Sen. Bernie Sanders admonished Democrats who have called for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race against former President Donald Trump.
  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    981·
    3 months ago

    I think most Dems, especially those who are highly politically engaged and closely follow election news, are going to vote blue no matter who. So, I think Bernie is preaching to the choir here. I think the Dems who are worried about Biden are worried he doesn’t have enough support among independents, and they feel independents are much less likely to just vote for the Democrat, no matter who it is.

    Now, could just any candidate replace Biden and automatically win back any of the independents he is believed to have lost? I don’t know. A lot of Dems seem to think that just about any other candidate would do better than Biden among independents right now, but I’m not so sure.

    • Throw_away_migrator@lemmy.world
      22·
      3 months ago

      I think the other concern is voter turnout/enthusiasm. The last presidential election had extremely high turnout. Even if voters (in swing states) don’t switch candidates but opt to stay home instead that could translate into a significant electoral problem too.

      • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        3 months ago

        You do have a point that turn out Is important, but a potential replacement candidate isn’t guaranteed to increase turn out, they could be worse. And they would only have 4 months to try to fix things, which isn’t a lot of time.

        • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
          1·
          3 months ago

          Turnout is literally everything. It is literally more turnout = Democrat win literally every single election in america. Low turnout in 2016 still resulted in trump losing the popular vote. America’s voting system is messed up, but then so is UK’s parliamentary first past the post system and Belgium’s 6 governments.

      • JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world
        4·
        3 months ago

        Hillary “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman” Clinton. Yeah. Keep on satisfying those poor, misguided progressives.

      • blindbunny@lemmy.mlEnglish
        456·
        3 months ago

        What an ungrateful cunt. I don’t want to be in hell with that removed.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        64·
        3 months ago

        Hillary, much like Trump, is a symptom of what is wrong with the Democrats. “It was her turn” spat in the face of people who were excited about a progressive candidate and made the whole primary a sham.

        She was a terrible candidate. She was a bitter pill that many independents said “enough is enough” and voted third party or not voted at all.

        I am deeply concerned that as the Republicans move more toward fascism, the left are not going to have great candidates. We’re going to get established, wealthy-class friendly candidates who are willing to throw crumbs at the working class. They’ll bitch and moan about how they are losing voters, never looking at themselves, never realizing that we are literally voting to just survive.

        This election will be just like 2020. We aren’t voting for Biden. We’re voting against fascism.

        And I’m personally getting fucking tired of Democrats seeing that as a win.

        • lad@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          I am deeply concerned that as the Republicans move more toward fascism, the left are not going to have great candidates

          Well, the Republicans Democrats will have an option of being “less fascist party” by then. I feel like the future is not too bright, somehow

          Edit: mixed the opposites somehow 🫠

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
      5·
      3 months ago

      I think you might be missing the point though.

      Those highly politically engaged Dem voters who will vote blue no matter who are bickering about whether Biden is the right choice, and the swing voters are paying attention.

      To an undecided voter, it doesn’t inspire much confident to see that Biden’s own supporters don’t think he can do the job.

      The bickering amongst those who will vote blue anyway is costing the votes from the undecideds that Biden so desperately needs.

  • maniii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    313·
    3 months ago

    Drumpf is a living survivor martyr. Nothing is now gonna hold anything back. Every thing is now going to hit the fan.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
      10·
      3 months ago

      Honestly second thing I thought of when I saw it. First was that it was staged.

    • distantsounds@lemmy.worldEnglish
      247·
      3 months ago

      tbh, I don’t think reasonable people would think an 80yr old is the best fit to run a country. Edit: Especially after publicly shitting the bed on multiple occasions

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
        116·
        3 months ago

        These are reasonable people who at this point are faced with a choice between that 80 year old and Trump.

        The Democrats could have run someone else, should have run someone else, didn’t run someone else. So those are now the two options.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
            24·
            3 months ago

            He already has enough delegates to win the convention, as is my understanding of the odd way the Democratic party makes this decision.

            • distantsounds@lemmy.worldEnglish
              122·
              3 months ago

              Biden can announce that he is not seeking re-election. Release the delegates and it can be decided at the convention, as it officially is done. The DNC refusing to allow proper primaries makes this much messing now, but it is the only viable path forward without trump. It’s the policies and platform that are important and anyone who would vote D knows that. The left doesn’t want a king, but someone who can champion their ideals.

          • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
            515·
            3 months ago

            That is what this is about. Because if everyone that is wanting people to not vote for the 81 year old get their way- then we’re getting the 78 year old.

            THESE ARE OUR CHOICES. it’s too late in the game to call an audible.

            • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
              74·
              3 months ago

              No, it’s not too late. Biden is not even officially the democratic nominee yet, the convention hasn’t even happened yet. The rest of the world has an entire election cycle that lasts like two months. The election is still almost four months away.

              • FaceDeer@fedia.io
                84·
                3 months ago

                The US has an election cycle that runs much longer than most other places in the world.

                I’m seeing a lot of people downvoting comments that are making simple statements of fact about how the American election system works. It may not be the way people want it to work, but that’s what they’ve got. Downvoting such comments doesn’t change it.

  • WatDabney@fedia.io
    15·
    3 months ago

    I’m with him 100% on the first bit - at this point, the single most important thing the Dems have to do is stop bickering.

    As for the rest, at this point I don’t even much care. I can see arguments both for and against in both directions - either choice is going to involve some risk but either choice can be made to succeed.

    So the important thing, and really the ONLY important thing, is to pick one and run with it. Stop with the dilly-dallying and the second-guessing and the bitching and moaning and hand-wringing and make a choice and stick with it, so we can focus ALL of our attention on pounding those fucking fascist traitors’ dicks into the dirt.

    • shiroininja@lemmy.world
      4011·
      3 months ago

      I have an unpopular opinion. Swapping candidates a couple months from election will look really disorganized and even weaker than keeping him. Especially to swing voters. And it’ll be rushed. I doubt the replacement will be well known, so you expect me to get to know, learn who they are and develop a platform in a couple months? I think they’d lose too.

      It’s too late. The spineless centrists controlling the party waffled too long and I bet they cost the election again. Just like in 2016. I’m really disappointed in the Democratic Party and how it’s condensed it’s power more towards the top and quite frankly, am tired of their muted response to things like project 2025 until months before the election. It’s been around since. Before trump was elected, but without a catchy name. I passed around the leaked documents on it in 2017.

      I’m just reminded of ‘Baby I’m an Anarchist’ by Against me! Lately. I’m not an Anarchist, but I feel the lyrics about the my fellow spineless liberals

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        132·
        3 months ago

        Swapping candidates would look really, really bad… unless he comes up and says “I had a talk with my doctor, he says I’ve developed a chronic condition that I didn’t know about past year. I can’t do it anymore, but here, vote for my VP, who you all already voted for once anyway, and would take over anyway if this thing kills me”.

        He can leave out that the chronic condition is just notgonnawinatall, and his doctor is also his pollster.

      • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
        88·
        3 months ago

        Other countries have their entire election cycles in a few months. It’s a joke to think it’s too late for Biden to drop out.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        32·
        3 months ago

        I think that’s why they’re floating it now. They’re getting people primed to accept someone as the replacement that they already recognize. (My money is on Kamala Harris.)

    • Thteven@lemmy.world
      202·
      3 months ago

      He understands the two party system we’re left with. If we don’t back the democratic candidate we will be fucked by the 30% of the population that wants Cheeto Messiah in the white house.

    • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1410·
      3 months ago

      Yep. But let’s explore this further under the hood.

      • Nobody of the progressive caucus can break ranks lest that be used against the party as a wedge-drive issue by operatives later, whether Biden stays in or not.

      • Bernie was essentially promised a high level committee position if he traded falling in line with Biden. This his returning of the favor.

      • Calls for Biden to step down will be completely ineffective from the progressive coalition anyway. Biden is a centrist and doesn’t hold much respect for them. The people who matter are the likes of Clyburn and Pelosi.

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    5010·
    3 months ago

    Or stop bickering and replace him ASAP.

    But really, I don’t think this is bickering. I think it’s an intentionally slow drip of news to get people more receptive to the idea of replacing him with Kamala, so that it’s not a bomb dropping all of a sudden, which would likely freak out a bunch of voters and cause them to lose votes. Boil the frog slowly and there’s less of a splash.

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      3 months ago

      Well honestly it’s going to be a splash either way and the sooner they replace him, the better. Kamala is going to need more time to cook with and the sooner she can get out there, the sooner she can challenge Trump to a debate and flip this country around.