Speaking of the speech, I implore everyone reading these words to listen to it in light of the constant, and baseless, complaints that Biden is in some sort of cognizant decline. And then compare it to Trump blathering that magnets lose their force if wet, or, well, whatever the hell was going on here:
Or, hell, here’s a compilation:
Yeah, it’s pretty easy to see who is in cognitive decline, and it sure the fuck isn’t Joe Biden.
Yeah, if Covid had occurred during H. Clintons presidency, she would have let the experts handle it, and just made a few public service announcements.
Biden’s cabinet and veep are very competent. Even if Joe got ill or something, the government would continue to function smoothly.
Yep.
I’ll second that.
Can it be called a decline if Trump has been this moronic for decades?
I normally read and not listen. But I did listen several times to make sure Biden said “Trump was a loser” and not the more acceptable “Trump was the loser.”
That is indeed my opinion. Apologies if I gave the impression of having seen a poll.
The number of swing voters, shown in polls, seems to vary widely.
I didn’t mean to imply that all swing voters swing between political parties. Some swing between voting and not voting.
There’s not much polling data here, but this fourteen month old article still sounds about right to me:
Swing Voters Are Angry, Alienated, and Very Powerful
Voters who swing between the Greens and the Democrats probably liked Biden accusing Trump of using Nazi rhetoric. I don’t think there are a lot of them, but I admit to lack of hard data there.
Moderating:
The discussion about Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his illness is not particularly relevant to the subject of this thread. However, I recognize the topic arose organically. For those participating, if you wish to carry on the discussion, please start a new thread and I will move posts for those who wish it. But drop the discussion here, please.
Thanks, @flurb. Posts moved.
Remember how, just over a month ago, we were being fed story after story, poll after poll, of how Trump was leading in the polls?
Wonder why those stories stopped?
Clearly Deep State misinformation. DERP STATE!!!1!!!?
THE AGE COHORT WHICH IS LEAST LIKELY TO VOTE IS MAD AT BIDEN BECAUSE THEY THINK HE CAN ISSUE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER AND GET ISRAEL TO STOP FIGHTING THE PALESTINIANS, meanwhile…
Link goes to video. In short, the reasons given:
That line didn’t cut it? It’s got Very Stable Genius all over it!
I’m sure it’s just to keep in the news, but Joe Manchin is still teasing a third-party run by somebody. Oh goody! Do we think he’d draw more from Dems or Republicans if he does run? Probably Dems, just thanks to the long association with the party.
I’m not worried. My feelings on Manchin:
Fourteen House Democrats joined Republicans to pass a resolution that “denounces the Biden administration’s open-borders policies” and “condemns the national security and public safety crisis” it says results from them.
Yes, Biden sure is having a hard time cleaning up the mess the previous administration left him there. Weren’t they supposed to have fixed this problem by building a wall or something? And wasn’t it going to be paid for by Mexico? Too bad they never got around to it, it makes it look like they intentionally failed to solve the problem just so they could make him look bad.
The nice part about extremist lunacy is that whatever the problem is, and no matter how many decades long-standing it is, or who touched it last, they can always shout that the real problem is that “Not enough extremism has been applied; only extremism is the solution. This can be fixed if only we’re willing to shed enough blood and treasure.”
In a sense they are right. Gordian knots and wicked problems are by definition insoluble except by the sword. Which of course will produce more and worse problems, but at least different worse problems. The difficulty is the number of extremists who’d prefer those more and different worse problems, or who think they do until they learn what it really entails.
This says something big about Biden’s position.
My first thought was the fourteen Democrats come from districts that voted for Trump in 2020.
Checking, there only are five Democrats from such districts, and all five voted for the resolution. That leaves nine who apparently think their district is swinging from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024.
Meanwhile, none of the fourteen Republican house members, from districts that went for Biden, opposed the resolution. It is mostly too late for them to be primaried, so that probably isn’t the main reason they voted Yea. They are afraid of the general election electorate.
So, judging by behavior, many professional politicians think Biden is. at least on immigration, politically toxic.
I’m leaving out the possibility of a Democrat, or a politician from a Democratic district, actually agreeing with the resolution, but it is so ugly I doubt that. It’s especially implausible that any of the fourteen Democratic yea votes feel good about their vote. No profiles in courage here.
One of the Democratic “yeas” was Colin Allred, who’s running to challenge Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race this fall. He clearly sees the Administration’s border policies as a liability in a statewide campaign.
I don’t think it’s much of a secret that the border is a political vulnerability for Biden. He certainly sees it – he’s apparently been directly involved in the negotiations on a Ukraine aid/border enforcement deal and progressively giving ground on what he’ll accept vis-a-vis the border. And we can gripe all we want about how this is manufactured Republican outrage and that it was just as bad under Trump, but Presidents get blamed for problems on their watch. Herbert Hoover wasn’t responsible for the stock market crash and onset of the Depression, but he was held accountable when his policies didn’t improve things.
If a conservative Republican President who was a former freakin’ Governor of Texas couldn’t secure the border in eight years, it can’t be done.