politics

It's all felt like external pressure to me. Trump's team knows it's hard for him to beat Biden, so it's all about undermining him in any way they can.

He's old, feeble, sundowning, has Parkinson's, has cancer, constantly forgetting things.

And in the debate? He answered every question in detail and got like two details wrong, while his opponent doubled down on comments that have gotten him impeached and in legal trouble.

But no, let's talk about the stuttering man who was a little hoarse, and demand his replacement with nobody. After all, they don't want to push a narrative that defines the replacement candidate, this is all about undermining the opposition.

And if you, reader, think you're in the crowd of amplifying that, fuck you.

It's amazing how nobody notices that all the Senators and Congress people that support the working class are for Biden staying in. All the big wealthy plutocrats on the other hand want him out.

But what does Jimmy Carter have to say?

Decisions like these can't be trusted to young'uns.

Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done. And probably not even then.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

I think that the winning strategy, rather obviously, is to throw the nomination entirely open and let it work itself out. The exact thing that's going to inspire the sort of enthusiasm that will steamroll Trump is a very public process by which a nominee is legitimately chosen.

Coming into it with some prepared scheme by which to hopefully force the nomination of a particular candidate is just duplicating the mistakes the DNC made in 2016 and 2020, and it's all too likely to just end us up right back where we were before the debate - with a disappointed and frustrated base that has to be guilt-tripped into voting for a candidate in whom they don't believe solely on the strength of them being not-Trump.

AOC and Warren are right at the top of national politicians I admire. If they support Biden that's good enough for me.

Asked by The Boston Globe if Biden should stay in the race, the Massachusetts Democrat said, “President Biden is our nominee. He is an excellent president. He works hard on behalf of working families every day.”

This is the entire statement from the article. This isn't a "should stay in the race" statement. It's "I'm not going to answer that".

Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done.

This is just wrong. "Should we replace Biden" is an entirely separate question from "who should replace him". And if someone named a specific name, the Biden-stans would attack them for trying to promote their own pick, or worse start attacking the pick themselves.

And we're rapidly approaching the last resort of public pressure campaigns. The "give him time and let him step down on his own terms" strategy doesn't look like it's going to work.

It’s like taking uppers to counteract downers; it just doesn’t work that way, it makes everything worse.