Just one thing about the fact that Biden is telling people that they should keep voting for Republicans because if the GOP lost support it would be bad for democracy: He said the exact same thing at the height of Watergate.
Joe Biden, 2019: It would be bad for America if voters abandoned the GOP and became Democrats in the wake of Trump.
Joe Biden, 1973: The same, but for Watergate.
Joe Biden, 1973: The same, but for Watergate.
If you want to know whether Biden understands that the rot in today's Republican Party is a threat to democracy, and whether he's going to take action to stop it, just ask him. He's nothing if not consistent.
Seriously, just take him at his word.
If you want next year's general election campaign to look like this, by all means vote for Joe.
Susan Collins is going to be on the ballot in 2020. Can you imagine Biden, as the Democratic nominee for president, condemning her for her complicity with Trump's abuses of the constitution?
People are in my mentions now telling me that Biden's right. As I say, if you think he's right, you should absolutely vote for him in the primary. If you think the collapse of the GOP is an imminent danger that Democrats should be working to counteract, Biden's your guy.
Okay, a few more things. First, the GOP is in no danger of disappearing, much less in such imminent danger of disappearing that it requires the assistance of Dems to keep it afloat. Republicans control the presidency, the US senate, and 29 state legislatures. They're doing fine.
American political parties in the modern era don't disappear, they adapt. They lose power, they lick their wounds, they retool, and they come back. That's how our system works, and with GOP support for Trump hovering at around 90%, there's no indication that it's changing now.
And this is what's so asinine about Biden's statements: If you're worried about the future of the GOP, if you want them to remain a vital force in a functioning democracy, YOU SHOULD WANT THEM TO LOSE A BUNCH OF ELECTIONS RIGHT NOW.
If Trump and Trumpism are revealed as devastating electoral losers for the GOP in 2020, 2022, and 2024, the GOP will abandon Trump and Trumpism. If they aren't, they won't. Period.
How do I know this? Because Republican elected officials DESPISE Trump, but they keep propping him up, because he's the mechanism by which—the only mechanism by which—they're able to maintain power.
I personally think we're teetering on the edge of constitutional collapse right now. Biden clearly disagrees. That's fine. But even if you don't think the system is broken—especially if you don't think the system is broken—Biden's argument has no grounding in history or logic.
If you want a better Republican party going forward, you want the Republican party to suffer sweeping losses in 2020. That's the path to your goal. And any serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination should be willing to say so.
Backing Trump is the path to winning GOP primaries, and Republicans are more worried about losing primaries than general elections. Until that calculus changes in some way, Trumpism will control the GOP.
And if you don't think the record shows that Biden would actually, literally campaign for Republican candidates while running for president, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with Representative Fred Upton. nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/…
Three weeks after Biden praised GOP Rep Fred Upton as "one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with" in a high-profile speech—a quote which Upton immediately started using in campaign ads—he won re-election to the House. By just fourteen thousand votes.
And note that this entire thread is just about whether it's a good idea IN PRINCIPLE for a leading Democrat to be urging voters to stick with the Republican Party, and warning of the dire consequences should the GOP be "clobbered" at the ballot box.
We haven't even gotten to the implications of Biden's "vote for me and the GOP" schtick for actually, you know, governing, yet.
A Democratic president and Senate in 2021 means a restoration of the Voting Rights Act. (If we abolish the filibuster, which Biden ... um ... also doesn't want to do.) A GOP Senate means no chance of that.
A Democratic president and Senate in 2021 means that any vacancies in the Supreme Court get filled as the constitution anticipated. A GOP Senate means that presumptively doesn't happen.
A Democratic president and Senate in 2021 means we can work toward statehood for DC and (if they want it) PR. And so on and on and on. And again, we haven't even gotten to policy-based legislation yet.
Actually governing in 2021 is going to be ridiculously daunting for the next Democratic president under the best of circumstances. Electing a president who wants to elect other Democrats doesn't seem too much to ask.
