Possible Biden withdrawal megathread (please use for all related news/speculation)

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

Meh. TBF, he corrected himself in like 2 seconds.

"the room gasped" omg these people are National Enquirer levels of dramatic

[wbrocks67]

Yeah I'm sorry this statement is rather unhinged. The man is literally leading a global NATO conference right now and is seemingly having no issues doing it. There are fair concerns about his run in the future but there is no evidence that he is unable to do the job right now / for the next 5 mnoths - that is simply just conjuring stuff out of thin air and frankly kind of insulting to insinuate that he's not even the one running the show - again - when he's literally the one leading this conference right now and having no issues doing it.

https://twitter.com/reesejgorman/status/1811504804646039814

The American public won’t accept anything less. If he’s mentally unfit to run for office(which he obviously wouldn't say but people will read between the lines for whatever BS he goes with) why is he still in office? It really will be that simple.

But you just said it - his reason for stepping down wouldn't have anything to do with him being "mentally unfit", so I imagine he would say "I'm committed to finishing out my term and then passing the baton on to Kamala, etc. "

Right, he and his team would use that EXCUSE to step out of the race. The American public would be able to sniff out a lie.

Honestly I don't think many people would care. All people really care about is the 2024 race for the next 4 years, not who is president until January

[Proud Independent]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

Meh. TBF, he corrected himself in like 2 seconds.

"the room gasped" omg these people are National Enquirer levels of dramatic

Yup. I don't even like Biden and I hope loses reelection but even I know the media is gleeful to push him aside all because of ONE sh**tty debate.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If Harris wins the nomination, I’m completely fine with that and she’ll have my complete support.
But I would really like to see her -win- the nomination.  

I.e. I want to see her win a campaign against serious oppposition, even if it’s a very short one. She’s underperformed in pretty much every race she’s run.  The offices she’s held have been virtually handed to her, and I’d like the see her disprove this pattern.

[Progressive Pessimist]

If Harris wins the nomination, I’m completely fine with that and she’ll have my complete support.
But I would really like to see her -win- the nomination.  

I.e. I want to see her win a campaign against serious oppposition, even if it’s a very short one. She’s underperformed in pretty much every race she’s run.  The offices she’s held have been virtually handed to her, and I’d like the see her disprove this pattern.

It would be helpful for her to probably not seem coronated. I just don't know how Democrats pull that off while also not looking like they want to pass over her either. That to me is the only real difficulty in replacing Biden.

[Trends Are Fake]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

That's a very weak attack; at less than a third of Biden's age I do stuff like this all the time.

[wbrocks67]

If Harris wins the nomination, I’m completely fine with that and she’ll have my complete support.
But I would really like to see her -win- the nomination.  

I.e. I want to see her win a campaign against serious oppposition, even if it’s a very short one. She’s underperformed in pretty much every race she’s run.  The offices she’s held have been virtually handed to her, and I’d like the see her disprove this pattern.

I wouldn't really say that's true, she demolished Sanchez and she clearly showed she was the better candidate in that race. It was D-on-D, but honestly that made it even easier for her to lose if she was that bad.

[TechbroMBA]

So let’s look at the hypothetical, Harris replaces Biden and the polls are just as sh**tty. What then? Will there be a drip of “passed over” Democrats sniping at her too? Because this level of friendly fire is untenable for anyone.

Biden sucks compared to a generic someone else that could be anything you want, Harris favorability and polling is as bad or worse.

She literally leads Trump by 3 in an ipsos poll

Oh f**k! A poll? Man I’m glad a poll outweighs hundreds of favorability surveys over the past few years.

The thing is that a lot of "perception" of Harris isn't really baked in imo. If she was out there more in front of a national audience, I think that could very much change. It at least has the opportunity to. Perceptions however of both Biden and Trump are for better and worse baked in. Honestly the biggest thing I feel like I hear about Harris still from "normies" is that they don't really see her that much or don't know what she's doing.

We’ll see. She crashed and burned in a primary, and her only other notable win was as a party machine Democrat in California. Shivving the incumbent President, to have her as the replacement candidate may well be sensible in the sense that Biden is losing and likely to keep collapsing, but man that is not a bet I’d feel safe about.

[Sestak]

Run a campaign for whom?

The only serious options being brought up for a "mini primary" or whatever involve the prospective candidates campaigning to the DNC delegates and them voting at the convention; essentially a contested convention with extra structure. There is no real democratic process there, only a dozen different potential disasters waiting to happen.

[wbrocks67]

If Harris wins the nomination, I’m completely fine with that and she’ll have my complete support.
But I would really like to see her -win- the nomination.  

I.e. I want to see her win a campaign against serious oppposition, even if it’s a very short one. She’s underperformed in pretty much every race she’s run.  The offices she’s held have been virtually handed to her, and I’d like the see her disprove this pattern.

It would be helpful for her to probably not seem coronated. I just don't know how Democrats pull that off while also not looking like they want to pass over her either. That to me is the only real difficulty in replacing Biden.

Maybe it's just me but I just don't see people getting upset at that. With the stakes of Trump, with 3-4 months to go, I don't think people are thinking about coronations or any of that. They just want someone to beat Trump, and she is literally the sitting vice president, so it's not like he just randomly chose her. If he died tomorrow, she'd be president, so I don't really see that as a "coronation" that has no basis

[CookieDamage]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

That's a very weak attack; at less than a third of Biden's age I do stuff like this all the time.

Omg the denialism is amazing

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

That's a very weak attack; at less than a third of Biden's age I do stuff like this all the time.

Omg the denialism is amazing

See this is where you lose me - people DO make mistakes! This is what is unbecoming to me about this whole thing - people on their pedestal who act as if they've never made a mistake or misspoke. Yes, you can have concerns about Joe Biden being 81 and how his age affects his presidency, but this kind of stuff is just dumb. We all misspeak sometimes. Stuff like that is not proof of anything. You can make your case without being overly dramatic to every single word the man speaks or misspeaks.

[Ferguson97]

Biden has cognitive decline, but misspeaking a name and immediately correcting himself is not an example of that.

[CookieDamage]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

That's a very weak attack; at less than a third of Biden's age I do stuff like this all the time.

Omg the denialism is amazing

See this is where you lose me - people DO make mistakes! This is what is unbecoming to me about this whole thing - people on their pedestal who act as if they've never made a mistake or misspoke. Yes, you can have concerns about Joe Biden being 81 and how his age affects his presidency, but this kind of stuff is just dumb. We all misspeak sometimes. Stuff like that is not proof of anything. You can make your case without being overly dramatic to every single word the man speaks or misspeaks.

I'm not the president of the United states mixing up important people but ok

[GAinDC]

https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1811517625467367831

That's a very weak attack; at less than a third of Biden's age I do stuff like this all the time.

This kind of stuff is truly not a big deal and the media +Biden detractors will overplay their hand if they keep hyping up moments like this.

I'm in my 30s and I mess up names and words all the time. If there was a camera constantly on me that caught every misstep you could probably also make the case that I have dementia, or anyone else really.

[Abolish ICE]

Okay, I’m convinced.  Even Harris is better than Biden at this point.  Newsom would still be worse though.

[Proud Independent]

Kind of crazy, but I never thought Dems would actually be able to top Republicans and their ouster of Speaker McCarthy and the seemingly never-ending round of votes to just land on someone that members didn't really have an opinion on in Mike Johnson, but here we are!

[You are responsible]

Don't focus on who he called what at NATO. Stay with the big picture.

[TheTide]

Unless the press conference itself is either an overwhelming success or a catastrophic failure, the Putin/Zelensky mix-up is probably going to be the main headline from this. Which gives enough reason for more Democrats to call for Biden to stand aside, although they probably would have done so anyway.

[Abolish ICE]

Don't focus on who he called what at NATO. Stay with the big picture.

Why?  He needs to drop out.  Defeating Trump is the big picture; this isn’t a Joe Biden death cult.

[emailking]

I'm looking forward to the press conference soon, wow.

[TechbroMBA]

Don't focus on who he called what at NATO. Stay with the big picture.

They and the press want him gone. Everything he say that isn't perfect will get nitpicked to death by both sides now. No one could withstand that level of scrutiny.

I want Biden to stay in. Democrats should want him gone. However the way they are doing this is just so undisciplined and messy, they are humiliating the President because he isn't polling well. George Clooney has a veto over who can be POTUS.

They are basically saying every GOP attack line since the Inauguration was right! Joe was a dementia patient while his team ran the country and the Obamas still run the Democratic party.

[somco]

The Putin/Zelenskyy thing obviously isn’t really a big deal to me but you also have to remember we’re dealing with Capitol Hill Democrats here. That was probably like a DEFCON-1 gaffe to them after this week lmao

[GeorgiaModerate]

People, young and old, do mix up names all the time.  To name a topical example, Trump does it quite often in his speeches.  But *that* particular mixup, in that setting, was a particularly bad one.  It certainly doesn't help Biden.

[lfromnj]

People, young and old, do mix up names all the time.  To name a topical example, Trump does it quite often in his speeches.  But *that* particular mixup, in that setting, was a particularly bad one.  It certainly doesn't help Biden.

Yeah I don't think it would have mattered much for most names mixed up(say Macron/Starmer) but the fact its two adversaries where one invaded the other does make it look bad. IMO It doesn't show anything as the correction was instant.