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.
Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket led to a surge of enthusiasm and improved poll numbers but ultimately ended in a decisive electoral college and popular vote defeat.
Agreed that Kamala got handed a shit show. At the time he did step down, she was the best candidate and she stepped up.
Mad respect for that and what she did accomplish.
Still, she needed to put daylight between her and Biden on Gaza, shouldn’t have run to the right on immigration and really needed to update the messaging on the economy.
I mean the whole genocide thing… it seems pretty brain dead not to. My guess on that is to avoid pissing off AIPAC, but they were already pulling hard for trump anyway. (Fascists of a feather stroke cock together.)
On immigration it was trump’s thrice-damned plan. Why the fuck would you run with that?
And then, on the economy messaging… telling people who are struggling to make rent or buy groceries that the economy is doing great is just a great way to piss them off.
When they say that wages outpaced inflation, they’re only talking the last few years. The people at the bottom have had ridiculously flat wage growth for decades. At least as long as I’ve been in the workforce. Actually, before the pandemic, I never had an actual raise, it always came with more responsibilities (aka a promotion.)
Wages have been stagnant for the bottom half and the bit we got during the pandemic doesn’t even come close to keeping pace with inflation over the course of our lives. Which means that with all the stain, people are struggling.
They need help. Not a “well, aktually…” the messaging should have been “here’s our plan to get you where you need to be, here’s what we’ve been doing and where we’re going”.