I don't know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It's hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We've seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it's a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
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It's amazing to me that "he sounds feeble" is worse than "everything he said wasn't true."
Problem is, the lower information voters don’t know that Trump is lying, and Biden couldn’t point that out in a clear and concise way. He was soft and rambling and wasn’t campaigning competently on that stage.
He needed to make the case against Trump. Which isn’t hard.
This is exactly the issue. The bar was set so low. He was barely able to put together a coherent response to the infanticide claims, which was something even the lowest of information voters know is a lie. He let Trump walk all over him on immigration even though Biden put together a "bipartisan" plan that was just a Republican wishlist. If Biden had articulated any of that we'd probably be having a different conversion.
We know Trump is a liar.
Biden had to prove he wasn't feeble... and he failed at that.
Voting for Biden and his administration is still 100% the correct decision, but that debate isn't going to convince any swing voters. If you want to use the incumbency advantage you need to convince folks you can stay the course for the next 4 years.
WE know, and that’s why the debate wasn’t for us. And it was a bad idea from the start - Trump does not deserve to be in a debate. Not that there’s any debating going on.
It was always going to support the ticket that thrives on chaos and idiocy. Always.
I would like to see Trump in a debate with someone young who knows the issues and has a specialty in antifascist takedowns. Not a respectable Democrat character, I mean someone who can get up there and call him a rapist, a criminal, and an unpatriotic traitor and back it up with intelligent citing of the facts. You know, a Greta Thunberg type character. I want to see the Greta Vs Donald CNN debate.
There are entire divisions of the RNC and Trump Org staffed and hard at work to ensure that that never happens.
I am voting for Biden. But that debate convinced multiple swing voters I personally know to vote for Trump. All I hear from both democrats and republicans is that Biden is senile. That bunch of nonsense followed by "we beat medicare" line lost tens of millions of votes for Biden.
Truth doesn't really matter in a presidential debate, it's not actually a debate. It's all about appearing superior than your opponent.
Don't you think he looks tired?
I always kind of hated that bit, because it seemed so unrealistic. And here we are.
Life imitates art.
The only reason I'll still v9te for Biden is because I know the rest of the people around him will be doing the decision making. I think he's a piece of shit for trying to run a 2nd term and potentially losing the Whitehouse to trump over it. You could literally throw any well spoken 50 year old Democrat to run against trump and they'd have a layup for a win. Instead we have to choose between a nutjob liar and a guy who probably could reason himself into a win against a child that rides the short bus. He wasn't great 4 years ago, but he's now very obviously not capable of leading a country.
The problem is that it's next to impossible for a party to replace an incumbent president on the ticket without a fight. And the Democrats don't have time for a fight right now.
The logical choice would be the VP, but Harris is less popular than Biden with all his flaws. She gets tagged with all of his negatives plus the misogyny and racism pervasive among voters who would vote for Putin before they vote for a minority or a woman. If she had a more progressive record as a politician, maybe she could bring new, young voters to the table.
If the DNC and Biden wanted Harris to be the candidate, the time to step aside was two years ago. That would have given Harris the opportunity to establish herself as a leader worth following. The racists and the misogynists have less ammo if she's already doing the job well. Of course, that assumes she would have done well.
And then we could have had a legitimate primary. If Harris was failing, it would have been easier to run against an incumbent who was not elected and had a low approval rating. The best candidate could have risen to the top, introduced themselves to American voters, and built a political machine capable of beating Trump in the general election.
Biden didn't want to do that, so now he must win. There isn't another option.
Biden could straight up choose and endorse someone. Even if it wasn't Harris, which would look kind of shitty, but the DNC isn't completely stupid. They'd fully back whoever they decide that Bidens endorsement (see what I did there?) would be. It's too late to let the dnc campaign and come up with a popular vote. It isn't too late for a presidential endorsement to work.
I think it is too late for a Presidential endorsement to work. The conservatives, including those in the Democratic Party, will spin it as an attempted coronation, a la Hillary in 2016. Biden will choose a centrist to avoid pissing off the DNC mega donors, which will deflate any enthusiasm from progressives who see Biden stepping aside as a victory. Nobody will be particularly enthusiastic about voting for the annointed one, and if they win it will be because of the "not Trump" voters.
So what does that do for us? Those voters are already going to show up. Progressives are already unenthusiastic about another Biden term, but they are terrified of another Trump term. So most of them will show up, too. Biden supporters, we can count on both Jill and the other one to vote either way.
This is my thought. I could imagine Biden announcing that Obama was coming in to play a very key role in his administration and that might give him a boost. That while technically the buck stops with Biden still, that Obama is very close to contribute.
This would sidestep the "annointed one" problem, avoid skipping the primary, and while it's short of a new candidate, it gets a very popular person near the presidency who couldn't have been the candidate.
I couldn't imagine them starting from scratch at this point, couldn't imagine who they would pick that people would already resonate with.
I think if the public has a choice between an old crazy liar or an old senile guy, or literally any competent 50 year old backed by one of the two parties.
You know what the real problem is? Biden reminded me and millions of other people of our frail grandparents in a stressful, scary, situation. We love them, (although I'm not a fan of Biden), but we don't let them drive or end up in those situations.
I'd still 100% let them drive me instead of a sociopath conman.
It's not about the diehard voters. It's about the the undecided voters. Which presumes they'd be fine with either.
If you lived through the Trump presidency, and you are unsure you want another one, you're either a closeted bigot who doesn't want to admit you want Trump, or you're a moron.
And yet, they vote.
I don't think you need to be a diehard to recognize that handing the keys over to a frail old person is an easy choice to handing them over to a felon fraudster. It's crazy that this is even a question.
Yes it is. But they've created an entirely different narrative to believe in.
we live in a post truth world and trump is the master of the gish gallop
I am pasting this from another thread where I replied to a person that said he was going to vote for Biden no matter what.
I don't care who you vote for. It is very clear to me you will vote for Democrats. That is great.
I do care about who my aunt and her family votes for, a lot. She is democrat leaning. Her husband is republican leaning. They both believe the middle class is getting destroyed by politicians for the last 2 decades. They are both retired. They used to be middle/low income. These days they are clearly low income.
For the last 2 years, they both are saying that they don’t want to vote for Trump but Biden destroyed the economy for middle class. It was clear they might give Biden another shot if he managed to recover the economy before the election.
Ever since the debate, they both are dead set on voting for Trump. All I hear is “Of course the economy would be bad, he is senile.” or any “Of course xyz would be bad, he is senile.”
As I said, I don’t care who you vote for. I care for the votes of people that have not decided whether to vote for Trump or Biden. In the debate, Biden lost a lot of them. Biden lost that debate, clearly! Saying “they both are senile” or "Trump lied during the debate" is damage control by Dems. If Dems insist on going forward with Biden, Trump will be president. I am sure of that.
Now you can say my aunt and her family are stupid. You can say I am stupid for not changing their minds. You can say Trump is an insurrectionist and we are all stupid. You can even say all of the Americans are stupid, it is your first amendment right. You can down-vote me to hell if it makes you feel good. None of these will change the fact that my aunt and her family will vote for Trump unless Dems change the candidate or Biden manages to shit rainbows and use it to gift a million dollars to my aunt’s family.
At this point being a Biden apologist is the same thing as voting for Trump. Trump will win.
It was Biden's job to call out Trump's lies, but he was nowhere near competent enough to do that. See how Trump called out Biden's incoherence, highlighting the issue to everybody ("yeah you beat medicare to death", "I didn't understand the end of that sentence, and I don't think he does either", etc)
It's worse if you expect the first guy to be a strong contender against the second guy