Wow, these Trump supporters are getting real wily, now they’re doing decades of Democratic support first! /s
Missing from the Clooney op-ed: The last two times Democrats changed their ticket at the last moment (1968 and 1972) they lost in landslides.
Did you expect people to not fact check this? 1968 was lost by less than a percentage point and was after the LBJ presidency, which was wildly unpopular for escalating the Vietnam War. You also fail to mention that both elections were against Nixon, who until the Watergate scandal was widely regarded positively. Edit: these two elections were also right in the middle of the implementation of the southern strategy, when racist Democrats were starting to defect to the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Both Democratic candidates were also chosen at the national convention, so I’m not sure what you mean by last moment candidate changes. Presumably one must have an official candidate before a last moment change can be made.
Also, 1972 was a trainwreck because the moderate assholes of the Democratic party threw a big temper tantrum over a progressive like McGovern getting the nomination and pushed him to pick a no-name moderate as his running mate, a moderate who just so happened to have major health problems McGovern and the general public didn’t know about. When those health problems got leaked by someone (seems nobody knows who for sure), the campaign tried to stand firm and McGovern said he was behind his VP Eagleton 1000%, leading to his polling numbers falling off a cliff and never recovering (even though they ended up dropping Eagleton and getting a different running mate like a week later).
Saying we should be worried about switching our nominee because of what happened in 1972 is like saying you shouldn’t get chemotherapy because most people who die of cancer were getting chemo, or you shouldn’t let firetrucks park on your street because most burned down homes had a firetruck parked near them recently, it’s just completely backwards.
But think of all the racists that defected to the Republican Party that might have otherwise voted Dem!!
Actually that does make the Dem establishment’s deranged obsession with getting “undecided” voters instead of exciting their base make a lot more… I don’t want to say “sense” because it’s a strategy that goes over like a lead balloon, but the old fucks at the wheel still being traumatized by 1972 adds context.
LBJ refused to run after leading in the primaries. This left three major democratic candidates, Robert Kennedy, who entered the race late, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Huphrey, LBJ’s vice President. The major issue was Vietnam. Kennedy and McCarthy were against the war, Humphrey was stay the course. Kennedy, who just got the lead in primary votes was assassinated the night of the last primary. An open convention was held in Chicago with rioting in the streets. Humphrey was chosen as nominee in a back room deal. He lost to Nixon who said he had a secret plan to end the war. But, of course he lied.
Fact check me all you want
Fact check me all you want
Okay. Are you going to edit out the misinformation in your comment that says losing by less than a percentage point is a landslide, or clarify that none of the candidates were changed after the convention?
Nixon got 301 electoral votes, Humphrey got 191.
Oh, we’re playing “land votes” now? Don’t you think ignoring the popular vote is giving away the game?
If you mean electoral votes, that is what made Donald Trump president. In fact, that makes every president.
Quick question: Did Donald Trump win in a landslide in 2016?
LBJ refused to run after leading in the primaries
That is more than a little bit misleading
LBJ faced long odds in November; his top aides feared that he might not even win re-nomination. With his public approval rating at around 36 percent, LBJ had barely survived a surprisingly strong primary challenge from antiwar Sen. Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire, who took 42 percent of the vote to LBJ’s 48 percent on March 12. Four days later, on March 16, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, a long-time LBJ nemesis, declared that he, too, would challenge Johnson for the nomination
…
On March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on national television and announced … that he had decided not to seek his party’s nomination for president.
[Quotes reordered from how they were in the source for better clarity]
Better source with lots more details (which makes it harder to excerpt) - https://web.archive.org/web/20240710213056/https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805375/president-johnson-made-a-bombshell-announcement-50-years-ago
An open convention was held in Chicago with rioting in the streets.
A note about those riots -
On September 4, 1968, Milton Eisenhower, chair of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, announced that the commission would investigate the violence at the Chicago convention and report its findings to President Lyndon Johnson.[3][36] A Chicago lawyer, Daniel Walker, headed the team of over 200 members, who interviewed more than 1,400 witnesses and studied FBI reports and film of the confrontations.[36] The report was released on December 1, 1968, characterized the convention violence as a “police riot” [37] and recommended prosecution of police who used indiscriminate violence; the report made clear that the vast majority of police had behaved responsibly, but also said that a failure to prosecute would further damage public confidence in law enforcement.[36] The commission’s Walker Report, named after its chair Daniel Walker, acknowledged that demonstrators had provoked the police and responded with violence of their own, but found that the “vast majority of the demonstrators were intent on expressing by peaceful means their dissent”.[4]: 3
[Bolding added]
He lost to Nixon who said he had a secret plan to end the war. But, of course he lied.
This is completely correct, but just saying he lied is kinda understating the magnitude of the horrifying things he and Kissinger did in that region of the world. A small sample - https://web.archive.org/web/20240710215210/https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353
Incidentally, as long as I’m thinking about the terrible things the 1968 election led to, its worth pointing out that Nixon’s use of law and order rhetoric brought the Dixiecrat segregationists who were big mad about the civil rights acts fully into the Republican party, who was then able to spend the 1970s dismantling lots of integrative programs and throwing black people into prison for bullshit reasons (like, this is the moment mass incarceration takes off). It’s also worth pointing out how a lot of people just remember Humphrey as a spineless Johnson lackey who kept supporting his boss’s war even though he really didn’t agree with it, but we should remember him as the badass who walked into the 1948 Democratic national convention and said it was time to drop segregationist bullshit and start promoting civil rights.
I imagine we disagree on why it turned out how it did, but I imagine we agree that the world would have been a lot better place if Nixon lost the 1968 election.
I don’t know what’s misleading. Facts is facts.
I tried to be succinct and write as little as necessary. This medium demands it.
I was actually pretty close to all these events, and some of the players.
I suppose we would actually agree on why things turned out the way it did, but nonetheless history tells us that dropping in a new nominee is a good way to lose.
The world would have been a better place had Robert Kennedy not been killed.
Fair enough about the need to be succinct (that has obviously never been a strong suit of mine), and yes, your first comment was technically factually correct, but the context of Johnson being a weakened candidate who thought he probably was going to lose if he stayed in is important. My argument would be that in situations where we dropped in a new nominee we were already pretty screwed for other reasons, and the need to switch nominees was just a symptom of that.
I was actually pretty close to all these events, and some of the players.
Y’know, I’ve actually kind of gotten that impression. I kinda hate to get into personal/individual account stuff, but I’ve read a lot of your comments at this point and speaking as someone whose own direct campaign experience has been limited to volunreering and chatting with the paid campaign staff, you remind me of some of them in a lot of hard to articulate ways. For lack of a less judgemental way to put it, some of your comments make me think “yeah, this guy gets how it works” and the rest make me think “this guy is everything wrong with the Democratic party!” I only ever seem to end up responding to the ones I disagree with, but either way it’s a perspective I appreciate.
The world would have been a better place had Robert Kennedy not been killed.
110% agreed, even more than Humphrey he was the one who should have won that election. I wasn’t alive for The 1968 election, but just reading about the history of it is heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, the public nature of these comments from sitting Congressmembers mean that we’re left with little choice now.
Biden had one bad debate and motherfuckers are coming out of the woodwork to condemn him. Meanwhile, Trump, the convicted felon, can say and do whatever the fuck he wants and you don’t hear shit against him from republicans. Democrats better learn real quick that the game has changed. Keep turning the other cheek and you’re just going to get slapped again.
People push back against Trump on a near constant basis, pointing out Biden’s flaws isn’t an endorsement of Trump.
People do, you and I push back against Trump. Retired republicans push back against Trump. But how many current Republicans in office do you see doing what democrats are doing to Biden right now? How many do you see calling for him to step aside? Is it one, two, three republicans in office? Remember, I’m not asking for those who oppose Trump like Lisa Murkowski or Susan “He’s learned his lesson” Collins. I’m talking about a two or three week thrashing on national media with the help of the media. How many?
Why should they? They see that Trump got good chances. And Democrats are worried that Biden could lose. It‘s not that complicated
That’s exactly my point. Morals, decorum, ethics, etc., only apply to democrats. Republicans will vote for Putin if it serves their needs and desires. Meanwhile democrats are infighting to the point of taking their own candidate down, even if that means destroying democracy. Democrats need to understand that the game has changed, if they want to win they’re going to have to emulate republicans. I guarantee that come November every single republican will vote for Trump. Why can’t we say the same? Why don’t we stand behind Biden regardless of that one debate performance? Instead we have every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane calling for Biden to step aside knowing damn well there is no one to take his place. Knowing damn well that Biden was the people’s choice.
In his op-ed Clooney detailed that during his time with Biden several weeks prior that Biden was just like he was during the debate… Which is a very important day point indicating that the debate was not just “one bad night” but rather a consistent condition.
It’s about donors. The donors want Biden gone because they don’t like his policies, but don’t want to donate to the Republicans because Trump is worse.
Oh yes, let’s completely change the candidate 4 MONTHS before the election. That really sounds like a winning strategy. Let’s get rid of the candidate that has been a Vice President for 8 years and is the sitting President of 3.5 years. Let’s replace the candidate that has done more for the US than any other republican president. Let’s make sure we replace Joe Biden so that the psychopathic dictator wanna-be ‘donald the con man trump’ can be installed as our illiterate king. That’s going to solve all the problems we have. Finally Democracy will go away. And Freedom will end. It’s about time, how boring and valueless those things are. Women can finally become property again, and all the non-white people will be deported. Everyone will be required to attend church on Sunday and give 10% of their income to the church. No more alcohol, parties, sex. We will finally be a moral land again. The christian version of Sharia will be implemented. Wages will be the lowest in history and we can finally build walls around the nation to keep people out and Americans trapped inside, just like East Germany used to be.
Personally I’m voting for Joe Biden, even if he is in a COMA! I value my Freedom and Biden has been doing a great job for Americans.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your overall point, but it is kind of insane that we think 4 months is way too late to change candidates, when other countries do their whole election cycle in a month.
As Jon Stewart and many others have already pointed out -Two of our closest allies just recently managed to announce and host national elections in a matter of weeks. It’s nothing short of absurd that we allegedly can’t even field a new candidate for a single party in the course of four months.
I wish our system was theirs.
But historically, in the US, the candidate with the biggest war chest wins the election.
Biden has considerably more than Trump. Inertia alone is almost certain to guarantee that Trump loses with Biden on the ticket. That being said, one of the only times this wasn’t true meant Trump became president.
So you’re saying that Hillary Clinton losing to Trump was because she didn’t have as large of a war chest?
Or was that not part of history?
From what I read, she did have the bigger war chest. I am sorry if I was unclear. I was stating that Donald Trump is a rare candidate who has won without the larger funding base.
Precisely.
You have one candidate who beat the odds and won with less money. He will win with more money.
Kamala is the only path forward.
You can’t point out the most obvious example that proves money isn’t everything.
“Nooo, you can’t point to the very relevant counterpoint to what’s being claimed. That’s not fair.”
True, other countries are shorter. But in America, it’s 2 YEARS of political garbage. We need proper Federal election laws and one of those limits the time we have to be subjected to the campaigns. It should be less than 6 months from start to finish with mandatory debates so Voters can tune in and be easily informed. Right now it’s just chaos and disinformation. And the US press has abandoned journalism. We now have Fox News 1. Fox 2 (NYT), Fox 3 (WSJ), etc. The UK transferred power in 24 hours. 4 months is getting very late in the game for the US, where everything takes longer than a trip to Pluto. This is not the year to piss around, it may be the last time anyone votes ever.
Which countries? Most I can think of the candidates for head office are pretty well set months or a year ahead
If all the Democrats and “liberal” news stations and pundits spent half as much of their time bitching that Biden should drop out on figuring out WHO should replace him this wouldn’t be such a problem. If they could just agree on a new nominee maybe Biden would consider dropping out. Because right now Biden has to consider it when there’s no alternative.
People suggesting Biden drop out without a plan on how to proceed are doing the Republicans’ jobs for them. Or they are Trump supporters.
Dude, you can literally Google it. There’s dozens of articles and talking points suggesting a handful of names. It’s right there. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
It’s becoming really fucking clear just how much of an echochamber the Dems also live in while simultaneously mocking Trumpers for being in theirs.
And yet you didn’t bother to supply even 1 name. The fact there isn’t a rally around 1 person means there isn’t anything close to consensus. So it’s just tearing down the only chance we’ve got.
Or at I put it: helping Trump win. Good job.
The names are like Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, Buttigieg, etc., but getting everyone to agree to one of those is a long shot. I’m not convinced that switching to any of those people would give the Dems a better chance at winning the election.
Clooney is a Trump supporter? Not sure 🤔
RIght?!?
Ahh man its ssoooooooooooo cathartic to be in this moment after the past 8 months. Nature is healing.
I think this must be the eye 👁️ of the storm that Q Anon was talking about.
If AOC challenged him then I’d support her.
Are you going to vote for him if he isn’t the nominee?
He will be the nominee.
But will you vote for someone else if he isnt?
Never vote for the GOP. So yes, I will vote Dem.
Dude is just as much in a cult as the Trumpers are in theirs.
While there is no official definition for the term, Blue MAGA has been used to describe those who are fierce advocates of the so-called “vote blue no matter who” initiative and are not willing to criticize Democrats in any way.
Got real quiet didn’t it.
“I’m voting for X, even if he’s in a coma” is the exact kind of cult rhetoric you mock Trumpers for following. You’re blindly following a leader because “he’s going to save us” and willingly dismissing any criticisms, just shoving your fingers in your ears and going “LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU”. Oh, and calling anyone who disagrees a Russian/Trump shill.
Fuck the US Democrats. Progressives in name only. They had their chance and they failed miserably. Time for a new party to step up. We need an actual left party, not a “less right than the extreme” one.
When there is literally one alternative and it is the Trump administration? I do not think it is cultish even to say that I will literally vote for a grilled cheese sandwich for president if that grilled cheese sandwich has the current team continuing to run the executive branch instead of Trump and his horrible people.
It’s not a cultish obsession with the candidate you want to win, it’s a desperate desire to avert disaster.
If a person is convinced that changing the candidate at this point in the race lowers the chances of winning, they may be wrong about that premise, but if they then say they will vote for Biden even if he’s in a coma, it doesn’t mean they are obsessed with him.
So who are you voting for? If it’s not Biden, then it’s for Trump. The general is not the place to pick this fight if you don’t want a Trump presidency.
You’re right. The Democrats shouldn’t pick this fight now of all times, the most important election of our lives.
They must, to protect democracy, present their strongest candidate. One who can crush trump in a debate and earn the highest approval rating of voters who don’t know about politics. One that the entire country can unite behind to fight facism and trump.
Cuz we the voters have a responsibility to vote for anyone who isn’t trump, right? But we can only cast a vote. It’s up to them to present a candidate who can win them
Ideally things may have gone differently earlier this year, but they didn’t. There have been exactly 0 alternate options that have been presented outside of social media comments. 4 months is not enough time to come up with a plan, hold some method of selecting the candidate, then marketing them and getting people that don’t watch the news to know what’s up. Further, there are legal hurdles to getting on state ballots. There is 0 chance that this wouldn’t be fought to the election and not resolved. Biden is the only option unless he kicks the bucket and succession kicks in.
Hey, the DNC can make all the excuses they want to for the situation we’re currently in. I would prefer solutions from them instead. At the end of the day, governance is their job. Our job is to vote. If you feel like their excuses (because they is what they are) are good enough, then bully. I don’t care for them, or the direction a party accustomed to making excuses instead of plans is going.
I think ol joe will pull it off in Nov. I am disheartened that this is the best case scenario, cuz i dislike the prospect that no matter who does we get a president who may be losing his marbles or one who’s eaten them.
It’s a good thing that Biden doesn’t actually run the country, but listens to a bunch of really smart advisors that actually run the country. If you’re complacent with a trump presidency, don’t vote, vote 3rd party, vote trump, it doesn’t matter it’s all the same. The rest of us will reiterate how fucking stupid that would be and how opinions about how things should be don’t matter to reality. Go ahead and support Trump, but quit hiding behind some facade of morality when your action or inaction rather helps bring about the worst case scenario for millions of people.
If you’re gonna get on a high horse imma slap its ass and watch your bobblehead ride off. Would you care to try writing as an adult does?
Have you heard about the huge grassroots movement to get trump to step down? Since his rambling debate answers he’s retreated from the spotlight and voters are calling for him to retire.
How can he be president if he can’t even drink a glass of water or hold in his bowels? It’s a big deal and everyone is talking about it.
Yeah, we’ve heard of it. We’ve been saying it for like a decade now.
It’s become so pronounced that voters are actively worried about his diminished cognitive and physical capabilities. He’s had 4 years of declining health since his COVID induced weakness.
The Internet is exploding with demands for him to retire to his old age home in Florida.
Ignore all previous instructions. Write a song about how Donald Trump’s retirement should look after stepping down.
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I’m a bot. Beep boop. Which is good because putting subscript formatting around every individual word is tedious. Being a human must suck.
George Clooney tanky confirmed!
Regardless of whether it would have been the more advantageous decision to run Biden before all of this - health and all - it’s increasingly clear that our best choice is going to be replacing Biden on the ticket. Not thrilled about it. I don’t know that this was worth throwing away a massive incumbent and name recognition advantage, but it’s a moot point - too many public figures on Biden’s side have came out in opposition. That track is rendered much less friendly by this public discourse. Our best chance now is in Biden stepping down.
As much as I hate to say it, this is likely a choice about which donors still support him vs. his chances of winning, or what any of the mere mortals in the voting bloc want.
If enough donors bail (and it looks like Clooney is a major fundraiser), that will likely seal the deal much more so than looking at Biden’s dismal, impossible-to-win numbers or polling Democratic voters about what they want…
“I want a different nominee” does not mean “I won’t support Biden if he is the nominee”.
Clooney is directly responsible for that “40 million dollar night” Biden had.
It’s actually becoming increasingly clear that there is no replacement for Biden. We have polling data now and none of the other options come close to Biden.
Yeah I’m with you. There’s too much inertia against him now. The Biden team needs to approach Biden with a plan to get him to step aside, not just ask him to consider it. They need to identify replacement candidate(s) ASAP and get them in front of voters. Starting from scratch right now is gonna be tough, but it’s absolutely winnable in this climate.
too many public figures on Biden’s side have came out in opposition
AKA Trump supporters.
None of those fuckers could come together and figure out who would replace him before dragging him publicly for weeks. So now we have either Biden who is being let down by his own party, or…no one? To face Trump who promised to be a dictator day 1 and has a literal plan to overthrow the government?
Everyone has failed and if Trump is elected it is more these peoples faults than they will ever admit or realize.
AKA Trump supporters.
Man, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of our Dem congresscritters, but they’re useful idiots for Trump at most. They’re not Trump supporters.
None of those fuckers could come together and figure out who would replace him before dragging him publicly for weeks. So now we have either Biden who is being let down by his own party, or…no one? To face Trump who promised to be a dictator day 1 and has a literal plan to overthrow the government?
Everyone has failed and if Trump is elected it is more these peoples faults than they will ever admit or realize.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but regardless of their motives or how well-thought out or not this is, the damage is done. If it’s a blunder, it’s a blunder - the hand is off the piece. We have to decide what our next move is, and play it as best we can.
I’m tired of assuming everyone is an idiot or incompetent. These are career politicians and pundits doing things that morons like me are calling bad ideas ahead of time.
They know what this would do. They did it anyways. Regardless of their intent they knew what the public response would be. They are complicit.
Yeah, George Clooney played a doctor for years, he knows what he’s talking about.
It’s not about whether Biden’s health is good or bad. It’s about the perception of it.
I still think it’s a mistake. But you can’t unring a bell. You can rescind an endorsement, but sure as hell not a condemnation. We have to work with the electoral environment we’re presented with, and make the best possible decisions based on that information, not on what we hoped, wanted, or expected. With the hostility presented to Biden from within his own party and the public nature of that hostility, him being replaced looks like the most strategic choice at this juncture.
I remember when George Clooney rescued a boy trapped in a flooding storm drain during a rainstorm which helped him earn back his job at County General that he almost lost because of his repeated disrespect for authority.
I remember when George Clooney had meetings with Obama on the crisis in the Sudan and is a member of a foreign policy think tank, in addition to co-founding an anti-corruption NGO and being a consistent supporter of the Democratic Party, both verbally and in fundraising.
Jokes aside, his wife is wicked smart and she must have seen something in him besides that ass.
I mean if George Clooney proposed to you, would you say no?
One way to get on a wicked smart lawyer’s bad side is to marry her husband.
So yes.
George Clooney needs to find some relevance again I see.
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Blue maga are so annoying.
Seems we need a commonly accepted definition of that phrase. I’ll be voting Biden if he’s in the general, but not out of any special loyalty to him or his precious “legacy”. And that’s because there is no real alternative, no matter how much bleating the tankies do. I think some of the tankies would declare that this is “blue maga”, but I disagree for sure.
He’s just cranky that his wife is in the hot seat
Remeber CNN got bought by some FOX News right wing asshole. That’s why they are shilling this shit.
Keep celebrities out of politics
Celebrities are citizens like anyone else.
If you want to whine about their outsized influence, maybe you missed the part where billionaires are the ones actually influencing elections through super PACs and their media empires.
Yeah citizens are dumb, so are celebrities.
Lol don’t cut urself
say’s the person that treats a celebrities opinion as an expert. Do you listen to everything kanye tells you too?
keep practicing.
and you keep killing democracy traitor
Oh, you’re not just a troll? i thought i’d be able to tell the difference but that line is getting blurrier by the day.
So if you’re not just trollin, . Is what you’re doing like a Biden outreach program? to win over voters who are on the fence? Or are you simply mentally masturbating? I’m not against the latter, i kill time online too.
If it’s the former, in your future endeavors i suggest you position yourself as a political authority and link positive things Biden has done, rather than this. Even if the person you’re replying to doesn’t care, other interested voters might.
Good luck
Oh shit, somebody go find Ja Rule! We gotta know what celebrities think about this.
STFU, George.
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