Both the president and his reelection campaign are going after his coup-attempting predecessor even before the first GOP primary ballots are cast.
A full year out from the 2024 presidential election and nearly two months before Republicans cast their first primary ballots, President Joe Biden and his campaign are assuming that Donald Trump will be his opponent and have already started reminding voters why they threw him out of office in the first place.
Biden personally has stepped up criticism of his coup-attempting predecessor and is framing the likely rematch as one that will determine the survival of American democracy.
“The same man who said we should terminate the rules and regulations and articles of the Constitution — these are things he said — is now running on a plan to end democracy as we know it,” he said last week at a fundraiser in Chicago.
“This next election is different. It’s more important. There’s more at stake. And we all know why: Because our very democracy is at stake,” he told a San Francisco audience on Wednesday.
I honestly can’t imagine Trump winning legit. His biggest strength was that he was an unknown quantity and his opponent was a woman who had to pay off DNC debt to keep popular democrats like Biden from running and beating her for the nomination.
He may have been an unknown quantity to you in 2016, but for his supporters he was exactly what it said on the tin: a racist, angry old white man who yelled at the dinner table about all the things Fox News told him were wrong with this country. And after 4 years of his administration, he actually picked up votes the second time. Biden had the largest turnout in American history in 2020, but only ahead of Trump’s 2020 numbers.
If anything, he has confirmed to the conservative base that he is who he said he was. If Biden fails to motivate his base, he will lose, because Trump is not going to lose votes.
The fact that he’s not an unknown quantity anymore is his biggest strength just like it took Hitler a couple of tries. His followers don’t care about democracy. In fact they believe it doesn’t actually exist anymore. They would much rather have the ability to attack the people they’re told to hate than to have democracy. If they can lynch Muslims, “Mexicans” (really Hispanic South Americans), people who have abortions, scientists, LGBTQ+ people, “pagans”, and optionally, Jews, black people, and any other non-white Christians.
From what I’ve seen, his actual base of support gets maxed out at 46%, his original victory relied on people that voted for Obama in '08 and '12 to pick him instead of Hilary. I don’t think this people will be dojng that again.
But he can still easily win with 46% or even less at this point. Technically it’s currently possible to win with as little as 23%. And I’m not talking 23% of the US population. 23% of people who actually vote. Less now actually, since that study was done in 2016, and Gerrymandering has gotten worse, shifting more power to fewer people.
All of the gerrymandering lawsuit losses have been overturned by conservative judges and the Supreme Court is corrupt now so there’s little likelihood of them doing the right thing and fixing the maps.
And if that’s not enough, there are several places that have removed polling places from cities and several places have declared that you can’t drop off absentee ballots for someone else, making it difficult for disabled people or people with “essential” jobs to vote, especially when early voting is also illegal. And if your job isn’t “essential”, employers still only have to give you one hour off. Even if you can make it to a polling place in less than half an hour, with the reduced locations in many cities, it’s often more than an hour wait to vote, so you risk losing your job. That’s if your employer even cares about the law because it might be cheaper for them to risk a fine than to let their only employee take an hour off. Not to mention it’s never actually been enforced anyway, so the risk is very low.
We need a mandatory public holiday, free transportation to polling places, and universal mail-in or early voting to be funded for it to actually allow more than a small percentage of citizens to vote, especially in traditionally more progressive places like cities.
I can really see this going either way if Biden stays with his decision to run. I know every year people complain about having two bad choices, but Biden V Trump round 2 has to be a record for the actual worst options possible.
I think the issues with both Biden and Trump are fairly obvious, but another issue is that if Biden does win, there is a fairly good chance we will end up with a president Harris, probably the one person people like less than Biden as a democratic president. I think she lost so much credibility when Biden promised he would pick a black woman as a VP, basically cementing the idea that part of her qualifications for the role of VP was based purely on gender and race.
He promised to pick a woman, not specifically a black woman. That’s why there are still unsubstantiated rumors that he/his team had settled on Klobuchar until George Floyd happened. That would clarify how they got Klobuchar to step out of the race so easily, too. If Biden promised Buttigieg a vague cabinet position, and Amy the VP… the two of them dropping out at just the right time makes complete sense.
Harris “represents” her surface-level demographic, but in her time in Oakland, she rolled back the practices of her predecessor Terence Hallinan, who was possibly the most progressive DA in the country. During his two terms, violent crime dropped by 60%, and he was an outspoken advocate for weed legalization. He said sex work was a public health issue and not a criminal one, and worked to steer as many non-violent cases into diversion/rehab and away from jail time as possible.
All of this, of course, pissed off the cops to no end. So Harris cozied up to the police and big money donors, and ran the now-typical “tough on crime” candidacy… And, well, you can see what has happened to San Francisco between when she was elected in 2003 and now.
I know he initially promised to pick a woman, but I’m pretty sure he changed that to black women, saying he has like 4 to choose from. Either way it’s bad taste to make such an important decision openly based on race and gender.
So we agree that nobody wants Harris as president? And that voting for Biden is how we might just end up with her as president?
If Biden wins and survives to the end of a second term, I think the nomination will be hotly contested.
I don’t think a sitting president will ever die of natural causes. The doctors at Walter Reed are just too good. Look at all the senators that make it to 95 before they start breaking down.
He may not die, but I think it’s reasonable to think he will be deemed unfit to serve, or even step down voluntarily.
I would be shocked. Like I said, the medical care these people are getting is on another level entirely.
Our medical care isn’t limitless, there is only so much we can actually do. Look at how Biden has been progressing even with the best care in the world, he clearly isn’t in the best shape and it’s only going to get worse. It’s entirely possible he gets worse fast and for there to be nothing that can be done about it even with the best care we can give him.
I’ve seen him speak a whole bunch and he always comes off as fine to me. I haven’t noticed any changes in the last 4 years.
He has had some pretty bad senior moments, the worst one I can recall is the “Hey Jackie” one. In general he does talk pretty slow and just appears confused sometimes. He talks like he is really having to think about what he is saying, and that’s not just him, he didn’t use to be like that.
Deemed unfit to serve requires an untested legal procedure that is going to definitely face challenges and will be unpopular. It would be better for them to pull a Wilson or Reagan.
Kamala Harris, only the far left hates her. The moderate left does not. I’m in the far left and I hate gamala because she is a cop who has a terrible human rights record, and has supported the idea of transgender women being forced into male prisons. For the moderate left, she is a black woman and that’s enough.
I think a lot of the left agree with you, and obviously the right hates her, probably more than Biden. I also feel like the far left has grown a lot lately, the fact that Bernie even won some states in primaries just shows how big the far left has become.
It is quite obvious that America is a country without any safety net, and what little safety net there is, our branded Moochers and takers, whereas any other country would have given them the tools to succeed instead of shaming them for needing a little help.
Let it be based on gender and race. Woman are nearly 52% of the population but the politicians don’t reflect that. African background is about 15% and again the political leadership doesn’t reflect that. It is reasonable to expect that the powers that be won’t be perfectly aligned with the demographics but it isn’t reasonable the levels that we have.
Let it be based on the best person for the job. If that happens to be a black woman then fine, but the race and gender should not be a requirement at all. Saying that you will only choose a black woman is just as racist as sexist as saying you will only choose a white male.
How was best determined?
Most qualified and experienced for the job, regardless of race or gender
Electrolytes are what plants crave.