Elderly people get sick, but they don’t act mentally impaired. Wasn’t the Queen even older than Biden?
There was one person on that stage acting mentally infirm, and I don’t recall Biden refusing to answer questions, veering off-topic, and rambling about migrants and dead babies when asked about the cost of childcare.
I think Jim Carrey has the time.
Great link, @Smapti
But, CNN, go jump in a lake. You’ve been going out of your way to give voice to minority Biden-doubters for months. And now - now - you decide to give this lady a few seconds? Horse-race narrative manipulation much?
Biden’s brand is to be the adult in the room. Trump’s brand is strongman. Biden sold his brand poorly. And if Trump has any sense, there will not be a next time for debate. That was it.
Nate Silver suggests that Trump was more coherent the first half, and showed his age in the second half. When I heard that on his podcast, I realize his team was correct. Remember Trump talking, late in the debate, about the “certain dog”? I could barely guess what Trump meant. But by then the damage, that is causing me to rationally panic, was done.
This is not about whether Biden would be a better second term president. It’s about whether to send Biden a message: It’s time for you to panic.
If we have a thread where there is genuine debate over who we should vote for in November, I will be pro-Biden. I like the idea of a weak president with a well-chosen cabinet. So Joe not being always on top of everything is fine with me. But without Biden buying into the current panic, and allowing the convention to pick someone else, roughly in the pre-primary manner of 1932, we will not have a Democratic president.
The brutal truth is no, he doesn’t.
If Joe Biden lasts until November, wins the election, and then dies a week later, he will have still saved the country. Kamala Harris would become President and would complete what would have been Biden’s second term. Either Biden or Harris will do a better job than Trump did or would do.
I feel Biden is still a better candidate than succumbing to panic and throwing a last minute substitute in.
Allowing the convention to pick someone else will guarantee that we will not have a Democratic president.
I swear the typical WWE audience doesn’t mark out the way people on this board have been doing the last 24 hours.
That might be what “this most perfect of documents” says but that requires a plurality of voters taking the pragmatic view “I’m voting for Joe Biden because he’ll probably invoke the 25th before Feb-25”.
Long bow.
Not necessarily. People might not be voting for Biden because of the pragmatic belief that he will die in office. Or they might be voting for him due to the self-deluding belief that he will complete his second term. (And they may be right. I can’t say that Biden will die in the next five years.)
If Biden, God forbid, were to be reelected only to keel over at 12:01 PM on 1/20/25, he will have done his job and I would not regret voting for him.
…the President of the United States posted this the other night.
Does anyone here believe him? Because it will take more than just winning the presidency to make that happen. He’s president now. They’ve got the senate. But not enough of the senate. And they don’t have the house. And they’ve lost the supreme court for a generation.
And speaking of the supreme court, last night they continued down the merry road of appalling decisions that will impact America, along with much of the rest of the world, for generations.
There are Democrat Mayors and Governors who are cracking down on specific protests, banning masks, cutting library budgets and increasing the funding of the police. The rhetoric about immigration is getting dangerously xenophobic from all sides.
This was something I’ve talked about a lot here. The slow, creeping march towards authoritarianism not just in America, but worldwide. It doesn’t matter if Biden wins the next election or not. The slide is inevitable. It will just happen much quicker under a Republican administration than not.
The “panic” we are seeing right now is partially manufactured by a media ecosystem that is driven by narrative and thrives on a good hot-take. And it will be enough to produce a shift with some voters, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. You can’t vote the media out.
And it’s partially driven by the fact that some voters are just realising that they’ve got all the eggs in one basket. They’ve been coasting along quite comfortably, ignoring all the warning signs (and I’m not just talking about Biden’s age or health) and when confronted with what many believe to be a substantial cognitive decline, panic seems to be the only appropriate thing to do.
But the appropriate time to be panicking was a couple of years ago. A lot of us were raising alarm bells back then. I’m surprisingly meh about the debate performance. It doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m beyond panicking. I believe America becoming some form of authoritarian state is inevitable, no matter who is in charge.
But it goes without saying, even if (like me) you absolutely hate Biden with the intensity of a thousand hot-white-suns, it’s more important than ever for Trump not to get elected. If America had an Obama calibre candidate waiting in the wings, I’d suggest swapping them out in a heartbeat. But there isn’t one. So Biden it is.
So the keys to him winning are the same as always. Win at the margins. The swing states. Focus on them. Actually listen to what the voters are asking for in those states and give it to them.
And the Democrats need to forge their own narrative. Protect their candidate. Consider pulling them out of the next round of debates. Play to the echo-chamber. Sure, you’ll get another round of editorials decrying the “death of democracy” and how “Biden is scared of debate.” But you’ve got to weigh that up against what might happen if Biden gives a worse performance next time.
The Democrats SHOULD be panicking. Not because of the debate: but because they thought that campaigning on “not Trump” would be enough to win the next election.
And everyone else needs to step up. They’ve got to not only win the house and the senate, but win it with enough margin to actually be able get things done. And they have to actually do something to deal with the supreme court.
Because if you don’t do that: even if Biden wins the presidency, he is never ever going to be able to keep that promise to restore Roe vs Wade if you don’t win big in the house and the senate. There is a much bigger picture here that everyone is missing. And if it take a last-minute panic to get everyones ass into gear, then so-be-it.
I believe he’ll try, and I believe the best way to help him to fulfill that promise is to vote Democratic.
Clinton and Obama would never say anything against the incumbent Democratic president in public. You have no idea what they’re saying behind closed doors. Neither do I, but for you to assume you actually know what they’re thinking, or saying behind the scenes, because of what they’re saying in public is ridiculous. Sausage isn’t made in public and politicians have to bullshit at times as a rule of politics.
I can name two members of Obama’s team who have said in the past 24 hours that there need to be discussions about Biden’s continued candidacy and that Biden might need to step aside: Van Jones and David Axelrod. Often these are the pols who are free to say things that former presidents themselves cannot. Axelrod has even said that if the Dems ran someone else, Trump might actually be serious trouble, suggesting that Biden may NOT be the best candidate this time around, and that it may NOT be too late to sub someone in.
Basically, I don’t think everything is simply as clear-cut/black-white as you continue to claim it is.
How many elections have either of them won?
There are exactly two possibilities come November; either Biden will be president-elect, or Trump will be. I do not have confidence in any other Democrat, living or dead, to be able to start a campaign from scratch four months before the election and do any better than Hubert Humphrey did half a century ago.
And frankly, I’m shocked that a hoarse voice and an unsteady gait is all it takes so get so many Democrats to immediately start falling for QOP talking points.
Sorry, but Time says to panic:
Of course Time says to panic. “Everything is fine” doesn’t sell papers. The Make-Line-Go-Up finance bros that run the media these days stand to personally profit if Biden drops out or if people think there’s a possibility of him dropping out. Surely I can’t be the only person around here who can see that. You’re being manipulated by a corporation that doesn’t care about the truth or the future of this country as long as the next quarter P&L has a bigger number on it than the last, and they’re not gonna be the ones holding the bag when things go south because of their parasitic and unsustainable pursuit of growth at all costs.
If you think my post was a genuine call to panic as opposed to pointing out the utter uselessness of corporate media… well, you’re wrong. It’s just funny to see them swing wildly from one extreme to another without ever acknowledging that they might have gotten things wrong.
Well, alright then. Carry on.
Another factor is the news cycle. The first debate was what? Thirty hours ago? “Biden is over!” is today’s headline and the media is playing it all they can.
The White House is already working on damage control. Biden has made a public speech. They’re working on retaking lost ground.
Check back in a couple of weeks.