Key quotes:
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with President Biden Thursday night to relay the sentiments of the House Democratic Caucus regarding his reelection bid, as concerns grow within the ranks about the incumbent’s ability to beat former President Trump in November.
The meeting — revealed in a letter to colleagues Friday morning — came after Jeffries spoke with a large swath of House Democrats in the two weeks since last month’s debate, which prompted concerns about Biden’s viability at the top of the presidential ticket. . The meeting took place after Biden’s high-stakes press conference that evening, a source familiar told The Hill.
Jeffries said he passed along the “full breadth” of thoughts he heard within his caucus.
I can only speak for myself; I never said that.
I think there’s a fair argument that the Democrats kept the extent of his oldness a secret through the primaries which they should not have done.
Are you aware that they’re in a dead even heat among registered voters (according to the polls that are garbage, but, that’s what the polls say), and that the ratio of registered voters who will turn into actual voters in the election is quantitatively way higher among the Democrats?
It’s way more complex than just that for several reasons, and definitely not a reason to relax with so much on the line (or automatically discount the idea of replacing him), but the bottom line “can he?” answer right now is yes. I’m aware that the media narrative is that it’s not. Why are you saying he can’t beat Trump?
Yeah, because Trump makes good decisions in a crisis and communicates clearly and decisively and never makes gaffes.
Biden’s press conference included coherent adult answers to a bunch of policy questions, and also some awful facepalming gaffes. If that means we need to disqualify him from the presidency, we need to fire Trump into the sun.
he won the 2020 election by squeaking out a win in 4 states that had less than or around 20k votes (compared to ~3 million voters.) That’s literally a rounding error. If he had lost any 3 states of PA, GA, AZ, or CO. and while the margins were a bit better we can add WI and MI to that list of questionable states.
Trump and his goons have had 4 years to pull out everything that stopped them from taking those states. They’ve doubled, trippled and quadrupled down on the rhetoric, whipping up their base; they’ve gone rampant on supressing minority voters, gerrymandering and generally just fucking up democracy; and SCOTUS is doing everything in it’s power to help, too, what with declaring immunity for things, intercedeing and delaying trial proceedings.
Meanwhile Biden is loosing votes from americans who are muslims because of his ardent support Israel as they prosecute a genocidal campaign in gaza.
Michigan, for example, 100k people voted ‘uncommitted’ instead of supporting biden or another primary opponent. These are people voting in a primary that was actively suppressed by the DNC because “Don’t primary the incumbent” bullcrap. To put this in perspective, Biden won Michigan in 2020 with ~150k votes to spare
in WI, 48k people voted 'other in the primary. in 2020, Biden won WI by 20.6k votes
Further, He’s losing votes on immigration (because boy did he run to the right on that reform…); he’s losing votes on the economy (because I’m pretty sure the NATO news conference was the first time he actually awknowledged common people are still hurting rather than “hey the [rich people’s yacht money] is fine”…
And now, we’re seeing that he can’t keep the names of his VP and presumptive opponent straight. Which. yes. That’s actually a big deal in terms of being able to do the job of president. Communicating clearly and concisely is a vital skill. same with Zelennsky and Putin. you can keep excusing it if you want. but it keeps happening. And the reality is because they quashed the primary, now is the time we get to see him really start campaigning.
The question is not whether Biden is better than trump. Nobody here is arguing (so far as I can see, at least,) that Trump is okay. He’s a convicted felon, he’s a proven rapist. He’s a liar, a cheat, and corrupt, violent asshole. Nobody is arguing that Trump is preferable to Biden.
The question is whether Biden can beat trump, and right now, we’re not seeing that. in the nato speech, I think the only two things that were leaving good impressions was the anger over kids dying… and finally recognizing that yeah, the “economy” is doing great but average americans are struggling.
Taken in isolation, sure. yes. one gaff doesn’t mean anything. People make mistakes. it happens. Biden is consistently making these gaffs. The reality is that Trump’s not running on a policy platform. He’s running on a platform composed entirely of hate, insults, and belittlement. Policy is good, don’t get me wrong. But Biden isn’t going to win on policy.