Who's to blame if Biden loses?

Politics & Elections
122

Got it, no problem.

Why shouldn’t they be blamed?

A group of 40 people wants to destroy your small community. Leaders are attempting to recruit volunteers. If you get a group of 50 together, you can defeat the group of 40 and save the town. Everyone is contacted and attempts are made to persuade people to show up and defend the town. However, only 30 people show up to defend the town. The defense is unsuccessful, and the town is destroyed.

By your reasoning, people that were recruited but didn’t show up shouldn’t be blamed. The blame should fall on people organizing the defense. Because they were apparently insufficiently persuasive, didn’t say the right magic words to get the people that didn’t show up to actually show up. Because the volunteers are just blades of grass in the wind, perfectly responsive to what people say. Therefore it’s the fault of the recruiters always. Instead of the volunteers being thinking people with ears, minds, and volition, who should be able to parse information.

123

There’s enough blame to go around if Trump gets elected. Yes, the DNC can review their choices to run better campaigns in the future (if there are campaigns in the future), but every single person who voted TRUMP and every single person who didn’t vote BIDEN is to blame for Trump getting elected.

If living through their two administrations leaves you so uncertain that you’re dependent on the fine points of the campaign process… you are to blame. You can’t tell the difference between the guy diligently working on running the country and the guy juggling his court appearances and keeping track of the lady he assaulted and the lady he paid hush money, and you want to blame the DNC for that?

124

This is brilliant, and I’m stealing it for my IRL political conversations.

125

If your opponent is some campaigning genius like Bill Clinton or Obama, then yes, you can run a great operation and still lose.

But if you go up against a 79-year old fascist who wears diapers, has the maturity of a 7-year old, tweets in all caps, and you lose…then yes, you ran a significantly-less-than-optimal campaign.

126

Your whole post, thank you, thank you. This is what I was inartfully trying to get at in my earlier posts. You put it so succinctly and so well.

127

Okay, so what do you want to see Biden doing, that he’s not doing? There’s no point in just waiting to see if he fails, so you can point fingers afterwards. What changes do you think he should make today to get his message across to the people who have seen the “79-year old fascist who wears diapers”, and still worship the ground he walks on?

128

Dirty tricks and underhanded, illegal tactics seem to work. Maybe Biden should try that. /s

129

Yeah this.

Plenty of f*ck yous to go round. But ultimately Biden not winning the election, and all the terrible things that will inevitably result, is the fault of the people who didn’t vote for Biden

130

I’m actually half-way to thinking that myself, but I have the nasty habit of realizing that this will just kill democracy too, alas.

131

Me, too. It’s why I edited to add my ‘/s’ tag in the post.

132

I feel like we should start a support group.

You can’t have a functional democracy when a majority of the population has decided that democracy isn’t working, or isn’t even desirable. Forcing people to care about democracy is itself anti-democratic. So what happens to those of us who like democracy, but also think it’s failing, despite our best efforts to save it?

At what point do you decide, “Okay, democracy is dead. The only question now is who comes out on top, and I think it should be my guys”? I’d much prefer a Biden dictatorship to a Trump one.

133

I’ve felt like this for more than two decades, now.

At least there is some glimmer of hope on the horizon, brought to us by @JohnT in another thread:

At least for 2024.

134

Take Clinton in 2016. She ran her campaign as if it were about popular votes and not electoral votes. You don’t need to campaign in California. Go to Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, … This is not picking on Clinton either. Dewey threw away the election because the “Grand Old Platitudes” Republicans though it was a sure thing and again were not as aggressive campaigning while Truman went all out.

135

Many voters are indeed attracted to Trump’s swaggering buffoonery. Trump promises everything and delivers on absolutely nothing. In some ways this does give him a “teflon” quality because his lying is so consistent that he ultimately stands for nothing and there’s nothing to call him out on in particular. But honestly, a lot of Trump’s techniques have proven to be effective when used in the past by other politicians.

The 2020 election itself was unusual in that Trump basically went too far and lost the election on the basis of incompetence to a more mature, competent candidate. I regard this as a highly unusual development. Based on what tends to sell in politics. So Biden was based on the election of competence, which he has attempted to carry out. As we can perhaps see, people tend to tear apart legitimate promises even if they are mostly kept, and also tend to be duped repeatedly by wild claims a la Trump. But I’m not sure how Biden pivots to being more exciting when he’s running against the same opponent, and that’s not why he won in the first place.

136

The second best time is now.

137

“Shoulda dunnit back when…” advice is only helpful if you have a time machine.

139

So the bad campaign was not realizing that the electorate was actually stupid enough to vote for Trump.

In this era of national TV and near-universal internet access, I have trouble understanding why a candidate not doing whistle-stop campaigning in some states is such a problem. Are there really people who think, “Well, Clinton didn’t come to my middle of nowhere town, so I’m voting for the clown candidate”? If they’re stupid enough to think that, they’re stupid enough to find some other excuse to vote for Trump.

Which is why I’m asking what Biden should do differently today.

140

This.

141

Advertising works, but he needs to outspend Trump and his Trumpettes. If he needs to badmouth Trump (and he does because it has been shown that people react stronger to negative news) he either has to go overboard with anti-Trump accusations, or stick to the facts. The former works better, but the latter is ethical. Do the ends justify the means?

142

Nope.

The collective decison of the GOP Senators of the 117th Congress to not hold a trial and vote (preferably unanimously) to remove Donald Trump from office between January 13th and January 20th, 2021 and bar him from forever seeking the office again is why we are staring down the barrel of another Trump presidency.

Ten more Senators, out of 43 voting to acquit, would have been sufficient. The Hall of Shame consists of John Barasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Braun (R-IN), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Jodi Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Hoeven (R-ND), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), John Kennedy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), Jim Risch (R-ID), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL), Tim Scott (R-SC), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Thune (R-SD), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Todd Young (R-MS). All voted not guilty when called upon to make the most important vote any of them will every make, and all proved unfit for the responsibility of being a Senator.

Ten of those 43 could have stood strong for the safety and prerogatives of Congress. Ten of those 43, some whose very lives were under threat less than two weeks before, could have struck the ultimate blow against the one who made that threat a reality. Ten of those 43 could have removed the worst president this nation has ever seen from being able to soil our nation’s White House again. They could have made Mike Pence - Mike f-ing Pence! - the 46th and shortest-serving President of the United States.

They had the power. They had the agency.

What they didn’t have was the guts.

And frankly, the blame, shame, guilt and disgrace should be on them.