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Now that Biden has dropped out, Democrats have the opportunity to nominate a candidate who can beat Trump.
The trouble is, they won’t. Kamala Harris is basically the second least electable Democrat after Biden. She dropped out of the 2020 primary for a reason. She was a horrible attorney general and she comes across to voters as exactly the slimy opportunist that she is.
If Trump is the existential threat to democracy which many claim he is, then Democrats should act like it and nominate someone who will appeal to swing voters.
I post this here to ask for disagreement. Most people I know agree with this sentiment; I’m looking for other perspectives.
Jul 21 · 5 months ago · 👍 norayr · 🔥 1
i am not from usa, and i don't understand much, still i agree with you. (:
as i understand the party should rollback to the previous system which worked before primaries were conducted, and the new candidate will be elected at the august national democratic convention by those delegates and superdelegates?
do you think gavin newsom or gretchen whitmer may be elected as candidate from democrats? both may appeal to many and have chances, but i think gretchen is a better bet.
I'm not from the US too but the decision may be tied to the money for the campaign. If they drop the ticket entirely, they have to drop the money donated to the ticket too. PACs have more freedom. Someone from US please complete / correct this.
👻 darkghost · Jul 31 at 15:00:
It's been 10 days. I'm wondering if your perspective has shifted any? From how things sit right now, at least from what I can see, the least electable Democrat is looking more electable than the Republican nominee. No candidate in US history has as much baggage as the Republican nominee. Will voters gravitate towards Harris because of that? I think they will. Voters have a short memory, but January 6th is etched in the memories of the nation. The hesitation about Biden's age is removed. Voters who wanted a major party alternative got exactly what they wanted.
🐐 satch [OP] · Aug 01 at 14:12:
@darkghost
I’m not sure but I think what we’re seeing right now is very likely a sort of honeymoon period.
Also, even if the polls don’t change, Trump is still a moderate favourite to win the electoral college.
I can't believe that Democrats are rolling with it. "The Party needs you to vote for whomever we choose!". It's like the Soviet Union. It's hard to admit one's chosen the wrong side, especially when they keep hammering that "democracy is at stake!"
well, a couple months in and things are fairly stable. Democracy is at stake, just like it was 4 years ago and 8 years ago. And will likely be at stake in the next 4 years...
That is just propaganda. Elect us or democracy topples, so we can continue raiding the treasury and making billionaires at your expense.
🐐 satch [OP] · Oct 02 at 11:25:
@murdock a few thoughts about democracy:
No one voted for Kamala Harris. She was nominated by the Democratic Party without running a campaign for nomination. To his credit, Trump won the Republican nomination fair and square.
Which side looks more democratic here?
And here’s the context the US is living with: according to the famous study by Gilens and Page in 2014,
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
— https://www.vox.com/2014/4/11/5581272/doom-loop-oligarchy
Our government is nothing more than a pseudo-democracy in practice. Democrats and Republicans alike perpetuate this system.
So that’s why I don’t really feel like democracy is at stake in this particular election.
To actually address your concern that Trump will try and subvert the system through election interference and/or a coup, which is clearly bad even given the sorry status of our current so-called democracy, I just don’t buy it. Hopefully I’m not being naive. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day because I won’t vote for Trump or Harris regardless.
@satch People voted for Harris as VP 4 years ago, so it's not like she never faced a federal election before. As for "democracy" as it relates to primaries, the constitution doesn't speak to that. Democrats can run who they want in whatever manner they want for the election in November. Is what happened outside the norms of how things have gone for the past 50 years? Yes. Does it violate the people's constitutional rights? No.
As for Trump subverting the election, it has already begun. One example: Georgia is changing its counting rules over the objections of their secretary of state.
— https://www.npr.org/2024/09/20/nx-s1-5121154/georgia-election-board-hand-count-ballots
Why do we have primaries then?
The electoral college is not even required to vote the same way as the people it 'REPRESENTS'... would that be unusual? Yes. But not violating the terms of this so-called 'democracy'
When you are brainwashed, whatever evil your party does is fine, but the other side is 'subverting democracy'
🦆 CitySlicker · Oct 02 at 18:45:
Like most Americans, I do not particularly like either candidate. But unlike most Americans I don’t think Trump is a threat to our democracy or it’s savior.
I don’t believe what the Democrats say that if Trump wins our democracy is over. He was president before and nothing bad happened.
I don’t believe what Trump supporters think, in that he will radically change things for the better. Once again he had a shot and nothing really changed.
Even if Trump does all the things he says he will do, what stops the next president from reverting it?
I think the best possible strategy is to stir the pot. That way, they don't get too comfy with their criminal activities. A new administration needs a couple of years to settle in before they start royally screwing us again, and if reelected, the encumbents get totally shameless. And it really helps to have internal strife and disagreement between house and senate. Keeps them busy, otherwise they start wars and create other disasters for us.
to say that "nothing changed under trump" is a profoundly uninformed take. Two big things happened: a massive tax cut for the rich and corporate class in 2018 and selecting two supreme court justices that resulted in roe v wade being overturned. Was your day-to-day existence unchanged? That's fine, but say that instead.
Followed by a multi-trillion dollar giveaway to the rich and corporate class by Biden, who kept the tax cuts. The supreme court decision is a direct consequence of RBG's decision to die in office, that's on Democrats. The hubris! Biden tried the same playbook, but is too obviously feeble-minded. Anything else change? oh, yea, the insane military escalation! An unelected team running the country with a puppethead president (usually this is called a 'coup') [I am not a Republican, I just don't like brainwashing and propaganda blindly repeated]
stack, do you agree with my assessment that there were at least two big changes during the trump presidency? do you think the changes I referenced were good or bad, overall? I'm not interested in playing games of "whataboutism", where we can't talk about one candidate without referencing the other. that is a dishonest tactic and dodges the original question.
Speaking of dishonest tactics, why are we only allowed to talk about your two hand-picked changes under Trump here? Start another topic if you want.
🐐 satch [OP] · Oct 04 at 07:44:
I'm slightly surprised that Kamala Harris is doing so well in polls, but I every time I watch Trump talk it reminds me how awful he is at pretending to be competent, something that Biden was also awful at but Harris is pulling off a lot better (still doing a bad job but the floor is low).
So I get it. But my point from the original post still stands: any actually even moderately decent Democratic candidate and Trump would be cooked. Anyone left or right from Dennis Kucinich to Joe Manchin could have won handily. The reason the race is close is because Harris is part of her party elite and cannot effectively communicate with people outside of her base.
it's impossible to reasonably evaluate counterfactuals like "Joe Manchin/Bernie Sanders would be killing it right now".
I actually don't think playing to undecideds is the right approach. Shore up the base and get non-voters out seems like the way to win these past cycles. Why fight over 10% when there are millions that aren't even part of that total?
🐐 satch [OP] · Oct 04 at 13:10:
@murdock this is what my personal causal model says about the counterfactuals. It’s impossible to *prove* that I’m right but all they really are doing is describing my casual model which says that choosing Kamala Harris as the nominee decreased the probability of Democrats winning the presidency relative to a different candidate from outside of the party establishment.
As to your point about undecideds versus non voters, I agree 100%.
👻 darkghost · Oct 04 at 20:26:
I think it would be a close race no matter the candidate. The morass that is our political reality defies reason. It's like pure id.
Both sides are willing to overlook the very kind of horribleness that they insist makes the other party unelectable. Subverting democracy, corruption, outright treason. Never mind if we do it, we are on your side. It's them you need to worry about!
"both sides are equally bad" is the most tired political take you can have. it's cheap, lazy and inaccurate. it also absolves the user of needing to dive deep into the details of any given issue. why bother, they both suck!
'Bad' is a poor choice of a quality to measure. I don't think they are 'equally' bad, and one side is particularly bad (currently) for international conflicts and the economy. They are both corrupt and evil if you wish, as in taking advantage of and lying to unsuspecting fools who think they can 'save democracy' or have 'free speech'.