One House Democrat said he spoke for others in the wake of the president’s stunningly feeble debate performance on Thursday: “The movement to convince Biden to not run is real.”
The House member, an outspoken defender of the president, said that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should consider “a combined effort” to nudge President Joe Biden out of the race.
Crestfallen by the president’s weak voice, pallid appearance and meandering answers, numerous Democratic officials said Biden’s bet on an early debate to rebut unceasing questions about his age had not only backfired but done damage that may prove irreversible. The president had, in the first 30 minutes of the debate, fully affirmed doubts about his fitness.
A second House Democrat said “reflection is needed” from Biden about the way ahead and indicated the private text threads among lawmakers were even more dire, with some saying outright that the president needed to drop out of the race.
It’s almost like it was a stupid fucking decision in the first place to make Biden, Obama’s embarrassing baggage, run for president.
So many of us fought this, and so many of us now hate the democratic party for this. They get zero sympathy from me at this stage.
I’m voting against Trump in this election just like I did in the last election, but after the conservatives retire the narcissistic criminal, all bets are off.
Hate to give attention to polls, but pretty much all polls say otherwise, so “bot pushing narrative” orrrr?
Not gonna happen. Also, the debate won’t make any difference. People made up their minds a long time ago on Biden vs Trump they are clearly not budging no matter what happens with the candidates. Only if they fall over dead will they be replaced.
The election will come down to like 2000 voters in some swing states. Even if 1% of people in those states changed their minds it could swing the election.
Don’t expect retards to accept this. They’ll just huff their fucking copium as if Thursday didn’t happen.
Clearly the blue team fans will simply abandon their team going into the superbowl.
Remember when a huge coalition of people wanted RBG to retire? And then she didn’t, and those people took it as courage or some such other virtue?
Fucking hate when you get “too old” out of people for one side but not the other.
All these fossils should have been sent to the farm years ago.
Max age for starting a term should be 70. In most places you can’t be in control of a car without regular tests when you reach that age, yet you can be in control of the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth if you can still tell the difference between a cow and a horse.
There’s a herd mentality that often overrides practical thinking, along with the desire not to offend.
I think for RBG she had worked so hard to get there as a woman, and she probably felt like men don’t retire from the role just to please political concerns so why should she? Could she see the mess the country is in, she would have retired.
Her lack of oversight is one of the only things many of us will ever remember her for. She set all women back 50 years by not stepping down. That’s part of her legacy now, and it always will be.
Her decision is a lesson for all those who will listen. We need to stop gambling with the future of our country. The best decision for everyone always needs to be put forward, and even the best people need to step down, if needed, to preserve and secure progress.
I only remember people being so pissed that she didn’t, they celebrated when she died. I don’t remember anyone who wanted her to step down calling it ‘courageous’ when she didn’t.
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 Joe needs no convincing and this is already decided.
Oh God, Gavin Newsom ruined SF, which gave him the credentials to ruin California. Now it gives him the credentials to ruin the country?
I’d be cool with that
I’d like to know what you’re talking so I never take it.
I just had a soda and a vegan burger. So… I guess eat meat and avoid high fructose corn syrup? 🫤
Phew, I ate a beyond burger earlier and I’m still cogent and coherent. Guess it’s the corn syrup, just like my dad warned me.
I don’t believe this conspiracy theory (or.not believe it), I am just saying it exists. But yes, without the corn syrup, I would probably be a better and sexier person.
Then why parrot chafe into the conversation at all?
The conspiracy theorists all say
He pretty clearly stated that it was the conspiracy nuts in his first comment.
Poor fella. Read my question again, but this time try to think about it.
I am adding it for posterity in case it does happen. I don’t believe or disbelieve this, but I have seem “conspiracy theories” proven true later and sometimes it’s like people forget the “crazy” people mentioned the truth months or years prior. I want this here so that if proven true, the word “misinformation” will start to be viewed skeptically as the Ministry of Truth word that it is, divorced from science and discourse.
Adding distracting points into the public discourse when people are seeking clarity doesn’t seem like a noble goal.
What do you get out of it at the end, the ability to say “told you so”?
What if Kamala does step in due to the very real odds of a medical issue happening, then shall we start believing conspiracy theorists on other points?
My point remains the same, you’re occluding understanding of the situation, both currently and in the future, and I don’t like that.
Isn’t it legally too late regardless? Don’t they have to have their application and fee in by a certain date?
Legally the party can do whatever they want: https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
The court affirmed that the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Hillary Clinton.
Wow, what a garbage site that grossly misrepresents what the judge said (and then went on to contradict this in the article). The judge didn’t ‘affirm’ their claims of bias, but just assumed they were true because whether or not they are true makes no difference to the ruling, as they basically claimed it was the wrong place for the suit. They even explain later on that assuming the plaintiffs claims are true is a common practice when dismissing a case.
Nope, he’s not the official nominee until after the convention. Still not gonna happen, but technically could.
Okay you know what? That’s it, elections are cancelled until morale improves
You joke, but that’s exactly the next step trump will take if elected to secure “president for life” for the federalist society.
It’s too late. They should have listened when we all said that before. But MMW, if they switch now they’ll not win in November. Stay the course and there’s a squeak of a chance.
Here’s the thing, if they push Biden out and pick Harris, she can’t beat Trump.
If they push Biden out and DONT pick Harris they’re literally telling the public that this presidency is not legitimate.
If they push Biden out and DONT pick Harris they’re literally telling the public that this presidency is not legitimate.
The rest of your post makes sense, but if they choose a new person to run they aren’t admitting that this presidency is not legitimate. How the fuck do you even get yourself to this point? And how does this nonsense even have any upvotes?
Because the DNC would be literally saying neither are competent to do the job.
Shout out to the neoliberal dipshits who thought we needed another right-of-center incrementalist to beat Trump.
That one really fucking worked out…
I fully confronted a person that claims Biden was the best shot against trump in 2020. I pointed out how he was not given that we are here now.
They still think that this is the best case scenario… like would they ever admit they were wrong?
Okay, I’ll bite. Who has a better chance?
A year ago almost anyone with the endorsement of Biden would’ve coasted.
Bernie did in 2020.
I think people misunderstood my comment.
Biden being the choice in 2020 didn’t fix anything, it only delayed the problem.
As evidence by this year’s election.
My prediction is that one of them doesn’t make it to Inauguration Day and the country panics as a result. Is likely? No. But on this timeline it makes the most sense
If Trump wins and dies before taking office would be a lot worse then Biden dieing.
Before Trump’s body is even cold there would be endless amount of conspiracies that Democrats killed Trump. The only saving grace would be Trump’s VP and other blood suckers all have diarrhea for brains and lack the charisma to take advantage of the situation.
I honestly think Bernie should run independent.
It’s clear Biden has no chance of rapidly changing his policy or stance on anything, meaning he will most likely lose to Trump anyway.
Even if Bernie gets only 20% of votes, it would be enough to get the DNC to split.
Amd no that 10% would not have been stolen from Biden. I saw Hillary’s horrendous turnout, people don’t vote when there’s not a candidate worth voting for.
The problem with that isn’t Bernie. The problem is Trump. Bernie splitting the Dem vote is a more sure-fire way to get Trump than Biden running as it is.
Isn’t it too late to get a new democrat as candidate anyway, right? I mean you need to register in all states before a deadline no?
There, a candidate must win support from the majority of “delegates” - party officials who formally choose the nominee. Delegates are assigned to candidates proportionally based on the results of each state’s primary election. This year, Mr Biden won almost 99% of the nearly 4,000 delegates.
According to the DNC rules, those delegates are “pledged” to him, and are bound to support his nomination.
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 convention.
Presumably, Mr Biden would have some sway over his pledged delegates, but they would ultimately be free to do as they please.
That could lead to a frantic contest erupting among Democrats who want a shot at the nomination. Source
2024 is going to be the year of frenzied elections with no preparation
People out here just winging shit like the future of the country doesn’t matter
I’m pretty sure he could step down and hand it to Kamala. Maybe he could even run as VP. That might rock the boat the least, and while I don’t like Kamala, I have more faith in her to actually do the job.
I always figured the role of president was more of a figure head.
I get the buck stops with them, they can do their veto and special powers thing, and I’m sure there are other “ultimately this is your decision” type things.
But it’s the administration you are voting on.I’m sure it feels amazing to have “that one guy” steering your country. But, I’m sure they mostly do what their advisors tell them to
I mean, that’s partly true. From my keeping up with politics, some of the candidates actions are their own but about 80% of the job is what you described. Your party recommends actions to you and congress sets you up for most of your actions. Vetoing things is only common when the opposition holds congress.
I’ll highlight though that lately the presidents have seized more and more power and continue to do so. It started with Bush basically declaring war without congress and lately it’s been Biden doing things like canceling student loans and blocking the border up. Which I get that’s all power they’ve always had, but they’ve been reluctant to use it improperly because it’s so abusable. Now those robes are off and so trump will come into office and immediately write laws by himself basically
The US has been on a governance crisis for some time now. It is slow and gradual, but they already had a coup attempt. It is the sort of things that is surreal and only possible to see when you look at it from a multi decades POV. Like Asimov’s foundation, it will take centuries and lots of things can happen in the mean time, but you can already see the empire imploding, rotting from within. Rome took almost 3 centuries to fall, and it was more like an erosion rather than crumble. I can see something similar.
I want a president who has a vision and some form of understanding, but who knows what he doesn’t know and knows how to get that information. I want someone who I know has the best team guiding them and has sound judgment.
I can’t fucking believe this is an impossible ask. :(
Also being young enough that they’ll actually have to live with any fuckups they create would be a nice bonus. Our current options don’t have any skin in the game.
Did you open a case for that
“Biden can’t be persuaded let alone pressured”
Which sums up both Biden’s strength and all his problems in one statement.
I am right now drafting a message to send to the White House contact form advocating for just this. Will do nothing most likely, but it’s my drop in the ocean.
We need ranked choice voting, and this 2 party system is complete bullshit and needs to go. Obviously, neither will happen, but it should.
Funny how people elected under the two party system aren’t super motivated to change it.
This is why it has to come from the bottom up. All of the people saying “im sitting out of this election” or “i’m voting third party” are just acting in vain. It’s all vanity as they want to pretend they are doing something while not actually doing anything. If you want this system to change, you have to go out in local elections and push for people who will change it to ranked/star voting, and then have that move up. Then you have people who have won under those conditions voting for it, which makes it a ton more likely.
Just changing the voting system by itself won’t get rid of the two party system, we also need proportional representation. I much prefer Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting because the results are as good, if not better than RCV, they’re easier for the individual to understand, and it’s impossible to submit an invalid ballot using either method. Plus RCV doesn’t actually change the winner the vast majority of the time. Fargo and St. Louis both use approval voting and folks there appreciate being able to vote for everyone they like and know that their full ballot will always be counted.
We’re not trying to force a change in winners though. The elections below president are far more dynamic and the people elected usually win for a reason beyond FPTP.
But also, any kind of proportional representation requires a constitutional amendment. RCV can be installed with a state legislature making a 2 sentence bill.
Really what needs to happen is removing the 100 year old cap on the size of the house. 800 reps would drastically change both presidential elections and representation of people in general. Using 800 reps puts California at 96 members to Wyoming still having 1.
Honestly I’d go further, let’s get a round thousand and hook it to a ratio. Obliterating the ability to buy house races will result in better high level candidates and better low level representation. I’d say let’s do the full ten thousand if I thought people would for it.
That linked data is collected from local American races. The winner is overwhelmingly the person who won the first round, which is the only round the majority of the time. When people claim RCV will break the two party system they are trying to claim it will change the winners. The evidence largely shows that no voting system can take a single-winner duopoly and break it.
Any new voting system would require only a simple bill from the legislature. “Ballots instructions for every election at every level shall direct voters to select any number of candidates. The candidates with the most votes wins their respective election.”
Proportional representation specifically refers to how parties divide the available seats in a parliamentary body. Not how you cast your vote.
RCV allows for changes that FPTP doesn’t but that has never meant this would be shaken up right away. Mostly it’s a way to avoid vote splitting. So you can run a progressive, moderate, conservative, and an alt right candidate without the traditional alliances worrying about vote splitting.
Proportional representation specifically refers to how parties divide the available seats
I apologize for not addressing that, but I didn’t think it required expanding on. Yes, that’s correct. I feel the preferred proportional method is Sequential Proportional Approval Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approval_voting)
RCV doesn’t eliminate vote splitting, it only mitigates it. If two candidates have similar support in a non-final round, one can act as a spoiler for the other. The problem is that it’s harder to understand and FairVote used to lie about it, so a lot of people think it’s not a problem. The Alaska special election from a few years back is an example of a spoiler election. If Palin hadn’t run (or fewer Palin voters voted) the other Republican would have won. If you want to completely eliminate vote splitting you have to move to a cardinal voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting?wprov=sfla1) method that satisfies the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, which is most of them, including approval voting.
SPAV is specifically constructed to work with proportional representation. It iterates until all seats are filled. But in the US, by Constitutional law, it’s one seat per geographical district.
About RCV though it’s still head and shoulders above FPTP, and easy to understand. About Alaska specifically, I don’t understand why you would call the party backed candidate who got more votes a spoiler?
Palin lost in the second round because roughly half of Begich’s voters did not want Palin. If the less popular Republican candidate wasn’t in the race then Peltola still wins. This was a case of RCV working exactly as advertised. A traditional party primary would have nominated Palin, not Begich, and she would have lost anyways.
SPAV is specifically constructed to work with proportional representation. It iterates until all seats are filled.
Yes, that’s how it works. The first round is functionally identical to regular approval which is why I like using the two. Approval for single-winner, SPAV for multi-winner.
But in the US, by Constitutional law, it’s one seat per geographical district.
I’m pretty sure it’s just federal law, but I would have to double check. Not like Congress would change it anyway.
A traditional party primary would have nominated Palin, not Begich, and she would have lost anyways.
That’s pure speculation. But using the voting data from the general, we Begich was preferred to both Palin and Peltola in head-to-head matchups. Palin pulled enough votes from Begich to eliminate him in the first round and he lost to Peltola in the second. If Palin hadn’t run Begich would have won.
You can read more about it from the linked sources here.
Here’s the most relevant section:
Some social choice and election scientists criticized the election in published opinion pieces, saying it had several perceived flaws, which they technically term pathologies. They cited Begich’s elimination as an example of a center squeeze, a scenario in which the candidate closest to the center of public opinion is eliminated due to failing to receive enough first choice votes. More voters ranked Begich above Peltola, but Palin played the role of spoiler by knocking Begich out of contention in the first round of the run-off. Specialists also said the election was notable as a negative vote weight event, as those who voted for Palin first and Begich second instead helped Peltola win by pushing Palin ahead of Begich in the first round.
Elections scientists were careful to note that such flaws (which in technical terms they call pathologies) likely would have occurred under Alaska’s previous primary system as well. In that binary system, winners of each party primary run against each other in the general election. Several suggested alternative systems that could replace either of these systems.
You have to be careful analysing RCV results, because people tend to only look at what the election did, and fail to look at what it didn’t do. One of the good things about RCV is that it collects a fair bit of information, but then it usually ignores a fair bit of it. When trying to understand whether a candidate was a spoiler or not, you have to ask what would have happened if they didn’t run at all, which requires considering collected information the “unaltered” election didn’t take into account. If removing them from the election changes the winner of the race, then they were a spoiler. We know that removing Palin would have resulted in a Begich win over Peltola, so that makes Palin a spoiler. She’s a losing candidate that changed the winner of the race simply by entering, assuming voter preferences are stable.
Just changing the voting system by itself won’t get rid of the two party system
Not immediately, but it is a necessary condition. A third party really can’t exist without ranked choice voting. If allows for a third party candidate to run without pissing everybody off.
There are lots of voting systems that make third parties less damaging to major parties. Approval, RCV, STAR, Score, to name a few. Approval is a better choice because it’s much easier to use and explain to people (RCV disenfranchises minorities, poor people, and under educated voters), while generally agreeing with RCV on the results. Plus, it’s much easier to expand to proportional representation, when we get there.
RCV will end the two party system. France uses runoff and they have more than two parties
That said, I’m partial to the systems in Sweden and Germany, plenty of options to choose from.
Sounds nice and fair. Also won’t ever happen. Our options will always be giant douche or turd sandwich.
You start from the bottom and work your way up. Switch your local elections to approval with a referendum campaign, and by the time you get up to the state level you’ll have people in office who have already proven they can win under approval. I’m serious. You should run a referendum campaign.
Lol, my state, county, and city are so deep red that there’s no chance. Most local primaries, there’s not even a democrat on the ballots. My options are to write in my favorite fictional characters or vote for the least shitbag republicans. My votes are quite literally a waste.
Okay. Go convince the Republicans who control over half the states to switched to rank choice voting.
I think we’ll first have to convince the Democratic leadership since they’re about as equally interested in changing things. Both parties want to maintain the status quo because it keeps them both in power.
