I'm not going to do the work to get around that paywall and I need more of a TL;DR than the bot gives cuz I can't figure out who they are talking about beyond Whitmer in the summary.
Any kind soul want to copy pasta some key quotes?
But on Whitmer..
Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who supported a successful ballot initiative to enact abortion protections and who enjoys a roughly 61 percent approval rating in a politically fractious swing state, where a local militia plotted to kidnap her.
I mean thats kind-of a big fucking deal. She's pretty progressive. But not DSA progressive. Winning Michigan. That's a big state.
Realistically however, there is the elephant in the room which is a question lingering in African American voters minds (links if needed) which is, OK not Biden, but isn't that why we have Harris? And if you side step Harris, like.. good fucking luck getting African American women to vote for you.
And honestly, I'm so broken by the modern DNC, I don't give a shit. I'll take the shitty mom-joke DARE cop. I'll drop my ass out of a coconut tree. Just give me someone who is at least competitive. Maybe that means Harris gets sidestepped, but damn that sure looks fucking bad if you do. Unless its for Michelle Obama. Then we can just cruise to victory.
The sad honest truth is probably that there are more bigoted people out there that won't vote for a Dem if it isn't a white guy than people who would add votes to one who isn't, particularly in swing states. Maybe I'm too cynical...
As for replacements, even the people who some polls show as being slightly more popular than Biden haven't been through anywhere near as much of a dedicated smear campaign as he has, and if they were, we don't know how they'd poll.
I never said it was impossible, just that one subset of the voting population was likely larger than another. Obama getting elected didn't end racism, it was just a victory in spite of it. Honestly, part of the rise of White Nationalism might even be attributable to his election, making racism worse.
Why is race a topic? Because there's a bunch of voting idiots who make their choice based on it. If the candidate doesn't bring other votes with them somehow, it just makes it that much harder.
This. Part of the reason we are in this mess now is that Obama won. The fact that we dare put a black man in the WHITE House, for not 4 but 8 years, broke their tiny little racist brains. They dogged him for every little thing they could, spent 8 years blocking, obstructing, bad faith arguing, and outright refusing to collaborate with a black man.
At a BBQ for Biden-Harris event, a small crowd of Democratic voters gathered recently for a quiet lunch in the parking lot of a Detroit church, where a swift Michigan wind carried away their polite applause.
At one table, a member of the United Auto Workers, the state’s powerful automotive union, told me that voting for President Biden was a duty he planned to perform.
Then Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas grabbed the microphone. And suddenly, the listless group of voters came alive.
“The Republicans remain steadfast as it relates to Roe v. Wade. They didn’t take our rights overnight. They worked on it. For decades! We need that type of resolve!” Ms. Crockett boomed to the mostly Black crowd. “They want to say things like: ‘You know what? Jim Crow life was better for y’all Black folk.’”
“No! No!” a man shouted out. The crowd fell silent, rapt.
Ms. Crockett, a powerhouse campaigner, isn’t even the most talked about from the Democratic Party’s deep bench of rising stars. As she and others continue to hit the campaign trail, the conundrum facing the party becomes clearer: There is plenty of political energy within the Democratic base, but it may not be there to re-elect Mr. Biden.
The dynamic is an awkward one. For months, Mr. Biden relied on this charismatic group of Democrats to serve as surrogates. In the wake of his disastrous debate performance, it is increasingly difficult for voters to ignore the bevy of charismatic politicians outshining the standard-bearer they are trying to publicly defend.
There is no mention of Whitmer anywhere. Did the AutoTL;DR bot hallucinate that?