This was always the danger of defending Biden’s age, and why I never got the big push to do so.
Running shitty candidates because trump is even shittier just lowers the bar further.
Kamala’s not great, but she’s slightly under retirement age and isn’t openly advocating for genocide, so compared to them she looks great, but pretending she’s perfect is just keeping the bar lower than it needs to be
It shouldn’t be a big deal to say a candidate is good enough to vote for, but isn’t everything you want.
She’s a much better candidate than Biden, and Biden was a much better candidate than trump or Hillary Clinton. It’s been eight years, or closer to ten if you include the campaign season for the 2016 election. People are rightfully excited about Harris. You’re absolutely right that we can do better, but this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a candidate. I was pessimisticly excited for Obama, but was afraid he wouldn’t be able to win the general election.
But you’re ignoring that she’s not better than 2012 Obama, and definitely not better than 2008 Obama.
Like, everyone knows Hillary was a terrible candidate, we all know Biden was a bad one.
But Kamala being a decent candidate doesn’t mean we can’t be happy about that, or that we can’t acknowledge reality about her.
She’s not as progressive as the average Dem voter.
And until candidates start matching the Dem voter base, shit feels like trump always have a chance
If the DNC ran a candidate that matched their voter base, it’d be a landslide. Just a lot less money flowing thru the campaign and the DNC. The people running the party have different goals than the people voting for it
Electability was such a huge concern in 2020 that we ended up in a competition between two old white men in the 2020 Dem primary.
Again, happy to know that this was wrong, but this is the line of thinking that was occurring back then.
It shouldn’t be a big deal to say a candidate is good enough to vote for, but isn’t everything you want.
Agreed, but also recall how greatly gerrymandering has affected this election. Of course you can’t directly gerrymander the presidential election, but the gerrymandering of Congressional seats and State legislature seats, governorships, etc has had a trickle-up effect, essentially. (E.g. laws passed in the name of preventing voter fraud that make it harder to vote and reduce turnout, increasing the odds that a State will swing for the GOP in the presidential election, as per https://www.npr.org/2020/11/08/932880774/how-gerrymandering-efforts-fit-into-2020-presidential-election )
This was always the danger of defending Biden’s age, and why I never got the big push to do so.
Running shitty candidates because trump is even shittier just lowers the bar further.
Kamala’s not great, but she’s slightly under retirement age and isn’t openly advocating for genocide, so compared to them she looks great, but pretending she’s perfect is just keeping the bar lower than it needs to be
It shouldn’t be a big deal to say a candidate is good enough to vote for, but isn’t everything you want.
She’s a much better candidate than Biden, and Biden was a much better candidate than trump or Hillary Clinton. It’s been eight years, or closer to ten if you include the campaign season for the 2016 election. People are rightfully excited about Harris. You’re absolutely right that we can do better, but this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a candidate. I was pessimisticly excited for Obama, but was afraid he wouldn’t be able to win the general election.
But you’re ignoring that she’s not better than 2012 Obama, and definitely not better than 2008 Obama.
Like, everyone knows Hillary was a terrible candidate, we all know Biden was a bad one.
But Kamala being a decent candidate doesn’t mean we can’t be happy about that, or that we can’t acknowledge reality about her.
She’s not as progressive as the average Dem voter.
And until candidates start matching the Dem voter base, shit feels like trump always have a chance
If the DNC ran a candidate that matched their voter base, it’d be a landslide. Just a lot less money flowing thru the campaign and the DNC. The people running the party have different goals than the people voting for it
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Happily, we now know it was wrong. At the time, there were concerns that only Biden, with his incumbent advantage and the need to win over midwestern voters ( as was the case four years ago, https://www.vox.com/2020/5/26/21264719/joe-biden-election-coalition & https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/3/21155150/electoral-college-2020-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-trump-wisconsin ) would be the only Dem who could beat the GOP’s choice. And it’s not like we could swap Biden out for someone else and then tag him back in if the new choice did poorly in polling and such.
Electability was such a huge concern in 2020 that we ended up in a competition between two old white men in the 2020 Dem primary.
Again, happy to know that this was wrong, but this is the line of thinking that was occurring back then.
Agreed, but also recall how greatly gerrymandering has affected this election. Of course you can’t directly gerrymander the presidential election, but the gerrymandering of Congressional seats and State legislature seats, governorships, etc has had a trickle-up effect, essentially. (E.g. laws passed in the name of preventing voter fraud that make it harder to vote and reduce turnout, increasing the odds that a State will swing for the GOP in the presidential election, as per https://www.npr.org/2020/11/08/932880774/how-gerrymandering-efforts-fit-into-2020-presidential-election )