After Carter lost to Reagan (with much thanks to the Religious Right, the early Christian Nationalist movement organized into a voting bloc by Jerry Falwell), both parties have been terrified a primary challenger to an incumbent president correllates to a loss of the White House, so Biden staying in is the default, and is a known quantity, since he has four years of being president on his rèsumè.

Anyone you replace him with loses the incumbent advantage, which is a significant number of people who vote for the incumbent regardless of party.

It’s greater hubris to assume we can safely replace him without losing votes than it is to keepmhim even if he was doing his Post-October 2nd 1919 Wilson impression.

According to Bob Woodward ( Fear: Trump in the White House the finalé of the book) Ty Cobb quit as Trump’s lawyer regarding the (still open) investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, because he realized that if Trump were not president, there would be a sound case that Trump had diminished capacity to be resposible. But Cobb couldn’t make this claim since that would mean admitting the President of the United States was mentally incapable.

Now I am down with the notion that we should have a system in which unconscious presidents and mentally unfit presidents are revealed and the chain of command is rapidly implemented. But that would assume the US is not run by an aristocratic elite, which it totally is. And hence no cabinet is going to admit that Trump neither can comprehend the job nor can be adequately controlled as a useful idiot.

So even if we assume Biden is daft like a domestic turkey, he’s a better choice than Trump.

And that’s before we confront the reality of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 which Trump is happy to facilitate, is intended to dismantle all remaining democratic feature (lower case) of the United States. It includes an Ermächtigungsgesetz (as much as an authoritarian president needs one after Trump v. United States (2024) ). A vote against Trump is a vote against Project 2025 and one-party autocracy, whether it’s Biden or whoever (or a sack of potatoes).

Yes, it may be King Log or King Heron yet again, but Biden has gotten more done than we typically can expect from neoliberal logs. And he (or his handlers) might recognize the mandate that obligates him that the US isn’t staring down the same threat in 2028.

Or, as the Republican party is looking not just to expand its usual election shenanigans of gerrymandering and voter suppression to include intimidation, violence and defrauding the Electoral College process, but is also looking to spearhead a barrage of procedural and violent coups d’etat, and may even incite civil war. So all our efforts to stop the Heritage Foundation’s offensive may be moot, no matter who is on the ballot.

I’m still voting blue regardless, because the outcome is not yet determined, only that Republican knives are out.

The slip-ups are not a big deal, and people should stop pretending otherwise. “He made 2 gaffs in one night! Oh my God! Only senile people do that source:trust me, bro.”

8 years ago

That’s the whole government. They have the best healthcare money can buy, their lives depend on it.

Kinda insane to think there are still swing voters at this point. I guess they just don’t understand what trump and republicans stand for otherwise they’d be all for them if they’re evil or completely against them if they’re sane.

It blows my mind that so many people still don’t get this.

The question to undecided moderates is if they’re going to vote against Trump and project 2025. To do that, they have to vote for the Democratic presidential candate (and down-ballot Democrats if they have Republican opponents). At the moment, this happens to be Biden.

Biden at his worst is better than Trump at his best. That’s the contest.

Heck, a sack of potatoes is better than Trump at his best.

Yes, it may be a contest between King Log and King Heron (boy the tropes of tyranny are old) but if Heron wins, he’ll totally eat all the frogs. (That’s us in this story.)

If enough moderates can’t work out this math, then the United States was fucked at its founding. Then government actually by the people may not be possible (though we haven’t yet tried sortition).

Voting out Trump should be a no-brainer. 2016 should be a lesson to us we can’t second guess ourselves. We also need to make sure elections are fair and conducted in good faith, and were prepared for coup d’etat actions procedural, legal or violent, and we should be prepared against civil war.

After all, if Democracy must die, it shouldn’t go gentle.

I understand why he felt he needed to do this press conference, but at the same time I can’t believe he did it because he would have literally had to be perfect for it to not just generate new headlines and memes about his decline (which it clearly has).

It seems like the headlines will never stop and they are being perpetuated by people on both sides, and he’s completely flailing because the fact is, he’s no longer capable of giving a stellar live performance that can put this all to rest.

Right after the debate, I felt that if Democrats had brushed his performance off, it would have dropped into the background and been totally erased if Biden did reasonably in other appearances and the next debate.

However, each time there is a new headline about a Democrat’s observation that he is not in good shape, I become more certain that he must end his campaign. Not necessarily because I’m more convinced about his mental decline, but because you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

So I’ve stopped weighing whether switching out Biden at a late stage was the optimal strategy in a vacuum. He’s been damaged enough by Democrats in liberal spaces that it’s absolutely the optimal strategy now. I’m not judging these Democrats for what they’ve done, I’m just saying it’s a hell of a gamble. So in my view, we might as well accept it that he’s gotta go and hope to hell their gamble pays off. Because there’s no way the guy can stay after all of this.

I can’t hear him over the noise of WW1 guns

Yeah, what did he mean by that?

Biden recently called Kamala Harris ‘Trump’ and Volodimir Zelensky ‘Vladimir Putin’.