Two videos convince me. Jon Stewart, live after the Biden-Trump ended. Spot on.
CNN "highlights" showing Biden failure, and Trump being a super cosmic asshole, as he always is, to where it is hard to watch the chosen segments through to the end.
I am serious, Al Franken would make the best President of ones I have seen. Bernie would be excellent, but has no chance at it and would be frustrated by not being able to get his agenda through. Franken is younger, just as well oriented as Bernie, as AOC, and was as good a Senator as he could have been. Better than his peers.
Franken got done-in for patting one to many females on the butt. "Gillibranded." Not good judgment by Al, but compare Trump. Franken has a stable marriage, wife with him not in another city, and they are a good couple. Jill Biden is loyal to her marriage , but Joe has lost major cogency, and it showed to where many are in panic mode.
Joe will gather with family, and we hope, truly, for the best to come of it.
Joe staying in against Trump has my vote locked, if he stays. I trust the administration to handle four more years competently; where I may differ in thought over a thing or two, but I have no fear, as I would have of Trump and the creeps he's had before and would find and use and churn again. He is, after all, an asshole. He's been one his entire life, with Roy Cohn his role model.
Look what he did to Pence. That tells us much. Enough, certainly.
If you have doubts about Franken, that's your problem, not mine. However, there is Dean Phillips who ran as a lifeboat primary option to Biden. The machine was Biden's and Phillips was sidelined. However, you put Phillips against other names being dredged up, e.g., Gavin California, or VP Harris, and Phillips looks to be the better business success and thinker than either of those two. He believed he was doing a helpful thing, saying pass the torch, and with action speaking louder than words he passed the torch in the Congressional District he held.
Both Franken and Phillips are Minnesotans, both Jewish. Both capable. Franken is more the progressive, but Phillips appears decently motivated and trustworthy.
Either, at this stage, would be acceptable, should Biden listen to those saying he's lost it and should recognize that reality and step aside. I did not watch Biden-Trump, but, again, the two originally cited video items each speaks truth - Biden slipping, Trump, incurable self-satisfied asshole of a seldom equaled scale.
So, two names in the hopper, should Biden, meeting soon with family, choose to surrender his candidacy and endorse. Biden has the war chest, his, not the Party's, and he could direct it in a way favorable to one he'd want to be his successor. [UPDATE: The electors gained so far are pledged to Joe, not the Party. His to direct.] I trust he and family and administration would choose wisely, and it could be smoothly done if the host of wannabes would merely respect Biden passing the torch.
It is time for Joe Biden and family and administration to search their collective souls.
And, Crabgrass has come to believe, time to pass the torch. To do it by a rational endorsement, rather than to cut the worse within his Party to battle from this late point onward rather than to honor one whose first administration surpassed Crabgrass expectations, and is still a functional administration should Biden refuse to pass the torch.
Defeating Trump remains essential. Beyond that, there are some egregious Dems who should be left as is, the Clintons coming immediately to mind, but Crabgrass has no voice in the Party and it can royally fuck up, again. The Democratic party and its donors are fully capable of losing a second time to Trump; and the better and brightest among them owe the nation their preventing it, despite what's in the party and donating to it.
Defeat Trump, however it needs to be done, and do it with class instead of crap. That's not too tall an order, but one easily fucked up. And the Dems have folks fully capable of fucking things up royally. Beyond where things are now. Including donors and including some Blue Dogs, New Dems, and other idiotic, misdirected, selfish and/or greedy inner party types. New Jersey comes to mind.
There are good people, and we hope they prevail.
(At least Jamaal Bowman ousted Eliot Engel before Bowman got done in by tons of evil money. One step forward, two steps back. Republicans have no locked ownership on thugish types, only a larger percentage. And louder ones.)
