this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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What i dont get about Biden running again is that there seemed to be like no democratic race to the candidacy? Or did it just completely fall flat in international media? I know Trump went late to the Reps race and then dominated it, but there was already Cruz and some candidates that tried to win on a "Trump is best" kinda position.
But for the Dems there seemed to be not even a real discussion to send anyone but Biden.
How can people be fine with this? How can the "best" both parties have to offer be more or less mentally unstable men that are clearly too old to lead a country and have a realistic chance of dying in office? How come the Dems have not understood after 2016 and 2020 that they need to stop being a right wing neoliberal party that fucks over poor people just slightly slower than the Reps?
Because it is between absurdly rare and unprecedented for a sitting president running for a second term to not get the given the significant advantage an incumbent possesses. The party not standing by the practical and spiritual leader of the party would have been taken by most amaricans as surefire evidence that the party had discovered a scandal about his so massive and overwhelming it put everything Trump ever did to shame.
While the primaries were and are an excellent place to put pressure on the sitting president to actually do something, their outcome was a forgone conclusion unless Amarican voters cared a whole lot more about Palestine than they actually do, as that was the primary thing that changed between 2020 and 2024 where Biden’s perspective has an impact. Practically, the time to find a better candidate are 2019 and 2027, the mid presidency elections are a time to push the president to fulfill more campaign promises. Something that is more difficult when the legislature is controlled by obstructionists who are publicly committed to blocking everything they possibly can until they have complete control.
There were primaries for the democratic party, but typically the parties back their incumbent and nominate them. I don't actually remember or know of a time where a sitting president had a meaningful primary challenger.
Tbh, people want to hate on Biden for whatever reason but he's done so much to actually move the needle--and with the cluster fuck he was handed plus a completely divided Congress.
He's been exactly what we needed as a country and I will happily vote for him in November and not just because the alternative is racism...but because he's actually doing great things and I'd love to see him with a democratic Congress to back him.
Business as usual neoliberalism is the last thing you need in the face of a climate breakdown and rising fascism.
That's exactly what they want to be. Politicians and billionares don't give a fuck about poor people, they are in for profits. As long as red and blue keep winning the elections they aren't going to change anything, why they should? They always win...
I mean I'm not.
Going into this we was that it's best to just go with the incumbent. Then when we saw how weak and shitty the incumbent was doing we're being told it's too late and we already have a candidate.
The DNC is maybe one of the least democratic institutions in a western democracy. It's ridiculous to not consider primaries a fundamental part of the process, but then the apologists come out and defend them as private institutions that cand o whatever they want. They rat fucked Bernie, twice, and we just keep getting told we better vote right or else we get the hose again.
They out progressive policies on the platform but it's only lip service. They simply don't pursue them once elected. Even worse they take our donations and fund Republican candidates to further rat fuck progressives.
Running against Biden meant throwing out the biggest indicator for success against a "worst case scenario" opposition candidate. Incumbency is worth all the young guns waiting 4 years for their shot. Despite what you may have heard, nobody in DNC is more likely to win 2024 than Biden despite all the baggage and Republican hate.
Again, Biden is 81 years old. Talking about "young guns" seems a bit off, when the next generation is like in their 50s and 60s, which is more of the usual age for country running politicians.
It is perfectly expected for Biden to simply die of old age or become permanently disabled in office, because that is what people in their 80s do. One bad cold and it could be over for him. That is an insane risk to take for a nation like the US. And just because the republicans are insane fascists, the democrats shouldn't be trying to meet them in insanity.
Seems irrelevant what category "young guns" represents.
And this is why Biden wanted to be a 1-term president, but Trump of all people making it to the general in 2024 made it impossible for him not to run for re-election.
Letting the president who got people to drink bleach have any leg-up in the election is a far more insane risk. His (note, not actually just his) Project 2025 plan involves a national abortion ban, reapportioning Congress towards republican seats, reversing gay marriage, betraying NATO, redefinition of the US as a Christian Nation, dismantling of all climate policies, expanding presidential power to be more absolute, and arguably ending Democracy in the US as we know it. Anyone who even pretends the last part of that is hyperbole has to at least admit it would be one of the most reactionary lunge-to-the-right-and-remove-rights initiatives we've seen in the last century, with no real Western comparisons.
Let's say it together. Better an 81 year old politician than an actual fascist coup.
A sitting president will get the nomination 99% of the time and typically runs essentially unopposed in the primaries.
Do you mean back in 2019 during those primaries? Biden absolutely had others he ran against, but the DNC did rig it for him in a way. There were two candidates that were seen as progressive, which were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Warren tanked her chances when she started attacking Bernie and even hiring Hillary's old campaign manager. Everyone started calling her a snake. Bernie became the defacto progressive. On the moderate side, there were a bunch of candidates including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttegiege, and I'm sure others that I can't remember. Because the moderate vote was split between so many candidates, Bernie was wiping the floor with them. Then Biden had one good state in South Carolina. Suddenly (as if told to), all the other moderate candidates dropped from the race, and Biden became the front runner.
This time around, the DNC rigged the primaries as best they could to favor Biden. The biggest thing they did was make South Carolina the first official primary. Biden didn't have any real competition and easily won even in states where he wasn't on the ballot he won as a write-in.
On top of all this, the DNC also has "super delegates" that aren't chosen at all by the electorate and are specifically there to influence the primaries towards the candidate the DNC wants.
So, yes, the game is very rigged.
You mean when she was hit by months of Bernie-sourced "grassroots" attacks and took the high ground, only to have an actual conversation brought up by the media and Bernie outright denying it to the extent they managed to hot-mic her offense.
She didn't crash because she attacked Bernie. She crashed because she was a woman who was seen genuinely angry and offended by a much more capable dirty-fighting career politician. I HATE Bernie as a person and the way his ambition ruined the only real chance we had at a progressive White House, but after years I can admit he could have backstabbed his way into the White House if the winds had gone a little differently for him. She crashed because she's an honest policymaker, and they never make it to the Presidency.
And Pocahontas and a bunch of other shit. Nobody likes a smart women. We didn't deserve someone as good as Warren. So we got Biden. And since Trump is running again, we have no choice but to get Biden again.
FYI, the super-delegate system was gutted in 2020 because of the appearance of impropriety in 2016. Superdelegates are powerless now unless the convention becomes contested (which it was not in 2020).
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