A poor debate performance has fuelled Democrat unease about Mr Biden's candidacy.
The first presidential debate is done and the aftermath has not been good for the incumbent, Joe Biden.
Some Democrat politicians and operatives reportedly texted CNN commentators with hopes that Mr Biden, 81, would step aside.
Some floated the possibility of going to the White House and publicly stating concerns about him remaining as candidate.
But if Mr Biden were to drop out, it would be a free-for-all. There is no official mechanism for him or anyone else in the party to choose his successor, meaning Democrats would be left with an open (Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19-22.
There’s no time. Democrats, I swear, just can’t see past one election at a time. They’re literally not prepping someone else. What they think will happen is KH will be the next person and they’re flat wrong. She can’t win. But they’ll dig their heads in the sand and put her up anyway.
So, now, because they put an old guy up last time they’re stuck. They have zero choice but to run what the brung.
Is it really feasible to replace Biden at this point? I didn't watch the debate last night but from what I've heard it was not good for Biden. Nonetheless, I think Biden remains the Democrats' best option. They're just going to have to rely on the electorate recognizing that Biden is still the better of the two choices, as pathetic as that reality may be. However, even if that strategy is somehow successful, again, and Biden does manage to get reelected, the Democrats MUST nominate a better candidate in 2028. I don't think the Democrats can continue with their strategy of just being better than terrible, indefinitely.
Just made a large post on this elsewhere, but the TL;DR is that the party can't just replace Biden. He has all the delegates from the primaries. Do you really think the party that is campaigning on preserving Democracy can get away with ignoring elections?
Now, it's possible that Biden gets diagnosed with a severe case of not-gonna-win-itis which adversely affects his health to the point that he has to resign not only from the campaign, but from the Presidency. If that happens, Kamala Harris becomes the 47th President, and has the only real claim to take over the ticket. It has the fun side effect of making Trump reprint all his hats to say "45 - 48" instead of "45-47".
(The Secret Service better take good care of President Harris, because whatever VP she appoints to take over that role needs to get a majority vote in both houses of Congress, and the House will never do it.)
At this point it's starting to feel like Biden's holding the nation at gunpoint and making us have a second Trump term. He's always been a terrible politician, running twice for the nomination and failing to get a single delegate, until Obama made him VP. Honestly I suspect part of the reason Obama chose him is because he didn't wanna play kingmaker and figured Biden was too old to run again.
Then in 2020 I think the argument was Biden could benefit from Obama's popularity. I certainly thought that was a terrible pick, but not totally lacking in logic. But in 2024 there was utterly no rational basis for Biden to be running in the first place. Now that he's been a complete disaster, he's just fucking us as a nation for his own narcissism.
Literally anyone that is younger than 70 could run and win. Biden needs to do everything in his power to campaign for whoever NOW. It may already be too late.
It feels very reactionary, especially on something that doesn't really affect voters by all that much. If Biden announced a popular VP candidate, they can lead with that person being ready to step up if required.
Because it is sooo late in the arbitrary-election-cycle, no matter what the Dems do, they're fucked.
Go with Biden?
Then they're fucked.
Go with Kamala Harris, whom the white-supremacists have been working against for years?
Then they're fucked.
Find somebody else?
There isn't time, so then they're fucked.
This highlights the category of political-lesson that you have to "fail early & fail often" ( to use a phrase from successful serial-startup founders ) in order to find the robust candidates whom you can currently win with.
UNlike the way the Dems have played.
The CNN+NYT "shutting down" of progressive-issues & progressive-voices, in the last election, burned too much potential out of existence, and that traction is gone: non-recoverable.
The mega-entitlement of the Biden insitution is buckling & collapsing with increasing obviousity.
I fucking told everyone so, again & again & again, but it was all my "delusion" & "incompetence" & "defectiveness" & "lies", was it??
Trump is going to become the US's dictator,
& is going to begin the 2nd half of the US's Civil War ( the Confederates only pretended to surrender, & now are earning a "reverse takeover" ), & the butchery will probably reduce the US's population by 2/3rds, within 12y, counting all the consequences both direct & indirect ( complete failure to manage a hurricane's landfall costs much more life than does managing it competently: multiply that by a dozen per year, & you've got human-costs up the gills, without even considering atmospheric-rivers, megadroughts, quakes, wildfires, or any other kind of disaster to multiply costs on, right? ).
it is infuriating to see people insist that "social pressure will make this work", millions of times,
while it measurably, proveably, isn't working, but that is what Natural Selection at the species-level means, isn't it?
Terminal Species-ending Butchery.
Sunak's obliteration of his own party, Kim Campbell's obliteration of her own party, what was that Liberal premier who wiped out her own party, in Ontario, can't remember that one's name..
Social-pressure never acts when it is needed, it only acts when it gets around to feeling comfortable with acting, and that is consistently too-late.
So, when will the Democratic Party admit they need to change gears??
After they've fundamentally lost, is when.
Imagine running a bunch of freight-trains that way: "oh, we'll slow-down when we feel a collision beginning, but until then, we're really fine, & there's no indication of any real need to be doing anything different, is there?"
Feelings are the wrong metric for preventing this kind of catastrophy.
frustration-rage
Authority needs to have hard walls, bright lines, & deadly-force biting its corruptions/entitlements/dishonesties/DarkHexad enactments, etc.
Political-process won't ever allow any such rule, in its dominion, of course..
And that is why political-process cannot be permitted to own our world's fate: its conflict-of-interest, & its inescapable-corruption disallow integrity from ruling, & without integrity, then only "Justice", with falsifying-quotes, the phony version of Justice, remains..
So, The Great Filter's going to extinguish yet another world, from this Universe, is it?
Political-machiavellianism/dishonesty's going to snuff all LivingPotential, LivingWorth, LivingOpportunity of this whole world, while the "social consensus" indulges in orgiastic clusterfucking, until existential-viability itself is gone..??
Ah, but at least everyone will be able to feel that they "weren't responsible", right?
Social-feelings: that's the real LORD, and so long as it's happy, then existence, itself, isn't actually necessary, right??
First of all the party doesn't have to do anything. They literally make the rules of their nominating convention. So the idea that it would just be unfettered chaos is ridiculous.
With that idea firmly in place, yes it's physically possible to replace him, until the nominating convention nominates him.
As to the idea that it must be an open convention instead of some kind of brokered convention, the earlier the democrats get on this and the more buy in they have from Biden, the more successful it will be. If they aren't going to pull the trigger though you'll never hear about anything because it could damage the campaign. So it's a crossing the Rubicon moment the second they announce they're going to do something other than nominate Biden.
first of all, some names that have been thrown around-
Newsom, high profile governor from taking runs at MAGA in the media. Was already raising his name recognition for a 2028 run.
Whitmer, governor of a key state, bullet bump from the kidnap attempt
Pritzker, governor of a key state
Shapiro, governor of a key state
Obviously some other people are getting their names thrown around, but the party is not going to take any extra risk in a time like this. So the replacement would very likely be straight, white, male, and photogenic. I wish we lived in a world where that wasn't true, but they're trying to reach for every single vote they can and they cannot afford racism or misogyny to pull anything.
Bernie, I love him but we're not exactly going to say Biden is too old and then nominate Bernie.
How the party does this would also have an effect. If they make it an inclusive process, debates with a caucus or comment period before allowing only the top two or three (according to polls and comments) to go into the convention then they can avoid a lot of the anger over appearing to just throw Biden away. The elephant in the room here is they did not have an actual primary this year. One man's name on the ballot is not an election. So they'd need to have that sort of atmosphere, but in just the few weeks before the convention. If they don't try to include their voters then this would fail.
Over all there's a lot to be said for sticking with the guy versus taking a path with so many failure points. If they approach a candidate and that candidate leaks the plan, they're worse off than before. If they don't make the voters feel included they fail. If they allow the convention to become a chaotic mess they fail. If they can't get Biden to endorse the replacement they fail. If they choose wrong with the abbreviated vetting period and we get another October surprise then they fail. And there's always the chance that they sustain too much damage even though they do everything right and fail anyways.
But yeah, it's possible, it doesn't have to be chaos, and there are people who can step in.
A BOX OF HAIR WITH A STICKER OF A CARTOON BLUE DONKEY ON IT COULD EFFECTIVELY REPLACE HIMlook... We're really not asking for much. The bar is subterranean. It's clear that the Democrat party is dead set on playing limbo in hell. But I admit... It's nice to dream. I hated buttigieg in 2020. In fact I couldn't fucking stand any of the vaguely beige cardboard standees that made up the lion share of all democrat candidates that year, but the truth is that just about any of them would be acceptable now just to ensure that we're one step closer to extinguishing the GOP because frankly THE ONLY WAY WE'LL GET A GOOD PARTY IS IF THE MOST EVIL ONE DIES AND THE REMAINING ONE SPLITS. Like when our forefathers curb stomped the federalists into oblivion - whom were ALSO nationalistic conservatives and absolutely deserved their resting place in history's rubbish bin. For fucks sake, the Democrats desperately don't WANT the Republican party to die and that's all the more reason to KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT. So just vote for literally anyone other than the GOP to make the Democrats suffer and then their party will disintegrate into two subfactions and we can focus on purging the tradcon SCUM from them, too.
There is no official anything when two duopolic corporations (with wildly similar interests) decide which candidates to bring forward. They decide which two will be the only viable choices.
Afaik there are no legal requirements binding them except the restrictions who is eligible ("being born in USA", that sort of arbitrary weirdness).
Biden can only be removed by Biden, but frankly, his performance last night was so terrible, he not only needs to stop the campaign, he should consider stepping down from office.
If he can't handle Trump in a debate, there's no way he's handling the duties of office.
As for who would replace him?
The DNC would push for Kamala Harris which would guarantee a Trump win.
The next two logical choices would be Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer.
But there are lots of good Democrats out there, Peter DeFazio, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, Earl Blumenauer, all from Oregon.
If you're dead set on "ancient white guy", I hear Jerry Brown is still available. :)
This is the thing with a primary season. If something happens late in the season, then how do you go back and change the results from earlier in the season?
Let's say for instance Biden listens to all the "sky is falling" pundits and retires now. How does the DNC choose its candidate? I'm not very familiar with procedures for a closed system like that. Do they do an open convention and let the delegates vote on whoever they want? Do they have a list of candidates to vote one at the convention? Who makes up that list?
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. If this is true, then we need not worry for this is all fot dramatic effect and Gavin and Kamela are already selected.
Gavin Newsom or Jon Stewart would be the only people with name recognized and the politics to win. Knowing the DNC will get Hillary Clinton or Hakeem Jeffries
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. If this is true, then someone is already selected.
A lot of the presidency seems to be cheerleading and keeping up appearances which is what a lot of celebrities are pretty good at anyways so I'm the spirit of slam dunking Trump on the name recognition side may I propose:
Not like it's the first time we've had an actor as president or anything either :>