I’m sure this was a really hard decision, but it shows courage and strength that Biden put his own ego aside for the good of the country…
…is what I would have said if he’d done this two weeks ago. Now, I’m just glad he was able to take off his narcissism glasses long enough to see how badly he was going to lose, and I hope his prolonged tantrum hasn’t damaged Harris’ chances too badly.
Yeah, you don’t have to be a political genius to realize that almost four weeks of your own allies coming out and saying you need to step down is, ya know…bad. Like, maybe if your political implosion was creating a period of fear, uncertainty, and chaos, and there was you could do to end all that and restore order, you should do that quickly…like, as quickly as possible…as in, not nearly a month later.
You don’t have to be a genius to realize that just because an option is bad, that the alternative might still be worse. Waiting until after the RNC is far from stupid, for example.
Anyone? We were saying this 3-4 weeks ago. You can check my post history, The Rest is Politics, or most commentators.
Here’s my post here with the BBC article referring to calls for him to step down.
I wouldn’t say this is bad timing in hindsight.
- The news media moves on from Trump’s pity party, the debate, the President Putin and Vice President Trump gaffes.
- Facing COVID, Biden has a legitimate reason to drop out without saying that he is weak to pressure
- Trump is now the old and doddering candidate, turning much of the past brainwashing of Republican media on its head.
- Trump will get bigly mad since the attention’s going to be off of him. Potential for a stupid outburst.
- The media will be hyperfocused on what’s to come from the Dem campaign, an excellent opportunity to highlight Biden’s achievements and articulate a bright future for the party and country.
- The pre-emptive smears from Republicans are on their way, but the Dems are a moving target until they officially announce the ticket.
It relies on Democrats getting the message right though they’d faltered before. They get one more chance to fix it in this soft reset.
Yeah, but none of these benefits are better than ending the uncertainty 2 weeks ago; at that point, the polling was clearly showing Biden was dropping in key swing states, and the party was starting to go into full panic mode, but he still let them twist in the win while he made up his mind. Hell, even if he made the announcement during the convention, he could have stolen some of Trump’s publicity this week and forced a whole lot if RNC speakers to rewrite their speeches. Instead, he left the party in chaos for a month, then gave Trump a victory lap convention before finally stepping aside.
There were a lot of rumors and speculation about this possibility last week that I think did take a lot of attention away from the Republican convention.
