r/politics • u/Murky-Site7468 • 6d ago

'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.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-debate-john-fetterman_n_667ea850e4b0415858d6a2f1
7.9k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 6d ago

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.

2

u/honkoku 6d ago

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.

1

u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 6d ago

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.

1

u/honkoku 6d ago

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.