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.
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.
that debate isn’t going to convince any swing voters
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.
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.
*A month later. Just wanna point out how flipping right I was! Lol. Harris sweeping the nation.
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.
It’s not about the diehard voters. It’s about the the undecided voters. Which presumes they’d be fine with either.
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.
- In 2004, they both voted for Bush.
- In 2008, they both voted for Obama.
- In 2012, they both voted for Obama.
- In 2016, they both claimed to vote for Trump, although I believe my aunt might have voted for Hillary. (Uncle has military background. He kept saying if he did what Hillary did when he was in active duty, he would be in prison for the rest of his life.)
- In 2020, they both voted for Biden.
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)
I’m voting for Biden so don’t give me shit about being a Leftist helping Trump win. But if he does win, remember that Dems had a million chances to run someone better and this is what they let happen. It’ll be their fault if we get more of the bad man.
The dems suspended the primaries in a number of states and more or less coronated Biden.
The Dems believe in democracy only when against the GOP but do not believe in democracy when deciding matters inside their party.
The “Democratic” Party my ass cheeks. Clowns and hypocrites.
Agreed. The coordinated pullout to sabotage Bernie in 2020 was shameful. “Vote for us or you’ll be sorry when the GOP takes over” is all they offer.
History, procedure, common sense, and logic all said that was what was going to happen. They didn’t cancel the primaries. They never started the primaries. A lot of states started holding primaries assuming the incumbent wasn’t running again. But that was never the case. Biden never said that he was only going to run the one time and not again. People in his orbit discussed that he might do that. But that was nothing that he said or that they ever committed to.
You and I are welcome to believe this what he should have done. But historically if an incumbent decides to run for another Term. No party ever Has primaried them. We can criticize Biden on not telegraphing that well enough. That’s fair. We can absolutely criticized Biden on things like that. But policy-wise and as far as his administration goes. He’s been fairly popular and consequential. Despite the one really big issue which seems to be all people want to talk about ignoring the fascist in the room.
But historically if an incumbent decides to run for another Term. No party ever Has primaried them.
And this lack of pragmatism and adherence to “tradition” when the republicans openly don’t stick by those rules will cause the Dems to contribute to the coming of fascist amerika
No. I’m a Leftist who’s outraged that my government is funding said genocide while actively denying it’s happening.
To run a debate with Trump and without live fact checking was just plain stupid. You know he’s just going to run his rehearsed talking points without so much as trying to answer even mildly uncomfortable questions. They not only let him get away with serial lying, they basically laid the groundwork so he could get away with it.
Fact checks after the fact never reach the people that need to see them.
Why billionaire John Malone’s shadow looms over CNN
most folks aren’t aware that CNN went from subtle billionaire propaganda to outright billionaire propaganda within the last few years
2 major problems with that. Good luck getting him to agree to a debate with fact checking. Even when he is blatantly lying, he’s just going to accuse the fact checkers of bias, and force his supporters to distance themselves from reality more than they are already.
The best defence is to ignore it, and focus on the issues that people care about. The best thing Biden can do is present a strong coherent front, and pretend like trump isn’t even there at all.
It was Biden’s job to call out Trump’s lies, not the moderators’ job, 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)
CNN is essentially owned by John Malone now. It’s just Fox News lite.
Are all American “debates” like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?
Nope.
Up till this year a non partisan committee handled the debates and lent it an air of impartially and at least tried to hold candidates to the questions.
Both parties decided to boycott those debates, and set up their own with CNN as the host.
I’ve been bitching about it for months now and everyone’s been telling me it’ll be fine…
Edit:
2020 debates
I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check. You’ll see candidates call each other out sometimes, but moderators don’t actually moderate. Timing answers to be ridiculously short so nothing of substance can be said is also a perennial feature.
Oh man… in all my years I have only seen one… (and it was this year!)… but it was not a presidential one… it was an AMAZING Republican primary debate in Colorado.
I WISH they got these guys to be the moderators. Would have fucking bashed Trump.
I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check.
During the one Obama Romney debate I remember Obama asking for a live fact check of some sort and getting it. So it’s happened before.
Fact checkers challenged many of Trump’s statements. Trump falsely said that he “brought back (college) football”; as he had commented on his wish for the conferences to play, but took no official action. Trump also repeated the claim that he “got back” Seattle and Minneapolis from left-wing protesters, and continued to repeat conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He said, without evidence, that drug prices will fall “80 or 90 percent,” in reference to his efforts to cut drug prices[50] and exaggerated that he is making insulin at prices “so cheap, it’s like water”, despite insulin prices remaining fixed at about $300 per vial. Trump also misleadingly said that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was “the greatest economy in the history of our country”; although GDP growth was high in the first three years of the Trump presidency, it was higher under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and the unemployment rate was lower under Eisenhower.[51] Nominal GDP was higher than at any point in US history, but this is true for the large majority of US Presidencies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_debates#Format_and_debate
Pretty much every Trump debate has been like this. This one was actually an improvement from 2020 and 2016 because his microphone was turned off so he wasn’t able to just yell over the other person and constantly interrupt.
I don’t know if this is an improvement. As many feared, the muted mic saved Trump from himself. I’m sure his staff was actually pretty excited about that rule.
It would prevent him from doing what he did last time, which polled terribly.
Yes. 90% of the time is almost always off topic. Sometimes a candidate spends a whole sentence saying something related, but that’s as close to organized as it ever was.
Trump definitely does more personal attacks, but that’s about it. I’ve seen a moderator make a correcting statement once.
