johnwoo

If Biden is forced to step down over sexual assault accusations, all of the above is purely academic, and personal opinion anyway.
In the event Biden steps down, presumably Bernie will be the Dem candidate, unless the DNC pull some one else out of the hat.
I personally think Bernie could handle Trump much better than Biden could.

johnwoo

I thought it was well known hydroxchloroquine was undergoing trials in the US by the NIH

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news...ovid-19-begins

scrubbedexpat091

I don't think they are doing in hospital here in Vancouver, but one of the long term care homes they were testing this drug on patients who consented to trying it as part of a larger world trial. Haven't heard much since though, so no idea if they had any success with it.

S Folinsky

NEITHER party will spend a penny in CA for president. Any money in CA will go to the Congressional ground game in close districts. I’m in CA 28 which is pretty much a Dem lock.

It was strange in moving the primary back to March we actually had TV ads. Not that it helped Michael Bloomberg.

Steerpike

And this is in the 2020 Election thread because ... ?

HDWill

Well, since Trump championed hydroxychloroquine based on his "gut," if it turned out to be highly effective, it would be a real feather in his cap for the election.

If you ask me, it is deeply unfortunate that medical treatments have become politicized. You'd think it would be obvious to everyone that scientific data should lead the way.

Jerseygirl

The Biden vs Trump debates should be fun.

Steerpike

Well, I've always said that a special set of rules applies to Trump, so just because Trump got away with virtually confessing to rape only weeks before the election, it doesn't mean Biden will get a pass; but I don't see this one hurting Biden too much. For better or for worse, these days, it seems every candidate is going to face this accusation and it's losing its impact.

I hope it works. I just think Trump was an irresponsible person for touting it against the advice of his scientific advisers. But nothing new there!

Leslie

Considering the fact that everybody has been talking about the severity of Trump's dementia for the past three years (I don't remember you mentioning that but maybe I missed it) it sounds like "the electorate" will have to judge which one is more senile.

Too bad Bernie didn't win, that whole scary socialist thing would have been a lot easier to sell, huh?

But, wait a minute, aren't you the one that said Trump was guaranteed to win UNLESS there was a financial crisis? Now we have a financial crisis and you're saying we have to keep Trump because Biden is senile? How convenient. Convenient and very familiar sounding.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...-senile-124797

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020...can-party-line

BritInParis

That would be Biden. You may not like Trump, you may correctly consider him to be a boor and a braggart, but that doesn't make him senile.

I don't think Sanders would've won the election but at least he would've been able to put up some kind of fight. Trump is effectively running unopposed now.

I never said anyone had to 'keep' Trump. I'm offering my prediction of what I think will happen, not what I want to happen. I said the Democrats' only chance was a financial crash which would damage Trump's record on the economy. It's less obvious that would the case with the current pandemic - an unprecedented, artificial suppression of the economy at the government's behest - but with Sanders as the nominee and many Trump voters in swing states hurting financially then that would've been their best shot. As it is the fix was in for Biden and there's no way a man who now struggles to string a sentence together is going to win the presidency during a time of national crisis.

carcajou

Not correct. The nomination would not automatically pass to Bernie on the basis that he dropped out last or finished second in the delegate count.

The delegates themselves, and the party at large, are highly unlikely to coalesce around Sanders.

The most likely scenarios would be, in this order: (1) Biden's VP pick becomes the nominee; (2) a brokered convention - which definitely does not benefit Sanders.

I don't doubt in such a scenario that Sanders and his supporters will issue a bunch of demands and threats, and let them. He is the exemplar of the law of diminishing returns.

scrubbedexpat099

The DNC must have a back up plan for a Biden drop out, whatever that reason could be. There is after all quite a few possible causes. If you were the VP pick would that not be something you would mention, do I get the nod?

carcajou

Nominee has to be approved by the delegates. Nobody has the power at the DNC to just step in and say "Boiler, I choose you as the nominee." So, a VP pick can't be promised that. If it's after the convention, something akin to an emergency convention gets convened and operates kind of akin to how a brokered convention would function.

However, a VP pick is highly likely to be next-in-line for a lot of reasons, including continuity of the campaign, familiarity with the public, consistent messaging and platforms, the most obvious person for everyone to coalesce around, etc.

Imagine for instance if you had a Biden-Klobuchar ticket that had been campaigning for months on a particular platform etc, and then suddenly at the end of September Biden has to withdraw and Sanders gets parachuted in with a completely different agenda. That's then highly confusing messaging and a highly dissonant platform for voters, so that's a problem.

Also, the VP pick gets confirmed separately. If Biden withdraws, that doesn't mean his VP pick also withdraws (if this is after the convention). The VP pick has already been formally nominated. So that would mean whomever gets nominated in place, if not the VP, has to keep the VP pick. They don't get to bring in their own person as part of the deal.

There is also the problem of the entire campaign machinery, where all the key staff etc have been hand-picked by the nominee. That all gets swept away and rebuilt from zero by Bernie (or whomever), on the fly, in September? Or he keeps staff he doesn't want and who don't want to work for him, and who all have different ideas of the platform?

Whereas if the delegates just choose the VP pick instead it's a much easier transition.

scrubbedexpat099

I was thinking more of what happened in 2016.

carcajou

You've lost me. What happened in 2016, that's relevant to the scenario you described?