Way back when Biden announced his intention to run, I said, “Biden may not be the president we want, but he’s the president we need”. I then counted him out multiple times and thought that Mayor Pete was the best candidate in the field. An while I am in support of virtually every Sanders platform policy, I am realistic about what can be actually achieved and by whom. Warren, IMO, had a far better chance of accomplishing that which Sanders cannot. But she too is about to pass the torch, to Biden, I hope.
I understand what you’re saying, but winning over swing voters is not the only path to victory. Getting black turnout, latino turnout, single mother turnout, youth turnout, etc. up will also allow the democrats to win the northern midwest states. However, how to do that, I don’t know.
My worry is Biden will be a terrible campaigner. Maybe he needs to stay off the stage and just let Bloomberg spend a billion dollars buying mailers for him.
VPs receive Secret Service protection for 6 months after leaving office. It can be extended if there is a specific reason. There wasn’t and it wasn’t. Major presidential candidates do receive protection 120 days before the general election unless the turn it down. We are not there yet.
Protection can be extended to presidential candidates before that. Biden would seem to fit the usual factors considered. Campaigns have to request protection though. Some request it. Some don’t, for a reason. Having a heavily armed, highly trained, professional paranoid with a wire growing out of their ear hovering nearby can make retail level politics difficult.
Biden does not currently have a government provided security detail.
It makes less difference now. But the fact Biden has lost more than a step mentally at the best makes it harder to press that issue against Trump. At worst he could show up a lot less on the ball than Trump later in the campaign or debates as he tires.
Among the things Trump has in his favor, and people who want to defeat him should not ignore his strengths, is that he just doesn’t GAS on the same level a lot of politicians do. Besides his vanity wrt ‘people who say nasty things about me’, that is. He’s basically happy and relaxed watching lots of TV in the WH. And he loves riffing in front of the big crowds he draws everywhere he chooses to go (places where he wouldn’t draw them…he wouldn’t go). The campaign is not very tiring and stressful for Trump IMO, just as the idea the responsibilities of the WH would make him melt down turned out a misguided notion. For Biden OTOH the campaign is obviously hard work for an already tired old man. And that could show up even more starkly later in the campaign.
That said I believe Trump would rather run against Sanders than Biden. Although he’s not necessarily right. Anyway there’s no law saying anyone has to support any candidate just based on uncertain (they almost always are) assessments of his or her electability.
Bloomberg out, Warren discussing her future. The writing is on the wall. This is now a two man race. Bernie’s 30% share of the vote looks great when there’s 5-10 people in the race, not so much when it’s only two. He’s great at firing up people who aren’t voting in the primaries and won’t vote in November. Time to unite behind Biden and save the rest of our gunpowder for November.
Great. Not only have we shot ourselves in the head, we’re congratulating ourselves for getting it on the first try.
:smack: Trump is going to get on the debate stage and have Biden for lunch, steak sauce provided by the press. I hope to God I’m wrong but I don’t think so.
I think you’re giving Donnie Two Scoops way too much credit. Biden’s performances have improved over the course of this campaign. Honestly, does anyone vote based on debate performance? We vote our tribes.
Running a campaign is no different than riding a bicycle, it’s just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
I’m in a similar boat in that I think both Bernie and Biden are seriously flawed and I’m not crazy about either. Warren is the “just right” to Bernie’s too hot and Biden’s too cold. But she’s probably going to drop out before my mail-in ballot even arrives, so, I get to hold my nose and vote for somebody I don’t fully believe in. So just like 2016, I guess. Hope the general goes different this time.
It won’t take a “revolutionary” to beat trump. It will take a decent, normal, principled human being with a heart, a brain, and courage. THAT’s what’s been missing from the White House!
Some of you are old enough to remember the sigh of relief that swept over the country when Gerald Ford took over from Nixon. Ford wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, he wasn’t a revolutionary, or an intellectual. (After all, he did try to eat the corn husk on a tamale when he visited Texas one time. :smack: The joke of the day was, “What kind of birth control does Betty Ford use?” “She gives Gerry a stick of gum before they go to bed.” If you need that explained, I’ll explain it.) But he was a decent, normal guy, not a scheming, tortured psycho. And he was savvy in the ways of Congress-- very important and something Biden shares. The country doesn’t need more change RIGHT NOW-- we need a return to normalcy, a return to faith in the government.
I can respect this take but I don’t necessarily believe it. It presumes that the massive turnout that showed up yesterday for a primary is going to not show up to stop Trump but did to stop Bernie.
At best the Bernie supporters don’t vote but contrast that with the majority of the never Bernies who showed up yesterday not voting and either way if these groups either one don’t vote in mass the country’s screwed either way.
In that scenario though Biden does give us the better chance to win because I believe that there are more never Trumpers who could vote for a Biden but not a Bernie than there are Trump Basers who would peel off to support a Bernie over a Biden. There really isn’t any incentive for them to do that.
Bernie has been fantastic in his current role. He has pushed the line of acceptable progressive thought in this country and that’s fantastic. I heard ideas from the non Bernie candidates that would have been unheard of 4 years ago. The revolution has planted the seeds and once the Bernie backers actually grow old enough to care to vote it’s going to be more likely that the revolution comes to fruition.
Last night they didn’t do it and there’s really no compelling reason to believe that they’d bother to show up in November either. They like the ideas but not enough to do anything productive about it en mass.
I also reject that Biden’s gaffes and performance are indicative of mental deterioration. He’s always been gaffe prone and never a great campaigner. Saturday was the first time he’s ever one a single primary in three bites at the apple. Like with Trump, Joe’s weaknesses are already baked into the cake and the public knows what they’ve been voting for.
It’s true that Trump may be wrong to want to face Bernie but his team pulled off a victory that no one outside of his campaign gave him a chance to achieve. I really tend to respect the opinion of the team savvy enough to pull that off to the opinion of those that failed to see it coming.
With all but one of the precincts reporting (but not all of the mail or provisional ballots counted), here’s what I get for the California delegate counts:
(assuming I’m using the right method - I use “round to the nearest delegate, and if there are too many/too few, the candidate that was rounded by the largest value loses/gains one”)
Sanders, 221
Biden, 162
Bloomberg, 24
Warren, 7
and, thanks to 8281 voters in the Palm Springs/Joshua Tree area, 1 delegate for Buttigieg
Omar Little, true enough. One recalls the African American housekeeper’s line in the 1969 film Being There, when she sees her former colleague Chance the Gardener on TV, now as a close advisor to the President of the US.