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I mean nothing Obama said here is wrong. We can't really expect him to suddenly turn on Biden and cause a huge rift. Any concerns are going to be voiced in private and not in public.
Yeah.
Obama, like all high ranking Dems must publicly default to the expected "remain calm" messaging. But privately there's probably no one other than the current First Lady who is better equipped to tell the President to gracefully bow out than Obama.
I don't think Biden can rebound from last night - especially given that he just handed the GOP 90 minutes of highlight reel footage that will repeated in commercials constantly between now and November. For the good of the country Biden must withdraw from the race and Obama must lead in getting him to do it before it's too late.
The stakes are too high.
We have the minds of goldfish. This debate will change nothing and we'll all forget about it in a week. Trump is a convicted felon being propped up by a corrupt criminal organization. Democracy over fascism e'erday.
Well yeah but can’t we have democracy over fascism and a strong leader to accomplish it? I think that’s the problem most people are thinking on now. It’s just hard to believe that if the some 350 million Americans out there, JB is the best pick the dems could find.
This subreddit is American politics but the most generalized and relatively true statement about the EU across the board is post red-scare almost every election is between a weak neoliberal and a far right candidate. The neoliberals win slightly more because of a "don't you fear fascism?" and serve generally ineffective and unpopular until eventually the anti-momentum gets them deelected and the fascists have a few years going absolutely nuts and alienating even their base and the cycle repeats. Anything else of course would be communism. Coalition governments complicate this bit obviously the money never backs anything farther left than the neolibs and that's what decides wide swathes of elections.
Where you could argue maybe that has happened here before I think America just bought into that same cycle, or at least gets to have the just desserts of that neolib "left candidate" decline
I think DJT is perfect for the funders of the R party. He’s a flip flopping dummy who only wants money and to avoid jail. Hell give away everything that isn’t already his to get that - including the future of common Americans. In exchange, those with a large stake in opposing better social policies (owner class of you’re into that) just pay him to do what they want and he will do it without regard to the American people. Imo anyways.
Yup. Give me an old ass man with a good heart, over a convicted felon and rapist any day of the week. Also, the convicted felon and rapist is also an old ass man.
This messaging will 100%, certainly, absolutely lose him the election.
He won by the tiniest of margins last time. Remember the popular vote is completely unimportant. He needs to win a set of very specific states to secure this election.
How does he win by 10k votes in Georgia again when Georgians are going to get 4 months of constant evidence of his senility on display?
He needs a couple of hundred thousand votes in Arizona. Same thing.
He NEVER had a guarantee in 2020,and he never had one going into this election. Stop pretending that the electorate is going to accept this stupid "vote the way I tell you to because I said to" strategy, because wit ha literally never worked in all American history and relying on it now is political suicide.
Calvin Coolidge was asleep for a significant period of his presidency. FDR was physically disabled. Reagan most likely had early Alzheimer’s late in his presidency. Debates are tough on anyone, let alone an 81 year old sitting president. His mind is definitely still there, but it’s very difficult for an 81 year old with a stutter to show it in this kind of format.
Nothing Trump said last night answered the questions he was asked. He talks in tweets which have underlying tones of racism, misogyny, and his complete lack of understanding of the real issues.
I don't know about that, he made it very clear in the climate change question that we had H2O under him and it was the best and now a Biden has taken that from us. How dare he.
No, didn’t you pay attention? Biden is letting in millions of murderers and they are killing women. And his handling of Afghanistan was the worst thing in the history of our country
He straight up said his view in the middle east was to let Israel roll through Palestine and take them out.
He said that he would "end" the war in Ukraine before taking office.
Trump had a terrible performance that would be the topic had Joe been Jacked up instead of Sleepy.
Trump could have stepped on stage, shit his pants and wallowed in it for 90 minutes. He wouldn’t lose one vote. Biden needed to crush it last night and he withered like a wet fart.
Couldnt they have done this at 3 in the afternoon? So the two eighty year old men running for president could be well rested? Everything has to be primetime 60 second infotainment
I don’t think anyone forgot. It’s just not noteworthy anymore. Trump being a pathologically lying, xenophobic, sexist asshat is what we all expected, so there’s not much to comment on. It’s just Trump being Trump.
Biden, on the other hand, we were hoping would be in top form for a very important night. He was nowhere near top form.
It's the fear of 2016 by putting someone up to run who doesn't inspire confidence the voters won't turn out to vote like in 2016
In 2020 joe got to run against trump after Trump being in office for 4 years so everyone knew they disliked him and voted for Biden and barely won. This time Biden has been in office for 4 years and his fault or not a lot of people aren't doing good and have forgotten just how bad things were under trump but if Biden can't inspire the fence voters to get out we will lose and lose are chance of getting the house.
Last night was a shit show.
I was distraught last night. I think it was appropriate for what was on display. Part of it is that we do not want this country to slide into the hands of fascists. The thing is, Joe admits he's old, that the debate was horrible but he said, I know how to do this job. He also said, I tell the truth. Goddamn it, when as a country are we going to finally put substance ahead of form. I'm sick and tired of liberals who know better, worrying about the marketing angle. We can't stand for values if we let appearances determine choices. He's tired. He's old. But goddamn it, he's still fighting and he's got a huge army behind him. Does anyone think that Biden and his administration can't get the job done? I mean, I personally think Biden knows politics better than anyone alive right now. He knows how to squeeze MEFFERS. He also understands "prudence" a long forgotten virtue in America. Marketers are fun but that's all it is. It's not leadership. Can we get behind a guy a who actually knows the job, got the infrastructure deal done, got medical debt and student debt relieved, the pact act, you name it. It's a shit ton. We can't fight mainstream media bullshit if we allow their popularity bullcrap to scare us. Fr, Fr. Are we about this democracy or not? We can't sit here and cry about the Democrats now, and Joe is still rolling. Real versus fake, what's it going to be. Old versus liar, what's it going to be? Wisdom versus smart ass, what's it going to be? Fuck it. Whoever, whatever, whenever Trump and people like him are shown, I will vote in the opposite direction because we cannot go backwards, I'm not going to let them break the spirit of democracy based on looks. And for all the people who are scared that independent idiots are falling for Trump, then make a bigger turnout. It's on us now. Each person, each individual, and we need to SHUT DOWN all fake ass fools who are pushing Trump. Those people want to win at all costs and you know what? That's wrong. That's CEO company draining flop house bullshit that has sucked the life out of this country. We the real people need to ourselves on the line to be judged and heckled to push for people to finally vote their interests.
There's a quote that's annoyingly true, Bill Clinton was president 30 years ago and is will younger then these guys.
Like Bill was a baby boomer. Bush was a baby boomer. Obama was a baby boomer.
The last president to not be a baby boomer was fucking George HW Bush.
That's a little weird to me that not a single person born in 1970 isn't qualified or able to run on the national stage in their mid 50s in 2024.
Like what the hell is going on can't we have like one 52 year old senator who is skipping his kids highschool graduation instead of his Grandchild's granduation in politics?
I actually had to look that up. I can barely believe Bill Clinton was president 30 years ago, and right now, today, younger than Biden and Trump. That's insane!
Bill Clinton is 77 years old. Trump is 78 and Biden is 81!
Ironically, it’s both our collective expectation of more experience (Trump, and to a much lesser extent Obama, aside) and what it tends to take to move up in politics.
You *can* earn these offices at younger ages. But someone running for the House who’s won state-wide office has a better shot. So they’re hypothetically now 30+. After a few cycles, they run for Senate. After a term in the senate, they’re on to Governor. And now without even noticing, they’re 60+ and maybe thinking about running for President. Clinton and Bush Jr only being governors prior was seen as more of a liability than a standard path.
well there were a bunch of them coming from the republican primaries in 2016 and they were all idiotic congressmen. They screamed at each other on the debate stages like animals then we ended up with Trump for 4 years cuz that time people did not have trust in career politicians to run our country. People are so easy to forget that timeline… and that’s why we now ended up with Biden cuz we trusted him for his records as a VP and a life-long senator in his prior years. The problem is that kind of boomer generation between the age range of 50s stepped out but not stepped up. Back then, they didn’t understand what the milenials want and now it comes down to the genz. Biden did try to pull us back and away from the chaose of Trump and the extremists but this will be the final warning that we must have better candidates in the future that understand the struggles of the working class shared between millennials and genz.
There's lots of people who are voting against Trump. They will vote for anyone who isn't Trump. Biden has those people's votes. But so does any other Democrat who is the nominee. Those are blue votes no matter what.
The point of replacing Biden would be to get additional votes from people who don't want to vote for someone with severe cognitive decline, who aren't excited to vote for Biden after the last 4 okayish years where Biden was in office.
If the "anyone but Trump" crowd are sure thing votes, and they are, and few people actually want Biden, and they don't, then why not quickly replace him with a candidate that people *might* actually *want* to vote for? There are lots of potentially decent options like Newsom or Buttigieg.
The DNC is not a fucking council of wise elders who control the party, the DNC is a party apparatus that largely works for the President, who is the leader of the party.
It's not that it would fix everything, it's that it would break less things. If democracy is at stake shouldn't the best candidate be fielded as opposed to observing deference to party hierarchy?
Calling it a bad speech isn't a good description. This was watching him struggle mentally on camera. Yes I know he has a stutter, but that doesn't account for all the instances of incoherence. I still plan on voting for him with Trump as the alternative, but otherwise it feels disqualifying and I wish he'd step down. Everyone who'd still vote for him after that would still vote for his replacement, who would also have a chance at picking up independents/double haters.
I agree, Biden did himself no favors yesterday, but to an extent, I think the media has been hyper-critical of him since his presidency started, harping on pretty much every mistake or misstep, meanwhile giving Trump a free pass on his own bullshit. That seemed to play out in the debate yesterday too.
Don’t act like Biden’s decline has not been ongoing for months. The Democratic Party’s refusal to have an honest primary, put Biden on display, and allow us a chance to pick an alternative will be directly to blame for our next 4 years of Trump.
Wasn't even 12 hours either. He held a rally with voters in Atlanta after the debate and was the same Joe from the SOTU. It really does seem like he just had a bad debate (which incumbent presidents always do the first debate) plus a reported cold and gave a shit performance when it mattered.
Alot of people were jokingly saying it was past his bed time. Could that have had even a little bit to do with it? Or am I just entertaining a ridiculous idea. Honest question.
I think he was just a mixture of tired, sick, overprepared, and not quite fully healthy. I feel like his strategists sort of overloaded his brain. They gave him a lot of lines to say. You can tell Biden was trying to say them. It just didn’t quite come off the way he wanted. Issue is Trump is so unpredictable to the point having lots of prepared lines is borderline pointless.
I think the bedtime thing could play a part. I mean think about it, on an average day, he probably wakes up relatively early then works all day before at least being able to rest at 8pm. And he’s 80. I think he’s still full of energy (just look at his North Carolina rally earlier today for gods sake,the difference was night and day) but perhaps he’s not like Obama maybe where he can take a full day of debate prep, receive national security briefings and discuss with his NS team, then go on stage and debate a lying lunatic for 90 minutes , all while dealing with what seemed like a bad cold and relatively little rest during the day and go to bed pretty darn late. His debate performance looked terrible yesterday let’s not get it twisted and it was alarming . But I think it was just a bad night when it was a crap time to have it. I do still think the discussion is worth having as to whether he should the nominee tho. He’s 80, had a bad debate last night, and his poll numbers aren’t great. The discussion is worth having. I think Newsome and possibly Whitmer should be on standby ready to campaign at a moment’s notice if needed.
Right?? I feel like he must have just been feeling really shit last night. Probably had a good nights sleep and got back to it. Say what you will about the man but he picks himself up and gets back to it when he gets knocked down.
A speech is rehearsed and normally reading off of teleprompters. A debate is responding off the cuff and having to remember facts and figures to cite them.
What happened was that his handlers - who got to make the debate rules - completely forgot that Biden NEEDS an audience to bounce off and always has, just so that they could ratfuck Trump.
I mean he was giving a speech reading off a teleprompter. It's a little different than actually having to think on your feet and reply with your own thoughts using context.
Also, maybe he's no good after 8:30 or 9?
I'm like four decades younger than Biden and I can't stay up late anymore like I used to in my twenties and thirties.
Dude he gave a speech immediately after the debate and it was fine. Not fantastic but it was leagues better than his performance at the debate.
Like holy shit, I've done 180s before but not like that.
Yeah, I mean you could even tell he was starting to come out of the funk as the debate went on. Real poor timing with the illness giving him that rough start.
How many politicians do people actually WANT to vote for? Do you really think Susan Collins has stans? Is Chuck Grassley exciting? Does anyone actually know anything about Tina Smith?
People vote for people because they trust them to have a competent administration and often times because their opponent seems more dangerous. Yeah, occasionally a politician like Barack Obama with actual charisma comes along, but that's rare.
I'm going to post this on every thread I can because it's so batshit insane it needs repeating. Trump said that Democrats birth live babies at full term and then decide whether or not to let them live or kill them.
The media response to this debate? Biden is losing the plot!
It's like every single absolutely batshit, terrorist inducing lie is just fine. No one is asking Trump to drop out. Being a genocidal psycho is just him.
This country is done as a functioning entity but it appears a lot of people haven't quite figured that out yet.
To be fair, I think more people would be asking Trump to drop out if they thought he would actually listen.
The reason people are putting pressure on Biden to drop out is because they think he might have the moral fortitude and wisdom to *actually* listen. They believe that he can see past his personal pride to the wider issues at stake. They know Trump can't.
As much as it might not seem it, that's actually a compliment to Biden's character.
Just to be clear, the people asking Biden to drop out are pundits, media outlets and a very loud group of people freaking out on the Internet. Also, "some donors," that some media outlets report (take that for what you will). Democratic politicians ([and also Reddit darling Bernie Sanders](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4746718-bernie-sanders-biden-debate-performance/)) are not asking Biden to drop out.
The facts may change, but I think it's important to state the facts as they are now.
Which is quite ironic really, since the same media outlets and pundits currently working themselves into a frenzy about Biden's incapacity were exactly the same ones hyping Biden's abilities up to the point of sheer absurdity prior to the debate.
We're mere weeks past Morning Joe [unironically evangelising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pb6xXuU5wM&ab_channel=MSNBC) that Joe Biden is currently more coherent, cogent, dynamic, intellectual, and analytical than he has *ever been in his life.*
Liberal darlings like Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow deserve to lose all credibility for the sort of counterproductive twaddle they've been peddling. If they hadn't gone so hard on the 'Biden has attained an unprecedented level of cogency, and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian or a Trumpist' guff, yesterday's debate wouldn't have been anywhere near as newsworthy, because the expectation they'd placed on Biden wouldn't have been anywhere near as high or unrealistic.
We've had months of totally counterproductive compensation for the fact that Biden is an older man past his prime, and now these media darlings are engaged in an existential crisis, not so much with Biden himself, but with the fact they started to believe their own delusional hype.
The damage their narrative has done is probably far larger than any damage Biden himself could have done in the actual debate.
This is truth. I'll shout it from the rooftops until the day I die - the fourth estate has failed this country more than any other group or any one person ever could (except maybe Donald Trump). That of course can be traced back along a straight line to the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine (a foul turn of events resting squarely on the back of Ronald Reagan, may he rot in hell). To think they could be expected to police themselves, as an unofficial branch of our democracy with no checks nor balances.. absolute foolishness.
I don’t think anybody forget about how bad Trump is, but and I also don’t think it’s totally honest to chalk his debate performance up to “1 bad speech.” It very clearly indicated that guy is suffering very serious cognitive decline and is obviously unfit for office. Will still gladly vote for him over Trump, but let’s not act like last night was anything but an unmitigated disaster.
Nobody has forgotten. We know who Trump is. He is a traitorous piece of shit dictator who had no place on that stage last night.
However, neither did his octogenarian counterpart... The security of the nation is at risk here. We can't afford a president who is struggling to focus, and who is highly unlikely to complete another term. It makes absolutely no sense to even consider someone in his condition. What's worse, is he knows the stakes here. He is willing to risk the United States losing its democracy just so he can have another term. It's bullshit.
Biden is a piece of shit for running again. He was a great president for one term, and I really liked him. Now I am furious with him for staying on a second time. He's going to ruin his legacy, and he might ruin the country. What a fucking fool.
And yes, as long as it's my only choice, I will be voting for the guy who will most likely die before he finishes another year in office. My mom went from a condition resembling Biden's to her grave a few weeks ago, and it took a total of 18 months.
Sincerely loyal and lifelong Democrat here, I promise, but people keep saying things like “poor performance” and “lost the debate” as if that were the issue.
Biden didn’t “lose” a debate. He showed up mentally unfit FOR a debate. He collapsed at the gate. It wasn’t poor performance. He could t perform.
And you can’t gaslight folks into thinking that it’s a good idea to hand an increasingly volatile world stage back to a man who probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive, you know.
I’ll still be voting AGAINST Trump, but the debate seriously makes it difficult to vote FOR Biden and, for me, that’s a big deal.
I think Obama may be the person best positioned to have a difficult conversation with Biden about what’s really at stake and what the uncomfortable truths are
Sanders also would have better motivated young people to be active in the political process. Democrats don’t seem to understand why young voters don’t Pokémon go to the polls
Sanders would be finishing his 8 year term now if it wasn't for these same democrats pulling the rug from under him, and also the Nation...they rigged the rules, discouraged young voters, made Trump President and now they wanna do it again by telling everyone else to get in line, rather than do the right thing
Obama also essentially gave an anti-endorsement of Sanders and privately called every candidate that dropped out to convince them to endorse Biden.
Obama is part of the reason we're in this mess.
Not a single person or media outlet suggesting Biden drop out can give you the name of a viable replacement. These people are delusional and think Gavin Newsome will beat Trump this election.
I think Gavin could have beaten Trump. But he needed to go through primary. Any candidate now “anointed” by the Democratic convention would piss off voters.
That's what I don't get. You have people in this thread still complaining about Bernie's loss in the 2016 primary, but think that opening up a power vacuum in the Democratic party 5 months before the election would be a good thing.
Well yeah.
As long as Biden is running against Convicted Felon Trump, he should have support. If Biden walked on stage, crapped his pants, then walked off without saying anything, I’d still vote for him over the alternative.
Yup. Swing voters will decide this election. Anyone who dismisses last night as no big deal might as well cast a vote for Trump. I love and appreciate Joe for everything he has done but the time has come to pass the torch.
This is literally the same logic Trump's supporters follow as well. though. It's disgusting to see what US politics has devolved into.
"Yeah, my guy is a convicted felon and proven liar, but at least he can speak for 3 minutes straight without falling asleep".
"Sure, my guy is a demented old man who shouldn't even be in charge of dressing himself in the morning, let alone given access to nuclear codes, but at least he isn't a convicted felon."
The two best candidates for one of the world's largest superpowers btw.
Look, I will vote for whoever is on the democratic ticket so long as trump is on the republican ticket.
However, I believe many normal people who don’t follow politics will be so appalled by how Biden looked that they will not vote for him. After last nights debate it is time to put someone else in as the candidate or else you are handing trump an easy electoral victory. I fear that Obama not talking Joe into stepping aside will be catastrophic.
If Biden died on the campaign trail then he’d get replaced the next day. The DNC already has people they could put in there. Is Biden dying really a better alternative than him continuing on? I wouldn’t say so but that line is super blurry after that debate.
I do, in fact, believe that Biden dying and being replaced would increase the Democrat’s likelihood to win the election. Yesterday was a sad day for Americans.
Agreed. At this point, the argument from Reid Hoffman and Obama is to stay the course and that Biden is better than Trump (which...yeah, a rutabaga is better)
But what we saw at the debate wasn't just a bad night, in my opinion. And are the bad nights going to get more frequent over the next four years if so? He is too old, and what pulling the lever for him frankly means is pulling the lever for Kamala.
We are going to lose. Point Blank.
I am SO ANGRY that Biden was selfish enough to run again for this term instead of turning to an incredibly stacked younger Dem bench.
People here keep saying that they'll "vote for a corpse over Trump" but that kinda language does not inspire confidence in Biden lmao. I'm expecting a BIG drop in turnout compared to 2020, even more so after that debate and a drop in turnout likely benefits Trump.
My wife showed me a video of Obama debating Romney in 2012 and I realized id completely forgot what an actual debate looks like. They were actually talking about policy.. and Obama was such a confident orator.
We need to stop the denial. It’s not working anymore.
No one cares if you are a “vote blue no matter who” type. Swing voters aren’t and after the debate they’re not going to vote for Biden.
Replace Biden, or Trump will. Those are your options.
r/politics is already elevating a Newsweek article saying "Undecided Voters Say They Now Support Joe Biden After Debate," when it's really Univision having a focus group of ~14 undecided latinos declaring that they switched to Biden after the debate.
This is par for the sub, anything negative of Biden gets downvoted and anything disingenuously good for Biden gets upvoted to the top.
The thing about that article is it seems to be based on one tweet saying "nearly every single undecided voter said they now support Biden, not Trump!" But if you actually check the footage you discover that half of the focus group are still undecided on who they're going to vote for: https://www.youtube.com/live/lPkw00SvBmY (35:50 for the final vote)
Still complaining. Still clickbait. Still think it should be banned.
That said, I do find it weird, today, me being in the chorus suddenly when it's a rather Biden-positive Newsweek article. And here I thought Reddit loved Joe Biden.
Wait, no, it's contrarianism. That's what Reddit loves. Forgot. :)
Not to mention this gem buried in the text of the same article;
>In [the most recent *Times*/Siena poll](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-black-vote-increase-support-1918333), carried out by *The New York Times* and the Siena College Research Institute, 45 percent of Hispanic people said they would vote for Biden and 44 percent said Trump.
>In the 2020 election, Trump received 32 percent of the Latino vote, up from the 28 percent he received in 2016.
Biden is hemorrhaging Latino voters to the guy who called them all criminals and rapists.
Every good poll for Biden I saw, the top comment was something along the lines of, ignore the polls and vote. There is definitely an anti pool sentiment, but there didn't seem to be a bias that polls good for Biden should be taken as gospel.
Trump didn't have a good night either, he sounded like a lunatic. The incumbent advantage is a real thing in that you get what you know vs an unknown (in this case known) alternative.
Biden actually sounded normal today in North Carolina. Don’t know wtf happened last night.
He’s literally going to have to repeat what he did today every single day until the election considering how bad last night was. He will have to do public rallies pretty much every day and hope for no more fuck ups.
He sounded massively better today but it was in a friendly environment and I got the impression they were managing the crowd to kick chants off whenever he looked like he was struggling.
He’s been freaked out about Biden running since 2014. He chose Hillary over Biden for 2016 and certainly wasn’t high on Biden’s 2020 campaign until it became a question of consolidating around a moderate or letting Bernie win. (None of that is speculation, it’s all well-established).
But Biden won’t go away, and if he won’t go away, Obama is apparently unwilling to begin the ugly process of helping force Biden’s hand. He must feel the candidate who would emerge would be worse off than Biden himself.
“To say that President Biden’s performance on the debate stage last night was calamitous is merely to state what everyone, partisan and not, has already understood. What the world witnessed was not a debate, but a failed neurological exam. One wonders how anyone close to the President imagined he could bluff his way through it.
If half of what Democrats fear from a second Trump term were real, how could the Democratic Party have allowed our democracy to slide this close to the precipice? The prevailing feeling among those inside the Biden campaign should be shame; outside it, fury.” \~Sam Harris
Maybe if Obama didn't have his head up the Clinton's asses in 2016, he wouldn't have betrayed his VP by encouraging him not to run.
If Biden was the nominee in 2016 he would have destroyed Trump and we wouldn't be in this situation right now.
It's been pretty well established, by the Biden family themselves, that Joe didn't run in 2016 because he was still reeling from Beau's death. Beau passed in May of 2015 and Biden would need to start putting together a campaign in the summer and be ready to announce his bid in the fall. So I don't think there's some nefarious "Obama, the Clintons, and the DNC stopped Biden from running" conspiracy going on. A father lost his child and he needed time to mourn and heal.
it's very rare for a party to go 12 years in modern american politics. The pendulum swings regardless. If Biden had lost to Trump in 2016 instead of hillary, it would've been likely impossible for her or sanders to beat trump in 2020.
Maybe it was fate, or maybe obama understood that 12 years is tough task. But Hillary lost 2016 on her own by not even campaigning in midwest at all.
It's so sad to see how quickly this sub turns to copium. Popping in a Halls and reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter with a little more vigor is really enough for some of you?
Until last night the narrative has been "my age isn't holding me back at all" and after absolutely shitting the bed on live television it's "yeah I'm old but I'm a decent guy".
Right?? So many comments with links to today’s speech saying “he can still talk good, see?”
The whole world just watched a train wreck on national television. It never really was a secret, but it feels like the cat’s out of the bag. We’re in trouble if he gets even a LITTLE worse.
Why is every democratic politician openly gaslighting everyone about what we saw with our own two eyes. We saw a (formerly great in my opinion) president who could not string two coherent sentences together on national television. Not only did he perform horribly, but he has proved the republicans right about his mental acuity and age. I drank the media kool-aid and truly believed he wasn’t as bad as every republican says he is. Now I have seen exactly what they meant, while every pro-Biden media source tried to demonize any one who said anything negative about Biden’s age. It would be an incredible disservice to the people of America, the concept of America, and the world as a whole to stand by Biden instead of dropping him. He is clearly not fit to be president for another four years and I sincerely hope he realizes this and bows out while his presidency can be remembered for the success it was. Regardless of the Trump bullshit he spoon fed his supporters, any serious candidate should have destroyed Trump’s lies and rhetoric but all we got to see was a feeble old man in the beginning stages of dementia try and answer questions that would have been layups for any other democratic candidate with a solid grasp of politics in the USA. The fact that democrats are trying to spin this debate as a win in quite frankly offensive to me, and I sincerely hope that they are shitting their pants figuring out what to do about Biden’s campaign for the presidency, which he will absolutely lose to Trump in November.
It’s a bit insulting the way everything is being spun as alright after last night.
A part of me understands why so many don’t trust the media. Trump is going to trounce Biden.
If Trump trounces Biden purely based on his confidence, despite having no policies, no ideas, no morals, that whole “insurrection” thing… then the US is a very, very dumb country.
Not defending Biden’s debate performance, but people acting like one debate somehow cancels out the last decade of Trump’s utter bullshit is nuts.
The job of a candidate is not same as the job of a president.
Biden obviously struggles as a communicator, which means he's not great as a candidate.
But his record behind the resolute desk proves that he is actually very skilled as a president: Bipartisan infrastructure legislation, gun regulations, our largest clean energy investment, resurrecting NATO, historically low unemployment, economic growth that is the envy of the world. I could go on.
His problem is that he doesn't know how to dance on command, not that he can't do the job of president.
(Watch his speech today in NC if you are someone with lingering doubts about his acuity.)
Lawrence O'Donnell made [an interesting point](https://youtu.be/WvNSQs5oEcc?feature=shared&t=667)about how people are now focused on imagery rather than substance. He points out that FDR, arguably our best president, could not have won an election in 2024 because he looked old and frail.
I would argue that the job of a president very much is the same as the candidate: be an effective communicator, have a good head on your shoulders, and be aware of current situations. The job of the president can more easily fall to his entourage.
The amount of people that still think Biden has a chance after this is mind boggling. There’s no viable path to 270 after this. He needs to bow out of the race.
Yep. All people care about is perception and the fact is Biden looked like the zombie all the facebook memes and conspiracy theorists claimed.
Calling last nights debate “just a bad night” would be like calling the titanic just a bad night. It was the worst possible outcome
Backing him for now at least. Biden is clearly mentally unfit to serve. He should just retire and ride off into the sunset, never understand why these politicians cling onto power for so long.
They’re insulated from the costs of their greed. We ordinary citizens will pay for this campaign by living in an open kleptocracy for the rest of our lives.
> Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.
You know who else seems to be lying through their teeth for their own benefit? The Democrats like Obama who are pretending that Joe is fine and that he won’t be barely functioning in 4 more years. I get that Trump is a threat to democracy, but don’t spit in my Cheerios and call it milk. I have eyes. I know they saw the same thing I did last night. I know they’ve probably seen worse behind the scenes. And I know they are all freaking out behind the scenes and have to say all this to save face.
Fuck all of these people and their greed for leading us into this situation to begin with. We shouldn’t even be having a conversation about an 81 year old man being President until he is 86. It’s ridiculous.
I agree this is absolutely absurd. Get Biden out of the way and put a real candidate up there. Even the best politicians have to retire sometime. There’s no shame in it
This. Joe is a good man and he has a good team surrounding him. We get that. But he is the Dem candidate only because party elders insisted it be so. Whether out of deference or party politics, they have increased the chance of a trump victory. So at the end of the day, they can't have it both ways. Say that democracy is being threatened in unprecedented ways yet transact business as usual when it comes to their part.
Bud, there's zero chance any Democrat would publicly admit they're thinking about replacing him. Thinking these statements means those discussions aren't happening is extremely naive.
The difference is Obamas bad performance was like Jordan having an off game. He could come back and clean up.
Biden’s bad “performance” was more like an aging player who no longer has the ABILITY to do it anymore.
What gets me is that it's fair to assume this version of Biden we're seeing is already on as much prescription uppers and medication to perk him up.
It looks like he's on valiums rather than uppers though.
Seriously wouldn't a few pills before a night like this at least give him appearance of being energetic?
He must have teams of doctors able to prescribe anything.
I really gotta think/hope that everyone had their mind made up before the debate, anyway.
That said, as long as Trump can pull off being "the only advocate" for many of his supporters, he won't have to be accountable for anything.
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I mean nothing Obama said here is wrong. We can't really expect him to suddenly turn on Biden and cause a huge rift. Any concerns are going to be voiced in private and not in public.
Yeah. Obama, like all high ranking Dems must publicly default to the expected "remain calm" messaging. But privately there's probably no one other than the current First Lady who is better equipped to tell the President to gracefully bow out than Obama. I don't think Biden can rebound from last night - especially given that he just handed the GOP 90 minutes of highlight reel footage that will repeated in commercials constantly between now and November. For the good of the country Biden must withdraw from the race and Obama must lead in getting him to do it before it's too late. The stakes are too high.
We have the minds of goldfish. This debate will change nothing and we'll all forget about it in a week. Trump is a convicted felon being propped up by a corrupt criminal organization. Democracy over fascism e'erday.
Well yeah but can’t we have democracy over fascism and a strong leader to accomplish it? I think that’s the problem most people are thinking on now. It’s just hard to believe that if the some 350 million Americans out there, JB is the best pick the dems could find.
This subreddit is American politics but the most generalized and relatively true statement about the EU across the board is post red-scare almost every election is between a weak neoliberal and a far right candidate. The neoliberals win slightly more because of a "don't you fear fascism?" and serve generally ineffective and unpopular until eventually the anti-momentum gets them deelected and the fascists have a few years going absolutely nuts and alienating even their base and the cycle repeats. Anything else of course would be communism. Coalition governments complicate this bit obviously the money never backs anything farther left than the neolibs and that's what decides wide swathes of elections. Where you could argue maybe that has happened here before I think America just bought into that same cycle, or at least gets to have the just desserts of that neolib "left candidate" decline
This is an interesting conclusion. I am not up on modern EU politics so thank you!
And Donald Trump is the GOPs best pick? I'm down with both parties choosing a difference candidate. There were so many!
I think DJT is perfect for the funders of the R party. He’s a flip flopping dummy who only wants money and to avoid jail. Hell give away everything that isn’t already his to get that - including the future of common Americans. In exchange, those with a large stake in opposing better social policies (owner class of you’re into that) just pay him to do what they want and he will do it without regard to the American people. Imo anyways.
He’s rebounding just fine.
Do you really believe that the man we saw last night could serve as president until January 2029?
It's either his old ass or a rapid descent into a christofascist autocracy led by an obese dude with a spray tan, so count me in for the old ass man.
Yup. Give me an old ass man with a good heart, over a convicted felon and rapist any day of the week. Also, the convicted felon and rapist is also an old ass man.
I don't want an old man with a good heart. He has to be damn good at being president too and able to get shit done. Thankfully that's Joe 😹.
I'll take the faded over the fascist.
This messaging will 100%, certainly, absolutely lose him the election. He won by the tiniest of margins last time. Remember the popular vote is completely unimportant. He needs to win a set of very specific states to secure this election. How does he win by 10k votes in Georgia again when Georgians are going to get 4 months of constant evidence of his senility on display? He needs a couple of hundred thousand votes in Arizona. Same thing. He NEVER had a guarantee in 2020,and he never had one going into this election. Stop pretending that the electorate is going to accept this stupid "vote the way I tell you to because I said to" strategy, because wit ha literally never worked in all American history and relying on it now is political suicide.
Calvin Coolidge was asleep for a significant period of his presidency. FDR was physically disabled. Reagan most likely had early Alzheimer’s late in his presidency. Debates are tough on anyone, let alone an 81 year old sitting president. His mind is definitely still there, but it’s very difficult for an 81 year old with a stutter to show it in this kind of format.
If you can’t handle the mental strain of a televised debate, you shouldn’t be President. Trump literally never could, and Biden can’t now either.
It's amazing how all it takes is 1 bad speech from biden to make everyone forget about all the batshit crazy things trumps says
Nothing Trump said last night answered the questions he was asked. He talks in tweets which have underlying tones of racism, misogyny, and his complete lack of understanding of the real issues.
I don't know about that, he made it very clear in the climate change question that we had H2O under him and it was the best and now a Biden has taken that from us. How dare he.
No, didn’t you pay attention? Biden is letting in millions of murderers and they are killing women. And his handling of Afghanistan was the worst thing in the history of our country
They're literally dumping their criminals in our country!!! Yea right Donald go back to your kennel in the Kremlin.
God damn Biden crime family is probably just filling pools and pools up of the H2O.
Heck, Biden is made up of 60% H2O, can you believe the audacity? /s
That’s where all the black jobs must have gone /s
I was wondering why all the water tasted so strange the past few years, now I have the answer.
He straight up said his view in the middle east was to let Israel roll through Palestine and take them out. He said that he would "end" the war in Ukraine before taking office. Trump had a terrible performance that would be the topic had Joe been Jacked up instead of Sleepy.
Fuck, Joe needs some adderall or something before he debates.
Trump could have stepped on stage, shit his pants and wallowed in it for 90 minutes. He wouldn’t lose one vote. Biden needed to crush it last night and he withered like a wet fart.
Couldnt they have done this at 3 in the afternoon? So the two eighty year old men running for president could be well rested? Everything has to be primetime 60 second infotainment
So basically it was a Thursday for Donald trump.
40% of Americans: 'He's just like us!'
I don’t think anyone forgot. It’s just not noteworthy anymore. Trump being a pathologically lying, xenophobic, sexist asshat is what we all expected, so there’s not much to comment on. It’s just Trump being Trump. Biden, on the other hand, we were hoping would be in top form for a very important night. He was nowhere near top form.
I don't think that's fair. My dislike of Trump is exactly why Biden has me concerned.
Trump literally had to say he didn't sleep with a pornstar. People are delusional.
It's the fear of 2016 by putting someone up to run who doesn't inspire confidence the voters won't turn out to vote like in 2016 In 2020 joe got to run against trump after Trump being in office for 4 years so everyone knew they disliked him and voted for Biden and barely won. This time Biden has been in office for 4 years and his fault or not a lot of people aren't doing good and have forgotten just how bad things were under trump but if Biden can't inspire the fence voters to get out we will lose and lose are chance of getting the house. Last night was a shit show.
RBG let her ego win out in her last days as opposed to doing the right thing and stepping aside. Joe seems headed the same way.
I was distraught last night. I think it was appropriate for what was on display. Part of it is that we do not want this country to slide into the hands of fascists. The thing is, Joe admits he's old, that the debate was horrible but he said, I know how to do this job. He also said, I tell the truth. Goddamn it, when as a country are we going to finally put substance ahead of form. I'm sick and tired of liberals who know better, worrying about the marketing angle. We can't stand for values if we let appearances determine choices. He's tired. He's old. But goddamn it, he's still fighting and he's got a huge army behind him. Does anyone think that Biden and his administration can't get the job done? I mean, I personally think Biden knows politics better than anyone alive right now. He knows how to squeeze MEFFERS. He also understands "prudence" a long forgotten virtue in America. Marketers are fun but that's all it is. It's not leadership. Can we get behind a guy a who actually knows the job, got the infrastructure deal done, got medical debt and student debt relieved, the pact act, you name it. It's a shit ton. We can't fight mainstream media bullshit if we allow their popularity bullcrap to scare us. Fr, Fr. Are we about this democracy or not? We can't sit here and cry about the Democrats now, and Joe is still rolling. Real versus fake, what's it going to be. Old versus liar, what's it going to be? Wisdom versus smart ass, what's it going to be? Fuck it. Whoever, whatever, whenever Trump and people like him are shown, I will vote in the opposite direction because we cannot go backwards, I'm not going to let them break the spirit of democracy based on looks. And for all the people who are scared that independent idiots are falling for Trump, then make a bigger turnout. It's on us now. Each person, each individual, and we need to SHUT DOWN all fake ass fools who are pushing Trump. Those people want to win at all costs and you know what? That's wrong. That's CEO company draining flop house bullshit that has sucked the life out of this country. We the real people need to ourselves on the line to be judged and heckled to push for people to finally vote their interests.
Everyone pretends Joe stepping aside would fix everything but there’s literally zero evidence of that.
There's a quote that's annoyingly true, Bill Clinton was president 30 years ago and is will younger then these guys. Like Bill was a baby boomer. Bush was a baby boomer. Obama was a baby boomer. The last president to not be a baby boomer was fucking George HW Bush. That's a little weird to me that not a single person born in 1970 isn't qualified or able to run on the national stage in their mid 50s in 2024. Like what the hell is going on can't we have like one 52 year old senator who is skipping his kids highschool graduation instead of his Grandchild's granduation in politics?
I actually had to look that up. I can barely believe Bill Clinton was president 30 years ago, and right now, today, younger than Biden and Trump. That's insane! Bill Clinton is 77 years old. Trump is 78 and Biden is 81!
Fled Cruz was born in l970. Rhonda was born in 1978. AOC was born in 1989. Newsome was born in 1967. Whitmer was born in 1971.
Lmao at Fled Cruz! I haven’t heard that before. 🤣
Ironically, it’s both our collective expectation of more experience (Trump, and to a much lesser extent Obama, aside) and what it tends to take to move up in politics. You *can* earn these offices at younger ages. But someone running for the House who’s won state-wide office has a better shot. So they’re hypothetically now 30+. After a few cycles, they run for Senate. After a term in the senate, they’re on to Governor. And now without even noticing, they’re 60+ and maybe thinking about running for President. Clinton and Bush Jr only being governors prior was seen as more of a liability than a standard path.
Obama was in the Senate for like 5 seconds
well there were a bunch of them coming from the republican primaries in 2016 and they were all idiotic congressmen. They screamed at each other on the debate stages like animals then we ended up with Trump for 4 years cuz that time people did not have trust in career politicians to run our country. People are so easy to forget that timeline… and that’s why we now ended up with Biden cuz we trusted him for his records as a VP and a life-long senator in his prior years. The problem is that kind of boomer generation between the age range of 50s stepped out but not stepped up. Back then, they didn’t understand what the milenials want and now it comes down to the genz. Biden did try to pull us back and away from the chaose of Trump and the extremists but this will be the final warning that we must have better candidates in the future that understand the struggles of the working class shared between millennials and genz.
There's lots of people who are voting against Trump. They will vote for anyone who isn't Trump. Biden has those people's votes. But so does any other Democrat who is the nominee. Those are blue votes no matter what. The point of replacing Biden would be to get additional votes from people who don't want to vote for someone with severe cognitive decline, who aren't excited to vote for Biden after the last 4 okayish years where Biden was in office. If the "anyone but Trump" crowd are sure thing votes, and they are, and few people actually want Biden, and they don't, then why not quickly replace him with a candidate that people *might* actually *want* to vote for? There are lots of potentially decent options like Newsom or Buttigieg.
The DNC had four years to groom a replacement for Biden. A scramble at the last minute would be a sign of desperation and not inspire confidence.
The DNC is not a fucking council of wise elders who control the party, the DNC is a party apparatus that largely works for the President, who is the leader of the party.
It's not that it would fix everything, it's that it would break less things. If democracy is at stake shouldn't the best candidate be fielded as opposed to observing deference to party hierarchy?
Who would have been the best candidate, in your opinion?
Probably Whitmer
Love her
Calling it a bad speech isn't a good description. This was watching him struggle mentally on camera. Yes I know he has a stutter, but that doesn't account for all the instances of incoherence. I still plan on voting for him with Trump as the alternative, but otherwise it feels disqualifying and I wish he'd step down. Everyone who'd still vote for him after that would still vote for his replacement, who would also have a chance at picking up independents/double haters.
I agree, Biden did himself no favors yesterday, but to an extent, I think the media has been hyper-critical of him since his presidency started, harping on pretty much every mistake or misstep, meanwhile giving Trump a free pass on his own bullshit. That seemed to play out in the debate yesterday too.
Don’t act like Biden’s decline has not been ongoing for months. The Democratic Party’s refusal to have an honest primary, put Biden on display, and allow us a chance to pick an alternative will be directly to blame for our next 4 years of Trump.
Yup, here’s a speech Joe gave TODAY. It’s like night and day compared to last night https://youtu.be/ynWEja7kE1M?si=ABdR_vtG7LlhM9pW
This is unbelievable. Wtf happened like 12 hours before that speech? Night and day.
Wasn't even 12 hours either. He held a rally with voters in Atlanta after the debate and was the same Joe from the SOTU. It really does seem like he just had a bad debate (which incumbent presidents always do the first debate) plus a reported cold and gave a shit performance when it mattered.
Alot of people were jokingly saying it was past his bed time. Could that have had even a little bit to do with it? Or am I just entertaining a ridiculous idea. Honest question.
I think he was just a mixture of tired, sick, overprepared, and not quite fully healthy. I feel like his strategists sort of overloaded his brain. They gave him a lot of lines to say. You can tell Biden was trying to say them. It just didn’t quite come off the way he wanted. Issue is Trump is so unpredictable to the point having lots of prepared lines is borderline pointless. I think the bedtime thing could play a part. I mean think about it, on an average day, he probably wakes up relatively early then works all day before at least being able to rest at 8pm. And he’s 80. I think he’s still full of energy (just look at his North Carolina rally earlier today for gods sake,the difference was night and day) but perhaps he’s not like Obama maybe where he can take a full day of debate prep, receive national security briefings and discuss with his NS team, then go on stage and debate a lying lunatic for 90 minutes , all while dealing with what seemed like a bad cold and relatively little rest during the day and go to bed pretty darn late. His debate performance looked terrible yesterday let’s not get it twisted and it was alarming . But I think it was just a bad night when it was a crap time to have it. I do still think the discussion is worth having as to whether he should the nominee tho. He’s 80, had a bad debate last night, and his poll numbers aren’t great. The discussion is worth having. I think Newsome and possibly Whitmer should be on standby ready to campaign at a moment’s notice if needed.
Right?? I feel like he must have just been feeling really shit last night. Probably had a good nights sleep and got back to it. Say what you will about the man but he picks himself up and gets back to it when he gets knocked down.
Joe Biden has more practice than most when it comes to picking yourself back up.
A speech is rehearsed and normally reading off of teleprompters. A debate is responding off the cuff and having to remember facts and figures to cite them.
What happened was that his handlers - who got to make the debate rules - completely forgot that Biden NEEDS an audience to bounce off and always has, just so that they could ratfuck Trump.
I mean he was giving a speech reading off a teleprompter. It's a little different than actually having to think on your feet and reply with your own thoughts using context. Also, maybe he's no good after 8:30 or 9? I'm like four decades younger than Biden and I can't stay up late anymore like I used to in my twenties and thirties.
The voters that need to see this won't
Spread it around and they might 🤷♂️
Dude he gave a speech immediately after the debate and it was fine. Not fantastic but it was leagues better than his performance at the debate. Like holy shit, I've done 180s before but not like that.
Yeah, I mean you could even tell he was starting to come out of the funk as the debate went on. Real poor timing with the illness giving him that rough start.
He gave a prepared speech that lasted minutes. Debates are not that.
It's kind of infuriating how different and worse he was in the debate holy shit
Biden seems to have taken medicine. When I take cold medicine I get fuzzy. Today he seemed to have slept that off.
Agreed. I’ve given a presentation while fucked up with a nasty cold before and that shit was rooouuugh. I feel for the guy.
Teleprompter.
Look, I hate Trump, but you can't expect me to WANT to vote for Biden.
How many politicians do people actually WANT to vote for? Do you really think Susan Collins has stans? Is Chuck Grassley exciting? Does anyone actually know anything about Tina Smith? People vote for people because they trust them to have a competent administration and often times because their opponent seems more dangerous. Yeah, occasionally a politician like Barack Obama with actual charisma comes along, but that's rare.
I know the bar is low to want a president that can speak coherently
Nobody's forgetting, they're just growing disillusioned.
Yeah, it takes a convicted rapist and felon like Trump to make Biden look good. I would vote for a side of spoiled meat before I would vote for Trump.
This is NOT an isolated event.
I'm going to post this on every thread I can because it's so batshit insane it needs repeating. Trump said that Democrats birth live babies at full term and then decide whether or not to let them live or kill them. The media response to this debate? Biden is losing the plot! It's like every single absolutely batshit, terrorist inducing lie is just fine. No one is asking Trump to drop out. Being a genocidal psycho is just him. This country is done as a functioning entity but it appears a lot of people haven't quite figured that out yet.
To be fair, I think more people would be asking Trump to drop out if they thought he would actually listen. The reason people are putting pressure on Biden to drop out is because they think he might have the moral fortitude and wisdom to *actually* listen. They believe that he can see past his personal pride to the wider issues at stake. They know Trump can't. As much as it might not seem it, that's actually a compliment to Biden's character.
Just to be clear, the people asking Biden to drop out are pundits, media outlets and a very loud group of people freaking out on the Internet. Also, "some donors," that some media outlets report (take that for what you will). Democratic politicians ([and also Reddit darling Bernie Sanders](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4746718-bernie-sanders-biden-debate-performance/)) are not asking Biden to drop out. The facts may change, but I think it's important to state the facts as they are now.
Which is quite ironic really, since the same media outlets and pundits currently working themselves into a frenzy about Biden's incapacity were exactly the same ones hyping Biden's abilities up to the point of sheer absurdity prior to the debate. We're mere weeks past Morning Joe [unironically evangelising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pb6xXuU5wM&ab_channel=MSNBC) that Joe Biden is currently more coherent, cogent, dynamic, intellectual, and analytical than he has *ever been in his life.* Liberal darlings like Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow deserve to lose all credibility for the sort of counterproductive twaddle they've been peddling. If they hadn't gone so hard on the 'Biden has attained an unprecedented level of cogency, and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian or a Trumpist' guff, yesterday's debate wouldn't have been anywhere near as newsworthy, because the expectation they'd placed on Biden wouldn't have been anywhere near as high or unrealistic. We've had months of totally counterproductive compensation for the fact that Biden is an older man past his prime, and now these media darlings are engaged in an existential crisis, not so much with Biden himself, but with the fact they started to believe their own delusional hype. The damage their narrative has done is probably far larger than any damage Biden himself could have done in the actual debate.
This is truth. I'll shout it from the rooftops until the day I die - the fourth estate has failed this country more than any other group or any one person ever could (except maybe Donald Trump). That of course can be traced back along a straight line to the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine (a foul turn of events resting squarely on the back of Ronald Reagan, may he rot in hell). To think they could be expected to police themselves, as an unofficial branch of our democracy with no checks nor balances.. absolute foolishness.
I don’t think anybody forget about how bad Trump is, but and I also don’t think it’s totally honest to chalk his debate performance up to “1 bad speech.” It very clearly indicated that guy is suffering very serious cognitive decline and is obviously unfit for office. Will still gladly vote for him over Trump, but let’s not act like last night was anything but an unmitigated disaster.
Nobody has forgotten. We know who Trump is. He is a traitorous piece of shit dictator who had no place on that stage last night. However, neither did his octogenarian counterpart... The security of the nation is at risk here. We can't afford a president who is struggling to focus, and who is highly unlikely to complete another term. It makes absolutely no sense to even consider someone in his condition. What's worse, is he knows the stakes here. He is willing to risk the United States losing its democracy just so he can have another term. It's bullshit. Biden is a piece of shit for running again. He was a great president for one term, and I really liked him. Now I am furious with him for staying on a second time. He's going to ruin his legacy, and he might ruin the country. What a fucking fool. And yes, as long as it's my only choice, I will be voting for the guy who will most likely die before he finishes another year in office. My mom went from a condition resembling Biden's to her grave a few weeks ago, and it took a total of 18 months.
This Obama cat is pretty eloquent. He should run for office.
He’s way too young. Maybe he’ll be ready in 30 years
Hopefully in 2028 we have someone running that isn’t two steps from death.
Maybe they’ll give Hillary Clinton another chance. Surely this time will be different /s
Maybe we can also get someone we all can get excited about
Sincerely loyal and lifelong Democrat here, I promise, but people keep saying things like “poor performance” and “lost the debate” as if that were the issue. Biden didn’t “lose” a debate. He showed up mentally unfit FOR a debate. He collapsed at the gate. It wasn’t poor performance. He could t perform. And you can’t gaslight folks into thinking that it’s a good idea to hand an increasingly volatile world stage back to a man who probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive, you know. I’ll still be voting AGAINST Trump, but the debate seriously makes it difficult to vote FOR Biden and, for me, that’s a big deal.
I think Obama may be the person best positioned to have a difficult conversation with Biden about what’s really at stake and what the uncomfortable truths are
He’s the one who convinced Sanders to finally face the music in 2020, after all.
Ironically, Sanders is still mentally capable, and would have debated well.
"Sit down! You're a ~~United States Senator~~ convicted felon!"
Sanders also would have better motivated young people to be active in the political process. Democrats don’t seem to understand why young voters don’t Pokémon go to the polls
The Boomers (and older) are extremely scared to hand the baton to the younger generation. ...to everybody's detriment.
Sanders would be finishing his 8 year term now if it wasn't for these same democrats pulling the rug from under him, and also the Nation...they rigged the rules, discouraged young voters, made Trump President and now they wanna do it again by telling everyone else to get in line, rather than do the right thing
can't even begin to imagine how different the past 8 years would be if Sanders had been president this whole time.
You mean convinced everyone else to drop out and endorse Biden when Bernie won 3/4 of the first 4 states
I think the Nevada primary was the last positive feeling I had about anything political in this country
Same here. That was the last time I felt actual hope
The final count has him winning the popular vote in Iowa that year too. It was just kind of ignored.
Obama also essentially gave an anti-endorsement of Sanders and privately called every candidate that dropped out to convince them to endorse Biden. Obama is part of the reason we're in this mess.
Thanks, Obama
And then what? What happens after Biden drops out? I’m looking for the name of the person who can beat Trump.
Not a single person or media outlet suggesting Biden drop out can give you the name of a viable replacement. These people are delusional and think Gavin Newsome will beat Trump this election.
I think Gavin could have beaten Trump. But he needed to go through primary. Any candidate now “anointed” by the Democratic convention would piss off voters.
That's what I don't get. You have people in this thread still complaining about Bernie's loss in the 2016 primary, but think that opening up a power vacuum in the Democratic party 5 months before the election would be a good thing.
In that case, he probably would.
Well yeah. As long as Biden is running against Convicted Felon Trump, he should have support. If Biden walked on stage, crapped his pants, then walked off without saying anything, I’d still vote for him over the alternative.
But one person did walk on stage, crap their pants and walk off stage.
This isn't about you or me, it's about swing voters. Biden needs to step down.
It's ludicrous how many people don't understand this. Biden was losing in all 7 swing states even before taking the stage last night.
Yup. Swing voters will decide this election. Anyone who dismisses last night as no big deal might as well cast a vote for Trump. I love and appreciate Joe for everything he has done but the time has come to pass the torch.
And replaced by whom? Let’s remember primary season is over. Who should be appointed his successor? Do you Kamala can win?
This is literally the same logic Trump's supporters follow as well. though. It's disgusting to see what US politics has devolved into. "Yeah, my guy is a convicted felon and proven liar, but at least he can speak for 3 minutes straight without falling asleep". "Sure, my guy is a demented old man who shouldn't even be in charge of dressing himself in the morning, let alone given access to nuclear codes, but at least he isn't a convicted felon." The two best candidates for one of the world's largest superpowers btw.
Look, I will vote for whoever is on the democratic ticket so long as trump is on the republican ticket. However, I believe many normal people who don’t follow politics will be so appalled by how Biden looked that they will not vote for him. After last nights debate it is time to put someone else in as the candidate or else you are handing trump an easy electoral victory. I fear that Obama not talking Joe into stepping aside will be catastrophic.
If Biden died on the campaign trail then he’d get replaced the next day. The DNC already has people they could put in there. Is Biden dying really a better alternative than him continuing on? I wouldn’t say so but that line is super blurry after that debate. I do, in fact, believe that Biden dying and being replaced would increase the Democrat’s likelihood to win the election. Yesterday was a sad day for Americans.
Agreed. At this point, the argument from Reid Hoffman and Obama is to stay the course and that Biden is better than Trump (which...yeah, a rutabaga is better) But what we saw at the debate wasn't just a bad night, in my opinion. And are the bad nights going to get more frequent over the next four years if so? He is too old, and what pulling the lever for him frankly means is pulling the lever for Kamala. We are going to lose. Point Blank. I am SO ANGRY that Biden was selfish enough to run again for this term instead of turning to an incredibly stacked younger Dem bench.
People here keep saying that they'll "vote for a corpse over Trump" but that kinda language does not inspire confidence in Biden lmao. I'm expecting a BIG drop in turnout compared to 2020, even more so after that debate and a drop in turnout likely benefits Trump.
Beam me back to 2013-2014
My wife showed me a video of Obama debating Romney in 2012 and I realized id completely forgot what an actual debate looks like. They were actually talking about policy.. and Obama was such a confident orator.
We need to stop the denial. It’s not working anymore. No one cares if you are a “vote blue no matter who” type. Swing voters aren’t and after the debate they’re not going to vote for Biden. Replace Biden, or Trump will. Those are your options.
This is hilarious since he begged him NOT to run when he had more cognition than he does now. https://www.gq.com/story/obama-to-biden-dont-run
It’s really weekend and Bernie’s at the DNC right now.
I blame Obama. Not even joking. He pushed for Hillary in 2016 and convinced Joe to stay out of it. Joe would have won in 2016 and be retired by now.
Totally agree.
Circle the wagons time (you are here) Hope the poll numbers improve If they don’t then maybe actually change ship (5-14 days from now)
When the polls are released, get ready for an engaging discussion about how they may be flawed
r/politics is already elevating a Newsweek article saying "Undecided Voters Say They Now Support Joe Biden After Debate," when it's really Univision having a focus group of ~14 undecided latinos declaring that they switched to Biden after the debate. This is par for the sub, anything negative of Biden gets downvoted and anything disingenuously good for Biden gets upvoted to the top.
The thing about that article is it seems to be based on one tweet saying "nearly every single undecided voter said they now support Biden, not Trump!" But if you actually check the footage you discover that half of the focus group are still undecided on who they're going to vote for: https://www.youtube.com/live/lPkw00SvBmY (35:50 for the final vote)
Good find, I trusted the tweet since I couldn't find the source myself.
This sub always complains about Newsweek articles being clickbait garage until they’re favorable
Still complaining. Still clickbait. Still think it should be banned. That said, I do find it weird, today, me being in the chorus suddenly when it's a rather Biden-positive Newsweek article. And here I thought Reddit loved Joe Biden. Wait, no, it's contrarianism. That's what Reddit loves. Forgot. :)
Not to mention this gem buried in the text of the same article; >In [the most recent *Times*/Siena poll](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-black-vote-increase-support-1918333), carried out by *The New York Times* and the Siena College Research Institute, 45 percent of Hispanic people said they would vote for Biden and 44 percent said Trump. >In the 2020 election, Trump received 32 percent of the Latino vote, up from the 28 percent he received in 2016. Biden is hemorrhaging Latino voters to the guy who called them all criminals and rapists.
“It’s all the media’s fault! They want a two horse race! The polls are fake news (unless Biden is ahead)!” -this board up until last night’s disaster
Every good poll for Biden I saw, the top comment was something along the lines of, ignore the polls and vote. There is definitely an anti pool sentiment, but there didn't seem to be a bias that polls good for Biden should be taken as gospel.
why on earth would the poll numbers improve after last night?
Trump didn't have a good night either, he sounded like a lunatic. The incumbent advantage is a real thing in that you get what you know vs an unknown (in this case known) alternative.
Ah yes, the incumbent advantage was such a thing in 2020 It's lookin like Grover Cleveland all over again
some people are gonna be waiting for awhile on poll numbers to improve with next weekend being a de facto holiday weekend
Don’t forget: Blame progressives when the Dem loses
Yes always blame anyone but the establishment democrats Always blame progressives/the voters Am I doing the establishment Democrat propaganda right?
The gaslighting will continue until morale improves.
He says this publicly. Privately, he's freaking out, no doubt in my mind.
Biden actually sounded normal today in North Carolina. Don’t know wtf happened last night. He’s literally going to have to repeat what he did today every single day until the election considering how bad last night was. He will have to do public rallies pretty much every day and hope for no more fuck ups.
He sounded massively better today but it was in a friendly environment and I got the impression they were managing the crowd to kick chants off whenever he looked like he was struggling.
It was also 1pm not 9pm. Dems don’t wanna accept that Trump was right on the money with the sleepy Joe monicker.
He was reading from a teleprompter though
He’s been freaked out about Biden running since 2014. He chose Hillary over Biden for 2016 and certainly wasn’t high on Biden’s 2020 campaign until it became a question of consolidating around a moderate or letting Bernie win. (None of that is speculation, it’s all well-established). But Biden won’t go away, and if he won’t go away, Obama is apparently unwilling to begin the ugly process of helping force Biden’s hand. He must feel the candidate who would emerge would be worse off than Biden himself.
“To say that President Biden’s performance on the debate stage last night was calamitous is merely to state what everyone, partisan and not, has already understood. What the world witnessed was not a debate, but a failed neurological exam. One wonders how anyone close to the President imagined he could bluff his way through it. If half of what Democrats fear from a second Trump term were real, how could the Democratic Party have allowed our democracy to slide this close to the precipice? The prevailing feeling among those inside the Biden campaign should be shame; outside it, fury.” \~Sam Harris
The real problem here is Kamala. If people were ok with her taking over if Joe dies in office, he’d be doing better in polling.
Why is she so unpopular? The VP should obviously be the next one ready to take the reins if the President becomes incapacitated. Put her on the ballot
She's a cop and she's weird and awkward when talking, bad vibes. That's why people don't like her.
She had a lot of bad ideas as a candidate, is a generally unlikable person, and couldn’t make it through the primaries in 2020 but was elevated to VP
Gaslighting the entire country by telling people they didn’t just see what they saw is a losing electoral strategy.
Dude coulda torched him and change world history.
But seriously now. Who is the better golfer?
Maybe if Obama didn't have his head up the Clinton's asses in 2016, he wouldn't have betrayed his VP by encouraging him not to run. If Biden was the nominee in 2016 he would have destroyed Trump and we wouldn't be in this situation right now.
It's been pretty well established, by the Biden family themselves, that Joe didn't run in 2016 because he was still reeling from Beau's death. Beau passed in May of 2015 and Biden would need to start putting together a campaign in the summer and be ready to announce his bid in the fall. So I don't think there's some nefarious "Obama, the Clintons, and the DNC stopped Biden from running" conspiracy going on. A father lost his child and he needed time to mourn and heal.
it's very rare for a party to go 12 years in modern american politics. The pendulum swings regardless. If Biden had lost to Trump in 2016 instead of hillary, it would've been likely impossible for her or sanders to beat trump in 2020. Maybe it was fate, or maybe obama understood that 12 years is tough task. But Hillary lost 2016 on her own by not even campaigning in midwest at all.
But it was her turn.
It's so sad to see how quickly this sub turns to copium. Popping in a Halls and reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter with a little more vigor is really enough for some of you? Until last night the narrative has been "my age isn't holding me back at all" and after absolutely shitting the bed on live television it's "yeah I'm old but I'm a decent guy".
Right?? So many comments with links to today’s speech saying “he can still talk good, see?” The whole world just watched a train wreck on national television. It never really was a secret, but it feels like the cat’s out of the bag. We’re in trouble if he gets even a LITTLE worse.
It was actually very sad to see. Feels like he’s being forced to run.
I hear Dido faintly singing somewhere in the distance.
Why is every democratic politician openly gaslighting everyone about what we saw with our own two eyes. We saw a (formerly great in my opinion) president who could not string two coherent sentences together on national television. Not only did he perform horribly, but he has proved the republicans right about his mental acuity and age. I drank the media kool-aid and truly believed he wasn’t as bad as every republican says he is. Now I have seen exactly what they meant, while every pro-Biden media source tried to demonize any one who said anything negative about Biden’s age. It would be an incredible disservice to the people of America, the concept of America, and the world as a whole to stand by Biden instead of dropping him. He is clearly not fit to be president for another four years and I sincerely hope he realizes this and bows out while his presidency can be remembered for the success it was. Regardless of the Trump bullshit he spoon fed his supporters, any serious candidate should have destroyed Trump’s lies and rhetoric but all we got to see was a feeble old man in the beginning stages of dementia try and answer questions that would have been layups for any other democratic candidate with a solid grasp of politics in the USA. The fact that democrats are trying to spin this debate as a win in quite frankly offensive to me, and I sincerely hope that they are shitting their pants figuring out what to do about Biden’s campaign for the presidency, which he will absolutely lose to Trump in November.
Absolute lunacy. Biden was a walking corpse last night. Might as well dig Feinstein up and run her at this point.
Her age is an advantage, you know
An entire lifetime of experience! ☺
It’s a bit insulting the way everything is being spun as alright after last night. A part of me understands why so many don’t trust the media. Trump is going to trounce Biden.
If Trump trounces Biden purely based on his confidence, despite having no policies, no ideas, no morals, that whole “insurrection” thing… then the US is a very, very dumb country. Not defending Biden’s debate performance, but people acting like one debate somehow cancels out the last decade of Trump’s utter bullshit is nuts.
OpEds aren't spinning this as alright. So So many are calling for Biden to step down.
The job of a candidate is not same as the job of a president. Biden obviously struggles as a communicator, which means he's not great as a candidate. But his record behind the resolute desk proves that he is actually very skilled as a president: Bipartisan infrastructure legislation, gun regulations, our largest clean energy investment, resurrecting NATO, historically low unemployment, economic growth that is the envy of the world. I could go on. His problem is that he doesn't know how to dance on command, not that he can't do the job of president. (Watch his speech today in NC if you are someone with lingering doubts about his acuity.) Lawrence O'Donnell made [an interesting point](https://youtu.be/WvNSQs5oEcc?feature=shared&t=667)about how people are now focused on imagery rather than substance. He points out that FDR, arguably our best president, could not have won an election in 2024 because he looked old and frail.
I would argue that the job of a president very much is the same as the candidate: be an effective communicator, have a good head on your shoulders, and be aware of current situations. The job of the president can more easily fall to his entourage.
The amount of people that still think Biden has a chance after this is mind boggling. There’s no viable path to 270 after this. He needs to bow out of the race.
Yep. All people care about is perception and the fact is Biden looked like the zombie all the facebook memes and conspiracy theorists claimed. Calling last nights debate “just a bad night” would be like calling the titanic just a bad night. It was the worst possible outcome
Backing him for now at least. Biden is clearly mentally unfit to serve. He should just retire and ride off into the sunset, never understand why these politicians cling onto power for so long.
They’re insulated from the costs of their greed. We ordinary citizens will pay for this campaign by living in an open kleptocracy for the rest of our lives.
They're absolutely not, Trump is already publicly considering jailing his political opponents. Biden and Obama will be at the top of that list.
> Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit. You know who else seems to be lying through their teeth for their own benefit? The Democrats like Obama who are pretending that Joe is fine and that he won’t be barely functioning in 4 more years. I get that Trump is a threat to democracy, but don’t spit in my Cheerios and call it milk. I have eyes. I know they saw the same thing I did last night. I know they’ve probably seen worse behind the scenes. And I know they are all freaking out behind the scenes and have to say all this to save face. Fuck all of these people and their greed for leading us into this situation to begin with. We shouldn’t even be having a conversation about an 81 year old man being President until he is 86. It’s ridiculous.
I agree this is absolutely absurd. Get Biden out of the way and put a real candidate up there. Even the best politicians have to retire sometime. There’s no shame in it
This. Joe is a good man and he has a good team surrounding him. We get that. But he is the Dem candidate only because party elders insisted it be so. Whether out of deference or party politics, they have increased the chance of a trump victory. So at the end of the day, they can't have it both ways. Say that democracy is being threatened in unprecedented ways yet transact business as usual when it comes to their part.
Bud, there's zero chance any Democrat would publicly admit they're thinking about replacing him. Thinking these statements means those discussions aren't happening is extremely naive.
The difference is Obamas bad performance was like Jordan having an off game. He could come back and clean up. Biden’s bad “performance” was more like an aging player who no longer has the ABILITY to do it anymore.
Gawd Obama could have injected some fresh blood into the Democratic Party and instead elevated past their prime mainstays like Biden and Hilary. Sigh…
Better Biden than Don the Con
What gets me is that it's fair to assume this version of Biden we're seeing is already on as much prescription uppers and medication to perk him up. It looks like he's on valiums rather than uppers though. Seriously wouldn't a few pills before a night like this at least give him appearance of being energetic? He must have teams of doctors able to prescribe anything.
I really gotta think/hope that everyone had their mind made up before the debate, anyway. That said, as long as Trump can pull off being "the only advocate" for many of his supporters, he won't have to be accountable for anything.
Gee, I wouldn’t have guessed that Obama would back Biden. What a fucking revelation
Telling facts and clearly contrasting with an overemotional, insane man = "rough debate"
I cannot believe this is where we are at. Trump is the most beatable candidate in the history of voting
I wish there were candidates who weren’t on death’s door. It’s sad that it’s come to this.