- cross-posted to:
- politics
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- cross-posted to:
- politics
- [email protected]
Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.
With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.
The only reason he ran at all is that he originally thought he had the best chance of winning. The debate and pressure after that changed his mind, but absolutely may have been wrong. After all, there were people on election day googling “did biden drop out?” One can certainly question how much the debate would have mattered.
But in the end, I generally agree with the below comment, that the election was always going to come down to the economy. It wasn’t good enough for people that we handled inflation better than other Western countries. It didn’t matter that Trump caused a lot of the inflation with the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and the GOP’s refusal to have oversight. The only thing that mattered was that people were mad and wanted change. They couldn’t figure out who to be mad at, and just chose the current people in charge. As a populace, we’re not smart enough to understand deeper than that, and we just keep flipping the switch back and forth hoping it works, in spite of the fact that the biggest reason we don’t go anywhere is that we keep flipping the switch back and forth.
I think the whole premise is wrong. It’s becoming clearer that the reason he insisted on running (despite much internal push-back) was to hold onto power for himself. It had less to do with the stakes than it did with his self-serving desires. You’d have to be completely senile to think you could beat Trump after that debate performance and all of the context surrounding it. He’s STILL insisting that he could have won. On what planet? Let’s assume he knows what’s at stake.
Is that easier for you than “he’s a good person who tried his best and failed”?
Tried his best to… what? Drop out and let someone else more likely to win try for it? Doesn’t seem like he wanted that. And nobody here thinks Biden would be worse than Trump. But that’s not how American politics work. This is a reality show.
I’m very much not willing to say “he’s a good person”, whether or not he could have won again. Supports genocide, breaks strikes, and throws trans people under the bus after promising to protect them. He’s an evil shitty person, whose interests sometimes aligned with helping the general public.
It sure is easier to sit on the sidelines than it is to actually lead. He absolutely wasn’t perfect, but I absolutely believe he tried to represent the American people to the best of his ability.
Like Biden!