Adaher’s comment about Biden being authentic is spot-on — it’s his strongest point. (I meant to mention this in my own post above.)
By analogy with your “logic” if I say “Einstein was smart,” your answer would be “Trump says he’s smart too, therefore neither Trump nor Einstein is smart.”
Let me off your bus at the next stop, please.
I wonder if scandals even matter anymore, to be honest. It seems like voters in both camps believe so strongly that their worlds will end if ‘that SOB’ is elected that we’re almost inured to some sort of late-breaking scandal. What would worry me more are fake information campaigns that suggest what someone might do once they’re in office or how they might cheat and steal elections.
Logic doesn’t appear your strength. My point wasn’t what Trump says, but rather his devoted followers who think authenticity and “saying what he thinks” and “we know him” is all that matters.
The cult of personality that put Trump in the White House is now infecting the Dems. Yup, I said it.
Given this statement is from our friend adaher I suspect Biden is the candidate with the best chance to remove Trump from the White House. Uncle Joe’s appeal to folks like adaher and older males voters is a strength.
As for more progressive people not voting for him, well maybe in the primary but what will they do in the general if Biden is the nominee? I really don’t buy that they will sit out the election when there is a chance to end the Trump crime spree.
To put this another way, Biden is polling better than Trump in most of the states Democrats need in order to win in 2020. These are states HRC lost, not because progressives failed to vote for her, but because voters in those states who went to Obama did not vote for or turnout for Hillary. Biden appears to appeal to those voters.
So that brings me to this point - if progressives end up disappointed with the D nominee, which states HRC won in 2016 will flip to Trump? Because, when I look at the 2016 map I don’t see any states remotely likely to have that happen. Zero. And if my assessment is correct, nominating someone who has the best chance to win in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina (or some combination thereof) makes complete sense.
Nominating a progressive just because that aligns more with what you or I may want is most likely a prescription for defeat and a second term for Trump and his corrupt allies.
The problem we’re up against is turnout. You are right that progressive voters will probably suck it up and support whomever the Dem’s nominee is, but voters is the operative word here. Dems need to rally people who have never voted to the polls. I just can’t see Biden bringing this kind of groundswell. It would be one thing if we could assume fair elections, but we can’t because we have to overcome Russian interference. This isn’t a normal election. The Ukraine scandal oughta be everyone’s wake up call. Trump has a rigged advantage, and that is what we need to beat. Not merely the razor thin margin of difference that separated Trumps electorate win from Hillary’s defeat in 2016.
I don’t want make it seem like this a simple word problem because it’s not. Biden has positives when it comes to the electability factor. This is good because getting Trump is topmost priority. But he also has weaknesses. My eyes bug out when I see Dems shrugging their shoulders at the Ukraine thing. His response to the guy in Iowa is exactly why I’m worried about his ability to weather this. Dude accused Biden of giving his son an oil job he’s not qualified for and Biden does the thing no politician should ever do. He called him a liar. Then barked “no one has ever said that.” Okay, no one. Except the President, that is. And the GOP. And Fox News. No one except all the people running the country right now. But other than them…
Why hasn’t he yet come up with better messaging to handle the inevitable of all grenades that will hurled at him in this campaign? Messaging that doesn’t resort to name calling and other nonsense? Anyone have an answer for this? His competence is too unpredictable for him to truly be a strong candidate, and honest to God i would be saying this even if he was progressive.
But old white guys like him and that’s all that matters, right? So unless you’re an old white guy, your opinion on Biden doesn’t matter. I’ve gotten the memo and I’m reading it. So are others. Those “others” are going to cost the Dems the election.
Public is tired of politicans? That may be true. Then why vote for a guy who entered politics in 1973?
He’s not really a politician, okay? He’s just a regular ole guy who puts his pants on one leg at a time. Just like Trump, golden toilet and all.
Because like John McCain, he doesn’t have the same baggage most career politicians do. Being a real guy for 40 years rather than a walking teleprompter helps with that. If anything, his gaffes and bluntness are part of his appeal.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have weaknesses. He’s clearly lost a step or two. He’s never been a talented campaigner. He’s prone to impulsiveness. But I also believe that every election cycle we get the one guy who is perfect for the time we’re in and I think Biden is what we need right now. A decent, smart, straight talking guy who can lower the temperature in the partisan wars somewhat. The other Democrats in the race are either hyperpartisan and would make the partisan hate worse, or are the walking teleprompters I mentioned with no principles, only strategies to get themselves elected(which don’t work, because they suck at it).
Of course once he’s elected I’ll probably trash most of the policies he pursues, but at least with Biden I can still like and respect the man while disagreeing with a lot of what he wants to do.
Is there anything a democratic candidate will do that will make the economy better than Trump’s?
The economy is always issue #1. That’s the biggest influence a president has. Unless you are enlisted. So far there have been no new wars or none brewing, so I have reason to trust Trump with that.
If your new doctor is finally becoming familiar with your personal medical situation, don’t get too comfortable, it’s Obamacare time again.
Trump has indeed presided over good times. Which is why I would vote for him if the Democrat was truly dangerous. I’ll take the idiot who isn’t really doing anything over an ambitious smartass who wants to remake half the country to fit their utopian vision. Fortunately, I probably won’t have to make that choice. Biden or Buttigieg work fine for me.
Joe Biden isn’t “straight talking.” Straight talking means you can articulate points clearly. Biden absolutely blows at making it clear what he’s trying to say. He mumbles, stumbles, trips over his tongue constantly. It’s not just that he’s a “gaffe machine” in terms of saying really stupid things that are memorable in how stupid they are, he also just has a tendency to make word salad out of whatever it is that he’s talking about at any given time. During the last debate, I had heavy deja-vu to the George W. Bush years every time it was Biden’s turn to talk. Eventually I came to the conclusion that Bush was actually BETTER at public speaking than Biden. THIS GUY ABSOLUTELY SUCKS AT TALKING. I’m sorry. There’s no getting around it.
If we’re in a situation where one candidate has the black vote sewn up but is hated by white progressives and is a shitty communicator, and then the other candidates are liked by progressives and/or younger people but weak with minorities…then all I can say is we’re in deep trouble. Again.
It’s not Biden’s fault progressives got really ambitious despite the public not actually being any more amenable to them than they were 20 years ago. There’s just no good reason for progressives to hate Biden other than the fact that they demand purity and radicalism in 2020. The Obama years convinced them that they mattered and the Trump years have made them pissed. They need to settle down. If the current generation of youth reaches their 40s and 50s and is still progressive, they’ll get to drive then. That’s how it’s always worked. In the meantime, they can either get on the bus or do like the Boomers did in 1968 and sabotage it.
Biden as the cult of personality?? That’s rich.
If you want to argue that there is no reason to have any interest at all in swingable voters in the key swing states, go ahead and make the case.
If you want to argue that those voters don’t find authenticity appealing and are turned off by those who they see as only cynically pandering, as focus group and most recent polling driven, also go ahead and make the case.
Heck, even if you want to make the more reasonable argument, that the swingable voters in those key swing states, who are attracted to authenticity, matter less than maxxing out turnout of younger progressives and/or Black voters in those states … so better someone who inauthentically and disingenuously panders to those group, no matter what they actually think … go for it.
But no one is arguing that authenticity is ALL that matters. I, for example, find authenticy attractive in a candidate but an authentic Klansman would less preferable than a cynically pandering moderate or progressive. I may not trust that I really know what the latter really thinks but I can be pretty sure they will govern better than the authentic Klansman would.
But it, along with views that are not complete third rail for them, is I think one of the most attractive characteristics a candidate can have for those key swingables in the key states. Swingabes tend to have more moderate policy beliefs but think even more so they tend to not care about those so much and they don’t follow the news so much. A debate flub that gets the pundits all atwitter is not what they focus on. They are more likely than other voters to vote their own gut reaction and feeling someone is authentic is part of that gut sense they go with. Flubs may even help with that for them, as it is part of being “real”.
He’s kinda moderate. The GOP has done all they can do in attacking him. And yes, he can beat trump, he has the highest numbers.
Yeah, trump was a “outsider” look how that worked out.
Yes, because they are they only ones who think that’s a issue. N*o one else does. * and they will 100% all vote for trump anyway, even if he is caught buggering a dead boy on the steps of the capital.
It’s a made up issue. It’s all smoke, no fire. Anyone will a whiff of brains can see there’s nothing there.
Joe is pretty good at speeches. He’s not good at off the cuff stuff in debates. He’s a good communicator.
And Joe is by no means " hated by white progressives ". You do have your Bernie-bros but they hate anyone but sanders. Biden polls the best among all dems. true, it wobbles and he isnt always #1, but overall he is on top.
polls now mean very little . If Trump and the GOP go after Biden full bore then you look at polls and see how he holds up.
But.her.emails.
GTFOHWTS.
When Trump and the GOP go after whoever is the nominee full bore then you look at polls and see how they hold up.
Biden has at least been tested and is overall trusted as an honest and real person. His many “Oh Joe” moments seem to only add to his perceived “realness”, his being a regular guy.
The voters who can be swayed often like the idea of “a regular guy” (or maybe woman). Bill Clinton’s greatest trick was being as smart as he was yet convincing so many voters that he was just a regular guy, a Bubba, just expressing what all of them were already thinking (but just hadn’t known yet that they were thinking that until he explained to them the how and why they had come to think that way). Joe has that regular guy vibe. Bill Clinton’s smarts? Nope. But he wants to move things in the right direction and is smart enough to know and to hire real smart people.
Inspiring though he is not.
Biden’s latest flub is calling someone fat shortly after calling them a liar. We can pretend this is what authenticity looks like, or we can call it what is:
Evidence that Biden is one gored ox away from saying or doing something so stupid and foul it can’t be walked back or shrugged off. Like actually hitting someone or threatening to do so.