I think both Biden and Clinton can be understood as having one clear path. Biden got there by way of a long Senate career that he returned to after the VP role, not direct succession. Clinton’s as Arkansas AG was a stepping stone to governor. The last president you could say came from strictly the VP pathway would be Bush Sr.
1 Like
Yeah that is the conventional wisdom the press lean on with the framing of every race every cycle, but like most of their political CWs it has little predictive value and does a bad job of describing the landscape they are reporting on. I think the issue is the political press are so insular that they have become incapable to thinking about any story outside the prism of one of 4 or 5 narratives/tropes they all use.
I even heard my first “Biden needs his Sista Souljah moment” last week from someone who probably wasn’t even born when Bill had the original one in his campaign. But someone who covered that 92 campaign and has now worked their way up into a position of influence in a newsroom would have looked at that “insight” and said “that’s a smart kid. Let’s promote him.”
What the press will tell you is voters prefer governors to senators because they have a track record of administrative experience far closer to the responsibilities of the president than a senator will have been able to demonstrate, which is such a funny way to think about how voters think about elections that it could only be thought true by someone who has never spoken to someone who doesn’t work in DC covering politics. People become good candidates because they have something about their personalities that resonates with voters and meshes with the political moment. It really is as simple as that.
1 Like
VP is a fascinating one for how bad a platform it actually is compared to how people see it.
Going back the beginning of the 20th century, Bush Sr is the only guy to win an election coming clearly from the VP lane.
Coolidge and LBJ both won elections after having been their predecessor’s VP, but in both cases won their election as the sitting president after their predecessor died in office
Nixon and Biden were both VPs to successful 2 term presidents, but think the story of their elections is a lot more complicated than them leveraging their place as the next in line by virtue of having been VP. Nixon lost that version of his election in 60 and sat out the next one. Biden chose not to run feeling a bit pushed out Clinton and feeling let down by the party establishment not treating him as next in line.
You then have examples of Humphry not even winning his primary (the first so called “modern” primary that was elected by the party at large rather than the party leaders) and Mondale losing to Regan in an all time blow out
Results of a just published Fed survey providing yet more evidence that the perception the economy is bad has not come about because of people’s personal experience of it, but because that is what they are hearing.
1 Like
Trump gets $1b in campaign funds from a US petroleum group on the promise to let them do whatever they want if he gets back into office.
The head of that group is being sued for price gouging yet “petrol prices are important to me” voters will continue to favour Trump
4 Likes
“But you cannot argue with people’s experience of the economy”
1 Like
I wont vote for Biden because he promised to cancel our student debt (his campaign promise was more complicated than that) and he hasn’t (his initial attempt to implement this campaign promise was struck down in the courts and he has since implemented numerous different programs that collectively has forgiven more debt than his initial plan would have)
1 Like
Will his decision rise or lower the price of gas?
It’s speculation to predict what will happen with the price of gas if the petroleum group gets what they want. It would make more sense for the group to lower prices if they are given concessions, or else those concessions would be taken away. It would most likely be a pro consumer move for some and a anti environment move for others.
Yeah, its a totally reasonable assumption that a group being investigated for colluding to keep prices high would pay $1B for the freedom to lower consumer prices.
1 Like
A lot of democrats are disassociating themselves with Biden because they feel his lack of popularity will harm their chances. It doesn’t look good for democrats winning the election.
I’m quite annoyed with Biden because he said when he ran the first time he’d be a 1 time president, just running to take down Trump. Now he’s gone back on his word. I don’t care if the reasoning is the same, this time around HE IS TOO OLD and its having a bad impact.
Won’t vote because you don’t like him giving this money back to borrowers, or because he hasn’t managed to cancel it out?
My wife has a loan. Took it out to become a teacher and the university didn’t setup her teacher practices so she couldn’t pass. Said she was meant to do that and should have been working in a school in the first place. They didn’t tell her that at the start and didn’t reject her candidacy or check she was in a school or able to setup her own teaching practices. Now I did the same thing in the UK and my university did arrange the practices with local schools.
She owes 60k. Same university forced her to do high school stuff for 2+ years, even though she has top grades from the UK and they refused to acknowledge she’d already achieved this minium, so she stuck with it for 6 years and failed ultimately. Couldn’t get a job except for walmart level work so quit. Really sad because she would have made a great special needs teacher. No way to pay this off and just accruing interest. And ironically there’s not enough teachers, especially special needs.
2 Likes
Incidentally, she’s not had her loan paid off.
Surely they wouldn’t pay 1bn and then lower prices. Where is the logic in that?
1 Like
How? The economy is healthy as are most other indices. Foreign policy wouldn’t look any better under a Rep president. What’s the problem?
He very much gave the vibe that was his intention, but he was careful to never actually say it. The closest he said was that he would be a bridge to the next generation and didnt correct people when they interpreted that to mean in 2024.
I think its likely he believed it in 2020 though, assuming that beating Trump would make him finally go away. And when that didnt happen and realized that someone was going to have to beat him again they figured they were in the best position to do that with incumbency, a positive record to run on and a sense that they had the special sauce required to beat him.
I was being facetious, parroting the opiniated ramblings from a section of the left who arent actually engaged with what is really happening but are intent on trashing the only side who will get close to anything they say they want.
1 Like
I’m not bashing Biden unnecessarily but his “implication” of going away is costing us another Trump term in office. Personally think we need two younger fitter more energetic candidates to run rather than two 80 year olds and both will be 80’s during their term in office.
And some people like my boss believe having the republican’s back in office a good thing for business as a whole. As you point out Bekloppt the economy is doing good and there’s an article out saying if the economy stays upbeat fiscally and stocks remain strong its a solid indicator that Biden will win. Its with all these other trending polls saying Trump’s doing better and better and he seems to be teflon I fear we’ll see him back in office and he’s a vindictive sob and him liking dictators, nazi comments and just the whole package is just plain bad. He is the antithesis of Klopp.
Anyway, sorry, I was just ranting on about my wife’s situation.
1 Like
Absolutely no need to apologise for that. No one should have crippling debt for trying to better themselves. It’s a crazy system.
1 Like
I suggest that is much more nuanced than that. It might be along the lines of open up drilling, etc, which possibly makes the overheads cheaper vs whatever they are having to do now, lower cost lower prices, or increased resources, less need to overcharge for a dwindling supply.
The point I am making is that there is no crystal ball that will tell you if a “deal” he has promised will lower or increase the price. I don’t know the details of the deal, however to suggest that paying X amount is always going to reflect in higher prices for the consumer, is incorrect.
1 Like
Inflation vs unemployment/recovery makes sense, because even if it would be better to not be the case, negative news has always trumped good news. But it is the recession data that is the give away. This coverage is solely talking heads projecting a coming recession that never came and there was simply no attempt to put the perspective right.
Plus ranting about this is taking my mind off Klopp leaving 