Voter apathy is the biggest problem in the upcoming elections on both sides of the Atlantic.
Here, a lot of people think Labour have already won so there’s no need to vote. There, the RWNJ element are more likely to go out to vote, meaning that Democrats need to get out there in order to prevent Trump from getting elected.
You remain the most erudite person I know. Having said that, I don’t know many people.
The court cases boosted his position in the race, and in fact made it a foregone conclusion. DeSantis had a slight chance before the charges started to roll in, however he was still considered an outsider at that stage.
Clearly.
This is not how political parties have worked since the 60s. The power many observers ascribe to parties as a centralizing force that can dictate stuff like this just doesnt exist. If it did, Trump’s political rise would have culled in its crib.
He’s obviously referring to me.
If your point is the donor class pulls the strings, then I agree. Still another reason to be nothing but disappointed at this mockery of an election though.
Again, the various cases were already well advanced and a matter of public record before he announced he was running. In the 18 months or so between Jan6th and announcing he was running the GOP increasingly let him back into the fold, increasingly taking on his talking points. They signaled to their electorate that it was ok to disregard the seriousness of the cases against him.
No, I am saying literally what I said. The “party”, as some centralized power base of leaders cannot just decide who their nominee will be, and certainly not when they already have a first term president indicating they want to run again.
As for the “he campaigned to the left now is moving back because that is who he is” arguments, he has a first term record to evaluate. It is the most progressive record of actual stuff done since FDR. Israel is a blight on his record, but transcends any sort of left-right distinction.
Zero skin in the game, in Canada. I would vote for him though given the choices as I cant get over Bidens current age,health,mental acuity, I shudder to think what it would be like in 4 years. I would however still prefer a 86 year old Biden to a Harris.
I would have voted for H Clinton, and would have voted for Obama, I don’t think either of them are too liberal.
It is actually rather undemocratic (small-d) for a political party to prepare a succession plan, because that more or less gets you to anointing a successor. That often doesn’t sit well with voters.
My suspicion is that Biden was fuzzy with even close supporters on whether he would stick around, very much because in the back of his mind he was going to as long as he felt able to do the job. Once he had crossed that threshold, there was really no way a challenge would emerge, particularly given the relative dearth of potential viable candidates.
Ironically, the GOP attack line of ‘Biden is a doddering grandpa’ may actually be helping him with the key voters, because the reality is that he is an ultra-pragmatic centrist, to the point of being cynical. That did help in the Senate by keeping him near the cross-party consensus, but never endeared him to the Democratic left. He has never been a Manchin, but his own party has been nearly as frustrated with him in the past.
The Dems get hit on both sides of this issue - criticized for not exerting centralized control of the nomination process as a way to claim they are disorganized and not serious about winning while also getting hit with criticisms of the undemocratic nature of the superdelegates (which have never meaningfully tipped a nomination away from the vote of the party members) as a way to complain about their commitment to democracy and satisfying their voters as being a lie.
Party leaders have some ability to shape a nomination process as they can exert pressure on candidates to not participate or to step aside. They can use their influence to generate attention for their preferred candidate. But to get a nominee you have to have identify themselves as wanting the nomination and run a campaign for it, and then have to enough enough party members vote for them in the various state wide primaries to win enough delegates to win the nomination. This is how it has been since 1972 and yet people still talk about it like the nominee gets decided by a group of party leaders the way it did in the 60s
In the future, I’m on the Buttiegieg bus. He is the President that America is waiting to have, but it is not quite ready yet.
Vast intellect, good orator, solid grasp of policy and the issues, an upstanding moral fella, compassionate, handsome, religious, gay, married, young family, former army veteran, multi-linguist… young too.
He ticks a lot of boxes, possibly even across a former political divide, though perhaps not now as things are too tribal? Anyhow, conservatives might like his sincere and private faith, as well as his military service and his demeanor. Progressives will like the fact that an openly gay man can be embraced in the highest office in the land.
On the policies he would be centrist-left leaning, at least by American standards.
I would vote for him all day long, and think he could help to renew a political system that is dying on its arse with bad actors throughout.
The preemptive attacks against Pete have already started from the RW, which is typically a good indication they are concerned about him. But I don’t see it. He strikes me as a left’s Paul Ryan…the sort of person the press think the voters want because they dont understand the electorate wants to be entertained not educated (or spoken down to, as too many americans think whenever they hear a smart person talking).
It’s the unfortunate reality of our presidential politics that the person we choose is typically closer to Dwayne Mountain Dew Camacho than Jimmy Carter.
Buttigieg is still around? Only remember him from when he was a candidate. Something about his public persona made me almost physically ill.
He generates that reaction from a good number of people. He comes across as a lab created politician and so transparently inauthentic. The sort of guy who spend his entire teens and 20s practicing the speeches and rhetoric and then arrived on the stage and acted as if that was the same as having actually a record of public service. Several of the more experienced candidates of the 2020 nomination disliked him for this reason, and Amy Klobouchar famously fucking hated him.
He actually reminds me of a friend I have who is autistic. He is high enough functioning to understand that his natural reaction to people is considered rude and not wanting people to think that of him. So he has developed this act of how he thinks others expect people to act in public and it’s so over the top with faux sincerity it feels like he’s taking the piss.
“How is your coffee?”
“Um, good. I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s great. I remember you told me before that you like coffee. What do you like about it?”
“Back off, weirdo.”
Yeah but trickle-down economics is like totally a thing y’know.
Must admit that “Thank you Mr Kurd” made me laugh out loud.