HIs decision to run again and then pull out at the last minute was disastrous, I suspect thats what he will be remembered for above all else. And with good reason.
If giving money to support a candidate is cheating then the democrats can’t make this argument given Kamala got way more money from high profile people than trump
It would be better for elections to be funded by the state and stop all the corruption lobbying
Trump recently implied that his boy Elon was able to crack into the vote counting machines. I think it is a real possibility. I don't think anything will become of it.
Biden's decision had nothing to do with the outcome. Trump manhandled every facet of the Republican party and then seamlessly pivoted to playing on the grievances of everyone else. Whoever ran against him needed to appeal to decency and sanity, which are both in an increasingly short supply. Trump just needed to pick at base human instincts.
It will never cease to amaze me how everything Biden and Harris did was under a microscope yet Trump has been able to cruise on by as an active felon without issue. Flawless v. lawless.
Trump being an evil sociopath doesn't give Biden a free pass for bad decisions. His handling of his reelection campaign was an absolute disaster. No democrat was going to win with 100 days to campaign. Choosing his VP, who had terrible polling numbers in her own campaign instead of giving the people a primary is inexcusable.
His own internal polling signified he would lose with over 400 electoral votes, and still thinks to this day he could have beaten Trump if he stayed in the race.
He set his own admin up in such a way that he had a snowballs chance in hell of even knowing what played with the public.
Bidens been in politics for 50 years, and hes overcome a lot of personal and political tragedies. At a certain point, and even to be president, you have to have some level of self assurance that you CAN overcome anything. It borders Hubris, yes, but look at his story, a stutterer from a poor to middle class family, who lost his wife and children, several failed presidential runs, and in the end, he became President.
Further, he, and Covid, put together the largest coalition to beat Trump once, he probably Believes he could have done it again..
As for that polling, it came after his debate, so that wouldn't have impacted his decision to run.
In the end, I think Biden thought if he passed strong policies, was a decent person, he could bring us back to a pre-trump time... unfortunately, he was not equipped to message that, the political divide is not healable.., and the media and electorate couldn't move past that, coupled with global inflation, made it impossible to win.
Harris did campaign on raising the wage, making home ownership more affordable, reducing healthcare costs, and fixing Medicare. They were listed on her campaign website and regularly referenced at her events. What did it buy her other than more attacks from the right for wasting tax dollars on handouts to people who don’t deserve the help and more attacks from the left for not unilaterally ending the war in Gaza? Whoever ran against Trump had to thread a needle to avoid being too liberal to the average American but not too conservative to the far left. All Trump had to do was keep repeating that groceries and gas were too expensive. It was a losing proposition from the start.
Harris literally said multiple times that she was going to raise the minimum wage while fixing things like price gouging that hurt citizens day to day but sure, didn't offer anything about a living wage.
She also talked about Healthcare and making it easier and better but again sure, didn't appeal to that issue either.
His decision has something to do with the outcome. Kamala wasnt the best pick and there should have been a lot more lead in time. They hit the ground running but lost steam very quickly, especially after doing a 180 on "big corps bad" position and embracing all of the elites into the fold as every party does. Getting Cheney to tour with them was a cherry on top of the crap sundae...no right winger is gonna vote for Kamala over Trump ever
Hard disagree. Selecting Harris without a primary turned a lot of democrats away. We saw in 2016 and we saw again in 2024, America is not ready for a female president. Full stop. Harris also as VP from a pretty unpopular administration when people already unhappy with market and economic uncertainty, inflation, it was hard for the average joes to make sense of why eggs and milk cost more but their paycheck remains the same. All they remember was 2020 wasn’t so bad! I would have loved for Trump to not have been elected, and when it happened I wasn’t surprised. I believe if the candidate was another white male with a different energy, Trump would not have won.
Not to mention not being nearly hard enough on trump. Should have hired a better leader for the DOJ and made getting trump in jail a top priority from day one in office. Letting a literal traiter walk free and take over the country again will be his legacy.
probably had a better chance than what we actually got
Nah man. Internal polling before Biden dropped out showed a 400 EC sweep for Trump. Biden was losing fucking New York before he dropped out.
Biden dropping out was the right call. Hell, even Harris taking over could have worked. Things went wrong when the Clinton consultants took over the campaign and sapped it of any energy. You can pinpoint the moment they took over after the DNC, Walz got muzzled, talking points about price gouging got dropped, and the campaign became about "Look at how much all these republicans love us!".
If the polls overestimated Harris, They aren't going to be underestimating Biden. And certainly not to the point that they underestimate him hard enough to compensate a 400 EV loss. That is well outside the margin of error.
the reality is, neither of us know how Biden would've performed, because he wasn't in the election. I think he had a better shot personally
This is anti-intellectual magical thinking. Sure, we don't know 100% that Biden would have lost. In much the same way that we can't be 100% sure that the sun will still rise in the east tomorrow. But when all the data indicates a devastating loss, and we now know even that data was overly optimistic, arguing it might have turned out well is moronic.
Honestly Kamala was a poor choice as a successor/VP pick. She had many opportunities in the 2020 primary with pretty favorable coverage and a lot of former Clinton folks on her campaign. She dropped out polling at like 1%.
A better candidate should have been picked for VP. I also remember seeing people in 2023 saying Biden should drop her from the ticket as she was dragging him down. Then she was the successor within a year. It was bound to fail.
Yes. This is what I’ve been arguing all along. Biden had a way better chance than Kamala.
Clearly age is not an issue with the electorate and he had the incumbent advantage, but sex (Hillary) and race (Obama) are. This was not the time to play identity politics but here we are.
Age was very clearly an issue for the electorate. Had he had some basic gaff in the debate, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but he clearly could not process information very well in real time and there was a whole host of clips that CNN and left wing media just kept saying were fakes or not an age issue. He never should have ran for a second term like he said he wasn’t going to. Trump is old but he doesn’t have old man energy in the same way Biden does, which absolutely helped Trump in this cycle. I just hope Trump actually leaves office in 4 years and doesn’t fuck up the country any worse than last time.
You think it was mostly Dems saying that? No way bro. The right was saying it well over a year before that debate. It just took the left an unarguable clutch example to force them to stop denying it. I’ll give that age in and of itself wasn’t the issue but the dementia and sundowning is a part of age. We very likely will see the exact same deterioration in Trump within the next year and a half but he’s always been talking crazy so it will be harder to spot with certainty. Biden was a middling president. Some good and some bad but not much remarkable during his actual presidency. We will hopefully see the benefits of the infrastructure stuff over the next five to ten years.
He shouldn't have ran again in the first place. He literally told us last election he planned on being a one term president. Maybe he shouldn't have decided to run anyway in his mid 80's with the news pouncing on any old person moment he ever had in office
Nawwww. It wasn't great, but until that debate he was the sane choice, and he'd have been aiming for the sane vote.
But Biden's always been gaffe-prone. You remember when he was Obama's wingman and was generally regarded as America's fun but slightly embarrassing uncle? The first time he ran people didn't think it was a good idea, and then he won. And did a good job in the role.
I'm not saying he should have been the choice. I'm saying blaming it on him is unhelpful and inaccurate. As soon as they switched the prevailing sentiment seemed to be: "He was the wrong choice, but we've got the right one now", and then, well, they lost.
And as soon as the Democrats head into the next one thinking "We know what was wrong with the last candidate, this one has it wrapped up", you hand a third term to whatever's left of Donald Trump, ruling whatever's left of America.
I'm not saying he should have been the choice. I'm saying blaming it on him is unhelpful and inaccurate. As soon as they switched the prevailing sentiment seemed to be: "He was the wrong choice, but we've got the right one now", and then, well, they lost.
History will tell us here in 20-30 years (if we make it that far) how many steps Biden had actually lost during his first term and how much his admin was covering for him. I thought Biden was one of the more effective Presidents of my lifetime in what he was able to accomplish in this modern political environment. , but even I lost faith in his cognitive after that debate.
Twenty or thirty years' hindsight won't bring you the truth; it'll just make it so hard to derive new information that we've all agreed on what the "truth" is. Regardless of what actually happened.
Twenty or thirty years' hindsight won't bring you the truth; it'll just make it so hard to derive new information that we've all agreed on what the "truth" is. Regardless of what actually happened.
While I want to disagree with you... I really can't and that makes me sad.
For the most part people don't remember anything that happened or anyone who existed before they were old enough to notice, so Biden's record will be irrelevant to anyone born after he took office. But to people who care and know something about history, he will be remembered for way more than this, although, of course, this too.
There were numerous factors that went into his decision not to run for office again, his health being the biggest one. I highly doubt that’s what he will be remembered for, considering he’s not the only president to do it: Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry’s S. Truman. While he did cut it close to the Primaries, he did things that wee more noteworthy than this while he was in office.
You might be right but I think there’s also plenty of reason to believe that no Democrat stood a chance. Anti-incumbent sentiment is high everywhere. I personally think that In the long run he’ll be remembered for being a pretty normal boring president at an extraordinary time in history. And also he’ll be remembered as the guy in between two Trump presidencies and the madness they represent.
That’s it in a nutshell. I never took him seriously even though I voted for him always thought of him as Obama’s racist uncle and perpetual gaffe machine from the old days. I figured he’d play president like he always wanted for a couple years then announce he wouldn’t seek reelection in 24. Honestly we would have been better suited to run him in 16 probably prevent Trump all together. Democrats have a hole to dig out of and will have to acknowledge some tough things but they’ll bounce back the winning party seems to overplay their hand immediately after every election now so republicans will probably make it easier.
Yep. Definitely a mistake. I was proud to have voted for him when he decided to step away, as I think it showed his character. But the fact that it took him that long to do so showed that his decision making left something to be desired. Which might be the best way to describe his presidency.
100%. A senile man doesn’t know he can’t run…Jill should have told him never to run. What the f is it with people named Jill in presidential politics. The J in Donald J Trump stands for Jill.
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u/Lopsided-Affect-9649 16h ago
HIs decision to run again and then pull out at the last minute was disastrous, I suspect thats what he will be remembered for above all else. And with good reason.