04

Wednesday's Most Active Threads

by Jeff Steele last modified Jul 05, 2024 08:58 AM

Yesterday's topics with the most engagement included President Biden considering whether to drop out of the campaign (or not), dating a MAGA, Kamala Harris for president, and things you wish you had known about traveling.

Yesterday's most active threads were again dominated by political topics, even when the topics were not in the political forum. The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Biden weighing whether to drop out", and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a New York Times article that currently reports that President Joe Biden has told allies that he understands that he must quickly convince voters that he is up to the job if he is to salvage his presidential campaign. This article originally said that Biden had talked to these allies about dropping out. While the current version of the article contains a quote from Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, denying that claim, the claim itself is missing. The article provides no information about why the original claim was removed or even any notice that it has been dropped from the article. After New York Times reporters tweeted out the claim that Biden had discussed dropping out, Biden campaign officials strongly pushed back saying that they had only been given 7 minutes to respond to the report and would have denied it then if they had had time. The upshot is that this thread is based on an allegation that has been removed by the newspaper and rejected by both campaign and White House officials. The discussion in the thread is mostly about who would take Biden's position at the top of the ticket. The most obvious choice is Vice President Kamala Harris. Legally, the campaign money raised by the Biden-Harris campaign can only be used by Biden or Harris. Nevertheless, in this thread, there is strong opposition to Harris. Posters are concerned that she is not popular and that her weaknesses can easily be exploited. Some posters argue that she should be removed as the vice presidential candidate, but that would mean that another campaign would have to start from zero in terms of money. Other posters suggest that she remain as the vice presidential candidate, but someone else be selected to run for the presidency. According to campaign finance experts, that arrangement would legally be a new campaign and could not access the current Biden-Harris money. Realistically, Biden and Harris are the only two candidates. Personally, I don't understand the opposition to Harris. Yes, we can all think of our dream candidates, but none of those are realistic options (unless either Biden or Harris is your dream candidate). Biden and Harris are both currently polling about the same against former president, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. I would think that Harris has a much bigger upside. Moreover, Harris's writ as candidate would be fairly simple. She would only need to support reproductive rights, support gun control, demand that corporations lower prices, and attack Trump on a long list of topics. Beating Trump does not require sophistication. It mostly requires demonstrating that you are not Trump and that you still maintain significant cognitive capability. What would be really damaging to Democrats is a long, drawn-out, process to determine whether Biden will stay or go. If he is going to step down, he needs to do it quickly. If he is not going to, all the Democrats calling for him to move aside need to shut up. Democratic infighting at this point is really not needed.

read more...