President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

'92 was supposed to be Gary Hart. Seems a lot of times Dems pick candidates based on the Republican opponent. Kerry's war service was supposed to counteract W. Biden's reasonableness and presumed ability to beat Trump was his main selling point to James Clyburn, Biden certainly wasn't exciting early primary voters. Not many Dems wanted to run against Hillary in '16, so voters had few choices to get excited about.

 

Gary Hart was '88

 

Johnson, Humphrey, McGovern.

Carter's sort of the outlier.

 

Time for Pelican Brief 2.

 

Joe Biden defeated his opponents in the 2020 primaries quite handily. The contest was basically over after Super Tuesday. The voters wanted somebody they thought could beat Trump. In fact, Biden did just that, so backdating that voters' choice as a mistake is foolish.

 

Guys like Clyburn were scared shitless Bernie would get the nomination, so they all threw their lot in with Biden — and they got almost everyone to go along with it.

Still convinced Biden could've been nominated as VP in 2016 and not made one campaign stop, and Hillary would've won. He makes the difference in Pennsylvania and either Wisconsin or Michigan. Not saying he should've or would've. Whether that's right or wrong re: gender politics is a different issue.

 

In Hillary's two swings at President, voters have:

(1) Gravitated towards a hardly-known politician from Illinois whose name rhymed with "Osama" a mere seven years after 9-11.
(2) Barely elected the worst person on the planet eight years after that.

At this point, I think she's so unlikeable she could lose running unopposed. I don't care how good of a policy wonk you are, you have to be likeable and, for whatever reason, people don't like her.

 

Kerry's problem was he didn't fight back against the swiftboaters by simply holding a press conference and saying,

"In April of (whatever year it was) I was on a PT boat in South Vietnam getting my ass shot at by the Viet Cong. Where was George Bush? Drunk in Alabama while dodging the draft?"

Say it every damn day as long as those commercials kept running. End of swiftboating. But the Dems never play serious hardball.

 

Nixon -- now THERE was a likeable candidate!

 

As the sitting vice president of a popular president who balanced the budget, Gore really should not be on that list.

 

As the highest vote-getter of a stolen election, he shouldn’t be on the list.