re: They are sticking with Biden because they are rigging the 2024 election.

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They aren’t replacing him. I thought they would but they clearly arent. They wouldn’t be scheduling debates early if they were going to replace him.


Their play is to punt on 24.

Make don and republicans own the economy and inflation and come back in 28 with someone like Gavin.

It’s like Bob Dole. They let the old guy his last ride in the sun while the party as a whole is on a strategic retreat.


This is the correct answer IMO.

Honestly, I don't think the Democrats confidently expected to win in 2020. I think they hoped for a win and they did everything they could to try to win (including some cheating, although I think the "massive cheating" narrative is ridiculous), but I think they were a little surprised that Biden won.

I think they had that strategic retreat scheduled for last time around and had to pivot when Biden actually won. And what I think they pivoted to is having him advance an agenda that is so radical that nobody else would advance it in a first term b/c it virtually guarantees defeat in the re-election.

I think they figured he wouldn't make it through a second term anyway, so forget trying to win one.

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I can't believe I'm even about to wade into this at all in this place, of all places...

But background:

The Republicans have always had one disadvantage:

Numbers. They're outnumbered. Electorally, and just registration/population-wise. Deeply Red States are also mostly small-population states.

Large-population states gain that population through big cities/large urban metros... which makes them tilt to being Blue states, because when you have hundreds of thousands or even millions of people living in close proximity to each other... well, to begin with, to make that choice they're on the Left, and it just pushing them further to the Left... their neighbor's problems are also their problems in that setting. It doesn't breed "small government, take care of yourself" thinking...

However, The Republicans had always had one BIG advantage: UNITY...

all the various parts of the Republican coalition were at peace with each other.

R 1) The Business First/Corporate/Wall Street types...

R 2) The high salary/highly educated Suburban professionals who carry the majority of the income tax burden...

R 3) The military-minded/National security community

R 4) The religious right/pro-Life community (which managed to flip Catholics from being Democrats because Socialism was a Catholic tenet)

R 5) The white working class in Right-To-Work states... the last group on board who were concerned with "government overreach (programs that they think prioritize the well-being of minority groups and immigrants over them)"

All a bunch of "single-issue" voters, and those issues didn't interfere with each other, and which contained the most reliable voters (groups 1-3).


Meanwhile, the Democrats had the opposite problem... they have a giant coalition that does not get along or want the same things...

D 1) Urban professionals (the same people as group 2 in Republicans, but who live inside urban city centers)

D 2) The highly-educated Urban/Academic segment

D 3) Labor Union members (a similar segment to group 5 above, but in states without Right-To-Work, where a Union's overall benefits make them loyal and eases their concerns about minority groups being among them)

D 4) Minority groups, which in a Venn diagram include subsets of all the groups above.

These groups are kind of at odds with one another... the Urban Professionals (D 1) want Social programs, because they have to step over the homeless when they leave their high-rise apartment buildings, but they want lower taxes on themselves, too, for instance, and are usually in conflict with group D 2 and D 3...

and group D 2 tends to be experts at having BIG MOUTHS amplified on Social Media and pissing everybody else off... they also presume to speak for everybody and know what's best for everybody... they also delight in making up new terms that no one else knows and bashing everybody over the head with them... they are the mighty cancel culture warriors, which tends to actually piss off the very ethnic groups they think they are speaking for, who see it as a type of oppression from above that they are potential victims of rather than in charge of...

So what usually happens is that one or more of these groups gets annoyed by a candidate or the party and general and underperforms (doesn't bother to vote) at the polls.

in 2016, Hillary Clinton threw herself at groups 1 and 2, and managed to not inspire enough of groups 3 and 4 that she lost "the blue wall" in the Midwest...

meanwhile, the Republican coalition held together enough (there were a few in Republican groups 1 and 2 who were turned off by Trump enough to not vote, or even cross over, but they were offset by another group Trump brought in, which I will get to in a minute) to pull off an Electoral College (but not popular vote) win.

Okay... so if he did it once, he could do it again, right?

Well, no... the various Democratic Party groups don't get along... which is why they need:

1) a candidate who has no specific policy things they're running on to piss off different groups

2) someone/something on the other side that unifies them as a single issue to oppose

Meanwhile, Trump didn't try to make amends with the people in groups R 1 (other than that big tax cut) and R 2 of the Republican coalition that had reservations about him, he doubled down and told them to frick off...

He did bring in a new group to the Republicans:

R 5.2) populists. Mostly Independents who were to the right of the Republican party (thought they were too liberal, or believe in the "uniparty" conspiracy) or people who had not voted in decades... if ever.

And though Trump added even more of group R 5.2 in 2020, he caused a bigger exodus of R 1 and R 2...

and he acted as a single issue to unify Democrats in opposition...

and then there's Independents...

there's right independents, who are to the right of the Republican party and think it's too Liberal, but who will NEVER vote for a Democrat.

There's center Right Independents, who a little to the Left of the GOP but who usually will not cross the line and vote for Democrats.

There's center Left Independents, who think the Democratic party is too Liveral but will usually not cross the line and vote for Republicans

and there's Left independents, who think the Decratic Party is too Conservative but will NEVER vote for a Republican.

Trump brought right Independents into group R 5...

But he also did something extraordinary...

not only did he get center-right Independents to vote for a Democrat...

He turned big chunks of R 1 and R 2 "temporarily" into center-right Independents who voted for a Democrat.

and he mostly unified the Democratic groups in opposition

so adding R 5 did not give him enough numbers to overcome all of that...

Groups R 1 and R 2 wanted him gone so they could have control of their party back...

And did they get it?

Nope. He's tripled and quadrupled down...