politics in quite some time.
TFW you get shot and it’s not even the biggest political story of the week.
I bet he’s livid. Thunder stolen. And he can’t even try to use the attempt to stir up animosity against his opponents, one of his own fired that gun.
Hahaha yes he can, the kid was obviously brainwashed by the left. Never assume facts matter to those clowns
This is getting downvoted by people who only read the first sentence, unlucky :<
I thought "those clowns" referred to Democrats initially.
Yeah me too, I actually skimmed their profile to verify haha.
I prefer satirists with the courage to fly that close to the sun. I got it, but now that you mention it, there's definitely a judgement call there.
Can we all get together and start posting our $15 dollar donations to act blue? That would surely be something.
Hallmark of a shitty politician unable to seize the moment more than sticking his fist in the air. The second he opened his mouth, any advantage he had went away.
Actually insane we've just moved on from that
He’s already trying to weasel out of the next debate. He’s scared.
Can you blame him? Kamala was a District Attorney and an Attorney General. Even a competent opponent who based their arguments on facts would be intimidated.
Trump wouldn’t stand a chance on that stage.
And if he ducks out hopefully she'll call him a coward. Repeatedly.
She should start calling him a coward before they start negotiation. He can't stand women talking crap about him. A woman of color, he'd have a canary.
A canary in the old mind, that's how the saying goes
I thought it was a coronary in the gold mine.
All this talk of coronation recently is making me dizzy.
Marty isn't the only Back To The Future character it works on?
I hope that Harris (or whoever) goes WAY more on the offensive than Biden did. Honestly I think that's where his age showed the most sharply; he was just too nice, even when he was "Dark Brandon."
That wouldn't be difficult.
Getting called a coward by a woman will break his brain beyond what it is now.
IDK, considering the MAGA crowd consider Trump lies better than facts, because everybody know by now, that facts have a liberal bias.
the fight is not for maga votes, it is for the undecided morons in the middle.
The fight is against the couch, idiot undecided voters are basically a coin toss. Getting 80%+ of your supporters to actually vote for you is all you really need.
Nothing was more demoralizing than Biden in the last debate. Trump against someone under 60 could have the same thing happen to him.
People on the couch are the undecided voters. The more Democrats call them idiots, the less incentive they have to vote for whoever the Democrat nominee is.
Trump loves the poorly educated
Okay... and what are Democrats going to do about that to help educate America? Are they going to tax churches who act as a conduit for the Republican party and think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, who wants to defund the Department of Education?
The undecided will be gaslighted too. Are you really sugesting Trump would try to use reason to sway the undecided?
Trump has only one mode, and that's narcissistic pathological liar.
no, i am suggesting that primary goal of democratic candidate is not to go after maga voters.
He needs to capture his base too, and make sure as many of them as possible will vote, without them the marginal voters are irrelevant.
Trump will use stupid arguments and lies, and look like he is winning. That's how he built the MAGA crowd, and that's the system he will continue to use.
The undecided he manages to convince to vote for him, will then be supporting MAGA by definition, even if they aren't as batshit crazy as the hardcore MAGA supporters.
No, but a good and clear debater, like an experienced lawyer that she is, would blow him apart. Biden was an effective politician and debated pretty well, but its not his forte in the same way.
It would be cool if Harris can expose Trump, like Obama exposed Romney in their 2nd debate.
I vaguely remember her debate against Mike pence, her performance was not to impressive. The fly helped. I wonder if they will let her a bit looser on the pedo
She's been VP for a few years since then. I hope she goes for the jugular... (Metharphorically of course. Seeing as maga is suddenly quite shocked about violent language LOL)
We haven't heard Kamala debate. She was not very popular in 2020. Sometimes she comes across as cringey and foolish. I wish people would stop acting like she should be coronated. She needs to prove herself before being the nominee. Just handing everything to her on a silver plater isn't going to get the response Democrats are hoping for.
She’s the VP, and the President’s nomination. She’s already on the ballot, so she has access to existing campaign funds. There are no outspoken challengers, and there are eight weeks until early voting ballots are sent out.
What do you suggest instead?
Mostly agree, but officially she is not on the ballot. Nobody is until after the Democratic convention.
That’s true. I should have written that she is the named VP of the candidate that received the donations, therefore she is allowed to use them to campaign.
There is at least one outspoken challenger that I know of. She should hopefully be starting some live interviews today on news networks. If she's like Biden and stays hidden unless there is a teleprompter and has her team silence anyone else, she's toast too. She was also running cover and part of the team shielding Biden which is what put us in this predicament. If she intends to beat Trump, she needs to come out and start speaking about how she is different. The further she can distance herself from Biden altogether, the better.
Care to share a link or her name? Your comment reads like disengagement propaganda by putting down Harris without supporting your nameless alternative.
https://marianne2024.com
BTW I'm not putting her down. I'm saying handing it to her without any public debate or discourse, and just acting like cause she was Biden's VP that she's already got this, isn't a winning strategy. She's got to distance herself from Biden now and show America what she's got that will be superior and better.
Williamson didn’t break 10% in the 2020 primary. What makes you think she’s going to capture more of the Democratic vote now?
I didn't say she would. I said Kamala needs to prove herself... she needs to have some public discourse with other people to show the public she is the best candidate. If another candidate makes her look weak and she can't talk about an agenda in details, then she's not going to do very well.
She has been the fucking VICE PRESIDENT for awhile now, and she's been an attorney general AND a district Attorney. She does not need to "prove herself".
I think what you mean is that she has already proven herself.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tomato Tomato
So the Joe & Kamala ticket was losing in polls badly, causing other Democrats to suffer. Kamala is going to have the exact same issue if she doesn't prove herself. What she proved so far was she was fine with genocide, she was fine with elder abuse. If she doesn't distance herself from Joe and show us something different, then Joe might as well have stayed in. What is a democracy if the voters have no say in the matter, and the nomination is just given to the same corporate puppet that stood alongside the losing candidate?
Again, she doesn't need to prove herself and we will all be voting for her. You do you homie.
I remember her from her last campaign. She is pretty articulate on stage, but she has some really fucking loony beliefs. Way too much spirituality and love. That's a fine message for self-help books, but it was a bad look when Nancy Reagan was dialing Miss Cleo for advice, and it would look even worse today.
Trump would tear her up one side and down the other.
You want Kamala to prove herself? The clowns I've seen stepping forward - Manchin and now this - aren't going to prove or disprove anything.
It's worse than that, IIRC she came this close to saying that the power of positive thinking would drive away covid. She is too far around the horseshoe imo. I've known people into the kind of magical thinking she's into, and it's really not a good thing.
Because the DNC did what they always do. They said sure we'll change the face but not give you choice. They hope just having a younger black female version of Biden will be sufficient, even though nothing is really changing. Voters weren't just worried about Biden's age, they are also tired of being manipulated and gaslit about their party.
Biden was a good President - the best going back at least as far as Clinton - and a younger black female version of him would be far from the worst we could do. That being said, no one is worried about DNC manipulation this time. That ship sailed with Bernie. I backed Biden and I said if not him Harris is the only other real choice. And here we are, and I'm feeling good about it.
I keep hearing about her unpopularity, but surely it's related to how she's got a low profile as VP and before that practically invisible on the country's stage. Let the direct light shine on her for a period and that will change.
He won't debate her. He's too chicken shit to do it.
It will never happen. Trump is such a fucking coward. But his supporters are perfectly fine with this being the first election year without a debate between the candidates...
Kamala would wipe the floor with him. Toss him upside down and use his head as a mop.
What’s weird is she is relaxing. After all the chaos and bullshit and jagged geriatrics from those two guys, it’s just relaxing to see her.
.
Surprised the hell out of me when I realized every time I saw her photo some tension left my shoulders. More so the moment I realized she was running. Weird outside of the context of the jagged geriatrics dance of chaos and decline of the last 8 years, within that context, not so much. I cannot be alone in that sensation. .
Don’t underestimate that impact. It’s a show stopper.
she's also like young, comparatively, experienced, and knows what she's doing. Which is a nice bump from the previous trump, though biden does also have experience, i'm not sure how much that matters or is even still true anymore.
Don't withhold credit for Biden's experience. Even his withdrawal was a shrewdly calculated political maneuver.
oh absolutely, this was strategically planned to be optimally timed lmao.
I enjoy these moments when the bots get disrupted and have no agenda to spread on social media.
It's so blissfully quiet!
I still find it strange that this is considered "late in the election cycle". We need legislation limiting campaign length to something reasonable.
Free speech pretty much means you can't stop someone from advertising for themselves or a cause just because it isn't close to election season. I don't disagree with you at all, but this is going to be a constitutional no go, I think.
Free speech can be limited if you have a good reason. For example, if you don't want people to see how their food is raised, you can just ignore key constitutional freedoms..
Yup. The ag-gag laws seem to be a huge carve-out - if that can be managed, I don't see why we don't start limiting the election cycle, too.
Totally.
We have freedom here, and yet our elections are like 2 months long, start to finish (including hand-counting ballots from that one day of voting). My polling place is a mason's hall about a block away that they convert to a polling station with some cardboard boxes and folding tables.
What are you referencing?
Feels like you could go after it from a campaign finance angle, not that those laws are particularly restrictive as it stands.
I really don't know. We'd have to pass it as a law and then see if it survives challenges. Better question is does either party have the political will to make it happen?
Campaigning is not a right. Postal employees can't run for office, for example.
I'm really not invested enough to disagree, here. If someone can make it happen, great. I think it might not pass constitutional muster but I'm not on the Supreme Court so what I think doesn't matter.
You could be right, who knows. But that would basically invalidate the entire Hatch Act, which would be wild. But Hatch is too restrictive in my opinion anyway.
Agreed. What about an inflation adjusted campaign budget for each elected position? I believe this system is already used in some countries.
I feel like this would promote a focus on policies/platforms and encourage good faith campaigning.
Citizens United determined that money is speech though.
I think most people agree that was a harmful decision though.
Absolutely. But you can't un-ting that bell, not without a constitutional amendment.
They could regulate campaign donations, like when they are allowed to be made. Or maybe when those funds are allowed to be accessed. Maybe that would help.
Maybe the access. I don't know about the donations, though. It's already been ruled that donations are speech.
I'm not against the idea if someone can make it happen.
I guess this just reinforces the problem with Citizens United. All that free speech is infringing on everyone's free speech.
You aren't wrong.
It's sorta like how "Christmas season" feels earlier and earlier every year... I'm a Grinch until Thanksgiving, and a patriotic non-partisan until Independence Day, thank you very much.
There is absolutely no reason why we need to run primaries so far in advance. They should all be in May or June. As far as I can tell, the only reason the schedule is like this is because some states want the influence that comes with being earlier in the process. But why should Iowa or New Hampshire always get that?
Presidential Primaries should be held over 4 or 5 consecutive weeks, with a rotating roster of which states vote in which order.
Why not like all in one week? Or one day?
Fuck it, liquid democracy.
Allow candidates to be picked by the nation without first building momentum in some of our most regressive states?
I live in Indiana and every year our national primaries are useless. All the nominees are determined by May and it leaves me with zero enthusiasm by that point.
i think we should force campaigning to be entirely done on paper. Forces thing to the rich only, but aide from entirely banning campaigning, and somehow dealing with that mess, i'm not sure how well that would go.
Indeed. Bidens age was the only real argument he had. And now he is the ancient on in the race.
Oh he will find something. She's a woman. He's a misogynistic pig, so it won't be hard.
And I hope she chooses to not lead on a charisma card and instead leans on what she knows best: How to present facts in a concise way. Let her writers make the words, and her coaches help her stand out. I want someone to challenge Trump directly and feel it is the best strategy. Every single stupid little thing he says that includes a kernal of any information should be immediately disputed, disrupted, and dissolved.
It won't make any MAGA come to our side - well a few might though I'm not holding my breath, it will increase not so much the trust in Harris, but our willingness to stand behind her word. Trust will then increase with time and the accuracy of her statements. There is a certain level of leadership in that.
maga was already fucked, they were never voting for any libs ever. Independents are more likely to vote for her though.
Literally nobody was voting for Trump over Biden because of his age.
There were going to be a lot of low-info brain stems that sat out, voted third party, or just out and out voted for donnie for age and/or the media narrative about mental acuity. You can count on that.
If they voted for Don over two made-up issues, they'll vote for Don over some new story. The GQP are attacking VP Harris' laugh, now. Do I need to go find a clip?
If they're excusing all Don's myriad misdeeds - THE MAN IS A FELON - over a stutter and a stumble, they'll believe anything.
The American independent voter is a puzzling thing. I think they vote based upon a great many non-issues tbh, but Biden old was an easy attack line and was a media classic, and removal of it will sway a non zero amount of voters.
I mean people voted Obama then Trump... and there is a non zero amount of people who voted Trump and then Biden. I wouldn't be shocked if there would've been people that voted Trump then Biden that would've voted Trump again, and some of those could be swayed to Harris?
For a laugh: https://youtu.be/KAG37Kw1-aw
Biden's polling went noticeably down after the debate in which he was noticeably very fucking old.
They need this energy to make people want to vote; not just to vote apathetically or to perhaps not bother because they don't feel like it makes a difference, but to get out and do it with purpose, energised to tell others to do it. The VP pick is going to be a crucial part of this, with some actual policies/promises to back it up. The Republicans have shown fuck all, so here's hoping for a progressive campaign which speaks to people.
there is a very real possibility that it may actually look progressive-ish. a victory and subsequent appointments will tell us alot, but I have a
minutiaeminutia of hope for something tangibly better than the mean average the past 40 years has given us.I mean this all friendly and not as a 'gotcha': the singular form of minutiae is minutia.
thank you, internet friend.
Other than Palin, who was an epically bad choice, I really don't feel like the VP moves the needle all that much or injects a lot of energy. That being said, another woman on the ticket would be an interesting flex, and there are some good choices.
AOC might be a good pick if you really wanna get more of the left crowd.
I like AOC. But I think she can still do a lot of good where she is. You have Katie Porter ready to go and she might be my top pick. Whitmer limits out in two years, and might be willing to be called up, but I'm really happy with her here in MI and I'm afraid to shake things up too much or risk losing our blue trifecta here. Either of them might be better strategic picks, but what do I know.
America is still too misogynistic to let a ticket of two women win.
Edit: I like the optimism of the people downvoting me. I'd prefer they engage, but I still like their optimism.
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but a pair of women on a pro-choice platform would fucking energize some folks. And I don't think a token man on the ticket would make a difference anyway.
Also, none of the men whose names I've seen put forward excite me the way some of the women do. (I know... bad phrasing...)
Women would turn out for them, a hugely underestimated group.
Maybe.
There isn't much Trump can attack her on that he doesn't support himself when it comes to Kamala's negatives. So she is actually a great choice. She also has gotten voters out of the loop of despair, even if there isn't much info about her plans besides continuing Biden's agenda.
I laughed a lot when the international news on TV around here claimed that "in a move that took politicians and campaign mangers by surprise, Biden left the race"... But the more I look around, the more it looks like people were surprised by it.
How come?
Because it hasn't happened a lot. If you are the incumbent, you are running for a second term unless you are beat or dead. Leaving for whatever reasons is very rare.
People saying that Biden should have dropped out two weeks ago have never, in their entire life, had to make a life-changing decision. Whatever the result, I personally applaud his ability to put aside his pride and his ego for the sake of a cause larger than himself.
Cal comes to mind... and that's the only one that I can immediately think of.
Edit: looked it up: LBJ, Harry S Truman, Cal, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Buchanan, and James K. Polk. So yeah, really short list.
Everytime someone mentions Harry Truman, I have Linda from Bob's Burgers song that she apparently sings while braiding her daughter's hair come to mind:
And, again, disastrous every time. Landslide losses when you switch out the incumbent.
I don't think too many realists were surprised. I think a lot of people that buy into a lot of bothsiderist bullshit might have been surprised, I dunno. Or the types that some call "blue maga", but honestly, unless someone's paycheck relies on believing in this, I don't know who qualifies as "blue maga".
No one. Outside of a MAGA talking point and an attempt to 'both sides' MAGA, it's no one.
Good. That fucker needs to be more scared more often.
What's funny is that this whole thing really started once Biden badly underperformed at the debate.
If Trump had just done his usual cowardly thing and bailed on the debate, we wouldn't have seen that humiliating performance by Biden, and he'd probably still be on the ticket.
Once again, Trump's pride has taken him to a place he didn't want to go.
Holy shit I skipped the last debate but you just made me realize Harris will probably debate Trump now. I wanna see that for sure
Just once I want to hear Harris say "I built my career putting felons like Donald Trump in prison" to his fat fucking face.
There's no way Trump will debate her. He'll back out saying she's an illegitimate candidate or something since she didn't get selected in the primaries.
Hillary must be miffed.
Fuck Hillary, she didn't even try. Just figured "I'm against Trump, how could I lose?"
Didn't she get 3 million more votes than Trump? She lost because the whole electoral college thing is undemocratic bullshit.
SHE DIDN'T VISIT WISCONSIN! NOT EVEN ONCE!
Good. It's what she deserves for what happened to Burnie. Donald Trump is her goddamn fault.
What Trump fear is not having am audience
I still think it was a bad idea that Joe dropped out this late into the cycle, but at least Kamilla will be a competant incumbant. I didn't think they were going to put kamilla in his place and I thought we were fucked. Glad I was wrong but I hope that she will be enough. She's polling slightly better than Joe was against Trump.
*Kamala
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Whoopsy
Hopefully it leaves the Republicans without enough time to develop and implement a new strategy. It wouldn't surprise me if they have some contingency plan already, but it might be too late for them to actually use it.
Doesn't really sound like it based on Trump whining about the switcharoo. Pretty sure their only plan was "attack Biden endlessly" with no back up.
If he had dropped out earlier, the Republicans would have used the entire RNC spreading talking points and lies trying to discredit her.
They're going to say you are crazy, they will say you are a bully, they'll tell you to stop, even your partner will say that you need to stop. Because nobody wants you to break the system itself. But that is true disruption.
🖼️ 🔥
Well, that one landed flat. It was a Miles Bron reference.
Hence the burning painting. I got you fam.
Thanks, brother.
What is this bizzaro world? Who is being paid to write these crap articles?
Nominating Kamala is the best way to guarantee a Trump presidency. It's like ya'll learned nothing from hillary clinton.
Yeah and she still won the popular vote. What's your point?
I doubt that, 2016 people were blissfully unaware how much a crooked president can break America, now they have a first hand experience.
learned nothing from hillary? what? how is kamala as nominee in any way the same as hillary except that she's a woman?