And then it ceased being a fact on Friday when he clearly demonstrated that the debate was a one-off, but that doesn’t fit the narrative that the pundit class has decided makes for good ratings.
He had a teleprompter and can read. We all saw the debate when he was left to his own thoughts. This thread is filled with his supporters who saw it. He is probably the only person who can get Trump elected.
Hello, excluded middle!
There’s a whole lot of ground between “not mentally fit to be President” and Biden’s performance at the debate. He clearly less stamina than I would like, and I think he should have stuck to a one-term presidency by choice, but to conclude from a lackluster (okay, terrible) performance that he’s “not mentally fit” is rather a huge leap.
Not, perhaps, mentally fit for a high-stakes televised debate late in the day, sure, which ideally would be no problem for a president, but while it’s in the negative column, overall I’ve seen nothing to suggest that Biden is mentally unfit. Mentally at the point where he probably shouldn’t sign up for another four years of this, sure, but he has, without serious pushback, so here we are.
Man, if you can’t see the difference between reading a teleprompter and speaking off-the-cuff without a teleprompter, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re in deep denial.
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Anyone who’s ever cared for someone with dementia knows that patients have good days and bad days. Over time, the bad days outnumber the good days until there are no more good days left. One thing is undeniable, however. A candidate with a healthy mind doesn’t say this in response to a question about abortion:
"The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided, supported Roe. And I was – that’s – this idea that they were all against it is just ridiculous.
And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We’re in a state where in six weeks you don’t even know whether you’re pregnant or not, but you cannot see a doctor, have your – and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help.
The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying, we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, let each state have a different rule.
Look, there’s so many young women who have been – including a young woman who just was murdered and he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by – by – by an immigrant coming in and (inaudible) talk about that.
But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their – by their in-laws, by their – by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by – just – it’s just – it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they try to arrest them when they cross state lines."
I’m glad Biden had a good day on Friday. I hope he has many, many more good days ahead of him. But at this point, insisting that he’s still got all his marbles isn’t so much whistling past the graveyard as it is leading a brass band past it playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag”.
I’m not sure that there is. It’s not too much to expect the leader of the free world to be at the top of his game, mentally speaking. I’m not a doctor. I’m in no position to diagnose Biden as having Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia or whatever. But I don’t feel I need any special expertise to say with confidence that a person who could give a performance like Biden’s on Thursday doesn’t have what it takes to do the most stressful job in the world.
To be clear, I’d vote for Biden if he was on life support if it was the only way to keep Trump out of office. However, my strong preference is for Biden to step aside and let Kamala Harris run in his stead. It’s not unrealistic. She’s his VP. If he’d passed away she’d already be running. I don’t know if she’d be able to beat Trump, but I think she has a far better chance than Biden does.
“Deep denial” of what? Nobody’s denying he had a bad debate. To take that one example and conclude “That’s how he’s always going to be from now on and he’ll never be able to think or act coherently again” is just plain silly.
Oh, so now we’re diagnosing him with dementia because he addressed two topics in one paragraph?
But it’s reckless and irresponsible to theorize that he might have a cold. Got it.
Meh, I don’t see that as an answer. I asked you for names and “anonymous sources” don’t cut it for me. When the leader of the House Democrats, the Senate Majority leader, pretty much every Democratic Governor, Senator and member of the House as well as the two most recent Democratic Presidents PUBLICLY say Biden should stay in the race then I will assume he has the support of most of the party.
Panicked meetings and calls with the DNC are par for the course in this type of situation. I expect all of this will blow over in the next few days for everyone other than the MAGAts.
And as for the anonymous sources, I say I will give more weight to a member of Congress than I would to some D in some state legislature. The NBC story simply says “Democratic lawmaker” so it could be either. Or even a Democrat on the Coralville, Iowa City Council for all we know.
Furthermore, Andrew Yang left the Democratic Party in 2021 and is now the head of the Forward Party, whatever that is supposed to be. Plus, he’s never held elective office so I take what he has to say with a grain of salt.
I think your being far too charitable to Biden here. Biden didn’t ‘address two topics in one paragraph’. He started talking about abortion (albeit in a rambling and disjointed fashion), but then he forgot what he was supposed to be talking about and lurched into a complete non-sequitur about immigration before finally devolving into what can only be described as utter nonsense.
It’s not a great leap to say that this is evidence of worrying cognitive decline. Maybe it was exacerbated a cold, but I’m skeptical. I come from a long-lived family. All my grandparents were in their late nineties when they died. They caught colds frequently, as old people with weak immune systems are wont to do. Never, not once ever, did a cold reduce any of them to such incoherence.
“Utter nonsense” is what you make of that? He was talking about how women are raped or abused by their partners, wind up pregnant, and now red states want to punish them for crossing state lines to seek an abortion. It’s a real problem and to dismiss it as “utter nonsense” is downright offensive.
And I’ve had colds that did and I’m half Biden’s age.
And again, stop with making this personal.
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Is this the teleprompter use that requires him to memorize responses to parrot, or the teleprompter use that doesn’t require him to think at all? Because you’ve posited both in this thread.
I’ll edit that line out of my post. The rest of it still stands - “I’ve never had a cold like that” is not an argument that nobody gets colds like that, and it’s a lot likelier that his cold contributed to his poor performance than that he’s not mentally sound.
POTUS needs to be clear headed and able to communicate and make critical decisions even when suffering from a minor illness. Sometimes time is of the essence in the worst way imaginable. Catch Joe on a bad day and the outcome of a crisis could be much worse than necessary.
What thinking is involved reading a teleprompter? Are you seriously trying to say that this isn’t substantially easier than memorizing the speech? It takes a massive load off of his presentation. It frees him up a considerable amount of his time and effort. No questions to answer, no numbers to come up with. The speech is 90 % of his rally and all he has to do is read it.
And of the two people who have any chance in hell of being president next year, Biden is the one I trust to do that. One bad debate night vs. nine years of whatever the hell Trump’s problem is is proof of that.
exactly.
meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine someone more unfit in every way than trump.