Still having a good laugh over the NY Times' insistence that the people shouting "We Love You Joe!" at the DNC convention last night were really saying they love the fact that Joe Biden isn't running again.
Their minds are simply unable to comprehend that people love Joe because he's a goddamn American hero and will one day be spoken of in the same breath as Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.
@jaredwhite It would've been more heroic if he didn't need to be forced out of the re-election campaign under duress. It's good that he did the right thing in the end, but history will remember him resisting it until the last possible moment... because that's what happened. If we could run the whole scenario again, it would've been way better for us if he declined to run for re-election in 2023 and we had a real primary.
@kethinov Bad take. He had every right to run for re-election, and I'd still be supporting him if he stayed in.
But things played out as they did, and here we are. In a *very* good place.
@jaredwhite Which part of it is bad exactly? The idea that he was gonna lose and had to be dragged to that realization kicking and screaming, or the fact that if he had realized it in 2023 we'd all be better off for having had a real primary?
@kethinov You've already argued this point with me, so I'm not sure what you're trying to convince me of. There's no world in which Biden just fades into the sunset in 2023. None. But if you want to fantastize about that, go right ahead.
@jaredwhite What I'm trying to convince you of is it seems highly unlikely history will look kindly on Biden's recalcitrance to exit the race years or decades from now.
When Washington declined to run for a third term and was praised as heroic for doing so, he did it on principle, not because he was bullied by political allies into changing his mind like Biden had to be.
Biden's grade from historians will be "at least he did the right thing eventually," not "American hero."
Since Biden exited the race after the Republican convention, the GOP spent the convention vilifying the wrong Democratic nominee. Trump picked a poor VP choice because he was complacent.
If Biden had announced he wasn’t running for re-election, he would have been a lame duck president and it would have been even harder to pass legislation.
Waiting until after the convention was obviously good strategy and Biden might have already decided to step aside a few weeks before that. Whether it was a longer term “grand strategy” is of no interest to me.
Things have worked out very well for the Democratic Party. I care more about people’s deeds and their effects than about what they say or what they might be thinking. Biden’s actions as a president and as a candidate have worked out to be very successful.
@spradlig @jaredwhite while we certainly agree the way it worked out seems to have been far from the worst case scenario, don't you think if we'd had a real primary instead that would've been better? Elections with more than one credible candidate on the ballot are the sort of democracy the "Democratic" party should stand for, don't you think?
I misspoke about the “real primary”. I meant that if Biden had announced at the beginning of his term that he wouldn’t run for re-election , then he would have been a lame duck.
We did have a real primary. Remember RFK, Jr.? Dean Phillips? They got a lot of press coverage. Which didn’t get them any votes in the Democratic primary.
An incumbent president is practically guaranteed the nomination if they wanted. Don’t blame Biden, it’s been like that for a long time.
Most Democrats are perfectly happy about the “last minute switcheroo” 😅
@spradlig @jaredwhite the lame duck argument still doesn't hold even if he committed to one term in 2021. Do you really think the Democratic House and Senate in 2021 and 2022 would've passed less legislation if he had done that? Seems unlikely.
@spradlig @jaredwhite The way the GOP got punked by the last minute nominee switcheroo is indeed a very helpful and amusing side effect of the chaos Biden forced us to endure all through July, but let's not pretend it was some grand strategy. It was a lucky silver lining.
As for the "lame duck" argument... think that one through a bit more. Can you name even one piece of legislation that wouldn't have gotten through if he had said let's have a real primary instead? Seems like a non-sequitur.