It’s not the job of the President.
I’ll concede that it’s a property of a supplicant for the job; will you start using precise terminology?
Oh, so electability is important to you?
I assume it was just as important to you when voters overwhelmingly considered that beating Trump was the most important quality they were after and that Biden met that criteria, right?
Before you pivot to “I am right about this, all the voters who outvoted me are wrong,” I have a couple of objections for that.
Who makes a person electable? The people who elect them. That would be the voters. They literally get a vote in this. And got a vote in it as well.
You could make a case that maybe their priorities were mistaken, except that polling and other evidence all points out that Democratic voters number one priority was not healthcare or breaking up the banks, it was the ability to beat Donald Trump. Which is exactly what electability is.
But fine, go tell the people who do the electing that they are mistaken on electability. You can also tell it to Ian Ayres and Zachary Shelley from Yale Law School whose LA Times Op-Ed right after Super Tuesday took on the question with data and here’s what they discovered:
So please, go on about electability. It’s obviously very important to you.
Probably, with the possible exception of us being in a major war, something which Trump, for all of his faults, hasn’t gotten us into. But having Bernie’s voice coming from the White House during this pandemic would have been infinitely better.
If you honestly believe that a candidate who had performed well in the opening contests would drop out before, rather than after Super Tuesday without either a deal, or a threat to damage their career, then you are incredibly naive.
I don’t believe anyone here wants to see Trump reelected. But a silver lining would be that after the Democratic party ran two losing neoliberals in a row maybe they would finally see that the people don’t want them and and their talk of “moderation” and “electability” is horseshit.
That’s not how it works. If the Dems lose, they’ll move even further towards the center next time, because that’s where the votes are.
Face it: the only way a progressive can ever win is by running as a moderate.
Not for lack of trying, at least in the case with North Korea. Luckily, he’s incompetent in that also.
Thank you for your candor.
May I ask if you believed that to be the case in 2016?
Yes, and if I lived in even a potential swing state I would have dragged myself out of bed and very reluctantly cast a ballot for her (though I also believe a Clinton victory would have damaged the Democratic party horribly). It would have felt like taking pepto bismol.
How would Hillary Clinton as president damage the Democratic party?
Biden won South Carolina by 30 points. A state whose democratic party voter electorate is majority black voters. No democrat since 1988 has won the nomination without winning the majority of black voters. Pete and Klobuchar weren’t making inroads since they staked so much on the overwhelmingly white Iowa and NH and perhaps just put 2+2 together and realized "i don’t have the time, money or pathway to keep going’ and dropped out before getting wiped out.
It doesn’t matter one damn bit what I believe. What matters is, what you can prove. You are making the assertion. So let’s see your proof.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is an honorable thing. There is no alternative. There is no credible third party. Hell, even Sanders ran on the Democratic ticket, rather than as a third party.
Until there is a credible third party, lesser of two evils is just fine.
I think it should rhyme—lose with Jose
Biden has such a right-winged record… But people are so fooled with a “D” next to the name.
Answer a question: Are you a fucking idiot?
I mean, only a fucking idiot would waltz in and say something so goddamn fucking stupid, right?
After all, someone who’s participated in these endless discussions must have surely learned by now that while Biden may not be the first choice for many people, he is surely the better alternative to the current administration. And having reached that conclusion (hopefully), one might choose to shut their dumb whore mouth about whatever disagreements they might have with Biden’s past record because surely it’s better than 4 more years of the current orange asswipe. Right? I mean otherwise, they’d just come across like a fucking idiot.
And you’re not a fucking idiot. Are you?
They say that in a democracy you generally end up with your third choice. The leading candidates batter each other to death or are unacceptable for some reason, and you are left with the guy that nobody actually dislikes. Supposedly this is how Warren Harding was chosen. It seems to be the same process at work with Biden. Seen from a distance, he is a blank; no record, no image, nobody outside the USA had heard of him.
So what are his chances? In 2016 Bernie Sanders was seen as too controversial and did not get the ticket. Hillary Clinton did, but she polarized. OK, with hindsight, she would have been better than Trump, but too many people were not prepared to vote for her. Are the positions about to be reversed/ Trump is the one who polarizes, and while he has a loyal fan base, hopefully the uncommitted would prefer to vote for a cipher than … than whatever rude name you wish to apply to Trump.
If only the rest of the world could vote. Trump would be out by a landslide.
He’s been a Senator since the '70s and spent eight years a heartbeat away from the presidency. If you haven’t heard of him that says less about his profile than your ignorance.
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to swallow the notion that Vice President Biden would have been a nobody to your average Beppo Sei-Pacchetto.
OTOH, who the hell is Thad Cochran?
Well, in fairness, look at the guy’s user name.