About Last Night: Debate Debacle Edition
Screen grab from CNN
Since he announced his presidential run back in 2019, I’ve been wrong about many things when it comes to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Ol’ Joe, Sheriff Joe, President Biden, has, for the last 5 years or so, had a knack for delivering when he really had to. Left for dead in his 3rd primary attempt? Big comeback win, as his party looked into the abyss of a Bernie Sanders candidacy and ran, not walked, to the polls to nominate Joe Biden. Sharp enough to debate an incumbent Trump? He malarkey’d his way right through helped by a spastic Trump’s constant interruptions. Questions about his age and fitness in the general election? Yeah, but he’s “not Trump” and that was enough to win. State of the Union? Exceeded expectations. Whenever someone – like me – thinks President Biden might finally have played out the string, Joe figures out, lucks out, or finds a way to keep on keeping on, at least perception wise.
That is why last night’s debate was so jarring, and such an alarm to even the President’s most ardent surrogates and supporters. Joe Biden was incapable of doing it. Incapable of answering questions. Incapable of stringing thoughts together. With a few exceptions, incapable of retorting to the fire hosing of Donald Trump’s replies, redirections, and often ridiculous assertions. The CNN debate with Donald Trump was not just gaffes, not just mistakes, not just low energy, it was PAINFUL to watch. The visceral feel of many folks who themselves have had to, at some point in their lives, deal with someone they know being unable to perform and communicate at a basic level, but it being on national TV. Presidential elections are never really about policy anyway; they are almost always decided on the optics of “who do I want to see in the media for the next 4 years more than the other candidate” for most voters.
Sure, as VP Harris and California Governor Newsom spun in the spin room, President Biden said some correct things on policy and had brief moments of being more alert as the debate went on. But that doesn’t overshadow the first few minutes of outright mumbling, hard-to-hear even with the volume up nonwords, and the obvious losing of thoughts, inability to speak, and the sad to watch breakdown as we all knew what Joe Biden knew. The brutal, awful, seemed like it was forever moments as he stopped speaking, looked up, looked down, closed his eyes and tried really hard, then – unable to find whatever it was he was trying to say – blurted out nonsensical things like “Look, we finally beat Medicare.”
Presidential debates are tv shows designed for optics, and the optics of President Biden not being able to answer the bell is something most normal, decent people never want to see on their televisions or devices ever again.
Right about now in an opinion piece is where one is supposed to hedge and remind you, the good readers, of things like there being still 130-some-odd days left before the election, that Trump has all sorts of legal issues out there including a sentencing in his New York case coming up in two weeks, that a lot can happen, that Trump is still Trump, yada yada yada. That’s all true. We are completely off the map in this election on many levels. For the first time in the modern era we have an incumbent against his predecessor. We have a convicted felon as one of the candidates. We have two historically old candidates. We have a direct rematch for the first time in generations.
There are a plethora of unknowns going forward towards November. Here is the core fact of this election: Just being “not Trump” is not enough for Joe Biden to get elected anymore. All the chatter of President Biden’s age and ability now has irrefutable evidence that can’t be excused because of selective editing, out-of-context moments, or the pathetic-even-if-true spin during the debate that went out to the journalist contact lists that “the president has a cold.”
Biden catastrophically lost that debate last night. Did Trump win it? Yes, he did by default, but winning debates doesn’t mean much. You can ask Mitt Romney about that. Did Donald Trump help himself last night? That is the better question.
By Trump’s standards, and despite a long list of typical Trump falsehoods that took the fact-checkers full tv segments just to list through, the former president was pretty disciplined. At least by Trumpian standards. Outside of the bizarre golf swing tangent, he stayed on message, stayed to camera, and kept talking about Joe Biden more than talking about himself. Despite the best efforts of Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, he rarely answered the posed questions, but he was exactly what the viewing public expected a slightly reigned-in Donald Trump to be on camera.
And this was an optics contest. Donald Trump was who he always is on camera. Joe Biden was a shocking, hard to watch shell of himself on camera. That’s the entire story of this debate debacle. So bad were the optics that news networks and talking heads started to openly demand a switch of candidate or Biden to step aside, moves that would all but guarantee a fracturing of the Democratic Party that has no clear successor and a win for Donald J. Trump in the process. It would look desperate, because it is desperate, and desperate doesn’t inspire folks. Team Blue has only themselves to blame for that though. The bill for “beat Trump at any cost” just might come due against the very Trump they mortgaged their future for, and expose the weak national bench that necessitated a Biden nomination in the first place.
It’ll be a few days before polls on this debate come out, just in time for Trump’s sentencing to hit and require all new polling again, but I suspect Trump will gain some ground here. That’s not really the problem Joe Biden has though. The problem President Biden’s team might not have an answer for is he is losing ground, and the stupidly labeled “double haters” the politicos are obsessing over are more likely than ever to split ticket vote, leave the top of the ballot blank or go with a protest candidate, or just stay home. This kind of debate between unable to perform Joe Biden and performative, cascading lies in Donald Trump might be driving down election participation more than it moves actual support.
Maybe Joe Biden once again proves everyone, and especially, me wrong. Maybe he has another comeback in him. But every time I see Joe Biden on my screen from now on, I’ll be clenching my teeth not really wanting to watch it, waiting for another moment where you want to reach through the tv and stop the embarrassing display of our president unable to form cognitive sentences. That’s a feeling that goes far beyond politics, that I never want to feel again, never want to see on my screen again, never want Joe Biden the man to go through again, never want to see my president look like to the world again.
And I suspect I am not alone.
Let’s check out the headlines…
CNN.
The top one:
Takeaways: Biden disappoints, Trump repeats falsehoods
Under that:
Biden’s disastrous debate pitches his reelection bid into crisis
What would happen if Biden decided to leave the race?
Biden’s age problem got worse, Trump ducks on deportations and other key moments to know
Everything else is stuff like “See the key moments and analysis from the CNN debate”
There is a “Biden to Trump: ‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’” a bit further down the page, I guess… a bone for the audience.
Let’s look at MSNBC:
Huh. A lot less information in the headlines, more clickbaity. Here’s one with an admission: “Donald Trump may not have ‘won’ the presidential debate. But Biden certainly lost.”
The other ones are stuff like “Trump’s debate performance proved Bill Clinton right — in the most depressing way” or “What Democrats should absolutely not do after Biden’s debate performance” or “Trump exploited a key weakness in the debate format. It’s time we fix it”.
Number six will shock me, I guess.
And let’s check out NPR… Nothing. “4 takeaways from the first presidential debate”, “Fact check: What did Biden and Trump claim about immigration in the debate?”, “What to know about the key policies that got airtime in the presidential debate”.
Under that: “Is your dog ugly? Find out in this week’s news quiz”
CNN is panicking, probably because it was their show. The other two seem to be taking a “STAY ON TARGET” approach. (“It’s no good, I can’t maneuver!” “STAY ON TARGET”)
But it’s still early yet.Report
Oh, the New York Times.
Let’s check them.
Here’s the top one:
Biden’s Struggles in Debate Alarm Democrats
Underneath:
Shaky Performance Against Trump Reinforces Doubts
Former President Trump’s attacks were frequently false, lacked context or were vague enough to be misleading.
President Biden sought to reassure Democrats after the debate.
The debate has left Democratic donors wondering about a Plan B.
The other ones are stuff like “Who won the debate? Here is a sampling of the reaction” or “For U.S. allies, the debate renewed concerns about America’s stability”.
Let’s check out the opinion page… OH THERE’S AN ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL GRAPHIC!!! Gimme a sec…
Here are the four columns at the top:
‘God Help Us’: 12 Writers Rate Biden’s Performance at the First Presidential Debate
Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race.
Biden Cannot Go On Like This
After the Debate: ‘I Don’t Think Joe Biden Should Be Running’
Very slowly and then all at once.Report
LOL Jamelle Bouie. What an utterly cringeworthy comical hack.Report
He’s a former OTer. I always enjoyed his columns here.Report
Yeah I know. He was bad then, but we wasn’t _as bad_. Or even now to be fair. But I swear for five years or so at least, he was the hackiest hack in all of media.Report
Coming from you, Koz, that means a lot.Report
Go to any of the top posts of r/politics and sort by controversial.
Or sort by “top”. It’s all good.Report
Nothing has changed.
One candidate will support and defend the Constitution, the other one will destroy the American republic.Report
Something has changed.Report
1 thing has changed. More doubt in the voter’s minds.Report
Its changed, but election isn’t over. This will get run but the calendar will help Biden a bit here. We have the holiday week, then Trump’s sentencing the following week, then we are into convention season. Biden gives a credible performance there and elapsed time, plus the (by his standards) disciplined Trump from last night isn’t going to sustain for 130-whatever days. Lot can still happen, but like I said in the piece, just being “non-Trump” isn’t going to work with those video clips now out there. Biden, if able, has to show something more for marginally engaged voters who saying “destroy the republic” doesn’t register with.Report
If they held the convention today and Gavin Newsome stepped up on stage, he’d be the nominee about forty-five seconds later.Report
He’s not universally liked in the party, and it would split the coalition Biden has.Report
Biden has a coalition because he’s The Only Choice, and they told us that anyone who said he wasn’t up to the job was a dirty Trumpist liar.
I really think that Newsome has enough cult-of-personality energy to make a run for the job right now. Give it two weeks for everyone to settle down, and it wouldn’t work; but right at this moment, he could pull it off.
(It wouldn’t be good for the rest of us because Newsome really is the genius bastard that Trump thinks he is.)Report
You’re wrongly assuming the Democrats select their nominee through some sort of democratic process.
This is Game of Thrones, not Schoolhouse Rock.Report
You know the old slapstick bit where a guy has a board on his shoulder and turns around and hits other people? It’s like that.
OH! I found the old 3 Stooges bit!
We just need to figure out who Moe is.Report
I would vote for a tree stump for President before I would vote for Trump, but I’m not sure if the electoral college votes shake out that way.Report
Chip, plenty has changed. We are supposed to be the working reality based party so we have to acknowledge reality and do some work. I have little doubt, and the past four years have shown conclusively, that Joe Biden has been and is up to the job of being President but the job in question right now is the job of Presidential Candidate and that debate performance suggests extremely strongly that Joe isn’t up to that job- and it’s a vitally important job.
Your own comment underlines that point- our side will support and defend the Constitution and Trump can be credibly charged with, at the minimum making noises about, destroying the republic. That makes the job of Presidential Candidate vitally important. Joe can’t be President if he fishes up the Presidential Candidate job for the next, sweet agnostic jebus, three and change months.
Perhaps Joe had an off evening? One fishing heck of a time to have an off evening. If that is the case then Joe will -have- to emerge from his controlled spaces and confront the media circus himself. Only repeated public engagements are going to make any progress to beating back the damage this debate did to him.
And if Joe can’t do that? Then a serious conversation has to be had about alternatives. Worse, that conversation won’t involve much of the party- at this stage Joe has the nomination locked down if he chooses to take it. The delegates are elected and bound. The only way Joe doesn’t get the nomination is if he does something- turns it down, dies, etc… So Joe has to either demonstrate- conclusively- that he is up to the job of Presidential Candidate of our party or he has to step down. This is for all the fishing marbles for fish’s sake.
And I type all this with great regret verging on physical illness. I was not just a Biden supporter once he got the nod but an enthusiastic Biden supporter. I still can remember the thrill I felt when he obliterated Bernie on Super Tuesday in 2020.Report
I only meant that one candidate will work to protect and defend the Constitution, and the other will work to destroy democracy and the rule of law.
I wish it were different, but it isn’t.
Yes, there are plenty of people now doubting Biden’s ability.
But the basic fact remains: A vote for Biden is a vote for democracy and the rule of law, and a vote for Trump is a vote for dictatorship.Report
Yes, agreed and if it comes to that choice in November you certainly know where I’d vote.
The question on the table for the party, right here, right now, is “Is Biden the candidate most likely to win in November or would our odds of winning increase if Biden quit/was pushed out and replaced by another candidate?).”Report
But you aren’t one of the party deciders. You’re a citizen participating in a democracy.
Imagine you were speaking to one of the undecided persuadable voters.
What would you say?Report
I’d say what I’m saying now. First: to contribute the tiny microscopic scintilla of an atom worth of pressure I can contribute to the force welling upwards pushing the party deciders to decide.
Second: to demonstrate to an undecided persuadable voter that I and my party are reality based and non-insane.
And, yes, if Biden hangs in there, if the party deciders make the call to continue backing him, yes if it’s the eleventh hour I’ll probably say what you’re saying to an undecided voter.
But not now, not yet.Report
That’s the armchair pundit talking.
I’m looking for, if you wanted to persuade a voter to vote for Biden, what would you say?
The reason I am pressing the point is to push back against the pundit Detached Objective Spectator View From Nowhere.
Like, you and I are citizens, participants in this, we have skin in the game. The lives of us and our loved ones will be drastically changed by the election.
To answer my own question I would say “Vote for the doddering old guy, because the alternative is the end of democracy.”Report
It is -not- armchair pundit talking. I am a member of the Democratic Party of this country. This is a question of the ability of the presumptive nominee of my party for the Presidency to run in such a way as maximizes odds of victory. I am neither detatched nor view from nowhereing. I want to win, very badly. I have always been a yellow dog Democrat and the years of the GOP’s decay and descent have not lessened those inclinations. We need to win.
As to your statement I’d say the same damned thing as you at the 11th hour. But right now, in this moment, we’re in the late minutes of the 10th hour. So the thing i am saying now is “Replace the doddering old guy, it’s important.” Then if that doesn’t happen then when the clock strikes eleven I’ll switch to “Vote for the doddering old guy, it’s important.”Report
Unfortunately too many Americans just don’t think this is the case. low information normie voters aren’t in on this conversation, and won’t be until its too late – meaning AFTER democracy crashes and burns.
You need a different hot take right now.Report
Biden is the only politician with a record of defeating Donald Trump.
Yes, there are other politicians who can probably do the same but it is worth having a huge fight over who that person is. I think probably not. I have pointed out below that I have seen normie Dems float Newsom and other rank and file damn him as an empty suit. All of them would end up voting for him over Trump if it somehow happened that he became the nominee.
Suppose a blackhole swallows up Biden tomorrow. Who becomes President? Kamala Harris. Who would be the most logical Democratic candidate in 2024? Kamala Harris. Who do pundits never, ever mention as a potential replacement for Biden (if they mention anyone), Kamala Harris.Report
After last nights debate I am thinking Harris would be preferable. If last night was just an off night then Biden needs to get out there and show it. If not, he should make some tough decisions. Unlike many, while I am unenthused, I do not profoundly fear a Harris candidacy.Report
Does anyone ever know what resilience is? Trump went full Nuremberg rally and everyone is seemingly ignoring that because Biden sounded raspy. It is pretty damn pathetic and a great example of learned helplessness. Toughen up, Buttercup
To use a sports analogy, everyone melting down is the equivalent of a guy who leaves a basketball game before half time because his team is down by three points.Report
Dude did you watch the debate? It was a heck of a lot more than the raspiness. If it was just raspy I wouldn’t give a fish. This man eviscerated Paul Ryan in 2016 and served him his own libertarian posterior on a plate with a cheeky irish grin. Last night he just stood there choking while Trump waddled around the stage lobbing softballs at him. It was not adequate, it wasn’t remotely close to adequate. Biden needs to do better.Report
I’m starting to think this election isn’t actually between the two candidates, it’s between the people that the two candidates surround themselves with to run the government.
Because it has been years, it is worth reminding people how disastrous Trump’s choices were there, and a lot of his stuff only failed because he picked _incompetent_ lunatics. Huge chunks of them literally went to jail, mountains of crazy policy happened that the court struck down. It’s easy to forget this stuff now, but all that really happened.
Biden, meanwhile… He seems mentally competent most of the time, but if he is not, honestly it’s very hard to tell with the things that are happening. And I’m someone who is constantly complaining that he hasn’t done more, but things have been accomplished, non-crazy things. Even if you don’t like them, they aren’t _crazy_. Whoever is making the decision is a normal centrist Democrat.
And if this cost Biden election, this means both elections of Trump will be due to Democratic leaders asking ‘All right, whose turn is it to run now? Who is next in the queue?’Report
Absolutely David, I agree which is why I still think Biden is solid for the job of Presidenting. His circle, cabinet and admin is very much a part of that.
For the next few months, though, job #1 is Winning Presidential Candidate and on that metric there’re serious substantive worries.Report
The last time a Democratic incumbent stepped down was in 1968 and we all know how that ended. The replace Biden faction has been short on describing the mechanism and pulling blanks on the replacement. This is because the actual successor to Biden exists and her name is Kamala Harris. The replace Biden faction doesn’t want Kamala Harris but sidelining Harris is goi g to piss off tens of millions of African-Americans who are needed to win. The natural white male replacement is Gavin Newsom and many don’t want him.
This is the reality. Biden is the candidate. Doing this wailing in public doesn’t make the Democratic Party look reality based to the normies. It makes us look like chicken littles involved in a circular firing squad.Report
Well speaking only for myself, if last nights performance is indicative I am 100% okay with replacing Joe with Kamala.Report
You might be fine with Kamala Harris but most of the rest of the replace Biden faction are not.Report
Well they’ll likely have to suck it up because the overwhelming likelihood is that if the old man steps down she’ll be the next nominee.Report
If Biden were to resign, she’d become President. That historically means she is the front runner for her party. Why the pundits ignore this is … probably explainable but not in a pretty way.Report
Most of the legal speculation I’ve seen on the subject suggests that if Biden were to resign/withdraw, a Harris campaign would “inherit” the $150M or so in the Biden/Harris fund. It’s one thing for pundits and donors to pick, say, Newsom; it’s another matter entirely to come up with that kind of money on short notice and legally.Report
The steady physical and cognitive decline of Joe Biden has been apparent to everyone not blinded by their own bias and/or wishful thinking.Report
A lot of people made “everything those nasty right-wing meanies say is a damn lie” into a load-bearing element of their personality, and they’re having a lot of difficulty with life this morning.Report
Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug.Report
It’s his stutter. He’s always had a stutter. Do you hate stutterers?Report
Well put, Andrew. I genuinely felt bad for Joe. Not in the cringey way you feel bad for politicians being politicians, but in the ordinary human way you feel bad for someone who no longer can do the very thing he used to do so well.
I knew there was no way out (jokes about Jamaal Bowman pulling the fire alarm notwithstanding); but I practically gasped when at 10:20pm(!!) Dana asked Joe ‘the question’ about his age. The question that he knew was coming — the Reagan question he had 4 years to prepare for — and he trundled on about something, I dunno South Korea or what? Until he petered out.
… and then she twisted the dagger: Mr. President you still have 40 seconds left, would you like to continue?Report
It was fair on her part and agonizing for us in his party. A terrible shame. Some grieving is allowed but either an emphatic refutation performance by Joe is required or else some kind of decision at this point. I don’t think his team can punt this.Report
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
I don’t recommend looking around at any given fellow traveler and trying to guess which stage they’re in by their comments.
That never goes well.Report
Yeah, it was certainly a fair question… I mean, it was an expected and necessary question even.
It’s probably a testimony to the decent job the moderators did… that was on the list as question #9 and by golly she asked question #9. Me? At that stage of the debate? I would’ve gone on to question #10. But I’m a softy.
Never, in a million years though would I have asked if he wanted more time…
On the format… we should just abandon the whole ‘debate’ nonsense… simple topics are fine. Candidates are going to say what they want to say. Let’s just give them a minimal prompt and see what they say. I thought they did a decent job of just giving topic oriented questions (vs. the old gotcha style wind-ups).Report
Yeah frankly I don’t think anyone has any place to complain much about the moderators or the format.Report
IIRC Biden proposed it and Trump accepted without any negotiation.
This is a depressing day.Report
It is. I had so hoped for a rerun of Biden/Ryan 2008. That was a good time.Report
One thing that occurred to me is that the best options are sitting there back in 2022.
Nothing to be done about that, I guess.
So let’s say we’ve got a bunch of bad options in June 2024.
They do not cease to be bad options in October 2024. They may even become worse options by that point.
A little pain now might prevent a lot more pain later.
Imagine, for example, if we allowed ourselves a little pain in 2022…Report
It seems, barring some convincing performance by Biden otherwise, that the best time to replace Joe would have been a year or so back, but the next best time may be now.Report
No one follows the news in July-August. They’ve got time to lock everyone in a room and figure this out.Report
Sure they could, but noone has the authority now that the votes are in. It’s going to have to be a conversation by Bidens inner circle and the party’s inner circle. Ultimately only Biden can make the call. They can’t force him out without violating the rules and bylaws of the party.Report
1) The 25th Amendment. Twenty-five the guy today, keep him on the ticket, swear him in next January, and twenty-five him immediately after.
2) Pass state legislation that members of the Electoral College may transfer a vote within the same political party.
3) Impeach him on the grounds that his refusal to step down and ensure the US has a fit president is itself a high misdemeanor.
That’s three ways, and I’m not smart. I’m also not considering the pressure that Congress, the party, the press, and the donors can put on a president.Report
None of which would work considering that the Dems don’t control all the legislatures that such schemes would require.
But the party can pressure him to step down and I think that, absent some serious remediative performances right quick, they should do so.Report
1 – The Democrats control the Cabinet, right?
2 – You don’t need to control all the legislatures, and back room deals could be made for the good of the country.
3 – For this one, back room deals could be made in Congress.Report
25ing him and keeping him on the ticket would be simply handing the election to Trump.I, frankly, ignored that one because it’s the solution to a problem we don’t have. Biden has been running his administration perfectly fine, but he seems to not have the oomph for the even more demanding job of presidential campaigning.
And as for the notion of back room deals being made with the GOP for the good of the country? I’ll be civil and not scornfully laugh at that idea the way it deserves.Report
This isn’t the first time you’ve laughed at the idea of the Republicans meeting a compromise. The last time was about the Speakership and a budget deal, which ended with the Republicans meeting a compromise.Report
I’m thinking more about the times the Republicans tanked their own border security for Ukraine aid bill because the Dems had the temerity to agree to it personally.Report
Technically speaking, I think he’d be 25th’d still after the election? The election shouldn’t undo that?But yeah, do it again just to make sure.
I think that that would actually result in him stepping off of the ballot, though. A reminder that Biden is not Trump, we do not actually have to figure out how to forcibly remove him, we just have to make it clear he is not acceptable as the presidential candidate and he will probably step down.
That said, all this actually does is remove the political maneuvering from the Democratic party at large and place it entirely in the cabinet, which I’m not sure is a workable plan.
The actual real problem is probably the lack of a clear succession, though, and the 25th would at least make it clear that the VP is the obvious choice. (Which she actually is.)Report
Honestly I’ve been reading some people this morning who have pointed out that this discussion is actually kind of silly and honestly very slightly sexist… If we’re looking around for who should be president next, which is not really the proper way to be running this thing, but at least would avoid idiotic infighting tearing the party apart, we have a, you know, VP.
Not only is she not going to step aside, she really shouldn’t step aside, and the only reason people are sort of expecting her to step aside instead of being the obvious choice is that…she’s not a white man.
If she was, she would probably be a much much larger part of this discussion in all sorts of ways, from having her convinced Biden to step down and getting appointed as the successor, to what she would do if this just all got went up for grabs.
Instead we’ve sort of forgotten she exists.Report
Instead we’ve sort of forgotten she exists.
You know the conspiracy theory about how they kept Biden hidden from the public because he would come across as an old man not up to the whole “presidency” thing?
I’ve heard rumors that there are conspiracy theories that Kamala Harris is not a particularly charismatic speaker who will resonate with the middle of the country.Report
In a national level contest in a two party system with heavy polarization you have a built in level of support. No one should doubt Kamala Harris’ ability to win the left coast and the ACELA corridor. But that’s not what the game is about.Report
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12558357/Kamala-Harris-incompetent-unqualified-worst-Vice-President-40-years-according-voters-brutal-Daily-Mail-poll.html
Kamala Harris is an absolute dumpster fire as an executive and politician. The idea that opposition to her (in this case, internal opposition inside the Democratic Party as a successor to President Biden) is sexist, that’s simply bad faith on your part.
The same bad faith that says that the opposition to Biden is unfair because of stuttering, or misleading video splices, or Robert Hur, or whatever. And I’m sure we’d find all of it if we looked in your comment history.
To state the obvious, the political weakness of Kamala Harris has always been for some time part of the cold water discouraging Democrats from replacing Biden.Report
“we do not actually have to figure out how to forcibly remove him”
But that’s been the subtext of most of the conversation in the last 12 hours. Not physical force, but procedural. And let’s be honest: Biden’s been like this for 2.5 years or so. If he were willing to listen to reason, he would have stepped down a while ago. Instead he decided to run for reelection.Report
Seeing an argument out there in the wild that says “People who love Trump are still going to vote Trump, people that Hate Trump are still going to vote Biden. The debate means *NOTHING*.”
And so, in response to that, I want to dig up my “three groups of voters” chestnut again.
there are three groups of voters.
1. People who, if they vote, will vote for our guy no matter what.
2. People who, if they vote, will vote for the other guy no matter what.
3. People who could swing back or forth either way.
For groups 1 or 2, you can’t do anything but make them want to vote more *OR* make them want to vote less. If they vote, they will vote for their preferred candidate and nothing will make them change their mind.
For group 3, you can get them to want to vote for your guy (but they’re fickle… maybe something will happen and they’ll change their mind and vote for the other guy again).
So a fun exercise after each major event is to ask:
Is this likely to energize *OUR* base? (Or depress it?)
Is this likely to depress *THEIR* base? (Or energize it?)
That group of number threes… were any minds changed?
And you can do that for Chevron too!
And whatever happens tomorrow.
And whatever happens on Sunday.
And whatever happens on Monday.Report
The three groups of voters are important in November but, right now? There are only two groups of people (and one doesn’t matter).
1. Donors to your guy
2. Non-Donors to your guy
Group #2 doesn’t matter.
Is what happened last night more likely or less likely to increase the group of #1s?
What can be done to increase the group of #1s?Report
Speaking only to myself, today I am making a donation to Biden.
I suspect there is a large group of people for whom this election is a sort of Flight 93 situation; People whose lives will become extremely hard with a Trump victory, or to put it another way, people for whom resignation is not an option.Report
Apparently, the fundraising quarter ends on Sunday.
So we’ll have a better picture of the donations thing after everybody’s hangover wears off on Monday.Report
1. Biden sounded raspy but is apparently okay sounding on TV today.
2. Trump sounded like a deranged lunatic and as Josh Shapiro pointed out stated Democrats killed babies.
3. I remember when everyone freaked out about Obama “losing” the first debate to President Romey and post-stroke Fetterman losing to Senator Oz. Also when Reagan lost his first debate to President Mondale.
3a. Just joking, Mondale and Romney never became President and Oz lost his election for Senate.
4. I can’t confirm or deny but apparently Luntz stated his focus group narrowly preferred Biden.
5. Imagine what would happen if Trump lost the debate badly. No Republican or Republican leaning pundit would be about to toss Trump down the river.
6. The most obvious “replacement” for Biden is Vice President Harris. I find it revealing that everyone or almost everyone stating “Biden needs to go now” is ignoring this fact.
7. Suppose Biden does a LBJ in 1968. I am not sure why a huge intraparty fight is great for the Democrats here. There is no such thing as Johnny or Jane Unbeatable. For example, I have seen people float the idea of replacing Biden with Newsom somehow via magical incantations. I’ve seen other Democrats call Newsom a blue-state DeSantis and an empty suit.Report
He didn’t ‘lose a debate’ that’s missing the point.
This isn’t about scoring points on a framework of who had the best rhetorical command of their message and policy positions.
Biden failed the ‘is he ok’ test.Report
Despair is counterrevolutionary and resilience is a thing. This is June. The election is in November.
I think he managed to get in some blows and Trump looked like an old deranged angry lunatic grandpa.Report
C’mon man, he had a cold. Who among us doesn’t lose all ability to form complete or coherent sentences when they’re sick?Report
parody?Report
Saul, this isn’t a question of if Biden lost the debate- he did but that is secondary- it’s that he barely seemed functional. If this was an off night- a cold or something temporary then the Biden policy of low profile and silence needs to end so he can get out there and demonstrate that he’s still got it.
And if he can’t… then he should consider stepping aside. If what we saw last night is Bidens’ norm then replacing him with Harris would be a lift. She is a former prosecutor. I think she could debate Trump pretty well.Report
1968 worked out very well for Democrats, correct?
It is June and I am dismayed by how many people have seemingly forgotten that resilience is a thing. You all will be great at obeying in advance in a fascist government.Report
If Joe Biden can’t ameliorate concerns about his performance and steps down for someone else, whether that is Harris or other, I’m confident the Dems would not suffer a 1968 debacle at the convention.
Resilience is a thing for the 11th hour. It’s 10:55 right now and the question of this hour is “would our odds be better if Joe stepped down and let someone else take his place as nominee?” Joe Biden is not owed the nomination, he performed unsatisfactorily last night and he has a responsibility to either demonstrate that it was a fluke or else step down. And I say that as a rock solid fan of his performance the last four years and as a moderate ideological fellow traveller.Report
And I think you are ignoring the examples I gave of supposedly disaster filled performances, one by someone who literally was recovering from a stroke, and they turned out not to be disasters.
Learned hopelessness is not attractive.Report
What do you think Biden’s odds are of winning the election? Would you bet $100 at even odds on it?Report
I would say both Trump and Biden have a 50 percent chance, give or take of winning the Presidency.
Neither is particularly popular. Negative Partisanship is high and both the Democrats and Republicans have roughly equal support. Trump has never won a popular vote. The election will be decided by marginal swing voters in the usual suspect states.Report
Would you put $100 at even odds on it? Biden could still win but I don’t think it’s 50-50 — I’d be willing to take the other side of that bet.Report
Making a reasonable guess as to the probabilities is complicated. Given a particular model, there will be probabilities assigned to each state and therefore the Electoral College.
But also important, we also have to make a guess as to how good the model is.
IMO, Biden’s best hope is that there is a significant polling miss in his favor. Which to be fair, the last few elections, there have been some big misses. But most of them have been in the Republicans’ favor. What’s the chance that there’s a big miss in Biden’s favor?
Whatever Biden’s overall chances are, it’s way less than 50%.Report
I’m not saying Biden must go. I’m saying that a major fish up happened last night and Biden’s previous strategy of low visibility has to go or he’ll have to step down. This is quite the opposite of learned helplessness. This is a concerned member of Bidens’ party and a personal fan of his saying “step up or step out sir. It’s one or the other.”Report
I wonder if that’s supposed to be a bad thing.Report
You wonder if fascist governments are a bad thing? Really?
Wow.
Just.
Wow.Report
I agree that if it’s true Biden had an off night then the campaign needs to get him out there showing energy, vibrancy, and plausibility as a person who can many important decisions. Apparently Biden had a really good rally in North Carolina today.
We need to be seeing and hearing more of that. A lot more of it. Soon.Report
How do all of you handle bumps and setbacks in your personal life? Do you fall into crying and blubbering heaps and think woe is me, nothing will ever succeed ever again? Toughen up buttercupsReport
Like I said, there are a lot of people for whom despair is not an option.
For most of us here (white, male, educated, professional) the national elections are very often abstractions, the sort of thing conducive to barstool bloviating because for us, the Wednesday after the election will be just another day.
Few of us here will be told to bleed out in the parking lot, or risk arrest if we order the morning after pill by mail. None of us here see a loved one be rounded up and herded into a concentration camp.
But there are plenty of people for whom these are very real possibilities and doddering or not, Biden is their last remaining defense.Report
To be fair, some people who are despairing are not white, male, educated, professional, and/or heterosexual.
I’m just frustrated by the professional bedwetter caucus.Report
Speaking as a gay man married to a black man I think I have plenty of skin in the game but I also reject the identarian framing in general. Biden is not a messiah or a great thinker, he’s the nominee of our party and he owes his party members his very best. If last night wasn’t his very best, he needs to demonstrate he can still deliver better and if he can’t he needs to make way for an alternative candidate. As Chip said, the country is potentially at stake.Report
And Biden appears to be fine and dandy in North Carolina today. He isn’t the messiah and I think having him step down after one bad night is more of a self-own than the sudden army of armchair consultants realize.
I’m also seeing tons of argument about who could or could not be the consensus replacement candidate which indicates there is not one.
I’m very frustrated right now at a lot of people who are going through all sorts of justifications to engage in indulgent behavior that represents the worst pathologies of Democrats.Report
Sure, he has two options, deliver publicly, a lot or step down. Looks like he’s trying to go the first route- good for him I wish him well. But if he tries to go back into his shell it ain’t gonna fly.Report
Really, Chip? Many of us on this blog are Jews. During the first Trump administration, we had synagogue shootings and a bunch of yahoos chanting “the Jews will not replace us.” This sort of get the Jews on as allies but also claim that Jews aren’t in real danger thing has been going on for a long time now.Report
Apologies, it wasn’t my intent to exclude.
Mostly I’m trying to push back on the posture of detached observer, and make the point as you just did, that the stakes for many people are very real.
We defend democracy with the man we have, not the one we wish we did.Report
You don’t have any gay relatives? Transgender friends? Hispanic co-workers? Wife? Daughters? Sisters?
Oh, and do tell – if TFG comes back, do you really think I will be allowed to remain employed by my present agency?
ALL of us have skin in this game, white cisgendered or not. This election is NOT an abstraction to us. Not by a long shot.Report
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-trump-june-debate-poll/
Trump did not quite get a bump and seems as unpopular as everReport
Here’s hoping it’s the case. A bit early to say.Report
If you’ve been idly wondering about the whole “will they swap him out?” question, here’s as strong an indicator of “no” as I can imagine:
Report
And if you wanted it nailed even downer:
Report
If you’re in a hole this deep, any change is necessarily for the better. But fcuk it, I’m just happy it’s not my team.
By all means Demos ought to stay with Biden. Works for me perfectly fine.Report
And that is the correct thing to do.Report
“Correct”? I have no idea how to measure that yet.
Maybe we’ll know by November.
Maybe you’re talking deontology, though while I’m stuck on vulgar utilitarianism again.Report
Murc’s law is real.
Suppose Biden did fine and Trump performs as is or worse. Do you think we would be having this conversation but in reverse?Report
If the roles were reversed and Biden was mezza mezza and Trump was obviously wandering down the path to dementia?
Why, yes, Saul. I do think that people would be screaming for DeSantis.
(I also think that there are people in the wings who have been waiting to give their “DeSantis is even worse than Trump!” takes who also would love for DeSantis to replace Trump even now.)Report
I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.Report
There are a double-buttload of folks out there who remain NeverTrump, Saul. They wish in their hearts for the days of a return to Mittler Rommelney and a “normal” Republican party.
Maybe they’re all on Twitter and I wouldn’t know how to measure that but… seriously. They exist.
And they’re all currently saying stuff like “Trumpler didn’t *WIN* the debate!” followed by some mumbling about whether or not the possibility exists that Biden might have lost it, theoretically.Report
And they have ALL been run out of positions of power and influence in the GOP Jaybird. They CAN NOT remove Trump.Report
Well, in the alternate universe where Trump gave as strong of a showing as Biden did during the debate and Biden gave as weak of one as Trump did, I think that we can easily see the puppetmasters installing DeSantis.
Then we could go back to worrying about the Florida guy putting people into camps because, I’m told, he’s even worse than Trump.Report
Dude – Trump is the puppetmaster of the RNC. Or did you miss that coup as well? Why in the world would his hand picked people replace him?Report
I imagine that, much like Biden’s, they’d fight tooth and nail against the very idea.
Even in the face of a disastrous debate performance.Report
Every speech Trump gives is a rambling mashup of incoherence, and yet no one is calling for DeSantis.
How many clips would you like about being electrocuted by sharks?Report
I admit that the calls for DeSantis instead of Trump did significantly die down after DeSantis dropped out of the Republican Primary earlier this year.
Prior to that, however, there was a bunch of Team DeSantis folks out there and they were even organized to the point where a handful of pundits explained that DeSantis was worse than Trump.Report
Oh, and if you really wanted examples of conservative groups screaming for Trump to not be the nominee, here’s The Bulwark and here’s Rick Wilson from The Lincoln Project.Report
Those stand in contradiction of your point, and confirm Sauls.Report
They don’t really explore the hypothetical of “what if Trump crashed and burned instead” so I don’t see how they confirmed Saul’s but they are examples of people screaming that Trump shouldn’t be the nominee.
Yeah, I suppose I should have known that it wasn’t about examples of conservatives screaming that Trump shouldn’t be the nominee.
Easier to pretend that it’s a monolith.Report
Yes, but if everything were completely different, I imagine that people I don’t like would do something bad, and that’s reason enough for me to be angry.Report
This tweet indicates nothing. Obama was never going to publicly lead the call for Biden to step down, and a tweet like this is no sign of whether he’s supporting Biden behind the scenes.
If Obama plays kingmaker in any respect and Trump increases his share of the minority vote, it hurts Obama’s legacy and pride. The furthest he’d go is to be the bearer of bad news, the guy who goes to the White House after three bad weeks and tells Biden he can’t pull it off. But there’s no value in Obama being on the front lines on this.Report
I would never suggest that Obama would say “You guys should nominate Warren instead!”
Instead, my suggestion would be that Obama would say something like “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to send a tweet. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to play golf.”Report
No no no, fcuk that sideways.
The resolution to this situation is pretty clear. We should all support the best candidate in the race, Donald Trump, who wins and serves in the office as best as he can. And Biden can shuffle off somewhere we can mercifully ignore him.Report
The New York Times posted this about 4 hours ago.
“To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race”
The NYT and whomever is able to coordinate Obama and Clinton need to do a better job of coordinating.Report
From the ed board that brought you “We endorse these two candidates, just pick one amongst yourselves…”Report
I wrote about this at the time. My take?
“HOLY CRAP THEY COULDN’T CONVINCE EACH OTHER TO CHANGE. THEY COULDN’T BUDGE THE BLOOMBERG, BOOKER, BUTTIGEIG, OR BIDEN STANS TO CHANGE TEAMS EVEN THOUGH EVERYBODY IN THE ROOM KNEW THAT THAT WOULD RESULT IN A DOUBLE ENDORSEMENT.”
So many memories.Report
Yes, and?
This op-ed was horrifically stupidReport
My argument was not “THE NEW YORK TIMES IS AWESOME!”, Saul.Report
But if you are looking for prominent Democrats who agree with you…
Report
Fetterman has good espirit de corps.Report
Fetterman is a fellow invalid who refuses to step down.Report
How is it possible that we’re considering Joe Biden as the only man on the stage last night who’s unfit for the office?Report
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5eYJNf8Z-gw
Yeah, how on earth could that be?Report
We could trade clips until Election Day. I didn’t watch the debate but I understand Trump once again refused to state categorically he’d accept whatever result there was on that day.
Does that sound like a man who’s fit for the office?Report
I think you’re overselling your traction there, and in fact the risks pertaining to a peaceful change of power are coming from Biden supporters as opposed to Trump people.
It’s one of the reasons I find David Thornton’s posts about Trump to be so distasteful. For David Thornton/David Frum/Jennifer Rubin etc, I don’t think they will be in any hurry to recognize Trump’s (hypothetical) win in November. In fact, I think they will be grasping at any straws to assert or pretend it didn’t happen.
Which is, in a subtextual kind of way, one reason why I think Trump is doing so well in the polls.Report
Obviously they’re both going to be unfit for office. Candidates who are fit for office can’t win primary elections.Report
Some polls have Biden gaining approval post-debate, the Internet and Pundits know nothing
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-biden-debate-2668642905/Report
Fox News is reporting that in the aftermath of the debate, Biden raised $14 Million to Trump’s 8.
(A chunk of that was mine!)Report
I am growing more and more confident that the chronically online, the meme makers, and chattering classes have this one wrong.
Trump did a full on red meat rally for the base at the debate and it was filled with lurid lies and vulgar fantasies. People pick up on this and were repulsed and will continue to be so.Report
This is a good point Saul, which I also raised. Trump isn’t gaining any voters here and every time he feeds his base he turns off everyone else. Biden’s numbers have room to slosh around as folks make up their mind about him, but Trump isn’t picking them up, its Biden or don’t vote, stay home, split ticket, and so on. The “chronically online”, which I admittedly am is one, are going to be predictable for the next few weeks. Just look at the calendar; Panic! for a few days, Monday will be Supreme Court reaction day, then holiday, then the chattering classes will lose their minds over the Trump sentencing the following week. Reaction to RNC. Reaction to DNC. Up and down it will go and most of it will be pretty predictable just based on what is already preordained to happen.
Biden has 130 days and a lot of money and campaigning to do yet, and is blessed with running against Trump who can self-destruct at any moment. I’m curious bordering on confident that Trump’s team will take the wrong lessons from this, think election is over, and not take the optics win of this debate and put in the infrastructure for winning an election – which there are lots of reporting they aren’t doing. All the money is going to legal defense. If Biden does another bad performance that is one thing, but if this is a one-off and he bounces back it is easy to see a scenario where the very online and Team Trump get surprised with perfectly viable Joe Biden in November because they think its over right now and coast when they need to get busy. We will see.Report
I admit to being totally surprised by both the immediate polling after the debate as well as the fundraising numbers.
“Maybe we’ll get better numbers on Monday”, I think.
“Better” meaning “more accurate”, of course.
Nothing is set in stone and anything could happen between now and then… but I’m surprised to see how big “anything” is.Report
By the time you get accurate polling numbers it’ll be Trump sentencing news cycle time and you’ll have to do them all over again anywayReport
~eyeroll~ LOL. The onlines and the meme-makers got this one right. This is Afghanistan round 2.Report
Jennifer Rubin: “gobsmacked by the hysteria of the get out of the race crowd? Let me explain. 1. refusing to leap to an impossible non-solution does NOT mean you think the debate went well. It was really bad. 2. white males tend to publically freak out when things dont go just so. Women cope. Nonwhites don’t have the luxury of melting down. 3. a serious contingent of pundits and pollsters insisted Biden shouldn’t run and are now playing the I told you so game. They want him out or to lose so they can be right. 4. many of #3 predicted the red wave and have been scrambling to save face. 5. many policy wonks brilliant on econ or foreign policy have no fucking idea how politics works. the idea of dumping Biden and bypassing Harris is political suicide.”Report
This seems about as stupid as the takes she criticizes. But, I mean, this is also a pundit willing to say on the record that she believes people’s opinions are correct or incorrect based on race and sex. I wonder if she thinks there are other places we should apply that. Maybe with Jews and Arabs. Or do you think that might hurt her feelings?Report
Yeah it’s so bizarre. Both to think that people’s assessment of Biden’s chances have anything to do with their personal life struggles, and to think that white males don’t have personal life struggles and all non-white-males do.
Also it’s hard to process the white males in this chat insisting that other white males are too blinded by their race and gender to appreciate the good chances of the white male candidate.Report
If I had the steelman the case for keeping Biden in it’s probably a combination of the risk of fracture in the Democratic coalition and the fact that Trump’s negatives are themselves so severe and structural that it’s hard to imagine him ever totally pulling away. So you keep the party together, try to keep it close, and hope gas prices are low in the swing state ‘burbs come November.
But citing the speculative and totally unsubstantiated race based psychoanalysis by one group of white people of another group of white people? You might as well be looking to astrology.Report
Yes, I can even understand the argument that Biden’s performance won’t even hurt him much — to me as a political junkie, Trump’s firehose of BS was just normal expected Trump but Biden’s struggles to express himself were much worse than expected; but I can’t claim to understand the thought process of someone who’s still undecided at this point (though I don’t think the junkie optimists can either). Maybe the “cold” gambit is enough to sway them, maybe they forgot how crazy Trump is in general and were turned off by seeing it live again… who knows.Report
Fcuk that. If the Demo coalition is going to stand by that turd, they ought to fracture.
Surprisingly enough, this is a dog that’s not barking this cycle. Not just the horse race, but Trump’s personal numbers have been going up for a while. Contrary to what I would have guessed a few months ago, it doesn’t look like Trump is going to beat himself.
We’ll see who picks for VP. If it’s Kari Lake or Tulsi Gabbard, I might flip back to Biden again. But realistically, I don’t think that’s going to happen.Report
I don’t think Trump defeating himself has ever been in the cards and have consistently said as much. That was the belief in 2016 and no one should think that way anymore. But Trump also isn’t going to run away with any election either. Or at least that’s not something he has ever shown the ability to do, and while we are clearly way passed peak Biden I think we are also passed peak Trump. The rationale is to keep it close and hope to catch a break. Time will tell if it was the right move but I don’t know that it’s obviously worse than make Kamala Harris the nominee or trying to jettison them both for a hypothetical candidate that may see no upside for themselves in getting involved. That is the steelman version of the keep Biden argument as I see it.Report
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “run away with”, but I maybe, probably disagree?
Reagan-Mondale margins are out, but Clinton-Dole or Bush-Dukakis are well within play here.
The reality is, Trump just isn’t scaring anybody any more. Not that people like him (though some do), it’s just that there’s no panic in the idea that he’ll go back to the White House.
And the Democrats have lost interest on anything other than Orange Man Bad. Among other things, they would have to substantively defend things like the lockdowns and the George Floyd riots, and they don’t want to do that.
Frankly, Joe Biden is lucky to be doing as well as he is in the polls, and I don’t expect him to stay there.Report
Why would democrats need to defund things that occurred on TFG’s prior watch?Report
Because Black Lives Matter, the virus lockdowns and the like are either a product of the Democratic party directly, or more likely, cultural actors associated with them.
It’s the sort of thing real Americans pick up on right away.Report
Right, because in your distorted fantasy world the blue states, and blue counties in red states, are not real Americans.
That aside – lockdowns were imposed in red states on the advice of a red administration. George Floyd was murdered by actors that red politicians still call American heros. The protests were met with red voter approved excessive force – including cops firing teargass and bean bag round INTO private residences.
But sure, Team Blue is always at fault because Team Red completely lacks agency.Report
Blue states and blue counties obviously have their fair share of problems, maybe including lack of loyalty sometimes. But for now, at least, I am corresponding with you, Philip, and whatever the problems with the blue states are, _Philip_ is not a real American.
Philip, people already know who was responsible for lockdowns and BLM and George Floyd riots. GOP really hasn’t even expended any effort to argue the point, or needed to. Maybe that will change as the campaign goes on if the Demos find an angle to push on.
Which again, if you were situated differently, you would know why your prior comment about Trump’s watch doesn’t hold water.
Most of the time political accountability is invoked in a shorthand back-of-the-envelope way as to what happened when such and such a person was in office.
But, that’s most of the time. There’s no law that says it has to be that way, and this is an exception for the reasons I’ve been writing about.
Reasons that most people intuit, and you would intuit as well if you had better motives than you in fact do.Report
You keep saying that, but my birth certificate, my passport and my every decade background check by the FBI seem to find otherwise.
So the lockdown orders issued in Mississippi by a … checks notes … GOP Governor were somehow orchestrated by Democrats? Fascinating.Report
Yeah, you are (I presume) an American citizen with an American passport. Good for you.
So even if you an American, you’re not a real American. You don’t have any loyalty to compatriots who are political adversaries. And therefore the things you say are likely to be wrong or corrupt in situations where that wouldn’t be the case for an apolitical person.
Or in this case, the fact that you’re oblivious to the reality that the real Americans hold the Democrats accountable, not Trump, for the actions of BLM and CDC and the like.
Well, yeah.
Without knowing anything in particular about Mississippi’s timeline for the virus, when were the lockdowns put in place? How long were they there for? Were the public schools closed and if so for how long?
What were Fauci, CDC, teacher’s unions, etc, saying at the time? How do these answers compare to analogous answers for blue states?
The voters have already internalized, at least in a vague way, the answers to these questions.
If these answers aren’t especially good for the Democrats, and they’re not, it’s up to your team to persuade the voters otherwise.
But as things stand, you’re not even attempting to communicate on the voters’ wavelength, so shouldn’t be surprised to find out that you’re not getting any traction and you’re well on your way to losing the election, at least at the Presidential level.Report
Holding people accountable for their views is the highest form of loyalty I know. That aside, by your own metric you aren’t a real American either.Report
Yeah. It’s a choice between “maybe win?” and “definitely lose”.
“Maybe win?” is the smart play.
And, of course, attacking people who point out the “maybe” and the question mark as not clapping loudly enough.Report
Isn’t it a standard complaint by conservatives that the elites are prone to misinformation and are living in an epistemic bubble and don’t understand what Real Americans think?Report
#2 is kind of what I was getting at yesterday, where the demographic most likely to be pundits (white cishet highly educated males) tend to have the least experience with oppression or adversity.
I’ve seen how one of the most common gateways to fascism is when a guy like that gets the wrong end of a divorce or custody situation, or gets passed over in favor of some sort of minority.
For a lot of guys like that it becomes the first time in their life where they feel like the whole world is tilted against them, where they are insignificant in the face of The System.
A lot of the pundits, like Ezra Klein, the Nates, Matt Y, and so on I think are behaving like barstool sports fans seeing the possibility of their pennant hopes vanishing; They are feeling bad and panicked, but missing the sense of fight and determination felt by those whose lives are actually affected. For them its still vicarious and abstract.Report
You realize by your own logic no one should take you or your opinion seriously either right?Report
A few years ago during the Ferguson protests, I was going on a bit too enthusiastically about the righteousness of violent protests, when Lee told me that uncontrolled violence never worked out well for marginalized people.
That’s an example of what I’m talking about. In my life, I’ve never experienced real oppression or felt the cruelty of mob violence so its easy to cosplay Les Miserable because I don’t have the perspective of a black or gay or Jewish person. Remember that during the George Floyd protests, I witnessed that most of the violence in my neighborhood was young white men who just wanted to play Che Guevarra for an evening.
So to answer your question, yeah, whenever I bloviate here, people should understand that I am coming from a privileged position and all my liberalism is still vicarious.
People should give Saul and Lee’s words on anti-Semitism or North’s views on queer life more weight than mine.
There’s nothing wrong with a white cishet guy taking a back seat and not feeling the need to mansplain/Gentile-splain/straight-splain/white-splain the world to people who are actually living it.
Oh, and when I talk about MAGAs? Hell yeah, I am an expert. I know these guys personally and could have been one very easily.Report
“Who is the Shakespeare of the Zulus?”
Shakespeare is the Shakespeare of the Zulus.Report
Pardon me stewardess, I speak MAGA:
Imagine you are on one of these electric boats, right, one of those electric boats, totally electric, then it starts sinking, and there are sharks in the water, like really big sharks, and you are wondering if you should jump in the water or get electrocuted, which people never had to to before, no one ever had to to do it, its totally new this stuff they have today and its like those low flush toilets where you have to flush over and over again its terrible, everybody is talking about, everybody is saying, its terrible what they’ve done to sharks, nothing like this has ever happened and its terrible, like the other day a big husky guy came up to me, came up to me with tears in his eyes and said Sir, thank you Sir, no one has ever told the truth about toilets like you do, no one can do it, and you know I was on the cover of Time, I was their Man of The Year.Report
Ok, I will give it to you, that was funny.Report
What does any of this have to do with the substantive questions at hand?
Because all I see in all those words is ‘abstraction of black/Jewish/gay person I made up is right and abstraction of white straight guy I made up is wrong, and thats all anyone needs to know about anything.’ I don’t see how anyone can approach the world with what seems to be a strictly agnostic stance towards objective reality.Report
In honor of the late, great Martin Mull, let me yield the floor on any discussion pertaining to Anti-Semitism to people who know what they’re talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCsnTxjRNPAReport
Still not following. And I mean, didn’t you just drag the opinion of 3 Jews for identity based reasons (I believe Klein, Silver, and Yglesias are all Jewish, not sure who the other Nate you meant was)?
Anyway, if we’re going to do the battle of television comedy belo wis what I think of every time I see these kinds of comments.
https://youtu.be/AV2Ahs__w_o?si=ikGHKg7Ccs2dQgkqReport
There are human experiences that are universal, and some that are particular.
The universal and particular don’t contradict each other.
Rewinding to my original comment, I don’t think that most pundits with a national stature really grasp what life will be like under an authoritarian regime so for them right now it is an abstraction.Report
[M]any policy wonks brilliant on econ or foreign policy have no f*cking idea how politics works.
At a minimum, any Democrat who says Biden should withdraw ought to be required to name someone that they think could pull together the party. People in vote by mail states will be casting ballots in less than four months.Report
Post-debate undecided Latinos largely decided to break for Biden: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9182ddc75d7c7790fc5411c94bc8146dc444b6a841370204d7c332e97610dbb5.jpgReport
To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race: https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=gift_link&utm_medium=referralReport
He should. A replacement level Republican would win handily. Whoever replaces their candidate first, wins.Report
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-3.pngReport