787
Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden's reelection campaign, sending a strong signal of Democratic unity
(www.independent.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
787 points (95.1% liked)
politics
19118 readers
4525 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Pretty much the only negative for Biden is age, but that is a pretty big negative.
The campaign needs to see to make Kamala Harris digestible. More than with most campaigns, the way she is viewed is immensely important due to Biden seemingly able to keel over at any moment.
They could also replace her.
In fact there's a pretty good argument that they ought to pick their strongest 2028 candidate - which is almost certainly not Harris - and Biden should secretly promise that person that he'll resign after the midterms in order to get them to agree to join the ticket; the odds are pretty strong he doesn't make it through 4 years anyway, and this way there'd be a solid plan in place when he finally runs into whatever medical setback forces him out.
They'll avoid the problem in favor of short term benefit. Any belief I had that the Democratic insiders had a long-term masterplan went out the window with how little they've done to pump up Harris. I don't even want her to be an eventual nominee, but I thought they'd be purposefully building her as the trusted heir apparent. Instead they just dumped no-win issues on her while making her mostly invisible in the administration's wins.
That sounds like what happened to every vice president we've had in my lifetime. And that's close to 6 decades now.
Yeah, but there's a real difference when that VP is a Joe Biden or Dick Cheney who didn't really have an expectation to be the heir apparent, and when the president is old enough that not finishing a term is a real possibility. There's an uncomfortably high (though still low) chance Biden actually has to be replaced on the campaign trail, and while that's never a good thing, it's a lot worse when you've saddled your VP with tasks like solving immigration and getting voting rights passed when she never really had the power to do either of those things. "Eats shit on tough issues so the president doesn't have to" is a valuable service from a VP, but not if you want people to be ready to accept her at any moment as a drop in replacement.
So you're trying to talk about two different things and joining them together. On one hand being the heir apparent, and on the other having the president keel over.
Biden was absolutely the heir apparent. If his son hadn't died he would have ran, and our country may have been on a much different course than it's been for the past 6 years. For many of us, the idea of Cheney becoming president because of health reasons was pretty damn scary. For both bush terms!
Speaking of heir apparent, George Sr was definitely not considered qualified to follow in Reagan's footsteps. He actually called Reagan's policies voodoo economics.
In any case, if the president did have to step down hypothetically in 2 years, Kamala Harris is not going to appear any dumber than any of the other VP s we've had in my lifetime. She would be a placeholder until the next election, just like any of the others would have been.
They're intimately related because keeling over can happen in close proximity to an election. I never viewed Biden as heir apparent for Obama, maybe others did, but it didn't matter because there were plenty of other choices and he'd still have a full primary cycle to be tested and discarded if he ate too much shit to be elected. I'm not even sure he would have beaten Clinton if he ran.
If Biden keels over 1 year from now, we're in deep shit, and his chances of doing so are MUCH higher than other recent presidents. Pretending that Biden has the same negligible risk of leaving office early as any other president is the whole problem with their approach.
Kamala Harris has done exactly what a Vice President is supposed to do, but she isn't going to be President after Biden, at least not yet.
If that's the biggest negative, that's not so bad compared to all the other possibilities.
Not only is he old, but he's pretending that doesn't matter. I think that's pretty disingenuous.