'Chill The F**k Out': John Fetterman Urges Democrats To Stick With Joe Biden | The Pennsylvania senator reminded panicked Democrats on Friday that he too had a bad debate once, yet he went on to win his Senate seat.

[u/Murky-Site7468]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-debate-john-fetterman_n_667ea850e4b0415858d6a2f1

[u/Mr_peanut_butterrr]

“Speech”. Exactly. “Everyone loses their train of thought”. Read the transcripts of those answers. It wasn’t once or twice.

Y’all delusional in your tribalism and we’re veering towards disaster because of it. He lost the soft 5% last night for good. Somebody needs to speak truth. Contested convention should be what we’re universally calling for.

[u/Parahelix → u/Mr_peanut_butterrr]

Dems don't have anyone else that could start a campaign at this point, except possibly Harris, and that would just cause a whole different set of problems.

You'd have a massive amount of scrutiny, which could screw up any new campaign, but which isn't really an issue for Biden since he's been scrutinized to hell and back already.

As I've said before, Biden could die a month after his inauguration and I wouldn't worry too much, because he will appoint competent people and things will continue to function just fine.

Trump is a criminal, who appoints the worst people (often also criminals), and then ends up telling us that they're the worst people as he fires them via tweet. He also lies about what he's going to do, and has the absolute dumbest policy ideas imaginable.

Why anyone would vote for that over even a comatose Biden, I can't fathom.

[u/Mr_peanut_butterrr → u/Parahelix]

They don’t? It’s June, not October. Convention hasn’t happened, plenty of time for a horse race. Is it ideal? Obviously it isn’t, but staying course ends in defeat.

The political reality is we’re deeply entrenched. 40-45% of the electorate won’t vote for either regardless of what they do. Personally, I’d crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump. However, we need to target that last 5-10% that remains soft. Their biggest complaint is “he’s too old, weak, etc”. Last night laid bare all their worst fears and they won’t soon forget. It was a disaster, and any talking head who tells you otherwise is being at best desingenous, and at worst purposefully deceitful.

[u/honkoku → u/Mr_peanut_butterrr]

They don’t? It’s June, not October. Convention hasn’t happened, plenty of time for a horse race. Is it ideal? Obviously it isn’t, but staying course ends in defeat.

The main problem is that right now, there is no obvious single person that can step up and replace Biden. If Biden were to decide to step aside, we would be back to the progressive vs. moderate fight again with 12 different candidates trying to elbow their way in. That's not a good position to be in 5 months before the election and even less time before the convention.

If Kamala Harris were widely respected and thought of as a future president she could take over, but (perhaps due to sexism and racism) she isn't viewed that way, meaning there's no clear successor.

[u/Mr_peanut_butterrr → u/honkoku]

The obvious choice is literally anybody else. Whitmer, Newsom, Warnock, etc. let them fight it out, but Biden is toast with the sliver of the electorate he needs to win this election and doing nothing is political malpractice.

Not a good position to be in? Give me a break. You act like we’re in a good position now. Trump about to open up a 5-10% lead in the polls, our candidate is incoherent, good god we have to try something.

[u/honkoku → u/Mr_peanut_butterrr]

You are overestimating the effect Biden's bad performance will have on the election, and underestimating the chaos it would cause to try to replace him now.