Mastodawn

J Odell Jul 1, 2024

From @StephanieJones

The "Biden Replacement Theory": A Joke That's Not Funny

https://open.substack.com/pub/stephaniejones2/p/the-biden-replacement-theory-a-joke?r=4hf2m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The "Biden Replacement Theory": A Joke That's Not Funny

If you're going to engage in any discussions about replacing Joe Biden on the ticket, you should know a few unassailable facts that the media have left out of their hysterical drumbeat "coverage" of what "Democratic insiders" are saying: Democratic "insiders" don't give the President advice through the media. They speak directly to him or to the people in his immediate circle. Anyone you see publicly calling on the President to step down is not close to him and does not have his ear. Yes, they may attend occasional briefings at the DNC or get invited to the White House holiday parties and annual Easter Egg Roll, and have their picture taken with him at fundraisers they pay good money to attend so they can get their picture taken. But they don't have real access to him and they can't be assumed to have his best interests in mind. Because the people who are actually close to him don't call him out on CNN and Twitter.

Stephanie’s Substack

Led By Gilded Fools Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Thanks for the link, but everything in the URL after and including the question mark is tracking info and unnecessary:
"?r=4hf2m&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web"

Grumble Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones The DNC machine runs an unpopular incumbent, but the problem is ungrateful, unrealistic, uninformed voters.

Noted.

Comrade Weez Jun 30, 2024

@grumble209 Biden isn't unpopular, but your other points are sound @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Grumble Jun 30, 2024

@weezmgk @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Could you please repeat that? I couldn't hear you over the roar of a +19 disapproval.

Edit to add: The machine had no stones to tell Joe to sit this out, figuring no one would vote for a felon. And so here we are.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

How Popular Is Joe Biden?

Latest polls on President Joe Biden’s approval ratings

FiveThirtyEight

Comrade Weez Jun 30, 2024

@grumble209 538? lol @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Comrade Weez Jun 30, 2024

@grumble209 pretty sure that roar is the laughter of everyone who saw you take Nate Silver seriously

Grumble Jun 30, 2024

@weezmgk So the pollsters are wrong, and Biden is really popular?

And the widespread negative public reaction to the debate, leading to calls to replace Joe, is all just ignorant people?

Comrade Weez Jun 30, 2024

@grumble209 538 is almost certainly wrong, it's a hobby for Nate. But you keep on grumbling.

Bye!

Jonas Trostle Jun 30, 2024

@weezmgk @grumble209 Nate Silver isn't at 538 anymore. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/fivethirtyeight-hires-g-elliott-morris-loses-nate-silver.html

FiveThirtyEight Hires G. Elliott Morris, Loses Nate Silver

FiveThirtyEight just did a brutal wonk swap: After Disney refused to re-up Nate Silver’s contract at the influential polling blog FiveThirtyEight, it hired his rival, G. Elliott Morris.

Intelligencer

Ariaflame Jul 15, 2024

@grumble209 @weezmgk Show to me how polls have been even remotely close since before 2018?

Grumble Jul 15, 2024

@ariaflame @weezmgk It's turnips versus beets this year - two less-than exciting options that are no one's first choice.

In a democracy, you might get strawberry or corn come in and smoke both of these chuckleheads. Instead, the donors decided that we get to argue over which one is worse than the other.

Ariaflame Jul 15, 2024

@grumble209 @weezmgk Oh dear, do you really think there's no real difference between the parties since Trump? I guess there's no point in explaining things to you then.

Grumble Jul 15, 2024

@ariaflame @weezmgk The parties have the same business model: sell policy to donors, sell tribalism to voters. Since the parties have some different donors, they will enact some different policies.

If you or I had a lot of money and chose to share it with judges and politicians, we could set policy in America, too. It's a land of opportunity.

que :verifried:Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 @weezmgk @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones whats the graph look like for the other guy?

Grumble Jul 1, 2024

@que @weezmgk @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones It's no better. Overall, the public really doesn't like either candidate: 60-70% hate each one, yet that's what the ruling class is force feeding us. And the media is now full of marketing wank telling us the shit sandwich isn't *really *that bad, or that the other shit sandwich is *even worse*.

This is all a problem, because, historically, the US engages in political violence when the population is pissed off.

Latest stats: 4 presidents killed, 2 wounded, and scores of plots that failed.

Odds of a sitting US president catching a bullet are over 10%. As former British colonies go, I think the US is one of the most violent.

And I don't really want to experience 1860s levels of violence, or even 1850s, or 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots - Wikipedia

Robin Adams Jul 3, 2024

@que @grumble209 @weezmgk @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Net approval -11.7

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/

Donald Trump : Favorability Polls

The latest political polls and polling averages from FiveThirtyEight.

FiveThirtyEight

Grumble Jul 3, 2024

@robinadams @que @weezmgk @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones This is some crazy shit we're living through. It's going to get sporty before it gets better.

Jay Jun 30, 2024

@grumble209 @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones So why did Biden sail through the primaries?

Grumble Jun 30, 2024

@WhiteCatTamer @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Because the big donors didn't back anyone else? Before there are primaries, there is the voting of the donors, which determines who is capable of running in the primaries.

https://youtu.be/mw2z9lV3W1g?si=kbXhZiTxotGbgE1A

We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | Lawrence Lessig

YouTube

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones I’m not going to watch a TED talk. Can you explain it in your own words?

Grumble Jul 1, 2024

@WhiteCatTamer @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones To win the general election, you need to do really well in primaries.

To do really well in primaries, you need to get excellent early support from big donors.

So while the 99% have ultimate control over who wins an election, the 1% control who we get to choose between.

Apparently, the 1% that support the Dems are pretty stoked with Joe and the status quo. The rest of us, not so much.

But hey, Trump is really awful, and that's good enough, right?

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Your original comment concerned uninformed and unrealistic voters. OP’s link speaks to that due to the way the process works. Do you disagree that that is not how ballot access, and so winning the Electoral College works?

I’m not asking if you disagree with the result. We can both agree on several points there. But we are here now. We can’t go back to before. So yes, Trump being awful matters.

Grumble Jul 1, 2024

@WhiteCatTamer @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Stephanie accurately describes the current process, and why, using the current process, despite being in advance of the party convention, it's too late to change candidates. I mean, they've already printed the bumper stickers.

But I hope we can agree that, this time, the current process has produced a shitty result: Biden's candidacy is not uniting his own party, let alone attracting unaligned voters. The only possible uniting factor in this election is that Trump is *really *bad. Worse even than a +19 disapproval margin? I guess we'll find out. The Dems can accomplish anything - even an incumbent losing an election to a convicted felon.

My snark tries to suggest that the current process is bullshit; only serving the monied interests, and that clinging to a shitty process further alienates the DNC from the population as a whole. The Dems tore themselves apart within living memory - they can do it again.

Edit: Fix attribution.

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 Yes, I agree: I -am- also tired of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I do think that the Democratic establishment trends older and more timid than they or this country or this world need them to be, though that error in thinking comes from an understandable place of wanting the nominee to be for all Americans. I don’t think that’s the right move amidst cultish fervor for reactionaries in one sector of the populace, but it’s an understandable one.
1/

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 I don’t see it as possible to get more good, progressive candidates who have the broad appeal, party connections, and political savvy to be the president capable of enacting their agenda without electing them into office in the first place, and if the most progressive among us choose to sit out we won’t get there. Similarly, if someone washes their hands of the Democratic party and votes 3rd party, nothing changes; they, rightly, don’t consider them gettable anymore.
2

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 It is absolutely a general trend that the modern parties hew closer to monied interests than voters’ preferences. It is also true that this trend is far worse the more conservative you go, and that treating voting for candidates as a stamp of approval is the wrong idea: it is an expression of your power as a voter to shape the legislature and the party. It is the simplest, most direct, and farthest reaching power, and it should NEVER be ceded.
3/

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 It would be great if we had a slew of options, and no, I don’t relish saying “but Trump”, but speaking as a queer person whose ectopic pregnancy choice in half the nation is to wait to die, “but Trump” is EXTREMELY pertinent. We’ve seen what his court is producing. We’ve seen the armed white supremacist groups growing bolder. We’ve seen his plans for deportation camps, we’ve heard his disdain for NATO, for Palestine, we’ve heard him court oil barons.
4/

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 Biden has done more than many give him credit for, and while in an increasingly hostile political climate. You can be frustrated with intraparty politics and still see that. You can think the Democratic party has become intellectually flabby because their only real opponents have been gargling coal plant runoff cut with homeopathic Bible water for at least three decades now.
5/

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 But the solution to that is to cut Republicans out of each and every seat with hedgeclippers, install Democrats, and then split the party into full progressives and conservatives.
6/6

Also it ate one of my posts and I didn’t save it so I am officially on the market for servers with higher character limits because I feel like a douchebag making a lot of notifications and losing half of what I was going to say anyways.

Grumble Jul 1, 2024

@WhiteCatTamer Can't say I agree that the solution to hyperpartisanship is to only have one party. Especially when the Constitution itself speaks so eloquently in its silence about political parties.

If the goal is to have one chamber representing the rich and one chamber representing the people, then we really need to bump up the size of the House and reapportion accordingly.

Let's #ExpandTheHouse to 1500 and see how that works for decade or two. Because the solution to pollution is dilution.

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@grumble209 Not one party, the Democrats can be the party of conservatives that are interacting with reality, a new progressive party can form by splitting off from the Democrats. Instead of constantly chucking Hail Mary passes in the hopes that a 3rd party gets in, you ride and guide the big tent until you can send Republicans packing for good.

I do think that the House of Reps needs to be reapportioned, but that seems unwieldy, so other avenues of change will result.

Grumble Jul 1, 2024

@WhiteCatTamer Like most complex situations, there's more than one fundamental cause at play.

Two parties are not enough to represent a diverse nation of 330 million, even if the two parties weren't constantly sucking up to billionaires. Both the number of parties and their funding sources needs to be unfucked.

Too few politicians (i.e., using the 1920 apportionment for a country 3x the population) makes those politicians too powerful, and too prone to corruption. Ditto a SCOTUS sized for the 1870s. So we have to dilute their power by enlarging both the House and SCOTUS.

But the real problem, caused by decades of letting the 1% run everything, is that 1/3 of the country are ready to embrace fascism. Putting the Dems in charge of everything won't make that 1/3 go away - that's what they are fighting against.

I hope the US isn't terminally fucked. But there's not much good news, and the Dems have climbed up their own assholes and are, in practical terms, useless.

Ariaflame Jul 15, 2024

@grumble209 @WhiteCatTamer @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones He won the write in poll. When he wasn't even on the ballot.

Raccoon🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Jul 2, 2024

@grumble209 @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones
I don't think that's what she's saying at all. What she's saying is that, at this point, we are well past the point of no return here: the time to be doing this was before the primary season, and no one stepped forward. At this point, we couldn't even get someone else on the ballot in all 50 states, because deadlines have passed, and even if we could, that person would not have the money or recognition to run a successful campaign. This is beside the fact that a huge chunk of opposition to Biden is based on people who either outright worship Trump or simply believe lies he keeps repeating, which changing a candidate will not change.

Biden isn't a perfect candidate, but the point that people are making is that there isn't a better option. Constantly trying to drag him down though, at this point, is going to bite into the opinions of undecided voters: we won't get a better candidate than Biden, we'll just get Trump.

JonChevreau 🇨🇦Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Excellent must-read.

(($; -)}™ Gozo Languedoc Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

I don't see reports on similar reelection-debate debacles by Reagan (1984; Mondale); G.W. Bush (2004; Kerry); Barack Obama (2012; Romney). Am I the only one who remembers those 4 predecessors counted out, too? Just like Biden?

Former successes should give us hope. Did everybody see Biden at the after-debate party? The debate was a disaster, yes. But (A) Old, Angry, Crazy Conman or (B) Effective, Old president ought not challenge pro-American voters.

(($; -)}™

SatelliteOfLove Jul 1, 2024

@Gozo @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Two words: Thomas Eagleton

(($; -)}™ Gozo Languedoc Jul 1, 2024

@SatelliteOfLove @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

I'll bite: what's 1972 McGovern v Nixon have to do with the syndrome where in-office presidents fall flat, or worse, on their 1st reelection debates? Or are you comparing the Eagleton dust-up to Mr. Trump's recent litigation losses & criminal convictions? I'm not sure anti-American Republicans care How low their guy goes.

Vote Blue like your Wife depends on it. Because she or your daughters or granddaughters one day just might.

(($; -)}™🇺🇸

SatelliteOfLove Jul 2, 2024

it was tossing out another example of chaning horses midstream (for a real reason in his case, see Jason Kander).

Nick has moved to Mathstodon Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones I'm glad this addressed the question of ballot access, because that was the thing that immediately came to my mind as making the idea of replacing a candidate at this point tantamount to unilaterally conceding the election. I had also been curious about the campaign finance question and suspected the funds could easily be transferred or redirected but didn't know about the law there.

No Gods , no Masters! RESIST Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield We are not going to even consider it ..
Biden -Harris 💙💙💙💙
2024🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Tony, Pretty Much Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield This is the definitive post on the matter. No more discussion should be needed after people read this.

Not A Bird Jun 30, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Incredible.

Interesting that the media that always wants to cover both sides, doesn't talk about these points at all.

Sarah E Bourne Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones I really wonder if the people they are (reportedly) talking to are actually Democrats, much less "insiders". Something smells funny.

Jay Jul 1, 2024

@sbourne @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones I mean, Democrats DO go into paroxysms on occasion, and the media is happy to get a quote and shove a story through while the printing press is hot.

There’s always going to be an element of narrative building, be it openly or covertly, but I think this is better overall explained by fear than by malice.

Alex Lubertozzi 🇺🇦Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones I think this is right. I can’t understand people who ought to know better (David Remnick) calling for Biden to drop out. Also, if Biden did, wouldn’t he sort of have to resign? (If you’re not up to running for prez, how can you argue that you can still do the job?) Harris would become POTUS, but there’d still be a fight for who would be the nominee. We’ve witnessed a lot of political shitshows over the last 10 years, but that would take the cake.

Kenneth Jul 1, 2024

@alexlubertozzi As I mentioned to Uncle Dave, the odds of a brokered convention are non-zero. Maybe two conventions!

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

SatelliteOfLove Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Got some people waking up to the realization they sucked down and regurgitated GOP propaganda the last few days...and its everyone elses fault

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/biden-special-counsel-beau-death/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/08/opinions/sotu-speech-biden/index.html

Biden slams special counsel Hur for raising son Beau’s death

President Joe Biden forcefully rejected that he had trouble remembering when his son, Beau, had died, as special counsel Robert Hur claimed in his scathing report on the president’s handling of classified documents released Thursday.

CNN

Elizabeth Loves DEI Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones , it is understandable to feel helpless and scared but if there is any time to avoid judging a book by it's cover on one day, this is it. We've had opportunity to read many books in the last several decades. Stay the course.

Texty the Bard Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones 75% of this is coming from trolls and right-wing sockpuppets who want to do the Dems in Disarray thing because they know their candidate is otherwise fucked. The third-party split thing isn't manifesting the way they wanted, and they otherwise have nothing left.

Everyone else is either nitwits taking that bait or the occasional alt-left troll who's bored and just wants to see the world burn.

Tanya Karoli 4 a better world Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones So tired of all the stupid commentary “urging” Biden to step down. My god, it was one (early) debate night! There’s plenty of time to remind voters of Biden’s pretty much unrivaled record. The response to a bad debate night is to rally around him, not ask for unrealistic miracles.

Martin Vermeer (not Jesus)Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Cruel 🤣🤣🤣 but true. Share early, share often!

John Czachurski Jul 1, 2024

@StephanieJones @Teri_Kanefield Did the Democrats have any similar ballot access or funding problems in 1972 when they replaced their VP nominee? (Of course that didn’t go so well for them, but I don’t recall it being because of these issues)

James R (Randy) Fromm Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Thank you, Teri, for recommending this.

Thank you, Stephanie, for having written it.

Both acts are deeply appreciated … and have been shared widely.

JerzeySoapMaker Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Ande Jacobson Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones: Excellent piece! Thank you for this. It so eloquently says what needs to be said.

Vincent Van Dinsky Jul 1, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Something tells me that the "replace Biden" nitwits are the same people as the "Garland do your job" nitwits

Daniel Keppler, PhD Jul 3, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones Excellent piece.

Kevin Dalley Jul 3, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield
Ballot access argument is wrong.
Biden has not yet been chosen as Democratic nominee. Whoever is chosen by party will be on ballot.
Running outside of 2 big parties requires more work for ballot access.
@StephanieJones

Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder Jul 8, 2024

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Imma gonna go looking for a host of accounts to post a link to this article on.