Replacing Joe Biden Is a Fantasy Democrats Must Abandon

37 comments

1. Well if that’s the case, beating Trump is a fantasy Democrats must abandon.

2. The crucial swing voters clearly aren’t hinging on policy or morality, so if those things cannot appeal to them, what can Biden do to sway them after that performance?

3. Trump wins then.

4. Of course …. Bloomberg would be happy with a Trump win too.

5. So, I’m not the only one kind of upset at the DNC and Biden administration for lying or misrepresenting the state of the presidents mental health? I am trying to justify this but it kind of feels like a whole bunch of unelected and elected people colluded to put an unfit man up for president because they felt like there was an advantage to keeping Biden in office, in turn allowing them to keep their power/position.

   I feel like this goes beyond democrat/republican and Trump/Biden and should be opening up conversation between the American people about the state of our government/two-party system/abuses of power. Neither side should be allowed to get away with things like this.

6. Gaslighting, commence!

7. This is probably the truth honestly. It can’t realistically happen because of a bunch of hurdles to replacing the nominee at this point. We should still recognize Biden is a better choice than Trump and still have a handful of months left to right the ship.

8. The situation is so bad I’d prefer Biden resigning and letting Kamala run as an incumbent.

   And I think Kamala is not a good candidate. But the Democrats are damaging themselves if they say the best option is what we saw Thursday.

9. Then prep up for a second Trump term.

10. Have to wonder if these are Trump supporters writing these articles.

11. It’s fucking wild, I am not American and didn’t watch this debate. All the coverage is about Biden as if Trump was thoughtful, coherent made a good case for being president. Which I fucking know is not the case. Check your goddamn priorities

    Edit: I didn’t watch it because obviously I can’t vote and the better choice is so obvious (Biden) that it would have been pointless

12. The only fantasy I’m clinging to now is a complete Dem takeover of the Supreme Court, followed by whatever else the fuck Biden needs to do to protect this country from the MAGA horde that wants to tear it apart. They just ruled presidents can do whatever they want, after all.

13. I agree with what Van Jones had to say after the debate. Biden is a good man and he IS doing his best, but his best is not enough. This is not a normal election and we need to do everything in our power to beat Trump. We have to put our best candidate forward, and Biden is not it. I will vote for any blue candidate over Trump, but I think democrats will live with intense regret if we don’t do everything we can to prevent the absolute disaster of Trump being elected again.

    Yes switching the candidate now is risky, but it’s way more risky in my opinion to keep Biden. It saddens me because I like Biden, and I wish we could get younger Biden back. We have to do the hard thing, take some risk, hurt some feelings, and pick the strongest democrat we can to fight for this election.

14. Can’t speak for anybody else but I’m playing the long game to replace Clarence Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. Maybe, take the House, hold the Senate and then obliterate every Federal Court via resizing.

    Anybody talking about anything else didn’t notice that our democracy got shot in the fucking head earlier today. 

15. I agree with the premise, but the article itself soft-pedals its strongest points and isn’t very persuasive.

    Biden would either need to resign, in which case the unpopular Harris would become president and the presumptive nominee, or decline to seek a second term, which would open up the nomination to a prolonged and public intraparty scrum, the only predictable outcome of which is to weaken the Democrats’ brand. And both those options assume that Biden is somehow convinced to step down, which doesn’t appear likely, since he, and all his allies and surrogates, are strenuously insisting he will continue.

    Most of what’s being written right now is either playing unproductive blame games, or bashing Trump; it’s a given that anyone with a stake in this process doesn’t like Trump. The party needs pragmatism and a cool hand right now, not emotional hair-tearing over the prospect of a second Trump term.

16. It is not. I’m sick of this lazy, condescending gaslighting. The convention has not happened. Biden can walk away with dignity and respect and enhance the chances of his successors victory, or he can listen to his wife and son (I’m sure they’re giving unbiased, objective counsel) and run to personal humiliation and a loss for the party he claims to love.

    There is not good reason we shouldn’t have this debate. None. To suggest otherwise is bullshit.

17. Why are we still even talking about this when the SC just declared the next Republican president king?

18. We are so screwed.

19. R Politics has lost the plot with this. Biden is cooked. Don’t you want to win? Don’t you want to avoid Trump dismantling democracy completely?

20. Being a presidential candidate is an entirely different job than being president, it’s a live performance and communications job. He failed catastrophically at the debate.  

     The problem has never been persuading people who weren’t planning on voting for him. It’s about persuading people who MAY OR MAY NOT VOTE AT ALL. If you can’t get a guy that can shut down an unhinged serial liar like Donald Trump at a debate, good fucking luck motivating these people to vote is all I will say. We’re in a very dangerous place, 

    I’ll vote for Biden no matter what, but I was never going to be the problem, nor were the majority of the people posting here.

    To say it’s too late to do anything, to me, seems parallel to the story that begins with, “Iceberg, right ahead!”

    I’ll bring my violin and sheet music for “Nearer my god to thee”, just in case.

21. The time is dire and pathetic people in power wont do anything the steer the boat away from the cliff. Welp it was fun while it lasted I guess.

22. I mean, it’s not unreasonable to think about replacing him. But it just seems that there is no one well-positioned to pick up the baton at this point. It’s not like we have a popular D waiting in the wings with broad name recognition, high approval and existing campaign infrastructure. So that kind of renders the discussion moot.

    Moreover, dragging this out essentially means more time that the media is focused on intra-party chaos than on the election. Especially because his replacement would have to be chosen by party insiders, which is going to give rise to another avalanche of intra-party conflict.

    It’s obviously a risk-benefit calculation and people can have different takes.

23. I’m so fucking sick of this spin cycle.

24. Jill and all these high profile people coming out to defend him are nice and all, but if it really was just one “bad night” or a blip, then HE should be out here defending himself, giving interviews, proving that he has the mental capacity to handle tough questions. He’s not. He gave a canned speech at a rally. That’s not what people need to see.

25. The Democratic Party is so good at creating losing strategies. Then we all have to suffer the consequences. The Supreme Court could get so much worse.

26. If that’s true, then winning in November is a fantasy Democrats must also abandon 

27. I am a deeply entrenched democrat, ran college political groups, door knocked and canvassed for Obama for 8 years, did my harm reduction vote for both Hillary and Biden, but if we all watched the same thing at the debate and people are talking the politics of the situation and who the better candidate is we are missing the point. I get the vote BLUE NO MATTER WHO shouting and in normal circumstances that makes sense to just blindly vote ticket and Donald Trump is also clearly demented both literally and figuratively. But we need to admit as a country and as patriots that allowing either of these men to hold the most important office on earth is a catastrophe. We cant hold Joe (or trump )to his best performance and grade on a curve. Do we trust that if an emergency happened during that debate and Joe needed shuffled off to a situation room that he was in the right mind to make the appropriate calls? His opponent shouted about post birth government and hospital sanctioned baby killing and said we “had all the h20” and somehow won the debate convincingly alarm bells should be ringing. Moderates, independents, the politically disengaged, the progressives, the youth, the pro-Palistine, the people upset about his unwillingness to pack the courts, the people appalled by his border policies. The inter-party coalition against Biden is higher than ever and I do not believe for a second he won a single swing vote with that performance. I know President Biden thinks he’s the only one who can defeat Trump but that doesnt mean it’s true or we as engaged voters need to buy it.

28. Thinking Biden is going to win is the fantasy that must be abandoned. And I say this as a lifelong Dem voter. They need to have him step aside.

29. Fuck off. He and Trump never should’ve been President in the first place

30. Having seen my grandmothers progression with dementia, I’m seeing the start of it with Joe. I don’t know if I can really express how heavy this makes my heart feel. Talking with other Democrats, there’s a lot of murmurs about what’s going on. A lot of people don’t think Kamala could win on her own either, so people are doubling down on Joe.

    I think it’s time to face the hard reality that enough people have lost confidence in Joe that he’s not going to win. Even prior to the debate his polling numbers were terrible, because people don’t understand the good he’s done for this country. I feel like the fate of our Democracy is at stake here.

31. More like “Joe Biden Winning Is a Fantasy Democrats Must Abandon…”

32. Sounds like winning the 2024 Election is a fantasy democratic leaders are abandoning

33. Dems putting party above the people is version a choice I didn’t… actually I did see that coming. Fools are trying to give it away. 

34. No. This shit happened in 2016. Many knew what it would mean to put Hillary up as the nominee. I think she is great, I think Biden has done great work, but this is madness.

35. That’s what they keep telling us. That’s what they told us when we should’ve had a chance to vote for other candidates months ago.

    That’s what they told us when we were given Biden in the first place.

    That’s what they told us with Hillary.

    They keep telling us that we just need to accept the candidate they give us, regardless of if the people actually wanted that candidate. I’m starting to think that they enjoy Trump’s BS, as it’s given the DNC an excuse to keep these relics and their dated ideals in office.

    It seriously seems to me, that the DNC has treated giving us a choice, as a “Fantasy” for nearly a decade now.

    I seriously doubt Trump would’ve even been a match against Yang. Young, successful in business, and intelligent.. He checks all of the boxes that Trump claims makes him the best president. Except, he’s not a narcissistic sociopath.

    But we get an old man instead, who just reinforces the status quo. Better than fascism, yes. But seriously, it seems like the DNC has acted like giving us a choice has been a fantasy in every recent election.. Maybe that’s why people don’t like voting?

36. Dems beating Trump without a huge course correction is a fantasy.

37. Along with winning if they don’t