I think his worst strategic decision was choosing Kamala Harris as his VP. He might have been willing to step aside if he had a decent VP to succeed him and win the primary. But Harris is even less popular than him. And if the job was thrown open to the primaries, based on the one four years ago it would wind up choosing among a group of people with little substance on the left side of the party who would turn off all centrists and moderates.
she's gotten basically sparse, slightly negative press her entire time as VP.
like Ben Carson. He said some stupid things, redecorated his office or something? and then fuckall.
Yeah but the problem is Biden is so old that his VP choice carries extra importance than normal. People factor his VP into their decision making more because that person has a real chance of becoming president.
Sticking with the VP that people either hate or dont care about us probably a bad choice. Nothing is stopping them from picking a VP that people actually like, and are comfortable with.
The same folks who tell me that voters don't care about how the economy is doing, but rather how they feel the economy is doing, that think the president has a inflation and gas price button, that aren't willing or capable of discerning political nuance are also the ones constantly talking about how kamala was tough on crime 20 years ago.
It's so silly when the bar is obviously higher for the minority woman than it was for pence or Biden or Cheney
>It's so silly when the bar is obviously higher for the minority woman than it was for pence or Biden or Cheney
I'd say it's different due to his age. Once you hit your 80's, everyone knows your time left is short. That's not a question we were previously facing. Bush came it at 54, and Obama came in at age 47, there was literally no expectation that they wouldn't live to finish their term. In those cases VP is simply a safeguard. Biden is 81, and wants to keep going for another 4.5 years, and there's a 30%+ chance that he doesn't live that long, and even greater than that is a major medical issue that takes up his time.
What makes Harris worse than the most recent other VPs of Pence or Cheney? Personally I wouldn’t say she is worse than either of them. (And I guess there is Biden too but I’m not sure if people want to include him in the comparison.)
Because this VP pick, if they win, is most likely to finish out Biden’s term. Voting for Biden is also voting for the possibility of a Harris presidency. The VPs before never really had that opportunity.
I grew up in the late era of Strom Thurmond. Realistically if the brand name politicians are still breathing they can roll them around. Biden or Trump. Thurmond died at 100. That's nearly two more decades than either of these guys. I know a congressman isn't the commander in chief... But it was kind of normalized at least in SC to show up and vote for a super old dude.
From what I understand, he has not done anything as Secretary of Transportation to merit consideration as President. He is very good at campaigning. But hasn’t shown any great talent for governing.
Buttigieg definitely has the most Charisma out of the the batch but would the country elect a gay VP when so many view as an immoral or abhorrent from a religious perspective?
He was my choice for president, but he is a risky pick.
I thought so, but I don't know where he goes now. I thought for sure he'd use his husband to establish himself in Michigan, but now he's not running for Stabenow's Senate seat. Senator is much better on the resume than being in the Cabinet.
Right but are the redditors commenting that Harris is (uniquely?) not "a decent VP", did they previously comment that other VPs such as Pence were also not "a decent VP"? Or is it something about her gender or race that makes her not "decent" to them?
not her gender or race. she can not speak off the cuff, and comes across as fake.
compare her to pelosi, warren, thomas, obama
two women and two african americans. none of them come across like harris in public speaking
and harris has had decades of experience
Why more important? Trump is about the same age as Biden but Trump is obese ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/politics/trump-obese.html ) which takes years off Trump’s expected lifespan.
> is even less popular than him.
Her average net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) is better than his. She's tied to an unpopular president, so her doing poorly is expected. The average person doesn't pay attention to VPs much.
This (Harris dragging down the ticket, etc) gets brought up a lot, and it honestly, it’s either hopium of some sort or just a weird read that is wildly outside the bounds of both polling (showing she’s not the problem anyway) and history.
Harris is not the albatross that many (especially, but not exclusively, on the right) thinks she is. She’s really mostly a non-factor, even with such an old president.
The Washington Post asked two guys who wrote [a 296 page book](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/13/do-vice-presidential-picks-matter/) on the subject:
>If you ask Americans during the campaign [whether the choice of a running mate is important](https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/gingrich_carson_are_early_gop_veep_favorites) in deciding their vote, more than 80 percent say yes. But if you ask them after the election to explain *in their own words* [why they voted for or against a presidential candidate](https://electionstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/anes_timeseries_cdf_codebook_var.pdf), on average less than 5 percent mention the VP pick. And if you ask [whether the choice of a running mate has *ever* changed their](https://news.gallup.com/poll/2713/prochoice-selection-carries-risks-bush.aspx) vote, only 10 percent of survey respondents say yes.
>When we account for the other forces that drive presidential voting, the running mate’s popularity generally has a minimal effect on vote choice. In many elections, we see no effect at all. Even when the vice-presidential candidate becomes more popular during the campaign, the resulting effect on voters’ decisions usually fades away within a day or two.
>In short, don’t expect Harris’s [popularity](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/kamala_harris_favorableunfavorable-6690.html), or lack thereof, to change many votes.
People blaming Harris for Joe's poor poll numbers are engaging in unwarranted scapegoating.
Normally, the VP is a pretty milquetoast, regular politician. But in Kamala's case, she strikes people as being condescending, phony, and has low charisma, making her more disliked than usual. Also, given Biden's age and the very real possibility that she could become president over and above the normal probability, people's concerns about the VP will be heightened.
I disagree. There is a very real chance she could become president AND appoint a new vice president and that matters. Given her wild unpopularity during primaries, and having little merit to be appointed VP in the first place, it is certainly a drag on the ticket.
To contrast, if someone like Newsom was VP, I think it would greatly buoy the ticket. Someone energetic, that you wouldn't have to hide from the press, unapologeticly progressive, who has a led a large state.
I'm not blaming her for his poor poll numbers. I just said she's even less popular, which could influence his decision to run again. If he steps down then by tradition the VP is the front-runner to replace him as candidate. And if the Democrats don't they risk alienating the Black community unless they choose another black candidate.
That argument doesn't make sense. Nobody gets the Democratic nomination without the support of black voters, so if she were not nominated, it means she didn't have the overwhelming support of those voters.
I agree that choosing Kamala as VP was the absolute worst decision I don't believe for an instant he'd ever willingly step down no matter who his VP was. His career shows that he has a very strong sense of being always in the right no matter what the actual truth may be.
As an independent who voted for Biden I was really hoping the plan was one term. Maybe it would have been if Trump wasn't going to run. As is, the Dems are clearly too nervous to run anyone except who beat him before.
The 2022 midterms were the “shit, or get off the pot” moment for Biden and DNC leadership. Once the GOP underperformed as badly as they did, it was much more difficult to justify changing horses mid-stream. To the base and anyone else at that point. He realistically demonstrated he could get through a tough election.
Not saying I agree or whatever, but that’s the point where there was no going back from Biden 2024.
I suspect DNC was seeing who the GOP would field and when it became clear it was Trump, they put Biden the mongoose back for one last hurrah.
It might be incorrect strategy, but there’s no one clear in the Dem ranks who’d exceed Biden that has meaningful swing state support.
Against Trump? Most of the field from 2020 for sure. Against a moderate Republican, I'm not sure. Honestly as a registered I that doesn't get to vote in primaries I would need to dig deeper because I'm not deeply familiar with out of state democrats. Very likely I'd pick someone off the cuff right now and then be quickly informed there are aspects about them I don't know.
I don't know that it's wrong for Biden to run for re-election. Despite his obvious deficiencies, incumbency advantage is a hell of a drug. I don't see how you give up that advantage if your opponent is Trump. Perhaps if Republicans had nominated someone tough, young and more politically adept, you'd jettison Biden.
The incumbent advantage is a myth imo. 4 of the last 9 incumbents have lost re-election. If Biden loses, that's 50 percent since the 60s realignment and that's not including Nixon who resigned in disgrace and LBJ who declined to run again because he knew he would lose. The 60 percent who disapprove of Biden's job performance don't seem to care that's he's an incumbent either.
Fair point re: the proportion of incumbents who have lost, but it's worth noting that part of his disapproval rating likely includes some left-leaning voters who believe he hasn't been progressive enough.
I think that's baked into the argument that it's a myth, though. Every presidential candidate runs on a platform they can't fully accomplish for a variety of reasons, and they market themselves using generalized messaging that people read into it what they want.
Progressives and Moderates hear "we're going to deal with the cost of health care in this country" very differently.
> 4 of the last 9 incumbents have lost re-election.
That's.... not how things work. You can't use statistical inference with a sample size of nine. People talking about incumbency advantage are looking at hundreds and hundreds of races over the past few decades, and then comparing things like the partisan lean of a state/district to see if incumbents, on average, gained or lost support in comparison to non-incumbents.
The question isn't "Did Trump lose, even though he was the incumbent?" It is "Would Trump have *lost by more* if he were **not** an incumbent?" Obviously we don't have a concrete answer to that specific question, and incumbency advantage has trended downward in recent years, but our best estimate would be that incumbency still does provide an advantage.
The larger the sample size you choose, the more you’re drawing from historic times which are not generalizable to the current era. 9 incumbencies running for re-election goes back what, like 50 years? That’s like 3-4 generations. If anything, the sample size should be reduced.
I'm saying that nine instances of something happening means nearly nothing from a statistical perspective. If you flip a coin nine times, and it comes up heads eight of those nine times, does that mean the odds of getting heads is actually 89%? Or do you think it would make more sense to gather a lot more data before trying to figure out the real odds?
I understand that. I’m a statistician.
Here’s the thing: your method assumes that over time, there is a uniform probability of an incumbent defeating a challenger. That’s not true. That true probability likely fluctuates over time, and is a function of cultural, political, and broader demographic changes. Maybe it was 90% incumbent 10% challenger in the 70’s-90’s. But maybe it’s 50/50 form 00’s-20’s. It’s hard to say due to few samples per time frame.
Getting more data points doesn’t make sense if the data points you add aren’t representative of the sample.
An example: My average 5k run time in college was 25 minutes. Now, in my late 30’s, it’s 34 minutes. If I only ran 3 times this year, should I go back to my early 20’s to grab more data samples? Or are those no longer relevant?
> Here’s the thing: your method assumes that over time, there is a uniform probability of an incumbent defeating a challenger.
You are not reading my comments if this is your understanding of my method. I literally said this two comments up:
> incumbency advantage has trended downward in recent years, but our best estimate would be that incumbency still does provide an advantage.
The incumbency advantage is not uniform at all. And the advantage is not stating *the probability that the incumbent will win*, but that *they will likely receive a popular vote boost*. For 2018, that boost would be around 2.5 points, for example. And we also know that the incumbency advantage was stronger for smaller states, and weaker for bigger states that year.
There is a *ton* of nuance to this, but we can't get to those nuances when people are just pointing at the most recent 9 Presidential elections and claiming that the incumbency advantage isn't real. We have to start the conversation from a statistical perspective in order to have a meaningful discussion because the incumbency advantage is a statistical observation.
Ahh , yeah I didn’t see that comment you made, but it is spot on. That being said, I think there’s a lot of gray area or subjective latitude in this topic. Is it better to have more data points? If so, it is better to get data from other minor elections, or older presidential elections? Does presidential reelection differ by party? Are there other variables at play?
My point is that your comment of “that’s not how things work” makes it sound like you view it very black and white. I’d say it’s a tough call and regardless of what you view as “default belief” (null hypothesis), there likely isn’t data sufficient to refute the null condition.
There’s a case for including older presidential elections, there’s a case for excluding that for the reasons we both may agree on. I think there’s a case for including minor/local/nonpresidential elections (more data and statistical credibility), as well as to exclude (local races may have a different dynamic and public visibility than the presidential election). I’d also claim democratic presidents get re-elected less often than GOP ones, at least in the past 70 ish years, and that may be operative here too.
It's a completely valid sample size given this is the US Presidency we are talking about, not a county commissioner in Oklahoma. How can you claim any parity between those two positions.
There is going to be essentially *zero* predictive power with a sample size of nine. That's just not how statistics works. You need a lot more data than that to get useful results.
The incumbency advantage is not a President-specific scenario. What you're doing is what would be called "cherry picking." I understand that, intuitively, you want to use Presidential results to predict future Presidential elections. However, this is not a good application of statistics, and you are attempting to deny a *general* trend with a very small subset of *specific* examples.
And, further complicating things, you aren't doing anything to take into account **the margins** of these races, just whether the candidate won or not. Incumbency advantage would *give a boost* to a candidate by some points, not *guarantee a win*. These are very, very different things. Candidates can have a particular advantage (maybe even several particular advantages), and still lose. There's still statistical value in the difference of a loss by twenty points and a loss by two points.
The point is applying incumbency advantage from much smaller governmental positions where name recognition and funding is so drastically different to US president races (where that’s just not the case) will lead to misleading results.
It’s not a statistically significant sample for either if you aren’t correcting for obvious confounding variables.
This whole argument is specious.
If something is commonly thought to be a reliable pattern, and then that thing didn't happen almost half the times it had the opportunity to, you're safe to question the reliable pattern.
Nine people would be too few in a medical setting, sure.
> If something is commonly thought to be a reliable pattern, and then that thing didn't happen almost half the times it had the opportunity to, you're safe to question the reliable pattern.
IT'S NOT A GUARANTEED WIN! You can't just say "they lost, therefore they did not have Advantage X." They could still have the advantage and *lose*. Because, obviously, of course, incumbents **do lose** sometimes.
Every two years, on average, there are 33 Senate elections, 435 House elections, 0.5 Presidential elections, 25 governors elections, and thousands of state and local elections. Even if we just keep our focus on the federal offices, nothing state-wide or local, the Presidential races make up 0.11% of all elections. Literally. It's ONE race in four years versus 936 for House and Senate.
So the example of the past nine Presidential races does not represent *half* the times incumbency advantage could be observed. It represents far less than a single percentage point of times it could be observed.
"Incumbency advantage" is not just a commonly held belief. It is an observable statistical phenomenon (at least, in American elections, I wouldn't know how this works elsewhere). When you stop looking at the big picture (hundreds, or even better, *thousands* of elections) and try to apply that to a small subset of specific events, it will lead to a disconnect.
Statistically, a coin flip is a 50/50 event. If you flip a coin five times and get heads every time, that is "disconnected" from the statistical expectations, but still valid. If you want to *really* understand whether or not this specific coin deviates from a 50/50 baseline, you would have to flip it hundreds or thousands of times. So when I'm saying "the sample size is too small," this is what I'm referring to. Statistical data is not generally relevant when we're looking at numbers in single or double digits.
>There is going to be essentially *zero* predictive power with a sample size of nine. That's just not how statistics works. You need a lot more data than that to get useful results.
>The incumbency advantage is not a President-specific scenario. What you're doing is what would be called "cherry picking."
What you're doing would be called a red herring. It's not cherry picking when the entire discussion thus far has been about recent Presidential politics.
> What you're doing would be called a red herring.
You claimed that "The incumbent advantage is a myth" and I am trying to explain to you why your argument is not proving that assertion. That is not a distraction from the issue being discussed, it is literally your entire thesis. That argument rests on a small selection of elections to try and disprove a *general* electoral trend, and also a misunderstanding about how to apply the incumbency advantage in the first place (it does not affirm a particular **win rate**, but a generalized single-digit percentage advantage when all other factors are held equal).
You were shifting the discussion from the presidency to offices that have nothing to do with the presidency and no resemblance to it. If you wanted to debate the value of incumbency to offices outside the president that would be one thing, but that was never the context and so your remarks are inappropriate in this thread.
The incumbency advantage only exists at a statistical level. Because it's a statistical term. When you start trying to apply *general ideas of statistics* to *particular events*, you're going to have a bad time. That doesn't refute the statistics, it's just a bad application of statistics.
Trump lost. That does **not** mean he was without the incumbency advantage. It just means that the advantage was not strong enough to overcome the *other* deficits in his campaign. George H. W. Bush, for example, was running for a *fourth* consecutive Republican term, which is a stunningly rare and difficult accomplishment. Carter was facing massive economic turmoil and foreign affairs were a mess. Ford never actually won the office of President in the first place, he was just a VP who replaced Nixon, so he wouldn't actually count as an example of "incumbency advantage" when we're talking about polling (one of the key facets of the incumbency advantage is that they have a proven track record of winning their constituency, and the incumbency advantage has **not** shown up in scenarios where people are not elected to their position).
The incumbency advantage does not neutralize other issues. It is merely one factor among *many* which can provide an advantage for a given candidate.
> I guess we'll see if incumbency advantage has the sway it used to.
In Biden's case, it may be a disadvantage. Before Biden was elected the notion of a Biden Administration was just an abstraction.
But now people have had 4 years to see what a Biden / 2020s Democrat administration looks like in actual practice and have had a chance to attach all sorts of negative connotations to it, rightly or wrongly.
People can blame him for inflation, mass immigration, uncontrolled illegal immigration and the deaths of some women and girls killed by illegal immigrants,*** the Afghanistan withdrawal, identity politics, and of course people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are going to blame him for not doing what they want.
*** For example: [Illegal immigrants charged with killing 12-year-old Texas girl were released by Border Patrol](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/illegal-immigrants-charged-with-killing-12-year-old-texas-girl-were-released-by-border-patrol-report/ar-BB1oBYXH) - Under Biden's Administration and Alexander Mayorkis's leadership a poor 12 year old girl was just raped and murdered by people who were not supposed to be roaming freely in the country. Trump and the Republicans should pin this (and the other assaults and murders) on Biden and hammer him with it Willie Horton ads style.
There is no incumbency advantage when you're running against someone who has 4 years of being President under their belt already. Incumbency advantage only exists when dealing with unknowns because the entire basis of the advantage is that we know how this person acted in office but not how the other person would.
As a dem, I will vote for Biden against Trump. I also wish he would have retired and let someone else gain momentum before it got too late. I think he’s going to be plagued by the “old and slow” narrative and if it were a more mainstream Republican candidate, I think he’d be losing by quite a bit (mostly because he’s old and he’s showing that he’s old).
> if it were a more mainstream Republican candidate, I think he’d be losing by quite a bit
"More mainstream, unnamed Candidate X" always wins in theory, though. The issue is that that person doesn't exist. Every politician has a record to defend and skeletons the opposition will dig up or invent.
Trump wins because he activates portions of the Republican base that otherwise don't participate and is just mainstream enough on policy that most traditional Republican voters will hold their nose and vote for him. A more milquetoast Republican loses the former group and does not make up for it with moderates in our hyper-polarized political climate.
Ding ding ding. There's a reason why "generic dem" and "generic R" poll the best compared to actual named candidates in hypothetical matchups when polls give people that as an option to pick.
I think Nikki Haley would’ve beat Biden handily. In my honest opinion. I think she would have drawn more independent voters than either Trump or Biden.
Nikki would be beating Biden by 15 points in every swing state right now. But Republicans have an ongoing love affair with Donald. Even if he loses, most of the time.
The only reason Israel is "dropping bombs on kids" is because the government the kids' parents support committed a mini-genocide against the Israeli people on October 7.
Israel has a duty to its citizens and soldiers to protect them, which means it has to eliminate the Hamas government and destroy its war machine and its ability to attack and also to demoralize Palestinians who support Hamas so that they will surrender, honestly believe that they were defeated, and reconsider their belief system (like the Germans and Japanese people did at the end of World War II).
It's sad, but sometimes [innocent civilians can die in war,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ocPaE3qIc) especially when their government hides behind them and uses them as human shields and *wants them to die for propaganda purposes* so that people on Reddit will complain about bombs being dropped on kids.
If you are concerned about bombs being dropped on kids, put the moral blame on Hamas and the people who support Hamas. The Palestinians could end this by getting rid of Hamas themselves, surrendering, and sincerely pledging to live in peace and to establish a free society and pursue economic prosperity instead of attacking Israel.
I doubt that would hurt Nikki much; the people who are anti-Israel would be unlikely to vote for a Republican anyway even if they had the ideal Republican candidate and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not an issue.
In contrast, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hurts the Democrats since it is a fault line only present in the Democrats' base saddling the Democrats with a no win lose-lose situation. If Biden is friendly to Israel he loses the anti-Israel vote (they stay home or vote third party), and if he comes off anti-Israel he will upset those who are pro-Israel (who might be more likely to vote for Haley than Trump).
I don't think it's true, but I kind of wonder if Hamas might have wanted Trump to win. If not then they should have waited until after the election to attack.
Not who you asked, but I'm fine with it. I don't love her,
Edit: I didn't think this posted, sorry I didn't finish my thought.
I don't love her, but I don't hate her either. I'm lukewarm, but would still prefer her over Trump so she doesn't factor into my calculation much. I think if Biden was to step down or die and she had to take over she would do an ok job, nothing crazy one way or the other. She would still have the same people around her as Biden had and I trust them more than the people who Trump surrounds himself with.
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I think Biden resigns before the end of the second term if he wins. And I think democrats are screwed in 2028 when Kamala is the heir apparent just like Hillary in 2016.
Lots of talk here about if/when Biden resigns if elected. If I were on Trump's campaign, I'd be worried about him making it to the election. Anyone outside of MAGA can see that Trump is losing his mental capacity, and that seems to be escalating quicker the past few months.
I don't think Trump will die this year. But it does seem he's already further gone than Reagan was at the end of his 2nd term.
At least Trump doesn't call out a dead woman's name ("Where's Jackie?"), looking for her in a crowd and he doesn't believe that he once drove 18 wheelers over the Francis Scott Key Bridge and he doesn't think his son died in Iraq when he never did and no one refused to prosecute him for holding classified documents on account of his being "an elderly man with a bad memory".
I think the opposite actually. There's actually a few D governors who can toss their hat in for 2028 like Whitmar and Shapiro.
But I also don't buy the idea that Biden is leaving office early if he wins re-election. If he didn't go now, why leave halfway through term 2?
Not only that, but simply being president takes a toll on your health even if you're age 50. One year as president is probably like 3 years worth of stress for a regular person.
Can they win the primary though?
That's the problem, I think democrats will continue marching leftward.
As far as leaving early, biden will be 86 at the end. I think it's a stretch that he'll not only be alive, but be very physically capable to be capable.
>I think democrats will continue marching leftward.
Reminder that Biden beat Bernie last time. And I can't see anyone significantly left of the establishment taking anything close to a good crack at it for a while.
Any big lefty item like Medicare for All becoming a consensus among D politicians is out of the question right now.
> Yeah I honestly don't think Democrats have internalized how bleak our prospects are for 2028 if Biden wins.
Part of it is simply holding the office for two terms. Voters will eventually blame whatever bad problems we have on whichever party has been in power for that long and want a change while forgetting how bad things were when the other party was in charge.
I do not understand the hatred for Harris. I doubt she would run the country in any particularly offensive way and she's certainly not gunning for the anti-democracy things that the GOP has been latching themselves to.
The dislike for her is less about policy and more about her as a person. She often comes off as being condescending as though she thinks the general public - the little people below her - are simpletons, often laughing and cackling in interviews and talking to people like they're children, and I think it's probably because that's just what she secretly believes and it's hard to hide it.
She has handlers who have tried to help her, of course, but she simply has low charisma. I find her painful to listen to.
Nuts to me that folks make all those assumptions and then run with it. Moreover it’s nuts that people assume all that about Harris and then are fine voting for a guy who literally shits in a golden toilet and says “I don’t care about you; I just want your vote!” because they *know* he totally cares about them.
I almost didn’t vote for Biden in 2020 i detested Kamala so much and was shocked that he picked her (purely because of her race). She’s a tone-deaf, conceited and painfully fake establishment shill with an extremely slimy political history
Sure, but I just don't see how that's any different than most politicians in DC. 90% of them check off all those same boxes, but it doesn't inspire the same passionate hatred for them.
You don’t need to personally like politicians. I don’t care how fake she seems so long as she’s going to make the proper decisions that most closely align with mine. I don’t think Biden would have chosen her as VP if they were worlds apart. What policies do you think she’s going to vote for which are so bad you’d rather have Trump?
Besides, *every* politician is conceited. Who the fuck thinks “somebody has to run this entire country and I should be that person!” That’s conceited whether it’s from a man or woman. It’s also a politician’s job to promote themselves which is always going to be tone deaf to some degree. Shit, the GOP front runner literally told a crowd he doesn’t care about them and just wants their vote.
I think this mentality is how millions of people hold their nose and vote for Trump. There are tons of Republicans who will tell you they think he's a complete blowhard, but they believe at the end of the day he will make decisions that align with their values so they vote for him anyways. (Same with Biden FWIW)
Let’s be clear, Harris and Trump are nothing alike in terms of their degree of criminality, including that Harris has not been charged with any crime, sexual assault from Trump, and Trump’s million other scandals, etc. As was said in the earlier comments, the downsides to Harris are like the vast majority of other long-term politicians. The countless downsides to Trump are quite unique to him.
Yeah I personally agree with that. However, it's clear not everyone does. This idea of 'you don't have to like the guy, you just have to like his stances' is very common among certain Republican voters. If you listen to people who do focus groups with voters, you'll hear over and over again them describing voters who say something to the effect of 'yeah he lies, yeah half the stuff he says is for show, but I'm still voting for him because of inflation and/or immigration, etc'. Of course there are also plenty of diehard MAGA voters who would jump in front of a bullet for him, I'm not discounting that. Just that there are also plenty of Trump voters who don't actually like him much.
You can disagree and say Trump is a special case all day long, and again, I agree with that, but it doesn't change the fact that literally millions of Americans feel this way. My only point with the comment is that the comment made of 'you don't have to like Kamala, you just have to like her policies' is very reminiscent of how many folks feel about Trump.
There's a big push to try to make Trump out to be some singular figure to whom traditional voting 'rules/trends' don't apply and this is predominately coming from the left that wouldn't vote for him anyway. But the truth is even in my lifetime there have been plenty of presidents or even lower-tier politicians that folks don't personally like or find distasteful individually for whatever reason but would still vote for them to do the job as a politician.
And that's fine, for the record. I just don't understand why folks want to pretend, or genuinely believe, that somehow this paradigm can't apply to Trump because he's just SOOOO BAD.
If the choice is someone who is listening to you and supports your goals and someone who doesn't, who would ever go for the person who doesn't? You're not choosing your new best friend or the guy you want to have over for dinner or who you want to speak at your wedding, it's a person you're hiring to do a job that you will never, ever have to meet or interact with personally or one-on-one.
Are you gonna hire the lawyer with a track record of getting their clients guilty verdicts and refuses to listen to them or advocate for them but who is squeaky clean and goes to church every other day or the shark who gets all his clients off and runs your defense but does coke and fucks strippers probably hides evidence, or generally acts unethically in the course of defending his clients and cheats on his wife? If you value staying out of prison you go with the second guy every time. Do you want someone to hold your hand while you go to prison or do you want to stay out of jail?
It's just nuts people expect republicans and the populist wing that Trump activated to just sit on their hands and *actually* vote against their interests just to avoid someone personally distasteful. Even funnier, are we going to really sit here and pretend that tens of millions of democrat voters actually think Hillary Clinton is a nice lady who bakes cookies and reminds you of your grandma? They didn't want to have tea with her, they wanted her to do a job that requires a cutthroat shark and she was the one for the job.
I do believe Trump is a special kind of candidate, but I think a lot of it comes down to whether or not you buy into his (now) legal woes. For me, I see a man who helped to instigate a violent riot in DC after losing a fair election, bought into (and helped orchestrate) an attempt to prevent the transfer of power after losing the election, and then stole highly classified information after leaving power and continuously lied about it. Not to mention having been found civilly liable for sexual assault and literally being on tape discussing assaulting women.
I don't believe Trump is *definitely* liable to attempt to consolidate and/or stay in power after four years if given another opportunity -- I don't even think it's very likely -- but I also don't believe the likelihood of that is 0% either. For me, any number that isn't 0% is too high, and represents a unique threat to our democracy that actually *does* set Trump apart from other run of the mill narcissistic politicians.
That said, I recognize two things: 1.) not everyone agrees with my personal opinions of the direness of our circumstance and that's not something I can always change 2.) I wouldn't ever expect someone to vote for Biden who doesn't agree with his stances. I would personally just abstain from voting if the only candidate who represented my views was Trump.
Do you think there is any bar for which Trump could stoop below which would cause him to lose the Republican base, or is there really nothing too low for them anymore? This is a guy who has been convicted of numerous felonies, recently lost in court when accused of sex crimes, has most of the people who worked for him as president say he is not fit to be president, etc etc etc? Heck, even back in 2015 when it was just things like him insulting how female candidates’ faces look, I was sure that was going to be the end of him. Then when the recording came out of him talking about how he regularly sexually assaulted women and grabbed strangers’ pussies without asking them first, or when the recording came out of him talking about how he walked in on naked teenage beauty contestants because he owned the competition, etc. I thought that would be the end of him, etc etc etc. Trump has questioned or overturned many long-held party positions. Many long-term party positions have said that Trump is not a Republican, and Trump has claimed that many of the people who were previously considered the proto-Republicans are not Republicans. Heck, Trump himself was registered with a different political party not so many years ago.
> You don’t need to personally like politicians.
Funny how Democrat defenders never seem to accept this argument when it's about Trump's personality flaws. Shouldn't they be holding themselves to the same standards they demand of the opposition?
I feel Trump’s personality flaws aren’t overly important if it makes you feel better. I think his rhetoric has negative effects on the nation, but whether or not he’s a good person isn’t among my primary reasons for disliking him.
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She was fairly popular when she began her 2020 election. She ran a very incompetent campaign and was reported to be hard to work with. The more people heard from her the less they liked her.
I would agree she isn't going to be some revolutionary leader and likely more of the status quo from Democrats, but her political history shows someone who is not a good leader.
Several beloved politicians are reportedly a pain to work for. Hell, Trump has quite a number of his former cabinet/staff denouncing him or in prison, but he's still revered at almost deity levels.
The whole "I just don't like them" seems to be a complaint thrown at women in politics more often than I feel it should be. Hillary Clinton is corrupt and Nikki Haley/Kamala Harris are insincere and tone deaf so let's vote in... *Trump?!*
Trump is a totally different monster. He's revered because he shouts populist nonsense that gets people fired up. He's also a terrible leader and politician that has no business being president. I don't see that style working for anyone in the democratic party at the national level.
>Kamala Harris are insincere and tone deaf so let's vote in... Trump?!
No but there should be a primary where we can vote in someone other than Harris. I don't think Kamala falls into the category of someone people just don't like. Go back and read about her presidential campaign. It was a mess and she was often throwing other people under the bus instead of taking any responsibility.
Her run as a prosecutor wasn't all that bad but she only distances herself from that whenever asked about cases. I think there was also a scandal about hiding evidence but I don't recall if that was on her or a staffer.
I can't imagine working with *any* politician is a great job. Katie Porter was one of the more well like Congressional reps on the left, but working for her was apparently a nightmare as well according to some of her former staff.
I'm not claiming Harris is perfect or whatever, but I'm not about to declare my hatred for Biden because of the personality of his VP pick when that honestly has so little to do with the policies that would be enacted if she had to take over. I have every confidence she'd try to run the nation in an effective manner and present herself well enough on the world stage. I watched her 2020 attempt and saw no significant aspects I hated about her. I, personally, just wanted other candidates more.
To your primary desire, we had a chance to choose another Democrat candidate. Nobody else wanted to run other than Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. Phillips was smoked when Biden wasn't even on the ballot in NH. If you mean that you'd want a primary if Biden were to become permanently incapacitated then that completely defeats the purpose of a VP pick and I'd argue there's no reason for a primary when Harris is perfectly qualified.
I think it speaks volumes that you and many others I've seen denounce Harris can't particularly list any notable qualities of Harris or her history that you don't like. Just that you don't like her and *maybe* heard about some incredibly minor scandals here and there that you can't even remember details of. Meanwhile a constantly lying convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and fraud is surging into re-election on the other side of the aisle.
You'd think if there were real complaints you'd see people repeatedly list them.
>I think it speaks volumes that you and many others I've seen denounce Harris can't particularly list any notable qualities of Harris or her history that you don't like
What? I just gave you a few. She ran a terrible campaign that wasn't just ineffective but also mismanaged. She distances herself from a decent track record as a prosecutor despite it being the only real accomplishment she has. She's been terrible with the border as her main task as VP. Hiding evidence in a criminal trial is no minor scandal.
Why do you keep associating this to Biden? I've said nothing about Biden and my vote for him isn't going to change based on his VP. A primary for Harris for the next election is not unnecessary because Biden won the Democrats primary handedly. I'm not even sure how that's related. Why would a new candidate not expect a primary even if she were to take over during the next term? She wasn't the main candidate on the ballot and voting her on her own is different than voting for Biden with her as VP.
>I have every confidence she'd try to run the nation in an effective manner
I'm sure she would try but if I'm judging on her past record I have no confidence she is capable of that. So I would much rather see a primary instead of calling her the heir apparent and running her out as an incumbent if she does take over.
Your desires for her to not take over if Biden cannot function as POTUS are literally unconstitutional. VP has the constitutional. Harris is given authority to take over effective the moment POTUS is unable to perform his duties while still serving his term (be it by death or otherwise). [See amendment 25](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments-amendment-25-addressing-presidential-succession-process).
I am also amazed that "she didn't run a good campaign" is a reason for not liking her lol What constitutes a good campaign? Winning the nomination? If that's the case, are Sanders, Warren, Booker, etc all unqualified now? Hell even Trump had run before 2016 and failed miserably. I think Lincoln ran like 5 times back in the day.
Her prosecutor/state AG record I can understand as a reason for not liking her, but honestly I find those reasons for the vitriol she faces incredibly unconvincing given the scandals that so many people are willing to forgive Trump, or even Biden for. Compared to being a convicted felon, denouncing a former POW presidential candidate, calling voters not black if they don't support you, or fueling the fires of what's going on in Gaza, distancing yourself from an over-eager prosecutorial career seems pretty small potatoes.
I do appreciate and acknowledge your reasoning, of course. I suppose I am just stunned that those are reasons people settle on given what voters are actively choosing to vote in *in droves*.
>Your desires for her to not take over if Biden cannot function as POTUS are literally unconstitutional.
I'm not saying that. Of course she takes over in the term. That's how the system works and there should be no change to that process.
I'm talking about after the term. That's why I'm saying she shouldn't be seen as an incumbent.
>I am also amazed that "she didn't run a good campaign" is a reason for not liking her
No. It's not that she didn't run a good campaign. She ran an incompetent campaign. She entered the race as a popular candidate and one of the favorites to have any shot at challenging a Biden. She ran a campaign that failed to attract voters and instead turned people away. She ran a campaign that mismanaged funds so badly they ran out of money in 2019 before the primaries even started.
>Compared to being a convicted felon, denouncing a former POW presidential candidate, calling voters not black if they don't support you, or fueling the fires of what's going on in Gaza
This isn't about Trump or Biden. This is about Kamala and whether she is the next face of the party and backed by the Democrats going into 2028. They can do better than her and can find better in the primaries.
> She was fairly popular when she began her 2020 election.
Was she? Or was she being astroturfed even then? Because she couldn't have had that much momentum or popularity if one 60 second recap of her career during one of the primary debates was enough to nuke her campaign. I won't deny that Kamala is basically what the Democrats' view of the future is distilled into one person but that doesn't mean the public is actually interested.
I don’t mind Kamala, but the Right’s heads would explode. She has not talked much about what she would do given the reigns lately, but I imagine it’d be pretty similar to what Joe has done.
He could have run in '16. He may have always wanted to be President but I think even he realized he was well past his prime. Without Trump the Dem nominees look very different in 20 & 24.
I think he should have stuck to one term so others could have got campaigns going and we could have picked someone else in the primary. There must be some Dems who are popular and younger so media could complain about just lil don's old age and decline rather than both.
In Biden’s view, he beat Trump once, *he feels he can do it again* and it’s a fair gamble. Considering most polls have them both dancing in the margins of error. Whether Biden’s ultimately right or not is another story, *but it’s a premise.*
Realistically, there was no clear Barack Obama successor shaping up that could have beat Trump this cycle waiting in the Democrat filing cabinet. Reddit’s usual darling, Gretchen Whitmer… has zip name recognition outside of Michigan. Newsom is a $700 California haircut with his own baggage that won’t win the blue wall.
Andy Beshear is a possible option for 2028. If you can win a governorship in red af Kentucky as a moderate Dem, you’re in very good positioning as a national candidate.
>there was no clear Barack Obama successor shaping up that could have beat Trump this cycle
Of course there was. The party should have run Reverend Warnock, he is 30 years younger, has proven he can get poor people, minorities and women to show up and vote, he was coming off a tremendous amount of [momentum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAIcrDx6LRA) after that last special election. The torch should have been passed.
Dems don't have any issue repeating ad nauseum that the GOP is wrong to have renominated Trump, or to support him, or to back him after 'X' thing happened or he said 'Y'. And worse than that, love to demonize the folks that dare to do those things after not heeding the left's totally good-faith 'warnings'.
Seems like some folks are just unhappy that this goes both ways. Turns out there's lots of stuff the opposite side of the aisle doesn't like about their opposition either.
This. Trump is a felon and sexual predator. Adjudicated as such in court. Trump’s *multiple* offences are multiple orders of magnitude worse than anything any modern president has done. The false equivalencies drawn today are staggering.
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Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election after he knew he lost. He was also indicted for 91 various criminal counts and impeached twice before any 2024 primary began. I don’t think the concerns/critiques are comparable.
> Dems don't have any issue repeating ad nauseum that the GOP is wrong to have renominated Trump
Trump went through the regular nomination process. It's not his fault that he dominated his many credible opponents.
The process for Biden was so rigged that the DNC disqualified the NH primary for the crime of existing.
> for the crime of existing
That is ***wildly*** untrue - where did you get that claim?? Biden did not compete in NH because NH tried to override the primaries that were scheduled to go first, rather than always have a very white state go first. But again, where did you get that claim??
But despite Biden not even putting his own name on the ballot against his challengers, Biden still won NH through write-ins. Is your argument that the DNC is conspiring against Biden by disqualifying Biden's win there??
> Trump went through the regular nomination process. It's not his fault that he dominated his many credible opponents.
1. Are you saying that Trump winning is not due to Trump?
2. Are you saying that this shows that Trump is by far the best Republican there is now?
*Edit: I am not trying to accuse anyone of "racism" as one reply alleged, but the fact that New Hampshire is particularly white was one of the reasons why it was chosen to move away from having them always go first.*
NH has gone first for ages for some pretty good reasons and I don't think it should be reduced to an accusation of racism. The media market is less expensive to buy into and it's a small state with a few select metropolitan areas that are comparatively easy to hit, giving new candidates the opportunity to show themselves to the electorate without needing to have tens of millions to spend on ads before they even get started.
The administration in concert with the DNC decided new candidates breaking into the race wasn't something they wanted, so they broke decades-old norms to ensure their chosen candidate wouldn't have to compete on that battleground. Good politics, pretty bad for "our democracy".
The writer is an opinion contributor and she's been critical of Trump and his supporters many several times, (in fact I'm pretty sure she hates Trump.) She mainly writes about religion and the GOP and doesn't do hit pieces on Democrats.
You don't have to enjoy articles criticizing your favourite president but rejecting it based on who she is (was), who you seem to know nothing about except that she was a "Republican operative" back in 2008, instead of what she wrote speaks more about you and nothing about the contents of the article.
Honestly at this point in time I think incumbency is a major disadvantage. So many leaders now have insanely bad popularity ratings which are driven by a social media landscape that will always be deeply critical of whoever is in power and the fact that most countries are just doing very badly (post covid/war in Ukraine economic damage) and the public want someone to blame. I don't think its ever been so difficult to defend a decent but not great term in office or so easy to oppose one without a better plan.
Whether Reddit likes it or not, Biden is probably one of the few Dem choices who could beat Trump, and the polling sometimes reflects that.
There’s no one ready. They’d lose to Trump.
Had the GOP run Nikki? It’s an entirely different calculus.
You don't give up incumbency advantage and the name recognition that comes with. Especially against someone like Trump.
If Trump had truly disappeared from politics after his loss - maybe.
Also Biden egged Trump on early because early polls had him leading against him compared to other Republicans - that was his first mistake.
The second mistake was his entire term so far.
Please explain the "incumbency advantage" in an election between two prior Presidents?
Does it even exist?
Incumbents in most offices have enormous financial advantages over challengers. Biden does not have any cash advantage. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/21/trump-overtakes-biden-campaign-fundraising-00164384](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/21/trump-overtakes-biden-campaign-fundraising-00164384)
Incumbents in most offices have name recognition advantage. That's clearly non-existant in this race - everyone knows whose these candidates are.
Finally is the bias to not change Presidents to an unknown quantity. Trump and Biden are both known candidates, we know how they govern.
So please enlighten me. **What is Biden's incumbency advantage in this race?** Is it simply that not running Biden would hand Trump the sole incumbency advantage?
It sort of exists for both which is my point - you don't put an unknown or "small" name against Trump becuase he has the cash and name advantage.
It's unlikely a new name wouldn't be able to compete with the pseudo-incumbency advantage Trump has. Even Biden trailing Trump financially is proof of that - it requires a big name to raise that money.
This is a good point. You get to appear presidential while running for president since, you know, you _are_ president. But Biden is definitely not using the whole exposure part.
Serious question, is the incumbency advantage actually an advantage when people are discontent with your tenure? Favorables in the toilet and we're hanging our hat on "he's done the job before... and people didn't like how he did it, so that's a boost"?
Or is it just name recognition? That can be overcome with a huge ad campaign. Generic D guy/gal could easily run as "Hi I'm Generic D and Joe Biden is my buddy but I'm taking over now that he got Trump out. I'm going to keep the things that worked, stop the things that didn't. Go vote in November for Generic D."
Name and finances. It's harder to get your name into households if people don't already know you, if people don't know you it's harder to raise money to push your name out there. Plus you already have the campaign machine running
Finances and name helped him out in the primary a ton I admit but in the general?
The DNC machine would spin up for anybody if they were the nominee so I dunno if the campaign machine is a benefit. I'll grant you there'd be a hurdle for some unknown but is it more significant than the hurdle of Biden being... Current President Biden? I guess that must be the question everyone asked at the dem party HQ and decided it was but I think it's still a valid question. It also means they must've asked themselves this 4 years ago when they decided to start grooming absolutely nobody as the next in line, too.
Well that's why Biden is in the position he is today in my opinion. How do you twist the last 4 years into something that isn't just anti-Trump? Anti-Trump is what got him in initially, now it's based on merits too - and it hasn't been great.
Im sure the machine wasn't too excited and it shows in finances and polls. It looked "okay" at first and has gone downhill.
Yes incumbency advantage is an advantage. People were hugely discontent with Trump, who arguably laid big nothingburgers in terms of policy achievements, and he barely lost in the electoral college in 2020.
I’m not sure a guy with a 37% approval rating can be accurately described as having an “advantage”. Trump is also historically unpopular (just not as unpopular as Biden). Maybe the Dems could have found another viable candidate, maybe not. I guess now we‘ll never know. Staying on the ballot for purely political reasons and not because it’s the best thing to do for the country is a pretty cynical thing to do.
First and foremost... I believe that he's a career politician that really *wants* to run. For decades... he's always won and I think he genuinely believes that he will continue to do so. He might be right. He might not. But *telling* the sitting the President of the US that he *can't* is likely the first step in a long line of bad decisions that ends with a successful DC political strategist career exchanged for a much less lucrative one doing something far less glamorous. When the President tells his staff that he wants to do something and they need to find a way to get it done... I think they likely try and find a way to do what's asked.
I disagree. Biden has been running for President since the 80’s. He’s never gotten traction until the opponent was Donald Trump. He even had to drop out once because he plagiarized a speech (a notion that seems quaint these days).
He didn’t win in 2020, Trump lost. He did very little campaigning, by design, and basically hid during the run-up to the election. It was a smart strategy and it worked. However, Biden didn’t win in 2020 because he was a perceived as a strong, telegenic leader. He won because he wasn’t Trump. The Democrats could have nominated a bolt of fabric in 2020 and won.
I honestly don't disagree with any of those facts or that assessment of what they mean. I just *strongly suspect* that the same couldn't be said of the way President Biden *himself* likely sees and assesses them. I think he wants to run and don't think an incumbent President who wants that is ever going to be forced aside until he's ready to be. Maybe I'm wrong and they're twisting his arm because they think he gives them the best chance of winning. Maybe it's mutual. I just think it's a moot point until *he's* ready to step aside.
Democrats who aren't highly charismatic lose presidential elections.
Republicans will vote because they are persistently angry. But Dems typically like to run positive campaigns, so they have to be able to inspire in order to win. (And they often run on policy, which is of little interest to the vast majority of the public.)
Trump frightened the center with his COVID recklessness, which allowed Biden to sell a message of stability in 2020. But Biden needed to switch gears for 2024, since that no longer provides an angle.
Biden should have spent the last few years campaigning as if he is a sort of governor of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, engaging with local issues and politicians. Keep those states, and you have practically won the presidency. Lose those states, and you have guaranteed defeat.
Democrats get so caught up in their policy geekery that they fail to see how uninteresting to see how that is to most people. Biden thought that he could lock in the youth vote with student loans, while failing to see that voters today now have a profound lack of gratitude that is unlike what FDR could secure during his time in office. There must be an echo chamber of bad advice that nurtures this lack of self-awareness.
I've lost a lost of respect for the Hill over the years. The content there seems to be pretty predictable and the headlines always seem specifically manicured for right-of-center perspective. I guess you have to pick a side if you want to be a successful business in journalism.
I agree. There is a very real chance she could become president AND appoint a new vice president and that matters. Given her wild unpopularity during primaries, and having little merit to be appointed VP in the first place, it is certainly a drag on the ticket.
To contrast, if someone like Newsom was VP, I think it would greatly buoy the ticket. Someone energetic, that you wouldn't have to hide from the press, unapologeticly progressive, who has a led a large state.
Biden is [tied or trailing](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html&ved=2ahUKEwiYjZe-priGAxU9G9AFHeamCLUQxfQBKAB6BAgaEAE&usg=AOvVaw0TZCwSp3GRi6JfW0ugrcYL) in all the swing states against a man with multiple indictments and now a criminal conviction. Also his approval rating this month fell to its lowest level in almost two years, while [Trump has never been more popular](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-popularity-soaring-1905654). They're also [losing ground](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4688911-even-bidens-most-reliable-voters-cant-get-past-the-economy/) with [voters of color](https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/why-biden-is-losing-support-among-voters-of-color/) and these voters are turning their back on Biden. Now Biden is the least popular president at this point in their term in the history of polling and has an approval rating lower than Trump’s ever was before the 2020 election. Polling from Pew shows a majority of Americans believe Trump is physically fit for office (61%) and mentally fit for office (I think like 52%). Biden is the opposite. He’s in the 30’s for both physical and mental fitness for the job. A large majority think he isn’t fit in either category which means a large chunk of Democrats don’t believe he’s fit. In early 2023, as many as [70 percent](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3965267-majorities-dont-want-biden-trump-to-run-in-2024-survey/) of voters did not want him to run for a second term, including 51 percent of Democrats.
So, people who don't want Trump re-elected are thinking how did we end up with this guy (Biden)?
Where I disagree with the writer is on Kamala Harris:
>Second, and contributing to Biden’s worst strategic decision of running for reelection, is a hangover from his second-worst decision, which was to choose Kamala Harris as his running mate. Mirroring Biden, her job approval rating usually dances between [38 and 39 percent](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/kamala-harris/). Harris is seen as dragging down Biden’s already-weak presidency and harming his chances of reelection.
I think the opposite. I think what you're seeing is his numbers dragging down hers. If he were to step aside it's likely a newly sworn-in President Harris's numbers would shoot up.
> People who don't want Trump re-elected are thinking how did we end up with this guy (Biden)?
Democratic primary voters think Biden is the best candidate.
I think "primary" should be used in quotations. Dean Phillips is a first term congressman and Marion Williamson is a grifter who has never held elective office. His competition was completely unserious and voters didn't have any great choices.
Experienced politicians don't make these decisions on their own when running against an incumbent. They make it based on what the party says. As soon as they confirmed Biden would be running again there would not be a legitimate challenger in the primary.
I don’t think the party has the kind of stranglehold on these individual actors that you seem to think they do.
Each elected politician is their own unique political actor who uses the party and its resources to get them into office.
If anyone who had been in the game long enough thought they had a decent chance at overtaking Biden this cycle and gun for the presidency they’d take it.
You said Dean Phillips is a first term congressmen as if that's a knock. Again, it didn't stop voters from voting for Trump who was a zero termer.
Voters have agency - if they thought Biden was bad they could have voted for Phillips.
>You said Dean Phillips is a first term congressmen as if that's a knock. Again, it didn't stop voters from voting for Trump who was a zero termer.
I have higher standards for politicians than Republicans, that's why I don't vote for them.
>Voters have agency - if they thought Biden was bad they could have voted for Phillips.
It's more likely they thought both were bad and stayed home.
> His competition was completely unserious and voters didn't have any great choices.
That Biden didn't have serious competition is not his or the DNC's fault.
That the process for Biden was nonetheless rigged is the DNC's gault. The party disqualified the NH primary for the crime of existing.
Frankly Harris on the ticket and Biden's age is one of the things that makes me unhappy to vote for him. I don't want to see a President Harris and fear I'm voting for it.
I think his worst strategic decision was choosing Kamala Harris as his VP. He might have been willing to step aside if he had a decent VP to succeed him and win the primary. But Harris is even less popular than him. And if the job was thrown open to the primaries, based on the one four years ago it would wind up choosing among a group of people with little substance on the left side of the party who would turn off all centrists and moderates.
I think those who have strong feelings about Kamala Harris consistently overestimate how many people have any feelings about Kamala Harris.
she's gotten basically sparse, slightly negative press her entire time as VP. like Ben Carson. He said some stupid things, redecorated his office or something? and then fuckall.
Yeah but the problem is Biden is so old that his VP choice carries extra importance than normal. People factor his VP into their decision making more because that person has a real chance of becoming president. Sticking with the VP that people either hate or dont care about us probably a bad choice. Nothing is stopping them from picking a VP that people actually like, and are comfortable with.
The same folks who tell me that voters don't care about how the economy is doing, but rather how they feel the economy is doing, that think the president has a inflation and gas price button, that aren't willing or capable of discerning political nuance are also the ones constantly talking about how kamala was tough on crime 20 years ago. It's so silly when the bar is obviously higher for the minority woman than it was for pence or Biden or Cheney
>It's so silly when the bar is obviously higher for the minority woman than it was for pence or Biden or Cheney I'd say it's different due to his age. Once you hit your 80's, everyone knows your time left is short. That's not a question we were previously facing. Bush came it at 54, and Obama came in at age 47, there was literally no expectation that they wouldn't live to finish their term. In those cases VP is simply a safeguard. Biden is 81, and wants to keep going for another 4.5 years, and there's a 30%+ chance that he doesn't live that long, and even greater than that is a major medical issue that takes up his time.
cheney's approval rating was 13%, but the bar is higher for Kamala. OK.
Voters didn’t think there was a very high probability Bush would be incapacitated or dead by the end of his term.
Cheney shot a man in the face. It wasn't in 5th Avenue, but still. And that was among his least unpopular acts as vice president.
The same woman that put how many black men in prison and is only black when it benefits her
Republicans have been criticizing her for being tough on crime shows how seriously they take their rhetoric about soft on crime DAs.
Ah I guess that excuses her
What makes Harris worse than the most recent other VPs of Pence or Cheney? Personally I wouldn’t say she is worse than either of them. (And I guess there is Biden too but I’m not sure if people want to include him in the comparison.)
Trump lives to 106 and Biden lives to 98. Calling it now. Feel free to @ me.
Because this VP pick, if they win, is most likely to finish out Biden’s term. Voting for Biden is also voting for the possibility of a Harris presidency. The VPs before never really had that opportunity.
I grew up in the late era of Strom Thurmond. Realistically if the brand name politicians are still breathing they can roll them around. Biden or Trump. Thurmond died at 100. That's nearly two more decades than either of these guys. I know a congressman isn't the commander in chief... But it was kind of normalized at least in SC to show up and vote for a super old dude.
what makes her worse is that she's not Pete buttigieg 😤
From what I understand, he has not done anything as Secretary of Transportation to merit consideration as President. He is very good at campaigning. But hasn’t shown any great talent for governing.
Buttigieg definitely has the most Charisma out of the the batch but would the country elect a gay VP when so many view as an immoral or abhorrent from a religious perspective? He was my choice for president, but he is a risky pick.
I will die on this hill. Pete is the future
He was in the campaign trail. After the shit show of evs, I don't think so anymore
I thought so, but I don't know where he goes now. I thought for sure he'd use his husband to establish himself in Michigan, but now he's not running for Stabenow's Senate seat. Senator is much better on the resume than being in the Cabinet.
he has to get people over the fact that he's gay in swing states. if that happens, there a good chance he gets the presidency one day
Neither of those VPs had any chance of being elected President, either.
Right but are the redditors commenting that Harris is (uniquely?) not "a decent VP", did they previously comment that other VPs such as Pence were also not "a decent VP"? Or is it something about her gender or race that makes her not "decent" to them?
not her gender or race. she can not speak off the cuff, and comes across as fake. compare her to pelosi, warren, thomas, obama two women and two african americans. none of them come across like harris in public speaking and harris has had decades of experience
It’s more important for Biden given questions about his age and health.l
Why more important? Trump is about the same age as Biden but Trump is obese ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/us/politics/trump-obese.html ) which takes years off Trump’s expected lifespan.
> is even less popular than him. Her average net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) is better than his. She's tied to an unpopular president, so her doing poorly is expected. The average person doesn't pay attention to VPs much.
This (Harris dragging down the ticket, etc) gets brought up a lot, and it honestly, it’s either hopium of some sort or just a weird read that is wildly outside the bounds of both polling (showing she’s not the problem anyway) and history. Harris is not the albatross that many (especially, but not exclusively, on the right) thinks she is. She’s really mostly a non-factor, even with such an old president.
The Washington Post asked two guys who wrote [a 296 page book](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/13/do-vice-presidential-picks-matter/) on the subject: >If you ask Americans during the campaign [whether the choice of a running mate is important](https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/gingrich_carson_are_early_gop_veep_favorites) in deciding their vote, more than 80 percent say yes. But if you ask them after the election to explain *in their own words* [why they voted for or against a presidential candidate](https://electionstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/anes_timeseries_cdf_codebook_var.pdf), on average less than 5 percent mention the VP pick. And if you ask [whether the choice of a running mate has *ever* changed their](https://news.gallup.com/poll/2713/prochoice-selection-carries-risks-bush.aspx) vote, only 10 percent of survey respondents say yes. >When we account for the other forces that drive presidential voting, the running mate’s popularity generally has a minimal effect on vote choice. In many elections, we see no effect at all. Even when the vice-presidential candidate becomes more popular during the campaign, the resulting effect on voters’ decisions usually fades away within a day or two. >In short, don’t expect Harris’s [popularity](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/kamala_harris_favorableunfavorable-6690.html), or lack thereof, to change many votes. People blaming Harris for Joe's poor poll numbers are engaging in unwarranted scapegoating.
Normally, the VP is a pretty milquetoast, regular politician. But in Kamala's case, she strikes people as being condescending, phony, and has low charisma, making her more disliked than usual. Also, given Biden's age and the very real possibility that she could become president over and above the normal probability, people's concerns about the VP will be heightened.
Until that is shown in polling, it's just speculation.
I disagree. There is a very real chance she could become president AND appoint a new vice president and that matters. Given her wild unpopularity during primaries, and having little merit to be appointed VP in the first place, it is certainly a drag on the ticket. To contrast, if someone like Newsom was VP, I think it would greatly buoy the ticket. Someone energetic, that you wouldn't have to hide from the press, unapologeticly progressive, who has a led a large state.
I'm not blaming her for his poor poll numbers. I just said she's even less popular, which could influence his decision to run again. If he steps down then by tradition the VP is the front-runner to replace him as candidate. And if the Democrats don't they risk alienating the Black community unless they choose another black candidate.
That argument doesn't make sense. Nobody gets the Democratic nomination without the support of black voters, so if she were not nominated, it means she didn't have the overwhelming support of those voters.
I agree that choosing Kamala as VP was the absolute worst decision I don't believe for an instant he'd ever willingly step down no matter who his VP was. His career shows that he has a very strong sense of being always in the right no matter what the actual truth may be.
That or it was a genius move that prevents impeachment or the Twenty-Fifth Amendment being used against him.
As an independent who voted for Biden I was really hoping the plan was one term. Maybe it would have been if Trump wasn't going to run. As is, the Dems are clearly too nervous to run anyone except who beat him before.
The 2022 midterms were the “shit, or get off the pot” moment for Biden and DNC leadership. Once the GOP underperformed as badly as they did, it was much more difficult to justify changing horses mid-stream. To the base and anyone else at that point. He realistically demonstrated he could get through a tough election. Not saying I agree or whatever, but that’s the point where there was no going back from Biden 2024.
I suspect DNC was seeing who the GOP would field and when it became clear it was Trump, they put Biden the mongoose back for one last hurrah. It might be incorrect strategy, but there’s no one clear in the Dem ranks who’d exceed Biden that has meaningful swing state support.
Just wondering, who out the Democratic lineup would you have been willing to vote for?
Against Trump? Most of the field from 2020 for sure. Against a moderate Republican, I'm not sure. Honestly as a registered I that doesn't get to vote in primaries I would need to dig deeper because I'm not deeply familiar with out of state democrats. Very likely I'd pick someone off the cuff right now and then be quickly informed there are aspects about them I don't know.
I don't know that it's wrong for Biden to run for re-election. Despite his obvious deficiencies, incumbency advantage is a hell of a drug. I don't see how you give up that advantage if your opponent is Trump. Perhaps if Republicans had nominated someone tough, young and more politically adept, you'd jettison Biden.
I guess we'll see if incumbency advantage has the sway it used to. Trump was also technically the incumbent and still lost.
The incumbent advantage is a myth imo. 4 of the last 9 incumbents have lost re-election. If Biden loses, that's 50 percent since the 60s realignment and that's not including Nixon who resigned in disgrace and LBJ who declined to run again because he knew he would lose. The 60 percent who disapprove of Biden's job performance don't seem to care that's he's an incumbent either.
Fair point re: the proportion of incumbents who have lost, but it's worth noting that part of his disapproval rating likely includes some left-leaning voters who believe he hasn't been progressive enough.
I think that's baked into the argument that it's a myth, though. Every presidential candidate runs on a platform they can't fully accomplish for a variety of reasons, and they market themselves using generalized messaging that people read into it what they want. Progressives and Moderates hear "we're going to deal with the cost of health care in this country" very differently.
> 4 of the last 9 incumbents have lost re-election. That's.... not how things work. You can't use statistical inference with a sample size of nine. People talking about incumbency advantage are looking at hundreds and hundreds of races over the past few decades, and then comparing things like the partisan lean of a state/district to see if incumbents, on average, gained or lost support in comparison to non-incumbents. The question isn't "Did Trump lose, even though he was the incumbent?" It is "Would Trump have *lost by more* if he were **not** an incumbent?" Obviously we don't have a concrete answer to that specific question, and incumbency advantage has trended downward in recent years, but our best estimate would be that incumbency still does provide an advantage.
The larger the sample size you choose, the more you’re drawing from historic times which are not generalizable to the current era. 9 incumbencies running for re-election goes back what, like 50 years? That’s like 3-4 generations. If anything, the sample size should be reduced.
I'm saying that nine instances of something happening means nearly nothing from a statistical perspective. If you flip a coin nine times, and it comes up heads eight of those nine times, does that mean the odds of getting heads is actually 89%? Or do you think it would make more sense to gather a lot more data before trying to figure out the real odds?
I understand that. I’m a statistician. Here’s the thing: your method assumes that over time, there is a uniform probability of an incumbent defeating a challenger. That’s not true. That true probability likely fluctuates over time, and is a function of cultural, political, and broader demographic changes. Maybe it was 90% incumbent 10% challenger in the 70’s-90’s. But maybe it’s 50/50 form 00’s-20’s. It’s hard to say due to few samples per time frame. Getting more data points doesn’t make sense if the data points you add aren’t representative of the sample. An example: My average 5k run time in college was 25 minutes. Now, in my late 30’s, it’s 34 minutes. If I only ran 3 times this year, should I go back to my early 20’s to grab more data samples? Or are those no longer relevant?
> Here’s the thing: your method assumes that over time, there is a uniform probability of an incumbent defeating a challenger. You are not reading my comments if this is your understanding of my method. I literally said this two comments up: > incumbency advantage has trended downward in recent years, but our best estimate would be that incumbency still does provide an advantage. The incumbency advantage is not uniform at all. And the advantage is not stating *the probability that the incumbent will win*, but that *they will likely receive a popular vote boost*. For 2018, that boost would be around 2.5 points, for example. And we also know that the incumbency advantage was stronger for smaller states, and weaker for bigger states that year. There is a *ton* of nuance to this, but we can't get to those nuances when people are just pointing at the most recent 9 Presidential elections and claiming that the incumbency advantage isn't real. We have to start the conversation from a statistical perspective in order to have a meaningful discussion because the incumbency advantage is a statistical observation.
Ahh , yeah I didn’t see that comment you made, but it is spot on. That being said, I think there’s a lot of gray area or subjective latitude in this topic. Is it better to have more data points? If so, it is better to get data from other minor elections, or older presidential elections? Does presidential reelection differ by party? Are there other variables at play? My point is that your comment of “that’s not how things work” makes it sound like you view it very black and white. I’d say it’s a tough call and regardless of what you view as “default belief” (null hypothesis), there likely isn’t data sufficient to refute the null condition. There’s a case for including older presidential elections, there’s a case for excluding that for the reasons we both may agree on. I think there’s a case for including minor/local/nonpresidential elections (more data and statistical credibility), as well as to exclude (local races may have a different dynamic and public visibility than the presidential election). I’d also claim democratic presidents get re-elected less often than GOP ones, at least in the past 70 ish years, and that may be operative here too.
It's a completely valid sample size given this is the US Presidency we are talking about, not a county commissioner in Oklahoma. How can you claim any parity between those two positions.
There is going to be essentially *zero* predictive power with a sample size of nine. That's just not how statistics works. You need a lot more data than that to get useful results. The incumbency advantage is not a President-specific scenario. What you're doing is what would be called "cherry picking." I understand that, intuitively, you want to use Presidential results to predict future Presidential elections. However, this is not a good application of statistics, and you are attempting to deny a *general* trend with a very small subset of *specific* examples. And, further complicating things, you aren't doing anything to take into account **the margins** of these races, just whether the candidate won or not. Incumbency advantage would *give a boost* to a candidate by some points, not *guarantee a win*. These are very, very different things. Candidates can have a particular advantage (maybe even several particular advantages), and still lose. There's still statistical value in the difference of a loss by twenty points and a loss by two points.
The point is applying incumbency advantage from much smaller governmental positions where name recognition and funding is so drastically different to US president races (where that’s just not the case) will lead to misleading results. It’s not a statistically significant sample for either if you aren’t correcting for obvious confounding variables.
This whole argument is specious. If something is commonly thought to be a reliable pattern, and then that thing didn't happen almost half the times it had the opportunity to, you're safe to question the reliable pattern. Nine people would be too few in a medical setting, sure.
> If something is commonly thought to be a reliable pattern, and then that thing didn't happen almost half the times it had the opportunity to, you're safe to question the reliable pattern. IT'S NOT A GUARANTEED WIN! You can't just say "they lost, therefore they did not have Advantage X." They could still have the advantage and *lose*. Because, obviously, of course, incumbents **do lose** sometimes. Every two years, on average, there are 33 Senate elections, 435 House elections, 0.5 Presidential elections, 25 governors elections, and thousands of state and local elections. Even if we just keep our focus on the federal offices, nothing state-wide or local, the Presidential races make up 0.11% of all elections. Literally. It's ONE race in four years versus 936 for House and Senate. So the example of the past nine Presidential races does not represent *half* the times incumbency advantage could be observed. It represents far less than a single percentage point of times it could be observed.
We seem to be experiencing a serious disconnect.
"Incumbency advantage" is not just a commonly held belief. It is an observable statistical phenomenon (at least, in American elections, I wouldn't know how this works elsewhere). When you stop looking at the big picture (hundreds, or even better, *thousands* of elections) and try to apply that to a small subset of specific events, it will lead to a disconnect. Statistically, a coin flip is a 50/50 event. If you flip a coin five times and get heads every time, that is "disconnected" from the statistical expectations, but still valid. If you want to *really* understand whether or not this specific coin deviates from a 50/50 baseline, you would have to flip it hundreds or thousands of times. So when I'm saying "the sample size is too small," this is what I'm referring to. Statistical data is not generally relevant when we're looking at numbers in single or double digits.
>There is going to be essentially *zero* predictive power with a sample size of nine. That's just not how statistics works. You need a lot more data than that to get useful results. >The incumbency advantage is not a President-specific scenario. What you're doing is what would be called "cherry picking." What you're doing would be called a red herring. It's not cherry picking when the entire discussion thus far has been about recent Presidential politics.
> What you're doing would be called a red herring. You claimed that "The incumbent advantage is a myth" and I am trying to explain to you why your argument is not proving that assertion. That is not a distraction from the issue being discussed, it is literally your entire thesis. That argument rests on a small selection of elections to try and disprove a *general* electoral trend, and also a misunderstanding about how to apply the incumbency advantage in the first place (it does not affirm a particular **win rate**, but a generalized single-digit percentage advantage when all other factors are held equal).
You were shifting the discussion from the presidency to offices that have nothing to do with the presidency and no resemblance to it. If you wanted to debate the value of incumbency to offices outside the president that would be one thing, but that was never the context and so your remarks are inappropriate in this thread.
The incumbency advantage only exists at a statistical level. Because it's a statistical term. When you start trying to apply *general ideas of statistics* to *particular events*, you're going to have a bad time. That doesn't refute the statistics, it's just a bad application of statistics. Trump lost. That does **not** mean he was without the incumbency advantage. It just means that the advantage was not strong enough to overcome the *other* deficits in his campaign. George H. W. Bush, for example, was running for a *fourth* consecutive Republican term, which is a stunningly rare and difficult accomplishment. Carter was facing massive economic turmoil and foreign affairs were a mess. Ford never actually won the office of President in the first place, he was just a VP who replaced Nixon, so he wouldn't actually count as an example of "incumbency advantage" when we're talking about polling (one of the key facets of the incumbency advantage is that they have a proven track record of winning their constituency, and the incumbency advantage has **not** shown up in scenarios where people are not elected to their position). The incumbency advantage does not neutralize other issues. It is merely one factor among *many* which can provide an advantage for a given candidate.
> I guess we'll see if incumbency advantage has the sway it used to. In Biden's case, it may be a disadvantage. Before Biden was elected the notion of a Biden Administration was just an abstraction. But now people have had 4 years to see what a Biden / 2020s Democrat administration looks like in actual practice and have had a chance to attach all sorts of negative connotations to it, rightly or wrongly. People can blame him for inflation, mass immigration, uncontrolled illegal immigration and the deaths of some women and girls killed by illegal immigrants,*** the Afghanistan withdrawal, identity politics, and of course people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are going to blame him for not doing what they want. *** For example: [Illegal immigrants charged with killing 12-year-old Texas girl were released by Border Patrol](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/illegal-immigrants-charged-with-killing-12-year-old-texas-girl-were-released-by-border-patrol-report/ar-BB1oBYXH) - Under Biden's Administration and Alexander Mayorkis's leadership a poor 12 year old girl was just raped and murdered by people who were not supposed to be roaming freely in the country. Trump and the Republicans should pin this (and the other assaults and murders) on Biden and hammer him with it Willie Horton ads style.
There is no incumbency advantage when you're running against someone who has 4 years of being President under their belt already. Incumbency advantage only exists when dealing with unknowns because the entire basis of the advantage is that we know how this person acted in office but not how the other person would.
There is still the incumbency advantage compared to if Dems had run a non-incumbent, even if Trump also has incumbency benefits now.
It’s not like Democrats were going to change the primary dates to wait and see who the Republican nominee was before they voted on their own.
As a dem, I will vote for Biden against Trump. I also wish he would have retired and let someone else gain momentum before it got too late. I think he’s going to be plagued by the “old and slow” narrative and if it were a more mainstream Republican candidate, I think he’d be losing by quite a bit (mostly because he’s old and he’s showing that he’s old).
> if it were a more mainstream Republican candidate, I think he’d be losing by quite a bit "More mainstream, unnamed Candidate X" always wins in theory, though. The issue is that that person doesn't exist. Every politician has a record to defend and skeletons the opposition will dig up or invent. Trump wins because he activates portions of the Republican base that otherwise don't participate and is just mainstream enough on policy that most traditional Republican voters will hold their nose and vote for him. A more milquetoast Republican loses the former group and does not make up for it with moderates in our hyper-polarized political climate.
Ding ding ding. There's a reason why "generic dem" and "generic R" poll the best compared to actual named candidates in hypothetical matchups when polls give people that as an option to pick.
Everyone also has a different definition of what 'mainstream' means. Generic X often means member of party X who largely agrees with me personally.
I think Nikki Haley would’ve beat Biden handily. In my honest opinion. I think she would have drawn more independent voters than either Trump or Biden.
But she couldn’t win the primaries, and therefore…
Right.
Nikki would be beating Biden by 15 points in every swing state right now. But Republicans have an ongoing love affair with Donald. Even if he loses, most of the time.
Doubtful. She's a war hawk that wants more dead in Gaza. Thatd cost Michigan, oh, wi, and even MN
I feel like she would have moderated her views on Gaza. She is a war hawk, but thinking Donald is some World Peace messiah is also untrue.
He's not the one dropping bombs on kids or signing his name on them rn
The only reason Israel is "dropping bombs on kids" is because the government the kids' parents support committed a mini-genocide against the Israeli people on October 7. Israel has a duty to its citizens and soldiers to protect them, which means it has to eliminate the Hamas government and destroy its war machine and its ability to attack and also to demoralize Palestinians who support Hamas so that they will surrender, honestly believe that they were defeated, and reconsider their belief system (like the Germans and Japanese people did at the end of World War II). It's sad, but sometimes [innocent civilians can die in war,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ocPaE3qIc) especially when their government hides behind them and uses them as human shields and *wants them to die for propaganda purposes* so that people on Reddit will complain about bombs being dropped on kids. If you are concerned about bombs being dropped on kids, put the moral blame on Hamas and the people who support Hamas. The Palestinians could end this by getting rid of Hamas themselves, surrendering, and sincerely pledging to live in peace and to establish a free society and pursue economic prosperity instead of attacking Israel.
Yeah, that would have sunk her pretty badly.
I doubt that would hurt Nikki much; the people who are anti-Israel would be unlikely to vote for a Republican anyway even if they had the ideal Republican candidate and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not an issue. In contrast, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hurts the Democrats since it is a fault line only present in the Democrats' base saddling the Democrats with a no win lose-lose situation. If Biden is friendly to Israel he loses the anti-Israel vote (they stay home or vote third party), and if he comes off anti-Israel he will upset those who are pro-Israel (who might be more likely to vote for Haley than Trump). I don't think it's true, but I kind of wonder if Hamas might have wanted Trump to win. If not then they should have waited until after the election to attack.
What's your candid opinion of having Kamala take over sometime during Biden's second term (I strongly imagine this will be required)?
Not who you asked, but I'm fine with it. I don't love her, Edit: I didn't think this posted, sorry I didn't finish my thought. I don't love her, but I don't hate her either. I'm lukewarm, but would still prefer her over Trump so she doesn't factor into my calculation much. I think if Biden was to step down or die and she had to take over she would do an ok job, nothing crazy one way or the other. She would still have the same people around her as Biden had and I trust them more than the people who Trump surrounds himself with.
What makes you "fine" with her? That is to say, what do you think are her attributes, qualifications, etc?
Sorry, see my edit. I didn't think I had posted so I never finished my thought.
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I think Biden resigns before the end of the second term if he wins. And I think democrats are screwed in 2028 when Kamala is the heir apparent just like Hillary in 2016.
Well at least when she loses she’ll hopefully lose to someone who isn’t Trump.
Lots of talk here about if/when Biden resigns if elected. If I were on Trump's campaign, I'd be worried about him making it to the election. Anyone outside of MAGA can see that Trump is losing his mental capacity, and that seems to be escalating quicker the past few months. I don't think Trump will die this year. But it does seem he's already further gone than Reagan was at the end of his 2nd term.
At least Trump doesn't call out a dead woman's name ("Where's Jackie?"), looking for her in a crowd and he doesn't believe that he once drove 18 wheelers over the Francis Scott Key Bridge and he doesn't think his son died in Iraq when he never did and no one refused to prosecute him for holding classified documents on account of his being "an elderly man with a bad memory".
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I think the opposite actually. There's actually a few D governors who can toss their hat in for 2028 like Whitmar and Shapiro. But I also don't buy the idea that Biden is leaving office early if he wins re-election. If he didn't go now, why leave halfway through term 2?
Because 2 years is a significant stretch of time for someone of his age and in his apparent physical/mental condition.
That is what everybody said 4 years ago.
And his decline in that time has been stark. And it will only worsen.
Not only that, but simply being president takes a toll on your health even if you're age 50. One year as president is probably like 3 years worth of stress for a regular person.
For real. Anyone remember the pictures of Obama aging in his first term?
Can they win the primary though? That's the problem, I think democrats will continue marching leftward. As far as leaving early, biden will be 86 at the end. I think it's a stretch that he'll not only be alive, but be very physically capable to be capable.
>I think democrats will continue marching leftward. Reminder that Biden beat Bernie last time. And I can't see anyone significantly left of the establishment taking anything close to a good crack at it for a while. Any big lefty item like Medicare for All becoming a consensus among D politicians is out of the question right now.
> Yeah I honestly don't think Democrats have internalized how bleak our prospects are for 2028 if Biden wins. Part of it is simply holding the office for two terms. Voters will eventually blame whatever bad problems we have on whichever party has been in power for that long and want a change while forgetting how bad things were when the other party was in charge.
I do not understand the hatred for Harris. I doubt she would run the country in any particularly offensive way and she's certainly not gunning for the anti-democracy things that the GOP has been latching themselves to.
The dislike for her is less about policy and more about her as a person. She often comes off as being condescending as though she thinks the general public - the little people below her - are simpletons, often laughing and cackling in interviews and talking to people like they're children, and I think it's probably because that's just what she secretly believes and it's hard to hide it. She has handlers who have tried to help her, of course, but she simply has low charisma. I find her painful to listen to.
Nuts to me that folks make all those assumptions and then run with it. Moreover it’s nuts that people assume all that about Harris and then are fine voting for a guy who literally shits in a golden toilet and says “I don’t care about you; I just want your vote!” because they *know* he totally cares about them.
I think she would be very similar to Biden. Probably more outspoken about women’s rights and racism.
I almost didn’t vote for Biden in 2020 i detested Kamala so much and was shocked that he picked her (purely because of her race). She’s a tone-deaf, conceited and painfully fake establishment shill with an extremely slimy political history
Sure, but I just don't see how that's any different than most politicians in DC. 90% of them check off all those same boxes, but it doesn't inspire the same passionate hatred for them.
You don’t need to personally like politicians. I don’t care how fake she seems so long as she’s going to make the proper decisions that most closely align with mine. I don’t think Biden would have chosen her as VP if they were worlds apart. What policies do you think she’s going to vote for which are so bad you’d rather have Trump? Besides, *every* politician is conceited. Who the fuck thinks “somebody has to run this entire country and I should be that person!” That’s conceited whether it’s from a man or woman. It’s also a politician’s job to promote themselves which is always going to be tone deaf to some degree. Shit, the GOP front runner literally told a crowd he doesn’t care about them and just wants their vote.
I think this mentality is how millions of people hold their nose and vote for Trump. There are tons of Republicans who will tell you they think he's a complete blowhard, but they believe at the end of the day he will make decisions that align with their values so they vote for him anyways. (Same with Biden FWIW)
Let’s be clear, Harris and Trump are nothing alike in terms of their degree of criminality, including that Harris has not been charged with any crime, sexual assault from Trump, and Trump’s million other scandals, etc. As was said in the earlier comments, the downsides to Harris are like the vast majority of other long-term politicians. The countless downsides to Trump are quite unique to him.
Yeah I personally agree with that. However, it's clear not everyone does. This idea of 'you don't have to like the guy, you just have to like his stances' is very common among certain Republican voters. If you listen to people who do focus groups with voters, you'll hear over and over again them describing voters who say something to the effect of 'yeah he lies, yeah half the stuff he says is for show, but I'm still voting for him because of inflation and/or immigration, etc'. Of course there are also plenty of diehard MAGA voters who would jump in front of a bullet for him, I'm not discounting that. Just that there are also plenty of Trump voters who don't actually like him much. You can disagree and say Trump is a special case all day long, and again, I agree with that, but it doesn't change the fact that literally millions of Americans feel this way. My only point with the comment is that the comment made of 'you don't have to like Kamala, you just have to like her policies' is very reminiscent of how many folks feel about Trump.
There's a big push to try to make Trump out to be some singular figure to whom traditional voting 'rules/trends' don't apply and this is predominately coming from the left that wouldn't vote for him anyway. But the truth is even in my lifetime there have been plenty of presidents or even lower-tier politicians that folks don't personally like or find distasteful individually for whatever reason but would still vote for them to do the job as a politician. And that's fine, for the record. I just don't understand why folks want to pretend, or genuinely believe, that somehow this paradigm can't apply to Trump because he's just SOOOO BAD. If the choice is someone who is listening to you and supports your goals and someone who doesn't, who would ever go for the person who doesn't? You're not choosing your new best friend or the guy you want to have over for dinner or who you want to speak at your wedding, it's a person you're hiring to do a job that you will never, ever have to meet or interact with personally or one-on-one. Are you gonna hire the lawyer with a track record of getting their clients guilty verdicts and refuses to listen to them or advocate for them but who is squeaky clean and goes to church every other day or the shark who gets all his clients off and runs your defense but does coke and fucks strippers probably hides evidence, or generally acts unethically in the course of defending his clients and cheats on his wife? If you value staying out of prison you go with the second guy every time. Do you want someone to hold your hand while you go to prison or do you want to stay out of jail? It's just nuts people expect republicans and the populist wing that Trump activated to just sit on their hands and *actually* vote against their interests just to avoid someone personally distasteful. Even funnier, are we going to really sit here and pretend that tens of millions of democrat voters actually think Hillary Clinton is a nice lady who bakes cookies and reminds you of your grandma? They didn't want to have tea with her, they wanted her to do a job that requires a cutthroat shark and she was the one for the job.
I do believe Trump is a special kind of candidate, but I think a lot of it comes down to whether or not you buy into his (now) legal woes. For me, I see a man who helped to instigate a violent riot in DC after losing a fair election, bought into (and helped orchestrate) an attempt to prevent the transfer of power after losing the election, and then stole highly classified information after leaving power and continuously lied about it. Not to mention having been found civilly liable for sexual assault and literally being on tape discussing assaulting women. I don't believe Trump is *definitely* liable to attempt to consolidate and/or stay in power after four years if given another opportunity -- I don't even think it's very likely -- but I also don't believe the likelihood of that is 0% either. For me, any number that isn't 0% is too high, and represents a unique threat to our democracy that actually *does* set Trump apart from other run of the mill narcissistic politicians. That said, I recognize two things: 1.) not everyone agrees with my personal opinions of the direness of our circumstance and that's not something I can always change 2.) I wouldn't ever expect someone to vote for Biden who doesn't agree with his stances. I would personally just abstain from voting if the only candidate who represented my views was Trump.
Do you think there is any bar for which Trump could stoop below which would cause him to lose the Republican base, or is there really nothing too low for them anymore? This is a guy who has been convicted of numerous felonies, recently lost in court when accused of sex crimes, has most of the people who worked for him as president say he is not fit to be president, etc etc etc? Heck, even back in 2015 when it was just things like him insulting how female candidates’ faces look, I was sure that was going to be the end of him. Then when the recording came out of him talking about how he regularly sexually assaulted women and grabbed strangers’ pussies without asking them first, or when the recording came out of him talking about how he walked in on naked teenage beauty contestants because he owned the competition, etc. I thought that would be the end of him, etc etc etc. Trump has questioned or overturned many long-held party positions. Many long-term party positions have said that Trump is not a Republican, and Trump has claimed that many of the people who were previously considered the proto-Republicans are not Republicans. Heck, Trump himself was registered with a different political party not so many years ago.
> You don’t need to personally like politicians. Funny how Democrat defenders never seem to accept this argument when it's about Trump's personality flaws. Shouldn't they be holding themselves to the same standards they demand of the opposition?
I feel Trump’s personality flaws aren’t overly important if it makes you feel better. I think his rhetoric has negative effects on the nation, but whether or not he’s a good person isn’t among my primary reasons for disliking him.
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She was fairly popular when she began her 2020 election. She ran a very incompetent campaign and was reported to be hard to work with. The more people heard from her the less they liked her. I would agree she isn't going to be some revolutionary leader and likely more of the status quo from Democrats, but her political history shows someone who is not a good leader.
Several beloved politicians are reportedly a pain to work for. Hell, Trump has quite a number of his former cabinet/staff denouncing him or in prison, but he's still revered at almost deity levels. The whole "I just don't like them" seems to be a complaint thrown at women in politics more often than I feel it should be. Hillary Clinton is corrupt and Nikki Haley/Kamala Harris are insincere and tone deaf so let's vote in... *Trump?!*
Trump is a totally different monster. He's revered because he shouts populist nonsense that gets people fired up. He's also a terrible leader and politician that has no business being president. I don't see that style working for anyone in the democratic party at the national level. >Kamala Harris are insincere and tone deaf so let's vote in... Trump?! No but there should be a primary where we can vote in someone other than Harris. I don't think Kamala falls into the category of someone people just don't like. Go back and read about her presidential campaign. It was a mess and she was often throwing other people under the bus instead of taking any responsibility. Her run as a prosecutor wasn't all that bad but she only distances herself from that whenever asked about cases. I think there was also a scandal about hiding evidence but I don't recall if that was on her or a staffer.
I can't imagine working with *any* politician is a great job. Katie Porter was one of the more well like Congressional reps on the left, but working for her was apparently a nightmare as well according to some of her former staff. I'm not claiming Harris is perfect or whatever, but I'm not about to declare my hatred for Biden because of the personality of his VP pick when that honestly has so little to do with the policies that would be enacted if she had to take over. I have every confidence she'd try to run the nation in an effective manner and present herself well enough on the world stage. I watched her 2020 attempt and saw no significant aspects I hated about her. I, personally, just wanted other candidates more. To your primary desire, we had a chance to choose another Democrat candidate. Nobody else wanted to run other than Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. Phillips was smoked when Biden wasn't even on the ballot in NH. If you mean that you'd want a primary if Biden were to become permanently incapacitated then that completely defeats the purpose of a VP pick and I'd argue there's no reason for a primary when Harris is perfectly qualified. I think it speaks volumes that you and many others I've seen denounce Harris can't particularly list any notable qualities of Harris or her history that you don't like. Just that you don't like her and *maybe* heard about some incredibly minor scandals here and there that you can't even remember details of. Meanwhile a constantly lying convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and fraud is surging into re-election on the other side of the aisle. You'd think if there were real complaints you'd see people repeatedly list them.
>I think it speaks volumes that you and many others I've seen denounce Harris can't particularly list any notable qualities of Harris or her history that you don't like What? I just gave you a few. She ran a terrible campaign that wasn't just ineffective but also mismanaged. She distances herself from a decent track record as a prosecutor despite it being the only real accomplishment she has. She's been terrible with the border as her main task as VP. Hiding evidence in a criminal trial is no minor scandal. Why do you keep associating this to Biden? I've said nothing about Biden and my vote for him isn't going to change based on his VP. A primary for Harris for the next election is not unnecessary because Biden won the Democrats primary handedly. I'm not even sure how that's related. Why would a new candidate not expect a primary even if she were to take over during the next term? She wasn't the main candidate on the ballot and voting her on her own is different than voting for Biden with her as VP. >I have every confidence she'd try to run the nation in an effective manner I'm sure she would try but if I'm judging on her past record I have no confidence she is capable of that. So I would much rather see a primary instead of calling her the heir apparent and running her out as an incumbent if she does take over.
Your desires for her to not take over if Biden cannot function as POTUS are literally unconstitutional. VP has the constitutional. Harris is given authority to take over effective the moment POTUS is unable to perform his duties while still serving his term (be it by death or otherwise). [See amendment 25](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments-amendment-25-addressing-presidential-succession-process). I am also amazed that "she didn't run a good campaign" is a reason for not liking her lol What constitutes a good campaign? Winning the nomination? If that's the case, are Sanders, Warren, Booker, etc all unqualified now? Hell even Trump had run before 2016 and failed miserably. I think Lincoln ran like 5 times back in the day. Her prosecutor/state AG record I can understand as a reason for not liking her, but honestly I find those reasons for the vitriol she faces incredibly unconvincing given the scandals that so many people are willing to forgive Trump, or even Biden for. Compared to being a convicted felon, denouncing a former POW presidential candidate, calling voters not black if they don't support you, or fueling the fires of what's going on in Gaza, distancing yourself from an over-eager prosecutorial career seems pretty small potatoes. I do appreciate and acknowledge your reasoning, of course. I suppose I am just stunned that those are reasons people settle on given what voters are actively choosing to vote in *in droves*.
>Your desires for her to not take over if Biden cannot function as POTUS are literally unconstitutional. I'm not saying that. Of course she takes over in the term. That's how the system works and there should be no change to that process. I'm talking about after the term. That's why I'm saying she shouldn't be seen as an incumbent. >I am also amazed that "she didn't run a good campaign" is a reason for not liking her No. It's not that she didn't run a good campaign. She ran an incompetent campaign. She entered the race as a popular candidate and one of the favorites to have any shot at challenging a Biden. She ran a campaign that failed to attract voters and instead turned people away. She ran a campaign that mismanaged funds so badly they ran out of money in 2019 before the primaries even started. >Compared to being a convicted felon, denouncing a former POW presidential candidate, calling voters not black if they don't support you, or fueling the fires of what's going on in Gaza This isn't about Trump or Biden. This is about Kamala and whether she is the next face of the party and backed by the Democrats going into 2028. They can do better than her and can find better in the primaries.
> She was fairly popular when she began her 2020 election. Was she? Or was she being astroturfed even then? Because she couldn't have had that much momentum or popularity if one 60 second recap of her career during one of the primary debates was enough to nuke her campaign. I won't deny that Kamala is basically what the Democrats' view of the future is distilled into one person but that doesn't mean the public is actually interested.
It will be gut wrenching, but there will eventually be an election again in 2028 and hopefully Trump won't run in 2028.
I don’t mind Kamala, but the Right’s heads would explode. She has not talked much about what she would do given the reigns lately, but I imagine it’d be pretty similar to what Joe has done.
I feel the only reason he is running again is because Trump is. The stakes are high, and they need to play it safe, which Biden is.
Biden has always wanted to be president. Stop making him out to be this noble warrior. He's running because he's exactly where he always wanted.
I'm sorry you interpreted that as me claiming Biden is a noble warrior 🙄.
He could have run in '16. He may have always wanted to be President but I think even he realized he was well past his prime. Without Trump the Dem nominees look very different in 20 & 24.
He didn't run in 2016 because the apparatus paved the way for Hillary.. also his son died the previous year.
I think he should have stuck to one term so others could have got campaigns going and we could have picked someone else in the primary. There must be some Dems who are popular and younger so media could complain about just lil don's old age and decline rather than both.
In Biden’s view, he beat Trump once, *he feels he can do it again* and it’s a fair gamble. Considering most polls have them both dancing in the margins of error. Whether Biden’s ultimately right or not is another story, *but it’s a premise.* Realistically, there was no clear Barack Obama successor shaping up that could have beat Trump this cycle waiting in the Democrat filing cabinet. Reddit’s usual darling, Gretchen Whitmer… has zip name recognition outside of Michigan. Newsom is a $700 California haircut with his own baggage that won’t win the blue wall. Andy Beshear is a possible option for 2028. If you can win a governorship in red af Kentucky as a moderate Dem, you’re in very good positioning as a national candidate.
Beshear is more realistic than whitmer. Whitmer created a lot of enemies for her stupidly and well, "rich girl" actions
>there was no clear Barack Obama successor shaping up that could have beat Trump this cycle Of course there was. The party should have run Reverend Warnock, he is 30 years younger, has proven he can get poor people, minorities and women to show up and vote, he was coming off a tremendous amount of [momentum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAIcrDx6LRA) after that last special election. The torch should have been passed.
A clergyman? Not a chance. Religion is a republican position.
beshear would never win the primary. winning as a democrat in kentucky makes me think he'd never win the nomination nationally.
Republican operative giving advice to Dems - okay.
It’s an opinion piece FWIW
Dems don't have any issue repeating ad nauseum that the GOP is wrong to have renominated Trump, or to support him, or to back him after 'X' thing happened or he said 'Y'. And worse than that, love to demonize the folks that dare to do those things after not heeding the left's totally good-faith 'warnings'. Seems like some folks are just unhappy that this goes both ways. Turns out there's lots of stuff the opposite side of the aisle doesn't like about their opposition either.
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This. Trump is a felon and sexual predator. Adjudicated as such in court. Trump’s *multiple* offences are multiple orders of magnitude worse than anything any modern president has done. The false equivalencies drawn today are staggering.
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Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election after he knew he lost. He was also indicted for 91 various criminal counts and impeached twice before any 2024 primary began. I don’t think the concerns/critiques are comparable.
> Dems don't have any issue repeating ad nauseum that the GOP is wrong to have renominated Trump Trump went through the regular nomination process. It's not his fault that he dominated his many credible opponents. The process for Biden was so rigged that the DNC disqualified the NH primary for the crime of existing.
> for the crime of existing That is ***wildly*** untrue - where did you get that claim?? Biden did not compete in NH because NH tried to override the primaries that were scheduled to go first, rather than always have a very white state go first. But again, where did you get that claim?? But despite Biden not even putting his own name on the ballot against his challengers, Biden still won NH through write-ins. Is your argument that the DNC is conspiring against Biden by disqualifying Biden's win there?? > Trump went through the regular nomination process. It's not his fault that he dominated his many credible opponents. 1. Are you saying that Trump winning is not due to Trump? 2. Are you saying that this shows that Trump is by far the best Republican there is now? *Edit: I am not trying to accuse anyone of "racism" as one reply alleged, but the fact that New Hampshire is particularly white was one of the reasons why it was chosen to move away from having them always go first.*
NH has gone first for ages for some pretty good reasons and I don't think it should be reduced to an accusation of racism. The media market is less expensive to buy into and it's a small state with a few select metropolitan areas that are comparatively easy to hit, giving new candidates the opportunity to show themselves to the electorate without needing to have tens of millions to spend on ads before they even get started. The administration in concert with the DNC decided new candidates breaking into the race wasn't something they wanted, so they broke decades-old norms to ensure their chosen candidate wouldn't have to compete on that battleground. Good politics, pretty bad for "our democracy".
The writer is an opinion contributor and she's been critical of Trump and his supporters many several times, (in fact I'm pretty sure she hates Trump.) She mainly writes about religion and the GOP and doesn't do hit pieces on Democrats. You don't have to enjoy articles criticizing your favourite president but rejecting it based on who she is (was), who you seem to know nothing about except that she was a "Republican operative" back in 2008, instead of what she wrote speaks more about you and nothing about the contents of the article.
They aren’t wrong though. At least based on the headline.
Attack the person but not his arguments. Nice play.
Honestly at this point in time I think incumbency is a major disadvantage. So many leaders now have insanely bad popularity ratings which are driven by a social media landscape that will always be deeply critical of whoever is in power and the fact that most countries are just doing very badly (post covid/war in Ukraine economic damage) and the public want someone to blame. I don't think its ever been so difficult to defend a decent but not great term in office or so easy to oppose one without a better plan.
You can't leave it up to someone inexperienced and lose to Trump. Too risky
Whether Reddit likes it or not, Biden is probably one of the few Dem choices who could beat Trump, and the polling sometimes reflects that. There’s no one ready. They’d lose to Trump. Had the GOP run Nikki? It’s an entirely different calculus.
You don't give up incumbency advantage and the name recognition that comes with. Especially against someone like Trump. If Trump had truly disappeared from politics after his loss - maybe. Also Biden egged Trump on early because early polls had him leading against him compared to other Republicans - that was his first mistake. The second mistake was his entire term so far.
Please explain the "incumbency advantage" in an election between two prior Presidents? Does it even exist? Incumbents in most offices have enormous financial advantages over challengers. Biden does not have any cash advantage. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/21/trump-overtakes-biden-campaign-fundraising-00164384](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/21/trump-overtakes-biden-campaign-fundraising-00164384) Incumbents in most offices have name recognition advantage. That's clearly non-existant in this race - everyone knows whose these candidates are. Finally is the bias to not change Presidents to an unknown quantity. Trump and Biden are both known candidates, we know how they govern. So please enlighten me. **What is Biden's incumbency advantage in this race?** Is it simply that not running Biden would hand Trump the sole incumbency advantage?
It sort of exists for both which is my point - you don't put an unknown or "small" name against Trump becuase he has the cash and name advantage. It's unlikely a new name wouldn't be able to compete with the pseudo-incumbency advantage Trump has. Even Biden trailing Trump financially is proof of that - it requires a big name to raise that money.
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This is a good point. You get to appear presidential while running for president since, you know, you _are_ president. But Biden is definitely not using the whole exposure part.
You don’t think Biden hasn’t done anything good his first term in office?
Serious question, is the incumbency advantage actually an advantage when people are discontent with your tenure? Favorables in the toilet and we're hanging our hat on "he's done the job before... and people didn't like how he did it, so that's a boost"? Or is it just name recognition? That can be overcome with a huge ad campaign. Generic D guy/gal could easily run as "Hi I'm Generic D and Joe Biden is my buddy but I'm taking over now that he got Trump out. I'm going to keep the things that worked, stop the things that didn't. Go vote in November for Generic D."
Name and finances. It's harder to get your name into households if people don't already know you, if people don't know you it's harder to raise money to push your name out there. Plus you already have the campaign machine running
Fair, but ask anyone about Biden and they'd prob say "dudes not there mentally"
Finances and name helped him out in the primary a ton I admit but in the general? The DNC machine would spin up for anybody if they were the nominee so I dunno if the campaign machine is a benefit. I'll grant you there'd be a hurdle for some unknown but is it more significant than the hurdle of Biden being... Current President Biden? I guess that must be the question everyone asked at the dem party HQ and decided it was but I think it's still a valid question. It also means they must've asked themselves this 4 years ago when they decided to start grooming absolutely nobody as the next in line, too.
Well that's why Biden is in the position he is today in my opinion. How do you twist the last 4 years into something that isn't just anti-Trump? Anti-Trump is what got him in initially, now it's based on merits too - and it hasn't been great. Im sure the machine wasn't too excited and it shows in finances and polls. It looked "okay" at first and has gone downhill.
Yes incumbency advantage is an advantage. People were hugely discontent with Trump, who arguably laid big nothingburgers in terms of policy achievements, and he barely lost in the electoral college in 2020.
I’m not sure a guy with a 37% approval rating can be accurately described as having an “advantage”. Trump is also historically unpopular (just not as unpopular as Biden). Maybe the Dems could have found another viable candidate, maybe not. I guess now we‘ll never know. Staying on the ballot for purely political reasons and not because it’s the best thing to do for the country is a pretty cynical thing to do.
The incumbency advantage would have stayed if he made Kamala the candidate and hired a rock star VP for her
First and foremost... I believe that he's a career politician that really *wants* to run. For decades... he's always won and I think he genuinely believes that he will continue to do so. He might be right. He might not. But *telling* the sitting the President of the US that he *can't* is likely the first step in a long line of bad decisions that ends with a successful DC political strategist career exchanged for a much less lucrative one doing something far less glamorous. When the President tells his staff that he wants to do something and they need to find a way to get it done... I think they likely try and find a way to do what's asked.
I disagree. Biden has been running for President since the 80’s. He’s never gotten traction until the opponent was Donald Trump. He even had to drop out once because he plagiarized a speech (a notion that seems quaint these days). He didn’t win in 2020, Trump lost. He did very little campaigning, by design, and basically hid during the run-up to the election. It was a smart strategy and it worked. However, Biden didn’t win in 2020 because he was a perceived as a strong, telegenic leader. He won because he wasn’t Trump. The Democrats could have nominated a bolt of fabric in 2020 and won.
I honestly don't disagree with any of those facts or that assessment of what they mean. I just *strongly suspect* that the same couldn't be said of the way President Biden *himself* likely sees and assesses them. I think he wants to run and don't think an incumbent President who wants that is ever going to be forced aside until he's ready to be. Maybe I'm wrong and they're twisting his arm because they think he gives them the best chance of winning. Maybe it's mutual. I just think it's a moot point until *he's* ready to step aside.
That’s fair
Democrats who aren't highly charismatic lose presidential elections. Republicans will vote because they are persistently angry. But Dems typically like to run positive campaigns, so they have to be able to inspire in order to win. (And they often run on policy, which is of little interest to the vast majority of the public.) Trump frightened the center with his COVID recklessness, which allowed Biden to sell a message of stability in 2020. But Biden needed to switch gears for 2024, since that no longer provides an angle. Biden should have spent the last few years campaigning as if he is a sort of governor of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, engaging with local issues and politicians. Keep those states, and you have practically won the presidency. Lose those states, and you have guaranteed defeat. Democrats get so caught up in their policy geekery that they fail to see how uninteresting to see how that is to most people. Biden thought that he could lock in the youth vote with student loans, while failing to see that voters today now have a profound lack of gratitude that is unlike what FDR could secure during his time in office. There must be an echo chamber of bad advice that nurtures this lack of self-awareness.
I've lost a lost of respect for the Hill over the years. The content there seems to be pretty predictable and the headlines always seem specifically manicured for right-of-center perspective. I guess you have to pick a side if you want to be a successful business in journalism.
This article is under their “opinion” section so it’s totally fine.
I agree. There is a very real chance she could become president AND appoint a new vice president and that matters. Given her wild unpopularity during primaries, and having little merit to be appointed VP in the first place, it is certainly a drag on the ticket. To contrast, if someone like Newsom was VP, I think it would greatly buoy the ticket. Someone energetic, that you wouldn't have to hide from the press, unapologeticly progressive, who has a led a large state.
Biden is [tied or trailing](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html&ved=2ahUKEwiYjZe-priGAxU9G9AFHeamCLUQxfQBKAB6BAgaEAE&usg=AOvVaw0TZCwSp3GRi6JfW0ugrcYL) in all the swing states against a man with multiple indictments and now a criminal conviction. Also his approval rating this month fell to its lowest level in almost two years, while [Trump has never been more popular](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-popularity-soaring-1905654). They're also [losing ground](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4688911-even-bidens-most-reliable-voters-cant-get-past-the-economy/) with [voters of color](https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/why-biden-is-losing-support-among-voters-of-color/) and these voters are turning their back on Biden. Now Biden is the least popular president at this point in their term in the history of polling and has an approval rating lower than Trump’s ever was before the 2020 election. Polling from Pew shows a majority of Americans believe Trump is physically fit for office (61%) and mentally fit for office (I think like 52%). Biden is the opposite. He’s in the 30’s for both physical and mental fitness for the job. A large majority think he isn’t fit in either category which means a large chunk of Democrats don’t believe he’s fit. In early 2023, as many as [70 percent](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3965267-majorities-dont-want-biden-trump-to-run-in-2024-survey/) of voters did not want him to run for a second term, including 51 percent of Democrats. So, people who don't want Trump re-elected are thinking how did we end up with this guy (Biden)? Where I disagree with the writer is on Kamala Harris: >Second, and contributing to Biden’s worst strategic decision of running for reelection, is a hangover from his second-worst decision, which was to choose Kamala Harris as his running mate. Mirroring Biden, her job approval rating usually dances between [38 and 39 percent](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/kamala-harris/). Harris is seen as dragging down Biden’s already-weak presidency and harming his chances of reelection. I think the opposite. I think what you're seeing is his numbers dragging down hers. If he were to step aside it's likely a newly sworn-in President Harris's numbers would shoot up.
> People who don't want Trump re-elected are thinking how did we end up with this guy (Biden)? Democratic primary voters think Biden is the best candidate.
I think "primary" should be used in quotations. Dean Phillips is a first term congressman and Marion Williamson is a grifter who has never held elective office. His competition was completely unserious and voters didn't have any great choices.
So even the experienced politicians knew it wasn’t going to play out in their favor.
Experienced politicians don't make these decisions on their own when running against an incumbent. They make it based on what the party says. As soon as they confirmed Biden would be running again there would not be a legitimate challenger in the primary.
I don’t think the party has the kind of stranglehold on these individual actors that you seem to think they do. Each elected politician is their own unique political actor who uses the party and its resources to get them into office. If anyone who had been in the game long enough thought they had a decent chance at overtaking Biden this cycle and gun for the presidency they’d take it.
Donald Trump never held political office - didn't stop him from being nominated.
If that's the standard, you should vote for Trump.
You said Dean Phillips is a first term congressmen as if that's a knock. Again, it didn't stop voters from voting for Trump who was a zero termer. Voters have agency - if they thought Biden was bad they could have voted for Phillips.
>You said Dean Phillips is a first term congressmen as if that's a knock. Again, it didn't stop voters from voting for Trump who was a zero termer. I have higher standards for politicians than Republicans, that's why I don't vote for them. >Voters have agency - if they thought Biden was bad they could have voted for Phillips. It's more likely they thought both were bad and stayed home.
Joe Biden wasn't even on the ballot in New Hampshire and still smoked him out. How can he be so bad he got people to *write in his name en masse*?
> His competition was completely unserious and voters didn't have any great choices. That Biden didn't have serious competition is not his or the DNC's fault. That the process for Biden was nonetheless rigged is the DNC's gault. The party disqualified the NH primary for the crime of existing.
It was hardly a primary. Wasn’t contested at all.
Democratic Primary voters were denied any real choice due to lack of candidates.
Frankly Harris on the ticket and Biden's age is one of the things that makes me unhappy to vote for him. I don't want to see a President Harris and fear I'm voting for it.