And yes that is where the fundamental disconnect occurs. I don’t know that she will win, but I believe she has a better crack at it than current Biden has. I also don’t know that he will lose. I recognize that I could be wrong. But yes @sciurophobic I believe Biden is wrong. I think he hears in his head his saying what his brain wants him to say but is in complete denial that such is not what others hear.
The fact that his modest polling deficit is such that he’d be a long shot win, and that it has been fairly fixed in place, would not bother me much with Biden of four years ago leading the fight. I’d believe that Biden could lead a charge and a comeback. I don’t believe such of current Biden.
I think Joe Biden has served his country well, in many ways, for many years. For him end his career remembered as a stubborn old man who failed to recognize that he wasn’t the same fighter he was just a few years ago, and dragging us all down as a result? That would be tragic for him. More tragic for the world.
I don’t think that Japan and South Korea have an explicit bilateral alliance - both are allies of the U.S. of course, but there’s a lot of historical mistrust there, not to mention the more recent colonial period of 1905-1945. The elites of each side recognize the importance of working together, but public sentiment against the other partner still runs strong and causes its share of diplomatic shakeups and spats.
Trump couldn’t have done it, though, because he would have insisted that “US” come first, meaning the treaty would have been called “USUKA”, which is an acronym no one should pronounce.
Exactly. Biden’s modest deficit has been and continues to be rock solid. That is a very very bad thing. He is possibly near his floor, but he is also apparently very near his ceiling.
Could Harris, starting at the same floor, reach a higher ceiling?
I’m not denying that he did good work in mending strains in that alliance (I’m not saying he did, either, because it’s a subject I know nothing about, but I assume he probably did). But as “major diplomatic accomplishments” go, it’s not super impressive. Bring South Korea and North Korea together, now you’ve got a talking point.
Either of us could be right or wrong. I recognize that. This is all speculation, as nobody can predict how any of this turns out. But it will also be tragic for us and the world if Kamala replaces him and loses. I have yet to see any data that suggests that she could beat Trump. If I were to see that she actually has a chance, I would consider changing my opinion. As it stands now though, there is only one person on the planet who has ever beat Trump, and despite everything going on, his numbers are still better than Kamala’s.
Those who constantly feel the need to claim this is all some sort of propaganda issue or anti-Biden media narrative just need to go re-read the live debate commentary thread.
There are probably few places on the net that would be more Biden friendly than the Dope… and his performance destroyed a lot of confidence in his ability to lead, even here. For many, he just hasn’t done enough to turn that around. For some he has. But this concern wasn’t manufactured out of whole cloth.
It’s worth mentioning again too that any tie in the popular vote almost certainly means a Republican victory. In other words, any polls that show Biden tied with Trump 46% to 46%, or even one or two percent ahead of Trump, are still cause for alarm.
The last presidential election showed us that a Democrat can beat a Republican by 4.5% in the popular vote and yet still only win by the skin of his teeth (44,000 votes in three swing states.)
Pretty much. We don’t have a single Trump supporter here (as far as I’m aware of.) This forum is close to 100% liberal/Democratic. And yet even in here, many are/were alarmed at how the race is going.
No data can exist. Polling right now puts her at the same level as Biden plus minus. That is likely the floor for any centrist D contender against Trump.
From there it is whether or not we each believe the arguments regarding current Biden’s ability to dig out, and the arguments for Harris being able to prosecute the case against Trump and for an alternative vision of who we as a people are with vigor.
My argument is that her chances won’t be worse, and that there is more of a chance for them to be better. I think.
Nah, you just say it like it’s a Japanese word and then the only question is do you elide the second U. Or apparently however you pronounce a town in Tanzania.
And again, it’s not the media. They’re not making Biden go out there and flub interviews and press conferences and Oval Office speeches. Remember also that the debate was the first time in most of a year that Biden had really done any public event except for the State of the Union.
Members of President Joe Biden’s family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
It then goes into detail about those discussions. There is other sourced info in the article with the same attribution - family members “familiar” with the discussions. My guess, it’s probably Joe and Jill, although he does have other family members that regularly help/support him with his campaign.
Why you should trust these sources: Quotes attributed to sources “familiar with the thinking” of a person are often quite reliable.
Why? A major newspaper like The New York Times or The Washington Post is not going to suggest that a source is familiar with someone’s thinking without being pretty sure of it. This is a fairly precise term. It also puts the news organization at a clear risk, as person X can obviously deny what an article has said he or she is thinking.
There are also reasons why you should not trust it implicitly, but they are fairly weak with that kind of attribution to the source. The article is also great at helping with other kinds of sources - they are not all the same and there is a lot “code” you can read into a type of source.
Those “familiar with” are also getting information indirectly which can be misinterpreted. Also those “familiar with” can be putting out misinformation intended to further pressure events to occur.
Or those “familiar with” can be leaking at the direction of those who know, as part of the process. (“Mom got out of the house.”)
That article should probably be stickied on this forum. A lot of people claim that “anonymous sources” are worthless, but a journalist who writes that Senator Joe Blow has privately urged Biden to drop out is going to lose their job if Senator Blow outright denies having said that. (Assuming the journalist works for a reputable paper, of course; “anonymous sources” quoted on clickbait websites shouldn’t be taken seriously)
When anonymous sources said recently that Chuck Schumer urged Biden to drop out, for instance, Schumer was asked to comment and called the reports “idle speculation”. He didn’t say they were wrong. Likewise, Obama hasn’t yet gotten back to any of the reporters asking him whether reports of his urging Biden to leave were true or not. He’s got a busy schedule, I guess. There really is kind of an art to interpreting these things, but it’s absolutely not true that all anonymously cited quotes should be ignored.
(The difference between “sources familiar with Comey’s thinking” and “sources familiar with the investigation” is that the former is both more verifiable and more risky for the news outlet. You can contact Comey to check his thinking, and he can call the Times to say if his thinking has been described incorrectly. “Sources familiar with the investigation,” on the other hand, does not put anyone on the spot, and investigators rarely go on the record during an investigation — even to say that published accounts are wrong.)
Familiar with “discussions” is not the same as familiar with Biden’s thinking. But it’s also not blindly throwing darts in how sourcing is phrased. I believe the family is discussing this based on: the phrasing, it’s a pretty tight family, that it’s NBC reporting, and the totality of other reporting (it’s not out of the blue).
With all that said, that article is my bible for checking the quality of sources.
It’s certainly possible that the source is misleading the reporter, but if the Washington Post published it, I feel we can be >99% certain that the source is someone who really does have access to Biden’s inner circle.
The Democrats should go even further and select a new candidate by some other tested method. Some sort of portent like an eclipse or maybe a strange woman lying in a pond distributing swords.
