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

Fred we all think youre an idiot plz stop

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Thursday, March 26, 2020 8:40 AM (forty-five minutes ago)

evergreen

you are presuming *every* vote for Biden is = an anti-Bernie vote

sadly I think this is more true than a lot of people want to admit right now

I think it is too! but the convention doesn't have a provision for making the direct assumption

Reanimating some candidate who got <50 delagtes (or none) and dropped out before Frebruary (or never entered!) would have implications for the party (and the general election) that'll make earlier concerns about the fallout from a traditionally brokered convention look mild by comparison

I'm not saying that won't happen, I'm just saying there goes your party

But that's not how it works! I know that, and I'm from Denmark!

the party's not gonna look the same next year no matter what, either Biden will lose the general and the progressive wing will find the strength to reshape it or Biden wins and the progressive wing finds the strength to exit it.

xp Fred shhhhh

what? what's now how it works?

(realize this is a dumb prediction but idk)

nobody knows "how it works!"

We're in the middle of a pandemic and talking about the unlikley scenario in which the presumptive nominee dies from it or falls into a manhole or whatever

You're looking at this as if it's a congressional election, but it's really not. You need 2000 delegates! If Biden gets a majority, but can't use it, he is free to use the delegates as he thinks is best. If he died, Buttigieg would have a fine claim to see he was the runner up in the moderate lane, and would have won if it weren't for Biden. If the delegates agree, they'll go to him. And that is the democratic way to do it!

he absoultely would not

James Clyburn would probably agree, I think his son worked on the Buttigieg campaign

the last time a candidate died in the middle of the primary, the convention did not go great

If Biden gets a majority, but can't use it, he is free to use the delegates as he thinks is best.

No shit Sherlock. My point if you reread is that this is would be a dangerous calculus the party (and Biden himself) might be unwilling to make, seeing how millions would no longer feel "defeated" but disenfranchised.

If you can cite some precedent for this sceanrio please do. I'm no scholar of U.S. electoral politics, but then again I'm not Danish.

lmao

1968 is the closest precedent, even though most states didn't hold primaries then. but choosing a party hack to replace RFK instead of the delegate leader Eugene McCarthy did alienate the activist left and leave them feeling disenfranchised

Also at the time RFK was killed there was greater parity—three candidates with 250+ delegates. This is not that.

No it's not, Biden is a clear frontrunner. So yeah, it's different.

Anyway Biden's going to slog Frankenstein-style through the convention, get the nomination, call his wife "Mr. President" or something, and tank Wisonsin

lol

Btw, Humphrey would have won even if Kennedy had lived, right?

you're saying he would have won the nomination?

Yeah.

I'm saying the problem was bigger than the assassination

What if he has to drop out after he has the nomination, won't it then go to his vp pick? That seems a lot cleaner

I would think so as well. But we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario where Biden drops dead - without naming a successor - too late for another campaign to restart, but too early for him to name a vp.

I have no doubt a lot of Bernie-voters would feel disenfranchised rather than defeated. That's what they felt last time, and it seems like a lot already feels like that no matter what this time. But with the not-so-great result Bernie has had this time around, I think the party would care more about the majority who wanted an establishment moderate shithead. Sorry, candidate.

this pandemic has by and large had a softening effect on my heart, made me instinctively kinder, more patient and understanding

and yet

if biden dies or something his delegates will rally behind someone like klobuchar.

she's never lost an election!!!

if I knew back then what I know now
If I understood the what, when, why and how.
Now it's clear to me. What I should have done.
I should have ran for higher office after my landslide victory
in the 8th grade national honor society vice presidential-election
When I still had never lost an election
But hindsight is 20/20 vision ..

we've all missed our opportunities

i won the Catholic county spelling bee in 8th grade, but I couldn't leverage that

I could elected to school council as the communist / satanist candidate.

Also I was, like, the only one left who hadn't been elected before at that point.

I know this is a silly question, but how would the Blue No Matter Who crowd react if Bernie was accused of sexual assault?

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) March 26, 2020

I will say this about the Biden campaign, his adviser @RonaldKlain is a legitimate expert on pandemic response and would be infinitely better than Mike Pence or Jared Kushner.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 26, 2020

I really don't think anyone should ever spend time on these things if they aren't willing to take a stand on the veracity of the allegation.

This is utter (and unsurprising) horseshit.

The main reason I find it hard to believe is that it's the second story Tara Reade has told about Biden, it's completely different than the first one, and she is now saying she was adjusting the first story make it more believable among the other allegations. But that this is the one that is true. That gives me pause a lot.

― Frederik B, Thursday, March 26, 2020 1:00 PM (yesterday)

i agree w/ this. i'm not gonna form a definite opinion on this allegation till a credible journalist looks into it, but the degree to which her story has changed since she first told it gives me some serious doubts about it. frankly i think it was pretty unethical of the intercept to run a story about this without even trying to vet her accusation. i found all the WHY ISN'T THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MENTIONING THIS crap on twitter to be pretty ridiculous -- as if any serious news outlet is going to publish such a serious charge against a candidate without investigating it first.

In the Intercept article it's specfically mentioned that she told her mother, brother, and a friend about the 1993 incident at the time, and that they reached out to the brother and the the friend (the mother has since died), who both confirmed they heard about it from her back then. Does it make sense to you that someone would come up with a false claim, tell her close ones about it but remain otherwise silent for over 25 years, and only then speak about in public?

The rape victim logic police are on the case I see

Have you made up your mind, Simon?

It’s Tara Reade’s word against a man whose Presidential campaign was sunk in 1987 due to his lying.

A Yahoo story published yesterday afternoon.

It mostly retells The Intercept story.

Have you made up your mind, Simon?

only that I've made up my mind not to do this:

Does it make sense to you that someone would come up with a false claim, tell her close ones about it but remain otherwise silent for over 25 years, and only then speak about in public?

Saw the interview in The Hill. The story changed again. I'm sorry, I don't believe this.

Also, whatever else it is, it's really bad journalism.

Here's where I stand at the moment. Quite a few media outlets could have been selected over The Intercept and a notorious Russia denier (and doesn't Jeremy Scahill face his own assault allegations?); any them would kill for the chance to destroy the Dem prez frontrunner.

Also, to think these allegations wouldn't have been known in 2008 when Biden got vetted as vice president stretches credulity. You'd think a hint of this behavior would've scared the people around the first black prez nominee in history.

Sorry -- I meant Taibbi, not Scahill.

The reason to do a second interview is to find out if her story is consistent. Letting her do it on Skype from her home means we don't know if she is using notes. It's useless. I'm kinda horrified by how leftist outlets are handling this.

Sounds like me too was a waste of time