I misspelled consciousness, but I think that if I go back to edit the post, the link gets fucked up.
And I probably got the phrase wrong, anyway.
Oh well, it’s a good thing I’m not starring in a debate!
I think the people we’re worried about are those who weren’t solid Democrat or Republican, but those voters who might but also might not vote Democrat. My fear, at least, is that a poor or uncharismatic D candidate will let the people who normally vote R mindlessly do so (not considering or not caring about the merits of the R candidate) or stay home.
For all that the polls or media narrative might be inaccurate, I don’t think anybody thinks that Biden can walk to victory here. It’s his election to lose, but as we saw with Clinton, that can be done. 2016 Hillary Clinton was a much stronger candidate than 2024 Biden (though I personally liked her less); neither was as strong as 2020 Biden.
And then we get fascism
Biden will not drop out.
thanks for posting that, @bobot
After sitting on this for a day, here is my opinion:
Biden is looking more frail to me recently and he moves stiffly but mentally he hasn’t been that bad. The second the debate started I noticed his raspy voice and cough and thought he looked sick. The head drooping and barely keeping his eyes open seemed to me like somebody who was sick and may also have been on cold medications.
That said, he started talking at a gallup. I wanted him to slow down and breath. Many times neither candidate used their entire allotted 2 minutes. He was trying too hard to get everything in and get all his statistics out and I think that this was poor debate prep. The audience wasn’t looking for statistics and Trump wasn’t going to give accurate numbers anyway.
The audience just wanted to see that he wasn’t confused or feeble. If I were coaching him i would have advised him that although there was no audience in the room, the audience was behind the camera. He should have ignored Trump, barely acknowledged him and spoken to the camera. He should have been Uncle Joe (ie FDR at a fireside chat). He should have spoken to the American people saying “Here’s the truth. Inflation is stil too high and prices are too high but they are getting better. We had the lowest unemplyment in decades, better than at any time in this other guy’s presidncy. The stock market is at an all-time high, higher than at any time in this other guy’s presidency… He promised he would let Medicare negotiate drug prices but he didn’t do it. We did and we also put a yearly cap on drug proces for every senior. He said he would fix infrastructure but he never got around to it. We are the ones who did it. He said illegal immigration was a problem but did nothing to fix it except building a few miles of wall that are not working. We came up with the greatest bipartisan immigration bill ever but he told the Republicans to block it so he could use the issue to campaign with. If he really cared about immigration reform he would have supported the bill.But he doesn’t care about immigration. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about getting elected and the power it will bring him. I care about getting things done that will help your lives be a little bit better.”
After seeing him at the afterparty and his speech today I think he could have pulled this off. Also after seeing him I’m still out on the ledge but I’m no longer actively stepping off it.Once I sat and breathed I reassured myself the way I did after Trump was elected in 2016. At that time, I told myself that he just wanted to be President but didn’t actually want to govern and he would surround himself with good people who could actually do the work while he got his ego stroked. Unfortunately, I underestimated his narcissism and the fact that he is too stupid to know who is capable and judges employees based on looks and loyalty rather that actual competence. However, Biden knows competence and he will surround himself with competent people who can do the job even if he can’t. People like him. They want to see him succeed. For all the mumbling about a change in the candidate, the party has his back
Also kudos to the team for how they are handling this mess. No excuses, just an admission that maybe he’s not really that good of a debator and getting worse and then a pivot into even if I screwed up badly, I’m still better than the other guy and I’m just the same old gaffe-machine I always was but I get things done.
I said this up-thread. Biden cut her off at the knees when he made her the"Border Czar". They have a large body of politicians to chose from and I don’t think she will be at the top of the list.
I don’t find it confusing at all that you simultaneously think using a teleprompter means “Nothing to memorize” (your exact words) and “memorising a few zingers” dependent on what you’re responding to, given that all your answers in this thread are designed to convey the impression that Biden has no real agency. We are informed that…
…with the intent to portray him as someone with no idea what is going on and who has to be manhandled through his day. He can’t possibly just have gone to speak to someone doing something interesting; he “wandered off”. And he can’t have just been called back to the photo op while having that conversation; he had to be “directed back”. Wearing sunglasses and clapping slightly late are suddenly clear signs of mental frailty and not just things that perfectly normal people do.
And he can’t have felt ill on the night of the debate and better in the morning; no, the only options are “miracle cure” or “teleprompter requiring no mental engagement at all (with some or no memorization involved)”. Etc etc.
Yes, he’s “slowed down”. But that’s not the argument you’re trying to make, is it? Biden “stayed on point” at the debate considerably more than Trump whose answers rambled through multiple unrelated topics. And I’ve already addressed your “example” about the photo op more than once.
The narrative that Biden is a mere mindless puppet with “handlers” is one the right-wing have been pushing all along (not even getting into the lunatic fringe who think he’s been replaced by an actor). Again, it is a narrative specifically designed to suggest that Biden has no agency and is fundamentally incapable of not just doing the job he’s actually mostly done quite competently, but also of basic functions like walking and thinking independently. No, it must be the case that someone else is always telling him what to say, what to do, and where to go.
We also saw this approach under Obama, who is actually a formidable public speaker and yet who was constantly dismissed by the same right-wind media and its audiences as being unable to speak without a teleprompter (despite multiple instances of him doing so quite well).
So perhaps if you don’t want to be accused of pushing right-wing narratives unsupported by reality, you should stop pushing right-wing narratives unsupported by reality.
And I hope you appreciate the irony of your accusations of Biden only parroting things he’s been told.
Actually what I’m saying is he can’t parrot what he’s been told. That was the whole problem he had with the debate. As President he should be able to talk about what he’s done in office just as anybody should be able to talk about their job. It’s not like it was hard to guess what the questions were likely to be. It was painful to watch.
I watched quite a few programs on PBS that discussed the debate and the rally that followed. The first thing mentioned on every one of them was the use of teleprompters at the rally. It’s not rocket science to understand it’s a lot easier to read a speech than it is to answer questions in a debate without talking points at hand.
If Biden stayed on point it wouldn’t be an issue drawing so many criticisms from his supporters in this thread and Democratic politicians.
Yes, he slowed down.
“Slowed down” barely begins to describe the situation. Biden was quite inadequate to the task. He mumbled a lot, lost his train of thought more than once and couldn’t keep up with the lies of his opponent.
He should stand back and let someone else take the lead. But the people around him want to keep their positions close to the center of power. They are insulating him from reality. We are doomed.
What do you suppose he will be like in a year or two?
thank you - I really appreciate you pointing out what he’s doing so I can relax and ignore him.
I have said nothing different than what his own party has said including people in this thread. Are these people pushing right wing narratives unsupported by reality? Should they be ignored? Should Democrat politicians asking for him to step down be run out of office?
If I was pushing a right wing agenda my position would be to rally around Biden and ensure he runs again.
To repeat from elsewhere: Not to toot my own horn, but I suggest anyone interested in this topic post in my other thread. I think a lot of people are talking past each other, and it’d help more than having an ongoing discussion that’s like, “Biden is still our best option to defeat Trump by some unspecified amount! Anyone else hurts that by some unspecified amount!” vs “Biden is going to lose by some unspecified amount at this rate! Someone else would have a better shot by some unspecified amount!”
At the least, it would add context to people’s emotions and preferred course of action.
Sure, just like if Roger Ailes really wanted to swing this country hard right (and destroy real Democracy) he would just keep calling his network GOP TV.
But changing the name to “Fox News” is part of pretending it’s really, actually journalism.
Just like your posts are all pretend reasonable.
But my real reply to you is in the thread pitting you. I had no doubt there was one.
What, specifically, is Magiver saying that the New York Times hasn’t said? As far as I can tell, his position is the same as the position of the Times’ editorial board. It’s not a “right wing narrative” anymore.
This is totally false. Name 1 Democratic officeholder who has called for Biden to step aside. All I see are anonymous sources and pundits like Carville saying this.
Every Democrat who is in office has said the exact opposite of what you erroneously claim.
notice how talking nothing but Word Salad has been normalized? as well as being a Felon, yet running for president?
it’s FAR right wing no matter who says it or prints it.
which is the problem.
I don’t have cable so I don’t get Fox News. You haven’t posted an argument against what I’ve said except to infer it’s Fox News propaganda in an attempt to smear me. Again, I haven’t said anything that Democrats haven’t said. Are they Fox News right wing followers?
Saying my posts are pretend reasonable is just another way of saying you can’t formulate a response against them because they’re reasonable.
When people can’t engage in proper discourse of ideas that leaves them with name calling and hyperbole. IE, the Pit.
If that’s the case then I can only conclude that, like the proverbial stopped clock, even the far right are occasionally correct.
For years, the far right has been saying that Joe Biden wasn’t mentally fit to be President, and we all just ignored them or laughed at them. Then Joe Biden came out on stage and proved them right. Since Thursday’s debate, it ceased being a far right talking point and became a fact. It’s no more “far right” than 2+2=4.
What was he like the next morning? Oh wait - he was fine.
Nothing I said about your posts in this thread was incorrect. There are many other right-wing media sources besides FoxNews. You’ve said quite a lot that “Democrats” haven’t said.
But please proceed. It’s going great.
You answered your own question. Anonymous sources. So unless NBC and other news agencies are lying then you either accept they have real sources or not.
But if you need a name Andrew Yang did say he should step down and he ran against Biden in the Primary. He indorced Biden when he bowed out.
The DNC isn’t even entertaining discussions:
From AP regarding a DNC committee call: Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.
From ABC regarding the same meeting: Instead, the people said, Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward. The chat function was disabled and there were no questions allowed.
“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see," said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call. “There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.”
What is being discussed on all the major news outlets is the process of how replacing him could be done. Why are they discussing the replacement process if it’s not seriously being discussed in backrooms?
The Washington Post: How Biden could be replaced as his party’s nominee, in 4 scenarios
Reuters: How Democrats could replace Biden as presidential candidate before November
Time: Can Joe Biden Be Replaced as the Nominee? Here’s How It Could Happen