I will also agree, and I would add that this was an issue also in the last election. So, nothing new with this one, acknowledging an issue like being old, is important. It is not a deal braker as many feared or wanted it to be as much as Republicans would want.
Since this is in the Pit, I can finally call this out for what this is. This is a fucking strawman. It’s a dishonest manner of arguing.
The issue is not that Biden is old, or stumbles over his words. It’s that Jon decided to frame this as Biden going senile. We all know that Biden has stutter, and that said stutter has gotten worse over time.
You are exactly the reason why this is a problem. You believe this very strongly. Jon has a responsibility to show the other side. THAT’S HIS FUCKING JOB.
Someone literally posted a doctors report showing that Biden is not in cognitive decline. He is not senile nor does he have dementia. You dismissed that with a single line.
That’s what’s dangerous about this talking point. People have a tendency to believe things they think they came up with themselves over experts. Stewart, with his platform, could have helped fix that. Instead, he played into it. He did exactly what I hated Bill Maher for doing, when he played into the San Fransisco argument. The issue was not the facts, but the framing.
You guys keep on acting like framing and facts are the same thing They aren’t. The issue is not Jon discussing the facts. It’s him framing it as the conclusion that Biden has “lost a step”–which is calling him senile. Which is a Republican framing to try and help Trump win.
Basic logic here: if you don’t want Trump to win, you don’t play into his talking points. This is like if Jon talked about the invasion at the border, instead of just discussing immigration issues.
I’m not advocating blowing smoke up their asses.
I think I address this either/or argument in post #29.
I think there’s a way to concede – not deny, ad infinitum – the valid parts of the point (not the cartoonish, histrionic RW version) without making the Republicans’ argument for them.
It’s tantamount to parrying, in fencing.
Exactly. I must’ve scrolled past your post. You get it. You get the actual issue. Yes, unfortunately we have to discuss the actual facts. But we can do that without playing into the talking points.
It’s not an either/or situation.
This is politics. Framing matters more than facts in what gets people to vote. Otherwise Trump wouldn’t have anyone voting for him.
Biden’s gaffes are legendary. That is to say, they’re like Nessie or Bigfoot: Everyone talks about them, but nobody ever seems to give examples. It’s always just “Well, everyone knows Biden has lots of gaffes”. What are they? How many? What’s the normal amount for someone whose every waking moment is recorded?
I think this is a good response to this (not directly in response but gets the idea across):
But savvy remains Stewart’s secret weapon, evident as he pivoted his easy giggles at the expense of doddering oldsters into a sturdier, more salient point about both parties’ demands for lockstep support from their base. More pressing than Biden occasionally drifting off is the Democrat leadership’s insistence that no one remark on it, the consolidation of authority taking precedence over the party’s best interests. On the way to his conclusion that a worthy politician should be able to withstand scrutiny from their side of the aisle, Stewart exercises his latitude to address elephants in the room with bracing, blunt terms. The nine months leading up to the election “are going to suck”, he warns us. “And even if your guy wins, the country is in no way saved.” He alone can verbalize the question on everyone’s minds: “What the fuck are we doing here, people?” - SOURCE
From a purely strategic perspective, Stewart disarmed the right’s inevitable accusation that he’s ‘just a shill for the administration’ on his first night.
This was especially important because lots of Republicans and independents tuned in to see his return. If he had just gone after the right and ignored the major news about the Hur report and the press conference, or tried to play it off as nothing to see, he would have lost all that audience, and then had no opportunity to win them over later.
And I can report from also reading the right, that there was a lot of, “Hey, Stewart was pretty fair” coming from them. And he was funny. They’ll keep watching, at least for now.
He bought himself a lot of running room to go after Trump while the people who need to hear it are still listening. And if he needs to go after Biden a bit when deserved to keep those people, well… his Democratic audience is never voting for Trump anyway.
TV has way too many people on both sides acting as mouthpieces for their party and preaching to the choir. No one’s talking to the other side any more. If Stewart can lower the heat while also laying more damage on Trump than the Democrat, that’s kind of a win-win except for the fringes on both sides who just want to tear things down.
Thank you for the view from the National Post. It’s horseshit, of course.
My concern is that “both candidates are very old, everyone hates them both” has become such a meme, such a bit-of-accepted-wisdom; that it’s very hard for someone even as deft as Stew-beef to try to say something vaguely similar to that, but acknowledging (as I hope he more clearly will) that Trump is a zillion times worse than Biden, without everyone just hearing “yeah, he also agrees that everyone is old”. Maybe he’s doing it strategically to gain the trust of the right, as Sam_Stone suggests, but… didn’t sound like that to me.
Leibowitz, not Lieberman.
Yeah, we’re going to disagree on that. Let’s just leave it at that. Too subjective.
Thanks. I knew I should fact-check that. Faulty memory strikes again.
Well there goes your presidential hopes.
Not really. The thing is, with the way moderating goes here (and there are some good reasons for it being that way) it makes the most sense to start many threads in the Pit because that’s the only way we can talk about things without being forced to only say Dope-Approved things. A thread with “The Pit Edition” at the end of the title is your Seal of Approval for Interesting and Comprehensive Debate.
I still think that at some point, just about any thread that includes robust discussion and a heathy back-and-forth will need to be in the Pit.
But certainly Stewart didn’t do this or even come close, right? You’re just saying legitimizing Trump is bad in general, right? I sure hope so.
I don’t think the Swedish Chef is a natural born American anyway.
Thank you.
I mostly agree but the Pit allows for complete hijacks of a thread. I am certainly guilty of hijacks but I can see the value of having a mod trying to keep things on track somewhat. That will not happen in the Pit.
The Pit has the Best Moderator on the Entire Board. Miller.
I believe Jon Stewart came back expressly to put his finger on the scale against Trump. He prolly has regreats for not having covered 2016 to the bloody end. And I really find it hard to believe that a Butthole Surfers fanboy financially set for life would come out of his hobby retirement to help Trump get elected this time around.
In order to not be viewed as a purely a propaganda puppet, and in the hopes of influencing some “undecided voters”, Jon at least needs to pretend to see the mote in Biden’s eye. And, to be frank, I think the vast majority of us would like a Biden that was a decade or two younger (and I write this as a 60+ year old).
So, in the interest of the big goal, which is to see Trump lose at the ballot box, Jon is playing the legitimacy card while shaving the dice. YMMV