President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Here's the thing. Kamala Harris had a terrible election. The Democrats, writ large, held their own. Every single incumbent Dem Senator, even the ones who lost, ran ahead of Harris, some well ahead (Tester was 15 points ahead). Control of the House has yet to be decided, but it looks as if neither side has gained or lost anything but a couple of seats. Every Democratic Governor was re-elected. This once again is evidence suggesting that voters were mad at Joe Biden and took it out on Harris, but weren't of a mind to similarly punish downballot Democrats.

 

There is an amazing song James McMurtry wrote 20 years ago putting the Bush administration and corporate America on blast. It and he are both liberal, but the end of the song has haunted me most of this year as I braced for impact.

 

That's correct, it's not. And I think it's a major problem.

Ezra Klein:

Opinion | Where Does This Leave Democrats?

But one thing Harris was not able to do — not in 2020, not in 2024 — was define what her campaign was about, aside from keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. She ultimately ran as the guardian of the institutions. A candidate with Liz Cheney on one side and Liz Warren on the other. But she took for granted the worth and health of those institutions. Was the endorsement of the Cheneys — and the enthusiasm with which it was embraced — a sign of the Democrats’ big tent or a sign of its internal confusion?

And Harris was burdened by all that had come before her. The Democratic Party had spent years kicking people out of its tent. I went and listened to the appearance Elon Musk made on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Monday. It was strikingly right wing and conspiratorial. It wasn’t that many years ago that Rogan had Bernie Sanders on for a friendly interview. And then Rogan kinda sorta endorsed him. Rather than celebrate, online liberals were furious at Sanders for going on “Rogan” in the first place. I was still on Twitter then, and I wrote about how of course Sanders was right to be there and this was one of the best arguments for Sanders’s campaign. If you wanted to beat Trump, you wanted to win over people like Rogan.

Liberals got so angry at me for that, I was briefly a trending topic. Rogan was a transphobe, an Islamophobe, a sexist, a racist, the kind of person you wanted to marginalize, not chat with. But if these last years have proved anything, it’s that liberals don’t get to choose who is marginalized. Democrats should have been going on “Rogan” regularly. They should have been prioritizing it — and other podcasts like it — this year.

More:

Emotionally, there are two ways Democrats can respond: contempt or curiosity. I’ve seen plenty of contempt already. If Americans are still willing to vote for Trump, given all he’s said and done, then there’s nothing Democrats or Harris could have done to dissuade them. There’ll be a desire to retreat, to hunker down, to draw the boundaries of who is decent and who is deplorable ever more clearly.

But Trump sharply improved his margin in New York City. These are voters angry about prices, about immigration, about a sense of disorder and failure. Trump seems to have made huge gains among voters making less than $50,000 a year. The Democratic Party is losing voters who lie at the core of its conception of itself.

 

And the media kept printing Trump’s denials without the context that he’s a lying convicted felon whose party literally believes in alternate facts.

 

Fascists are highly-organized, principled (often very wrongly) and objective to their value system. Trump is none of these.

 

You assume most of those who voted for Trump care if those workers are here legally or illegally. They don't. They don't want Latinos here period.

 

If I hear one more self-serving analysis of "Why Harris Lost" without citing and quoting actual voters who state that THAT was why the voted for Trump instead of Harris - I might scream. You don't think some voters would have deserted Harris if she threw Biden under the bus? "Ungrateful bitch" they would say. The Gaza stuff, you pick up one Arab for every Jewish voter you lose and vice versa if you go the other direction. The sad truth, it shouldn't have taken the debate to get Biden to drop out. Those around him were fine with him up to that point, but as soon as the public saw how Biden was - the jig was up, and down ballot candidates were worried their races would take a hit with him on the ballot.

 

MAGA is, though.

 

This is a point I hadn’t thought of. How much of her fighting the good fight kept other incumbents in office, even if she couldn’t make it over the mountain herself?

 

Selma Times-Journal real darn sorry they changed out the paper’s Facebook cover photo to a bale of cotton after Trump was declared the winner.

https://www.al.com/news/2024/11/ala...-of-bale-of-cotton-after-trumps-election.html

 

Her campaign doled out millions to Congressional candidates. I have no beef with Harris at all. She really was the "stepmomala" in all this, trying to make it work for everybody. And it irritates me that Biden people are still chirping about how they beat Trump.

Top Harris Campaign Official Nukes His X Account After Swiping at Biden

One other note - I do think the Dems overstate the importance of legacy media. They still value the MSM and consistently value their opinion, when it is clear that it really doesn't register as much as it used to. Joe Rogan is now the Walter Cronkite of this generation? We're doomed.

One other thing, How hilarious would it be if Biden does step down a couple of weeks before the inauguration, allowing Harris to become the first woman President and make all of Trump's "47" merchandise worthless?