So Biden is out, but he didn't resign. He'll be president until January.
If Democrats are smart, they'll quickly coalesce around Kamala Harris and be done with it. She may not be perfect, but on short notice she's the best they have.
But then, when have Democrats ever been smart?
UPDATE: Hold on. In a second Twitter post, Biden endorsed Harris:
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
harris is fine with me; her last campaign for president was against other dems where she had to be somewhat restrained
gloves are off for trumpco
I wish I could believe it will be that simple. But I anticipate more chaos and more backstabbing through the convention, during which the Democrats will
demonstrate that they are fundamentally unserious about winning.
She'll be overwhelmingly favored. If anything, I'm more worried about excessive "coronation" optics than I am an overly vituperative convention.
This. And watch how quickly the Trumpers start talking about how it's the Dems who are anti-democracy because their nominee was picked by insiders and elites behind closed doors . . .*
It's a tough road ahead--godspeed, Kamala, and good luck with it!
______
*And I lay better-than-even odds that Trump himself will start talking about what a good man Biden is, and how those nasty democrats treated him like a dog. After all, Donnie is nothing if not a bullshitting hypocrite.
Right after he called him the worst president ever.
Trump after the annuncement:
“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!”
This is why Harris can win. He is beatable.
She was his pick for v.p. and he was voted as the Dems candidate. It makes perfect sense for her to assume the candidacy. I'm not sure who's going to argue the anti democratic optic more though, the GOP or certain elements in the Democratic party.
the paul wellstone memorial piece.
I agree. On the first ballot, with the endorsement of Biden (and many others, Adam Schiff for example), the delegates who were pledged to Biden will almost certainly honor his wishes.
And nearly all the delegates were elected as Biden supporters.
Agreed. I would have preferred that Biden not endorse anyone and Democrats try to pick the strongest candidate to take on Trump, instead of simply going with the next in line. I was and am in favor of Biden stepping down, but it's still a gamble; we should look for the best possible payoff given the risk.
Still, even a Harris coronation is better than where we were. Now we find out if she's got what it takes to turn things around. Fingers crossed.
How do we discern who "the best candidate" will be in a month? Only Harris has the name recognition as well as four years of experience. All the other candidates are unknowns for the vast majority of the country with no national campaign experience.
And she's the *only* candidate who can inherit the Biden/Harris war chest.
How could he not endorse her? Anything less would be saying he made a mistake in 2020, and would leave everybody wondering who he did support. And that would open the door to all kinds of infighting and backstabbing and bad feelings. There's likely to be plenty of that anyway, but at least it won't be so public. Nobody wants 2016 all over again. Well, maybe Dean Phillips, but nobody serious.
Agreed. I would have preferred that Biden not endorse anyone and Democrats...
I was hoping he'd say some nice things about Harris but stop shy of officially endorsing her. Mind you, I see very little prospect come what may that she won't be the nominee. And at this point I tentatively believe she's the best choice*—paired with a compelling running mate like Whitmer, Newsom, Buttigieg, Pritzker or whoever.
I'd prefer to see the convention remain at least officially open, with Harris securing her party's endorsement on the second or third ballot. But I have no idea how this is going to play out. And I doubt Democrats do, either.
*In part because, let's be blunt, passing over the first Black female VP for the nomination would not be an unambiguously positive development.
Think of how much effort the GOP wasted in smearing Biden. Now they have to start almost from scratch, as they shift from trashing Biden to giving him "heartfelt" "sympathy".
I think that my friend's prediction that the 'first side that gets rid of its geriatric will win' is correct. And all down-ballot Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief.
And now Trump is the old man in the race, and the press can zero in on that. I'm thinking blue-wave election.
'what brand of adult diapers does donald trump wear? opinions differ.'
[insert youtube clip of snl fake ad "oops! i crapped my pants"]
She can certainly take the angle of "If Biden is too old, so is Trump".
Of course! All the silly jabber about a "mini-primary" or "open convention" was a recipe for disaster. There are no Bernie Bros waiting to pounce on the DNC against a "coronation" like there were in 2016. I have a lot of confidence in Harris. My only fear is that the spin doctors will fuck it up by pushing her too hard to focus exclusively on abortion. The focus should be on her youth and energy. She must tout the administration's accomplishments. She must, at long last, make voters realize all the good things that happen, which Biden was unable to do.
I think abortion is her strongest calling card, it has been a winner in every election where it factored in. Contrasted with Project 2025, it's the biggest appeal she's got.
every election post-june 2022 is a dobbs election.
Yes, but there's plenty more she should focus on - not the least being that she will stand up to Putin and the dictators that Trump loves so much.
Abortion is certainly her strongest suit, but don't forget that Donnie tried to get rid of the ACA, and with it the ban on lifetime caps, and protection for people with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, Biden increased subsidies to make the ACA truly affordable, and Trump will no doubt try to get rid of those subsidies.
On top of that, project 2025 wants to restrict contraceptive availability and IVF. And they want a nationwide ban on abortion and abortion drugs.
Kamala and Biden were close to making progress on immigration reform, including better border enforcement, but Trump himself intervened to kill the negotiated bill. I'd hammer that as well.
I wouldn't waste time on calling Trump a felon, but I would point out that he admitted he had classified documents he had no right to, and didn't secure them at all.
And Vance is even more an abortion extremist than Trump.
I'd also point out that Trump is clearly declining mentally, as anyone who compares his 2016 speeches with his speeches today can see.
Trump is a target rich environment, but Harris does have to focus on a relatively small # of things, to avoid having her most important points lost in the noise. For me, that would be abortion, along with the risk of a nationwide ban, the ACA, and giving in to Putin on Ukraine.
james donald bowman fetishizes menstruation almost as much as he fetishizes the latin mass.
One more: climate change. We need a high turnout of younger voters as well as women and minorities (who will be enthused by a Harris candidacy). We have to remind them constantly that a Trump presidency means a lifetime of facing an unnecessarily greater number of catastrophic droughts, floods, wildfires, and destructive storms than we have already brought upon ourselves.
Good point. Also, as Nov draws near, candidates usually tack to the center to pick up more votes from the center.
And here we are.
I voted for Biden with Harris as VP in the primary; and I view her as his political heir; the woman prepared to step in if President Biden is unable to fulfill his duties as president.
I will stand by this choice as the road of prudence in the face of GOP chaos.
laura kelly for vp.
ex-republican, older, white -- a good way to get the sane haleyites to back their favorite & vote democrat. (if only for selfish reasons; harris-kelly running for a third consecutive dem term in 2028 would be a gop layup, & haley would have an actual chance on the primary, where she wouldn't be facing iff against donald trump, sr., going for a third term or subcomandante james donald bowman* pursuing his destiny as an american augustus.)
ks governor when the voters rejected an abortion amendment to the state constitution that would have kiboshed all pregnancy terminations. (the dobbs piece.)
midwesterner, but not a shrill woman like whitmer or a fatty like walz or pritzker.
No republicans for VP. Kamala will already have two sniper’s targets on her back for being a black woman. We don’t need to give the crazies another reason to kill her: so that she’s replaced immediately by a Republican.
kelly is former gop.
switched during brownback's first term as ks gov.
Richard Spencer seems OK with her...
Once again, yes, that Richard Spencer. Once again, yes you can go read his tweets.
Perhaps you really ought to update your analysis of how American politics works?
It's freaking embarrassing to read the pontification on this web site, like a bunch of 6 year-olds from 1960 think they can usefully analyze things based on a few slurs.
You've got the idiots from 1930 who think it's all Stalin all the time, and the idiots from 1970 who think it's all Malcolm X all the time; what you don't have is a single original thought calibrated to the fact that it's actually 2024.
I hope you're joking. I think they need to go all in on age and bring Pete into the ticket.
You get much the same effect with Whitmer.
I think we're better off leaving Whitmer as governor in MI. Also a bit scared of an all female ticket.
as opposed to "one's (supposedly) black! one's (supposedly) gay!"?
"one's (supposedly) gay"
wait, is there a conspiracy theory that Pete Buttigieg is *not* gay? He's married to a man--I would think that pretty much ends the discussion?
the altleft scumbags like the chapos & cumtowners in 2019-20 treated buttigieg's homosexuality as a puton to appeal to woke dei shitlibs.
Pete's a better speaker than Whitmer. So is Shapiro.
Pete has that special something something to connect with voters of all stripes. But yes there would be risks.
Agreed. I'm in for the ticket either way. I wouldn't like it, but I'd even vote for Newsom over TFG.
i'd vote for newsom twice before TFG
I'd vote for a plate of broken glass before TFG.
I'd vote for Commander before TFG. Even if Commander was in the process of biting me in the voting booth.
Speaking of Newsom: https://sfist.com/2024/07/19/sfist-turns-20-the-san-francisco-scandals-that-made-this-website-what-it-is/
I will leave that to Harris or to the convention, but I would not support any Republican (or reformed Republican) who did not support women's right to reproductive freedom.
Congratulations to all the fucking geniuses who've created this needless catastrophe.
Now go out there and make it work.
"this thing you call a catastrophe. it's not a big deal to me, kevin drum".
I can already see their excuses for a loss in November:
He should never have run in the first place
He should have resigned
It shouldn’t have been Kamala
Personally, I think we’ve just handed the country over to Trump and his minions. Sure hope I’m the one who is wrong.
I think it remains very winnable, because every time Trump is on television he loses someone's vote, but none of this ever needed to be an issue.
Well given where we are now, it is obvious it would have been better if he had not.sought reelection and there was a proper primary. Hindsight 20/20 and all that. But it is what it is.
Proper primaries damage candidates and create extremists, it's how we ended up with MAGA and the Tea Party.
the eric cantor & dave brat piece.
Get out of here with your logic and valid historical perspective!
ABD: Always Blame Dems. It doesn't matter that avoiding a primary when your party has a sitting president is an extremely high priority given historical experience. Ignore facts and blame Democrats anyway.
Historically the President doesn't drop out in the July before the election either. That's why I said given what we know now, that Biden ia not going to be the nominee, it would have been better if that he had not ran at all. But that is also why I said that's 20/20 hindsight.
Indeed! It would have been better if Biden had graciously dropped out in 2021 in favor of Johnny Unbeatable, but sadly, Biden didn't have that foresight.
Anyway, coulda-shoulda-woulda. The facts are what they are, and our job is to win in November, not muse about might-have-beens. So let's get to it!
the only time to drop was after the 2022 midterm. went shockingly well for dems, & would have been a great valedictory, as opposed to the surrender of an early-early departure (summer 2021, or a bit later, after afghanistan withdrawal).
murc's law.
I sure hope your wrong but I'm fearful as to whether or not the same stupid gossipy movers and shakers and unite behind Kamala.
we need emhoff to call up the space lasers.
My wife and I are both people who wanted Biden to bow out after the debate. We're both 100% in with Kamala. The NYT will write whiny articles, but Harris will have all the political support she needs.
Biden's position was untenable. Without a teleprompter, he couldn't explain why he was better than Trump; he couldn't really speak at all. You can call us bedwetters or whatever you want, but there was simply no way to argue that Biden was fit to be President, much less would be fit in 4 more years.
There's no honor in self-imposed defeat. You'll note that at Dunkirk soldiers didn't fight a lost cause; they changed their plan and eventually won.
A very cogent comment from guest on a Mehdi Hasan YouTube short: with Biden as the Democratic candidate, the election is about his age; with Harris as the Democratic candidate, the election is about the Dobbs decision and Trump's felony convictions.
Yeah, I like that.
also, donald trump's age.
Not just his felony convictions, but also that he can't be trusted with classified documents.
And he wants to destroy the ACA, which provides health insurance for tens of millions of people directly, and prevents lifetime caps and protects people with pre-existing conditions throughout the country.
And he wants to kiss Vladimir Putin's ass and turn Ukraine over to him.
If Biden was going to win in November, a number of stars were going to have to align: 1. he was going to have to come out on the campaign trail this week looking tanned, rested, and ready to head to the convention and take on Trump. As soon as he recovered from Covid. 2. Give an inspiring, high-energy convention performance and lots of interviews with no slips of the tongue, recall issues, or any other flubs that the media could jump all over and 3. Then campaign for another two and a half months without any major slip ups or memory flubs, or other incidents that the press would jump all over. Oh, and also debate Trump again and win decisively without any major incidents that the media would jump all over.
He was not going to win. There's no guarantee Harris/[insert VP candidate here] will win, either, given how insane this country has become and (esp.) given her gender and race, but at least now Trump is the confused elderly man running against a smart, multiracial woman who looks more like America than his angry, flabby, orange ass ever will. This Roevember, who are you going to trust to defend your freedom?
Bingo!
Exactly cld. Kevin, the rest of media, and so many Dems created this by making a lackluster debate into a bigger issue than it actually was. Now they need to own this fuck up. I'm still voting Dem, but all these fucktards out our country at risk for no real reason. All of them are so stupid.
@nps1983 -- I'm forcing myself to avoid ad hominem attacks here, but it wasn't a "lackluster debate." It was a fucking disastrous performance that showed that Biden is cognitively limited at least in his speaking abilities. And it was never going to get better, because these things don't get better for people in their 80s.
After the debate, there was never any chance that Biden would win the election. Never.
But now, this is Harris's election to lose. She's way younger and smarter than Trump, and she can maintain drama and keep Trump out of the news with coverage of her VP pick. She can hammer him on abortion, contraception, IVF, and *his* cognitive problems. She can hammer him on immigration for killing off the immigration bill.
She will win.
"Biden is cognitively limited at least in his speaking abilities"
Ableists need to understand that having diminished speaking abilities is not the same as having diminished cognitive ability, which is about the ability to understand and reason. It's the same BS that was thrown at Fetterman and the same BS that idiots of decades past used to think about any person who was mute or could otherwise not speak properly.
yup.
cld, heh, you said what I would have said myself if you had not beat me to the punch.
Stay calm.
Look for consensus.
And stop talking about how awful Republicans are if you want them to vote for you. Talk about what you'll to make their lives better.
You can't get them to vote for you, the best you can manage is focused de-motivation.
Yes. All those Democratic protesters (not) who rampaged and rioted in Milwaukee during Trump's convention are a good example.
Who's gonna be protesting the Dem convention?
what riots?
Exactly.
Stay calm.
Keep your eye on the prize.
Biden created this needless catastrophe.
The best president of anyone's lifetime could have used a little support, instead the hysteria he's been treated with would have rattled anyone.
Kamala has little support from the Biden campaign.
she is a weak candidate with no charisma.
We need new blood to decisively win.
Well, I think she has lots of charisma, and inherits the Biden campaign wholesale.
The no charisma candidate was that guy from Starbuck's who tried to run last time.
DNFTT
which one, caramba or howard schultz?
Disagreeing makes one a troll in your world.
sad.
Kamala became invisible because she made missteps after missteps. If she is the chosen one, I hope she will improve, but so far she hasn't.
And you are?
The mud baths give it away.
If they must roll around in a mud bath . . . expect a troll.
oddly spoken with disdain.
You need to get out of the way. It's Kamala she has 100% support Biden endorsed her and it's the smoothest ride to November. It's actually ride or die, unless you like Nazis 1.0
"We need new blood to decisively win."
Ah yes, the night of the long knives! Once started, it's too much fun to quit!
Why would Biden have picked such a poor candidate as vice president who didn't have the support of his people? Is it possible he was losing his marbles already back in 2020?
Actually, this is a pretty clear story. Joe was getting hammered until Black women came to his rescue in South Carolina. That made Kamala the VP.
There have been two episodes this year of mass hysteria aggressively dividing the Democratic vote, Gaza and Biden's age.
While the sides divided differently each time the development seemed to follow the same pattern, an exclusive, immobile focus on one element of a complex, multi-dimensional topic that drums up vast amounts of motivation for people desperate for some kind of motivation where they could imagine they were making a difference but which was actually creating a massive harm, to which suggestion they were, to a man, grotesquely immune.
Someone has worked out the formula for gullibility in the Democratic vote.
I'm assuming it works something like a few wealthy, key influencers will, just by chance, find their inboxes crammed with memes and histrionic links on the topic and that sets their hair on fire and rather than putting it out they spread the fire to whoever will listen.
So, my suspect is Peter Thiel. He has exactly the kind of resources and exactly the kind of motivation to put some project like this into action.
Your conspiracy theory aside: fracture is also just more likely to happen in the party that doesn’t share one unified identity. Democrats are historically* the party of blacks, Latinos, Asians, non-Christians, LGBTs etc. The GOP is the party of white Christian heterosexuals.
It’s not surprising that the party that has less shared group identity fractures more easily… it’s not like all non-Christians get along well (Jews vs Muslims), or all LGBTs get along well (white gay men vs everyone else) or all Asians get along well (Chinese vs Southeast Asians, Japanese vs Koreans, Indians versus each other of different castes) etc.
*yes I know that this is a generalization. But it’s true for the majority of each group I mention.
Yes, the Democrats have to accommodate everyone making them more vulnerable to just this kind of manipulation.
It’s not like white Christians get along. The church goers of The Church Of Our Savior hates the church goers of The Church Of Our Holy Savior, and each thinks the other is going to Hell.
I have yet to see any explanation as to why people like/love Trump. None of them work for me. Republicans seem to hate each other as much as Democrats. Yet they all fall in line to the “magic” of Trump. And it’s a “magic” that not only escapes me, it baffles me.
He gives them license to completely throw away even the pretense of rationality.
And don't even get me started on transubstantiation!
say that in latin, like our latin mass fetishist gop vp nominee James donald bowman, who has has more names than william jefferson blythe, jr.!
My religion classes were post Vatican II.
But they are united in large part by who or what they hate. Reminds me of a conference of Holocaust deniers made up of white Christians, Muslims and one other group. People who normaly wouldn't look at each other brought together by their antisemitism.
I have always felt that the survival of Israel in the Middle East was based on the Muslims hating each other more than they hated the Jews.
When I was watching coverage of the Trump “assassination” attempt I was struck by the fact that many of the people interviewed seemed like perfectly normal people attending an event where something terrible happened. And in the conversation they mentioned their love for Trump. I guess I had deluded myself into believing that, at least for his campaign rallies, the people attending were pretty looney. Yet there it was, “normal” people loving Trump. It is just unfathomable to me. Sure, I can understand people like that preferring Bob Dole to Clinton or McCain to Obama. But Trump!? Trump!!?? How do you reconcile that?
And I think a lot of people who comment in the MSM and here in Kevin’s comment section and who think Trump is easily beatable are kind of like me in that they can’t conceive of a “normal” person loving Trump. Yet time after time Republicans have been given the opportunity to pick someone else. Even more “normal” scumbags like DeSantis have no chance against him.
But Democrats were able to field a candidate who could beat him and, in fact did. And we have allowed that person to be drummed (I did that on purpose) out. My current feeling is despair.
It's not Trump's magic. He's the guy that's there who doesn't represent what Democrats stand for. It's a vote against libs, elites, gays, etc., etc....
In 2019, Bob Altemeyer and John Dean commissioned a survey which provides some insight into Trump supporters. They looked for correlations between approval of Trump’s performance as President and various other things.
To set a baseline for the numbers, a correlation of 0.0 means no correlation. A correlation of 1.0 means perfect correlation. Examples of correlations of approximately 0.5 are the correlation between people’s height and weight, or between IQ and academic performance.
A. There was a correlation of 0.859 between political party preference and approval of Trump, which is high. The causation is not obvious, probably some combination of:
1) Trump chose to run as a Republican because the Republican Party contained the type of people likely to support Trump.
2) Trump’s victory changed the composition of the party, as his supporters started identifying as Republican and people who opposed him stopped identifying as Republican.
3) Party loyalty: Long time Republicans supporting Trump just because he is a Republican.
B. The next strongest correlation, 0.812, was with a 20 item personality test measuring prejudice. Here causation seems clear: most of the correlation comes from prejudiced people being more likely to support Trump.
C. The third strongest correlation, 0.737, was with the Right-Wing Authoritarian scale. This personality test measures the tendency to follow authoritarian leaders.
So people who support Trump tend to be prejudiced and to be authoritarian followers. These two things are themselves highly correlated, with a correlation of 0.836 between the prejudice and authoritarian follower scales. I suppose this is not surprising--both are related to supporting hierarchy and an aversion to a society where everyone is equal. And some of the “magic” that has you baffled is that authoritarian followers naturally line up behind an authoritarian leader.
Maybe, but that is spilt milk, and it is not helpful to spend time on it.
It will happen again if not addressed.
Yes. The Felon and his Nazi mini-Me are eminently beatable. And then there's Dobbs, deportation and Dominionism.
Donate! Volunteer! Vote! Enough with the circular firing squad! Aux barricades!
+1
Love that!
Neither where you stand on the killing of children on a massive scale, nor fitness for office, is "one element of a complex, multi-dimensional topic". These are simple questions. One could excuse anything at all - how about Jan. 6? - by calling it just "one element of a complex, multi-dimensional topic".
January 6 was caused by one specific person, at once specific time trying to make it happen. Couldn't have pulled that off in any other moment, at any other time.
Yes like you I do smell GOP ratf'ng in all of this. The Gaza protests never seemed authentic and seemed to be bought and paid for outside the authentically upset folks with relatives in Gaza.
"So, my suspect is Peter Thiel."
Maybe, but Peter Thiel just isn't that smart. I know he likes to present himself as that smart, but he really isn't. Recall his speech at the Repub convention in 2020--he was whining about how our nuclear arsenal didn't have the latest and greatest computer controls for launch. Like it would be a better world if our cache of world-enders could be launched via fucking iphone or something, instead of through an unhackable airgapped system.
Thiel made his money being part of paypal and selling it to ebay a few months before the credit card companies figured out secure online transactions. Ebay way, way overpaid, but by then Thiel was rich, and once you're that rich, it's easy to get richer.
It may be much the same collection of people who created the cyber-astroturfing that created Brexit.
The Keep America White contingent is already having a hissy over Usha Chilukuri Vance, this will send them over the edge.
she's supposed to be their designated pitbull against (fake) indo-american kamala.
if kamala is now top of the ticket, the intercaste prejudice just gets amplified that much more & is an even worse look.
I can't wait for the first time TFG accuses the Dems of backing a DEI candidate, you know it's coming, he won't be able to stop himself.
only upside to buttigieg as vp pick is bowman calling him the f-word.
the new wm. f. buckley attacking gore vidal moment. also it ironic since jimmy b has obviously had his Larry craig moments.
That'll be just the start. Eventually I expect he'll go full birther on her, like he did with Haley when she got under his skin too much. And along the way he'll undoubtedly treat us to a whole range of both racial and gender abuse that will get worse if the polls show any change in her direction.
If we were not before, certainly now we are living in ... interesting times...
We are blessed.
haha
Get over it. Let’s all move ahead with what we’ve got and complete our mission. Defeat the guy whose name I will not say. By the way, I’m taking back our flag ????????????????
+1. Also on taking back the flag. Fuck yeah.
"But then, when have Democrats ever been smart?"
Some day, researchers will explain the deep need of non-conservative Americans to pre-emptively hate themselves before someone else does. It is pathological,
goes back to the mc govern campaign, & jettisoning eagleton over electroshock.
seems a quite dismissal reason, in the age of trump.
It takes a wise man to know when to hole em and when to fold em. Joe made a huge choice and it has made him a real American patriot. Unlike the demented "king of fools" in the R party. Thank you Joe. You did good!!!
absolutely correct.
So now we can ask: isn't Trump too old for the presidency?
he doesn't know who won the last presidential election
obviously dementia
don't expect the maras liaisson, andreas mitchell, davids brooks, rosses douthat, georges will, etc., of the world to ask such things.
harris needs to spend a week with obama to practice giving obama-esque speeches promoting the liberal view of american exceptionalism, justice, and unity
Its an all-hands-on-deck moment, she'll get all the help she asks for. I don't know why some think she needs it though.
That's my thinking when folks say she doesn't know how to campaign based on her 2020 run. She will have all the money, staff and expertise the Dems have to offer.
From the very first I thought Obama would have been a much better speaker if he'd ever had to teach college freshmen instead of just law students. He's good, and by comparison with anyone else in public life 15 years ago he was a magician, but the current American electorate needs a smaller syllable count and lower idea density than he typically gave them.
From what I've recently seen of her, her delivery is good. As long as she can stay thematically focused and pin the right labels on trump and his shapeshifter vp candidate, I think she'll be better than people think. She just has to not get bored with saying the same stuff many times.
Actually she should talk to Bill Clinton, or Pete Buttigieg, or Josh Shapiro, all of whom are great speakers who can clearly express the most important ideas in simple and clear terms. In 2012, Bill Clinton did a better job of explaining why you should vote for Obama again at the DNC than Obama did.
And she should pick one of the latter two for her VP, for the same reason.
Heh Obama didn't endorse Vice President Harris. He was one of the group that shived Joe Biden.
While it is unprecedented for someone who has sown up a major party's presidential nomination to withdraw at this late date, let's not forget that until very recently the parties selected their nominee just three or four months before the general election. Hell, I hope this is a trend that will shorten presidential campaigns from now on as I question whether the reforms instituted in the 1970s have actually produced better nominees.
I think it is fine if someone else wants to throw in their name at the convention because it should not be a coronation, but there is no doubt that Harris is the most qualified person in the party to run and, more importantly, serve as president, having served as veep for four years.
Her candidacy shows that we have not repudiated Biden's considerable accomplishments but are running on them, while her age now puts the onus of mental acuity back on Trump, where it always belonged. Further, reproductive choice remains a winning issue for Democrats, especially with the GOP VP nominee believing there should be no exceptions in abortion bans even for rape or incest. Biden was never comfortable talking about abortion while Harris will forcefully make the case for reproductive freedom.
Trump has a ceiling of about 46 percent of the popular vote. Harris will win the popular vote (again) and the key will be the seven or so swing states. Her veep choice will hopefully help shore up one of those (I like Cooper out of NC) but this race has always been eminently winnable, but given Biden's diminished capacity necessitated this change and now it is more winnable for Democrats than ever.
james bowman wants to track menstrual periods.
Verry good observations. I am a little leery of leaning too heavily on "reproductive freedom" at the expense of other issues. I've seen this fail in some past state Senate races. Swing voters have to see Harris as a complete package. I believe she's smart enough to see this, as long as she doesn't inherit a dopey campaign staff.
At the time I thought Dobbs was going to be a generational shift, a long slow burn rather than a quick now-it's-done-let's-move-on the way the court and the other Rs evidently expected. It's a tectonic shift, very fundamental. You don't tell 2/5 of the country (half, minus the anti-abortion women) that a core constitutional right they've built their lives around for 70 years has just vanished overnight, like "poof! you were just dreaming, wake up now!"
Of course it has to be appealed to smartly as an electoral issue. No absolutism about it, framing as personal liberty; basically following the lead of the referenda in Ohio and I think Kansas, both now very red states that carried abortion rights bigly. Harris has close ties to the people who ran them, iirc, and that can help.
It's important in itself and as part of a wider platform of liberties Project 2025 wants to steal from us all. Big theme, individual elements.
Oops, 50 years, of course
Sure hope you're right. Harris is at 38.6% approval, 50.4% disapproval.
I should have not ran for a second term, but I absolutely give him credit for dropping out now, and potentially giving his party and this country a fighting chance to stop that Orange fuck head from becoming President again.
The gloves need to be off right now. Call him a threat to democracy (along with a felon, liar, sexual predator, con man, etc.) because that is exactly who he is. It should also be Roe V Wade 24/7
Politics certainly makes strange bedfellows, and Kevin has a new (?) one:
https://sfist.com/2024/07/21/its-happened-joe-biden-drops-out-of-2024-race/
johnson wants grassley presiding over the electoral count.
Any reason why anybody should pay any attention to what Johnson says?
I cannot think of any.
he's my porn watchdog.
Perhaps a little more than listening to what Drum says. At least in terms of possible effects. Short of Biden saying that his doctors have given him, oh, two years of useful mental acuity, resigning is the logical next step.
They are free to try impeaching Biden for whatever crazy grounds they can concoct.
Ending his campaign was the right thing for Biden to do, but that doesn't mean he should step down as President.
From a governance point of view, Biden has been the best President of my lifetime. He may be less capable now than he was four years ago, but whatever system he and his aides have put in place to compensate for his failings, it's worked so far. It can carry us through January unless he declines drastically in the interim. If that happens, he can resign then.
And from a politics point of view, we are still in a hole here. Harris is now what stands in the way of a Trump restoration; she has a lot of ground to make up and not a lot of time to do it. Let her devote all her efforts to campaigning while Biden and his team serve out the rest of his term.
Joe Manchin made a great point--the energy needed for a presidential campaign on top of being president is a lot, perhaps too much for Biden. Dropping out means he have the energy needed to finish out his term.
Answer is easy. It is a double load to run the country AND campaign. Now he doesn't have to campaign, he can concentrate on his main job. He might have been too old to do both.
I think Harris will lose against Trump for the same reason that Clinton did. The "mild misogyny" that will keep some Democratic men from voting for her.
Clinton won the popular vote. It was some close margins in a couple of swing states that did her in. And if you want to blame a man, blame Republican James Comey. He single-handedly flipped the election to Trump.
(H) Clinton was a terrible candidate. I heard her in Pittsburgh in 2016, talking to a bunch of persuadable voters from the 'burbs. Her speech was much more a victory lap, talking about how historic a woman president would be, than explaining how she'd make anyone's life better. It was inside baseball to people who tune in once every few years.
And she still almost won. If Harris avoids being cutesy, and keeps the focus on how she'll improve things and how terrible Trump will make it unsafe to be pregnant anywhere in the US, she'll win. Especially if she picks a good VP, like Buttigieg or Shapiro.
Hillary lost because she’s Hillary. Harris won’t be nearly as much hated..
This country (as of now) will not elect a black woman for president.
Seems like something similar to what was said when President Obama was the Democratic nominee.
Indeed.
Harris is not as strong a candidate as Obama; on the other hand, Obama's election was sixteen years ago. That's sixteen years of older, more-prejudiced voters being replaced by younger, less-prejudiced ones. Victory is possible -- though far from guaranteed.
When Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee, he had the older, experienced white guy to guide him as his VP. We do not as yet know who will be backstopping Kamala Harris.
White guy, you can bet on that. Older? Probably not so much. It won't be Dick Cheney.
Harris at least has or will have a full term of _one_ "higher" office under her proverbial belt - a full term as VP.
Exactly. I was still working at a newspaper when Obama first ran and all these journalists didn’t think America could possibly elect a black person. Of course many people will hate her, but Her ethnicity will not decide this election. .
Well, sure, if the Rs have anything to say about it. The trick is to outvote them.
I think we will.
Remember whom she's running against.
The greatest success the country has had against racism -- maybe the only success it has had -- is making it socially unacceptable almost everywhere.
On paper, it's obvious who is most qualified to be President.
If you vote the other way, it's rather difficult not to admit -- at least to yourself -- that you're acting out of racism or sexism.
I think the country has evolved far enough that enough people will decide they don't want to do that that the better candidate will win.
I would not be too sure of that.
If it were Black woman vs. normal Republican (e.g. Romney or someone like that), then I might handicap her a bit. But this time it's Black woman vs. Insane Orange Fascist and his Creepy-Ass Mini-Me in a year when reproductive rights, immigrant rights, and a bunch of other hot-button issues are on the ballot. I give her even odds.
With Biden stepping down and, hopefully, Kamala Harris being nominated, Democrats are doing all the right things. It does not guarantee that the next president will be a Democrat, of course, but Democrats will not have contributed to the insanity that is sweeping the country.
It seems to me that anyone who voted for Joe Biden in this year's primaries voted for Kamala Harris to become President if Joe ever decided to step down. So their votes will be respected when those delegates choose Harris.
".. if Joe ever decided to step down.." or pass away. Sheesh. Biden was in his late 70s when he took office; chances were pretty good that something would happen to him before the end of his term. Harris was always positioned to take over.
When I voted for Biden, I did it despite Kamala, and would prefer, say Gretchen Whitmer. That said, if Kamala is our nominee (as is the most likely outcome), I will vote for her, hope she runs a better campaign than she did in 2020, and sincerely hope she wins.
In 2020 she was running a primary campaign, and was desperately trying to stop Biden from walking away with it. Now she's running a general election campaign, which has completely different goals.
I still thought it was nuts for her to run in 2020 by relitigating 1970s school busing. But with Dobbs and general reproductive freedom she has a much clearer path to victory.
Agreed about the busing turn in 2020. It turned her entire public persona upside-down, from prosecutor who takes no shit from nobody to resentful victim. Besides, it just made no sense to try that in front of an audience of Dems, just incoherent. I couldn't believe it at the time. And hope like hell she's not listening to whoever gave her *that* idea anymore.
So, in a brokered, DNC convention, are the delegates picking a ticket, or are they choosing presidential and vice-presidential candidates separately?
Separately. The delegates vote for President and then for Vice President. That way, the delegates know who the Presidential nominee is when they vote for Vice President.
Great. So now it's Scary Black Woman vs. That Guy. Well, the past is past (though not yet over). Time to spit on my palms and roll up my sleeves. If I have to go down, I'm going down swinging.
Joe will be remembered as an excellent president, if not great, future will tell (not all up to him or to current events), and my respect for him is huge.
This opens up the campaign, hopefully for the better, and puts the focus firmly on the plutocrats, as well as staving off the corruption of our democracy and elections (finance), including those using it to further themselves financially.
We need a swing state winner and I don't think that's Harris. She's upright, which is a benefit, but it's otherwise a lot of down side.
What has she actually been doing for the last three years? From the outside looking in, it looks not much. No her fault. They didn't give her anything.
But by my count, Biden assigned her to the border (WHY?) which is probably an impossible anchor on her campaign, and there were multiple articles written about infighting and poor management in her office. She occasionally popped up to defend abortion rights. She's going to have to defend the admin's record without any personal accomplishments to fall back on over the last three years.
Certainly, Harris is better than Biden getting older for the next four months, but I'd take any of the non-Klobuchar or Booker candidates over Harris.
I agree that handing Harris the "solve an intractable hemisphere-wide migration crisis" portfolio didn't make a lot of sense -- what could she do absent massive Congressional action to completely change our border control and asylum laws while also addressing the massive underlying economic and political issues driving people to the border? But for a lot of the first two years of her term, she was also spending most of her time in DC filling in as the 51st Dem Senator.
If you check out her speeches in Munich and other security conferences the last couple of years addressing the Ukraine war and other issues, she comes off a lot better. She's ready to be CiC.
I wonder. Sometimes I think that maybe these small percentage swing state voters that will decide the election might be looking for any reason to NOT vote for TFG, and old Joe wasn't enough, but maybe Harris will, especially if they really accentuate her vitality and I'm not an old guyness.
trump assigned pence to run point on the 'vid, & his failure there never came up in 2020 general or his own 2023-24 primary run.
Pence assignment was to slow down development of tests, with the hope that it will help cover up the actual number of deaths. The cover up became unworkable pretty fast, but he did succeed to slow down development of tests quite significantly.
i'm guessing chickenshit trump will only debate the new dem nominee if the polls turn decidedly against him
He will be absolutely nuts to debate her because he thinks he's unstoppable and she's lame, and because he'll feel an overwhelming need to destroy her to 'prove' he's not a rapist.
So sorry if the Dem elites are coalescing behind Harris. Her approval is at 38.6%, disapproval at 50.4%. Looks like a reprise of Hillary Clinton versus Trump. No question she'd be a far better President than Trump, but her last Presidential campaign crashed and burned even before the primaries. Let's go with a swing state governor or Senator.
This was nothing but a coup by the rich backers of the party and by the idiots like Kevin who bought into it. Despite outraising the GOP in June the money has dried up. Not one red cent will be spent on Biden by the oligarchs. They have spoken.
A reminder for everyone in that Biden didn't want to run in 2020 but was begged to by the same people who are pushing him out. He said he wanted to be a single term president and then hand it over but felt the country was too far divided to do so. He did it out of a sense of duty, and he should be commended for it.
The attacks on his mental state must stop immediately, Kevin. You got most of what you wanted. The old man is stepping down from the race but not resigning. Let the other MAGA idiots call for his resignation, and seriously think about whether your stance really is correct when they have the same opinion as you do. The convention better embrace this man who has bought this country four years while nominating his VP to replace him. He's been betrayed by those to whom begged for his help. He's been the most successful President of most of our lifetimes -- certainly mine. He deserves our respect, not ridicule.
Despite all of what I said I will gladly vote for Harris for President, and I really hope she wins. However, Biden didn't use her much in his administration. None of the policy accomplishments have anything to do with her, and he seemed to even set her up for failure by assigning her to the border "crisis". She will also be hit with a double whammy of misogyny and racism.
To the others calling for someone else other than Harris: Only she can access the money raised by Biden's campaign thus far, and it requires her to top the ticket. She'll need to pick a good VP.
So Biden is out, but he didn't resign. He'll be president until January.
Good grief DON'T resign !!!!!
Unless you want Mike Johnson a heartbeat away
Probably not doable, buy my fantasy-
"Hello Niki, this is Kamala. Except for denying the 2020 vote count, tell me what you want"
you really ought to find better fantasies
Who else could guarantee at least 1-2% of GOP voters ?
GOP traitor? She already high on T's "not loyal" list so whether he wins or not her 2028 GOP chances are slim to none
Pick a red state dem for VP who's not in or running for office.
Note: Obama's statement was issued before Harris announced her candidacy. But everyone is reading a lot into his statement praising Biden.
"Step aside but don't resign" makes sense to me. Joe is clearly aging, but to my eyes he is still capable of doing the job of president and is likely to continue to be able to do the job for the next six months. There is a really serious question as to whether he could do the job for another four years and six months.
With Biden out of the way, more attention can be paid to Trump's mental state. He also is clearly aging; to my eyes he's in worse mental shape than Biden, and four years from now is essentially certain to be in considerably worse mental shape than he is in now. Of course, Trump never was capable of doing the job of president, even when he had it.