The Dems are risk averse, that's among the reasons why she got the veep nod in 2020 and why she's the presidential nominee now this year. I do not think they, or she, would be eager to run a 2 woman or a 1 woman and 1 gay man ticket (which is why I doubt Buttigieg is being seriously considered). A two woman ticket strikes me as daring in a year the Dems are not at all in a mood to be daring. Harris herself ticks all the boxes a woman Veep would tick- I wouldn't bet we'll see a two woman show.
I will repeat what I said after the debate. I said that Biden had to either do a blitz of good performing public appearances and one on ones in unscripted interactions with the media or else he'd have to get out of the way. Biden didn't do the former for whatever reason (most likely because he couldn't), thus he ended up having to do the latter. God(ess) bless him for not being a Trump and doing neither.
But in terms of his performance as President and running his administration? We have been presented no reason to believe he can't do it. Wobbly debate performances; poor performance in media interactions and looking old in public are not disqualifying for the job of President. They are, taken together, pretty much disqualifying for the job of Presidential candidate.
So you're saying the media should have been spinning a more aggressive story against Bidens' age based on less prior to the debate and that it's a scandal they didn't?
Yes, i've been saying from the get go that we won't know for certain until well after the fact.
What would constitute evidence of Biden not being able to run his administration? Well some major failure of his in running his administration. We have, on the contrary, seen evidence in the other direction- Biden is considerably outside his party's comfort level on Israel support and, despite that, his administration has hewn to Bidens position despite his own staffers carping and complaining about it. If Biden were inert and the admin was being run by leftists as the GOP alleges, then this outcome doesn't fit that allegation.
I think the media has been plenty curious, they just haven't been able to find anything to base a concrete story on.
As for JD fishing couches? I haven't seen the article but I'm certainly not going to judge him. As long as they aren't other peoples couches. I mean I wasn't going to vote for him anyhow. Why you brought it up I'm still not clear.
Of course, heck -I'd- like to know but I also know we likely won't know until/unless Bidens' inner circle writes tell alls after his presidency but even those narratives will be slanted to cover their butts.
But in terms of -media- scandal? I just don't see any scandal there.
Yes and, as I noted in my analysis, we don't know if there's any cover up at all. The strong "Biden can't run the Whitehouse" case is, itself, not established. We saw the debate and we saw Biden fail to adequately make up for the debate in subsequent appearances (lacking both in quantity and quality) so the 6-7 position appears to comport with reality but there's been no evidence of Biden being able to run his administration which is why GOP inveigling on that subject has gone nowhere. We likewise have no idea when Biden's decline occurred that made him incapable of adequately campaigning or if anyone outside his administration covered for him at all. Not much of a scandal then.
And I'm not clear on why JD Vance's alleged epiplophilia is suddenly popping up in this subject.
1) irrelevant. The media universe was utterly different. The fishing communication technology universe was entirely different!
2) Trump still is a conundrum for the MSM. They've tried undercutting/balancing him by not reporting so much on his exploits but that, ironically, boosts him by pasteurizing his deranged rambling down into vaguely sane sounding sound bites.
3) it could be that sentiments and facts are just reaching an inflection point. Inflation is looking well and truly whupped now. Consumer sentiment has ticked up a lot in June.
4) I agree that Dems shouldn't believe the 4th estate is on their side. I would also allege, however, that the left in general has a very bad "work the refs" attitude that serves them ill. The Grey Lady going Jacobin is not going to win elections. Far from it.
Sure, but you founder in your outrage (in this hypothetical scenario) because your reporters say "we don't know where Biden is at exactly or when it happened. He whupped the GOPs' posteriors at the SOTU and his team runs a tight ship so we couldn't get any grist for our mill except anonymous and anecdotal info. Remember the emails? We got burnt good on those. Remember the laptop? We dodged a bullet there. As you chomp your cigar and fume, Perry White style, that we needed to get the story out there we -still- don't know when Biden actually declined.
Nothing you've said contradicts what I've said Jay me lad and you're mostly talking about post debate media response which, frankly, is utterly bereft of even a whiff of "scandal".
I am not certain about the denunciations of the main stream media. I’m gonna try and unpack it here.
Let’s plot the claims about Bidens senescence on a scale of 1 to 10:
- At 1 are the people saying Biden’s totally fine, he’s spryer than people half his age and anyone suggesting otherwise is agist and/or malevolent.
-At 10 are the people saying Biden is next thing to (or actually) dead and being propped up Weekend at Bernies style by *insert your right wing bugaboo of choice* group.
-I’m going to place our midpoint 5 as people saying “Bidens age is a question that’s encumbering his campaign but no concrete definitive evidence has emerged to answer that question for sure.”
-I’d place Team Biden and certain individual commentators out at 1. Most of the Democratic professional party ranged from 3ish down to 1ish positions initially.
-Fox and the right-wing media ecosystem to the right of them, that most voting right wingers get their info from, sit at 9 and 10. Team Trump sits at 10ish when they’re talking to right wingers and at a far lower number when talking to anyone else because, of course, they didn’t actually want Biden replaced.
-Pinky’s people, the intellectual but low mass influence right wing outfits, NRO and their ilk, perch around 8. Generally sympathetic to positions 9 and 10 but more measured in tone and claim. They basically claim Bidens’ impacted by his age and incapable of campaigning or remaining President.
-Where we’ve ended up in reality is around position 6 shading into 7: Biden is clearly impeded by his age and doesn’t seem capable of handling the task of both governing and campaigning.
I’d say that, pre-debate, the main stream media has been distributed from position 6 downward but mostly concentrated in a range of, say, 4-6. There’ve been plenty of centrists (left and right) individually who’ve been at a 6 or seven position (Chait, Klein, Sullivan, etc) but in terms of main stream institutionalist organs I’d say they’ve mostly been stroking their chins around position 5 or close to it. The ones who wanted a primary spectacle leaned towards 6 and the ones who were trying to be strictly impartial stuck to the safe lane at 5.
Post debate the media shifted over into the 6-7ish range. To be angry at them requires info that we just don’t know. We don’t know exactly when or how quickly Biden got to the stage he’s at now. If his decline happened in the past year, say, since the state of the union address then it’s pretty plausible that Bidens team would be able (for both self-interested, professional, self-deceiving and idealistic reasons) to hide it from everyone enough that the main stream media wouldn’t have the goods enough to reach a conclusion different than the pattern they have followed. Bidens crew have been extremely good at running a non-leaky operation and the media’s been burnt something awful by boy who cried wolf behavior from the right for a long time now.
So, to be angry at the main stream media, at this point, I think we’d need to know for certain that Biden was in severe decline for much longer and that various main stream media figures got definitive info about this and sat on it for ideological reasons. No. I don’t think anonymous to quasi anonymous stories or various anecdotal individual tales that Biden seemed out of it on certain occasions is enough personally but YMMV. I don’t think we’ll really know-know until some of Bidens crew leave the admin and write some tell all memoirs, at which point the aggregate of those recollections -might- give us an idea of what the truth is (but it’ll be tough since that lot will be strongly motivated to spin the story in a way that makes them look good).
He did at the debate, and when he flubbed the debate (and subsequently failed to prove his claims that it was a one off) enough of his own team acknowledged it enough to result in him stepping down. When the facts changed we changed our minds, so to speak.
There's a reason the Emperor's New Clothes story features a naive kid who pointed at the Emperor and said he's naked. Had, instead, the story have had the accusation coming from a cynical courtier who routinely pointed at fully clothed rivals at court while shouting "They're naked" and demanding they be thrown out to said courtiers own benefit; well, the story would hit very differently.
Up until the debates the lion's share of the most extreme "Biden is too old to do anything" stories were from people who'd been saying it for more than four years and who'd been saying almost the same thing about HRC the cycle before and who, prior to that, had been saying that Obama wasn't an American Citizen. That's a pretty solid defense for people to point to in their own defense. Moreover, once Biden failed in the debate and subsequently failed to recover (or even try to recover) the narrative changed to reflect the evidence.
The final test will be in November but, having seen the improvement in energy and fund raising as well as a demonstration of how a living, functioning party actually works, I feel optimistic that Biden made the correct decision.
Highly plausible. I doubt that the replacement value of a different veep would be worth the foofaraw cost of trying to replace Vance even if he was willing to step aside.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Kamala’s Veepstakes”
You must surely be chuffed at the prospect? The Dems have broken their string of east of the Rockies nominees.
"
The Dems are risk averse, that's among the reasons why she got the veep nod in 2020 and why she's the presidential nominee now this year. I do not think they, or she, would be eager to run a 2 woman or a 1 woman and 1 gay man ticket (which is why I doubt Buttigieg is being seriously considered). A two woman ticket strikes me as daring in a year the Dems are not at all in a mood to be daring. Harris herself ticks all the boxes a woman Veep would tick- I wouldn't bet we'll see a two woman show.
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Heehee definitely not!
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I would be extremely shocked if Harris chooses a woman running mate.
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I can say that Walz is a fine Governor though I can't imagine him as Veep.
On “President Biden Addresses the Nation Regarding Not Seeking Re-election”
I will repeat what I said after the debate. I said that Biden had to either do a blitz of good performing public appearances and one on ones in unscripted interactions with the media or else he'd have to get out of the way. Biden didn't do the former for whatever reason (most likely because he couldn't), thus he ended up having to do the latter. God(ess) bless him for not being a Trump and doing neither.
But in terms of his performance as President and running his administration? We have been presented no reason to believe he can't do it. Wobbly debate performances; poor performance in media interactions and looking old in public are not disqualifying for the job of President. They are, taken together, pretty much disqualifying for the job of Presidential candidate.
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Dude you just described the actual media environment prior to the debates.
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So you're saying the media should have been spinning a more aggressive story against Bidens' age based on less prior to the debate and that it's a scandal they didn't?
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Yes, i've been saying from the get go that we won't know for certain until well after the fact.
What would constitute evidence of Biden not being able to run his administration? Well some major failure of his in running his administration. We have, on the contrary, seen evidence in the other direction- Biden is considerably outside his party's comfort level on Israel support and, despite that, his administration has hewn to Bidens position despite his own staffers carping and complaining about it. If Biden were inert and the admin was being run by leftists as the GOP alleges, then this outcome doesn't fit that allegation.
"
I think the media has been plenty curious, they just haven't been able to find anything to base a concrete story on.
As for JD fishing couches? I haven't seen the article but I'm certainly not going to judge him. As long as they aren't other peoples couches. I mean I wasn't going to vote for him anyhow. Why you brought it up I'm still not clear.
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Of course, heck -I'd- like to know but I also know we likely won't know until/unless Bidens' inner circle writes tell alls after his presidency but even those narratives will be slanted to cover their butts.
But in terms of -media- scandal? I just don't see any scandal there.
"
Yes and, as I noted in my analysis, we don't know if there's any cover up at all. The strong "Biden can't run the Whitehouse" case is, itself, not established. We saw the debate and we saw Biden fail to adequately make up for the debate in subsequent appearances (lacking both in quantity and quality) so the 6-7 position appears to comport with reality but there's been no evidence of Biden being able to run his administration which is why GOP inveigling on that subject has gone nowhere. We likewise have no idea when Biden's decline occurred that made him incapable of adequately campaigning or if anyone outside his administration covered for him at all. Not much of a scandal then.
And I'm not clear on why JD Vance's alleged epiplophilia is suddenly popping up in this subject.
"
1) irrelevant. The media universe was utterly different. The fishing communication technology universe was entirely different!
2) Trump still is a conundrum for the MSM. They've tried undercutting/balancing him by not reporting so much on his exploits but that, ironically, boosts him by pasteurizing his deranged rambling down into vaguely sane sounding sound bites.
3) it could be that sentiments and facts are just reaching an inflection point. Inflation is looking well and truly whupped now. Consumer sentiment has ticked up a lot in June.
4) I agree that Dems shouldn't believe the 4th estate is on their side. I would also allege, however, that the left in general has a very bad "work the refs" attitude that serves them ill. The Grey Lady going Jacobin is not going to win elections. Far from it.
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Very clever!
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Sure, but you founder in your outrage (in this hypothetical scenario) because your reporters say "we don't know where Biden is at exactly or when it happened. He whupped the GOPs' posteriors at the SOTU and his team runs a tight ship so we couldn't get any grist for our mill except anonymous and anecdotal info. Remember the emails? We got burnt good on those. Remember the laptop? We dodged a bullet there. As you chomp your cigar and fume, Perry White style, that we needed to get the story out there we -still- don't know when Biden actually declined.
"
Nothing you've said contradicts what I've said Jay me lad and you're mostly talking about post debate media response which, frankly, is utterly bereft of even a whiff of "scandal".
"
I am not certain about the denunciations of the main stream media. I’m gonna try and unpack it here.
Let’s plot the claims about Bidens senescence on a scale of 1 to 10:
- At 1 are the people saying Biden’s totally fine, he’s spryer than people half his age and anyone suggesting otherwise is agist and/or malevolent.
-At 10 are the people saying Biden is next thing to (or actually) dead and being propped up Weekend at Bernies style by *insert your right wing bugaboo of choice* group.
-I’m going to place our midpoint 5 as people saying “Bidens age is a question that’s encumbering his campaign but no concrete definitive evidence has emerged to answer that question for sure.”
-I’d place Team Biden and certain individual commentators out at 1. Most of the Democratic professional party ranged from 3ish down to 1ish positions initially.
-Fox and the right-wing media ecosystem to the right of them, that most voting right wingers get their info from, sit at 9 and 10. Team Trump sits at 10ish when they’re talking to right wingers and at a far lower number when talking to anyone else because, of course, they didn’t actually want Biden replaced.
-Pinky’s people, the intellectual but low mass influence right wing outfits, NRO and their ilk, perch around 8. Generally sympathetic to positions 9 and 10 but more measured in tone and claim. They basically claim Bidens’ impacted by his age and incapable of campaigning or remaining President.
-Where we’ve ended up in reality is around position 6 shading into 7: Biden is clearly impeded by his age and doesn’t seem capable of handling the task of both governing and campaigning.
I’d say that, pre-debate, the main stream media has been distributed from position 6 downward but mostly concentrated in a range of, say, 4-6. There’ve been plenty of centrists (left and right) individually who’ve been at a 6 or seven position (Chait, Klein, Sullivan, etc) but in terms of main stream institutionalist organs I’d say they’ve mostly been stroking their chins around position 5 or close to it. The ones who wanted a primary spectacle leaned towards 6 and the ones who were trying to be strictly impartial stuck to the safe lane at 5.
Post debate the media shifted over into the 6-7ish range. To be angry at them requires info that we just don’t know. We don’t know exactly when or how quickly Biden got to the stage he’s at now. If his decline happened in the past year, say, since the state of the union address then it’s pretty plausible that Bidens team would be able (for both self-interested, professional, self-deceiving and idealistic reasons) to hide it from everyone enough that the main stream media wouldn’t have the goods enough to reach a conclusion different than the pattern they have followed. Bidens crew have been extremely good at running a non-leaky operation and the media’s been burnt something awful by boy who cried wolf behavior from the right for a long time now.
So, to be angry at the main stream media, at this point, I think we’d need to know for certain that Biden was in severe decline for much longer and that various main stream media figures got definitive info about this and sat on it for ideological reasons. No. I don’t think anonymous to quasi anonymous stories or various anecdotal individual tales that Biden seemed out of it on certain occasions is enough personally but YMMV. I don’t think we’ll really know-know until some of Bidens crew leave the admin and write some tell all memoirs, at which point the aggregate of those recollections -might- give us an idea of what the truth is (but it’ll be tough since that lot will be strongly motivated to spin the story in a way that makes them look good).
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He did at the debate, and when he flubbed the debate (and subsequently failed to prove his claims that it was a one off) enough of his own team acknowledged it enough to result in him stepping down. When the facts changed we changed our minds, so to speak.
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Well it depends on the stack in question. It'd be like asking whether Television is right wing or left wing.
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There's a reason the Emperor's New Clothes story features a naive kid who pointed at the Emperor and said he's naked. Had, instead, the story have had the accusation coming from a cynical courtier who routinely pointed at fully clothed rivals at court while shouting "They're naked" and demanding they be thrown out to said courtiers own benefit; well, the story would hit very differently.
Up until the debates the lion's share of the most extreme "Biden is too old to do anything" stories were from people who'd been saying it for more than four years and who'd been saying almost the same thing about HRC the cycle before and who, prior to that, had been saying that Obama wasn't an American Citizen. That's a pretty solid defense for people to point to in their own defense. Moreover, once Biden failed in the debate and subsequently failed to recover (or even try to recover) the narrative changed to reflect the evidence.
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I'll always be grateful to him.
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I'm not going to give polling much credence until around the beginning of September. Maybe late August though, I have a half day for the state fair.
On “Eton’s Ethically Equivocal Entrance Exam Essay”
The title alone was worth the time reading the essay and the essay was great too! Well done!
On “President Biden Addresses the Nation Regarding Not Seeking Re-election”
The final test will be in November but, having seen the improvement in energy and fund raising as well as a demonstration of how a living, functioning party actually works, I feel optimistic that Biden made the correct decision.
On “The Next Candidate To Be Dumped?”
Highly plausible. I doubt that the replacement value of a different veep would be worth the foofaraw cost of trying to replace Vance even if he was willing to step aside.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.