The “Plan”

So here’s my question to those who continue to claim that we front pagers who wanted Biden to step away from reelection were irresponsible and putting the nation at risk or whatnot without a plan. A commenter in Paul’s thread named Zippy Pinhead says it in about the same way as everyone else:

I wrote countless comments begging you guys to explain your position in any sort of detail. They were all summarily ignored. It was all pure underpants gnome theory. It was all over the place- Pelosi herself was talking about mini blitz primaries, as were many of the big donors. The pundits were doing their best to completely erase Harris from the conversation, Lemieux to his credit at least espoused the idea of a handoff to Harris but never explained the mechanics of it. And none of you explained how anyone was going to bring Biden along if he wasn’t interested- and THAT was a huge part of the equation you all ignored. Thank God the man dug deep down and found it within himself to agree to this, but the idea that that was something you guys had priced in and counted on is nonsense and many of us called you out on it at the time. THAT was part of that step 3)???

My response to this is that if you want to know precisely how it was going to happen, who was going to call who, who had the most influence on Biden, what it would take to get him to support Harris, and all that, I don’t know. That’s an impossible question unless you are a real Democratic insider and even then I don’t know. But if the answer is, well, obviously Harris is the only realistic option and that is what’s going to happen, well, we wrote several posts pushing that very idea.

But let’s flip this. Because my question is this–what was your plan for Biden to actually win the election? Because no one had one. I suggested this to Mr. Pinhead and got the following response:

I’m not the one prancing about claiming to be omniscient and threatening to rub everyone’s nose in anything. I was genuinely worried about the status quo and said as much at the time. I just wanted some concrete answers before I’d commit to any given plan. Contrary to that straw man you are so fond of erecting, I was never a “Biden dead ender.” I simply wanted some assurances that there was a plan in place that would give us a better chance than our then current trajectory, because I don’t believe in the Hail Mary approach. But all I got was Biden sucks, this might work and we have to do something, this is something. And nobody would supply anything remotely resembling details- to the point nobody even agreed what “this” would even be.

And now that a whole bunch of unlikely things fell together in our favor, we’re getting a serious case of “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan” and people are taking an unearned victory lap. Nobody KNEW that Joe would do the right thing. Nobody KNEW that the other potential candidates would all stand down. Nobody KNEW that Kamala would hit the ground running as well as she has. Nobody KNEW that the big money donors would back off their demands for an open primary and their Johnny Unbeatable and be mollified, nobody KNEW that the press would be momentarily caught up in the drama and be okay with it, nobody KNEW that the Trump team would be this incompetent and unprepared.A whole bunch of things that HAD to go right did go right. But making some post hoc argument that those of you who pushed any given path were right all along is the height of hubris- NOBODY KNEW how this was going to go down and it was perfectly reasonable to be concerned and question the details. The idea that some of you were right and we all were wrong is laughable- it was a crap shoot…

Well, OK. But that’s not answering the question. If you think the FPers didn’t have a plan, well, what was your plan? And that plan has to address the following issues:

1. The media was never going to let up on Biden and his age
2. Your average voters are idiots
3. The polling overwhelming suggested that voters wanted some other option than Biden and Trump
4. Letting Biden speak more was quite obviously not helping, as demonstrated in the time between the debate and when he ended the campaign.

Forget the fact that going with Harris was obviously the right call. I just think that if the constant call from commenters was going to be A VERY SPECIFIC PLAN from myself, Paul, Scott, and/or Rob, then it’s incredibly fair to ask what plausible plan there from Biden remainders to win the election.

And I might remind you that Donald Trump is incredibly whiny about all of this because he knew he was going to destroy Biden. So I’d at least hope LGM commenters are smarter about politics than that guy.