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

Maybe Cheryl Hines was saying on Thursday night, "Bob, I know you want to go on CNN, but if you poke your head out now they'll hit you with that dog you ate."

“Stop fucking giving Biden money.”
-Damon Lindelof, creator of LOST

https://deadline.com/2024/07/joe-biden-has-to-go-damon-lindelof-democrat-donor-1236000351/

I did wonder if Vanity Fair is part of a Hollywood machine that was sitting on that story for this kind of situation. It didn't seem particular time-sensitive. I'm not sure how that kind of decision is made.

tradition says that summer is the time to publish news stories about loons bcz that's the type of thing that can grab the attention of the public when nothing important is happening. obv, some important things have been happening, but the decision to got to print will have been made before the debacle debate.

Joe Biden literally JUST emailed me:

Andrew, I know the past few days have been tough. I'm sure you're getting a lot of questions. I'm sure many of you have questions as well.

So, let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I'm running.

I've been knocked down and counted out my whole life. I'm sure the same is true for many of you. But my father had an expression. He said, “Champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down. It’s how quickly you get up.”

As a country, when we get knocked down, we get back up. When we get counted out, we just work harder. That is exactly what I am going to do, and it’s what I need you to do as well...

how'd you get knocked down Joe

he's really leaning into the Chumbawamba messaging

look, whatever, Biden knows himself better than anyone, if he really thinks he's up to this now that the entire country thinks he's senile, give him a chance to prove it

if he faceplants like this at another live event though i'm gonna be incredibly upset

If his interview with Stephanopolous is a shitshow, maybe that’ll finally pull the plug

Andy, I got that text about an hour ago!

does the campaign have the final say on how it's edited? have to imagine ABC is going to want to keep it in if he says anything truly bizarre like he did at the debate

I don't really know what's to be gained from this kind of thing. He's not going to look or sound great, he hasn't in years. It just feels sad to me, like it'll produce a range of reactions but not fundamentally change anyone's sense of things and just kind of kick the can down the road unless/until something else bad happens. On the other hand I don't expect him to be terrible, surely with adequate prep and rest you can get through an hour with Stephanopoulos.

i hate to say it but maybe the country just doesn't want someone who always gets knocked down and who is sympathetic and relatable because of tragic loss. maybe this country just wants a sane badass who can speak in public and doesn't kill too many people in countries fill with poverty and hunger and who doesn't give a fuck about no trump. Dems are supposed to be all brainy and shit why can't they ever find someone who can slay at public speaking? And who is funny. is there one funny Democrat? like, funny ha ha on purpose and not because they fall down all the time.

But, guys, Biden has a tragic backstory! Let’s celebrate the underdog!

i wouldn't hire a social media person for kamala. i would hire a team of ace comedy writers who can come up with a dozen good Trump putdowns every day. and i would have her go on Fox News and just unleash comic fury on those idiots. go into the icky lion's den. show them who's boss. it ain't tony danza its kamala!

this will never happen and she will be awkward but whatever. this is a thread for dreaming.

dreaming and dreading, just one letter apart

sad lol

Andy, I got that text about an hour ago!

wait, he's sending them out to just everyone? I thought we had a special donor/donee relationship

Regarding slaying at public speaking: you guys don't like them at all I gather, but Newsom and Buttigieg are both very impressive as debaters and as public speakers.

I still would rather have Biden or Harris, as bumbling or awkward as they might be (Harris has really improved, though). And I don't know among the Republicans anyone who is funny either

Yeah, Newsom is smarm but he's actually a pretty good communicator

lol

Vanity Fair's story goes on to suggest that Kennedy could have contracted the brain worm in 2010 from the 'dog.'

The candidate has said that he believed he contracted the tapeworm from food he ate - though it's unclear where he had that meal.

Reed Hastings wants him out, too. Yikes. Maybe even Katzenberg and Geffen will be next

https://deadline.com/2024/07/biden-reed-hastings-quit-race-1236001194/

I really do think this rush to ditch Biden is misguided and will backfire

Ari Emanuel was ready on Friday morn for him not to run. Here he is at the Aspen Ideas Festival (really interesting interview; the Biden stuff is of course at the beginning):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx55HtvkPJg

I don't think mega-donors have nearly as much sway over this kind of decision as the long term political insiders Biden trusts most, who understand what it takes to win elections. if the media frenzy and polling numbers take on the aspect of a landslide that will bury Biden, those kind of insiders will start telling him he's toast with near unanimity; he'd listen to their perspective, carefully check it against his own sense of political reality and might actually step aside.

In that Ari Emanuel interview he talks about his own father — we're going to get so many think pieces about this whole thing, because so many people of think-piece-writing age are also dealing with aging family.

i feel bad you man now fucking win

We need that on T-shirts.

I don't think Biden is destined to be a victim of a media frenzy or bad polling numbers, as much as I see you would all seem to relish it for some reason.

He is competent and he will survive and go on to win the nomination and win the election. Replacing him by Harris or whoever else will just result in endless lawsuits brought by the Federalist Society in various states (Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona etc - see the Notus article, which is scary) and will cause chaos. Any replacement candidate would just be starting with nothing, no campaign funds or support 3 months before the election. It's not going to happen

He is competent

citation needed

you would all seem to relish it

no we are seriously fucking concerned that he is obviously not up to the job... did you watch that debate?

3 months before the election

four months

playing by the rules hasn't worked very well so far for the non-fascists, perhaps something new is in order

Ari Emanuel is one of Elon's BFFs

There’s no rule a dog can’t run for president

sleeve, I would just ask what alternative you propose that seriously could work at this late date? All of the "but what about so-and-so" arguments are not going to cut it at this point

it's not ideal

The obvious answer has been floated pretty much everywhere — Harris. I agree that it still seems pretty unlikely it will happen. But it's not like there's not an answer to your question. Yes, lots of people think she (or anyone, but she's good, she's fine) would be a better candidate. You don't, I get it.

You're wrong about there being personal animus to Biden in any of this, though. This is personal in the sense that a lot of people think he's the wrong person for this election, but that's because of entirely pragmatic and practical concerns. As I've said, if he was polling at 60 percent, I'd be so happy. 50 percent I would take. He's nowhere close and going lower. We can argue all we want about why that is, but his apparent diminished capacity is near the top of most of people's lists. And that's not something that gets better with more time.

Playing by the rules got us a 6-3 Supreme Court. Fuck civility and “staying high”

Dan S, do you have a link to the notus.org article you think people should read?

I hadn't heard this about a potential legal challenge to Harris' candidacy, just to the others.

nah I think we all need to stay high if we're gonna make it through this

Also to Dan, there's the issue that a lot of people (me included) do think he's not just too old to win — which is the main and urgent concern — but also just that he's too old to do this. Assuming he stays in, I hope he wins, but if he actually exceeds my expectations and does that, we still have a huge number of ongoing fights — climate, abortion, economy, education — that it's going to be important to have strong and popular leadership for. And I just don't see that happening. Instead it'll be some kind of ongoing senescence watch. So even the best-case scenario with Biden here is not that great!

that article was linked upthread, tbf it did have one major asterisk which is that the Dems haven't had their convention meaning they haven't actually nominated anyone yet so I'm not sure what these legal challenges would be based on, if they try to swap candidates afterwards though it would probably be a giant mess

I don't think mega-donors have nearly as much sway over this kind of decision as the long term political insiders Biden trusts most, who understand what it takes to win elections. if the media frenzy and polling numbers take on the aspect of a landslide that will bury Biden, those kind of insiders will start telling him he's toast with near unanimity; he'd listen to their perspective, carefully check it against his own sense of political reality and might actually step aside.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, July 3, 2024 7:13 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like everything is going to be more clear after a couple of weeks. obviously pollsters are gonna be chomping at the bit to see if Kamala really does have that much higher of a chance and if they are consistently showing that she does - which seems possible, given that Biden is trailing every Dem Senate candidate - I have to think he would at least be open to the idea. if he stays in and loses, that more than anything else will be his legacy. fwiw I do think Biden still has decent political instincts somehow, I don't think what he's saying right now means he's absolutely staying in...he knows if he leaves any room for doubt, the fever pitch gets that much higher, and as many have said in a situation like this "if you have 2 quarterbacks you have none"...he's the guy until he isn't.

if a pope can resign just because he feels the job has become more than he can handle, so can a president. but my feeling is that this isn't what will happen. the dog has barked, but the caravan will move on.

https://www.notus.org/2024-election/biden-heritage-republicans

Then there's this shit. Fuck you Biden, fuck everybody around him.

Republicans. They can fuck off too. That goes without saying.

― Cow_Art, Wednesday, July 3, 2024 11:26 AM bookmarkflaglink

Ok, thanks.

That article didn't link to the memo it was reporting on. I could look the memo itself up but I don't think that sounds like a serious legal impediment to a potential Harris nomination.

I could look at it further but it would be kind of hilarious for the Heritage Foundation or whoever to spend a lot of time and money to keep Biden *on* the ballot while Democrats tried to keep Trump *off* the ballot in various states. It looks like a wash to voters, or that they don't have a lot of confidence in Trump. I doubt they would do this, and if they really were planning to, they should just do it rather than tell everybody about their legal strategy and give the opponents time to prepare.

The Heritage Foundation fighting to keep a Black woman off the ballot in Georgia would be pretty on-the-nose even for those guys. (Which means they will 100% do it, of course.)

you're wrong about there being personal animus to Biden in any of this, though. This is personal in the sense that a lot of people think he's the wrong person for this election, but that's because of entirely pragmatic and practical concerns.

I think that's largely true though obviously there are a lot of people on the left who hate biden. I used to hate the guy and have grown to like and respect him after his VP stint where I think he was pretty effective and I think he became much more likeable as a human being the older he's gotten, until now. This is frankly a tragedy, and I wish he'd had the foresight to have declared 2 years ago he wouldn't run and the DNC could have prepped Harris for the nomination. Kicking the can down the road was insane in hindsight.

this thread makes me so depressed.

xp to tipsy

True, but "keep a black woman off the ballot" is obviously not a law to which the Heritage Foundation can or is citing.

I just spent a few minutes looking for this memo on their website and gave up. If anyone finds this memo, I will take a look, but anyone can sue anyone for anything and get sanctioned/disbarred/disciplined/arrested like a bunch of the election lawsuit lawyers did.

re: Notus:

“If the Biden family decides that President Biden will not run for re-election, the mechanisms for replacing him on ballots vary by state,” reads the memo. “There is the potential for pre-election litigation in some states that would make the process difficult and perhaps unsuccessful.”

The upshot was that replacing Biden on the ticket would be “extraordinarily difficult” Oversight Project Executive Director Mike Howell, who authored the memo, told NOTUS this week.

With Biden’s odds of winning looking longer by the minute, organizations like Heritage are pledging litigation to make replacing Biden close to impossible. They suggested they — or their allies — would challenge efforts to replace Biden on the ballot, which would already be difficult given the timing.

“The problem that any potential replacement for Joe Biden would likely run into is that in many states, including in several key states, the deadline for getting on the ballot has already passed,” Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, told NOTUS. “Or in many states, the process for replacing a candidate currently on the ballot just isn’t clearly defined because it happens so rarely.”

The memo identifies Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia as attractive states for litigation to keep a new Democrat from replacing Biden on the ballot.

Kendrick 2024

The Heritage Foundation fighting to keep a Black woman off the ballot in Georgia would be pretty on-the-nose even for those guys. (Which means they will 100% do it, of course.)

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, July 3, 2024 6:59 PM bookmarkflaglink

That ship sailed in 2020. There was a black woman on "the ballot" and she is the current Veep. Maybe they didn't get the memo.