Biden. Stay or go?

Sadly, latest poll shows she’ll lose to Trump by a smaller margin than Biden…so, much work to do, as positive as it is to see KH probably get the ticket. I have concerns that it might just be false hope on the Democrats side, and that creosote chimp is heading to victory regardless.

To my mind this is now a test of the character of the United States public. They have a credible alternative to Trump to vote for. There are no age issues like Biden. She does not have the baggage of Hilary Clinton and to be fair is a lot more likeable. In front of them they have Trump – a white (orange) old man of privilege; his ranting and nonsense words, his criminal record, his sexual assault record, his instigation of a riot. Or they have Harris , a black woman. If they collectively choose to vote in Trump now then a plague on their houses (or nuke from space – either is good). It is the civic duty of every sane thinking american to do all they can to get her elected, for no other reason than to have any personal credibility if they choose to travel beyond their borders for the foreseeable. The American public are literally on trial right now.

Sadly, latest poll shows she’ll lose to Trump by a smaller margin than Biden…so, much work to do, as positive as it is to see KH probably get the ticket.

I don’t think that she’s been properly included in polling until Joe Biden made his decision. I’d be interested to know how many Americans voters know a) anything about her and b) what she’s been allowed to do as VP before this

She needs more extensive public exposure and a chance to say what she’ll do now

The polling differences between trump and Harris are within the margin of error so I wouldn’t read anything into them.

Harris needs someone to play the role that “Scranton Joe” Biden played for Obama or Prescott played for Blair: while she’s being the dignified adult in the room, she needs a brawler who can punch back in what will be a dirty campaign. There is an appetite for that: look at Fetterman’s rise (even though he’s quirky on a good day). Democrats have been too hidebound and polite. In the politics of America as it is, Harris’s most “electable” sidekick would be a white or Hispanic guy from the Midwest, maybe from a working class or union background.

It is the civic duty of every sane thinking american to do all they can to get her elected, for no other reason than to have any personal credibility if they choose to travel beyond their borders for the foreseeable.

This is one of the least compelling arguments ever made to actual Americans. The US, Russia, Israel and Serbia all take a Millwall approach to how they’re perceived by newspaper-reading softies abroad.

Fetterman’s health problems are still not resolved and would be a consideration.

Andy Beshear, Kentucky governor, is tipped by many to be Harris’s VP pick and was interviewed on CNN last night. He pointed out JD Vance’s ‘evolving’ views about trump – a vocal critic previously, now a MAGA fanatic – and said ‘…Vance doesn’t have any convictions but his running mate has 34 of them’.

It’s clear that trump’s criminality is a drum which the Democrats will bang long and loud.

Not that they’re rattled about the age thing but Trump just described himself as a “fine and brilliant young man”.

Posted about it in the other thread but Vance was a hammer for a very specific nail, and now it’s gone away. He’s not really the right guy to put against any of the likely VP picks, but with some of them at least he looks different enough for that to work- like, he doesn’t have to directly counter Shapiro at his own game our vice versa. But if they go with Mark Kelly, he’s just completely cancelled out and eclipsed, in that situation all he can do is run around being pound shop trump and doing the same things but less so while getting bombarded with things he said 5 years ago.

faustus
Full Member

Sadly, latest poll shows she’ll lose to Trump by a smaller margin than Biden…

Which is another way of saying “the gap is narrowing”. TBF I’m a little surprised to see that at this point, I thought we’d be seeing Trump edge ahead post-convention while the democrats lack a confirmed candidate or VP, this is the point where Trump’s campaign ought to be pretty much peaking.

But, in the end any polls til that happens- and til it’s settled a little and people have seen and heard more from the new ticket- are going to be pretty low confidence.

Harris needs someone to play the role that “Scranton Joe” Biden played for Obama or Prescott played for Blair: while she’s being the dignified adult in the room, she needs a brawler who can punch back in what will be a dirty campaign.

My money is on Mark Kelly, Arizona senator – former NASA astronaut, combat veteran etc etc. Plus he is from one of the key swing states.

Apparently vetting has been sought by the Harris campaign for him and five others – Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. I would have thought it would be someone from a swing state, so that’s Shapiro (PA) , Whitmer or Kelly. Don’t think it will be a two-woman ticket.

So Shapiro or Kelly.

and to be fair is a lot more likeable

She needs more extensive public exposure and a chance to say what she’ll do now

Quoting my American friends “She was not well liked for her kind of out there ideas as AG and she has only a bit more charisma than Lizz [Truss]”

She’s not seen as a good option apart from being not Trump.

 The American public are literally on trial right now.

Literally? Really?

Schumer and Jeffries both just endorsed Harris, that’s another big step forward.

TBH all the VP candidates look reasonable to me but Whitmer, Cooper and Shapiro don’t seem to nail the “widening of appeal” part- it’s great to have the lawyer/DA/AG thing especially against Trump but you don’t really gain by doing it twice. Shapiro for sure helps with jewish voters. Tim Walz has the veteran card but as far as I’ve seen Walz and Whitmer are pretty adrift on polling. I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of him. Shapiro supporters seem to think his biggest asset is that he almost certainly brings PA with him, but I think all the candidates poll decently in the swing states and I think all the candidates likewise have their own support in a swing state?

Mark Kelly looks good in his own right but also, he’s very much not Kamala Harris, he creates a ton of difference and different appeal (some of that’s cynical, he is super white and super manly, but it’s also just a genuine positive difference). Holds a mirror up to Vance and just demolishes his “I am an ex marine” thing. OTOH he’s not a great speaker from what I’ve seen, and there’s not a huge amount of time to coach him, and his body language etc isn’t really great either (though, that’d be a bigger problem in a lawyerly bookish candidate).

#New @Reuters Poll

? Harris 44% (+2)
? Trump 42%

IPSOS – 1018 RV – 7/22

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) July 23, 2024

Also agree about Kelly

Not 100 years old bounce

.@Reuters National Poll:

?Harris 42% (+4)
?Trump 38%
?Kennedy 8%.@Ipsos, 1,018 RV, 7/22-23 https://t.co/qk43H0kS8Q

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) July 23, 2024

From what I gather, compared to Harris’ experience in government and as California’s AG, Vance is barely more than an intern.

Harris appears to be generating some serious early traction with donations and as shown above is also moving the polls.

interesting that Trump didn’t get a huge bump from the shooting, just shows that his base is very sticky (they would have to be by now!) but swing voters are easily… swung? Swayed?

anyway, I feel a bit more confident about November than I did before the weekend

CNN had this on the donors

1.1 million different donors — 62% of them first-time contributors — between Sunday and Monday

I think if you only look at UK news then you’ll be convinced that Trump is going to romp home. All the US stuff I look at had been suggesting that Biden was still in with a good chance of victory even just 48 hours before he withdrew from the race. I think Harris will win pretty convincingly in November.

“ I think Harris will win pretty convincingly in November.”

Which will be a good thing, the first woman President. Now, how to go about the UK Labour Party to get a woman Leader? It isnt going to happen for 10 years+. (they’ll be in power for at least two terms, and Keir wont step down unless something bad happens)

Can we move over to the US election thread?

It’s getting frustrating flicking between this and that one

kormoran
Free Member
Can we move over to the US election thread?

It’s getting frustrating flicking between this and that one

I agree, I can’t keep up with the fractured nature of the posting in different threads. My memory isn’t good enough!lol

From what I gather, compared to Harris’ experience in government and as California’s AG, Vance is barely more than an intern.

It doesn’t matter. The voters don’t care. Trump hadn’t even been a parish councillor before he ran for president. “I think we’ve had enough of experts” as Gove would say. Having no working record in politics seems to be more of an asset, electorally,  that having one.

Sadly, latest poll shows she’ll lose to Trump by a smaller margin than Biden

Well, thank **** for that. The polls show someone who has literally just started campaigning behind someone who has been campaigning for 2 years. Obviously, polls at this stage are perfectly accurate 3 months into the future. Infact we should just ditch the **** election and give Trump a crown and a nuclear football shaped like a Fleshlight. Jesus wept, she’s not even the official nominee yet.

Now that Biden has gone, maybe we should stop posting here and use only the “US Election thread” to discuss the US Election?

Just mentioning it for a friend.

How much is this week’s result down to Biden… both him hiding from the media pool for the last 18 months, and holding onto the nomination to try and get re-elected ’till far too close to the election?

I am not sure that the late change made a significant difference. Maybe having some kind of internal process to elect a new candidate would have been better, but only if it had created a better candidate, KH never really continued the surge after Biden dropped out, after the debate her campaign fell rather flat .

I just think Biden has performed rather badly as a president, and that is what has opened the door to Trump, and not enough was done to close it.

President Biden’s free to do a tonne of stuff now, starting with $$$ Presidential Drawdown for Ukraine 🙂

People were asking questions about Biden, and he was dodging the media, for a couple of years prior to the election, I remember reading a blog about it a few years ago.

Because the Democrats didn’t do anything about it until they had no choice, by the time that they did do, they really had no option but to go with Kamala Harris, who was a dud candidate, unpopular with the wider public as vice-president, associated with the Biden administration and arguably culpable for colluding to cover up Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

She also didn’t have time to hone her message through the primary process, so it was weak.

At the same time, because Biden’s been dodging the media for the past few years, they’ve squandered the incumbent’s advantage of the “bully pulpit”.

How much is this week’s result down to Biden

100%

He was a poor choice of candidate for 2020, let alone 2024.

baffling how they thought they would get away with it

A media colluding with them? Surely all journalists  who covered the Whitehouse must have been aware of Biden’s mental decline but nobody ran the story as far as I remember.  Maybe Fox News but any right wing press stories would just be dismissed.   Someone needed to get a positive statement from Biden that he would not run for re-election a year ago to allow a proper process to select the best candidate. 300M population and the choice was Harris or trump?

He did the USA equivalent of hiding in a fridge. The media were kept away from him.

but surely they must have known the fridge strategy would run out of road before the election

America’s darkest dawn!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/06/left-wing-media-reaction-donald-trump-victory-america/

Nothing like an over-reaction.  Someone lost an election.  I would have thought Dec 7th 1941 or the morning after 9/11 were a bit darker.

He was a poor choice of candidate for 2020, let alone 2024.

He defeated an incumbent president in both the popular vote and the electoral college. I’m not sure how that makes him a bad choice for 2020. His decline did not immediately come to the fore, it wasn’t linear, he appeared to suffer some kind of acute episode about 18 months ago which directly impacted his physical manner and mental sharpness. Whether his team thought he would recover, who knows, but obviously the painful but necessary decision was delayed far too long.

It’s not like the Democrats are overflowing with presidential talent to replace him.

Anyhow, how much mainstream chatter have we had about a similar, perhaps even more striking collapse in Trump? The man can’t string a sentence together. Perhaps it was more noticeable in Biden because he actually had some mental acuity to lose in the first place.

America’s darkest dawn!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/06/left-wing-media-reaction-donald-trump-victory-america/

Nothing like an over-reaction.  Someone lost an election.  I would have thought Dec 7th 1941 or the morning after 9/11 were a bit darker.

When did Rory Stewart become left wing media?

Or is that just in comparison to the Telegraph?

Either way I agree, bit of an overreaction by the Telegraph – but to be fair they’ve been in a bit of a tizzy since Reform failed to win the general election.

PS – surely it’s America’s orangest dawn?

The Democrats need to do some serious planning over the next 3 years to get a viable candidate in place to beat (presumably) Vance in 2028.

If they don’t get some good candidates ready for the primaries and start collectively chipping away at the GOP, they’ll be lucky to get to 2032.

2028? there’ll be an election? Don Jr will take the throne when Trump shuffles off his mortal coil

He was a poor choice of candidate for 2020, let alone 2024.

He defeated an incumbent president in both the popular vote and the electoral college. I’m not sure how that makes him a bad choice for 2020.

He was an old white man defeating a slightly younger old white man. I felt he was a poor choice because it felt forced, i.e. he’d finally got his turn to run again based on calling in the favours he’d banked over the years.
I distinctly remember thinking that Biden would be in his eighties when going for his second term and had anyone thought that through.

I stumbled into this on the Donald thread, it’s of on topic re the stuff above:

How much of this is on the democrats for putting forward someone not matching the job description?

Like what Labour did with Corbyn in the 2017 and 2019 elections.

That is, in the view of the wider electorate not just the party’s own supporters.

ie – US president isn’t a job for a youngish looking 2nd generation immigrant non-white woman, UK PM isn’t a job for a socialist protester type.

Nasty stuff I know but these things are at play in the analysis of the fallout so we shouldn’t avoid discussing it.

Have some foresight not to put forward an 81 year old candidate in the first place, and a succession plan to have a suitable (in the eyes of the electorate) replacement ready to go.

Trump at 70 first time was way older than recent presidents, then Biden blew that out of the water at 78, and now we’ve Trump again at 78.

I agree with your assessment of the mood, but that doesn’t change that they f’d up by the first being too old then the replacement the wrong type.

This was written by an American conservative about four months ago but I think it is highly plausible and well worth reading

https://nypost.com/2024/07/09/opinion/dems-de-facto-coup-even-if-biden-wins-kamala-will-be-prez/