Biden’s debate performance spurs Democratic panic about his ability to lead party against Trump
The biggest question for Biden is whether the damage is permanent. Many voters have not yet tuned into an election that’s still more than four months away.
How is it that the general response to this debate is "Trump rambled nonsensically and told conflicting lies and wants to undermine democracy, but Biden was recovering from a cold, so he's unfit."
Like in what world are these issues comparable?
Like in what world are these issues comparable?
Everyone who already knows that Trump is a moron can't actually develop a lower opinion of him.
Anyone who doesn't know that Trump is a moron is too dense to parse anything more complex than a ten-second Fox News soundbite.
Thus, Biden giving a mediocre performance hurts Biden much more than Trump doing his normal word-salad oral diarrhea hurts Trump.
It's not fair or logical, but it's the way things work at the moment.
Very generous of you to call it a "mediocre performance".
He was recovering from a cold? Is this really the excuse Democrats are gonna go with?
but Biden was recovering from a cold, so he’s unfit.”
Literally haven't seen that excuse yet...
Has he been recovering from a cold the last decade?
both candidates are the age of my grandfather who lives with me because he needs care
no way either candidate has escaped the ravages of time
Biden and Trump both are selfishly keeping a younger generation from stepping in
Yup. Fuck them.
I'm voting for Biden, but fuck them both all the same.
I hate this timeline.
These debates are only there for Biden to lose 🤷
And he certainly rose to the occasion last night.
I don't understand why any one Biden's side thought this was a good idea. Biden has never been a good speaker I believe mostly due to his stutter. The only thing Trump knows how to do is talk he's a damn salesman. I guess the hope was that Biden could string together some coherent sentences in order to hit back at Trump's lies and tout his achievements. I just think putting your candidates weakest trait against the other candidates strongest trait was a stupid risky thing to do from the outset with limited positive potential.
Such obvious bullshit.
He's leading the party just fine against Trump right now.
I'm saying this as someone that donated ~$1000 to Bernie.
I'm personally glad Biden is handling Ukraine & not Sanders.
You'd have to be astoundingly stupid to think that the DNC is going to change tack 5 months prior to the election.
EDIT: Oh look, there are 12 of them now.
Starting with a declaimer of being fairly far left...
Biden is not looking like he has a winning chance. He's barely leading in national polls, but those polls are misleading, as, because of the senate, democrats typically need to win by 2.5-3 points in order to have a shot at the electoral college. So he's behind there.
He's behind in several key states where he needs to win. If you count states where he's down 2 points or less, he BARELY has enough to win. Can't miss a single state.
The debate hurt Biden. This is not a logical contest, it's a popularity one, and Biden is not doing well. I think he's done some great policy things, but that's not how people vote. Democrats have to learn that it's not enough to be "right" if you're going to lose elections.
Polls are garbage.
Democrats have been beating the polls at the ballot boxes by 9 points nationwide since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
It's been going on long enough now that either pollsters don't want to adjust or they don't know how.
As for the debate, there is (conservative funded so YMMV) research that shows that debates don't change anyone's mind.
Don't get so wrapped up in their dog & pony show.
Would be a great move to pick someone new but right before the nomination. Lots of independents want anyone but these 2 old dudes. If either party picked a different candidate, I think they would easily take the White House.
(Unlikely) but if the dems really just had biden out there to take the brunt of trumps attacks up until the nomination, then a majority of trumps platform (biden bad) goes out the window, while the dems platform (trump bad) gets to remain in place.
Would be a galaxy brain strategy but I don’t think anyone in politics would be smart enough to pull something like that off.
He couldn't beat Trump in a relatively simple debate, how is he supposed to beat him in an election?
Above all, Joe Biden’s allies wanted him to demonstrate strength and energy on the debate stage to help put to rest questions about the 81-year-old Democrat’s physical and mental acuity.
But on the biggest stage in U.S. politics on Thursday night, Biden did not meet their modest expectations.
And by the end of the 90-minute showdown, the Democratic president’s allies — party strategists and rank-and-file voters alike — descended into all-out panic following a debate performance punctuated by repeated stumbles, uncomfortable pauses, and a quiet speaking style that was often difficult to understand. Publicly and privately, Democrats questioned whether the party could or should replace him as the party’s presidential nominee against the 78-year-old Republican former President Donald Trump this fall.
"I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC. “I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”
What we can do is run a better candidate before it's too late.
The convention isn't for over a month, and the DNC has been very open about how they can just nominate anyone they want.
We're only stuck with Biden because Biden and the people he put in charge of the DNC would rather risk trump than Biden step aside.
Can you imagine what it would look like if they chose someone like Jon Stewart instead? How a debate like that would have gone? A guy can dream...
I mean yea, but that’s not really fair to him. Being president seems like a terrible burden.
Did we even watch the same debate? Trump is a rambling moron. Biden is old, that is a very real concern, but he wasn't incoherent even a little bit.
What?
When asked about abortion, Biden started ranting about illegal immigrants murdering women...
And for an example used an instance where we don't know who the murderers are, but right wing media keeps claiming it was immigrants.
Like, this isn't just you and me bub.
Feel free to provide a source from literally any major news organization claiming Biden did well and was coherent.
You're currently commenting on one about the opposite, but I can find more if you want
Which candidate do you suggest, givesomefucks?
It's kind of amazing how he'll engage with every single response to his comments... except the ones asking who he thinks the Democratic party should nominate.
We're only stuck with Biden because Biden and the people he put in charge of the DNC would rather risk trump than Biden step aside.
We're stuck with Biden precisely because the DNC doesn't want to risk Trump, and the incumbent advantage is significant.
and the incumbent advantage is significant.
An incumbent advantage helps but isn't an automatic win.
Biden's poll numbers are abysmal for Dem voters. The incumbent advantage likely won't overcome his unpopularity.
And when the most common reason his supporters give us just "he's not trump" then literally any Dem candidate has that too.