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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Yes, the primaries may be a huge joke, but they at least have the veneer of democracy over them. Primaries are formal elections run by each state, so there are laws to follow regarding how delegates are applied.

    Here’s what I think now: I’m sure Barack Obama watched that debate, and came to the same conclusion we all did. If anyone has Biden’s ear on this, it’s Obama. Obama needs to get on the phone with Joe, and have a heart-to-heart about how fucking devastating that thing was. He should point out how much damage was done by RBG not retiring when it was her time to do so. I’m sure he had those discussions directly with her in 2015.

    (Edited to add: according to the NYT, Obama’s not going there

    “Bad debate nights happen,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/politics/biden-democrats-nominee-2024-election.html

    I still have confidence that Joe can do the job, but not so much that he is electable anymore. I hope I’m wrong, and in November, if he is on the ballot I will still vote for him, and not regret it.

    In retrospect, maybe we should have had a Primary debate after all.


  • The biggest argument against removing Biden from the ticket against his will is that we went through a bunch of primaries, and he has won enough delegates to be the nominee. For the party that claims to be about protecting democracy, it would be a stretch to tell all those Primary voters “Hey, guess what? Your vote doesn’t really count” so directly.

    But, there are contingency plans for a reason. If Biden’s doctors decide he has a sudden case of chronic not-gonna-win-itis that is affecting his health, and he gets a sudden medical diagnosis that forces him from the race (and the Presidency), there are precisely two people who can take over without the Democratic Party totally abandoning the democratic process:

    1. the newly minted 47th President. Kamala Harris. While she did not get any delegates herself, as Biden’s VP she shares the ticket and would take over the Presidency once he backs out.

    2. Dean Phillips , who as far as I know is the only other candidate to get any Primary delegates. No, “uncommitted” doesn’t count.

    Nobody else can swoop in and take over, because they have no legitimate relationship to the Biden ticket, or to the primaries.






  • It’s all statistics. It means that if we ran the 2024 election millions of times in his model, Trump would win more than Biden. But we will only get one shot, so the number is kind of useless.

    I was watching the Mets game this weekend on ESPN, and they were ahead of the Cubs by a few runs. ESPN has a tracker that estimates “Win Probability” and their model gave the Mets a 75% chance to win. But have you seen the Mets this year? They’ve blown a bunch of games late. Every Mets fan watching knew that their bullpen wasn’t good enough to merit that rating.

    The Mets did end up winning that game. (Thanks, Grimace.) But that doesn’t change the fact that no matter what math is behind their win prediction model, it just doesn’t feel right to apply statistics like that to one-off events.