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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These people are so stupid they’re falling for the exact same stuff we heard in 2016.
Trump 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.
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.
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
It’s amazing to me that “he sounds feeble” is worse than “everything he said wasn’t true.”
It was Biden’s job to call out Trump’s lies, 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)
we live in a post truth world and trump is the master of the gish gallop
I am pasting this from another thread where I replied to a person that said he was going to vote for Biden no matter what.
I don’t care who you vote for. It is very clear to me you will vote for Democrats. That is great.
I do care about who my aunt and her family votes for, a lot. She is democrat leaning. Her husband is republican leaning. They both believe the middle class is getting destroyed by politicians for the last 2 decades. They are both retired. They used to be middle/low income. These days they are clearly low income.
- In 2004, they both voted for Bush.
- In 2008, they both voted for Obama.
- In 2012, they both voted for Obama.
- In 2016, they both claimed to vote for Trump, although I believe my aunt might have voted for Hillary. (Uncle has military background. He kept saying if he did what Hillary did when he was in active duty, he would be in prison for the rest of his life.)
- In 2020, they both voted for Biden.
For the last 2 years, they both are saying that they don’t want to vote for Trump but Biden destroyed the economy for middle class. It was clear they might give Biden another shot if he managed to recover the economy before the election.
Ever since the debate, they both are dead set on voting for Trump. All I hear is “Of course the economy would be bad, he is senile.” or any “Of course xyz would be bad, he is senile.”
As I said, I don’t care who you vote for. I care for the votes of people that have not decided whether to vote for Trump or Biden. In the debate, Biden lost a lot of them. Biden lost that debate, clearly! Saying “they both are senile” or “Trump lied during the debate” is damage control by Dems. If Dems insist on going forward with Biden, Trump will be president. I am sure of that.
Now you can say my aunt and her family are stupid. You can say I am stupid for not changing their minds. You can say Trump is an insurrectionist and we are all stupid. You can even say all of the Americans are stupid, it is your first amendment right. You can down-vote me to hell if it makes you feel good. None of these will change the fact that my aunt and her family will vote for Trump unless Dems change the candidate or Biden manages to shit rainbows and use it to gift a million dollars to my aunt’s family.
At this point being a Biden apologist is the same thing as voting for Trump. Trump will win.
Problem is, the lower information voters don’t know that Trump is lying, and Biden couldn’t point that out in a clear and concise way. He was soft and rambling and wasn’t campaigning competently on that stage.
He needed to make the case against Trump. Which isn’t hard.
This is exactly the issue. The bar was set so low. He was barely able to put together a coherent response to the infanticide claims, which was something even the lowest of information voters know is a lie. He let Trump walk all over him on immigration even though Biden put together a “bipartisan” plan that was just a Republican wishlist. If Biden had articulated any of that we’d probably be having a different conversion.
It’s worse if you expect the first guy to be a strong contender against the second guy
We know Trump is a liar.
Biden had to prove he wasn’t feeble… and he failed at that.
Voting for Biden and his administration is still 100% the correct decision, but that debate isn’t going to convince any swing voters. If you want to use the incumbency advantage you need to convince folks you can stay the course for the next 4 years.
that debate isn’t going to convince any swing voters
I am voting for Biden. But that debate convinced multiple swing voters I personally know to vote for Trump. All I hear from both democrats and republicans is that Biden is senile. That bunch of nonsense followed by “we beat medicare” line lost tens of millions of votes for Biden.
WE know, and that’s why the debate wasn’t for us. And it was a bad idea from the start - Trump does not deserve to be in a debate. Not that there’s any debating going on.
It was always going to support the ticket that thrives on chaos and idiocy. Always.
I would like to see Trump in a debate with someone young who knows the issues and has a specialty in antifascist takedowns. Not a respectable Democrat character, I mean someone who can get up there and call him a rapist, a criminal, and an unpatriotic traitor and back it up with intelligent citing of the facts. You know, a Greta Thunberg type character. I want to see the Greta Vs Donald CNN debate.
There are entire divisions of the RNC and Trump Org staffed and hard at work to ensure that that never happens.
The only reason I’ll still v9te for Biden is because I know the rest of the people around him will be doing the decision making. I think he’s a piece of shit for trying to run a 2nd term and potentially losing the Whitehouse to trump over it. You could literally throw any well spoken 50 year old Democrat to run against trump and they’d have a layup for a win. Instead we have to choose between a nutjob liar and a guy who probably could reason himself into a win against a child that rides the short bus. He wasn’t great 4 years ago, but he’s now very obviously not capable of leading a country.
The problem is that it’s next to impossible for a party to replace an incumbent president on the ticket without a fight. And the Democrats don’t have time for a fight right now.
The logical choice would be the VP, but Harris is less popular than Biden with all his flaws. She gets tagged with all of his negatives plus the misogyny and racism pervasive among voters who would vote for Putin before they vote for a minority or a woman. If she had a more progressive record as a politician, maybe she could bring new, young voters to the table.
If the DNC and Biden wanted Harris to be the candidate, the time to step aside was two years ago. That would have given Harris the opportunity to establish herself as a leader worth following. The racists and the misogynists have less ammo if she’s already doing the job well. Of course, that assumes she would have done well.
And then we could have had a legitimate primary. If Harris was failing, it would have been easier to run against an incumbent who was not elected and had a low approval rating. The best candidate could have risen to the top, introduced themselves to American voters, and built a political machine capable of beating Trump in the general election.
Biden didn’t want to do that, so now he must win. There isn’t another option.
Biden could straight up choose and endorse someone. Even if it wasn’t Harris, which would look kind of shitty, but the DNC isn’t completely stupid. They’d fully back whoever they decide that Bidens endorsement (see what I did there?) would be. It’s too late to let the dnc campaign and come up with a popular vote. It isn’t too late for a presidential endorsement to work.
I think it is too late for a Presidential endorsement to work. The conservatives, including those in the Democratic Party, will spin it as an attempted coronation, a la Hillary in 2016. Biden will choose a centrist to avoid pissing off the DNC mega donors, which will deflate any enthusiasm from progressives who see Biden stepping aside as a victory. Nobody will be particularly enthusiastic about voting for the annointed one, and if they win it will be because of the “not Trump” voters.
So what does that do for us? Those voters are already going to show up. Progressives are already unenthusiastic about another Biden term, but they are terrified of another Trump term. So most of them will show up, too. Biden supporters, we can count on both Jill and the other one to vote either way.
This is my thought. I could imagine Biden announcing that Obama was coming in to play a very key role in his administration and that might give him a boost. That while technically the buck stops with Biden still, that Obama is very close to contribute.
This would sidestep the “annointed one” problem, avoid skipping the primary, and while it’s short of a new candidate, it gets a very popular person near the presidency who couldn’t have been the candidate.
I couldn’t imagine them starting from scratch at this point, couldn’t imagine who they would pick that people would already resonate with.
I think if the public has a choice between an old crazy liar or an old senile guy, or literally any competent 50 year old backed by one of the two parties.
Truth doesn’t really matter in a presidential debate, it’s not actually a debate. It’s all about appearing superior than your opponent.
Don’t you think he looks tired?
I always kind of hated that bit, because it seemed so unrealistic. And here we are.
Life imitates art.
You know what the real problem is? Biden reminded me and millions of other people of our frail grandparents in a stressful, scary, situation. We love them, (although I’m not a fan of Biden), but we don’t let them drive or end up in those situations.
I’d still 100% let them drive me instead of a sociopath conman.
It’s not about the diehard voters. It’s about the the undecided voters. Which presumes they’d be fine with either.
I don’t think you need to be a diehard to recognize that handing the keys over to a frail old person is an easy choice to handing them over to a felon fraudster. It’s crazy that this is even a question.
Yes it is. But they’ve created an entirely different narrative to believe in.
If you lived through the Trump presidency, and you are unsure you want another one, you’re either a closeted bigot who doesn’t want to admit you want Trump, or you’re a moron.
And yet, they vote.
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
I’m voting for Biden so don’t give me shit about being a Leftist helping Trump win. But if he does win, remember that Dems had a million chances to run someone better and this is what they let happen. It’ll be their fault if we get more of the bad man.
THANK YOU!!! MORE TRUMP WILL BE THE DIRECT RESULT OF DOGSHIT LEADERSHIP IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!
Are you a leftist that denies that there is a genocide going on in Gaza?
No. I’m a Leftist who’s outraged that my government is funding said genocide while actively denying it’s happening.
Then how could you possibly vote for Biden? He only once held up funding, for like two days, before the heat got too high for him and he relented. He’s marginally than Trump better but voting for him is still supporting genocide.
The dems suspended the primaries in a number of states and more or less coronated Biden.
The Dems believe in democracy only when against the GOP but do not believe in democracy when deciding matters inside their party.
The “Democratic” Party my ass cheeks. Clowns and hypocrites.
Agreed. The coordinated pullout to sabotage Bernie in 2020 was shameful. “Vote for us or you’ll be sorry when the GOP takes over” is all they offer.
They sabatoged him in 2016, too… 2020 they had learned how to just do it better.
Right before Super Tuesday they got scared the DNC types made calls and then it was over.
The neo-liberals who took over the party completely after Reagan would rather lose to Trump than let Sanders, or Warren, or AOC, or anyone else who’d actually even slightly joke at the possibility of forcing the billionaire class to finally start contributing instead of leeching.
I will vote for Biden, just like I did in 2020, and Hillary in 2016… but they won’t change and if they lose they just blame the left anyway.
If they won’t change and they’ll just blame you when they loose why are you voting for them?
Because they aren’t the only ones, because Trump and any R is worse.
The Ds may cut off a finger, but the Rs will eat your whole goddamn family and make you watch.
Both suck… but sitting out or voting for anyone who has no chance is inviting them to feast.
Do you think it’s worth it to help the democrats win rather than build an alternative and show them where to shift their platform towards?
Build an alternative in… checks calendar, 4 months that can gain more votes than the active democratic nominee and beat the stir mad republican candidate whose supporters are voting for out of pure spite. This comment is either in bad faith or you literally have no idea how the election works. Best case here isn’t even winning, it’s taking as few votes from the sane candidates as possible because all this’ll do is split the democrat voting block.
That’s not feasible in a FPTP system. Best you can do is keep voting for the least bad between the two “real” candidates and shift the Overton window overtime.
Or have a violent revolution, but that’s a bit more difficult to coordinate.
As long as the US has a two-party system where the third-party mechanically ONLY acts as a spoiler candidate - see Ross Perot for Bush in 92, Nader, Stein, whoever you want to fucking name… whichever THAT 3rd party candidate is most closely aligned with are the ones that get screwed the most.
Voting third-party is about as stupid a fucking thing you can do outside of not voting at all.
Voting third-party is the worst kind of dipshit gesture - like raising your middle finger to flip someone off while a helicopter blade is spinning inches above you. Voting 3rd party means you effectively give another vote to the candidate you want the least.
If the US had ranked-choice voting, then voting for a 3rd party would make sense, but both parties know that this helps them stay in power and so as long as they keep it the way it is, our ONLY choice with a demonstrably positive outcome of any kind is to try and fight super fucking hard in the primaries and hope to God that we can squeeze someone through before dark corporate PAC money missiles or the ring-leaders in the DNC recognize what they are before being able to stop them.
It’s how we got AOC, and a few others from the squad… and it’s how we were even able to see Bernie get to push Biden just a TINY bit more left than Biden would have been otherwise.
If you want to tell them to fuck off… then show up and volunteer and phone bank and knock on doors for the best candidates you can find DURING THE PRIMARIES.
If someone really awesome makes it through to the general… then great!
But if they don’t, hopefully they were strong enough presence (thanks to brave volunteer supporters who wanted to say “fuck you” to the shitty party leaders) to force the right-leaning Democratic members to lean a little bit more leftward than they otherwise would have been (like Bernie helped make Biden do… as much as he could).
History, procedure, common sense, and logic all said that was what was going to happen. They didn’t cancel the primaries. They never started the primaries. A lot of states started holding primaries assuming the incumbent wasn’t running again. But that was never the case. Biden never said that he was only going to run the one time and not again. People in his orbit discussed that he might do that. But that was nothing that he said or that they ever committed to.
You and I are welcome to believe this what he should have done. But historically if an incumbent decides to run for another Term. No party ever Has primaried them. We can criticize Biden on not telegraphing that well enough. That’s fair. We can absolutely criticized Biden on things like that. But policy-wise and as far as his administration goes. He’s been fairly popular and consequential. Despite the one really big issue which seems to be all people want to talk about ignoring the fascist in the room.
But historically if an incumbent decides to run for another Term. No party ever Has primaried them.
And this lack of pragmatism and adherence to “tradition” when the republicans openly don’t stick by those rules will cause the Dems to contribute to the coming of fascist amerika
Fascists support genocide so you must be taking about supporting Biden?
CNN is essentially owned by John Malone now. It’s just Fox News lite.
Are all American “debates” like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?
Nope.
Up till this year a non partisan committee handled the debates and lent it an air of impartially and at least tried to hold candidates to the questions.
Both parties decided to boycott those debates, and set up their own with CNN as the host.
I’ve been bitching about it for months now and everyone’s been telling me it’ll be fine…
Edit:
2020 debates
Hard disagree. This wasn’t unusual. Presidential debates are notorious for moderators being ineffectual and unwilling to challenge lies.
I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check. You’ll see candidates call each other out sometimes, but moderators don’t actually moderate. Timing answers to be ridiculously short so nothing of substance can be said is also a perennial feature.
Oh man… in all my years I have only seen one… (and it was this year!)… but it was not a presidential one… it was an AMAZING Republican primary debate in Colorado.
I WISH they got these guys to be the moderators. Would have fucking bashed Trump.
If all debates for like that one. I would not miss a single debate. He cut through the b******* and got straight to the answers or not answers as the case may be. Which is what a debate moderator should do. A debate moderator is not intended to be a personified a cue card. The Talking Heads at CNN failed even harder than I ever thought they could with their moderation.
Lol last night before the debate started, I sent a message to my friends asking if it was too late to get Kyle Clark to moderate. The guy is amazing.
I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check.
During the one Obama Romney debate I remember Obama asking for a live fact check of some sort and getting it. So it’s happened before.
Yes, Obama had to ask for it. The moderator wasn’t about to say Romney was a lying sack of shit on their own. That’s my point.
In general, the “debates” have always been a nationally televised pissing contest for as long as I’ve watched them.
Fact checkers challenged many of Trump’s statements. Trump falsely said that he “brought back (college) football”; as he had commented on his wish for the conferences to play, but took no official action. Trump also repeated the claim that he “got back” Seattle and Minneapolis from left-wing protesters, and continued to repeat conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He said, without evidence, that drug prices will fall “80 or 90 percent,” in reference to his efforts to cut drug prices[50] and exaggerated that he is making insulin at prices “so cheap, it’s like water”, despite insulin prices remaining fixed at about $300 per vial. Trump also misleadingly said that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was “the greatest economy in the history of our country”; although GDP growth was high in the first three years of the Trump presidency, it was higher under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and the unemployment rate was lower under Eisenhower.[51] Nominal GDP was higher than at any point in US history, but this is true for the large majority of US Presidencies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_debates#Format_and_debate
I’m sorry, but what universe are you living in? You don’t remember this exchange?
Those all happened afterwards. During the debate nobody has ever been told they lied about a particular thing by a moderator.
I hope you appreciate this, because I had to watch those two argue more:
Am I supposed to be seeing a fact check during the debate? Because it seems more like “I want to move on to another subject” and “well anyways” the first few times the moderator speaks.
Pretty much every Trump debate has been like this. This one was actually an improvement from 2020 and 2016 because his microphone was turned off so he wasn’t able to just yell over the other person and constantly interrupt.
I don’t know if this is an improvement. As many feared, the muted mic saved Trump from himself. I’m sure his staff was actually pretty excited about that rule.
It would prevent him from doing what he did last time, which polled terribly.
That’s very true, I should of said “from a civility standpoint it’s an improvement”.
Yes. 90% of the time is almost always off topic. Sometimes a candidate spends a whole sentence saying something related, but that’s as close to organized as it ever was.
Trump definitely does more personal attacks, but that’s about it. I’ve seen a moderator make a correcting statement once.
They’re getting much worse
They are now, apparently.
Oh absolutely. I meant only they weren’t so glaringly obvious, always.
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?
I remember Clinton’s “3am phone call” ad that she used against Obama. Now centrists are fine with “not after Wheel of Fortune.”
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.
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.
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.”
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”
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.
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.
‘you have the morals of an alley cat’
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. 🙄
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.
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,
If Biden faced a serious primary, we’d have known he was like this months ago and had even more time to find a competent replacement.
But people said it was too late then.
They say it’s too late now, but it still isn’t.
It’s too big of a risk to keep plowing ahead like we’re headed to Country Kitchen Buffet…
You overestimate the risk of this specific event. I do think the DNC and all Americans need a wakeup call before November and this may or may not be it, but the debate is forgettable in 1 week whereas the consequences of these Supreme Court decisions or going to be with us for years to come.
Democrats have other opportunities to energize their base, it’s up to them to use these opportunities, and avoid letting Trump dominate every election conversation.
You overestimate the risk of this specific event
This isn’t a one off thing tho.
This is Biden. He’s not going to magically change a bunch of policy positions to align with the Dem platform out of nowhere.
He’s not going to magically start acting half his age on the campaign trail.
No malarkey, what you see is what you get.
Now it really is too late. It’s Biden or Trump. Your either for democracy or fascism
Now it really is too late.
The convention still hasn’t happened.
The candidate still hasn’t been named.
It’s still not too late
Despite what people on Lemmy are saying there was a primary. Votes were cast and delegates are obligated to vote accordingly at least on the first ballot. Short of Biden stepping down there is no avenue to replace him at the convention.
By tradition no serious politicians participated. We didn’t have a primary and its disingenuous to say we did.
No serious politician chose to participate. Either for their own political reasons (Newsome) or because they preferred Biden as a better and more strategic option (Sanders). It’s still a primary when you don’t like the choices. It’s disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Just to clarify - the briefly stated “political reasons” you mentioned are being dog-piled by the establishment and having your political career torpedoed.
No it’s literally not what I said or implied. If you think Gavin Newsom is staying out of this because he’s worried about having his career torpedoed you’re nuts. I said political reasons because it’s political reasons. For his own personal political benefit. I think that should have been obvious. If Newsome wanted to run he’d be running. I doubt Biden would be in this race if Newsome was running. He would have stepped aside. If for some reason he hadn’t, the party would have pushed him aside.
Yeah, how politics and voting are supposed to work and how they actually do are 2 different things.
So you understand that it’s not too late?
Because this isn’t a thing where opinions come into play.
It’s literally not to late to change candidates. That’s just literal facts.
That’s neither literal nor a fact.
Why?
Because trump is guaranteed going to convince the military and entire government to behave like nazi Germany. Anyone who disagrees with this obvious take is clearly a moron who loves fascism and hates freedom. Trump will kill everyone who isn’t purely white. It’s so obvious. It’s definitely better to have a turtle without a shell as president because trump is the biblical antichrist who will surely usher in the end times. Only an idiot couldn’t see this obvious fact.
Someone educated can correct me but that doesn’t sound accurate. Even if it Trump were to go full hitler (which is dumb for an aspiring autocrat in this day and age) it wouldn’t work like that. They’d denigrate all non whites but have a specific target group that they persecute/kill. The group needs to be specific for fascism so they can have a sacrificial goat to blame everything on.
The real answer is he will continue the gutting of the administrative state. The direction we are going is corporatism. Absolution of federal agencies tasked with legally protecting people (education, health, environmental protection, labor protection, safety, finance regulation) and expanding the agencies that legally bind people (police, prisons).
It’s not likely that Trump would be going “full Hitler”. But the governors of Texas and Florida might.
Oh yeah for sure, that sounds way more likely my reply is more in following with the other posters “Trump will go full Nazi” hypothesis. Just seems like fascism has a specific way of working that’s more complex than “kill every out group”.
Gutting the state as beefalo said is right but they’ll still have the usual scapegoats (immigrants, dog whistle racism, lgbtq community).
Any of these communities could be hit with state violence, either directly through police action or state sanctioned terrorism such as the proud boys, or indirectly by eroding protections and further marginalization.
Just look at what Texas and Florida are doing to hurt trans people and immigrants. Scale that up to a national level. That sort of stuff is in the project 2025 playbook. For example just being trans they want to make illegal under the pornography act. And charge teachers who talk about the existence of trans people with child sexual assault.
So, hopefully not gas chambers and witch hunts but, it could get pretty bad for a lot of people.
The question would more likely be, why is it too late to have a different candidate run against Trump?
Yeah he will kill everyone who spoke poorly of him, that includes everyone here.
No, it’s not too late. The convention is still 2 months out
Sure kid.
I mean, the Biden camp didn’t need to take this debate.
I don’t know the details for how far ahead all the rules were decided. I would have assumed months but clearly not.
A BIG news story yesterday was that republicans were angry that there would be live fact checking during the debate. So CNN got rid of that literally the afternoon of the debate. That makes a massive difference because it means that Biden now needed to actively refute the increasingly blatant lies in addition to getting his talking points across.
And the format always went against Biden. His stutter and aphasia do not mix well with short 3 minute responses. With proper debate prep and a focus on talking points, he is mostly good. We had a few moments but even when he was at his most feeble sounding he was fine. But once he had to respond to things like “you are a manchurian candidate” and “you are basically a Palestinian but a bad one”? Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
And that fucked Biden. Because that is not something a POTUS needs to be able to handle. If Kim Jong Un started talking like that during a meeting… we might literally invade North Korea. Almost all meaningful conversation between world leaders is basically heavily scripted speeches or closed door conversations where people acknowledge others are human.
But also? CNN didn’t even follow their own format. They repeatedly unmuted candidates (mostly trump but a few times Biden) so they could get a juicy comeback in.
I mean. Sure I guess?
So it was unfair. Sure.
But Biden and his camp didn’t need to agree to a debate. It was going to get them nothing. There was NOTHING to gain here and everything to lose.
And they lost… everything .
It shows that the Biden team isn’t capable of manging this election; it showed that Biden isn’t capable of offering the rhetoric it takes to win.
The Presidential role is a communications job. If he can’t do the communications part of this, he__cant__win.
It is always worth remembering. During one of (their last?) debates in 2020, trump made a comment that Biden took as an attack on Beau (it was actually Hunter). Biden went fucking ballistic and trump visibly cowered. That basically destroyed the strong man routine instantly and shut everyone up about “Biden is weak”. Another moment like that would have almost guaranteed a win.
But also? Biden is a traditional politician who believes that there should be a debate so that people can make informed decisions. So the usual Democrat bullshit of trying to play by the rules.
But ALSO: If Biden had refused then the news cycle would be nothing but “Biden is a coward” and “Biden is weak”.
There was no winning. But if there had been fact checking and the rules were even kind of adhered to and Biden hadn’t drank a bottle of Nyquil or whatever the fuck happened there? It would have been good. Hell, even just one of those would have probably led to a decisive win.
Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
That would be an understandable reaction from the average person but the president should be a lot more capable than the average person. Even if this specific sort of thing isn’t something he needs to be able to handle, he still needs to handle things a lot harder than this and his performance here isn’t reassuring me that he can. Trump is so predictably rude that Biden should have been totally ready for it.
Nobody has, to my knowledge, ever faulted Biden in a crisis (… well, except the zionism and racism but those are carefully considered platforms and not knee jerk reactions). I know I get a stutter when I need to say a LOT of technical jargon in a row and others have the same issue. When your goal is to get shit done, rather than to clown on someone, people are a lot more able to understand what is being said and will ask for clarification where needed.
It does not matter. If I have trouble saying something then the person I am talking to can immediately key in on “foo?” and I can nod and move on.
It has absolutely zero bearing on leadership unless a bunch of terrorists have taken a building hostage and will kill one person every time Biden stutters while going through an actor’s warm-up exercises. And if Biden hadn’t gone up there sounding like he was dead this would not be an issue outside of the most chuddy of morons and useful idiots.
The problem is that he had all the same stutters and aphasias he has had for decades but ALSO sounded feeble.
People having the metric of “President sounds good when throwing schoolyard insults at people” is how we got less than half of the country voting for the orange fuckstick.
They absolutely needed to. Biden can’t hide behind Covid protocol this time, he needs to be publicly visible far more in this campaign. Also whether it was mutual or not, Trump would use no debates as an attack against Biden.
I see both sides of what you are saying; but if this is what you get when you put the guy on stage?
Bro keep him under a rock. Its just much much more evidence that Biden can-not-be the candidate if we need to win this one.
If he was going to be that bad the democratic party shouldn’t have fought having a real primary.
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.
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 could also have ended all of his answers with “I’ll hand this back over to the convicted felon.”
He did at least get that in once. But yeah, it should have been a slam dunk.
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.
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.
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.
