Will Biden bow out?
This weekend would be a decent opportunity for Biden to bow out of the race. I don't think it's feasible to do so for any other reason than unspecified health issues, in which case he can't avoid resigning. Most other options would harm his successor.
Harris can take over after Biden signs a secret pardon for Hunter just in case.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I give it a 70-80% chance before the end of the month
Although I believed and still believe Biden needs to drop out, the points Loki and LF made in the other thread are valid and may still make the difference between winning and losing the election. It's really disgraceful that Biden's condition has been hidden this long, the Democrats should have had a chance of do a proper primary process. The only silver lining is that at least by leaving it this late they get a chance to counter-pick Trump and his VP choice.
Last edited by Steely Glint; 07-19-2024 at 02:27 PM.
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
Whoever replaces him will succumb to republican lawfare
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Realistically, I can't see it being anyone other than Harris.
She can't win. Regardless of her merit and qualification, everyone seems to hate her. Just like Hillary.Originally Posted by Loki
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
In her defense, when Trump won, it wasn't just because ppl hated Clinton - it was also bc they didn't know how much they hated Trump and his ever-expanding coterie of odious freaks.
Harris has time to develop some incumbency advantage and hopefully both she and Dem leaders + organizers have the good sense to capitalize on the tsunami of sheer relief that's likely to spread across the Dem voter base if Biden drops out.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
It is what it is. Hopefully, Trump messes up in an "unpresidented" way closer to the election.
Democrats to voters: Trump is an existential threat to our democracy, this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes, it's never been more important for you to get out and vote, vote, vote
Democrats when they have to do literally anything to win, or improve their position, beyond the most default, bare-minimum thing possible, like 'having a good candidate' or any kind of policy platform that will improve the material reality of people's lives:
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
Voters don't give a damn about the platform. Trump has the support of at least 40% of union members even as Biden has been the most union-friendly president in generations and the GOP is constantly seeking to destroy union protections.
The key part is 'that will materially improve people's lives', especially when you're the incumbent. Do Americans feel like their lives are better in 2024 than they were in 2020?
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
Biden still seems adamant that he's going to run, BTW.
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
No, because they care more about what they read on social media than about their own reality. People are complaining about wages falling behind inflation even as wages continue to increase faster than inflation. Half the Americans think unemployment is at a record high and that we're in a recession. The stupidity isn't limited to one party either.
I hope he will, as if he doesn't he'll lose to Trump and Ukraine, America and the world (in that order) can't afford President Trump.
In 2020 Biden was acceptable under the circumstances. This year, he's no longer even that.
He should resign, Harris should become POTUS and then hopefully Kamala Harris will beat Trump. She has a better shot than Biden does.
Not sure about the last part. The polls are pretty mixed. And the GOP and their media allies only started their smear campaign against her. Also, see how the media treated Hillary Clinton.
It's that lack of a primary that makes it such a problem. If there'd been a challenger Biden could throw his support to in bowing out, if there'd public voting on preferred candidates then even though things would get messy it could have been salvageable. Instead, any replacement is going to be a Party Convention circus performance and will lack democratic legitimacy. Trump tried to launch a FUCKING COUP and the Democrats have literally handed him the stronger democratic credentials by not convincing Biden to stay out of a 2024 race.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I don't hate Harris but I don't like her and I don't support her. I don't like or support anyone who climbs the political ladder on the Prosecutorial track. She also lacks the experience I want to see in a nominee. Her only legislative experience is less than a single term in the Senate and her executive experience is all in subordinate positions (VP, AG and county DA) where she is largely not setting policy.
Last edited by LittleFuzzy; 07-20-2024 at 07:38 PM.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Just because some wages are increasing faster than inflation doesn't mean THEIR wages are, just like general inflation doesn't necessarily reflect THEIR costs. MY wages have not kept pace with inflation in general. They haven't even kept pace with just the increase in my rental costs alone.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
You need to go into politics
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Yup. It's why it hard to take their 'Trump is a fascist, vote blue no matter who" line so hard to take seriously - if they aren't acting like it's true, why should voters?
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
Well said.
Though its not an exclusively modern problem.
CPI/RPI inflation doesn't count housing costs/house prices. Inflation in recent decades has been low if you own your own home, but if you're struggling to afford something and prices are going up faster than wages then pretending those prices aren't inflation doesn't help.
I don't know how inflation metrics in the UK work, but a huge proportion of CPI and PCE are housing costs (both rent and imputed costs for owners).
It is true, however, that aggregate measures of inflation do not take into account how it affects individuals. There are specific inflation metrics that try to address specific sectors with different weighting (e.g. elderly) but it's an imperfect science. Median wage growth across a variety of groupings has actually been remarkably similar (see e.g. https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker ), but you can see that since about 2021 the third and fourth quartile have been lagging substantially behind the first and second quartile until about late 2023. I imagine there's some more sophisticated analysis that has been done, but it's not obvious that specifically poor people have been experiencing erosion in their wages as a group compared to richer folk.
All politics is local, however, and it's likely that specific groupings in important swing states may be experiencing real decreases in their quality of life. It's also wildly likely that people are not economic machines and 'feel' high prices much more than they feel higher wages that compensate for said prices - especially when wages tend to lag prices. I do think that Loki's basic analysis is correct, though, that political leanings are all about narratives people believe rather than any specific case of self interest (though I take issue with his implicit assumption that being pro-union means a union members should vote for a candidate). Hell, one could argue that my voting patterns have little to do with self interest (except in a rather sophisticated 'enlightened self interest' kind of way).
In my view it is counterproductive to castigate people for voting against what you perceive their interest to be. It is equally counterproductive to throw up your hands and say that you can't fight Fox News or social media or whatever. I think it's better to try to understand the narratives that people believe, why they believe those narratives, and try to find a more compelling narrative to convince them to change their mind.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Given the sheer number of people complaining about this and the fact that wages rose most for people earning the least, I find it hard to believe that the people complaining are all on the wrong side of the median.
CPI includes a heavy housing component by the way. Housing has been the main driver of inflation. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/o...t-and-rent.htm
This discussion reminds me of Tories boasting about putting more money in people's pockets with some tax cut and then I run the numbers and it's ends up being like an extra ?7.63 a month or something. And I'm like, great, I'll add a new wing to the manor. Totally worth gutting public services over.
If your pay is low, and you're struggling to pay for some combination of: housing, childcare, health-insurance, student debt, food then single digit percent increases in wages over inflation aren't something you're actually going to notice, assuming you actually get a pay rise at all. 1-2% increase on fuck all is still fuck all.
Also, in the real world, pay rises, assuming you get one, are annual but price rises due to inflation/'inflation' are whenever the company feels like it. Wage growth only started to outpace inflation in the US some time in 2023, so it's highly likely that a large number of people haven't actually seen the benefit, such as it is.
TLDR: you can't just live in this abstract world of statistics, you have to look at the material reality of people's day to day existence.
The world on your shoulders, the love of your mother
The fear of the future, the best years behind you
The world is getting older, the times, they fall behind you
The need, it still grows stronger, the best years never found you
Right. I can't use abstract concepts like "most people's earnings outpaced inflation" to argue against people who believe the US is in a recession and facing record unemployment.
I'd argue they did act like it was true. That's why they spent so much time backing Biden. A serious challenge against a running incumbent is almost always going to hand the general race to the opposition unless it's a safe seat being contested. Biden refusing to drop out tied their hands until he demonstrated that he probably wasn't up to the exertion of a serious race which meant Trump would win anyway. Most Dem leadership and potential candidates are/were not in a position to influence whether Biden sought to be renominated.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Utter bonehead... let her have the incumbency advantage ffs
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Biden out. FYI: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/john...y?id=112129063
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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