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ArcticStones's avatar

A few thoughts:

– The very last thing we need is this public self-flagellation that Democrats have such an astonishing propensity for.

– Yes, Biden books are being published, but we are idiots if we allow Trump’s insanity and misdeeds to be pushed into the background.

– We need to push our narrative into the news cycle, so it eclipses what Trump and MAGA are trying to push.

– Ken Martin and the DNC are doing a terrific job of being the catalyst for change that the Democratic party sorely needs.

– There are incredibly many positive things happening at the local and state level. For instance: hundreds of town halls and targeted protests.

– And even nationally, Democratic legislators are doing a better job of fighting back.

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Brad Warren's avatar

I actually think it's good that the Biden stuff is dropping now. Get it over with and move on.

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ArcticStones's avatar

I agree. But I do fear that self-flagellating Democrats will forget that Biden was a great president – imho the most consequential since LBJ. Likewise that we, and thus the public, lose sight of what Team Biden accomplished (and which Trump is desperately trying to undo).

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Brad Warren's avatar

I feel strongly that evaluations of Biden (on policy, if not on politics) will soften over time. Sometimes these things can only be judged fairly from a bit of a distance. (And I really don't care what David Axelrod has to say; he's had a weird hard-on for Biden ever since the Obama years if not before.)

For what it's worth, I do think he should have declared himself a one-term transitional president from the get-go, but a 2024 primary would not have been a magic bullet, because (with the benefit of hindsight) I really don't think Trump was beatable that cycle. Ultimately, the results of both the 2020 and 2024 elections boiled down to a single matter: voters' nostalgia for, and desire to return to, 2019.

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JanusIanitos's avatar

The tipping point state in 2024 was Pennsylvania, which Harris lost by 1.7 points. That's not a huge margin. It was absolutely a winnable year for the house and the presidency. The senate is another matter...

I don't know that a big open primary would have been what we needed. But sticking close to the events that did occur, I think it would be sufficient with Biden dropping out earlier in the year to (a) give Harris time to define herself and establish a campaign, and (b) avoid the disaster debate. The debate was bad not just for the negative headlines it gave us, but it ended the Trump conviction stories, and then after that it occupied the news for weeks as the media got stuck in a loop of if Biden would or would not stay in.

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Brad Warren's avatar

I'm not arguing that the swing-state margins weren't close (as is often the case), nor that Democrats couldn't have won if—and only if—the stars had aligned perfectly, but nothing was going to change Trump's large and cultish base of support and the horrible vibes about the economy (the latter driven both by inflation and by corporate media and its enablers who were mad that the pandemic didn't bring back post-2008 labor conditions).

I actually think that it's impressive that Harris fought things to a near-draw with a short runway. The House was a wash, and we lost only one winnable Senate race (PA).

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JanusIanitos's avatar

Yeah, my point is that the losing margin for her was small enough that it wouldn't take the stars aligning perfectly for her to have won. Instead it'd be some tweaks in how the year went down. I think the combo of my (a) and (b) above would have done it, and that's far from a perfect alignment of events. It still has plenty of unfavorable events still occurring.

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Guy's avatar

1.7 is not insurmountable, but it’s a large enough margin to conclude he would have been favored in most scenarios.

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PollJunkie's avatar

It would be even better if we lost the popular vote but won the Presidency. An end to this ridiculous system with its origins in slavery and elitism.

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michaelflutist's avatar

You mean won the electoral college but lost the popular vote.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Good points and I agree with all – except that I do believe Trump was beatable in 2024.

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Brad Warren's avatar

It would have required the stars to align perfectly, or nearly so. Not impossible, but also highly improbable.

Now, if Trump had been unable to run again in 2024 for whatever reason, things would have been a LOT more up-in-the-air.

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sacman701's avatar

If Trump hadn't run I think DeSantis would have beaten Harris by around 5 and the Senate would be 57-43.

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ArcticStones's avatar

DeSantis beating Harris? No way! Even Chlamydia is more popular than Ron DeSantis!

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Mike in MD's avatar

You at least have fun contracting chlamydia. Listening to Ron DeSantis is a struggle start to finish.

But if you believe, as some here defensibly do, that a GOP victory in 2024 was near-inevitable and the final result was only close because of Trump's personal unpopularity and baggage, then DeSantis would likely have won by a solid if not landslide margin and his party would now have more seats in the House, Senate, and state and local offices.

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Guy's avatar

I don’t think DeSantis would have generated the same WWC support/turnout Trump did or gotten historic numbers with Hispanics. Also he’s way more socially conservative than Trump.

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Harrison Konigstein's avatar

Trump was not beatable in 2024-In fact I don't think any Republican would have been beatable in 2024-given the rage and anger surrounding Trump's loss in 2020.

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

Agreed; voters' associated the worst of the post-Covid societal changes to Democrats (which honestly IS partially their fault and partially not) and thus any candidate would've had that anvil around their necks. Could have a Shapiro, Whitmer or Warnock outran that? Maybe, but with Harris as VP they would've never ran let alone won a hypothetical open primary in 2024.

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Brad Warren's avatar

Yep, and if Democratic voters sensed that an African-American woman were being unfairly shoved aside, that could have done considerable damage as well.

But of course, it's all academic speculation at this point.

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dragonfire5004's avatar

I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. He was a great policy president, but he wasn’t a great political president. In all the areas that matter most to our lives, he was a transformational leader, but in all the areas that matter most to winning political power and elections, he was terrible.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but if Biden and Democrats had been blown out in the midterms in 2022 (which probably would have happened save for Dobbs backlash), he may have never even ran for a 2nd term as Democrats would have intensely pressured him to retire after 1 term and there would be an open contest for 2 years instead of a 3 month break glass in case of emergency last ditch effort campaign after he short circuited on national television.

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Brad Warren's avatar

Yeah, if the goal was to get Biden out, the fact that Democrats held up pretty well down-ballot in 2022 and 2023 certainly didn't help in achieving that goal. Dobbs was a major factor, but there were others as well: "I only have eyes for Trump" types not turning out, the J6 hearings bringing democracy concerns to the fore, Republicans nominating horrible MAGA candidates who were swing-vote poison, a 1994/2010-style House blowout being unlikely for several reasons, and so on.

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Guy's avatar

I think there’s a good argument to be made that Trump would have beaten Biden in the swing states in 2022 while Democrats were holding up well.

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sacman701's avatar

He was a good chief executive, but he had no idea how to operate in a 21st century media environment.

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

I still think if he had completely owned the fact of being old and did a media blitz being the affable old grandpa and made fun of his infirmities (on podcasts, on the View . .heck I think he could've even charmed Joe Rogan in the right mindset) he could've helped his popularity a lot. But he was old school and from a time when the Presidency was "above" that type of strategy. I also think his advisors were overly protective and anxiety-ridden.

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slothlax's avatar

I'm all for acknowledging Biden's accomplishments, but you can't expect people to just ignore the fact that those accomplishments didn't translate into electoral success. To the extent that Biden himself contributed to that outcome is a worthy topic of discussion.

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ArcticStones's avatar

All true. My objection is to conducting that discussion in a manner that removes the focus from the outrageous behavior or the Trump Regime.

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slothlax's avatar

And my objection is this is just whataboutism. If Biden has things he needs to be called out for, so be it. Trump is irrelevant to the discussion.

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stevk's avatar

Both these things can be true - Biden was as good a president as we could have asked for, given the circumstances AND it's also clear in retrospect that he should not have run for re-election.

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