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Notes -
Hot Swap time?
On the All-In podcast, a couple of the podcasters have been making bold claims that Biden would be "hot-swapped" out for a different candidate (presumably Gavin Newsom) after the first debate. I thought their claims were pretty outlandish, but after last night they are seeming a lot more, um, inlandish.
I concur with a lot of the Mottizens below that Biden's performance was not that bad. I thought he landed some decent punches and fought Trump mostly to a draw. But expectations matter. Like most people here, I am well aware of Biden's state of decline, whereas perhaps the average voter is not. I was not expecting vigor, so was in no way shocked by Biden's lack of it. Furthermore, Mottizens tend to actually listen to the words that are said. Normies react more to feels. Biden's blank-eyed stare and gaped mouth said more than words ever could. If this was your first exposure to Biden in the last 4 years, it would be unsettling.
What I was shocked by was the immediate consensus by CNN's post-debate panel that Biden's performance was a disaster, and the immediate speculation about a new candidate. I had expected them to rally around their leader. There was a plausible argument to be made that Biden did okay. Instead, they threw him under the bus.
The timing of the debate certainly seems a bit suspicious. This was the earliest Presidential debate in some time (ever?). Conspicuously, it comes before the convention, but after the primaries. If Biden can be pressured to resign, the DNC will be able to handpick their preferred candidate without the pesky need for voters.
As Bill Ackman and others have pointed out on Twitter, everyone in Biden's inner circle knew that this was Biden's ability level in 2024. They didn't have to agree to a debate. Why did they send him out there to get slaughtered?Seen through this lens, Obama "helping" the elderly Biden off the stage a couple weeks ago take on a darker tone.
Shares in "Biden 2024 Democratic nominee" crashed during the debate and now trade at just 63%. Newsom is at 22% and Harris at 13%.
I don't know. All of this seems very conspiratorial. The real world is messy and boring. I doubt that the DNC are sitting around in a smoke-filled room, twirling their mustaches. But, however it shakes out, odds of Biden being replaced are shooting up. This seems very undemocratic. There was a time to replace Biden, and that was during the primaries. However it shakes out, the election season just got a lot more interesting.
I'm very interested if anyone has any ideas for how this could be done in a way that doesn't feel awfully undemocratic. So far, the dominant position seems to be that the only mechanism would be if Joe willingly stepped back, said he'd refuse the nomination, and supported someone else. Josh Blackman suggests that maybe a deal could be made to give him some things he'd want in return. "Look Joe, we'll hook you up with two more SCOTUS nominees and _____. You have the ability to take an easy out by just saying that you've had a very recent health issue. No one will view you too negatively, and the history books will mostly forget about this."
At the same time, looking in from the outside, it will be hard to distinguish between positive, log-rolling like trades here (which I wouldn't view as too undemocratic) and negative, coercive ones ("Joe, if you don't step back, we're going to X,Y,Z to hurt you in whatever ways"). The latter feels more undemocratic to me, but again, it will be hard to distinguish from the outside.
All that said, has anyone seen any other credible ideas for how the DNC could pull off a switch without Joe's explicit agreement and without it seeming too terribly undemocratic?
I don't understand the "undemocratic" argument. The general election is meant to be decided democratically - political parties can decide who their candidates will be any way they like, including in smoke-filled back rooms. Nowadays they generally don't do that (at least not overtly) because it pisses off their base, but political parties exist to select winners by the most effective (legal) means possible.
This seems to be the same fundamental misunderstanding of party politics that I saw in 2016 when the Bernie Sanders supporters were enraged that the DNC "picked" Hillary instead of Sanders, and made similar complaints - "This isn't fair, it's undemocratic, it's crooked!" Uh, no, the political party picked the candidate who has been a party insider and supported other party candidates and raised money for the party for years, over the outsider who wants to crash the party. That is how political parties work!
Here is where once again I make my pitch for reading early American history. You all know that it's relatively recently that conventions became essentially coronations for a pre-selected winner, but in the 19th century party politics were even rougher and more arbitrary. Abraham Lincoln's VP got switched on him for his reelection campaign and he really didn't have much to say about it. Several presidents either were not selected by their parties for reelection, or chose not to put themselves forward because they knew they would not be selected. Lots of negotiations were very much smoke-filled room sort of deals, and no one cared much about which candidate the public would prefer, except in the general election. It was interesting contrasting, say, Thomas Jefferson's view of party politics (he claimed to hate political parties while being extremely partisan) with Martin Van Buren's (a pure and unabashed party creature who thought party politics were fundamentally good politics).
I'll admit that, coming from the outside, the American primary system has always seemed absurd to me. Maybe this is a result of being Australian instead, but I am much more accustomed to the approach where the party selects its own leader, and the public don't get a say. We get to vote later on. But of course the party get to choose their own leaders. Why wouldn't they?
It's become tradition in America that the way the parties do that is with primaries, but there's no in-principle reason why they couldn't do it any other way, and frankly I suspect it would be better for America if they did. If the party establishments or members of congress had gotten to pick their presidential candidates (approximating the way it works in Australia), Bernie Sanders would never have been a concern, Donald Trump would never have become a political figure at all, and America would have been spared long, divisive primary seasons. As it is, they have a system that rewards extremist candidates playing towards the base, rather than one that rewards trying to appeal to a genuine majority, and that seems like a poorly-functioning electoral system to me.
On the positive, at least, it means the American elections provide some very high quality popcorn.
Well, party leaders often can get pulled into their own insular "bubble". The leader of a party is sometimes chosen despite being a poor candidate simply because of their internal connections. Corruption can happen. Why wouldn't the rank-and-file want more control over their candidate, not less? Why would voters trust someone else, much less a party elite/insider, more than themselves?
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Parties can choose whoever and whatever they like, for whatever position they want. But democracy is sacred enough in America that there's always pressure for parties to select their candidates through a democratic process with an open vote, and sometimes parties cave in, probably because they think it will get them votes in the long run. No one wants to alienate that weird fringe who might wind up voting for the mainstream candidate, so why not give their fringe candidate a chance to compete in the primary? Of course that only works if your mainstream candidate is viable, or if you're good at rigging the process.
Yes, there are a number of reasons why Americans have primaries - it's just become an expectation at this point, it lets you judge popularity with the base because America is a system where turnout matters, and so on. It's more that in the aggregate I think it creates a weaker system than the alternative.
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