Did Michelle say she wouldn’t run for office, or she wouldn’t run for President?
Convince her to run for vice-President, and you’ve got a Harris/Obama ticket that might just kick ass.
Personally, I’ll give him the most charitable of interpretations and fill in some blanks with my own assumptions:
- Trump treated NATO like an extortion racket. If they didn’t pay up, he wouldn’t protect them with the mighty power of the US military. This likely caused a severe trust deficit between NATO and the US.
- Russian intelligence was able to operate completely unchecked during Trump’s entire tenure and they also drove as many wedges into NATO as they could.
- When Biden took office he had to herd a lot of NATO cats and rebuild a bunch of bridges that Trump had shat upon repeatedly before burning with napalm.
- Cleaning up this mess shows Biden’s skill as a negotiator.
But… if Biden’s point is to try to establish that he and only he can go into a room full of people who are supposed to all be on the same side but they can’t stop arguing amongst themselves well then… what the fuck, Joe?
And not to minimize Biden’s diplomatic accomplishments in repairing the havoc that Trump wrought, but it’s not like Japan and South Korea weren’t already allies when Biden took office. And negotiating a treaty between the US, UK and Australia isn’t exactly a “Nixon in China” level breakthrough.
And I’ll add Schumer in that mix. These are people with access to data, analysis and expertise we in the chattering classes simply do not have. They do not just undermine a beloved president, and a friend, because they panicked or because of a gut reaction. If the reporting is accurate, this is pretty solid “implied evidence” that Joe does not have a likely path to victory.
And I love our president, I truly do. God bless President Biden.
This is what I think we all saw three weeks ago and he’s still doing it. I’m not asking for perfection in every single statement he makes. But he’s had what, three interviews at least, plus the press conference at the end of the NATO summit, plus the five minute statement on Sunday evening about the assassination attempt, and in every single one he sounded weak, muddled, was literally difficult to hear and not being picked up well by the microphone, and tended to just somehow trail off without finishing a point.
Now, again, just because he’s having trouble speaking doesn’t mean he’s incapable of at least finishing his term. But when I think of the debates four years ago, the only thing that really comes to mind is Biden’s comment of “Will you shut up, man?” I get that Trump is a gish gallop of crap, but you’ve gotta be able to at least get a decent attack line off against his behavior.
One of the strongest arguments in favor of Biden declining the nomination and endorsing someone else is the weak bullshit being argued (by Dems) against it, particularly the “but some states may fight anyone’s name but his going on the ballot.” If Biden died, even after getting the nomination, the DNC would put someone else’s name on the ballot, so why would his turning down the nomination now make things worse? Making shit up (“the Dems would be hopelessly fractured” is another BS story) just shows that there’s not an actual problem there, you just don’t want Biden to step down and you’re willing to say anything to support that position.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
My favorite is all the times his refusal to admit he’s too old and needs to drop out is proof he’s too old and needs to drop out.
Standard reasoning: “denial is proof!”
No. It is a sign that he is putting his personal needs, ego, and feelings over the needs of the country and the world. That disappoints some of us who are his longtime admirers.
I get that his personal mythology would frame his stepping aside as quitting, something he is loath to do. I’d hope that he can reframe it as serving the fight better in a different capacity, recognizing that he is not the best quarterback right now, but it the goal isn’t his winning but the team, the country, the world winning. I’d want to see him as an active part of the campaign.
I still feel that much of that blame is on the democrats who, while they should be pushing back and attacking Trump with every fiber of their being are instead attacking their best chance of beating Trump. I don’t believe Harris can win, and I don’t believe there is anyone else in the party who can, this late in the game, beat Trump. So while we all sit around and argue about this, Trump will easily take this election. Hopefully there will be another one in four years.
That’s because you think he’s wrong.
Think of all that happened in the last three weeks. Now multiply that by 5, and that’s how much that could happen before election day. This election is very far from over. Anyone who thinks it’s over is making a wild, wild guess with no supporting evidence.
Biden has been losing for months (or at best tied), well before any calls for him to drop out became widespread. Democrats tried ignoring the issue. It didn’t work. People blaming the media or Democrats are missing that the voters have been clearly stating Biden is too old for them. The debate got public officials and the media on board but voters were already there.
That’s very true. Polls have been saying for a long time that Biden’s age was a major concern for voters, and for a long time the Democratic response was to handwave those concerns away. This is a case of public opinion leading the elites, not the other way around.
New reporting from NBC News. Unnamed “sources” say that the Biden family is finally moving towards making plans for the best way for Joe to exit with dignity and style. Lots of other named people say “poppycock!” So, same as it ever was, but this specifically mentions the Biden family members accepting that Joe needs to give way.
And yet,
The race for the presidency remains statistically tied despite President Biden’s dismal debate performance two weeks ago, a new national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.
Biden actually gained a point since last month’s survey, which was taken before the debate. In this poll, he leads Trump 50% to 48% in a head-to-head matchup. But Biden slips when third-party options are introduced, with Trump holding the slightest advantage with 43% to 42%.
Those numbers, though, do not represent statistically significant differences, as the margin of error in the survey is +/- 3.1 percentage points, meaning results could be 3 points higher or lower.
The poll also found that, at this point, no other mainstream Democrat who has been mentioned as a replacement for the president on the ticket does better than Biden.
Besides reminding you not to look at individual polls and the aggregate since has Biden down 2-3 points, this doesn’t dispute my point. Voters didn’t like Biden already. The calls for him to resign haven’t moved the needle much at all. Full on support of him wouldn’t change anything either. Also I wouldn’t call being tied with Trump, who again is not popular, a positive result.