I can confirm that it indeed can. When I get a cold, I get spacey. Like really airheaded. And cold meds make the effect worse. Before I retired, my staff (one person in particular) found it amusing. Said it evened the playing field.
I mean, I can have trouble forming sentences, finding words. Combine that with having trouble breathing. I can be a mess. And I’m talking about a bad cold, not the flu. And I don’t stutter.
I don’t know why colds impact me that way. They don’t my wife. Maybe you’re like my wife and that’s why it seems so implausible to you. And I get that nobody cares how colds kick me in the ass. But this is an instance where an anecdote can win an argument that collapses with a single counter-example. Yes, colds can affect performance that much. He should have postponed the debate.
OK, colds affect you very badly. This isn’t the first time Joe has had trouble forming sentences, and had rambling incoherent points. I think you’re fooling yourself if you think that debate performance was strictly from a cold.
Look, I’m going to keep supporting him. And I started this thread because I wanted to point out that the substance of what Trump was saying should be enough to sink Trump, even in the face of Biden’s stammering delivery. I hope I’m right.
I do think his age is a factor. IMO, Joe has the normal age-related impact on his cognition, which is not dementia. I’ve seen the change since he was inaugurated. Combine that with his stutter, and a shitty cold could make him look as he did.
But I believe his mind is still sound, and that it was an awful idea to go ahead with the debate when his head was in a fog and he struggled to breathe. He might have soldiered through it in his forties, but not now.
(1) I don’t know why I have to point out the obvious, but it wasn’t just about the game of golf. It was about the “who’s old?” issue. Biden is more physically active than Trump (has Trump ever rode a bicycle as an adult?), and Trump’s frequent golfing is no sign of vibrancy because he always uses a cart. Biden called him out on his false vigor.
(2) It was one of the few times, if not the only time, Biden got Trump’s goat.
One of the critiques in the debate-watching thread is that Biden and his team weren’t ready for Trump but should’ve known his typical behavior.
But except for spewing a parade of lies and false superlatives, the debate wasn’t Trump’s typical behavior. He’s infamously thin-skinned and usually lashes out at any perceived insult. His prep team somehow convinced him to channel his lashing-out energy into making his talking points and answering one of the questions even if not the most recent one.
While Biden clearly tried to get under Trump’s skin more than once – he didn’t point out the convicted felon thing just for fun – Trump rose to the bait on the golf thing.
Yes, he’s always been a gaffe-machine. But go back and watch the VP debate from 2012. The change in him from then to now is astounding. He used to make coherent and articulate arguments on the fly. He’s no longer able to do that.
I don’t think he has dementia, btw. I think he’s aging and losing his verbal abilities, but he’s still lucid. He’s in the here and now, and understands policy, etc. But he’s unable to communicate it on the fly…
They had to change how Biden gets on Air Force One. I’m not going to take any bets on who is physically better. Trump is fat and out of shape. Biden shuffles like an extra on The Walking Dead. This is not a contest that anyone would win.
The debate was a bad idea, period. Team Biden wanted this debate. They wanted it this early. They wanted these rules. They got everything they asked for, and then Biden face-planted in this debate. Whether it was a cold or something else, his performance was awful, and people need to admit that.
And I know Trump did nothing but spews lies in the debate. That might be our only saving grace here, if enough undecideds realize how much Trump lied the other night.
He served up a thousand soft-balls that the 2012 version of Biden would have swatted out of the park. But we’re in 2024. This version of Joe is greatly diminished compared to 2012, or even 2016…and even diminished from 2020.
I suspect that a year from now he’ll be an even poorer debater, and a cold will impact him even more. But his mind will still be sound, he’ll continue to make good decisions, and he’ll get things done.
It is a fantasy that some have that replacing Joe saves the day. It hands Trump victory. Whatever damage the debate did, we need to fix it.
I would go with whichever guy tried to buy Greenland the least during his tenure as President. You have two options, the head of a party that is capable of governing or the head of a party that is not.
I don’t mean this as a personal attack/criticism in the least, but this “I would this” “I would that” attitude encapsulates what’s wrong with much of the Biden camp, namely, the projection that because “I” (a Biden supporter, probably someone more progressive than the average American voter) would support Biden no matter what, it therefore means that the average American voter will as well.
Just because you may feel that way doesn’t mean the electorate at large does. We don’t need polls of what Dopers would do if the choice were a halting, hoarse, confused, slow, befuddled Biden vs. Trump - we all know the choice here on this board would be like 99% to 1%. But the average American voter may be swayed. The fact that we aren’t swayed doesn’t mean they won’t be.
OK, but how do you fix it? I think the way to fix it is to show that the debate was a “one-off”, a situation where he felt sick and it impacted his ability to think and communicate. There are reports that it was not a one-off, but part of a pattern that’s been occurring over the last year or so.
