Joe Biden 2020 campaign megathread v3 (pg 45 - mass-dropout aftermath)

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ElectionsGuy has posted about 50 times since saying that he’d be posting less frequently. You really hate to see it.

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Biden's yelling jag the other day was an embarrassment. It'd have been one thing if he'd said, "You're a damned liar," followed by a convincing explanation of why his son was on the board of a company he had no qualifications for. But getting mad without backing it up just proves it's a criticism that hurts... likely because it's true. The same with the pushup nonsense about his age. Biden is a walking disaster.

Hunter Biden is a troubled man. His life has been plagued by drugs, tragedy, and unseemly behavior. For those reasons I probably wouldn't have him in any important roles. Still, this idea that oil executive boards have strict guidelines in who they select for them is laughable. If anyone has a thorough understanding of how Burisma used to select board members, then maybe they can criticize the addition of Hunter Biden. It's also a complete fiction that Joe Biden steered him to that company. Completely made up.

More to the point, Biden earned more goodwill with voters by making a raw, genuine stand for his only surviving son against right-wing lies than anything any other candidate has done in the race. It's better he hit back at this sedentary dolt who "saw it on the TV" than to let it fester with a weak response.

Biden's earthy, uninhibited style has helped him clear hurdles about his record and background in a much better way than say, Hillary's academic mannerisms, and it will in this case too.

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Just like with the Harris Veep, he is pandering, Hoe would run for a 2nd term, he is just as old as Trump would be at the end of 2024

Hoe Biden.

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The coal miners learning to code thing is easily the dumbest thing he’s said all year. We’ll see if any of the savvier campaigns pick up on it.

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I don't agree.

The Democrats have to tell coal workers that they'll lose their jobs and be re-trained.  It's a bullet they simply have to bite.  You can't lie your way out of it.  The only reason Trump can lie his way around it is by saying "f*** the environment, we're keeping coal" (coal workers have been shedding jobs anyway).

So how do you phrase it?  Biden's phrasing doesn't seem particularly bad at all.  "If you can do X you can damn sure do Y" makes it sound complementary of coal workers, like you guys are so tough and smart you're definitely up to this challenge.

The coal miners learning to code thing is easily the dumbest thing he’s said all year. We’ll see if any of the savvier campaigns pick up on it.

There's good reason to support it. If any of the other campaigns are savvy, then they'd actually do themselves well to support it as well.

Biden's framing is better and less insulting than Hillary's. The problem with his statement isn't that software can't be a good landing spot for ex-coal miners -- it certainly could. The issue is implying that coal miners' skills and/or work ethic will easily translate into programming. This is a false promise at best. And, without getting too into the esoterics of computer science, the massive number of job openings in software won't be filled by regulars who've taken an introductory programming course. You need a real computer science education to qualify for a whole lot of those jobs.

Retraining programs aren't a terrible idea, I just don't like selling people a promise of a cushy programming job when that's not easily achievable nor is it something they really want. And when that doesn't work out, their trust in government plummets even further.

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Yep.  Biden is over.  Totally incompetent execution.  These are embarrassing results for a campaign that's supposed to be run by some of the best in the biz, and I would never trust a campaign that executes like this to beat Trump.

It's a shame, Biden is a really great guy and would have been a good president.  He has by far the most complete resume and best track record of success in the race, represents a diverse and winning coalition, and holds positions that Democrats can run on and win.  He's been treated like absolute dogsh*t by everyone this campaign, especially the media, and persevered for a year only to implode because the folks running his campaign couldn't drive turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are all good choices for the nominee, in that order IMO.  I'm on board Bloomberg 2020 at this point.

I really don't think you've thought this through. Buttigieg just doesn't have it with black voters and lacks the charisma needed to connect. I like Klobuchar's chances of finding a winning coalition better, but she's got a long way to go. But if you think Biden's campaign is proving to be a paper tiger, Bloomberg is a bigger one who just happens to have an unseemly sum of money to waste. He hasn't been in a single debate and is still negative nationally before the opposition onslaught.

I've soured on Bloomberg hard in the past week -- his strategy is moronic and threatening to detonate the party. Let's be real, there's no real path for him to get a majority of delegates. The scenario where he gets 30-35% of delegates and somehow overcomes extreme obstacles to get to 50% at a contested convention is a nightmare and you know it.

His entry into the race and his spending have made it astronomically more likely that there's a contested convention by tanking Biden's prospects, and he's an extremely flawed general election candidate if he makes it there. I'm admittedly bitter and more annoyed by the former, as I quite like Joe Biden and a hell of a lot more than anyone else in the race. But I don't think the moderates have the stomach for what's gonna happen next if they abandon him.

It's looking dire for the Democratic Party. Even if you're a Bernie Sanders fan you'd have to admit his time as frontrunner hasn't been so glorious.

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This was truly an epic performance. Malarkey was destroyed, etc. After settling all family business, it seemed Biden was shaping up to have a good night, but he did even better than expected. I'm glad the candidate I support did so well, but beyond that, I'm comforted that he proved to have support with an extremely broad, multi-regional, cross-demographic coalition that could win everywhere. Any demographic of size, white or black, college-educated or not, Joe Biden had a major showing in it.

The results in Maine, Massachusetts, and Minnesota were the most surprising wins considering he spent no time, money, or effort in them. But I'm struck by the results in my home state:





Biden did stronger than Hillary Clinton! Sure, she got a higher percentage of the vote, but underneath the surface, Biden won and with big turnout across the board. In Fairfax County, Biden got 38% more votes than HRC. In Chesterfield County, Biden got 48% more votes. The story is consistent across the suburbs. But even more impressively, this held everywhere, even in areas Democrats are thought to be hemorrhaging support. In mountainous Giles County (Romney +25, Trump +48), Biden got 34% more votes. In the heavily evangelical Bedford County (Romney +44, Trump +50), Biden got 90%(!) more votes.

I don't know what the general election will look like, but there are clearly a lot of people beyond the 2016 electorate comfortable voting for Joe Biden. That's a good sign moving forward.

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I’m now realizing we’re in a phase of the campaign where Biden can fall into a number of land mines. Do not pick Kamala Harris — she has so many obvious skeletons and we all know it. Stacey Abrams and whoever the hell this Barragan person is are ultimate identity politics picks. Duckworth as a veteran and senator is a pick that can stand on the merit as much as these things can be.

Beto needs to be more or less shelved. I really like the guy, but the Biden campaign needs to be cognizant of who and what is politically toxic to persuadable groups. I have some confidence they will but not overwhelmingly.

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I’m now realizing we’re in a phase of the campaign where Biden can fall into a number of land mines. Do not pick Kamala Harris — she has so many obvious skeletons and we all know it. Stacey Abrams and whoever the hell this Barragan person is are ultimate identity politics picks. Duckworth as a veteran and senator is a pick that can stand on the merit as much as these things can be.

Beto needs to be more or less shelved. I really like the guy, but the Biden campaign needs to be cognizant of who and what is politically toxic to persuadable groups. I have some confidence they will but not overwhelmingly.

Every VP in the last hundred years has been decided by identity politics. Race and Gender are only recent additions to this dogma. Regional identities, factional identities, religious identities, cultural identities, ethnic identities, state identities - they are the keys to the VP slot. This applies to both parties.

Let me expand: Stacey Abrams was a State Senate Minority Leader and this "Nanette Barragan" person is an obscure congressman from an electorally irrelevant part of the country. Kamala Harris has similar problems and has her own set of character flaws. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has already been given a huge vote of confidence by black voters. The only reason they'd be picked is to feed into this toxic mindset of deserved representation.

Biden's VP pick seems unusually important. He is, indeed, an old man who should pick someone relatively young but also makes his candidacy appealing to more people who can be persuaded to support him. There are some people who fit this mold, but the names being floated right now just aren't.