I don’t want him to run either, but I will vote for him and anyone who doesn’t want this country to fall into a Christian autocracy better as well. There really isn’t a choice anymore.
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Oh Joe can’t be doing that badly in the eyes of the lef…
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It would have a certain symmetry. Florida and California kinda being mirror images of each other.
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It’s clear some expected him to be as far to the left as the last administration was to the right.
That’s a fantasy though, and was clearly never going to happen. Along with the senate make up not allowing for that, even if he was that far left.
It feels very fair for people to be upset that he hasn’t seemed to bring the pressure he can and engage to push the senate more for many things that aren’t that far left. That lack of putting pressure on the senate and supreme court for very basic things like voting rights, abortion, and preserving basic rights is a huge miss step. Those things are pretty center of the road.
They show polls on this all the time, and Republicans use it as a talking point all the time too. All it shows is the total failure of the pollsters and the media. Since it’s not like any of those Republicans have any answers or plans to deal with the economy at all. So, when someone says they’re not going to for him because of the economy, they’re completely missing the boat that there is no better plan from anyone else. He could totally be doing more, but it’s not like the other side is doing anything either. That’s not the hottest persuasive argument obviously.
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Yeah, that was a great example of “every vote counts” 
I think the filibuster (as well as Manchinima) have blunted any increased visibility she might have gained from being the tie-breaking vote.
Buttigieg?
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What, a communist? Bernie Sanders isn’t anywhere near that left wing, so why would anyone think Biden would be?
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I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about any more.
“The establishment candidate always wins!”
“Well, what about this? The unknown won, and the anointed one lost.”
“Yeah, well that was because the conspiracy went deeper and They™ didn’t count the votes.”
da fuq?
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This, so so much this.
If he were to announce today that he’s not running. Nothing else would get done, he would immediately become a lame duck and all of the focus would be on who is running instead. We would get an almost 2 year run up to the primaries starting where that’s the only news and focus.
To me, the longer he can wait. Even if it’s just a ruse to prevent stories about others by bringing the focus to himself. In my ideal world, they shorten the democratic primary cycle to be as short as possible and start as late as possible. Push the start back to March or April, and have all them all on the same date. Then, a month or two before that, he announces he’s not running. Compact the primary cycle to 2 months followed by a 6 month general campaign.
The whole 2 year campaign cycle for a 4 year term that starts immediately after the midterm election is crazy. Simply by saying he’s running, he could collapse this from 24 to 8 months. If he said he wasn’t running today, he would increase it to 28 months instead.
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YES. Exactly.
I hate the idea of having a person over the age of 70 as president. And he wasn’t close to my first choice. But he’s not only done a fine—not perfect, by any means—job so far, he’s the most liberal president we’ve had in well over 50 years. (Biden has always been right in the middle of the party, so as it moved right, he moved right. Now that it’s quite a bit further to the left, so is he. If we pick up more seats in the mid-term, they will almost certainly move the party even further to the left, and he’ll shift with them.)
And while there are so many things I wish he’d done differently (I’m WAY to the left of him, and can’t believe how staggering a disappointment Garland has been, for instance), and I’m very nervous about having someone of his advanced age in the gig for another six years, replacing him on the ticket at this point seems like an absolute self-own from the party which specializes in circular firing squads.
Has she disppeared? Or has the press—which has never liked her—simply not covered her? From what I’ve been able to ascertain, it’s a combination of the two. (And one of the reasons she perhaps hasn’t been more front and center is that when the press isn’t ignoring her, they’re criticizing her. I’m sure the fact that she’s a Black woman who is treated far more harshly than the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert is just a coincidence.)
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That’s fair as a comparison for how far right the other side has gone.
But, not what I meant, sorry.
I think some expected him to push toward many of the Sanders and Warren type policies. He’s clearly no where near that and wasn’t ever going to be. Being upset with him for not being as far left as Sanders or Warren feels like a misplaced anger. Instead of being upset in the take your ball and go home way, instead push on him. If nothing else, Biden has shown that he can be pushed some.
On the other hand, those who are upset with him for things he said he was going to do, and things that are very popular, stuff with 70% approval in polls. Those feel like very reasonable reasons to be upset. Again, not in a take your ball and go home way, but in a push him to use the leverage the office of the president provides to push on the congress and supreme court.
So, the articles “democrats abandoning Biden because of XYZ” are kind of self defeating. There’s no other magic person that will do those better. The other guy is clearly going to do less and take those things too.
Articles about “lobbing and pressuring Biden to do XYZ” would be much more effective.
Or, maybe the balance in the Senate is that precarious. That at the drop of a hat Manchin could switch parties and make them the majority. Maybe that’s why he isn’t using more influence. But, if that’s the case, he should be making Manchin a king maker. He’s not doing either, which makes it look like he’s not leveraging the power of the president at all.
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Being practical, you’ve got have a candidate who can win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and then you’ve just got to stick the landing in one of Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina …
(in 2028 at least the pure voter demographics in Texas will flip blue, then chaos will reign …)
I would love a 3 way race between Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Mayor Pete. I will support anyone who runs against Biden, country needs a shakeup.
Folks were fine with idea of Biden following on after Obama.
But that was a much younger Biden.
Still, conservatives are agog at the idea that “nah. we don’t really like him, much less worship his ass”
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I mean maybe it’s because she’s the VP. It’s a role that’s basically a non-entity for the most part unless POTUS dies. With the exception of maybe Dick Cheney, it’s hard to think of any VP of any real importance from the past four decades.
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Me either. I have never, ever liked him. The first time Obama disappointed me was by naming Biden as his running mate, and I never bought the “Uncle Joe” schtick. The only people lower on my list in the enormous 2020 Democratic field were Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard, and I don’t think he won the election so much as Trump lost it (along with the Senate).
That said, I will admit he has been a better president than I expected. But not so much better that I care to vote for him again. (Don’t read that the wrong way – I will never even consider voting for any Republican as long as Neil Gorsuch or Amy Coney Barret remains on the Supreme Court.)
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They completely removed Michigan, couldn’t declare a winner through the popular vote so it defaulted to super delegates which are defined as: “the embodiment of the institutional Democratic Party – everyone from former presidents, congressional leaders and big-money fundraisers to mayors, labor leaders and longtime local party functionaries.”
I mean, if that is ok with you then fine. But to me it feels likey vote is less and less mine every cycle.
Sure they do: tax cuts for the well off. The economy is doing poorly? Tax cuts for the well off to boost the economy. The economy is doing well? Tax cuts to give people (well off people anyway) their money back. Just like the old snake oil patent medicines tax cuts are the cure for EVERY situation, and about as effective.
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Huh? I live in Michigan Biden won the popular vote in the primary.
What am I missing?
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Klouchbar’s a fine senator, Cory Booker’s awesome, and Mayor Pete is an absolute demon at handing the horrible folks at Fox News their asses on the regular. But the three of them together received (if my math is correct) 33 delegates. Of the almost 2000 required to win the nomination. You really think they’re going to do better this time around?
Here’s the thing that most — NOT ALL! — of the folks who didn’t want Trump ever, but who also didn’t want Biden in 2020, haven’t warmed to him, and want him primaried don’t like to acknowledge. The party didn’t “keep” Bernie from winning. The voters didn’t want Bernie. They don’t love Bernie as much as his hard-core fans do. And do you know who is really truly the base of the Democratic Party? The ones who really liked Biden and really wanted him and really didn’t want Bernie? Black women. They have voted for the best candidate in every general election since the 60s. And they’re the ones who wanted Biden. Without them, our country would already be lost. It’s an inconvenient truth, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
The last time a disappointing — exponentially more disappointing, in fact — sitting Democratic president got primaried, he ended up injured and we wound up with Reagan, who as much any one person started the entire shitshow in which we find ourselves today.
As for the whole “country needs a shakeup” thing: that’s what people thought in 2016 and we all saw how well that worked out.
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Anyone who says the current leadership of the Democratic party is far left is fuckin’ lying through their teeth or has no idea what it means to be on the left.
Except not really. I think they expected more progressive policies, as he ran on some of those policies in order to shore up the progressive wing of the party. He has pretty much ignored a good bit of those promises thus far, and this not entirely his fault. But I think that the progressives who voted for him did not believe he was going to be a leftist president, but a moderate who would deliver at least some progressive policies.
Because apparently the overton window is so fucked, that center right policies seem like they are now far left… 
The other side is full on fascist now, in case you have not noticed. Trump ran on essentially burning down what’s left of the welfare state, cutting off as much immigration as possible from some places (the global south), cutting taxes, rolling back basic rights for anyone who wasn’t a white man, and then essentially installing himself as dictator for life.
And even when you say “communism” (which Sanders is not), you are talking a wide variety of worldviews and ideas, everything from a Stalinist state to democratic socialism. No one in American politics today is much farther left that Sanders, who is a democratic socialist. He’s most certainly center-left, but he’s not left in the same measure as the mainstream of the current GOP is right. Not by a long shot.
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