You also don't really need to think for a speech. You've got a friendly audience who won't challenge you and you know exactly what the next topic is, so you can focus on inflection and timing and emotion. It's good to see him have some life in the speech, but it's not really much of a counter to his terrible debate performance.
And incidentally, that's probably why Trump's performance sounded better. He also didn't really need to think about substance because he was just speaking to whatever topic he felt like and making things up without concern for truthfulness or challenge.
I've been sick before. It doesn't make me sound like I don't know where I am or what I'm talking about. The cold thing is massive cope. Good thing we beat medicare though.
He has to put up a strong front at this point, to keep the confidence of voters. But he could absolutely resign a year in... either planned or due to some new development, e.g. illness.
He is physically incapable of this, he just demonstrated that to us. Strong front? Who are we talking about? We seriously need to wake up, its over for Dems if there is no pivot. Any other conversation is copium.
I think most Democrats are worried about him being elected more than will he be able to be president for four years. Like he probably won't, but there's lots of structure and support to prevent a failing Biden from a catastrophic presidency. There's basically none to prevent him from tanking his reelection campaign.
If he bowed out and the Dems nominated a halfway decent candidate (which they likely wouldn't do, but that's a different subject), they'd demolish Trump. He'd lose so badly he couldn't even pretend it was fraudulent (though of course he'd claim that anyway, since he has the emotional maturity of a spoiled five-year-old). The race would instantly go from a terrifying risk to a complete rout.
But between Biden's ego and the DNC's determination to stick with a wholly-owned establishment neoliberal hack at all costs - even if it means losing - I expected that they wouldn't take this golden opportunity.
On the stream of the debate I was watching, when they took a break they showed clips from previous debates and the difference was kind of mind-blowing.
I honestly kind of think that even a mid-level candidate who didn't make it like Romney or Kerry probably could have mopped the floor with either one of them.
Also as a side note, how lucky is Donald Trump? Just a whole life of being handed infinite money no matter how many times he fucked up a business, a bewildering assortment of crimes with essentially no hard consequences, and two presidential runs against pretty much the only two people he has any chance of beating in a debate.
He's had a life of almost non-stop softballs. It's kind of wild really.
But between Biden's ego and the DNC's determination to stick with a wholly-owned establishment neoliberal hack at all costs - even if it means losing - I expected that they wouldn't take this golden opportunity.
Biden has objectively been the most progressive president since LBJ, and the most effective progressive president since FDR. And he did it with about the slimmest possible congressional margins, a situation which would have made it very easy for an actual "establishment neoliberal hack" to say "my hands are tied" and accomplish nothing of substance. Instead we got the biggest climate reform package ever, the biggest infrastructure package since the Interstate Highway system, a child tax credit that massively reduced child poverty, the most significant industrial policy in decades (CHIPS and Science), a veritable bulldog FTC chair with an aggressive anti-monopoly stance, and that's just for starters.
That's all well and good... And it will be for nothing. Biden's legacy will be that of RBG - your hubris handed the future to the opposition. These are dark days.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” the 81-year-old Biden said Friday. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong and I know how to do this job.”
trump didn't think he was wrong when he was breaking human rights laws on our southern border.
And Biden apparently doesn't either now that he's doing it.
My point being the people who do evil shit, usually dont think of themselves as evil.
The problem with Biden, is on issues like Israel where the vast majority of not only his party but the country won't him him to calm the fuck down. He never will
Because he is absolutely sure his outdated morals are the best, and he's not listening to anyone that disagrees with him.
I mean, the greater evil would presumably have gotten us worse. And in a system that is set up so as to inevitably produce two viable parties, and where "good" is not on the ballot from either, what else do you expect people to do?
"just change the system" is easier said than done, which I suspect you realize of course, since if it were so easy, you'd have changed it yourself already. The difficulty in such change is that it requires a very large number of people to act in unison, which is quite rare, especially when most people aren't literally starving, and have different ideas over what they want the system to be, some of which might be better, but some of which might be as bad or worse. It's a bit like how libertarian types sometimes remark that, if everyone stopped paying taxes, the government would run out of money and be unable to enforce them anymore: technically true, but requires humans to act with uncharacteristic unity towards a singular goal, against pushback from established power. Not to say that it never happens, but it does not seem to happen reliably or in a way that can be readily forced to occur.
Maybe everybody should just vote for me. I'll end our support for Isreal. I'll massively increase our support for Ukraine, and I'll send George Clooney a birthday card every year with a pop-up middle finger, that pops out of a card that says "You're getting older, you smug fuck!"
The primary process is so heavily fucked between superdelegates, and games played by the DNC that it’s pointless to even try.
Or did you forget it was the superdelegates that fucked Bernie in the early primary, as well as all the other games like removing his access to voter roles for a bug that was reported by his staff,
As well as the first few states generally dictate the course of the primary.
You’d have a point if a) every state primaries on the same day, b) superdelegates didn’t exist, and c) the DNC abided by its own rules.
Also if they didn't mess with the primary through media contacts, plus the media itself having its own biases due to their corporate owners and neoliberal talk show hosts, plus things like being able to offer favors to certain candidates for dropping out, or using past power like Obama to secure endorsements and stuff. It's super rigged.
Don't pretend this is a normal choice. The whole context has shifted since the debate - Biden is unfit, we are still gonna say hold your nose and vote?
"yeah I'm in cognitive and physical decline, but I'm totally capable of leading one of the most powerful and influential nations in history. Trust me bro."
The discourse around Biden exiting the race is moot because the only one who decides if he continues is Biden. Biden is still running so nothing changes. Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Biden had a bad debate performance. It was a missed opportunity to pick up new voters. Biden demoralized his base. But we're still stuck with him, because there is no external mechanism to stop him from running.
The most effective tool we have to prevent the christo-fascist takeover this November is voting. The debate did not change that.
I'm running on an independent ticket. My platform: Unlike the other two candidates no one wonders if I can physically handle the journey from back stage to the podium.
I'm fucking serious, one of the talking heads on the news said Biden needed to "remain upright" to come off well in this debate. That was said of the currently serving commander-in-chief!
Unlike the actual President Of These United States of America, the 24 hour news cycle probably expects more out of me than "can stand up straight for 30 minutes without incident."
Remember when Trump made a point to demonstrate his ability to lift and drink from a glass of water?
Seriously next time these two appear on stage I want them to step through a hoop to prove there are no wires.
the only one who decides if he continues is Biden.
Got it.
Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Um, what? Vote Biden to save Democracy, and fuck you if you want a different candidate.
I'll vote for Biden's corpse in 2028 if it's still the only way to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse, but give up the "save Democracy" schtick. That ship has sailed. Democracy is dead, and it's not just the Republican's fault.
Democracy is still alive for now. That's why voting matters. Our flawed democracy is still our best chance at adverting fascism. Which is why the fascists want to take it away. Giving up early gets us nothing. So keep fighting.
I think his point is that, if our only alternative to fascism is to vote for a senile old man who was forced upon voters without a primary, then this system can't credibly be called democracy.
Its not about how old the candidate is, its about not having other valid alternatives when you dont like the candidate chosen for you.
Edit: just to make sure the point gets across. Imagine going to a restaurant, the waiter asks if you want to drink moldy water or toxic industrial waste. You see behind him lies an array of normal, refreshing beverages but sorry, you weren’t given those choices so you can’t have any of that. Thats basically this election.
We live in a first-past-the-post voting system. These choices, Biden and Trump, are in part the result of that system. We need to change to a different system like rank choice voting or approval voting. But despite being flawed, our system is still a democracy.
You can only continue to call this system a democracy by setting the bar very very low. Pointless to argue semantics though, better to argue substance. We won't get to a better - more representative - democracy by working within the current system; we need to apply external pressure. People don't feel that voting in this election will save democracy because they don't feel there's enough of it left to be saved. Voting in this election can at best stave off a total collapse to fascism, but that's it.
Our democracy is a democracy. That is a fact. The most effective method to improving our democracy is using our democracy. US history has demonstrated this repeatedly. Our democracy is our most effective tool to prevent fascism, so we should fight to keep it as long as possible. The fascist movement will continue to grow until we defeat their ideas and abandon neo-liberalism. This means we need to elect Biden in 2024 and then elect a socialist in 2028. edit: typo
The most effective method to improving our democracy is using our democracy. US history has demonstrated this repeatedly.
Meaningful progress has only ever been made in the US after mass movements engaged in direct action and protests (often met with violent state repression), and even then the legislation that's made is usually much less than the people wanted. This is not a sign of a democracy that functions for the people.
It is the sign of democracy for the people. All of the social, economic, and political progress in the US is thanks to movements that translated into legislation, amendments, and court rulings via our democracy. Without a democracy those movements would have hit a wall. Of course we need to continue to improve our democracy. We need unfettered majority rule in this country. It is functionally possible to achieve this, but people have to vote. The movements won't translate into positive change if people skip voting.
If Biden wins this election in 2024 we will have a Democratic primary without a Democratic incumbent in 2028. The last two times that happened we were given a socialist to vote for in the Democratic primary. In 2028 we need to make sure whoever that is wins the primary. We can do that by spreading socialist and progressive ideas in the fours years between now and the 2028 election.
If your choices are vote for A and democracy ends or vote for B, it isn't really a choice. If it isn't a choice, it's not a democracy. It's political theater. Not unlike mock elections in dictatorships.
You're fucked either way, both choices are pathways to the same destination. Just at different speeds/ different routes.
By electing Biden democracy continues and we will have the opportunity for better choices. There are ways to fix our problems, but we have to be willing to fight for them. If we choose to keep fighting we can avert self-destruction. In this case it means voting for a neo-liberal. That's a small price to pay for a shot at a better society and averting death camps.
We are living in a democracy right now. The fascists are attempting to takeover our democracy. If we didn't have democracy there wouldn't be an election.
Well, at least in the states where they didn't succeed in keeping everyone else off the ballot.
There was no real primary. Even 2020 wasn't a real primary. The fix is in with mainstream media and the major outlets taking their queues from the establishment.
The idea that we have an actual democracy is laughable, and the Democratic party does everything in their power to keep it that way. Biden won in 2020 because the establishment picked him and the media did as they were told. There is no democracy without an independent press.
Biden is a better choice than Trump for a multitude of reasons, but not saving democracy.
We have a democracy. There is a real Democratic Party primary every four years. Incumbent presidents usually win their primary when they are up for reelection.
The press is independent, but for profit in most cases. There are of course non-profit exceptions. The fact capitalism exists doesn't mean democracy doesn't exist. It means the owner class has a profit motive to overthrow our democracy.
Electing Biden preserves our flawed democracy for four more years. This gives us time to build grassroots movements to put people with better ideas into political positions in the next two elections. It delays the christo-fascist movement for four more years, who have to win a presidential election to succeed.
Getting Biden in office is how we save our democracy, but not because of something he will do. In order to save our democracy, we first have to keep it. Then we have to fix it.
This year they literally canceled the presidential primary in several states so, no, we don't have a primary every four years.
Radical consolidation of the media industry has largely killed independent journalism. There is a long list of media personalities who were taken off the air for daring to speak the truth. Anchors are selected to represent the establishment perspective on everything. Media ownership and the establishment work together to dominate the narrative. For profit or non-profit is irrelevant. PBS is now as captured as the private networks.
New media caught the establishment by surprise and did manage to make inroads, but that has largely been brought under control. Democrats and Republicans cooperated long enough to pressure social media companies to tweak the algorithm to direct viewers to "trustworthy" news sources, a group that laughably includes FOX News and MS-NBC and excludes independent news providers.
Electing Biden can't preserve democracy where none exists. There was that study out of Stanford that showed zero statistical correlation between the policy desires of voters and what legislation gets passed. We have the facade of democracy, but no actual democracy.
What we do have is the fight for Democracy, and that fight has a much better chance under Biden than Trump. That's not a minor distinction. I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy. They are democracy's enemies, and they are my enemies. The entire fight for democracy in an age of media manipulation is a fight to pull back that curtain. That fight doesn't stop because of Trump.
Biden was a write in candidate in New Hampshire and won. Delware was cancelled because only Biden got enough signatures. Florida's cancellation is still being challenged in court. These exceptions are exceptions, they don't mean we didn't have a primary. The incumbent won the primary, like incumbents usually do.
The media isn't perfect. Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. CNN was artificially shifted to the right by a rich donor. But the situation isn't as bad as your argument claims. We just had most of mainstream media attacking Biden over his debate performance. For profit media follows the profit motive to everyone's detriment. There isn't some kind of organized conspiracy to control the news.
We have a democracy. The policy people want and the policy that gets implemented has diverged since Regan. Neo-liberalism is the cause of this. Neo-liberalism suppresses socialist ideas, while allowing fascist ideas to take root. Neo-liberals cling to the status quo and believe that our institutions are fundamentally good. That we just need good people in charge of them. So they resist systemic change and fail to get to the root cause of our problems.
Our intuitions are fundamentally flawed and need to be fixed. We need majority rule in our democracy and wealth redistribution in our economy. We need to abolish the Electoral College, proportion Senate seats by population, have Supreme Court justices run for election to name a few. We need to remove the owner class by taking away their wealth and the source of their wealth. Workers need to own the corporations they work for. Every worker needs to be given an equal percentage of the company in stocks or bonds and be paid out regularly in dividends or interest. Billionaires need to be taxed until they are millionaires.
In addition to being difficult to implement neo-liberals are going to intuitively resit these changes. The fixes all involve systemic change to systems they believe are inherently good. There are people who would rather elect Trump than fix these problems. Not because they are fascists, but because neo-liberalism has led them to believe that a 'good man' needs to be allowed to do 'what needs to be done'. There are of course people who want their prejudices to be validated and overt fascists. But neo-liberalism leaves people susceptible the idea that systems don't need to be fixed and that only the people need be to changed.
Thanks to neo-liberalism it easier for a fascist to convince people to blame their problems on immigrants and minorities than for a socialist to convince people to solve their problems with systemic change and wealth redistribution. This is not to say that it is impossible to convince people socialism is the answer to their problems. Just that we actively have to educate people about the flaws of neo-liberalism and fascism in addition to convincing them about progressive and socialist ideas.
I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy.
I am not arguing for this.
Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
I am arguing for this.
I am not arguing Biden will save democracy. Biden is a neo-liberal. His political ideology prevents him from saving our democracy. The same goes for the Democratic Party who are predominately neo-liberals. I am arguing that we, as in the American people, need to save our democracy. The first step in the strategy I am arguing for is to elect Joe Biden. Out of the two viable candidates, he is the candidate who is not a fascist. Electing Biden will preserve our democracy, flawed as it is, for four more years.
Then we need to use the 2026 and 2028 elections to elect socialists and progressives. We ideally want a socialist president to win in 2028. We need to co-opt the Democratic party the way the christo-fascists co-opted the Republican Party.
That fight doesn’t stop because of Trump.
The fascists will not be defeated until we defeat their ideas. Once Trump is out of the picture MAGA and the Republican Party will find a new guy. Fascists movements are springing up in Europe. Modi is the head of a hindu-fascist movement in India. Getting Biden elected is not the solution, just a way to delay the fascists in the US long enough to start implementing actual solutions. edit: typos
sounds like the party is dysfunctional if we can't replace a candidate with 120 days of leadup. that's longer than any other country's election season. the inability of the democratic party to do good things on purpose makes a strong argument against their leadership if what they think they offer is competence
I thought the 2016 Bernie debacle was enough of a learning moment for the Democrats, yet 8 years go so long for memory lane. Biden is barely functional, anyone with old grandparents know how fast things accelerate, how is he even going to last 5 more years with that mental capacity? Isn't this at the end blind party loyalty, the same thing the republicans are criticized for? I guess rules for thee but not for me.
Yep - if you are for Biden after that debate you're just Blue MAGA, he is unfit for office at this point. That's not a "bad night" , that's an old man. I cant even believe these news articles, its outrageous. I basically support the guy and after that debate I don't know how I cam cast a vote of confidence that he can do the job. We're fucked.
But more people want to vote against trump than want to vote Biden.
And everyone voting Biden wants to vote against Trump.
Logically, to get the most votes, wed run a better candidate than Biden to maximize odds of stopping trump...
Like, you get that right?
Biden and the DNC is asking tens of millions of voters to vote for someone they don't want because stopping trump is so important. But refuse to step aside to help stop trump.
That's not us working together to stop trump.
It's Biden and the DNC holding the entire country hostage with the threat of trump if we don't elect someone we don't want.
Which just hurts Biden's chances of stopping trump even more, and shows that even if he wins, he's just going to do whatever the fuck he wants like continue to violate US and international law. Which is why:
But more people want to vote against trump than want to vote Biden.
If Biden really cared most about stopping Trump, he'd fucking retire.
If he gets elected I'm not worried. He can die or be puppeted by his staff and things will be roughly as ok as they are now. I'm worried he won't get elected.
Ah yes, the DNC, known for making good decisions for our democracy. How they trusted Hillary on us leading to the election of Trump.
We just need ranked choice voting at a national scale. Until that happens we're going to keep dealing with this bullshit. A lot of Republicans don't want to elect a fascist anymore than a lot of democrats don't want to elect a geriatric. But just like democrats a lot of those Republicans think they have no choice. These could all have been avoided with a different voting system and the more moderate members of each party could have voted together.
I agree with you, but the system is just fucking broken.
Until that happens we’re going to keep dealing with this bullshit.
Bruh...
The current DNC is not going to support RCV. Some state parties might, but the DNC is run by moderates who know most of their votes are because literally the only other option is a Republican.
To get rcv, we need to get a progressive president who will actually try to fix the DNC.
Obama wasn't perfect, and he made a lot of mistakes.
But the one that keeps fucking us over is instead of fixing the DNC when he had a shot, he just ignored them because they just ignored him in 08.
If Obama had tried to fix the DNC, Bernie would have won in 2016, would be exiting his second term, and likely handing the torch to president AOC.
trump would still be known as a shitty reality TV host, and we'd all be better off.
Mostly true. The DNC is the organization that makes the rules and can change them at any time. That would be a pretty bad move though unless the party really felt united in needing to do a hostile expulsion. Realistically Biden needs to be on board for a change to work, so being able to play Calvinball with primary voting rules isn't really an out.
Yes, as I understand it they would have to change the rules to expel him. People seem to be assuming that there is already a mechanism to expel him without doing that.
The guy didn't ace a debate with a sore throat and jet-lag so the media loses its shit. The orange liar has rape and 34 felony convictions- crickets. Nothing new here.
I searched for an editorial board opinion in the New York Times which said Trump should withdraw from the Republican ticket because he lied throughout the debate, but I couldn't find one. Why didn't they write one?
The christo-fascists are not in complete control of all three branches of government yet. That is why this election and voting is so important. Calling it early is both inaccurate and unhelpful.
There is no mechanism at this stage that can force him to do so that I am aware of. They can of course try to convince him, but no one from Biden's inner circle, like Jill Biden, or any of the hypothetical candidates people like to float, like Gavin Newsom, has expressed interest in doing that.
Biden was tired from too many engagements, jet lag and a sore throat. You could see he was tried. On the other hand, the orange felon/rapist/liar had one job - to not be an asshole - he failed spectacularly.
Other people ran in the Democratic Party's primary. As is typical of US politics, the incumbent president won their primary.
Biden and Trump both won their primaries, because people in their respective parties voted for Biden and Trump. Trump had even more challengers than Biden did. This outcome wasn't predetermined, just predictable.
Hillary Clinton vs Jeb Bush in 2016 was predictable. But as we saw with Trump's win, not predetermined.
