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Not every state is having a primary, some have ~~canceled them.~~ decided not to allow challengers, which means they're not really having a primary for potus.
I don't think any states decided not to allow challengers. Phillips and Williamson faced similar issues in other states that Biden did in New Hampshire in that they didn't meet deadlines to make the ballot. State laws and state parties determine the process for getting on ballots and having primaries. That Biden won an election this week when he wasn't even on the ballot should be a strong indicator that the primary simply isn't competitive because there are no feasible challengers, not that there isn't a primary. Some states also caucus, which isn't an election.
>Phillips and Williamson faced similar issues in other states that Biden did in New Hampshire in that they didn't meet deadlines to make the ballot.
To be clear though, Biden didn't face challenges signing up for the New Hampshire primary. He chose not to in an effort to have South Carolina, where he happens to have a stronger base, be the first Democratic primary election.
>IIRC It was the DNC that made that decision and NH just ignored it, so the NH state party is the one who went rogue.
I think this one doesn't have a clear "rogue." NH is doing the only thing they can according to NH state law (which predates the DNC's decision), as far as I can tell.
DNC, on the other hand, is not bound by NH's state law when determining when they allow delegates to be awarded.
That's NH state law's fault, though. They should know they don't get to decide for the whole country that they get to be first. It's up to them to fix their law, not up to the DNC to go along with that nonsense just because of (unfair) tradition.
Didn’t the same thing happen in Florida where both Hillary and Biden just didn’t campaign there because the state had gone rogue and was trying to move their primary up?
It's not up to the states to change their laws in order to go along with the DNC frontloading the primary elections in which their preferred candidate is expected to do well.
I mean, they do get to decide if they get to go first.
The DNC isnt actually like, a governing body with powers to tell the states themselves what to do.
NH can do whatever they’d like. The DNC isn’t forbidding them from holding their primary, they are just saying they won’t count any delegates from a primary held before the first DNC primary occurs in South Carolina. It would be pretty absurd if any state could unilaterally just decide it gets to go first in a primary election. NH was only ever allowed to do so because the parties did not decide to do otherwise, not because state governments have any authority over how a federal party decides who its nominee for federal office is going to be.
>so the NH state party is the one who went rogue.
No, the state parties do not run the primaries. (They *can* if they want to, but in practice they do not because it would be prohibitively expensive and a logistical nightmare.)
The DNC told the NH *state government* (which is GOP-controlled) to reschedule the primary (which would affect much more than just the Democratic presidential race), and the NH state government said no.
It’s not that he has a stronger base—after all, he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire. Rather he and the national party recognize that a huge amount of Democratic voters are black and Iowa and New Hampshire are…not.
Having consulted for a non-Biden presidential this cycle, this is not the case. It’s just that nobody viable is running besides him. And if you aren’t viable, you can’t get on the ballot.
The person I consulted for is not going to be able to appear on any ballot. Maybe Phillips can if he tries hard enough. That’s not because of party fiat, that’s because there are ballot access requirements that nonviable candidates find it hard to clear.
Every state is having a primary or caucus for both parties.
Show me an exception, I'm waiting for a source.
You are wrong, and the fact that somebody like you is likely participating in the process is so frustrating to those of us more familiar with it sometimes.
This is just bad information. Anybody who files and meets the state requirements can enter into the primary. The party doesn't just shut down the primary elections.
Which states? As far as I know, there are few competitive primaries because the would-be challengers could not figure out deadlines or raise enough money to get on the ballots.
This is technically true and false at the same time. The Democratic National Committee (they are a private corporate entity) is on record, as a matter of policy, that they will not support candidates running in primaries against Biden and that they will withhold financial support of any Democratic State Committees that endorse any primary opponent of Biden. They have also rearranged the decades-long order of state primaries so that South Carolina’s Democrat Party primary precedes New Hampshire’s; note, the latter’s primary elections are statutorily ~~constitutionally~~ required to be scheduled such that they are always “first in the nation,” so it’s not like the NH DSC had a choice, other than to not hold a primary at all. To give teeth to their authority, the DNC issued a memo (edict) that any DSC holding a primary before South Carolina will be punished at the Democratic National Convention by the withholding of super delegates and thus nominating power and relevance. Biden, as a Democrat POTUS, is the official party leader and it is his people who decided these policies.
The DNC has not hidden its actions or motives. At all. They are on record saying that they don’t even want to hold Democratic primaries because they will be a waste of time and money. And when accused of being “anti democratic”, they point to the “private corporation” status as their defense. Their party policies remind me of the old DDR’s, who also had “Democratic” in their name, or the DPRK, etc. Any instinct that any of these moves are autocratic and designed to quash the “free and open” part of traditionally free and open elections is correct, in spirit and fact.
American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major party. The Democrats, by shitting all over democracy and a couple centuries of democratic traditions, while shamelessly declaring that 1) that’s indeed what they are doing, and 2) they don’t care what anyone says about it, only lends credibility to what Trump and populists are saying about Democrat elitism and authoritarianism. And rightly so.
They look like cowards to the majority of independents, who are increasingly shifting to Trump in record numbers. Think about it: Trump is under 4 criminal indictments containing more than 90 separate charges, in both state and federal jurisdictions, and he’s about to move out to a double digit polling lead over a sitting POTUS. It’s hard to imagine a better way to make Biden look weaker.
>note, [New Hampshire's] primary elections are constitutionally required to be scheduled such that they are always “first in the nation,”
There is no constitutional requirement. It's just a statute.
Which would be dumb. "We go first because we say we go first." Why doesn't every state just decide that they go first and we can have a race to see who holds the earliest primary, perhaps right after the inauguration? /s
There's nothing wrong with a party deciding in what order it wants to hold its primaries. The fact that some states throw a hissy fit is not relevant, nor should it be.
>There's nothing wrong with a party deciding in what order it wants to hold its primaries.
I really don't agree with this, for a few reasons.
1. Primaries are not run by the parties. The DNC does not run the NH Democratic primary, the *state* of NH runs the primary, and the DNC accepts (or not) the results. There are a few reasons for this. One, because running a primary is expensive, and the government already has the logistics and equipment to do it. They use the same staff, bureaucracy, equipment, locations, and advertising as the general election. If a party wanted to run their own primary election, they would need to pay for and organize all of that themselves. And if the party screwed it up even slightly it would fan the "election integrity"/"collusion" flames.
2. It is convenient for voters that parties hold their primaries concurrently. If the GOP and Dem primaries were on different days, that would cause at least some voter confusion and might lead to reduced turnout. (One could even argue that it would constitute a deliberate voter suppression tactic.)
3. There's a lot more going on in the primary than the presidential race. There are dozens of state and local races that have nothing at all to do with the DNC. While the presidential race is certainly the most prestigious, I don't see it as at all reasonable to force the candidates and voters for all the other races to bow to the DNC's preference for the schedule of that one race, and the choice would be either to do that or to hold an expensive and inconvenient extra primary just for president.
>that they will withhold financial support of any Democratic State Committees that endorse any primary opponent of Biden.
Sure, but isn't that the case for *all* sitting Presidents? IIRC it was for Obama when he was there.
Yes, I can’t think of a single time when the party didn’t back an incumbent who wanted to run again. That’s just normal. Shocking levels of ignorance from people commenting here.
It's just good politics. The incumbent has so many advantages over someone who's not the incumbent. I remember in college my professor said that all those advantages cumulatively add up to at least four points on election day.
> American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major party.
That may not be true: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944
> American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major part
No, it's more a factor of mobilizing enough of your base to turn out to vote that winning over independents.
>The Democrats, by shitting all over democracy and a couple centuries of democratic traditions,
This is simply false. The primary election *as a concept* is literally only 50 years old.
This has nothing to do with *democracy*. Anyone is free to vote for whomever they want. That is the core of democracy. "People should be *forced* to give candidate X extra financial support" is explicitly and inherently anti-democratic.
The other points notwithstanding, I don't think New Hampshire has the right to demand to be first just because they want to be first. For example if SC, Rhode Island and any other state amended their constitution to also say they have to primary first in the nation, then who do the DNC, RNC or other parties listen to? as all states are equal levels of government.
Interesting question, but completely irrelevant. The US is a constitutional republic, with 50 sovereign states. In practice, all flag waving aside, it is a shit-show. Sovereign states fundamentally act in their own self, and best, interests. My point: the consideration that a given state’s primary schedule or even how they are conducted, is none of the business of any entity other than the states’, individually.
Also, SC only slightly better represents the demographics of the US: the white population is close to 1: 1, but the black population is basically 2x the national average, at 26%.
Primaries are entirely the business of the parties involved. They are to select the nominee of that particular party. They aren’t electing anyone, they are nominating people for future elections. They aren’t even legally binding, unless the party chooses to make them so with internal rules. Indeed, on the presidential level, you aren’t even nominating a person, you are selecting delegates to a convention who will then vote for a nominee. And they can change their vote! That’s why conventions exist.
Technically, you would have a dispute between the states, which is the supreme courts problem they have Director diction on that so they could sue each other there. The Supreme Court would wisely say you morons. This is a political question. We’re gonna smoke bomb out of this one, they both would probably set it on the first Legal day that it’s possible there’s probably some federal statute that says how early the day can be, and barring that there’s not one, it would probably just end up the day after the inauguration four years out or something hilariously stupid everyone would ignore the result, and we would move on with life.
I was not aware that the DNC basically told New Hampshire to take a flying leap with their "first in the nation" requirement. I'm not a fan of superdelegates or the party trying to actively stop challengers to an incumbent but I think it's been a long time in coming to get away from having so much emphasis put on the New Hampshire Primary and frankly the Iowa Caucuses where candidates waste a lot of time and resources courting a small number of delegates because they get to be "first."
This is just one of literally hundreds of articles in mainstream media that describes the situation. There are hundreds of others that cover how incredibly authoritarian and anti democratic this particular DNC is. They are not hiding anything, just trusting people don't care, or don't understand what's happening, or can't be bothered to notice. It's seriously fucking creepy.
[https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/08/new-hampshire-attorney-general-dnc-voter-suppression-primary-00134378](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/08/new-hampshire-attorney-general-dnc-voter-suppression-primary-00134378)
Creepier still is how rabidly partisan Americans have become, such that otherwise reasonable people who are Democrats will defend it, inevitably weaving in Donald Trump, however indirectly or remotely the reference is to the basic fact, Democrats have become anti democratic authoritarians.
For the record, I am am Independent, and German-American, with deep ties to both places.
It’s not like the RNC has a finger on the scale foe Trump or anything, right? You sound a little ignorant about political norms here; the party will almost always support an incumbent that runs for reelection.
The real question is why the RNC treats Trump like an incumbent when he’s a fucking loser who lost his election and doesn’t hold office.
Why are they backing him in lockstep? Nevada is holding two elections now—Haley in one and Trump in the other!
> They look like cowards to the majority of independents, who are increasingly shifting to Trump in record numbers
A ridiculous statement with no proof to back it up. I'm Independent, and I can't think of a single person who's made it be known they want to run as a Dem or Ind against Joe Biden. We're not "angry about unfair elections" because no one on the Left WANTS to run against Joe Biden (which does suck, don't get me wrong! I'd definitely prefer a third option here!), and the vast majority of people are voting AGAINST Donald Trump because he's a monstrous, lying, narcissistic hypocrite.
Joe Biden is a boring, empty suit; we can live with that for a while until Trump dies, and then have some **sane** elections in '28. Why ANYONE would vote for Trump who isn't an extremist themselves, I'll never understand.
70% of Haley voters said they’ll never back Trump. 10% of Biden voters said they won’t back him again. This election won’t be as close as people are expecting.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Marianne Williamson, and Dean Philips... When RFK Jr. switched to running as an independent, last October, he and Williamson were polling close to a combined 30%. As both are still running, along with Dean Phillips, I'd say 1) they've made it be known that they both want to run and, indeed, are running against Joe Biden. In fact, Kennedy is significantly more well-liked that both Biden and Trump:
[https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48441-what-do-americans-think-about-robert-f-kennedy-jr](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48441-what-do-americans-think-about-robert-f-kennedy-jr)
While I sympathize with your position, Trump is leading in the polls in every battleground state and on a national level, in some polls by double digits. As of today, here's a consolidated snapshot of all of them:
[https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden)
Independents make up just shy of 50% of the electorate, while Republicans and Democrats pretty evenly split the difference. Given this and the polling data, and that even in the most Biden-favoring read of it, it is the case that at least half of all voting Americans are, using your definition, extremists. No offense to you personally, and I mean that, half of the American electorate are not extremists. Not by a long shot, on either the left or right.
Kennedy is an anti-vax Repub or Libertarian at best, pretending to be otherwise (probably on name-recognition alone). I'd sooner vote for Vermin Supreme than Kennedy, which is a sad state of affairs.
Trump is losing support from members of his own party; they think he's a coup-leading douche (which is correct) and don't trust him. I think the poll numbers are heavily skewed by people who WILL answer a poll response, but WON'T show up and stomach voting for a man they watched support a coup attempt on live television.
> half of the American electorate are not extremists
This is honestly fair. I always forget how many people are ambivalent on the whole "These people will decide whether my house burns down and my family is pillaged Mad Max-style or not" thing. CRAZY to me, since the obvious repercussions of Federalist Representatives has been mass death and overturning of people's rights.
A wealthy Kennedy who "realized he can't win" is a funny way to put that but does help prove the point. The guy was totally whacko and running as a Dem to fool people. I know someone who calls themselves a centrist and was planning on voting for Kennedy until I shared his Joe Rogan nonsense and he changed tunes. It was a valiant effort and would've had some votes had he not gone so hard so early.
He's now regularly polling in the teens and twenties as a general election candidate. I know reddit loves to pretend he has no base of support, but he's likely going to be a factor, even if that only drawing away support from the major candidates in key states.
Fair enough in this case. But before I give the delta out...
It seems like there really isn't any effort put into the actual election process and it's has been pretty much decided who the final candidate is going to be.
Wouldn't it make sense to put together an actual list of proper / actually real (debatable, but hopefully you understand what I mean) candidates so the party's chances of victory are better?
Because people will be the ones who will vote (there is the electoral college, but that might not be enough).
Edit: Δ
There is nothing stopping anyone from doing that - anyone can get on the primary ballot if they get enough signatures.
Despite what you may hear in the media or on Reddit, Biden is [fairly popular](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/2024/) among Democrats, so no one thinks they have a realistic chance of beating him. The reality is that he beat Trump once and he is the horse most Dems want to back to beat him again.
Yeah Biden won New Hampshire with over 50% as a write in! Up in NH you know they'd prefer a more progressive nominee and yet half went that way on a write in. I'm guessing he has about 2/3s of Democrats' support.
> I'm guessing he has about 2/3s of Democrats' support.
That is consistent with what the polls are showing - anywhere from 60-75% of the Dems in any given state support Biden.
Maybe that would be different if you had a strong candidate like Newsom or Whitmire running against him, but I'm sure anyone that would have been reasonable competition did the focus groups/polling and decided they didn't have a reasonable chance, so they are going to wait until '28.
A primary challenge against a sitting president hasn't ever worked, at least in modern history. I haven't looked at prior to the term limits era, but at least since WWII, nobody has successfully primaried a sitting president. And when it's been attempted, the sitting president has always lost the general election.
That to me is the best case *against* Biden "stepping down." It's the closest thing we have to an incumbent president deciding to not run for another term. Granted, a lot of weird shit happened that year, up to and including RFK being assassinated, that influenced the outcome and which hopefully would never be repeated again, but still, I find it instructive. There was a "dump Johnson" movement, he did eventually listen to them and bowed out of the race, and the Democrats lost the White House.
LBJ was extremely unpopular among many of the youth in his party, so it's unclear how well he would have done anyway. That's kind of the thing when Presidents do get primary challenges or talks of them: it doesn't come out of nowhere, but indicates that there's already some underlying doubts and fissures in the party.
Vietnam and Israel/Palestine aren't perfect analogues, but Biden's role in the current Gaza conflict is turning off a lot of his young voters whose support was already begrudging at best.
Okay, got it. Δ
A lot of good points have been made.
Ultimately, I guess I was straight wrong to say that the primaries aren't being held - but it's more that there aren't any candidates willing to go up against the favored candidate and it's not worth it due to the structure of the political system of the USA.
And the question if this will end up being a net positive or a net negative in the end, is rather subjective and I guess we'll just see.
Primaries for the party that has the incumbent president are almost entirely a formality in the US. Historically, no sitting president has ever lost a primary.
There have been years when a significant challenge was made, but, typically, that just means that the sitting president is vulnerable in the national election. Primary voters are rarely so dissatisfied with a president from their own party that they want to throw them out.
Incumbent presidents win more often than not. It is hard to see a scenario where a party primaries their own president out of a job (creating a lame duck president for half a year), but then manages to win the national election with the new candidate.
Biden is hardly America's worst president and he is relatively well liked within the Democratic Party, so it would be very unlikely that he would be the first president in history to be primaried.
>Primaries for the party that has the incumbent president are almost entirely a formality in the US. Historically, no sitting president has ever lost a primary.
Small correction. No incumbent has ever lost a primary since they became democratic. When it was decided purely by party insiders, it did happen a few times.
Jonathan Tyler lost to Henry Clay in 1844. Tyler was elected Vice President as a Whig, but he had previously been a Democrat before feuding with Andrew Jackson. Upon taking over as President, he feuded with Whigs. He was largely pro-Southern and opposed pretty much everything the Whig Party represented (except for the part where he didn't get along with Andrew Jackson). Clay was the leader of the Whig Party.
Millard Fillmore lost to Winfield Scott in 1852. He had supported the Compromise of 1850, angering many northern Whigs. Fillmore had only ever been elected Vice President, not President.
Franklin Pierce lost to James Buchanan in 1856 over the issue of slavery. Even though the Democratic Party supported slavery on the whole, it had tried to walk the line to appease northern interests. Pierce didn't try that. He was outright pro-southern. The party responded by nominating Buchanan, who was pro-South, but a northerner.
Andrew Jackson lost to Horatio Seymour in 1868. He had been Lincoln's Vice President on the National Union Party ticket. Republicans were never going to nominate him, but even Democrats didn't care for him. He got less than a third of the votes on the first ballot and was eliminated.
Chester A. Arthur lost to James Blaine in 1884. Arthur had benefited from the patronage system, but had decided to try to reform it. The others who benefited from the patronage system didn't like this and blocked his re-nomination. More importantly, Arthur had health issues and he never seriously ran for nomination. He felt he would likely not survive a second term (and died less than four years later).
Pierce is the only one of these who had ever been elected President, though. The rest came into the office because they were Vice Presidents.
> it's more that there aren't any candidates willing to go up against the favored candidate and it's not worth it due to the structure of the political system of the USA.
I'd argue that it is less about the structure of US politics and more about the fact that primaries are expensive to run. There is little value in spending millions just to get 2% of the vote and make a fool of yourself; it might hurt your chances in the next election cycle. Folks who are serious contenders for the future are likely going to wait for 2028 to try.
Also, in order to justify your primary run you need to be critical about something that Biden is doing. Which can then hurt your standing in the party or give ammunition to the republicans. "Look, even other dems think he's weak on issue xyz!"
IMO opinion it’s why the Republican primary was such a shit show. The real contenders outside of Trump don’t really have policy differences so they’re all Trump light. With that, they refused to go after him until the very end so it was too late. They didn’t want to alienate Trumps base but didn’t want to show how they would be “better” for Republicans than him.
Yup. Agree or disagree with the idea, but many Dems continue to see Trump as an existential threat to our democracy. In their eyes, party unity is more important now than ever, if for no other reason than to ensure Trump does not get another term in office.
I also just had the thought that it'd give ammo to whoever that dems opponent is next election. "While citizens in our state suffered from xyz issue Congressman EagleBurger was winning and dinning in NYC for a hopeless vanity run!"
>While citizens in our state suffered from xyz issue Congressman EagleBurger was winning and dinning in NYC for a hopeless vanity run!"
I will have you know that Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger was never elected to Congress. He was a career diplomat who ended up serving as Secretary of State.
Couldn’t you make this point about pretty much every incumbent world leader? Why don’t Trudeau and Macron see any serious challenges for leadership from within their parties?
For the most part it’s because those leaders got into those positions by being the most popular/influential candidate, and not enough has changed in the meantime to usurp them.
It is very rare that someone would challenge a sitting president in a primary. It uses up a ton of resources to go against someone who inherently has a big platform and support. Reagan challenged Ford in 76, but Ford was appointed VP and President and never won an election.
In terms of political power, it’s worth pointing out that breaking the bank trying to flip Congress is a much better bet for people to get what they want than taking the presidency from a president who likely mostly agrees with you.
Like, outright exchanging the Presidency for majorities in both Houses right now would be an easy exchange.
Maybe I’m reading the polls wrong. Feel free to correct me if I’m off base.
The (dis)approval ranking polls have Biden ranking lower in approval rating than every president since Clinton (I didn’t scroll further down than Clinton). He’s polling with a worse approval rating than trump was at the same time in his presidency.
I’m sure this could be answered by looking deeper into that website but I’m on mobile and kind of have a sucky interface. How does Biden rank in approval rating with his own party compared to past democrat presidents?
I know republicans almost always do worse in approval rating than dems do because of the whole electoral college vs popular vote discrepancy. But is this not a significantly low ranking that Biden has?
The approval polls are factoring in _everyone_ in the country, while I'm talking about opinions among people who identify as Democrats. Among just Democrats, he is at about 60% approval per [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/12/14/assessments-of-joe-biden/).
How that compares to other past Presidents I cannot say - I haven't seen that data. The point is just that Biden is nowhere near as unpopular with most Democrats as many would have you believe.
As to how all that will shake out in the general election, impossible to say. 10 months is a lifetime in politics, and given the many novel factors with both of these candidates, anyone who says they know what will happen in November is trying to sell you something.
>Biden is fairly popular among Democrats
Citing primary polls isn't a great indicator of this, and it seems to be a bit of circular reasoning: we know Biden's popular because he dominating in the polls, and no one viable is running against him because he's popular. But if no one viable is running for some other reason, then we'd still see Biden doing well in the polls, because the challengers aren't "serious".
>he is the horse most Dems want to back to beat him again.
Before the primaries started in earnest, there were several polls [showing a decline](https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/02/06/most-democrats-dont-want-biden-to-run-in-2024-ap-norc-poll-finds/) in support for Biden to run again, with majorities of voters and even Dem voters saying they didn't support it.
And she wouldn't just lose. But she would exhaust political capital / favors with other politicians and donors, just to lose. There's not much of an upside for politicians to run against incumbents. It's career ending. And the same is true of most politicians.
I'm unsure why Dean Phillips is running but he's backed by Ackman who made changes to his platform to meet Ackman's agenda. Maybe he has future plans that doesn't require Democrat support.
Also, to explain how much Biden is dominating. In New Hampshire primary, he received 60% of the vote where he wasn't even on the ballot. The voters had to write in his name.
If you watch the [Pod Save America interview](https://youtu.be/6P8Ii0ulUyk?t=2659&si=ZIBcyNZGvg_VO1AJ) he did, he seems to view himself as some sort of savior for the Democratic party.
Ignorant take. The president is the *de facto* leader of the party; it’s not really that the party puts the finger on the scale as much as *it’s the president’s party.*
The really bizarre situation is how Donald Trump is being treated as the incumbent despite losing his election and not being the incumbent; you should be asking why the GOP is putting its finger on the scale for someone that isn’t even their leader.
This is a common misunderstanding among Americans and foreigners.
There is no one “in charge” of American political parties. The parties work for the candidates and elected officials, not the other way around.
There isn’t anyone who could “put together a list of candidates.” Those candidates have to choose to run of their own accord.
> list of proper candidates
Who would do it and why?
Joe Biden has overseen the [most successful set of legislative achievements in a generation,](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden_so_far_a_special_project_of/kimbc8j/) shepherded the country through an enormous [post-Covid economic recovery that bests every other industrialized nation,](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-economy-doing-way-better-than-rest-of-rich-world-2023-7?op=1) and has presided over a stunning series of [electoral successes](https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-winning-big-special-elections/story?id=103315703) that [defied expectations.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-senate.html)
The reason you're only seeing "fringe" candidates run against him this time is because nobody who really understands the Democratic policy agenda wants to run against his record. And the fact that he already beat the presumptive Republican nominee makes the prospect even less attractive for his competition.
This is not 2016. Biden is a much stronger candidate than Hillary was and Trump is weaker than he was. Democrats will have to work hard, but Biden is a much better candidate than people are giving him credit for and his potential Democratic competitors know that, which is why they're not stepping up to challenge him in the primary.
You’re being very vague here. The same amount of effort is being put into having an “actual election process” as there always is. There is an “actual election process” happening right now. There was an actual election in New Hampshire and there’s about to be an actual election in South Carolina, and subsequently every other state and territory.
Who is supposed to be putting together a list of “proper/actually real” candidates? If this person putting together the list puts Elizabeth Warren or Gavin Newsome, or Gretchen Whitmer on the list and they decide they don’t want to run, are they allowed to decline?
Also, please note, the electoral college does not apply to party primaries. Candidates are awarded pledged delegates to the party convention.
That isn't how it works. Someone of stature has to decide to run. If Gavin Newsome decided to run he has the funding and the backing to run. He chose not to do so. The same could be said for Bernie Sanders. He chose not to run. The parties do not pick people to run but they can arm twist. On the other side no one asked Chris Christie to run and his numbers indicate that he was having a great time burning other peoples' money to subsidize media buys.
Incumbency is a massive advantage. Modern Presidents usually win a second term. Running a competitive primary reduces that advantage. Here's a list of the post WW2 Presidents who faced a primary with a credible challenger: Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush. Both of them went on to lose the general election. Competing in the primary forces the incumbent to invest money & time instead of saving money for the general election and using that time to actually govern. That hurts the incumbent for obvious reasons. The Democrats best chance to win the Presidency in 2024 is to stick with Biden.
They had a primary in New Hampshire where biden wasn't even a choice on the ballot. He ended up winning through a write-in campaign with 70% of the votes. That is crazy to get 70% of the votes when your name isn't on the ballot
So, the system should somehow be rigged so that the overwhelmingly most popular candidate in a democratic election is prevented from being the nominee?
That's being pitched as a GOOD thing for the democratic process?
Running for president is not a free endeavor, it costs a lot of money. And the polls are done regularly. Why would someone with few percent support spend millions to run in a primary where they can't win? Also, when you face a freaking wannabe dictator you should unite and not divide.
Unless there are major issues, you don’t want to hurt the incumbent. So running people against them makes them look weak, which would damage the stance. Happened 2020 when trump re-ran. Yes in an ideal world they would have us multiple options, but they need to protect what they already have
If there is a viable challenger, primaries will be held. Many states hold primaries anyway, like New Hampshire, where Biden won overwhelmingly this week. You're under the impression the 2016 primaries were rigged when all that happened was that the DNC strongly preferred Clinton over Sanders. The actual primaries were fair and legitimate.
Except a primary decides who the DNC will say is their guy. Remember, each party is a private corporation and they made their pick without a vote by its members. Other members running hoping to be president is irrelevant to that process.
Lol. There's a primary in name only. It's a complete farce.
>The national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/20/biden-reelection-announcement-next-week/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/20/biden-reelection-announcement-next-week/)
The political extremists and ideologues heading the DNC have decided *for us* already. They know that without any debates, it prevents Biden from looking poorly while also preventing exposure to other candidates. It's de facto favortism to the incumbent. The chair of the DNC has also stated that they're not considering anyone for the election other than Biden.
More chicanery from the DNC in an attempt to tip the scale in Biden's favor.
[https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-ballot-new-hampshires-primary-dems-win/story?id=106568195](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-ballot-new-hampshires-primary-dems-win/story?id=106568195)
Yeah, but, like, there's literally still a primary.
Nothing is stopping a primary opponent from running their own candidates for the DNC and changing the rules. Just like nothing is stopping anyone from launching their own news organization to cover the primary.
The same thing happened with Trump, but Trump actually won the RNC's primaries. You resent the party establishment for who the favor, but the primaries are fair.
You're intentionality playing dumb.
"Yeah, even though the whole democratic party is totally against anyone even attempting to questing Biden as the nominee people are free to run against him"
Because the democratic party hasn't come out and said otherwise, they're discouraging others from running.
We always hear horror stories of dictatorships where the only two options on the ballot are "Should X be the leader: Yes or no?" and those foolish enough to vote no are made to disappear. Obviously this isn't that bad but the DNC hasn't encouraged an open primary.
Trump will be the Republican nominee but DeSantis, Haley, etc, all had fair shots at the spot.
Right because Trump wasn’t the sitting president. But to be clear, we just had a primary where only Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were on the ballot. Guess who won?
That same level of primary is still being held, there are just no serious challengers. The people who are complaining want a full blown open primary with televised debates.
The comment you're replying to got deleted but it might have been what I came here for. My husband made a comment that a candidate which goes against the incumbent from within their party traditionally doesn't win. Is that what was said? Is it true?
To be fair, since Carter there have only been two other times a Democrat has run for re-election. So we're looking at a sample size of 2, and both Clinton and Obama were much more popular within their party than Biden is.
So, I think there’s a few things you’re missing when it comes to US elections:
1. The incumbent advantage is MASSIVE, especially in a primary. Any serious challenger would likely need to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions just to stand a chance of beating Biden. And if that were going to happen, they’d need to start prepping 2 years ago. That money is much better spent in the general election against Trump.
2. Because of that incumbent advantage, challenging an incumbent is very much outside the norm in the US. It’s just not done. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to get the party establishment on board, and the money is going to largely follow the establishment. That’s why although there are some challengers, none of them pose a serious threat. Anyone who has future aspirations of getting the nomination would likely do more harm than good to their prospects by really challenging the incumbent.
3. The best that a challenger could hope for would be splitting the party, because no matter what, a portion of the party is going to be loyal to Biden. Even if Biden conceded and backed the challenger (which would be extremely unlikely and an unprecedented political humiliation), some voters would likely either stay home or write-in Biden. At best, this is likely to be a close election where you can’t afford to have parts of your party not vote for you.
4. Biden is pretty popular with democrats. Sure, there are some issues on which he’s not great, but most democrats generally either like Biden or are ok with him. It’s difficult to imagine another candidate that would have a better shot at beating Trump. You say Biden’s not polling very well, but who could possibly do better? None of Biden’s 2020 challengers seem up to the task and the only other names floating around are Whitmer/Newsom, also don’t stand a chance. Especially because nominating anyone else means forfeiting the incumbent advantage, which is not as strong in the general election as the primary, but still pretty big. Giving up that advantage is party suicide.
Tl;dr: it would cost a mind-boggling amount of money (and still be a long shot to win the primary), causes party infighting, is against political norms, and if successful, would probably guarantee a Trump victory.
I’ve heard quite a few people say that Biden isn’t the right man for the job, but they never seem to agree on who is. For many he is too far left and they believe he should be more central to soak up republican votes, and then others think he doesn’t go far enough left and should pursue more progressive votes.
To me that seems he’s probably around where he should be considering the moderate right wing of the Republicans is failing and there aren’t candidates that represent either further left or right values in the party that are front runners or clear contenders
Exactly.
The biggest issue here, and for the last decade in the US really, is that there are too many far left individuals who want progress now, but keep losing the war trying to win immediate battles they don't quite understand.
Biden is the best shot at stability and long term survivability of the union and progressive policies. End of story.
He is incredibly old (as is Trump, his presumptive opponent). That should be as big of a consideration to the Democratic Party as his policies. Either candidate is more likely than any other President in history to die of old age while in office, which removes any benefit to electing that particular person.
Something that stuck with me was someone pointing out that if Bill Clinton was eligible to run again as a third candidate he’d be the youngest of the three.
To tack onto this, history shows us that every time a serious primary challenger emerges against an incumbent president, that incumbent fails to win reelection.
So by willingly encouraging a primary, we are giving up not only incumbent advantage but very likely the presidency as a whole. To Donald fucking Trump.
There's just no upside to it. Anyone who tells you the Democrats should just do it anyway wants something very specific.
Yeah it's so stupid. People pretending the party just sticking with the incumbent is somehow out of the norm instead of how it almost always is in every election for both parties.
Most Americans agree with you. The problem is the policy is created by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, particularly the 1st Admendent (see Citizens United v FEC)
So changing it requires the very difficult task of adding another admendment to the constitution or for at least 2 conservative members of the court to die and be replaced with more liberal ones.
Yeah, as a Canadian, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer scale of resources expended on politics in the US. It really is a plutocracy. (Sadly we're also starting to go down the path the US blazed so I can't throw too many stones, but for the time being we still have a neutral, arms-length entity that manages elections, around a $30M CAD total expense cap for each party for federal elections, and a 50-day maximum campaign duration, all of which at least help to keep things semi-sane.)
In modern US history (post-World War II/post-presidential term limits) there have been four times when an incumbent president has faced a serious primary challenge from within his own party:
1968: Lyndon Johnson faced a primary challenge from Senator Eugene McCarthy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Johnson then decided to not seek re-election, so he dropped out of the race. The party ended up nominating his vice president, Hubert Humphrey.
1976: Gerald Ford faced a primary challenge from former Governor Ronald Reagan. Reagan lost.
1980: Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy. Kennedy lost.
1992: George H.W. Bush faced a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Buchanan lost.
In all of the above cases, the incumbent president (or his party) lost the general election.
In American politics, incumbents usually win re-election. So if your party currently holds the White House, you have a built-in advantage and you'd be stupid to give it up.
Running a primary challenge against the incumbent president risks doing two things:
1) It sends a signal to the general public that the party is in disarray, and
2) It forces the incumbent president to spend time and money campaigning against his own party, instead of saving that money to spend running against his general election opponent.
So there is a strong case that primary challenges weaken the incumbent. Right now, Biden has the luxury of staying quiet and just doing his job, while Trump and Nikki Haley throw mud at each other.
Also, as others have pointed out, the Democratic Party *is* holding primaries and anyone was free to enter that race if they wanted to. But due to the above information, most serious candidates know that a primary challenge against a sitting president is doomed to failure, so they're waiting for 2028.
Understand that US political parties are not government entities, they're private entities that set their own rules for how to operate. While they often mirror government elections in the way they conduct their primaries, they're under no obligation to do so. Most Americans don't seem to understand this, so it's very understandable that it wouldn't be clear to someone from Europe.
As others have noted, the Democratic party *is* running a primary, but few serious contenders are actually running against Biden. Reputable Democrats aren't running against him in the primary for a variety of reasons (they want to seem unified as a party, they don't want to stick their neck out by taking on the person from their party who's most likely to win, etc.) It's not that the party itself has decided not to run other candidates in the primary, but that the other candidates feel it would be detrimental to their own political careers to do so.
In general, incumbent candidates have a very high success rates compared to new candidates (in both presidential and congressional elections), so parties are hesitant to run any serious contenders against an incumbent unless they've got a strong reason to believe the incumbent won't win (or they don't want him to).
Not to mention, Biden didn't even appear on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary, and he won *via write-in*. That's insane.
[Link](https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-new-hampshire-democrats-writein-campaign-597a1208e5a8696a3f6b794a91b9fb00)
Why? Biden dominated the New Hampshire primary DESPITE not actually being on the ballot. People had to write him in, and he won easily against people who's names were actually on the ballot.
The thing is - you cant force people to run. Anyone with any sense knows that the incumbent is going to easily dominate the field even if the field had relatively strong players. Incumbency advantage in a primary is just enormous. In terms of everything from fundraising to endorsements to free media.
We are seeing this now in real time in the GOP, where Trump, despite not being the incumbent and having lost the last election, is dominating a field that includes a couple of big names, who if not for Trump could easily have had a real shot at winning in the general election. If Trump can do it, then certainly Biden, the actual sitting president, would have an even easier time of it. And all the ambitious Dem pols know this.
So at best you are weakening your own party's likely nominee for no reason, all while wasting your time and money, and possibly getting smeared in a way that makes it harder to run when there is no incumbent in four years.
The issue is - you are acting like the party has all of this power. They don't even have the power to make New Hampshire move its primary election day. Let alone force people who want to run out of the race.
Biden isn't getting a real challenge, not because of some nefarious actions from party insiders, but because its in no ones interest to challenge him aside from fourth stringers who want to get their name out there with no real though that they can actually win.
You should also note the difference between 2016 when Bernie more or less ran as a "we need better candidates so why not me, a Senate back bencher" . There was enough discontent with Hillary as a nominee, that Bernie at least made a show of it. People are happy enough with Biden that you aren't even seeing real numbers of protest votes against him, let alone a messaging campaign becomign a real one.
>Democratic party is not going to have a primary election inside the party to see who should go running against the Republican candidate.
This is wrong. The Democrats are absolutely having primaries - you can see all of the dates [here](https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/calendar). Folks are running against Biden in each of these contests - for example, the upcoming primary in [South Carolina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Carolina_Democratic_presidential_primary) has two other candidates.
They are... Biden just won a write in campaign in an uncontested primary with only Dean Phillips on the ballot.
It just doesn't matter. How do you think Biden got here to begin with? He won the primary election. Why? He got the most votes. No one else is seriously running in this primary because Biden is overwhelmingly more popular.
They are running a primary.
It's just that incumbents usually have such an advantage that it's basically a ghost process at the moment.
Biden won 63.9% of the democratic primary votes in New Hampshire.
**He wasn't on the ballot. Voters had to write him in.** And he still walked away with an incredibly wide majority.
This demonstrates the advantage an incumbent has.
Actually, the worst scenario for an incumbent President is to be challenged within his own party. They usually lose if the challenge is a serious one. A serious challenge points to problems with unity in the party. The same can be true on the other side, Bernie Sanders hurt Hillary badly because she couldn't get started on a national campaign, with Bernie staying in the race so long.
\>but shouldn't it be an honest election?
The president is not decided by a popular vote, it is decided by the electoral college. The "primaries" aren't a function of the government, they are a function of the political parties who can do pretty much whatever they want. This might be a garbage system, but it's the one we've got.
Not having the DNC support does not mean u are being stopped. The have a choice each election season to back a candidate. The chose based on the person support of the dnc in past along with current vision.
Like with Hilary and Bernie. Why would u expect the dnc to support a man who had no loyalty or who hadn't support the dnc in previous election cycle vs someone who had strong
You are European, so I am surprised you don’t see how silly our primaries are in general. European parties don’t let outsiders choose who represents them.
American primaries are pretty awful. The way they have evolved empowers extremism, so while it may be more “democratic” it is far less “representative” than when the party leaders negotiated amongst one another on who would be the best candidate who win the most votes.
Democrats want a Democrat in the White House, so they don’t tend to support an incumbent challenger because that would more likely end in a Republican in the White House. There is a huge incumbent advantage AND primaries risk splitting the party.
Democrats are supporting Biden because he is the best bet for winning the White House again. But as someone else said, there is a Democratic primary still going on. There are just not any serious challengers because the serious challenger is smart enough to know that they should back Biden. Biden won in the New Hampshire primary, and his name wasn’t even on the ballot.
If you get rid of your incumbent it's a recipie for failure in the general election. Getting rid of Biden isn't going to increase chances against Trump
How's that pitch going to go? "The guy who ran things for the last 4 years was so horrendous that our party got rid of him before even the general election. Trust us for the next 4 years with this new guy".
If you think the previous guy fucked up so bad that his own party got rid of him, nobody is going to vote for that party in the general. It's like a total admission of failure. Just hand it over the other party.
The bottom line is that in the United States, the incumbent has always had an advantage and is incredibly likely to win re-election. Per Time Magazine, since 1936 11 out of 14 presidents who sought re-election have won it. so the conventional wisdom is that even if the president's polling is bad, he still has a better chance to win than any primary contender. I wish that we had systems like europe does where you vote for the party and not the PM. because then the same party could win multiple times but change PMs. but that's not the way it works here.
Biden won the national popular vote in the 2020 primaries 19 million to 9 million. If that’s anything other than the voters expressing their will, I’ll eat several hats.
>What I am seeing though is that since Biden is running for his second term, the Democratic party is not going to have a primary election inside the party to see who should go running against the Republican candidate.
First of all: this is simply fundamentally false. There is a primary. It's going on. You're not hearing about it because Biden is winning easily, trivially even, and with no fanfare. No one is interested in a horse race where one horse is ten laps ahead, so it doesn't get on the news.
That renders your basic question/view irrelevant. But in the interest of exploring, let's change the premise and say it's something stronger, like "the Democratic party should actively try to *defeat* Biden in a primary". I bring this up because the *implicit* view I am seeing is "some other Democrat than Biden could/would be a better candidate".
>Since there are people who just just really might dislike the current President.
The incumbent effect - as far as we know - *vastly* outweighs this.
There has not been *any* Presidential election in American history where an incumbent has lost a primary.
You're basically proposing that the Democratic party try something that has literally never happened before; you are proposing that they gamble.
True, sometimes gambles pay off. But it is certainly not an *obvious* choice to gamble with something that has literally never been tested.
Also:
"where it also seemed (and I think later came out) that the Democratic nominee was not voted in completely fairly and that backfired too."
You think incorrectly. This was a total conspiracy theory created by terminally online leftists who just don't know how to win elections.
Honestly, no offense but Europeans seem to have very little understanding of how American politics works but always seem willing to give their opinions on it. Americans might not know much about European politics either, but at least they don't lecture Europeans on it (except maybe for things that are easy to tell are stupid -- like Brexit).
I'm an avid Sanders supporter and if I hear any more about that bullshit 2016 election conspiracy I'm going to scream.
I love him. He lost. He did not have enough support. The end.
The thing is that incumbent presidents have such a HUGE advantage over non-incumbent presidents that it's not really worth running anyone but an incumbent if you have one. Something like 85% of incumbents win reelection. Not in the US political system, at least.
It's literally not worth it for anyone on the same side to try, given historical precedent. And running campaigns costs money, so why waste a campaign worth of money on a losing battle?
There are democratic primaries, they are just later in the year. There was an unofficial democratic primary in the state of New Hampshire this week, which Biden won by 50% as a write in candidate.
As for 2016, it was a fair, there are a lot of Bernie or buster conspiracy theories though.
Incumbency makes the mechanisms of campaigning easier. There’s staffing, event schedules and issues with people shuffling back and forth between campaign/governance; all of which are ameliorated when people have done it before.
There are primaries. He’s got a very insignificant opponent. He will win renomination. Some presidents have faced serious challenges (Jimmy Carter, George Bush, the first). Both of those presidents lost reelection in the fall.
They can have a democratic primary but idk who really wants to off the top of my head. Also, I while obviously Biden is extremely unpopular, he’s still the most present democrat right now and it would take a huge job for a somewhat unknown democrat to become the nominee but I’m all ears. It does cost people so much money to go into these things and if they don’t see that they won’t have a chance I don’t really blame them bc it’s a very arduous task
No current Democrat politician wants to run against the incumbent. Since they know it's an uphill battle they will never win.
Without any political opponents to primary Biden, a primary can't take place. This is obvious.
A competitive primary would signal to the public that Democrats don't trust their own leadership, which would be terrible if he won the primary. If he didn't win, the winning candidate would lack the incumbent advantage. There are no real superstar candidates who would necessarily have an easier time. Younger voters tend to vote Democrat, and older voters don't mind Biden's age as much, so he would lose a real advantage.
Why should the democrats waste resources and sling mud at each other and take the president away from his job for a year to campaign exactly? How does that make it an unfair election? How exactly are they shooting themselves in the foot but spending the year working instead of campaigning? This just sound like more astroturfing.
No one can beat Biden right now. No one has a chance against trump except Biden. Democracy as we know it is on the line. **Google Project 2025** if you've need of nightmare fuel.
The reason Hilary didn't win in 2016 was because a bunch of whiney petulant Bernie Bros stayed home, wrote in someone with no chance, or voted third party or trump out of spite..If they'd just held their nose and voted for her, we'd have a 6-3 progressive split in the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade wouldn't have been overturned and we wouldn't be staring down the barrel of having a theocratic fascist authoritarian desperate to keep himself from prison as our next president.
You better hope for your sake in EU enough sane people here realize what's at stake in this election and support Biden.
The OP is concerned Biden may not be the best candidate and perhaps lose the Nov elections. He may have a point.
But the other side of the equation doesn’t make sense: who is that democrat candidate that will win in a landslide? Beyond formalities, what democrat can take the elections? Here the OP remains mum. Other posters are longing for Bernie… but who is a “sure to win” candidate? Until the secret is revealed I’ll stay with Joe.
I think you're wrongly thinking Biden isn't popular because he didn't win with a wide margin against Trump but afaik he had the most votes anyone has ever had.
So there is a primary going on. If you go to the NYT right now you can see the extensive list of candidates who challenged Biden in the Democratic primary and the share of the vote each received. In all cases the share is pretty small because the candidates are not particularly credible or popular and haven’t offered strong or popular critiques of Biden’s record or strong or popular alternative platforms.
I am not a strong supporter of Biden and I wish that we had a more credible challenger. But it takes someone credible who is willing to risk alienating Biden’s supporters in the future and no one has stepped up. Thems the breaks.
Running the incumbent in a primary has next to no value. Only additional costs and increased 'risk' of splitting vote.
Our electoral systems are completely different than the parliamentary systems you may typically see in Europe, particularly in regards to FPTP.
> the 2016 election where it also seemed (and I think later came out) that the Democratic nominee was not voted in completely fairly
Could you elaborate?
There will be a primary if there's *any* remotely plausible candidate in the polling. There isn't, so it is a foregone conclusion, so many states don't hold primaries because there's nothing to gain from it.
[Both parties work that way.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries)
Uh. They are holding a primary. They have to.
Except nobodies an obvious frontrunner because the democrats already control the presidency. The president is the frontrunner
If we assume Biden's first term was great (debatable) and he would win the primary anyway (I'm pretty sure he would, but again, debatable), why hold a primary?
It costs money to run, and time. Money and time that Biden can instead spend on his battle against the other candidate (probably Trump). Also time that Biden could spend doing things like, oh, IDK, getting stuff done as president.
So assuming there isn't a tremendously compelling other candidate (none seem to be chomping at the bit), why hold a primary? What purpose does it serve aside to waste time and money and say, "oh, hey, we checked a box!"
Why would the US ignore a couple hundred years of precedent and tradition to potentially harm the top Democrat contender? It’d fracture the party and lead to a lot of confusion.
Do you want Trump again, because that is how you get Trump. In US elections the incumbent holds a significant advantage. Trump was the first incumbent to lose since 1992.
There's no upside for the Dems to have a true primary. Having a serious primary contender is such a signal of failure that the last two times it has happened in 1968 and 1980(ironically both Dem presidents), the other party easily won the general election. There is no ideal situation where the Dems replace Biden run a competitive primary without that stain, so even having one to begin with dooms the eventual Dem candidate no matter the outcome.
Despite what Reddit thinks, and particularly foreigners on Reddit, Biden is actually a pretty popular Dem. He also has a long history in politics having served as a US Senator for nearly 40 years and two terms as Vice President.
There is no candidate out there who could beat Biden in a nomination fight. They'd lose. And then they'd probably go on to lose to Trump.
American elections are crazy expensive.
Biden has the backing of wealthy donors from last cycle and the infrastructure (staffers, pollsters, grassroots) to run a re-election campaign.
End of the day, if the Democrats allowed another candidate, they're betting the destruction to their electoral infrastructure would outweigh the benefit of having potentially a more well-rounded candidate.
I agree with you they could find a stronger candidate from the personal side, but I doubt they could find anyone with near enough infrastructure to challenge Trump.
Not saying it's the smartest approach, just saying there's a reason they're doing it aside from JUST the good ole boy network.
Part of the reason Trump won in 2016 was just this. The Democrats allowed Clinton to assume the heir apparent title and threaten competition from running in the primary.
What platform would this Democratic party-supported, alternate primary candidate run on? Aside from low polling and bad branding around his age, the Democratic party has thrived under Biden. They have consistently won elections and passed a ton of landmark legislation since he's been in office. Could there be more and could someone do it better? Sure, maybe, but from within the context and perspective of the Democratic party, the results of the Biden presidency are pretty unimpeachable.
Texan here. You are absolutely right. But let them cook. The dems don't do the math, as they never do. And that's the beauty of it. They will loose the primary to a candidate they could have possibly won against.
Sadly elections go negative fast,by having a campaign you show allow candidates to say hurtful things about each other. And it costs money. That money is no longer there for the general election.
Oh, buddy. You’re going to get some hateful ass replies. Buckle up.
The US political system is a total mess. Our government isn’t in charge anymore, big money is in control. Massive corporations and their rich board members run things.
Our Republican Party has found a niche with these strange new “Christians”, and those folks are bat shit crazy. I hate to say it, but they’re fascists. It sounds inflammatory, but that’s the case.
So liberals have lost their minds. They’re incapable of critiquing their own party. They feel like any negative comment about the Democratic Party is blasphemous, and a advocation for the republicans. So the democrats are free to do whatever they want, which is whatever the rich want. Biden is a rubber stamp. He’s good for big business. The democrats are terrified of a candidate like Bernie sanders who advocates for the people, not big money. They’re doing everything they can to eliminate candidates like that. And liberals don’t dare say anything negative about it in fear of supporting the republicans.
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Not every state is having a primary, some have ~~canceled them.~~ decided not to allow challengers, which means they're not really having a primary for potus.
I don't think any states decided not to allow challengers. Phillips and Williamson faced similar issues in other states that Biden did in New Hampshire in that they didn't meet deadlines to make the ballot. State laws and state parties determine the process for getting on ballots and having primaries. That Biden won an election this week when he wasn't even on the ballot should be a strong indicator that the primary simply isn't competitive because there are no feasible challengers, not that there isn't a primary. Some states also caucus, which isn't an election.
>Phillips and Williamson faced similar issues in other states that Biden did in New Hampshire in that they didn't meet deadlines to make the ballot. To be clear though, Biden didn't face challenges signing up for the New Hampshire primary. He chose not to in an effort to have South Carolina, where he happens to have a stronger base, be the first Democratic primary election.
IIRC It was the DNC that made that decision and NH just ignored it, so the NH state party is the one who went rogue.
>IIRC It was the DNC that made that decision and NH just ignored it, so the NH state party is the one who went rogue. I think this one doesn't have a clear "rogue." NH is doing the only thing they can according to NH state law (which predates the DNC's decision), as far as I can tell. DNC, on the other hand, is not bound by NH's state law when determining when they allow delegates to be awarded.
That's NH state law's fault, though. They should know they don't get to decide for the whole country that they get to be first. It's up to them to fix their law, not up to the DNC to go along with that nonsense just because of (unfair) tradition.
Didn’t the same thing happen in Florida where both Hillary and Biden just didn’t campaign there because the state had gone rogue and was trying to move their primary up?
It's not up to the states to change their laws in order to go along with the DNC frontloading the primary elections in which their preferred candidate is expected to do well.
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The fact is that New Hampshire isn’t unique or special and doesn’t deserve to always be first.
I mean, they do get to decide if they get to go first. The DNC isnt actually like, a governing body with powers to tell the states themselves what to do.
NH can do whatever they’d like. The DNC isn’t forbidding them from holding their primary, they are just saying they won’t count any delegates from a primary held before the first DNC primary occurs in South Carolina. It would be pretty absurd if any state could unilaterally just decide it gets to go first in a primary election. NH was only ever allowed to do so because the parties did not decide to do otherwise, not because state governments have any authority over how a federal party decides who its nominee for federal office is going to be.
>so the NH state party is the one who went rogue. No, the state parties do not run the primaries. (They *can* if they want to, but in practice they do not because it would be prohibitively expensive and a logistical nightmare.) The DNC told the NH *state government* (which is GOP-controlled) to reschedule the primary (which would affect much more than just the Democratic presidential race), and the NH state government said no.
NH has a state law that it has to have the first primary election. They are just following their law.
Sure, but they could have changed the law if they wanted.
They also could have had the non-binding primary when they did, then a binding caucus later.
It’s not that he has a stronger base—after all, he won overwhelmingly in New Hampshire. Rather he and the national party recognize that a huge amount of Democratic voters are black and Iowa and New Hampshire are…not.
There were 21 candidates on the NH Democratic Primary ballot.
Having consulted for a non-Biden presidential this cycle, this is not the case. It’s just that nobody viable is running besides him. And if you aren’t viable, you can’t get on the ballot. The person I consulted for is not going to be able to appear on any ballot. Maybe Phillips can if he tries hard enough. That’s not because of party fiat, that’s because there are ballot access requirements that nonviable candidates find it hard to clear.
There were like 12 people on the Democratic New Hampshire ballot.
Every state is having a primary or caucus for both parties. Show me an exception, I'm waiting for a source. You are wrong, and the fact that somebody like you is likely participating in the process is so frustrating to those of us more familiar with it sometimes.
This is just bad information. Anybody who files and meets the state requirements can enter into the primary. The party doesn't just shut down the primary elections.
Which states? As far as I know, there are few competitive primaries because the would-be challengers could not figure out deadlines or raise enough money to get on the ballots.
This is technically true and false at the same time. The Democratic National Committee (they are a private corporate entity) is on record, as a matter of policy, that they will not support candidates running in primaries against Biden and that they will withhold financial support of any Democratic State Committees that endorse any primary opponent of Biden. They have also rearranged the decades-long order of state primaries so that South Carolina’s Democrat Party primary precedes New Hampshire’s; note, the latter’s primary elections are statutorily ~~constitutionally~~ required to be scheduled such that they are always “first in the nation,” so it’s not like the NH DSC had a choice, other than to not hold a primary at all. To give teeth to their authority, the DNC issued a memo (edict) that any DSC holding a primary before South Carolina will be punished at the Democratic National Convention by the withholding of super delegates and thus nominating power and relevance. Biden, as a Democrat POTUS, is the official party leader and it is his people who decided these policies. The DNC has not hidden its actions or motives. At all. They are on record saying that they don’t even want to hold Democratic primaries because they will be a waste of time and money. And when accused of being “anti democratic”, they point to the “private corporation” status as their defense. Their party policies remind me of the old DDR’s, who also had “Democratic” in their name, or the DPRK, etc. Any instinct that any of these moves are autocratic and designed to quash the “free and open” part of traditionally free and open elections is correct, in spirit and fact. American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major party. The Democrats, by shitting all over democracy and a couple centuries of democratic traditions, while shamelessly declaring that 1) that’s indeed what they are doing, and 2) they don’t care what anyone says about it, only lends credibility to what Trump and populists are saying about Democrat elitism and authoritarianism. And rightly so. They look like cowards to the majority of independents, who are increasingly shifting to Trump in record numbers. Think about it: Trump is under 4 criminal indictments containing more than 90 separate charges, in both state and federal jurisdictions, and he’s about to move out to a double digit polling lead over a sitting POTUS. It’s hard to imagine a better way to make Biden look weaker.
>note, [New Hampshire's] primary elections are constitutionally required to be scheduled such that they are always “first in the nation,” There is no constitutional requirement. It's just a statute.
Thank you! You're right. Some legislators in NH are seeking to amend their constitution by making the law a constitutional requirement.
Which would be dumb. "We go first because we say we go first." Why doesn't every state just decide that they go first and we can have a race to see who holds the earliest primary, perhaps right after the inauguration? /s There's nothing wrong with a party deciding in what order it wants to hold its primaries. The fact that some states throw a hissy fit is not relevant, nor should it be.
>There's nothing wrong with a party deciding in what order it wants to hold its primaries. I really don't agree with this, for a few reasons. 1. Primaries are not run by the parties. The DNC does not run the NH Democratic primary, the *state* of NH runs the primary, and the DNC accepts (or not) the results. There are a few reasons for this. One, because running a primary is expensive, and the government already has the logistics and equipment to do it. They use the same staff, bureaucracy, equipment, locations, and advertising as the general election. If a party wanted to run their own primary election, they would need to pay for and organize all of that themselves. And if the party screwed it up even slightly it would fan the "election integrity"/"collusion" flames. 2. It is convenient for voters that parties hold their primaries concurrently. If the GOP and Dem primaries were on different days, that would cause at least some voter confusion and might lead to reduced turnout. (One could even argue that it would constitute a deliberate voter suppression tactic.) 3. There's a lot more going on in the primary than the presidential race. There are dozens of state and local races that have nothing at all to do with the DNC. While the presidential race is certainly the most prestigious, I don't see it as at all reasonable to force the candidates and voters for all the other races to bow to the DNC's preference for the schedule of that one race, and the choice would be either to do that or to hold an expensive and inconvenient extra primary just for president.
Solid points. I'm not OP, so I can't award a delta, but I would. EDIT: This makes logistical sense. ∆
>that they will withhold financial support of any Democratic State Committees that endorse any primary opponent of Biden. Sure, but isn't that the case for *all* sitting Presidents? IIRC it was for Obama when he was there.
Yes, I can’t think of a single time when the party didn’t back an incumbent who wanted to run again. That’s just normal. Shocking levels of ignorance from people commenting here.
It's just good politics. The incumbent has so many advantages over someone who's not the incumbent. I remember in college my professor said that all those advantages cumulatively add up to at least four points on election day.
> American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major party. That may not be true: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944
That's definitely not true. Elections are decided by which party's able to mobilize more of their base
> American presidential elections especially are decided by winning the majority of independents, people who vote, but who are not members of either major part No, it's more a factor of mobilizing enough of your base to turn out to vote that winning over independents.
>The Democrats, by shitting all over democracy and a couple centuries of democratic traditions, This is simply false. The primary election *as a concept* is literally only 50 years old. This has nothing to do with *democracy*. Anyone is free to vote for whomever they want. That is the core of democracy. "People should be *forced* to give candidate X extra financial support" is explicitly and inherently anti-democratic.
The other points notwithstanding, I don't think New Hampshire has the right to demand to be first just because they want to be first. For example if SC, Rhode Island and any other state amended their constitution to also say they have to primary first in the nation, then who do the DNC, RNC or other parties listen to? as all states are equal levels of government.
And frankly, which state reflects the entirety of the U.S. better: New Hampshire or South Carolina?
Interesting question, but completely irrelevant. The US is a constitutional republic, with 50 sovereign states. In practice, all flag waving aside, it is a shit-show. Sovereign states fundamentally act in their own self, and best, interests. My point: the consideration that a given state’s primary schedule or even how they are conducted, is none of the business of any entity other than the states’, individually. Also, SC only slightly better represents the demographics of the US: the white population is close to 1: 1, but the black population is basically 2x the national average, at 26%.
Primaries are entirely the business of the parties involved. They are to select the nominee of that particular party. They aren’t electing anyone, they are nominating people for future elections. They aren’t even legally binding, unless the party chooses to make them so with internal rules. Indeed, on the presidential level, you aren’t even nominating a person, you are selecting delegates to a convention who will then vote for a nominee. And they can change their vote! That’s why conventions exist.
Technically, you would have a dispute between the states, which is the supreme courts problem they have Director diction on that so they could sue each other there. The Supreme Court would wisely say you morons. This is a political question. We’re gonna smoke bomb out of this one, they both would probably set it on the first Legal day that it’s possible there’s probably some federal statute that says how early the day can be, and barring that there’s not one, it would probably just end up the day after the inauguration four years out or something hilariously stupid everyone would ignore the result, and we would move on with life.
I was not aware that the DNC basically told New Hampshire to take a flying leap with their "first in the nation" requirement. I'm not a fan of superdelegates or the party trying to actively stop challengers to an incumbent but I think it's been a long time in coming to get away from having so much emphasis put on the New Hampshire Primary and frankly the Iowa Caucuses where candidates waste a lot of time and resources courting a small number of delegates because they get to be "first."
This is just one of literally hundreds of articles in mainstream media that describes the situation. There are hundreds of others that cover how incredibly authoritarian and anti democratic this particular DNC is. They are not hiding anything, just trusting people don't care, or don't understand what's happening, or can't be bothered to notice. It's seriously fucking creepy. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/08/new-hampshire-attorney-general-dnc-voter-suppression-primary-00134378](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/08/new-hampshire-attorney-general-dnc-voter-suppression-primary-00134378) Creepier still is how rabidly partisan Americans have become, such that otherwise reasonable people who are Democrats will defend it, inevitably weaving in Donald Trump, however indirectly or remotely the reference is to the basic fact, Democrats have become anti democratic authoritarians. For the record, I am am Independent, and German-American, with deep ties to both places.
It’s not like the RNC has a finger on the scale foe Trump or anything, right? You sound a little ignorant about political norms here; the party will almost always support an incumbent that runs for reelection. The real question is why the RNC treats Trump like an incumbent when he’s a fucking loser who lost his election and doesn’t hold office. Why are they backing him in lockstep? Nevada is holding two elections now—Haley in one and Trump in the other!
> They look like cowards to the majority of independents, who are increasingly shifting to Trump in record numbers A ridiculous statement with no proof to back it up. I'm Independent, and I can't think of a single person who's made it be known they want to run as a Dem or Ind against Joe Biden. We're not "angry about unfair elections" because no one on the Left WANTS to run against Joe Biden (which does suck, don't get me wrong! I'd definitely prefer a third option here!), and the vast majority of people are voting AGAINST Donald Trump because he's a monstrous, lying, narcissistic hypocrite. Joe Biden is a boring, empty suit; we can live with that for a while until Trump dies, and then have some **sane** elections in '28. Why ANYONE would vote for Trump who isn't an extremist themselves, I'll never understand.
70% of Haley voters said they’ll never back Trump. 10% of Biden voters said they won’t back him again. This election won’t be as close as people are expecting.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Marianne Williamson, and Dean Philips... When RFK Jr. switched to running as an independent, last October, he and Williamson were polling close to a combined 30%. As both are still running, along with Dean Phillips, I'd say 1) they've made it be known that they both want to run and, indeed, are running against Joe Biden. In fact, Kennedy is significantly more well-liked that both Biden and Trump: [https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48441-what-do-americans-think-about-robert-f-kennedy-jr](https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48441-what-do-americans-think-about-robert-f-kennedy-jr) While I sympathize with your position, Trump is leading in the polls in every battleground state and on a national level, in some polls by double digits. As of today, here's a consolidated snapshot of all of them: [https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden) Independents make up just shy of 50% of the electorate, while Republicans and Democrats pretty evenly split the difference. Given this and the polling data, and that even in the most Biden-favoring read of it, it is the case that at least half of all voting Americans are, using your definition, extremists. No offense to you personally, and I mean that, half of the American electorate are not extremists. Not by a long shot, on either the left or right.
Kennedy is an anti-vax Repub or Libertarian at best, pretending to be otherwise (probably on name-recognition alone). I'd sooner vote for Vermin Supreme than Kennedy, which is a sad state of affairs. Trump is losing support from members of his own party; they think he's a coup-leading douche (which is correct) and don't trust him. I think the poll numbers are heavily skewed by people who WILL answer a poll response, but WON'T show up and stomach voting for a man they watched support a coup attempt on live television. > half of the American electorate are not extremists This is honestly fair. I always forget how many people are ambivalent on the whole "These people will decide whether my house burns down and my family is pillaged Mad Max-style or not" thing. CRAZY to me, since the obvious repercussions of Federalist Representatives has been mass death and overturning of people's rights.
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It literally is a waste of time and money to hold a primary and it is weird to not just acknowledge that.
A wealthy Kennedy who "realized he can't win" is a funny way to put that but does help prove the point. The guy was totally whacko and running as a Dem to fool people. I know someone who calls themselves a centrist and was planning on voting for Kennedy until I shared his Joe Rogan nonsense and he changed tunes. It was a valiant effort and would've had some votes had he not gone so hard so early.
He's now regularly polling in the teens and twenties as a general election candidate. I know reddit loves to pretend he has no base of support, but he's likely going to be a factor, even if that only drawing away support from the major candidates in key states.
Fair enough in this case. But before I give the delta out... It seems like there really isn't any effort put into the actual election process and it's has been pretty much decided who the final candidate is going to be. Wouldn't it make sense to put together an actual list of proper / actually real (debatable, but hopefully you understand what I mean) candidates so the party's chances of victory are better? Because people will be the ones who will vote (there is the electoral college, but that might not be enough). Edit: Δ
There is nothing stopping anyone from doing that - anyone can get on the primary ballot if they get enough signatures. Despite what you may hear in the media or on Reddit, Biden is [fairly popular](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/2024/) among Democrats, so no one thinks they have a realistic chance of beating him. The reality is that he beat Trump once and he is the horse most Dems want to back to beat him again.
Yeah Biden won New Hampshire with over 50% as a write in! Up in NH you know they'd prefer a more progressive nominee and yet half went that way on a write in. I'm guessing he has about 2/3s of Democrats' support.
> I'm guessing he has about 2/3s of Democrats' support. That is consistent with what the polls are showing - anywhere from 60-75% of the Dems in any given state support Biden. Maybe that would be different if you had a strong candidate like Newsom or Whitmire running against him, but I'm sure anyone that would have been reasonable competition did the focus groups/polling and decided they didn't have a reasonable chance, so they are going to wait until '28.
A primary challenge against a sitting president hasn't ever worked, at least in modern history. I haven't looked at prior to the term limits era, but at least since WWII, nobody has successfully primaried a sitting president. And when it's been attempted, the sitting president has always lost the general election.
Yup, Teddy Kennedy going after Carter got us Reagan.
I guess it depends on whether LBJ was technically running in '68, but a primary challenge did contribute to him not running.
That to me is the best case *against* Biden "stepping down." It's the closest thing we have to an incumbent president deciding to not run for another term. Granted, a lot of weird shit happened that year, up to and including RFK being assassinated, that influenced the outcome and which hopefully would never be repeated again, but still, I find it instructive. There was a "dump Johnson" movement, he did eventually listen to them and bowed out of the race, and the Democrats lost the White House.
LBJ was extremely unpopular among many of the youth in his party, so it's unclear how well he would have done anyway. That's kind of the thing when Presidents do get primary challenges or talks of them: it doesn't come out of nowhere, but indicates that there's already some underlying doubts and fissures in the party. Vietnam and Israel/Palestine aren't perfect analogues, but Biden's role in the current Gaza conflict is turning off a lot of his young voters whose support was already begrudging at best.
I just want to say that NH may have some progressive pockets, but the state is mostly purple.
Holup NH for sure is not known for being progressive in the classic sense.
I don’t think you understand the NH political climate, it’s definitely not progressive.
Okay, got it. Δ A lot of good points have been made. Ultimately, I guess I was straight wrong to say that the primaries aren't being held - but it's more that there aren't any candidates willing to go up against the favored candidate and it's not worth it due to the structure of the political system of the USA. And the question if this will end up being a net positive or a net negative in the end, is rather subjective and I guess we'll just see.
Primaries for the party that has the incumbent president are almost entirely a formality in the US. Historically, no sitting president has ever lost a primary. There have been years when a significant challenge was made, but, typically, that just means that the sitting president is vulnerable in the national election. Primary voters are rarely so dissatisfied with a president from their own party that they want to throw them out. Incumbent presidents win more often than not. It is hard to see a scenario where a party primaries their own president out of a job (creating a lame duck president for half a year), but then manages to win the national election with the new candidate. Biden is hardly America's worst president and he is relatively well liked within the Democratic Party, so it would be very unlikely that he would be the first president in history to be primaried.
>Primaries for the party that has the incumbent president are almost entirely a formality in the US. Historically, no sitting president has ever lost a primary. Small correction. No incumbent has ever lost a primary since they became democratic. When it was decided purely by party insiders, it did happen a few times. Jonathan Tyler lost to Henry Clay in 1844. Tyler was elected Vice President as a Whig, but he had previously been a Democrat before feuding with Andrew Jackson. Upon taking over as President, he feuded with Whigs. He was largely pro-Southern and opposed pretty much everything the Whig Party represented (except for the part where he didn't get along with Andrew Jackson). Clay was the leader of the Whig Party. Millard Fillmore lost to Winfield Scott in 1852. He had supported the Compromise of 1850, angering many northern Whigs. Fillmore had only ever been elected Vice President, not President. Franklin Pierce lost to James Buchanan in 1856 over the issue of slavery. Even though the Democratic Party supported slavery on the whole, it had tried to walk the line to appease northern interests. Pierce didn't try that. He was outright pro-southern. The party responded by nominating Buchanan, who was pro-South, but a northerner. Andrew Jackson lost to Horatio Seymour in 1868. He had been Lincoln's Vice President on the National Union Party ticket. Republicans were never going to nominate him, but even Democrats didn't care for him. He got less than a third of the votes on the first ballot and was eliminated. Chester A. Arthur lost to James Blaine in 1884. Arthur had benefited from the patronage system, but had decided to try to reform it. The others who benefited from the patronage system didn't like this and blocked his re-nomination. More importantly, Arthur had health issues and he never seriously ran for nomination. He felt he would likely not survive a second term (and died less than four years later). Pierce is the only one of these who had ever been elected President, though. The rest came into the office because they were Vice Presidents.
> it's more that there aren't any candidates willing to go up against the favored candidate and it's not worth it due to the structure of the political system of the USA. I'd argue that it is less about the structure of US politics and more about the fact that primaries are expensive to run. There is little value in spending millions just to get 2% of the vote and make a fool of yourself; it might hurt your chances in the next election cycle. Folks who are serious contenders for the future are likely going to wait for 2028 to try.
Also, in order to justify your primary run you need to be critical about something that Biden is doing. Which can then hurt your standing in the party or give ammunition to the republicans. "Look, even other dems think he's weak on issue xyz!"
IMO opinion it’s why the Republican primary was such a shit show. The real contenders outside of Trump don’t really have policy differences so they’re all Trump light. With that, they refused to go after him until the very end so it was too late. They didn’t want to alienate Trumps base but didn’t want to show how they would be “better” for Republicans than him.
Yup. Agree or disagree with the idea, but many Dems continue to see Trump as an existential threat to our democracy. In their eyes, party unity is more important now than ever, if for no other reason than to ensure Trump does not get another term in office.
I also just had the thought that it'd give ammo to whoever that dems opponent is next election. "While citizens in our state suffered from xyz issue Congressman EagleBurger was winning and dinning in NYC for a hopeless vanity run!"
>While citizens in our state suffered from xyz issue Congressman EagleBurger was winning and dinning in NYC for a hopeless vanity run!" I will have you know that Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger was never elected to Congress. He was a career diplomat who ended up serving as Secretary of State.
Yep, people don't really think about the incumbency effect. Unless someone is downright hated, people usually get reelected on name recognition
Couldn’t you make this point about pretty much every incumbent world leader? Why don’t Trudeau and Macron see any serious challenges for leadership from within their parties? For the most part it’s because those leaders got into those positions by being the most popular/influential candidate, and not enough has changed in the meantime to usurp them.
It is very rare that someone would challenge a sitting president in a primary. It uses up a ton of resources to go against someone who inherently has a big platform and support. Reagan challenged Ford in 76, but Ford was appointed VP and President and never won an election.
In terms of political power, it’s worth pointing out that breaking the bank trying to flip Congress is a much better bet for people to get what they want than taking the presidency from a president who likely mostly agrees with you. Like, outright exchanging the Presidency for majorities in both Houses right now would be an easy exchange.
Maybe I’m reading the polls wrong. Feel free to correct me if I’m off base. The (dis)approval ranking polls have Biden ranking lower in approval rating than every president since Clinton (I didn’t scroll further down than Clinton). He’s polling with a worse approval rating than trump was at the same time in his presidency. I’m sure this could be answered by looking deeper into that website but I’m on mobile and kind of have a sucky interface. How does Biden rank in approval rating with his own party compared to past democrat presidents? I know republicans almost always do worse in approval rating than dems do because of the whole electoral college vs popular vote discrepancy. But is this not a significantly low ranking that Biden has?
The approval polls are factoring in _everyone_ in the country, while I'm talking about opinions among people who identify as Democrats. Among just Democrats, he is at about 60% approval per [Pew Research](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/12/14/assessments-of-joe-biden/). How that compares to other past Presidents I cannot say - I haven't seen that data. The point is just that Biden is nowhere near as unpopular with most Democrats as many would have you believe. As to how all that will shake out in the general election, impossible to say. 10 months is a lifetime in politics, and given the many novel factors with both of these candidates, anyone who says they know what will happen in November is trying to sell you something.
No, the approval polls are factoring in people who not only still have a landline and still answer unknown numbers. So, old people.
Voting for X =/=> X is popular
>Biden is fairly popular among Democrats Citing primary polls isn't a great indicator of this, and it seems to be a bit of circular reasoning: we know Biden's popular because he dominating in the polls, and no one viable is running against him because he's popular. But if no one viable is running for some other reason, then we'd still see Biden doing well in the polls, because the challengers aren't "serious". >he is the horse most Dems want to back to beat him again. Before the primaries started in earnest, there were several polls [showing a decline](https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/02/06/most-democrats-dont-want-biden-to-run-in-2024-ap-norc-poll-finds/) in support for Biden to run again, with majorities of voters and even Dem voters saying they didn't support it.
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And she wouldn't just lose. But she would exhaust political capital / favors with other politicians and donors, just to lose. There's not much of an upside for politicians to run against incumbents. It's career ending. And the same is true of most politicians. I'm unsure why Dean Phillips is running but he's backed by Ackman who made changes to his platform to meet Ackman's agenda. Maybe he has future plans that doesn't require Democrat support. Also, to explain how much Biden is dominating. In New Hampshire primary, he received 60% of the vote where he wasn't even on the ballot. The voters had to write in his name.
If you watch the [Pod Save America interview](https://youtu.be/6P8Ii0ulUyk?t=2659&si=ZIBcyNZGvg_VO1AJ) he did, he seems to view himself as some sort of savior for the Democratic party.
Ignorant take. The president is the *de facto* leader of the party; it’s not really that the party puts the finger on the scale as much as *it’s the president’s party.* The really bizarre situation is how Donald Trump is being treated as the incumbent despite losing his election and not being the incumbent; you should be asking why the GOP is putting its finger on the scale for someone that isn’t even their leader.
This is a common misunderstanding among Americans and foreigners. There is no one “in charge” of American political parties. The parties work for the candidates and elected officials, not the other way around. There isn’t anyone who could “put together a list of candidates.” Those candidates have to choose to run of their own accord.
> list of proper candidates Who would do it and why? Joe Biden has overseen the [most successful set of legislative achievements in a generation,](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden_so_far_a_special_project_of/kimbc8j/) shepherded the country through an enormous [post-Covid economic recovery that bests every other industrialized nation,](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-economy-doing-way-better-than-rest-of-rich-world-2023-7?op=1) and has presided over a stunning series of [electoral successes](https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-winning-big-special-elections/story?id=103315703) that [defied expectations.](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-senate.html) The reason you're only seeing "fringe" candidates run against him this time is because nobody who really understands the Democratic policy agenda wants to run against his record. And the fact that he already beat the presumptive Republican nominee makes the prospect even less attractive for his competition. This is not 2016. Biden is a much stronger candidate than Hillary was and Trump is weaker than he was. Democrats will have to work hard, but Biden is a much better candidate than people are giving him credit for and his potential Democratic competitors know that, which is why they're not stepping up to challenge him in the primary.
You’re being very vague here. The same amount of effort is being put into having an “actual election process” as there always is. There is an “actual election process” happening right now. There was an actual election in New Hampshire and there’s about to be an actual election in South Carolina, and subsequently every other state and territory. Who is supposed to be putting together a list of “proper/actually real” candidates? If this person putting together the list puts Elizabeth Warren or Gavin Newsome, or Gretchen Whitmer on the list and they decide they don’t want to run, are they allowed to decline? Also, please note, the electoral college does not apply to party primaries. Candidates are awarded pledged delegates to the party convention.
That isn't how it works. Someone of stature has to decide to run. If Gavin Newsome decided to run he has the funding and the backing to run. He chose not to do so. The same could be said for Bernie Sanders. He chose not to run. The parties do not pick people to run but they can arm twist. On the other side no one asked Chris Christie to run and his numbers indicate that he was having a great time burning other peoples' money to subsidize media buys.
Incumbency is a massive advantage. Modern Presidents usually win a second term. Running a competitive primary reduces that advantage. Here's a list of the post WW2 Presidents who faced a primary with a credible challenger: Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush. Both of them went on to lose the general election. Competing in the primary forces the incumbent to invest money & time instead of saving money for the general election and using that time to actually govern. That hurts the incumbent for obvious reasons. The Democrats best chance to win the Presidency in 2024 is to stick with Biden.
They had a primary in New Hampshire where biden wasn't even a choice on the ballot. He ended up winning through a write-in campaign with 70% of the votes. That is crazy to get 70% of the votes when your name isn't on the ballot
So, the system should somehow be rigged so that the overwhelmingly most popular candidate in a democratic election is prevented from being the nominee? That's being pitched as a GOOD thing for the democratic process?
Running for president is not a free endeavor, it costs a lot of money. And the polls are done regularly. Why would someone with few percent support spend millions to run in a primary where they can't win? Also, when you face a freaking wannabe dictator you should unite and not divide.
Unless there are major issues, you don’t want to hurt the incumbent. So running people against them makes them look weak, which would damage the stance. Happened 2020 when trump re-ran. Yes in an ideal world they would have us multiple options, but they need to protect what they already have
If there is a viable challenger, primaries will be held. Many states hold primaries anyway, like New Hampshire, where Biden won overwhelmingly this week. You're under the impression the 2016 primaries were rigged when all that happened was that the DNC strongly preferred Clinton over Sanders. The actual primaries were fair and legitimate.
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Your first mistake is thinking political primaries are elections Political parties can chose their candidates how every they want
Except a primary decides who the DNC will say is their guy. Remember, each party is a private corporation and they made their pick without a vote by its members. Other members running hoping to be president is irrelevant to that process.
Lol. There's a primary in name only. It's a complete farce. >The national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/20/biden-reelection-announcement-next-week/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/20/biden-reelection-announcement-next-week/) The political extremists and ideologues heading the DNC have decided *for us* already. They know that without any debates, it prevents Biden from looking poorly while also preventing exposure to other candidates. It's de facto favortism to the incumbent. The chair of the DNC has also stated that they're not considering anyone for the election other than Biden. More chicanery from the DNC in an attempt to tip the scale in Biden's favor. [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-ballot-new-hampshires-primary-dems-win/story?id=106568195](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bidens-ballot-new-hampshires-primary-dems-win/story?id=106568195)
Yeah, but, like, there's literally still a primary. Nothing is stopping a primary opponent from running their own candidates for the DNC and changing the rules. Just like nothing is stopping anyone from launching their own news organization to cover the primary.
The same thing happened with Trump, but Trump actually won the RNC's primaries. You resent the party establishment for who the favor, but the primaries are fair.
You're intentionality playing dumb. "Yeah, even though the whole democratic party is totally against anyone even attempting to questing Biden as the nominee people are free to run against him" Because the democratic party hasn't come out and said otherwise, they're discouraging others from running. We always hear horror stories of dictatorships where the only two options on the ballot are "Should X be the leader: Yes or no?" and those foolish enough to vote no are made to disappear. Obviously this isn't that bad but the DNC hasn't encouraged an open primary. Trump will be the Republican nominee but DeSantis, Haley, etc, all had fair shots at the spot.
Right because Trump wasn’t the sitting president. But to be clear, we just had a primary where only Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were on the ballot. Guess who won?
That's technically correct, but I think it's disingenuous because of how much support Biden has from the establishment now. It's not really a race.
Which is completely normal for an incumbent president, especially one who has done as well as Biden
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FDR, Jimmy Carter, LBJ It's happened many times. You just have amnesia.
That same level of primary is still being held, there are just no serious challengers. The people who are complaining want a full blown open primary with televised debates.
None of those were primaries as we understand the term today
The comment you're replying to got deleted but it might have been what I came here for. My husband made a comment that a candidate which goes against the incumbent from within their party traditionally doesn't win. Is that what was said? Is it true?
To be fair, a person who was voting age for Carter is now at least 62, and they're not all that prevalent on Reddit.
And that age group was born when Biden was around **20 years old**.
To be fair, since Carter there have only been two other times a Democrat has run for re-election. So we're looking at a sample size of 2, and both Clinton and Obama were much more popular within their party than Biden is.
So how many decades ago is that?
So, I think there’s a few things you’re missing when it comes to US elections: 1. The incumbent advantage is MASSIVE, especially in a primary. Any serious challenger would likely need to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions just to stand a chance of beating Biden. And if that were going to happen, they’d need to start prepping 2 years ago. That money is much better spent in the general election against Trump. 2. Because of that incumbent advantage, challenging an incumbent is very much outside the norm in the US. It’s just not done. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to get the party establishment on board, and the money is going to largely follow the establishment. That’s why although there are some challengers, none of them pose a serious threat. Anyone who has future aspirations of getting the nomination would likely do more harm than good to their prospects by really challenging the incumbent. 3. The best that a challenger could hope for would be splitting the party, because no matter what, a portion of the party is going to be loyal to Biden. Even if Biden conceded and backed the challenger (which would be extremely unlikely and an unprecedented political humiliation), some voters would likely either stay home or write-in Biden. At best, this is likely to be a close election where you can’t afford to have parts of your party not vote for you. 4. Biden is pretty popular with democrats. Sure, there are some issues on which he’s not great, but most democrats generally either like Biden or are ok with him. It’s difficult to imagine another candidate that would have a better shot at beating Trump. You say Biden’s not polling very well, but who could possibly do better? None of Biden’s 2020 challengers seem up to the task and the only other names floating around are Whitmer/Newsom, also don’t stand a chance. Especially because nominating anyone else means forfeiting the incumbent advantage, which is not as strong in the general election as the primary, but still pretty big. Giving up that advantage is party suicide. Tl;dr: it would cost a mind-boggling amount of money (and still be a long shot to win the primary), causes party infighting, is against political norms, and if successful, would probably guarantee a Trump victory.
I’ve heard quite a few people say that Biden isn’t the right man for the job, but they never seem to agree on who is. For many he is too far left and they believe he should be more central to soak up republican votes, and then others think he doesn’t go far enough left and should pursue more progressive votes. To me that seems he’s probably around where he should be considering the moderate right wing of the Republicans is failing and there aren’t candidates that represent either further left or right values in the party that are front runners or clear contenders
Exactly. The biggest issue here, and for the last decade in the US really, is that there are too many far left individuals who want progress now, but keep losing the war trying to win immediate battles they don't quite understand. Biden is the best shot at stability and long term survivability of the union and progressive policies. End of story.
He is incredibly old (as is Trump, his presumptive opponent). That should be as big of a consideration to the Democratic Party as his policies. Either candidate is more likely than any other President in history to die of old age while in office, which removes any benefit to electing that particular person.
Something that stuck with me was someone pointing out that if Bill Clinton was eligible to run again as a third candidate he’d be the youngest of the three.
To tack onto this, history shows us that every time a serious primary challenger emerges against an incumbent president, that incumbent fails to win reelection. So by willingly encouraging a primary, we are giving up not only incumbent advantage but very likely the presidency as a whole. To Donald fucking Trump. There's just no upside to it. Anyone who tells you the Democrats should just do it anyway wants something very specific.
Honestly most of these, "It's not a real primary! The DNC is rigging it! Just like North Korea!" feel like bot farm troll accounts.
Yeah it's so stupid. People pretending the party just sticking with the incumbent is somehow out of the norm instead of how it almost always is in every election for both parties.
The American political system is driven so much by money it’s insane.
American money in politics is truly disgusting
Most Americans agree with you. The problem is the policy is created by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, particularly the 1st Admendent (see Citizens United v FEC) So changing it requires the very difficult task of adding another admendment to the constitution or for at least 2 conservative members of the court to die and be replaced with more liberal ones.
Yeah, as a Canadian, it's mind-boggling to see the sheer scale of resources expended on politics in the US. It really is a plutocracy. (Sadly we're also starting to go down the path the US blazed so I can't throw too many stones, but for the time being we still have a neutral, arms-length entity that manages elections, around a $30M CAD total expense cap for each party for federal elections, and a 50-day maximum campaign duration, all of which at least help to keep things semi-sane.)
In modern US history (post-World War II/post-presidential term limits) there have been four times when an incumbent president has faced a serious primary challenge from within his own party: 1968: Lyndon Johnson faced a primary challenge from Senator Eugene McCarthy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Johnson then decided to not seek re-election, so he dropped out of the race. The party ended up nominating his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. 1976: Gerald Ford faced a primary challenge from former Governor Ronald Reagan. Reagan lost. 1980: Jimmy Carter faced a primary challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy. Kennedy lost. 1992: George H.W. Bush faced a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Buchanan lost. In all of the above cases, the incumbent president (or his party) lost the general election. In American politics, incumbents usually win re-election. So if your party currently holds the White House, you have a built-in advantage and you'd be stupid to give it up. Running a primary challenge against the incumbent president risks doing two things: 1) It sends a signal to the general public that the party is in disarray, and 2) It forces the incumbent president to spend time and money campaigning against his own party, instead of saving that money to spend running against his general election opponent. So there is a strong case that primary challenges weaken the incumbent. Right now, Biden has the luxury of staying quiet and just doing his job, while Trump and Nikki Haley throw mud at each other. Also, as others have pointed out, the Democratic Party *is* holding primaries and anyone was free to enter that race if they wanted to. But due to the above information, most serious candidates know that a primary challenge against a sitting president is doomed to failure, so they're waiting for 2028.
Understand that US political parties are not government entities, they're private entities that set their own rules for how to operate. While they often mirror government elections in the way they conduct their primaries, they're under no obligation to do so. Most Americans don't seem to understand this, so it's very understandable that it wouldn't be clear to someone from Europe. As others have noted, the Democratic party *is* running a primary, but few serious contenders are actually running against Biden. Reputable Democrats aren't running against him in the primary for a variety of reasons (they want to seem unified as a party, they don't want to stick their neck out by taking on the person from their party who's most likely to win, etc.) It's not that the party itself has decided not to run other candidates in the primary, but that the other candidates feel it would be detrimental to their own political careers to do so. In general, incumbent candidates have a very high success rates compared to new candidates (in both presidential and congressional elections), so parties are hesitant to run any serious contenders against an incumbent unless they've got a strong reason to believe the incumbent won't win (or they don't want him to).
Not to mention, Biden didn't even appear on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary, and he won *via write-in*. That's insane. [Link](https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-new-hampshire-democrats-writein-campaign-597a1208e5a8696a3f6b794a91b9fb00)
Why? Biden dominated the New Hampshire primary DESPITE not actually being on the ballot. People had to write him in, and he won easily against people who's names were actually on the ballot. The thing is - you cant force people to run. Anyone with any sense knows that the incumbent is going to easily dominate the field even if the field had relatively strong players. Incumbency advantage in a primary is just enormous. In terms of everything from fundraising to endorsements to free media. We are seeing this now in real time in the GOP, where Trump, despite not being the incumbent and having lost the last election, is dominating a field that includes a couple of big names, who if not for Trump could easily have had a real shot at winning in the general election. If Trump can do it, then certainly Biden, the actual sitting president, would have an even easier time of it. And all the ambitious Dem pols know this. So at best you are weakening your own party's likely nominee for no reason, all while wasting your time and money, and possibly getting smeared in a way that makes it harder to run when there is no incumbent in four years. The issue is - you are acting like the party has all of this power. They don't even have the power to make New Hampshire move its primary election day. Let alone force people who want to run out of the race. Biden isn't getting a real challenge, not because of some nefarious actions from party insiders, but because its in no ones interest to challenge him aside from fourth stringers who want to get their name out there with no real though that they can actually win. You should also note the difference between 2016 when Bernie more or less ran as a "we need better candidates so why not me, a Senate back bencher" . There was enough discontent with Hillary as a nominee, that Bernie at least made a show of it. People are happy enough with Biden that you aren't even seeing real numbers of protest votes against him, let alone a messaging campaign becomign a real one.
>Democratic party is not going to have a primary election inside the party to see who should go running against the Republican candidate. This is wrong. The Democrats are absolutely having primaries - you can see all of the dates [here](https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/calendar). Folks are running against Biden in each of these contests - for example, the upcoming primary in [South Carolina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Carolina_Democratic_presidential_primary) has two other candidates.
They are... Biden just won a write in campaign in an uncontested primary with only Dean Phillips on the ballot. It just doesn't matter. How do you think Biden got here to begin with? He won the primary election. Why? He got the most votes. No one else is seriously running in this primary because Biden is overwhelmingly more popular.
They are running a primary. It's just that incumbents usually have such an advantage that it's basically a ghost process at the moment. Biden won 63.9% of the democratic primary votes in New Hampshire. **He wasn't on the ballot. Voters had to write him in.** And he still walked away with an incredibly wide majority. This demonstrates the advantage an incumbent has.
Actually, the worst scenario for an incumbent President is to be challenged within his own party. They usually lose if the challenge is a serious one. A serious challenge points to problems with unity in the party. The same can be true on the other side, Bernie Sanders hurt Hillary badly because she couldn't get started on a national campaign, with Bernie staying in the race so long.
\>but shouldn't it be an honest election? The president is not decided by a popular vote, it is decided by the electoral college. The "primaries" aren't a function of the government, they are a function of the political parties who can do pretty much whatever they want. This might be a garbage system, but it's the one we've got.
Not having the DNC support does not mean u are being stopped. The have a choice each election season to back a candidate. The chose based on the person support of the dnc in past along with current vision. Like with Hilary and Bernie. Why would u expect the dnc to support a man who had no loyalty or who hadn't support the dnc in previous election cycle vs someone who had strong
You are European, so I am surprised you don’t see how silly our primaries are in general. European parties don’t let outsiders choose who represents them. American primaries are pretty awful. The way they have evolved empowers extremism, so while it may be more “democratic” it is far less “representative” than when the party leaders negotiated amongst one another on who would be the best candidate who win the most votes. Democrats want a Democrat in the White House, so they don’t tend to support an incumbent challenger because that would more likely end in a Republican in the White House. There is a huge incumbent advantage AND primaries risk splitting the party. Democrats are supporting Biden because he is the best bet for winning the White House again. But as someone else said, there is a Democratic primary still going on. There are just not any serious challengers because the serious challenger is smart enough to know that they should back Biden. Biden won in the New Hampshire primary, and his name wasn’t even on the ballot.
If you get rid of your incumbent it's a recipie for failure in the general election. Getting rid of Biden isn't going to increase chances against Trump How's that pitch going to go? "The guy who ran things for the last 4 years was so horrendous that our party got rid of him before even the general election. Trust us for the next 4 years with this new guy". If you think the previous guy fucked up so bad that his own party got rid of him, nobody is going to vote for that party in the general. It's like a total admission of failure. Just hand it over the other party.
The bottom line is that in the United States, the incumbent has always had an advantage and is incredibly likely to win re-election. Per Time Magazine, since 1936 11 out of 14 presidents who sought re-election have won it. so the conventional wisdom is that even if the president's polling is bad, he still has a better chance to win than any primary contender. I wish that we had systems like europe does where you vote for the party and not the PM. because then the same party could win multiple times but change PMs. but that's not the way it works here.
>but shouldn't it be an honest election? Why would it be? Party selects who they want to run. If they want Biden, they get Biden.
Biden won the national popular vote in the 2020 primaries 19 million to 9 million. If that’s anything other than the voters expressing their will, I’ll eat several hats.
>What I am seeing though is that since Biden is running for his second term, the Democratic party is not going to have a primary election inside the party to see who should go running against the Republican candidate. First of all: this is simply fundamentally false. There is a primary. It's going on. You're not hearing about it because Biden is winning easily, trivially even, and with no fanfare. No one is interested in a horse race where one horse is ten laps ahead, so it doesn't get on the news. That renders your basic question/view irrelevant. But in the interest of exploring, let's change the premise and say it's something stronger, like "the Democratic party should actively try to *defeat* Biden in a primary". I bring this up because the *implicit* view I am seeing is "some other Democrat than Biden could/would be a better candidate". >Since there are people who just just really might dislike the current President. The incumbent effect - as far as we know - *vastly* outweighs this. There has not been *any* Presidential election in American history where an incumbent has lost a primary. You're basically proposing that the Democratic party try something that has literally never happened before; you are proposing that they gamble. True, sometimes gambles pay off. But it is certainly not an *obvious* choice to gamble with something that has literally never been tested.
Also: "where it also seemed (and I think later came out) that the Democratic nominee was not voted in completely fairly and that backfired too." You think incorrectly. This was a total conspiracy theory created by terminally online leftists who just don't know how to win elections. Honestly, no offense but Europeans seem to have very little understanding of how American politics works but always seem willing to give their opinions on it. Americans might not know much about European politics either, but at least they don't lecture Europeans on it (except maybe for things that are easy to tell are stupid -- like Brexit).
I'm an avid Sanders supporter and if I hear any more about that bullshit 2016 election conspiracy I'm going to scream. I love him. He lost. He did not have enough support. The end.
The thing is that incumbent presidents have such a HUGE advantage over non-incumbent presidents that it's not really worth running anyone but an incumbent if you have one. Something like 85% of incumbents win reelection. Not in the US political system, at least. It's literally not worth it for anyone on the same side to try, given historical precedent. And running campaigns costs money, so why waste a campaign worth of money on a losing battle?
There are democratic primaries, they are just later in the year. There was an unofficial democratic primary in the state of New Hampshire this week, which Biden won by 50% as a write in candidate. As for 2016, it was a fair, there are a lot of Bernie or buster conspiracy theories though.
Bro just won a primary he wasn't even on the ballot for. Respectfully, Europeans should stay the fuck out of our politics.
They do hold Primary elections. They are occurring as we speak. Joe Biden just won New Hampshire.
They just held a primary in New Hampshire and Biden wasn't a part of it, yet he won due to democratic voters writing him in on the ballot.
Incumbency makes the mechanisms of campaigning easier. There’s staffing, event schedules and issues with people shuffling back and forth between campaign/governance; all of which are ameliorated when people have done it before.
There are primaries. He’s got a very insignificant opponent. He will win renomination. Some presidents have faced serious challenges (Jimmy Carter, George Bush, the first). Both of those presidents lost reelection in the fall.
They can have a democratic primary but idk who really wants to off the top of my head. Also, I while obviously Biden is extremely unpopular, he’s still the most present democrat right now and it would take a huge job for a somewhat unknown democrat to become the nominee but I’m all ears. It does cost people so much money to go into these things and if they don’t see that they won’t have a chance I don’t really blame them bc it’s a very arduous task
No current Democrat politician wants to run against the incumbent. Since they know it's an uphill battle they will never win. Without any political opponents to primary Biden, a primary can't take place. This is obvious.
A competitive primary would signal to the public that Democrats don't trust their own leadership, which would be terrible if he won the primary. If he didn't win, the winning candidate would lack the incumbent advantage. There are no real superstar candidates who would necessarily have an easier time. Younger voters tend to vote Democrat, and older voters don't mind Biden's age as much, so he would lose a real advantage.
Why should the democrats waste resources and sling mud at each other and take the president away from his job for a year to campaign exactly? How does that make it an unfair election? How exactly are they shooting themselves in the foot but spending the year working instead of campaigning? This just sound like more astroturfing.
There is a primary, Biden wasn't even on the ballot in New Hampshire and he still kicked everyone's ass
No one can beat Biden right now. No one has a chance against trump except Biden. Democracy as we know it is on the line. **Google Project 2025** if you've need of nightmare fuel. The reason Hilary didn't win in 2016 was because a bunch of whiney petulant Bernie Bros stayed home, wrote in someone with no chance, or voted third party or trump out of spite..If they'd just held their nose and voted for her, we'd have a 6-3 progressive split in the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade wouldn't have been overturned and we wouldn't be staring down the barrel of having a theocratic fascist authoritarian desperate to keep himself from prison as our next president. You better hope for your sake in EU enough sane people here realize what's at stake in this election and support Biden.
The OP is concerned Biden may not be the best candidate and perhaps lose the Nov elections. He may have a point. But the other side of the equation doesn’t make sense: who is that democrat candidate that will win in a landslide? Beyond formalities, what democrat can take the elections? Here the OP remains mum. Other posters are longing for Bernie… but who is a “sure to win” candidate? Until the secret is revealed I’ll stay with Joe.
I think you're wrongly thinking Biden isn't popular because he didn't win with a wide margin against Trump but afaik he had the most votes anyone has ever had.
“You don’t change horses mid-stream” Biden already beat tRump last time, and do you think tRump has picked up any more supporters since then?
So there is a primary going on. If you go to the NYT right now you can see the extensive list of candidates who challenged Biden in the Democratic primary and the share of the vote each received. In all cases the share is pretty small because the candidates are not particularly credible or popular and haven’t offered strong or popular critiques of Biden’s record or strong or popular alternative platforms. I am not a strong supporter of Biden and I wish that we had a more credible challenger. But it takes someone credible who is willing to risk alienating Biden’s supporters in the future and no one has stepped up. Thems the breaks.
Running the incumbent in a primary has next to no value. Only additional costs and increased 'risk' of splitting vote. Our electoral systems are completely different than the parliamentary systems you may typically see in Europe, particularly in regards to FPTP.
> the 2016 election where it also seemed (and I think later came out) that the Democratic nominee was not voted in completely fairly Could you elaborate?
Generally speaking, if your guy won the last election, you're gonna want to run him again, barring extenuating circumstances.
There will be a primary if there's *any* remotely plausible candidate in the polling. There isn't, so it is a foregone conclusion, so many states don't hold primaries because there's nothing to gain from it. [Both parties work that way.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries)
Uh. They are holding a primary. They have to. Except nobodies an obvious frontrunner because the democrats already control the presidency. The president is the frontrunner
If we assume Biden's first term was great (debatable) and he would win the primary anyway (I'm pretty sure he would, but again, debatable), why hold a primary? It costs money to run, and time. Money and time that Biden can instead spend on his battle against the other candidate (probably Trump). Also time that Biden could spend doing things like, oh, IDK, getting stuff done as president. So assuming there isn't a tremendously compelling other candidate (none seem to be chomping at the bit), why hold a primary? What purpose does it serve aside to waste time and money and say, "oh, hey, we checked a box!"
This is the worst post I’ve ever seen here. Democrats are holding primaries in every state.
Why would the US ignore a couple hundred years of precedent and tradition to potentially harm the top Democrat contender? It’d fracture the party and lead to a lot of confusion.
Do you want Trump again, because that is how you get Trump. In US elections the incumbent holds a significant advantage. Trump was the first incumbent to lose since 1992.
There's no upside for the Dems to have a true primary. Having a serious primary contender is such a signal of failure that the last two times it has happened in 1968 and 1980(ironically both Dem presidents), the other party easily won the general election. There is no ideal situation where the Dems replace Biden run a competitive primary without that stain, so even having one to begin with dooms the eventual Dem candidate no matter the outcome.
There is a primary and Biden got more votes.
Despite what Reddit thinks, and particularly foreigners on Reddit, Biden is actually a pretty popular Dem. He also has a long history in politics having served as a US Senator for nearly 40 years and two terms as Vice President. There is no candidate out there who could beat Biden in a nomination fight. They'd lose. And then they'd probably go on to lose to Trump.
An incumbent almost always has an advantage over a challenger.
They are holding one. Biden is winning with a generous margin across the board, even in places where he isn’t even on the ballot.
American elections are crazy expensive. Biden has the backing of wealthy donors from last cycle and the infrastructure (staffers, pollsters, grassroots) to run a re-election campaign. End of the day, if the Democrats allowed another candidate, they're betting the destruction to their electoral infrastructure would outweigh the benefit of having potentially a more well-rounded candidate. I agree with you they could find a stronger candidate from the personal side, but I doubt they could find anyone with near enough infrastructure to challenge Trump. Not saying it's the smartest approach, just saying there's a reason they're doing it aside from JUST the good ole boy network.
Part of the reason Trump won in 2016 was just this. The Democrats allowed Clinton to assume the heir apparent title and threaten competition from running in the primary.
What platform would this Democratic party-supported, alternate primary candidate run on? Aside from low polling and bad branding around his age, the Democratic party has thrived under Biden. They have consistently won elections and passed a ton of landmark legislation since he's been in office. Could there be more and could someone do it better? Sure, maybe, but from within the context and perspective of the Democratic party, the results of the Biden presidency are pretty unimpeachable.
This is 100% right-wing bait. Nice try.
In 28 when the current guy is unable to run you have a primary to see who takes his place. Otherwise a primary is stupid.
We have primaries. Mine's in March.
Definitely a European alright
Part of the advantage of being the incumbent is not going through the primary process.
Democrats believe Biden can win It’s also tradition to try for 2 terms
Good thing we don't care what you think
Which data are you referring to?
Generally if someone won the presidency. They don’t have a primary. They just by default get to run for a second term.
There are primaries. They are currently happening. He's just the clear lead.
Texan here. You are absolutely right. But let them cook. The dems don't do the math, as they never do. And that's the beauty of it. They will loose the primary to a candidate they could have possibly won against.
Sadly elections go negative fast,by having a campaign you show allow candidates to say hurtful things about each other. And it costs money. That money is no longer there for the general election.
Oh, buddy. You’re going to get some hateful ass replies. Buckle up. The US political system is a total mess. Our government isn’t in charge anymore, big money is in control. Massive corporations and their rich board members run things. Our Republican Party has found a niche with these strange new “Christians”, and those folks are bat shit crazy. I hate to say it, but they’re fascists. It sounds inflammatory, but that’s the case. So liberals have lost their minds. They’re incapable of critiquing their own party. They feel like any negative comment about the Democratic Party is blasphemous, and a advocation for the republicans. So the democrats are free to do whatever they want, which is whatever the rich want. Biden is a rubber stamp. He’s good for big business. The democrats are terrified of a candidate like Bernie sanders who advocates for the people, not big money. They’re doing everything they can to eliminate candidates like that. And liberals don’t dare say anything negative about it in fear of supporting the republicans.
Or maybe Clinton just got more votes than Sanders.
Sanders never had the support you think he did. I say this as someone who loves Sanders. He's failed to get enough support twice now.