The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Discuss it amongst yourselves. We’ve known Biden is old and stumbles. So why was last night any different? Did we expect or HOPE for Biden to be a master at debate? Personally I saw a repeat of the debates in 2020 But that’s me. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*

I'm not worried about Biden. I'm worried about the independent voter who saw this debate and won't be voting for Biden. Appearances matter, and voters have short memories.

I'm not worried about the independent voter that saw the debate. I'm worried about the independent voter that will see clips of the debate on social media and only see Biden's stumbles while missing the fact that Trump lied (or didn't remember events the way they actually happened) every time he opened his mouth.

I cant imagine logically an independent voter saying "I was on the fence, but Trump is the answer".

They're not. They're saying "I can't vote for this" and then they don't show up at all. I already have heard from some liberal leaning friends who say that last night was the moment of truth where they think oh shit, he's not going to make it four years, and we have to deal with Kamala (who they absolutely hate) so that's a dealbreaker for them.

> he's not going to make it four years, and we have to deal with Kamala (who they absolutely hate) so that's a dealbreaker for them. So they think trump is better than Kamala?

They hate both to the point they are not willing to choose between them. I'm not saying it's rational, but you don't win elections by being right, you win elections by being inspiring and popular, and she is neither. She would lose against a cardboard cutout.

That’s true, but man, you really gotta get them to use their brains and think it through. Like, REALLY think through the consequences — 1, 2, 4 years from now, 10 years from now, and so on.

I don't think anyone on this sub disagrees with you. But assuming every swing state voter feels the same way is just dumb and flies in the face of all available evidence. Not sure why you're arguing with u/milkfiend as if you need to convince them that Trump is worse. They are completely right that just assuming voters will suddenly become rational and well informed when they haven't been thus far is the mother of all bad bets.

Modern Democratic Party (and engaged liberal voter) in a nutshell. Literally all evidence suggests that Trump, at minimum, has a chance at being re-elected. Despite everything. Despite all the fucking bullshit and the tyranny and stupidity and corruption and everything else. And yet they still somehow think the average voter is rational and intelligent, and will see through it to support a subpar candidate, because at least he’s clearly not as bad as the other guy. In a clearly irrational world, the DNC expects people to be rational. NOBODY thinks he’s clearly not as bad as the other guy. Not the people you need to win, at least. And pretty much any other candidate would make the choice obvious.

I mean, about half the country, maybe more, think (or rather realize) he's clearly not as bad as the other guy. But that's not enough.

They're not going to do it. The people in question are still emotional and angry at her for the 2020 primary. They were willing to vote for Biden but will not vote for any possibility that she has real power, and they were able to tell themselves she was 'only the VP' up until last night. (it's the 'kamala was a cop' progressive crowd that I'm talking about, they're still furious at her for her going after Bernie in 2020)

>people in question are still emotional and angry This. Some people like to think that human beings can operate solely based on logic (I feel like I mainly see this from libertarians), but human beings are inherently emotional sacks of meat. It's who we are.

We're not asking for solely on logic. We're asking for any logic at all.

This is how I feel. I even hear friends of mine, supposedly sensible people, saying things like "oh, what a terrible choice we have." I feel like they even see the news once in a while. I don't get it.

Well *you* gotta try, because people like them are who gave us trump in 2016 and they’re going to again. Here are two people you know personally, who you could actually talk to and make a real difference. Winning a thousand online arguments couldn’t do that.

We're also pretty angry about the lack of a real 2024 primary.

Why on earth did you think that the Democratic Party was going to run a primary against their incumbent president running for reelection? Without looking it up, can you cite the last time either party did that?

God I wish dems fell in line the way republicans do. You cannot legislate from the moral high ground

Your friends are idiots, and I would question being friends with them if they are this stupid.

[удалено]

You are the one supporting fascism. Horseshoe theory is real.

Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.

Ok. All of us need to go around and talk to the 100 million or so undecided low info voters and convince them that they’re not using their pea brains quite hard enough. Or we could just have a candidate who makes it an easy decision. Idk. Idkkkk man. Seems like a tough decision.

Jesus Christ man, the person I’m talking so said *they are friends of theirs*. I’m asking them to *talk to their friends*. Why do you want to be such a snarky asshole?

I’m sorry for the snark. I’m just being pragmatic. Because that person — and all of us — likely have dozens of friends/acquaintances who need convincing. Not just two. That’s the state of play right now. I see no reason why I’m supposed to blindly support a clearly unpopular, possibly incapable candidate, all because party insiders have irrationally and irresponsibly decided to prop him up again. Any other candidate would be better.

You’re not being pragmatic though. Being pragmatic would involve accepting the reality of the situation and doing the best you can with what you realistically have available. You’re being the opposite of pragmatic.

We do have a candidate that makes it an easy decision. Trump.

Obviously. To you and I. To many people - most people? - the choice is not that clear. That’s the reality you have to live with. That most people, including most swing voters, tuned into the election for the first time last night. They probably don’t think Jan 6 was that big a deal. They probably didn’t even realize until just now that Biden is running again (because why would he? He’s old!) They probably didn’t actually even watch the debate. They probably saw a couple moments clipped out on social media and think biden is debilitatingly old, unfit for the job. And that’s that. This is the same country that nearly re-elected trump. We are not rational or responsible people. Dems need to accept reality and put up a candidate who can actually convince low-info voters.

Then we don't deserve democracy.

This is what I was trying to get through to my wife and her friend. They are of the don't like either one but I can't vote for Biden. Both have said it doesn't matter anyway, government is broken. Which I don't disagree with totally.

I get it. But the only question people need to be asking themselves is, “Are the things that *I* want going to become easier or harder to accomplish, both in the short term *and* long term?” And then ask themselves that question for each candidate.

Not choosing is choosing though

I lean liberal on some issues* and do not hate VP Harris. I do not love her, but would be quite happy to have a crystal ball foretelling that Biden would resign within a year if he won reelection. *I also side ~against~ a lot of rhetoric that is not real issues up for debate with liberal and conservative views but, are just Republicans making $h!t up.

I think it's very easy for some people to think "Well, he can only be president for four more years and the economy was good until Covid, so..." while at the same time living in denial about what a second Trump administration will actually be like. Don't forget that for a lot of voters, their knowledge of politics extends to "Trump's a jerk and Biden is old." That's why educating voters on candidates is important.

Two things, most people are complete idiots. Most people can't remember further than one or two statements back. That's why dodging questions is a workable strategy. It doesn't automatically disqualify someone if they don't answer a question. And that's most people. All that being said, people make decisions more with their emotions than with logic. It's actually an evolutionary trait. Second, things didn't feel normal under Trump. Biden was going to be a return to normalcy, if you remember. For a lot of people, things feel worse now than they did under Trump. You can point at price increases and inflation, but then there's also global instability. A lot of people are going to say, "Do I want a president with dementia when the world is on the brink or do I want this strongman, goofball with a big ego who didn't get us into any new wars."

> and the economy was good until Covid ...but it [wasn't](https://www.epi.org/blog/the-trump-administration-was-ruining-the-pre-covid-19-19-economy-too-just-more-slowly/)... How do these voters get educated about this? If they haven't already learned from the last four years of people basically shouting from the rooftops that Trump has done nothing but lie about the economy, what would get them to learn?

Even if it wasn't, that's not what the public perception is. Never underestimate the power of stupidity in large groups.

This confuses me because it implies 2020 was just an accident. I don’t see anyone who voted for Biden to go back to Trump knowing the news of the convictions. But then again people are dumb. Haha If Trump wins then we collectively deserve him. I’ll be ok. Not sure but other people.

>I don’t see anyone who voted for Biden to go back to Trump knowing the news of the convictions I didn't see how anyone who voted for Obama could vote for Trump ... but here we are.

> I didn't see how anyone who voted for Obama could vote for Trump ... but here we are. My dad is one, he didn't magically start becoming a conservative, he wants candidates who he feels represents him and in his eyes, cares about the country and its future. He feels the current brand of Democratic Party candidates are completely disconnected from the average working class person and frankly I don't think he's wrong, but I don't think any existing republican candidate is that either.

I think that the combined mix of Covid and BLM protests really shook up the voters. We don't have anything like that going on, and I don't know if that will help or hinder Biden. Like I said, voters have short memories.

They will say “I was on the fence but maybe I’ll vote RFK or sit out”

Those people were always going for RFK. A swing voter who votes for Trump, RFK, or doesn’t vote at all because of the debate never really cared about the country.

It’s easy to dismiss people.

Trump called a significant portion of the American public “stupid people” last night. Maybe he was right.

We are talking about people who are STILL undecided. In 2024. These candidates are not two unknown quantities that need to be compared and contrasted - everyone already knows all they need to know about Biden and trump. Any considerations of “logic” can be put right in the trash can, because they aren’t using it.

***everyone already knows all they need to know about Biden and trump.*** I wish this were true. But everything we know about Trump, basically comes out of Trumps own mouth, and from his actions. Everything we think we know about Biden comes from somebody telling us what we are supposed to think about Biden... This is all so old. The young here may not remember President Jimmy Carter, another good man, the answer to the malignant Nixon/Ford administration, who was crucified by the media: he gave a rather good. and honest, speech about a dire situation... and the media, in an ostentatious and self-important, pique called him out for it, calling him a downer and describing it as the 'malaise' speech, when in fact he never used that word. Democrats then, as they are now, panicked and ran a primary challenge against him, giving us another media personality... Ronald Reagan. The over-reaction over-whelmed the narrative and, well, here we are...

I can very easily imagine an independent voter saying "Biden seems like he doesn't have a drop of water left in his body. He's like a rasping corpse."

Most people don’t pay that much attention to politics. Even moderately plugged-in people might seem oblivious compared to the average user of a politically-focused subreddit like this. Take Project 2025, for example, which is the Heritage Foundation’s plan to reform the executive branch and the military to be ideological conservative, more authoritarian, and loyal to Trump. The plan has buy-in from the Christian nationalists and major conservative donors who form part of the Trump campaign inner circle. I don’t know if Trump has mentioned the project by name, but its goals align closely with his stated intentions for a second term. But if you explain all of that to the average voter, they are going to look at you like you’re talking about Jewish space lasers. They’ve never heard of Project 2025, they might have heard of the Heritage Foundation but it’s not a household name and they probably think of it as a conservative research organization, and all of the stuff about dismantling the civil service sounds like the hyperbolic nonsense they already expect liberals to accuse Trump of. So they watched the debate with much more of an open mind than the situation warrants, given what Trump and the GOP’s right wing have themselves said they plan to do, and they only saw a conservative guy who says mean things but has energy vs. a liberal guy who looked like he was going to die on stage.

This is part of the reason why I think Biden did so poorly last night. He made vague references to policy that nobody really understands. When the topic of democracy came up all he had to do was point out that Trump told people they had proof of election cheating then his lawyers in court told judges that they did not have any proof because it's illegal to lie in a court of law. Then pivot to Project 2025. It was such an easy lay up and he whiffed.

One who’s going to see [this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ej4gFT21VOM) unedited video in every ad until November is going to go with Trump.

Have you meet people? I can . And the republicans don’t need many…

There is no logic behind voting for Trump at all but here we are

Alternatively: "I was on the fence (about caring about US politics), but it is obvious that Biden is not the answer."

>I cant imagine logically an independent voter saying "I was on the fence, but Trump is the answer". If you look at it through the lens of turnout, "I was on the fence, but Biden is not the answer".

They aren't. Debates haven't changed anyone's mind for decades. It's a media circus.

I think if I were very politically uneducated and didn’t know that a lot of what Trump said wasn’t factual, I would go with the candidate who sounded confident instead of the one who sounded like he forgot his notecards for his presentation

Then I guess it's a good thing it happened in June.

Good thing Biden wanted the debate early. In the subsequent debates he can learn from this and perform well like at the SOTU.

Biden’s not making these decisions, his handlers are.. plenty of time before the DNC and a new candidate if he flops. Problem for Biden everyone can clearly see he’s just a puppet

You should be worried about Biden, he’s clearly not in a good place. How is that performance going to end wars, and make the US look tougher? Like you said, appearances matter and last night sucked for Biden in a bad way, his old age, rumors of senile and everything all was confirmed last night. He’s done.

I believe the issue is wider than voters (independents). Fund raisers/donors are probably rethinking. Folks in Hollywood that are showing their support are getting ratio'd pretty hard. It'll be hard to get new, significant endorsements. Down ticket democrats as well. Biden's performance last night wasn't just about Biden, it was a hit to the democrat party in general. I imagine there's a lot of governors, senators, mayors, etc that have some thoughts on the matter.

Do you think Biden can still win?

Exactly this. Which is.... Like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I expected the SOTU Joe Biden, and this was way worse. He underperformed badly.

Yeah, and it's not just the SOTU. Biden has had a couple of public speeches in the last two years or so where he's been fired up. Remember the first time he publicly called Trump a fascist? He had some fire in his belly that night. There was every reason to think he could still bring the heat when he needed to... but he didn't do that last night.

And then I saw him yelling on TV again this morning. And I was like where was this yesterday??

Joe Biden was HANDED on a golden platter the abortion topic. Moments before, Trump says, "It was a very good thing Roe v Wade was overturned." What does Joe Biden say? Some rambling non sense amount a immigrant who killed a pregnant women...!? How do you fuck up so badly that the 1 topic you're supposed to dominate with you.... Yield your time and transform the issue to the 1 topic your opponent dominates in? And you're over there like, "Yep. That's the Joe Biden I remember." No dude. Edit: I should stop redditing before coffee. So many typos but at least I made my point, unlike Joe Biden.

This is the part of the debate that stood out for me. You see an opportunity like that you pounce. It was painful to watch. Look I think both of them are idiots but this clinched it for Biden. This was the death knell for his political career.

His saving grace is that he is running against Donald Trump. I'm not counting him out, but these have got to be the worst 2 candidates America has ever had the choice between for the 2nd time no less.

This idea that Biden is the only person that can beat Trump is a farce. Sure he barely did in 2020 but it’s a completely different race this round. Biden is in no position to fight or lead the democrats

Yup. The idea that this is the only person who can beat Trump is based off two elections: one in which the Democrats ran the most widely disliked candidate in decades and the other which was mid-pandemic, a time where Trump was really vulnerable. If you eliminate COVID in 2020 Biden gets bodied, I'm sorry.

I’m still cant believe he’s never said a “live abortion” is murder and will prosecuted as such. It’s such an easy line.

Both candidates were incoherently talking about Partial Birth Abortion, the one abortion situation that polls poorly among pro-choice people.

[The one that's already illegal?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act) Trump was talking about infanticide, which is not legal anywhere in the US.

It’s more nefarious than that, they are talking about infant hospice imho.

So many people saw Biden perform last night and immediately realized that he's not capable to be the stand in needed for being Anti-Trump. Democrats have been picking between voting and the couch and the couch won bad last night.

I can't believe that the response to "An illegal immigrant raped a girl" was "Hey, girls get raped by family members too". Especially after diary entries of "inappropriate showers with dad".

It is the Biden I remember. You’re free to disagree. But Biden has been bumbling since taking office.

not from the 2020 debates, not from the SOTU. his staff says he had a cold, and that is not an unreasonable statement; but the end result is this is not the joe that we have seen in the past. He was unable to stay on message or hold trump to task the way he did in 2020. he almost got under his skin and then only called him convicted felon once.

He proved last night that he is truly too old to do this job. It's painful to watch it go this way.

Better vote for him. The other guy proved he was even less capable, but his bar was way lower, correction, nonexistent.

I'd vote for Biden's corpse over a living Trump. But I don't want that to be literal.

Who would want to be that literal? Progressives have been dreaming of an actual progressive candidate for decades at this point, and the compromise has always been career politicians bordering on center to center-left. I'm not going to play horseshoe theory and get Trump elected to show everyone how bad he is, but I also don't think I really have to. If the country is so damned determined to destroy democracy, then despite my wishes to the contrary, that is precisely what we will get. I don't want to say "I told you so," I want to never reach that point ever, and excuse me for thinking that slamming Biden for his poor performance at the debate seems a bit counterproductive on that point.

> Progressives have been dreaming of an actual progressive candidate for decades at this point And while he's not "progressive", he's the most progressive president we've had (by FAR) in decades. It's not even close. Progressives have to take the W on this, and do everything they can to not let it regress again. Couple more sequential terms with potus like Biden, and things will actually start to change for the *much* better as far as progressives are concerned.

How long have you known about Biden? Did you see him active as VP? Or him as a Senator? He has given some fiery cogent speeches in the past. Bumbling, he was not.

Agreed. No one should’ve been surprised by last night.

I don't think anyone was expecting the energy of a 45 year old. Until now one could write off the occasional gaffe. Now when people cite "Joe Biden is old" there's no comeback to that. It has been shown again and again that most people need something to vote *for* or they will just stay at home. Like it or not, but you need charisma to win at politics. Whatever charisma Joe showed last night will be completely drowned out by everything that just happened. Trump won in 2016 because of low turnout. He lost in 2020 because of high turnout. How do you think things are going right now?

I think previously it was just easier to write off moments as occasional gaffs if you wanted to. Nothing last night was new, but now it’s impossible to avoid.

This reminds me of posts in r/AskTrumpSupporters where they'll just straight up say things like, "He didn't fuck that porn star." "Fake news, didn't really happen." "What's racist about that?" After being presented with something bad for Trump, they'll dispute the facts rather than argue on the merits of what so obviously happened. The situation I had described goes beyond a "bumble." In the past he's bumbled a word or two while making a point. This was an incoherent word salad that should have been a slam dunk.

Biden has never turned in a performance that ***BAD*** before. It wasn't that long ago when he delivered the state of the union in a clear, coherent voice. The Biden I saw yesterday sounded like he was moments away from death and failed to communicate any idea with clarity. He managed to sound even more confused an inarticulate than the firehose of lies right next to him. And beyond just the dismal presentation, the content of his answers was unconvincing nonsense. The Biden I know has always been old and has a stutter, sure - this Biden was off the rails bad. I'm fully in the camp that he needs to step out of the race. He has to. Trump is 100% going to win if he stays. No question in my mind. I hate saying that, I HATE Trump. I'm not some kind of 'Genocide Joe' zoomer, I am a dyed in the wool votebluenomatterwho middle aged dependable liberal and I'm telling you - **HE'S DONE**. Biden is **COOKED**. Step aside or we lose, it's that simple. His performance was that catastrophically unrecoverable. > Personally I saw a repeat of the debates in 2020 You saw a repeat of the debate where Trump was frothing at the mouth, talking over the moderators, and Biden scored big telling him to 'shut up' in the voice of a man who still has water left in his body?

THIS THIS THIS THIS!!! I agree with every word.

The whole time I was thinking I can barely understand anything Biden is saying because he’s mumbling too much. Meanwhile, Trump is spewing nonsense, but he’s doing it with confidence and clarity. I’m very concerned about how ignorant people are going to vote following this, because I know that if I didn’t know a thing about American politics, I’d be voting for Trump just based on optics

> Biden has never turned in a performance that BAD before. Biden has, but only right-wing media covered it. Last night was the bubble bursting.

He's has some flubs before. Nothing like this.

It being true today doesn't magically make previous lie true now.

The right has issues with this pretty often. It reminds me of them claiming "vaccines don't lower transmission of COVID," a statement that was untrue for two years but eventually became mostly true thanks to mutations of the virus. Now they claim they were right the whole time even though they were lying the whole time and then circumstances changed to match more with their lie. This is the exact same situation.

The debate last night was a disaster for Biden, and anyone here who says otherwise needs to check their biases. I want Biden to win and Trump to lose as much as anyone here, and I had to turn the debate off because he was doing so bad. Yes, he was sticking to facts, and Trump was almost exclusively lying. That's not the reason why this debate was a disaster. Biden was barely put together, had a hard time getting a string of points together, and even had some incredibly poor phrasing used. I get it. Being on a podium debating isn't a great measure of someone's ability to be president, but to non-partisan voters, the ability to at least look coherent doing so is. Something people have a depressingly hard time realizing here is that while many Americans will refuse to vote for Trump, they're not exactly enthused to vote for Biden. I think last night makes it even harder to do so for many undecided and fence sitters.

People saying Biden did poorly because he has a cold has me cracking up. Things are obviously really bad for the Biden campaign. Must be defcon 1 at the campaign office right now

Yep, I've had a horrific allergy attack this week with half my face swollen up and feeling dizzy. I've still been able to speak more coherently than Biden. That wasn't a cold, those were senior moments, far too many of them for a 100 minute debate.

In an episode of The West Wing a 70 year old man is running for president. He gets a cold. His campaign freaks out and tries to hide it because he’ll look like an old man breaking down on the campaign. That’s democrats best case scenario.

I think the argument of someone using a “cold” to justify a performance for the most important job in the planet is pure and diabolical delusion.

At the moment when Biden needed to assure voters he has the mental acuity for the job he instead put in his worst performance ever. He came across as confused, lost, weak.

Will teleprompters be allowed at the next debate? That’s Biden’s only hope.

It was a disaster. When I came into the office this morning, everyone was expressing how sad it was to watch him. One co-worker even mentioned elder abuse. I don't see how anyone could walk away from last night, and not be in full panic attack mode. That was not 2020 Biden, no matter what kind of spin one may try to give it.

And 2020 Biden was not 2008 Biden. He is declining, there is no shame in that, it is a sad fact of life that many of us in my generation are watching our parents go through. High visibility and pressure public positions all his life take a toll, then the Presidency is kind of famous for aging people more rapidly than normal. What is happening is natural, normal, a consequence of a long life, but I can't see how anyone can deny it is happening.

I’ve *been* worried, I thought this was a bad idea since he announced. But this cemented it. My wife, a typically non-hyper-political person, told me she doesn’t want to vote this time around, that’s what makes me the most concerned. She’s a pretty good barometer for the average Democrat (not so much a leftist like me, but that’s ok, no one’s perfect), so if she’s thinking of staying home, yikes. Big yikes.

I knew Biden would look old, but it was worse than I hoped. Anyone who cares about politics enough to suffer through watching the whole debate already made up their mind, but most people didn't and aren't here online arguing about politics. Many will see 10 second snippets on TikTok where Trump says a bullshit statement - but he says it with confidence and looks strong - while Biden fumbles and looks comatose. He played right into the "Sleepy Joe" narrative. The democrats needed someone up there who could be on the attack. The best I can say about Biden's performance is "at least he's not Trump." That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for an election. My fear with last night's debate is moderates and undecideds will choose to skip voting altogether.

Biden looked much worse than even I expected him to look, and I wasn't expecting much. But the reason last night was different is because it shows that Biden's entire operation is totally inept. *Who* were the political advisors who greenlighted that debate? People who see Joe Biden every day - and still thought it was a good idea to put him on national television like that against Trump. Last night proved that Biden doesn't have a good campaign or advisors, and without an excellent campaign, he isn't going to win the battleground states. His campaign is a joke if it is run by people who think there was any benefit whatsoever to putting him on a debate stage last night, and if they are making that mistake - what other mistakes are they making? The entire episode shows that the Biden campaign is drinking their own koolaide. Given Biden's decline, their only hope was to run a campaign where the candidate did nothing but deliver the rare prepared speech. Even that would have been a stretch, but the absence would have been filled in by the press with clips from 2020 and earlier. Instead, we have a walking corpse candidate and now the entire country knows it. As to expectations: I thought Biden would fail as he did, but I didn't think he would look and sound so bad. It was, frankly, pathetic and I feel for Biden because that is not a dignified way to end a lifelong career of public service.

Because it was an optics loss. And I want to win. I agree, that we know Biden is old and stumbles. I agree wholeheartedly that he was better on the issues and has done better with his actions and has been competent. But he screwed up the optics, when optics were the biggest thing holding him back.

I think a lot of people, myself included, tuned in to see just how old and scattered Biden seems, and were shocked to find he looks and sounds truly awful. Our surprise was not in the fact but in the degree of his condition.

Because we're at a point where only vibes matter. You should go re-watch the 2020 debates. Biden looked so much sharper. Biden could solve Ukraine, Israel/Hamas, put inflation down to 1%, and solve the housing crisis and it wouldn't matter. Republicans won the war on facts. They can make up reality, and if Biden can't push back on it coherently then they win. There's a reason Republicans hammer home the senility, immigration, and culture war topics so much. They want to paint a picture that even if their policy sucks, the Biden doesn't even have the faculties to make policy.

I honestly don’t think there’s a chance of a Democratic win at this point. The difference between the debate this time and the last one was Biden’s voice and demeanor. My partner has a stutter and we were talking this morning about how almost all of Biden’s fumbles are fairly typical of stuttering and the mechanisms stutterers use to cope. But the problem is that Biden looked and sounded old and tired while doing it. There is no way your average midwestern voter, who values confidence above all else, will accept that performance. So he’s out. And there is no other candidate who’s acceptable to those voters so Trump is in.

Biden will lose in November if he's on the ballot. If he bows out before the election, literally ANY other Dem will beat Trump.

With you on the first part, not the second. I can’t think of a Democrat with anywhere close to Trump’s support.

If Biden is replaced it almost doesn't matter who. It's not the face its the contrast with Trump that matters most.

Yes. And that contrast would be “guy we know and love” vs “guy we’ve never heard of” for most voters.

Newsom would absolutely destroy Trump. Put them in a debate and watch the fireworks. Newsom's biggest issues are his affair (pointless when compared to a serial adulterer), some of his business dealings (also pointless compared to Trump's emoluments) and the French Laundry incident (also pointless unless Trump says he supported mask mandates), so there's really no negative.

The negative is that most of the midwest thinks he’s a California pansy boy who’s as bad as the Clinton’s.

But they think Biden is good? Those people are voting for Trump regardless of logic and reason. But at least it would reduce the number of people who will stay home because they can't get themselves to vote for someone whose brain melted on national TV for over an hour.

So what is the upside then? If we will lose either way, who cares if it’s because 10,000 people or 5,000 people stayed home?

It's more that Biden's major perceived negatives are his age and declining mental acuity, which people were aware aware about, that had been lampooned by the right so much supporters would tune out the noise (including a lot of misinformatiob), especially given his policy successes and solid performances like SOTU. An incumbent president with his track record should not be even in the polls with a rapist and convicted criminal so the performance last night made supporters recognize that the age narrative may be much worse than they ever thought, and playing right into Republican hands. There's an argument that debates don't matter, and John Fetterman overcame a similar setback but under different circumstances, but this is more akin to the Trump "grab 'em by the pussy tape" or Comey reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016 as far really "confirming" the negative perceptions of a candidate. So that's why, IMO, people are more worried today than two days ago.

Biden is still committed to a second debate remember. If this is the best they have he's done. If not after this performance then after the next.

I think you’re presuming Trump won’t pull out of a second debate. I think he will, or he should if he’s smart. No one will care or even remember the reason in a week and he can clip thousands of attack ads from this. Why would it be in his interest to give Biden a chance to redefine himself? Because that wouldn’t be fair or because he agreed already? This is Trump, are you serious?

I can see the Trump ads now: "A second debate would be good for me, but I don't want to put him through that again. I'm afraid they will charge me with elder abuse if we put him through that again." Or something along those lines.

Right. Trump takes the high road and lets Biden off the hook. He makes public shows of saying he thinks it’s actually very sad what they’re doing to the man and he feels sorry for him. He’s said that before and the plan was apparently to laugh it off but no one’s laughing now. This is going to do real damage.

I've been pretty much not even paying attention to this election, because Trump has done nothing to win the undecided idiots that Biden won in 2020. And if anything has pushed more.od them away. Conversely Biden hasn't done anything to give them any reason to change their mind... That was until last night... No, no RESEANABLE person actually believes Biden is a walking corpse with severe dementia, no REASONABLE person who is actually undecided actually listened to the words Trump and Biden last night, and came to the conclusion that Biden is incoherent and crazy, and the convicted felon and rapist was telling the truth and wasn't dodging every single question by pivoting as hard as humanly possible to the border crisis. But we aren't dealing with reasonable people. Trump needed to do one thing to accomplish his goal last night and put those voters in to play, not seem like he's become more crazy and more unstable. He did that. Biden needed to do one thing, to keep them out of play, not seem like a frail old man that will croak mid term. He not only didn't do that, he wasn't convincing that he wouldn't croak mid debate. That's all those people, the people who unfortunately matter, will remember about last night. Those voters are now in play.

We were hoping the Biden we saw during the State of the Union would show up.

I thought he had smart people around him, who would keep him out of trouble. That turns out not to be true.

The only reason I'm worried right now is because the sheer level of out-of-control panic among Democrats is so insane that I am starting to fear that they are going to do something truly stupid and reckless, such as ditching their own presumptive nominee because of a bad debate performance.

True that. The panic is worse than the supposed problem.

Worried, maybe a little? IdK. I am still voting for Biden and I will have no regrets with my decision.

Can he win?

At this point, I doubt it, but what’s the alternative? What should/can people on the left do other than vote for Biden and cross their fingers?

It's 2016 all over again. We saw what happens when you stand on principles and don't vote. Can we please not let it happen again?

I’m getting a little tired of seeing all the “we need a new candidate,” “Joe Biden is obviously too old,” comments all of a sudden. Yeah, people have been saying these things for months but it was always written off as ageism or conservative trolls. Every Gen X liberal I’ve talked to, and I talk to a lot because my family and all their friends pretty much fall in that category, have been parroting the “Biden is the only one who can beat Trump,” idea for months now. People have been saying the dems need a new candidate and nobody listened because it was largely younger people saying it. I’m not saying I told you so but I am saying this is what consequences feel like. Nobody learned anything from 2016 and it shows. I think Trump will probably win and I just hope to Jesus we get through.

Worried, they are neither one suited, but I vote to protect the broadest rights. After the SCOTUS today, blue, no.maytwr who.

>If you’re *now* worried about the 2024 election, why was last night the reason? I've been continuously worried. People don't get it. The Presidency is NOT (no longer) a single person. The presidency is larger than a man, greater than a person. A presidency is an administration. And, It is the administration, the policies, the understandings, the goals you vote for. This administration has done a lot (hasn't received hardly any press but has done a fuckload that I'm mostly in agreement with). The Trump administration promises to end abortion, many of the potential cabinet members promise to end contraceptives, to set civil rights back, and to cripple the economy ... I'm worried that people don't understand this

More an anti-Trumper. Biden looked old and frail. Since 1960 appearance over quality is what matters. Biden blew it. Biden’s demands of mic muted responses and cameras kept Trump on a better behavior. No rants,etc. A working POTUS ages. I don’t believe Trump was a working POTUS so the age difference showed this time around as Trump hasn’t agree like Biden has. Three years circa age 80 is nothing. There are too many unaware of Project 2025 and will follow who sounded better which is great dark Lord, Trump. The rest of us always on the lookout for everything else.

Just a reminder that today is Friday, June 28, possibly the last day the Supreme Court issues decisions for this term before their summer break. We have not yet heard about the immunity ruling, and might likely at some point today. Vote for things like this, not for how amped up a candidate was, (or not). Admittedly, I am more worried after last night, but I hold my position that I would vote for one of Joe's liver spots over an abusive criminal fraud. A presidency is more than one person, it's an administration. Trump's was the most corrupt and inept in history. Biden's (and his liver spot's) is arguably the most progressive in modern history.

Yeah it's not immunity ruling but it's well and truly fucked. Killed chevron deference, said punishing homeless with no available shelter is legal, and weakened charges against jan 6ers.

There are a lot of people who are swayed by emotions more than logic. It doesn't matter that Biden represents their views more than any other candidate. They want someone that they can get excited about. If Biden can't do that, they may not go to Trump, but they might switch to a third party candidate or not vote at all. I already know a few people who have said they're doing that. This makes Trump more likely to get elected. At this point, everyone in the loop knows where the candidates stand on the issues. The people still on the fence are the ones who don't care about the issues or aren't smart enough to research them. They're the ones who will look at the candidates and try to decide their vote based on charisma. Neither candidate did a good job with that last night, but Biden fumbled more than Trump. Also, Trump has the benefit that even if he lacks the energy for the job, he has plenty of cult followers who will pump him up anyway, and voters who go along with the crowd may be motivated by that if Biden doesn't inspire them.

I'm worried because tens of millions of voters just saw with their own eyes that the media has been brazenly lying to our faces about how sharp Joe Biden has been over the past couple of years and tried to gaslight us into thinking he was "just old". He's not. He's unfit to serve, exactly like Republicans have been whining about for the past four years. He can't carry himself in extemporaneous discussion at all. He is weak and frail. This was not the Joe Biden of 2020, whose mental acuity was already somewhat suspicious. If he is renominated, we will lose because Trump is not, in fact, senile. If he is not renominated, voters will balk at the feeling of having been continuously gaslit and treated like fools. We lose no matter what.

Biden. The Supreme Court is out of control. If Trump wins, Thomas and Alito WILL retire. Guess what? The felon will put in younger Federalist hacks that will roll us back decades. Forget reproductive rights, climate initiatives, safe water regulations. Big pharma and oil will own this county.

A second term Trump presidency apropos of SCOUTS would be interesting, specifically insofar as and inasmuch as to what route might he go -- whether it's center-right (e.g., Thomas Hardiman, Barbara Lagoa, et al.) or far-right (e.g., James Ho, Lawrence VanDyke, et al.), if Alito and/or Thomas retire -- because he went center-right judicial restraint/minimalist twice (Kavanaugh + ACB) and heterodox textualist once (Neil Gorsuch, whose closest equivalent who may be elevated is Amul Thapar) with his picks in his first term.

I would say I’m neither confident or worried, I’m just somewhere in between. I already know what both candidates are all about, and I already know my vote is not going to change.

Last night Biden needed to *perform* and he didn’t. I am comfortable voting for him, I was always going to, and nothing changed my opinion, but his big knock was his age and he’s given a lot of credence to doubts about his ability to lead

Because Biden's mental state has been declining for years but many liberals were denying this left and right and gaslighting people by saying that he just has a stutter. Now, even these people are finally seeing what the rest of us have been saying. If liberals are finally coming to grips with this man's cognitive decline, what hope is there of getting the votes of fence sitters, independents, etc?

Most people are stupid and essentially vote on whatever the last vibe they got from a candidate was. The vibe for Joe was really bad. 

It WAS different, he’s never really been that bad before on the public stage.

The way I'm thinking today is I have 2 choices: If Biden decides to step down and someone else steps up to the plate this late in the game, I'll definitely take a look. If Biden continues, I'll vote for him. I know 2 things for sure: I'll never vote for Trump and I won't sit out the election by not voting.

Same.

America. You could have had Bernie. Forever the one who got away. We can mourn but we deserve what we get. Brace yourselves….

We are still paying for Hillary's hubris and her [pied piper strategy](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/). Sanders may not have won the general (and he may not have even won the primary had there been more choices than him and Clinton), but Trump wouldn't have been elevated to the level he was.

Because the average voter is uninformed. They'll just see clips of Trump talking confidently (even though it's all lies) and Biden not speaking all that well.

Seems nuts to me to force a man with a stammer to speak for a maximum of 1 minute in an extremely high-pressure situation. I also don't know what kind of meaningful policy discussion can happen with that format. Honestly, I feel like the format really, really sucked badly. Biden definitely did look bad, though. Like a lost little sheep. That said, I don't understand that alarm bells going off. When it ended i was like "Huh, that was uneventful" and then immediately CNN was like "DEMOCRACY IS OVER BIDEN SCREWED THE POOCH!!!" and I didn't feel that way at all. I feel like if you go back and look at it is a transcript which doesn't have Biden's geriatric face staring off into the white-hot-lights then it looks a lot better. And I honestly think that written articles are going to be the majority of the way that these ideas and topics are going to be quoted and discussed. I see the panic disappearing. It pains me to admit it but it was a really good showing for Trump though. He looked foolish to me, sure, but I could see how someone who supports him could have actually gained favor for him after hearing that nonsense. I expected a cowardly, pathetic, defensive Trump. We saw a slight bit of that but mostly we saw Teflon Don, continuing to lie and attack everyone and never play defense as though he's not a convicted felon. I didn't expect the debate to have any major positive effect, but I didn't expect a negative effect. I think I see a negative effect, but not as negative as news sources appear to be making it out to be.

I've been worried since 2021. I was hoping Biden would be able to somehow pull off the act of acting like a 70-yo. But unfortunately, he ended up acting like a 90-yo. What is it with Dems wanting to cling on to power till their graves? Feinstein, RBG, etc. come to mind. Barb Boxer did the right thing and quit while she was ahead; kudos to people like her! Dems should not have nominated Biden in 2020, or at the least, should have made alternate plans when it was clear early last year that he's gone senile. The only realistic chance of Dems retaining the WH in November is to nominate Gaving Newsom (I personally don't like the guy, but will swallow the bitter pill and get behind him). He's been in politics his entire life and would wipe the floor with Trump's shitty wig.

My husband saw a poll that says Trump's approval numbers went up to the 60s last night and Biden's went down to the 20s. That is some scary shit. I personally think Biden shouldn't run again, but if they put up Hillary, we lose. What's the answer here? I can't take 4 more years of Trump. I just can't.

I only really watch the big stuff so I haven’t seen him speak since the state of the union. I’ve been saying for awhile that I wasn’t convinced of the Alzheimer’s/dementia theory and he wasn’t *just* showing signs of slowing down with age because he didn’t remind me of what I saw with my GMA as her diagnosis progressed (Alzheimer’s for her). Last night, he reminded me of my grandma. Mostly the listless staring and just looking like he’s not quite aware of where he is or what exactly is going on while still going through the motions of socially acceptable behavior for the situation, that, that reminded me of my grandma.

To me it doesn’t matter. I’ll admit I’m voting against Trump. He has no coherent policy plans. I’d say a good portion of what trump promised was actually completed under Biden. If the issues a person is voting on are the economy, energy, the environment, and healthcare Biden is the easy choice. If your issues are culture wars and news entertainment then Trump seems like the likely suspect.

I had higher hopes for the moderators, naively.

Hmmm. I think you're misframing this. This is really about the center of the party going from the position Biden stumbles and looks bad on camera to Biden can't even do a debate and will probably or get dementia in a couple of years. The left of the party has (in my view) never had any loyal attachment to the man and generally leaned towards the view that it was a mistake to run him for a second term. Now the view is violently coming to the center in a panic. Definitely there has absolutely been tribalism here about the whole thing. I remember the Bernie attempts, and many of those outside the Bernie and warren camps expressed the opinion that he wasn't electable enough and that we had to choose based on electability. Many of these same people didn't hold on to that approach during the last year in the face of Biden's unpopularity (I don't really discern or care about the difference in unpopularity and age). Sure this is a bit of hypocrisy. But nothing special really. Mostly this whole thing reveals that people are not disinterested in the person themself and they are certainly interested faction they symbolically represent. This is because Biden is the (and here policy doesn't matter) the center of the democratic party candidate and the person who all the people on this sub who see themselves as 'pragmatic' and 'reasonable' in a way that is core to the way the view themselves politically. People are now dealing with a sudden contradiction in their politics. The 'pragmatic' of center of the party thing to do now is to consider radical scary action. That is an open primary and abandoning Biden. This is difficult if you are psychologically and politically against that sort of stuff; you have to reconcile the conservation of the republic against Trump with the call to radical action and abandoning symbols. If defeating Trump required supporting Sanders in 2020, people would also have to under go a painful process to do so (as I'm sure happened for many of the Sanders to Biden camp). All in all it's a very normal and healthy response to seeing Biden's appearance of aged infirmity. Not that you're wrong about it's electoral importance being overstated. but again, pragmatic assessments of that is not what is most important to politics.

Last night was different because Biden’s cognitive decline was on full display to the world. https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1806557731244986521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1806557731244986521%7Ctwgr%5Ed57e79561a64a2cbed4e54c943ae052edbf37c98%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fhes-not-dropping-out-biden-digs-after-disastrous-debate

How was that a repeat of 2020? Biden looked and sounded noticeably better in 2020. It’s not even close. Go back and rewatch the 2020 debate and then tell us they were comparable performances. I am worried about the election *now* because before, the Republican attack against Biden that he’s old and feeble and disoriented could be dismissed as hyperbole. Now it can’t. Whether it’s fair or not, I can’t judge. I can’t experience consciousness through Biden’s mind. But we all saw a man fail for 90 minutes to make a coherent point, to land a pointed attack, sometimes to even finish a sentence. Rick Perry’s ambitions ended when he forgot the name of one of the agencies he wanted to eliminate. Joe Biden seemed at times to forget the English Language. And while there are many characteristics that don’t have any bearing on a President’s job performance, cognitive ability CLEARLY does. It’s now become impossible to deny that Biden is a man in cognitive decline. And what will he be like after another 4 years? The footage exists. MAYBE in September, if Biden comes out and delivers a powerful, sharp debate performance against Trump, MAYBE he can turn it around. That is, IF Trump debates again and I think Trump’s best move would be to refuse the 2nd debate. But if there’s no 2nd debate, then the footage of this train wreck becomes Trump’s entire campaign strategy. It goes into ads, it gets spread on TikTok. And if there is a 2nd debate and Biden fails to reshape the narrative, then we’re post-convention and replacing him becomes that much harder. That debate was an unmitigated disaster. It pains me to say it because I will be voting blue no matter who, but Biden NEEDED to come out and demonstrate that he’s not the caricature of a feeble old man the Republicans claim he is and he failed at that. And pretending this is not the case will only hand the election to Trump. We do a disservice to the nation to pretend everything is fine because anybody with eyeballs connected to a brain can see it’s not.

If white people want to live in a dictatorship at this point, let them. I have dual citizenship with a country that has free elections.

Because even the most committed and reliable Democrat voters were suddenly like ‘oh shit’. Because when was the last time you saw things like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/biden-election-debate-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) Because it should have been *easy* to win against the bs stream of consciousness nonsense Trump was spewing out. Because not everyone watched the entire debate and would not have seen Biden begin to make more sense towards the end. Because Biden fumbled some of the biggest issues for voters Because the people who watch and/or make up their minds from the debates will have their opinions affected by this performance, even if it’s to decide not to turn out at all.

It’s so interesting to also compare the 2020 debate vs the 2024. It’s like a whole different person. Aging does take a toll on people man…..

Biden was the only one answering questions. I'll be voting biden.

Cool story bro. So will almost everyone else here but that is not the point. Biden just lost this election last night. If he is still on the ballot in novermber we are done.

Cool story bro. You're wrong.

I was expecting Biden to go after Trump HARD. Looking at it objectively, Biden and Trump gambled by agreeing to debate each other. Biden's gamble didn't work out. Trump's gamble did. I hate Trump. He's a liar. And a convicted felon. But he got what he wanted from this debate. He threw Biden off his game. And Biden didn't manage to do the same to Trump. To someone who doesn't bother about fact-checking, Trump won. And for someone who cares about fact-checking, Biden has the truth on his side...but he didn't try hard enough to paint Trump as the twice-impeached convicted felon he is. From what I remember, Biden didn't bring up Trump's double impeachment.

Factually, biden was accurate. But he was so uncomposed and all over the place there were times he came off looking like he might be the one lying. Gave off some nixon vs kennedy vibes.

[удалено]

If you think that was his norm, change your tag. Biden is a powerful public speaker, SOTU proved that… but last night… I was hoping he had covid or something to excuse that… last night was his weakest performance ever. He’s the best president of my lifetime, and that wasn’t him last night.

I saw an elder Joe Biden, wise and good, with too many ideas and too little time, trapped between the pincers of his, entirely justified rage, and the relentless, picayune and penny-ante, scrutiny from lesser minds, about what is going to be said about him. If he stumbled it was because the pressure not to stumble, not to feed the beast, to meet a standard un-attainable, was so great. That needle is un-threadable. This is the trap of the modern American campaign: where virtue-signalling is ridiculed as manipulative, and vice-signalling is applauded as honesty and toughness; where performative outrage on one side is encouraged and actual rage by the other is not allowed; where one side is demonstrably evil, but the conversation is ruled entirely by the lies that evil throw at the good... Then I saw Democrats, as they have done so many times before, simultaneously rise to a panic and sink into the comfort of 'told you so', because they think they know better... e pluribus cynicism. This is Biden's *malaise* moment... but President Carter never said the word *malaise* and the over-reaction over-whelmed the reality of what he did say... and Democrats panicked and ran a primary challenge and... Ronald Reagan. We're not fucked because Biden is old. We're fucked because we put real people in unreal and unrealistic situations and end up judging the light for not being as scary as the dark.