So...AOC did a lengthy livestream on why we shouldn't replace Biden. I admit, I didn't get to watch the whole thing, it's a fricking hour long, and while it's infinitely more interesting than listening to Trump, it's late and I wanna get to this before bed, so I'm reacting to what I can, as I got the main gist of it.
Now, there are a lot of risks even I'm not really considering with Biden. I've heard contradictory evidence either way on them, but I've heard stuff about the ballot access in Ohio, and court challenges and how the GOP is looking to trap us into screwing us over. And how replacing Biden at this stage is a nightmare because the convention is in 4 weeks and 4 weeks after that we already have early voting, and yeah. This...is a mess. It really. This whole thing is a nightmare and logistically, I do think it's problematic.
I've mainly been looking at the polling side of it. Even there, I'm not sure about whether replacing Biden is wise. Biden is doing TERRIBLY, I admit that, and yes, the debate is part of the reason why. Again, going to post this chart from my election update:
Ok, you see that dip going into July? That was what the debate did to Biden's odds. He cratered. He was never winning in the first place, but his debate performance did have an impact.
Now, as we can see from the green line, Harris has always been a worse option. She peaked at 15.9% back in November last year, and then tanked from there in February, and new polling has her finally returning to 15.9%. Biden is at 13%, and slowly starting to recover from his poor debate performance, but yeah. Again, he's never been winning.
But again, if Harris is the baseline for an alternative to Biden, well, I can't really encourage replacing him. And while supporters of the replacement plan think it will pay off later, again, we're kinda taking off a plane on a really short runway that goes over a cliff if you can't clear it. So...do we really have the time to put this in motion?
Quite frankly, it seems like the time to do this was earlier this year or last year. Open up the primary process, figure out what we were doing, but the dems actively suppressed having a primary and allowing an alternative to Biden to arise. And you know what? Critics have been pushing for replacing Biden for a while. Progressives, not ones in the institutions like AOC, but ones outside of it, like Cenk Uygur of TYT, Bernie supporters online, and even people like Dean Phillips who are relatively establishmenty, did call out Biden's age. And heck, see that tanking back in January through march? That was the previous time we had this discussion about age. But he did well at the state of the union so that ended that debate until...the debate.
Now, I'm going to be honest, I dont think Biden's debate performance was THAT bad. Given the alternative was a bloviating hack who lied constantly and refused to answer questions and rambled on and on and on, biden didnt come off as that bad. I watched the debate live with a few online friends and we discussed what we thought. We were mostly focused on trump but there were a few moments where i had to cringe like the infamous "defeating medicare" moment. Quite frankly, Biden did F up, and he did look bad. But still, all in all, he won the debate by default because debating trump is like playing chess with a pigeon, he'll knock over the pieces, crap on the board, and then strut around like he's victorious.
But...all of the sudden the floodgates opened. And suddenly CNN and MSNBC were stating the obvious of OMG BIDEN LOOKS OLD AND CANT SPEAK PROPERLY. And It kind of caught me off guard because normally, those networks wouldnt do that. because they'd rather brown nose biden and sing his praises than admit he screwed up.
So what changed? Well, it's like AOC is saying, the primary push for this late stage replacement is...the donors. Donor money. Cha-ching, cha-ching. THEY started having a freak out, and THEY started withholding money and pointing out Biden looked old, and you know what? THe money people in charge of CNN and MSNBC probably told their anchors, yeah let biden have it, hammer home the age issue, start manufacturing consent for replacing him.
Which is why AOC keeps saying shes talking to people in washington and it's all about what the donors thing. THEY'RE THE ONES WHO WANT BIDEN OUT! They're the ones who are freaking out and dropping him, since they dont think he can win.
Now, are they right? Well, they have an argument. BUT...there's also the argument that replacing Biden is like doing spinal surgery where you risk paralyzing your patient for life. Could it work? yes. Could you be shooting yourself in the face instead? Also yes. Is it worth trying? I'm not sure.
The fact is, this is like taking off a plane on a short runway. Can we get everything in place at this late date to replace the existing candidate with someone else? Unclear. And can that person win? Well, to date, no one has polled significantly better than Biden. This is in part due to name recognition, but this is the problem that trying to push a candidate at this late date suggests. How do we excite people about someone they don't know? Replacing Biden at this late date might be fatal for democrats because they simply wont have the time window to make it work and built up a consensus.
And honestly, there remains the question: is the replacement going to be popular? Honestly? I keep saying it, the problem with the dems IS their oligarchical nature and the culture. They dont ALLOW the dems to grow organically, because if they did, we'd have Bernie and AOC be the face of the party. And the donors dont want that. They want centrist corporate hacks. Thats why they pushed hillary, and biden in the first place. And they wanted to manufacture consent for harris but they couldn't do that either. She didn't catch on in 2020, and people didn't like her. Biden had objectively the best polling, Bernie was slightly behind biden, still competitive, just not so much in the sun belt, and everyone else sucked and were several points behind biden, including harris.
And if we replaced Biden...there's no guarantee whatever empty corporate suit they push on us, would win. Because the dems have a problem that goes beyond Biden's age. Their entire brand is toxic and unlikable.
Like seriously, the dem strategy is to choose someone inoffensive to the money people, and then ram them down the public's throat. Tell them, THIS IS HOW IT'S GONNA BE, YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR THEM, IF YOU ARGUE AGAINST THEM PUBLICLY YOU'RE CREATING DISUNITY IN THE PARTY AND LOSING IS YOUR FAULT, BLAH BLAH BLAH!!
Which is why the discussion on age was suppressed until the debate. It wasn't that this wasn't a problem some of us didnt see from a mile away. It's that the democratic party is literally the asch experiment gone amok. Ignore your senses, ignore what your own eyes and ears tell you, just fall in line and conform. Don't point out the lines arent the same size, if you do that you're not a team player and you're creating disunity and causing us to lose. Stifle your opinion and follow the groupthink.
Literally the only reason this blew up is because suddenly the donors kinda realized they were cooked after spending the past year trying to gaslight us into believing everything is fine and now they're panicking and suddenly want to shake things up.
But again, if we go forward with it, we risk all of the logistical issues AOC pointed out, and we risk replacing Biden, a candidate who can't win, with someone else who has even less chance of winning. The dems kept having this mindset that the polls were gonna turn around by july and blah blah blah, and now they're crapping their paints and understanding that maybe 30% is Biden's ceiling and when the age issue comes up, he drops to 10%.
But again...Harris only peaks at 16% on a good day. And is often down less than that. like 4-5%. And anyone else has even less name recognition and polls even worse. Again, i know that because i did my OWN research on this issue the last time it came up and I'm not seeing a lot to contradict it.
In all fairness newer data shows the difference between biden and someone like harris or even newsom might not be as large as once thought, at least nationally, but that doesnt necessarily translate well to state level data. Again, the plane is on the runway, it needs to gain speed, if we cant get it to go fast enough by the time we hit the cliff, we go off it and all die. Like, it's july, this is general election footing. We should have the debate wrapped up, normally we'd have our convention next week after the republicans. For some reason we got an extra month this year, but yeah. It is kinda late to switch planes. The runway is getting shorter and shorter. And I'm not sure an alternative can gain enough momentum to get off the ground before we hit the cliff.
I admit, alternatives ARE gaining SOME momentum. Harris is arguably on rough parity with Biden, at least as far as PA goes. But she is markedly worse in the sun belt, and possibly slightly better in the rust belt. Even then, I'm basing this off of limited polling. Even one contradictory poll coming in could radically shake up my predictions. I mean, today with the election update, i was planning on crapping HARD on replacing Biden with harris. Because I expected the margin to be trump +7 according to one recent poll. But another one came in that was trump +1, so now I'm at a trump +4 average. Kinda in the same range as Biden. Either way, we dont have a ton of data to go off of.
So why are we pushing? Again, because that's what the DONORS want. And that's why progressives in congress like AOC and Bernie are suddenly sticking around Biden. Because this is all corporate centrists trying to panic and replace Biden in a moment of fear and disarray. it's even been suspected this is in part a republican psy op. Maybe it is, they are leaning hard into attacking Biden, but yeah.
Look, with me, I'm just following the evidence. I would argue if we want to replace Biden at this stage, we need evidence of clear benefits to do so. We need clear evidence that whomever we replace Biden with can win, while Biden cannot. If the evidence indicates that the best alternative does the same or worse, it's not worth it. Even if Biden's numbers are crap themselves. And they are. I totally get the urge to want to replace him. Being around 15% or so like he is is TERRIBLE. Like, really, this is awful odds. Biden is almost guaranteed to lose if the election were held today.
BUT....the dems are screwed in such a way they replacing him isn't gonna help. And it might actually hurt. Every day is another day of the plane going down the runway, and I'm not sure another plane can gain enough momentum quickly enough to not crash.
So again, I'm gonna stick with Biden to until I see clear evidence to the contrary. AT MOST, we have until the first week of august, or two weeks, to figure this crap out. Because that's when ballot deadlines start coming up. And then the convention is a month from now. And then early voting starts long after that. Again, things are coming too fast, and I'm not sure we could properly replace Biden AND win an election in that time frame. We should've had this discussion 6 months ago but the fricking donors didn't want that...
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