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[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 41 points 17 hours ago

Second to the sheer billionaire wealth inequality, he and his inner circle of enablers fucked us all. Dumbass would've been praised eternally if he got us out of covid and committed to being a 1 term president as he stated. Then he REALLY should've withdrawn like in a week following that June debate. But no, he dragged it out and really fucked the party over, including Harris.

[-] diverging@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago

1 term president as he stated

No, he never said he would only run one term. Anonymous people said that they thought he would, and when journalists immediately asked the Biden campaign they denied it. For some reason people take as gospel what anonymous people thought someone else would do.

"Lots of chatter out there on this so just want to be crystal clear: this is not a conversation our campaign is having and not something VP Biden is thinking about,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield tweeted.

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Nope. In 2024, Biden himself confirmed it:

"When I originally ran, you may remember, Ed, I said I was gonna be a transitional candidate, and I thought that I'd be able to move from this, just pass it on to someone else," Biden said. "But I didn't anticipate things getting so, so, so divided."


Biden had referred to himself as a "bridge" during the 2020 campaign.

"Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else," Biden said at the time. "There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country."

[-] diverging@piefed.social 1 points 6 hours ago

How do you get a one term promise out of any of that? Whether he runs one term or two terms he would still be handing things off to younger politicians. It's almost tautological considering how old he was.

"I don't have plans on one term,” Biden told reporters between campaign stops in Nevada. "I'm not even there yet.”

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

What else could he possibly mean by that, especially when he's discussing in retrospect and openly acknowledging it? Seems awfully obtuse. But here, let me try spelling it out just a bit more, and beyond that I'm done trying:

Your references to 2019 are irrelevant. It was already reported by Politico that four people speaking regularly with VP Biden had privately told the mhe was unlikely to run for reelection in 2024 -- this was likely to assuage concerns of liability for his age when that time came.

There was a particularly famous press conference Q&A of his, July 11, 2024.

  • The report asks, "in 2020 you referred yourself as being a 'bridge candidate for a younger, fresher generation of Democratic leaders' and I wanted to know what changed"

  • Biden's response, in acknowledgement stated, "What changed was...[reasons]... and I want to get that finished."

Naturally, if using the tiniest bit of logic, you can surmise two things:

  • (1) If "bridge" candidate doesn't mean that, then he could've and would've simply said, "I still intend to be a bridge candidate, after two terms, which was always the plan!" -- never did he say this.

  • (2) He concluded answering the question that he needed more time, implying he wanted his second term in order, "to get that finished."

If you're still not connecting the dots then I don't know what to tell you and I'll just chalk this up to either willful ignorance or rage-bait.

[-] diverging@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago

reported by Politico that four people speaking regularly with VP Biden had privately told the mhe was unlikely to run for reelection in 2024

The Politico article quoted several anonymous people and in it they only shared their personal opinion and not anything that Biden said. So your description of that article is wrong, you are lying.

I'll provide quotes:

“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”

Anonymous personal opinion.

“This makes Biden a good transition figure,” the adviser said. “I’d love to have an election this year for the next generation of leaders, but if I have to wait four years [in order to] to get rid of Trump, I’m willing to do it.”

Anonymous personal opinion.

Another top Biden adviser put it this way: “He’s going into this thinking, ‘I want to find a running mate I can turn things over to after four years but if that’s not possible or doesn’t happen then I’ll run for reelection.’ But he’s not going to publicly make a one term pledge.”

Anonymous personal opinion.

But none of these are relevant, because shortly after the campaign responded:

"Lots of chatter out there on this so just want to be crystal clear: this is not a conversation our campaign is having and not something VP Biden is thinking about,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield tweeted.

Not anonymous and an official statement from the campaign.

So I repeat myself:

Anonymous people said that they thought he would, and when journalists immediately asked the Biden campaign they denied it. For some reason people take as gospel what anonymous people thought someone else would do.

[-] TheGoldenV@lemmy.world 17 points 16 hours ago

Almost completely agree with you. Harris had a good amount of fucking herself though.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago

We dems have a long and storied history of fucking ourselves.

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

It's sadly such an uphill battle these days -- especially in the post-CU era -- that requires once-in-a-generation candidates like Obama or Bernie to overcome the fucking cliff of an uneven playing-field. That Americans didn't see Trump for the existential threat he is, or that Harris was better in every conceivable way to me proves this

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 8 points 15 hours ago

I think a lot of Americans did see Trump as an existential threat and that's why they voted for him. He was the "blow everything up" candidate, Harris was the "everything continues as it is" candidate.

This is literally the most charitable thing I can say about a subset of Trump voters. They actually did have a point there. A lot of people voted for Obama because he was the change candidate and this time around Trump was the change candidate. Almost entirely bad changes, of course, but some people were so desperate for change that they figured it was worth rolling the dice.

Just a subset of Trump voters, mind. Most of them were probably just awful people who saw a fellow awful person on the candidate and went "me like." But if a subset had decided not to vote for him we wouldn't be here now so they were significant.

[-] Tujio@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

That would be a reasonable argument a decade ago, before we knew exactly what he's about.

Voting Trump in 2016 is something bad that a person does.

Voting Trump in 2024 is something that a bad person does.

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

In one respect I can see why they'd think this from a point of ignorance, but also, that disgusts me so much. Accelerationists are always so willing to volunteer others for the chlorine shock treatment without their consent. Just look at the deaths wrought by Musk's DOGE alone that dwarfs Gaza and Ukraine, combined. Elections are so consequential.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 2 points 15 hours ago

Yup. The "you can't make an omelette without killing a whole bunch of people" mindset.

The annoying part is that it's not entirely wrong, IMO. At this point I think the best hope America has is for those Trump voters to feel the pain of the situation they have brought upon themselves, and for the Democrats to be pushed far enough to finally shake off the DNC establishment. America needs another Roosevelt at this point and there's no way someone like that would have got on the ballot or been elected under the past few decades' conditions.

Sure would have been nice if everyone had just been smart about all this and we hadn't got here to begin with, but we go to the ballot box with the electorate we have rather than the one we hope for.

[-] TheGoldenV@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

Agreed. Now that Scrotus has removed all constraints on spending I expect this to come to a head very soon.

I’m incredibly disappointed that people were taken in by Trump a 3rd time. Since we’ve gotten this bad I imagine that the horror is going to have to visit these Trump voters personally, each and every one. Then and only then will they understand.

The trouble is that by the time they get it it’s going to be very bad here.

this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
21 points (74.4% liked)

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