Biden has always struck me as gullible and unintelligent but it seems to be getting worse.
I really hope if he wins and the democrats win the senate that the democrats lick a very good vice president, senate majority leader, chief of staff and other important positions to kind of keep Biden in check.
The gop are going to take full advantage of how naive and desperate for consensus Biden is to constantly get him to move to the right, delay or water down his legislation and his nominations.
I’m sure that if Biden picks a female VP candidate, he’ll find a way to lick her, or fondle her arm, or sniff her hair…
Haven’t people dug up multiple videos of Trump being interviewed twenty or more years ago where he’s noticeably more coherent and articulate than he is now? Which is particularly telling when he’s more coherent answering questions then (when you have to listen to someone else’s question, process it, and formulate an answer) than in speeches and rallies now (when you get to control exactly what you say).
I think you’d have to be wearing a MAGA hat to think Trump hasn’t declined significantly. :dubious:
Nate Silver’s new projections: Who Will Win The 2020 Democratic Primary? | FiveThirtyEight
Chance of majority:
Biden 88%
No Majority 10%
Sanders 2%
Wow. What a turnaround.
Trump has gone downhill far more than Biden. Biden just seems to be having issues with emotional regulation, keeping a train of thought and things like that.
Trump is much worse. His meet the press interview from the year 2000 may have been a different person.
You are both talking about 20 years ago. Of course a 54 year old man will look more spry and articulate than a 74 year old man. That’s not saying anything at all.
I’m perfectly qualified to form my own opinion, actually. As are you.
So is your piont that, in a thread about whether or not Joseph Biden has early onset dementia, nobody should post?
Sorry, no. I have an opinion. Deal.
Yes, actually. Nobody should post about it. It’s idiotic to think anyone, let alone complete laymen, have any right to an opinion on this.
I wonder if it’s more that his brain has turned into a waffle from a combination of age and force of habit. Imagine just always having to say nothing much about doing hideous evil while seeming folksy. You would just start to vacate your own stream of consciousness and let the words flow.
Without personal conviction other than trotting out what works to be a party leader, you end up with what seems like a badly programmed neural network because that’s what it is.
I agree with this. I find Trump to be a completely odious, loathsome individual, but I have to concede that he is good at talking. Most of the people who bash his inarticulate speaking style are missing the point. He IS inarticulate, but he has good verbal timing. Maybe he uses Teleprompters much of the time, but even when he doesn’t, he has very good command of dynamics (i.e. varying his volume for maximum delivery and building up to crescendos), timing (when to allow pauses for his words to sink in), doing call-and-response things with the audience - whether or not he is consciously thinking about any of this, he’s good at delivering speeches.
It’s a big part of why he won - not just the election but the primary as well.
I’d stick with what I originally said
“Then, people will mainly interpret the relative mental acuity of Biden and Trump through the lens of their politics. Millions nationwide besides I assume a majority here would agree ‘Trump has the most obvious decline’. Millions of others nationwide would not agree.”
Which I think is demonstrated by the posts back and forth since saying ‘oh no Trump hasn’t declined more’ v ‘oh yes he has’ rather than refuted by either side. It’s mainly a matter of your politics which of those you believe.
The key in the election is people who don’t have strong convictions, though as importantly people who’ll almost 100% vote for Trump if they show up and those who will almost 100% vote for Biden if they show up. Which of those groups, not people typical of this forum or some right wing forum somewhere, are given pause about showing up by the apparent cognitive decline of Trump or Biden, I think that’s really tricky for partisans to judge. It’s the kind of thing where it’s really hard to put your own biases aside.
Again though Trump will cruise through the campaign comfortable in the WH and riffing in front of big very friendly crowds (cruise to a loss quite possibly, but still I think he will cruise along fairly relaxed). Biden will have to slog it out more without any real base of people who like him all that much, as opposed to being determined to get rid of Trump. Higher stress environment for Biden I think day to day over a still long campaign. OTOH most of the media will tend to be somewhat more friendly to Biden than Trump once it’s straight up one on one, will be reluctant to push a ‘Biden’s lost it’ narrative at that stage unless it’s really obvious. Though on the third hand in the media horse race coverage of the primaries up to now Biden cognitive decline yes/no has been a common topic whereas Trump cognitive decline is more of a left echo chamber topic.
Again though depends a lot which or either of them gives a lot of new reasons for voters to worry about this issue. I don’t think they’ll do it to each other though, I guess neither will come across much sharper than the other in head to head debate, again expect insofar as people who will already have decided who ‘wiped up the floor’ with whom before the debate starts.
Sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense. We’re being asked to vote for a candidate in a spectacularly important election, perhaps the most important in some of our lives.
But we don’t have a right to consider a candidate’s fitness for the job?
Seriously, that’s nonsense.
And, furthermore, I didn’t “diagnose” Biden. I said that, based on my experience with men of his age with dementia, I see some similarities, and that concerns me.
Not really, I know people in their 70s who are still sharp. With trump it’s a huge difference.
Yeah let’s all just pretend everything is fine.
After all trump bribed a doctor to say he was fine and would live to be 200, so let’s all ignore these very serious issues that relate to our reputation and national security.
Plenty of people are mentally quite fit in their 70s, 80s, even 90s (although it’s pretty rare at that point).
The legendary federal judge Jack Weinstein just retired, at 98. Nobody ever said he was showing signs of dementia.
He acts like Mussolini, and it seems to be a self conscious choice. That’s his virtue signalling and it works. His words actually don’t even make sense. His dynamics and timing are from his pathological narcissism.
Is this what you are talking about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQUaQo2j42Y
In that video I see Donald Trump twenty years younger. If you played the audio from that, I would bet anything that nobody here could tell if it was Trump 2020 or Trump 1999. Same arrogance, same brashness, same deflection of questions, same everything.
Could you point out something to me that Trump exhibits in the video that he no longer does which would support your assertion that he is losing it?
Biden has always been a blowhard and a gaffe generator (Jon Stewart dubbed him “Gabby McGillicuddy”), and I think he’s become only more so with passing years. Several times recently he’s blanked on Obama’s name during his town halls and Q&As, which is worrisome. That said, I’ll vote for him in a heartbeat over Il Douche.
Isn’t Biden too old to have early onset dementia?
Minor mental flaws appear with age. My grandmother used to annoy us kids by mixing up our names, but I’ve started to do the same. Do I have dementia? I test myself at on-line math puzzles and still manage to get on the winner’s board. And I hereby challenge any Doper to a Backgammon match!
As others say, Jill or Barack would probably have done an intervention if Joe were severely flawed.
Or even four years ago! 
Easily. It’s quite sad; the 8-year Red/Blue cycle worked in the Reds favor in 2016 but Trump should have been very easy to defeat — and he would have gone down until Comey went berserk. Now the 8-year cycle works in Trump’s favor. Biden-2020 is no Obama … he’s not even a Biden-2016.
Again: Every informed person who doesn’t hate America will vote for Biden over Trump. But that’s not who will swing the election. Biden needs to appeal to the bigots of Flyover Land. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
We’ll need some cites for this. Start with the Trump speech in #45. Tell us what you think of it and/or point to speech by a younger Trump that was just as deranged.