For those still all-in on “it was just a bad debate, no big deal,” what is your explanation for why they haven’t gotten him back out there for a press conference or interview to end the news cycle? It’s politics 101, we all know it’s the right move. Why aren’t they making it?
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Ok so not because of this for you but is there any point you would do it? If Biden were polling in the 20s? If he had a string of performances as bad as last night?
If I could be convinced it was one bad night I would think stay the course too, but this night also has to cause you to rethink the last 6-12 months and the next 3 months. It’s a bad trend, that evidence fits with the decline being worse than appearances and well hidden. There’s no rush by the campaign to put Biden out there publicly in a situation that reveals him to be an energetic and capable guy. This is well past the point where you stop drawing attention to it, major newspapers are calling for resignation. Either go out there in public and prove them wrong, definitely, or take their advice.
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It was also the body language, not just the words. And the lack of a definitive response since. With headlines and the news cycle doing what it’s doing, and capable and competent candidate would be out there dispelling the narrative. It would be easy to do.
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Okay, so if it wasn’t evidence of mental decline of some sort, why haven’t we seen anything like that before from him? He’s been in the public eye for a half-century. He’s run for president 3 times. He’s been vice president. He’s done debates before. Last Thursday night was something very different.
Are you telling me that it is just as likely that he would have a performance like that in 2008 if he were the nominee and it was just extremely bad luck that it happened now?
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I think it’s also pretty likely that someone or multiple people were leaking to the Trump camp just how bad Biden had gotten. Now it makes sense why Trump wanted to debate so badly even though he was already leading. Secret Service maybe?
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whether he actually has dementia doesn’t even matter, the perception does.
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Or he could have just asked His Kevin or His Mike:
He’s probably in better health than most of us,” Dillon said, according to two of the participants, one of whom said the comments were offensive and dismissive of the real concerns about Biden in the wake of his debate performance.
This is the most damning part right here. They think they’re gonna be able to just hide him until the election and still win. The models are quickly going to be shifting to landslide territory. This is going to depress Dem turnout to absurd levels. We’ve been relying heavily on the youth vote and increased turnout since 2020 and they’ve been flat out telling everyone they’re not showing up to the polls for Biden.
Trump has a simple message he can pound away at (Biden is mentally unfit), Dems just have nothing, completely on the defensive.
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This is why I think you gotta give Harris a chance, if nothing else can just blast never Trump messaging and then forces Rs to at least fish around for how they want to best attack Harris. But currently Ds can’t even get the anti Trump messaging sustained because too busy trying to damage control
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In lighter news, RFK Jr may have gotten brain parasites from eating a dog.
Disagree on the lifeboats. At this point even a new nominee seems like another deck chair. The Supreme Court is lost for my lifetime and has claimed authority over essentially all functions of government with no pushback. A good 40% of the electorate has been brain wormed into cheering on blatant corruption as long as it’s from their team. And we’ve structured our government to ensure that 40% can at a minimum check any positive progress and in many cases hold the power to enact further regressive changes. We probably passed the tipping point to fascism years ago but even if we still had outs it doesn’t matter when nobody with any power has any interest in drawing to them.
Economist is at a 73% chance of a Trump win, Nate Silver 72%, 538 is lagging st 50% - they adjust the most for incumbency and state of the economy.
Another benefit of this is Trump doesn’t have to pound away on unpopular policies. It’s no longer an election Dems win on abortion and GOP wins on immigration, now the GOP also wins on the Biden mentally unfit issue.
Some of the other candidates will be much more aggressive on this front. It’s time to pack the court with a simple trifecta, not vote harder.
Dems should be pounding away on the supreme court. They’ve just been gifted a message
Sure would help if they had a candidate capable of messaging on anything. Unfortunately we’ve chosen a candidate we have to hide from the public for the next four months.
Right it’s not that Democrats are in some impossible position and have to play defense, it’s that they are too incompetent to seize an opportunity to change the narrative
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It’s not just a question of how bad Biden is doing. I think people are severely underestimating the optics and consequences of replacing him, even in the smoothest of circumstances, which I think would be Biden resigning from the whole-ass presidency and Kamala taking over. The price to be paid for that in terms of validating Republican cries of Biden’s unfitness is immense. It forces every Dem in every seat anywhere to defend charges that they were complicit in putting the whole country at risk propping up a man everyone knew was senile for years. GOP could be drawing to 60+ senate seats and a laughably huge majority in the house.
It’s a bad spot, but I think fighting is better.