I find it more sad that people will hand Trump the presidency because of in-party bickering. And no, Democrats do not seem like MAGAs. The MAGAs are in complete lockstep. There is absolutely nothing that Trump could do or say that would dissuade a single MAGA from voting for him. He can insult veterans and handicapped people. He can pay off hookers. He can spend a few days on Epstein’s island. He can even be convicted of 34 felonies. 10 years ago, nobody that did ANY of those things would ever have a chance to be President. Now, half of the country literally worships someone who does all of those things and more. It is downright sickening.
And theres nothing Biden can do that would make anyone not vote for him. Dopers have even said so.
If Biden decided that the only way to save America from Trump was to do anything it takes, including acting like an autocrat, I would not vote for him. I wouldn’t vote for Trump either.
Biden has taken the opposite route though.
Is this because you really like Biden as a candidate or you feel that the only route to defeating Trump is Biden?
Personally, my answer to that question is “yes”.
Some have, some haven’t, some haven’t made up their minds yet.
Weirdest fucking lockstep I have ever seen. 
One of the notable things an autocrat does is hold on to power at any cost, putting self before country. Trump did it on January 6, Biden is doing it now.
The most charitable interpretation one could put on Biden’s decision to stay in is that he’s lost self-awareness of his own precipitous decline. But he’s received – and ignored – so much input to the contrary from advisors, leading Democrats, respected media, and outside influencers that he can’t possibly not know how he’s being perceived and what that does to his chances of re-election.
I’m just giving an outsider’s opinion here; I’m not American but I fear for the world if Trump is elected again. If I was American, I would still vote for Biden but I would do so more as a moral necessity than out of an real hope of re-electing Biden, because so many of my fellow citizens would be doing otherwise.
Biden’s slip-ups last night weren’t “gaffes” in the normal sense of an earlier, more robust Biden who’d sometimes say the wrong thing, they were more evidence of mental decline whose significance will be hugely amplified because of the gathering storm around him. The headline on CBC News put it well: it was “do or die” for Biden last night, and he did neither. The stalemate continues, while Trump golfs and plots his tyrannical return.
Sometimes people see what they want to see.
They aren’t gaffes even though they’re no different than anything he’s said for decades.
I had a thread here a months or so ago asking if there was anyone that would make them prefer Trump.
There were a few but yeah…mostly it is never Trump. He’s so awful and dangerous that it is hard to imagine not voting for anyone running against him.
I’m not a big Biden fan. He is more of the same that got us here. He is Hillary Clinton in a different package. But there is no reality where I vote for Trump over Biden…absolutely none. Not even on Bizarro World.
I don’t know what’s the “only route” or if there is an “only route.” You don’t either. Anybody who says they know what’s going to happen over the next several months is kidding themselves. I know uncertainty drives us crazy. But that’s no reason to grab at false certainty. I think Biden can win this. It behooves us all to support him all the way.
Just listen.
“Black voters are extremely pragmatic. Most Black women in America are pragmatic, hence why they show up at the ballot box in the various ways they do.”
This is why I say we should all vote like Black women do. Given the demographics of the SDMB, it behooves Dopers to listen to Black women.
"In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey of nearly 3,000 registered voters conducted in the days immediately following the debate, 58 percent of Black respondents said they believed Biden should be running for president, while 42 percent felt he shouldn’t.
While those numbers fell closely in line with the overall sentiment of Democrats polled, Black voters comprised the only racial demographic surveyed where a majority felt Biden should be in the race. White respondents overwhelmingly indicated they believe Biden shouldn’t be running, 74 percent to 26 percent, and 66 percent of Hispanic respondents said the same, compared to just 34 percent who said Biden should run.
Black voters were also more likely to say the debate did not change how they felt about Joe Biden at 52 percent, compared to 36 percent of both white and Hispanic respondents.
Brown and Gillespie both credited that steadfast support of Biden in large part to the “pragmatism” of Black voters who understand they don’t have large enough numbers to play big in elections but can still make their voices heard and influence a race."
I’m not sure your stats make your case.
There are more Hispanics than Black people in the US. More Whites than either of those. And your numbers say Blacks are the only ones who prefer Biden. And, I wonder, would Black women give a different answer if it was Harris as the candidate who is a Black woman?
Oh, for crying out loud. Biden is not “putting self before country”. He’s not running for reelection at 81 because he’s gone mad with power - he’s doing it because he’s beaten Trump once and can beat him again. If some 50-year-old liberal wunderkind who everyone loves had stepped forward between 2020 and now he wouldn’t be, but that person doesn’t exist and cannot be wished into existence.
The head of the DNC thinks he should stay in. The House and Senate leaders think he should stay in. Two living former presidents say he should stay in. Democratic governors support him unanimously. His doctors say he’s fine. His VP and Cabinet unanimously support him. AOC and Joe Manchin, who are on as opposite ends of the spectrum as you can get and still be in the same party, say he should stay in.
Who’s telling him to drop out? A handful backbenchers trying to make a name for themselves, retirees who won’t be affected either way, actors who have never run a campaign in their lives, and media executives who crave the ratings jamboree an open convention would generate. You cannot just claim that everyone supporting him is lying and that everyone who wants him to drop out is being honest and selfless.
Yes, they were, because they’re rhe exact same kind of verbal missteps he’s been making since before I was born.
You may have missed my point. The polling of those who think he should drop out is not the same topic as the votes they will cast in November. The point is: Biden is staying on the ballot and no amount of pressure is going to change his mind. He’s staying in and that’s it. That matter is settled despite any number of people who don’t like it. All that remains is to use the time that is given us.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
Like I said for some people there is literally nothing Biden can do to convince them. I think that quite a few, at least on the dope, didn’t want him in the first place and are jumping on this as a reasonto dump him. His, 'obvious decline’ (not a specific quote but a summation of the assumptions of several posters) is as good a reason as any to put anyone else in his place. Just my opinion.
Like ~ for the post, but especially the quote. 
Although Biden did get a nice dig in when he said something like, “Trump fills out his scorecard before he even tees off on the golf course.”
I believe what he said was, “Trump fills out his scorecard before he gets out of the golf cart.”
And it’s rather bizarre that the same foot-in-mouth syndrome Biden has had for decades is proof of his “obvious decline” when he’s running against a man who thinks magnets don’t work if they’re wet, that the CEO of Apple is named “Tim Apple”, that Hannibal Lecter is a real person who endorsed him, doesn’t understand the difference between electric motors and solar power, thinks windmills kill whales and give you cancer, doesn’t know what batteries are, said THIS WEEK that he had no idea what NATO is, can’t remember whether or not his oldest son is married or how old his youngest son is, can’t even read a teleprompter without going off script and mumbling incoherently, and openly declares his intent to become a dictator and orchestrate an ethnic cleansing on a larger scale than the literal Holocaust.