Instead of frittering away the last few months of his presidential term, Biden should have just resigned and allowed Harris to take over his role. She could have pivoted way to the left without having to undermine Biden's agenda and that would have really sent a clearer message to the democratic base.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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The voters deserve a lot of blame here.
You can lead a horse to water....
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect, and no single candidate is going to align 100% with your stance. Demanding that they do, or else you'll vote for literally the worst possible option, or sit out, or vote a "protest" vote, all so that someone, somewhere will "learn" something is just fucking childish and stupid. And this will be continue to be true no matter how many times the Tone Police show up to admonish people about blaming voters. Sorry, not sorry: I blame the voters.
I agree, I'm also happy that people like Walz seem to want to give people a better option, making a protest vote even less appealing.
Defeated Democratic candidate: accepts responsibility in the lightest possible way
Liberal fanboy: Noooo, it's not your fault, it's the children who were wrong!
I blame the voters.
It means you never have to listen or change in any way, so of course you do.
Any ADULT can easily see that politicians are going to be imperfect
The best I can do is fall for blatant Russian propaganda and then get mad when someone calls me out on it.
There's no leadership void in the Democratic Party, it's been Bernard Sanders for quite a while. Them denying this is to their (and everyone elses) detriment. Just run Bernie/AOC and let's get this over with.
DNCs fault for blocking Bernie
Nope. This is on Biden. It's his fault Harris/Walz were put into an impossible situation.
That senile old fuck was supposed to be a one-term president. If they'd spent 4 years planning for 2024 instead of sitting around with their thumbs up their asses maybe they could have run a winning campaign.
But no, Joe was too proud or stupid or both to stick to that plan. This election was lost the instant he doddered his way on to the debate stage on 6/27/24.
Lots and lots of balls were dropped. Garland didn't get Trump in jail when he could have. Biden didn't stick to only one term. A democratic candidate wasn't really elected when Biden stepped down (for the record, I think that Harris was more than qualified, but a lot of people were upset that she was just "chosen"). Harris didn't try to stand out and be her own candidate - she mostly just stuck with the status quo and never disagreed with Biden. Etc etc etc.
Warning bells started going off in my head the moment that the Democrats announced that Harris was going to be the candidate after Biden dropped out, not because I thought she was an unqualified candidate but because there was no time taken to search for other candidates. Maybe it was too close to the election to take the time to go through the rigamarole of all that but I think even a cursory effort to do so would have gone a long way towards making it feel like people's opinions actually mattered. Biden dropping out was huge (at least to me) because it felt like an acknowledgement of the voters who had consistently felt like they were held hostage for their votes because the alternative was a fascist.
It doesn't help either that they went on to repeatedly shoot themselves in the feet while chasing moderate Republican votes, getting other prominent Democrats to chastise certain classes of voters and breeding the same voter apathy that hurt them in 2016, and their refusal to acknowledge that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide that we shouldn't help Israel perpetrate.
Putting trump in jail would've made America look bad. Oh, the irony.
Harris made choices. She could have chosen not to adopt every single one of Bidens policies. What was biden going to do, fire her? If you look back at her presidential run she really struggled to articulate any policies back then too.
This is on anyone who was within arms reach of Trump in the last decade and didn't take matters into their own hands.
It's on Biden and Garland for not throwing Trump in prison the second his term ended.
Amen. 4 years to build a case? January 6th, spend 6-12 months and file charges. What the fuck were they doing for 4 years?
Running out the clock.
Exactly, and it's the third time we've been betrayed like this.
Not going after the Bush administration.
Not going after the subprime mortgage architects.
Not going after Trump.
Three times, they've had the easiest of layups for public approval of all time and they've consistently fucked it up.
It's not really a fuck up when they did it deliberately. Their priorities are in the wrong place because it's an oligarchy.
I'd like to add:
Not going after the Confederate states
to this list
Or at least the second the supreme court said whatever the president does is legal as long as it's an "official act".
A cascade of failures. Beyond Joe not man enough GTFO, the DNC once again anointed a letter instead of letting the public decide. yes, Joe should never have run for a second term. Given that he did, he should have dropped out sooner. Given that he didn't, the DNC should have had an open convention rather than putting their thumbs on the scale in back room deals.
Tim is 100% right that we would not be in this mess if they had won, but when is the DNC going to stop trying to manipulate everything and lie to us about it? They are to blame as much as Repugnacans.
Because they and R are same team. I bet it's like lawyers who viciously go after each other in court, them have golf and martinis on weekends.
They probably realised Harris wasn't going to win due to the amount of prejudice and thought Biden had a better chance against trump (who they'd have guessed would have been axed after his loss and criminality, but it was a cult), but then they let Biden to abdicate because there was truth in the criticism of him and the media ran with it..
At that point who else could they run? It was bad planning, not accounting for Biden's age/health and the cult of trump.
Also they should have given Bernie his shot. They didn't want real change and it's been forced on them anyway, but now to the detriment of all.
Biden made an appropriate decision to back out. He should have done it much sooner. But I'm not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden's fault. I don't really feel that's fair.
Harris' main draw was that she didn't want to do anything, which pissed off progressives. She was pro-establishment and pro-status quo. She didn't need Biden's help to not get votes... I have no love for Biden, but the truth is the truth.
But I’m not sure I would characterize the failings of Harris/Walz as Biden’s fault.
Inasmuch as they ran as a continuation of his policy, I'd say there's some blame to be had.
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Well, I mean the worst Walz did personally was maybe his performance against JD, but that's pretty small compared to a lot of other errors that can be attributed to the collective campaign decisions and DNC as a whole. And yes, Biden. And really, 2020 and 2016. Actually fuck it, compared to all the butterfly effect possibilities, Walz is such a small part of why we're in this mess, lol. I still want the 2000 supreme court to support the Florida recount that actually says Gore won.
Still, kudos for taking responsibility.
I wouldn't place any of it on Walz, this is all about Harris/Biden. He did well in his debate, he was obviously more progressive than Harris and was pretty much just reined in.
I think if the ticket had been reversed, they'd have won. The center wasn't ready for a black woman to start with, and when she was just parroting the same party line re: Gaza, and cozying up to fucking Cheney's, for crying out loud, it turned off the progressives that might have voted.
Fucking finally. A Democrat we we can respect, because they don't rely on their role inthe damage.
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