*It's remarkable how fast Republicans have pivoted from Biden is decrepit and brain dead to Biden was ousted in a coup by anti-democratic elites! I mean, I would have figured it would take at least a few days.
But no. No matter how cynical you get, Republicans can keep surprising you.
they should be jealous that kamala harris (a woman!) had the courage mike pence didn't.
Someone noted that Nancy Pelosi had the guts and ability to do what Mitch McConnell couldn’t do on his side, and he has had multiple chances and a much stronger case to do it, if he had the skills he supposedly does he could have pulled off the post January 6th impeachment, yeah they’d have taken a hit with Trump’s base but it was early enough that by now anti partisanship would have kicked in and they’d be the ones running a young fresh candidate against an old man
Haley would have outperformed Obama '08 electorally, & might have gotten close to Bush '88.
Nikki Haley was 16 in 1988 and therefore too young to challenge the incumbent VP.
i'm saying her electoral victory in 2024 would be at least obama 08 like, if not bush 88 like.
Seven million more Americans voted for Kamala Harris than Donald Trump.
Nice try. No one votes for VP.
tell that to paul manafort, who connived pence on the 2016 ticket to fully assuage the biblehumpers.
Sarah Palin. What a brain-dead comment.
Wrong. _LIterally everyone_ who votes for a president also votes for the VP.
technically no votes for president either. you're voting for a list of electors sworn to vote for the president and vice president.
i bow to your superior pedantica in response to elctrk.
Not just Republicans, plenty of Dems feel like it's yet another episode of The Establishment (TM) running roughshod over the rank and file who would like some fresh blood and someone not encumbered by ties to the FIRE sector who might actually change some things.
I find their demands to have Biden resign altogether to be hollow - and a transparent attempt to overload the heir apparent with not only a campaign but taking over the boss's job at the same time.
Rationally, though. There simply isn't enough time for someone to pull together a national campaign this fast - unless they were really, really good and had the best campaign team in the world. It's a tall order but TFG is also a target rich entity -- lots and lots of soft targets and I do not mean that in a violence related manner.
And yet, Harris raised ca. $100 million in the first 24 hrs from small dollar donors. How do they reconcile the establishment running roughshod with that fact? I don't think there's significant evidence for "plenty of Dems" feeling run over. Looks to me that the commentariat who want to control the discourse feel run over. Ef 'em.
I've seen it in a few places, more of a "Hey, can you ask us first before you just assume?" Harris is the logical move with 3 months left, but there are a lot of rank and file folks who would like to see a leadership shakeup since the D party as a whole is failing to appeal to a lot of people in the center. We can reflect now or we can reflect after we lose to an incoherent felon TV host.
The delegates are being asked and saying ok. The various competitors have said no thanks. What’s left? You want a poll?
Well, the donor bros don't like her. Something a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains on individuals worth $100 million or more.
Scent she just raised nearly a quarter-billion dollars.
She's got no money problems,
??? Have you mistaken me for someone else? I have no idea how what you said applies to my comment.
If they can contain the taxation to cash borrowed on that capital, that would be more logical. Have banks report that they loaned cash based on that collateral.
i have no idea the amount involved but harris was the only candidate legally able to inherit biden's campaign warchest. so there was a practical reason to go with harris behond the sheer chaos of an open convention less than three months before the election.
The Republicans beg to differ on that "inherit" thingy, and they have some legislative language on their side. The Campaign Finance laws all refer to "a candidate", not a "campaign", probably to avoid the squishiness of what a "campaign" might be.
That's a problem because "candidate" is singular. Harris can take her (initial) $100 million and run with it while Joe goes through the bookkeeping exercises of setting up a PAC to support her campaign and giving what's in "Biden-Harris 2024" to the PAC. I expect that the ad slot reservations can also be transferred to the PAC.
In a week or so the PAC can be up and gutting the flailing Bronzefish.
But the contributions were to Biden/Harris. Harris is part of Biden/Harris isn't she. I think this is just another example of a GOP frivolous suit but I don't think it matters. Even if they won, as you point out, the funds could be turned over to a PAC controlled by Biden.
If I was Harris, I would just spend the money and say sorry later.
Polls are pretty clear that rank and file Dems wanted Biden out.
I think the difference is elites were more likely to support the absurd open convention ideas and rank and file voters are the sane ones who said “no we want the VP we already voted for”
You really believe that money came from small donors?
Based on what?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/us/politics/democrats-dark-money-donors.html
888,000 small donors contributed to the 81 million raised through ACT BLUE in the first 30 hours. I was one of them.
And I. And my partner.
Adjust your tin foil hat. You're getting some leakage.
the spinal fluid piece.
As I have commented elsewhere, given that there is no practical way to hold new primary elections, there is only one potential candidate who has already received, effectively, millions of Democratic primary votes. Anyone voting for Joe Biden knew they were voting for Kamala Harris as his replacement in case of need.
yup.
This is 100% the correct argument, and is specific to the circumstances (given that there was a very good chance that Biden wouldn't see out four years).
She definitively is not my first choice. And I voted for Biden kind of despite Harris. And I strongly suspect that if Joe had dropped out a year ago and we went through a normal primary campaign, someone else would have beat her for the nomination.
But she is the only practical candidate at this point, so she is what we get. And while I am not strongly confident in her political skills, her politics are okay by me. Let's hope that she runs a better campaign than she ran in 2020.
While Republicans are upset and say there has been a coup “against Democracy” (as if they cared), but at the same time, they say Biden should be required to resign his office. It's always that dual craziness with them.
They have already formulated that kind of strategy to use against Harris. They're going to say she's a raving Commie on the Left while a Strict Prosecutor on the Right. I just ignore them, but in a campaign, the Dems need a fairly unified way of dealing with their craziness. Trying to debate the Donald doesn't work, since he just yells and disrupts things (being a whiney 6-year-old child).
Harris, so far, has been pointing to his conviction rate and constant lying. Simply pointing out the facts is good. Stating our own plans and goals is a great follow-on. I loved her rally speech and would like to see more of that throughout the campaign.
"Not just Republicans, plenty of Dems feel like it's yet another episode of The Establishment (TM) running roughshod over the rank and file"
Indeed! The Establishment's fingerprints are all over this--as I understand it, the ultimate decision to shunt Biden aside in favor of Harris came from the president himself!
In seriousness, this line they are pulling only has any resonance if Biden appears to be at all bitter or resentful. But he doesn't. He's all-in on Harris.
biden is both allende & pinochet.
Just no!
I'm thinking that Biden has been playing 'half as smart as I really am' his adult political life. And it's paid off in spades for him.
I suspect Biden is both bitter and resentful -- he's just been forced to walk away from the job he spent half his life striving to reach, if he weren't bitter he wouldn't be human -- but he's not going to let it show in public right now. He sacrificed his re-election bid to take down Trump, he's damn well going to get what he paid for.
He would be entitled to mixed feelings, but I can’t imagine that the endorsements would have poured in so quickly had Biden himself not made some of the solicitation calls.
Yes, it's a bittersweet kind of moment. The Convention will eat it up.
First off, nobody gets to complain unless they voted for Biden in the primary. Those of us who did are the ONLY ones who can plausibly claim to be wronged by his withdrawal.
And among us Biden-in-the-primary voters? All of us understood that Harris was to be his replacement in the event that he suddenly found himself unable to carry out his duties as president. She has indisputable constitutional legitimacy in that role.
Her legitimacy isn't QUITE that clear as his replacement as nominee, but it's still plenty clear. It's pretty much the same deal: He's out, and there isn't time to run a legitimate election to replace him. The VP is his natural successor. And the delegates have overwhelmingly chosen to support her as well, which has awesome democratic legitimacy given that they've got no contrary instructions from their constituents.
This is a non-issue, pushed by people with no legitimate stake in the question.
Very well said, thank you!
+1!
Exactly as anticipated, but I don't think anyone is going to actually care, aside from wingnuts who are, as always, only pretending to care, because it's a gimmick they can harm someone with, as they are happy to admit if you talk to them about it, --because they think they're really clever and want to brag about it.
Yep, they all smirk like a snotty ten-year old boy. It’s why they adore Trump.
+1
That's right. It's called concern trolling.
I am ashamed that I am going to enjoy watching the GOP self-immolate in a frenzy of political incorrectness this election,
I’m not.
Yeah - trump republicans are terrible awful hateful people. No worries, though. Everyone is going to tear at Harris every which way.
“Some analysts were quick to predict that Ms. Harris would struggle to break free of voters’ unflattering economic views of the administration. “She’d pick up all of Biden’s economic negatives,” Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who opposes Mr. Trump, wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday.”
It really doesn’t matter who is the candidate.
That sounds like a lot of Republican wishcasting. Because until five minutes ago, it mattered very very much who was the candidate.
They're in terrible trouble and they know it. They're panicking. Already they've bailed on the debate, which is a clear sign of weakness.
Without bad faith…..
Republicans would have no arguments at all…
correct. Republicans, especially MAGA Republicans, don't argue in good faith.
My favorite example of this: 2022 election. In multiple red states, Republicans running for state office ran campaign signs and ads saying "vote for us, we will solve inflation."
Overwhelmingly, they were incumbents. In most cases, Republicans had been entirely in charge of state government for decades. "Vote for us, we will fix the problem that has been happening while we were already in office and haven't done anything about!"
Although "bonus points" of a sort for Trump and his followers for turning "I am rubber and you are glue" into a long-term campaign strategy that seems surprisingly successful.
Why is this surprising, exactly?
Seriously, why is this surprising?
It is obviously propaganda, and what is surprising is that they think it will work on anybody.
My hunch is that they don't, it is just a way of showing their fealty to Trump, by always attacking whether it makes any sense or not.
No, it's not surprising. They've been doing this shit for longer than I've been alive and I'm no spring chicken.
I always think of Taming of the Shrew. As usual, the Elizabethans understood it all way before we did 😀
Petruchio
I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
Katherina
I know it is the sun that shines so bright.
Petruchio
Now, by my mother's son — and that's myself —
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or e’er I journey to your father's house.
They're desperate. There's now only one decrepit old semi senile old man in the race and he's theirs. The Dems need to hit it out of the park with the v.p. pick. Someone who really is from working class origins and who still has the same values. Unlike the sychophant Mr. Vance.
beshear or kelly*.
*either laura or mark. i'm good with both. make it a dobbs election or a what actually happens when a zealot shoots someone you love in the head election.
I don't know much about Laura Kelly, but I think Mark Kelly would be a fantastic choice. It would balance out the ticket more than another woman would. Conservatives aren't only Republicans. I feel there are more than a fair share of misogynists in the Democratic party as well.
Our Democratic women governors in
have all been respected by me, & she, like the voters on the referendum, didn't surprise me, but obviously is not what outsiders expect in a "red" state. For that, you can look to Alabama, where I am doubtful that the majority would support a candidate who was both a Democrat & a woman. Mark has seemed very chummy with Manchin, so I'm not sure about him.
Manchin would be very easy to get along with on a personal basis, but his politics stink like a Sinema.
I wish the GOP was desperate. While I sincerely hope otherwise, I still think Trump is the favorite. We are fighting up hill here, let's not kid ourselves. But she is less of a favorite over Harris than he was over Biden.
Has he ever polled outside the margin of error? And I wonder how the likely-voter algorithms will pan out this unprecedented year.
The repulsives just gotta keep that negativity train a rolling so no one falls off. They are so terribly despicable.
Time for the media to show us how old, decrepitate, and mentally incompetent t-Rump really is.
Biden was ousted in a coup by anti-democratic elites!
Lucky for us, we don't live in a democracy. This is a republic, in case you haven't heard, and in a republic you can do anything you want. Sometimes you want to oust your leader. Sometimes you join his cult. Sometimes you can even join his cult while feigning concern over the other side's anti-democratic "coup" that ousted its leader. That's terribly cute, and in a republic you can be as terribly cute as you want to be. Lucky for us, we don't live in a democracy. Somebody ought to tell them about that.
not true! we're a democracy when it works to their advantage. like calvin vall, the rules always change as it suits them.
>I don't actually get all this anyway. Nobody promises democracy in primaries. Does Kennedy hold primaries? Is he able to stand anyway? The nominee is the nominee of the party. In truth they make their own rules.
It just blows my mind that this is the best they've got, after years of workshopping their Harris material.
They love the chance to make a new bad faith argument.
All these comments miss the point.
(1) The US has an established procedure for how to handle a President who cannot do the job, ie the 25th amendment. This provides various different mechanisms for the President to be replaced, either temporarily (as in when Reagan or Bush underwent surgery) or permanently.
We have seen no evidence that these procedures have been followed (eg if Biden is incapacitated due to Covid)
(2) This might not matter for "routine" things, but a very non-routine matter, namely the issue of the election, occurred over the past few days, under very weird circumstances.
No "official" word, just a Twitter announcement.
And the general belief is that random staffers tweet random nonsense on the supposedly official
Biden Twitter account (at least we hope so, because some of that account is, OMG, juvenile).
(3) The US has had cases like this before, the most obvious one being Woodrow Wilson. It's hardly crazy, given the precedent AND the weirdness around the past week, to ask for some sort of evidence that procedure is being followed.
Or to put it differently
- why the weirdness if Biden is not incapacitated?
- why not follow the procedures if Biden IS incapacitated?
A coup in lesser countries than the US involves guns and armies. But in the US, I don't think it's an exaggeration to call refusal to follow the procedures that are in place for exactly this sort of thing a coup.
It may well be that in a week Biden is up and walking. That will not change the fact that there is a procedure in place for what's supposed to happen while he was ill, a procedure that was followed by earlier presidents (under less extreme conditions than deciding an election). And that procedure was NOT followed. Why?
There is simply no evidence that Biden was incapacitated by Covid, anymore than a person being under the weather from a bad cold. Coming back to the WH and likely meeting with Netanyahu tomorrow is reasonable proof that this is the case.
In my opinion, his performance at the NATO press conference showed a materially diminished person, compared with 1+ years ago. Yet a person who seemed to have a far more lucid grasp on the complexities of foreign policy than that Orange Cheeto ever had. I did not watch the debate, and opinions may differ.
If you have evidence of a more significant incapacitation warranting the 25th Amendment, feel free to provide the link (evidence not opinion). I believe he is capable of carrying out his duties for the next 6 months, and he is still far more capable of performing the job, and of rational thought than Il Duce.
yup.
+1
You've got a logic error here.
This is not about the 25th; nobody's trying to remove Biden from office right now. He stepped out of the race, not the office. So it's about the Democratic Primary Party rules on how they choose to nominate their candidate to office.
And nationally, it seems the Democratic Party has made up its mind.
25th got nothing to do with this; state election laws, party rules, and campaign finance law are the laws and rules that apply. And the Dems can opt to change their party rules at the convention, too.
It's not a logic error because they don't deal in logic. It's just new attack angle trotted out to see if might gain traction. If that doesn't work, they'll have more from central command shortly.
Got the Donnie and Mike talking points, I see. Don't you have better things to do with your time than work for free?
But in the US, I don't think it's an exaggeration to call refusal to follow the procedures that are in place for exactly this sort of thing a coup.
How can it be a coup when Biden is still running the country? He's simply not running for reelection. Try again!
The Republicans are always worse than you think even if you take into account that they are worse than you think.
I must have achieved the optimum level of cynicism. Nothing that Republicans do surprise me any more.
I really don't give a flying fuck about what anyone in the MAGA GOP has to say about this or anything else.
There's too much conspiratorial thinking in the world today, and anyone who thinks this was about any deep undercurrents beyond "this guy's too old and he's going to make us lose" is an idiot and should be told as such to their faces.
The other thing as unsurprising as the sun rising in the east is that TFN (that f***ing newspaper) and even theGuardian bothered to waste space printing the GOP's idiotic bleating without pointing out in the headline or the first couple of paragraphs that it is all utter bullshit. WTF is wrong with modern "objective" journalists anyway? The GOP states that there is a "coup" and somewhere around paragraph 10 the NYT gets around to quoting a lawyer whose response is basically ROFLMAO. That should be the lead.
The NYT is indeed TFN. They were total cheerleaders for the war in Iraq; more recently, their coverage of trans issues has repeatedly crossed the line from Bad to Inexcusable. They constantly use words like "inaccurate" or "misleading" to describe Trump's statements, even when any person halfway connected to reality would just say "lie".
Like millions of other Americans I thought about subscribing back in 2017. I'm really glad I didn't.
clearly, they are deluded enough to think trump won't include them in the purge.
"their coverage of trans issues has repeatedly crossed the line from Bad to Inexcusable." Translation: they are uncovering uncomfortable facts which the community doesn't like to hear.
We obviously have to take down the temperature in public discourse over the next few months or there will be nothing but one lunatic after another acting out violently.
The best way to do that, of course, will be if one particular candidate sits out election day in Riker's Island.
I’ve read weakly sourced reporting indicating that the Trump campaign had no plan for dealing with Biden withdrawing from the race, and that seems to be the case. Republicans were spreading the “coup” nonsense before Biden’s announcement, the claim being that Democrats were “attempting a coup” against Joe Biden, proving that Democrats are the real opponents of democracy. It isn’t a new line of attack they came up with in response to Biden dropping out.
The dumber juxtaposition of opposing messages coming from Republicans:
-- Biden is incompetent and should be 25th'd
-- Biden cannot be removed as a presidential candidate
User icon checks out! Where's the "like" button?
Why do people feel obligated to pretend to take this nonsense seriously?
I don't expect Republicans (or NYT editors) to not be horrid humans; I'm trying to be realistic. But could they at least try to not to sneer while they act like they think everyone else is a dumb chump?
If anyone knows about coups against democracy it should be MAGA Republicans, for sure.