Not sure if this violates rules, but this is breaking news and the primary source. Local news video.
17th house Democrat calls for Biden to step down. Post NATO-news conference, 6:30 Pacific Time
Not sure if this violates rules, but this is breaking news and the primary source. Local news video.
17th house Democrat calls for Biden to step down. Post NATO-news conference, 6:30 Pacific Time
As way of explanation, as my opinion on the matter changed before my little argument with Coach, it was Democratic Congresscritters coming out to call on Biden to step down.
We live in a society where meaningless and twisted data abounds, propagandists push opposed views, and news is more interested in a click than the truth (not to say the past was any better on that point). As long as Biden’s support from those well-placed to be informed in his own party was solid, I was willing to accept that Biden, while undeniably slowing down, still had the best chance of pushing through with the advantage of incumbency and name recognition.
Once he lost the full support of his party in such a major and public way, as Congresscritters asking the sitting president to step down as candidate for their own party is fucking unheard of, and Nancy fucking Pelosi all but asking him with a public statement, it became apparent that, through all the noise, something was desperately wrong. Dem Congresscritters have next-to-nothing to gain by replacing Biden, and their seats to potentially lose - not to mention the cooperation of the President if Biden were to win.
That they’re speaking up in PUBLIC means that things are SERIOUSLY fucked, and I take the opinion of those placed so close to the President, and so tied to his fortunes, very seriously. If there’s one thing that you can trust Congresscritters on, usually, it’s that they want to keep their seats and the power it comes with, and their actions will tend towards that.
I think you need to acknowledge the roll you played in silencing a dissent that has for months been trying to communicate that that Biden is not winning this election. You in-particular were part of a group trying to brow-beat myself and others into submission under the false premise that Biden “is going to be the nominee” and “is the best chance for us to beat Trump”. It was wrong, both in principal, approach, and underlying assumptions, and it maybe has cost us our ability to beat Trump.
The approach is what built the seeds of what is now “Blue Maga”, a deluded cult of personality that has the real chance of stopping us from stopping Trump. You did work that hurt our ability to stop Trump. Its good that you’ve come around, but how you conducted yourself for months did real damage to this community.
Look at the vote count. This isn’t an opinion piece or some far left anything. Its a local news station breaking a story about their House representative. That negative vote count on basic reality, “Just the facts ma’am” reporting is Blue Maga.
At the time, the information pointed towards that. Congress members asking a member of their own party to step down publicly is fucking unprecedented. The advantage of the incumbent is offering unity to the party by providing an unambiguous candidate to rally behind - once the incumbent can’t offer that, he loses much of the advantage that he would otherwise have. As information available to me changed, so too did my view of the best way to move forward.
For not wanting the candidate who was actually running to be undermined at every turn? You had no alternatives. Hell, the only reason there are alternatives now is because of the debate sapping confidence in Biden and causing enough pressure to emerge to potentially have him step down from the candidacy. God only knows what ugliness will emerge if he refuses to step down and the DNC tries to replace him. A lot of arguing about rules, and a lot of damage to the ticket, I imagine.
Lord.
The vote count is negative because people are concerned, rightly, that propagandists, native fascists, and clickbaiting news orgs are pushing a divisive narrative for their own reasons. And they are pushing a divisive narrative - but this one stems from a very real problem that we need to address. Right equation, wrong answer.
Bro I hate to break it to you, but nothing about Biden changed from that debate. He’s had the slightest, margin of error dip in polling. The reality is that he’s been losing this whole time and you’ve been in complete denial of that.
Biden needed to be at 55% in the aggregate of polling to be cruising to a W comfortably. 50% is tight, but very doable. 45% and Biden is struggling, kind-of landslide losing territory. Biden hasn’t polled at 45% in 450 days.
Because of your denial others have become comfortable denying material reality as well, and now down vote anything that doesn’t agree with their insane bias that Biden is somehow the best candidate when at no point in the past 450 days has he even been competitive.
YOU helped build that. YOU normalized that. YOU made it acceptable to walk around in abject denial of reality for 6 months and and promoted that others do the same.
Not some one else. YOU.
Its quite fucking literally how r/TheDonald started. Take some fucking responsibility and have some accountability. Fix the damage you caused.
He lost the confidence of his own party. I believe I mentioned that. Quite prominently. Several times.
I didn’t say “The polls changed, so I changed my mind.” Perhaps you should reread what I wrote.
He was in a bad position, that’s not the same as not being our best chance at victory. I believed he was previously despite his poor polling.
And you were really, really, really fucking wrong. Wrong in such a way that the net effect has been that you worked to prevent a real conversation about what was happening.
Yes. I was really fucking wrong.
I made a call with imperfect information, and I made the wrong one. Fuck, I’m still making a call with imperfect information. I might be wrong now for all I fucking know. All I can do is go forward with all my energy with what I believe to be the correct course of action.
You want me to say that my judgement was subpar in regarding which sources to trust and how to weigh them? That’s fair, I won’t argue against that, clearly I fucked up. But “You were vocal in the need for unity behind one candidate in a FPTP system, and the one with no real challengers in his party’s primary is our only choice” is not one I will apologize for.
Can you also try to help pull people out of the cult-like thinking that has built up around Blue Maga?
I wouldn’t call it Blue MAGA, and I find the term stupid. They’re operating on inertia, like I was - it’s not a cult-like worship of Biden. It’s just the belief that he was the best shot.
But yes. I intend on arguing forcefully towards pro-Biden commenters on the need to change candidates now that Biden has lost the unity that an incumbent is supposed to give, especially one who ran in his primary without any major challengers. We’ve fucked up and now we have to unfuck this mess, fast.