The former president has always considered himself to be the ultimate disrupter. But this time, the disruption is on the other side.
Through the weekend, there were an awful lot of questions that were going back and forth from people in the president’s tightest circle, and one of the questions that kept being asked was whether Joe Biden was going to endorse Kamala Harris or not. And the question didn’t revolve around whether he wanted to or not, but whether people in her camp thought it would be better for her to fight for it, win it on her own, and not be seen as somebody who was tapped by President Biden and so, in her own way, have a fresh start going into the campaign.
So the timing seems to be about as good as it could have been to end what has just been one of the craziest two or three weeks in American politics in quite some time.
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I bet he’s livid. Thunder stolen. And he can’t even try to use the attempt to stir up animosity against his opponents, one of his own fired that gun.
Hahaha yes he can, the kid was obviously brainwashed by the left. Never assume facts matter to those clowns
This is getting downvoted by people who only read the first sentence, unlucky :<
I thought “those clowns” referred to Democrats initially.
Yeah me too, I actually skimmed their profile to verify haha.
I prefer satirists with the courage to fly that close to the sun. I got it, but now that you mention it, there’s definitely a judgement call there.
Can we all get together and start posting our $15 dollar donations to act blue? That would surely be something.
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Hallmark of a shitty politician unable to seize the moment more than sticking his fist in the air. The second he opened his mouth, any advantage he had went away.
Actually insane we’ve just moved on from that
He’s already trying to weasel out of the next debate. He’s scared.
Can you blame him? Kamala was a District Attorney and an Attorney General. Even a competent opponent who based their arguments on facts would be intimidated.
Trump wouldn’t stand a chance on that stage.
And if he ducks out hopefully she’ll call him a coward. Repeatedly.
She should start calling him a coward before they start negotiation. He can’t stand women talking crap about him. A woman of color, he’d have a canary.
A canary in the old mind, that’s how the saying goes
I thought it was a coronary in the gold mine.
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All this talk of coronation recently is making me dizzy.
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Wow. WHOOSH cubed
Marty isn’t the only Back To The Future character it works on?
I hope that Harris (or whoever) goes WAY more on the offensive than Biden did. Honestly I think that’s where his age showed the most sharply; he was just too nice, even when he was “Dark Brandon.”
I hope that Harris (or whoever) goes WAY more on the offensive than Biden did.
That wouldn’t be difficult.
Getting called a coward by a woman will break his brain beyond what it is now.
IDK, considering the MAGA crowd consider Trump lies better than facts, because everybody know by now, that facts have a liberal bias.
the fight is not for maga votes, it is for the undecided morons in the middle.
The fight is against the couch, idiot undecided voters are basically a coin toss. Getting 80%+ of your supporters to actually vote for you is all you really need.
Nothing was more demoralizing than Biden in the last debate. Trump against someone under 60 could have the same thing happen to him.
The undecided will be gaslighted too. Are you really sugesting Trump would try to use reason to sway the undecided?
Trump has only one mode, and that’s narcissistic pathological liar.Are you really sugesting Trump would try to use reason to sway the undecided?
no, i am suggesting that primary goal of democratic candidate is not to go after maga voters.
He needs to capture his base too, and make sure as many of them as possible will vote, without them the marginal voters are irrelevant.
Trump will use stupid arguments and lies, and look like he is winning. That’s how he built the MAGA crowd, and that’s the system he will continue to use.
The undecided he manages to convince to vote for him, will then be supporting MAGA by definition, even if they aren’t as batshit crazy as the hardcore MAGA supporters.
No, but a good and clear debater, like an experienced lawyer that she is, would blow him apart. Biden was an effective politician and debated pretty well, but its not his forte in the same way.
It would be cool if Harris can expose Trump, like Obama exposed Romney in their 2nd debate.
He won’t debate her. He’s too chicken shit to do it.
It will never happen. Trump is such a fucking coward. But his supporters are perfectly fine with this being the first election year without a debate between the candidates…
Kamala would wipe the floor with him. Toss him upside down and use his head as a mop.
What’s weird is she is relaxing. After all the chaos and bullshit and jagged geriatrics from those two guys, it’s just relaxing to see her.
.
Surprised the hell out of me when I realized every time I saw her photo some tension left my shoulders. More so the moment I realized she was running. Weird outside of the context of the jagged geriatrics dance of chaos and decline of the last 8 years, within that context, not so much. I cannot be alone in that sensation. .
Don’t underestimate that impact. It’s a show stopper.
she’s also like young, comparatively, experienced, and knows what she’s doing. Which is a nice bump from the previous trump, though biden does also have experience, i’m not sure how much that matters or is even still true anymore.
Don’t withhold credit for Biden’s experience. Even his withdrawal was a shrewdly calculated political maneuver.
oh absolutely, this was strategically planned to be optimally timed lmao.
I enjoy these moments when the bots get disrupted and have no agenda to spread on social media.
It’s so blissfully quiet!
I still find it strange that this is considered “late in the election cycle”. We need legislation limiting campaign length to something reasonable.
Free speech pretty much means you can’t stop someone from advertising for themselves or a cause just because it isn’t close to election season. I don’t disagree with you at all, but this is going to be a constitutional no go, I think.
Free speech can be limited if you have a good reason. For example, if you don’t want people to see how their food is raised, you can just ignore key constitutional freedoms…
Yup. The ag-gag laws seem to be a huge carve-out - if that can be managed, I don’t see why we don’t start limiting the election cycle, too.
What are you referencing?
Feels like you could go after it from a campaign finance angle, not that those laws are particularly restrictive as it stands.
I really don’t know. We’d have to pass it as a law and then see if it survives challenges. Better question is does either party have the political will to make it happen?
Campaigning is not a right. Postal employees can’t run for office, for example.
I’m really not invested enough to disagree, here. If someone can make it happen, great. I think it might not pass constitutional muster but I’m not on the Supreme Court so what I think doesn’t matter.
You could be right, who knows. But that would basically invalidate the entire Hatch Act, which would be wild. But Hatch is too restrictive in my opinion anyway.
Agreed. What about an inflation adjusted campaign budget for each elected position? I believe this system is already used in some countries.
I feel like this would promote a focus on policies/platforms and encourage good faith campaigning.
They could regulate campaign donations, like when they are allowed to be made. Or maybe when those funds are allowed to be accessed. Maybe that would help.
Maybe the access. I don’t know about the donations, though. It’s already been ruled that donations are speech.
I’m not against the idea if someone can make it happen.
I guess this just reinforces the problem with Citizens United. All that free speech is infringing on everyone’s free speech.
You aren’t wrong.
It’s sorta like how “Christmas season” feels earlier and earlier every year… I’m a Grinch until Thanksgiving, and a patriotic non-partisan until Independence Day, thank you very much.
There is absolutely no reason why we need to run primaries so far in advance. They should all be in May or June. As far as I can tell, the only reason the schedule is like this is because some states want the influence that comes with being earlier in the process. But why should Iowa or New Hampshire always get that?
Presidential Primaries should be held over 4 or 5 consecutive weeks, with a rotating roster of which states vote in which order.
Why not like all in one week? Or one day?
Fuck it, liquid democracy.
Allow candidates to be picked by the nation without first building momentum in some of our most regressive states?
I live in Indiana and every year our national primaries are useless. All the nominees are determined by May and it leaves me with zero enthusiasm by that point.
i think we should force campaigning to be entirely done on paper. Forces thing to the rich only, but aide from entirely banning campaigning, and somehow dealing with that mess, i’m not sure how well that would go.
Indeed. Bidens age was the only real argument he had. And now he is the ancient on in the race.
Oh he will find something. She’s a woman. He’s a misogynistic pig, so it won’t be hard.
And I hope she chooses to not lead on a charisma card and instead leans on what she knows best: How to present facts in a concise way. Let her writers make the words, and her coaches help her stand out. I want someone to challenge Trump directly and feel it is the best strategy. Every single stupid little thing he says that includes a kernal of any information should be immediately disputed, disrupted, and dissolved.
It won’t make any MAGA come to our side - well a few might though I’m not holding my breath, it will increase not so much the trust in Harris, but our willingness to stand behind her word. Trust will then increase with time and the accuracy of her statements. There is a certain level of leadership in that.
It won’t make any MAGA come to our side
maga was already fucked, they were never voting for any libs ever. Independents are more likely to vote for her though.
Literally nobody was voting for Trump over Biden because of his age.
Biden’s polling went noticeably down after the debate in which he was noticeably very fucking old.
There were going to be a lot of low-info brain stems that sat out, voted third party, or just out and out voted for donnie for age and/or the media narrative about mental acuity. You can count on that.
They need this energy to make people want to vote; not just to vote apathetically or to perhaps not bother because they don’t feel like it makes a difference, but to get out and do it with purpose, energised to tell others to do it. The VP pick is going to be a crucial part of this, with some actual policies/promises to back it up. The Republicans have shown fuck all, so here’s hoping for a progressive campaign which speaks to people.
here’s hoping for a progressive campaign which speaks to people.
there is a very real possibility that it may actually look progressive-ish. a victory and subsequent appointments will tell us alot, but I have a
minutiaeminutia of hope for something tangibly better than the mean average the past 40 years has given us.I mean this all friendly and not as a ‘gotcha’: the singular form of minutiae is minutia.
thank you, internet friend.
Other than Palin, who was an epically bad choice, I really don’t feel like the VP moves the needle all that much or injects a lot of energy. That being said, another woman on the ticket would be an interesting flex, and there are some good choices.
America is still too misogynistic to let a ticket of two women win.
Edit: I like the optimism of the people downvoting me. I’d prefer they engage, but I still like their optimism.
I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but a pair of women on a pro-choice platform would fucking energize some folks. And I don’t think a token man on the ticket would make a difference anyway.
Also, none of the men whose names I’ve seen put forward excite me the way some of the women do. (I know… bad phrasing…)
Women would turn out for them, a hugely underestimated group.
Maybe.
AOC might be a good pick if you really wanna get more of the left crowd.
I like AOC. But I think she can still do a lot of good where she is. You have Katie Porter ready to go and she might be my top pick. Whitmer limits out in two years, and might be willing to be called up, but I’m really happy with her here in MI and I’m afraid to shake things up too much or risk losing our blue trifecta here. Either of them might be better strategic picks, but what do I know.
I laughed a lot when the international news on TV around here claimed that “in a move that took politicians and campaign mangers by surprise, Biden left the race”… But the more I look around, the more it looks like people were surprised by it.
How come?
Because it hasn’t happened a lot. If you are the incumbent, you are running for a second term unless you are beat or dead. Leaving for whatever reasons is very rare.
People saying that Biden should have dropped out two weeks ago have never, in their entire life, had to make a life-changing decision. Whatever the result, I personally applaud his ability to put aside his pride and his ego for the sake of a cause larger than himself.
Cal comes to mind… and that’s the only one that I can immediately think of.
Edit: looked it up: LBJ, Harry S Truman, Cal, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Buchanan, and James K. Polk. So yeah, really short list.
Everytime someone mentions Harry Truman, I have Linda from Bob’s Burgers song that she apparently sings while braiding her daughter’s hair come to mind:
Here goes the hair and / There goes the hair and / Where is Harry Truman? / He’s dead in the ground. / He’s dead in the ground. / He’s dead, dead, dead!
I don’t think too many realists were surprised. I think a lot of people that buy into a lot of bothsiderist bullshit might have been surprised, I dunno. Or the types that some call “blue maga”, but honestly, unless someone’s paycheck relies on believing in this, I don’t know who qualifies as “blue maga”.
There isn’t much Trump can attack her on that he doesn’t support himself when it comes to Kamala’s negatives. So she is actually a great choice. She also has gotten voters out of the loop of despair, even if there isn’t much info about her plans besides continuing Biden’s agenda.
What’s funny is that this whole thing really started once Biden badly underperformed at the debate.
If Trump had just done his usual cowardly thing and bailed on the debate, we wouldn’t have seen that humiliating performance by Biden, and he’d probably still be on the ticket.
Once again, Trump’s pride has taken him to a place he didn’t want to go.
Holy shit I skipped the last debate but you just made me realize Harris will probably debate Trump now. I wanna see that for sure
Just once I want to hear Harris say “I built my career putting felons like Donald Trump in prison” to his fat fucking face.
There’s no way Trump will debate her. He’ll back out saying she’s an illegitimate candidate or something since she didn’t get selected in the primaries.
They’re going to say you are crazy, they will say you are a bully, they’ll tell you to stop, even your partner will say that you need to stop. Because nobody wants you to break the system itself. But that is true disruption.
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Well, that one landed flat. It was a Miles Bron reference.
The former president has always considered himself to be the ultimate disrupter. [emph. added]
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Thanks, brother.
What Trump fear is not having am audience
I still think it was a bad idea that Joe dropped out this late into the cycle, but at least Kamilla will be a competant incumbant. I didn’t think they were going to put kamilla in his place and I thought we were fucked. Glad I was wrong but I hope that she will be enough. She’s polling slightly better than Joe was against Trump.
Kamilla
*Kamala
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Whoopsy
Hopefully it leaves the Republicans without enough time to develop and implement a new strategy. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have some contingency plan already, but it might be too late for them to actually use it.
Doesn’t really sound like it based on Trump whining about the switcharoo. Pretty sure their only plan was “attack Biden endlessly” with no back up.
If he had dropped out earlier, the Republicans would have used the entire RNC spreading talking points and lies trying to discredit her.
What is this bizzaro world? Who is being paid to write these crap articles?
Nominating Kamala is the best way to guarantee a Trump presidency. It’s like ya’ll learned nothing from hillary clinton.
Yeah and she still won the popular vote. What’s your point?
I doubt that, 2016 people were blissfully unaware how much a crooked president can break America, now they have a first hand experience.
learned nothing from hillary? what? how is kamala as nominee in any way the same as hillary except that she’s a woman?
