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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Pay attention, people. This is part of a Friday bad decision SCOTUS dump. Watch what they do, and remember that if you don't vote for Biden, you can expect more of it.
FOR FORTY YEARS.
If Trump wins, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are likely to retire, comfortable in the knowledge that Trump will appoint very young, very inexperienced, and very fascistic replacements. People who will erode the rule of law as much as they possibly can, destabilizing the country in the name of "small government."
Abortion? Outlawed. Contraception? On the chopping block too. LGBTQ+ rights? Gone. They will do everything they can to turn the clock back as far as possible.
And with young, stupid, easily manipulable conservatives on SCOTUS, you can rest assured that the damage will outlive you.
If you don't vote for Biden, get used to rulings like these and many, many more for the rest of your life.
Biden sucked last night and I have serious concerns about his physical and cognitive faculties to run the country.
But I'm still voting for him for reasons you mentioned.
That won't stop me from advocating for him to step down and put someone else up for the election, but if it comes down to it, I will still vote for Biden.
I'm less concerned about his cognitive faculties, though I definitely understand your concerns. Apparently, he was suffering from a gnarly cold last night, and he looked both tired and unwell (though he did better as the evening progressed).
Apparently he's feeling much better today, because he just finished up a rally and looked like his usual self again. Honestly, kind of fired up, in fact.
I think going forward with the debate was a mistake. He should have just rescheduled, and admitted he'd caught a cold. Yes, the right-wing would turn that into "he's on death's door," but that would have petered out, while the soundbites from this debate will have legs for a while.
The best case is the dems pushing him aside and going to fucking town with another candidate.
The second best, and possibly sleeper choice, is Biden taking this atrocious debate performance and going apeshit to fix it, by forcing the dems to follow his lead. Assuming he was feeling under the weather enough to cause that display. This could be turned around with enough pissed off energy behind it because that's what the Dems need to do: Step up, fire back, and actually fight fire with fire for once. No more of the upturned nose. They would gain supporters this way and if done correctly Biden would set himself up in a better position than prior to the debate.
You can guess, though, which one is a more dangerous decision.
With all due respect I appreciate the attempt at spin-doctoring what happened and giving an outlet for Biden, but I cannot conceive of how a cold warrants that performance for anyone who suffered through watching that. Even Trump did better while actively having COVID on stage back in the 2020 debates.
Many of us have been sounding the alarm of events like this that were matter-of-factly non-existent during, say, then-VP Biden's debates with the likes of Paul Ryan. I get why there's incumbent inertia behind Biden, but now is very little data that portends a good end to this election for Biden, relative to his standings in 2020.
In order to viably attain the "undecided" swing-voters, we need to meet them half-way and give them an outlet that doesn't place them into a dichotomous situation of voting for two people they clearly do not like.
Not really trying to "spin-doctor," because your concerns are legit. It's not just that he had a cold, after all. He may exercise regularly and be in good shape for an octogenarian, but he's still an octogenarian. Being sick likely means head and chest congestion, exhaustion, and a temperature - and those combined with the kind of speech impediment that gets worse when its sufferer is under stress... Well, it's not a good thing. It results in performances like last night. As he ages, perfect storms of bad luck like that will occur more often, and eventually his age will fully catch up to him.
We need to acknowledge things like that.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge that all in all, he's been a remarkably good president under extremely trying circumstances, and his predecessor - hopefully not his successor - is a felon and a con artist who will open the door for a fascist takeover of this country.
One is too old. The other is a nightmare and the death of this country.
These are all fair points and points I'm sure to raise in the months ahead should Biden remain the nominee, but the way I see it is that polls haven't budged; aggregate approval rating for Biden continues to decline. We can argue how much this debate hurt Biden, but we can all agree it certainly did not help. And if it didn't help, what else can be done and said that hasn't already been done and said over the past years? Polling isn't just hard to budge positively, but it's actively trending opposite to what we need, relative to Biden's position in 2020. If the case of saying, "look it's between the old guy, and the fascist twice-impeached convicted felon with 3 more trials to go and who tried to overturn a free and fair election" hasn't worked yet, what makes anyone think it's going to work in the coming months? Hel this desperation is what led the Biden campaign to accept this debate in the first place -- a risk gambit that simply did not pay off. A tough sell.
So what do we do?
Well, in my view Democrats restore some trust by Biden publicly and voluntarily acknowledging the situation head-on, stepping down, and opening up the convention. Democrats nominate someone half-ways young and charismatic -- Whitmer, Booker, Newsom, Buttigieg -- I don't particularly care -- and I think the freshness of a face and the addressing of youth will be enough to sway swing voters.
I do hope that happens. A graceful exit for Biden and a fresh-faced nominee could very well be the thing we need.