I’m optimistic about the potential to galvanize the Black vote and women’s vote; as stupid as that kind of affiliation is, it’s a political reality. And all the racists and misogynists are already voting for Trump, so no loss there. Maybe there really is a God, and we’ll be seeing a repeat of history being made as it was in 2008.
Also, Harris now has a chance to pick a really exciting running mate. Maybe she can officially relocate her residence to DC and pick Newsom!
I see it the other way around. With Biden out and Harris in, the D’s are suddenly the prohibitive favorites. It would be an epic upset, perhaps even greater than 2016, for Trump to pull off the win.
You may well be right. I sure hope so. As I said in my more optimistic second post, this may energize both the women’s vote and also the Black vote much as Obama did.
Irony of ironies : after screeching for months (or years) about President Biden being too old to serve as President, the righties on my Facebook feed are in freakout mode right now (and yes I acknowledge that that’s just one small dumb data point).
I am a bit surprised it happened so fast. Biden had been rising a bit in Polymarket to 30% which seemed to suggest that this thing would drag on for a while.
My basic sense has been that Harris is a bit better than Biden as a candidate and nothing more. Biden was obviously struggling with basic communication and it was hard to see much of an upside which is what the trailing candidate needs.
Harris is only an average speaker but that may be all that is needed to expose Trump’s numerous weaknesses. And she will undoubtedly do a better job at talking about abortion than Biden. On the flip side you have to wonder whether she will be able to connect with white non-college voters in the Midwest. Her campaign in 2020 was hopelessly incompetent and one hopes she will have a better team if she gets the nomination.
It will be interesting to see if any heavy hitters even bother competing for the nomination. Whitmer is already out. The rest may well calculate that 2028 is the better shot. In fact I wonder if Harris herself is happy getting the nomination in this chaotic way with the election just three and a half months away. I also suspect that she and other potential contenders are seriously worried about the threat of more violence in this year.
Early on after the poor debate performance I supported him staying on, hoping that he could brush it off as a bad night. Unfortunately media frenzy centered around whether he could beat Trump and whether he would drop out made for a self fulfilling prophesy by sucking up all of the oxygen from his campaign. So even before his announcement I switched sides and recognized he had to go. God speed the new nominee.
I’m worried there are enough people who simply will not vote for a black woman that it will negatively impact her chances. I will certainly vote for Harris if she’s the nominee, but then I would vote for a chicken salad sandwich if my alternative is Trump or any other Republican.
My wife is quite upset because she’s worried about a lot of things if Trump wins. Her rights as a woman of course, the rest of Project 2025, and of course her job. She’s voting Harris as well, but like me, is afraid a lot of people simply won’t vote for a black woman. I’d love to say those type of people are voting for Trump anyway, but racism isn’t the domain of Republicans alone.
Unfortunately if they bypass Harris due to her race, the African American vote will be pissed off (and rightly so). So as usual the Dems are in a a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation. The big problem with being a party that relies on a big tent rather than a core group.
To think that Biden dropped out a full 4 months later in the campaign than LBJ did in 1968. We’ve never seen an election have to re-coalesce around a new person so fast. That being said, in today’s era, 3.5 months is an eternity.