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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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It's officially Joever

Now we see if 3 months is long enough to rev up a credible presidential campaign.

He doesn't mention picking a successor, but may in a speech later this week.

E: He endorsed Kamala. Obama did not, calling for an "open nominating process", and didn't even mention Harris.

I would just like to say the whole thing is bullshit. The sole reason he should drop out is because he isn’t fit for office. It would be illegitimate to drop out solely because “the polls are bad.” There was an election to determine a candidate. The pick was bad but the pick was made. Now the candidate drops out? Like I said only makes sense if Biden can’t serve the office.

The whole purpose of a political party is to win elections. Biden isn't being forced out of office, he's stepping down as a candidate for reelection. While these specific circumstances are unique, it's not unprecedented for parties to not renominate a sitting president.

The fact that the Democrats already nominated Biden was a procedural and political problem for them, but if they convinced him to step down voluntarily, there is nothing "illegitimate" about it (though I understand why Trump supporters will be unhappy since it was obviously to Trump's advantage for Biden to stay in).

(though I understand why Trump supporters will be unhappy since it was obviously to Trump's advantage for Biden to stay in)

Not sure I agree with this or that the data does either. If there did exist 'Generic Democrat' waiting in the wings - a candidate everyone had been secretly hungry for in '20 that never threw in their hat - then maybe so. If Andrew Cuomo hadn't been MeToo'd and his corona press conferences in the windbreakers were everyone's last memory of him, maybe so.

But the democrat bench is structurally unsound to a degree that's been (imo) hidden by the conspiracy of silence surrounding the topic. The GOP in '16 (their last contested primary) had an embarrassment of riches, which the media lovingly referred to as the 'clown car.' Like 6+ popular governors running (Jindal, Perry, etc), some from non-traditionally safe republican states (Bush, Kasich, Walker, etc). All those guys are completely wiped out, granted, but the GOP has been consistently spitting out new guys like Vance, Hawley, etc for '28

The democrats have had exactly 1 clear-the-benches primary this entire century. '00 was smooth sailing for Gore, '04 for Kerry, '08 was Clinton-until-it-wasn't, '12 incumbent Obama, '16 Clinton-and-it-was.

But in '20 when the opportunity was ripe and it was all hands on deck, the democrats were running Joe, Bernie, Kamala, Warren, and the mayor of some town in Indiana. There was and is no Klobmentum.

Frankly, it seems to me as though their repeated decisions to 'clear-the-board' for their preferred candidate rather than the benches, the party may have cooked itself for the foreseeable future

  • Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania handily and has great approval ratings.
  • Jared Polis is a popular two-term libertarian-ish gay governor of Colorado who got Covid mostly right and is still only 49.
  • Andy Beshear won re-election as governor of KY by 5 even while the GOP kept a supermajority of the legislature.
  • Joe Manchin has an ego the size of the Appalachians, and a history as an effective legislator.
  • Gavin Newsom has failed to actually fix anything in CA, but he certainly looks Presidential, has boatloads of money, and is quite glib.
  • JB Pritzker has all the money in the universe and has run IL like his own personal fief for a while; he might have higher ambitions too.
  • AOC will be eligible in 2028 and remains very vivid and high-profile (though I can't vouch for whether the progressive wing of the party still likes her)
  • Gretchen Whitmer is also someone people still talk about, though I don't understand why.

And that's just off the top of my head.

/u/Outlaw83 "Yup!"

Shapiro by admission quite publicly of democrat party elders is a no go because he's a Jew

Polis (he changed his name from Schutz a few years ago 'because he liked it better'), see above. Also he's gay. A gay Jew for VP?? Maybe we're there already and I'm even more wrong then I thought I was, sure, but...to put him up as a bencher is bizarre

The rest of the 'top of your head' is the same. Beshear put all the kids in masks, closed all the small businesses, released uncountable numbers of violent criminals, and the day before it was all challenged...dropped it all. Machin is not even a democrat anymore dude. Newsome has failed to actually fix anything in CA so hard he's driven literally millions of taxpayers to other states. Pritzker is a 400lb Hermaeus Mora tentacle figure who nobody besides the two of us even knows, and if they did, I doubt they'd be enthralled. AOC???? And people still talk about Whitmer because she faked a kidnapping plot.