Official Biden vs. Trump 2020 General Election Thread (Biden WINS 306 Electoral College Votes)

[Cognito]

Saagar is a sack of shyt. Xi has been stacking influence while this agent orange is pissing his pants at one phone call with him.

 

[FAH1223]

Hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped his bid for the Demoratic presidential nomination, a group of eight organizations representing young liberals came out with a warning for Joe Biden, who had just become the party’s presumptive nominee.

In an open letter Wednesday, the groups said Biden’s message of a “return to normalcy” isn’t enough for younger voters, and called on him to embrace the kind of revolutionary change sought by Sanders and his supporters and viewed with some skepticism by the broader Democratic electorate.

The letter highlights a challenge for Biden as his campaign works to unify the party and avoid the drop in support from young voters that hindered Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump after a bruising primary against Sanders.

“There is a trust gap between Biden and voters under 45, just like there was with Hillary Clinton,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, one of the letter’s signatories, in an interview prior to Sanders’ exit from the race.

The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.


New Morning Consult data shows two-thirds of Sanders supporters in the Democratic primary are under the age of 45, more than twice the share of Biden’s supporters who are the same age. But that demographic seems to have contributed to Sanders’ downfall this year: Exit polling conducted on Super Tuesday showed younger Americans did not vote for Sanders at the rate they did in 2016. However, their presence at the polls in the fall is “necessary to defeat Trump and will only become more essential to the Democratic Party’s future,” Shahid said.

Sanders supporters are more likely to hold a dimmer view of Biden than the average Democrat — especially those ages 18-34, 47 percent of whom view Biden unfavorably.

The responses were collected March 18 through April 7 among roughly 15,000 Democratic primary voters who said they would vote for Sanders even as it became increasingly clear that Biden was en route to clinching the nomination. The polling has a margin of error of 1 percentage point.


While Sanders supporters have mixed views about Biden, they’re more certain about their antipathy toward the president, regardless of age. Overall, about 85 percent of both Sanders’ supporters and Democrats disapprove of Trump’s job performance, and more than 7 in 10 do so strongly, 30 points more than the share who have somewhat or very unfavorable views of Biden.

Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan political analyst and publisher of Inside Elections, said the best person to shore up Biden’s backing among Sanders supporters is Trump himself.

“They spent months trying to defeat Biden, so it’s not a surprise they’re slow to liking the guy,” he said. “It might take time for Sanders supporters to say they’ll support Biden, but it will happen. The vast majority of them will prefer Biden over four more years of President Trump.”

In a head-to-head matchup, only 7 percent of Sanders supporters said they would vote for Trump in November, according to the latest tracking, down from the 12 percent estimated to have done so in 2016.

There was little difference by age; if anything, younger Sanders voters were slightly less likely to say they would vote for Trump in November or hold favorable views of the president than older voters who backed Sanders. But younger Sanders supporters were also more inclined to opt out of the two-person choice, with 15 percent of those ages 18-34 saying they did not know whom they would vote for in November.


Exit polling in 2016 found lower turnout among the youngest American voters, along with an uptick in support for third-party candidates. Sarah Audelo, who served as Clinton’s millennial vote director in 2016 and now leads Alliance for Youth Action, which signed the Wednesday letter, said young people are “issues-first” voters disenchanted by both parties. For them, she said, being “anti-Trump has never been enough” to beat him.

Audelo, who said Clinton’s campaign leadership “decided not to invest in fighting for young people’s votes in the primary,” is worried that Biden has not done enough to understand and engage them this time around.

“Young people want their votes to be fought for like anybody else,” she said. “He needs to be talking about the issues in a different way.”

Those younger Sanders supporters are more likely than the average Democrat to say the economy is their top issue (31 percent to 24 percent), though they’re roughly as likely to prioritize health care (29 percent to 32 percent).

Biden has already made overtures to the more progressive wing of the party within the past month or so, taking up a tuition-free college plan backed by Sanders and a bankruptcy plan proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). On Thursday, he embraced a student debt forgiveness plan and announced he’s developing a pitch to expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age.

But those leftward steps may not be enough without Sanders’ full backing. The Vermont independent, who has not endorsed Biden, signaled to supporters in a video announcing the end of his campaign that he is seeking to retain influence on the party’s platform.

“You saw him signaling in a big way during that livestream that he’s going to do what he can to make sure Trump is out of office, but it’s going to take many others to engage to make sure we have the turnout that’s necessary,” Audelo said.

 

[F K]

Has this biden rape stuff escaped the twitter bubble yet? idk if my friends aren't talking about it because they haven't heard it or because none of us want to grapple with the ramifications

 

[Cognito]

Where is this notion that Trump as president is bad for China
Dude caps for his buddy and gives fck all about global relationships and all his fcking trade wars are failures.
Huawei getting contracts everywhere
Philippines with China>
Indonesia with China>
South Korea going that way>
Hong Kong anti CCP movement got fcked
Taiwan not even allowed in international orgz

 

[FAH1223]

Has this biden rape stuff escaped the twitter bubble yet? idk if my friends aren't talking about it because they haven't heard it or because none of us want to grapple with the ramifications

 

[FAH1223]

Barack Obama wins the Democratic primary

Barack Obama wins the Democratic primary

Released from his self-imposed neutrality, the former president will soon make the case for Biden that Biden has had trouble making himself.

Former President Barack Obama may find that young progressives view him — rightly or not — as a boomer from a bygone era of diminished ambitions. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

By RYAN LIZZA

04/09/2020 08:07 PM EDT



In the end, the most influential politician of 2020 might be the one who has been the most silent.

With Bernie Sanders exiting the race and Joe Biden taking on the mantle of presumptive nominee, the man who hovered quietly over the race for more than a year, Barack Obama, will soon return to the political fray.

Obama wanted Sanders to have the day to himself, so he refrained from speaking (or tweeting) publicly on Wednesday. But Obama had always said his role in the primaries would be to unite the party when it’s over, and he’s been in close contact with both campaigns as the pandemic both froze the race without a clear victor and also made it more obvious that Biden would eventually prevail.


“Over the last few weeks, he’s had multiple conversations with candidates, including Sen. Sanders, about how to best position the Democratic Party to win in November,” said a source familiar with those calls. “While the content of those conversations remain private, there was always agreement that winning in the fall was paramount.”

“A very good day!” one Obama adviser wrote when I asked about Sanders dropping out.

Obama mostly stuck to his pledge not to interfere in the race, but in 2019 there was one enormously important exception. In mid-November at a Democratic donor event he weighed in forcefully on the left vs. centrist argument that was then dominating the race. He warned Democratic candidates not to confuse actual voters with “left-leaning Twitter feeds.” He said that voters “don’t want to see crazy stuff,” that America is “less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement,” and that politicians pushing immigration policies that deny the existence of a border “may be in for a rude shock.”


If there was a casualty of Obama’s comments, it might have been Elizabeth Warren, who lost her lead in both Iowa and New Hampshire (to Pete Buttigieg) that same week and never regained it. Obama’s warning about the electoral consequences of leftism may have been the most important moment of the 2019 pre-primary season. At the time of those comments, several of Obama’s closest advisers, who all opposed Sanders, told me in interviews that Sanders was a spent force, a mistake that many observers made at the time. Obama was publicly silent for the remainder of the campaign. But one of his closest advisers issued a warning: “If Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something.”



As the race narrowed to Biden and Sanders, interest among pro-Biden Democrats for Obama to speak up spiked and the political press was on the hunt for any indications of Obama choosing sides. Obama had a delicate task. Everyone knew whom he preferred, and yet he could not be seen as helping organize the massive party-wide show of force in favor of Biden that emerged from South Carolina through Super Tuesday. Obama’s aides forcefully reiterated that he was scrupulously not intervening.

But some of his aides now concede that behind the scenes Obama played a role in nudging things in Biden’s direction at the crucial moment when the Biden team was organizing former candidates to coalesce around Biden.

“I know he did a few things,” said one longtime close adviser to Obama. “He was talking to Biden regularly in that period. I don’t know exactly what he said, but you can speculate! It’s noteworthy that he called Klobuchar and the others right when they got out.”

A person with knowledge of Obama’s conversation with Buttigieg after the former Indiana mayor exited the race explained it this way: “Obama talked to Pete the night that Pete dropped out. When Pete told Obama that he was 99.9 percent of the way there in terms of endorsing Biden, I would say that Obama was encouraging. But I would also say that Obama was very careful not to be seen as putting a thumb on the scale. He and the people close to him are very careful about the optics — the 2016-style optics. Sanders and his supporters had reason to believe the party put the thumb on the scale for Hillary in 2016 and he wanted to avoid that. Obama wasn’t the driving force, but he was encouraging of people who had those instincts to rally around Biden. But he was very cautious and discreet in how he operated.”

A Democratic strategist added, “The truth is, he’d rather be on David Geffen’s yacht than dealing with internal Democratic party bullshyt.”

That’s a little unfair, but it plays into a popular stereotype of Obama during the Trump era as too detached from the political fray. But Obama has had a fairly consistent strategy of husbanding his political capital and only speaking publicly when he was sure it would have some impact (as it seemed to in November) and laying back from pure electoral politics until the final stretch of the campaign (as in 2018).

“[Sanders’ exit from the race] frees up Obama to live up to what he said — that he wasn’t going to put his thumb on the scale until there was a nominee,” said the longtime Obama adviser. “Now he’ll do anything the party and the nominee want to help win the election.”

Obama will soon make the case for Biden that Biden has had trouble making himself. “He will come out and make the point that Biden is the man for the times, that he has the experience and judgment to lead the country,” the adviser said. “He’ll make an obvious comparison to Trump but without saying too much about Trump: ‘This is a moment where we need someone like Biden.’ It’s the contrast that Biden has been trying to make — though I’m not sure how successfully — with his streaming from his basement.”

The other area where Obamaworld believes — perhaps naively — that the former president will have a role is in helping Biden with younger voters. Just as Biden once helped Obama win over older voters worried he was too young and too inexperienced, Obama will now try to help Biden win over younger, more liberal voters who think he’s too old and too experienced.

It will be an interesting test for Obama. In the online Sanders universe, Obama is often derided as a neoliberal (and much worse) and his administration is seen as a failure. Obama may find that young progressives view him — rightly or not — as a boomer from a bygone era of diminished ambitions.

“I would try to use Obama as a bridge to the progressive community,” said the adviser. “Because of the 'It factor' that Obama still has, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of Obama being able to rekindle that among younger voters.”

Obama has survived one crucial test. A presidential primary is often a referendum on the party’s last president. And in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Obama — or at least Obamaism — prevailed.

 

[AnonymityX1000]

Barack Obama wins the Democratic primary

Sounds like he kinda broke his word on staying out the primary. lol And really no amount of kind words about Biden will boost him unless it is tied to a popular policy position most agree with. Obama's stumping for Hillary without that didn't work either.

 

[King Static X]

Where is this notion that Trump as president is bad for China
Dude caps for his buddy and gives fck all about global relationships and all his fcking trade wars are failures.
Huawei getting contracts everywhere
Philippines with China>
Indonesia with China>
South Korea going that way>
Hong Kong anti CCP movement got fcked
Taiwan not even allowed in international orgz

Trump is a terrible president and person and I absolutely don't support him but you can't blame that on Trump. That has been the case since 1979.

In fact, Trump has done more for Taiwan than any President since Eisenhower. He gave them more military equipment and bumped up relations with the Taiwan Travel Act (which was huge, it allowed President Tsai to travel anywhere in America) in 2018 and the TAIPEI Act last month. Of course, those bills were passed UNANIMOUSLY on a bipartisan level but Trump deserves credit for signing them. It's one of the FEW good things he's done in office.

I hope that if Joe Biden gets elected, he doesn't try to reverse to tone down those bills. fukk the CCP!

 

[MoneyTron]

Obama been waiting 4 years for this shyt.

This isn’t a rahrah, jump in at the last minute push like 2016.

I know he has a plan, just hope it comes to fruition.

 

[King Static X]

Sounds like he kinda broke his word on staying out the primary. lol And really no amount of kind words about Biden will boost him unless it is tied to a popular policy position most agree with. Obama's stumping for Hillary without that didn't work either.

Are you dumb?

Biden is much more tied to President Obama than Hillary. Those "Uncle Joe" memes from 2014-2016 with him & President Obama proves it. President Obama coming back to stump for his #2 man is a different dynamic.

 

[AnonymityX1000]

Are you dumb?

Biden is much more tied to President Obama than Hillary. Those "Uncle Joe" memes from 2014-2016 with him & President Obama proves it. President Obama coming back to stump for his #2 man is a different dynamic.

Is that answer yes if I don't agree with you? lol
Like I said, saying kind words without offering something to the electorate wears thin fast. I don't think the different dynamic matters that much. I hope I'm wrong let's wait and see?

 

[jj23]

Sounds like he kinda broke his word on staying out the primary. lol And really no amount of kind words about Biden will boost him unless it is tied to a popular policy position most agree with. Obama's stumping for Hillary without that didn't work either.

Or, If obama couldnt change your numbers it shows the visceral hatred folks had for hillary. Glass half full.

I think Obama will be a fine surrogate.

 

[AnonymityX1000]

Or, If obama couldnt change your numbers it shows the visceral hatred folks had for hillary. Glass half full.

I think Obama will be a fine surrogate.

He was a fine surrogate for Hillary, doesn't mean that in itself ensures victory. Biden at some point is going to have to secure the victory.

 

[Pressure]

Obama put his thumb on the scale and tipped the primary Obama isn't a good surrogate.

 

[AnonymityX1000]

Obama put his thumb on the scale and tipped the primary Obama isn't a good surrogate.

I wonder who said that? Oh, nobody.