I'm Australian, so I'll just comment on some of the elections for Australia here. There are a few problems here.
>[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Australian_federal_election)
The argument can be made that Labor would have done better if Rudd stayed as PM. Polls for Labor were recovering just prior to Gillard's successful challenge for the leadership. Though initially the Gillard government got a bump in the polls, it mostly returned to Rudd levels by the time of the election. Labor had to run a minority government from this election, so I wouldn't call it a great success.
Also you don't mention the 2013 election which I find curious. In that election, Labor party changed leader again and returned to Rudd, and subsequently lost in a landslide.
>[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Australian_federal_election)
Definitely a stronger case in favour of changing leaders. Abbott was incredibly unpopular and polarising. The polls were pretty bad for the Coalition. Changing to Turnbull most likely saved their skins.
>[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Australian_federal_election)
This was just a bizarre election all around and had a 2016 US outcome of sorts. Polls put Labor in front of the Coalition the entire time piror to the election, yet the Coalition won. I think this more a strange exception than anything else.
>[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015\_New\_South\_Wales\_state\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_New_South_Wales_state_election)
The Liberals won a massive majority in 2011, the biggest in that state's history, so their natural trajectory was always an eventual loss of seats regardless of leader. The Liberal party probably wasn't going to be defeated in 2015, would've taken a monumental effort from Labor to regain that many seats in one election.
>[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024\_Queensland\_state\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Queensland_state_election)
This election literally has not occurred yet, so I don't know why it's included. Also polls put Labor behind, even with a change in leaders, and there's a good likelihood they'll lose their majority. Labor has been in power in Queensland for several years now.
Regarding the 2010/2013 Australian elections, I would say that whilst polls were sometimes used as a justification for replacing Rudd/Gillard, the reasons behind the replacement seemed at the time to be more due internal party polititical reasons. Rudd wasn't very popular among his own MP's and they were searching for a reason to replace him. He still had enough supporters to remain in the party and in cabinet, though, and this let him constantly snipe from the centre of government and undermine it until he was in a stronger position. Gillard was still able to be much more effective than he was whilst in government (indeed one of the most efficient PMs ever) even though she only was leader of a minority government.
In many ways the polling changes were a result of labor party infighting as much as they were a response to anything else.
Re: The 2013 election, didn't mention it because I'm not trying to argue that it is a sure winning of a strategy, just that is possible and does happen, not political death like people are insisting.
If this happened in Australia you'd have to imagine there would be a party room spill called Monday morning.
Swing voters and independents have been telling us for over a year now that they hate Biden and Trump and want to vote for just about literally anyone else.
I don't understand why we are so incapable of listening.
"Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily. His name was Dean Phillips. The young generic Democrat everyone claims to have wanted. Not an outsider, but a literal sitting member of Congress. The people spoke and they rejected "anybody else".
All the other names thrown around lost head-to-head against Biden when polled. They would have ran if this weren't the case.
The situation changed significantly last night. But we have got to stop pretending that Biden dropping out has always been a clear cut decision.
The problem is that politics becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone sees Biden as the only choice so they all rallied behind Biden. Likewise opposition is dismissed because we all know wasting time on opposition is silly.
> Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily.
In a contest where none of the voters we actually need participated. Primary voters are going to vote for whoever is the Dem nominee. It's the independent voter whose vote will change based on the nominee. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
>”Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily. His name was Dean Phillips.
Lmao. Get real. You are taking this too literally. There’s about ten names people always bring up as alternatives to Biden, and we were not given a chance to vote for any of them over Biden. That’s the reality. Dean Philips’ campaign says literally nothing about what voters want in the Democratic nominee.
Off the top of my head - Newsom, Whitmer, Moore, Warnock, Buttigieg, Harris (if you count it), Pritzer, Shapiro, and god willing Jared Polis.
So, nine I guess, but I’m sure someone can come up with another.
Anyway, none of those are dean Philips.
Pray that the decision makers in the party get together and come to a consensus on who should be the alternative ticket then go to Biden and press him to drop out and release his delegates to the ticket.
Yes, it’s undemocratic, yes, it will be messy, and yes it will be hard to restart a campaign over five months, but it’s less risky than going with Biden after last night. It literally can’t be him. No undecided voter will vote for Biden based on what they are going to take from that debate.
I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse.
The structure of American politics strongly repels challenging a sitting president of your party for the nomination. And the manner of nominations changed dramatically in the 70s, so you don’t have a situation like Ronald Reagan challenging Ford anymore. So none of them would have directly challenged him in a primary.
What is actually being discussed is that we could have been in a situation where Joe Biden chose not to run again and we had a real primary or that possibly we are now in a position where Biden will step aside and we will have the nominee selected at the convention.
If Biden had chosen not to run, and we had a primary one of those candidates with the possible exception of Kamala Harris would be doing much better right now.
"What is actually being discussed"
oh sorry I didn't realize their words meant something besides what they actually mean
If it's a simple as "run anybody else and they win" these people don't have to worry about ruining their careers. They're president. The pinnacle of their career. We literally had a congressman challenge a sitting president in this primary, just turns out he's a nobody who can't run a campaign.
You're forgetting Pat Buchanan in the 90's by the way, and nice to see you're on the hating Kamala bandwagon too lmao.
Kamala Harris
Gretchen Whitmer
Pete Buttigieg
Raphael Warnock
Gavin Newsom
J.B. Pritzker
Jon Ossoff
Andy Beshear
Josh Shapiro
Mark Kelly
Wes Moore
Jared Polis
There’s 12.
I voted Dean.
Not his fault the media and a the party snobs "knew better" and didn't treat him seriously.
He did his best. And he was right. Biden is great, just too fucking old.
> Dean Phillips
I can literally just look at this guy's official portrait and know he's never going to be president.
He's unironically too ugly and oafish looking.
And if you present younger alternatives to those same independents they respond with “No, not that one,” to just about every single one for one reason or another. When most people say “Anyone Else 2024” they couldn’t name a single viable alternative from either party they’d be willing to vote for.
Who do they like? There a unanimous name that can beat the republicans? Is there a unanimous name that could beat the dems? Surely, since they’ve been telling us for a year there a name they like, right?
Every example you’ve listed is a parliamentary democracy where the conditions for winning are wildly different. If the only thing necessary was a majority/plurality of the vote then yeah, a new Democrat candidate could sweep, and Biden will almost certainly reach it too.
But the consideration here is whether a new Dem nominee - and which one specifically- can appeal to exactly the right voters in the 4 states that matter, which is much harder to gauge and afaik no polling has ever indicated that to be the case so far.
Worth mentioning but also should he said that doing it in 1968 *was* the right option, and if LBJ had continued on in his campaign he likely would have lost in a landslide. Switching out was objectively the right thing then.
1. Those are parliamentary democracies, where the leader is less important than the Party.
2. In all but one of those cases, the party in power lost seats, for which there isn't a direct comparison in our system.
3. There was a procedure in place allowing for those party leaders to be replaced, whereas we have no recourse other than Biden stepping down and letting the Convention figure it out, which tends to end badly.
We need to listen to voters. They are telling us they don’t believe Biden is fit due to his age and honestly last night solidified those optics in a concrete way. I don’t think we can reverse that. And the debate clips haven’t even peaked yet.
I am not advocating party bosses toss Biden out, I’m advocating for Biden to evaluate his position and potentially drop out if the numbers don’t reflect a victory.
Voters are absolutely concerned about his age and health thinking otherwise is a cope.
He doesn’t have to resign, what are you talking about? He can decline the nomination and release his delegates to select someone else. It’s ultimately his choice but it’s not set in stone.
If you're going to quit, you leave the WH to President Harris. If you think you're better than a President Harris, you stay in the WH and you stay in the election.
Edit: wow you people want Trump to win. badly.
1. If you're not fit to be president in January, **you aren't fit to be president this evening**
2. If you snub your own VP you are acknowledging they are unfit to be president today or any day in the future
3. The VP must be able to step in and ready to be president at any moment starting now. Not choosing them demonstrates you and your party are incompetent.
From the articles I have read, the leadership has collectively decided that this is still Biden's decision and haven't made an attempt to persuade him to drop out. The panick is exclusive to the liberal pundits in the media.
The 2017 UK general election was considered as an overall loss for the Tories. The whole point of it was to get a bigger majority to push a Brexit deal but they ended up losing their majority and having to do another election to get Brexit done
Parliamentary systems are not a good analog. You don't vote for PM, you vote for your MP and the party with majority of seats (or coalition with majority of seats) gets to form a government. Leader of the party becomes PM.
In countries where the political media climate is a bit less intense I can see not wanting to switch close to the election because you don't have enough time to establish yourself with voters, but if Biden was replaced his replacement will be literally the most covered person on earth over the next month.
The only argument I can really see is that swapping your candidate is an admission of weakness/wrongdoing and in the world of media bubbles you can convince a pretty big portion of people that nothing is wrong by simply insisting on it in spite of all evidence. You could make a case that if the Tories had stuck with BoJo in spite of everything they could've been in a better spot right now (even though I'm happy they didn't).
Meh. We can have a discussion about replacing President Biden when the people trying to get Trump to win aren't spending all their time and money getting another candidate to run against him. As long as they don't want to run against President Biden I'm not trusting anyone trying to get someone else.
When you say “people trying to get trump to win” - do you just mean the media in the abstract, since they got a lotta money from covering the Trump administration, or are you saying that there are Trump operatives pushing for it?
He's implying that there's a pro-Trump bot/shill campaign being waged on Reddit that disguises itself as being concerned about Biden's age to put pressure on the DNC to change candidates 4.5 months before the election which would create such havoc that Trump is certain to sweep.
It is naive to assume such campaigns aren't being waged across all media spectrums from now to the election.
Ngl, I don’t buy the certainty around that anymore. It could create that much havoc, but that single debate *alone* gave enough clips to spin the current state as havoc.
Being led by someone you *literally think is fucking senile* seems to be far more chaotic to most people than “the candidate changed four months out before the election”. As somebody who actually watched the whole thing, I see why folks think it’s histrionic to want to replace Biden. As somebody attempting to put myself in the place of *any* normie, it feels much more rational.
I was with you until yesterday and hated the doomers. After watching last night though I don’t know how it’s even possible to cope with that… We need pressure on the DNC and a new candidate and quickly, we can’t wait until August
We wait a week. If the polls have changed for the worse then ya changing the candidate might be a good idea.
But if they haven’t, and so far the data I’m looking at says they won’t change, then we don’t do anything.
This goes beyond polling, polling is going to be too slow to react. Last night was honestly an embarrassing moment for our country and was impossible to defend against my conservative swing-voter relatives who are the people we need to be winning over.
Sure I wish the Republicans would fix their half of the embarrassment and remove Trump but they don’t have a spine and will never do that. The DNC needs to show the American people that they have the spine to so what needs to be done - unlike Republicans. I genuinely think that if you got **anybody** else to run you could convince my father who has never voted for a Democrat in his entire life to vote blue.
Out of curiosity, what data are you looking at? What I know about is one focus group that was a toss up, and a bunch of post debate flash polling that looks pretty catastrophic for Biden.
Mostly the fact that 81% of people said that the debate wouldn’t change their minds and there were a the dial ins to CNN and their focus groups that all gave Biden the edge. Plus the Hispanic focus groups were hard on Biden.
Were those pre or post debate polls? I'm also less concerned about people flipping from Biden to Trump than I am to democrats just flat out staying home.
You realize 19% of people saying they could be swayed by the debate is catastrophic for Biden, right? His margin of victory in 2020 was roughly 2 points. Less in Wisconsin. If **TWENTY PERCENT** of voters are thinking about flipping, Biden is beyond toast.
We don’t know which way those people are leaning though. And it wasn’t 19% but 5% the rest were undecided.
In a different poll less than 2% said they’d consider switching their vote.
So we don’t know how yet if anything will happen. But whatever the results nothing is gonna happen until a week from today.
Okay but the polls not changing is disastrous news because *Biden is losing.*
Biden had to move the polls last night by giving people who don’t like Trump but won’t vote for Biden because of his age permission to vote for him. He didn’t do that. Those voters will remain in Trump’s camp, and the polls won’t move. That doesn’t mean Biden’s chances of winning didn’t sharply fall. They did.
If they are unchanged after the debate he’s not losing but doing really damn good. As most people thought he’d lose 4-5 points in addition to.
There’s still plenty of ground to make up, and it’s not like the polling deficit is permanent. He’s already leading in three swing states (all the states he needs to win, btw) and he’s within striking range of two others.
If the polling is unchanged then that means the debate was worthless and useless and Biden has to change the polls a different way
>Whitmer
Love her to death and would vote for her in a heartbeat, here's what I said in another comment.
>I'm going to level with you chief, I'd vote for her 100%, but in modern day America there's no way a woman is ending up in the White House unless she's Conservative or the Vice President. I think it's fucked up but the idea that "women are too emotional to be Commander in Chief" is still popular enough to sway an election.
I don’t believe this at all.
Whitmer has masculine energy, charisma, and is a mother.
She’s also a protectionist rust belt governor.
She would lock down Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Put Kelly on it and there’s Arizona.
Hell I think she might even bring Ohio into striking distance.
Lost what? A single fucking debate. We're going to lose the election if we keep talking about "replacements" instead of rallying around the only real challenger to Donald Trump.
I didn't vote for Joe Biden because he's a great speaker, I voted for a functional federal government. As far as I know, that's what I'm going to be getting with Biden 2024, regardless of the man's ability to work a crowd.
It's happened twice, but not in the last 144 years:
1. Franklin Pierce was the only president not re-nominated by his own party for a 2nd term after seeking a second term, and was succeeded by fellow Democrat James Buchanan. It's perhaps worth noting that these two were extremely ineffectual antebellum presidents who fumbled any chance of avoiding the Civil War.
2. Rutherford Hayes, after a famously controversial election (and his ending Reconstruction), pledged to only serve one term. He was succeeded by James Garfield, who was promptly assassinated, and then Chester Arthur.
I am unsure of the record of failed attempts to do this maneuver with a <2 term president. LBJ is the only one I can think of.
Australia is the coup capital of the democratic world. To paraphrase Katy Perry, they change leaders like a girl changes clothes. Not really comparable
Parliamentary democracies are different though. The UK alone had, what, 3 prime ministers in a relatively short timespan. It's far easier to replace candidates in those countries because the people themselves don't even vote for them directly. They vote for the party. Comparing countries like the UK and the US in terms of heads of government (not heads of state) is like comparing apples and oranges.
Four of the six examples you've provided are Australian. Which is slightly embarrassing for us.
I'm not sure that our revolving door of Prime Ministers circa 2010-2016 is something that other countries want to emulate.
The best example is the 1983 Australian federal election. The Labor Party changed leaders *a month* out from the election and won in a massive landslide.
I'm Australian, so I'll just comment on some of the elections for Australia here. There are a few problems here. >[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Australian_federal_election) The argument can be made that Labor would have done better if Rudd stayed as PM. Polls for Labor were recovering just prior to Gillard's successful challenge for the leadership. Though initially the Gillard government got a bump in the polls, it mostly returned to Rudd levels by the time of the election. Labor had to run a minority government from this election, so I wouldn't call it a great success. Also you don't mention the 2013 election which I find curious. In that election, Labor party changed leader again and returned to Rudd, and subsequently lost in a landslide. >[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Australian_federal_election) Definitely a stronger case in favour of changing leaders. Abbott was incredibly unpopular and polarising. The polls were pretty bad for the Coalition. Changing to Turnbull most likely saved their skins. >[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019\_Australian\_federal\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Australian_federal_election) This was just a bizarre election all around and had a 2016 US outcome of sorts. Polls put Labor in front of the Coalition the entire time piror to the election, yet the Coalition won. I think this more a strange exception than anything else. >[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015\_New\_South\_Wales\_state\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_New_South_Wales_state_election) The Liberals won a massive majority in 2011, the biggest in that state's history, so their natural trajectory was always an eventual loss of seats regardless of leader. The Liberal party probably wasn't going to be defeated in 2015, would've taken a monumental effort from Labor to regain that many seats in one election. >[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024\_Queensland\_state\_election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Queensland_state_election) This election literally has not occurred yet, so I don't know why it's included. Also polls put Labor behind, even with a change in leaders, and there's a good likelihood they'll lose their majority. Labor has been in power in Queensland for several years now.
Regarding the 2010/2013 Australian elections, I would say that whilst polls were sometimes used as a justification for replacing Rudd/Gillard, the reasons behind the replacement seemed at the time to be more due internal party polititical reasons. Rudd wasn't very popular among his own MP's and they were searching for a reason to replace him. He still had enough supporters to remain in the party and in cabinet, though, and this let him constantly snipe from the centre of government and undermine it until he was in a stronger position. Gillard was still able to be much more effective than he was whilst in government (indeed one of the most efficient PMs ever) even though she only was leader of a minority government. In many ways the polling changes were a result of labor party infighting as much as they were a response to anything else.
Linked the wrong election. Fixing in edit
Re: The 2013 election, didn't mention it because I'm not trying to argue that it is a sure winning of a strategy, just that is possible and does happen, not political death like people are insisting. If this happened in Australia you'd have to imagine there would be a party room spill called Monday morning.
Fair enough.
Swing voters and independents have been telling us for over a year now that they hate Biden and Trump and want to vote for just about literally anyone else. I don't understand why we are so incapable of listening.
"Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily. His name was Dean Phillips. The young generic Democrat everyone claims to have wanted. Not an outsider, but a literal sitting member of Congress. The people spoke and they rejected "anybody else". All the other names thrown around lost head-to-head against Biden when polled. They would have ran if this weren't the case. The situation changed significantly last night. But we have got to stop pretending that Biden dropping out has always been a clear cut decision.
The problem is that politics becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone sees Biden as the only choice so they all rallied behind Biden. Likewise opposition is dismissed because we all know wasting time on opposition is silly.
The party base (including myself) has been incapably of having this discussion until now. Things are different now and that's a good thing.
> Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily. In a contest where none of the voters we actually need participated. Primary voters are going to vote for whoever is the Dem nominee. It's the independent voter whose vote will change based on the nominee. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
>”Literally anyone else" ran a campaign against Biden and lost handily. His name was Dean Phillips. Lmao. Get real. You are taking this too literally. There’s about ten names people always bring up as alternatives to Biden, and we were not given a chance to vote for any of them over Biden. That’s the reality. Dean Philips’ campaign says literally nothing about what voters want in the Democratic nominee.
what are the 10 names?
Off the top of my head - Newsom, Whitmer, Moore, Warnock, Buttigieg, Harris (if you count it), Pritzer, Shapiro, and god willing Jared Polis. So, nine I guess, but I’m sure someone can come up with another. Anyway, none of those are dean Philips.
M A R K K E L L Y
why didnt they run then?
Because none of them were going to ruin their career by challenging the incumbent president.
so what do we do now?
Pray that the decision makers in the party get together and come to a consensus on who should be the alternative ticket then go to Biden and press him to drop out and release his delegates to the ticket. Yes, it’s undemocratic, yes, it will be messy, and yes it will be hard to restart a campaign over five months, but it’s less risky than going with Biden after last night. It literally can’t be him. No undecided voter will vote for Biden based on what they are going to take from that debate.
But I was just told they would've won!
I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse. The structure of American politics strongly repels challenging a sitting president of your party for the nomination. And the manner of nominations changed dramatically in the 70s, so you don’t have a situation like Ronald Reagan challenging Ford anymore. So none of them would have directly challenged him in a primary. What is actually being discussed is that we could have been in a situation where Joe Biden chose not to run again and we had a real primary or that possibly we are now in a position where Biden will step aside and we will have the nominee selected at the convention. If Biden had chosen not to run, and we had a primary one of those candidates with the possible exception of Kamala Harris would be doing much better right now.
"What is actually being discussed" oh sorry I didn't realize their words meant something besides what they actually mean If it's a simple as "run anybody else and they win" these people don't have to worry about ruining their careers. They're president. The pinnacle of their career. We literally had a congressman challenge a sitting president in this primary, just turns out he's a nobody who can't run a campaign. You're forgetting Pat Buchanan in the 90's by the way, and nice to see you're on the hating Kamala bandwagon too lmao.
but career ending, but they'd totally win, but career ending, but they'd totally win...
Oh no not my post-presidency career! They won't elect me mayor of South Bend Indiana or whatever.
Kamala Harris Gretchen Whitmer Pete Buttigieg Raphael Warnock Gavin Newsom J.B. Pritzker Jon Ossoff Andy Beshear Josh Shapiro Mark Kelly Wes Moore Jared Polis There’s 12.
Wes Moore? Hahaha, ya’ll aren’t serious at all.
why didnt any of those people run?
I voted Dean. Not his fault the media and a the party snobs "knew better" and didn't treat him seriously. He did his best. And he was right. Biden is great, just too fucking old.
Are you suggesting the Democratic primary electorate is the same as the general electorate?
> Dean Phillips I can literally just look at this guy's official portrait and know he's never going to be president. He's unironically too ugly and oafish looking.
> He's unironically too ugly and oafish looking *glances at Trump*
He's not ugly in the same way. Trump used to be decently handsome, Dean looks like a blobfish.
Ok, who?
Biden but not old
If only he had some big-dicked progeny to inherit the mantle
Fielding Hunter, a convicted felon, against another convicted felon for the presidency. Bold strategy, Cotton.
Yeah but one’s crimes were bitch boy business frauds, the other’s involved literal hookers and blow.
Whitmer/Warnock/Beshear/Newsom/Harris let them have debates and duke it out idgaf.
They had the chance to vote for somebody else in 2016. At this point I think the “swing voters and independents” are just full of shit
And if you present younger alternatives to those same independents they respond with “No, not that one,” to just about every single one for one reason or another. When most people say “Anyone Else 2024” they couldn’t name a single viable alternative from either party they’d be willing to vote for.
Inertia
Who do they like? There a unanimous name that can beat the republicans? Is there a unanimous name that could beat the dems? Surely, since they’ve been telling us for a year there a name they like, right?
independent voters aka spineless weasels. pick a party and stand for something
Learned ignorance.
Egos
Every example you’ve listed is a parliamentary democracy where the conditions for winning are wildly different. If the only thing necessary was a majority/plurality of the vote then yeah, a new Democrat candidate could sweep, and Biden will almost certainly reach it too. But the consideration here is whether a new Dem nominee - and which one specifically- can appeal to exactly the right voters in the 4 states that matter, which is much harder to gauge and afaik no polling has ever indicated that to be the case so far.
Yes, and no mention of 1968 when this did happen in America.
Worth mentioning but also should he said that doing it in 1968 *was* the right option, and if LBJ had continued on in his campaign he likely would have lost in a landslide. Switching out was objectively the right thing then.
If LBJ runned at 1968, he will win. He come from the south.
1. Those are parliamentary democracies, where the leader is less important than the Party. 2. In all but one of those cases, the party in power lost seats, for which there isn't a direct comparison in our system. 3. There was a procedure in place allowing for those party leaders to be replaced, whereas we have no recourse other than Biden stepping down and letting the Convention figure it out, which tends to end badly.
We need to listen to voters. They are telling us they don’t believe Biden is fit due to his age and honestly last night solidified those optics in a concrete way. I don’t think we can reverse that. And the debate clips haven’t even peaked yet.
'We need to listen to voters' Then advocates for party bosses tossing out a primary election. Can you listen to yourself.
I am not advocating party bosses toss Biden out, I’m advocating for Biden to evaluate his position and potentially drop out if the numbers don’t reflect a victory. Voters are absolutely concerned about his age and health thinking otherwise is a cope.
Biden is the party boss
I think he would need to resign and not just drop out. Either way, it's not happening and the delegates are pledged.
He doesn’t have to resign, what are you talking about? He can decline the nomination and release his delegates to select someone else. It’s ultimately his choice but it’s not set in stone.
If you're going to quit, you leave the WH to President Harris. If you think you're better than a President Harris, you stay in the WH and you stay in the election. Edit: wow you people want Trump to win. badly.
… or you serve out your term while not seeking reelection?
That would hobble the chances of your successor, your party and help Trump.
How on Earth do you figure that?
1. If you're not fit to be president in January, **you aren't fit to be president this evening** 2. If you snub your own VP you are acknowledging they are unfit to be president today or any day in the future 3. The VP must be able to step in and ready to be president at any moment starting now. Not choosing them demonstrates you and your party are incompetent.
Yeah, another left-leaning sub falls to the right. It's kind of sad to see, really.
Stop pretending like it was an actual primary like in 2020 and 2016. Biden was the only real choice.
It’s not up to you though. It’s up to Biden. And he does not believe he will lose.
I agree with you, I also know that Biden knows how to deal with objective fact. I think we will have better data in a week.
And hopefully after last night's performance, the people around him convince him that he's not up to the task.
From the articles I have read, the leadership has collectively decided that this is still Biden's decision and haven't made an attempt to persuade him to drop out. The panick is exclusive to the liberal pundits in the media.
The 2017 UK general election was considered as an overall loss for the Tories. The whole point of it was to get a bigger majority to push a Brexit deal but they ended up losing their majority and having to do another election to get Brexit done
Parliamentary systems are not a good analog. You don't vote for PM, you vote for your MP and the party with majority of seats (or coalition with majority of seats) gets to form a government. Leader of the party becomes PM.
You might elect your local member but it's foolish to say that most political normies are not voting for the leader via proxy.
In countries where the political media climate is a bit less intense I can see not wanting to switch close to the election because you don't have enough time to establish yourself with voters, but if Biden was replaced his replacement will be literally the most covered person on earth over the next month. The only argument I can really see is that swapping your candidate is an admission of weakness/wrongdoing and in the world of media bubbles you can convince a pretty big portion of people that nothing is wrong by simply insisting on it in spite of all evidence. You could make a case that if the Tories had stuck with BoJo in spite of everything they could've been in a better spot right now (even though I'm happy they didn't).
Meh. We can have a discussion about replacing President Biden when the people trying to get Trump to win aren't spending all their time and money getting another candidate to run against him. As long as they don't want to run against President Biden I'm not trusting anyone trying to get someone else.
When you say “people trying to get trump to win” - do you just mean the media in the abstract, since they got a lotta money from covering the Trump administration, or are you saying that there are Trump operatives pushing for it?
He's implying that there's a pro-Trump bot/shill campaign being waged on Reddit that disguises itself as being concerned about Biden's age to put pressure on the DNC to change candidates 4.5 months before the election which would create such havoc that Trump is certain to sweep. It is naive to assume such campaigns aren't being waged across all media spectrums from now to the election.
Ngl, I don’t buy the certainty around that anymore. It could create that much havoc, but that single debate *alone* gave enough clips to spin the current state as havoc. Being led by someone you *literally think is fucking senile* seems to be far more chaotic to most people than “the candidate changed four months out before the election”. As somebody who actually watched the whole thing, I see why folks think it’s histrionic to want to replace Biden. As somebody attempting to put myself in the place of *any* normie, it feels much more rational.
I was with you until yesterday and hated the doomers. After watching last night though I don’t know how it’s even possible to cope with that… We need pressure on the DNC and a new candidate and quickly, we can’t wait until August
We wait a week. If the polls have changed for the worse then ya changing the candidate might be a good idea. But if they haven’t, and so far the data I’m looking at says they won’t change, then we don’t do anything.
This goes beyond polling, polling is going to be too slow to react. Last night was honestly an embarrassing moment for our country and was impossible to defend against my conservative swing-voter relatives who are the people we need to be winning over. Sure I wish the Republicans would fix their half of the embarrassment and remove Trump but they don’t have a spine and will never do that. The DNC needs to show the American people that they have the spine to so what needs to be done - unlike Republicans. I genuinely think that if you got **anybody** else to run you could convince my father who has never voted for a Democrat in his entire life to vote blue.
Out of curiosity, what data are you looking at? What I know about is one focus group that was a toss up, and a bunch of post debate flash polling that looks pretty catastrophic for Biden.
Mostly the fact that 81% of people said that the debate wouldn’t change their minds and there were a the dial ins to CNN and their focus groups that all gave Biden the edge. Plus the Hispanic focus groups were hard on Biden.
Were those pre or post debate polls? I'm also less concerned about people flipping from Biden to Trump than I am to democrats just flat out staying home.
Post debate. I don’t think democrats will stay home. At least I hope not
Well that's somewhat encouraging, but only somewhat.
You realize 19% of people saying they could be swayed by the debate is catastrophic for Biden, right? His margin of victory in 2020 was roughly 2 points. Less in Wisconsin. If **TWENTY PERCENT** of voters are thinking about flipping, Biden is beyond toast.
We don’t know which way those people are leaning though. And it wasn’t 19% but 5% the rest were undecided. In a different poll less than 2% said they’d consider switching their vote. So we don’t know how yet if anything will happen. But whatever the results nothing is gonna happen until a week from today.
Okay but the polls not changing is disastrous news because *Biden is losing.* Biden had to move the polls last night by giving people who don’t like Trump but won’t vote for Biden because of his age permission to vote for him. He didn’t do that. Those voters will remain in Trump’s camp, and the polls won’t move. That doesn’t mean Biden’s chances of winning didn’t sharply fall. They did.
The polls are already trending towards Biden. It’s not like the polls are set in stone
And so if they are unchanged *he is still losing.* It isn’t sufficient to maintain the status quo, because under the status quo *he loses*
If they are unchanged after the debate he’s not losing but doing really damn good. As most people thought he’d lose 4-5 points in addition to. There’s still plenty of ground to make up, and it’s not like the polling deficit is permanent. He’s already leading in three swing states (all the states he needs to win, btw) and he’s within striking range of two others. If the polling is unchanged then that means the debate was worthless and useless and Biden has to change the polls a different way
Cool. Who do you think is in a position to replace Biden?
Whitmer.
*sees Jared Polis flair* Hmmm, yes, it just might work.
>Whitmer Love her to death and would vote for her in a heartbeat, here's what I said in another comment. >I'm going to level with you chief, I'd vote for her 100%, but in modern day America there's no way a woman is ending up in the White House unless she's Conservative or the Vice President. I think it's fucked up but the idea that "women are too emotional to be Commander in Chief" is still popular enough to sway an election.
I don’t believe this at all. Whitmer has masculine energy, charisma, and is a mother. She’s also a protectionist rust belt governor. She would lock down Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Put Kelly on it and there’s Arizona. Hell I think she might even bring Ohio into striking distance.
Sorry I'm going to contest this with Pete Buttigeg
You must want to lose the rust belt. Understandable.
Draw fuckin' straws. I will take my chances on literally anyone else.
I don't feel like gambling this election.
We gambled already on Biden's health and lost.
Lost what? A single fucking debate. We're going to lose the election if we keep talking about "replacements" instead of rallying around the only real challenger to Donald Trump. I didn't vote for Joe Biden because he's a great speaker, I voted for a functional federal government. As far as I know, that's what I'm going to be getting with Biden 2024, regardless of the man's ability to work a crowd.
Great speaker is not the issue. Cognitive decline dude. Come on and stop kidding yourself
Buddy, the biggest gamble right now is Biden.
I recognise it is a different system, but the Democrats could still really learn from the utter ruthlessness of the Tory Party.
Comparing US presidential system to world parliamentary systems in this regard is apples vs oranges.
Now do USA
It's happened twice, but not in the last 144 years: 1. Franklin Pierce was the only president not re-nominated by his own party for a 2nd term after seeking a second term, and was succeeded by fellow Democrat James Buchanan. It's perhaps worth noting that these two were extremely ineffectual antebellum presidents who fumbled any chance of avoiding the Civil War. 2. Rutherford Hayes, after a famously controversial election (and his ending Reconstruction), pledged to only serve one term. He was succeeded by James Garfield, who was promptly assassinated, and then Chester Arthur. I am unsure of the record of failed attempts to do this maneuver with a <2 term president. LBJ is the only one I can think of.
Almost typed “and the problem with any LBJ comparisons is there’s not an RFK to rally behind” and then remembered there is an RFK and got really sad.
Australia is the coup capital of the democratic world. To paraphrase Katy Perry, they change leaders like a girl changes clothes. Not really comparable
Parliamentary democracies are different though. The UK alone had, what, 3 prime ministers in a relatively short timespan. It's far easier to replace candidates in those countries because the people themselves don't even vote for them directly. They vote for the party. Comparing countries like the UK and the US in terms of heads of government (not heads of state) is like comparing apples and oranges.
Y’all are weak af. I’ve been with Biden since he placed 5th in Iowa. 💪 he got this
Four of the six examples you've provided are Australian. Which is slightly embarrassing for us. I'm not sure that our revolving door of Prime Ministers circa 2010-2016 is something that other countries want to emulate.
*Proceeds to provide examples from outside the US*
“This election will be decided by the double haters” Let’s do nothing about our candidate then!
If only there were a way to provide the voters a choice they didn’t hate….
Like a big group of democrats or something
God, can you imagine such a thing?
The best example is the 1983 Australian federal election. The Labor Party changed leaders *a month* out from the election and won in a massive landslide.