Surely you can link some of those comments on Lemmy?
I don’t feel like digging through my own comment history for examples, but I can assure you I made MANY such comments, and I was not alone in making them.
I don’t think I made such comments but I sure as hell voted that way.
It’s good to be proven wrong when the outcome is this positive.
Hopefully you can take a second, if not a couple hours, to reflect on what you can learn about the experience. A lot of other people didn’t make the same mistake, for lack of a better word, and were communicating their ideas the whole time.
For example, I try to pay attention to which pundits or networks are wrong and then never fully trust them again, or at least treat them with a high amount of skepticism. In contrast, people that are right on big, important issues I try to pay more attention to
Edit: I think I should’ve said we, as I’m absolutely doing this myself
I personally didn’t think it was a great idea to attack him a la Bernie v Hilary, since we have to ultimately vote for him, which is where I think most of his defense comes from, but I also didn’t agree with denying reality and pretending we were going to win by just ignoring reality harder than the other side.
I mainly want to try and understand why I was hesitant at all and not fully onboard with the brave people that convinced enough people in power to force him to step down. It at least makes me wonder what else I’m believing that isn’t true
To be fair this was kind of a new phenomenon, and nobody knew what would happen if Biden dropped out like that. I’m sure you were hoping to avoid a power struggle that just didn’t materialize. Plus a lot of the suggestions were kind of out there and not well known, so I can see why it would make sense to stick with Biden.
Though I’m really glad you were wrong.
Yeah, honestly, I was dreading a whole avalanche of consequences that just… didn’t materialize. Even when I finally came around to Biden dropping out, I was certain that we were going to end up with a very brutal “DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY” narrative from the media in addition to whatever ugliness emerged from figuring out who the candidate was without a new primary. And yet when it happened, it was almost… subdued. And the Trump campaign absolutely floundered on it.
Wasn’t hyped for Harris either, but Walz was a damn good VP pick, so I’m actually feeling almost positive. Almost. I mean, at the end of the day we shouldn’t be dealing with fighting this fascist shite in a fair and just world, but we deal with the hand we have, not the one we want.
I did as well, and am very happy to be wrong.
And it seems like Harris’ campaign saw those kinds of comments and chose to address them with energy and humor.
They’ve done a great job so far. Hoping they can keep this amazing momentum and prove me thoroughly wrong on election day.
I can’t find specific comments I’ve made in the past, but I know I made them. I admit I believed there was no way there could be such a rapid acceptance of Kamala as the candidate with how late in the election cycle we were.
My main priority then (as it is now) was just keeping Trump out of the white house, and I thought dropping the incumbent from the ticket after primaries were already done would jeopardize that. Happy to be wrong.
What a time to be alive. As it seems now, I was entirely wrong, as was ‘conventional’ political wisdom. May I continue to be wrong. It’s a welcome failure, as far as I’m concerned.
I figured there was a 1% chance of Biden dropping out, but also thought that Kamala would be a better candidate than him, but was also skeptical that Kamala would be able to beat Trump.
So…basically wrong on the first, correct on the second… yet to be determined on the third.
I did not expect the Democrats to actually do anything that would actually help themselves, figuring that they are far too ossified and out of touch.
Currently the Trump and the Republicans seem to stun locked by the ‘they’re just weird’ angle… which is amazing to me in two ways:
One, that after basically 3 decades of spewing lies and hate and insults against their opponents in the form of coordinated talking points to respond to basically every political development, they cannot handle the mildest possible form of this being used against them.
Two, that the Democrats finally actually collectively did something ‘aggressive’ rhetorically. Years and years of ‘taking the high road’ and acting morally superior to their opponents… they finally actually did something (collectively) that makes them not seem like hoity toity cloistered intellectual snobs.
That, and Mike Tim Walz is actually surprisingly relatable and charismatic.
That conventional political wisdom is getting less applicable with every year since the hell-date of 2016?
Yeah, unprecedented event after unprecedented event. Still you could’ve been vindicated if anything mildly unfortunate had happened before the DNC. Like if Harris picked a different VP, if Vance was actually in any way adept, etc. And hey, knock on wood, but you could still be right in the end – we probably shouldn’t count our chickens before they hatch.
Good on you though for being a good sport about your previous comments. I was on the “drop out” side (not that Biden would drop out, but I thought pretty much anyone else would have a better chance), but at the end of the day I kinda think we’re all talking out of our asses to a certain degree, because political science isn’t actually a science at all.
That’s actually really great! 1000 kudos to you
Why do you think political wisdom wasn’t applicable in 2016 and hasn’t been since?
I think that’s is really one of the most important things we need to try and understand and I don’t think it’s mainly due to the Internet being a factor.
My guess is it’s moreso due to the influence of money on political campaigns, the influence of mega-corporations on the job market, and all the offshoring of jobs in the last few decades. The terrible state of our education system really doesn’t help either
What’s to be learned? What is weak logic about the mainline, presumptive nominee, who is a sitting president, who one way or another was the only human being to beat trump in an election, would become the actual nominee and democratic candidate?
That is not a bad bet, or bad logic, if we are sitting in March or April.
Idk, I asked someone else in this thread that and they had a great answer. They mentioned how the way we predict elections has changed since 2016 (or something) and I thought that was super interesting and worth reflecting on. If I answered your question right now it might be something simple like age or someone with a better understanding of history might mention how the current level of wealth inequality compares to previous moments in history
That said, I’m not sure why this similar comment was seen as more offensive. This is literally something I try to do myself when someone I trust is wrong about something. I might not cancel em or whatever but I’ll try to understand what went wrong or maybe just stop listening to them about certain topics they’re consistently wrong on
For example, you could note that “only human being to beat Trump in an election” is a really small sample size. It’s equally true to note that so far, Hillary is the only Democrat to lose to Trump in an election. The performance post-switch would indicate Trump is not a uniquely dangerous and persuasive candidate, but that his opposition was uniquely weak so far.
Yep, I was wearing that clown makeup too. Dems have not impressed me much lately with being able to deliver a coherent and effective message, so I was fully prepared for a shitshow of disarray if/when Biden dropped out.
It was very surprising to me how effectively they were able to leave Trump stumbling just as he seemed to be on the upswing. The utter lack of disorder around it almost feels like Biden was planning to drop out of the race all along, just waiting for the right moment… but that’s probably giving him too much credit.
What clown makeup? Biden was the presumptive nominee. I wasn’t pro Biden, I was pro Democrat in the Whitehouse. Trump in prison.
I still am, though I acknowledge I was wrong about who the nominee was gonna be.
I personally underestimated the support Harris would get. I remember lots of progressives being unhappy with her back in 2020, due to her background as a prosecutor.
Between that and the obvious reasons Republicans would go after her, I figured it would be an uphill battle.
Very happy to have been wrong!
That’s what they looked like at the time they were made too. Was so wildly disconnected from actual day-to-day opinions. Best argument at the time could have been “Biden won’t drop out and the DNC won’t do anything about that, so we should try to make the corpse look as appealing as possible.”
I won’t pretend to know how it would have gone either way. Had it actually not happened in the timeline that it did happen, it could have easily been different. The momentum, the media narratives, the quickness with which the Democrats united behind Harris, all of these things caught most everyone by surprise. I could see any of those things being wildly different had Biden chose to step down much earlier. We don’t like to admit it, but irrational, unknowable elements like “vibe” and “timing” have always played a huge role in elections.
Around the time this article was posted, I largely agreed with AOC, even though I was very worried about Biden’s stubbornness leading to his loss in November despite his capability of being an excellent leader.
But the fact that the party was able to resist chaos, keep steady on a Biden-lite agenda through Harris means that the Dems have vastly outperformed my expectations in the last month.
I will let Lemmy decide if I need to hold myself to account for my comment pledging money to charity if a “spry and progressive” candidate succeeded him. Does Harris count as spry and progressive?
And Done! Lemmy has spoken!
Does Harris count as spry and progressive?
Surprisingly, yes!
I expected the Dems to support the same tired high road taking boring candidate so I wanted Biden to be kept around for brand recognition because that seemed to be the only thing the Dems would accept. I absolutely did not expect Kamala to come out guns blazing on memes, engaging the GOP on their level instead of taking the high road, and then picking the absolute best example of a human being possible as VP. I expected the Dems to discourage all of those things in favor of some stoic white guy safe choice.
I am extremely happy to have been wrong and it is great to see the Dems catch on that this kind of campaign will be successful.
