> By pretty much every measure, Biden appears to be the establishment candidate. Who is out to get him?
Certainly the fossil fuel establishment, one of the strongest forces on the planet, would always prefer a GOP candidate over a Dem.
Other parties out to get Biden are likely corporate lobbying groups as the Dems have been showing some backbone with regard to regulations in recent times.
>Certainly the fossil fuel establishment, one of the strongest forces on the planet, would always prefer a GOP candidate over a Dem. Is this not common knowledge?
Yes, since Dems always worked just fine for them too.
> You all are wealthy enough, he (Trump) said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted
The source is a paper run by an ex-News Corp employee.
> And the same deals Dems have been making for decades too.
This is extremely hand-wavy. To get down to specifics, look at the history of the opening of drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. GOP opens it, Dems close it.
Look at EPA fuel efficiency regulations, which party increases them?
I understand being frustrated by how corporate-friendly both parties in the USA are, but to just throw your hands up in the air while stating "both sides" is ignoring reality and surrendering your agency.
> The source is a paper run by an ex-News Corp employee.
So someone who's used to being owned by a billionaire and pushing their agenda, and good at it, and presumably doing the same thing now under another billionaire? What point were you trying to make?
My point, while admittedly weak, was that the WP is not as institutionally anti-Trump as is often bandied about. Though I now realize that was a useless thing to raise in this context.
For the most part, the mechanics of the current bipartisan system.
In the current election system of primaries (in place since 1972), an incumbent has never lost. They haven't even lost a state in 44 years. So basically the incumbent has a defacto first right of refusal when it comes to their party's nomination.
The other party has been shaped by a political movement with a lot of power and momentum, and the founder of that movement more or less has the same defacto first right of refusal.
I think the parent comment is commenting on presidential candidate ages, which has had two consecutive new records in age and incumbency didn't seem to factor.
Prompt: list of us presidents and their year of birth and age when elected
You will see a list with few year of birth regressions and most ages in 50-60. Two years of 70+ is an outlier.
One side is currently run like a cult, and the other has an incumbent with a massive fundraising apparatus behind him. Just because some people complain on the internet doesn't mean that there are enough of them to make a meaningful difference when it comes to selecting candidates.
A large part seems to also be the insane first past the post voting system. A presidential vote, as I understand it, is only counted against a single candidate (unlike preferential voting for example). This makes the risk of a third candidate much greater and really funnels the system into just two real candidates.
You’re going to have to eliminate first past the post for that to work. Both parties are essentially coallitions. Christian nationalists and big business, and their apologists on one side, and everyone else on the other.
This obviously isn't true unless you think half the population is "evil". It doesn't help anyone's cause when you try and position it as "us vs. Them, and they're wrong"
They may or may not be wrong, or evil, but they are almost certainly not going to take your opinion into account if they win.
An election is fundamentally binary: it has one winner and everyone else is equally a loser. There are other structures that don't fall prey to that, such as multi member districts or party lists. As long as the election has a unique outcome, everyone else is equivalently irrelevant.
hah, I see Unions/forced votes and bought naïve votes (anyone falling for "free" healthcare, student loan cancellation, $10k for a house, etc) on one side, everyone else on the other. That has changed in the last few years for sure.
Sure. Everyone prefers someone else. These are the candidates who are the least worst for a majority. There is no single candidate widely preferred by either party.
The fact that they're both elderly is kind of a coincidence. It is true that older candidates are the ones with the longest track record of accomplishments and the most extensive alliances.
But the GOP candidate had little government experience and somewhat dubious business experience. He is nonetheless popular for his style and positions.
Both parties are very diverse and it's difficult to find someone tolerable to all. Many actively despise their party's candidate but the alternative to the consensus risks losing entirely. It is generally thought to be better to vote for a suboptimal candidate than a pessimal one, though some vocally disagree.
A young, charismatic candidate could come up next time around, but to be honest neither party seems to have one getting ready.
I think social media has greatly thinned the pipeline for leaders. Political leaders are either old and developed their political career before social media was a big influence, or are dogmatic uncompromising idealogues seemingly produced by social media bubbles (or both...).
I don't think it's popular media, I think it's the boomer generation (not the whole generation but those in positions of power). In my estimation and experience, there has been a severe lack of training the next generation and handing off the reins of power. Be it a middle management position, a leadership position in local government, or leadership positions in political parties. We have had a generation of leaders who took the reins and then either never trained their replacement or they did but held onto the reins for so long that replacement has aged out or left for another opportunity/path.
So here we stand, with our leaders entering the high positions of power well after they should have retired. In the president's case, his first run for the presidency was 32 years before he eventually won it in 2020. That spacing is the bulk of most people's working life.
There were several in 2020; Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris etc. None of them got much traction, and once Biden got momentum after South Carolina, everyone coalesced around him because the main goal for Democrats was "Beat Trump."
In 2028 both parties will really have to figure something out. At least (hopefully) neither Trump nor Biden will be eligible to run.
Right - I guess technically Biden would be eligible, but for goodness sake, I think even he would admit at that point that it wouldn't be the best move for the party for him to run at age 85.
I'm a firm believer in meritocracy and equal opportunity, so if a candidate can perform the duties of the office then why does being older by itself matter? That's ageism.
We have Biden and Trump because neither party agrees on a direction for the future. Democrats are like the German stoplight coalition under the hood. It includes everyone from the Chamber of Commerce set who would rather have Liz Cheney or Nikki Haley, to educated identitarians who love Kamala Harris, to culturally conservative populists who like RFK Jr. to culturally liberal populists who like AOC.
I don’t get the comparison. Who’d be Indian Malcom X? I think of Nikki Haley as Indian Liz Cheney. Jindal is Indian Mike Pence. Kamala Harris is, of course, Indian Dan Quayle.
You’re missing the point, and taking it too literally - the context of the original was Wayne Brady being more “assimilated” (not necessarily freer) than Bryant Gumbel, from someone who famously had thought long and hard about the subject [1]
Kshama Sawant is basically white. Socialist,[1] divorced and remarried to a white guy, childless, socially liberal, etc. By contrast, writing "finish them" on a artillery shell seems like a pretty Indian thing to do these days: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/thanks-to-pm-modi-....
[1] Although India loves socialism, it's like cricket and biscuits--stuff we inherited from white people.
By pretty much every measure, Biden appears to be the establishment candidate. Who is out to get him?