I’m sure this was a really hard decision, but it shows courage and strength that Biden put his own ego aside for the good of the country…
…is what I would have said if he’d done this two weeks ago. Now, I’m just glad he was able to take off his narcissism glasses long enough to see how badly he was going to lose, and I hope his prolonged tantrum hasn’t damaged Harris’ chances too badly.
I wouldn’t say this is bad timing in hindsight.
- The news media moves on from Trump’s pity party, the debate, the President Putin and Vice President Trump gaffes.
- Facing COVID, Biden has a legitimate reason to drop out without saying that he is weak to pressure
- Trump is now the old and doddering candidate, turning much of the past brainwashing of Republican media on its head.
- Trump will get bigly mad since the attention’s going to be off of him. Potential for a stupid outburst.
- The media will be hyperfocused on what’s to come from the Dem campaign, an excellent opportunity to highlight Biden’s achievements and articulate a bright future for the party and country.
- The pre-emptive smears from Republicans are on their way, but the Dems are a moving target until they officially announce the ticket.
It relies on Democrats getting the message right though they’d faltered before. They get one more chance to fix it in this soft reset.
Yeah, but none of these benefits are better than ending the uncertainty 2 weeks ago; at that point, the polling was clearly showing Biden was dropping in key swing states, and the party was starting to go into full panic mode, but he still let them twist in the win while he made up his mind. Hell, even if he made the announcement during the convention, he could have stolen some of Trump’s publicity this week and forced a whole lot if RNC speakers to rewrite their speeches. Instead, he left the party in chaos for a month, then gave Trump a victory lap convention before finally stepping aside.
There were a lot of rumors and speculation about this possibility last week that I think did take a lot of attention away from the Republican convention.
True, but rumors and speculation make people think that the party is in chaos. Announcements and press conferences would have made it seem like the Democrats were mobilizing. I’ve heard a couple of people say that it was smart to do this right after the convention to blunt any polling bump Trump might get, but I think the whole RNC just came across like a victory lap, and now it looks like it culminated in Joe Biden’s surrender.
I was about to literally write the second half of your message then I saw you wrote it haha
If Kamala does become the new nominee, I wonder how hard Trump will fight to avoid debating her.
Shit would be funny as hell to watch. Trump would be balling by the end.
Why do you refer to the female candidate with her first name and the male candidate with his last name? The same thing regularly happens with Clinton. I assume the casual disrespect is not intentional but I’m very curious as to why this happens.
I think people tend to choose the more unique/recognizable name to call candidates by. For example, we also call Bernie Sanders by his first name more often than his last. “Harris” is a more common name than “Kamala”. “Clinton” could be confused for Bill, but “Hillary” isn’t going to be mistaken. I don’t think it has anything to do with the candidate’s gender.
Going to throw in a few other unique examples like how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is almost always called by her first and last name or the initials AOC. Similarly Ilhan Omar is almost always referred to by her first and last name.
The right loved to call Obama, Barack Hussein Obama with emphasis on Hussein to highlight how non-white he was, pin him as Muslim, and draw associations to Sadam Hussein. This was done to rile up their xenophobic and racist base.
“Harris” is a more common name than “Kamala”, and “Donald” is a more common name than “Trump”. This is just my opinion, but I think Kamala is a more powerful sounding name than Harris, and that helps with her image as a stern prosecutor who wants to crush injustice towards women.
“Clinton” refers (in most people’s minds) to Hillary’s husband Bill moreso than Hillary herself. In her campaign, she leveraged her first initial for her slogan “I’m with Her” with the stylized right-pointing arrow in the H. For her, it seems to be her choice and more clear. For Harris, it just seems to be because “Kamala” sticks out in people’s minds more than her last name.
They want to signal that they’re close to them, like Springsteen fans calling him “Bruce”.
I hope you meant bawling.
Rolled up in the fetal position, crying like a baby balling.
So, now we get to see how many “blue no matter who”’s actually meant it.
Remember folks, it applies to anyone who might be the candidate.
That over…. Harris/AOC or Harris Whitmer !!
You think people are lying about that? Weird.
“I Know you don’t like MY candidate, but you know… Blue No Matter WHO!!! You don’t want a fascist to win, do you?”
people are absolutely lying about it. the question is… how many.
You’ve not convinced me. I don’t know why anyone would use that argument if it completely betrayed their feelings. Plenty others you could use which make more sense
Uhhuh.
You don’t believe people can be manipulative assholes? Or that they lie?
Of course they can. But in this case I see no motivation to tell that particular lie
You don’t see the motivation to push your preferred candidate onto people? To manipulate people who disagree with that choice?
Or to manipulate an entire base?
Oh no, they manipulated the entire democratic base to vote democratic!
Kamala all the way! It won’t be AOC or Whitmer though. Most likely Kelly or Newsom. AOC is the future, though.
Newsome cannot and will not be the VP. Harris is also from California, which would cause issues in the electoral college. Electors cannot cast both the Presidential and vice-presidential ballot for someone from the same state as themselves. Because both Harris and Newsome are form California, it could cause issues, and they might not get the electoral votes from California.
so what debate one-liners are you putting on your bingo card?
“Lock him up!” <-- If she doesn’t fucking say this so help me god…
My bing card is “slaps cuffs on him during the debate.”
I doubt Newsome, you wouldn’t want both from California
Very good point! Kelly then? That’s my top pick.
I think AOC isn’t old enough to be VP. I don’t say that as a matter of opinion. I think you have to be at least 40
Edit: it’s actually 35, but AOC is 34 so I was partially correct
However I think the relevant language is:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
So maybe it’s okay for VP
She’ll be old enough to be POTUS by inauguration.
So, she’s probably old enough to be VPOTUS…
Irrelevant. The Democrats would never put a progressive in a position where they could be president. They’ll probably go for a centrist like Shapiro or a corporate Dem like Newsom. I’m hoping that they’ll go with Whitmer but they’ll probably shy away from a two woman ticket.
It’s relevant to the question of if she’s old enough, which is a fair question given she’s on the cusp. Even if only theoretically.
Before I left home this morning, I pointed to the bottle of mustard on the table and told my girl that I would vote for the mustard. We were talking about the rumors of Biden dropping out.
At least the mustard is honest about its color. So are carrots, for that matter. I’d totally vote for a carrot.
Turnips too.
What kinda carrot? Chatennay or Danvers?
Yup, I’ll vote for any garden vegetable except for cucumbers and their squash and watermelon relatives. Will make an exception for pickles, they’re one of the good ones.
Don’t know much about carrot varieties other than Queen Anne’s lace is a wild carrot. Know more about taters and tomatoes.
Figure any real carrot would do. I’d totally vote for a beefsteak or better boy tomato over a carrot, however.
Do you grow tomatoes? Have you tried a brandywine? They’re balanced between sweet and tart. Love ‘em on a good burger.
Oxhearts are great for sauces (they have fewer seeds and a strong flavor.)
My favorites are the cherry tomatoes- can’t make up my mind on a single best, though. Blomdkopfchen roast amazing well (or grill!) where Amy’s Apricots do well in salads. Want to get my hands on some black cherries, though.
Chadwick’s are of course the old stand by in my greenhouse.
If you like beefsteaks, have you tried brandywine? They’re our favorite burger slicer here. (And oxhearts for saucing)
I think you’re responding to yourself.
No idea how that happened. Gonna leave that up though.
Mostly copied from above response.
Grew up working on a tater farm. Sweet taters and Irish taters.
We’re in process of moving further north and my girl is excited to try container gardening again.
I prefer heirloom seed or hardware start plants grown traditionally.
It’s been a long time since I’ve grown much of anything other than cacti, native ornamentals, and fungi. It’s a kind of work I swore off for a long time.
Just bought a play farm, will probably grow some tomatoes. Have apple trees, blueberries, and a small vineyard I need to learn.
Have always heard good things about Brandywine tomatoes.
Won’t be this year, but we’ll be trying some varieties.
Roma, we called Romies, were my favorite as a kid. Canned tomato soup and sauce always smelled amazing and the stuff in stores doesn’t compare.
Best judge of a tomato is to slice it up, add too much salt, and eat it with a fork.
Have you tried a grafted cherry tomato/white potato plant? I’ve been looking at trying it out just because growing two produces with “one plant” seems really interesting to me and I’ve read a bit about how they’re closely related enough that you can graft the tomato to the top of the potato plant.
Also trying to get more people into container gardening and it seems like a good space saver.I haven’t tried it. Seems like a gimmick.
I’m not a big fan of container gardening. From the deep south, container gardening is for places where the sun won’t dry and burn the roots.
Grew up working on a tater farm. Sweet taters and Irish taters.
We’re in process of moving further north and my girl is excited to try container gardening again.
A plant takes in a certain amount of energy and turns part of that into fruit or root storage. You can’t really get anything for free.
I prefer heirloom seed or hardware start plants grown traditionally.
It’s been a long time since I’ve grown much of anything other than cacti, native ornamentals, and fungi. It’s a kind of work I swore off for a long time.
Just bought a play farm, will probably grow some tomatoes. Have apple trees, blueberries, and a small vineyard I need to learn.
I have a tiny yard in the south and it’s pretty much paved so container is the only way I can go until (if?) I manage to buy a house with a plantable area. Currently have some citrus in containers producing, a bunch of basil, tomatoes, and some various sprawlers like squash. I wish I had the space to put them all in the ground but I gotta work with what I have. Usually use heirloom seeds or hardware starter plants but gotta pick varieties that are good for containers so I don’t get that many options. I figured that potatoes would still be productive in the seasons when tomatoes aren’t growing on the branches due to heat or cold but I could be wrong since i’m still learning a lot.
Northern and central Alabama myself. Tater experience from central AL.
I’ve heard of people having great results with container tomatoes by taking the drip line of the AC unit and piping it into the tomatoes roots. Keeps the roots very cool.
Taters have a long season, plant just after frost is done. Blackberry Winter is no longer a constant due to climate change.
To try and do taters in containers, I would build my conainers from cinder blocks and fill the blocks with dirt or other insulation. 4’ wide at a minimum and however long you want/have space/can afford. This would be for one row. Paint the blocks white. Bury a soaker hose down the center. Put the hose on a timer and adjust for high temps. You’ll have to fight fungal infection due to the higher moisture so it would be delicate. I would treat with antifungal at intervals through the hose. Taters need more sand than you would think in the soil, especially if you have clay soil.
If the ticket is something messed up like Harris/Bob Menendez, or Harris/Blagoyavich, I might have some reservations, but would quickly look past them considering the alternative.
Only problem I have with menendez is that I’m too broke to buy him off.
(I suspect the people who don’t have a problem with him… are rich enough. Funny how that works.)
Or Harris Wittels, best of both worlds, AND the afterlife.
As much as I’d love to see it in my lifetime, no way she chooses a female VP. Way too risky.
Did you vote for H Clinton, though? I bet not.
What gives you the idea I didn’t?
Your vibe only
Even having had time to prepare for this, and knowing it was essentially inevitable, this feels heavy in a way that I’m not sure how to express yet.
He needs to spend every free minute between now and his last day seating judges. Fuck blue slips. Appoint until there’s not a vacancy to be found.
Yeah, the Dems better not fuck up this hard pivot!
It is, and always has been, in the hands of the voters. It’s the non-voters who fuck it up.
It’s voters who don’t listen or remember that fucks things up
There are 10s of millions of eligible voters who don’t participate but then complain about the result. If they would show up to vote then campaign managers would put an effort into polling and engaging them to win their vote. If they want to protest then they can show up and cast an empty ballot.
I nonvote is a vote of no confidence.
We can plainly see that sitting out and not voting only tells those in power and campaigning that they don’t have to spend any time or money earning your vote. A vote of no confidence would be showing up and turning in a ballot with no selection for particular races. That puts you on public record as an active voter.
Allowing them to do whatever they want with no accountability has given us the political climate we are currently in.
Biden could kill 200k Palestinians and not lose a single voter.
Allowing them to do whatever they want with no accountability has given us the political climate we are currently in.
Exactly. Not voting is how you allow them to do whatever they want with no accountability. Third parties won’t be viable without election reform (which is at the state level) which we won’t get without replacing the incumbents through the party primaries.
Biden could kill 200k Palestinians and not lose a single voter.
Bull shit. He’s lost plenty of voters already for his handling of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Even though he did actually put public pressure on Netanyahu for a ceasefire and he did in fact delay weapons shipments. He needed to do better, but Trump will be worse and if the Democratic party loses Trump will win. No amount of idealism will change that reality.
It doesn’t have to be hard. Harris should go to the top of the ticket, and the campaign apparatus stays the same.
Have her, a former prosecutor, debate Trump and treat that shit like a cross examination.
And make Sanders the VP to make me excited.
Sanders is too old. God love him, but it would not inspire confidence. If we’re going for a prominent progressive on the ticket, we’d have to go AOC.
More likely though, Harris will pick someone who is an old white moderate male, though, unfortunately.
There’s a difference between old and senile and ordinary old. Bernie is just old
That is a ticket I would be happy to vote for
It’s already fucked up. Biden dropping out just handed the whole fucking thing to Trump.
Edit: Alright, alright. This was a gut punch and I really felt Biden was our best shot. That said, this could be an opportunity and I’m here for it.
Oh, stop. We’re you one of the ones also saying him not dropping out handed it to Trump? Or that the assassination attempt picture handed it to Trump?
Nothing has handed it to anyone. There are more liberal voters than conservative, including in battleground states. We just have to decide to rally around Harris and stop with the quibbling about one issue or another.
Assuming the new candidate(probably Harris) avoid any major disasters as does Trump, we’ll be returning to the May 2024 status quo of things. Harris is more popular than post-debate Biden, was slightly behind pre-debate Biden, and will probably need a month to get back there(winning the nomination and undoing all the damage from 4 weeks of infighting.)
On the plus side, that’ll drop the hemorrhaging, New Mexico and New Jersey safe, Virginia and Minnesota probably safe. On the downside at this point Georgia and North Carolina are lost, there just isn’t time and the Republicans spent 4 years pouring resources into them.
This is back to the main 5. Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The important factor is that if they lose Pennsylvania, they lose. They can win the other 4 here, but it’s 268-270. Unless they snag something extra like Georgia(unlikely in this scenario), that’s it.
If they win Pennsylvania, they need at least two others in ideal circumstances(Michigan needs to be one of the two and Nevada can’t be one of the two, second one would have to be Wisconsin or Arizona), 3 others in unideal circumstances if Michigan isn’t there and they get Nevada. I should also note several of these scenarios are razor thin (270-268 with Pensylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and 271-267 with Arizona instead) and thus vulnerable to faithless electors. Or worse, if Maine’s statewide went red(which is more likely than Georgia going blue or Virginia going red at this point) the former would be a win and the latter would be a tie. In the tie scenario the House picks the president(so Trump) and the Senate picks the Vice President(so Vance would be ousted) which would be an absolute nightmare and gambling on Trump dying in that situation isn’t worth it.
I note this because even in the base line May scenario Pennsylvania was one of the worse polling one for democrats(Arizona and Wisconsin were the blue edging ones), and Pennsylvania is not a state where the stars are aligning. It was Biden’s home state, Scranton boy, him being off the ticket hurts things there probably more than they help. AND, while it’s true nationwide the post-shooting bump for Trump was relatively minor, Pennsylvania is where the shooting happened and has gotten the largest bump in the polls since, 3 or 4 points. Biden leaving demotivates the base there harder than anywhere else in the county and the Trump shooting re-motivated the base there harder than most.
My call? If they don’t pick Shapiro or Whitmer, it’s over 100%, and even with it’s iffy. Pennsylvania is perhaps the one state where any replacement is going to do worse than Biden even post-debate, and the one state the Trump shooting caused a notable bump. What are the odds it’s also the single most crucial state in this election?
I’d forgotten what hope felt like.
Give me a Jon Stewart / Katie Porter ticket!
Jon Stewart has said he’d never run and I believe him, unfortunately
Make it Harris / Stewart.
Harris up top because she’s already on the ballot, has Biden / Harris war chest, and won’t get as fucked with by republicans who try to block a new name.
