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Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign and says he’d have defeated Trump
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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I'm not sure he'd win but Kamala didn't have a chance.
Brother he had less of a chance than Kamala, if anything he should have dropped sooner
This is one of the issues I have with criticism of Harris.
The woman had no control over the situation. She couldn't exactly force Biden to drop out. There was no time for a primary. The woman was handed chicken shit and was expected to turn in into chicken salad with barely 3 months to go. The fact that she even made it competitive with 3 months to go, Biden's numbers in the toilet, and her own popularity numbers in the sewer is itself a miracle.
The woman was given cement shoes, told to sprint, and everybody shits all over her for only being able to jog.
She started strong. In the ACAB era we were gonna vote for the prosecutor, but then she stopped saying “they’re weird”, she stated cozying up to republicans, “I’ll put one on my cabinet”, Liz Cheney, supporting Israel (although honestly I doubt a candidate would survive going against them, maybe once she was president, but it very well could have lost her Michigan)
Point is, it was working and then it got all “brat” and “we need to work with the traitors” and a fuckload of people just sat it out. Probably figured we’d be getting mostly the same either way, since that’s how she made it look. Either Trump wins, or the GOP obstructs for another 4 years while controlling SCOTUS.
The fuck does it matter at that point?
Agreed that Kamala got handed a shit show. At the time he did step down, she was the best candidate and she stepped up.
Mad respect for that and what she did accomplish.
Still, she needed to put daylight between her and Biden on Gaza, shouldn’t have run to the right on immigration and really needed to update the messaging on the economy.
I mean the whole genocide thing… it seems pretty brain dead not to. My guess on that is to avoid pissing off AIPAC, but they were already pulling hard for trump anyway. (Fascists of a feather stroke cock together.)
On immigration it was trump’s thrice-damned plan. Why the fuck would you run with that?
And then, on the economy messaging… telling people who are struggling to make rent or buy groceries that the economy is doing great is just a great way to piss them off.
When they say that wages outpaced inflation, they’re only talking the last few years. The people at the bottom have had ridiculously flat wage growth for decades. At least as long as I’ve been in the workforce. Actually, before the pandemic, I never had an actual raise, it always came with more responsibilities (aka a promotion.)
Wages have been stagnant for the bottom half and the bit we got during the pandemic doesn’t even come close to keeping pace with inflation over the course of our lives. Which means that with all the stain, people are struggling.
They need help. Not a “well, aktually…” the messaging should have been “here’s our plan to get you where you need to be, here’s what we’ve been doing and where we’re going”.
Kamala continued the Biden course and had many of Bidens campaign staffers because they deemed switching them risky with the time left.
This likely contributed to her campaign being Joe Biden in everything but name.
Being his veep, it's not like she could really put much distance between her and Biden.
Then (a) exactly what did you expect her to do, (b) why didn't people say anything about it before the election, and (c) how the fuck is allowing Trump to return to power a better alternative in any way, shape, or form?
All these people who are shitting all over Harris allowed the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and in the process allowed the terrible to return to power. Y'all said that "Significantly better than Trump" wasn't good enough so now you get Trump. Good job, guys. You played yourselves. You decided to step aside to watch the leopards start eating faces without realizing that those leopards have no problems eating the faces of the spectators too.
Biden dropped out because polling was awful. Kamala continuing his failed course meant guaranteed failure. Kamala should have taken the risk and swapped out the ghouls running Bidens campaign.
Or even better, Democrats should have had a primary instead of shoehorning in Kamala.
There was plenty of time for a primary. He said in 2020 that he would be a 1 term president, and then went back on that. If he had stuck to being a one term president, then we would have had a primary in 2024. That wouldn't have guaranteed that the DNC could hand us the worst possible candidate for the election though.
Kamela absolutely could have reminded him at the end of 2023 that he said he was too old in 2020 and only wanted one term. That would have let her run a primary, and probably get primaried.
Neither you nor I know what kind of conversations were going on privately behind the scenes. For all any of us know, these conversations could have been going on for months with Biden just being stubborn.
Kamala could have reminded him. She also could have jumped up and down yelling "Hi, I'm a squid." for all that it mattered. Kamala had exactly zero control over any of this. She could not force Biden to drop. Now, you could obviously make a case that it's Biden's fault for not dropping out sooner when it was obvious he wasn't going to win. But none of that is Kamala's fault or anyone else's. Nobody could force Biden to drop out. At the very least, put the blame where it belongs.
Kamala had a lot of enthusiasm behind her when she took over the campaign. Then she squandered all of it by hiring the same hacks who lost to Trump in 2016. If she hadn't sidelined Walz, or ignored the Uncommitted movement, or ran on the kind of left-wing economic message that won in 2020, she might have had a chance.
Biden, however, had no chance. Even if he had reversed course on Gaza and adopted left-wing economic populism, he was doomed from the moment he walked on that debate stage. Everyone was worried that he was old and senile, and it turns out they were right. Nothing was going to make the American people vote for him after that became public.
Biden was at -5 when he dropped out and was slipping by the day. Kamala at least made it neck and neck.
If Biden had stayed in, Trump would have won in a landslide that would have seen Regan/Mondale look competitive.