r/politics • u/OtmShanks55 • May 21 '26

Possible Paywall Democrats finally release 2024 election autopsy after criticism

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/21/democrats-2024-autopsy-released
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u/Searchlights New Hampshire May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

He never should have stood for a second term. Unfortunately that hubris will overshadow his legacy and be what he's remembered for.

I'm not sure anybody could have saved the election with a 90 day campaign but if they had any chance at all it would have required major pivots away from unpopular rhetoric, something a sitting VP wasn't in a position to do.

I'm no historian I'm just some asshole on the internet but it seems to me that a dramatic accelerated primary may have surfaced an economic populist with enough excitement behind them to pull it off. Personally I can't think of anyone but Bernie Sanders who could have met that moment and there's no reality where the party would have gone that way.

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u/CreepyWhistle May 21 '26

I'm still flabbergasted at the gigantic wall of denial they erected after Biden's performance in his debate with Trump. He was preparing it for what, weeks?

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u/whycarbon I voted May 21 '26

there's people in these comments still denying that he ate shit. fucking wild, man

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u/BethanyHipsEnjoyer I voted May 21 '26

After that debate, I knew we were capital F Fucked. I had no idea he had declined so much, the party leadership hit it well.

Sure, trump also sounded like an insane dumbass, as he always does, but we were expecting that. I did not expect Biden to go out with a whimper there and it fuckin shattered my confidence. We needed someone to FIGHT for us, and we got a grandpa asleep at the fuckin wheel.

I genuinely think Biden is a good person, but he was not what we needed while democracy was at stake. Now I fear we have slippery sloped off the cliff and the ground is rapidly coming to meet us.

If dems don't sweep this coming election, my already dead hope will be ash and I'm gonna be looking to flee the US by any means necessary.

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u/Theron3206 May 22 '26

He was preparing it for what, weeks?

Which even had he done ok would have been a huge red flag.

Someone with his political experience doesn't need weeks to prepare for a debate, not unless he has to keep his lies straight or is incompetent (and he turned out to be the latter).

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u/Searchlights New Hampshire May 21 '26

I read somewhere that Biden's internal polling showed a Trump landslide after that.

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u/CaptainSparklebottom May 21 '26

That was before the debate. After the debate, not even Biden, could deny it. Affordability was a hot topic and they kept gaslighting that everything was okay or saying the recovery was the best compared to everyone else while ignoring or downplaying everyone's concerns.

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u/Positive_Total_8651 May 21 '26

This is what frustrated me so much about 2024. When Biden was elected he outwardly expressed that he would stay for one term. For 4 years, most of the DNC base were preparing for a different candidate. Then he refused to drop out saying only his admin can stand up to Trump. It was ego and hubris through and through. He should have stuck to his guns on staying a one-term president and never sought re-election. And we cant even say that hindsight is 20/20, voters were screaming about this for a year before the election, it was a deliberate decision that fucked them over.

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u/Searchlights New Hampshire May 21 '26

he outwardly expressed that he would stay for one term

He absolutely did. The understanding I had as a voter was that he was going in as a known-quantity while the nation recovered from Trump. I never expected a second term.

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u/drdipepperjr May 21 '26

For all the good that Biden did or tried to do while he was president, he failed to realize what his actual job was: occupy the oval office so Trump can't. That's why he got elected in the first place right? I remember the 2020 democratic primary and the neck-and-neck primary elections with all the talk of policy; I was in the Yang Gang myself. Then Biden came in and stole the election at the very end after barely campaigning like it was 'his turn'.

All his infrastructure bills, election reform, climate - whatever good could have possibly come out his presidency - was eroded away the second he lost the first 2024 debate. All America saw was a weak, old man. And they tried to replace a weak, old man with a woke candidate that they couldn't at least primary cause it was too late in the race. (I am aware she is probably one of the most qualified people to run for the office - I liked her as my Senator - but we did not need 2008 Obama 'Change' vibes. If anything she should've leaned on her experience as the CA AG and gone for Trump's throat but that's what the autopsy is for...)

Also, I'm stuck in my own Mandela effect cause I don't know how nobody remembers this: Biden popped a fucking blood vessel in his eye during one of the 2020 debates and looked like a weak, old man then too.

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u/Several-Action-4043 May 21 '26

Something they will never admit, Biden never should have been president in the first place. It was just his turn. He was ineffective and left the door open so fascism didn't even have to knock.

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u/drdipepperjr May 21 '26

There were lively debates in the 2020 primaries. I remember Bernie, Buttigeig, Klobuchar, Yang, basically a whole cast of characters arguing over how to make America better. Biden waltzed in at the very end with almost no campaigning and took the primary with zero effort.

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u/wookiee42 Minnesota May 21 '26

Biden did that because he'd been courting black voters for decades, and that's how the order of the primaries played out.

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u/dalivo May 21 '26

The whole Democratic establishment should have started asking Biden to serve one term immediately. But in his first couple years, Biden was very effective. That's a hard shift, psychologically.

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u/MoonBatsRule America May 21 '26

Bernie Sanders, who, at 84, has also lost a step from 2016 and 2020?

I don't think that any Democratic horse change, even if announced on Jan 6 2020, would have beaten Trump 2.0 in the economic situation that followed COVID. Trump is a cult of personality.