#joe biden young

[rightnewshindi]

रूस की पोलैंड पर हमले की आशंका के बीच जो बाइडेन से मिले राष्ट्रपति डूडा, जानें अमेरिका ने क्या कहा

रूस की पोलैंड पर हमले की आशंका के बीच जो बाइडेन से मिले राष्ट्रपति डूडा, जानें अमेरिका ने क्या कहा

Washington News: रुस-यूक्रेन युद्ध के बीच पोलैंड के राष्ट्रपति और प्रधानमंत्री के संयुक्त अमेरिका दौरे ने दुनिया का ध्यान आकर्षित किया है. पॉलिश राष्ट्रपति ने यहां यूरोप के भविष्य पर बड़ी चिंता जताई. उन्होंने कहा कि अ��र पुतिन यूक्रेन जीत गए तो वो अपने युद्ध का दायरा बढ़ा सकते हैं. राष्ट्रपति आंद्रेज डूडा ने पोलैंड और अन्य देशों पर संभावित रुसी अक्रमण को लेकर चिंता जताई, जिस पर हिटलर के हमले ने…

[philsmeatylegss]

Daily reminder that in 1980, only 36% of eligible voters between ages 18-20 and 43% of eligible voters between ages 21-24 voted. In 1984, 37% for 18-20 and 44% for 21-24.

Meanwhile, in 1980, 65% of eligible voters aged 65+ voted. In 1984, 68% voted.

Republicans have a history of relying on young voters to not vote. They purposefully make young people feel discouraged; like no matter what, it won’t make a difference.

I don’t care if your state tends to always vote with one party. Get out and vote.

Especially in swing states, every single vote matters. Every. Single. Vote.

Mail in your vote. Go during your lunch break. Plan to take the day off. Your vote matters. In fact, it matters so much that people will purposefully try to sabotage you voting.

Here’s a guide on how to register to vote and how to check if you are registered. Plan ahead. Make sure you know how to mail in your vote or where voting booths will be.

Republicans have been so flippant towards Gen Z because of our historical hesitance to vote.

We have the power to make things at least somewhat okay.

I have seen so many people from Gen z saying voting for Kamala is hopeless because she’s a woman of color, citing past elections as proof.

That discouragement is purposeful. It’s been used for decades. And it’s been working.

This website is relatively young. Especially with a lot of older Gen z, including me, where this is their first or second election that they are eligible for.

Don’t listen to those saying voting is pointless. That there is no way Kamala will win so who cares? It’s absolutely okay to be frustrated and or wary, but don’t let that keep you from taking action.

Young voters are the key. Start planning on your vote now. Take it seriously. Your voice matters. Your vote matters.

[lil-als]

Living veeps as text posts I guess

[sotomato06]

Women in Politics

I know that his election was devastating for a billion and a half reasons, but one thing that occurred to me was how much of an example this is going to set for girls interested in Politics, or any position of power in general. Like, the Trump campaign's have shown that no matter how qualified the woman is, no matter how smart, likable, or strong, they will always be second best to any man. Two of the most qualified women in politics, who had years of experience lost to a bigoted dumbass with a big mouth and bigger pockets. Harris and Clinton worked their whole lives to reach the positions they were in before their campaigns and some fuckup who just decided one day to run for president. And he still fucking won. Twice. Because he is a man and his opponents weren't. Just look at what happened when we pitted another old white dude against him. It shows just how deep seeded a lot of the sexism and misogyny in the country is and shows us just how far we still have to go. We're on the stage, but the judges are still rigged.

[the-beacons-of-minas-tirith]

CONHEADS OUR TIME IS NOW!!! 🗳️🗳️🗳️

[sophies-junkyard]

This whole election just got flipped upside down, and I know that’s scary. But I also hope that this MOBILIZES people. We don’t have to have a geriatric president anymore. We have an obvious replacement for Biden in the race. Like… I know she’s not perfect. Everybody sucks I know I know I know. But I feel a tiny bit of…. Hope? I mean in a choice between Kamala and Trump the answer is So. Fucking. Obvious.

GO VOTE.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Harris and Legitimacy: Don't hate the player, hate the game.

A lot of this is inspired by comments made by people I respect, both in my personal life such as those made by a good friend over dinner who is an avowed leftist, as well as some public-ish figures like Justin Robert Young of Politics! Politics! Politics! and Jennifer Briney of Congressional Dish. Two thinkers I have immense respect for but I think have made some lame takes about Harris being "coronated."

Your problem with Kamala Harris is structural not personal.

Warning: This gets windy. It clocked in at about 3100 words and 7 pages in a Google doc.

TL/DR: We have a complexity and opacity problem when it comes to how elections work and I don't actually know what we should do or expect when a Presidential nominee drops out in July, but for all sorts of reasons a Primary "do over" is unrealistic and massively problematic. Which is why candidates who are likely to drop out in July because they're increasingly incapable of campaigning and deeply unpopular shouldn't run in the first place because once they run, there's actually no good way to stop them if they have an incumbency advantage. There's no "remove your candidate before its a problem" button under breakable glass, and I don't know how we'd build such a button into the system in a way that wouldn't feel more undemocratic.

I do not love the way that Harris became the nominee. However, I don’t love it not because I think it's wholly illegitimate or undemocratic. Her not having directly faced voters in a primary at the top of the ticket is not wholly undemocratic.

No, not because of the super lame excuse that she was on the ticket as VP.

That’s why she’s the legitimate nominee from a legal and party rules standpoint. Because party rules and election laws ensured that it couldn’t play out any other way.

At least not without Biden having dropped out much, much earlier.

The principle reason for this is actually fairly reasonable - if you accept our electoral machinery “as is” which I do not encourage you to do so but you go to war with the electoral process you have not the electoral process you want. We absolutely should debate reforms after this cycle because what Biden did was undemocratic and unconscionable - it's just that Kamala Harris should not be punished for accepting reality as it is rather than waving a wand and remaking the entire process to be more in keeping with what you or I or Ezra Klein would want.

The principal reason that it had to be Harris is that there is no ironclad, bad faith actor resistant mechanism to spin up a brand new primary election after one is already essentially complete. 

The reason for this is two fold. First is that because this is a state by state process rather than a national one, each state sets conditions for qualifying to be on the ballot and sets deadlines for fulfilling those conditions so there is adequate time to plan the election: recruit and train staff who run the voting sites, print ballots, make sure voting machines are working properly - and whatever else.

There are 50 Democratic Primaries, not 1 and Democratic Party rules can’t legally bind actual lawmakers

This is where it gets weird! Because we are told the parties are essentially NGOs - private clubs - that make their own rules for who gets to be a candidate or not and when primaries are even held. 

Which is true! 

Sort of. 

State elected officials are not beholden to the parties and its state governments who are actually operating the voting process itself. This how you get situations like New Hampshire very nearly not having its delegates seated at the convention because it held its primary election earlier than the position in the schedule dictated by the Democratic National Committee. 

So the Democratic National Committee attempted to force New Hampshire to vote later while New Hampshire has a state law mandating that it have the first primary election. Which the state technically has the right to do because the DNC is not actually a federal authority, it’s a private organization remember? But the DNC also threatened to refuse to allow New Hampshire’s votes to count since the DNC decides how to pick its candidates for President.

Now this story has a happy ending because New Hampshire’s delegates were seated, but only after the New Hampshire state Democratic Party (a legally autonomous but theoretically subordinate entity to the Democratic national party) held its own separate vote later in the election cycle which did count. Incidentally Joe Biden was the only one on the ballot. 

So technically because it felt it should have more authority than a state elected government, the Democratic National Party caused New Hampshire to run an election that didn’t actually count in an act of ill advised pettiness and micromanagement (and in what was widely assessed to be an attempt to minimize the chances of any of Biden’s challengers from getting any momentum by having the first few elections in states where Biden was unpopular with Democrats - see also the saga of Michigan & Uncommitted.)

Manufacturing Irregularity and Illegitimacy

Now I know what you’re saying, how does this anecdote help the argument that Harris’ candidacy isn’t undemocratic and illegitimate?

It sort of doesn’t, but I also want you to understand from a practical standpoint the problems that Biden caused by running again and then waiting practically until it was almost impossible for him to get his name off the ballot to drop out. The complexity and dubiousness of the primary process to begin with is why the only smooth and legally sound transition was to Harris.

The Democratic National Party could not force New Hampshire’s Republican controlled legislature to change its law requiring New Hampshire to hold its election first in any Presidential primary election. I am not defending the DNC’s attempt to threaten a state government into obeying its election calendar. I’m also not defending the New Hampshire legislature and its quest to go first come hell or highwater.

But do you think New Hampshire and other states would acquiesce to holding a “do over” primary for the Democrats? Do you think maybe they might engage in some legal chicanery? 

Let's say Republican controlled states refuse to allow a “do over” and the state parties hold privately funded and organized contests like New Hampshire did to get its delegates back. Might this provoke legal wrangling over whether the new nominee should be allowed ballot access to the general election? 

I’m not personally aware of any laws stating that the winner of a primary election in any particular state or nationally has to be the person who goes on the ballot for that party in the general election - that would be silly for a lot of reasons. Which is why Harris is able to become the new Democratic party nominee in the first place. Yet it's not inconceivable that some states might rush to try to change their election laws in the event of a more chaotic process. 

There were threats made and speculation of that happening even with Harris taking over as candidate. These threats ultimately don't seem to have manifested real world action, but don’t forget that in 2020 Trump went to court almost 80 times to dispute this or that aspect of the election process. It's now in our culture that the law is a tool you can wield to try to stop election results you don’t like or, failing that, poison the results so that while the election result may be honored legally, tens of millions of people wind up feeling like something was wrong.

Again, I am not defending our election methods, I am describing the context in which candidates are selected.

Trying to defend elections and voters against fraud

The second reason that there is no mechanism for a primary election “do over” is money. As I mentioned, the Democratic Party kinda, sorta jerked around New Hampshire voters and the state government. It engaged in a game of chicken wherein if New Hampshire’s Republican controlled legislature didn’t change its laws to delete the requirement that it go first in any Presidential Primary, then the delegates from that election wouldn’t be permitted to cast New Hampshire’s votes. Paid election workers had to be paid for their efforts, ballots had to be printed, voters had to vote. Time, effort, and money was expended for a contest that didn’t count.

Now imagine asking everyone to do it again.

What should have happened to the money the Biden - Harris campaign raised when Biden suspended his campaign is probably the critical question that I would pose to people who are cranky about Harris being “annointed.”

According to Forbes this is the scenario: 

Harris can use the money because she is part of the campaign. The VP can use the money if the President steps aside. There’s paperwork involved.

Now if being the VP should be disqualifying for automatically getting the money and the campaign machinery, this is absolutely a conversation we can have! 

Now worthwhile questions to ponder though are should this actually be disqualifying or should we care more about who the VP nominee is? Because we are technically voting both for a candidate and the person who will step in if, after winning, the President dies, is incapacitated, or resigns because of some sort of insurmountable scandal. All of which have historical precedents. Although it's possible Nixon will be the last President ever to resign because they committed what are empirically understood to be crimes and the general public was not okay with this.

If we think that the VP pick shouldn’t inherit the campaign operation and money if the Presidential nominee simply drops out rather than drops dead (and maybe not even then) then we do have to have the conversation of what happens to the money and the campaign operation? If the campaign has to be shut down and the balance of the money refunded to donors, then are we in effect handing the election to the opponent of the ex-nominee if this is a major party candidate we are talking about?

I think the argument made by many pundits in March of 2024 when Ezra Klein became the most prominent voice calling for Biden to drop out and the Dems to hold a modified Primary is that “no, the penalty from having to dismantle and rebuild the election machine around a new person is outweighed by lots of factors: 

The media taking to novelty and drama like catnip. 

The attention economy running wild. 

And what I think we can now describe as a “sugar high” that comes from replacing a certain to fail candidate with someone who, while not descended from heaven free of scandal or questionable policy stances and affectations, at least represents a different set of pros and cons and changes how we talk about the issues and candidates.

But that was also March. March!

Biden waited to drop out until July. When all of the Primaries had been held, all of the delegates awarded, and he was cruising to the nomination more or less solely on the basis that nobody who could give him a serious fight was willing to risk throwing down with the sitting President in a year where said President was up against Trump. If Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee, all bets are off. The Primary might have been a blood sport with Mitt Romney on the opposing side, but with Trump as the presumed nominee the risk aversion among Democrats was incredible and tragic to behold.

But it was also their risk to not take. You can’t just make people who could theoretically give the incumbent President a serious fight actually do it. And the rub is that I don’t know how to rejigger any sort of laws or formal Democratic party processes to make it so that running and losing is consequence free. 

I don’t know how to encourage more competitive elections when there’s an incumbent, other than a political culture that is A LOT thicker skinned and doesn’t gripe perpetually about being robbed when voters don’t do what they want. Why yes I am still irritated by a conversation with a friend who simultaneously thinks Harris is illegitimate because “nobody voted for her” but still to this day thinks it would be fine if a candidate won a primary with less than a majority because the liberals collectively had more votes overall but were splitting them too narrowly and that it was dirty pool for them to drop out and consolidate the vote.

Dropping out in July

So what do you do if the presumed nominee who (technically) won an (uncompetitive) primary in July?

In an ideal world the candidate should have seen the writing on the wall and never ran.

Failing that, they should have dropped out before the voting started.

But if they don’t?

There is no explicit mechanism to force someone out of the race before it’s started. There are all sorts of shenanigans that can be played with funding opponents, withholding funds, creating blacklists of people who aren’t allowed to work on campaigns if they work for person XYZ (ask AOC about the DNC kneecapping candidates who primary incumbents by trying to scare campaign staffers with “you’ll never work in this town again.” It was a whole thing.)

Despite the presumption of being dastardly oligarchs unaccountable to voters who just do what they want, the DNC actually can’t keep people from running as Democrats. Hell, RFK Jr. started as a Democrat. Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Manchin, and Krysten Sinema all have run as Democrats. Anybody can be a Democrat if they check the right box on a form. 

Same with the Republicans. The Republican establishment pulled every lever they had to try to stop Trump from being the nominee in 2016, but they didn’t have a big red button that says “you’re not a candidate anymore. Kick rocks” if that person can pull together the money, attention, and votes to be a viable candidate in the face of establishment opposition.

This is, incidentally, why the Dems originally wanted superdelegates: to override the voters if there were a Trumpian scenario where a candidate had less than a majority of the overall votes cast but the other candidates were splitting the opposition vote instead of consolidating around a candidate who would be palatable to the establishment, if not one of them.

Why Biden couldn’t give the money to someone else.

That Biden can’t give the money to another candidate, at least not in total, and has to donate it either to the national committee or refund it, is reasonably well discussed in the media. Why he couldn’t is less well discussed.

Because I haven’t seen it discussed, this is where I’m going to get very speculative.

I think it's a check against fraud. I think it may even be a check against the very thing people are accusing Biden and the Democrats of doing: pulling a fast one and changing candidates at the last minute. Except she was, for lack of a better word, Biden’s legal beneficiary should he decide he as an individual was out of the campaign.

But you could easily imagine a scenario much like the Dem 2020 Primary or the GOP 2016 Primary where, surprise! All the very popular but not popular enough candidates drop out and give not only their endorsements, but all of their money and campaign staff to their preferred candidate. We’d definitely be living in a different world if all the establishment Republicans had been able to transfer their cash and organizations to Mitt Romney.

I know a lot of people who may very well have walked away from electoralism entirely and never voted again if Klobuchar, Buttigieg et al. had been able to not just suspend their campaigns and clear the center left lane for Biden but also directly give him all of the money they’d raised.

Essentially what I’m talking about is longshots and badfaith candidates entering a race largely just to raise money, only to funnel it to another person late in the game.

Another possibility is out and out grifters. Which we already kind of know this happens, but in an exquisitely legal way that still sometimes manages to trip up otherwise very competent candidates who are taking advantage of their campaign donations to live a little more opulently and provide huge paydays for their friends and family. But as is, they have to spend the money and they have to spend it in ways that can be scrutinized by the Federal Electoral Commission. They can spend profligately but they have to save the receipts.

What they can’t do is just brazenly take the money and run.

Probably.

It’s not entirely clear to me to what degree if any there is a firewall between Trump’s re-election fund and Trump’s legal defense fund. There may be some sketchy legalese involved.

So by forcing Biden to either 1. Give the money to Harris. 2. Give the money to the DNC. 3. Refund the money; it keeps him somewhat above board and it minimizes the potential for an insincere grifter to fundraise, quit, and then use the money for whatever.

So where does that leave us?

I’m actually a bit at a loss for how to prevent another scenario like Biden dropping out in friggin’ July. This is if not literally than essentially unprecedented.

At the risk of repeating myself, ideally he should have never run again. I would hope that a future President facing dire prospects would not monopolize time and money this way or play stupid games with the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I would expect there would be pressure on such a hypothetical President not to do so. Yet I cannot rule out family and staffers with careers on the line gaslighting an increasingly out of touch or deeply arrogant President.

In an election year where until just two months ago now, both presumptive nominees of their Parties were the oldest candidates ever AND where one was nearly assassinated, we should take more care to scrutinize who is the VP pick. Because we are not just voting for President, we are voting for the backup President.

As for Harris inheriting all of this mess in July, I don’t love the circumstances, but at the same time I think we need to be much more introspective about Primaries - how they’re run, what they mean, the complicated dance between the national parties who technically have no direct legal authority over states and the states who can be coerced but not directly cowed by parties if the states feel like being obstreperous like New Hampshire. 

There’s all sorts of pain points that the Republicans may try to attack to sabotage the legally very smooth ascension of Harris to being the Presidential nominee, especially if it looks like she’s going to win. Those pain points and more would have been wielded against someone wholly separate from the Biden - Harris campaign as a legal matter. In the very best scenario, we are looking at an election where the Republicans will spend the next four years waving around their failed legal challenges like OJ Simpson’s bloody glove and creating a miasma of illegitimacy and rage around Harris’ presidency.

We have a complexity and an opacity problem when it comes to the election process. It's taken me too dang many words to explain up to this point in what I hope is plain enough English which makes it very prone to sabotage and very difficult for the average person to scrutinize carefully. And that is how you end up with a narrative in which Harris’ candidacy is undemocratic and illegitimate. But if it is, and I’m not actually saying it's not, then we should indict the system and ponder how to improve its ability to reliably serve up candidates who are selected democratically and are rich in legitimacy.

[plethoraworldatlas]

A week after "uncommitted" made a surprising showing against President Joe Biden in the Michigan primary, voters around the nation had a chance to weigh whether "no preference" was preferable to the incumbent president.

In Michigan's Democratic primary last week, over 100,000 voters cast their ballots as uncommitted, more than 13% of the total votes cast. The movement was put together by various politicians and community organizers of Arab and Muslim descent, and intended as an act of electoral protest against President Joe Biden's unconditional support of the Israeli military.

...

Coverage of the 'uncommitted' initiative has centered largely around the sentiments of Michigan's Arab and Muslim American population, which is one of the largest in the nation. But some observers thought Super Tuesday's Democratic primaries could provide an initial gauge of how deep discontent runs among other historically loyal Democratic voting blocs outside of Muslim and Arab Americans.

...

The large number of “uncommitted” ballots in Michigan shows Biden’s vulnerability in a swing state that could play a pivotal role in November. Biden defeated Trump by just 154,000 votes in 2020. (Uncommitted Michigan had 101k votes)

...

14.6% in Minnesota Democratic primary

...

10.5% in North Carolina Democratic primary

Biden won the Democratic race in the diverse swing state of North Carolina with 89.5% of the vote. Meanwhile, the "uncommitted" option took 10.5% of the vote with nearly 39,900 voters.

...

7.3% in Colorado Democratic primary

The "Noncommitted Delegate" option received 7.3% of the vote with a total of 35,674 as Biden came out victorious with 84.7% of votes.

...

3.9% in Iowa Democratic caucus

...

3.3% in Tennessee Democratic Primary

With a total of 2,215 votes, the "uncommitted" option received 3.3% of the vote in the Tennessee Democratic Primary. Biden received 96.7% of the vote.

...

5.1% in Alabama Democratic primary

...

11.2% in Massachusetts Democratic primary

The no preference option took 11.2% of votes in Massachusetts Democratic primary with a total 8,569 votes.

===============================

The math of these bigger numbers plus Michigan alone puts the Uncommitted vote at 187,331, not counting the smaller races from other states. Again, Biden only beat Trump in 2020 by 154k. Uncommitted votes from a few of the State Primaries that have already been held.

[gamer2002]

The notion that these outlets [CNN, MSNBC] “had total and complete access” to the president would come as a surprise to their reporters and producers, whose relationship with the Biden White House was often notoriously adversarial;

In her entire piece, there is not a single mention of Jen Psaki, who, after being White House press secretary, started working for MSNBC.

[nappingpaperclip]

so many pro-government/Democrat propoganda posts on here but they’re literally all the same:

30smthfandomblogger Follow

guys remember if a president did one or two things that really helped middle class white liberals then it’s ok for them to bomb children because our usamerican status quo is more important than brown people’s existence

[youngprincesses]

FANFIC: Barron Trump and The Latin Girl

Isabela: Barron,you're cool,but I think we come from different worlds Barron: Do you say that because I come from a rich and Republican family? While you are more liberal and your father is the head of my father's security team?

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[nodynasty4us]

From the December 21, 2023 item:

One in five in Gen Z and millennials (ages 18-41) say that dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances. ... A new Siena College poll shows that the war in the Middle East is having a real toll on Biden's popularity. Among young voters, Trump leads Biden 49% to 43%. ... The Biden campaign understands this and is trying to make it more concrete to younger voters by framing the issue as authoritarians trying to take away their rights, for example, the right to an abortion and the right to be safe from gun violence. ... One 23-year-old man in Wisconsin said: "I genuinely could not live with myself if I voted for someone who's made the decisions that Biden has." The reporter did not ask him what he expected a president Trump to do about the Middle East. ... These people are viewing the election as an up-or-down vote of approval for Biden and the Democrats, rather than a choice between two alternatives. Older voters better understand the concept of picking the lesser of two evils rather than voting as a way to make a statement. Biden really needs to frame the election as a choice between two candidates, not a vote to approve/disapprove how he is doing his job. ... In reality, of course, no president could have codified Roe v. Wade. Only Congress can do that and there wasn't even a majority among Democrats for that, let alone the entire Congress. But the young voter doesn't know that and he is going to punish Biden for it by voting for a third-party candidate. ... Not all young voters follow the news enough to know that Biden did try and another branch of government said: "Nope." Biden has canceled student debt for a limited number of people, but not nearly as many as he promised. Again, young voters, especially those who don't follow the news, don't distinguish between politicians who promise something, actually try to do it, and get swatted down by one of the other branches and politicians who never even try to make good on their promises.

[theweeklyshowwithjonstewart]

Michelle Obama, the DNC, and Political Dynasties

Jon Stewart is joined by historian and author, Jill Lepore and New York Times correspondent, Zolan Kanno-Youngs to talk about the Democratic candidate who never was - Michelle Obama. On this week’s episode they will talk about the DNC, the renewed excitement in the Kamala Harris plot twist, and the usefulness (or uselessness) of political conventions.

Political Conventions: What’s The Point? with Jon Stewart, Jill Lepore, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs

This week, Jon Stewart dives into the happenings at the DNC and the excitement around the Harris-Walz ticket with NYT White House Correspondent and CNN political analyst Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Jill Lepore, Harvard History and Law Professor, The New Yorker staff writer, and author of The Deadline. Together, they discuss the happenings on the floor, explore how these political gatherings have evolved from smoke-filled rooms of party bosses to the spectacles of today, and examine how political messaging has adapted (or failed to adapt) to the ever-changing media landscape.