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Thursday's debate was the gift that keeps on giving for political horse race junkies like me. 2024's campaign was shaping up to be the ultimate snooze-fest. Neither party fielded competitive primaries. Neither candidate provided any sort of vision for the future. Two geriatric candidates were fighting a rematch over a tiny sliver of undecided voters. Despite the heated rhetoric, it was boring.
Everything is different now, and this is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic campaign seasons in history.
Biden's chances to win the Democratic nomination keep plummeting. On PredictIt, he is down to 50%! Kamala Harris's stock is surging - now up to 33%.
But while many within the Democratic media complex have called for Biden to step down (he even lost Brian Stelter!) elected officials have been much more circumspect. Nearly all prominent Democrats continue to support Biden in public. The knives are being sharpened, favors are being called in, backroom deals are being made. But the party unity hasn't broken. Somebody (Obama maybe) will have to strike the first blow. Until then, it's far too risky to stick one's neck out.
Biden's political instincts are stronger than many give him credit for. I've mentioned before how he's used the SPR to keep gas prices down, knowing that simple things like that matter a lot. Now he has a new mantra. Trust no one. Increasingly relying on his wife Jill, he is now apparently bringing in Hunter as an advisor as well.
Biden only needs to last a few more weeks. To appear on the Ohio ballot, Democrats must nominate someone before August 7th. He just needs to run out the clock. Big public speeches or appearances are a no no, as every senior moment will now be dissected in minute detail. Once he's the nominee, the media will come back onside to save democracy.
In any case, I can't get enough of the drama. Make election season fun again.
Well, Texas rep Lloyd Doggett just became the first Democratic politician to call for Biden to step down. Call me crazy, but I honestly have a sneaking suspicion that this was all planned out ahead of time. Biden looked awful during the debate. But at the after party he seemed fine, and he was beck to his old self the next day in North Carolina. I think Biden always intended to be a one-term president but that's not the kind of thing you can pull off these days barring death or permanent disability. He would have had to announce he wasn't seeking the nomination some time around last summer, at which point he would have immediately become a lame duck where he lost whatever pull he had with congress and saw half of his administration overshadowed by the other Democrats jockeying for position. There was also the traditional incumbent's advantage to consider. And there was no guarantee that whoever the Democrats ended up nominating would be better than Biden. He had to run again.
At this point, the entire Republican apparatus has had a year to prepare a campaign against Joe Biden. The attacks are pretty standard at this point — he's old, he's demented, he caused inflation, he fucked up the Afghanistan pullout, the "Biden Crime Family", etc. What happens if, at the eleventh hour, Joe Biden is no longer the candidate? Suddenly, a year's worth of planning is down the toilet. Now they'll find themselves likely up against some "Generic Democrat" on whom they will have no opposition research, no idea who his base is, no idea what his policy positions are. Meanwhile, the Democrats could have been planning this for months and have ready solutions to all the problems out there. Plus they can run on the idea "that he knew when to step aside", unlike somebody else. This is a person who didn't have to spend primary season pretending to be further left than they really were and didn't have the misfortune of months of oppo research from members of their own party. A candidate who's optimized for winning a general election.
Then there's the matter of the debates. Trump was eager to debate Biden. Maybe a little too eager. He agreed to an unusually early first debate and to a format that stripped him of the ability to interrupt his opponent and to draw on a supportive studio audience. If a new guy comes in soon, there's the possibility that he pushes for two more debates with the same rules. Trump really isn't in a position to refuse given how adamant he's been about debating. If he wants his mike permanently unmuted then he'll get criticized for being afraid to let the public hear what his opponent has to say — "He agreed to the rules for Biden because he thought he could win against Biden; if he wants to change the rules it must because he doesn't think he can win." Maybe give him his audience back as a token of goodwill. Now he's got to go up against someone who's much younger and more adept at pushing his buttons than Sleepy Joe.
The major downside is that the country collectively goes "Who?" and votes for someone they're familiar with. But this is overrated, both because Joe Biden is massively disliked in some circles and because most of the people who will ultimately decide the election aren't really paying attention until after Labor Day. Trump can and should run his "Who is Lou Lipschitz" routine for a couple months, but after that it starts to wear thin and make people think "Is that all you've got?" I don't actually think this is what will happen but I hope it will. It would make this fall much more interesting than another slow descent into a Trump presidency.
The problem with this theory is all the likely Democrat candidates are poisonous in their own right.
Newsom comes up constantly, but California and his governorship of it in particular is practically a cautionary to the rest of America. Virtually the entire comedy scene had to flee his state due to mismanagement and talks about it all the time on podcast, interviews, standup specials.
Gretchen Witmer comes up, I can't tell why. The only thing she's notable for is participating in one of the few FBI entrapment plots/misinformation events that was so bad it actually did get thrown out of court.
There is Harris, but while Biden at least has the excuse of dementia, it's unclear what Harris' excuse for her constant word salads are. She polls worse than anyone.
Buttigieg I guess still exist, but has overseen possibly one of the most disastrous 4 years the Department of Transportation has ever seen. Rail disasters, air disasters, bridge disasters, you name it. It's hard to imagine failing up with that public a record of incompetence.
And that's more or less all the contenders unless Bernie Sanders wants to give it another go. But after how the DNC ratfucked him to position Biden as the nominee in 2020, I sincerely doubt they'd tap him for 2024, even if he is politically the least toxic candidate.
There is always RFK Jr... but the DNC ratfucked him in the 2024 primaries as well, and will almost certainly not tap him either.
Beto is the best shot. He won’t win, but his actual scandals are a drunk driving charge that got dismissed under funny circumstances. He’s a normal white guy who at least tries to talk to proles, so he won’t come off as DEI, and the dems are enthralled enough with his lackluster political performance to bypass those concerns. He’s too dumb to try anything overly clever and willing to play towards the middle. He can at least get dem normies to show up well enough so he doesn’t throw Virginia and Colorado and lose senate races that should go dem.
I donno. He has a habit of confidently blundering onto third rails as though the entire rest of the country consist of his political consultants. Instead of mealy mouthed lies about "common sense gun control" that might at least fool enough people who care to win, he just goes all in with "Hell yes we're coming for your guns!" for example.
As bad as the "coming for your guns" is, it's nothing compared to "we should tax religions I don't like." Beto has been one of my go-to examples for why the Culture War is terminal, and the counter-argument previously was that Beto was a minor, dead-end presidential contender of no consequence. I was assured that his naked appeal to intolerance, for which his audience cheered and which the press responded to by stroking their chins thoughtfully, should not be taken as representative of Blue Tribe generally. Charitably, we shouldn't see him floated as a serious candidate now, because of course Blues wouldn't rally behind such an obviously unfit candidate.
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Sure, but at this point actually winning the election is a tall order, it’s about giving normie dems and dem leaning independents someone they wouldn’t be ashamed to vote for so trump doesn’t win blue states and Kari Lake stays out of the senate.
Yeah, I have heard some of that talk. Replace Biden not to win the presidency, but rescue the down ballot races. Breaking Points keeps covering polls indicating that down ballot dems are doing fantastic even when Biden is polling horrendously, the theory being there might be significant ticket splitting. Personally I think it's more likely people just stay home.
I just struggle with the notion that run of the mill liberals could get excited about anyone nakedly appointed by a cabal of donors and party insiders. But then again I'm not a liberal, so what do I know? The same thing more or less happened with Biden, and I'm expected to believe he got the most votes of anyone any in history.
‘Willing to vote for’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘excited’.
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