The Joe Biden Presidency II : He's too old...or something like that!

I'd disagree that the Black community is the core of the Dem party. I'd say we're part of the core but we don't make up most of it.

The only Veeps with a serious profile in my lifetime are Agnew and Cheney. We saw the Bidens on TV a lot because they were the older, almost grandparently couple who rode the Obama train to fame. A lot like Lyndon and Lady Bird before JFK got killed. It's not like he was doing any more than Kamala has done, or Quayle or Mondale. Tipper Gore did more in poking her little nose into the music industry than her hubby did as a Veep. Veeps don't run on their accomplishments as veeps- they run on the record of the incumbent whose administration they worked in.

And given that Kamala is a Black female, it really doesn't matter what she does. She will lose the first Presidential election she runs in. And the people who say they "needed to see her doing something" will either stay home or vote for her opponent regardless. Don't be fooled.

 

My thinking is you won't win the election as a Democrat if you don't have solid support from the black community. But I should have said "a core" instead of "the core".

Fair enough, but I was focusing more on what I thought should have happened, not what usually happens.

I confess that I was supporting her during the early primaries of 2020 until she dropped out. As such, I had a more optimistic opinion of her and wasn't as focused on more general electability issues surrounding racism and misogyny.

 

"Should have happened" To what end? So she does a lot of stuff to prove she's capable. They're just not going to vote for the n... b...

"...and here's my resu-"

"Uh, you can keep all that, we're not hiring your ass"
or
"Thank you, but our concerns are about the... intangibles Don't call us... weeeee'llllll caaaalllll yoooouuuuuu..."

Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, Obama, Trump... all became presidents without being a veep. The guys who were Veeps and ran on the heels of a two-term POTUS and still lost are Nixon (became president eventually, but lost as a veep to JFK) and Gore. I think you can dismiss Mondale because Carter was a one-term guy.

I just don't see where a veep's resume matters at all. I don't see any reason why Kamala should have taken on any more work than Biden did in the same role.

Yeah, brain fart on my part- she's already lost the first presidential election she ran in. If she has to run, she'll lose another.

Also, I've never assumed my candidate had enough White support behind him, because a lot of American politics revolves around voting against my interests. Sometimes my candidate wins, sometimes not.

 

My thinking was that because America has never had a female president, there needed to be a concerted and focused effort to start "easing" people into the comfort of having a female president. As I've stated elsewhere, I thought Biden should have resigned after three years so that Harris could have been president for a year to break that barrier.

I feel the same way about a gay president. You just can't expect one to be elected without a concerted effort to get people more comfortable with it (and even then, it won't be easy - the same for a female, especially one who is black).

 

I kind of think that's what the original intent was. I have no doubt that Kamala would have lost after a year, regardless. If the barrier is people's comfort, that's an individual issue that her actually being in the job isn't going to change. The people who are uncomfortable with her are uncomfortable with Black and they're uncomfortable with female.

Anyhow, Biden's decision to run was made, remember, in 2018 or so. The concocted disbelief about the election results and the insurrection that came from it were unthought of, because Biden hadn't won yet. And there's no reason to blame him for not seeing this far ahead.

How well the gay guy can do the job is irrelevant to the people who simply don't want a gay guy in office.

I'm not really saying that there ought be no effort made to "normalize" Kamala, but generations of trying to appeal to White people haven't worked with the White people for whom race is a factor.

 

I still think he should have chosen a different Veep.

 

They were running against the guy who had been a Veep. It matters much more in the primaries than it does in the general. No modern-day former Veep who ran (Nixon, Mondale, Biden, Gore) has failed to win his party's nomination.

In addition to the info I laid out in a previous post, Kennedy and Dubya beat 8-year Veeps. Clinton, Reagan, Biden and Carter beat incumbents.

What was she not doing that Biden did, or that Gore did, or that Mondale did, yada?

You've made a very good point. We don't even know what she's doing, because it's not necessarily being reported.

 

Like Trump, she's never held public office in her life.
Unlike Trump, she'd have no shot. In fact, IMO she has a negative shot after this Trump shooting thingy.

Mrs. Obama would probably get more of the Right to come out and vote against her than Dems for her. The Dem votes from the demo likely to vote for her now will likely already go to Biden.

 

She was no threat at all. She was just going to do or say something to discredit herself and give people who already weren't going to vote for her a reason.

I really don't know why he chose her, or why he even felt the need to do some kind of double minority thing, since Obama had already broken the race barrier. And Obama broke that barrier by running and winning both the nom and the general. With Biden giving Kamala the Veep and then the POTUS gig itself, she will have earned nothing, a la Gerald Ford. And she will lose the WH, a la Gerald Ford. If he steps down, she'll be seen as the ultimate welfare queen by the Right, and even those of us on the left will not be able to counter when conservatives say she caught a cab at the begging of a marathon and rode it 26.19 miles.

It's not enough for me to be able to stick my tongue out at conservatives and say, "Nah, nah, nah, her name's on the roll!", because they will say, "and she had the shortest tenure of any POTUS who was alive to vacate the office".

 

This level of fecklessness within the Democratic Party is truly off the charts. I am a democrat but I am so ********ing pissed at the current handwringing and bedwetting from mostly higher ups in the party.
They truly do not deserved the support of the base, particularly AAs, LGBTQs, POCs and other minorities who have the most to lose in this elections and are willing to fight and put everything on the line.
Those mother********ers talking to the Axios and politicos of the world are mostly white dudes who are set for line and don't have much to worry about a convicted felopn presidency but still don't have the discipline to shut the ******** up and the courage to fight.

 

As I said, these guys can and will accommodate themselves with a convicted felon presidency. They have very little to lose. Some may even profit from it since they will pretend to lead the "resistance". What a bunch of twats.

 

Half-decent NYT editorial from Elizabeth Spiers.

https://archive.ph/7sT9l

Democrats Need to Wake Up From Their ‘West Wing’ Fantasy

Bipartisan cooperation requires a shared idea of reality that exists in “The West Wing” but not in the real world.

Adherence to this fantasy is preventing the Democrats from functioning effectively in the current political climate. In response to Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s road map for a second Trump presidency, which includes agenda items so extreme they would be sent back to the writers’ room in Sorkin-land — Mr. Biden offers mostly dry policyspeak. On reproductive rights, the president defaults to talk of rights and reason, while Donald Trump makes utterly false but compellingly graphic statements like, “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth.” The Democrats talk about facts and analyses. The Republicans talk about a holy war in which civilization hangs in the balance.

In the “West Wing” paradigm, problems can be workshopped and strategized, sometimes into platitudes that neither offend nor inspire. In President Bartlet’s White House, the very busy characters dispatch tasks with ruthless efficiency. They’re smart, the issues they work on are important and everyone means well. But Democrats are not going to be able to diligently and efficiently workshop their way out of the current dilemma or test all of the potential scenarios. There is no way to meaningfully poll alternatives to Mr. Biden and clinically weigh costs and benefits. There’s no precedent for this crisis, we don’t know what the contextual environment will look like in November, and if the leaking is any indication, not everybody means well.

“The West Wing” is built on a belief that America is an inherently noble force for good as opposed to a nation that, like every other, seeks to amass and preserve power. This is also an organizing principle in the way many real Democrats talk about foreign policy, and it doesn’t hold up in a 24/7 media environment where the consequences of our actions are broadcast for the world to see.
​

After a bit of speculation about how Veep is a better guide than The West Wing, the author concludes

It does seem that there was no plan for what would happen if Mr. Biden bombed at the debate, but it doesn’t matter now. Democrats need to stop overthinking it and now need to ruthlessly commit to a plan. Which option they pursue — Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris or someone else — matters less than that they do it. This is not an election with a wrongheaded but well-meaning Republican. It’s an all-out war with an illiberal megalomaniac who will happily destroy American democracy if it buys him one more ounce of power and keeps him out of prison.

In “The West Wing,” Jed Bartlet is censured for not disclosing a medical condition. He slips in the polls. But he wins re-election by a landslide anyway because voters vote with their better selves — and his fictional opponent accepts the results. It’s a pretty fantasy, but here in real life, people often vote out of fear and anger and align with a party as much as a specific candidate. Whether Mr. Biden stays or goes, this is an opportunity to articulate to voters that Democrats understand that the world we all live in is less “West Wing” than “Veep” — and to demonstrate that they’re capable of adapting to it.​

 

Aaron Sorkin is a hack and I refuse to see his work on basic principle.

That said, it's telling that the likes of Favreau, Carville, and a bunch of backbench MOC are screaming The West Wing fantasy and not people like AOC or Gary Peters.

 

Reports suggesting the Teamsters will not endorse either candidate.

 

The Teamsters president is a massive arsehole....

 

Apparently, it's not just White dudes...

 

Say it again louder for the people in back!!

 

Why you talking at all? How the fvck does this help get volunteers? Like I don't get the snitching. Dems need more Slim Charles in them. Softcocks, the lot of them.