Opinion | To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race
Opinion | To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race
The president’s inadequate performance in the debate made it clear he is not the man he was four years ago.
To serve his country, 34 felon melon should go to jail
36He should.
But if the only defense of Biden is trump is worse, that's still not a reason to not replace Biden with someone better.
Hell, it's a reason to replace Biden.
trump is a major threat to American democracy. We should be running a capable and charismatic candidate against him to maximize the chances of stopping him.
Like, if you're lost at sea, and had the choice of a life raft with radio beacon and supplies to last a month or one of those unicorn ring floats...
Sure. We'd all take the unicorn floaty over nothing, but you'd be insane to insist on it over the raft because there's a shark in the water.
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This is getting down voted here, but it shouldn't be just because some people disagree. The NYT editorial board coming out with this is a Big Deal. It has the potential to change the race. A lot of influential people still read it.
Key Democratic leaders have been lining up to support Biden, but of course they will. He is their guy. We don't know what private conversations are happening, though. If Biden can be convinced to drop out, all these people who are defending his decision to stay in now will defend his decision to back out.
No matter how many op-eds people write, though, Biden will stay in the game unless two things happen:
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his polls take a further nosedive -- but even then he may be convinced he can make that up
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his donors dry up.
Even if Biden drops out, all the tankies here need to accept the fact that the Democratic nominee will not be some progressive darling who will stop shipping arms to Israel. It will be whats-her-name, and the entire party will expect us all to get behind her. Get over yourselves. Hold your nose and vote for her, no matter how much she loves cops.
And he's not getting fired at the convention. The only off-ramp for Biden is if he backs out entirely. That means formally resigning and giving whats-her-name not only a campaign, but a country to run. Good luck!
15Do you know what the word tankie means? Because I don’t think the people you are describing are tankies. Progressives, democratic socialists, maybe some anarchists, or just Palestinian liberation people of all stripes but tankies no. Tankies are not supporting the Democratic Party because they don’t generally believe in democracy. If they were to vote it would be third party or maybe even for Trump in the hopes the west will destroy itself.
Tankies are dangerous so please don’t dilute the meaning of the word that way.
11You're right, I'm being a bit disengenuous there. But I'm trying to draw a line between the typical GeNoCiDe JoE nonsense that some people push here, and what is going on now. There are a lot of well-meaning progressives who get caught up in that, not realizing their movement does nothing productive for anyone they claim to support. They may as well be tankies, in regards to their effect on what happens in the election.
Any replacement for Biden will not be more progressive, and in fact will be more centrist to try and win back that middle voter. Progressives can't say "I won't back Harris either, she likes cops too much" and not be part of the problem.
Even after all this, I still have confidence in Biden as a leader, and will vote for him if he remains on the ballot. But I now have much more severe doubts about his electability than I did on Wednesday.
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Thank you for this. Lot of knee jerk voting going on that’s ignoring huge moves going on out there. Please ya’ll don’t bury these in my feed just because you don’t like it.
6This is getting down voted here, but it shouldn't be just because some people disagree. The NYT editorial board coming out with this is a Big Deal. It has the potential to change the race. A lot of influential people still read it.
The people downvoting don't care. This community is particularly bad for it, imo. There is a group of people who will downvote literally anything bad for Biden, and think that people like return2ozma, who seems to genuinely be a democrat, are posting bad news as part of some plot to suppress the vote (?) and help Trump win.
One time I saw one poll with good news for Biden upvoted and another, equally legit poll in a different state (I think this was a swing state too) but showing Trump in the lead sitting on zero. It is not about whether it is significant for these people, it is literally "Is this good or bad for My Guy? Does this fit the echo chamber I want to live in?"
They absolutely should not downvote something like this, you're totally right. Any relevant political analysis/news from a respected source should get upvoted. But the (justified) fear of Trump is making tribalism hit hard and turning some people into petulant children with nothing to do but demand we "vote blue" and prop up the narrative.
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This whole freakout over one bad debate (that had lousy ratings) in effing June is more embarrassing than productive. Maybe everyone should calm the fuck down and wait for enough high quality poll data to see if it even caused a shift in the race. For all we know, it changed zero minds or people were turned off by Trump’s angrier, dumber rambling old man answers.
5One bad debate is one thing but this was maybe the worst debate performance in history. And Biden’s polling was already quite bad prior to this. These polls show essentially no advantage in sticking with Biden, which is highly unusual for an incumbent. It’s likely to only be worse after the new information gets factored in.
That said, you’re right that we likely need all of the information from new polling to decide on the correct path. But if democrats are smart they are at a minimum setting up an alternative candidate at this point.
5Agreed. I’m not saying Biden should or shouldn’t drop out. I’m saying we’ll know more in a few days and everyone should calm down and also consider the downside risks. Even beyond basic horse race polling, we don’t know how voters would react to a replacement candidate instead of “generic Democrat.” Maybe someone like Whitmer solidifies Michigan but is unpopular with Georgia or Arizona voters for some reason. I have no idea at this point.
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Polls dont matter I thought. Or am I only supposed to say that when it shows Biden losing the general?
3I mean, that's all pro-Israel moderates...
3I have bad news about who a convention of Biden loyalists will nominate regardless of what horrors Israel does. Or a committee of wise party elders (which doesn't exist), for that matter. The time to challenge Biden was before he won every primary with like 80% of the vote.
There's just not a realistic way that I can see where the convention nominates a progressive option. Even just replacing Biden with someone younger and the exact same policies would be nearly impossible.
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Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.
This isn't just one person's opinion, it's coming from the Times editorial board.
And while I don't often agree with them, it's telling that such a "moderate" organization is saying Biden needs to step aside.
But I'm sure people are going to call them trump supporters now.
3This may be an unpopular opinion, but I see this as an irresponsible use of media privilege. This isn’t the same as contacting the campaign directly with an informed opinion. This just proves to adversely impact his campaign when he doesn’t step down.
2If he doesn't step down, Trump will win. If he does step down, we have a chance at not having a fascist running the government.
-5Biden isn’t great, but he’s done a lot of good with his first term.
Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked the Keystone Pipeline permit, created a 13 million acre federal petroleum reserve for Alaskan wildlife, greatly increased oil site lease cost, signed $7B in solar subsidies, invested $66B in passenger rail, enacted the Inflation Reduction act to support clean energy, increased energy efficiency standards on cars, appliances, and industry, created new permitting rules to streamline transmission lines, leveraged the NLRB for an FTC ruling that eliminated non-compete agreements, capped credit card late fees, reduced or outlawed junk fees in several industries, forgave billions in student debt from predatory loans, created the CHIPS Act to improve reliance on domestic technology, reenacted Net Neutrality, repealed Title 42, ended the Muslim Ban, reinstated the law prohibiting Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory, signed the Equality Act for LGBTQ+ rights, restored gay rights to beneficiaries, pardoned thousands of gay veterans from being convicted based on their sexual orientation, reenacted trans care anti-discrimination law, signed the Respect for Marriage Act, enabled unspecified gender on US Passports, rejoined WHO, rescheduled marijuana, banned medical debt from credit reports, actively reducing drug costs with the American Rescue Plan Act…
Fascism doesn’t look like that.
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