Democratic Primaries 2020 - With a whimper

I hate Biden but am strongly against replacing him based on currently available information.

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1257858123576029184

The mechanism to replace Biden is to convince delegates that Biden selected to support someone else. You should understand that will be difficult while he’s alive.

To clarify for the readers, the website is Saladfingered Lemur 20220

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Lincoln, seriously? There wasn’t even a pretense that the rank and file voters for a party had any say back then.

If they just pick someone who didn’t get votes I’m probably never going to vote for a Democrat for the rest of my life. Voting for Biden will suck, but at least there would be some semblance of a process where people got to chose the candidate.

Everyone who made it to the first primary got some votes.

[quote=ā€œmicrobet, post:2251, topic:1453, full:trueā€]If they just pick someone who didn’t get votes I’m probably never going to vote for a Democrat for the rest of my life. Voting for Biden will suck, but at least there would be some semblance of a process where people got to chose the candidate.
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I don’t disagree with you here. This is why I’m skeptical of the idea that the DNC should just decide to pick someone else even if Biden wins the primary contest.

Probably? I mean like, of course there is. But it’s not an accident that none of the other choices actually look good. That’s what happens when you spend months campaigning against a great candidate

It depends on what you mean by ā€œlook goodā€. My contention has been that a generic Democrat beats Trump in this climate. By the criterion of electability, which voters seem to care about, they all look equally good.

What’s the path to picking another candidate? I don’t think that whoever has the second-most votes getting the nomination is correct. If a candidate dies after an election, we don’t give the position to the runner-up.

If Biden delegates end up being allowed to express their own opinions in picking a nominee, what happens? Either the centrists consolidate behind a different candidate or there is some sort of brokered convention which leads to a compromise candidate who can unite different wings of the party. This is probably the likeliest scenario, since a majority of delegates can dictate the process for dealing with an unprecedented and unplanned-for scenario. We just don’t know how it goes down.

If Biden withdraws after the convention, it seems pretty clear that the Democratic National Committee will decide who the nominee is. I’m pretty sure that will lead to a not-Bernie nominee.

The question I would ask is: what process would we have wanted in place for picking a replacement nominee if Barack Obama had died in June 2012? 2020 should probably have the same process if Biden is forced out of the race.

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It’s not really a comparable situation. They’d have gone with Biden and Biden would’ve won.

If you must, imagine a scenario where Biden is either unable or unwilling to be the nominee.

But also, what would be the formal process of nominating Biden? Letting the delegates decide or having the DNC dictate that Biden is the nominee?

I assume it would be the delegates, though it’s become fairly clear over the last few elections that the parties can change their rules more or less as they please.

The DNC does have a charter and bylaws they have to abide by, but I think it is relatively easy for them to change those with a vote by a majority of delegates.

I don’t see an easy path for Sanders to be the nominee if Biden drops out. It might be practically impossible. What’s the second-best option?

Assuming no Sanders, and assuming that that’s not personal to Sanders but ideological opposition to his policies, then whoever polls best, really. There’s little to choose between candidates palatable to the relevant people.

This is kinda the question you have to answer. The problem with the rest of the demE bench is that they all lost handily. We already know what the nation thinks about them, and it’s not good. We sit here and say oh yea, the centrists will coalesce behind somebody, but when you put the rest of them in that role, it’s incredibly underwhelming. It’s not like bernie has low favorability ratings and it’s just a small section of the electorate supports him, he’s liked across the spectrum and it’s only one small group that doesn’t like him.

I’m not sure what is smaller, the Bernie-or-bust crowd or the never-Bernie crowd. The argument for Bernie has been that he can make up for the people who will never vote for him with increased enthusiasm. I’m not completely hostile to that argument, but I am also not in love with it. Keep in mind that the centrists can credibly threaten that some of them will vote for Trump, so you have to make up more ground when you turn them away than you have to make up when someone merely sits out of the election from the left.

The best scenario is a compromise candidate that would get the full support of Sanders, one that he would be willing to endorse even before it is settled. And I’m not saying that Warren should be that candidate, but I do think that maybe the snake emoji crowd should probably be ignored in looking for that compromise because no compromise will satisfy them.

The washout who didn’t carry a single state and came third in her home state? Bold stance not insisting on that absolute supernova of charisma.

There’s not really much to choose from in the non-Bernie, non-establishment category. If the only way to get centrists to drop Biden is to pick someone from that category, I’m looking to brainstorm for non-Warren possibilities.

https://mobile.twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1258453585823764487

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Pretty good ad