The alternative was voting against Trump.
Now I have the option to vote for a change, of sorts. That brings up a bit more enthusiasm, rather than “just another day at the office voting booth.”
ETA: replying to @Whack-a-Mole
I vacillate between “left leaning, skeptical but think Harris will win” and “left leaning, hopeful, but unlikely Harris will beat Trump”, and ultimate voted for the later by a slim margin.
To be clear, I was cautiously optimistic, but only by a razor’s edge that Biden could beat Trump earlier in the year, but the double-whammy of the assault on Trump and Biden’s poor debate performance pushed me into not-quite despair.
I am actually MORE optimistic as it stands today with Harris than with the Biden/Trump position of last week, but I know the insane fervor of the RWNJ and the fact that the SCOTUS has encouraged out-and-out chicanery in favor of Republicans. Just too many factors that make me pessimistic.
FSM, I hope I’m wrong.
Where is the option for “I’m an enthusiastic supporter of Harris but stopped making predictions in 2016”?
I won’t deny I’m concerned. I’ve said all along I felt we should stick with Biden who had the advantage of being the incumbent and was not seen as threatening to any fear-motivated demographics.
The Republicans will now go full attack on Harris. I don’t know what they will say, other than it will almost certainly be lies. Harris looks good now; hopefully she will still look electable after a few weeks of the right wing media just asking questions" and “raising concerns”.
I hope that the Democrats will now take the age issue and run with it. The Republicans were foolish to bring it up when they were running a 78 year old against an 81 year old. Especially with this particular 78 year old.
Harris is as close to being the incumbent as possible other than Biden himself. I see that as an advantage. She gets some (but not all) of the incumbency benefit, while also defusing the “too old” arguments, and she can own the last four years of policy. I think that’s a net positive.
She’s not going to sweep undecided voters or cause MAGA defections. However, I don’t think she’ll encourage more conservatives to come out of the woodwork to vote against her than were already going to vote against Biden. What she will do is energize the apathetic Democrats and moderates who were ready to sit this one out. She should even be able to get some of the hard-core leftists to vote, but that’s just gravy.
Yep yep yep. It’s all about Democratic turnout. trump got more votes in 2020 than any other incumbent President in history. But Biden got even more.
These are both great campaigning points.
- OK, let’s talk about candidates being too elderly, too rambling, too incoherent to be eligible for the Presidency. What, now the GOP no longe considers this a disqualification? Why is that?
and
- Have you noticed that the GOP is no longer actively pursuing the Biden crime family? Why is that? Could it be that was not an actual issue, just some hyped up nonsense meant to inflame people over nothing? Is there anything else that they could be blowing up from nonsense into a supposedly serious subject? Let’s talk about those nonsense issues.
Cautiously optimistic enough that I’m viewing this thread despite its tags, which are globally muted for me to preserve my sanity, as is the entire P&E category.
I’m substantially less politically informed than most here, by choice, but something about this match just feels right. I love the dyads of young vs. old, optimistic vs. doomsaying, cheerful vs. hateful, not to mention law & order vs. convicted criminal.
My very well informed friend is pessimistic, though, pointing out that she loses 3% for being a woman and 3% for being a POC, just out of the gate. And while this is the country that once elected Obama, the racists punished us long and hard for that, and are even more fired up than before. As for sexism, yesterday I was browsing comments on Freddie DeBoer’s substack – FdB is a Marxist, but attracts a maybe right-of-center audience because his specialty is skewering the Left, not the Right – and the sexist comments were just eye-watering. Many people freaking out that because she’s a WOMAN, all these stupid uninformed WOMEN are going to vote for her just because she’s a WOMAN, and how much more terrible could anything be than that?
So it’s definitely not a lock IMO, and because my sensibilities are generally pretty delicate, I’m not even exposed to the level of raw racism and sexism that exists all over this country.
That’s how Clinton lost.
Not because anybody chanted that at the convention; but because too many people were so sure that she’d win that they didn’t bother to vote.
I don’t think most of those people would vote for any Democrat, at this point.
Maybe. I can imagine a totally low-information voter, white working class, who just historically votes Democrat because their parents did, their grandparents did. They hardly know a thing about party platforms and policies, they’re just Inertia Democrats. They’d vote for Biden without thinking twice, but a woman of color?
Let us hope these people are very, very few and were already lost to the Republicans many election cycles ago. Hopefully it’s not 3% or 6% of 2020 Biden voters. But it’s some percentage surely.
Why on earth would you expect a coherent response for Biden quitting when the entire Trump campaign has been incoherent up to now?
They’ve been beating the Biden’s old and lost his marbles drum for months and were astonished when the Dems agreed enough to dump him.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, bitches.
Ahem, I think it’s fair to say that after his debate performance there was a lot of quiet (and not-so-quiet) pressure for Biden to leave, but in the end, it was still his choice. At least, pending his statement to America tonight for more depth on his reasoning, I think “dump him” is excessive, unless you mean it as how a MAGA fan would state it. At which point, yeah, fair enough.
The best part is the “too old” now rebounds on to Trump. Doubtless MAGA will try to ignore that but it’s still there and we all know it.
There were posters here who were not shy about saying dump Biden or other equally jarring ways to word it. We still pretty recently had Dems. here calling him, senile, stumbling dementia ridden, and as having mental issues. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say some dems wished to “dump”. Him.
Not sure what topic Im’ in. 
With the sheer number of threads here, and some posters prone to panicking (myself among them at times!), I’ll take your word for it. IMHO, many posters here were appalled at how weakly Biden presented himself at the debate (being sick does no one favors, much less at his age), and were panicked because it gave Trump all the momentum, and no responsibility for Trump to do a new debate where it could be offset.
But very few (although not zero!) seemed to see Harris or anyone else as a valid pitch hitter, mostly because most of us assumed it would lead to a free-fire zone while Trump enjoyed the chaos, and then later road his near-martyrdom into a new term, possibly with a substantial gain in the House and Senate as well.
I think it also included a feeling that Biden should withdraw, but even with all the semi-quiet signaling behind the scenes and in public, would be unwilling to do so. Which may lead into the feeling that you mention, that he would somehow need to be “dumped” if he refused to go.
BUT, and back to this thread, Biden’s quick self-removal, support for Harris, and perhaps that same sense of panic enabled the party to come together quickly. And right now, IMHO, Harris is stronger than Biden was after the debate, much less after the attack.
And as quoted here and in other threads, now Trump is going to have to walk back or ignore a lot of his own words and attack strategies that are no longer valid.
I still lean toward him winning for the reasons I stated upthread, but I now doubt a total blowout, and there’s a much better chance of keeping the rest of the races competitive than if Biden had stayed as the candidate without a huge increase in apparent energy (which would have fed Trump’s pill-popping narrative anyway).
It may just be me, but I feel like there’s this huge gap between “extremely confident” and “somewhat skeptical.” I guess I picture “somewhat skeptical” as believing that Harris has, like, a 60% chance of winning. Maybe 70% at best.
I agree. I voted “somewhat skeptical.” I would rather have the option of somewhat/guardedly confident, or something similar.
Well, one person and I really don’t remember who acused Biden of arrogance, over inflated ego, self centerness, and self agrandizement. Seriously? it sounded like a description of tfg. I also saw his family accused of either manipulating him or not “taking the keys away”. Oh yes and the lovely “Weekend at Bernie’s” references.
I really am sorry that some people panicked, but I think shredding someone’s character and make specious accusations towards his family, because they aren’t doing what you [not aimed at who I’m replying to] want them to, when you want them to is just a step too far.
There was so much diagnosing and mind reading going on it was pretty cringe inducing. YMMV.
“But it doesn’t count when there’s an (R) after his name!”
Oh, and for the record I used ‘dump’ as coming from their point of view. I think Biden’s done a remarkably good job, particularly considering the hand he was dealt.
I think they need some sort of “I want to be part of this! Part of this!”.
I mean, I knew when I voted for Obama in 2008 that he was not going to win Texas, but
I thought he’d likley win overall and I wanted to be part of it.
Also, I want Taylor Swift on the stage at the DNC. Standing next to Biden, shed have made him look old and feeble. But she and Haris can hug and look like Besties.