• TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    I’ll always wonder if Biden would have won. I was against the Democrats switching candidates so late in the election, but I came around thinking Harris would get roughly the same support as Biden, maybe even more. I should have stuck with my first instinct. Yes, Biden had a terrible debate, and yes he is very old and showing signs of cognitive decline, but maybe he would have won regardless. Harris certainly didn’t perform better than Biden did in 2020, and in fact she performed worse in many instances. Of course we’ll never know, but, given Tuesday’s result, I can’t help but think the Democrats wouldn’t have been better off taking their chances with Biden.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      I don’t. Biden is a shell of what he once was. And people, rightly or wrongly, ultimately blamed Biden for how expensive shit is right now. I don’t think he would have been able to overcome that. I was a big backer of Biden – the only politician to beat Trump, after all – until I saw that debate and realized he just didn’t have it anymore.

      The right move would have been to stick to his initial promise of being a one-term President. If Democrats had a meaningful primary, even if Harris ended up with the nomination anyway, she would have been able to formulate a more transitional campaign message, which would have put at least a bit of distance between her and Biden.

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      I think Biden only won in 2020 because of how terrible things were at the time and the fact that Trump was still in office so people blamed him, but even then it was only a narrow victory. The party keeps picking the worst candidates with the worst campaigns and have now handed yet another victory to Trump.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Biden would have done just as bad as Harris because Harris ran on Biden’s platform plus a little extra helping of GOP policies (for some stupid fucking reason). OK, Biden might have done slightly better, but not enough to actually win. Anyone who stood a chance of winning would have to run on essentially the opposite of Biden’s policies instead of pulling Kamala’s “nope, wouldn’t change a single thing” platform.

    • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      If i could change time to allow Biden to run, i would do so only because Harris running in the situation that she did, didn’t work out regardless.

      But I kind of don’t think he would have won either. The debate performance plus “his bad economy” I think we’re too impactful. I think the only chance, if any, was Biden not running, and us actually having a chance to select a candidate.

      The biggest hurdle I would say is the disinformation war that reality is losing against Russia/MAGA.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Biden should’ve joined the primary in 2016. Obama put his thumb on the scale for Hillary that year. As much as I like Obama, the dude has been meddling in the democratic primary process too much.

      • noride@lemm.ee
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        14 days ago

        Bidens son had just died and he wasn’t sure he was going to stay in politics at the time, I don’t fault him for not running then.

    • b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 days ago

      I think it was still the right move for Biden to drop out. His brain was clearly done. Trump looked like a sure win after the ear incident, and Trump got rattled with someone younger stepping in.

      But it never mattered what Trump said, Republicans were always going to vote for him.

      It would have been better if Biden dropped out sooner, if they let Bernie run, if Kamala didn’t fruitlessly try to win Republican votes by moving further right.

      She could have done anything even slightly for the working class, stand up to Israel in a meaningful way.

      Instead we got “I’m speaking”, “most lethal army”, “I will have a Republican in my cabinet”, “Israel must expand its borders” from Walz.

      She should have moved to the left and differentiated herself, get people excited and motivated for some actual change. All we got was “maybe I won’t be quite as bad as Trump”.

      You can chastise people for staying home all day, but that’s never going to actually get people to put their energy and effort into supporting you and move millions of people needed to get to the ballot box.

      Also need to consider all the forces of Israel, Russia, the “alt-right”, Elon Musk were in full play to disenfranchise voters and who knows what other kinds of trickery behind the scenes. They needed an absolute surge to overcome all that, not some weak sauce Trump-lite bullshit.

    • TheDannysaur@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I mean the polls for Biden were bad and getting worse. Harris was only down a couple points… Biden was down double digits. I hate to say it, but with the 2 point polling error, Biden had 0 path to make it. I don’t know a single state that he would have taken off of Trump.