I'll never forget moving out west on a cross-country road trip with my mom and little sister. We vetted most of our hotels pretty well but had to make an unplanned stop at a red roof inn on Oklahoma. What a complete shithole. Dingy, flickering half-lit hallways. Sketchiest people. I slept with a knife under my pillow.

You know the state ballot argument is a risk I hadn't considered. I honestly don't know enough to say how they could impact but it's worth further consideration.

I think there would be a media frenzy if you saw a headline like, "BREAKING NEWS: PRESIDENT BIDEN RESIGNS; ENDORSED GRETCHEN WHITMER." After which there would be viral social media and millions googling, "who is Whitmer?" Hopefully the conclusion they have is, "well she's a fresh face and she's younger than the other guy."

Anyone: (1) young, and (2) not old.

But just curious: are you sincerely asking this as if you haven't heard the half dozen names floated, some of whom did better in battleground states than Biden?

Yeah I'm chuckling at the anonymous vote manipulation.

You know these cowards have no substantive argument.

On Lemmy since October. Only comment. Zero submissions.

Is there a c/ChoosyBeggars?

Fair points but I don't personally put much weight in the perception of what Republicans might say about a coronation for a couple reasons:

• All of us on the Democratic side just want Trump to lose.
• Anyone who voted for Joe Biden will vote for anyone under the Democratic ticket.
• Especially when Joe Biden, himself, endorses that candidate. It's little different than letting Joe pick his own Vice President. It's kind of like a transitive extension of one's vote.

and it’s hard to know which bad option is the worst of the options.

And this is the thing that I'm 100% convinced of by this point, personally. I see not just little hope, but no hope for Biden winning at this stage. As I tried my best to convey, Biden is performing significantly worse compared to 2020 and even Hillary's failed run. There's kind of a diminishing-returns argument to be made at this point that the vast electorate knows both Trump and Biden through & through. There's nothing new they're going to realize that they don't already know. So to move poll numbers now is next to impossible; and with that, the polls are going in the wrong direction for Biden, and the full effect of the debate hasn't even set in.

So what does one do? Well between riding out the inevitable crash, I think we take the chance with another way. But we won't do that by the looks of it. And I will bet large sums of money that Biden loses, unfortunately.

It's fine. We have an 81-year-old who jumps from his strongest issue — abortion — to his weakest issue — immigration mid-sentence who will save us from this downward spiral into fascism.

I'm told <checks notes> that this is the best we've got.

First off, Garland was a Supreme Court Justice nominee By Obama and who the Republicans would block, right? I'm not remotely buying this olive-branch attempt to downplay this. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't survive scrutiny from the left if he was a partisan hack for both being a SCOTUS nominee, as well as an AG under Biden. If Garland was that much of a conservative partisan hack, McConnell wouldn't have blocked the appointment. So far I think he's doing a fucking fantastic job and the only people I see complaining are people who are clearly not legal experts and think everything is so cut-and-dry and easy with a "if I was in there, it would've been done overnight!" mentality.

Second, I know exactly which WaPo article you're discussing and it did not take 2.5 years for him to begin investigating. Nor does that article cover the OTHER investigations apart from January 6th, such as the classified documents case.

Forget the obvious fucking fact that goes completely unmentioned: Garland was busy building the case from the ground-up while handling — gee I don't know — the largest criminal investigation in the history of the FBI.. So naturally, it would make sense if you wanted to make sure you eliminated ANY hole for accusation of bias to first build your case from the ground-up, charge the actual insurrectionists first, then let smaller fish turn on bigger fish which can then be used as evidence for the mega case that is taking down a former President.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Who said anything about third-party?

The nominee isn't official until the convention, which means we still have time. And I ask: what would happen between then and November should Biden suffer a fatal medical emergency or his condition get so worse it's impossible to hide? Democrats would, of course, find a way to put someone else on the ticket.

So let's not pretend it's impossible or that the ship has sailed, for it has not.

If we actually grow a fucking backbone and realize that Biden:

• Is performing WORSE in EVERY WAY compared to his 2020 run (where he eeked by with 40,000 votes)
• Is performing WORSE than Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016.
• 70% of the electorate BEFORE the catastrophic debate seen by 50 million people thought Biden was too old
• 64% of independents POST-debate say they want Biden replaced on the ballot.

... And let's acknowledge that we need to take a chance at an open convention or face a guaranteed loss.

The people who need to read this are either the psychopaths who implemented the strategy to get these conservative hacks on the court, or the grossly gullible base too illiterate to find let alone comprehend this dissent.

Golly, if only Barr wasn't overseeing that aforementioned Department during that period of time.

I agree. We are going to lose in November if we remain on this shuffling horse.

I will vote for Biden, but we will lose because we're not the people who needed to be convinced by that debate performance.

Breaking: Merrick Garland magically throws together a team and analyzes thousands of documents and gets search warrants for former presidents and analyzes all information, gets grand juries and indicts magically really quickly!

(... Later)

Breaking: Merrick Garland's indictments thrown out on technicality because of rushing things; widespread animosity that this is a political witch-hunt thrown together.

We fucked up, but not because of this.

lol my guy, you are reaching for some serious straws. If you're not going off of this data, what ARE you going off, exactly...? Vibes? This is more denial than I can handle.

He was not telling Biden to drop out the day before the debate. He was telling Biden to drop out the day after,

Well no fucking shit! That's called adapting to new information. Any good scientist or analyst does it. When an unprecedented event like THAT debate performance occurs, then yes, that means you must go back and readjust the model. Models only work if they actually factor in the latest information — you get this, right? Have you SEEN the post-debate polling coming out? It's TERRIBLE:

Post-Debate: "72 Percent Say Biden Unfit Mentally, Cognitively."

Post-Debate: "64% of Independents want Biden replaced on the ballot"; that's more than they want Trump replaced on the ballot by 1%, by the way.

Post-Debate: "Undecided voter focus group leans toward Trump after debate"

Trump tanked two debates against Hillary and still squeaked through on election day. Nobody is going to be thinking about this debate by the time the Olympics are over.

You live in this magical fairy-tale world where Trump is held to the same standard as Biden when he clearly is not. If voters were as informed as you and me then we wouldn't have either of these fucking candidates. Neither of those poor debates come remotely close to what we saw yesterday from the person espousing to be the fighter to take on Donald Trump. It doesn't change the reality reflected in every single piece of data we have in battleground states. Now you can choose to bury your head in the sand and go off vibes if you want, but good luck with that.

Nate's algorithm is just a poll of polls. And his reasoning is incredibly short term and superficial.

That isn't true. Far more involved than that. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-fivethirtyeights-2020-presidential-forecast-works-and-whats-different-because-of-covid-19/

Nate went further post-debate performance, knowing where Biden stands in a variety of polling and that this was the worst debate perhaps in the history of debates they was a make-or-break moment for the campaign desperate to reach a widespread audience. Biden capturing the attention of 50 million people will not happen again between now and November. For many Americans this debate, which Republicans will never let anyone forget, will be the last thing they remember.

More importantly there will be no major positive event that overrides it. That event, if it existed, already passed with Trump's conviction.

Nobody can provide me a single data-point where Biden isn't performing significantly worse than his 2020 race where he won by merely 40,000 votes across 3 battleground states. Time to face hard truths.

If it was about a poor debate performance akin to Obama vs Romney debate 1 I'd be inclined to agree.

The problem is this wasn't really about the debate. It was about revealing to the country Biden's clear senility problems, which at 81, won't get better but certainly get worse.

And second to that: If Biden was 10 points ahead in the polls I'd also say okay maybe we just ride this out.

But he's not. In fact relative to 2020 he's been 10 pts behind pre-Debate. Losing in every battleground state as well.

To me I see the car crash happening up ahead and want to jump while we still have time.

Sadly I agree with your final comment. Today at Camp David was the day Biden could back out if his closest advisors and family pulled him aside. But they're encouraging him to keep going.

Raven for President!

Whitmer. Shapiro. Newsom, even.

Before anyone tries to claim polls show they wouldn't do better than Biden against Trump let me remind people that this is without them having the endorsement of the dnc or the inevitable viral media attention they'd receive from endorsements from Obama or Biden himself. They'd surge overnight.

You know who isn't surging? Biden. He's been steadily declining in every single data-point, and the debate didn't help.

So you know what 70% of voters have a problem with? How old the two current candidates are.

Give them what they want. Give Americans new exciting shit to vote for. This is the country that watches the Kardashians and American Idol for christ sake.

And yet, he hasn't predicted yet because there are many other "keys". Case-in-point: see how incumbency worked for Trump.

Also should be noted other reputable science-based algorithm designers like Nate Silver advises Biden to step down.

Finally, the unprecedented nature of an open convention also means this guy has nothing to go on for extrapolation.

Meaningless considering he still hasn't predicted whether or not Biden will win this election. He says he needs another month lol.

Edit: As a bonus he can't even apply his own rubric to a new potential candidate. So the real questions are: How could he possibly know they'd be worse, and why the fuck is he even saying anything?