The Democrats should have replaced Biden as president and not just as candidate.
The Democrats should have replaced Biden as president and not just as candidate.
Now is a great time for if I were there hypotheticals, so here's mine.
Once it was decided to run Harris and push Biden out, they should have gone all the way and used the 25th amendment to let Harris become president. This would have effectively separated her from Biden while still allowing her to take credit for the good stuff. She could have instructed the DOJ to start investigating price gouging now, and campaigned on needing to win to keep it up.
The 100ish days wouldn't have been enough for wholesale replacement, but it could have created a concrete message of this is where I want to go. A campaign focused on already delivering is a positive message people could get behind as well.
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It's RBG all over again.
Joe Biden should have stepped down two years ago at least. His diminishing cognitive ability is nothing new.
Honestly I think he was fine then got covid I think right before the debate and the brain fog fucked him and us.
Nah. The Daily Show's been running segments on Biden's decline for years.
I don't think Trump's brain is any better.
He is able to rile his crowd and his fumbles appear less demented although he is clearly suffering from same issues as the many other of our geriatric nepo baby leadership.
At least RBG seemed competent, Biden looks more like elder abuse at times.
You're not wrong.
I'm still shocked anyone thought it was a good idea to put him on live TV or let him in front of a camera unmanaged during the campaign.
Covid was the only reason he won in 2020, they could get away with hiding him away and claim it's responsible.
Not in this election. Most people are paying double or triple for groceries, utilities, and rent.
Biden was fucked from the get-go. His presidency, for most Americans, has been a travesty.
Kamala had a legit shot to win, but wasted two months of campaign time repeating memes instead of campaigning hard in favor of workers and higher wages. She was also mum on the historic corporate corruption making the lives of ordinary Americans so hard.
Look at my state, Missouri. We voted down the abortion ban in a landslide. We passed a $15 minimum wage in a landslide. We also went for Trump and elected a Republican governor. If Harris had campaigned harder in support of workers, she would have won, I think.
But if someone were to be heading South at 100 miles/hr, and then managed to halt that and start going North at 100 miles/hr, but only managed to cover 10 miles before having to check in with a progress report, then why doesn't he get credit for stopping the bad, turning the situation around, and at least beginning the process to make it better? The scenario I outlined is a +200 miles/hr difference, so to focus on "only" covering 10 miles is nowhere close to an accurate reporting of the situation.
A practical irl example is how those striking railway workers got close to everything they asked for. They may not have received as much pure "sick days" as they asked, but they got even more "PTO days", which might even be better perhaps, depending on how those are allocated and what burdens are involved one way or another, I dunno? Either way, the vast majority of the billionaire-bought media refused to cover that story. If it bleeds it leads but that was boring, they decided (for us). If I was not on Lemmy I would have had no clue about it at all.
Congress and the Supreme Court also share the functioning of government, and there is only so much that one branch can do all on its own - remember last year when Congress could not pass a budget for six months!?
Now Gaza... okay that's fucked up, but that ONE issue aside, he did kinda impressive work? Not... like... the kind that shows up immediately e.g. egg prices dropping, but the kind that is boring, policy changes, that sets up the future, i.e. infrastructure changes. Also, aside from price gouging, how much of egg price rising was initially due to COVID where so many truckers had literally died that they had trouble putting things onto shelves? (and once they could blame that, the gouging kept them high, b/c fuck us why not) And also the whole Avian flu situation, which may not be infecting workers directly (except in a very few set of rare instances - e.g. I haven't read yet but this just popped up: https://lemmy.world/post/21827872), but lots of birds have had to be destroyed in order to save their larger stocks from getting the virus.
So, the USA is not okay now, I am not saying that. But the situation is more complex than that he simply was a bad President. Trump will be MUCH worse. Not that the likes of Fox News or Joe Rogan or Elon Musk will acknowledge that.
Another thing Dems shouldn't be doing now: making excuses.
The $15 minimum wage passed in a landslide here in Missouri.
That's empirical evidence that it was stupid to float tax breaks and cosplay as moderate Republicans. They should have leaned into New Deal politics, but they didn't. Only Trump spoke to workers, even if he was lying.
In retrospect the teamsters and other unions declining to endorse Harris should have triggered every alarm in the campaign, and I don't think it did.
Absolutely it should have. As a Green Party supporter, it felt condescending and tone deaf to me how everything Dems said was about being "joyful" in a country where many people are paying double or triple for groceries, utilities, and rent for the last three years. I had to loan my 80 year-old parents my car so they can drive for DoorDash, because we don't have a social safety net for the elderly and no one else will employ them. Don't tell me to be joyful. Tell me you're going to hold corporations accountable and actually take care of our people.
Except... they won't, though neither will the conservatives. The only thing required for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. Which there seem not enough of, at least in comparison to the forces on the other side that want to tear everything down - in fairness, it is significantly easier (and thus needs far fewer resources) to destroy than to create.
That's empirical evidence that it was stupid to float tax breaks and cosplay as moderate Republicans.
Maybe. I'm hearing that a lot lately, but I'm not politically astute enough to judge there - especially regarding Missouri that has more than a little contentious relationship with liberals. I'm talking bombings of abortion clinics, Josh Hawley being the only Senator to vote against a particular sex-slave trafficking bill, death threats delivered to SO MANY doctors etc. Even if what you are saying is true, I can see why her campaign did not think that Missouri could have been flipped over to actively voting for her. And even if it could have been, at what cost i.e. what amount of resources would that have required, vs. trying harder to win e.g. Pennsylvania?
Only Trump spoke to workers, even if he was lying.
Definitely that - similar to Hillary's promises "just suck it up and take it b/c everything is fine now as it is" (except pro-tip: it was NOT, and more people voted against her than for him). Both of them I noticed barely had a primary, which broke the older convention of leaning more left to first win the libs, then shift a bit to the right to engage the centrists (like people in MO). Perhaps not having a campaign is what led to her shifting too far to the right, straight out of the gate, and never having a chance to show the actual liberals what she wanted to do for them? She counted on people showing up for her to spite Trump... but apparently the Gaza situation, in combination with so much else (inflation & other economic hardships) did not make that happen, particularly where it counted i.e. again Pennsylvania (but the latter would have been substantially helped by hearing from many other places that had likewise chosen her over him instead of the reverse).
Was the call for her to step down during the time the Democrats controlled the Senate?