If Biden drops out of the race, the candidate would be Harris. He'd resign, endorse Harris, and it'd get confirmed at the convention. The only "fresh new, younger face" would be the VP pick.
I'm not saying that's a problem, but the idea that that an open floor battle at the convention would be a good idea is nuts, and just discarding the sitting VP like that would probably shatter the democratic coalition.
Ahem, Bush v Gore... bit longer than a decade. They're certainly more shameless now that they have a larger margin, but republican justices have been pushing an agenda for awhile.
They're not silly at all, they're thugs. They want to influence the next one by showing the cost of going against them.
Now, we're lucky that they're mostly grifting, incompetent, blustery cowards, so the risk isn't what it could be.
Gosh, you mean that he's playing by the rules that the republicans have put in place and not unilaterally disarming? How scandalous.
They should flush the entire "money is speech" concept, but until we can replace most of the SC with people who don't suck, we work with what we got.
Oddly, sort of related to some of these same complainers sitting out 2016. Weird how elections can have consequences.
Not (re)building in areas prone to wildfires, mudslides, floods, and the like would be a good start. Otherwise, someone has to pay to rebuild when the ever more frequent disaster hits. State farm and other insurers suck in many ways, but this isn't unreasonable on their part.
It's probably more due to increased asymmetric partisan polarization than anything. The same issue shows in polling on the economy. When Trump was in, republicans reported that the economy was great. As soon as Biden took office, the economy was doing horribly.
If she only had a record to check... oh, wait, she does:
Haley has consistently supported bills that give rights to an unborn baby and restrict abortion, except when the mother's life is at risk. In 2006, as a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Haley voted for the Penalties for Harming an Unborn Child/Fetus law, which asserted that an act of violence against a fetus is akin to a criminal act against the mother. She has also re-signed a new state law that bans abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy.[38]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Nikki_Haley
Haley is opposed to Jail or Death Penalty for women who have abortions.[41][42][43]
Is that the moderate republican position?
If one of them gets into power, Canada might just pay for that wall.
The difference is that Manchin, for all of his many flaws, is probably the only Democratic senator that we're likely to see from WV in the foreseeable future. So, the option isn't "Manchin or a better Democrat", it "Manchin or a hard right-wing republican". WV is one of the reddest of states and it's almost shocking that a Democrat won there at all and it's easy to understand why he bucks the party.
Sinema has no excuse aside from her seeming delusions of importance and dreams of cushy corporate cash once she's out.
The republican base isn't conservative in the modern sense, they're reactionary. In a similar vein, evangelical republicans don't support the people who embody the values that they profess to hold sacred, they fully, and loudly, back people who are quite the opposite.
I imagine that both groups feel that they're increasingly losing out in modern society and are seeking someone who'll crush their perceived enemies and return them to their rightful place ruling the rest of us. So, the allure of a strongman to return them to their imagined golden age.
I get the reflexive urge to both-sides things, but rail workers did end up getting their sick leave:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
Biden wanted to avoid the disruption that a rail strike would bring, especially when we were trying to deal with inflation, but like many things, they quietly got it done.
Assuming Harris wins, the first midterm federal election is usually ugly for the president's party, so it'd be a risk. Especially coming off of this election where dems will have to be extremely lucky just to hold onto the majority (even with the vp tiebreaker).