Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean is from the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. She hit the campaign trail with President Biden over the weekend and as other House Democrats are asking him to drop out of the race. Rep. Dean joined Geoff Bennett to discuss her support.
He beat Trump
Yeah, in 2020, riding the “Anyone but Trump” wave. Woulda got smoked in 2016.
He probably would’ve done better than Hillary. He was pretty well liked in 2016. Between the memes and the momentum from the Obama administration, I think he may have won.
Now in 2024, “he’s not Trump” and “he beat Trump” are the best reasons they can give to compel people to vote for him. That’s nearly double the number of achievements compared to last time!
I wonder if Biden would have even won in the first place if Covid wasn’t a thing right at the peak of election. Ignoring factors like that isn’t going to help with your election projections. He beat him last time when a disease was everyones biggest concern. That’s not the climate right now.
Another thing worth mentioning is that many states were operating under special emergency rules for absentee and early voting in 2020, whereas not all of them will be doing that now. Statistically I tend to think this hurts Biden this time around (2020 early voting broke significantly towards Biden in most areas) but it is difficult to project how much of a factor that will be.
Speaking of which, why isn’t the Biden campaign beating the drum on how badly Trump bungled COVID
My guess is covid fatigue. Even people who aren’t anti mask or anti jab would rather move past covid than continue thinking about it unless it’s becoming highly active in their local area. Idk if its the right call but that seems like the logical reason to me.
Plausible
Anyone living in a swing state just needs to go and vote for Biden. I know a lot of people don’t want to, and, believe me, I get it, but you gotta just do it. It’s like a chore you need to do that you really don’t want to do, that you resent having to do, even, but that nonetheless has to be done. Just do it then take a nice, long hot shower after.
That being said, holy shit something has to be done. Clearly, just focusing on the presidential election every four years ain’t gonna cut it. We have got to get more involved in the political process. We have got to vote in every local, state, and congressional election. We have to encourage better people to run for office. We have to do something. I don’t know exactly what needs to be done to improve our democracy, but we gotta figure it out. We can’t have another election cycle like the last several.
Indeed, folks need to get involved at the local level and primaries.
For those that complain about the first past the post voting, Alaska managed to pass ranked choice voting:
https://apnews.com/article/alaska-ranked-choice-voting-5ae6c163af2f8a70a8f90928267c4086
If you hate FPTP and the choices it gives you, don’t just sit out the election, that’s an inherent vote for the person you like the least. You can try to back a similar ranked choice measure in your state:
Yuuuup. If you have never called your senator or met with your representative, if you’ve never been to a city council meeting, then you are a part of the problem. This site is full of smart, hardworking, passionate people. We should be the ones in local offices.
The biden administration has been the best single term of my liftetime. I still suspect all this is more coming from republicans than anything else. Still its the very fact democrats are vulnerable to this type of disruption that is the reason I vote for them over republicans. Its ugly but its more honest.
If you ignore all the BS marketing, it really is amazing how much Biden has done in his first term, even more than Obama.
oh yeah. I like obama but he pretty much lost a term trying to work with folks who where not ever going to do so in good faith.
Let’s be clear, this is not a repeat of 2024.
Even if it was, Biden won by unprecedentedly narrow margins in key states.
In the intervening 3.5 years, Trump has shorn up gaps in his base, motivating them to turn up to vote; his scotus nominations have ran roughshod over democracy.
Meanwhile it took Biden’s administration 2.5 years to get nuclear secrets or whatever back from the insurrectionist traitor who still walks free, and for some inconceivable notion, is running against him for president; has pissed away votes trying to chase centrists, pissed away vote supporting genocide, and pissed away votes by being entirely out of touch on “the economy”- which we all know really means “rich people’s yacht money.”
I don’t care about him being old- I care about him being competent.
Is he a fuckton more competent than Trump? Absolutely. It’s the difference between a hammer and a rock, but we’re trying to rebuild and should probably get an air nailer. even so, it’s asininely stupid to force Biden out if he doesn’t want to go.
If his ego won’t let him bow out for the sake of Americans, he’s absolutely going to ruin any chance anyone else has, too.
In the intervening 3.5 years, Trump has shorn up gaps in his base, motivating them to turn up to vote; his scotus nominations have ran roughshod over democracy.
And massively lost. Let’s not forget that 2022 was an absolute route for the Republican Party, as has been nearly every special election. Their antics are a complete self-own. Trump’s dominance is anything but assured.
The public may have a short memory, but RvW is a dominant concern that the right will just not stop punching themselves in the balls with.
I just refuse to accept this gloom about Biden. Replace him and you lose the incumbent advantage and everyone is thrown into chaos and confusion and we go back to arguing about who the nominee should be like before the primaries instead of consolidating behind a single person. Harris is the only real logical replacement at this point and no one actually wants her. The only other names I’ve even heard are Newsome and Whitmer, who both lack national exposure because they haven’t been campaigning.
Maybe Biden will pull off a loss here, but I think it’s too late to unite behind anyone else.
And massively lost. Let’s not forget that 2022 was an absolute route for the Republican Party, as has been nearly every special election. Their antics are a complete self-own. Trump’s dominance is anything but assured.
Uhm. I wouldn’t call gaining control of the house a “rout”… Just saying.
I just refuse to accept this gloom about Biden.
In 2020, Georgia was one by less than 12k votes. Arizona was won by 10.4k votes. Pennsylvania 80k votes. Wisconsin 20k votes. These are infinitesimally small leads. Trump only needed three of the four to get the requisite EC votes to win.
By the way, by “shoring up” his base… that includes fucked up shit like getting laws passed to make it easier for republican assholes to overturn the will of their citizens, and continued gerrymandering bullshit.
Do not turn a blind eye to just how unpopular biden really is, and it’s not too late. The convention hasn’t even happened yet. If Biden did the right thing and bowed out and supported whoever replaced him as the candidate, it would work. Remember- all the idiots screaming “Vote Blue No Matter Who”? yeah… it goes both ways.
That said… he should not be forced out. Forcing him out is how you split the vote and hand Trump the win without even trying. Personally, I feel like Biden is holding the country hostage, but we won’t get into that.
In off election years (where there isn’t a presidential ticket), the party in power (this time it was the democrats) on average loses 30-40 seats. It’s a massive flip. The democrats actually won seats and if it wasn’t for the fuck face dem leader in New York fucking with the maps you would have seen dems in control of the house.
I’m going to argue some points here, but I appreciate your perspective. This is more conversational than argumentative.
Uhm. I wouldn’t call gaining control of the house a “rout”… Just saying.
Compared to what they were expected to gain, yes, they were completely dominated. They had all their “red wave” speeches prepared and it all melted away in a historically bad performance. They expected to control both chambers and have a significant margin in the House and we see how that turned out.
and continued gerrymandering bullshit.
Man, gerrymandering pisses me off so much and I think it’s at the core of how partisan and fucked up things are right now. But I think there were a couple of significant wins on that front. Wisconsin, for sure. Seems like there was at least one other significant win. Florida? I haven’t been able to keep up with all of it.
Anyway your point is well made, they are doing everything they can to prevent people from voting - but I’m not sure how well those efforts have succeeded in specifically swing states.
In the other hand, covid deaths hit red areas and demographics at something like 2:1 compared to blue districts. At the tight margins you bring up, that can be a significant factor.
Do not turn a blind eye to just how unpopular biden really is
Dude has nothing on Hillary in 2016 (though that’s not helpful since she lost). The fact is, no one in the Democratic Party with national prominence is particularly well-liked. Bernie Sanders is probably the closest but for a litany of reasons I think that’s a no go.
The convention hasn’t even happened yet.
The convention is a formality in the process. It’s not supposed to be, but it’s just too late in the election cycle. It would be absolute chaos. We’ll be arguing about who while Trump is campaigning.
If Biden did the right thing and bowed out and supported whoever replaced him as the candidate, it would work.
Maybe. I could see it with Harris since she shares the incumbency. I worry about her ability to overcome misogyny and racism without a powerful and uplifting message like Obama had. I’d love to be proven wrong in this front, but the post-Obama era has lifted the veil on a level of racism that I didn’t even believe existed here 20 years ago, and I’m really concerned it has become even more mainstream since. I still think if Biden steps down she is our best chance.
Whitmer and Newsome both have to overcome obscurity, and Whitmer has the misogyny issue as well. Newsome I think has a head start there, but it’s going to take a lot of work and money to make either of them household names in Georgia and Pennsylvania. As a Michigander, I think Whitmer has been an outstanding Governor and would make a great President, but I don’t think she has the recognition right now.
Look, I think it’s too late, but if Biden stepped down I’d do my meager best to help elect whoever is the nominee, but I think out of all the risky paths in front of us, Biden is the least risky.
At the end of the day, I don’t care who the nominee is as long as trump doesn’t win.
Cheers.
About Harris… I’m just gonna vent here.
Biden gave her a massive finger and then left her to languish. She could have been out front getting face time, spreading that message. Doing campaign-y things.
I think the only thing I recall her stumping for is some abortion stuffs.
As a side note she could always campaign on law and order :/ or maybe reformed law and order. The violent crime rate is way down, and they’d could campaign on that along with no-contest policing reforms… like mandated training standards to receive that juicy federal funding. (Deescalation, mental health. Mandated liability insurance. Possibly “preventative care” therapy. Active shooter……. Fuck Uvalde Cops. My level 1 security guards have better fucking training and they’re contract security guards.)
It’s true that Biden really put her in a corner. She hasn’t really been able to differentiate herself in a meaningful way, and maybe that was strategic. It’s not that uncommon for vice presidents, but usually there is at least some distinctive role or signature issue that the VP works on.
Biden acted as an informal whip in Congress and as a diplomat in some international issues as VP. Pence acted as a media surrogate to the religious right, and as an advisor on appointments. I think he was once considered the most powerful VP of all time.
Harris reminds me of Veep, the Julia Dryfus show. I can’t recall a single signature issue or import role she has played in the past four years.
The truth of. ps is that you only pick a VP that stands out if you need them to for some reason. Usually you go with the bland people who couldn’t challenge you in a primary if they wanted too, because you want to avoid controversy.
Biden picked her for the law and order crowd because for some reason people see him as soft on that. She’s a prosecutor.
Also, she’s black and he’s soft there too.
There’s a few other groups there, but you get the idea.
Still she’s not particularly controversial. What that really means is she’s boring. I’ll take it over Biden if he’ll stump for her; in a heart beat. He’ll right now I’d take a cardboard cut out of Reagan over Trump.
He’s already got the incumbent advantage baked into his polling and he’s losing badly. Nevermind that 3 of the last 7 incumbents lost. The incumbent advantage, if there is one for the presidency, doesn’t seem to be particularly strong.
Good luck. You keep Biden and Trump is a shoo-in. Looots of people not voting if there’s no good candidates.
Support RCV in your city!
And pretty soon he’s going to be known as the “Guy who lost to Trump.” His legacy will be up there with Neville Chamberlain.
