He just flew in from across the Atlantic and his internal clock was five hours behind. Probably didn’t get much sleep on the way either.
middle seat?
he does move more stiffly. they may have to start the white house day with tai chi.
And a howling baby in the row behind him.
Yes, I watched the State of the Union, and if that’s the Biden that debates, he’ll be fine. Perhaps Smapti is right, it’s just the travel that tired him out.
That was my thought as well.
I wish we had an age-50 or even age-70 Biden right now.
I’m very thankful we don’t have an age-50 or even age-70 Trump right now.
I for one don’t care* if Biden dies or resigns during his next term. President Harris will be great. We just need to get through this election…
*I do care; I just don’t fear a president Harris–at all. I celebrate the notion.
I know I’m supposed to be a cheerleader but I think your worries are valid. I don’t see much of an upside to the debate and a lot of downside. The only thing worse would be to refuse to debate at all.
What happens in the debate won’t convince a single MAGAt. But what I hope for (assuming the debate comes off–which I doubt) is that it convinces people like David Brooks that yes, Biden is old and certainly has lost a step or two, but he is still playing with a full deck. The independents and non-Trump Republicans are who he is after. And I expect him to convince them.
Precisely.
One way or another, Biden is going to debate an empty suit.
He is 77.
Joe Biden has spinal arthritis and probably wearing a bullet proof vest during the ceremony. Anyone would be moving stiffly.
Yep, and he was a lot sharper seven years ago.
Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch believes that Trump is going to run from the debates. Here’s a new video from him on the topic.
Aeschines: That last post was more persuasive than your first post. Your first post said that Trump lacks incentive to debate: aka it’s in his interest to dodge the debate. Then you went on to declare 100% confidence. But incentives are debateable while candidates trend delusional. So that sort of confidence is overstated.
That’s quite a vid though. Apparently Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s staunchest water carriers, is bleating that Trump should bow out of the debates because Biden might be on performance enhancing drugs. That sort of inanity has all the markings of advanced prep-work. Whatever the probabilities were for Trump’s skipping the debate when the OP was dropped, they have now increased.
Interestingly, Meiselas notes that Trumpworld started laying the groundwork immediately after Biden called for a debate. RNC head Lara Trump jawjawed about how everything was rigged. But then again, they always say things like that, so at the time it was just background noise.
Notwithstanding the above, props for making a prediction that seems to be bearing out. Solid work.
Well, nothing is 100%, but I was and am pretty confident. I also think the incentives I delineated are correct and remain the same. The stuff that Ben cites is additional data in favor of the position.
Ben does state an additional incentive or way of looking at the incentives as they probably appear to Trump. I’m going to paraphrase, but basically Trump has become completely dependent on communicating via his rallies and right wing media, and the debate takes him out of that comfort zone (this is a different take on the “situation he can control” argument, but I think it has added value to it). I also think that even Hannity is getting a bit worried at this point (worried about whether Trump will win, and worried about whether he should win… But he’ll toe the line in the end…).
Although Trump is clearly a malignant narcissist = severely mentally ill and going through rapidly accelerating cognitive decline, I’m not sure about how deluded he is per se about his prospects in the election as a whole or in any individual element of competing for the win. Trump’s presentation of himself in everything he does can certainly be taken to imply that he is nuts in each individual thing, but I don’t know. I think, rather, that he’s one of the greatest self-promoters in world history and tends to have strong instincts about what works and what doesn’t. That’s why the argument that Trump loves his teevee time so much that he’ll grab it no matter what doesn’t work for me. He’s cannier than that, IMO.
Yes, I could have done a better job of pointing it out. I wouldn’t call it background noise, but it was unclear whether they were laying the groundwork for a definite pullout or were simply helping him establish the option of pulling out. Now it seems clear that the latter is the case.
Thank you!
I’m going to beat the horse a little.
This was a good prediction, whatever the outcome on June 27. Still, we should strive for best practice. Here the lesson is, “Try to think about the full range of evidence: don’t get stuck on one category of evidence. Specifically, try to think about whether there’s some observable or empirical evidence to consider.” There was subtle but observable backpeddling by Trumpworld after Biden made his challenge. Meiselas lays it out showing clips of Donald Trump’s and Lara Trump’s statements. We might have figured that out upthread (not me though).
Combine incentive with observation and you get a compelling case. Not necessarily 100%, but it checks the boxes.
I agree with your characterization of Trump: he has a certain animal cunning and even talent for seeing what plays well and what doesn’t. So it was worth it to break that down into several points in the OP.
I’ll lay down another marker. The evidence to this date suggests that Trump won’t ever debate Biden, but this is still way outside my priors and outside conventional wisdom, things that Trump has routinely upended since 2016. So again: interesting thread.
When was the last time there was no presidential debate in the general?
Hey yo. I think your points are fair and I accept them as constructive criticism. Thank you!
Presidential debates have not always been routine: that habit only started during the 1970s, well after the Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960. The last Presidential election without a debate was in 1972. Wiki:
Many observers think they are over-rated, given the hand-picked questioners’ tendency to showboat. James Fallows: