USA Midterms....

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Psamathe

Regular
When was this utopian period in our history?, I must have slept through it.
Used to be that in the UK Parliament had more powers and scrutiny. These days more powers have moved to "Statutory Instruments", whips seem to have or be able to exhert more powers where MPs are expected to follow what Party Leader leader decides should be done. We've seen significant purges of MPs (exprlled from Party) when they don't go along with Leaders directive over how to vote.

I don't remember that or that to the same extent ef 30 years ago.

Ian
 

matticus

Guru
But in the circumstances they had no choice but to go with Harris.
A much smarter move would have been for Biden to drop out 6 months earlier. It didn’t happen and we know what happened next.

So why was no-one suggesting Harris - or anyone else - instead of Biden back in March when he got nominated?
It seems harsh to say he was dumb to put himself forward, when there was no-one else wanting the job.
(I wasn't really taking an interest back in March, but this seems the case; do a hindsightGoogle search e.g. reviewing this thread's March posts, or read this https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-clinches-2024-democratic-nomination )
 

Ian H

Legendary Member
So why was no-one suggesting Harris - or anyone else - instead of Biden back in March when he got nominated?
It seems harsh to say he was dumb to put himself forward, when there was no-one else wanting the job.
(I wasn't really taking an interest back in March, but this seems the case; do a hindsightGoogle search e.g. reviewing this thread's March posts, or read this https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-clinches-2024-democratic-nomination )

It seems that the sitting president generally gets a free pass to stand for a second term. What is surprising in recent years is the paucity of talented candidates both willing and able to stand. Currently the deciding criterium seems to be the ability to raise ludicrously vast sums of campaign money.
 

Psamathe

Regular
So why was no-one suggesting Harris - or anyone else - instead of Biden back in March when he got nominated?
It seems harsh to say he was dumb to put himself forward, when there was no-one else wanting the job.
(I wasn't really taking an interest back in March, but this seems the case; do a hindsightGoogle search e.g. reviewing this thread's March posts, or read this https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-clinches-2024-democratic-nomination )
My understanding (claiming no expertise in US politics) is that US parties view it as something close to a "right" of a sitting President to automatically stand for a 2nd term. ie it's their choice and whilst others could put themselves forward it would be viewed as disloyal meaning their attempt would fail and they'd lose any reputation and ruin their chances come the following election.

Same to a degree in UK politics where "disloyalty" can badly damage a politicians career prospects eg Mr Gove.

Hence the concept of a "Stalking Horse" - allowing a real contender to initiate a contest without being seen as the initiator and without being viewed as disloyal.

Ian
 

the snail

Active Member
... she was weighed down heavily by the Biden administration's track record.

Seems to me that Biden's record is pretty good - he dealt with covid, which was a shitshow under trump, and the economy is performing very well. The main reason for trump's win seems to be the number of people who didn't vote, which is probably more about people's perception than the actual performance of the Biden administration. A lot of people are complaining about inflation, but every country has experienced this post-covid. It's hard to see what Biden could have done, and trump's trade policies will increase inflation hugely in Gilead.
 
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Psamathe

Regular
Seems to me that Biden's record is pretty good - he dealt with covid, which was a shitshow under trump, and the economy is performing very well. The main reason for trump's win seems to be the number of people who didn't vote, which is probably more about people's perception than the actual performance of the Biden administration. A lot of people are complaining about inflation, but every country has experienced this post-covid. It's hard to see what Biden could have done, and trump's trade policies will increase inflation hugely in Gilead.
(Noting I'm dependent on commentators/news reports)
I think Biden's performance "variable". And doing well in areas that doesn't concern the electorate does not help electoral success whilst doing badly in areas of concern does damage electoral prospects eg border and illegal immigration.

I suspect that much of the electorate is concerned about cost of living and inflation. How well the rest of the world has fared in relation to US is irrelevant to them, their only concern is their own situation. One of the big problems of inflation is politicians welcome inflation dropping to lower positive levels but for us in the real world even low inflation still means that prices are increasing in the shops and past high inflation means that those high/fast price rises are still high and don't drop back down.

Biden's performance in the Middle East seemt to still have caused problems and the Democrat "Uncommited" movement is still active. Another contributory factor (article https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/10/uncommitted-movement-leaders-organizing-trump). Netanyahu continually highlighting Biden's weakness & irrelevance, Biden still pours weapons in that end-up killing vast numbers of innocent civilians.

Ian
 

matticus

Guru
@ The Ians (!)
It seems that the sitting president generally gets a free pass to stand for a second term. What is surprising in recent years is the paucity of talented candidates both willing and able to stand.
Well this is kinda my point: nowhere is/was a serious replacement for Biden proposed.
... until the last-minute panic from "that" TV debate, when Harris sprung into action (she seemed to do a good job in her brief campaign, to me, but anyways ... ).

Why would Biden step aside with no candidate to take over? 🤷‍♀️
 

icowden

Squire
Seems to me that Biden's record is pretty good - he dealt with covid, which was a shitshow under trump, and the economy is performing very well.
Whilst that's true, it was totally irrelevant to the election. Trump just claimed that it was better when he was PM, and the measure for people is the cost of living, not the economy - which is about inflation, which Biden couldn't control. People also fail to realise that usually at least 2 years of a Presidential Term is based on what the previous guy did - it takes time for the effects of policies to be seen. Thus problems in the first couple of years of Bidens Term were due to Trump Policies whereas he will benefit from Biden's.


It's hard to see what Biden could have done, and trump's trade policies will increase inflation hugely in Gilead.
Well, the Turkeys have voted for the best Christmas ever.
 

Psamathe

Regular
@ The Ians (!)

Well this is kinda my point: nowhere is/was a serious replacement for Biden proposed.
... until the last-minute panic from "that" TV debate, when Harris sprung into action (she seemed to do a good job in her brief campaign, to me, but anyways ... ).

Why would Biden step aside with no candidate to take over? 🤷‍♀️
My understanding is there were quite a few potential candidates, some regarded as strong but Biden has 1st choice and as long as Biden maintained he was standing others would destroy any longer term prospects if they appeared disloyal and put themselves forward. For anybody else to put themselves forward first Biden would have to decide to stand down - which he didn't until it was too late.

And when Biden did stand down he immediately endorsed Harris in effect making sure things were too late for anybody else and he had already announced his successor - hence no Primaries.

eg my understanding Josh Shapiro declined being Harris' VP as he wanted to go for President (not VP) and decided his best chances were to wait intol next time. There were others but none ever got to put themselves forward as Biden was blocking by standing (and nobody would contest a sitting President running for re-election) - so they stayed silent.

Edit: just like in the UK when an interviewer asks a prominent MP "will you be bidding for leadership?" and they always answer "There is no vacancy, We're all behind ..." - so nobody putting themselves forward so no "serious replacement".

Ian
 
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monkers

Legendary Member
Workers measure their wealth what they can continue to buy. Inflation does not need to be high for people to notice their ability to buy less, or they have less left over at the end of each month.

From the charts, inflation under Biden was not spectacularly high, especially in his last year. However, the charts do reveal real wage stagnation.

Governments can influence inflation, but how would Biden manage to force billionaire owned companies to pay middle class or middle earning workers wages that match the inflation rate if they don't feel inclined?

Although Musk, for one example and relevant to this discussion, did in fact increase salaries at Tesla, he funded that by cutting his workforce.
 
Harris didn't help herself by tying herself very closely to the Biden administration and track record. Asked in an interview if there was anything over the last 4 years that she would have done differently to Biden, she said 'Not a thing comes to mind'. Many in the US were clearly not happy with how things were going and Harris wasn't offering anything substantially different from more of the same.
Bit like Labour, the election wasn't won, the incumbents lost it.
 
Seems to me that Biden's record is pretty good - he dealt with covid, which was a shitshow under trump, and the economy is performing very well. The main reason for trump's win seems to be the number of people who didn't vote, which is probably more about people's perception than the actual performance of the Biden administration. A lot of people are complaining about inflation, but every country has experienced this post-covid. It's hard to see what Biden could have done, and trump's trade policies will increase inflation hugely in Gilead.
If Biden has done well or not doesn't really matter what they done wrong in my view and what caused their election loss is that their campaign failed and relied too much on celerity endorsements etc.
Where is Trump manages to brand himself as ''one of them'' them being ''normal'' people the democrat's don't seem to get rid of the image that they feel above the people, and that is what this election shows too.(i think normal is what we here call ''working class'')
The point they quote reasons for people voting Trump are exactly his campaign points, so the democrats did not manage to show Trump was wrong.
I don't see the same poll for what made people vote for Harris, i know the last time lot of Biden voters voted him because ''he was not Trump''

Voter turnout is also a thing, but it's often these days sued as an excuse to explain why the democrats lost, which is wrong, voter turnout in the US is almost always low, so if an even bigger part then normal of the people who would normally voted the democrats stayed home, that should be the wake up call.
It's always easy to point to others, but maybe it's time they look at themselves first and foremost.
 

monkers

Legendary Member
Harris didn't help herself by tying herself very closely to the Biden administration and track record. Asked in an interview if there was anything over the last 4 years that she would have done differently to Biden, she said 'Not a thing comes to mind'. Many in the US were clearly not happy with how things were going and Harris wasn't offering anything substantially different from more of the same.
Bit like Labour, the election wasn't won, the incumbents lost it.

I did trouble to look at the responses to the questions in the polling survey that you linked to. They are set questions imagined by someone. I prefer to see the collated responses to open questions usually for a more accurate picture. It is what it is, but as a general observation, I think it interesting that there was a question about inflation, but not one about wage stagnation. Generally speaking I think it less important to see rising prices, since affordability is the issue for most people - if they can afford what they want, they'll maybe choose to buy it.
 
I did trouble to look at the responses to the questions in the polling survey that you linked to. They are set questions imagined by someone. I prefer to see the collated responses to open questions usually for a more accurate picture. It is what it is, but as a general observation, I think it interesting that there was a question about inflation, but not one about wage stagnation. Generally speaking I think it less important to see rising prices, since affordability is the issue for most people - if they can afford what they want, they'll maybe choose to buy it.
Yes but things in the US like many other countries have become much more expensive, so if you ask is in Way A or B the answer is always gonna be ''yes it is more expensive'' The point that the democrats should have tackled is the assumption the Trump campaign has placed that implies that he would have done it better.

The fact is prices are rising because we need to pay for the pandemic, EV hype etc. etc. that's a worldwide thing.
 
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