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One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its g

by gumby 2y ago

One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.

Slava_Propanei 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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tim333 2y ago
I liked James Carville's idea of picking maybe eight contenders and having town hall type events to choose the most popular. Game show element to take publicity from Trump and also kind of democratic rather than anointing a connected insider, which of course Trump would then go on about endlessly.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  democratic is the famous intended design, over promotion of insiders, right? seems like a great idea from Carville.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Not really, no. At least not in the US. The tension in the US system is between founders who believed in the virtue of the commoner and founders who feared mobocracy. At various levels of the system, the system is designed to be elitist. And the parties are fundamentally private institutions and can be as populist or elitist as they want (worth noting: in practice, the GOP constitution is more populist than the Democrat constitution, which is one of the reasons they nominated Trump; there weren't backstops in the GOP like superdelegates to push him off the ticket).
    - keybored 2y ago
      The fear of “mob rule” seems to only be about losing power in practice.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > backstops [...] like superdelegates The Electoral College is often cited as serving a similar purpose... I think recent events show despite paying the consistent premium it extracts in elitist gatekeeping, when it finally mattered it failed to provide the promised protection against unethical demagogues.
- mattnewton 2y ago
  1) contested convention after the incumbent steps down 2) republican candidate considered a crook 3) it's in Chicago Whatever they do, don't do what the DNC did in 1968 again, lets try to at least make new mistakes this time I guess?
  - PopAlongKid 2y ago
    What mistakes did the DNC make in 1968? Chicago Mayor Daley and his police force made the mistakes with the protestors, much of the media coverage of the police riots falsely made it look like it was happening right outside the convention site.
    - mattnewton 2y ago
      Well, anointing the VP Humphrey as the new candidate, in a process that alienated a lot of the dem's base was a big mistake in retrospect. I won't pretend to know the history well enough to know if there was any workable approach then, but the convention process in 1968 definitely didn't work to produce a candidate Dems were excited about at the end of it, the turnout was low and Humphrey lost in a landslide. Also, I think some of it was happening right outside the convention site - Dan Rather was famously manhandled on national television by security guards while trying to interview someone leaving the convention.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I keep imaging being in a Sorkin-esque West Wing timeline
- ScottBurson 2y ago
  Not a bad idea, but it remains to be seen how many people are up for starting a run at this late date. Also, I just read that Harris has money pouring in. The donors may effectively decide this before anyone else can get traction.
- kagakuninja 2y ago
  Anything a washed up hack like Carville suggests should be viewed with suspicion. At this point, it has to be Harris. She is also the only person who can use the money from Joe Biden's campaign fund.
jjtheblunt 2y ago
how do you measure who is effective?
- babypuncher 2y ago
  It's a very tough thing to objectively measure, but one metric we can point to is his ability to push a surprising amount of bipartisan legislation through an incredibly divided congress in just 4 years.
  - arp242 2y ago
    What would you say are some of his greatest achievements? Question out of curiosity, not a challenge. I don't follow US politics that closely.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      IRA (re-industrialized a significant portion of Red states in Power Systems, Battery, and Solar PV manufacturing), CHIPS (bringing back mass semiconductor fabrication with 5 mega fabs and re-introducing packaging and OSAT in the US), Infra Bill/IIJA, and Child Tax Credit during COVID. There's a reason the GOP aren't touching most of the provisions in the first 3 Acts (especially with Vance as Veep). [0][1] Vance is backed by Horowitz and Andreessen, and both heavily benefited from the IRA and CHIPS various provisions (but got hit by the capital gains tax changes that Biden proposed a couple months ago [2]). The biggest issue was the Biden admin's inability to promote the impact of all of these. Biden hasn't been campaigning across America as much as his predecessors. [0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-policy/ https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-p... [1] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-us-trade-policy/ https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-us-trade-pol... [2] - https://a16z.com/the-little-tech-agenda/ https://a16z.com/the-little-tech-agenda/
      - jjtheblunt 2y ago
        some have a delay until the benefits are evident, too, and a delay longer than roughly a half an election cycle makes them perhaps semi invisible?
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer. On the contrary, the processes that anointed Hillary in 2016 and Biden round 2 in 2024 were exactly the kind of "well, it's this person's turn now" decisions that were bad, anti-democratic (lower-case d) choices previously. I'm not looking for a "circular firing squad" but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either.
- notjoemama 2y ago
  Part of it is a numbers game. She would get an incumbent bump over other potential candidates. There is hope, and I believe some data showing, she could energize the POC base. This is especially important now because polling was suggesting Trump was growing that area. Fundamentally though, name recognition ends up being meaningful in elections. I’m not advocating one way or another, just sharing why it seems to be an obvious choice for the party. If it helps, who I prefer isn’t being considered, probably because it’s not “their turn”.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    Doesn't she lose bluecolar npoc without Joe?
    - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
      Maybe she should pick Joe as her running mate then. That would be hilarious.
- klyrs 2y ago
  > ...but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either. Regardless of what people want (and FWIW I agree that Hilary getting rammed down our throats was highly anti-democratic) at this stage of the game, Harris is the only person who can benefit from Biden's warchest. Barring somebody like Dwayne Johnson deciding to enter politics and stealing the show, Harris is the solitary candidate who is poised to hit the ground running with an adequate campaign today. And with so little time before the election, I think the only choice Democrats have today is to hold their noses and vote.
slashdev 2y ago
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tomohawk 2y ago
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wilg 2y ago
> But he did campaign on a single term. He did not really do this.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  A single term was a prominent part of the discussion around his electability[1]. I'm not sure whether he campaigned on it per se, but it was certainly something that I (and other people I know) factored into my vote in 2020. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-0...
- alex_young 2y ago
  "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said. "There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country." https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge...
  - ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
    Please stop spreading the cancer which is AMP. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge...
    - jimktrains2 2y ago
      At least it's on CNN's domain. I most hated that it used to always be hosted off of Google's domain.
  - trhway 2y ago
    Biden was a stop-gap measure as Democrats didn't risk to put any new emerging leader against Trump. I think it was a big mistake - basically "coronation" of Biden back then replaced the normal, though painful, democratic process of producing a new Democrats leader. And as a result, it seems to me that Biden like a huge tree in the forest only exacerbated the issue by not letting new leadership to grow in the last 4 years. Of course he didn't do it intentionally, he (and his entourage) just naturally sucked up all the air and nothing grew in his shadow. Now, with the "anointment" of Harris, Democrats are repeating that mistake for the 3rd time - ie. Hillary, Biden, Harris - while on the other side we have a "Viking" leader who bloody slaughtered and ate all the competitors who were in that Republican jar (compare that to "Biden campaign chair to staff: Time to elevate Kamala Harris" - leaders aren't elevated by some bureaucrats, leaders arise and elevate themselves) (To clarify my political position, i'm pro-Democrat and think Biden wasn't a bad president, though i think he completely dropped the ball on the foreign policy - while Ukraine and Israel are more prominent, they cause multipage flamewars, so instead i'd point to Houthis where i think majority can agree with me that what Houtis do in Red Sea is just plain war crimes (intentional attacks on civilian shipping) and that should have been immediately nipped in the bud by the overwhelming US and allies' force in the region - if anything, protection of civilian shipping is one of the most legitimate major uses of the Navy, and i'd say it is a direct duty of the president to put it to such a use when the need arises)
eric_cc 2y ago
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veryeffective 2y ago
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- ridgitdigit 2y ago
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- aa_is_op 2y ago
  great new account you have there
- endofreach 2y ago
  Why create an anonymous account for this if this is your honest opinion & you don't see anything wrong with it?
natehiggars 2y ago
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natehiggars 2y ago
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- cycrutchfield 2y ago
  How are usernames like this allowed? Very on-brand btw
  - arp242 2y ago
    They're obviously not. But account was created just an hour ago, and stuff like this is more or less impossible to prevent.
bushbaba 2y ago
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- dehrmann 2y ago
  > He also was president to Russia invading Ukraine leading to a Europe wide conflict. Hamas invading Israel. I put some of the blame on Biden because the botched Afghanistan withdrawal sent the message that the US doesn't want to get involved with regional conflicts, emboldening Russia, Hamas, and Iran.
  - elil17 2y ago
    Except it was Trump who agreed to the withdrawal… Biden just happened to be president during it.
    - dehrmann 2y ago
      He didn't have to complete it, and he didn't have to rush it.
      - lesuorac 2y ago
        Rush it? The agreement was to leave in May. The US left in basically August which is 4 months after the agreed upon time. That said, if though basically 20 years of "occupation" the US couldn't nation build Afghanistan into being able to defend itself vs the Taliban I don't think you can point at a single president.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  It's not obvious how he could have prevented Russia from invading Ukraine, or stopped Hamas from invading Israel. Not everything comes back to the U.S. The biggest EV manufacturers in the U.S. are Tesla and Ford, as far as I can tell. No Chinese manufacturer I'm aware of has made significant inroads.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
throwaway984393 2y ago
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lilsoso 2y ago
Not according to Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz [1], Chamath Palihapitiya & David Sacks [2], possibly Zuckerberg [3], and others. And of course Elon, Thiel. Many such cases. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqIZGXWUpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqIZGXWUpU [3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgWFwVRGcf4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgWFwVRGcf4
- nirav72 2y ago
  SEC and other watchdog agencies will most likely be gutted to give rise to Crypto.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  These videos would fit very nicely into an undergraduate course segment on motivated reasoning. As viewers, it's incumbent upon us to determine whether the Musks and the Thiels of the world have our best interests in mind and, if not, whether their support for any particular candidate might reflect that.
  - justinhj 2y ago
    As Trump said in his recent speech in Michigan "We have to make life good for our smart people." These are executives and investors who have created trillions in value with their technology based products and services. Their interests align with mine.
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      You're entitled to believe that. But you might want to consider whether this is (1) uniformly true for HN's readership demographic, and (2) uniformly true for the American electorate.
      - cdrini 2y ago
        Hmm why should they consider those things? They stated their opinion and priorities, which will likely influence their voting decision. The views of HN or the American electorate play no role in the statement of that individual's priorities, no?
0xcde4c3db 2y ago
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- ajross 2y ago
  > A fair number of Dems have seemingly engaged with the prospect of Biden stepping aside as a gateway to their wildest fantasies Uh, who? Certainly there are people who have their own opinions out there somewhere, but virtually every name brand democrat over the past few hours has either explicitly endorsed Harris or notably avoided boosting a different candidate. And absolutely no one is going even the tiniest bit negative on Harris, at all. No, it seems like a fait accompli at this point. Add to that her control over the almost $100M campaign warchest, and... yeah. The fight now is over who gets to be VP.
  - 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
    I'm not talking about prominent Democratic politicians/strategists/pundits for that part; it's just a sentiment I've seen a whole lot of as someone whose social media diet is dominated by left-leaning spaces. There's a huge appetite for the perfect candidate who can (in fantasy-land) ensure that Trump is defeated for all time.
- smeej 2y ago
  I don't know how much name recognition matters when people are SO polarized about the extremely well-known name on the other side. It seems like this is really going to be a "for Trump" and "against Trump" election at this point. Nobody's going to leap out and knock anybody's socks off this close to the wire. All the dems need to do is present any body people are reasonably sure will still be warm in four years. The results won't differ much.
- deleted 2y ago
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oldpersonintx 2y ago
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dotancohen 2y ago
> One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. In what way? I don't live in the US, so what did I miss? I don't remember Biden doing anything of note (good or bad). > But he did campaign on a single term. Biden said that he was running for only a single term, and during this entire second election campaign nobody called him out on that, not even outspoken Trump?
- gcanyon 2y ago
  https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1143149435/despite-infighting-its-been-a-surprisingly-productive-2-years-for-democrats https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1143149435/despite-infighting... There's more; that's just the first two years.
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    Looks like he just signed a bunch of money to people, then said he fought inflation which was both directly and indirectly caused by him signing over money... Can't see anything tangible there that forcibly improved the lives of Americans.
    - breckenedge 2y ago
      More stimulus money was spent under Trump ($456B) than Biden ($410B). https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-three-rounds-of-coronavirus-stimulus-checks https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-thr...
      - seoulmetro 2y ago
        Not sure how that relates to someone's accomplishments being just spending?
canadiantim 2y ago
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jzb 2y ago
Simplest may not be best here. Is Harris the person who is most likely to get people to the polls and vote Dem? Is she someone who can convert independent/undecided voters? etc. IMO those are not easy "yes, absolutely" answers. Does the Democratic party have anyone in the wings who is more likely to win than Harris? Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to think of a nationally known candidate with super-strong positives that would be a viable alternative. (That's also true for the GOP IMO if somehow Trump was out.)
- egypturnash 2y ago
  The polling before this announcement was showing Harris with better numbers vs. Trump than Biden had, at least.
  - caseyohara 2y ago
    I believe Harris would still have access to the $240M Biden/Harris campaign fund too.
    - deleted 2y ago
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  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I honestly didn't have much faith in that polling. The media was scrambling after the debate to propose a different narrative and many in the party that were turning on Biden were promoting Harris. The polling seemed too convenient. I don't have a link handy, but the best poll process I saw after the debate did show Harris doing better than Biden, but she was still worse off than a few of the other Democratic potentials.
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Polling whom? Democrats? As we have seen many times this century, getting the popular vote does not mean you win the presidency.
- 2y ago
dimal 2y ago
> probably Harris is the simplest answer And probably the wrong answer. I don’t see her winning over swing voters. Gretchen Whitmer seems like the best option to me. I’d enjoy watching her debate Trump.
- deleted 2y ago
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- netsharc 2y ago
  The 2 parties' bases will vote for whoever their candidate is, and their work is just to convince the undecideds. An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. I feel like to win them over, the candidates have to rely on the halo effect, ie. sadly even just on looks. The young and fit-looking Whitmer, or Newsom, seem to be the best candidates. It's shallow, but consider the voters. Obama's charisma and youth surely helped a lot. Trump is tall and he was a good-looking young man, and his swagger has let him get away with being a total POS for 77-78 years.
  - NalNezumi 2y ago
    >An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory Believe it or not, there are people in this world that is not immediately swayed by either waving your totem pole or burning the strawman with the opponents face. You witness a raging mob or a 100% sure fool once in your life and the magic of tribalists shouting loud being convincing, might shatter. Those will still be swayed by emotional or other marketing tactics that appeal to their convictions, but if they managed to stay undecided in such a polar political climate like USA, my guess is that what they see are two fanatic ends of the horseshoe, and they either decides to disengage from it all or take their time to assessment which one is the lesser dummheit[1] [1] https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/ https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidit...
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
seoulmetro 2y ago
What did Biden do to make America or the life of Americans better (or possibly worse for some)? Seems like America has been going backwards for a long time.
- ericfr11 2y ago
  CHIPS act, IR act (infrastructure, jobs...), student loans effort, better social nets for seniors, millions of jobs, much better handling of inflation than the rest of the world, pushing for democracy and freedom. We can't go back to misogyny, racism, removing freedoms from women, teachers, different people, giving money only to the rich and connected, non-sense diplomacy...
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    The second sentence makes me not trust the first sentence btw. The first sentence is basically just signing normal budget agreements? The chips decision sounds like the best decision that was actually pushed after Covid.
asynchronous 2y ago
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adolph 2y ago
By not stepping down as president, he is totally RBG-ing Harris. Maybe a resignation will be announced later for maximum impact and tie into some thing ready for Harris to announce presidentially, like some camp david peacing or another 3 states ratifying the ERA.
- deleted 2y ago
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jalapenos 2y ago
I laughed out loud when I read this, but maybe if you reword it "effective presidencies" you could be right. I imagine those around him were doing all the presidenting, and perhaps they're more effective without a functioning president to get in their way. Some might then point out things like the border were signs of ineffectiveness, but actually, if you reasonably assume it was intentional, then they were exceptionally effective.
PM_me_your_math 2y ago
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by gumby 2y ago

Slava_Propanei 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

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tim333 2y ago

I liked James Carville's idea of picking maybe eight contenders and having town hall type events to choose the most popular. Game show element to take publicity from Trump and also kind of democratic rather than anointing a connected insider, which of course Trump would then go on about endlessly.

jjtheblunt 2y ago
democratic is the famous intended design, over promotion of insiders, right? seems like a great idea from Carville.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Not really, no. At least not in the US. The tension in the US system is between founders who believed in the virtue of the commoner and founders who feared mobocracy. At various levels of the system, the system is designed to be elitist. And the parties are fundamentally private institutions and can be as populist or elitist as they want (worth noting: in practice, the GOP constitution is more populist than the Democrat constitution, which is one of the reasons they nominated Trump; there weren't backstops in the GOP like superdelegates to push him off the ticket).
  - keybored 2y ago
    The fear of “mob rule” seems to only be about losing power in practice.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > backstops [...] like superdelegates The Electoral College is often cited as serving a similar purpose... I think recent events show despite paying the consistent premium it extracts in elitist gatekeeping, when it finally mattered it failed to provide the promised protection against unethical demagogues.
mattnewton 2y ago
1) contested convention after the incumbent steps down 2) republican candidate considered a crook 3) it's in Chicago Whatever they do, don't do what the DNC did in 1968 again, lets try to at least make new mistakes this time I guess?
- PopAlongKid 2y ago
  What mistakes did the DNC make in 1968? Chicago Mayor Daley and his police force made the mistakes with the protestors, much of the media coverage of the police riots falsely made it look like it was happening right outside the convention site.
  - mattnewton 2y ago
    Well, anointing the VP Humphrey as the new candidate, in a process that alienated a lot of the dem's base was a big mistake in retrospect. I won't pretend to know the history well enough to know if there was any workable approach then, but the convention process in 1968 definitely didn't work to produce a candidate Dems were excited about at the end of it, the turnout was low and Humphrey lost in a landslide. Also, I think some of it was happening right outside the convention site - Dan Rather was famously manhandled on national television by security guards while trying to interview someone leaving the convention.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I keep imaging being in a Sorkin-esque West Wing timeline
ScottBurson 2y ago
Not a bad idea, but it remains to be seen how many people are up for starting a run at this late date. Also, I just read that Harris has money pouring in. The donors may effectively decide this before anyone else can get traction.
kagakuninja 2y ago
Anything a washed up hack like Carville suggests should be viewed with suspicion. At this point, it has to be Harris. She is also the only person who can use the money from Joe Biden's campaign fund.

jjtheblunt 2y ago

how do you measure who is effective?

babypuncher 2y ago
It's a very tough thing to objectively measure, but one metric we can point to is his ability to push a surprising amount of bipartisan legislation through an incredibly divided congress in just 4 years.
- arp242 2y ago
  What would you say are some of his greatest achievements? Question out of curiosity, not a challenge. I don't follow US politics that closely.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    IRA (re-industrialized a significant portion of Red states in Power Systems, Battery, and Solar PV manufacturing), CHIPS (bringing back mass semiconductor fabrication with 5 mega fabs and re-introducing packaging and OSAT in the US), Infra Bill/IIJA, and Child Tax Credit during COVID. There's a reason the GOP aren't touching most of the provisions in the first 3 Acts (especially with Vance as Veep). [0][1] Vance is backed by Horowitz and Andreessen, and both heavily benefited from the IRA and CHIPS various provisions (but got hit by the capital gains tax changes that Biden proposed a couple months ago [2]). The biggest issue was the Biden admin's inability to promote the impact of all of these. Biden hasn't been campaigning across America as much as his predecessors. [0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-policy/ https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-p... [1] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-us-trade-policy/ https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-us-trade-pol... [2] - https://a16z.com/the-little-tech-agenda/ https://a16z.com/the-little-tech-agenda/
    - jjtheblunt 2y ago
      some have a delay until the benefits are evident, too, and a delay longer than roughly a half an election cycle makes them perhaps semi invisible?

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

> Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer. On the contrary, the processes that anointed Hillary in 2016 and Biden round 2 in 2024 were exactly the kind of "well, it's this person's turn now" decisions that were bad, anti-democratic (lower-case d) choices previously. I'm not looking for a "circular firing squad" but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either.

notjoemama 2y ago
Part of it is a numbers game. She would get an incumbent bump over other potential candidates. There is hope, and I believe some data showing, she could energize the POC base. This is especially important now because polling was suggesting Trump was growing that area. Fundamentally though, name recognition ends up being meaningful in elections. I’m not advocating one way or another, just sharing why it seems to be an obvious choice for the party. If it helps, who I prefer isn’t being considered, probably because it’s not “their turn”.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  Doesn't she lose bluecolar npoc without Joe?
  - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
    Maybe she should pick Joe as her running mate then. That would be hilarious.
klyrs 2y ago
> ...but neither do I think some sort of automatic anointment of Harris is what people want either. Regardless of what people want (and FWIW I agree that Hilary getting rammed down our throats was highly anti-democratic) at this stage of the game, Harris is the only person who can benefit from Biden's warchest. Barring somebody like Dwayne Johnson deciding to enter politics and stealing the show, Harris is the solitary candidate who is poised to hit the ground running with an adequate campaign today. And with so little time before the election, I think the only choice Democrats have today is to hold their noses and vote.

slashdev 2y ago

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tomohawk 2y ago

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wilg 2y ago

> But he did campaign on a single term. He did not really do this.

woodruffw 2y ago
A single term was a prominent part of the discussion around his electability[1]. I'm not sure whether he campaigned on it per se, but it was certainly something that I (and other people I know) factored into my vote in 2020. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-0...
alex_young 2y ago
"Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said. "There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country." https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge...
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  Please stop spreading the cancer which is AMP. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge...
  - jimktrains2 2y ago
    At least it's on CNN's domain. I most hated that it used to always be hosted off of Google's domain.
- trhway 2y ago
  Biden was a stop-gap measure as Democrats didn't risk to put any new emerging leader against Trump. I think it was a big mistake - basically "coronation" of Biden back then replaced the normal, though painful, democratic process of producing a new Democrats leader. And as a result, it seems to me that Biden like a huge tree in the forest only exacerbated the issue by not letting new leadership to grow in the last 4 years. Of course he didn't do it intentionally, he (and his entourage) just naturally sucked up all the air and nothing grew in his shadow. Now, with the "anointment" of Harris, Democrats are repeating that mistake for the 3rd time - ie. Hillary, Biden, Harris - while on the other side we have a "Viking" leader who bloody slaughtered and ate all the competitors who were in that Republican jar (compare that to "Biden campaign chair to staff: Time to elevate Kamala Harris" - leaders aren't elevated by some bureaucrats, leaders arise and elevate themselves) (To clarify my political position, i'm pro-Democrat and think Biden wasn't a bad president, though i think he completely dropped the ball on the foreign policy - while Ukraine and Israel are more prominent, they cause multipage flamewars, so instead i'd point to Houthis where i think majority can agree with me that what Houtis do in Red Sea is just plain war crimes (intentional attacks on civilian shipping) and that should have been immediately nipped in the bud by the overwhelming US and allies' force in the region - if anything, protection of civilian shipping is one of the most legitimate major uses of the Navy, and i'd say it is a direct duty of the president to put it to such a use when the need arises)

eric_cc 2y ago

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veryeffective 2y ago

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ridgitdigit 2y ago
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aa_is_op 2y ago
great new account you have there
endofreach 2y ago
Why create an anonymous account for this if this is your honest opinion & you don't see anything wrong with it?

natehiggars 2y ago

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natehiggars 2y ago

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cycrutchfield 2y ago
How are usernames like this allowed? Very on-brand btw
- arp242 2y ago
  They're obviously not. But account was created just an hour ago, and stuff like this is more or less impossible to prevent.

bushbaba 2y ago

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dehrmann 2y ago
> He also was president to Russia invading Ukraine leading to a Europe wide conflict. Hamas invading Israel. I put some of the blame on Biden because the botched Afghanistan withdrawal sent the message that the US doesn't want to get involved with regional conflicts, emboldening Russia, Hamas, and Iran.
- elil17 2y ago
  Except it was Trump who agreed to the withdrawal… Biden just happened to be president during it.
  - dehrmann 2y ago
    He didn't have to complete it, and he didn't have to rush it.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      Rush it? The agreement was to leave in May. The US left in basically August which is 4 months after the agreed upon time. That said, if though basically 20 years of "occupation" the US couldn't nation build Afghanistan into being able to defend itself vs the Taliban I don't think you can point at a single president.
karaterobot 2y ago
It's not obvious how he could have prevented Russia from invading Ukraine, or stopped Hamas from invading Israel. Not everything comes back to the U.S. The biggest EV manufacturers in the U.S. are Tesla and Ford, as far as I can tell. No Chinese manufacturer I'm aware of has made significant inroads.
- ipaddr 2y ago

throwaway984393 2y ago

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lilsoso 2y ago

Not according to Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz [1], Chamath Palihapitiya & David Sacks [2], possibly Zuckerberg [3], and others. And of course Elon, Thiel. Many such cases. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqIZGXWUpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blqIZGXWUpU [3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgWFwVRGcf4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XgWFwVRGcf4

nirav72 2y ago
SEC and other watchdog agencies will most likely be gutted to give rise to Crypto.
woodruffw 2y ago
These videos would fit very nicely into an undergraduate course segment on motivated reasoning. As viewers, it's incumbent upon us to determine whether the Musks and the Thiels of the world have our best interests in mind and, if not, whether their support for any particular candidate might reflect that.
- justinhj 2y ago
  As Trump said in his recent speech in Michigan "We have to make life good for our smart people." These are executives and investors who have created trillions in value with their technology based products and services. Their interests align with mine.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    You're entitled to believe that. But you might want to consider whether this is (1) uniformly true for HN's readership demographic, and (2) uniformly true for the American electorate.
    - cdrini 2y ago
      Hmm why should they consider those things? They stated their opinion and priorities, which will likely influence their voting decision. The views of HN or the American electorate play no role in the statement of that individual's priorities, no?

0xcde4c3db 2y ago

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ajross 2y ago
> A fair number of Dems have seemingly engaged with the prospect of Biden stepping aside as a gateway to their wildest fantasies Uh, who? Certainly there are people who have their own opinions out there somewhere, but virtually every name brand democrat over the past few hours has either explicitly endorsed Harris or notably avoided boosting a different candidate. And absolutely no one is going even the tiniest bit negative on Harris, at all. No, it seems like a fait accompli at this point. Add to that her control over the almost $100M campaign warchest, and... yeah. The fight now is over who gets to be VP.
- 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
  I'm not talking about prominent Democratic politicians/strategists/pundits for that part; it's just a sentiment I've seen a whole lot of as someone whose social media diet is dominated by left-leaning spaces. There's a huge appetite for the perfect candidate who can (in fantasy-land) ensure that Trump is defeated for all time.
smeej 2y ago
I don't know how much name recognition matters when people are SO polarized about the extremely well-known name on the other side. It seems like this is really going to be a "for Trump" and "against Trump" election at this point. Nobody's going to leap out and knock anybody's socks off this close to the wire. All the dems need to do is present any body people are reasonably sure will still be warm in four years. The results won't differ much.
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oldpersonintx 2y ago

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dotancohen 2y ago

> One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. In what way? I don't live in the US, so what did I miss? I don't remember Biden doing anything of note (good or bad). > But he did campaign on a single term. Biden said that he was running for only a single term, and during this entire second election campaign nobody called him out on that, not even outspoken Trump?

gcanyon 2y ago
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1143149435/despite-infighting-its-been-a-surprisingly-productive-2-years-for-democrats https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1143149435/despite-infighting... There's more; that's just the first two years.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  Looks like he just signed a bunch of money to people, then said he fought inflation which was both directly and indirectly caused by him signing over money... Can't see anything tangible there that forcibly improved the lives of Americans.
  - breckenedge 2y ago
    More stimulus money was spent under Trump ($456B) than Biden ($410B). https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-three-rounds-of-coronavirus-stimulus-checks https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-thr...
    - seoulmetro 2y ago
      Not sure how that relates to someone's accomplishments being just spending?

canadiantim 2y ago

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jzb 2y ago

Simplest may not be best here. Is Harris the person who is most likely to get people to the polls and vote Dem? Is she someone who can convert independent/undecided voters? etc. IMO those are not easy "yes, absolutely" answers. Does the Democratic party have anyone in the wings who is more likely to win than Harris? Maybe? Gretchen Whitmer might be a strong candidate, off the top of my head. But I'm struggling to think of a nationally known candidate with super-strong positives that would be a viable alternative. (That's also true for the GOP IMO if somehow Trump was out.)

egypturnash 2y ago
The polling before this announcement was showing Harris with better numbers vs. Trump than Biden had, at least.
- caseyohara 2y ago
  I believe Harris would still have access to the $240M Biden/Harris campaign fund too.
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- _heimdall 2y ago
  I honestly didn't have much faith in that polling. The media was scrambling after the debate to propose a different narrative and many in the party that were turning on Biden were promoting Harris. The polling seemed too convenient. I don't have a link handy, but the best poll process I saw after the debate did show Harris doing better than Biden, but she was still worse off than a few of the other Democratic potentials.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Polling whom? Democrats? As we have seen many times this century, getting the popular vote does not mean you win the presidency.
2y ago

dimal 2y ago

> probably Harris is the simplest answer And probably the wrong answer. I don’t see her winning over swing voters. Gretchen Whitmer seems like the best option to me. I’d enjoy watching her debate Trump.

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netsharc 2y ago
The 2 parties' bases will vote for whoever their candidate is, and their work is just to convince the undecideds. An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. I feel like to win them over, the candidates have to rely on the halo effect, ie. sadly even just on looks. The young and fit-looking Whitmer, or Newsom, seem to be the best candidates. It's shallow, but consider the voters. Obama's charisma and youth surely helped a lot. Trump is tall and he was a good-looking young man, and his swagger has let him get away with being a total POS for 77-78 years.
- NalNezumi 2y ago
  >An HN commenter a while ago wrote, they don't get who in the hell can be so stupid/ignorant to still be undecided in this election. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory Believe it or not, there are people in this world that is not immediately swayed by either waving your totem pole or burning the strawman with the opponents face. You witness a raging mob or a 100% sure fool once in your life and the magic of tribalists shouting loud being convincing, might shatter. Those will still be swayed by emotional or other marketing tactics that appeal to their convictions, but if they managed to stay undecided in such a polar political climate like USA, my guess is that what they see are two fanatic ends of the horseshoe, and they either decides to disengage from it all or take their time to assessment which one is the lesser dummheit[1] [1] https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/ https://nsjonline.com/article/2021/12/bonhoeffer-on-stupidit...
- Workaccount2 2y ago

seoulmetro 2y ago

What did Biden do to make America or the life of Americans better (or possibly worse for some)? Seems like America has been going backwards for a long time.

ericfr11 2y ago
CHIPS act, IR act (infrastructure, jobs...), student loans effort, better social nets for seniors, millions of jobs, much better handling of inflation than the rest of the world, pushing for democracy and freedom. We can't go back to misogyny, racism, removing freedoms from women, teachers, different people, giving money only to the rich and connected, non-sense diplomacy...
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  The second sentence makes me not trust the first sentence btw. The first sentence is basically just signing normal budget agreements? The chips decision sounds like the best decision that was actually pushed after Covid.

asynchronous 2y ago

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adolph 2y ago

By not stepping down as president, he is totally RBG-ing Harris. Maybe a resignation will be announced later for maximum impact and tie into some thing ready for Harris to announce presidentially, like some camp david peacing or another 3 states ratifying the ERA.

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jalapenos 2y ago

I laughed out loud when I read this, but maybe if you reword it "effective presidencies" you could be right. I imagine those around him were doing all the presidenting, and perhaps they're more effective without a functioning president to get in their way. Some might then point out things like the border were signs of ineffectiveness, but actually, if you reasonably assume it was intentional, then they were exceptionally effective.

PM_me_your_math 2y ago

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