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So close to being joever
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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I don't think they can let him drop out now.
They're stuck with Biden now because it would empower the rank-and-file to replace him. If he drops out it'll prove that pressure from the voter base matters and that we can influence the Party. That's poison to Democrats, they can't have us questioning them!
That’s a good take. But donors are threatening to pull funding, which is also something the Democratic Party cannot abide.
But why? Donors don't care that he's old. What is motivating them to pull funding?
imo the donors are worried people won't vote for him. It's still the voters driving this.
literally because he had that optically bad "debate" where he couldn't even deliver the talking points to make donors happy
He's also historically, horrifically unpopular and anyone paying attention has seen he has essentially no chance to win since even before the genocide in Gaza began but especially since then his popularity has PLUMMETED mostly because he was isolated and pretending pro-Palestine protests were fringe and small and unpopular when they really weren't.
His own party was polling 80% that Israel had to be forced into a ceasefire- and nevertheless he persisted with mass murder.
A similar portion said they wanted to recognize a Palestinian state- again, nevertheless he persisted.
Month after month straight into hell went his approval.
He took a "close, but winnable" election and cranked it down down down to where it is now where like 8 different planets need to align for him to win. Something those paying attention have been saying since a least a year ago and more. Just took an amazing fuck up to embarrass and motivate the donors to gtfo.
Donors are happy as long as their agenda is advanced and Biden being unfit for office doesn't really effect that, what made donors unhappy is waking up to the reality that voters don't like Biden and he can't win. It's the backdrop of immense voter dissatisfaction and months of rank-and-file action against him that is causing donors to freak out, the debate was merely the straw that broke the camel's back.
Ding ding ding. I believe that’s a big possibility. It’s a very neoliberal way of thinking to listen to market forces (donors) over constituents. Because what are constituents really than just molecular portions of the market? Whatever the logos, I think it’s easier to imagine democrats replacing Biden because of funding concerns rather that the direct will of voters.
I think it creates the perception of the decision being made from the direct will of the voters, though, and that would be disastrous for the Party. If voters get it into their heads that they can influence the Party it will be hard to stuff that genie back in the bottle.
that's why Harris is so perfect for this, because nobody wants Harris
I hope I'm not lathing it, but if Joe drops out, they might replace him with Harris, then Trump absolutely dominates, possibly to the point of winning all 538 electors unanimously. Then Democrats will say "See? We shouldn't listen to the voters!"
"you leftists got what you wanted, and you still didnt vote!"
Vote with your wallet!!
I agree. I guess we’ll see how much obfuscation of the voters’ will the Democratic Party can tolerate. If history serves as a guide, they’ll eff it up and replace Biden. Hopefully people will realize the genie’s out of the bottle then.
I think it would be easy to contain any popular sentiment from the voters. They tend to be better disciplined than your average Republican primary voter. Plus, look how effortlessly they were able to stop Bernie when they put their mind to it. The donors are another story though.
The donors care that he wins. Its not that they they care about what voters want, just that they want a return on their money.
Because donors don't want to waste money ~~bribing~~ donating to someone who is guaranteed to lose
Local small-business-tyrant donors putting funds into some small-town mayoral race don't. But the wealthy donors involved in federal matters will donate to both, so that whoever ends up in office is beholden to them regardless of lawn sign colour. These legal bribes aren't gifts, they're investments.
If I told you that you'd make a guaranteed $1,000,000 back in a few years by making two $50,000 donations today, anyone with $100,000 lying around would take that deal in a heartbeat.
Embarrassment, at a certain point.
The richest people in the room aren't calculators, they're people, and I'm willing to bet that a certain chunk of them think their wealth is the direct result of their ability to gamble correctly. When they make a bad bet it hurts them in the feels.
idk the motivation, but they have pulled significant amount funding, that's an empirical fact. They could reverse that decision, of course, if he weathers the storm.
Indeed, they may or may not care ideologically about the issues or Biden’s age and performance, but more importantly you don’t bet on the horse whose owner abandoned it and won’t feed or train it. He can poll at 2% approval, but as long the voters are whipped into voting for him, they don’t care because they can advance their agenda with their guy.
I get what you're saying, but I will continue to hold that he's cooked.
Inshallah 🙏
It's all about the donors I think, all the initial articles wouldn't shut up about the donors
Yes, but why are the donors so concerned? imo it's because they see how voters are reacting and, in turn, reacting to them.
Donors don't care if Biden is old. They don't care if he dies after he's elected. They just care if he can win.
I don't think it's pressure from the voter base that's doing this. Every primary voter that thinks he's an old racist piece of shit thought that in 2020. There's no grassroots campaign from party voters to back a specific alternative primary candidate; Obama and the DNC successfully killed off any possibility of grassroots party activism for a generation. I think the recent media "discovery" of Biden's longstanding medical issues is being driven by US capital worrying that he looks publicly weak, and a publicly weak president is the one thing they can't have when the president's primary role is to distract the public from the reality of bourgeois rule.
"Publicly weak" to whom?
The voters.
Yes, it's being driven by the donors and media, but they are still responding to voters. It's unfortunately spontaneous and disorganized, which is why I think he's going to be the nominee, but I don't think you can deny the public matters in this.
What are "the voters" going to do about it? "Voters" don't determine the party nominee or the president. The US isn't a democracy. The party bosses committed to going down with the ship aren't doing that because they believe Biden stands a better chance of keeping the presidency; they've all publicly resigned themselves to a second Trump term. The opportunists speculated for replacement as the party nominee all know they stand an even worse chance than Biden at being selected for the presidency. The current internal conflict among the party elite is people who don't expect the party to hold power, and are fighting over what they think will best advance their personal careers by 2028 after Trump leaves office and Biden's dead (from old age, Mr. FBI).
The media and donors suddenly pushing for replacement aren't doing that because they're afraid Biden's public deterioration might make voters vote Trump into office. They'll continue to profit whichever of the two is in office. They're pushing for replacement because they rely on the mythology of the two-party system of liberal democracy in order to keep consumers consuming, investors investing, and voters voting. Most of the country doesn't like Trump, and Biden is doing a bad job of both pretending to represent a meaningful alternative to Trump and pretending to actually be making any of the decisions nominally coming out of the white house. If Democrat voters lose immersion in the fantasy that they have influence and representation in the American system of government, they might start to become more inclined toward political activity outside the acceptable boundaries of "vote, consume, invest". As we saw in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd (among others), once people start engaging in political activity that strays outside those boundaries, capital will feel vulnerable and react with violent police and military crackdowns to protect property.
Not vote for him. The donors seem to be awfully concerned about that, for the reasons you mentioned.
Note that I'm not saying this actually demonstrates that the voters have representation. We're just being placated. What I'm saying is it creates the perception of rank-and-file influence, and that would be disastrous for the Democrats because they can't have voters thinking they matter or getting any ideas. This extends the illusion of so-called democracy, so it's not revolutionary, but it's also a disaster for the Party itself because it also makes voters feel empowered to take further actions in the future.
If they remove Biden it lessens the contradictions in the short term, but in the long term it will only raise them when voters realize they don't control the donor class.
Nah, they push him out and get to handpick his successor /avoid a primary. It's elegant and it's joever.
I think the real reason he could stay in is that nobody wants to run against a guy who survived an assassination. Everybody believes it means he has to win for some reason
Its not like there's a downside to being a permanent minority party. Letting us unwashed masses think we've got a say in what the Democratic party does every now and then shouldn't be a problem.