Lichtman thinks Dems would be slitting their own throats by dumping Biden
Lichtman thinks Dems would be slitting their own throats by dumping Biden
Sam will be live, after this live, here: https://www.youtube.com/live/PqfALiniMjc?si=EWrMUnolUtdZsqJqThe calls for Joe Biden to step aside aren't diminishing...
I honestly don't know what to think at this point; just putting this out there.
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This upheaval against Biden is too late. It undermines the entire process we have and makes Democrats appear as poor for the country as Republicans.
We already have a bad system for primaries that is only loosely democratic. It takes votes into consideration but is a broken system that heavily favors super-delegates and pressures primary opponents of an incumbent to drop out.
But if we throw away any implication of democratic elections in choosing the nominee, we just trade one type of descent into authoritarianism for another.
The time for this was during primary elections for the Democratic nominee, not now. Doing it now undermines the rule of law, reduces any moral high ground Democrats have going into a very close election, and erodes any little chance remaining of a nonviolent transfer of power in January.
If the primary system is already "loosely democratic" then we're not really throwing anything away by choosing a different nominee. This already happened with Bernie. Should we reform the DNC to make it more democratic? Certainly, but that's a different problem and isn't going to happen in the next two weeks.
Is it only unacceptable to you if the party pushes him out? How would Biden stepping down due to health reasons (or any personal reason, really) undermine the rule of law?
If the primary system is already "loosely democratic" then we're not really throwing anything away by choosing a different nominee.
I disagree. If you start with a flawed system and then go to a worse system, you're marching in the wrong direction.
If Biden legitimately has health issues, he should resign as President, not just bow out of reelection. The fact that very few are calling for that belies the fact that few actually believes he's unhealthy. They just don't think he'll win and want a different candidate.
If Biden legitimately has health issues, he should resign as President, not just bow out of reelection. The fact that very few are calling for that belies the fact that few actually believes he’s unhealthy. They just don’t think he’ll win and want a different candidate.
Biden is going to lose to Trump; that's why he needs to withdraw now. He was on shaky ground in 2020, and his popularity and trustworthiness among even Centrists has crumbled, nevermind among progressives and leftists. It's not just about health issues.
broken system that heavily favors super-delegates
This is years out of date nonsense.
The time for this was during primary elections for the Democratic nominee, not now. Doing it now undermines the rule of law
And this is incoherent. There's no "law" involved in any of this. If Biden leaves the race it will be from him withdrawing, which is a totally by the books option in Democratic internal rules.
On July 23, 2016, ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 2016 DNC Rules Committee voted overwhelmingly (158–6) to adopt a superdelegate reform package. The new rules were the result of a compromise between the Hillary Clinton and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns
Ultimately, the DNC decided to prevent superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, instead of reducing their numbers
People keep seeming to forget about the super delegate reform Bernie fought for. They are still there now, 15% of all the delegates (a lot of the super delegates being democratic elected officials like members of congress since that automatically gives the status). But they can't vote in the first ballot any longer. They could only vote in a contested election in subsequent ballots, after all the other pledged delegates are unbound as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate
Even before those reforms, they never really made a difference in any convention, except possibly 1984 when they helped push Mondale from a plurality to a majority by voting for him on the first ballot.
I'm not personally in favor of them at all, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be sometimes. If we go to an open convention though, unless there's a majority choice on the first ballot, they may play a role on subsequent ballots.