The president often had a weak, raspy voice during his first debate against Trump, in what Democrats had hoped would be a turning point in the race.
I’m not in a panic. I knew this. Should he have run again? Hell no. I wish he would have had the courage to call it a day.
That being said, I’m fully willing to endure 4 years of Weekend at Bernie’s if it means I won’t have to go through the embarrassment of having the orange moron at the helm.
Are you willing to let Trump win though than have Biden step aside? That is what the DNC should be asking themselves. The polls are way to close for Biden to have that poor of a performance. If Democrats are seriously worried about Trump being the end of Democracy then they would not be okay with Biden being the DNC’s best choice.
I think it’s to late to change things up. That’s the problem, everyone told the DNC this was going to happen and yet they all just kept with Biden.
That being said, I don’t think either Trump or Biden are in a state to actually run the country. Their cabinets are going to hold all the power, and I trust Bidens cabinet over Trumps any day.
Any change no matter if is too late or too inconvenient would be a better change for the DNC than to allow Biden at the top position. Seriously, any other DNC politician would be better than Biden even if they changed right now or in the next few months. All you need is some politician who is about 50 years old to fight Trump every day until the election and the orange menace would suffer a heart attack trying to keep up.
This is insane … it’s almost as if the powers that be want Trump to win and the only way they can ensure that is to put him up against an 80 year old competitor because it is the only candidate he could possibly beat.
I agree. I’ll vote for Biden if I have to, but if Trump wins I’m not blaming RFK Jr like they blamed Bernie and Jill Stein in 2016. I’ll blame them and likely never vote for a majority political party again.
That’s the problem, everyone told the DNC this was going to happen and yet they all just kept with Biden.
i think that’s only the tip of the iceberg; we’re going to vote for them anyways so they literally have no reason to bother listening, ever.
At the end of the day, that’s the main takeaway here. It’s not so much the men themselves, but the people they intend to appoint to positions of authority. Biden will appoint experts and professionals to run the country for him. Trump will appoint sycophants and yes-men to do whatever he wants to do, even if it flies in the face of reason or standard procedure, and unlike last time he won’t allow anyone who isn’t 100% loyal to him to work in his administration.
That’s the problem, everyone told the DNC this was going to happen and yet they all just kept with Biden.
What is with this absurd disconnect from reality? The DNC charter says only the voters have the power to choose the nominee.
While I agree, it’s way too late in the game to change up now. There’s no strong candidate waiting in the wings. It’s not about willing, it’s about alternatives.
Gretchen Whitmer would run away with the election. Plus, we get Michigan (swing state) and the suburban moms. I really can’t see a downside.
There doesn’t have to be a strong candidate, just anyone stronger than Biden who’s basically zombie-crawling across the floor.
He absolutely can be replaced at this stage, and by nearly anyone.
AOC would be a really strong candidate. The right would freak out and she’d end up getting more press coverage than Trump. I imagine she’d make several Republican’s embolisms pop.
Bernie had the most individual donors by a landslide. Too bad Americans are too dumb and easily manipulated
After he wins the election, he could retire and let Harris rule in his stead.
Then there’s Schumer (provided he’s still the majority leader.)
There really is no need for a weekend at Bernie’s situation.
So, we’ve got an old, racist guy who lied through most of his statements and refused to possibly say that he would accept the results of the election vs an old guy with a history of a speech impediment that showed signs of his speech impediment and regularly pointed out the lies spouted off by his convicted felon opponent. Why are the media companies banking Trump again?
Biden’s performance wasn’t an impediment. It was him fumbling and stuttering over his words, forgetting his debate prep and saying nonsensical things. I absolutely do not want Trump to win, but Biden’s debate performance in reality was poor. Many Democrats don’t want to accept that. It is fine if they want to ignore facts. The truth is the Democrats would be far better off if Kamala or AOC or someone else was running for President, and they are risking way too much despite the facts.
It’s not just a speech impediment, it’s a speech impediment in a fucking 81 year old man who shouldn’t be dealing with a stressful job in politics. Been around many octogenarians? He did great for someone his age.
If he were up against someone in their 30s or 40s, it would be terrible but, against an old racist nazi who can only seem to make complete statements when they are provably false? Well, I’d still prefer someone else but at least he has the balls to actually say the forbidden words of “you’re lying” and he’s the only choice that we’re allowed to have as infuriating as that is.
Trump is almost the same age and he is a liar but he also was quick enough to immediately use Biden’s blunders against him. Pretty much everything Biden said sounded scripted and then he still messed it up. Biden didn’t “look” like the smarter candidate. There is enough misinformation out there that if people go searching they’ll find sources that support Trump’s lies. Trump won for the undecided tonight that watches the debate and uses it to make s decision.
AOC? An ambitious woman who just barely will have squeezed past the minimum age requirement by the time of the election and half the country has decided is a communist? Don’t get me wrong, I think she’d be a fantastic candidate, maybe even the best, but I sincerely doubt that she’d poll better than Biden, even considering his horrendous performance in yesterday’s debate.
I watched it and this wasn’t a stutter. This was a loss of his train of thought, switching topics unexpectedly, and creating needless openings for Trump to talk about things Biden didn’t have a good defense for. To be clear his decision making faculties are obviously intact. But this performance was really really bad. Night and day from 4 years ago.
It absolutely wasn’t just a stutter. It was an 81 year old with a history of speech impediment - things like that can manifest differently in old age. Maybe it’s from having grown up with a mother who was a nurse at an assisted living facility but, I really think that anyone who was shocked was setting expectations that are disconnected from the reality of how age impacts our communication abilities. If setting the bar at standards for people 10, 20, or 50 years younger, yeah, it was terrible. Relative to people of advanced age? He did well. When you’re that old, 4 years in a high-stress position is a long time.
It’s a bullshit choice as neither are in an age range where they should have power over long-term policy. It’s also pretty horrific in terms of ethics. But, a soggy turnip would be better than any nazi, much less a nazi who is a compulsive liar intent on using the political system for revenge and installing himself as dictator.
Exactly. I guess we are learning that most of our fellow citizens have a hard time with nuance, and all they can do is shit their pants instead of toughen up.
How come when they show old campaign videos of Biden where he’s plagiarizing others his so called stutter/speech impediment doesn’t seem to be there? And I thought the new excuse was that Biden had a cold anyway
…He was younger and the videos, being campaign videos, are edited to show him in the best possible light?
ETA: To be clear, I don’t think that he or anyone else too old to have to worry about the long-term consequences of their actions should be in office. But, he’s the only non-nazi choice available.
You’ve just been fooled by the MSM about the nazi garbage. Same with Joe being sharp as a razor. They just can’t hide it anymore
Joe’s a racist too. His immigration policy is identical to Trump’s and he’s been outspoken in his seeing palestinians as subhuman.
The guy fought against school integration even before he got this old. He’s always been a racist pos same as any Republican.
While I think that Joe’s got some dated views, being 81, if you’re honest, you’ve got to acknowledge that the immigration bill was nothing more than calling the GOP bluff and getting extra fodder for election ads. They knew that the GOP wouldn’t allow it to pass. It’s politics at its most bullshit; playing with human lives for points.
For the bussing, that was fifty, 5 0 years ago and his views have clearly changed. Yes, he has no legitimate place in politics at his age but neither does his opponent, who has been known to admire fascist and authoritarians of yore and the modern day.
A person’s view shouldn’t have to change on racial justice and equality, particular someone who’spart of the Democratic party. Sanders is just as old and he’s always been on the right side of history, it has nothing to do with age.
Biden is still racist and even if his far-right border policy was a gambit that’s really irresponsible, given the GOP could’ve easily just accepted the no-strings attached policy win. People need to stop making excuses for shitty politicians, and need to stop allowing the lesser evil be the enemy of good enough.
It was dumb just going along with Biden as the nominee, hubris and status quo thinking. Now the Democratic party needs to come up with something to energize the electorate. Scaring people with democracy being on the line, while completely true, isn’t gonna do it. Hoping the attacks on reproductive rights will carry them over the finish line is a bad idea. Trying to bring Harris out now into the limelight isn’t gonna work. People are tired and struggling. The youth feel betrayed and themselves are struggling. There is no energy coming from up on top. Dems have always sucked at messaging.
Dem leaders prefer Trump to a real structural progressive economic reform.
The billionaires buy both parties now. Capitalism sucks chunks.
The billionaires of today love the status quo.
Is a full on fascist dictatorship the “status quo” now? Surprised billionaires would be behind this.
Fascism is great for any buisness that is already established. These people are already buying off the government, they’re not the little guys who could be taken over by a fascist government, they’re the ones pulling the strings.
The thing is, nobody ever said billionaires were smart. A lot of people conflate being wealthy with being intelligent, and that’s simply not the case.
The fatal mistake the billionaire donor class is making here is that they think Trump can be controlled if he does win. They aren’t worried about fascism because money is the real king of America and always has been.
And that line of thinking is solid until a fascist dictator who doesn’t want to give up their power or have it limited by anybody else decides that the wealthy are no longer their allies and has the secret police “deal with them”.
You shouldn’t be. The rich supporting fascists (and vice versa) is nothing new.
Excerpts from Blackshirts and Reds, by Michael Parenti
To impose a full measure of austerity upon workers and peasants, the ruling economic interests would have to abolish the democratic rights that helped the masses defend their modest living standards. The solution was to smash their unions, political organizations, and civil liberties. Industrialists and big landowners wanted someone at the helm who could break the power of organized workers and farm laborers and impose a stern order on the masses. For this task Benito Mussolini, armed with his gangs of Blackshirts, seemed the likely candidate.
In 1922, the Federazione Industriale, composed of the leaders of industry, along with representatives from the banking and agribusiness associations, met with Mussolini to plan the “March on Rome,” contributing 20 million lire to the undertaking. With the additional backing of Italy’s top military officers and police chiefs, the fascist “revolution”—really a coup d’état—took place. . .
In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.
During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown-shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.
In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end. . .
Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy. . .
Both Mussolini and Hitler showed their gratitude to their big business patrons by privatizing many perfectly solvent state-owned steel mills, power plants, banks, and steamship companies. Both regimes dipped heavily into the public treasury to refloat or subsidize heavy industry. Agribusiness farming was expanded and heavily subsidized. Both states guaranteed a return on the capital invested by giant corporations while assuming most of the risks and losses on investments. As is often the case with reactionary regimes, public capital was raided by private capital.
At the same time, taxes were increased for the general populace but lowered or eliminated for the rich and big business. Inheritance taxes on the wealthy were greatly reduced or abolished altogether.
Many billionaires are not only morons, they’re racist morons. They also love the trappings of fascism—as long as they get to be the ones on top.
Have you seen that article about that one techbro rich boy and how he wants to structure San Francisco? How the techbros would wear grey shirts, and their Republican friends would red shirts, and everyone else would be forced to wear blue shirts, and those with grey and red shirts would get preferential treatment, because they would buy out the cops?
Dem leaders prefer Trump to a real structural progressive economic reform.
Literally no Dem in the entire country prefers Traitorapist Trump to even a house plant. Trump and “real structural progressive economic reform” are completely disconnected things. It’s not even remotely an either/or choice.
He could energize the electorate by ending the genicide in Palestine, nationalizing the rail industry or Boeing, expanding the Supreme Court and investigating their corruption, or displaying unlimited support for clean energy and dismantling the fossil fuel industry. But I doubt any of that will happen.
It won’t happen because Biden doesn’t want to do any of those things. The DNC would rather risk the nation crumbling into fascism than take any of those steps to stop it.
The DNC would rather
The newly elected delegates this year literally is the DNC. The smaller group of caretakers do not have the legal power to purge the large number of elected delegates. And these delegates are bound by the party charter to vote Biden on the first ballot. Unless Biden releases his delegates, which he could do and might do if convinced he is not the best choice to defeat Trump. So I am hoping that behind the scenes Dems are working furiously to convince Biden to release his delegates so that Gavin Newsome can be the nominee instead.
I think we’ve been operating on the false assumption that the Democratic partys primary goal is to win. I would wager that as far as campaign contributions go, it’s likely better for them financially if they barely lose. I feel like the past few presidential races have been the American populace trying to force them to win anyways when they obviously didn’t want to.
A lot of their decisions make a lot more sense in that context.
it’s likely better for them financially if they barely lose
LMFAO that makes absolutely no sense. The only use of the money they raise is to win elections. It’s not like if they lose they can use the leftover money to buy a new car. If there even is any leftover money, which there almost always is not.
I admire your optimism, but even if you aren’t willing to bend the rules and stick to the letter of the ethics rules, you can still use campaign funds for a fairly broad amount of items. And, if you are willing to bend the rules… when’s the last time you heard of someone getting in trouble for misuse of campaign funds? If you remember one at all, i’d wager it was George Santos, and it took a huge amount of misuse there for people to start paying attention.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Show real people who have been helped by Biden’s policies in the commercials.
People don’t trust institutions anymore. They don’t trust authority anymore. But put a real person in front of them and there’s a chance a plurality won’t call them paid actors and will understand that things are getting better.
What a disaster. I can’t remember the last time I saw a decent presidential debate, they all devolve into completely failing to answer the questions and just attacking the opponent. The only thing this new format did was prevent them from constantly talking over the opponent when their time was up.
What the hell happened to Biden? I mean, he’s old…but normally his speaking is far, far better despite his stutter. He could hardly get coherent rebuttals out half the time and had a hard time enunciating his policy goals.
Trump…nothing but a torrent of lies, [insert group] loves me, and “hurr durr you’re stupid, Biden.” But he was able to spew his word salad clearly.
They should have had fact-checkers, but the problem is that trump told so many lies so fast that 75% of the debate would have been the moderators having to correct trump’s bs.
This was embarrassing, to put it mildly. Terrifying to see trump look better than Biden - if you ignore what was actually said.
Legitimately planning how I’m going to weather a Trump presidency after the debate. Unimaginably disheartening.
You could call your congressional representatives asking that they encourage Biden to step aside for a better candidate.
Pretty sure after tonight my congressional representative is thrilled that Biden is the one running.
