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Kris's avatar

Thank you for posting this… I think more people should evaluate this info, tho will they ? There is simply no better candidate … if there were , Biden would’ve been convinced (coerced?) outta the race a long time ago. Excellent thoughts on the incumbency - it is both a blessing and a curse.

Next- a rundown of why all these lesser knowns could not win a national election - and their weaknesses. First , you cannot bypass Harris - she’s got the money if Biden is coerced out. I think she would be fine … but she really has to be able to win… I don’t see that happening. Buttigieg (?) cmon - excellent candidate - but he would not win. Newsom (?) coastal elite , CA Gretchen Whitmer said she would not run my point is any one of these people would be excellent options … in 2028 and beyond but they were already evaluated and did not throw their hat in bc they know Biden is the best bet this year. We are in the midst of a major transformation … we have a bench full of excellent candidates for the future. We’re just not there yet … we gotta move the ball this year. Interested in your thoughts on ea of the alternates weaknesses on the Natl playing field, beyond they’re unknowns

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Timothy Burke's avatar

So much of this kind of reasoning depends on "usually", on claims from patterns and regularities. I think when we're talking U.S. Presidential races, that's already a slightly tenuous base from which to argue about patterns and regularities because, weirdly enough given how much we talk about them, it's a very small dataset--only seven instances in the 21st Century if we count 2000, and only 20 since the end of World War II. Moreover there are a lot of elements to US Presidential races that make them hard to compare over that postwar sequence: some voters were in effect being prevented from voting (most notably Blacks in the US South), primaries did not become a dominant force in candidate selection until 1972, the amount of money in races and the constraints (or lack thereof) on campaign spending has changed a great deal, the national media environment and advertising have undergone enormous shifts, and so on.

But also, arguments from patterns and regularities become a lot less reliable if they're being applied to a system or behavior that is arguably in the middle of a major transformation or rupture. I honestly think that's what's happening right now, and it really started happening in earnest in 2016--notably a year where many prognostications made from patterns and regularities failed very badly.

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