To everyone who has downvoted me both here and on Reddit for saying “I think Biden is too old to run in 2024”, I have two things to say: the first of them is “I hope you take advantage of this opportunity to wake up to your own biases”, and the second one is “Fuck you”.
You have been eating up every single tought-terminating cliche put in circulation by the elites of your party and parroting it online not just when it did serve your ideology or your electoral success, but also when it was just a cover for incompetent fools looking over their own asses and the hierarchies they form a part of. Many tried to warn you that just because 90% of every Conservative talking point was cooked in a meth lab by a blind monkey doesn’t mean you should also close your ears when they said that the sky was blue or that Biden is old. Yes, Trump is old too, yes, THEY were arguing in bad faith, but you still were morons for refusing to even consider that it might have been a problem.
I don’t have the misfortune of living in the US, but even as someone who just cares for the general stability of the world, I hope you can get the fuck out of this mess, if nothing else because contemporary Democrats don’t collaborate with Latin American golpists noawadays, and because Republicans are a walking menace for green energy transition, but for the love of everything that is holy PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING from yesterday’s disaster.
People need a reality check on Biden’s senility. Some of us saw it earlier than others who continued to live in a silo. I am willing to vote for Joe but I also knew he’s a liability with no strength versus Trump under these circumstances.
And we both had options and have options right now. Convention is 8 weeks away. Democrats can still jump ship and I can think of 6 alternative, younger, more charismatic candidates to win this stupid fucking popularity contest with ease.
People need a reality check on their reality checks. Biden has been living with a stutter since he was young - it has nothing to do with age or senility. Those high-pressure, fast-paced debates just aren’t a good platform to measure people up unless they’re a showman. I feel confident in my own opinions, but I still freeze up in fast-paced debates where I can’t look things up.
Biden went to the 2020 primaries under the premise that he would be a single-term president, specifically to kick Trump out, and it was immediately used as a hammer against internal critics. Once president, his policies couldn’t be criticized in any way (not even in a constructive one), because it was “ammo for the republicans”, or else “but he’s doing good things too!” (never mind that the positive Biden policies, positive as they were, were always patchworks, and never structural reforms); once the time for primaries was getting closer, the mantra became “saying that Biden is too old is a Republican talking point”, and “you can’t run primaries in a party with a sitting president”. And perhaps there was well intentioned people who took all of these ideas at face value and believed in them, but they always refused to see the subtext: “do not question the official Democrat party line”, regardless of its blind spots and conflicts of interest.
Well, what are you going to do now that the official party line has crushed all opposition year after year and the Democrats have suddenly discovered themselves in front of the abyss, sacrificing all possible alternatives for the sake of electoral success when even the people most ideologically aligned with the Old Guard are scared? Are you going to continue justify all the bad decisions that took you to this place, or are you going to analyze what the hell is wrong with the party to start reforming it immediately after the elections? I understand not wanting to have an open-air debate immediately before the presidential elections, but if you guys refuse to work it out right next, I’m just going to assume that the USA is just going to be a fascist country by 2033.
My impression is that Biden said he would step aside in the hope that a viable alternative would present itself. It did not. It was also hoped that a Trump loss might push the GOP away from him and off the path of pure fascism. It did not. I think he ran more because he didn’t want fascists in power than because he wanted the power himself.
Also, when Marianne Williamson tried to challenge Biden for the Democrat nomination, the white house press secretary openly mocked her in a white house press conference.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm1-Ef8Lxns
(My favourite thing about this clip is that the press secretary has obviously been coached to mock Marianne Williamson for having a crystal ball, but she doesn’t know what a crystal ball is and confuses it with a magic 8-ball.)
We could have told him it was time to retire. Instead we gaslit an octogenarian into thinking he had to give up his retirement.
There’s nothing we can fucking do about it at that level of government. The party caucuses make it very difficult to decide who our presidential candidate should be. Remember how Bernie tried running back in 2016 and the entire DNC conspired against him in favor of their insider Hillary? Trump managed to win the nomination because he understands he can make the Republican base eat shit off his hand and have them demand more, even with the RNC doing everything they could to avoid him. Let’s face it, the average American is a confused, exploited, poorly educated bigot who would latch on to any hateful speech to blame harmless parts of the population for their problems. There are even highly educated people who believe in his nonsense because they want to pay fewer taxes.
Between regulatory and judicial capture by major corporations, our future isn’t gonna be a bright one any time soon. Project 2025 will also cause irreversible damage to all sectors of the government in which only Republican party loyalists can work. We’re getting really close to how Germany was in the mid 1930s.
Statistically both these men should be dead. Biden beat Reagan as oldest president. Trump would be second oldest president behind Biden and beating Reagan if he won, with Trump already being older than Reagan when he left office.
This is ridiculous. They belong on an iceberg but there aren’t any left.
If you think voting stops fascists from seizing power, you better buckle the fuck up.
It doesn’t stop them, but it requires very little effort and definitely slows them down.
This whole night was so many layers of exhausting, but probably not for the reasons you think… No rational, serious person was expecting Biden to Willy Wonka front somersault into this debate? it was going to be what this was, the only true surprise was probably the volume of his voice (which they chalk up to a cold, okay fine, I guess) and actually how well he did quickly processing and responding to trump’s gish gallop and unchecked stream of consciousness mistruth firehose with little help from the impotent moderators for the majority of the night.
The people in this country, in their immediate reaction to this debate, demonstrate that they just fundamentally lack the focus, empathv and frankly basic intelligence to process the substance of this or any debate. On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler… Or a dog.
I don’t know if you missed the part where he brought up “rapist immigrants” when trying to answer a question about abortion that should have been a layup and was absolutely key to this debate being meaningful to voters who are confused, apathetic, or considering voting 3rd party, especially those in swing states.
That was also very unexpected, highly disappointing, and totally unrelated to his tone or volume. No amount of moderation could have helped that.
That’s part of the point, the gettable “swing voter”, who was hanging on this debate and nothing else to get their confidence just isn’t real… If that was the case, why didn’t the fucking SOTU seal it for them (again that’s if they even exist, as I challenge your basic premise).
People generally know where they stand, with these two especially. And if they do exist and they are truly that “confused”… They are actually just ashamed to be 98% trump leaning and just waiting for any strong fart to push them towards him with " justification’ ( if it wasn’t this, they would have sought something to fill that need between now and election).
I don’t think any swing voter is “gettable” or “hanging on this debate” though. Pretty significant misrepresentation of my position there so hope this helps. Lot of time till November.
I do, however, believe there are a) left leaning voters in swing states who are turned off from voting blue by the Democrat defense of Israel and capitulation to the conservative framing of the border, and b) right leaning voters in swing states who see that Biden brings up immigration in order to support his abortion position and feel hugely vindicated and double down on their intent to vote MAGA.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the term “swing voter,” I’ll to back and edit that.
IMO there’s also a contingent of people who are demotivated to participate. Lack of participation hurts Biden more than trump.
Despite the danger, Trump doesn’t feel like an imminent threat to most people. He’s not motivating enough alone to bring out Democratic voters. However you do have a bunch of shit demotivating those voters. Gaza, money, immigration. The only big motivator is abortion, and Biden kinda flubbed that.
A Dem win will be on abortion alone at this point, unless something huge changes.
I agree with everything but the comment on the moderators. It’s not their job to hold the candidates to account, that’s the job of the dude standing right next to the speaker. If a presidential candidate needs to rely upon a journalist to correct disinformation in a debate that he himself is participating in, they shouldn’t be the candidate.
I’m a smooth-brained imbecile, but everytime that Trump opened his mouth I had 14 better responses than Biden had. He permitted the most outlandish untruths to go on the record unchecked. Biden would have done a better job by just replying “bulls*hit” in answer to Trump’s ramblings. The moderators just ask questions. They are not supposed to prop either side up.
On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler… Or a dog.
Welcome to leadership 101. Projecting confidence is 90 percent of getting people to listen to you. This is why Con Artists are effective and Military Leaders cultivate an air of Stoicism. If you’re lucky you find a confident person who informs their decisions with science.
they just fundamentally lack the focus, empathv and frankly basic intelligence to process the substance of this or any debate.
The good side, if you can call it that, is that because they lack the focus they also don’t remember shit. If Biden has a good performance in the future this will be forgotten about.
Hopefully, but the focus on “performance” in a stage moment, versus performance in the job done (collective accomplishment of the administration over the last 4 years) is core to the problem here. Oh well.
On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler…
You wouldn’t believe how close you are.
[…Researches] recruited 684 Swiss students and asked them to rate pairs of politicians who had run against each other in the 2002 French parliamentary elections. Based solely on black-and-white photos of the candidates, they had to say who was more competent and by what degree. There were 57 pairs in all, and each volunteer rated just one.
They found that the students’ competence judgments predicted the actual winners of the run-offs with a 72% accuracy.
[A] group of children would be able to predict the outcome of elections in another country, based only on photos of the candidates […] is exactly what a recent study in the journal Science has found.
Swiss children as young as five years can predict which candidates are more likely to win French parliamentary elections.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-look-of-a-winner/
The children were just as good at predicting election results as the grown-ups were;
(first article again)
People were expecting state of the union Biden. Instead we got Magoo. We don’t need a strong man to lead, we just need more than what Biden currently is. The DNC is out to fucking lunch and probably handed Trump an easy win. Does this stop me from eating a shit sandwich to help protect our democracy? No, will angrily eat that shit sandwich for a few more good years.
The presidency is not one person, it’s an entire administration and general philosophy. We’re fed a lie that these debates always matter, they matter when candidates are unknown and then have a forum to stand out as leaders and educate voters about a vision for the country. That’s NOT the case here, the candidates are wholly known entities and these fucking debates absolutely do not matter.
The president is the leader of their presidency not the other way round. This debate has been very important to showcase that Biden is not capable of leading an argument let alone his staff. It’s not too late for him to bow out with dignity and get someone who has wit to lead.
To be fair Biden has had a stutter for all his life. How quiet he was and with everything going on it didn’t look good though. I wish we could have different candidates. I’m not sure if this will change anyone’s vote or not though.
I was considering voting for Biden. I’ve never voted before. I think after seeing all this though the only way I’ll vote for Biden is if my dad votes for Trump just so I can cancel his vote out lol
Voting for Biden is not voting for the man, it’s voting for an ideology, for hope, for a future less grim. Vote for Biden.
Those are the same reasons people use to vote for Trump. I’m around it all the time. People on both sides are voting out of fear of the other side. Reason and reality are no longer relevant in politics. Only fear.
Honestly that’s overselling Biden and their own pitch is you are voting against ending democracy. Biden isn’t going to make the future less grim (unless we protest), but Trump would certainly make it worse.
To be fair Biden has had a stutter for all his life.
That gets repeated a lot, but I think the people who think that’s a good enough excuse have not actually seen middle aged Biden speak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_v00iGJCLY
The Biden of that video has some incredible charisma, but he has nothing to do with the person today.
It is obvious age has effected his ability to communicate. I suppose it’s just something to keep in mind, not an excuse. Like I said before, I wish we had younger candidates on both sides. I think most people didn’t want this rematch. The person in that video would have been great, but we only have what’s left of that now.
It for sure will, republicans have been ripping critical thinking out from the educational system since Reagan. In fact, it looks like they got a hold of journalists first.
it looks like they got a hold of journalists
Republicans understood that that they must control the news in order to control the people. Problem is that they made the “news” into a dumpster of lies. They are now going after education. Idiocracy, here we come.
They found they just need to accuse the media of treating them unfairly, and they’ll fall in line to avoid looking biased, ironically becoming biased in the process.
Also Idiocracy would be an improvement because Komacho literally put the smartest man in the world in charge
I love the part where the democratic leadership made sure there were no viable alternatives during the primary.
Biden is the incumbent so obviously the only one that can possibly win. Crush all other prospects and tell them to wait their turn
Nobody stopped people from running, though. In fact people did run they just lost like primaries are supposed to work?
Okay, and? What is your point?
This is just a misunderstanding of how primaries work and basic civics. There are Democratic primaries in FL. For Senate seats, House seats, etc. Those primary dates differ state-to-state, and Florida’s just so happen to take place in August. Nobody met the requirements to be submitted on the Florida ballot in time, and second to that, it wouldn’t have made a difference ultimately as we would come to find out since nobody achieved any competitive results in earlier primaries or in national polling.
There wasn’t a Primary for President because those who voluntarily threw their hat in the ring either (a) dropped out, (b) did not meet the minimum ballot requirements, or © Biden already earned enough votes for it to be irrelevant. Florida was never make-or-break for anyone else who, again, voluntarily threw their hat in the ring.
