ASPartOfMe wrote:
If the man was determined to run unless they physically stopped him from applying they really could not. Biden had the support of key voting blocs in the party for various reasons, he was the lesser of 20 evils etc. They are rallying around him because he is running against Trump considered an existential threat in many realms and he has popularity with voters the Dems are going to need. Any alternative no matter how problematic is preferable to Trump to the vast majority of the party.
That does not mean supporters do not see signs of senility, it means Trump has lowered the bar that much.
And Bloomberg was not a credible alternative, not for that party in this moment.
I don’t buy that Democratic primary voters largely thought the field was “20 evils”. At worst they hadn’t heard of most of the contenders and understandably weren’t prepared to put the work in to get familiar with them. The problem people like Cory Booker has was that they were crowded out by the Vice President. If there were any rumblings at all that Biden wasn’t up to the job then they’d have used it against him, but they didn’t.
For most of the race there were four candidates who looked like genuine contenders for the nomination: Biden, Sanders, Warren, and a non-Biden moderate: for a long time Harris, then Buttigieg, and then at the end it was Bloomberg. Biden came fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. He won South Carolina largely due to Jim Clyburn’s endorsement. If Clyburn thought Joe was sick then do you really think he’d have gambled on that endorsement?
Then before Super Tuesday, when it was looking like a three-way shootout between Biden, Sanders, and Bloomberg, several of Biden’s former rivals endorsed him. Two of them dropped out to do so. If there was any inkling that Biden might be seriously sick, don’t you think they’d have endorsed Bloomberg instead?
Finally, Republicans said exactly the same things about Hillary Clinton. She went to a campaign event with pneumonia and needed to be helped up some steps, and people, including users here, were convinced she had a degenerative neurological disease. She didn’t.
in a not so subtle way and it backfired. After that understandably no other primary opponent attempted to go there.
Do I think all these people would endorse Biden if they thought he was sick? Absolutely. It is all about winning. Rightly or wrongly he was perceived as the best guy to do that.
25 May 2020, 5:54 pm
