Replace Biden? Naaaah.
Like everyone else, I was not happy at President Biden’s weak performance at the June 29th debate. But the pre-debate hype didn’t help. SOTU Joe didn’t show up as the media talking heads all promised us he would. Some other guy did. Excuses were made (head cold, jet lag, over-prepped) but in the end, all it earned the man was a swift kick in the pants by former supporters, and pleasantly surprised jeers from the MAGA crowd.
As I poke this text into my phone, the tides of opinion are still rising and falling. Each day brings us another county heard from.
In a previous post, and in making a different point, I suggested that any Democrat could beat a serial rapist with 34 felony convictions. The point was that TFG is more beatable now than he ever was before. As I wrote after the debate: “No one who isn’t a captive of The Former Guy’s demagogery is saying I really want this guy to be president again.”
That, at least, hasn’t changed. Except now, we have talk of open conventions (from which no emerging candidate has ever been elected in modern times) or a new “real primary” (as opposed to the one I voted in).
This situation echoes one that I experienced in 2006. Tom DeLay (R TX-22) was my congressman then. He had a bad primary with three opponents trying to oust him, and he got “only” 62% of the vote. That was bad news for Tom, and fearing defeat, he decided not to run in the General Election. The Republican Party of Texas got busy looking for someone to replace him on the ballot in November.
Then, lawyers for the Texas Democratic Party, calling a halt to that utter nonsense, got that whole thing thrown out in federal court with the brilliant notion that nothing in the Constitution prevented DeLay from being the nominee.
As is the case now.
Do you think that for one minute the Republican lawyers, the Heritage Foundation, or both, will sit on their hands watching as we Democrats try and fix things by looking for a younger, better, “winning-er” presidential candidate?
Experience tells us that the answer is “what the H-E-double hockey-sticks made you think that?” Have we learned nothing?
Sorry. For just this one reason alone, a torrent of litigation, we have to leave this dance with the one who brung us. To top it off, we have a perfectly good, some say great, Vice-President to assure the continuity of an administration that has had huge legislative success thanks in no small part to Biden’s senatorial mojo.
But hey, if it turns out that, for one reason or another, we have a President Harris before 2029, we can reassure all who still have reservations about him, that a Vice President Newsom is as unlikely a possibility as a Vice President Rubio.
Yes, there will be law suits by the usual reich-wing suspects, but that shouldn’t be the reason not to put forth a different and much better candidate (my money is on Pete Buttigeig).
Unlike with Delay, Biden isn’t “officially” the Democratic candidate for President until the convention. The primaries/caucuses were not for “electing” Biden as our candidate, they were about how many delegates he would have at the convention to support his bid. That is the big difference between what occurred with Delay.
1Anybody who thinks Biden’s debate performance was worse than trump’s was not paying attention.
Now, it’s entirely possible that 99% of the voters weren’t really paying attention.
But to say that Biden pergormed worse is delusional.
2Harry@2 – Who was better or worse during the debate is totally besides the point IMO. I think we should stop comparing those two, they simply are not comparable. Plus, for die hard party line voters, the debate wouldn’t have changed anything. Not to mention MAGA cult members.
The question IS (and I know that I sound like an old grammophon, repeating it again and again) HOW MANY independent and undecided voters Democrats lost and will lose because of Biden’s poor performance during the debate, and after that. Plus those left leaning voters, who do not vote for Trump because he’s a lying scumbag, but can’t make themselves vote for Biden either, after what they saw during the debate.
p.s. Pardon me being so talkative here lately. I promised after 2016 and 2020 that I won’t get myself tangled up again, but here we go… 🙂
3Yes, Biden is old, but so is Trump. Here’s how I see it. Biden is the chief executive. He has put into place people to run departments, who in turn make the government run. He’s done a good job and I think will continue to do so. You won’t see Darren Woods out working on an oil rig or watching dials and turning knobs at a refinery, he’s hired people to make it happen;Exxon is rich because of it.
Let’s remember that Trump will run a vanity campaign, and as long as his overseers let him blather on as President, they will make the decisions that will ruin our country.
4The idea pf an open Dem convention is a wet dream for the folks who don’t understand how things work. Joe isn’t going anywhere. How many times does he have to tell us that? Plus, he won all those delegates in the primaries. (I know, I know, he didn’t have much competition.)
The aces up his sleeve are: 1) the abortion issue; and, 2) Kamala. There will be several propositions ensuring the legality of abortion on many state ballors in November, which will drive turn out–as we have seen over the past two years. And, Kamala–because she isn’t stupid–has learned a great deal at the knee of Uncle Joe. If you haven’t been paying attention lately, she is now a much, much better campaigner than she was in 2020. I hope she is front and center during the convention.
Underestimate the women at your peril.
5I’m with BarbinDC.
6FrauFree @2
But the people opining keep saying Biden had a disastrous (probably the most used adjective) performance. trump’s was worse.
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