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Project 2025 Architect Signals Bloodshed If Left Opposes Trump-Led 'Revolution'
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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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It's not Biden, it's the DNC's primary voters. They elected the guy, not once, but twice, maybe because he actually does a decent job and beat Don last time. There was a primary this year, I voted in it, there was more than one candidate (though I would have preferred even more), Biden actually lost a primary in American Samoa. I voted for him though, he was clearly the best of the options, nobody else even remotely competitive stepped up to be president.
Just once, there wasn't a real primary this year. All the alternate frontrunners (Newsone, Whitimer, Butigeg, etc.) stayed out of the race, following the lead of the Party and letting Joe run virtually unopposed.
Very few people, if anyone, took any of the other candidates as anything more than protests to pressure the Biden campaign into turning left.
That's a "real primary". A democratic process doesn't mean you'll like all the options, just that anybody is welcome to participate and become an option if they want and you can vote for them if you want. Few people ran because there was no reason to run, they already had a very strong candidate. But if they'd won the primary vote, they would have replaced Biden. I don't say my city elections aren't "real elections" because only one or two people run for a position, that's just who showed up, it's as real an election as any other.
If you are knowledgeable about how US elections work, you know that if you vote for somebody in the primary and they win the general, they will probably be the primary winner/default pick for the next cycle too since it gives them an advantage. If they fuck up badly enough, somebody else can beat them in the next primary, it's happened before.
Yeah the thing I really can't understand is why did the voters pick Biden in 2016? Even on the moderate side of the party there were much better choices. The democratic voters who just seem to pick the name they're most familiar with - Clinton, Biden - those are the people who made Trump happen.
I think the majority of Democratic voters just assume the most familiar name is the most electable in the general, but as we've seen that's simply not the case. Ironically, if it feels like Democrats run the worst candidates against Trump, that's probably not an accident. Trump makes Democratic voters pick the "safest" candidate, who turns out to be the least electable.
They picked Hillary in 2016, not Biden. But you're right generally.
Back in 2016 the voters actually weren’t super excited about Biden either.
Biden did pretty badly in the first 3 primaries
Feb 3rd in Iowa he came in 4th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, and Warren.
Feb 11th in New Hampshire he came in 5th place behind Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren.
Feb 22nd in Nevada he came in 3rd place behind Sander and Warren.
After these pretty awful results there was a brief period when Sanders was considered the front runner and the DNC shit a brick. You might recall Chris Matthews on MSNBC speculating wildly about a Sanders presidency meaning “executions in Central Park” that was February 8th.
Biden was thrown a life line though by Jim Clyborn who strongly supported him and gave him his first victory in South Carolina on February 29th. A state that would go on to vote trump on Election Day.
This strong showing though was enough for the DNC to see a way to have a moderate candidate win the primary. If they could get the moderate candidates, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Biden to stop splitting that voting block they could stop a more progressive candidate like Sanders or Warren from taking the nomination. Internally the DNC feared that a more progressive candidate would win the primary and lose in the general and wanted a safer option.
The day before Super Tuesday when 15 states would hold their primaries, the more moderate candidates reached an agreement. Buttigieg and Klobuchar announced they would drop out of the race and throw their support behind Biden. In the days before these announcement polling showed Sanders likely to win a plurality of the Super Tuesday delegates. After the moderate candidates lined up behind Biden he won 10 of the 15 contests, losing California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont to Sanders and American Samoa to Bloomberg.
Buttigieg would be rewarded with his current position as Secretary of Transportation and Klobuchar would end up Chair of the Senate Rules Committee (although it’s less clear how much that was because of her dropping out).
With a victorious Super Tuesday the media rallied around Biden’s amazing reversal of fortune and the Chris Matthews of the world finally had a light at the end of the tunnel for the horrors of a Sanders presidency, line up behind Joe.
An interesting foot note is that of the states holding primaries on Super Tuesday, of the 10 that went for Biden, 6 (7 if you count Maine but I wouldn’t) would go on to vote for trump on Election Day, Alabama, Arkansas, 1 of 4 of Maine’s votes, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. All the states carried by Sanders, except Utah, reliably voted for Biden in the general.
So the DNC, worried about losing the general election, rallied their moderate candidates around Biden, who was losing fairly badly. His overperformance in states that would ultimately vote Republican ended up changing the narrative enough that he became presumptive nominee status on the eyes of the media. This status became generally accepted on April 8th when Sanders pulled out of the race, but you can find the media pushing this in March
That's just it, though - because he decided to run again, and is an incumbent, very few challenged him.