US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

I disagree with this pretty strongly! It's a big decision, with a lot of complex political, legal, and financial consequences, and I don't want it done in a snap way.

I think if there were an unexpected situation due to an assassination or plane crash I would agree, rushing such a decision with no prep would be a big mistake. But I think in this scenario you would expect that the wargaming for such a situation has already been done, perhaps the timing came as a surprise but this kind of eventuality has been predicted for a while now to arrive at some point

Unless its the case that no preparation or contingency measure were previously thought out and ready to go, but that probably just exacerbates the seeming appearance of inertia and indecision

Non-US lurker here but I've been following the debate here, bewildered by how people have such strong opinions about whether he should drop out or not, because it seemed to me there are no great options and therefore no strong opinions make sense to me, and the stakes are so high that every consideration is terrifying.

However when I was watching that Raskin clip, I realized that if I woke up tomorrow and saw that Harris is replacing Biden, I would feel relief. If the speculation continues indefinitely, I suspect I will feel a growing sense of dread.

Anvil, we’re taking about the Democrats here, I’m sure they had no preparation for this.

Non-US here too, just overwhelmed by dread over it all for the last week. Seems insurmountable, esp after SCOTUS intervention. Hoping against hope Dems win both houses and presidency in November and find some way to overcome the corrupt SCOTUS, and/or something awful befalls Trump and 6/9ths of SCOTUS.

bewildered by how people have such strong opinions about whether he should drop out or not, because it seemed to me there are no great options and therefore no strong opinions make sense to me, and the stakes are so high that every consideration is terrifying.

To my surprise this has gradually become my position (as of 9:15 a.m. EST) too.

If the debate had really been just a one-off bad day and not a sign of cognitive impairment, Biden would be out giving press conferences and unscripted interviews left right and center to prove it. He hasn't. He's given one teleprompter performance. There's no way he can keep that up for another four months.

The indecision is far worse than either path

They're following Yogi Berra's advice: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. It sounds like it might be less indecision than intransigence/digging-in on one side vs. acceptance of the inevitable (reluctant or otherwise) on the other.

I realized that if I woke up tomorrow and saw that Harris is replacing Biden, I would feel relief

I had that reaction yesterday just at Doggett and what seemed like the possibility that something might change. I was surprised to find myself thinking, "Yeah, Kamala!" — not a thought I've ever had in my life til yesterday. So I'm going with that. It doesn't mean I have some great confidence in her abilities or prospects, more a measure of how grim and sad the prospect of a forced Biden march thru November seems to me. At least with Harris it's like, we could have an actual campaign with an actual candidate! She could go places and say stuff!

If the debate had really been just a one-off bad day and not a sign of cognitive impairment, Biden would be out giving press conferences and unscripted interviews left right and center to prove it. He hasn't. He's given one teleprompter performance. There's no way he can keep that up for another four months.

― Zelda Zonk,

He responded to the SCOTUS decision and has got an interview with George Snuffleupagus on Friday.

CNN was a solid drumbeat for Biden leaving last night. Just relentless. They've made up there minds over there!

The relentlessnes has been something to see. Online, too--the whole left side of their front page at the moment. Good for business is the obvious answer. (Not the people they're interviewing, they're sincere, but the programming decision to seek them out one after another.)

The fact that nearly a week after the debate this is just getting bigger makes it feel more likely something will happen. Biden team strategy to ride this out feels dumb and wrong.

What can be done about SCOTUS and these latest rulings? What a fucked-up situation whereby 9 partisanly-appointed individuals can seal the fate of a whole nation.

The easiest solution would be to expand the number of justices or to put a hit on Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.

Anvil, we’re taking about the Democrats here, I’m sure they had no preparation for this.

Its not necessarily a surprise that this caught them unawares, I can see that. But not acting quickly one way or the other would confirm that. The worst decision of all is no decision

I agree about all the options being bad options. They're all exponentially better than no option

As a media person I just kinda roll my eyes at people complaining about "the media" in situations like this. Of course the media is all abuzz, it's what the media does — it's a hell of a story! — but they're not inventing any of this. They're responding to the same things everyone is responding too — what we all saw at the debate, and the actual-not-imaginary widespread public perceptions and reactions to that. This isn't some media lynching, it's just plain old news.

If you don't want "Party panics after disastrous debate" to be the headline, then don't have a disastrous debate that causes the party to panic.

fair enough but also the media are amoral eyeball-seekers

Well yeah, I mean, it's called "news." Novelty-seeking is inherent to the enterprise. And this is all pretty novel.

As a media person I just kinda roll my eyes at people complaining about "the media" in situations like this. Of course the media is all abuzz, it's what the media does — it's a hell of a story! — but they're not inventing any of this. They're responding to the same things everyone is responding too — what we all saw at the debate, and the actual-not-imaginary widespread public perceptions and reactions to that. This isn't some media lynching, it's just plain old news.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

OTM. As somewhat of a media person I have to explain to people that most political writers vote Dem, regard themselves as liberal, some are gay, others have trans kids; however, they're products of journalism schools and programs that instill #bothsidesism as if it were doctrine. They genuinely think they're being fair when ceding space to a kook climate change denier. They're subject to groupthink and hate falling behind a story picked up by the competition.

Their editors, however, skew right-ish. It gets worse at the top.

I've felt for almost a decade or so now that the weakening of the media in the internet age - the loss of ad revenue, the need for clicks to survive, social media whittling away what was left of a workable model - made fertile ground for such political "disruptions" like Trump and Brexit and so on, to the detriment of democracy and freedom and everything else that's good.

I agree with eephus though, if they made a decision now it would come off panicked and rushed, also "SCOTUS just turned the US into a dictatorship" is currently dominating the headlines and I think changes some of the internal strategy as well, problem is I just do not see how the Dems ever do the right thing

Alfred otm, but there's another factor which is just the excitement of a big story. People get hung up thinking about the ideology of news operations, but the biggest bias isn't really ideological, it's just "what's the most interesting thing happening right now." For people who haven't been in a newsroom when a big story is breaking, I don't really know how to describe it, but people just light up, the whole place turns electric. It's exciting. In the moment, it doesn't really matter whether the news is "good" or "bad" for the particular players in the story, it's the story that turns us on. Just how it is.

yup

Tipsy OTM. It becomes a moment of infinite possibility out of thin air - what takes can be pursue? Who can we call? What’s likely to come next?

(Stevie is also right though)

Yeah, the weakening of the MSM in terms of resources has been bad for all sorts of reasons for sure.

I don't disagree with any of tipsy's points here--good for business, as I posted--it's just that CNN generally takes a very bland middle ground, so it's a little surprising to seem this hammer so hard on this story. (Except: good for business.)

"seem this" = "see them" (there's a transposition)

anyway one thing I've been hearing a lot is that Biden should not drop out because the old and feeble stuff is already baked in, as it was in 2020 when he won the primaries and then the presidency, so it can't really "hurt" him anymore. the polls are kinda showing that, he's lost maybe a point or two while Trump hasn't really been helped, though I would argue that you shouldn't be running behind a criminal and open fascist at all

that said I think there's a much stronger argument there for him dropping out - if he's running against DeSantis or Cruz or Rubio maybe it's different, but something that is getting overlooked right now is that Trump is also very old and not in particularly great shape, he's constantly saying bizarre and brain damaged shit, he's freezing up during speeches too. it'll get worse as the campaign goes on. and yet the voters still think he's more "mentally fit" to be president by a wide margin. and honestly I'm not sure if they're even wrong to do so anymore! but if Biden resigns and it's Harris, suddenly that conversation is focused solely on Trump.

hard to predict how much that will help but I will say whenever the subject of politics comes up with people who do not follow this particularly closely (which is much of the country I'm sure) the one topic that's almost always brought up now is "our leaders are too damn old" - RBG, Mitch McConnell, and Feinstein are still on people's minds. both presidential candidates are of the age where normally the only viable "career" would be Wal Mart greeter. idk I think just recognizing that might buy the Dems a lot of goodwill, in fact Biden announcing his resignation is probably the one thing he could do to significantly bump his approval rating

as Robin says if the news dropped that Harris was going to now be the nominee, I'd feel a lot of relief. its kind of the one thing keeping me from despairing entirely. and I don't particularly like her! but she can speak well, she can do events, she can provide a stark contrast to Trump's utter insanity, something Biden sadly cannot do anymore.

Kamala's worst stylistic trait, of course, is that she's prone to word salad -- but so are both Biden and Trump. She at least does it confidently and happily, and it's usually a jumble of platitudes rather than an inability to articulate matters of substance.

I'm a U.S. non-lurker and am 100% in agreement with robin on this. I kinda figure that if people like me knew what should be done, and had the ability to carry it out, we'd be running things. And we're very much not.

Also, as a recovering ex-media person, I agree with stevie and his Lordship.

One little-remarked-upon cause of the demise of print journalism was not just losing ad revenue in general, but classified ads especially. Which were singlehandedly killed by a guy named Craig. Thanks, Craig.

something that is getting overlooked right now is that Trump is also very old and not in particularly great shape

otm, this has always been to me one of the obvious benefits of having any younger candidate vs. Trump. He's the one who ought to seem like old-man-yelling-at-stuff and totally out of touch with the actual America of 2024. But that potential advantage is totally squandered when the candidate is Biden, instead Trump benefits from seeming more vigorous and with-it.

Kamala is definitely a total weirdo, which I think maybe comes from being in a career where having a personality is seen as a negative, then suddenly needing to develop one for political reasons. she has like this Tim and Eric sense of accidental comedic timing. tbh if anything it's probably a good thing in this hyper online political climate. I sometimes wonder if Hillary would've had a better chance if she said more weird shit. all anyone remembers is "Pokemon Go to the polls"

...and "deplorables"

*BIDEN TOLD ALLY HE IS WEIGHING WHETHER TO CONTINUE IN RACE: NYT

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 3, 2024

How much does it weigh?

The story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/biden-election-debate.html

President Biden has told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.

The president, who the ally emphasized is still deeply in the fight for re-election, understands that his next few appearances heading into the holiday weekend — including an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — must go well.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend, said the ally, referring to Mr. Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in the debate. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

The conversation is the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years.

Not much of an ally is they leak it to the Times, eh?

if

lol "if he has two more events like that"

“Two more strikes, and I’m out!”

Sorry

That's gotta be it. Whatever gets said publically, I'm sure the story is three steps ahead of that behind the scenes.

The campaign is hiring a social media person "to write daily content for VP Kamala Harris and expand the Vice President’s voice online."

Couple of things:

1. Part of the reason this is not going away is that trump is staying out of the news. It’s also the reason the debate was such a disaster: trump let Biden speak (or was muted).

2. If it goes to Harris then the funniest vp suggestion I’ve heard is manchin.

Josh Marshall:

Two thoughts on our current predicament. The first is that while people are seizing on this or that bad poll – and there are some – we now have seven polls in which we have before and after data from individual pollsters, before the debate and after. This is the only real way to judge the public opinion of last week’s debate. Putting all those together you have Biden going down one point and Trump remaining unchanged. This data point is certainly not determinative in itself about what should happen next or anything about the campaign. But from what I can tell it is the best systematic and data-driven look at the impact of this event which has consumed the political world and especially the Democratic party for a week. The slight shift could in fact quite easily be explained simply by non-response bias. By any measure it is very limited.

At a minimum we need to look clearly at those numbers as a counter to what from the world of commentary and chatter has the look of a collapse of support for Biden and even Democrats generally. Vibes, the overlapping cacophony of voices on cable news and on editorial pages are all together like being in a room of screaming, shouting people, leaving one disoriented and overwhelmed. Packs of reporters at several critical publications – most notably The New York Times – are deeply invested in what they clearly see as vindication. This is jackals and hyenas type stuff. These numbers, while not gospel and also a moving target, are at least the result of some systematic analysis, like instruments signals flying in a storm.

The problem is not a collapse in support as measured by polls.

It’s that Biden is behind and the debate didn’t change that, and also there are 3.5 months to go and the clear evidence of the debate is that Biden is not going to make it through that without similar incidents.

The campaign is hiring a social media person "to write daily content for VP Kamala Harris and expand the Vice President’s voice online."

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, July 3, 2024 9:57 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the only person I can think of who would be qualified for this is Neil Breen

basing strategy purely on polls conducted in the immediate wake of a debate is dumb. especially since it takes a while for the true effects to show up in polls. if you wait for that, you're already behind the eight-ball.

frankly, Trump and his voters created a narrative about Biden and his senility, even as Trump himself was losing his marbles. now, Biden has completely played into that narrative on camera, and there's no way to wash that stink away from the public eye. even if you shot him full of crazy experimental drugs and it didn't happen again.

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