So barring something very out of the norm (which is something we are certainly still drawing VERY live to), Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president in the election eight months from now.
Most, if not every one of the regulars here, had Biden at or very close to the bottom in their rankings of the over two dozen people who ran for the nomination (he was only above Bloomberg for me). So is there anything he can do now that will turn people here from “meh, fine, I’ll vote for him” at best, to “yeah, maybe this will work out”? I’m thinking of things like a VP announcement, visibly and earnestly reaching out to Bernie supporters, policy proposals much better than what he has announced thus far, or anything else.
I honestly don’t know the answer to this and was wondering everyone else thoughts.
No. His history matters. It would be worse if he tried to, what was it, “have the most progressive platform of any nominee ever”. I suppose a good VP would help only because he’s fairly likely to die, but not because of the pandering.
In fact, that should be his campaign slogan. “I’m fairly likely to die anyway.”
He has zero credibility. Nothing he says can be relied upon or even believed, and that was before the dementia took hold. There is no sensible argument that he/his cronies are trying (but failing) to make life better for ordinary people. They are 100% complicit. I guess he could make Matt Christman his VP then take cyanide on the 4th of november.
A truly progressive VP pick and a promise to pass the reigns to them after one term, paired with shifting all of his policies to the left. At least to the left of conservative politicians in the rest of the developed world.
That would be the bare minimum needed for me to not hate myself for voting for him. I still wouldn’t particularly enjoy it.
That’s a promise that I wouldn’t have much faith in from ANYONE. Not Bernie, not AOC, not even myself and I’m pretty damn scrupulous and introspective about being honest (including with myself).
Valid. I wouldn’t necessarily believe it coming from him either, but the fact that he possibly won’t be able to speak in another year or two makes a progressive VP and an acknowledgement of them eventually being the party leader carry more weight.
Maybe the play for progressives is to campaign for Republicans to vote for Biden. It may be a better play in terms of accellerationism than voting for Trump.
I think that if he adopted a couple of high profile progressive policies, that would convince enough people. Very few people would need him to move left on everything. Most people are starting from the position of hating Trump so much that they barely need to be convinced.
Nothing, because I wouldn’t trust him no matter what he said. What’s he gonna do, come out and say “actually, forget everything I said earlier, I favor M4A”?? No–he will never win me over.
I’ll probably show up and vote anyways for downballot stuff, but I’m tempted to write in Bernie for president. If my vote in Virginia will make a difference, we’re super fucked anyways.
VA is maybe swing in theory, but that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s not heavily Trump’s constituency. The type of Dem there is not the type that might go for Trump. Romney would do better in VA. The Michigan Dem, the labor union type person (maybe they grew up with their parents in the Union), is more the Dem → Trump voter.
Bernie as VP, that’s pretty much it. Nothing he says will be taken as the truth, the dude lies daily and he can’t even remember what he said early on in a long sentence
