A reader who calls herself New York City Public School Parent (NYCPSP) posted this gem of a commentary. It is a brilliant rant by a journalist about how Democrats and the media love to tear apart Democratic candidates. When faced with a choice between a flawed incumbent only four months before the election, they gather into a wolfpack to demand he be replaced by an ideal candidate. Groupthink prevails. If they got their wish, they would immediately attack the new candidate, because she or he is also flawed. Meanwhile the fascist and his bootlicking party are treated as normal.
NYCPSP explains that she found this rant by climate/energy journalist David Roberts on the Facebook page of author/historian/activist Rebecca Solnit. NYCPSP wrote “It is one of the most trenchant analyses of how the media does political reporting that I have ever read.”
I am not on Facebook so I am borrowing NYCPSP’s transmission, which follows, and I thank her both for sending it and for adjusting (but not deleting) words like “f**k”
Rebecca Solnit writes: “this is the best thing I’ve read so far on the situation, and it’s some tweets a guy who has a Substack newsletter on climate did for free, while a thousand salaried media pundits are congratulating themselves while striving to outdo and imitate each other in pulling down the republic.”
David Roberts: “I haven’t written much about politics since the debate, mainly because I’m so overwhelmed by disgust & contempt toward this country’s media & commentariat that it has rendered me inarticulate with rage. Twitter probably doesn’t need more rage. I do just wanna make one point tho.
To be clear up front: I don’t give one tiny hot f**k who the Dem nominee is. I truly don’t. Biden’s fine. Harris is fine. A warm puddle of vomit is fine. *There is no conceivable resolution to the nomination fight that could change the basic calculus of this race.*
Preventing a fascist takeover of the US is my top priority–as a journalist, as a voter, as a human. If it isn’t yours too, you should feel bad about yourself. If you haven’t made the stakes of this election clear to everyone within the sound of your voice, you should feel bad.
But I’m not gonna rant. [breathes deeply] Just gonna make my one point, which is this: the idea that that the process of jettisoning Biden & choosing someone else will go well — will be *allowed* to go well — is a deeply deranged fantasy.
The idea that Dems will do this & will end up feeling unified, that Harris will come out popular, that “the dynamics of the race will shift,” all of that … f**king deranged. Deranged in such a perfectly characteristic Dem way.
“This person/policy/slogan/approach has been irredeemably slimed by Republicans & a hostile media — let’s throw it overboard!” That’s the Dem way. Always with this starry-eyed hope that they can reset, start over, get it right this time.
Just as one example — other people have aggregated these — there have been “calls” for every Dem nominee of the last 30 years to step aside. Dems practically delight in abandoning their own people, policies, & principles in response to bad-faith pressure. They f’ing love it.
But, as I’ve been saying for, oh, 20 years now, the situation is structural. The current situation is an outcome of a particular incentive structure & that structure will remain exactly the same if Harris takes over the ticket.
For centrists, journalists, pundits, *even Dem electeds*, the way you prove you are a Reasonable, Serious Person in DC is by sh**ting on Dems. For the left, the way you prove you are a true radical is by sh**ting on Dems. For the right … well, obviously.
Everyone’s professional incentives are to s**t on Dems. Dwelling on Trump & his fascist movement — however justified by the objective facts — just doesn’t bring that juice, doesn’t get the clicks & the high-fives, doesn’t feel brave & iconoclastic. It’s just … no fun.
So, say Biden stepped aside in favor of Harris tomorrow. How long until the vapid gossips we call political reporters find something wrong with her, some alleged flaw they just have to write 192 stories about? How long until the hopped-up mediocrities we call pundits …
…find some “counter-intuitive” reason that the new Dem ticket is flawed after all? How long until the irredentist left gets over the temporary thrill of its new Harris memes & remembers that she’s a cop & turns on her? How long before the ambient racism & misogyny in the US…
… lead center-leftists to conclude that, sure, they’d support a black woman, just not *this* black woman? In other words: how long before everyone reverts to their comfortable, familiar identity & narratives?
About 30 f’ing seconds, is my guess.
Dems uniting, feeling good, telling a clear story, receiving credit for their accomplishments–all of that is *impossible* in the current environment. It won’t be allowed. Dems can punch themselves in the face all they want, abandon whoever they want, apologize all they want…
… they simply will not be allowed to turn the page & start fresh, because everyone’s incentives remain the same. If they did that, elites, including media elites, would have no choice but to openly & frankly grapple with Trump & what he represents & they *don’t want to*.
Everyone feels comfortable sh**ting on Dems — it’s just a cozy professional space. You get to feel brave & independent (just like all the replacement-level pundits around you) with zero risk.
Yes, it’s abysmal, contemptible cowardice on a genuinely embarrassing scale …
… but it is what it is & we should have no illusions that it will change with a change in the top of the ticket.
As @whstancil has been trying to tell you people (good god how he tries), the information environment is thoroughly corrupted.
@whstancil For some reason, left pundits are pathologically averse to acknowledging that fact. And so they grasp at these straws — if we could just get rid of Biden, we could have a reasonable conversation! Yeah, sure. You absurd summer children.
@whstancil This election is not a choice between two individuals, it’s a choice between worldviews, between futures. Do we want to continue down the path to multiethnic democracy or do we want to impose a white patriarchal Christian autocracy?
@whstancil At stake is the entire federal civil service. The machinery of state built since WWII. Freedom & dignity for millions. Yes, democracy itself. That’s not an exaggeration. Yet this country’s elites have utterly failed to convey those stakes to the populace. A *grotesque* failure.
You can not look at this extraordinary media freakout this last week and not psychologize, not see all kinds of displacement. They can’t or won’t be serious about Trump & so they are f**king *giddy* at having permission to scold Dems again. Their safe place.
Anyway, my point is just: none of this will change if Harris replaces Biden at the top of the ticket. The idea that the media — with these soulless careerist court gossips in charge — will allow it is just fantasy. They *need* Dems in disarray & so they will engineer it.
The US is right on the precipice of falling into bona fide fascism & *the vast majority of the voting public doesn’t even know it*. That speaks to a deeply diseased information environment. Until Dems do something about that, all their self-flagellation will buy them nothing.
Not knowing what else to do, Dems s**t on their own.”
This analysis confirms what I have been thinking and writing. As I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and other mainstream media, I feel that they jump to distribute news of a Congressman, a Senator, a donor, or a bunch of big donors (“Hollywood”) that wants Biden to step aside. They seem to be on a death watch, waiting for Biden to succumb to their pressure. If you added together the stories about why or whether Biden will retire and compared them to the stories about Trump’s absurd lies and dangerous threats, the ratio would be about 10:1. It’s “news” to hound Biden out of office, it’s not “news” to report on Trump’s incitement of violence, hatred, and division.
I support Biden because he has been a very successful President, because he is sane, rational, and I share his love of democracy. I would support any Democrat against Trump. I won’t repeat why I oppose Trump but he is the opposite of Biden. He represents the worst in America.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
THANK YOU, DIANE. Love your statement:
“I support Biden because he has been a very successful President, because he sane, rational, and I share his love of democracy. I would support any Democrat against Trump. I won’t repeat why I oppose Trump but he is the opposite of Biden. He represents the worst in America.”
AGREE!
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WHY ARE THE RANK AND FILE IN THIS PARTY OK WITH THAT? A mental sinkhole, caused by speaking and teaching propaganda, continues the magical thinking. Even though democracy can’t be a market commodity, to be bought or sold, denial-ism continues. Auctions are called elections. Public masters are called public servants, while they serve their donors. Brilliant rants are the solutions.
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Thank you very much for highlighting that commentary.
In France, voters put aside their differences and joined together to prevent a dangerous far right government from ruling France.
Can America do that? How sad is it that instead of calling for that, the so-called liberal media in the US is working overtime to divide those who want to prevent a far right government from seizing power. And abdicating their responsibility to report on the far right’s past and present actions in a way that informs the public that they are dangerous, instead of normalizing it.
(I had just posted a version of that comment in another discussion, but I should have posted it here.)
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I thought of France Too. A bit different in a parliamentary system, but the similarity is obvious.
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The difference is all the difference. In a parliamentary system, the party that is behind and looks like it’s going to lose, can form a coalition and win. That’s not possible here. What is possible is that we could choose a candidate that a) will keep all the votes Biden has without losing a single one and b) add to those millions of young people and disaffected black people and c) allow us to win and stop the Orange Menace.
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“Just gonna make my one point, which is this: the idea that that the process of jettisoning Biden & choosing someone else will go well — will be *allowed* to go well — is a deeply deranged fantasy.
The idea that Dems will do this & will end up feeling unified, that Harris will come out popular, that “the dynamics of the race will shift,” all of that … f**king deranged. Deranged in such a perfectly characteristic Dem way.
“This person/policy/slogan/approach has been irredeemably slimed by Republicans & a hostile media — let’s throw it overboard!” That’s the Dem way. Always with this starry-eyed hope that they can reset, start over, get it right this time.“
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Also, from Marcy Wheeler, at today’s emptywheel.net:
“An annotation of the front page of the NYT, pointing out that NYT calls Biden “defiant” twice, two NATO stories claim they’re about Biden when they’re not, and NYT is spinning their own adoption of a conspiracy theory about Parkinson’s. Not mentioned? The GOP’s radical and deceitful platform.”
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The solution to the media is staunch unity. Some Democrats, particularly those in danger in their home states, tend to waffle. In answer to Biden’s determination to stay the course, the media were at it again yesterday. They were implying Biden may have Parkinson’s because a particular neurologist had visited The White House several times. Karine Jean-Pierre, press secretary, answered the reporters directly with a loud and clear, “No.” It was also discovered that the same doctor had visited The White House many times during the Obama administration. Jean-Pierre shut down the rumor mill the media was attempting to foment.
Senator Fetterman is campaigning hard for Biden in Pennsylvania. Fetterman knows what it feels like for the media to pile on a vulnerable candidate. He had a stroke right before his Senate campaign. He was sidelined for most of the campaign, faced pressure to quit, and was routinely ridiculed by the GOP. Joe Biden supported Fetterman’s campaign and ignored naysayers. Now a healthy, outspoken Fetterman has Joe Biden’s back. Unity is how a party can win elections.
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Extremely compelling analysis but I have to disagree. I do care who the Dem nominee is.
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Here is a helpful NYT tracker for next time you post here defending the daily onslaught of “Biden is unfit” NYT stories, and cite the important “news” of the growing groundswell of Dem politicians calling for Biden to step down. (The answer is 6, not 10)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/biden-drop-out-democrats.html
Is your argument that it’s reasonable for the NYT to write more than 200 stories about how Biden is unfit for office in a week or two because 6 of 283 (2%) Dem politicians want Biden to step aside for “candidate to be named later”? That seems to be the NYT decision-making as to what is newsworthy – since Republicans are marching in lock step to give Trump full immunity for “minor” stuff like insurrection, extortion, tax evasion, threatening government and election officials, and they all embrace Project 2025, then it is not newsworthy.
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“Just as one example — other people have aggregated these — there have been “calls” for every Dem nominee of the last 30 years to step aside.”
If other people have aggregated these, it should be easy to post a link, no? I would love to see such a list, as I can’t remember any Democrats calling for Hillary, Obama, Kerry, Gore or Clinton to step aside.
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The only example of high-level calls for a party’s presumptive nominee to step aside is 2016, with Trump, when the Access Hollywood tapes came out. At least that’s how I remember it happening.
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Exactly, Dienne. Well, I called for Hillary and Kerry and Gore to step aside, but here’s who heard me: my mother.
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This posting shows how deeply in a bubble Diane Ravitch and most of this blog’s commenters are. The idea that the media are out to get Democratic candidates is 100% detached from reality. For at least 30 years every study of political journalists has concluded that 90+% of them are straight Democratic voters, and collectively they are far to the Left of the average voter on the American political spectrum. Ethical journalists face the wrath of colleagues for straying from the party line: there are numerous examples just in recent years of moderate liberals being ostracized – even fired from their journalism jobs – for deviating from the Left’s preferred narratives. The media goes easy on Trump and the GOP? Good grief. I regularly read the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and other liberal publications – ALL of them have criticized Trump and Republicans relentlessly. Same for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC.
Democrats have been badly hurt by having such a servile media cheerleading for them rather than holding the Biden team accountable and fairly reporting important news, let the chips fall where they may. Everyone in the national political media – EVERYONE – knew that for the last two years (and more) Joe Biden had experienced many episodes of mental fog clearly showing evidence of cognitive decline. That’s what the New York magazine essay I link to below is all about.
With few exceptions, political journalists do not want Trump or any Republican to be elected President in 2024. But their lying about Biden’s actual condition – by commission and omission – has made a second term for Trump far more likely than it otherwise would be.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/conspiracy-of-silence-to-protect-joe-biden.html
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Yes, the “liberal” media wrote 200+ articles about the Supreme Court’s spurning the Constitution to make radical turn to the right and how dangerous it is.
Oh right, they didn’t.
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You obviously don’t make an effort to read prominent liberal publications. There have been many, many articles criticizing recent SCOTUS decisions.
What you and others here want is a media that chooses sides and is purely polemical. That’s not how general circulation publications operate.
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Jack: when European fascism rose it was largely due to the failure of the mainstream to recognize it for what it actually is. Based on historical untruth, fascism grows well in an environment where truth seems a matter of opinion.
This is what journalists fear. Your painting them as on some distant left is siding and abetting this process. Fear them. Avoid them. Your only choice is the fascist us.
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Exactly so, Jack. Thank you.
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To everyone who believes, or who really wants to believe, that the question of Biden’s mental acuity will be resolved because Biden has refused to step aside and the party and Dem voters will ultimately rally around him, let me explain some things that we all already know.
The debate opened a door that will not close. Every time Biden speaks, he will be scrutinized microscopically. Every time he can’t finish a sentence, or says something that makes no sense, or looks or sounds frail, it will be a media story. This is just a fact. It’s the tale of the frog and the scorpion. Major media have made clear that this is something they will cover. They have told us that. You may hate it, and you may complain about it, but one thing you can never say is you weren’t told.
Another fact: Biden is not getting younger. He is not going to suddenly become a different person. The problems he has with speech and thinking on his feet will not get better. They may well get worse. Best case is they stay about the same. That is not good.
To deal with this, the Biden team will hide him from public view as much as possible. He will not appear in settings in which he must speak without a teleprompter. Even appearances with teleprompters will be limited compared to what candidates have done historically. None of that is good at a time when the Dem nominee–which is losing in nearly every poll and needs to mount a major comeback–needs to be in front of voters, explaining, persuading, making the case for his candidacy with clarity and urgency. But it is necessary to protect Biden from another catastrophe event on par with, or worse than, the debate.
On top of all this, Trump has been very quiet. Biden has had a near-monopoly on airtime in recent weeks and months (with the exception of the Trump trials), and he has been dying. That is going to change soon as Trump starts spending the war chest he amassed following the guilty verdict in New York.
I rarely try to predict the future because it’s difficult and I’m terrible at it. I have a gut feeling that Trump will lose this election. But it’s just a gut feeling, probably more akin to a hope than any view based on facts and good analysis. This is a really terrible situation.
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Oh, and if you think the issue of Biden’s age is purely a media invention, remember that polling has shown for over a year (at a minimum) that a substantial majority of Democratic voters believe Biden is too old to govern effectively for another term. You can argue the point with all the usual talking points — Biden has been successful, thus proving that he is mentally fit; and Trump is old too!—but this is how Dem voters feel about Biden and his future. Does anyone seriously believe this won’t have a negative impact on voter turnout?
Again, we can’t say we weren’t told.
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Polling shows that a substantial majority of Democratic voters still wanted Biden to remain the nominee AFTER the debate.
You sound a lot like the people who spent all of 2016 tearing down HRC and then crowed “I told you so, polls shows that only Bernie could beat Trump”. They also kept saying “we warned you, we told you to nominate Bernie because HRC can’t win”.
I thought you found them as tiresome as I did. But perhaps you considered that trenchant commentary.
Voters were concerned about Bernie’s age in 2020 – they thought he was too old to govern effectively. I guess four years of governing effectively is nothing compared to a bad night at the debate.
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“Polling shows that a substantial majority of Democratic voters still wanted Biden to remain the nominee AFTER the debate”
That doesn’t refute what I said. I said polling has shown most Democratic voters have thought for over a year at least that Biden is too old to govern effectively for another four years. I’m not surprised that most of them also think he should not drop out, because there are no clear alternatives and the risk of chaos is not inviting. The problem isn’t that Biden isn’t stepping aside now, it’s that he didn’t step aside a year ago when it was clear that his age was a huge liability.
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^^correction: Voters were concerned about BIDEN’s age in 2020….
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They were concerned but at a much smaller percentage. I think it was in the 30-percent range.
And go back and look at Biden in 2020. He was a different man.
I get why nobody wants to hear this.
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You missed the point of David Roberts’ comment in your rush to mischaracterize what the “warm puddle of vomit” reference means. EVERY candidate has some liability that the NYT can and will blow up to make them seem unfit for office (while they also MINIMIZE the extreme liabilities of the Republican). Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, HRC all had liabilities. So did all the REPUBLICAN candidates running against them — far worse liabilities that weren’t presented as making them risky and dangerous and unfit for office. Obama and Clinton had liabilities, but they won because the “liberal media” treated them like they cover Republican liabilities. Instead of like they usually cover Democrats. In 2024, the media is back to their old tricks.
Every candidate has liabilities. Of course Biden’s age is a liability, but in normal times, a president currently doing a very strong job running the country whose biggest liability is his age would not be a problem. Other candidates have had very bad debates — Trump just had one! But it’s weird that Trump’s horrific debate performance isn’t covered.
The MANY Republicans who threw their hat in the ring in 2022 had polls too. They were confident that the voters had doubts about Trump’s many liabilities because polls were showing that Republican voters had doubts about Trump’s fitness in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Once he won the nomination, those were barely newsworthy. It’s also notable that voters doubts increased about Trump only when the news media’s hand was forced because the impeachment hearings were televised live or a court convicted him. Voters doubts were increased but the so-called liberal media didn’t flood the zone with coverage and it was soon forgotten. The NYT covers Trump without ever mentioning his history — yesterday they ran a big (totally misleading) story giving Trump credit for “forcing” Republicans to be moderate on abortion. All to allay voters doubts. While the media STOKES the doubts of Dems by making Biden’s cognitive fitness an issue.
Look, if you are fearful of Biden continuing to be president past January 20, 2025 because it scares you that such an unfit man might be woken up at 3am, don’t vote for him. That’s the way I feel about Trump. I don’t worry about Biden’s judgement or decision-making in those circumstances, except in the same way that I would worry if Obama or HRC or Getchen Whitmer or any Dem answered the phone. Do they have enough experience to know what to do? And Biden would be one of my top choices. But the person I would vote for a wet puddle of vomit to PREVENT from answering that phone is Trump.
But I wish you would stop with the “We warned you” narrative.
Bernie voters “warned” us. Did you listen to them and vote for Bernie who – supposedly – would have not had any liabilities that allowed the media to treat him like all the other Dems? If you didn’t vote for Bernie but voted for HRC, well, they warned you that you should have voted for Bernie because HE supposedly didn’t have those liabilities and was a guaranteed victory.
I’ve also heard you express doubt that Kamala Harris will ride off to a sweeping victory if she replaces Bernie. So sometimes it seems you see the problem as well.
Biden stepping down last year would result in one thing: we’d be having the conversation about whether xxx could beat Trump when they are so unfit because of xxx, and someone here would be saying “I told you so, we should have begged Biden to run for re-election.”
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Sorry, I’ll vote for whoever’s on the Dem ticket. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Dem and swing voters who probably don’t have that mentality.
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With all due respect, I suspect you don’t like the “we warned you” narrative because you feel that it implicates you, because you were among the many people who helped get us to this position by gaslighting people who saw the obvious signs of Biden’s decline by telling them that was just right-wing misinformation. You did it on this site over and over.
Sorry but I will continue to note that you were warned about this exact scenario and not only disregarded the warnings but actively tried to discredit them. I’ll do that as long as it feels like it has a therapeutic benefit or until Diane removes my comments. I won’t stop doing it for you.
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Obviously I know you don’t bear any real responsibility for this. You’re an anonymous commenter on a blog. There are probably a handful of people in the universe who read your comments. You have no power and influence nothing. It’s stupid of me to even engage in this back and forth.
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It’s so tedious.
When Biden won in 2020 I didn’t once crow “I told you so, Biden was the ONLY candidate that could beat Trump.” I was just relieved Trump was gone and the media hadn’t given him the Gore/HRC/Dukakis/Kerry treatment they give exclusively to Democrats running for president. I believed Bernie could have won, too, with that treatment from the press. So could Elizabeth Warren or any of the primary candidates.
But I too was “warning” people whose opinion I knew was inferior to my own –in 1980 when I was a teenager! I told them they needed to dump the unfit and corrupt Jimmy Carter and vote for the person who was guaranteed to have a sweeping victory over Reagan – Ted Kennedy. Ted PROVED it at the convention when he gave an unparalleled speech that I don’t believe has been matched since. I too said that a candidate’s single night performance proved that I was right all along.
But I was a teenager, so my arrogance could hopefully be forgiven.
The only thing I “know” now is that the media refrained from this pile on with Clinton and Obama and they won. In 2020 the media refrained from piling on Biden despite his many “gaffes” and the drumbeat of people saying he was too old and Biden won and DID A GOOD JOB.
And now the media is going back to their 1980, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016 playbook. All negative about the Democrat, while the truly unfit and dangerous Republican gets a pass.
Jimmy Carter was a flawed president but he did many admirable things as president and deserved to be re-elected. His flaws were magnified in the media (Ted Koppel’s Nightline was created to report “Day 200” “Day 300” of the hostages in Iran). His successes were all but ignored. I fell hook, line, and sinker for all the negative propaganda about Jimmy Carter being unfit.
“I warned them” that Carter wasn’t fit to win re-election and they should have nominated Ted Kennedy who was guaranteed to win, so I guess flerp! will give me a lot of credit. I think I just sounded like an arrogant sh*t. I didn’t understand the media at all until I grew up.
flerp! you seem unwilling to even acknowledge the problems in mainstream news coverage this election year. If you reject that as having any importance, then good luck with whoever “perfect” candidate you think can beat Trump and it’s a shame Biden didn’t step aside so they could win the open primary they were supposedly guarantee to win.
We have a horse. A horse elected by PRIMARY VOTERS, not some group of elites who seem to want to overturn the will of the people.
Instead of riding the horse we have, we are helping the Republicans beat it to death. Under the false narrative that by beating it to death, we are embracing “honesty”. That’s what I thought when I demonized Jimmy Carter – I was just being honest, because I knew he was a corrupt and unfit president back in the primary but too many voters didn’t listen.
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In fairness, what’s tedious is having to read about somebody’s experiences in the 1980 election for the millionth time. https://tinyurl.com/t3tnedrm
I’m not “crowing,” although that you would choose that word suggests you know the warnings a year ago about Biden’s mental fitness and the problems they posed for reelection were right.
I don’t think there’s a perfect candidate who can beat Trump. I never said that. You’re arguing with straw men.
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It is not stupid to engage on this topic, Flerp, because of the power of network effects. I have often seen a phrase I invented and posted here blow up and start being used all over the net.
See Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, by Duncan J. Watts. It’s the sort of book that changes one’s perspective and understanding significantly.
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flerp! did you vote for Bernie to be the nominee in 2016?
If you did not, well, some folks here warned you. How could you ignore their warnings? Bernie would have won.
I repeat for the xxth time, I don’t listen to “warnings” from people on the internet who have no credibility with me, especially if they have posted things that I find very misleading in the past.
If I had heard some of your “warnings” from people I respect and trust who are much closer to Biden but aren’t pushovers who do his bidding, like AOC and Bernie, I might have believed them. But I heard the OPPOSITE from them.
And I won’t apologize because I trust the two of them (and Elizabeth Warren) 1,000 times more than I trust two people who can’t engage in a civil argument without throwing in some personal attacks. As we have seen even here.
I usually ignore the gratuitous nastiness, but it certainly doesn’t add to your credibility.
The way to victory lies in how the press decides to cover the Democrat, and THAT is what David Roberts is saying.
You are free to believe your knowledge is superior to his. Keep me out of it.
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I have no problem with you not listening to me, NYCPSP. I have never convinced you of anything and I don’t expect to start anytime soon. Even now you appear unable to admit that Biden should have stepped aside last year so a primary process could unfold and a successor could be identified.
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Well, obviously, if Flerp had voted for Bernie, then Bernie would have won. How could you, Flerp!?!?!?!? And what’s this I hear about you out there causing hurricanes?
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FACT: I like Joe Biden, but he hasn’t been my first choice for president since 1988, when my brief admiration and excitement that the Dems might actually field a winning candidate were shattered by his plagiarism scandal. However, I am very impressed with the job Biden did his first term under extremely trying circumstances.
FACT: I would have been perfectly open to someone declaring they were running against Biden in spring of 2023 – even before Biden declared – and their popularity possibly leading to Biden stepping aside.
FACT: When Bernie Sanders and AOC made very early endorsements in April 2023, I considered WHY they were doing it, and realized it was because Biden was doing a good job for progressives AND they believed he could win. And that’s what made me more confident in supporting Biden’s re-election.
I am tired of all of your innuendo that my reasoning is somehow not valid, or based on some nonsensical reason that you ascribe to belittle me.
I want Biden to continue to do exactly the same job he has done for the last 4 years. As long as he can, and if it’s only for 6 months, I am happy for Kamala to take over.
And nothing I wrote above should give you any reason to continue to engage in juvenile ridicule.
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The short response is we both agree we will vote for Biden in November if he’s the nominee. The longer response would complicate almost every fact you just listed, but that would upset you. So let’s stick with the short response. We agree on the important thing.
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I wrote a post about my own decision-making process. Unless you have acquired mind reading and time travel skills, you can’t contradict any “facts” about what my personal decision-making process was.
If Biden served one term only and the Dems ended up fighting it out in an open primary, we would most likely be in a “mess” of a different kind, with some folks likely saying “I told you Biden should have run for re-election like Bernie and AOC wanted. Look how the NYT is making XXXX look unfit to serve the way they did in 2016, 2000, 2004”. And I would likely be outraged and ranting about NYT’s biased coverage that turned Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom into the most unpopular nominee in 20 years. And other people would be blaming the candidate and saying they should step down for that “better” elusive candidate that the NYT won’t smear.
To put it in terms that educators might understand — if the NYT decides the Democratic nominee belongs on the “got to go” list, they flood the zone with multiple daily stories — all negative — to present that Democrat as an extreme danger to have in the White House to pressure them to leave in shame. Sorry, Biden, but you just aren’t the right “fit” and we at the NYT are going to make sure the public knows it, too.
Unfortunately, in most election years, the NYT wants to put the Dem on the got to go list where they decide to flood the zone with negative stories to make them look as bad as possible. So many Dems – HRC, Gore, Dukakis, Kerry – were put on the “got to go” list. I don’t know why the so-called liberal media pulled their punches with Clinton and Obama — but they were never put on the got to go list. The NYT didn’t tilt the playing field FOR Clinton and Obama. They just treated them the way they treat Republicans and that was all it took for a Democratic victory.
The extreme double standard is that by any impartial standards it is Trump who belongs on the got to go list. But in 8 years, the NYT never put him there. Trump was treated like a trouble maker whose parents are VIPs. No “got to go” list for him.
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“put it in terms that educators might understand”
because it is so difficult for educators to understand things? Maybe it’s just that they “lack judgment” like Nanojudgment Bob.
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Bob, please stop looking for insult where none is intended. I was making a joke at the expense of no-excuses charter schools – how could you possible see it as insulting to teachers?
I mentioned educators understanding because I thought they would get the “got to go list” reference. If I said that to most people I know, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Not that I couldn’t explain it, but I thought people who DID get the reference immediately – educators – would be amused at the idea of the NYT having its’ own “got to go” list and putting nearly all Dem nominees on it, but intentionally leaving Trump off it.
mea culpa if that wasn’t clear. But please just ask next time instead of assuming the worst.
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Biden 2024: A Warm Puddle of Vomit Is Fine!
Not quite the rallying call we need.
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lol
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But Biden hasn’t been hidden from sight. He has been out and about.
Trump hasn’t been “very quiet”. He has been hidding out of sight. Has he even been seen golfing or dining? I realize the NYT reporters covering him are completely uninterested in his health, but where has Trump been? . Where had Trump been? He seems to have disappeared into a bunker. Or suffered a heart attack.
How is it that the NYT has reporters assigned to Trump and they have no idea what is going on with him for the last 10 days?
I guess they will report the “news” whenever their source in the Trump campaign gives them the news that they believe is fit to print.
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Following my argument is not difficult. All one needs is to accept OBVIOUS premises and the ability to add.
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??
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Yet, every nonsensical and violent comment from Trump is often ignored by the media as well as the heinous Project 2025. Big dark money controls the media, and most of them want Biden step aside to clear a path for felon Trump.
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I do not believe the New York Times’ decisions about what to cover are controlled by dark money or that the New York Times wants Biden to step aside it clear a path for Trump. Frankly I think this is crazy conspiracy thinking.
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to clear a path. Autocorrect kills me at least once per comment.
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David Roberts twitter feed – coincidentally the very subject of Diane’s post that you are commenting on – explains exactly how this works!
Did you read it?
He is right. This happens over and over again, and excellent media critics who have studied this understand it. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has been talking about this since at least 1988. So have many other people.
As someone else has said “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.”
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If David Roberts says the New York Times’ decisions about what to cover are controlled by dark money or that the New York Times wants Biden to step aside to clear a path for Trump, then I respectfully disagree with David Roberts.
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If you want to know what David Roberts believes, it’s right above.
Curious, flerp!, what DO you believe influences the New York Times’ decisions about what to cover ?
Six Dems in Congress say they don’t want him? It’s 2% now, maybe it will be 3% or even 4% tomorrow?
When all those Republicans declared for the primary, it did not result in 300+ stories in 2 weeks (going into 3 or 4) constantly barraging the public with the “news” that Trump was unfit.
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The editorial board meets and corresponds to discuss what positions it will take in editorials.
Opinion writers generally write whatever they feel like writing, subject to input from editors.
Reporters have their assigned beats and they cover developing news based on what they are learning from their sources. A high priority is placed on breaking news, but they will also follow news, too, just to stay in the “conversation.” Reporters enjoy a degree of independence, but there also are weekly meetings with editors about coverage decisions and directions, and reporters also are in contact with editors on a daily basis.
The newsroom operates independently from the editorial board and from The NY Times corporation. Nobody tells them what to cover.
You probably won’t believe this, but this is how a major newsroom operates. If David “Dr. Volts” Roberts disagrees, he’s full of sh!t.
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lol!
That’s like saying “Trump’s White House had a chief of staff who oversaw how all his appointees do their job. Cabinet Secretaries oversee their departments. That’s how a White House works.”
That’s true, but is deeply uninformative about how it actually works.
Journalists don’t work in a vacuum. That’s why Roberts talks about careerists and “professional incentives”. Cultivating sources, pleasing them, afraid of criticism that they are too liberal.
Do you really not acknowledge how LITTLE coverage the NYT has given to the right wing Supreme Court decisions and Trump’s own cognitive unfitness to hold office? And most of the news coverage of the Immunity decision was “both siderism” that NORMALIZED it. Even today there is a piece about how moderate and centrist Amy Coney Barrett is. As if she had not signed on to the most radical decisions of the Supreme Court. Apparently signing on to destroying precedent regularly, but voicing a small objection that doesn’t bother the far right is being “moderate”.
It’s not that what you wrote is not “technically true”. But it is as meaningless as my saying I know how the Supreme Court works – the Supreme Court is justices hear cases and read legal briefs then they figure out what their decision is, with help from their clerks and outside influence is absolutely forbidden. There is politics (with a small p) in how the Supreme Court operates and politics in big media newsrooms.
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I’m telling you how the newsroom works based on personal experience. No “dark money” is coming in to tell reporters what to cover. The Times business side is not telling editors what to have the reporters cover. It’s just not happening. I can’t force you to accept this. Take it or leave it.
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Will young people suddenly become galvanized to support the elderly guy? Will they flock to the polls? Will the black people who have become disaffected come out in the millions again for Biden? I doubt it, given the recent polls, and they are the reason he won last time.
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Given that the polls show that a very high percentage of Black voters (and Black politicians) want Biden to remain the nominee, I find it odd that you think they would not be put off by him being replaced.
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Recent polls have shown Biden is losing support among Black voters, a critical part of his base.
A nationwide New York Times/Siena College poll conducted between June 28 and July 2 found that 47 percent of Black voters think there should be a different Democratic nominee, while 43 percent think Biden should remain as the party’s nominee.
Overall, that poll found 60 percent of registered voters think there should be a different nominee.
Among others showing the same thing. Blacks propelled Biden to office in 2020.
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I doubt that Biden would lose the Black vote. Why would Black voters vote for a racist?
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Trump’s percentage of the black vote has increased, but by a miniscule amount. The fear is that black voters and young voters will simply stay home.
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Biden has lost a lot of black voters. This has been a huge story for months now.
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Bob– “This has been a huge story for months” sounds less than convincing in the context of this post.
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Haaa. Touché.
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Kamala is a GREAT public speaker. She commands the stage. She is funny. She is smart. She is breathtakingly well informed. She is tough. Trump will not debate her. He knows that she would mince him on a debate stage now.
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I like Kamala, but come on. It’s not like primary voters were rushing to vote for her in 2020.
If anything, there was a drumbeat of negative Kamala propaganda among the young folks about how she was a corrupt part of the criminal justice system and let an innocent man die when she withheld key evidence.
It seems as if the only viable candidate is she who may not be named. Polls show us that she’s the most likely to beat Trump so we can avoid disaster.
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Would we lose a single vote now pledged to Biden in people’s hearts and minds if she became the nominee? NO, we wouldn’t.
Would we add to those lots of young people and disaffected black voters? Yes, we would.
It’s that simple. How she polled months ago is irrelevant to the current situation.
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Young people will come out for her because she would be the first woman president.
Blacks will come out for her because she would be the first black woman president.
And, again, anyone who would have voted for Biden will vote for her.
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I am with Bernie and AOC supporting Biden because I have FULL CONFIDENCE that Kamala Harris can take over. I would be less thrilled if Biden had a lousy VP.
But the reason that no one is saying that is because the Republicans WANT to be able to make Kamala scary as the president-in-waiting.
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Wow. Prominent Democratic politicians endorsed the Democratic nominee. What a surprise! How meaningful! It’s up there with “Circles are round.”
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Bob,
The most prominent progressive Democrats endorsed Biden. The ones whose judgement I trust more than yours.
But don’t worry, the conservative Dems and Republicans are in agreement with you.
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Democrats endorse Democratic candidates. What a surprise? Very meaningful that. It’s up there with the fact that a piece of lettuce fell out of my salad bowl yesterday. –Bob, he of nanoscale judgment
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In order to win, Democrats need the youth vote, so let’s stick with Biden because you know how 20-somethings place all their trust in faltering old people.
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Growing chorus of young people calls for Biden to step aside in favor of someone older and more experienced. “Yeah, they’re calling it the 19 for 95 Movement.” You know how it is with young people. The older the better,” says politics and skateboarding reporter Nanojudgment Bob.
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“You know how it is with young people. The older the better,” says politics and skateboarding reporter Nanojudgment Bob.”
Not sure what your point is.
Bernie Sanders was popular with young folks. So yes, old people CAN be popular. I think Bernie probably still is popular despite being a year older than Biden.
RBG was popular with young people.
Amy Coney Barrett probably isn’t.
AOC is popular but Matt Gaetz isn’t. Although maybe if they get some of that NYT treatment, the opposite will be true.
Kamala Harris is 59. I am sure she would be perfectly good, but if the Biden replacement is all about attracting the youth vote that supposed likes young candidate, it’s probably going to have to be Mayor Pete.
Young people who don’t like Trump are persuadable, but they aren’t going to be persuaded by a middle age Democrat candidate. If this election is about the candidate being the message, it was lost in 2022.
It’s an existential election. That worked in France, because that fact was reinforced by the French media, not undermined by their lack of coverage.
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Sorting out this utter nonsense and refuting it would take a lot more time than I have this afternoon.
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“Not sure what your point is.”
My point, OBVIOUSLY, is that Biden doesn’t have enormous appeal with young voters, which a Dem needs in order to win. They do not typically look for, in a candidate, stumbling to the podium, slurring words, rambling incoherently, starting a sentence talking about one thing and ending it talking about something else, staring off into space while to tries to recall something and then giving up on the attempt. And the “Nanojudgment Bob” part is in reference to your previous comment that I have no judgment, which up there with the one by another commenter that I have no critical thinking skills.
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Bear in mind that you vote for a candidate, you are voting for an administration, meaning policies, programs, priorities, people.
Young people must worry about the environment, guns, and abortion—not just charisma.
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I agree that they should. And your first point is spot on.
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“Liberal” (conservative billionaire-owned) media won’t cover Trump’s mental breakdown, incoherent rants, incessant lies. It’s just Trump. Nothing to see. Move on.
They didn’t call for Trump to step down as Republican Party nominee when he was convicted. They didn’t run poll after poll on that: “Hey America, if Trump is convicted, should the Republican Party replace him?” “Hey America, now that Trump has been convicted, who should the Republican Party nominate instead?” “Hey America, how many lies are too many?”
Steve
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The leftist media didn’t call for Trump to step down because they thought all their abuse of Trump would help defeat him. That is until Biden and his ENTIRE administration were caught with their pants down at the debate. It was clear that Joe Briben was not running the country. Maybe Obama got his wish to have a secret third term. Hmmm, let’s subpoena Susan Rice’s phone records.
Anyway, It is time for democrats to take the “L” hopefully with a minimum of riots, deaths, and property damage.
Trust me, Republicans are crossing their fingers that Briben stays in the race.
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Ah, yes. So, you support all this?
Which Candidate Most Needs to Step Down? | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
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”…It is time for democrats to take the “L” hopefully with a minimum of riots, deaths, and property damage.”
Typical Russia RepubliQan disinformation.
That’s YOUR party – the party of insurrection, of normalizing political violence and of spreading unfiltered Kremlin agitprop.
Stop equating the activities of a protest group (BLM) with the blatantly fascist trappings of an entire national party. It is very disingenuous.
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Here is a hilarious truth: SHE WHO MAY NOT BE NAMED is the best candidate to defeat Trump, according to the latest poll!
I’d actually support that.
The Hill:
“Clinton, Harris hold slight leads over Trump, while Biden trails: Survey
by Miranda Nazzaro – 07/09/24 10:14 AM ET
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You mean the only person in the world who has actually lost to Trump? Go for it.
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Is there any viable candidate who is more likely to win than Biden who YOU would vote for because you actually care whether or not Trump and the Republicans are prevented from having power?
I am interested to see who meets your criteria. If you choose someone who is far less likely to win, then I know you are not interested in seriously figuring out who can beat Trump.
Don’t forget you were wrong in 2020. You are batting .500, but so am I.
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I don’t actually care whether Trump and the Republicans are prevented from having power, considering what the Democrats are doing with power, which I’m not allowed to mention on this blog.
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The stakes are extraordinarily high. That’s why Biden needs to step down and pledge his delegates to Kamala Harris, WHO WILL KEEP EVERY VOTE THAT BIDEN NOW HAS and ADD TO THOSE THE VOTES OF YOUNG PEOPLE AND DISAFFECTED BLACKPEOPLE and SO DEFEAT TRUMP. This is NOT “sh–ing on Dems.” It’s facing reality. Tell me what’s wrong with the argument I just made. Tell me why anyone now committed to Biden would not vote for Harris. Thinking that large numbers of currently committed Democratic voters would stay home if the nomination went to Harris is the actual utter foolishness.
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And what happened to your recognition of misogyny as a factor in presidential politics? It is not just a Republican phenomena. Then Kamala also has the added “baggage” of being Asian and Black.(snark alert) Of course there are no conservative Democrats who have a problem with another minority president. Contrary to popular opinion, Democrat is not synonymous with liberal and/or open- minded.
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I thought about it more and more carefully. Kamala would keep all of Biden’s votes and add some. And she is not an ultraliberal. She is a former prosecutor, for Christ’s sake.
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I don’t assume that she would keep all of Biden’s former votes, not that they would go to Trump, but that they might stay home. That is why it is so important to frame this race as an existential threat to democracy.
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Bob– Let’s set aside for the moment any bets on how a Harris vs Trump vote would go. What worries me more is the process involved to get her to the top of the ticket. Biden can’t simply pledge his delegates to Harris, that’s not how Democrat party rules work. There’s a good summary of the process here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-happens-if-biden-or-trump-leaves-his-partys-ticket
and another here: https://www.newsweek.com/how-joe-biden-could-challenged-democratic-convention-1923255
Sounds messy to me, and a huge opportunity for media to push their clickbait-y depiction of a party in disarray. Yesterday (7/9) on the NYT “The Ezra Klein Show,” Jamelle Bouie walked through some of his concerns.
Excerpt: “I don’t think the argument that has been put out there by some observers, that you could remove Biden with no particular incident in terms of his political hit to the Democrat Party, and then have an ad hoc process at the convention– I think that the downside risks of that are actually like very high.
“The odds that you get a chaotic, contested convention, a convention process that, for one, isn’t really designed for what I think people imagine happening here– the odds that you get that, that maybe is even inconclusive is, I think, a way worse outcome than just having Biden at the top of the ticket.”
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Sure, what could go wrong with having someone with cognitive issues in charge of nuclear defense?
Not a thing, right? Right???
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Sure, what could go wrong with having someone with cognitive issues in charge of nuclear defense?
Not a thing, right? Right???
DO YOU MEAN TRUMP OR BIDEN?
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I mean both. Which should really be obvious, since I consider neither of them good candidates.
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The stakes are so high that we should take our heads out of the sand and look to see how things actually stand. And this is how they actually stand: as things are right now, without a significant change, we could easily lose. The Precautionary Principle applies here.
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Unless we are just assuming that the polls are meaningless, then yes, something needs to change. Maybe that change doesn’t have to be who’s leading the ticket. But something has to change. And I’m having a hard time imagining what.
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“Unless we are just assuming that the polls are meaningless”
Well, hey, we are Americans. So what we do is science denial. Sure, Nate Silver correctly predicted 50 out of 50 states in one presidential election and 49 out of 50 in another and was one of the few pundits who predicted that Trump would win in 2016. Sure, polls are saying that Biden has very low approval ratings and that young people are totally soured on him and that he has lost black voters. But hey, we are Americans. When we wish upon a star, that becomes the reality! And science? PUHLEEZE. Don’t look up.
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Bob says: “Nate Silver…. was one of the few pundits who predicted that Trump would win in 2016.”
Wrong. Nate Silver gave Trump the highest chance of winning, which is only a 1/3 chance. But am happy to go with Nate as an example, since Nate Silver was predicting a huge HRC victory all summer long, just like people are doing with Trump against Biden.
Bob, on July 10, 2016, Nate Silver said HRC would win.
On August 8, 2016, Nate Silver HRC would win by an even bigger margin.
On October 8, 2016, Nate Silver had HRC leading by one her biggest margins yet, after the race seemed to be tightening (although Nate Silver never had Trump winning in all those months).
Vox.com, Nov 3, 2016, 10:50 AM EDT
“If you’re a Democrat, the FiveThirtyEight forecast is probably making you feel anxious right about now.
Just last week, Nate Silver’s polls-only forecast gave Hillary Clinton an overwhelming 85 percent chance of winning. But as of Thursday morning, her odds have fallen down to 66.9 percent — suggesting that while Donald Trump is still the underdog, there’s a one-in-three shot he’ll end up the next president.”
Bob, you just made the case to IGNORE current polls because in July 2016 Nate Silver said the LOSING candidate would win, and Nate Silver also said that as late as October 2016!
In July 2016, Nate Silver had HRC as a big favorite. Does Nate Silver have Trump as a favorite this month? Is that a good sign for Biden in November?
Don’t look up!
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Flerp and Bob: Harris is already on the ticket . . . and she’ll be there if anything dire happens to Biden.
Also, at this stage, I doubt more change at the level we are talking about would not be good, just on general principles about “how people accept change.” It’s why incumbents often have the advantage–it’s deeply structural. And I think the trust in Biden goes deeper than we think–and no one has to guess at it or that he is just a decent man running against a lifetime moral degenerate.
And again we are all the better for the Harris, et al, bench. And Remember Hilary: not everyone is still an unrepentant sexist, misogynist, or racist at heart.
Has Trump even chosen a vice president? I doubt he wants to even THINK about either sharing power or giving up an inch of it. CBK
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I repeat: electing a president is not just choosing the person. It’s about the person’s choice of personnel, policies, and programs. Whether it’s Biden, Harris, or any other Democrat, the republic will be in good hands.
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When Democrats think that they are “playing it safe,” they lose. When they put to the people a choice that galvanizes the large numbers of Democrats who typically stay home and adds those to the numbers of Democrats who vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is, no matter what, they win.
It pains me that the national Democratic Party organization has not learned this obvious lesson. There’s a reason they haven’t: the role of big money in our politics. The oligarchs hate the progressives because they promise to tax them more steeply and more, well, progressively.
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Bob: I am not thinking of “playing it safe,” at least as a fallback position, as you seem to imply. I just think it’s not the smartest thing to do to on several levels to force Biden out. We have a unified and bench-deep ticket. And I don’t think it’s ego with Biden. I think it’s personal for Trump, and both Trump and Biden know he (Biden) can beat Trump.
Of course, the coming months will tell–the democratic machine is just getting started, however, and we have some heavy hitters and apparently a good chunk of change. Too much too early is never good anyway. And the GOP is the greatest lying machine the world has ever known–and becoming exposed as such as we speak.
Also, there is this: Who would run for vice-president on a Harris ticket? It’s way too late for people to start thinking about that–and there are, again, the slobbering GOP dogs at the gate just waiting to slather sxxt on whomever. CBK
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CBK,
I agree. The GOP slime machine is ready to release racist, misogynist attack ads against Harris. She is red meat for them.
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Diane: . . . yes, Kamala and the slime machine, but not to mention whomever she would take as vice president. CBK
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There are so many excellent choices for VP on the Harris ticket. Beto, Buttigieg, Newsome, Whitmer.
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Bob: All true about the VP choices. And all to the Dem’s advantage already, as I see it. I get a terrible sense of divisiveness–bad karma, so to speak . . . in the party, however, if Biden is overlooked or forced out at this point.
It’s not wholly about gratefulness by any means, but it would seem so terribly ungrateful anyway. And again, it’s not like Harris and the rest are going away.
Also, the timing is a really big part of this right now (whereas it wouldn’t be if the election weren’t so close). No cliche, stereotype, or even past experience fits THIS situation well at all.
Also, about the Heritage Foundation guy saying the revolution won’t be violent if the left will go along with it (arrogant fellow. . . was his name “Dick”? I cannot remember).
But it reminded me of when Obama was running for president the first time–someone interviewed a young guy in a bar in the SOUTH somewhere–sorry, cannot remember the details, except this–that young guy was so very cocksure that a black man could NOT become president–it was a case (in my view) or pure projection . . . of his own embedded racism talking.
Listening to that Heritage Foundation guy, I was reminded of that guy in the bar in the South, who had his racism handed to him on a plate. In my view, neither had/has a ratsass clue about the American spirit as a whole and as it is still spread across the land. They only need to know what’s at stake.
Sorry . . . did I say “ratsass”? I must have meant to write “sassy” or “blasted” or something like that. . . CBK
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The polls are NOT meaningless.
It must be Harris or she who may not be named. Because EVERY other candidate will lose to Trump, and we can only have a candidate who polls say right now is guaranteed to beat Trump in November.
“Both Vice President Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran ahead of former President Trump in a new survey from a Democratic pollster, while President Biden trailed slightly behind the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
According to the poll from Bendixen & Amandi Inc., a top Democratic pollster, Harris edged out Trump by 1 point, 42 percent to 41 percent, while 5 percent of voters picked a third-party candidate and 12 percent were undecided.
“Harris’s name has been repeatedly floated as a potential replacement for Biden should he choose to exit the race, though she made clear last week she supports Biden’s continued bid for a second term.
Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 election, polled 2 points ahead of the former president, while 6 percent of votes went to a third-party candidate and 10 percent were undecided, Bendixen & Amandi Inc noted.
Other Democrats whose names have been floated as potential replacements for Biden fared worse than Trump in hypothetical match-ups, pollsters found. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer trailed Trump by 4 points, 40 percent to 36 percent, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom fell behind by 3 points, 40 percent to 37 percent.”
Biden is in THIRD place, and if that’s a problem, then no one with even less support can replace him.
It makes no sense if those Dems are already behind BEFORE the public knows how bad they are (thank you NYT!!! who will flood the zone to inform folks how bad they are!)
I don’t know if it is possible to smear the clear winning candidate any more than she was smeared in 2016. Folks, polls tell us what we MUST do. There is only one person who can beat Trump and it isn’t Biden.
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Everything changes with her polling once she becomes the nominee. Surely you can understand that if you stop to think.
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Fact: Nate Silver had the Democrat winning by a significant margin over Trump in July 2016. Look it up.
Nate had the Dem winning by an even bigger margin in October 2016.
You are correct that in early November Nate was one of the only people to point out that Trump’s chances were getting to be significant (still his polls favored the Dem).
I think that means Nate’s advice would be don’t trust polls from July?
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Yes, I stand corrected. But he did predict the election as closer than others did:
Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else | FiveThirtyEight
And in previous presidential elections, he predicted all 50 states correctly in one and 49 out of 50 correct in another. He says that Biden could easily lose. Because that is freaking obvious.
UNLESS WE MAKE CHANGES, TRUMP WINS. Biden is not going to bring out the young people, disaffected black people, and independents who suddenly say, “Gee, I was undecided, but I really like what I’ve been seeing in Biden’s debates and interviews. The incoherence and inability to recall things really appeals to me.”
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Bob,
Nate Silver didn’t predict the results of elections in JULY. He predicted them late in the game. I doubt very much that Silver is claiming he can predict election outcomes in July.
In July 2022, no one, including Nate Silver, was predicting the Democrats would do so well in an off-year election.
Whether Nate predicted the 2022 results – or any year’s results correctly in the late fall is entirely irrelevant.
Imagine if the Republicans had said i July 2016, or in August 2016, or in September 2016 that “Trump is losing big, we better replace him because Nate Silver says we have virtually no shot at winning.”
You citing Nate Silver makes me feel BETTER about Biden’s chances. Because the way Nate Silver was predicting the election in July 2016 bore no relevance to how he was predicting the election in November.
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To continue in my role as massive buzzkill in this thread, here’s a nightmare scenario for everyone to ponder. Biden stays in the race. Questions about his age don’t go away. His future public appearances don’t look much better than his recent ones. He has another disastrous debate (assuming he doesn’t pull out of it). Trump wins, with Dem turnout lower than expected, which pulls down Dem Senate and House candidates, helping the Republicans keep the House and win the Senate. The Republicans then pack SCOTUS.
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My argument is in moderation. Let’s try this:
Biden has lost young voters and black voters.
Biden is behind in the polls.
Kamala would keep every voter now pledged to Biden. Not one vote would be lost.
Kamala would add to those young voters and black voters.
If she is our nominee, we win.
If she isn’t, . . . well, very smart prognosticators like Nate Silver say, if she isn’t, we lose.
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And that would be a catastrophe for the United States and for the world. WE SHOULD NOT RISK THIS. TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE.
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Just my “uninformed” opinion, but just because “polls say” that the only way to avoid catastrophe is to dump Biden and replace him with HRC (or maybe with Harris although that’s a big risk) does NOT mean that is the only way to avoid catastrophe. In fact, it is more likely to cause catastrophe.
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Don’t look up, NYCPSP!
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Bob, the entire content of Diane’s post here seems lost to you. Diane read the comments by David Roberts and thought they were worth re-posting.
“the idea that that the process of jettisoning Biden & choosing someone else will go well — will be *allowed* to go well — is a deeply deranged fantasy.
The idea that Dems will do this & will end up feeling unified, that Harris will come out popular, that “the dynamics of the race will shift,” all of that … f**king deranged. Deranged in such a perfectly characteristic Dem way.
“This person/policy/slogan/approach has been irredeemably slimed by Republicans & a hostile media — let’s throw it overboard!” That’s the Dem way. Always with this starry-eyed hope that they can reset, start over, get it right this time.“
Bob, don’t look up.
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I’m just finishing Reaganland by Rick Perlstein and all of this rings true. The media and the Dem pundits savaged Carter and gave us Reagan and all that he brought.
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II have watched just about every instance on the record of Biden talking publicly there has been recently. I also watched my mother’s decline from Alzheimer’s. I have also, unfortunately, witnessed others starting on their decline.
I am a lifelong Democrat, worked on both Carter campaigns as a volunteer, backed Clinton to the hilt. I don’t say this lightly.
The evidence of Biden’s decline is patent. It is irreversible. Having “good days” is not a signal that “the fever has passed”. It hasn’t.
The rules are not the same for both parties. If they were, Trump would never have been nominated, let alone elected. But Trump is outrageous and, most importantly, good copy.
Obviously, the media prefers a constant supply of “good copy” over frank truth. But in this country, we uncritically accept media whoredom as some sort of First Amendment fetish object as opposed to an object lesson.
All this tells me we lost this country decades ago. Honestly, the second we legitimized the felonious enterprise of the “Republican Party” as a serious political entity was the day we lost democracy. Electing “just the tip” fascists is equivalent to acceptance of the whoredom that Republicans use as a necessary fuel. One party has played it straight and put its goals honestly to the people. The other party has reduced itself to serfdom in service of a dictatorship.
Guess who’s winning? Guess who’s letting them win?
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exactly
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Blyat. Yob tvoyu mat.
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Saying it in Russian does not relieve it of being obscene.
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Wanted to say it in a language that the originators of this stuff understand.
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I have a large and wonderful collection of books on cursing in the languages of the world. You might have missed this:
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It’s depressing that people seem far more focused on beating Republicans than guaranteeing competent leadership for the country.
Which, silly me, I thought was the point of choosing a president.
We made a choice four years ago that we all knew could lead to this. The bargain was that we would defeat Trump.
It worked, but now we risk destroying the Democratic Party as a legitimate institution. That is not hyperbole.
When you react out of panic, your choices are automatically suspect. You do not solve a problem by ignoring reality. You aggravate it.
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We made a choice four years ago that led to extremely competent leadership the last 4 years. Not sure anyone else could have done better, so it was a win-win. Definitely better than the last 3 Democratic presidents.
I don’t think Bernie Sanders and AOC are interested in risking the destruction of the Democratic Party as a legitimate institution. They just want the competent leadership to continue. And they know if at some future time Biden can’t be that leader, Kamala will be.
They didn’t act out of panic. The people who did are the ones who saw one debate and couldn’t deal. They had the panic attacks immediately.
I am happy to vote for any Democrat, but I don’t see one standing out from the crowd. They all have liabilities, just different liabilities than Biden’s age and the fact he is slowing down and is not the man he used to be. Nonetheless, he doesn’t have to be the man he used to be to be a competent leader as the last 4 years have shown. They were better than Obama’s.
Obviously, I would feel very differently if I did not know Kamala Harris is standing by. That’s why I am not worried about Biden’s age.
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Two prominent Democratic politicians (AOC and Bernie) endorsed the Democratic nominee for president. This is truly surprising and meaningful and consequential, huh? To find another event that unlikely and significant, one would have to look to the fact that a piece of lettuce fell off a salad bowl at a Bonefish Grill in Atlanta on Thursday, March 17, 2022.
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Comrade Shepherd, you must be careful about what you say. I know you would not want to give the dangerous impression that you do not trust AOC and Bernie. Surely if AOC and Bernie have endorsed Biden, we call all agree that means Biden is the best candidate, no?
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Commissar Flerp. Let me assure you of my unerring loyalty to The Party. However, if it be deemed necessary in the collective wisdom for me to make public confession of any inadvertent slippage on my part into reactionary, I will of course do so with gladness that I have been saved from further disgrace. –Comrade Bob
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cx: slippage into reactionary errancy
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I’m sure all independent voters agree with you.
No, wait….
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. . . but then . . . on the other hand, . . . in another context, . . . . however, . . . CBK
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Also, I suspect Biden is very open to not serving the full 4 years. But Reagan actually did have Alzheimer’s (it wasn’t an armchair diagnosis). He won re-election, and stayed the entire 4 years.
And while I wish it had hurt the legitimacy of the Republican party, it didn’t. If anything it helped them move the country even further right post-Reagan — Newt Gingrich, Bush 2, culminating in Trump. I wish that having Reagan not just re-elected but serving out 4 years had hurt, but not only did the country accept Iran-Contra and vote for the VP who oversaw it, they made the Republicans even more powerful.
I think the difference is that the Democrats always amplify how many doubts they have about their own presidents. Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden – Dems could not wait to pile on. Not saying it wasn’t legitimate criticism of Jimmy Carter, and Clinton and Obama and Biden — they definitely were far from perfect — but it makes the voters in general distrustful of the entire party. While the Republicans are confident in their leader no matter what. Gotta have some middle ground.
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NYC: Yes . . . in my view, democratic DNA holds little fear of, but rather welcomes, constructive criticism (a notable distinction from the present GOP).
The democratic “however,” however, is that as voting time gets closer, we need to close ranks more than normal–hold off self-critique until later, for obvious political reasons.
One does not save one’s toe by shooting off one’s foot. CBK
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But it’s also a fact that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease.
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jsrtheta: “There you go again. . . ” CBK
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CBK,
Agreed. We are in a precarious moment. The GOP has closed ranks behind a convicted felon and sex offender. No criticism.
Dems at some point either persuade Biden to resign or close ranks behind him.
United we stand, divided we fall.
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Diane: I don’t pretend to know for a minute what was in Comey’s mind when he reopened the Hillary problem so close to the election; but my guess is that he was doorknob dumb to his responsibility of realizing the import of up-against-the-wall timing.
Otherwise, he was either a dupe or deliberately complicit in her “losing” the election. (My stomach turns whenever I think of it.) CBK
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He was part of law enforcement. They don’t hang around waiting for “the proper time”.
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jsrtheta: Very true (about Comey and the law not waiting around). On the other hand, in such situations, first, EITHER acting or NOT acting (he surely knew) has dire circumstantial import. His timing, not the law as such, advantaged Trump while disadvantaging Hillary in a huge and predictable way. So, in my view, he was not considering the law as much as he was considering the import of his timing of application of it.
Complicating that same situation, and with 20-20 hindsight, for sure, was the import on the very foundations of the law that Comey may have been attuning himself to. But second, if he had waited, he could have still carried out the law–probably more inconvenience for him, but a lawful point he apparently was not sure of anyway.
And add to that: he was probably trying to know what he could not know at the time. History ended up biting him in the behind.
I vote for ego-driven self-doubt coupled with doorknob dumbery. CBK
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CBK,
It is a well-known fact in the federal government that no one from the feds is supposed to interfere in the election (the Hatch Act), and this is triply true in the last month before the election. Comey broke the rules.
A neighbor is a law professor who knows Comey and defends him. He says Comey had “a duty to warn.” But what he said turned out to be false.
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Remember this never would have happened if Anthony Weiner hadn’t been sending illicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl.
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Sometimes these names seem chosen for their purpose by a novelist, don’t they? Tom Wolf would have called this guy Tony Weiner.
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FLERP…horrible thought. Weiner and sexting changed the nation.
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And Huma just married a billionaire.
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Huma is engaged to son of George Soros.
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“President Joe Biden has the integrity, moral character and record needed to beat Donald Trump in November.”
Stacey Abrams
https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-stacey-abrams-ignore-the-joe-biden-doom-loop/RKBDAIORWVEE3F77UY6IBHDHGE/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0dU3rw5r1qv0x9osXBVvOK3gH2vl1ArDNxjnZ7oBold8s_ZKuSV3_NMvc_aem_da_QFw5HVmpkUHm9TydCuw
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This has not aged well:
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The oversupply of blowhards on the Internet just making sh!t up and being taken seriously is a national crisis.
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FLERP: I certainly know not look to you to gain a full understanding of what is “perfectly characteristic” of democrats. If sxxt is all you look for, that’s all you’ll find. CBK
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I don’t understand your comment.
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