The Daily stands by democracy and freedom through thick and thin. Join the fight to save American democracy by becoming a subscriber.We thought maybe you could use a friendly on this difficult day, so here are some quotes from the edition of the podcast. The quotes are lightly edited but transcribed as spoken.Joe Biden Is An Exceptional President There, there are presidents that have really had a lasting legacy on the country. And a lot of them never get their credit for that. They had, they had accomplishments that never really get credited. Obama was the rare exception and somebody who had the personality And the charisma and had the accomplishments. That is not normal. Yeah, that's not normal. I mean, you have, you have, before Obama, everybody compares him to Reagan, which is justified because you've got to go back to Reagan, who was the previous transformational president. But then, once you get behind Reagan, you have to go back to Roosevelt. Those presidents don't happen very often. Harry Truman and Joe Biden are the kind of presidents who come in and do effective things but they don't get credit because maybe they don't look the part or they don't act the part. They're a lot more common than Trump, who is just this amalgamation of everything that's going on, which is bad about modern politics and what candidates are evaluated by. Trump is the post-fact, post-accomplishment president. I'm gonna take advantage of division and polarization, and hey, kids, let's put on a show. And so you know what's interesting about, when you're talking about younger voters, voters and they say they care about climate change, right? What The Movement To Get Rid Of Biden Was Really AboutYou remember the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton primary in 2016? We remember it because we were at the convention that year. After that, the DNC, which was at the time led by Tom Perez and Keith Ellison, after the new leadership turned over, sat down with Sanders, sat down with Biden actually, and Obama and the whole crew, and they all agreed to get rid of the super delegate system who did the super delegate system benefit? Elites.The super delegates themselves were elites, and to remind everybody what the system was, Democratic voters named a percentage of the delegates, and then there was this big pot of super delegates. Who was not elected by the voters but got an equal vote as the voters as to who gets to be the nominee.That's a whole lot of power, right? And in 2018, everybody sat down and one of the good things, no matter how you feel about what Bernie did in the 2016 campaign, one of the good things that came out of his run was they reformed the primary process. So, the primary process was given to the voters. Now that seems like no big deal, but then COVID came in 2020 and everything fell into place quickly for Biden because of the new reforms. When Biden started getting momentum after South Carolina, he was able to put it away pretty quickly. Now fast forward to 2024, Biden storms through the primaries. The voters again say, we want Biden. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The people that in normal circumstances, which are these 40 House Democrats or 30 House Democrats and these elected leaders and all these people that were saying Biden had to step aside, they would have been superdelegates normally. They were nobody special in 2024. That's what this all is. This all comes down to controlling the party and power. This has been a power struggle. They want power back because it was taken away from them and given to the voters. And this is what I keep coming back to. And that's why you're hearing that BS. about an open process to find the new nominee. Yeah, that's BS. And I'm, that actually disgusted me. And the more people that are repeating this, people that I used to respect, it's like, we already had an this process.We already did this process. You don't get to tell the voters that they don't get the people. They, they said, if it's not Joe, they want Kamala. So you people all need to take a seat because that is what's going to happen. That's the way it should happen. That's what is right to happen now. Yeah, and instead they're doing this whole thing.I just I know that they're gonna come up with issues they have with Kamala here if she doesn't fall into line for them and you you know Give them the power they seek and I just don't think she's that kind of person. I don't think I don't think she is either. Yeah, I think she's gonna cave to them and I think that's gonna be a problem. I also think that if she ends up being the nominee, she should be left alone. There should be no open process to pick her running mate. She should pick her own running mate. Absolutely. She should have that if she's the nominee. It should not be in the convention. The convention shouldn't get to choose the VP or whatever nonsense they're thinking of.2024 Is Not 1968The comparisons to 1968 I think are way off base. All right, tell us more about that. Okay, very simply, there are a few different reasons why. The main reason is that LBJ was forced out of office in 1968 because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. His vice president, Humphrey, was also saddled with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. There was an overriding issue that led to President Johnson losing, didn't even lose, did poorly in the primary, got embarrassed, said Democratic voters don't want me and he left. That's not what happened in 2024.There is no overriding issue here within the Democratic Party that pushed Joe Biden out the door. In fact, Democratic voters said they wanted Joe Biden. Yeah, and every time that they, that, that people were trying to push him out, the voters kept speaking more and more and more and more. We saw that in the rally in Detroit, for example.And, since there is no predominating issue driving the democratic dislike of the president, then Vice President Harris is not saddled with a 1968-style issue. And the democratic party, if we can just cut the crap for a minute, is not deeply divided on issues on beating Donald Trump. They are not divided.We hope you like the podcast. Our hour-long conversation contains so much more. Please give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below.

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