mozz

it is important that Democrats run almost anybody else

So.. nobody in particular in mind?

I see no reason to believe that the conservatives want him to drop out, and many reasons to believe they want him to stay in.

They sure as fuck have a funny way of showing it

I am referring to the New York Times and CBS News and whatever other crap here, as conservative media. Not the modern meaning of conservative, i.e. Nazi, like Fox News or Newsmax. I'm not sure what they are saying about Biden needing to drop out but I am assuming they are also talking about it, with much of the same self-fulfilling prophecy aspect about it.

I would think that pretty much the last thing in the world they'd want would be for the Democrats to make an 11th hour switch to an entirely different candidate, and quite possibly a candidate who will inspire the sort of enthusiasm Biden's candidacy is sorely lacking.

My god dude

The enthusiasm you are perceiving or not perceiving is purely media created. You are consuming some made up bullshit and imagining that it corresponds to reality, and that the media will suddenly be excited about this new candidate. They will not. They will find problems with the new candidate just as genuine as Biden's fuckup of a debate, and if you start wringing your hands at that point about what a big deal it is and how maybe now we need a new candidate that people can get some enthusiasm about, the people that bankroll the media that gave you that idea will laugh and laugh, with pure contempt for you, and with a certain quiet conviction of the sureness of their victory.

There are farm workers that work next to infected animals every day in the US, right now, in many states. Sometimes they get bird flu. Just a handful of times that we know of, so far, which probably means it's happened a decent amount more than that.

The official guidance is "try not to get any of the fluids you are coming in contact with on you or anything, that might be really bad, good luck."

It's not a great strategy overall, in my opinion, to be honest.

Hm

You may have a point. I read more about it, and it's not really clear cut. You're right that the states have laws about what has to happen, but the Supreme Court has also said that they can't tell a political party how to run their nominating process. The delegates are pledged to Biden, but also, ever since 1984 they don't have to vote for him if their conscience bothers them. But also, knowledgeable people have looked at the situation and said, it doesn't really matter what the rules are because they just wouldn't do it.

I think in practice, it's a mess. I do somewhat stand by my statement that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Biden to just kind of leave the cockpit and trust that someone else will wander in and start flying the plane again, without anyone affirmatively saying, yes it is me, I will do it, I got it. But I do also get what you're saying and it has a lot more validity than I thought at first.

This, as far as I can tell, isn't true. If someone can talk enough delegates into supporting them instead of Biden -- instead of talking the media into running stories about wealthy donors and a handful of congresspeople who want Biden to drop out -- then the nomination can be theirs.

Yes, they would have to challenge Biden and mount a campaign. That's how it works. Usually nominees fight each other, sometimes fairly hard. They might also after that have to challenge Trump or get in a war or something. If they are hoping for the process to be nice to them and for Biden to just kind of clear the way so they don't have to do any work he has already said that (for now at least) he will not.

Again, it's incredibly notable to me that there's this incredible level of energy being spent on how Biden shouldn't be the nominee and almost none being spent on who should be the nominee instead. The first one will hurt the Democrats, and the second one might be a useful path forward in a difficult situation, and about 90% of what's in the media is the first one. So what does that tell you?

Look man, I don't know. Maybe Biden dropping out would be best. All I'm saying is that the things Biden is saying make a lot more sense to me than the things the media is saying.

I think what Biden said was pretty spot on: If you don’t want me as the nominee, figure out a plan and mount a challenge at the convention. If I’m a weak candidate then beat me at the convention. But if you show up at the convention just standing there with nothing but your little sign that says “BUT HE’S OLLLLLLLD” then I hope you won’t mind if I don’t take you seriously, and run for president anyway, and in fact I would hope that in that case you’d be able to admit you don’t have anything better to offer and willing to vote for me so we don’t get Project 2025 instead.

To me, that sounds pretty fair.

Some version of that sounds pretty good, yes. I do think there’s a legitimate conversation to be had about what candidate would be best instead of just “fuck you it’s Biden,” even though the time is pretty fuckin tight at this point. As Biden pointed out, the convention is where that can happen, which would give people time to organize a competitor candidate or two and get their ducks in a row for how to run their challenger.

Since Biden is such an objectively weak candidate that no one supports him anymore and he can’t even put a sentence together, that should be easy to do. Right?

What I, and I think Warren, are objecting to, is the stupid idea that Biden should just respond to the obvious conservative-media thirst for the idea of him dropping out, and play into the Republicans’ hands, and hope that the DNC can come through in a clutch and come up with an alternate plan from scratch without tripping over their dicks and falling down at the critical moment as they are wont to often do.

What, you mean you aren’t deeply concerned about what all the wealthy DNC donors want to have happen? Those guys have always had our backs.

If replacing Biden was the answer to all the Democrats’ problems, all the papers like the NYT that are openly hostile to the Democrats winning the election wouldn’t be pushing it so hard.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. They are not “pushing” it in the sense of sincerely advocating a particular course of action that is realistic, and interviewing the people who are trying to implement that plan of action, as they would if they were sympathetic to the Democrats’ efforts to stop a real fascist dictatorship to come to life in the US, and trying to report on that genuine strategic effort maybe with a little bit of partisan hope that it would work.

They’re just very convincingly imitating this whole panicked concern trolling freak out, to hurt Biden, for reasons of their own. That doesn’t mean he isn’t old as fuck or that that’s not a problem. It could be that going through the total clusterfuck of replacing him as a candidate 4 months before the election might be worth the risk and we’d come into smoother waters successfully before November.

But they’re recommending it with such a shouting in everyone’s face level of forcefulness and repetition and without any particular plan to substitute for him, because they know it will hurt his chances if he stays in, and that replacing him at this point will be a clusterfuck. Not because they sincerely believe it will help. And the Democrats who are buying into and amplifying the strategy free panicked shouting version of it should be ashamed of themselves.

China during this era was not a simple time to stay alive if you were politically relevant. You're damn right. Look at his face. Zero regrets.

That's actually not true. People regularly walk out of Trump rallies early because it's just an incoherent mess and it just keeps going for over an hour. Even the true believers aren't that into it after a while.

This post makes a fairly compelling and fairly chilling argument for why it might be that Trump gets such a free pass in the media for the blatant fuckups he makes and why there's still so much scrutiny of Biden.

It requires an email to even read the first article, or at least has appeared to any time I’ve tried to go over there and read stuff

Most places that do that, I am fine putting my email into, sometimes even paying for them, but for some reason I don’t understand, medium.com has some kind of anti Feng shui that makes me just hit the back button annoyed any time I click on an article and the thing pops up. It’s like somehow their web site design has it timed and positioned at the perfect psychological moment to create irritation

It is purely irrational and purely only my personal reaction to it but that is how I react to it