He could have just walked off stage.

But he couldn’t help himself, just one more, and what a whopper of a sound bite.

It’s almost like there’s a lesson in here about Joe Biden not knowing when to quit.

That one was the best one. I thought his answer though to the question about letting Harris take over the ticket if she was polling better was awful. I’m sure most of the ink will be spilled over Vice President trump and “listen to him” but that’s a simple flub and a poorly delivered quip.

We are being told, and I really do believe, that a second trump term could bring about a fascist takeover, project 2025 is legitimately frightening and the Supreme Court seems eager to make this happen.

Saying that he wouldn’t go for who had the best shot he’d only step away if he knew for certain he would lose because of some nebulous “only I can finish the job here” is straight ego tripping.

Someone else has a better shot at saving our very democracy and Biden would bet it all on Biden because he thinks Biden is singularly capable of doing… something. No idea what. And that’s more important to him which is fucking wild

Here’s an actual lawyer doing analysis of the dissent from an actual justice. Maybe you should watch it and learn what the decision actually says about official acts

https://youtu.be/MXQ43yyJvgs?si=ZLIXDxQBJjaYEfyS

Remember when they served him a softball on abortion and somehow he managed to change the subject to an immigrant killing a white woman. Fucking insane

Back in 2016 the voters actually weren’t super excited about Biden either.

Biden did pretty badly in the first 3 primaries

Feb 3rd in Iowa he came in 4th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, and Warren.

Feb 11th in New Hampshire he came in 5th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren.

Feb 22nd in Nevada he came in 3rd place behind Sander and Warren.

After these pretty awful results there was a brief period when Sanders was considered the front runner and the DNC shit a brick. You might recall Chris Matthews on MSNBC speculating wildly about a Sanders presidency meaning “executions in Central Park” that was February 8th.

Biden was thrown a life line though by Jim Clyborn who strongly supported him and gave him his first victory in South Carolina on February 29th. A state that would go on to vote trump on Election Day.

This strong showing though was enough for the DNC to see a way to have a moderate candidate win the primary. If they could get the moderate candidates, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Biden to stop splitting that voting block they could stop a more progressive candidate like Sanders or Warren from taking the nomination. Internally the DNC feared that a more progressive candidate would win the primary and lose in the general and wanted a safer option.

The day before Super Tuesday when 15 states would hold their primaries, the more moderate candidates reached an agreement. Buttigieg and Klobuchar announced they would drop out of the race and throw their support behind Biden. In the days before these announcement polling showed Sanders likely to win a plurality of the Super Tuesday delegates. After the moderate candidates lined up behind Biden he won 10 of the 15 contests, losing California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont to Sanders and American Samoa to Bloomberg.

Buttigieg would be rewarded with his current position as Secretary of Transportation and Klobuchar would end up Chair of the Senate Rules Committee (although it’s less clear how much that was because of her dropping out).

With a victorious Super Tuesday the media rallied around Biden’s amazing reversal of fortune and the Chris Matthews of the world finally had a light at the end of the tunnel for the horrors of a Sanders presidency, line up behind Joe.

An interesting foot note is that of the states holding primaries on Super Tuesday, of the 10 that went for Biden, 6 (7 if you count Maine but I wouldn’t) would go on to vote for trump on Election Day, Alabama, Arkansas, 1 of 4 of Maine’s votes, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. All the states carried by Sanders, except Utah, reliably voted for Biden in the general.

So the DNC, worried about losing the general election, rallied their moderate candidates around Biden, who was losing fairly badly. His overperformance in states that would ultimately vote Republican ended up changing the narrative enough that he became presumptive nominee status on the eyes of the media. This status became generally accepted on April 8th when Sanders pulled out of the race, but you can find the media pushing this in March

I find it interesting that it’s always the “adults in the room” aka “the people in power” and their allies that run to the favorite news outlet and let you know “oh it’s far far too late to put anyone else in power.”

Really? I mean maybe, but also let’s not pretend like the DNC and Biden campaign and all their operatives are just neutral observers opining about the objective logistics.

In any other election year you wouldn’t have a candidate before the convention, so somehow it’s not too late in all those elections. And what exactly do we need all the time for? No one ever seems to say why it’s too late, just take it on faith that it’s too late.

If they replaced Biden it’s not like they would have to start from scratch. They have raised funds and they have staffers and campaign offices, as long as you don’t actively dismantle that election infrastructure I’m sure some enterprising intern can find the call script and strike through “Biden” and write in the new candidates name.

It’s not like they would pick a candidate with 0 name recognition, the person would have to be someone in the party they think could win. So it’s not like you need some massive lead time so people can get to know the candidate.

You toss that infrastructure to a younger candidate and what’s the actual thing they won’t be able to wrangle in time?

While I believe in common sense gun control I think that one thing people might miss when comparing America to Finland or Sweden is just how brutal America can be.

America is an interesting country, if you can stay on the gainful employment ladder you can have a lot of creature comforts and for a few people they get to go up the ladder and have a really nice life.

That ladder though is dangling over the mouth of a volcano and there are more ways to fall off then anyone wants to admit. There’s also a ton of people just barely hanging on.

Easy access to guns is a problem, but the fact that so many Americans are so crushed by the system we live under that violence and deadly violence are things people routinely turn to is also a massive problem. For a lot of working poor the system can feel a lot like running on a perpetual treadmill stuck at full speed. We retooled our economy towards service and knowledge jobs, a lot of people in that service industry make just enough money to scrape by.

There is not a single state in the nation where minimum wage affords a 2 bedroom apartment

So you have a large number of people that spend the vast majority of their time working difficult jobs rife with customer abuse. They earn just enough money to afford a place to stay and food (and a cellphone so people can sneer at them and say, oh you have a cellphone so you can’t be struggling). Mix that with a big pile of guns and violence is bound to happen.

We can take away the guns but I suspect Americans have the ingenuity to find other ways to do violence against each other.