I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
Holy cope.
People here actually deluding themselves into Biden falling for Debate tricks instead of saying he “beat Medicare” and “we need Abortion because foreigners are raping women”.
They need to defend their talking points:
- Trump is the worst thing to ever happen to the US (I think GWB was worse- Global War on Terrorism us $8 trillion IIRC, est. 1 million excess deaths in Iraq, est. 360’000 excess deaths in Afghanistan, and both countries ravaged economically and socially).
- Biden is the only one that can save us from Trump and the Republicans and Project 2025.
- A vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump. When I go to vote for Jill Stein I’m literally, according to them, voting for Trump. I don’t know how their stupid minds figured this one out. Must be some Terrence Howard math they are doing (one multiplied by one equals two- look it up).
- This is the most important election evar!! Every election seems to be the most important: The world is going to end if my guy/gal doesn’t get in! Chicken Little, the sky has been falling for so long, or more accurately, you’ve been yelling about it for so long that I’ve come to believe that it’s all lies and not truth.
These people are so stupid they’re falling for the exact same stuff we heard in 2016.
Trmp was a racist and said stupid stuff. But he didn’t start any wars. Trump was far from the world ending. Then again, Biden was being insanely racist this debate too. Blaming the need for abortion on foreign immigrants raping women.
Deluded Democrats have no idea what an actual militarist Fascist looks like. This cycle of sliding right will only be broken by a third party.
Lol @ mr “Gaza is the worstest genocide 4evah” going “at least donnie doesn’t start no wars”
Lol @ people pretending to care about Genocide and simping for Genocide Joe committing Genocide.
Factually my statement was correct. You might not like it because your reality gets shattered that Trump is a far cry from being the worst Republican ever.
Why would you choose to mention Donnie ‘Factually, just get it over with’ T started just as many wars as Biden, if you weren’t his #1 simp?
Because Donnie didn’t. Donny retreated from Aghanistan. The dumbest thing he did was bomb Suleimani. But in the end that did not lead to war.
Biden is currently illegally at war with Yemen. He did not ask congress to go to war.
And Biden is currently supporting the israeli Genocide of Gaza with both military intelligence personell and weapons.
As much as you want to believe it, during his 2016-2020 rule Trump somehow did far less crazy shit than expected.
Will Trump continue the Genocide? Very likely.
Will Biden continue the Genocide? 100%.
Biden is currently illegally at war with Yemen. He did not ask congress to go to war.
Lolsimp
Did your donnie ask congress before he put missiles on Syria? Did he ask congress before he put a genocide on IS?
The part about voting is pretty simple logic.
In a voting system where the one who gets majority of the votes wins, the other votes don’t really have an impact. Of course they are part of the race to win, but outside of that, what do the other votes do? Nothing. In other systems those votes would cause a second round to happen, but in the US system they don’t. Those votes are just… gone.
Sure, you could argue that it’s about “sending a message”, but… why? Why do this now while the Project 2025 looms over the US if the Republicans win? The Democratic Party won’t change before the elections and no amount of threatening to vote for 3rd party will change that.
The part about “if you don’t vote for Biden, you vote for Trump” is not literal. It’s more… abstract if that makes sense. Since if you vote for parties that have no realistic chance of winning, it means that a party that has a chance of winning doesn’t get that vote and the party you least want in power is one vote closer to win the election. This logic goes for both Democrats and Republicans. If a Republican votes for third party that has no chance of winning, their vote metaphorically goes to the Democratic party, since the Republican party will be one vote further away from the Democratic party. Hell, this same logic, to some extent, also applies to other systems, but not as much as the US system.
So unless you are predicting Jill Stein to be making history and winning as a third party, a thing that hasn’t happened, that vote won’t affect the elections and the party you least want in power is just one vote closer to be winning.
In a two round system, your vote would matter more, since your vote would be affecting everyone’s chance of getting an absolute majority of 50% all votes. And since everyone, but your chosen party, is one vote further from the 50% mark, a second round has a higher chance of happening.
I addressed “tHiS iS tHe MoSt ImPoRtAnT eLeCtIoN eVaR!” and Project 2025- there is always a Boogeyman that we always have to vote Democrat or the Republicans will destroy us (and the lukewarm Republicans/Conservatives get the opposite message from the opposition). They play us too keep us in line.
Sending a message to Joseph “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black” Biden and the DNC is about the only thing I can do with my vote since I refuse to support genocide, which is a full stop issue and precludes the need for any other reasons. I’m trying to not be a Doomer and saying that revolution is the only way but what other options are there?
We have to stop thinking the current election and think long term. If more people vote their conscience then the DNC would take that into account. Instead people listen to their doomsaying and vote in fear of the immediate and nothing changes about the party.
I know Jill isn’t going to win, but I’m not a team person and I’m just picking what I see as the best candidate- I’ve picked the lesser evil too many times and here we still are, in a worse place.
I would love a different system but I still wouldn’t put Biden down as my second choice because genocide support is not acceptable.
It’s bad here, but it’s actually a mental institution on reddit.
I am losing my mind over what I see on Reddit right now. They are arguing that Trump should quit running for president if he wants to serve his country.
Biden is senile! Trump is a POS, he has always been a POS. This no news to anyone. But, the biggest thing the debate revealed is that Biden is senile. He lost A LOT of votes during the debate. Trump did not lose any votes. Everyone knew Trump was a POS before the debate.
You just made facts up. “He lost votes during the debate” is not measurable in any meaningful way. It’s still 5 months from now. There are other debates to come.
We all know Trump doesn’t actually want to serve his country. During a Hannity interview Trump couldn’t name a single thing he wanted to enact in his second term. It’s all about keeping himself out of prison and helping heal his wounded ego for losing in 2020.
Reddit is heavily astroturfed by Democratic Party staff and affiliates, along with a host of other organizations and literal nation state actors. If you can’t see the agendas being pushed there, you might need a new pair of glasses. I got mine from my friend John Nada.
It’s more like Reddit is a bunch of edgy teenagers who already skew in favor of liberal ideas far beyond that of the regular voting public. It’s why atheism is wildly popular on Reddit as well as issues like abortion or trans rights, when the American public is far more evenly split.
Yes there’s some campaigning going on on Reddit as well but it’s dwarfed by the left wing base already on the site. The swell in anti-Biden posts make this split all the more obvious.
That as well, but make no mistake - there is a ton of astroturf laid down on that site daily.
BIDEN: Fentanyl and the byproducts of fentanyl went down for a while. And I wanted to make sure we use the machinery that can detect fentanyl, these big machines that roll over everything that comes across the border, and it costs a lot of money. That was part of this deal we put together, this bipartisan deal.
More fentanyl machines, were able to detect drugs, more numbers of agents, more numbers of all the people at the border. And when we had that deal done, he went – he called his Republican colleagues said don’t do it. It’s going to hurt me politically.
He never argued it’s not a good bill. It’s a really good bill. We need those machines. We need those machines. And we’re coming down very hard in every country in Asia in terms of precursors for fentanyl. And Mexico is working with us to make sure they don’t have the technology to be able to put it together. That’s what we have to do. We need those machines.
If Biden was dead I’d still vote for him over trump.
Yeah but people are correct when they ask if that’s really the standard you should be aiming for. If democrats want to beat trump as much as they say - perhaps to stop shooting themselves in the foot, picking incrementalist candidates who forget where they are, and trying to re-engage people that (correctly) feel completely unrepresented by offering up these ancient clowns would be a good start.
Blind allegiance to the most uninspiring dem runner in history, and his campaign being more about who he isn’t…it’s just the emperor’s new clothes but as an extremely consequential election.
If democrats lose again, it’s time for some serious self reflection - as bad as trump is, and as insane and dangerous some of his supporters are - that’s not an acceptable excuse for losing an election - if anything, it makes it more embarrassing that there’s anything resembling an actual contest.
I wouldn’t equate voting for the lesser of two evils with “blind allegiance”.
For all of Biden’s faults (of which there are many) he’s still the better candidate on offer.
All the issues you bring up are valid, of course, but unfortunately there’s a lot at risk should Trump win. And voting for a senile old man is still preferable to voting for a fascist who is primarily running as a way to stay out of prison.
I’m not sure how we can hijack the DNC primaries to get a real quality candidate, but as far as improving our elections overall, that’s where I’d like to see some progress.
Totally, the problem is he should be in a home, and a fresh strapping young lad/lass under the age of 70 (lmao) should be doing these debates instead.
Trump needs to be defeated at all costs, I’m just massively disappointed that this is the guy the democrats chose
Same.
To run a debate with Trump and without live fact checking was just plain stupid. You know he’s just going to run his rehearsed talking points without so much as trying to answer even mildly uncomfortable questions. They not only let him get away with serial lying, they basically laid the groundwork so he could get away with it.
Fact checks after the fact never reach the people that need to see them.
It was Biden’s job to call out Trump’s lies, not the moderators’ job, but he was nowhere near competent enough to do that. See how Trump called out Biden’s incoherence, highlighting the issue to everybody (“yeah you beat medicare to death”, “I didn’t understand the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he does either”, etc)
‘Calling out lies’ isn’t fact-checking - at best it would have turned into a ‘your word against mine, who will people believe’ mudslinging contest. Fact-checking puts the onus on the person telling the lie to correct it - ‘this is false and here is a source that says so’.
2 major problems with that. Good luck getting him to agree to a debate with fact checking. Even when he is blatantly lying, he’s just going to accuse the fact checkers of bias, and force his supporters to distance themselves from reality more than they are already.
The best defence is to ignore it, and focus on the issues that people care about. The best thing Biden can do is present a strong coherent front, and pretend like trump isn’t even there at all.
Why billionaire John Malone’s shadow looms over CNN
most folks aren’t aware that CNN went from subtle billionaire propaganda to outright billionaire propaganda within the last few years
TLDR:
All that’s missing is a swastika
On Biden because he’s enabling the genocide in Gaza?
Trump would show how genocide is done
Or maybe we shouldn’t have anyone debating a Facist anti-intellectual. Because you can’t.
It’s like arguing with a toddler. You can’t, because even when you are right you are wrong
Skill issue.
Of course the opponent is always going to claim you’re wrong, that doesn’t mean you can’t mount a competent response. If their tactics are so incredibly effective that there’s no way to counter them, then steal those tactics and throw them right back at their face. Trump isn’t even an unknown quantity, they’ve got teams of people working for 8 years to come up with an answer to his approach, if Biden still isn’t up to the task then he needs to step aside and let someone else handle it.
HIS CONTROLLER WAS DISCONNECTED
Someone pointed out, the debate was scheduled for 9pm, with two men over 70. I’m in my 50’s, and I’m no good after 8pm. This should have been held in the morning.
The debate was poorly arranged, and once again Biden’s incompetent staff contributed by letting it happen.
Fair enough, but isn’t it reasonable to want the president of the United States to be someone who doesn’t fall apart after 9pm?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But I also want a president who’s not just going to take amphetamines so he can perform well past his bed time.
I’m not saying either of these guys is my first choice. I’m just saying that it was late, Biden had a cold, and he was probably taking Nyquil or something - he would want to be up there sneezing and blowing his nose. If you compare his performance in the debate to his speech in N Carolina, he certainly wasn’t at his peak. Good knows how much cocaine Trump had snorted before the debate.
He did horribly and you make excuses for him. He needs to retire.
I make no excuses. We’ve seen what Trump presidencies look like; the last was bumbling and did massive damage to civil rights, the next won’t be. Project 2025 ensures that.
Biden’s biggest crime has been supporting Israel. His presidency was categorically and measurably better for the US than Trump’s. Aside from Palestine, he wasn’t a bad president. Now, if Trump wasn’t saying that Israel isn’t going far enough; if Trump were supporting Palestine, then there’d be something to talk about. But he isn’t, and he did terrible things to our country while in charge, and should never be allowed near the White House again.
It’s too late to ask for that now. You gotta say that at the primaries.
I tried, the establishment muscled out any real contenders.
Yeah, it’s a shame.
I remember Clinton’s “3am phone call” ad that she used against Obama. Now centrists are fine with “not after Wheel of Fortune.”
He was massively over coached.
The very first thing he needed to say was:
“This man is going to lie to you. He’s going to lie the entire time, and probably the only thing he will say true is his name.”
‘you have the morals of an alley cat’
Agreed.
Biden could have started saying, “you know, I’ve never been a good debater – especially with a bit of a campaign cold – but what I have been good at is running this country. I’ve clearly been around for a while and, since I’ve dedicated my career and life to being a servant to this great country, I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s economy. Yes, we’ve taken a few punches recovering from the pandemic, but compared to our international neighbors we are doing ok. Not great, but not bad. There is still a lot of work left to do cleaning up from the mistakes of my predecesor, but we are making good progress and will continue to do so. <insert list of capping medication prescription costs, FED interest rates have stopped and not rising, historically low unemployment with 11 million new jobs, taxes on corporations>”
The second you say not great, but not bad, it’s over.
The threshold is wanting great, so much the maga asshole made it his slogan. Nobody (collectively) wants “okay”
The problem is Biden’s team has been saying the economy is great, look at all the metrics… but people don’t feel that it’s great for them. It would be helpful for Biden to validate people’s concerns and feelings instead of dismissing them.
The economy is doing well, let’s admit that. But the first question of the debate demonstrated that things are not great. Denying that reality and pretending otherwise is extremely damaging. I don’t want a grandpa who will lie to me to make me feel better, I want a grandpa who will sell it to me straight but help me through what I’m going through.
If Biden could accept and be upfront that people are struggling day-to-day, he may not alienate as many people over to Trump on economic success.
I want okay. I want a country that doesn’t backslide into fascism. I would be overjoyed by okay.
You are not the vast majority of people. People want killer economy, no unemployment, no inflation (I know these are all incompatible). They don’t want meh.
People need to chill the fuck out.
Do any of you remember the first debate between Kerry and W? W sounded and stammered like a compete moron, and it made no difference.
These debates are a waste of time and Biden should never have agreed to debate a traitor.
Your guy is a lost case and you are coping so hard. 🙄
Whoever wins gets the nuclear football. Neither of these assholes is with it enough consistently to deserve that responsibility.
then look at it this way - which of them is more likely to act on a stupid impulse, and is surrounded by incompetent, lying yes-men?
Biden by a mile - but they’re both awful choices and clearly unqualified for the position.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
Bush didn’t sound nearly this bad. And they also ran such a novel attack campaign it invented a new term, “swift boating”. Which is right in line with Trump’s gish gallop. Bush was also a war time president.
These situations are not analogous, the dominoes are lined up completely differently.
W is younger than both Biden and Trump, the fact that we have geriatrics running is the real problem
Yes, exactly. Only now we’ve punched ourself in the nads and have to walk it off when there should never have been this issue.
Brandon fucked up. Bad. He played into all that bullshit the traitors have been planning. It was truly disheartening.
Look, I’m voting for him. I’ll vote for any D in hopes of stopping the republican traitor filth. But Brandon needs to fuck off. Someone needs to talk sense to him and have him recognize what is right and necessary for the country.
I guarantee you the subset of DNC operatives invested in keeping Biden is vastly larger than any advocating for someone else.
This is all media turd circus because we were stupid enough to stand in the same room with a demented orange rapist in order to, uh, “reach undecideds”.
Welp. We reached ‘em. Good job DNC. As per.
If they stand by him while the media eviscerates him then Trump wins, full stop.
If they want to fight this off he needs to be on national TV as often as possible over the next couple weeks answering questions without scripts or prompters. It’s the only way out of this hole.
If he will not or can not do that, he must step aside.
I dunno about that, but however we defeat trump let’s keep it in full focus because the roller coaster has begun its ascent in earnest.
Don’t let the optimism here fool you. Biden needs to bring on board undecided voters. And they aren’t impressed.
Honestly I think anyone who is old enough to vote and saw the unholy shitshow that was 2017-2021 is literally incapable of being undecided.
If that is even possible somehow, I’m sure there’s nothing Biden can do that will specifically change that.
Polls show there’s still undecided people. For example in Pennsylvania there’s 6 points unaccounted for in polling. And Biden really needs to pick up those points.
Polls show a lot of things. They are very often critically flawed.
They only asked for the debate because they assumed Trump would say No to all the stupid stipulations they set for it. Then, they could’ve ran and told everyone that they tried to debate Trump but he wouldn’t accept. They were really just left with no choice when Trump accepted their terms
Well, that was also a dumb plan, then.
Salon always has a bias, but I also can’t help but think he was on Sudafed or something. I also have seen him at other things and he’s generally less… raspy. Doesn’t change that it was stupid to go on like that, though.
I fortunately skipped the debate and only watched highlights, though. I already hate “debates” as far as I remember since, at best, it’s just fluffy sound bites and vague promises, and at worst, a series of unrefuted lies. This sounds like everything I hate about typical “debates” turned up to 11.
As it was always going to be.
DNC, get this through your heads: Debates Are Dead. They were getting pretty useless in an always-on world anyway, but Trump killed them dead.
Agreeing to these means you haven’t learned the lessons he already taught you. Put him in prison, not on tv.
Joe struggled a lot.
Does seem to be the consensus
Whoever decided that putting that old man on stage in front of a national audience was a good idea should be shot. I’m voting for Kamala Harris, via Biden.
Another case of the lesser of two evils. I’m not necessarily hyped on Biden but holy shit he has never looked/sounded this old and feeble
IMHO, complaining about the refs feels like grasping for straws.
Biden was rambling, incoherent, and unlike Trump, he couldn’t get on message. And the messaging against Trump ain’t complex. He wants fascism, he’s killing women, covid was a fucking disaster under him, he’s a felon, and he’s lying. Biden struggled to get the basics out in a clear and coherent way.
IMHO, this is NOT the time to keep on and carry on. This debate is early enough that he can still step down and we can have a contested convention. The alternative is fascism. Biden is going to lose this shit.
Here’s the catch: we might expect that, or think that or want that, but “that” isn’t going to happen unless Biden wants that because the world of politics has its own laws just like every other discipline / industry.
I seriously doubt there’s any chance of it, but since we’re allotted this specific window to pretend we can choose such a thing, why not. I’d go for Bernie, or Warren, or Schiff, or a few others.
Sunday, ten years too late, they’ll send talking heads to the old-people political shows to vigorously support Biden, or the “new” messaging or whatever their mitigation strategy is. But for now, just today, sure let’s imagine.
Why doesn’t he just answer every question with:
“Yeah but this is the man who thought shooting up bleach and letting sunlight into your lungs would cure COVID and then said it on TV”
He did at least get that in once. But yeah, it should have been a slam dunk.
He could also have ended all of his answers with “I’ll hand this back over to the convicted felon.”
