That one Biden snowflake has started the avalanche. If President Biden can take any solace from the most difficult personal and professional decision of his life, it’s that his selfless and patriotic decision has lit a fire under the Democratic party that will burn Trump and the GOP to a cinder in November.
It’s all over but the shouting, and most of that may well end up being a whisper. Here’s just a brief, and most likely incomplete update as to what has happened in the last seven hours since President biden announced that he was dropping out of the race;
- The DNC announced that in the first six hours since Biden’s announcement, they had raised more than $30 million in small money donations, on track for a record one day haul
- Act Blue, the Democratic small money donation juggernaut for all Democratic candidates announced that it had raised more than $47m million in small money donations in the first six hours for the presidential campaign, again on track for a record
- In the last seven hours, scores of Democratic congressional members and Senators have come out endorsing Harris for President
- More importantly, several Democratic Governors, including every potential convention opponent, have all come out and endorsed Harris for President
- several states, including TN, LA, and three more had elected Biden delegates have already gone public pledging their delegates to Harris
The mutiny is over. With every serious Democratic floor contender already endorsing Harris, she is on a glide slope to the damn near unanimous consensus vote on the first floor ballot. This is a stunning kumbaya party moment that I honestly don’t think that either Biden or the DNC could have dared to hope would happen.
And the sudden and almost complete unanimity of the conversion is like a gift from God for the party. If this current momentum of unity starts to spread downwards, and any plumber will tell you that shit flows downhill, if the unity spreads out to the grassroots organizers and activists, then they get a three week head start on the convention to hit the streets. Canvas neighborhoods, knock on doors, phone banking, and taking the word to the street.
The Democratic convention is going to be a blowout event. A combination lovefest for Biden’s 50 yhears of public service, followed by an official passing of the torch to the new, younger, more progressive generation. The theme will be positive, forward reaching, progressive, and nationally unifying. Trump came out of the RNC with no appreciable bounce. I’m betting that the Democrats get a handsome bounce out of theirs.
This has been one of the most painful months as a Democrat that I’ve seen since the Chicago convention of 1968. But unlike 1968, which led to a fatally fractured Democratic party limping out of Chicago to electoral defeat, this convention feels like it’s going to be like a high speed Japanese bullet train leaving the station. Keep punching, and keep the faith.
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
I’m all in for Kamala Harris, I think she will make a great President…but somebody PLEASE tell her to ease up on the hand movements when speaking, distracting! It’s bad enough we have to look at Trump play his air accordion and his other stupid hand movements. Go Kamala, kick some DJT ass in November!
Let’s face some past facts: 1) Hillary Clinton would have already been president if Russia, Comey, and the MSM, and trump hadn’t cheated her out of the election. 2) Hillary was also screwed by a vestigial holdover from a racist system called the Electoral college. If this were a true democracy she would have won by 3 million votes. 3 million citizens who stood in line yet their votes didn’t count but 77,000 across 3 states did. 3)Like Kamala, she was immensely more qualified than Trump. 4) Despite all this, she graciously accepted defeat whereas Trump has led a violent insurrection and spent the past years continuing to spread lies which undermine our democracy. There are other things to be said, but Hillary deserves some credit for rising above her personal injustice, which demonstrated a woman in a high public office showed more strength, dignity, and support for our democracy than Trump and the gop EVER HAS OR EVER WILL. She plowed the ground for the harvest to come in my opinion. Maybe the country was waiting for payback. It appears that a tsunami is building to defeat the nazis once again, except this time it will be done with ballots not bullets!
Technically, there’s a very good chance that Hillary would NOT have won in 2016, even with the popular vote as the only method. Remember, there is NO FEDERAL LAW stating the person “with the most votes” wins; the standard is the person who wins “the majority” of the vote. And Hillary (just like Bill before her) did NOT have a majority of the popular vote. She received only 48.2% of the vote; that is NOT a “majority”–a plurality, yes, but not a majority. (Unlike the 1876 election, when Democrat Samuel Tilden did receive an outright majority of the popular vote–50.9%–but lost due to some electoral shenanigans after Republican Rutherford Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction.)
And, you can whine all you want about the Electoral College and it’s being unfair or “racist” (and, you really need to look at just how NOT “racist” the history is–after all, slaves WERE counted for population/electoral purposes, albeit that “3/5 of a person” deal, but, bear in mind, if slaves had counted as *full* people, the slave states would’ve had even more electoral power; the alternative, as suggested by the “free” states, was to completely disallow any slaves being counted as people for census or electoral purposes) but it is THE process to select a President until an amendment either abolishes it or reforms it (personally, I’d rather see the House enlarged to more accurately represent the people AND establish the Maine/Nebraska system for ALL states).
Sorry. United we are not. You vote for Harris I’m writing in Joe.
Joe you are now a Trump voter and don’t kid yourself…YOU ARE now supporting nazis. By the way Biden supports her and has all along. It’s no time to be a phucking traitor unless you already are in that camp and just here to spread divisive shit.
Joe, pay attention to Scott. Any abstention or write-in on so crucial an issue hurts our candidate’s cause just as much as a vote for TFG. Nader votes queered it for AL Gore in 2000; abstentions and Jill Stein votes in 2016 were a factor in Hilary Clinton’s loss.
We’re all upset over the way President Biden was treated by party elites and megadonors, but taking it out on VP Harris’s campaign is ABSOLUTELY the wrong way to go. She needs EVERY vote we can get her to decisively defeat TFG and Project 2025.
President Biden came to recognize that it is more important to win the election than lead a campaign crippled by poor funding, and he knew that VP Harris was well qualified to “finish the job” and had good grassroot as well as megadonor support, so he made the best decision for the party AND the country. We know he has the intelligence, vision and know-how to do it, but people were doubting his stamina, and the signs are unfortunately there.
I emailed comments supporting his candidacy to the White House, the NY State Dem Party, and one or two other groups that escape me at the moment. I, too, am disappointed at how this worked out, but we have to work for what we have, and that’s Kamala Harris.
As I wrote in a comment in an earlier PZ post, IMHO history will recognize Joe Biden as one of our all-time Top 10 Chief Executives, while TFG will be battling it out with James Buchanan for the anchor slot.
Think of it – three and a half years of cleaning up TFG’s many-faceted mess (the pandemic, the.economy, foreign relations, overseas conflicts) while dealing with an obstructionist opposition party as well as threats to our country and way of life from across the world – most of us would have crumbled under the stress long ago, but Joe still has the spirit and desire to “finish the job”. HOW FI-YOU-KING AMAZING IS THAT?????
THANK GOD FOR JOE BIDEN!!!
There’s one group of very important people we didn’t hear from or hear anything about the past few weeks. I’m betting a handful of journalists did do some poking around expecting some grassroots operatives joining in the piling on Joe Biden’s canidacy. There are what, five hundred field offices give or take throughout the country? Staffed with core solid professional staff and thousands of volunteers who’ve been out there for months knocking on doors, making calls and organizing phone banks with some efforts going on to get people trained up for the big push after the convention. And recruiting MORE volunteers. There were signs since the last debate THESE people, the ones in the trenches said two things. Yes, they wish Biden was younger, but more importantly that they thought the debate was just a bad night. That once the public became fully engaged Biden would win. AND some resentments of bigwigs paying attention to polls and donors instead of them.
You know what? I think the folks running the Biden/Harris campaign WERE staying in touch with these “low level” to most establishment types) and hearing what I just said. But elected Democrats and major donors didn’t want to hear it. A LOT of the major donor class also wanted Harris tossed overboard too, even before that Saturday conference call where so many were OFFENDED that she didn’t kiss their asses and, because at that point had no inkling that in 24 hours the President would step aside (and so firmly endorse her) and it appears she shut down any attempts to hold a “Joe must go” discussion. These are rich people who at their corporations are used to getting their asses kissed. Or at least being given tangible deference. What they are NOT used to is someone just as smart as any of them (albeit not their narrows fields) and tougher. They didn’t like someone who had Harris’ political and literal prosecutor chops using those skills to control things and keep steering the conversation away from the one they’d wanted to have.
A little while ago I read and heard a bit of rumbling. THESE asshats aren’t at all happy that the Party is responding just the way the President asked us to. Organically choosing to jump on board the Harris train. THEY wanted control of some process where they would make up the rules and change them at will to get some candidate (NOT Harris) they wanted. All these endorsements including from most (if not all) the potential names they had in mind plus so many other Democrats, State Party chairs in four states I know for sure about saying they did a quick check and all their delegates were now pledged to Harris, and this sudden flow of small dollar donations which might well top 100 million sometime tomorrow morning has to have these big money donors REALLY pissed. Oh, they are seeing quite clear that rank and file voters who mostly never abandoned Biden have done what he wanted. Seamlessly switch support to Harris, AND put their money where their mouths are. Elected Democrats both on the Hill and in Goverenor’s mansions didn’t wait around for all that money to be reported, on their own they started endorsing Harris!
Why, those rich people can see we have dropped trou to both moon them and flash a double-bird. What will be intesting is how they react. Are they going to piss in the soup and toss turds into the punchbowl or accept they aren’t the power brokers they thought they were and open up their wallets again. If they do it’s not like they and legislation they want will get frozen out but they will find themselves having difficulty getting an appointment or getting their calls taken. Stuff they want will get bottled up in committee and the price of moving forward worthy stuff will mean not blocking stuff they don’t want with donations to GOPers, or putting up bucks for things progressives want.
Hey, they love and have made out like bandits thanks to Citizen’s United. It legalized political bribery to the point it’s wasted time and effort to prosecute it 99.9% of the time. Well, sooner or later the music ends and it’s time to pay the piper. Pay up motherfuckers!
As we saw in Britain and France. the 1% found out that 99% beats 1%.
Every time.
It IS called the Democratic Party.
These fools screwed the pooch so badly they need to be called the f*ck-wad party from here on out. I hope that catches on and sends progressives of all stripes out of the party to form their own. It is past time to teach the operatives of the party a very important and valuable lesson and losing every f*cking race up and down the ballot ought to do it.
That is going to be my message to everyone I speak to from now on until this worthless p.o.s. party is destroyed.
Here’s hoping she mobilizes the younger voters, women, and Black voters. She will be pretty unstoppable, if that happens.
I truly believe she will. She will definately kick the kr*p out of trump to the point that he won’t want to sell our souls to the otherside anymore. With any luck if he’s not in prison he will disappear.
I stuck with Biden to the end, but now that the new die is cast, I’m thinking about the comparison that has been drawn betwen this campaign and 1968. There are strong parallels, but with Harris as the candidate I now see the dynamic of 2024 as actually the exact opposite of 1968. Because in 1968, when LBJ withdrew his candidacy and the party supported his VP Hubert Humphrey, that was real kick in the teeth to the youth and the black vote, ending with the disastrous Chicago convention where lots of youth were literally kicked in the teeth by the brutal Chicago cops. Also, LBJ withdrew because his leadership of the Vietnam war had turned out to be a failure, as revealed by the Tet offensive of February 1968. LBJ did not even attend he convention, he was holed up at his ranch in TX. And that SOB Nixon won the election and the war continued another seven years.
Biden, on the other hand, has had a very successful presidency, despite great obstacles. And by withdrawing and endorsing his Vice President, he has only increased his stature and will energize the youth vote. As for the black vote, he already had that, but what about the black and hispanic YOUTH vote?
So yes, there are negative aspects to Harris’s candidacy like mysogyny and racism, but the youth and party unity factors are emerging as new positives. in any case, mysogyny and racism are Trump’s brands; he has worked all these years for that, and the main customers for them have long since joined his cult and are not and never were potential Democratic voters.
On the other hand, not all Trump voters are racist. If you recall, Obama won over white voters we might not have thought he could win over — yet some of them, some who had even voted for Obama twice, later voted for Trump. With the right message (such as better employment and health care) perhaps they can be won back. Here’s how a commentator on DU explained this in 2016:
https://eu-west-3.democraticunderground.com/12512640638
The mutiny is over, the party is united and the press will faun all over Vice President Harris and dis orange menace for being old. hmmmmm
Not hardly carol. The msm will still get down on their knees and blow von shitzinpants while babbling on about how un-electable Ms. Harris is. The f*ck-wad party didn’t shoot themselves in the foot, they blew their whole damned leg off this time.
The f*ck-wad party, oops, I mean democrats, are all united after blowing the 2024 election and giving it to von shitzinpants and probably every other magat down ballot. I’m thrilled.
I’ve been saying this for a long time but it’s way past time for progressives to break away from these morons. There is too little difference between the f*ck-wads and the ‘pubes , too many out of touch party big-wigs thinking they know what’s best for the party when they likely don’t know who to lace their own shoes. Point is, I’m done with them. Every last mother-f*cking one of them. This time they went too far. Might as well have just advertised they wanted to give this election to von shitzi from the start.
Now when I say I’m embarrassed to be an american, it is as much because of the f*ck-wad party as the magat party. Screw them, this country, and everything in it.
Joseph clearly you aren’t black or have black children or you wouldn’t support valuing a person as 3/5 and call it whining. It’s phucking EVIL and anyone who intimates somehow it was OK and the system left over is somehow OK needs to review your own racism. I find a lot of white folks who believe they aren’t prejudiced but deep down ARE.