Alternative to what just happened the last 3.5 years.

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Don't know anything about Gallego, but given the leakage of Hispanics, he'd seem to be a solid choice. Harvard, actually fought in Iraq, looks pretty tough. Gotta wrap it up against Lake though. Pair him with Whitmer or Wes.
 
In retrospect, I wish Trump had beaten Biden. Get it over with...without the payback tour.
 
Scientific Mapp said:
Revisionist Biden plan:

1. Tell people to get out the house and go back to work in early 2021 as soon as vaccines were available; instead of printing a couple trillion more dollars.

2. Decide, early on, whether to go full bore on Trump with the criminal justice system or not. Either decision would have been fine. Delayed, slow, weak, half-measure criminal prosecutions were a huge gift to Trump and his election prospects.

3. Keep implicit promise to be a one term president and hand it off to a primary process waaay before summer '24.
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Tell people to go back to work in early 2021? To what jobs? Are you suggesting that jobs were just sitting there waiting to be filled by people who were instead staying home? The reason that the relief package was necessary was that the jobs weren't there. Businesses closed. Supply chains were broken. People actually didn't have a lot of spending money.

The pandemic massively reordered the economy and the idea that it could have been seamless if only Biden had told people to do something is risible.
 
aGDevil2k said:
In retrospect, I wish Trump had beaten Biden. Get it over with...without the payback tour.
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No - our country needed the Biden administration in the middle of the pandemic. We certainly needed it afterward. Also, Biden was able to replace one SCOTUS justice with someone younger, and that could make a difference at some point down the road.

Losing sucks, but what's most important is what gets done, and Biden got stuff done when our country badly needed it. He won't get the full credit for it from a majority of Americans, but it doesn't make it any less important.

Finally, we got to see how exactly how ugly Trump can be when he doesn't win. If, say, the pandemic had never happened and Trump had been re-elected coming off an economic high, the country would have never seen his full ugliness on display. We got plenty of it for sure during his 4 years, but how he's been since Election Day 4 years ago has revealed the true horror of who he is. Even if he has a successful next 4 years and beyond, there's nothing that can take that away.
 
This "Blame Biden" chorus does nothing to address the problem, and it's also mistaken. I have seen nothing to suggest that Biden was unable to be a candidate prior to October 2023. The Gaza war was what broke him. Sure, he was elderly and prone to breaking, but there was a reason why Dems were not pushing him to step aside. Not selfishness. It's the following:

incumbency is one of the single strongest advantages political candidates have in our system. If you don't believe me, go look at the Wisconsin election. Kamala couldn't win WI, but Tammy Baldwin -- the liberal lesbian who has been targeted by Pubs for a long time -- could. As could Ron Johnson, despite being rightfully loathed in Wisconsin.

We had this debate a long time ago, and nothing has changed. It still remains true that primaries of presidents always result in failure. We don't have a lot of data on presidents dropping out to avoid losing a primary, but it happened in 68 and guess how that went? In general, non-incumbents of the same party as the president do poorly. This is why politics bounces around so much. Gore, McCain, HRC, even as far back as Nixon in 60. It's structural. Note that in Europe, they don't have term limits for the prime minister. And that's why they can have more stable politics.

And I also don't understand the love affair with primaries. The Republicans ran a full primary in 1996 and ended up with Bob Dole. They ended up with John McCain in 08, and Mitt Romney in 12 (probably the Pub candidate least likely to win the critical rust belt states due to his personal history). On the Dem side, a primary process gave us Barack. It also gave us John Kerry. Michael Dukakis. Oh, and yes, Joe Biden.

Incumbent parties are especially poorly served by primaries. The opposition party primary is smooth: everyone stands up on stage, attacks the sitting president in a number of ways, and in that context makes a case to the electorate. But the incumbent party can't do that. Most of the voters in the incumbent primary like the policies of the previous administration (which, after all, is why the policies were enacted). But then they have to differentiate themselves. Usually they do this by running to the extreme, and then try to pivot later. That often does not work, and the extreme positions get held against the candidate.

And, of course, primaries in today's age are particularly destructive because a) they consume so many resources and b) because almost all of our politics is negative, the primary process damages the eventual candidate -- just as it did in 2016.
 
gregh1 said:
My first thoughts on Shapiro or Bashear went to the potential of losing the black vote, esp black women's vote. In Pennsylvania black women were 6% of all voters, black men were 3%. Among swing states (including Tx, Fl) it was 7% and 5% of all voters.

But on a national level Harris underperformed Biden among black women and black men ,the latter went much more red in contrast with 2020, 24% of them voted for Trump.

Given that she underperformed Biden I don't think her turnout of the Black vote was a strength to consider. Not her fault, but she and Hillary have ensured that 2028 will be a man, probably white.
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Correct. White, straight, male for sure in 2028, and for the foreseeable future. Dems have been burnt twice in 3 elections, losing to the worst megalomaniac on the planet in the process both times by running a female.
Not sure I follow about Beshear “losing” the black vote, potentially.
 
superrific said:
incumbency is one of the single strongest advantages political candidates have in our system.
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Post-Covid, I don't think this has been true. Incumbent parties have lost power throughout Europe and the United States due to high inflation. You want to be the out party during a high inflation period.

Baldwin was a lesbian when she got elected. So, it is not as though lesbianism is a political albatross in Wisconsin. Incumbency didn't help Tester or Brown (and it wouldn't have helped Manchin unless he switched to the magic R). Moreover, I think senate and especially House have a larger incumbency advantage than president.
 
superrific said:
This "Blame Biden" chorus does nothing to address the problem, and it's also mistaken. I have seen nothing to suggest that Biden was unable to be a candidate prior to October 2023. The Gaza war was what broke him. Sure, he was elderly and prone to breaking, but there was a reason why Dems were not pushing him to step aside. Not selfishness. It's the following:

incumbency is one of the single strongest advantages political candidates have in our system. If you don't believe me, go look at the Wisconsin election. Kamala couldn't win WI, but Tammy Baldwin -- the liberal lesbian who has been targeted by Pubs for a long time -- could. As could Ron Johnson, despite being rightfully loathed in Wisconsin.

We had this debate a long time ago, and nothing has changed. It still remains true that primaries of presidents always result in failure. We don't have a lot of data on presidents dropping out to avoid losing a primary, but it happened in 68 and guess how that went? In general, non-incumbents of the same party as the president do poorly. This is why politics bounces around so much. Gore, McCain, HRC, even as far back as Nixon in 60. It's structural. Note that in Europe, they don't have term limits for the prime minister. And that's why they can have more stable politics.

And I also don't understand the love affair with primaries. The Republicans ran a full primary in 1996 and ended up with Bob Dole. They ended up with John McCain in 08, and Mitt Romney in 12 (probably the Pub candidate least likely to win the critical rust belt states due to his personal history). On the Dem side, a primary process gave us Barack. It also gave us John Kerry. Michael Dukakis. Oh, and yes, Joe Biden.

Incumbent parties are especially poorly served by primaries. The opposition party primary is smooth: everyone stands up on stage, attacks the sitting president in a number of ways, and in that context makes a case to the electorate. But the incumbent party can't do that. Most of the voters in the incumbent primary like the policies of the previous administration (which, after all, is why the policies were enacted). But then they have to differentiate themselves. Usually they do this by running to the extreme, and then try to pivot later. That often does not work, and the extreme positions get held against the candidate.

And, of course, primaries in today's age are particularly destructive because a) they consume so many resources and b) because almost all of our politics is negative, the primary process damages the eventual candidate -- just as it did in 2016.
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1980 is another example of an incumbent primary gone wrong.
 
Calheel said:
Post-Covid, I don't think this has been true. Incumbent parties have lost power throughout Europe and the United States due to high inflation. You want to be the out party during a high inflation period.

Baldwin was a lesbian when she got elected. So, it is not as though lesbianism is a political albatross in Wisconsin. Incumbency didn't help Tester or Brown (and it wouldn't have helped Manchin unless he switched to the magic R). Moreover, I think senate and especially House have a larger incumbency advantage than president.
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Your first paragraph seems to be true, but when did we know this? People are saying that Biden should have announced he wouldn't run for re-election in 2022. That's when he would have needed to do it for the primary process to be "ordinary" per our contemporary standards.

There was no upside to him standing down in late 2023. The primary would have been mostly name recognition, not unlike when Arnold was elected governor after Gray Davis was recalled.

There is no way that lesbianism isn't a political albatross in Wisconsin. Obviously not an insuperable one, but also she got her start in politics when Wisconsin was considerably more progressive than it is now.

I have no idea how to compare Senate and President incumbency. House usually has a strong incumbency advantage, but that is weakening.
 
Weird that all these sexist, homophobic voters in the Wisconsin sent Baldwin back to Congress.
 
superrific said:
Your first paragraph seems to be true, but when did we know this? People are saying that Biden should have announced he wouldn't run for re-election in 2022. That's when he would have needed to do it for the primary process to be "ordinary" per our contemporary standards.

There was no upside to him standing down in late 2023. The primary would have been mostly name recognition, not unlike when Arnold was elected governor after Gray Davis was recalled.

There is no way that lesbianism isn't a political albatross in Wisconsin. Obviously not an insuperable one, but also she got her start in politics when Wisconsin was considerably more progressive than it is now.

I have no idea how to compare Senate and President incumbency. House usually has a strong incumbency advantage, but that is weakening.
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I think Biden should have stepped aside early 2024. That would have been plenty of time to have a real primary. He couldn't do it much earlier because it weakens his political power if he announces he is not running.

But even if he had stepped aside early, Kamala would have been a huge favorite to get the nod -- especially if Biden put his thumb on the scale like he did in July. I think an Andy Beshear type would have been a better candidate, but: (1) I don't know if he would have run, (2) don't know if he could have won the primary in any event, and (3) I am not sure anyone could have overcome the anti-incumbency stance by the working class latinos.
 
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