Why they nominated Biden in 2020
I noticed a discussion of the question in this thread, and I thought I’d reiterate my own opinion of why the Democrats wanted to nominate Biden in 2020.
They were desperate to defeat Trump, but their pool of candidates wasn’t strong. Sanders – who, by the way, is even older than Biden – seemed to have a good chance of being the nominee, and they were terrified that he would alienate so many people that they wouldn’t be able to pull him across the finish line no matter what they did, fraudulent or not.
So they turned to Biden, who had the following attributes: malleable and unprincipled, he would do whatever they wanted in terms of policy. Not only that, but they believed they could successfully sell him as a moderate (unlike Sanders), as well as a “uniter” because he supposedly came across as affable and avuncular. He may not have been the most coherent, but he was coherent enough for COVID times, because they could plausibly hide him away for the most part.
But probably his biggest plus was that he had been Obama’s VP for eight years. That Obama aura had rubbed off on him just a wee bit, and that was very much a plus. Obama’s reflected glow was also was a draw for the all-important black vote, for which Biden himself wasn’t necessarily a magnet. That’s also where Kamala Harris came in – both black and female, she was thought to be likely to lock in those two vital constituencies even further.
In 2024, it’s a bit different – although they still may be able to pull it off by hook or by crook. People have gotten to know how incompetent Biden is, as well as how leftist his administration has been, and they also see his mental decline. Harris is a dud (and that’s being kind). And yet alternatives to the two and a way to replace them are still not obvious, and the undead Trump has yet to have a stake driven into his still-beating heart, although not for lack of trying.
Primary donnybrooks are given to preference cascades and black voters even more so, so it’s a reasonable inference that Clyburn’s endorsement was the most consequential discrete act. It’s also reasonable inference some donor crew put the screws to Klobberherworkers, Bootygag, and Princess Spreading Bull. I doubt much brain went into nominating Biden.
You have to question who was/were the person(s) behind the curtain that got Biden nominated as POTUS. I think it was his controller(s), who seek the destruction of the US via a Cloward-Piven strategy. My rule is never to underestimate the enemy, the Democratic Party in this case, linked to “equity” and CRT at this time.
You have to question who was/were the person(s) behind the curtain that got Biden nominated as POTUS.
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Likely no one in particular.
Cicero:
At the time I felt, and I continue to feel, that Obama led the decision but that there were many people who agreed. In the end, it’s a team effort, but he’s the team leader. He neither liked nor respected Biden, but he realized that Biden was useful and that he could be successfully used.
Sundance has an interesting take on this, which seems plausible.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/02/05/dnc-approves-obama-clyburn-plan-for-south-carolina-to-lead-2024-democrat-presidential-primary-media-call-it-the-biden-plan/
I can see Obama leading the charge for Biden persuading the cadre with something like, “Hillary can’t win and sure, Joe can f— things up but my people will be running things in the background. We can think of it as my third term.”
No matter what else you might think about Obama, he isn’t stupid.
“Obama and Clyburn selected Biden due to his ability to be controlled.”
Supports my thesis.
Remember Cloward-Piven. Their strategy is underway. Federal debt is monstrous, inflation is persistent, military cannot meet its recruitment goals, Leftists run our institutions as fentanyl kills tens of thousands per year, the drug cartels of Mexico, plus millions of illegal migrants, flooding across our southern phony “border” unimpeded by Biden.
I am 64 years old and have been a conservative republican since I was in high school. All of my family and most of my friends are also conservative republicans or right-leaning independents. I voted for Trump twice and recognize his achievements but also his significant character flaws. Nobody I know wants him to run again. Who are these people supporting him in the polls? Are the pollsters just trying to make people like me feel like there are no other options? I don’t think Trump can win. Even against the demented moron, Biden.
The formula: a minimal campaign that attracts enough votes, combined with massive fraud and glowing coverage from the MSM, to make Joe the “plausible” winner. Plausible to whom? Only the most ignorant and irrational people in modern history.
I have long thought that Biden became the nominee because he could protect the members of the previous administration from paying a price for their dishonest use of media and government agencies to “get Trump” at any cost. Since Biden and his family were in on it all, they could be relied upon to protect the narrative and all of its contributors.
Neo couldn’t argue against any of that
Sanders – who, by the way, is even older than Biden – seemed to have a good chance of being the nominee, and they were terrified that he would alienate so many people that they wouldn’t be able to pull him across the finish line
I don’t think this is quite right. Sanders was not allowed to win the primary because he is unacceptable to the Democrats in Congress, their donors, and the Deep State. Like Trump, he was a relative outsider who might disrupt some of the grifting. He is as unacceptable to the Democratic establishment as Trump is to the GOP establishment.
He’s been allowed to participate in the Dem primaries because that gives the Leftist rank-and-file the illusion that their participation in the process is meaningful. They’re strung along into the general election the same way conservatives are by the GOP. They tend to get more of what they want from the Dems than conservatives get from the GOP though, partly because Leftists use whatever power they have to extract concessions and partly because the Dem establishment is more left-leaning than the GOP establishment is right-leaning.
I don’t agree that concerns about electability in the general election were why Sanders was shoved out in 2016 and 2020. But even if so, now that elections are fortified, that concern no longer exists for the Dems. The Dem establishment could have Bernie (or anyone else) for President if they wanted him, and their establishment does not want him.
Melisande:
We disagree.
Sanders was and is unpopular enough with the general public that even a certain amount of fraud probably wouldn’t have brought him victory. The amount of fraud that could be accomplished is not inexhaustible, and a blowout election would be hard to overcome.
Also, Sanders is no outsider at this point, and hasn’t been for quite some time. He has been a member of Congress since 1991, first in the House and then in the Senate. Except for the early years, he has caucused with the Democrats although he styles himself an Independent. He is a firm ally of Biden and almost certainly one of the powers behind the throne. He knows very well how to play the game.
Re: Sanders
Melisande, neo:
I would split the difference.
Sanders isn’t an outsider, true, and he was vulnerable in the general election, but he did have his old-school socialist support and the Obama coalition couldn’t control Sanders as they could, and would, Joe Biden.
Therefore, they rigged things behind the scenes and, I suspect, made Sanders an offer he couldn’t refuse. Sanders is a player and he took the deal.
I see the Sanders defenestration as the Democrat “Night of the Long Knives” with a happy ending.
Thanks to Jordan Rivers for the Sundance link.
1) “Sanders was and is unpopular enough with the general public that even a certain amount of fraud probably wouldn’t have brought him victory. The amount of fraud that could be accomplished is not inexhaustible, and a blowout election would be hard to overcome.”
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that Trump was on his way to a “blowout election” – received the most legitimate votes in the history of the USA – which is why making the fraud more visible was unavoidable (see “stopped counting” followed by massive late night Biden vote swings, etc.).
2) “You have to question who was/were the person(s) behind the curtain that got Biden nominated as POTUS. I think it was his controller(s), who seek the destruction of the US via a Cloward-Piven strategy.”
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that we are a young nation that has never been conquered and do not know what it is like to be conquered, what the warning signs are – those from dictatorships know – but we are being conquered (see “Federal debt is monstrous, inflation is persistent, military cannot meet its recruitment goals, Leftists run our institutions as fentanyl kills tens of thousands per year, the drug cartels of Mexico, plus millions of illegal migrants, flooding across our southern phony “border” unimpeded by Biden.”).
3) “Obama and Clyburn selected Biden due to his ability to be controlled.”
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that of the 29 individuals that declared their candidacies for the 2020 Democrat nomination, it seems probable that at least one of them would have been willing to go along with the Obama, et al goals – e.g., Inslee – but none of them would have been as malleable as Biden (see career) or as well known to them as Biden (see corruption, pedo tendencies, etc.).
As a general rule, most times the sides have a few folks on the bench who look at least plausible for the primaries. At least, you’d have heard of them outside the gossip rags.
Not seeing it for the dems this time. Or last time. Or the time before that.
Agree with huxley and Melisande on Sanders.
The amount of time he has spent in Washington is somewhat irrelevant to his status. This is equally true of Trump since from some angles he’s the ultimate insider. Sander’s proposed platform with things like Brit-style nationalized healthcare would be as disruptive as Trump to the current semi-fascist status quo of big business-big government collaboration. The major difference between Trump and Sanders is that Sanders is willing to play the game for prizes while there’s darn little the GOPe could use to bribe a billionaire with a supermodel wife.
How’s that “moderation” working for everybody??
When is the last date someone can sign up to become a candidate?
Much of the above seems plausible, except for one thing. I cannot for the life of me see whence comes this deep regard for Obama’s intelligence. It’s now almost 20 years since he appeared on the scene, and I have seen exactly nothing that would indicate that he is remotely so. Literally every statement I’ve seen from him has shown his mediocrity. Every single one.
I will grant that he has a style that people associate with intelligence, but it is actually unintelligent to mistake the one for the other. This is in contrast to, e.g., Bill Clinton who is clearly actually smart. One old college friend noticed this, saying that – if you could keep him away from your girlfriend – Bill would be fun to drink with, while we always saw straight through people like Obama. And we would. The absolute Platonic form of “pseudo-intellectual”.
I don’t get it.
Eeyore:
I could not disagree more. I believe Obama is highly intelligent. It’s just that his intelligence isn’t being used in a manner of which we on the right would approve. Nor do I say he’s intelligent because of his mellifluous speaking voice or the books he’s said he’s read or the big words he sometimes uses. He is intelligent in his careful planning and execution of the leftist agenda, step by step, boiling the frog just so. When he answers questions he is ultra-careful and lawyerly in his use of words, saying whatever needs to be said at the time to soothe the naysayers (“You can keep your doctor”) and then somehow evading the consequences. He managed to present himself as being a racial healer while being a racial divider. He made the DOJ into a leftist force par excellence. He was not alone in this, of course, but I see no evidence that he wasn’t highly involved. The guy taught Alinsky methods and learned them well and used them appropriately and smoothly. It all takes intelligence.
I’ve written about Obama many many many times. Please see this, for example.
Behind-the-scenes wirepullers wanted someone who could win, and they didn’t want Bernie. They knew who Joe’s handlers were and they felt comfortable with them. I think you have to distinguish between power brokers and various advocacy groups pushing their favorite policies. Different interests want different things, but the party Establishment didn’t pick Joe because his policy on transsexuals matched theirs. That topic probably never came up.
The power brokers picked Joe because he was (strange as it may be to believe) the strongest candidate. It was assumed that he’d get through as much of the party program as he could (and assumed he’d be able to get less of it through than he has), but Clyburn didn’t pick Biden because of the border policy Biden gave us, Zuckerberg probably didn’t support him because he’d advance transsexualism, and Wall Street didn’t contribute because Joe would wreck the dollar.
Biden could “protect” Obama and others because he could get elected. Warren or Booker or Buttigieg couldn’t do that because they wouldn’t win. If a different Democrat did win, they’d protect the insiders and go after Trump anyway because that’s what the party wants.
_________
Bernie the senator doesn’t scare the party Establishment. He gives the Democrats his vote when it counts. Bernie as president might be a different story. Bernie as presidential candidate scares them like nothing else. His “gaffes” would be voicing Old Left and Old New Left sentiments, and they’d be harder to cover up than Joe’s autofictions.
The meaning of intelligence in politics has changed. John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson wrote scholarly books. Lincoln and Truman were praised for being well-read — and Lincoln for being eloquent. LBJ and Nixon were sneered at for not being as cultured as JFK was (wrongly) assumed to be. Nowadays, don’t we pretty much accept that politicians aren’t going to be exceptionally learned, cultured, or wise?
Obama was educated enough and clever enough to function in the roles he played, and educated enough and clever enough not to have any really original ideas. Smart enough, too, not do anything really risky or rock the boat. There’s a tendency to make him a genius or an idiot, depending on whether one supports him. The truth is that he was, like everybody else, somewhere in the middle.
We’ve had this discussion before, but I see him more as a partisan than an ideologue who carefully planned out and implemented a radical agenda. He put people in place who supported policies he did, and we see the consequences now, but I don’t see him as any kind of mastermind. Elect Democrats, and we get what we got. The nuances might have been different with John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, but the same players would be lined up waiting for their payoffs.
Eeyore, if Bill Clinton would be a pleasant drinking partner, it wouldn’t be because of his intellectual depth. Didn’t David Brinkley say much the same thing about his speeches as you’re saying about Obama’s utterances?
4) “I cannot for the life of me see whence comes this deep regard for Obama’s intelligence. It’s now almost 20 years since he appeared on the scene, and I have seen exactly nothing that would indicate that he is remotely so.” “I will grant that he has a style that people associate with intelligence,.. but it is actually [incorrect] to mistake the one for the other.”
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that Obama did not invent – or even improve on – the various strategies to overthrow western democracy (see Cloward-Piven); however, he is the right “leader” to see those strategies implemented (see progress before Obama and after Obama).
well obama had a patina of polish on ridiculous and dangerous ideas, we see now it doesn’t require anyone of competence to push these notions, just no appreciable resistance,
Abraxas:
Bill Clinton and Obama are both lawyers, so when they speak they are very very very careful with words. That’s about the only similarity I see between them.
I voted for Clinton twice (in my Democrat days) but I never much liked him and I thought his speeches were a big snooze.
miguel cervantes:
Again, it depends what you mean by “competence.” I think Obama was very competent at doing what he set out to do – transform American towards the left, step by step, so most people didn’t become too alarmed.
neo
I agree. If you judge Obama by what he set out to do starting in January, 2009 you have to say that he was one of the most successful presidents we ever had. A terrible president in my opinon but a successful one based on the agenda he wanted to impose on this nation.
Because of many possibilities happening before election day even gets here, this may be the most unpredictable election in many years.
Obama is smart enough, but not the whiz kid people thought him or that he thought himself— cf. “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.” Puhleez.
Also, he clearly was not a good student, or his gpa would have been engraved on a plaque at the White House instead of shrouded in secrecy. One can be smart and a bad student but good student-hood represents a particular kind of intelligence that Obama seems not to possess.
He is clever, devious, shrewd. Unfortunately for the rest of us.
The Dems will panic at the last minute and Michelle will agree to run. She’ll let Barak run the show. My money is on that!
neo:
I entirely disagree. (No need to link your old posts on this; I found them unpersuasive then, too.)
Look at this statement of yours, which I think contains the core of our difference:
“When he answers questions he is ultra-careful and lawyerly in his use of words, saying whatever needs to be said at the time to soothe the naysayers (“You can keep your doctor”) and then somehow evading the consequences. He managed to present himself as being a racial healer while being a racial divider.”
He was NEVER “ultra-careful”; really quite careless. And your example “you can keep your doctor” is proof of that. What he was, was insulated from the consequences of what he said and did. But again and again he showed is true colors. But because he was almost designed to hit all the right buttons with the Bandar Log, he got a pass. Always.
Did he ever give an intelligent, as opposed to an effective, speech? I mean one one would reread for the ideas? Did he ever give a serious interview with an intelligent interlocutor? (One no wearing kneepads, I mean?)
What he was was the original for these AI generated hotties you read about, that guys fall for. I am of your generation, but was never a leftist. I did however see, up close and personal, the leftist psyche. He is the perfect imago for them; but nothing more. Underneath, there’s no there there.
I’m in accord with Eeyore.
well he looks competent, yes he wrought great damage and continues to,
Eeyore:
I don’t think you understand Obama, and I don’t think you understand strategic lying. Intelligence can be used for good or for evil or for anything in between, and it doesn’t look the same in each case. And intelligence is most definitely not the same as wisdom.
Obama was purposely lying in that doctor statement. It was no slip-up and no error.
Your position is the flip side of the myriad people on the left who say Trump isn’t intelligent. But he very clearly is intelligent, and I would say that whether I agree with him or not.
Obviously the “keep your doctor” was an error, and he paid for it. It’s about the only Pinocchio the press gave him. To take a clear example of what I am speaking of, look at the press conference after the 2010 elections. Obama couldn’t handle it at all. That would have entailed intelligent reaction to something he didn’t expect. And he wasn’t up to it, so he turned it over to Clinton, who could.
Or another, remember how he thought he beat Romney in the first debate (Romney’s high point in that campaign.) Michelle knew, but the Solipsist in Chief didn’t.
I think I get Obama better than most – I’ve known too many just like him. Polished and well able to simulate what the shallow class takes for intellect. That’ll get you quite a ways under the right circumstances. But he has NEVER made an intelligent statement that I’ve seen. He’s empty.
Eeyore:
You may think those people are like him. But I doubt they are powerful leftist idealogues well-versed in propaganda techniques and deception. If they are, you run in some strange circles.
“You can keep your doctor” was no error. It was a purposeful lie told to reassure people. Obamacare was passed, wasn’t it? Obama was re-elected, wasn’t he? Yes, the lie angered people – as he knew it would, but it didn’t matter. The point was to soothe people and pass the bill. The bill’s proponents knew that after that it was highly unlikely that it would ever be repealed. The left and Obama got what they wanted. Obama lives a great life today, with plenty of money, fame, and influence.