The whole "let's replace Joe Biden with an invisible pink unicorn at the convention" thing is nothing but a fantasy that is apparently entertaining to some political and media types, but it is a delusion.
The time to get Biden not to run for reelection was late 2021. Which would have also destroyed his ability to get big progressive wins like the Inflation Reduction Act.
@mattsheffield it's a classic political-rookie kind of mistaken thinking. I don't like to be too snooty about it because we all start somewhere and it's better to be engaged than not, but believing this could work is a very "tell me you don't understand practical American electoral politics without saying those words" thing. Yes yes the system is dumb, the time to change that is between election cycles after a major victory, I empathize with the frustration but here we all are so let's be real
@mrcompletely Yes, it's usually people who know very little about American politics who entertain these fantasy scenarios that either party is going to replace Trump or Biden.
That's why it's particularly galling when people who do know better, such as Ezra Klein and James Carville, pander to this dangerous ignorance.
@mattsheffield “Could it go badly?” Klein writes, “Sure. But that doesn’t mean it will go badly. It could make the Democrats into the most exciting political show on earth.”
Frankly, I don't want the most exciting political show on earth. This is not fiction, it's the real world, and if it goes badly in the form of a Trump win, it will go very badly for our country.
@mattsheffield Even if you agree with Ezra's case, it still upsets me that someone with his audience is dedicating yet more air time to something other than the face eating leopards trying to eat all of our faces.
I'm just saying there are leopards that want to eat our faces and I think maybe the responsible thing to do is to raise awareness about them
@mattsheffield Ever since Ezra got the Time’s gig, his opinions have gone from bad, to worse, to worser. This one would be catastrophic. I cannot take him seriously anymore. If this ridiculous idea starts to trend, we’ll be in deeper doo than we are now. Thanks for posting this.
@mattsheffield@mattsheffield I’ve always assumed that aggressive criticism of the grey lady would probably be career suicide for a journalist. But it’s high-time someone wrote a tell-all about just what goes on there.
@shoq The long and short of it is that the Times, the Atlantic, WaPo, and all other major media outlets are owned by people who are conservative.
Unfortunately, the Republican party is fully under the control of reactionaries, and so the media conservatives have gravitated into the Democratic party, where they have made a real hash of things by giving undue hearing to insane ideas.
@mattsheffield Klein didn’t want Biden in the first place and wrote him off until we got to South Carolina and the base had its say.
It makes him angry that he was wrong and he cannot, unlike the rest of us who have long since moved on, let it go.
The fact that he acts like Kamala Harris wasn’t chosen as VP intentionally and as successor is embarrassing. And he wants Biden to stay in as a lame duck President until 2025? Great way to make sure absolutely nothing good happens.
@TonyStark@mattsheffield Of course he’s like this about Harris, my experience is that many white male leftists, especially Very Online and influencer types, just consider women invisible unless we annoy them somehow.
@MisuseCase@mattsheffield I just blocked yet another one. Some leftists, or maybe a lot as it’s beginning to seem, only approve of white men’s votes and white men like them in political leadership. What an interesting learning experience.
@mattsheffield@TonyStark@MisuseCase They vastly overestimate their own worth and prefer women, especially Black women, stay in what they think is our place. They are mad when we’re successful and prefer to sink us. They’re not allies.
@TonyStark@mattsheffield Trump has one of his worst weeks ever so of course here comes Klein to try and get ad clicks for the Times so he can get a raise. That’s all he cares about now.
@mattsheffield You nailed it. It's too late to replace him now regardless of his wins or his losses or his deficiencies. Now is the time to rally behind the old fart and make sure democracy has one more shot.
@mattsheffield I don’t know what your world is like. But my pretty middle of the road liberal family is turning on Joe Biden because he’s too old. These are people who will sit it out to send a message.
Nothing "sends a message" quite like helping a fascist dictator take over. I'm sure they'll be smugly nodding their heads and saying "that'll show those old Democrats" as their train rumbles toward an American Treblinka.
@troy_frizzell@confusionanddelay@mattsheffield It’s unfortunate that a lot of people seem to think that things have to get worse before they get better. It’s that exact mentality that stopped antifascists from uniting against Hitler. Things can always get worse, but it’s foolish and dangerous to try and make them worse.
@mattsheffield@troy_frizzell@confusionanddelay I think Ezra’s piece actually deals with this sense of demobilization. I’ve eaten crow with Biden. I was angry from the left. Now I can’t convince moderates that Biden’s been a good president and governed how they wanted. People around me just don’t buy it. They’re not about to be bullied or belittled into hearing it.
@mattsheffield Biden has about a 5% chance of dropping dead before the election so I would suggest it is political malpractice not to have a plan for replacing him. 90% of Dems would vote for a potted plant with a D next to it, and a good number of voters are actively repulsed by genocide, so I suspect there are many replacements that would improve on Biden's incredibly poor poll numbers. Literally almost anyone. His approval rating is worse than Trump's as President! Astonishing.
@peltast@mattsheffield Absolutely. Given the risk of Trump, if the democratic candidate is anyone to the left of Mitch McConnell everyone out there with a conscience needs to vote for them.
If you’re in the center, and it’s Trump vs AOC; you need to vote for AOC. If you’re on the far left and it’s Trump vs Manchin, you must vote for Manchin.
@204areacode@mattsheffield An automatic replacement for President Biden, but nothing at all to Candidate Biden. Harris is one of the few people who polls worse than Biden, so she shouldn't be an automatic candidate replacement either.
@peltast@mattsheffield , I guess the real story is that Americans want a Putin-style dictator.
You have to admit that Biden and his pal AG Garland are bending over backward to make sure soon-to-be Dictator Trump can kill democracy.
@204areacode@peltast@mattsheffield what I find bizarre, is looking in from Europe we see Trump as a fruitcake but Biden has a cognitive frailty about him and there’s a view that surely neither are the best you’ve got. None of our business, of course. Almost every political analyst, political commentator and bookmakers predict Trump will win. Perhaps the people in the USA will prove they are wrong.
@Lassielmr@204areacode@peltast@mattsheffield Biden doesn’t have any more “cognitive frailty” than he did 30 years ago when he was also known for making gaffes, by the same media institutions that are now pretending a thing he’s been doing for his whole career is a sign of mental decline.
@mattsheffield
Yep
We can replace Biden in 2028, and the time to have started figuring out a replacement was in 2020, but now would be better than next year.
Any energy spent on fever dreams of replacing him now are just a stupid waste of energy
@Pineywoozle@mloxton
I can't understand why more people are not looking forward to seeing what that compassionate man with so much experience is going to do in office once he no longer has to have any consideration about another election in his future after such a long career of winning them.
@mloxton@mattsheffield Biden already has a replacement: Harris. If it turns out he's unable to do the full term for one reason or another, she's right there, perfectly qualified to take over.
Strangely, the overwhelmingly white and male malcontents clamoring for a replacement don't like this scenario. They want someone they would be excited about: a white guy under 50, just like them.
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