President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Obama was a stellar campaigner, Hillary an indifferent one. But in 2008, that didn't matter. The headwinds against McCain were so great (world financial crisis hits down the stretch, Iraq War, two-term GOP incumbent who was both unpopular and totally checked out of his job) that either would have won the election. Candidates and campaigns make a difference, but not as much as political/economic circumstances do.

 

I know that McCain’s candidacy was crippled by the selection of Palin as his running mate — I’ve cited that as the reason I switched my vote to Obama, and I’ve read at least two others here who did the same, and we can’t be the only three people who did so. Looking back, I wonder if I would have switched my vote anyway after how clumsily he handled the advent of the 2008 financial crisis.

 

Choosing Palin was a big misplay by the GOP, thinking Hillary supporters would flock to her since they had the same gender. Had they fully vetted her, I think they make another pick for veep, but a lot of that is Monday morning quarterbacking here. Yet we still see that type of thinking among some in today's GOP, hoping women will go back to the Donna Reed/June Cleaver roles they played in the 50s and early 60s.

That said, the biggest reason I marked the square for Obama was that every time McCain talked, Karl Rove's lips moved. Obama's vision was that of an America moving forward, which was not the case with the Republicans, then or now. Still deeply respect McCain, but just couldn't give him my vote then.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/24/tucker-carlson-jan-6/

Scores of news organizations — including The Washington Post — on Friday demanded congressional leaders release a trove of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that the House speaker provided exclusively to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has downplayed the violence.

 

You can draw a direct line from Palin’s coarseness to the MTGs and Gosars of today.

 

Like every pol (and person for that matter), McCain had his strong points and his weak ones. Unfortunately for him, finance and economics in general were close to his weakest ones, and they became Issue Number One with less than two months to go in the campaign.

 

Nope. They'd never approve any nominee ever, because as long as the VP seat remained open, they'd be one bullet (or one dose of COVID, etc etc) away from the White House.

 

Campaigns don’t have to approve the other’s VP picks, so how or why would this be different?

 

That’s when I no longer could vote McCain. It took more convincing myself to actually vote for Obama, as in sitting at the table for 10 minutes with my ballot before I could mark it for him. That’s how deep the evangelical doubt within me ran.

 

From the AP:

U.S. first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet that President Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview on Friday that there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but figure out the time and place for the announcement.

 

And for that I’ll never forgive him, I don’t care how many years he did whatever. He held the door open for these screeching morons and they’ve multiplied like Gremlins.

 

Because the 25th Amendment specifically addresses vacancies in the vice presidency and it says you have to get a majority vote of both houses. While campaigns don't have to approve the other's VP picks, nobody actually becomes VP until they're elected.