Joe Biden

[pipbarber]

Perhaps if the DNC dig hard enough they may excavate a back bone, but i really doubt they can be arsed. If the US swings to an autocratic christian-fascist dystopia the democrats will be partly responsible. Lazy neoliberal fuckers.

[stevebrooks]

seriously I think of it like this, it doesn't matter which of them wins, the chances of either of them surviving for the full 4 years is almost zero, so the main thing you should be looking at is who replaces them when that happens. Trump alone is bad enough, but have you looked at the possible list of replacements if he needs replacing? Biden could drop dead in office and the country will basically just keep running because there are people there who know what they are doing, if Trump drops dead in office it's going to be utter chaos! So the choice has to be Biden, even if you think he's going to drop dead or already gone to far into old age, you have to choose Biden.

Is it to late for either party to change candidate, probably, so you have to look at what there is available not just in the President but the backup if he should fail!

[stylofone]

seriously I think of it like this, it doesn't matter which of them wins, the chances of either of them surviving for the full 4 years is almost zero, so the main thing you should be looking at is who replaces them when that happens. Trump alone is bad enough, but have you looked at the possible list of replacements if he needs replacing? Biden could drop dead in office and the country will basically just keep running because there are people there who know what they are doing, if Trump drops dead in office it's going to be utter chaos! So the choice has to be Biden, even if you think he's going to drop dead or already gone to far into old age, you have to choose Biden.

Is it to late for either party to change candidate, probably, so you have to look at what there is available not just in the President but the backup if he should fail!

Of course I agree that in a straight fight between Biden and Trump, then it is imperative that Biden wins.

I was also thinking this morning about the myth of the white hat and the black hat. Reality just isn't that simple. There is a whiff of fascism in the whole system. Biden's gerontocracy is like the unshakeable dominance of Mugabe or Mahathir.

Outside the MAGA fantasy world, It just seems harder to accept the false binary like people used to, to achieve the suspension of disbelief they had when listening to the likes of Reagan, Clinton or Obama weaving their fairytale webs. The Brits are certainly not buying it, they are following our drover's dog tradition right now. But Biden just ordered a bigger white hat, it's about a metre wide now, to go with his white cowboy suit in his star-spangled rodeo.

it's not too late to change candidates, but it seems at the moment that the impetus for that must come from Biden himself, he is the Dear Leader after all.

Another thing about the gerontocracy is that power can seem like a life-extension drug. EIther of them could drop dead in office, but my recollection (no doubt flawed) is that they tend to deflate and die soon after they leave office. So I'm not counting on that. Remember the sheer excitement when Trump got Covid? Look how that turned out, with his weird mask-removing theatrics, and now he's looking like the frontrunner.

[pipbarber]

seriously I think of it like this, it doesn't matter which of them wins, the chances of either of them surviving for the full 4 years is almost zero, so the main thing you should be looking at is who replaces them when that happens. Trump alone is bad enough, but have you looked at the possible list of replacements if he needs replacing? Biden could drop dead in office and the country will basically just keep running because there are people there who know what they are doing, if Trump drops dead in office it's going to be utter chaos! So the choice has to be Biden, even if you think he's going to drop dead or already gone to far into old age, you have to choose Biden.

Is it to late for either party to change candidate, probably, so you have to look at what there is available not just in the President but the backup if he should fail!

I agree that Biden over Trump is the simplest of voting decisions, but i'm not American. Trump will get his 70+ million votes regardless of anything he says or does, so the Democrat candidate has to beat that, and win in the 6 or 7 sates that decide the election. Biden's debate performance puts that possibility under serious threat. So we might realistically have another Trump term and the potential destruction that he and his band of idiots could unleash might be irreversible, whether the orange fool survives the four years or not. What is going to happen to Latinx people targeted as 'undocumented'? What of women's rights, trans people, people of color....greenhouse gas emissions...and so on. Potentially, the situation could become murderous and catastrophic. Now is not the moment to stick to traditions.

It's not too late to choose a new candidate for the Dems. It could happen at the conference, which is in the first week of August i think. That's when the party officially endorses its candidate. The delegates from every state could just choose a different person to how people voted in the primaries. It can be done. I suspect though, that noting will be done. They'll just resign themselves to four years of Trump and plan for 2028. They'll assume Trump 2.0 will be similar to the original version - inept, ineffective and glibly comedic and they might be right. But what if they're wrong? What if Trump goes full autocrat and starts killing people?

If i was a part of the DNC, i'd be strong on changing candidates.

[stevebrooks]

If i was a part of the DNC, i'd be strong on changing candidates.

Thing is, this is American politics. I mean in Australia, and the UK, we change leaders at the drop of a hat, in fact the system is designed for exactly that, it's basically just a formality, the US political system makes changing leaders...difficult at the best of times, we can only wait and see.

[stevebrooks]

Here's an interesting take on Trump;

“Do you want a guy who stutters from time to time and is a decent fellow or an entertainer who is funny? Trump is funny, Biden is not funny,” he shrugged.

I, I really don't know what to say, I don't think I have ever heard Trump say anything funny, at all, ever. He's never joking with what he says, I don't think he's capable of humour because humour requires empathy and he doesn't have any. Oh plenty of Trump supporters say thing like he was joking when he said that to get a rise out of liberals, but this is always after the fact when some ludicrous statement of his falls flat, it's always, "Oh that was a joke and you have sense of humour, you lefties are all the same, can't take joke." But it's always after the fact when he makes a stupid statement. No, he's really not funny, oh he thinks he's being funny, for instance when he makes fun of the disabled reporter, but no it's not funny when you do it to mock someone as the case was then, but you know, some people think cruelty if funny, and those are the ones who support Trump.

But in the end, I don't think there's a choice here really, it's a choice between man who is to old but has a heart and mind in the right place, and a man who is to old and will burn everything down on his way out at the next election, if there's anything left that is!

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-ame ... e0cce9db7d

[stylofone]

It's a dilemma. The most important thing is to prevent the global catastrophe of a second Trump term.

If Biden's age-related decline is going to make the Democrats lose, then they need to get rid of him.

But if Biden won't go, then talking about his age-related decline could help Trump. In that case we need to shut up about the age issue.

I thought Biden was too old in 2020. He's worse now. Imagine how he'll be in 2028. So I personally think he's got to go. All the "he's too old" attacks could then be applied to Trump, who is also a decrepit silly old bugger, but also evil with it.

(anti-paywall link)
https://archive.is/E6Rup

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/p ... apses.html

[nibble]

Unfortunately he needs to step down. Perhaps a "medical condition" as an excuse

[pipbarber]

There seems virtually zero chance that Biden will win over any Trump supporters, so he has to inspire the anti-Trump majority to go and vote. If he fails in that, Trump will win. But that is such a pathetic strategy, defeatist even. Imagine a charismatic candidate that actually erodes Trump's voting base! Someone who presents an appealing narrative. Even if they don't actually convert a small number of maga voters, perhaps they'll deflate the maga turn out, even very marginally, and that may decide the election.

The DNC cannot endorse Biden. He will lose and who knows if the US will ever have another fair election after four years of a criminally immune Trump presidency. This is an existential threat for the Dems. You'd expect them to realise that.

Gavin Newsom is a viable option.

[joele]

To be fair on the democrats though, what other options are there? Do they have anyone they can put up at this point who will actually gain more votes than Biden?