General Discussion

Biden chose to stay in, and I had no control over how the Biden campaign played out -- only control of how it played out here on DU. DU has a decades-old precedent during General Election Season that protects candidates from being bashed. These principles go all the way back to the competitive primaries of 2004, when ugly fights from the primaries bled over into the general election campaign after the primaries were over.

In order to abandon Biden, we would have had to abandon the principles and precedent that we've had on DU for decades. So at what point should we have abandoned those principles? After the first influencer called on Biden to step down? The first podcaster? The first celebrity? The first congressman? The second congressman?

In fact, the only question I had to answer to avoid abandoning longstanding precedent was is Joe Biden still running? I decided that as long as that was the case, we would stay the course, and we did. As soon as he dropped out, it was Primary Season again.

As I said above, during the 2024 general election all Democrats were forced to decide: Are you a team player or a ship-jumper? That was a choice with no good outcomes, and a choice that nobody wanted to make.