I know a lot of us are having real John Kerry flashbacks right now, and I think it's worth the reminder that Kerry and Biden are who you get stuck with when your only unifying principle is being AGAINST something

you only get an Obama when you choose based on what you're FOR

I have had a lot of frustrations for many years with Bernie Sanders, his supporters, and Online Leftist Discourse in general, but he was the last candidate in this primary who was actually FOR something besides just stopping Trump

Biden needs to decide what he's for, and quickly

the candidates in this primary who excited and inspired me were the ones who had a plan for the Democratic Party that extended past November of 2020, plans that didn't end with "I'm the only person who can get this monster out of office"

okay

then what

what happens next

because the Republicans did that, like that's what we're up against

when they were just calculating based on who could put up a credible challenge against a presumptive Clinton, all the big early money was on Jeb Bush

then Trump came along, and he EXCITED them. they CRAVED this

Trump voters didn't just pick him because they were voting against Hillary Clinton, though a lot of them used that excuse after the fact

they picked him because the vision of America he presents remains genuinely thrilling to them, and that's why it's so hard to move the needle.

my only real hope now is that Biden picks a VP candidate who is FOR something and not just against Trump, that he wins in November, that he steps down after one term as promised and throws his support behind his former VP and we get a good 8 years of progressive leadership

but man, it's disheartening to wind up with such a tepid leftover choice when we started out with this crowded field of remarkably diverse and progressive and brilliant candidates who had big, ambitious visions for fixing America's problems beyond just next Inauguration Day.