Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign and says he’d have defeated Trump
Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.
With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/28/joe-biden-regrets-dropping-out-re-electionOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
No, he wouldn't have.
But of course he would think that. 🙄🙄
I mean he might have, a lot of people that voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Kamala in 2024 for various reasons. Trump did only very slightly better in 2024 than be did in 2020. Would the people who stayed home and didn't vote for Kamala have gotten out and voted for Biden? Maybe. If anything though Biden should have dropped out sooner or not ran at all, the DNC should have fielded better candidates, instead they spent 4 years (longer) trying to strangle any progressives before they could become feasible candidates.
The Joe Biden who showed up in 2020 would have beaten Trump. Joe Biden in 2024 is not the same guy.
The only real asset Joe had over Kamala, though, is a penis. For some voters, though, that's enough to make them pick one and not the other.
A white penis.
Well that's disturbing image I can't get out of my head, lost circulation or just old?
Those voters would've picked Trump over Biden anyway. The Democrats will never, ever win by falling over themselves to court those types of voters at the expense of progressives and leftists.
But Liz Cheney supported Kamala............
Look at all these Republicans who say, "Don't vote for Trump."
Surely that'll work...
One of the Republican talking points was that Kamala never won a primary and just snuck in. Not that it mattered for her actual policies but more so it was another reason for votor apathy
His own internal polling had trump winning over 400 versus him
No. "We finally beat Medicaid" Biden would have lost, bigly.
Yes, 100% this. He should have been the transitional president he signaled he'd be, before being elected in 2020.
I actually think that Biden won the election because of the primary campaign against Bernie. Bernie shifted the platform left and attracted young voters to the party that subsequently voted for Biden in the general election (even if they had to hold their noses). Nothing like a primary to unite voters behind the candidate.
A lot of people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 spent the next four years getting poorer.
Kamala lost because she promised to be four more years of the same thing.
I agree.
They would have kept showing that first debate performance over and over as a reason Joe is too old, and it would have worked.
I mean he already had, and if he had capitalized on how a LOSER was going to try and LOSE again because he was a huge loser I think he might have swayed many of the minds
I agree, but it deserves more discussion than just "No."
Eh, does it? The whole reason he was pushed out was because he was a combination of personally incoherent and organizationally sheltered from reality. His opinion on his own greatness has little value.
Depends how senile he would be or not be. What killed him was the debate, if there was another one and he was fully fine, then yeah a decent chance.
At least that part is fair
It's been absolutely appalling how long it has taken to prosecute Trump.
Many cases should have been ready the second he was no-longer president.
All the lame considerations about looks and not getting involved is idiotic. if the politicians in power don't work to defend democracy, who else should?
The left have been screaming for Democrats to wake up for more than a decade, but they behave like a party with dementia that doesn't understand what's going on around them.
As AOC has stated multiple times, people will come to vote for you, if you give them a good enough reason for it. Harris was the better more moderate candidate. But I think most Americans want more, they want real change. Like better healthcare, environment protection, democracy etc.
Preventing a fascist narcissist becoming president apparently wasn't enough?!
But maybe I'm wrong, maybe the majority of Americans prefer to live with the danger of not receiving healthcare, and the danger of being financially ruined by healthcare bills. Rather than living in a "socialist hellhole" where society actually care about the citizens?
The number one cause for bankruptcies in USA is healthcare bills.
Remember how there was already a document produced by a special prosecutor that said there were crimes committed but a sitting president couldn't be prosecuted? Just fucking memory holed by Garland's DOJ. He literally could have taken that up the day he was confirmed.
I'd say his first mistake was choosing Garland. Biden then made a second mistake when he didn't immediately fire Garland as soon as it became obvious that Garland wasn't going to do his job.
So it's everybody else's fault.
He literally said it was his.
No, he literally said his mistake was selecting Garland. There were many other mistakes, and opportunities for him to push Garland even after he had been selected.
That's the taking responsibility equivalent of "I'm sorry you feel that way" apology.
Not a chance in hell.
It does highlight how out of touch those in the gerontocracy are, however.
I wish this comment was higher. Biden betrayed the party and its chances of defeating Trump the moment he won the 2020 election and chose to not start preparing the nation on Jan 20th 2021 for a younger generation to lead. Merrick fucking Garland was the other, related, and just as large mistake. That one is totally on him.
And Kamala has just never been a great candidate, but he could have taken actions to try to boost her prominence. Instead he saddled her with no-win issues throughout and jealously guarded any successes for himself. And the one big bad issue I remember that he didn't dump on her (the rail strike), he farmed out to Pete Buttigieg to be the face of the administration (even though it wasn't a DOT issue). It was almost like the goal was to sabotage any potential locus of political power that wasn't Biden and his inner circle.
I don't think a better grooming would have helped Harris when she wasn't willing to be not-Biden in any way other than being coherent, but it certainly didn't help and seems indicative of their lack of intention to ever transfer power.
An open primary would have helped.
A massive look back (Whenever we have the ability for free press again after Trump) on the consistent self sabotage of Clinton-Biden-Harris would become a new The Prince for future generations of leaders.
"It's better to be feared as a leader than to be loved as one."
"It's better to not shoot yourself in the foot and then declare you're good for a 10K, after saying the last 4K was your last."
"They young care too much about disrupting our economy (making it more fair which means less for my
ownersdonors) we can't have that."I have a fun test for you, it will inform you if your information ecosystem is informing you or misinforming you
You clearly remember this as a big promise during Biden's 2020 campaign - but can you actually find evidence of him saying this, ever?
Can you find anything official - with a name attached to it - of the Biden campaign saying anything about only serving for one term?
Google gives a bunch of examples. Did he actually say it to the press? Perhaps not. Was it discussed and was his age recognized as a liability within his campaign in 2020? Absolutely yes.
They all, all reference the exact same quote each article.
None of that was official, it was all just the campaign's attempt to shore up an issue they had without an actual commitment and you fell for it.
That's not a failure of the media, that's a deception by the campaign. Unless you think the media lied about a prominent advisor saying that, they did their job.
If they were off the reservation, there should have been a firing, but just because they're putting out statements through unofficial side channels doesn't make it not a message from the campaign.
that phrase was used to describe native americans who ventured outside of the confines of the reservations they had been forced into. You can imagine what happened to them if caught. That phrase has a dark, dark, history.
Well, then they should've repudiated it a lot sooner (i.e. during the 2020 campaign), because to allow the misconception to exist is tantamount to confirming it.
Vote for us! We lied to you!
Yeah, great look.
I am amazed of the mental gymnastics.
"Can you find proof of this?"
"Yes, dozens of reputable sources give proof."
"Well that's not good enough, what I meant was you're a moron for never thinking a 78 year old man with dementia would be great for 8 years as the hardest job in America."
His campaign unofficially put that out in 2020, since he was near the bottom of the primary rankings. Campaigns that desperate start to float ideas as a trial balloon, to see if it would help or not. That’s how this works; a suggestion given by campaign staff that he can formally deny if it hurts his campaign or embrace if it’s helping. Once he started to gain ground in the primaries he backed off of the idea. He did many of these trial ideas.
His own staff had data that showed he would have lost even more electoral votes, giving Trump 400 instead of the 312. Biden is not aware of this data though. Kind of makes you think his staff is still heavily censoring what he sees.
"Benedict Arnold" developed a clear connotation over time. The same needs to become true for "Merrick Garland". History will remember him as a coward beyond measure and a key to enabling trump's final push to end American democracy.
Fuck Merrick Garland, without exception.
He spent so much time trying to make a good legacy that he forgot to actually do the right thing in the moment.
Garland knew he’d be accused of bias and selective prosecution, so Garland took slow and deliberate steps to make an ironclad case… only to be accused of bias anyway, and doing it so slowly that the charges expired.
Garland was hired to slow walk the case so Biden could run as second worst to Trump again.
What would have made him a good Supreme Court Justice made him a HORRIBLE attorney general.
His tenure was so horribly handled though, that I can't help but suspect some actual intent.... Otherwise, Im I'm left to conclude that he was just that impotent and cowardly. There's no way he was that lost on what this moment was - He had an unquestionable historical mandate to act against an insurrection at the US Capitol, with police officers being beaten and stabbed with US flags on sharpened poles, all broadcast live across every channel, in full HD. He is a failure on an unimaginable scale that spans all recorded time and space. He's a fucking dunce.
And fuck Biden for picking a Republican as AG.
Garland made a lot of sense in theory. Obama had picked him first and he had been denied his likely singular life's goal by obstructionist gop with trump egging it on. He should have sought justice for this country, while feeling the cathartic release of righting his personal wrongs.
But he didn't, because he's feckless and an absolute waste of that historical moment.
No, no it didn't, because they were picked for different roles with different political goals. Obama picked him to make it look as ridiculous as possible when Republicans refused to seat him. The argument was that Garland was so inoffensive to Republicans that their opposition was irrational. That's not an argument Biden needed to make when picking his AG after a criminal president.
It was a totally braindead "wouldn't this be poetic" move without any consideration for what type of person was actually needed in the position and how that was different from Obama's SC pick.
No, all the problems left of fascists have with Kamala were even moreso with him. The only way Democrats could have won was to hold a fair primary which they haven't done in a long time. They needed to get people voting for a candidate and not against the other guy which has been the strategy of both parties for ages, but doesn't work well when one side has people voting for him and your side actually wanted to vote against you, but were never given an alternate.
Bernie is one example of not running a fair primary, but not specifically what I was referencing. I was referencing the 2024 Democratic Primary specifically, and then mentioning that very few in the past have been fair to candidates. Not just because of the way the party treats the candidates publicly, but because of the way funding works and the direct control the leaders of the party have over that funding and how blackballing works if any candidate doesn't follow the party line. Which would be fine if there were allowed to be more than two viable, active parties at once. But the electoral college, among other things, makes that almost impossible, thus why Bernie had to run as a Democrat in the first place when he doesn't usually belong to the party.
You're quoting the last half of a sentence. "The only way Democrats could have won was to hold a fair primary which they haven't done in a long time." A prepositional phrase is an addition/side comment to a current statement. Thus, the 2024 primary was the primary focus of my comment.
But, again, to address the prepositional phrase portion, yes, none of the primaries in my lifetime have been truly fair.
As for the two party system, the original comment is referencing the electoral college which is the primary cause of the two party system as I mentioned in the original comment. The reason it's relevant here is the same reason duopolies are unfair in economic contexts. When hundreds of millions of people have only 2 choices, those 2 rarely will care to appease the majority because they don't have to in order to keep the customers/constituents. They just have to be the less hated for more people than the other one.
So, funding. Where does most presidential funding come from if they don't have direct wealthy donors? The SuperPACs are controlled by the same group of people who lead the DNC. And most primary elections are determined by funding because it's so expensive just to get your name out there, your message heard, and to get on the ballots. So funding is very relevant to the fairness of the primaries.
I don't know why you're so focused on Bernie when I only side discussed decades of primaries, but OK if that's the only primary that matters in all of history, then let's discuss it.
Clinton took a bunch of money she promised to give a significant amount of to state and local Democratic parties and then a bunch of what she didn't take went to the DNC instead and less than half a percent of the $80+ million went to the state and local candidates. And this was fine with the fund raising agreement technically because the DNC wrote it that way, but definitely unethical considering the donations were made with the assumption that it would help the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, not just Hillary and the DNC. Bernie didn't take part because of the mismanagement of the DNC and the agreement language that allowed for such things.
Additionally, Warren, Biden, and several other candidates were prevented from running through pressure from the DNC leadership. If they had been allowed to run, it was said, it would have split the vote too much away from Hillary. Again, it's easier to control the narratives with a two sided competition so they could get who they wanted.
These are just two examples of problems with the way the primary was conducted. Unfortunately, because a lot of the financials and other business of political parties is considered proprietary, much more like a corporation than something representing the people who it purports to represent, there is less evidence of a lot of the other issues. Fortunately, Hillary's campaign was more forthcoming with financial data than the DNC, so we do have some data at least.
I'm not a Hillary hater and while I think she did some things wrong, and while I admit I'm biased against her from her taking a bunch of money to drop the healthcare reform during her husband's term that could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps a certain CEO assassin's severe pain, it's the responsibility of the party to make the primary elections fair, not the candidates, beyond basic ethical standards at least.
I'm having problems rationalizing what you're trying to get to. You admit "the DNC stacked the deck" but you don't think that effected his outcome? You ran on the campaigns but have completely forgotten about the Nevada scandals involving unions and the caucus or what happened in SC when the DNC pressured high profile representatives to back Biden instead of Bernie (of which historically Biden has been horrible for minority communities). These are just off the top of my head, articles and references if you need them and I'll make sure to find you some more to help with the analysis.
Seems like you're splitting hairs trying to form some type of narrative. Democratic primaries have nothing to do with the two-party system? You'd have to completely wretch out decades of political knowledge from my head to even consider that nothing is connected. If there's a real, viable point you're trying to make besides "nuh uh", would love to be exposed to it.
This is all sounding a little delusional and honestly blind. Several factors have been pointed out to you, you're aware of some of it and supposedly followed along. The very statement of "they have a favorite and message in their favor" is a direct conflict to having a "fair primary".
sadfasfsadfd
I would say "wow, the dementia is even farther along than we realized" but it's likely the entire neoliberal faction that will be determined to come to this erroneous conclusion. They will grasp at any straw, even racist/sexist ones, in order to avoid admitting that the electorate is crying out for anti-corporate change.
What do you mean neoliberal faction?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk.
Yes, I know what neoliberalism is and yes, I really do mean that.
The dominant faction of the Democratic Party is, in fact, neoliberal. As a result, the party's platform as a whole supports free-market capitalism, free trade, low regulations, weak worker protections, etc.
That's why (for example) Hillary Clinton championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why politicians like Elizabeth Warren and AOC who care about things like workers' rights and Wall Street reform are among the minority within the party.
No, Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk pretended to be before he came out as full-blown fascist.
Thank you for literally being the first person I've ever seen online that actually seems to know what Warren stands for. Not exaggerating even in the slightest, either.
She could've been president, back when it would've mattered.
I worry that neoliberalism may need fascism in order to be fully realized.
No you don't. You just want a word for super evil. The TPP is not in any way, shape, or form Neoliberal. And the Democrats just finished four years of fighting tooth and nail to get more regulation of industry into place. I'm not a fan of them but this is just ridiculous.
This just proves you have no clue whatsoever what neoliberalism is.
Oh dude lemmy has decided that there are no normal liberals left. It's progressives and neoliberals. And no amount of reasoning, showing them academic materials, or engaging with the tenets of the ideologies will shift it. Neoliberals is the new "rich people I don't like" label.
This ghoul was propped up in 2020 with the full force of the party and then won thanks to covid, but he thinks he's some hero. Democrats lost in 2024 in large part thanks to him. Fuck you biden, you racist, genocidal, and power-hungry piece of shit.
Things would have likely gone a lot better if the Ds would have had an actual primary. It's so frustrating.
Actual primaries are against what the DNC wants. 2016, 2020, and 2024 all had sham ones and argued in court "We don't have to have fair ones, it's mainly for show. We're a private organization, we don't need to abide by fair election practices."
So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.
If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.
of course he’s forgotten
It was painful to watch. It's even more painful that he put us in this position. Now he is rubbing salt in the wound.
He is hopelessly arrogant and not the brightest.
of course he forgot… he forgets all sorts of things….
He certainly seemed like a patient who had escaped the memory care unit. I still remember my wife came in to see how it was going, she saw my face and turned right around. There just wasn't any recovery to that. I would not have been surprised if Adult Protective Services had showed up on that stage.
Hey, hey. Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure. All he did was tread water for 4 years and then hang on to power way too long, simultaneously tanking his own campaign, and making it much more difficult for someone to follow him.
Biden literally kept a lot of Trump's policies in place, kept his tax cuts in place, and did things Trump was considering despite public outcry, like limiting COVID protections and telling the CDC to stop covering it.
His regret should be that he left so late.
What a prick. No ownership of his candidacy-destroying debate performance. And thanks for taking so long to withdraw after you fucked that to the moon. Let him be the basis for age ceilings on presidential candidates.
He's a prick because he doesn't want Trump to be president? He's a prick because he wishes he did things differently?
I guess I'm a prick too then. I also don't want Trump to be president and have regrets in my life.
He's a prick because he thinks he should have been the one to defeat Trump. Even though he was not remotely suited to the task.
The only reason he ran at all is that he originally thought he had the best chance of winning. The debate and pressure after that changed his mind, but absolutely may have been wrong. After all, there were people on election day googling "did biden drop out?" One can certainly question how much the debate would have mattered.
But in the end, I generally agree with the below comment, that the election was always going to come down to the economy. It wasn't good enough for people that we handled inflation better than other Western countries. It didn't matter that Trump caused a lot of the inflation with the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and the GOP's refusal to have oversight. The only thing that mattered was that people were mad and wanted change. They couldn't figure out who to be mad at, and just chose the current people in charge. As a populace, we're not smart enough to understand deeper than that, and we just keep flipping the switch back and forth hoping it works, in spite of the fact that the biggest reason we don't go anywhere is that we keep flipping the switch back and forth.
I think the whole premise is wrong. It's becoming clearer that the reason he insisted on running (despite much internal push-back) was to hold onto power for himself. It had less to do with the stakes than it did with his self-serving desires. You'd have to be completely senile to think you could beat Trump after that debate performance and all of the context surrounding it. He's STILL insisting that he could have won. On what planet? Let's assume he knows what's at stake.
Is that easier for you than "he's a good person who tried his best and failed"?
Tried his best to... what? Drop out and let someone else more likely to win try for it? Doesn't seem like he wanted that. And nobody here thinks Biden would be worse than Trump. But that's not how American politics work. This is a reality show.
I'm very much not willing to say "he's a good person", whether or not he could have won again. Supports genocide, breaks strikes, and throws trans people under the bus after promising to protect them. He's an evil shitty person, whose interests sometimes aligned with helping the general public.
It sure is easier to sit on the sidelines than it is to actually lead. He absolutely wasn't perfect, but I absolutely believe he tried to represent the American people to the best of his ability.
Also he literally stepped down and let someone else try based on feedback.
He was willing enough to listen to other people despite his doubts.
And now he's calling backsies on that.
Exactly. He made a choice and should stand by it.
He's whining about what 'could' have been instead of looking at what should have been (had he chosen to back out earlier or, even better, allowed someone else to run in the first fucking place).
I promise you that you don't have shortfalls like he does in magnitude. And at least you own up to them.
shoulda never ran
Ever. For any position.
You can go back and look at Pew polling or Gallup polling. The top concern for people who voted Trump was the economy. Within that, the aspect that they were most concerned about was prices. That is, people were very unhappy about inflation. There was a lot of inflation relative to normal US levels under Biden.
The Trump administration also adopted inflationary policy. And doing so was generally considered desirable by economists; having inflation is preferable to recession in terms of the impact on a country, and COVID-19 was going to produce some level of economic disruption. But that doesn't change the fact that the public doesn't view inflation in that way; it's very unpopular with the public, and past polling has shown that the public, in the US and elsewhere, is more upset about having inflation than a recession.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c8881/c8881.pdf
In general, the American public also attributes short-term aspects of the economy directly to the President.
The Trump campaign also worked to drive those concerns and associate them with the Biden administration.
Benefitting from mis-attribution of economic behavior and policy is not unique to the Republicans. Clinton benefited from it; the "it's the economy, stupid" slogan played off public concern about economic policy where there probably wasn't much to blame Bush for, but the public was still upset about it. To some extent, it winds up being luck of the draw; if the economy is growing when you're President, people tend to credit you for it, whether you really deserve credit or not, and if it's contracting, people tend to blame you for it, again whether you really deserve blame or not. They don't go digging through data or reading much about where policy originated.
That's been a property of American elections for some time.
If you want to change that, you have a hard communications problem.
My guess is that neither Biden nor Harris was going to solve that communication problem, fundamentally change that aspect of electoral politics, and I think that unless they managed to pull some very large rabbit out of the hat, that was going to dominate the election.
To me, there are a couple problems of perception that gave Biden/Harris a huge uphill battle in the election that they didn't need to have.
Biden actually did a ton to address problems of inequality and income in America. He worked harder on it than any president since Johnson at least, and scored some huge successes driving up low-income wages and strengthening unions. But, he didn't do it in ways that were visible to the average American, I think because he's so far removed from the present-day average American that he genuinely didn't realize how invisible a lot of his reforms would turn out to be.
His two huge mistakes were:
And then, also, letting Merrick Garland twiddle his thumbs for four years like the cowardly lump that he is. I think history will look back on this past few years of slow-walking the Trump prosecutions as a massive error that led to untold misery and bloodshed. Honestly, even if he fucked up everything else and lost the 2024 election, if he had simply taken the fire on the roof as an urgent problem that needs all hands on deck, instead of one more renovation project that needs to wait its turn until it comes up in the agenda, it would have been better.
Garland is easily this day and age's Chamberlain. Except Chamberlain sacrificed the Sudetenland to buy time for rearmament, what's Garland's excuse?
Yeah. Chamberlain came in with effectively no military at all, saw that a war with Germany would be like a child trying to fight an adult, oversaw a lot of rearmament, and then declared war on Germany when the situation became more clear, at a point when they still barely had a functional military. He gets a lot of heat for appeasement but the situation he came into was totally hopeless, and he was taking concrete steps to get things moved in the right direction.
Biden and Garland did fuck-all for 4 years, and then when the situation started showing signs of genuine threat, started talking about pardons for them and their friends as the solution.
Do people not in the W-2 economy turn out to vote? (Undocumented people clearly don't.) This isn't a rhetorical question.
Edit: a quick search found this from 2016, but it would need to adjusted by the number of people in each segment. (And "W-2 economy" isn't synonymous with income, but they are correlated.)
Now how do those income blocks compare as proportions of the total voting-eligible population?
If people not in the W-2 economy had gotten jobs working in the modern-day WPA, paying $75k a year, they sure as fuck would have started turning out to vote. Probably forever, as long as it kept going. There's a reason FDR won 4 terms.
No Democrat will in our lifetime. It's to late for that. The wealthy own all major social media outlets, all major traditional media outlets, and are turning them to disinformation and AI slop. Even as they spin up thousands of AI slop and misinformation farms masquerading as small independent outlets to keep the fools that stray corralled.
Liberal or economic liberal politics will never solve it either. As this is a feature of them. It's working as intended, in the interests of the worst possible people.
Technically, Inflation peaked in Biden's first year. That means it rose under Trump and declined under Biden. I'm sure people really did think what you said, but I think it needs to be clarified that the economy actually did improve, from how it was in the Covid 2020 Era, after Biden took office.
Might've, might not've. It's irrelevant now, of course.
What Biden and Harris will be remembered most for, is their peaceful transition of power to a mentally unbalanced fascist tyrant, knowingly, compliantly, without even any public statements of caution.
Biden and Harris are ready to quietly shake hands with Trump and Pence, hand them control of everything, after then retire to a quiet life of luxury and highly-paid speaking engagements, where they'll continue the Democratic Party's proud tradition of speaking without really saying anything.
And so the toilet flushes.
Just a small correction ... Trump's VP is JD Vance this time, not Pence.
Not like it really matters, Trump seems to be VP to Musk now.
I forgot ... the next step of late-stage capitalism is to have a billionaire act as proxy for the duly-elected POTUS.
:/
I'm old, sorry, but yeah — gotta remember, Pence wasn't crazy enough to make the cut this time.
They can either hand over control to someone who might destroy American democracy, or they can destroy American democracy themselves.
There’s nothing wrong with peacefully handing over power to a person that won both the electoral and popular votes this time around.
We get what we fuckin’ deserve.
Was this truly “the last chance to save democracy” or just another election?
The campaign certainly ran and fundraised off the former messaging, but behaved like the latter.
People (including campaigning politicians) can genuinely believe democracy is on the line but refuse to be the one that ends it by refusing to give up power themselves when they fairly lose to their opponent. There is absolutely nothing wrong or illogical about that. If Trump refuses to leave office in four years it will be him ending democracy in the U.S. even though he got there by democratic means. This is usually how dictators get into power; a dumb, frightened populace hands it to them.
The campaign is bigger than one person, as is the party structure though - Pelosi had to be the one to kick out the pillars beneath Biden in order for him to end his run. Nobody in the DNC or the Biden campaign took the keys away from Grandpa until then. Even as an DC outsider who just follows politics, let alone has daily access to Biden, it was apparent that he was mentally declining, and rapidly so in the last two years.
Even before then, it was business as usual. “It’s my turn” got us Trump in 2016 after Hillary stood aside for Obama. “It’s my turn, again” got us Trump in 2024 because Biden/the staff did not court a fresh crop of junior politicians, nor stand aside gracefully in the Primary, nor even permit Harris the conditions to win. She publicly was saddled with no-win scenarios like the border or Gaza, whilst being relied upon to pass legislation in the Senate, becoming the record holder in that role.
And that’s before we even get to how Trump’s court shenanigans were permitted to play out and run down the clock. Biden needs to save his whitewashing of history and self-exoneration for his Presidential Library, his record is clear. Had he actually been a one termed ‘elder statesman’ who passed the torch and prepared the next generation, we wouldn’t be looking at a Republican triple sweep of government.
Without even any public statements of caution.
They’d both been making public statements of caution for months prior to the election. People didn’t listen, so now we’re here. Biden and Harris are not responsible for this. We are.
He could have defeated medicare too.
Seems like this is his way of arrogantly throwing Harris under the bus for his own historically low ratings, starting back in 2022 after Roe was lost. Theres no way he could have done better than Harris. With him running it would have been an even bigger blowout. He seems to think he could run a genocide against his parties wishes and then go on to win an election. Its idiotic.
Jfc, these people.
Fuck's sake. As deluded as he was when he stayed in despite internal polling showing him losing in a landslide. Fuckwad very well may have handed American democracy over to its execution.
There was some discussion I saw that alleged those polls never reached him. Instead ended at the inner staffers.
Not excusing his current opinion.
I'm reading the WaPo article it's based on and guys this is some pure grade bullshit. They start with 5d Chess; then they say people were unable to hear about his victories because of the media, they were unable to appreciate the best Covid recovery in the world; and yes, he claims he could have beaten Trump.
It's an incredibly flattering article for a man who was so far out of touch he called outrage over inflation the best recovery in the world. Yeah they managed a soft landing, but that shit didn't trickle down. We're on our second year of record breaking increases in homeless people. We don't give a goddamn shit about the stock market when we're shopping for used Recreational Vehicles to use as our primary housing. If families are choosing between utilities, rent, and food, then your Bidenomics message is going to do worse than fall flat, it's going to blow up in your face.
And the whole style over substance thing. Just holy shit batman, he broke the strike of workers who were (and are still) massively abused. He did that on prime time television. And then he negotiated for the office worker parts of the unions to get improvements and it's a complete submarine. Not only did he do the bad, he did no PR damage control, not even to show what little he gave the workers after he shut down their strike. At one point in the WaPo article someone mentions that Biden tried to run the country like it was 1972, and I agree with that statement.
Which brings us to the crux of his sins as a leader. He was unwilling to listen to the people he was supposed to be leading. At every turn he decided that he and his high paid advisors from the corporate world knew better then the people actually struggling. He might have thought he was playing 5d chess but he was losing at checkers... badly.
It is very appropriate if they're framing COVID as a purely economic issue.
On the top line numbers but it's increasingly clear that it's a split recovery.
on no fucking planet is this the case. Also, him hanging on as long as he did, didn't help things. It's not like the Harris campaign did themselves any favors, but was clear not one person the the management caste of the DNC really gave a fuck about winning.
They don't care about winning, because it changes nothing for them. If they win, they keep taking kickbacks and bribes. If they lose, they keep taking kickbacks and bribes.
If they win, they wring their hands about how they can't do what they want, so it's not even worth trying. If they lose, they wring their hands about things they can't stop, so it's not even worth trying.
It's win-win for them. It's lose-lose for us.
Money in politics is always the case, and being in the opposition where you can make deals and promises for when you are back in power is big money.
It's like how the hour of Roe v. Wade being overturned, people got texts wanting money to put it back into place with the next president.
The president can't just declare abortion legal or illegal, my $5 isn't going to help a candidate get elected when millions are spent on a press tour in one day. There's a clear reason why they do it.
Oh, they wanted to win but only on their terms.
They seem to fundamentally believe the electorate are all dumb as fuck and everything would be so much better if they just did as they were told.
They certainly seem to believe that the electorate love voting for the second stinkiest turd.
That’s okay Joe, there is a lot of regret about your entire administration, and career, on all sides.
Not even American and I know that's BS lol
Man this dude is off his rocker.
Sour grapes. There are no guarantees he would have won, and the propaganda machine would have played almost exactly the same tune it did for Harris. Eggs, israel, gas prices, too old…
People stayed home. That’s why we got trump.
Not sour grapes.
Pure fucking delusion and narcissism.
We all watched the debate. There was no coming back from that.
For an ancient venal egotist like Joe, the fact that Kamala lost is close to a best case scenario. He would've gotten completely waxed if he had stayed in... but now he gets to say he was forced aside by the party leaders (Pelosi, the Obamas etc.) and that is completely verifiably true, but he also gets to claim he totally would've won, which is very likely not true, but now we will never know.
A fool to the end. A Zionist, genociding, hubristic fool until the end.
then he's still dreaming but sadly would have been the better alternative to what's coming
A jab in the eye with a sharp stick, daily, for the next four years, is a better alternative to what's in the pipe.
I just hope they don't think Harris lost because she didn't have enough time and then run her again in 2028, either without a primary or with a heavily one-sided primary like in 2016.
You know they will. They don't care what people want.
Nah, they'll pivot back to a white guy.
They're going to give the nomination to Mitt Romney.
I'm not sure ol' Mitt is corporate enough for the current democratic party
Ok, they have a backup plan. Their other pick will be someone even more well suited to appeal to Republicans. In fact, they have experience in politics and were even a minor Democratic Primary nomination contender several years back. They have appeal in the South, and they should have a solid lock on Georgia, and maybe even be able to finally turn Texas blue! And he'll appeal well to the younger generations, as he has even run a Republican and third party presidential candidate in the past. Younger voters will love a candidate with such multi-partisan cred.
Let me introduce you to 2028 Democratic Presidential nominee David Duke!
That sounds like that may be current dem plan for future elections. Good summary
It'll be Blinken or Shapiro.
Anyone who figured out messaging beyond "Look how bad Trump is, even Bush republicans won't vote for him" probably wins that election. No one had a broad vision to latch for sale, and no one did anything inspiring.
Hey as long as we are talking about regrets Joe, how about regretting going for a second term when you said you wouldn’t?
This feckless fuck over here, I am starting to think Ol'Corn Pop beat the dog shit out of him back in the day.
End Citizens United, force retirement at 65, and term limits for all governmental appointments and elected officials.
As my old granddad used to say "If one stinks of shit you best believe they all stink of shit."
no. any idiots that did not vote for kamala to avoid a second trump term would likely not have voted for him. win for gaza or something.
Well, Trump will make sure we don’t have to worry about Palestine anymore-as it will just be more Israel.
That was already the game under Biden. There was zero attempts to actually prevent annexation of Gaza. Just a lot of finger waving while they sent more shit and even US troops.
I'd like to hear from one of those ass-hats that were protesting about Palestine outside Harris rallies.
How dare they be against centrism's defining policy?
I've taken a few weeks away from Lemmy since the election and now apparently the dems are centrist?
You have a 2 party system. Of which one is the most conservative and one is the most progressive. The more often you elect the more progressive party the more progressive both parties will become.
To suggest that both parties are too conservative is patently absurd and speaks of a complete lack of understanding of your political system.
Now? They spent the past year supporting genocide. That is not and will never be a progressive policy. Don't lie about progressives to make genocide supporters look good.
You simply don't have much of a grasp on American politics if characterizing the Democrats as centrist seems inappropriate. Republicans haven't been on some long term winning streak to push them right. Power's been flipping back and forth in roughly equal proportion. Their base has just radicalized and their politicians move with them. The same people who were anti-Trump in 2016 are now MAGA cheerleaders. The party of "compassionate conservatism" (not really compassionate, but wanting to be seen as such) has turned hard right and embraces antagonistic and crude politics.
Only one party has tried to capture the center in the last decade, and they've lost 2/3 elections.
You're not in a position to talk down to anyone, are you. Centrists just lost every single lever of government and their reputation has never been worse. They've turned the democratic party into a big joke on their watch.
Every time you guys talk things just get worse. Maybe its time to sit down and take a look at where you're at instead of talking. At the very least, your talking wont help anything, now will it.
Oh please. There's some real pot kettle black in this comment.
Besides which, I'm not from the US, and I think the entire developed world is in a position to talk down to anyone from the US, in particular those who acted against their own interests by protesting against their best candidate, and assisting to install a dictator.
Honestly, one of us really does need to engage in some self reflection.
Oh right youre australian. I see that Australia has a center left and a center right party. Nothing but centrists huh, neat.
And you say:
Well that desire to "talk down to" and the fact that both parties in Australia are centrist certainly explains the tone of your comments. I've often decried to my friends, "But who will speak for the political tourists who want to do drive-by pearls-of-knowledge droppings???" Its a big concern thats seldom addressed. Its right up there wih, "But what do the fascists all think? How can we be truly centrist and bipartisan if we dont understand what they want?? who speaks for them? can we get them a seat next to Harris maybe? Maybe they can campaign together even!" I'm super concerned to know the details of the fascist plans so I can set my own agenda to be just to the left of theirs, as is proper. If the fascist dont tell me how to think, then I lack any guideposts at all, right. Centrism aint easy. So much strategery involved.
So you're just here to (in your words) "talk down to" people in a system you're not a member of at all, and you bring with you a profoundly inbred sense of centrism. So glad you're here to school us americans with your keen insights on american culture. Read some blogs about America, did you? cool. So let me guess what your advice would be here, 'we need a stronger sense of centrism in the US and everything will be OK', am I right?
Sorry if I stole your thunder, mate.
This obsession with "centrism" is so tiresome.
Left, right, and centre is subjective. Any country with a two party system is going to have a centre left and centre right.
If you're a major party in a two party system the only way possible way to attract enough votes to form government is to have policies as close as possible to your opponent whilst simultaneously differentiating yourself so as to be identified as "the best option" to any voters on your side of the political spectrum. This dynamic of political science is well established, and patently obvious to everyone but a handful of 16 year old idiots who think they're the first generation in the history of the world to want things to be better than they are.
Your big "I see that Australia has... " reveal sadly says more about your very limited understanding of politics in your own country than it does about my perspective.
This is absolutely hilarious stuff, thank you.
Ah yes, hilarity. The classic resort of a child when confronted with a concept beyond their comprehension.
It's very much not a basic tenet of politics, simply the philosophy that centrists continually push because it's the philosophy that promotes centrists. This election was the perfect test case. Harris couldn't be more centrist, even putting a lot of effort into courting actual Republican voters, while Trump leaned into the far right. Your naive political philosophy was soundly disproven.
Elections aren't a static population of voters on a line, they have diverse opinions and different priorities, and elections are often won or loss on turnout from voters in the party base. Trumps turned his out, Harris didn't. It had nothing to do with who was best able to represent the center.
Hell, he might be right (I doubt it but you never know). BUT better than either of those options would have been if he'd announced by 2023 that he would not be running for reelection (like he campaigned on!) so the Dems could have had a full field and competitive primaries. That would have given them the best chance to win (but would they have? kinda doubt that too).
I DO agree with his understatement that his Garland decision was a mistake. Not just a mistake, a disaster!
He could have stepped down in 2022, given Kamala his last two years, and she would still be eligible for two more terms after that. She would have had incumbency, experience, and a younger face than the oldest guy who ever ran for president.
Biden: "I'm a one term president, stability in crisis."
Biden: "I don't care, fuck it, you only live once, I'm running again!"
People: "You said you were a one term canidate, you're old, you didn't do COVID well, you broke up strikes, you aren't protecting women's rights, trans people are under attack, Mexicans are still in cages at the border, Ukraine could use more help, you're doing a bad job at stopping weapons to Israel, rent is gone up, inflation is stopped bu not down, groceries are still expensive..."
Biden: "Shut up Jack, check this out!"
["Primaries" give him the win, flops at debate, hands things to Harris]
Biden: "Well I did what I could do. ...I would have won anyways, why be consistant with what I say and do? Now lemme pardon my son after I said I wouldn't."
Of all things the pardon of his son is reasonable that guy had a whole culture of assholes trying to find anything to get him in jail just to hurt Biden.
Then we find out the basis of the entire hunter controversy was a lie and the guy admitted it was a lie after the election.
So they ended up getting for like tax evasion I would be willing to bet 90% of congress would be guilty of similar things if brought under the same scrutiny.
Copium: The Final Frontier
Fucking wanker. Let him eat megashitdicks.
I just don't understand why Biden's family and those closest to him wouldn't have taken the time to be like "Joe, just shut your mouth. Cement your legacy as one of the best Presidents the USA has ever had, make some shit for Donald harder on the way out, and enjoy retirement."
Instead he's showing his whole ass. And for what? Once real history gets memory-holed by the fascists none of his whining matters anyway. He could have done a lot of good on his way out.
Yeah, why try too hard when everybody is gonna remember sloppy Joe anyways.
I like genocide joe better.
Spineless Joe, anyone?
He likely would not have won. It surprises me how discrepancies in this election haven't been questioned, but at this point it may not matter. As for his choice of Merrick Garland. Yeah, that and not really doing much about unseating DeJoy was a mistake.
The statistics and composite polls predicted the Trump victory, and they predicted it even before Biden dropped out by a larger margin, so he is incorrect.
But, given how people chose Trump over Kamala, I can't blame him for thinking that way. Clearly the USA does have reservations about electing a women and a minority.
Oh no he doesn't get to say anything about it. He shit the bed, and his team shit the bed. Then when they were staring at polls showing Trump would take 400 electoral college votes they doubled down. They didn't start a hand off in the background like everyone assumed. No they wasted nearly a month and then called up Kamala Harris one day and told her she was the candidate now, with no warning.
If anyone is responsible for Trump winning it is Biden and his team. They hid how bad Biden was aging instead of getting a ton of grown-up points by having him retire or get removed by the 25th amendment. That would have given Kamala Harris a year or two of time in office to get the incumbent advantage and set up a real campaign. No they played this like little boys who don't want to come home because then the party ends.
It's weird to say, but Harris was like the third most responsible person for her loss. She still is responsible, but Biden and Garland set her up for failure.
Who cares at this point.
Citizen United says President Biden would not have won.
That dementia would probably won over him.
I guess when you're president t of the US you get access to the really cood crack
How do you call something a "mistake" when you allowed it to continue for four fucking years?
Every time he remembered it was a mistake he'd forget it before he could do anything about it.
just like he beat Medicare?
On the bright side, centrists are getting split between Biden and Kamala.
Let them bicker amongst themselves for once. The rest of us can unite for once.
I almost believe it, not because he would have done any better but because America is too dumb racist and sexist
Why is he saying this now?
Because he regrets the choice he made.
So, I get that. But the thing is he should be man enough to accept he made a choice and now accept the consequences.
Smart people count the cost of a decision before making it. That way they can hold their head high on one thing at least. As it stands Biden can't even do that.
He’s a stubborn idiot. He genuinely thought he’d be able to pull off a miracle and dig himself out of the hole he was in with the underwater electoral polls and falling favorability rating. When his internal polls said he was losing to Trump with a possible 400-138 split, he ignored it and said he would be able to comeback like he always does. Pelosi tried to force him to see reality and he went along with her plan angrily, and now he’s angry he didn’t ignore her and fight her on it.
Yeah except he disappeared ages ago.
I know grandpa I know. Now come drink your date juice
He probably had a better chance than Harris. Might not have won either way, but sadly I suspect the odds were better with him.
Not after that debate performance.
Yeah there was a huge stink on him. It wasn't just the debate. His every appearance and utterance just made him look geriatric. The debate just made it so obvious he was indefensible.
He also wasnt campaigning very much at all. It was all naptimes, no speeches after 6pm, and using surrogates.
It's possible. I thought hardcore misogyny was on a downward trend but fuck was I wrong
I honestly don’t think people care that much about a woman running. Because at that level, their gender is not ‘man’ or ‘woman’ but ‘politician’.
People didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she was quite unlikeable and the campaign centred around it being ‘her turn’. People didn’t vote for Harris because she was generally invisible and had to run a very truncated campaign. The fact that both were women was the least of their worries.
Other countries have elected women leaders with no issues. Heck, you see women presidents all the time in movies and TV shows. Nobody bats an eye.
I guess. Except America hasn't had a woman president.
You’ll get there eventually; we can’t all be as progressive :D
Anything to avoid admitting that Harris lost because the only way she differentiated herself from Biden was moving to his right.