Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

I know you're joking, but even that would make a massive difference :)

Biden is a guy who almost literally has done nothing as an adult but hold elective office. What’s impressive about him is that he was great at holding a Senate seat in a tiny state — he got a total of 116,000 votes when he won his first Senate term — and at playing the role of Ed McMahon to Obama’s Johnny Carson for eight years. Absent his popular role as Obama’s goofy sidekick during the Before Time, his 2020 candidacy would be completely preposterous on its face.

There are certainly things to admire about Biden, starting with how he got himself elected to the U.S. Senate despite having done basically nothing impressive in his life to that point. Of course this also makes Biden a kind of poster boy for a certain type of white privilege of an extreme sort: you pretty much have to be an egomaniacal white guy to think, at age 29, with a track record consisting of not much more than gentleman’s Cs at obscure universities, that what the US Senate needs at this moment is me.

And it’s admirable that Biden was able to overcome a horrible personal tragedy immediately after winning that election (his wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in a car crash in December of 1972).

He also seems to have spent his whole pre-2017 career not cashing in on his political fame, which is an increasingly rare virtue in our political class (He does seem to have given a number of six-figure fee speeches since then though).

If he gets the nomination, I will of course support his candidacy with unambiguous enthusiasm (Again, Donald Trump is president of the United States). But the fact that he’s the frontrunner in the polls for the nomination at this point is hopefully just an artifact of our very strange moment in American politics.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/04/joe-biden

1) Watching you go down in flames
2) Seeing you leave public life
3) Having crows rip out your hair plugs pic.twitter.com/UMA8UGC0y9

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) April 28, 2019

it's weird that the person next to joe is encouraging everyone to take the survey at the same time that joe is speaking

fuckin’ speech bubbles, how do they work

I dread the prospect of Joe Biden winning the nom and hope he gets clobbered

all the ad hominem bile though, who has enough left over to spend on this guy?

kids are in cages ffs

I dread the prospect of Joe Biden winning the nom and hope he gets clobbered

You hope he gets clobbered now, not if he gets the nomination, I trust. At that point I'd vote for a rotten egg in shit if it means getting rid of Trump.

yeah that's my point

luckily he has a lot of time to get clobbered and many angles to get clobbered from

less luckily he is going to outraise everyone else two to one (at minimum)

anyway he's a Joe Biden—not a Joe Lieberman, not a Joe Manchin

At that point I'd vote for a rotten egg in shit

habit left over from 2016

I'm With Egg in Shit

habit left over from 2016

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

in Swingin' Florida the menu options are limited.

less luckily he is going to outraise everyone else two to one (at minimum)

Don't actually think this is true. The big donors will give him a certain amount of money, but I think a surprising number of them will lean toward Harris.

Nobody wants to be seen enthusiastically backing a two-time loser.

i really can't see Biden beating Trump. Doesn't everyone accept that one of the reasons Hilary lost was that she didn't energize minority voters in places where it mattered? How the fuck is Biden going to do that? Does the guy have a lot of black support that I don't understand (maybe he does with older, POC union members, dunno)?

like, if the Dems are going to try to throw the dice on winning with the aging white midwest voter...I don't think that's a safe gamble, because lots of those people are going to be dead by 2020.

xp
I think Harris would be the ideal VP pick if he does get it, for that reason. Not sure if it would be smart or dumb for her to accept.

The big donors will give him a certain amount of money, but I think a surprising number of them will lean toward Harris.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson),

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'surprising' but agree with this. Harris is safer bet than Biden for stopping Bernie. Depends what Mayor Pete does too, he's already knocked Beto Biden Jr out of the way

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

Any Dem could win if white people would get their shit together.

Pittsburgh: "Middle class is not a number, it's a values set!"

O RLY

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

Agree with all this, but the bigger donors are more bothered about stopping Bernie (and maybe Warren if it came to it) than Trump, which is why I think you're right in saying Kamala will be ultimately be the beneficiary of that, not Biden

no one knows who can beat who where. it's all just random.

time is a flat circle

I turn on MSNBC before switching to Netflix and, sweet baby Jesus, Nicole Wallace and her chant of the ever-circling skeletal family devoted all of four minutes to praising Elizabeth Warren for not just knowing more policy than any candidate but being "electric" in a room.

wait, why is trump's severe unpopularity an argument for biden specifically?

he could make inroads in wisconsin or something bc he is folksy

it's just random guessing

not sure its an argument for him maybe just against being yknow *too* cunty about him on the offchance youll be voting for him in a few months

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Monday, April 29, 2019 3:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol. deems got dazzed

im not agreeing with that!

so biden's emotional openness--how he is very into being vulnerable in public, speaking about his personal tragedies, etc--seems phony and unctuous to a lot of people but i think he's betting it's the thing that will set him apart, especially in comparison to trump.

not sure its an argument for him maybe just against being yknow *too* cunty about him on the offchance youll be voting for him in a few months

eight months and up! now is absolutely the time to be cunty! he literally just announced!

i think that's a bigger part of his brand than appealing to midwesterners or being anti-pc or whatever this time around. in a frightening era of ideology he is just a guy and seemingly a pretty nice one. also, refreshingly not that smart.

I think Trϵϵship is otm

His speech this afternoon for those fire fighters wasn't a strong moment -- he sounded querulous, his voice almost cottoned in that manner familiar to anyone who's dealt with a senior. My mom, who turned seventy last September, is starting to suffer from minor memory lapses. This man is almost eighty.

i think his botox and fillers and stuff looks pretty good though, honestly. not too obvious.

the most stirring endorsement he is likely to receive on ILX

biden's emotional openness
also, refreshingly not that smart

good luck usa etc

i am not at all against minor cosmetic procedures to be clear -- wasn't a diss. if i look like that when i'm 77 i'll be happy.

to be extra clear though, he would be a disaster, as would any candidate that isn't bernie or warren. we need someone who thinks structurally.

seeing him speak I agree with Alfred, I'm scared of him being the candidate

honestly I do feel somewhat the same way about Bernie too for that matter, although he seems like he has more on the ball

I really don't want to see someone that old in office

i admit it's kind of weird that we have these candidates who are like at the upper end of the human life expectancy

bernie is an idea as much as he is a candidate though. a bernie victory (and also a warren victory) would just mean something very powerful because they've been so uncompromising. a buttigieg or a kamala, even with a super-bernie platform, just wouldn't mean the same thing

I have no fucking idea what Harris, Buttigieg or Beto would do in office and neither does anyone else (aside from "mainstream" corp satisfaction). It's their brand. lol platforms