5mo ago

Biden calls his decision to step aside from 2024 race a matter of defending democracy

www.cnn.com Biden calls his decision to step aside from 2024 race a matter of defending democracy | CNN Politics

President Joe Biden, speaking to the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday evening, framed his decision to step aside from the 2024 presidential race as a matter of saving democracy and passing “the torch to a new generation.”

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219 comments

Fuck off Joe, you're slightly better than Hillary because you did eventually listen to reason.
But he should have said years ago he wasn't going to run in 2024.
Hell, even if he just said it 6 months ago we could have had a real primary
It's good he finally did the right thing, but he came damn close to not. He's not a hero because he stopped doing the wrong thing at the last possible second. A week ago he wouldn't stop rambling about "Lord God" was the only one that could make him drop
Dude is off the deep already, and has been for a while.
- nah. i won't call him a "hero" but this is the best way it could have happened, rather than republicans having YEARS to foment hatred and spin conspiracy theories and make everyone waste time debunking lie after lie about harris.
  and nobody's going to switch from D to R because it's harris instead of biden. you can be fairly certain, however, that there WILL be people voting who weren't going to vote at all when it was biden instead of harris
  should he be applauded? yes. is he a hero? no. should he have announced it years ago? no fucking way.
  
  That's a really awful take. It's good that Biden has stepped aside but our lack of a primary absolutely isn't "a good thing". Primaries are how we battle test our candidates and Harris has never performed well in one. I hope to hell she wins but I'd have more confidence if she'd been able to secure the nomination through traditional means.
  
  Well, she didn't do well in her presidential primary, no argument there. But she did do well enough in her primaries for AG and Senator for California to win not only those nominations but those elections, too.
  
  who do you think would have won (or should have won) this hypothetical primary that was "stolen" from us?
  
  I don't have a fucking clue because we never got to have one.
  
  funny how no one started whining about it until just now.
  what might have happened, i wonder, if all the hissy fits were thrown back then, instead of AFTER biden stepped down (thanks to hissy fits)?
  don't answer. that was a rhetorical question. congratulations, you have been successful in your mission to poopooh biden and make me not vote for him.
  LOL
  
  I don't know where you've been but I've been removed about this for the past six months. I absolutely loathe the fact that we don't have a real primary when we have an incumbent president and I was really disappointed when Biden changed his tune from being a one term president. I also really appreciate what Biden did do in office even though I thought he'd be an awful president during the last election!
  Thanks for making so many assumptions about me though, I'll be sure to mulch my garden with all these strawmen you set up.
  Oh and you better fucking vote, don't even think about sitting out the election - it's cowardly and immature!
  
  i stand corrected. however, "dems stole your primary" is already a favorite of republicans, not to affect meaningful change, but to make people vote for anything except D. so sorry to say, you're in for more of that
  
  No worries. I know it's easy to generalize about other people on the internet and, if you spent much time on Reddit, you've been exposed to a lot of bad faith arguments and sadistic (instead of for the lulz) trolling.
  It took me a bit when I first came to lemmy to realize that most people here (even ones I often strongly disagree with like anticolonist) are consistent in their view points and usually trying to have a discussion in good(ish) faith.
  Have a nice day!
  
  but this is the best way it could have happened
  The best way was this happening a year ago so we could have a primary...
  But you don't think Dem voters should have had a say?
  I'm a lot more democratic than you apparently...
  
  LOL good job parroting fox news's desperate "bIdEn ChEaTeD tHe DeMs!!!" talking points. i'll bet you're doing it for free too.
  news flash-- biden isn't running, and you could have voted for anyone you wanted in the primary. so this entire "debate" about biden's shoulda/woulda/coulda, while entertaining to obliterate people in, is getting the tankie position exactly nowhere
  
  What?
  So if Faux News says we didn't get a real primary...
  We have to lie and say we did?
  That's Trumper logic man
  Have fun with that.
  Edit:
  and you could have voted for anyone you wanted in the primary.
  In my state (and others) Biden was the only Dem on the primary ballot...
  
  LOL why weren't you and the apparently millions of other like minded yous mobilizing to either get someone else on the ballot, or writing in someone else?
  or were you just accepting what you were told to, like you're accusing everyone else of doing now?
  again--what do you think you're going to accomplish with all of these sad desperate dEmScHeAtEd attacks? making people not vote now?
  have fun with that
  btw: voter registrations for 18-34 year olds surged AFTER harris became the nominee. that means people are registering specifically to vote for harris. does that grind your gears? LOL
  
  again–what do you think you’re going to accomplish
  Did you not see what happened to the Republican party when they stopped holding their politicians accountable?
  Why are you trying to make the democratic party just as shitty?
  btw: voter registrations for 18-34 year olds surged AFTER harris became the nominee. that means people are registering specifically to vote for harris. does that grind your gears? LOL
  No...
  It's a good thing, I've spent over a year saying Biden and Hillary are the only two who could.lose to trump...
  I'm glad Biden finally listened to people who knew what he was talking about about. But I'm still mad that he waited so long we didn't get a primary.
  You seem to be operating under football logic where people pick a team and only say good things about them.
  Which again, is what made the Republican party into what it is today.
  So I ask again, why do you want both major parties to act like Republicans?
  If youre not gonna answer, there's no point in me wasting time with you.
  
  Your argument here might hold some weight if it weren't for the fact that the only reason this conversation is even happening is that the presumptive Democratic candidate just voluntary withdrew from the race when it became clear that he couldn't win. The last guy staged a fucking coup after he lost.
  How many months did you just spend removed and moaning about how anyone would be better than Joe? Now you have anyone else and you're still salty about it. I wonder how you could make it any more transparent that your goal is just to discourage people from voting.
  
  Since you seem willing to engage in discourse about this, I feel similarly to the person you replied to and can explain my position. I don't want to discourage anyone from voting, I have two goals:
  Don't concede the White House to Trump
  Fight back against the Democratic Party's efforts to reduce the voice of the people.
  I'm guessing we agree on 1 and disagree on the premise of 2. I see 2 as a systemic pattern that really launched after the 2008 primaries when Obama disrupted the plan to place Hillary in the White House. It came to a head in 2016 and has been rippling ever since.
  I never believed Joe should have run again in the first place, and in the last month it became clear that him running was detrimental to 1. So we push for him to step aside, while I still think he shouldn't have run in the first place. He steps down, and you feel satisfied because goal 1 is protected. But I'm deeply unsettled by the damage that has been done to 2. The Democrats just figured out how to skip the voice of the people entirely.
  The last time this happened (1968 primaries, eerily similar) the Democrats launched a committee to reform the primary process into what it is today. A big improvement over what it was before, but Biden just revealed a significant weakness in it.
  I'm happy to vote for Harris to fulfill 1, I'm thrilled that there was a surge in registrations. But if the Democrats don't address the critical problem of this process we all just witnessed, I fear 2 becomes unreachable. The Democrats are our only hope of saving our democracy, so if they abandon democracy within their party (like I have seen happening over the last 16 years), it's a hollow victory.
  
  I'm not convinced that the party rallying behind the incumbent president and/or VP is nearly as much of a problem as you're making it out to be. Hillary got more votes than Bernie in 2016 and I know all the Bernie bros complain that the party conspired against him, but they always ignore the fact that Bernie is only a Democrat during the campaign and an Independent the rest of the time. Why would the DNC throw its weight behind someone like that rather than someone who has been active in the party for decades?
  Joe probably shouldn't have run again, but it's not really a surprise that he did. What would have been nice is if Kamala had been out there pushing some policy and letting people know who she is over the last four years, but for some reason that didn't happen and here we are. Maybe the party's processes do need reform. Super delegates are inherently undemocratic, but I don't think they've tipped the scales one way or the other too badly recently.
  You can also just look at give's history. He was relentlessly "genocide joe, blue maga, both sides..." for months. Even on articles that had nothing to do with Biden or Gaza and has developed a reputation for not being a good faith participant in any of the discussions around here which is why I felt the need to call him out. Especially when he keeps yelling about how the democrats are just as bad as republicans in an article about the Democratic president voluntary backing out of the race.
  
  I tried to engage you in honest discourse explaining my position and you immediately went straight to all of your favorite one-liners designed to undermine without actually addressing anything.
  All of your points are easily refuted and I'm happy to write them out if you need me to, but it's a conversation that's been done to death since 2016. I'll do one: "Bernie Bros" voted Hillary better than Hillary supporters voted for Obama. Leave your sexist bullshit at home unless you want to admit your camp is racist.
  
  I’m guessing we agree on #1 and disagree on the premise of #2. I see #2 as a systemic pattern that really launched after the 2008 primaries when Obama disrupted the plan to place Hillary in the White House. It came to a head in 2016 and has been rippling ever since.
  THANK YOU. It's fucking insane seeing people claim "well uhhh nobody ever complained about this before! maybe you should've complained about this before, maybe then things would've changed!" just because republicans decided to adopt it as a talking point since they're scrambling to come up with a new strategy and their plans have gone to shit. It's partisan brainworms of the highest order. I guess it's not surprising that they haven't heard these complaints or noticed these trends when they all only become fixated on keeping the pendulum republican candidate out for 6 months out of every four years at most and then completely go back to sleep for the rest of the time.
  
  God, these people are so fucking intolerant of any criticism of their party, it's absurd. I really tried to engage in an honest discourse and the person reverted straight back to petty sexist bullshit and nonsequitors, ignoring what I said entirely.
  It's such an embodiment of the out-of-touch Democratic party and how they can't possibly fathom any other point of view.
  
  LOL ok. you can sit there and say dems are "acting like republicans" for the rest of your life, but you'll die having NEVER been correct. dems have not tried to run fake electors. dems have not attempted an insurrection on the capitol to overthrow an election. dems don't nominate a rapist conman. this is among MANY, MANY things that blatantly throw your notion of "both sides are the same" out the window. honestly it's been tiresome for years
  the immediate objective, right now, which should be everyone's absolute top priority, is keeping trump out of the white house. that's it. your motivation for trying (poorly) to undermine that doesn't matter. what matters is that your arguments are weak and without substance
  yet still, assuming some parallel universe where you're right, you still haven't spelled out exactly what actions you expect people to take. i'm assuming it's not to vote at all. so, again: have fun with that
  
  Looks like we're back in full "you can't criticize the Democrats at all or you're a Russian troll" territory. I hate this sycophancy.
  I'm with you on this one. The Democrats have been skirting democracy to the best of their ability for years. I'm glad we've got a better chance of defeating Trump now, but I'm unwilling to concede the democratic process of nominating candidates. If we celebrate this fucked up process instead of holding their feet to the fire, they're just going to learn that actually they don't need to bother involving the people at all. We cannot give a single inch to the plutocrats at the top.
- Now that he's stepped down, it's a lot harder for you to hide that Trump love. You've lost your talking point, lol. Floundering just like the GOP.
- He didn't think he'd be pressured out 6 months ago. He's obeying popular opinion that shifted after the debate.
  Someone here compared it to convincing an elderly parent to stop driving. They're not heroes either, it just sucks for everyone that nature works this way.
  
  He did like a tenth of the press conferences as the last two presidents...
  And people were pointing out his age related issues 4 years ago.
  The only reason it took till the first debate for a critical mass to demand he drop out, was that was the first people had seen him speak for longer than 5 minutes. Ive been calling for him to do more public appearances/interviews this whole term, lots of us did. But we were called conspiracy nuts for saying an 80 year old was as capable as the average 80 year old.
  The people around him day to day knew how bad it was and knew he'd be forced to step down if the public knew. So they fucking hid him. Just like Republicans did with Reagan.
  Like it or not, that's what happened.
  I hope you at least learned that it's not just ok to criticize your "team" it's fundamentally necessary.
  If people hadn't, wed still be running Joe and trump would still be likely to win.

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