I rarely get angry about politics anymore. My expectations are so low that I usually just sigh at the depravity now.
But man, it really gets under my skin when I hear people making excuses about why we can’t replace Biden. It’s so stupid and limp dicked that I can’t handle it.
Like, I don’t want to pick a fight with skydiver here. It’s admirable that she’s actually out there doing stuff. I personally like Mayor Pete and think he might even be the best candidate to replace Biden.
But being told to wait patiently really rubs me the wrong way. And we hear these types of excuses time and again. “Careful! We can’t do anything because reasons.”
We can! We could do something! We’re like halfway down the fascism drain already! There is overwhelming evidence that Biden is a terrible candidate! We can replace him and try to win!
This isn’t a time for patience. It’s a time for urgency and the solution is staring us in the face. As Obama used to say, elections have consequences. Winning matters, especially when the opponent is Donald Earbandage Trump.
All the morons here defending Biden are already laughing stocks but im sure they will tell us when he only lost by 2% they were right. If he loses bigger we will never see them again besides the truly clueless monsters like Ikes
we are at the “everybody gets a pony” point of this cycle. the platform Biden is putting out is actually getting more progressive. anxiety about the election or not, but here, the nominee is actually moving where you want him to be.
Yes but not because I like him or whatever. It’s because I understand how elections work. And I’m not talking about what you all see from the outside.
It’s this.
You all seem to think I’m “defending the party” or I’m some kind of big Biden stan. No. I’m just a realist who does this for a living and I know how elections work. Not just the legal stuff or the procedural stuff, but the ebbs and flows of opinion and earned media and voter turnout and other esoteric things that don’t get measured and reported on in the press.
So by all means keep yelling at me. I’ll be outside doing the work. I’m only here today because I had a bunch of meetings all day. I am managing 3 water board campaigns and one school board campaign and That’s my real focus…maybe make it yours and you’re realize how much it helps to ratchet down your stress levels knowing the work you do will actually make a material difference.
Would I vote for Kamala? yes. Would I vote for any dem? Yes. Well, not Menendez or Cuellar, but you know what I mean.
Here’s my solution: Don’t vote for anyone you don’t want to actually hold the office. … the Dems and Republicans aren’t dramatically different when it comes to actual policies. I have no intention of voting. Didn’t in the midterms. This two party nonsense can rot.
This attitude is exactly why progressives lose. If you really don’t understand that losing by 3 points in an R+10 district is a success, then I don’t know what to tell you.
This is why the urban rural divide exists and why the Heritage foundation is winning. Because Democrats and progressives are short term thinkers who don’t understand that it takes years of building bases in local races, even if we lose that year, in order to flip districts. It works because that’s what the GOP did starting 40 years ago and here we are.
I suppose I could go work for Scott Peters or Sara Jacobs in their D+10 districts and take a year off sipping mai tais and sending a few texts just to get a win on my record, but that’s not who I am.
Have you stopped to consider that maybe the “inside” stuff is blindly you to reality? Maybe being involved in the day-to-day is making you overrate things that don’t actually matter that much?
Like, here on the outside, it’s patently obvious that Biden is a horrific candidate. People think he’s a doddering old man, and no amount of money or ad campaign or get-out-the-vote operation is going to change that.
David Axelrod used to always talk about how – by far – the most important aspect to running a successful campaign is candidate quality. He always gave Obama the credit, and rightfully so.
All the work that you and others are doing on the inside is great, but it only helps on the margins. When you have a candidate who is consistently underperforming other democrats in state polls (often by double digits!), you have a Bad Candidate. Replacing a Bad Candidate with a Good Candidate can instantly make a huge difference. Knocking on doors slightly better can’t do that.
I put forward this idea a month or two ago. It seems pretty straightforward to me, but I was called childish and stupid and whatever. That time it had to do with Genocide Joe, this time maybe the general idea would gather some more traction.