Biden for President?

[johnny karate]

The GOP didn't really choose Trump.

Please.

The GOP fell in lockstep behind him and have spent three years enabling pretty much every terrible thing he does in service of their power-grabbing agenda.

This latest iteration of Republicans trying to abdicate responsibility for Trump would be laughable if we weren’t currently watching the tragic consequences unfold and destroy our country.

 

[theprestige]

Not much use now, but ...
New poll shows Trump beating Biden, losing to Sanders

yt;dw - Next time link to the actual poll itself.

ETA: Also, I think it probably is pretty useful, in a "the media is not your friend" kind of way. If this news encourages progressives to vote, who were discouraged by Sanders' withdrawal, then it's probably pretty useful news in some circles. My bad. I completely misread dann's summary of the poll.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

That wasn't one of the articles that I had read, but as I'm skimming it now I note that she's upset Biden under-performed among young people. The least likely to vote group is not...exactly the group we should be focusing on. She also talks about how defeating Trump is a matter of life or death for "our communities", that she defines as "Any number of communities, whether it’s the Bronx, whether it’s Latinos, or whether it’s people of color, whether it’s women, whether it’s young people, whether it’s people with student debt, whether it’s working-class people, or people with no health care." I'm hopeful that she can convince other progressives how maybe it's more important to do the, you know, life or death stuff like defeating Trump before we do self-defeating stuff like not vote, vote 3rd party, or even vote Trump as some are threatening to do.

After all, as AOC says in that article: "But I know the goal ultimately is to win. And I’m not trying to needle as a way of making a point or to score points. I want to win. And I want to make sure that we win broadly."

I have the sneaking suspicion that if Biden loses, we're never going to stop hearing about how these young progressives are to blame.

Victory occurs in the margins. Biden is weakest among the under 45 crowd. If he doesn't need them, then that's fine. If he does need them, he should figure out how to get them enthusiastic to vote for him.

If "not Trump" is all it takes, then Biden has already won and we're just counting down days to the election. If it's not enough, I don't really see him doing much to improve his standing with these people.

 

[theprestige]

Please.

The GOP fell in lockstep behind him and have spent three years enabling pretty much every terrible thing he does in service of their power-grabbing agenda.

This latest iteration of Republicans trying to abdicate responsibility for Trump would be laughable if we weren’t currently watching the tragic consequences unfold and destroy our country.

He wasn't one of the establishment candidates. Of course the GOP pols made the strategic decision to listen to their voters, and to make the most out of his presidency.

But never in a million years would the GOP establishment have chosen to back Trump, if the voters hadn't already elected him. Some hardcore conservative establishment types are still so butthurt about it that they'd rather vote Democrat - even down-ticket - than support Trump.

Let me know when American progressives are so mad about their establishment candidates losing to an outsider that they'd prefer a strategy of conservative advancement rather than support their own candidate.

 

[theprestige]

If this is the story you two are bickering about, it's worth reading beyond the headlines:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/us/politics/aoc-progressives-joe-biden.html

AOC talks at length in the interview about what it means to unify the party, and how so far she is disappointed by Biden's lack of interest in meaningfully doing so.

Is this the same AOC who's been raising funds to primary other Democrats?

Guys, AOC is kind of a hypocritical jerk.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

He wasn't one of the establishment candidates. Of course the GOP pols made the strategic decision to listen to their voters, and to make the most out of his presidency.

But never in a million years would the GOP establishment have chosen to back Trump, if the voters hadn't already elected him. Some hardcore conservative establishment types are still so butthurt about it that they'd rather vote Democrat - even down-ticket - than support Trump.

Let me know when American progressives are so mad about their establishment candidates losing to an outsider that they'd prefer a strategy of conservative advancement rather than support their own candidate.

That's not really an apt comparison because the Never Trumpers were centrists in their party, not the fringe wings. For someone like Jennifer Rubin to go from being a Romney moderate to supporting the most conservative wings of the Democratic party is not a huge shift. Progressives aren't going to become MAGA conservatives to protest Trump. They will make the shorter journey to the green party or some other left wing third party.

Plenty of conservatives were pissed off enough with the party to leave it. The largest third-party in the US is the libertarian party, which is best understood as an ideologically right-wing party. In that sense, plenty of ideological right wings have been spiting the Republican party in pretty high numbers.

The question would be, how many centrist libs would have been pissed off enough about a hypothetical Bernie win that they would have wrote in "Michelle Obama" or some other nonsense in the general?

 

[theprestige]

I have the sneaking suspicion that if Biden loses, we're never going to stop hearing about how these young progressives are to blame.

Victory occurs in the margins. Biden is weakest among the under 45 crowd. If he doesn't need them, then that's fine. If he does need them, he should figure out how to get them enthusiastic to vote for him.

If "not Trump" is all it takes, then Biden has already won and we're just counting down days to the election. If it's not enough, I don't really see him doing much to improve his standing with these people.

I'm not sure how it's possible to improve his standing with people whose basic position is that as much as they hate the idea of four more years of President Trump, what they hate more is the idea of literally any other available Democrat than Trump.

Seriously, what are "these people" holding out for? Ponies? A constitutional convention? A socialist revolution? Do they really not understand the concept of the perfect being the enemy of the good?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I'm not sure how it's possible to improve his standing with people whose basic position is that as much as they hate the idea of four more years of President Trump, what they hate more is the idea of literally any other available Democrat than Trump.

Seriously, what are "these people" holding out for? Ponies? A constitutional convention? A socialist revolution? Do they really not understand the concept of the perfect being the enemy of the good?

The vast majority of these Bernie people will vote for Biden.

The question will be, will Trump still be able to pander to blue-collar whites in swing states with his xenophobic, anti-elite message. That coupled with an unenthusiastic Biden that depresses turnout could be enough to secure another victory, as it did in 2016.

Despite all the moaning about Bernie bros in 2016, the reason Hillary lost was because Trump has tapped into a populist, anti-elite sentiment in this country. It isn't college age proggies that lost the election, it's middle age white guys who got ****** by NAFTA that were willing to vote for a proto-fascist if it meant sticking it to the coastal elites that keep telling them to learn to code.

 

[Garb]

Is this the same AOC who's been raising funds to primary other Democrats?

Guys, AOC is kind of a hypocritical jerk.

I'm not sure what is hypocritical. She isn't the one making vague calls for unity, here, and I don't know of a time she said it was wrong to primary opponents within your own party if you deem it necessary.

 

[theprestige]

That's not really an apt comparison because the Never Trumpers were centrists in their party, not the fringe wings. For someone like Jennifer Rubin to go from being a Romney moderate to supporting the most conservative wings of the Democratic party is not a huge shift. Progressives aren't going to become MAGA conservatives to protest Trump. They will make the shorter journey to the green party or some other left wing third party.

Plenty of conservatives were pissed off enough with the party to leave it. The largest third-party in the US is the libertarian party, which is best understood as an ideologically right-wing party. In that sense, plenty of ideological right wings have been spiting the Republican party in pretty high numbers.

The question would be, how many centrist libs would have been pissed off enough about a hypothetical Bernie win that they would have wrote in "Michelle Obama" or some other nonsense in the general?

Fair enough.

 

[theprestige]

The vast majority of these Bernie people will vote for Biden.

Is it possible for you to restate this as a testable prediction?

The question will be, will Trump still be able to pander to blue-collar whites in swing states with his xenophobic, anti-elite message. That coupled with an unenthusiastic Biden that depresses turnout could be enough to secure another victory, as it did in 2016.

I don't know if that's the question. What I do know is that up until Sanders withdrew, the message from the Bernie Bros hasn't been that Biden is going to depress voter turnout. Their message has been that they would choose not to turn out for Biden if their candidate didn't get the nomination.

Now your message seems to be that the Bros like Biden just fine, but other progressives won't. If that's true, the why is Biden the presumptive nominee, and Bernie has withdrawn?

Don't you think it's weird that the guy who's supposedly depressing voter turnout actually got enough voter turnout to win the nomination? Don't you think it's weird that the guy who's allegedly the energizing campaigner couldn't even energize enough votes to stay in the race?

Don't you think it's weird that Bernie fans are the only ones openly threatening to kneecap the Dem nominee, and now a Bernie fan is the one telling us it's the other Dems that are gonna do the kneecapping?

Because I think all of that is pretty ******* weird.

 

[johnny karate]

He wasn't one of the establishment candidates. Of course the GOP pols made the strategic decision to listen to their voters, and to make the most out of his presidency.

But never in a million years would the GOP establishment have chosen to back Trump, if the voters hadn't already elected him. Some hardcore conservative establishment types are still so butthurt about it that they'd rather vote Democrat - even down-ticket - than support Trump.

Let me know when American progressives are so mad about their establishment candidates losing to an outsider that they'd prefer a strategy of conservative advancement rather than support their own candidate.

Let me know when America conservatives, to any meaningful degree, have preferred a strategy of liberal advancement rather than support their own candidate, and I will.

 

[theprestige]

I'm not sure what is hypocritical. She isn't the one making vague calls for unity, here, and I don't know of a time she said it was wrong to primary opponents within your own party if you deem it necessary.

Biden's not the one actively fighting against other Democrats.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Is it possible for you to restate this as a testable prediction?


I don't know if that's the question. What I do know is that up until Sanders withdrew, the message from the Bernie Bros hasn't been that Biden is going to depress voter turnout. Their message has been that they would choose not to turn out for Biden if their candidate didn't get the nomination.

Now your message seems to be that the Bros like Biden just fine, but other progressives won't. If that's true, the why is Biden the presumptive nominee, and Bernie has withdrawn?

Don't you think it's weird that the guy who's supposedly depressing voter turnout actually got enough voter turnout to win the nomination? Don't you think it's weird that the guy who's allegedly the energizing campaigner couldn't even energize enough votes to stay in the race?

Don't you think it's weird that Bernie fans are the only ones openly threatening to kneecap the Dem nominee, and now a Bernie fan is the one telling us it's the other Dems that are gonna do the kneecapping?

Because I think all of that is pretty ******* weird.

The people threatening the kneecap the party are a vocal minority that don't have the power to carry out the threat.

Young voters will have a poor showing, as they always do, in the general. That's my testable prediction. Whether or not this is worse than usual for Biden remains to be seen. Work could be done on his part to bring these people onto his side, but perhaps it is not worthwhile. Even Bernie's campaign, which was extremely popular among young people, was unsuccessful in turning this into meaningful power.

Bernie's failed campaign has already demonstrated the limited political power of the young, progressive wing. I think there is a bright future for this kind of politics, but that's for another discussion. That's why I find it so absurd that HRC revisionists are so keen on blaming these fairly insignificant people as one of the key factors for the 2016 loss.

My point remains that Biden's make or break moment will be appealing to blue collar voters in the post-industrial swing states. In 2016, these people chose a vindictive, spiteful man over the empty platitudes of third-way liberals. What has changed?

 

[Segnosaur]

Not much use now, but ...

New poll shows Trump beating Biden, losing to Sanders

One of the first things that those commentators say is that that poll was an outlier, and other polls show Biden having more success.

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk

 

[theprestige]

The people threatening the kneecap the party are a vocal minority that don't have the power to carry out the threat.

Is it possible for you to restate this as a testable prediction?

Young voters will have a poor showing, as they always do, in the general. Whether or not this is worse than usual for Biden remains to be seen. Work could be done on his part to bring these people onto his side, but perhaps it is not worthwhile. Even Bernie's campaign, which was extremely popular among young people, was unsuccessful in turning this into meaningful power.

Bernie's failed campaign has already demonstrated the limited political power of the young, progressive wing. I think there is a bright future for this kind of politics, but that's for another discussion. That's why I find it so absurd that HRC revisionists are so keen on blaming these fairly insignificant people as one of the key factors for the 2016 loss.

My point remains that Biden's make or break moment will be appealing to blue collar voters in the post-industrial swing states. In 2016, these people chose a vindictive, spiteful man over the empty platitudes of third-way liberals. What has changed?

This doesn't seem to answer any of my questions.

 

[Garb]

Biden's not the one actively fighting against other Democrats.

Okay what argument do you think AOC is making that causes her funding potential primary opponents to other candidates as hypocritical? Because what you just said doesn't address your original premise, nor does it address what I said with regards to it.

 

[theprestige]

Okay what argument do you think AOC is making that causes her funding potential primary opponents to other candidates as hypocritical? Because what you just said doesn't address your original premise, nor does it address what I said with regards to it.

Her hypocrisy lies in complaining that Biden isn't acting to further Democratic unity, while she herself is acting against Democratic unity.

 

[Susheel]

Her hypocrisy lies in complaining that Biden isn't acting to further Democratic unity, while she herself is acting against Democratic unity.

How?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Is it possible for you to restate this as a testable prediction?


This doesn't seem to answer any of my questions.

Political predictions are a fool's errand. What exactly are you looking for here?

What is your testable prediction about disaffected progressives "kneecapping" the party? Give me an example and I'll return in kind.