2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Debate Night - Walz vs Weirdo

Politics & News
1510

I’m still not seeing it. This is what should happen. It’s not what will happen. Nothing about our government in its current state functions as things should happen.

I’m probably going through the stages of grief but either way I’m currently at anger. Same as those congress people described upthread. I read the reports that Biden was fine, I saw videos of him acting fine, I enjoyed dunking on conservatives after the SOTU who couldn’t understand the competence they were witnessing out of him. I have nothing negative to say about his current administration beyond the failure to hold Trump accountable for anything. His debate performance and more specifically his inability to recover from it and the absolute bullshit excuses coming from his spokespeople is disqualifying, if not from a job performance standard for sure from an electoral standard (but also 100% from a job performance standard).

I’m imagining what his campaign will look like and the excuses he’ll continue to present and the emails promising he’ll continue to fight and if I want to join just send $20 and I know my anger is just going to get worse. Maybe it will change by election day but I can’t envision a scenario where he refuses to concede the nomination and I still go out and vote for him in November, and I live in a swing state. I realize Trump is worse in every way. Call it a privileged take, although I’m not sure it is because I’m just as fucked as anyone with the Christian theocracy and climate change that’s coming. Whatever, I don’t care. Fuck this guy so hard for standing in the way when he knows he’s not up to the job and unable to campaign for it.

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1511

I’m with you until this part:

I’m not there yet. I still think the importance of voting against Trump overrides everything else.

I don’t envy the party right now. No matter what happens, there will be a subset of D voters that will be so angry, frustrated, alienated, etc. that they will not show up in November. If he’s replaced, there’s plenty of people who will be turned off by the chaos, the disloyalty, the disrespect shown to Kamala when they pass her over, etc.

It’s not which bloc will be bigger or madder, it’s which one will be so turned off that they won’t turn out. And that assumes they are even trying to make winning the election their highest priority.

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1512

For the ‘I want Biden to stay in the race crowd’ — suppose we had some way of knowing for sure that Biden’s debate performance represented his baseline level of communication going forward when not using a prompter. Like let’s just assume that any press conference, future debate, and potentially four years of his 2nd term, he will perform at that level. Does that move you at all?

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1513

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So me, I guess? :harold:

I should be clear that I don’t feel strongly about this, like, you’re looking at two bad options and you have to pick one. If you choose to drink piss lemonade over eating a shit sandwich, it’s not because you love piss.

But yeah, a big part of that calculation is the assumption that the debate performance was an outlier, we caught him at the worst possible time, and there’s the possibility that this fades from view and we forget it ever happened approaching the election. If that wasn’t the case, if SOTU Brandon is gone forever and this is what we’re getting now, then yeah lol he’s 100% gonna lose, get rid of his ass.

Along those lines, the “stop scheduling stuff after 8pm” and “it was just the travel (12 days prior) getting to him” stuff has not been encouraging! :harold:

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1514

I mean, we can all agree Trump is the worst option, but which of these is better?

  • 81 year old male in cognitive decline who is obviously not up to the demands of the job, is unable to hold events (or presumably, do the job) after 8pm, is unable to perform at a high level for at least 2 weeks after global travel, can’t be counted on to reliably string together a paragraph of coherent thoughts without a teleprompter, selfish enough to still try to hold the job, and his resume includes opposition to busing and mistreatment of Anita Hill, but he’s reliably center-left.

  • 70 year old who can form coherent thoughts, limited by his own stupidity, conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, significantly more racist and anti-semitic than the alternative but significantly less racist than Trump, significantly worse moral history than the alternative (sexual assault, heroin use) but significantly less bad moral history than Trump, actually progressive on economic issues, strong track record of fighting to protect the environment and could be counted on to do good on climate change. Occasionally likes to barbecue and eat dog, has literal brainworms.

I somewhat lean to RFK, given that if Putin attacks Poland after 8pm EST, he can actually process the information and make decisions, and I think it’s debatable whether a true progressive who’s a conspiracy theorist could do enough good on economic and environmental issues to offset the bad. I need society and the Dems in Congress to block his racism and antisemitism and conspiratorial bullshit, which sounds a hell of a lot less bad than counting on our institutions to block Trump’s fascism in a second term.

If I were a swing state voter, I’d vote for whoever has the best chance to beat Trump in my opinion. If Biden and RFK were polling within a few points of each other, I’d probably lean RFK. I have a feeling that if Biden doesn’t drop out, the polling momentum is going to pull them closer together, get RFK into a debate, and all hell could break loose.

1515

Ok, but now that it has been over a week and Biden and his team have not scheduled him for any sort of unscripted event (press conference, townhall, etc.), you now have to adjust your priors, right? If his performance was an outlier, then just having him do a 45 min press conference where he takes questions is the clear move.

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1516

If they have an open process, which she’s able to join, I don’t think it’s “passing her over.” Like if Biden did the right thing a year ago and said he wasn’t running, and Kamala lost in the primary to Newsom, Buttigieg, Whitmer, whoever, would people be mad that she was “passed over”? I get that it’s a difference, but if the options are hand her the crown or have an open process, I go with open process every time, and if she doesn’t win it I think that’s just on her.

And he’s using a prompter for “intimate” in-home fundraisers with billionaires. Like, sorry Joe, if you’re reading off a prompter it’s no longer “intimate.”

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1517

ehh this level of analysis is useless because RFK can’t and won’t win; voting for him is simply an act of protest regardless of what he stands for or whether he would or wouldn’t be better at leading than others. Denying Trump EVs (if you could peel off a single important state for RFK somehow) also doesn’t help because Trump just gets elected by the House.

Sure! It’s an ongoing & evolving process.

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1518

Can we please stop talking about RFK now and forever? That guy is finished he BBQ’d a dog. If there’s one thing I know about the American voter it’s that they will not be understanding about BBQ’d dog.

Biden has to go not because he had a bad debate but because he had a bad debate and then physically couldn’t do what you do after you lose a debate. That’s all she wrote he can’t hide the fact that he’s declined heavily anymore. If he’s still on the ballot he’ll lose to Trump and it will be the people who enabled him’s fault. Not anyone posting here, the people who didn’t leak that he was failing 6-12 months ago.

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1519

Should be noted that “American voters won’t vote for someone who _______” has a giant “(unless they’re a fascist)” exception.

1520

I don’t think that’s a given right now. I have Biden at damn near 0% to win, and if that’s true, he’s going to continue to fall in the polls and that support has to go somewhere. In the multi-way match, it’s currently like Trump 42, Biden 36, RFK 14 or something like that. Let’s say Biden bombs this interview (very possible) or just doesn’t do enough to change the news cycle one iota (most likely outcome), and drops to like 32%, now we could see Trump 42, Biden 36, RFK 18. Once the narrative is “Biden losing support to RFK, who is surging!” it becomes self-fulfilling.

I don’t think RFK is likely to win, it’s < 10% even if he pulls ahead of Biden. But I do think it’s plausible that on Election Day, RFK is polling higher than Biden.

I’m a staunch liberal who’s had like 8 or 9 COVID jabs who LOATHES anti-vaxxers, and I’m sitting here thinking, “Maybe RFK is the least bad option.” I have to think there are others who are less militant about vaccines, less informed about RFK’s closeted skeletons, and similarly down on Biden.

I think we need a filing deadline list, and I’m really curious what happens with the other parties. If No Labels reversed course and ran a Manchin/Flake ticket or something like that, I’d vote for that over Biden if it were viable to win, and I hate Manchin with a passion. I think it would probably actually poll right in the mix right now. Might be too late. If the Libertarians kicked their candidates off and ran a viable candidate who wasn’t nuts, I’d consider them. If a billionaire like Mark Cuban jumped in and self-funded, he’d be my pick over the current crop.

I can’t imagine what’s going on behind closed doors. Like, I could imagine a world where a political strategist is calling up someone like Matt Damon or The Rock saying they could win as an independent right now. And, like, maybe they could?

I could make the case that Trump’s 42, Biden’s 36, and RFK’s 14 are all soft numbers. All of them. I think someone like Mark Cuban could immediately take chunks off all three of them and get into the 25% range from Day 1.

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1521

Nope they absolutely shunned out of political existence a GOP governor over dog related issues. It’s the real third rail of politics. Touch it and fucking die. It’s one of the few things we actually all agree on.

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1522

You still have to vote for Biden. I understand low information voters that don’t understand the threat that Trump represents may be moved by Biden’s significantly limited mental state. But not voting for Biden as a form of protest is dumb.

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1523

Yeah obviously everyone votes for Biden if he’s the nominee on election day… but if he’s the nominee it’ll be because the Democratic Party scammed its base and if we lose the resulting election I hope they all die horribly in camps. I’m not kidding I want them to go first. Playing stupid games in this situation is a ‘you better hope there’s no hell because if there is you’re going there’ spot for sure. Trying to double down and blame the voters for your fuck up in this spot I’d strike the match to burn you at the stake for. Truly evil shit.

The fact that this is a conversation we’re having at all is honestly the reason why the entire Democratic establishment needs to fucking go. The next iteration needs to contain literally zero people in leadership who didn’t get a pell grant.

EDIT: And again to be very clear I’m talking about the insiders who allowed the primary to be essentially closed knowing Biden very likely wouldn’t be up to running the actual race. That shit is a crime against fucking humanity. We should not be in this situation at all. The man basically promised not to run a second time.

Last time Trump won probably at least an extra million people died. You help him get elected over petty political bullshit you’re more responsible for what he does than he is. He’s a fucking moron and more of a terrain feature than a player on the board. You were entrusted with the highest level political positions in the sane major political party in the most powerful country the world has ever seen and you entirely fucked it up and lost to a drooling imbecile.

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1524

Dumb is the most powerful and wealthy country in the history of the world having a presidential election that comes down to a Redneck Hitler, a Senile Replacement Level Centrist, and Dog BBQ Guy.

Anything that happens after that is what it is.

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1525
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1526

bruh

bruh

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1527

You want to know what made me feel like a sucker? Knocking on doors in the rain for Joe Biden and then watching his only slightly less inhumane handling of the immigrants at the border, and now watching this shit show. Donating money to several Congressional Dem candidates, and watching them do the minimal amount possible with their power.

I did get more engaged with our political system, and at the end of it I knew I was a sucker for it. Unless/until they prove that it’s worthwhile to do anything or give anything to them, I’d rather spend my time and money taking food and water to homeless camps or volunteering in the local community for a good cause.

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1528

Maybe this is my copium-fueled attempt to convince myself Donald Trump has like 90% equity instead of 99%, but I’m more optimistic about RFK’s chances than Biden’s.

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1529

This is a dumb take. There’s a very real chance Trump can’t beat a toaster oven which is the entire pro Biden case. It probably has 10-25% equity based on previous election results where Trump and Biden weren’t on the ballot but abortion was. It would also look like the polling slowly drifting back to dead even over the next few weeks if it was going to happen.

That is still a complete disaster for an election we realistically need an amount of equity approaching 100%. We’re not supposed to need to suck out vs Donald Trump. That guys luckbox is unreal.

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