I don’t think the opinion “the man who has control of the nuclear arsenal is showing signs of senility and should not serve another 4 years regardless of who replaces him” is not an unreasonable one
When the current only alternative is someone with clearly worse faculties and intentions, it obviously fucking is. Again, name who you think can beat him. Go ahead. Take into account the entire current political climate. We’ll wait.
this is kinda a ridiculous request. The DNC should be the ones actively finding and presenting alternatives. If it was any other election year what if something happened to their primary candidate?
No one publicly shows interest because the party prevents any alternative. Anyone trying to run is accused of trying to break up the party, look at what happened to Bernie.
The Polymarket prediction markets gives odds for who will win the presidential election and who will win the democratic nominee. We can compare the odds of each candidate and use Bayes Theorem to determine their chances of winning the presidency if they secure the DNC nomination.
Here’s the results as of posting this comment:
Joe Biden: 27% Kamala Harris: 50% Michelle Obama: 100% Gavin Newsom: 66% Other: 50%
Obviously this doesn’t work perfectly (the Michelle Obama example especially is bizarre), but there is over $300M behind these numbers so people seem to think they’re at least somewhat accurate.
TLDR: there is a lot of money that thinks Joe Biden is one of the worst options
It wouldn’t be if there were an alternative who was not showing similar or worse signs of senility. When both of the only feasible candidates have the same issue, that issue is mostly moot.
You don’t think if Biden stepped down and it was an open primary there wouldn’t be some good options?
Pete Buttigeig, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, anyone under 60 would make Trump look like a dottering old man in comparison
And preferably, name someone who has announced their candidacy.
A list of people you’d like in the job isn’t as relevant. I would’ve accepted almost any of the names people had floated, had any of them publicly shown interest.
But here we are with people often demanding Jon Stewart and Michelle Obama throw their hats in the ring, and that’s two people who keep saying they aren’t interested.
Edit: the shit people downvote here.
We’d love to, but Biden killed primaries and caucuses. And there’s not a Democrat in existence that will go up against the DNC’s hand-picked candidate after their behavior over the last decade.
Whining about being downvoted (BY ONE PERSON IN THIS CASE) is a great way to ensure that I downvote you.
You’re not wrong (generally speaking…I’m not interested, I’m entirely untrustworthy, and no one who knows me wants me in that position), but they’re not going to run so it’s moot.
No one who wants to run in 2028 is going to run against the incumbent President unless that President is incredibly weak.
Biden in 2020 was solid, but even he had a close win over Trump. Biden 2022 was starting to show signs of wear (understandably so), but planning for 2024 made sense. Not my favorite choice, but I don’t think it was necessarily wrong. 2024 SOTU Biden scared Republicans so much they made up all sorts of drug rumors.
Jump to 1st Debate 2024 Biden. That was his first real misstep. Biden can recover from this.
Biden was far from my first choice in 2020, but he’s done a great job. He needs to get out there and prove it. Showcase what he’s done and pitch a plan for a future America.
Right now I don’t know if Biden can do that. I saw parts of it during the debate, but I want more. Biden should be able to convince his own party he has what it takes to win. Biden isn’t incredibly weak at the moment, but he’s getting weaker.
At the end of the day I’m voting for Biden (or his replacement) because I believe in Democrat policy. I’m not just voting “against Trump”, I believe Democratic policy is better for Americans and the American people. Republican policy, especially under Trump, isn’t even worth considering, it’s fascism and I don’t mean that hyperbolically.
If Biden can’t beat Democrats, Biden can’t beat Trump and that’s a big fuckin concern to me.
Also, since you’re looking for a name, Newsom has made it clear he is going to run in 2028. Will he run if Biden steps down? That’s debatable. It’s going to be a tough race and a loss in 2024 probably means no chance of running in 2028. There is a chance no one can beat Trump (and that’s even scarier).
(Also to anyone on the fence, Fuck Trump. Get your ass to the voting booth on election day and vote Biden.)
They keep asking for names then stop responding when you give them one. Hilariously unserious people who just want to scream that we have zero other options as loud as possible.
I disagree. My logic is as follows:
Premise 1. Joe Biden cannot beat Trump
Premise 2: Virtually any other democrat can beat Trump
Conclusion: If we want to beat Trump, Biden should step down and be replaced by virtually any other Democrat
Why can’t Joe beat Trump? Because he seems old and confuses things? You think that’s why people are voting for Trump?
Biden only beat Trump the first time around because of historic voter turnout. Voters just aren’t as enthusiastic to keep Trump out this year.
I mean, if you look at track records, Biden already beat Trump in 100% of previous elections.
Because last time he beat Trump it was because Covid was the top worry and of course people want the party that promotes health care over Trump when their biggest fear is a global pandemic. Now peoples fears are money. You run the same campaign you ran in 2020 and you’ll lose.
Yes. There’s partisans who vote Trump no matter what, but there’s also a pretty large number of “low information voters”. Rather than being necessarily dumb, many of these are people from all kinds of different walks of life who just don’t follow politics that closely and prefer to follow things like dating reality shows or sports instead. These people are not really aware of what happened on Jan 6 other than that there was some sort of riot at the Capitol. They know Trump was charged with a bunch of crimes, but don’t know if they were real crimes or just politics. And when these people see Trump lying confidently and Joe Biden being barely intelligible in response, they like Trump better.
It sucks, yes. But it’s reality. Democrats need someone who can answer Trump forcefully. Or they will lose.
You say he can’t beat Trump, but he already beat healthcare, so who knows what else he can beat
This continues to be a disingenuous meme response. If they named a name you’d complain that they were trying to install their choice rather than have an open selection process.
Try me. I’m waiting. No one has named a name.
My best alternative choice would be Bernie but I don’t think he’d actually beat Trump because he’d lose some centrists, doesn’t seem particularly less old, and hasn’t held presidential office before. What’s your choice?
It’s two separate questions, and the second has basically only two answers: it’s either Harris or some sort of open contest voted on by the delegates. Most “replace” voices don’t care which of those options is selected nearly as much as they care that the guy who’s going to lose can’t be the nominee.
And my personal choice is “I don’t care”. Harris is fine, the governors are fine, Buttigieg is unlikely but fine. I’m not going to pretend the party or Biden’s own delegates is going to choose a progressive. None of them is going to cause a seismic shift in the candidate’s policy except for getting a chance to choose a better message on Israel and any will fulfill the need of ditching the losing incumbent who only made the race worse in his one key public appearance. Their one and only qualification is that unlike Biden, they might not lose. And that’s plenty for me.
I don’t think that’s a disingenuous response. I can name a lot of people I liked who ran in the primaries in '20 as well as a slew of up and coming names. I don’t think they have as strong a chance as Biden.
Like many have already said, I think that focusing on a lackluster debate (in which he actually responded well based on the content of his responses and the policy he promoted) is not the way to go about this.
As much as I like other names for the presidency, I think Biden is our best shot at staving off disaster and he did get a lot done with the Inflation Reduction Act. Another four years of that policy trajectory is definitely something I can get behind. That’s at least a step in the right direction.
And I think Biden is going to lose and any of the shortlist names have a reasonable chance of injecting some life into the party and most importantly haven’t been fatally damaged, not by “a lackluster debate”, but by being unable to make coherent responses. Biden had lackluster debates in the 2020 primary, that didn’t invalidate him from being nominee, because it was just a poor performance, not indications that at least some of the time he’s incoherent.
I remember when RBG said the same thing. “Who would you rather see on the court other than me?” The answer is literally anyone else who isn’t a christofascist rapist, but they ended up with that one christofascist rapist.
And you’re not able to see the difference between a guaranteed nomination and a national election?
“‘Get On Board Or Shut The Fuck Up’ is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker,” he said.
Jon Stewart gets it, why can’t you?
Democrats can’t name someone until Biden agrees or they have a majority ready to try to force him out. It really is Biden’s decision to step aside. The issue is the polls are saying he should step aside, and it looks like he wants to lose.
I wonder how much of it is just undermining Biden. I lump this in with the “just any third party” people. It doesn’t make sense unless your goal is to just undermine Biden to bemoan his situation and the party without rallying behind something more specific. The “just any third party” implies the person is equally stoked about the chances of a Green Party or a Libertarian candidate, which makes no sense given the vastly different platforms.
Kamala Harris. Pete Buttigieg. Fucking anyone else. I’d rather vote for Mitt Romney than Donald Trump; we don’t need Biden.
But your question is obviously made in bad faith. You will argue that anyone we name is unelectable. Meanwhile, the framework of the discussion ignores Biden’s own questionable electability.
The current vice president, who also is the vice presidential candidate, and who Biden’s campaign itself says is qualified to replace him if he’s incapacitated? You know, the one that’s already effectively a candidate for the presidency because no one believes Biden will last 4 years?
How does Biden right now? She’s already fully factored in when people think about Biden anyway.
And to answer your question, the Ipsos poll from July 2 puts her within one point of Trump which is actually much better than Biden right now.
America will NOT elect a Black woman. Independent voters have already been fed four years of bullshit about her. Remember all the conspiracy theories about how Biden was going to immediately step down after the 2020 election and hand the Presidency over to Kamala, which would be apocalyptically bad because…well, you know…mumble mumble
It may also be a little late to introduce a new candidate, unless they have great name recognition. Betcha Bernie 2.0 would mobilize a goodly number of people, while centrists would hold their noses, and just vote for Not Trump.
Bernie isn’t running, and Biden isn’t quitting, so we take what we can get. At this point, I would literally vote for a loofah if it ran against Trump.
Someone on lemmy said this Sunday that France leftist successfully formed a global left party in 4 weeks, surely Democrats could find a candidate in 4 months.
I want to see AOC as your president.
The French situation is very different and the election was a little more complicated than that. They (left and center parties)didn’t form a global left party, but only allegedly collaborated on not running against each other in some areas.
This is not an option in the USA presidential election where there only are two candidates to begin with. Introducing a third candidate would only split the votes.
It would be nice to see AOC run eventually, but it wouldn’t be a good idea right now. Hopefully both Trump and Biden will be to old next time, so both parties need to find younger candidates.
At this point, I would literally vote for a loofah if it ran against Trump.
Then we don’t need name recognition. Any middle of the road Democrat will do.
To be clear, I’m planning to vote against trump unless somehow biden gets replaced with someone worse than trump (~0% chance that happens, but still)
that said, I don’t know a single person who’s happy with biden or excited that he’s the candidate, and frankly I doubt the sanity of anyone excited about him as much as I doubt bidens sanity (whereas with people voting for trump the insanity is crystal clear). I don’t know for sure who would be better, kamala might be the best bet, but being able to get through a debate without gibberish word salad sentences should be an obvious requirement
It should be, but the time and place for it was in the primaries, not when you’re up against another word salad candidate with a die hard rock solid base.
lmao what primary? the one where there were zero serious alternatives because everyone even suggesting candidates were yelled at for hElPiNg tRuMp simply by contesting biden?
I don’t know a single person
This is the problem with Leftists. Y’all censor or cancel anyone with opposing viewpoints, and then you get trapped by your own bubble and confused by how it doesn’t jive with reality, so you make up conspiracy theories to explain the difference.
The point is that is a fine viewpoint to have, but to loudly just bemoan problem rather than proposing the preferred alternative is hardly useful. It has all the downsides of undermining the still presumptive candidate without any concrete hint of building up an alternative.
Yeah, but not to the same level as biden for people who are on the fence between biden and trump.
Less than Biden was, even before the debate, but only she gets described that way.
Rare AOC L. This is absolutely the wrong call.
Everyone who’s paying attention can see that Biden is heading toward a loss with tragic consequences and only digs himself deeper every time he tries to convince people that the sky is green and replacing him is impossible.
Fact is that, despite spending two campaigns saying the opposite as a tactic, Biden wouldn’t lose any sleep over losing. He knows that, because he’s rich and privileged in the US, he’ll be ok when fascism comes.
Apparently he cares less about the vast majority of the population who emphatically WON’T be ok than he does about his own ego and career. Yet another reason why he’s definitely the wrong man for the job and would have been even if he WASN’T on course to lose. Which he is.
I’m not a Biden fan, but sewing discontent is not helpful.
The “I would be at peace” thing is taken out of context as you well know. Biden knows as well as anyone how bad a Trump presidency would be, but how would you have him answer that question? The only possible answer is to say you’ll give it your best and deal with the outcome.
sewing discontent is not helpful.
I’m not sowing anything. My point is that the discontent is already there and it’s only growing.
The “I would be at peace” thing is taken out of context as you well know
No. He said the words in the context of whether he would care much if he lost. That’s how I presented it.
Biden knows as well as anyone how bad a Trump presidency would be
For most people, but not the ones he cares about the most: himself and his rich owner donors.
how would you have him answer that question?
“Yes, losing to the last president and first dictator of the United States of America would obviously be devastating. That’s why I’m doing everything in my power to avoid it”
The only possible answer is to say you’ll give it your best and deal with the outcome.
No it isn’t. See above.
Bad take. Biden clearly isn’t up for the job anymore. If it really was “just a cold” he would be out doing unscripted interviews and reassuring the public that he isn’t too confused to work after 5pm. The fact that he isn’t means his team thinks it’s more likely than not that he can’t actually convince the public that he’s still with it.
Putting someone else in is a risk but keeping him in is a bigger risk. Models are predicting a 60-70% chance of trump winning if the election was run today. This ignores that now the trump team and conservative media will now be pushing the age issue constantly. Who is going to be confident in Biden after he hides away from the public for the next few months and then drops out of the second debate?
Last, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the Democratic Party giving cover to a president that isn’t mentally fit for the job. There was so much talk about following norms and respecting the office of president while it was trump in the white house, but now some dems are openly saying they’re ok with Biden being controlled by his cabinet and family. Even if it all works out and Bidens cabinet runs the country for 4 more years it’s going to cast a long shadow on future elections where republicans can point to Biden as proof that democrats don’t respect the office and don’t even care if the nominee is competent.
Biden clearly isn’t up for the job anymore.
He’s currently in the job and things are going reasonably well. Do I wish he was more left wing? Yes, but he’s been more left than any POTUS during my lifetime. Do I wish he would stop supporting Israel? Absolutely, this is a huge mark against him.
Maybe we can argue that we can see the writing on the wall and we think he won’t be able to do the job, but to argue that he clearly can’t requires ignoring the reality.
Trump, on the other hand, we had 4 years of and that was a disaster that ended with people attacking the capitol. So if we can say we know any of them is not up for the job, it’s clear which way that should point.
Two things though
1 if he can’t get up and speak coherently for an hour at a time I’d argue he actually isn’t doing the job. Communicating clearly and responding to crises at all hours is crucial to the job.
2 there’s little proof that Biden is actually the one calling the shots even ignoring his lack of public appearances
- I’m a proof is in the pudding type of guy, and it’s been smooth sailing. You’re conjecture that he can’t lead us during a crisis is just that: conjecture.
- Again, I’m a proof is in the pudding guy. Whether he is actually running the administration is inconsequential: it’s doing well. So if he isn’t running it, then all the less reason to worry about re-electing him because if he is already hands off, then that’s proof his cognitive ability doesn’t really matter.
Yeah there are some pretty frightening implications to all of this.
So they’re all saying that they’re ok with the president being a puppet but also having absolute authority? Sounds highly, highly abusable.
Who is saying both of those things? Everyone that would support Biden is strongly against Trump’s court’s ruling.
Are they? Almost no one is doing a damn thing in response, while also saying that they would be fine with Biden being president while in a coma. People are literally saying things like that all over the place.
Progressives will be absolutely woodchippered if they did anything otherwise. Prob best to stand this one out and let the centrists fight it out. AOC is as delusional as Biden if she thinks he can win this. Not a great look.
I don’t know who downvotes like insanity around here, I think there is a lot of validity in your take.
There is a cult forming around the denial of the reality around Biden as candidate. The current working term is Blue Maga. Lemmt seems to be a kind of epic enter but it’s the exact kind of thing that when Russian propagandists found it, they were able to create The Donald.
Also note how the vote totals work. Someone makes a “don’t vote for Biden, trust me I’m totally a progressive” post and it immediately gets a ton of upvotes. Someone makes a “hey this whole ‘don’t vote’ thing is kind of stupid” post and it immediately gets a ton of downvotes. But if the post gets big enough, real people balance the vote totals out. The initial votes were just bots/trolls trying to influence the tone of the discussion.
AOC strikes me as someone who sees the game as is. She won’t endorse anyone but Democratic nominee, presumptive or otherwise.
Et tu, AOC?
I agree with much of what AOC has to say, but not this. I’ll bet significant money if Biden remains the nominee that we will lose, unfortunately.
(lol whew there is some serious vote manipulation going on around these parts. I hope admins begin implementing some safeguards soon).
I’ll bet significant money if Biden remains the nominee that we will lose
In a repeat of 2016, we found the most beatable candidate in the Democratic Party and ran that person for President. sigh
(lol whew there is some serious vote manipulation going on around these parts. I hope admins begin implementing some safeguards soon).
There is a strong contingent of Blue MAGA on Lemmy. Anything even remotely critical of Our Dear Leader gets trashed, your account gets reported, and people spill out of the woodworking insisting that you are on the personal payroll of one Mr. V. Vladimirovich Putin or possibly the insidious Hand of the Dragon Himself, CCP Supervillain Xi Jinping.
AOC has been increasingly aligned with the Democratic Party elite these days. My guess is she’s wants to run for senate someday and needs to appear loyal to the people who could make or break her campaign. That said, I do think the kind of insider politics she seems to be engaging in is a betrayal of the progressive values she once held.
