I am going to link the video. But, afterward, I will comment at length.
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 19, 2019
Jill Biden: So, yes, you know—your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care than Joe is…
This means Joe Biden is opposed to Medicare for All. But, Jill Biden will try to persuade a voter, insisting on Medicare for All, to overlook her husband.
Jill Biden: …but, you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election. And you may have to swallow a little bit and say, “Ok. I personally like so and so better,” but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.
No. Not everyone, who choose to participate by voting, shares the same motivation. Not all people think alike. So, Jill Biden’s expressed bottom line is not everyone else’s bottom line.
Jill Biden: I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that, but I want you to think about your candidate—his or her electability—and who’s going to win this race.
I have.
Joe Biden will not be president of the United States.
• No member of congress who voted for the wars in Vietnam or Iraq—the two most disastrous wars since television—was later elected president of the United States.
• No former U.S. vice president unseated an incumbent U.S. president.
With its popularity overwhelming, and with such incredible support among self-identified party voters, Democrats will not win back the presidency of the United States with a nominee who does not truly support, and is determined to deliver, Medicare for All. Not only does Joe Biden not truly support, and is not determined to deliver, Medicare for All…Joe Biden is opposed to Medicare for All. That means, for me, one who will not vote for a candidate who does not truly support, and is not determined to deliver, Medicare for All…Joe Biden is opposed to me. And this also means, I am opposed to Joe Biden.
When you are deliberately out of touch—meaning, you are opposed—to a big part of the domestic agenda of the people who are in your party…you are not going to win the presidency of the United States.
2020 Nomination for Joe Biden = 2020 Re-election for Donald Trump!
Jill Biden: And, so, if you’re looking at that, you’ve got to look at the polls.…
For determining the 2016 Democratic nomination for president of the United States, supporters of Bernie Sanders were telling this to supporters of Hillary Clinton. Sanders was polling more strongly than Clinton for hypothetical, general-election matchups including against eventual Republican nominee and presidential pickup winner Donald Trump. That fell on deaf ears. The 2016 supporters of Hillary Clinton did not give a damn about the polls. Now, supporters of Joe Biden want supporters of Bernie Sanders—and more so than supporters of other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates—to turn around and mind the polls.
Jill Biden: And you know—a lot of the times, I say, “Oh, you know—polls don’t mean anything, polls don’t mean anything,” but, they’re, consistent. And if they’re consistently saying the same thing, I don’t think you can dismiss that. I mean you all deal with facts.
This is not enough information. Polls for the primaries. Polls for a hypothetical matchup for the general election. One may want to look to past examples, in a year preceding a leap/presidential year, to see if they jibed with what actually played out. I personally should do this. From some other people’s writings, elsewhere (of course), it has been mentioned that the preceding year’s polls were not what played out with some primaries—to determine a party’s presidential nomination—and the general election. That Hillary Clinton was supposedly going to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for U.S. president. That Jeb Bush was supposedly going to be the 2016 Republican nominee for U.S. president. 2008 was a year in which the presidency flipped from Republican to Democratic. 2016 wss a year in which the presidency flipped from Democratic to Republican. But they ended up flipping for different individuals—Barack Obama and Donald Trump—and that tells us the specific nominee (and party pickup winner) matters.
Jill Biden: So, if your goal—I know my goal—is to beat Donald Trump, we have to have someone who can beat him.
Agree.
It is not Jill Biden’s husband.
It is important to recognize, for any given upcoming U.S. presidential election, the nature of that election.
Election 2020 is an incumbent year.
This means, the people have the option to re-elect an incumbent president.
Election 2020 gives the people the option to re-elect Republican incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump.
Nominate Joe Biden—and the result will be re-election for Donald Trump.
To unseat an incumbent U.S. president, it helps to consider those who did unseat incumbent U.S. presidents.
During the 20th century, there were five. Four were Democrats: 1912 Woodrow Wilson (who unseated William Howard Taft); 1932 Franklin Roosevelt (who unseated Herbert Hoover); 1976 Jimmy Carter (who unseated Gerald Ford, never elected U.S. vice president or U.S. president); and 1992 Bill Clinton (who unseated George Bush). One was a Republican: 1980 Ronald Reagan (who unseated Jimmy Carter).
None of those opposition-party challengers unseated incumbent U.S. presidents without having a vision, one for change, and one who convincingly persuaded the people to go in the direction such winning opposition-party challenger argued for.
Joe Biden is not a change candidate.
Joe Biden is a candidate of yesterday.
Consider this linked video’s moment from the 1993 Oscar-nominated documentary The War Room, about the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign, and Clinton’s campaign lead strategist James Carville. (The film’s co-director, D.A. Pennebaker, died at age 94 on August 1, 2019.)
Jill Biden: And, so, if you look at the pols. If you look at Joe, with his record with independents, we can’t just have Democrats who are going to win.…
This does not make sense.
Jill Biden is trying to make an argument saying the 2020 Democrats must nominated Joe Biden—because, otherwise, they are likely to not unseat Donald Trump—but then she says Democrats can win but that is not enough.
She tries.
Jill Biden: You know—we have to include everybody. Our party has to be more inclusive.
Not even the Democratic Party Establishment is inclusive.
They have, at least since 2008 (a Democratic pickup year for the presidency for Barack Obama), embraced demographics—what information they absorbed about how non-whites voted nationwide (like the sizes of the nationwide votes since increasing by Hispanics and Asians)—but, that isn’t speaking to policies let alone how the party as a whole operates.
The Democratic Party Establishment has spent the last four decades trying to out-Republican the Republican Party with corporatism.
So, as far as being inclusive is concerned: The Democratic Party Establishment embraces inclusiveness, in the form of helping non-whites rise in the ranks, so long as they don’t have an agenda which differs from theirs.
Jill Biden: Which means we have to go to independents and say, “join us.”
They will. If the party prevails. In 2016, Donald Trump won self-identified independents by +4 (while he lost the U.S. Popular Vote by –2.09 but, had he prevailed—given he and his party flipped the presidency—would have won by +2.xx). Usually, self-identified independents align with the winner. (They did not in 2012.) It’s not enough to say, “join us.” You have to earn their votes.
Jill Biden: We have to go to Republicans and say, “Ok! You’re a Republican. But, you can’t tell me that your children are proud of the president. You know of the things he [Trump] says. And you know, as a mother or father, how can you be proud of that president as a leader?” …
Not everyone’s thinking is alike, Jill Biden.
On the way to re-election in 2012, Barack Obama had plenty from the Republican side who were trying to say to Democrats: How can you vote to re-elect Obama when he has the mandate to buy private insurance? Did you really want that, during his 2008 campaign, when he promised to deliver a health-insurance bill to your advantage? Is your Affordable Care Act truly affordable?
Looking toward 2020, many Democrats try the same guilt trip as Jill Biden with regard for Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
What is a flaw, to Jill Biden’s assertion, is that it doesn’t keep in mind something important: What Obama and Trump have in common is that they are personally popular in their political parties. Obama is personally popular with self-identified Democrats. (They were mathematically enough for his re-election in 2012 while losing Republican challenger Mitt Romney won over self-identified independents nationwide. The size of the vote from self-identified Democrats—who outnumbered Republicans by six percent—helped with that and with Obama’s popular-vote margin of +3.86. Source: How Groups Voted in 2012.) Trump is personally popular with self-identified Republicans. While the Democrats flipped the U.S. House in 2018, and won the net gain in U.S. Governors (+7 when the party needed +10 for a new majority), the Republicans counter-flipped with winning the overall net gains in the U.S. Senate as Trump guided four of his party’s nominees—they were opposition-party challengers—to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. senators in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, and bellwether state Florida.
That, for example, doesn’t sound to me, Jill Biden, like there are too many self-identified Republicans who are not proud of Donald Trump.
Jill Biden: And I think, if you look at the polls in Michigan, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania—where [we, Joe and Jill Biden] are from—[Joe is] leading all the other candidates.
Let’s consider the primaries first. Since 1976, the Democratic presidential primaries have been held in all 50 states and District of Columbia, as is obviously the case with general elections. (The Republicans started this in 1980.)
No Democratic presidential nominee who failed to win the primary in Michigan went on to win the general election. 1988 Michael Dukakis (who lost to Jesse Jackson) and 2016 Hillary Clinton (who lost to Bernie Sanders) have this in common.
Another way of putting it: The Democratic pickup winners, with a first-term election, were 1976 Jimmy Carter, 1992 Bill Clinton, and 2008 Barack Obama. Now, please keep in mind, Michigan violated the DNC rules in 2008. (They jumped ahead in the calendar.) Some of the actual candidates, like eventual nominee Obama, removed their names from the 2008 Michigan Democratic presidential primary ballot. The winner of record, with 55 percent, was Hillary Clinton. But, I will say this: Had Michigan not violated the rules, and retained usual schedule of being held five to seven weeks after the first contest in Iowa, the winner in Michigan would not have been Hillary Clinton but Barack Obama. Why? Michigan votes in primaries more closer to the next state I will mention.
Another thing to consider: There is only one state—since 1976—which carried in the primaries and the general elections for Democratic pickup winners Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. That state is Wisconsin. It was the tipping point state in the general election of 2016. It gave Donald Trump his 270th electoral vote. Pennsylvania and Michigan followed to become Trump’s 290th and 306th original electoral votes.
In the 2016 Wisconsin presidential primary, the winner was not Hillary Clinton. It was Bernie Sanders. He defeated Clinton by +13.54 percentage points. (Source: Wikipedia —2016 Wisconsin Democratic primary.) That, in a way, was a bad omen for a general-election nominee Hillary Clinton. I think at least one person in her campaign may have recognized this. Consider the following video, just after it happened, by Mike Malloy.
Do I think Joe Biden would win all these states—and this doesn’t strongly factor Ohio (which is trending toward the Republicans while Texas is trending toward replacing Ohio as a new bellwether state)—in both the primaries and the general election?
No.
Trump hit his numbers. I won’t go into details. But, long story short: His 2016 campaign, for its strategy with the electoral map, was focused on flipping the four Rust Belt states—but, think more of the trio Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—because Trump spoke to the issues of the voting electorates in those states and persuaded them that the status quo of the Democrats—with the eight years of Barack Obama and with what would come from a nominee and possible winner in Hillary Clinton—would not actually move these people’s live in a better direction. (Side Note: Every U.S. president elected to two terms—this sets aside Franklin Roosevelt, the only one who was elected beyond two terms—who carried Pennsylvania and/or Michigan with his first election…carried them with re-election. Since Michigan, the younger of the two states, first voted in 1836…they have carried the same in all but five election cycles: 1848, 1856, 1932, 1940, and 1976. They are highly likely to vote the same again in 2020.)
Jill Biden proudly says she and her husband are from Pennsylvania. Well, Donald Trump is from New York. And Trump certainly did not flip and carry New York. He was born in the Empire State as Biden was born in the Keystone State. Hillary Clinton was not born in New York. She was born in Illinois. People—voters—are not consciously saying to themselves, When I vote, I want to help make sure a presidential candidate carries his home state because it is also my home state. If that was to become the reality, Republicans could routinely nominate two candidates from, say, Hawaii and Rhode Island while Democrats could routinely nominate two candidates from, say, Idaho and Wyoming for the presidency and vice presidency of the United States.
This is not a credible argument by Jill, on behalf of Joe, Biden.
Jill Biden: So, yes, you know—your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care than Joe is; but, you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election and, maybe, swallow a little bit and say: “Okay. I personally like so and so better.” But, your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.
That isn’t even the bottom line for the Democratic Party Establishment.
The bottom line for the Democratic Party Establishment, to which Jill’s husband Joe is a proud member, is to keep control of the party.
They want to make sure actual progressives don’t attain power. If they do attain any power, the corporate Democratic Party Establishment want that to be at a minimum. To contain it. What the Democratic Party Establishment, with assistance from their allies in mainstream media, want is to keep control. They want to control who, and what, can represent politics not only in the United States but also in this so-called left-wing political party called the Democratic Party.
Another Jill—2012 and 2016 Green Party U.S. presidential nominee Jill Stein—had it correct. She still does. The Democratic Party is, in current form, a graveyard for actual progressives wanting to advance their vision and agenda.
This is the point of Jill Biden speaking in support for her husband’s 2020 United States presidential campaign.
It is an effort to get self-identified Democrats—ones who intend to vote in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries—to conclude that they need Joe Biden. That they cannot win without Joe Biden. That they have to have Joe Biden.
This is not truly about unseating Donald Trump.
This is not a message, for however much it may be taken seriously, that can produce that result.
This is about helping the corrupt and corporate elites continue to maintain their control of the Democratic Party—and to urge the party’s voters to feel desperate by backing a candidate, for 2020 nomination, who has the corrupt, corporate, Democratic Party Establishment feeling comfortable.
If this was actually about unseating Donald Trump—and some of these flawed points actually show the best option is not her husband—Jill Biden would have been passionately and lucidly making the case to speak directly in favor of voting the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to the candidate who is best at offering a vision, an agenda, and a change in direction that is very favorable for the people and for the United States. Jill Biden would be urging us to vote for Bernie Sanders.
I leave this with a video, on this topic, published Tuesday [Aug. 27] by The Jimmy Dore Show.
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