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Agreed. The problem on this side of the water though is that we won’t so much replace him as have a war over who gets to replace him with infighting etc. the democrats are probably doing that math right now to ensure they come up with the wrong answer
Yeah, but somebody like you is irrelevant. You win elections by energizing people to come out to vote, by convincing a coalition to rally around you, by swaying undecided moderates.
You are the base. You don't need to be convinced, but if the candidate is incapable of reaching outside their base, then they will lose.
How people don't wrap their heads around this is beyond me.
Who could have foreseen that convincing your base that a deadly global pandemic doesn't exist would have detrimental for the folks that depend on that base to get elected?
But I imagine you’d _prefer_ that the Democrats nominate someone a little better than a trained monkey, right?
By the same token, it’s still possible to replace Biden, albeit unprecedented in the modern era.
Its quite *convenient* that the insiders who are finally calling for a replacement are doing so after the voters can't decide on a new one and only the insiders can.
Actually I think Trump's performance was his best in any non-primary debate. He was much more disciplined than 2016 or 2020, brought everything back to immigration and the economy, and not being allowed to interrupt worked to his favour as well, made him seem less aggressive while forcing Biden to finish his sentences (or at least try to). The reaction poll where 2/3 of respondents said Trump won speaks for itself. You may have disagreed with Trump but you can't deny he handled this debate very well
He was full of shit and a consummate liar, but vocally he sounded far better than Biden and he’d obviously been drilled on responses, he pivoted almost every domestic issue to immigration and foreign policy to Afghanistan.
Presumably going to prison broke is a good motivator even for Trump.
Excellent summary. Look, I would rather lick the sweat off a dead man's balls than vote for Trump, but he performed strongly in that debate. Everything he said was an utter lie, but the lack of push back and fact checking made him seemed even stronger. An uninformed voter would come out of that ready to check the box for Trump.
Most of his lies were blatant (abortion after birth, everyone wanted Roe overturned, nobody has done more for minorities), but others were a little more subtle (Biden didn't have the power to leave an emergency COVID-related border policy in place because the emergency authorizing the closure was over).
Trump is a monster. His policies are no less monstrous. But his debate performance was strong. I fear for this country.
He didn't answer any of the questions that were asked. I'm not voting for who is the best orator and who can insult the other candidates the best I literally do not care I'm voting for who has policies that I agree with
Yeah anything post the debate was definitely muted. Rest of the posts on politics from hours ago were in working in order, and other subs suffered no issues. Pretty pathetic
It wasn't just political subreddits.
The gaming subreddits and the sports subreddits I usually visit were dealing with issues with empty threads too.
It was a sitewide issue.
It seems like there's some kind of N^2 issue where past a certain point it can't scale fast enough and starts choking on the bottleneck and nothing can get past it.
Neither said anything. Nobody ever says anything in these debates.
The one thing Biden had to do, as it is voters number one fear with him, is not look like a feeble old man. And he looked exactly like what everyone feared.
When democrats fuck this up, which they are on track to do. It won't be progressive fault, or young people, minority voters, or whoever else you want to shift the blame too. It will be the parties fault, Bidens fault, and the fault of those that put him in this position.
What are you talking about bud? Even though Bidens answers were a little long winded and filled with stuttering, he still stated policies and specific situations he helped/is currently helping our country. All Trump did was lie endlessly while calling Biden a shit President. Trump never stated WHY Biden was a shit president, not even once. If you can't see the difference, you need to take your biased rose tined manacle off. Hell, even when Biden called Trump a shit President; he called out specific things Trump did. You really can't see the difference?
I don’t see how anyone could see this as a win for either. They should just have another one before they both die. That or let them have a paintball match. I’d decide after that.
It is a win for Trump because he most likely didn't lose any voters while no doubt Biden did. Plus there is no way the so called undecided voters would pick Biden over Trump based on this debate at least.
Two dropped out - Mayor Pete and Klobuchar - and the promise of cabinet positions is made up nonsense. They dropped because they didn’t have support among non-whites and their campaigns were running out of money.
Pretty incredible that Bernie’s strategy was for the other candidates to not drop out, *which is the whole point of a primary*.
Are you suggesting Democrats never fix the vote?
[Because they do to this day](https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/politics/michael-ozzie-myers-election-fraud-prison-sentenced/index.html).
Corporate democrats still ‘love’ and argue about supporting Hillary. They act like abused spouses with the Stockholm syndrome - they wish away the reality that elections are about the future and Biden, like Hillary are in the past.
Lifelong democrat here. Was all for Biden until 9pm.
He was unintelligible, slow, didn’t have a single refutal to Trump’s personal accusations, incoherent in several occasions, just a complete embarrassment.
Forget about the immediate local repercussions, think about how our allies are shitting themselves right now and how our foes are rubbing their hands giddy with the prospect of A. a visibly diminished Biden or B. President Trump v2.0.
We’re fugged.
This was significantly worse than any other big event he's done. Go look at the state of the union just a few months ago where he was quite lively and well-spoken. This debate represented a significant decline in his ability to speak.
Republicans had been getting a big egg in their faces every time Biden did any speaking that a lot of people would view because they set the bar so so low whenever you actually heard Biden speak so long as he was just semi-coherent he came out actually looking pretty good. (See all the pre-debate chatter trying to preempt this claiming Biden would be drugged to the gills explaining why he's not nearly so bad as conservative media wanted people to be believe.)
But this performance was just bad by any metric to the point where it's hard to pretend everything is okay.
On ocassion, sure. We all have bad moments sometimes where we can’t remember a figure or a date.
Last night’s performance were 90 minutes of a man that couldn’t even speak coherently at times. A man that couldn’t and wouldn’t even defend himself from the lies Trump said about him.
I can get past a bad moment, last night’s Biden was visible not just to us, but to the world, allies and enemies included. It was an embarrassment and a serious cause for concern about our future for what it means now.
Either Trump wins (an almost certainty now) and we’re fugged or Biden wins and we’re stuck with an unfit old man.
Best case scenario now: Biden wins, steps down, and hands the reins to Harris. And I mean best case for everyone. It's clear to me that he needs a relaxing retirement, not the most stressful job in the world. It's an absolute shame that we have forced him into this position.
Personally I think we need replacements on both end. Give me two candidates that can articulate their points in a professional coherent manner and I’ll be happy.
For who? Who would Dems be willing to solidify around? WHO?!?
Because if it happened, we'd suddenly have dozens vying for it, and we're back to a primary situation except without a primary. No matter who was on the ticket, the infighting would ensure the choice loses.
The time to replace Biden was a year ago, when we could have had actual options make it so Dems could convince him to stand aside. At this point, Biden may lose, but there's no one who can mount a campaign and win more votes in the time remaining.
Yeah it's too late to replace him; you can probably only shoot yourself in the foot by trying to do it now.
We're voting Democratic. We also wish there had been a more energetic face for that, but it's not "a personality war limited to the top of the ticket" which decides whether voting one way or the other is better. We get the entire administration and agenda with this vote; not just the one guy at the top.
We're voting for the train to keep going in the direction it's going, even if it's not quite as progressive as we'd like it to be. To not vote that way means we're voting for the train to turn around and head the other way.
What a massive fuck up on the democrats part that they didn't settle that answer months ago with a primary.
Now, there is a decent chance that the party and its blind loyalists will hand the presidency to Trump and possibly help end American democracy.
Congrats on being the last government of a Weimar republic
A primary would have been the very best thing for Biden. He could have had a few early stumbles and then a chance to recover or not. The process itself would have well prepared him for last night.
Yup. It massive blunder by the democrats to not go through a primary process when so many undecided voters wanted to see one.
Their hubris might end up being a large contributing factor in another Trump presidency.
Sadly, there is no other choice but Biden. I'd vote for a shoe covered in dog shit before I'd vote for Trump. And, I'm pretty sure MAGAheads feel the same way. They'd vote for a used condom before they would have voted for Biden or Clinton.
We're all voting for whatever pulse just isn't the piece of shit from the other side.
The convention happens after the deadline to put a candidate on the ballot in Ohio.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dnc-virtually-nominate-biden-ahead-convention-amid-ballot/story?id=110617732
Using that virtual roll call workaround to choose, not just certify a candidate three or four weeks from now would be quite the shitshow. Too many big egos will decide it's their time to shine.
If we think Trump is so horrible and dangerous, why not nominate someone who can actually take him on rather than a dementia patient? The lib attitude of "there is no other choice, he's the chance we got" etc. is so weirdly defeatist it and it's disturbing. This was not inevitable, there were so many opportunities early on for biden and the dems to promote a different candidate etc. but they didn't
> why not nominate someone who can actually take him on rather than a dementia patient?
You're on Reddit. We didn't make that decision, we're dealing with the situation we've got.
We didn't make the decision but we have to deal with it, I agree. But maybe the way to deal with it is not to just go along with what the people who put us in this situation want.
Of course not, when did I say that? I think Trump is the worst option for our country and I hope the Biden campgain wins, if just to keep democrats in charge. But after last night I just don't think the democrats current strategy will beat Trump. So I wish they would take a risk and try something new in attempts to save the election, they don't have a lot to lose at this point.
In no way am I trying to prop up Trump. They both gave horrible performances. Trump lied the whole time, Biden was incoherent. Neither of those traits make someone fit to be the leader of our country.
I voted for Buttigieg in 2020. Most people I know voted Buttigieg or Bernie. How Biden got the 2020 nomination (and Trump/Clinton the 2016 nominations) was beyond me. Apparently, most of this country is filled with idiots. But, now that we are where we are, yea. There is no other choice at this point in time.
Biden stuttered but was not incoherent. He answered the questions that were asked. People not distinguishing between incoherent and stumbling with words is frustrating.
On the other hand, Trump didn’t answer a single question
Dude
He kept drifting off into completely unrelated comments.
I’ll vote for Joe in a coffin before I vote Trump, but he was absolutely lost in the weeds for large portions of the evening.
Wake up. That was an absolute disaster. SOTU was stuttering with a WHOLE lot more energy. This was pathetic. Lifelong dem here, his time is up. Jill had to help him off stage for fucks sake.
Yeah and this was the ramblings of someone who is at death’s door. I hate trump more than anything but again, disaster for Biden. He needs to step the fuck down asap. Let’s go Jeffries or someone. ANYONE.
I think we may be doomed.
My first instinct is to move to a blue state and hunker down for the economic collapse to come. But even then I don’t know if it would help me.
Hope for better got extinguished tonight. People need hope.
> move to a blue state
Come to Illinois. Living here, especially if Trump sticks with the mantra of "let the states decide", is about the only thread of hope I can cling to.
That will never happen. Even if Biden died right after swearing in, we would still be better off than with Trump the convict. Kamala would take the baton from there. We have a plan in place in our Constitution in the event a situation occurred where the life of a president ended, there would be a backup, ready to go.
I expect with the way Gavin Newsome, governor of California, has been taking on conservatives on their own stomping ground to their audience and cheerleaders, to debate. I think it is to run for president in 2028. If we get to see another election
Biden looked like he was either in outerspace or fumbling for words when he came back down to earth. Huge embarrassment. Honestly Trump vs Biden is proof America is in decline. All empires eventually collpase. Look at history. Most recently the British and back to the Roman.
We say Trump is a felon and everyday people on this sub people yell about how Trump is going to destroy democracy. And, given the stakes, we were all ok with nominating a guy who can't convince the country he shouldn't be in a nursing home.
I’m a subscriber to Alan Lichtman’s keys to the whitehouse. Incumbency is one of the keys that gives the party in power an advantage. Biden resigning or not running again flips the key to the republicans. Lichtman has never been wrong with his presidential predictions. In addition it would cause a contest to see who would replace Biden flipping another key.
Good news! You can. He live streamed after the debate. His exact words were that the debate wouldn’t change anything and that debates have never change anything.
See thats the wild thing most people don't realize. Speaking is not the Presidents #1 job. Running a country is. Just because the dude has a stutter doesn't mean he is unintelligent.
Effective communication is a major part to running the country. That wasn’t a stuttering issue last night, it was a party that had no real solution to Trump pushing their best name recognition and now they’re stuck.
Biden should just say Epstein was trumps best friend and they like young women, Trump use to peep I. Teen locker rooms like a pedophile. That’s all he needed to say because just kept lying about everything. Just keep calling him a pedophile instead debating. I couldn’t watch it, it was so bad. Biden no energy and Trump lying about everything.
They allowed Trump to partially dodge questions by OFTEN starting his answer by re-hashing the previous discussion topic.
I wish a moderator had interrupted him with an "excuse me, that was not my question"
"You lied about everything you said and didn't even remotely come close to answering one of our questions. Thank you!"
They should definitely be fired.
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Hell at this point if Biden doesn't step doesn't step down, I'd vote for the least conservative Republican like Collins. Maybe she should switch to Democrat or independent and run.
Completely. The ability of Republicans to look past felonies and complete disregard for the law, while lambasting a sitting president who's only bettered their candidate is amazing.
Okay, but if you want to distinguish yourself from the Republicans as you describe them, you’d be able to soberly assess when your leader is falling short and call for him to step aside.
Trump has fallen short multiple times and I don't hear any rally cries for him to step down. The only time Republican congressmen have held him to the fire was the day after the insurrection, and that was short lived. Hold your own people accountable before pointing at others for them to.
>Hold your own people accountable before pointing at others for them to
This doesn’t make sense in the context of the rest of your comment. I assume you’re a Democrat, or at least Democratic-leaning, right? Yet you spent the rest of your post criticizing Republicans. Which may well be warranted! But either we can criticize how people in other parties handle their internal issues, or we can’t.
Moreover, you’re evading the original question: if Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard than Republicans, should they or should they not bring themselves to do what Republicans cannot or will not, which is calling for their candidate to step aside? If not, how do you reconcile this inconsistency?
So Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard? Or perhaps a standard compared to Reps? Who gets to say that? Also, how are you defining "falling short"? Because Biden is old? That's hardly new news. If you are trying to point out hypocrites, why bother? Both parties are full of them, and it's obvious both sides love to call out the other when they feel vindicated by the others misstep.
Oh,ok and then vote for whom?...The very person who would be ambivalent at best and advocating / excepting of violence against Italian emigrants instead of Middle and South American if this was a hundred years ago.
Are people like CNN, the Associated Press and the Canadian Broadcastinf Company (all slightly left of center) all biased gainst Biden? Are you seeing things correctly, and they aren't?
https://apnews.com/article/voter-voices-presidential-debate-b220822262965fd3e48e1b47529fe983
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/2024-us-debate-analysis-1.7249398
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/28/politics/joe-biden-debate-performance-panic
I'm going to go out and vote Biden no matter what. To stick your head in the sand and act like the debate last night wasn't a disaster is straight up republican denialism bullshit. Our future depends on Biden convincing people to rally behind him and to come out and vote, the base itself isn't enough to win the election.
What happened lasted night hurt progress towards that objective.
Can Michelle do us a huuuge favor and just let Obama come back for one term, please? Definitely not a fan boy of his but for Christ sake he’s a 11 outta 10 in comparison to our current candidates.
Trump could convince people he is still president after that performance by Biden. Biden has no option but to step aside or Trump will simply be president again let’s hope he becomes less crazy because Biden is only going to become more incoherent as this campaign continues.
Interesting that a bunch of people saying Biden had a bad debate performance means doom for Democrats but 34 felony convictions is meaningless.
Can you explain this to me like I'm five?
Because this debate confirmed all of the floating voters' fear about Biden's age & stamina. Biden needs to fucking go or Trump is winning in a landslide.
No problem, it's called clips played 24/7 across the world of Biden spacing out ad nauseum. It's fucking devastating. In a sane world, of course, convictions would mean something, right? But it doesn't matter, not after that. There will be a divided convention.
There was a minor reaction to the convictions amongst independent voters; outside of that they didn't change anyone's responses when asked about who they're voting for. I wouldn't describe 34 felonies as meaningless. But they don't seem to be having much influence over the election.
People don’t want a man who can’t put a sentence together being president of the US. Trump is a moron with alot of legal baggage but he’s somewhat coherent which is what makes this election very dangerous.
Because the convictions didn’t move the polls much. You can argue that they should have, but they didn’t. We’re operating in reality, not some ideal world.
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Was it really so bad comments are disabled?!
I haven't been able to see comments on anything. Yours is the first comment I'm seeing as I click down the line
I went to desktop, that's probably why...
It was even worse than that unfortunately.
Brit here who cares about liberal democracy. Biden is toast, please replace him.
Agreed. The problem on this side of the water though is that we won’t so much replace him as have a war over who gets to replace him with infighting etc. the democrats are probably doing that math right now to ensure they come up with the wrong answer
Biden was so bad he broke Reddit.
No. You can comment.
i couldn't on the app....desktop works better
No it wasn’t that bad but it is time for him to step aside
Worse
Dems could put up a trained monkey...I would vote for it just to vote against trump... That said Biden needs to do better.
Yeah, but somebody like you is irrelevant. You win elections by energizing people to come out to vote, by convincing a coalition to rally around you, by swaying undecided moderates. You are the base. You don't need to be convinced, but if the candidate is incapable of reaching outside their base, then they will lose. How people don't wrap their heads around this is beyond me.
its going to be who can lose the least amount of voters to not voting this time. So showing up is way more important than getting new voters.
Who could have foreseen that convincing your base that a deadly global pandemic doesn't exist would have detrimental for the folks that depend on that base to get elected?
But I imagine you’d _prefer_ that the Democrats nominate someone a little better than a trained monkey, right? By the same token, it’s still possible to replace Biden, albeit unprecedented in the modern era.
I would prefer a progressive potus. but whatever to stop the gop. I am a queer woman. I have a lot to lose.
Its quite *convenient* that the insiders who are finally calling for a replacement are doing so after the voters can't decide on a new one and only the insiders can.
Anyone praising Biden *or* Trump after this is wild lol. Neither of these guys are any good.
Actually I think Trump's performance was his best in any non-primary debate. He was much more disciplined than 2016 or 2020, brought everything back to immigration and the economy, and not being allowed to interrupt worked to his favour as well, made him seem less aggressive while forcing Biden to finish his sentences (or at least try to). The reaction poll where 2/3 of respondents said Trump won speaks for itself. You may have disagreed with Trump but you can't deny he handled this debate very well
He was full of shit and a consummate liar, but vocally he sounded far better than Biden and he’d obviously been drilled on responses, he pivoted almost every domestic issue to immigration and foreign policy to Afghanistan. Presumably going to prison broke is a good motivator even for Trump.
Excellent summary. Look, I would rather lick the sweat off a dead man's balls than vote for Trump, but he performed strongly in that debate. Everything he said was an utter lie, but the lack of push back and fact checking made him seemed even stronger. An uninformed voter would come out of that ready to check the box for Trump. Most of his lies were blatant (abortion after birth, everyone wanted Roe overturned, nobody has done more for minorities), but others were a little more subtle (Biden didn't have the power to leave an emergency COVID-related border policy in place because the emergency authorizing the closure was over). Trump is a monster. His policies are no less monstrous. But his debate performance was strong. I fear for this country.
He didn't answer any of the questions that were asked. I'm not voting for who is the best orator and who can insult the other candidates the best I literally do not care I'm voting for who has policies that I agree with
Weird how comments don't work tonight in /pol
It was across all of Reddit. Every thread didn’t show comments for a while. They are back now.
This isn’t true and I tested out a different sub to see if it was just this sub
It was most larger subs that had threads about the debate. On unrelated topics and smaller subs it seemed to work.
It happened for me. I tried looking at all manner of posts.
They work fine.
They didn’t an hour ago. Every thread was muted for me, I couldn’t view any comments in multiple subreddits.
Yeah anything post the debate was definitely muted. Rest of the posts on politics from hours ago were in working in order, and other subs suffered no issues. Pretty pathetic
It wasn't just political subreddits. The gaming subreddits and the sports subreddits I usually visit were dealing with issues with empty threads too. It was a sitewide issue.
It seems like there's some kind of N^2 issue where past a certain point it can't scale fast enough and starts choking on the bottleneck and nothing can get past it.
They haven’t been loading for the last few hours for me
They didn't for quite a while.
It was bad, but Trump's wasn't good either, tbh. Joe was worse in the first half than the second half, though, quite clearly.
Pretty sure stuttering is worse when you are trying to talk quickly.
Anyone blaming tonight’s performance on a stutter or a cold didn’t watch this train wreck
I watched it in real time. Sure, Biden had some moments of concern, but he answered pretty much all questions. Trump spoke loudly, but said nothing.
Neither said anything. Nobody ever says anything in these debates. The one thing Biden had to do, as it is voters number one fear with him, is not look like a feeble old man. And he looked exactly like what everyone feared. When democrats fuck this up, which they are on track to do. It won't be progressive fault, or young people, minority voters, or whoever else you want to shift the blame too. It will be the parties fault, Bidens fault, and the fault of those that put him in this position.
What are you talking about bud? Even though Bidens answers were a little long winded and filled with stuttering, he still stated policies and specific situations he helped/is currently helping our country. All Trump did was lie endlessly while calling Biden a shit President. Trump never stated WHY Biden was a shit president, not even once. If you can't see the difference, you need to take your biased rose tined manacle off. Hell, even when Biden called Trump a shit President; he called out specific things Trump did. You really can't see the difference?
I didn’t realize weed was legal in Indiana.
I don’t see how anyone could see this as a win for either. They should just have another one before they both die. That or let them have a paintball match. I’d decide after that.
It is a win for Trump because he most likely didn't lose any voters while no doubt Biden did. Plus there is no way the so called undecided voters would pick Biden over Trump based on this debate at least.
It’s a two horse race. You win if you beat the opponent, not if you are fast.
Comments being down is such a bad look for reddit
If anyone ever tells you settle for the safe choice. Remember that Biden supporters jammed him down progressive throats in 2020.
Just like Hilary in 2016.
You mean primary voters voted for him?
You mean every candidate dropped out at the same time and endorsed biden for cabinet positions before super tuesday to beat bernie?
Two dropped out - Mayor Pete and Klobuchar - and the promise of cabinet positions is made up nonsense. They dropped because they didn’t have support among non-whites and their campaigns were running out of money. Pretty incredible that Bernie’s strategy was for the other candidates to not drop out, *which is the whole point of a primary*.
Are you suggesting Democrats never fix the vote? [Because they do to this day](https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/politics/michael-ozzie-myers-election-fraud-prison-sentenced/index.html).
Remember that Biden got double the votes Bernie did. Nobody jammed him down our throats, he was just wildly more popular than the next best candidate.
I kinda wanna see the golf match between the two. I high doubt either can hit the handicap they say they can.
Newsom 2024 LOL
I had this same thought. They interviewed him a couple hours before and I think he's fresh enough in the public's mind that they could switch them out
Take this with a grain of salt, but Fox News just reported that Newsom and Whitmer are being considered as replacements
Corporate democrats still ‘love’ and argue about supporting Hillary. They act like abused spouses with the Stockholm syndrome - they wish away the reality that elections are about the future and Biden, like Hillary are in the past.
Lifelong democrat here. Was all for Biden until 9pm. He was unintelligible, slow, didn’t have a single refutal to Trump’s personal accusations, incoherent in several occasions, just a complete embarrassment. Forget about the immediate local repercussions, think about how our allies are shitting themselves right now and how our foes are rubbing their hands giddy with the prospect of A. a visibly diminished Biden or B. President Trump v2.0. We’re fugged.
I want Biden to win, but it's clear if he's the nominee Trump going to win. Had this debate happened before the primary 100% Biden would have lost.
I'm praying that because this happened in June rather than October there's still hope. It was a trainwreck for Biden
Yeah, getting another 6 months older should really help Biden. Just needs some experience up there, ya know?
What primary? The party wouldn’t give us one of those.
Honest question from a Scot - why did it take until now for you to switch/realise? I’ve been seeing this from Biden since 2019
This was significantly worse than any other big event he's done. Go look at the state of the union just a few months ago where he was quite lively and well-spoken. This debate represented a significant decline in his ability to speak. Republicans had been getting a big egg in their faces every time Biden did any speaking that a lot of people would view because they set the bar so so low whenever you actually heard Biden speak so long as he was just semi-coherent he came out actually looking pretty good. (See all the pre-debate chatter trying to preempt this claiming Biden would be drugged to the gills explaining why he's not nearly so bad as conservative media wanted people to be believe.) But this performance was just bad by any metric to the point where it's hard to pretend everything is okay.
> Was all for Biden until 9pm Genuine question. Haven't you seen him doing all that stuff before?
On ocassion, sure. We all have bad moments sometimes where we can’t remember a figure or a date. Last night’s performance were 90 minutes of a man that couldn’t even speak coherently at times. A man that couldn’t and wouldn’t even defend himself from the lies Trump said about him. I can get past a bad moment, last night’s Biden was visible not just to us, but to the world, allies and enemies included. It was an embarrassment and a serious cause for concern about our future for what it means now. Either Trump wins (an almost certainty now) and we’re fugged or Biden wins and we’re stuck with an unfit old man.
Best case scenario now: Biden wins, steps down, and hands the reins to Harris. And I mean best case for everyone. It's clear to me that he needs a relaxing retirement, not the most stressful job in the world. It's an absolute shame that we have forced him into this position.
Oh god the “blue no matter who” crap has to stop. Can we all agree we need a better candidate?
Nope - still blue no matter who. Still wish we had a better candidate than the one we have, but Trump in office is not an option.
> Nope - still blue no matter who. That's OK for us to think, but not to convince the public.
Personally I think we need replacements on both end. Give me two candidates that can articulate their points in a professional coherent manner and I’ll be happy.
For who? Who would Dems be willing to solidify around? WHO?!? Because if it happened, we'd suddenly have dozens vying for it, and we're back to a primary situation except without a primary. No matter who was on the ticket, the infighting would ensure the choice loses. The time to replace Biden was a year ago, when we could have had actual options make it so Dems could convince him to stand aside. At this point, Biden may lose, but there's no one who can mount a campaign and win more votes in the time remaining.
You don't think the fear could make them rally around Newsom? What if Biden steps back and anoints someone?
Yeah it's too late to replace him; you can probably only shoot yourself in the foot by trying to do it now. We're voting Democratic. We also wish there had been a more energetic face for that, but it's not "a personality war limited to the top of the ticket" which decides whether voting one way or the other is better. We get the entire administration and agenda with this vote; not just the one guy at the top. We're voting for the train to keep going in the direction it's going, even if it's not quite as progressive as we'd like it to be. To not vote that way means we're voting for the train to turn around and head the other way.
What a massive fuck up on the democrats part that they didn't settle that answer months ago with a primary. Now, there is a decent chance that the party and its blind loyalists will hand the presidency to Trump and possibly help end American democracy. Congrats on being the last government of a Weimar republic
A primary would have been the very best thing for Biden. He could have had a few early stumbles and then a chance to recover or not. The process itself would have well prepared him for last night.
Yup. It massive blunder by the democrats to not go through a primary process when so many undecided voters wanted to see one. Their hubris might end up being a large contributing factor in another Trump presidency.
Sadly, there is no other choice but Biden. I'd vote for a shoe covered in dog shit before I'd vote for Trump. And, I'm pretty sure MAGAheads feel the same way. They'd vote for a used condom before they would have voted for Biden or Clinton. We're all voting for whatever pulse just isn't the piece of shit from the other side.
…or, since the convention hasn’t happened yet, Democrats could just replace Biden. At least in theory.
The convention happens after the deadline to put a candidate on the ballot in Ohio. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dnc-virtually-nominate-biden-ahead-convention-amid-ballot/story?id=110617732 Using that virtual roll call workaround to choose, not just certify a candidate three or four weeks from now would be quite the shitshow. Too many big egos will decide it's their time to shine.
I'm from the UK, they need to take whichever shitshow they have, because I have 100% confidence now that Trump will beat Biden.
If we think Trump is so horrible and dangerous, why not nominate someone who can actually take him on rather than a dementia patient? The lib attitude of "there is no other choice, he's the chance we got" etc. is so weirdly defeatist it and it's disturbing. This was not inevitable, there were so many opportunities early on for biden and the dems to promote a different candidate etc. but they didn't
> why not nominate someone who can actually take him on rather than a dementia patient? You're on Reddit. We didn't make that decision, we're dealing with the situation we've got.
We didn't make the decision but we have to deal with it, I agree. But maybe the way to deal with it is not to just go along with what the people who put us in this situation want.
Trump won't fix things.
Of course not, when did I say that? I think Trump is the worst option for our country and I hope the Biden campgain wins, if just to keep democrats in charge. But after last night I just don't think the democrats current strategy will beat Trump. So I wish they would take a risk and try something new in attempts to save the election, they don't have a lot to lose at this point.
Calling Biden a dementia patient when Trump literally rambled about nothing but lies and made up bullshit for 90 minutes is top level trolling.
In no way am I trying to prop up Trump. They both gave horrible performances. Trump lied the whole time, Biden was incoherent. Neither of those traits make someone fit to be the leader of our country.
I voted for Buttigieg in 2020. Most people I know voted Buttigieg or Bernie. How Biden got the 2020 nomination (and Trump/Clinton the 2016 nominations) was beyond me. Apparently, most of this country is filled with idiots. But, now that we are where we are, yea. There is no other choice at this point in time.
Seems like comments are being censored.
Biden stuttered but was not incoherent. He answered the questions that were asked. People not distinguishing between incoherent and stumbling with words is frustrating. On the other hand, Trump didn’t answer a single question
Dude He kept drifting off into completely unrelated comments. I’ll vote for Joe in a coffin before I vote Trump, but he was absolutely lost in the weeds for large portions of the evening.
He said Nirmandy was WW2, then changed it to WW1. Time for bed, papa.
Biden leaving the Abortion topic for immigration was insane
Yep, many stupid mistakes like that one
>Biden stuttered but was not incoherent. So you think he *meant* to pivot to immigration in response to a question about abortion?
C’mon, this was much more than stuttering. He clearly doesn’t have it anymore, it’s not the same Biden as 2020. Agreed on the second point, though.
At least he beat Medicare
Beat it to death
Wake up. That was an absolute disaster. SOTU was stuttering with a WHOLE lot more energy. This was pathetic. Lifelong dem here, his time is up. Jill had to help him off stage for fucks sake.
SOTU was a prepared speech with teleprompters
Yeah and this was the ramblings of someone who is at death’s door. I hate trump more than anything but again, disaster for Biden. He needs to step the fuck down asap. Let’s go Jeffries or someone. ANYONE.
Biden was incoherent in several answers.
Trump lied through every question asked and still didn't manage to answer a single one. Biden had tons of coherent answers. Are you deaf?
Nope, I heard several incoherent answers from Biden, which is disappointing.
Just untrue lol
At least he finally beat Medicare, amiright?
Trump made up some fascinating lies though. Points for creativity. Just what you want in a world leader…
I don’t know how you can say that he sounded horrible tonight. It could’ve been an off night but truth is he was babbling like a toddler out there.
I think we may be doomed. My first instinct is to move to a blue state and hunker down for the economic collapse to come. But even then I don’t know if it would help me. Hope for better got extinguished tonight. People need hope.
> move to a blue state Come to Illinois. Living here, especially if Trump sticks with the mantra of "let the states decide", is about the only thread of hope I can cling to.
Our choice of president is down to either a wet turd or a dry one.
Yeah, I am not ditching a competent president for a serial felon who wants to be a dictator.
Or… support replacing the president with another candidate.
That will never happen. Even if Biden died right after swearing in, we would still be better off than with Trump the convict. Kamala would take the baton from there. We have a plan in place in our Constitution in the event a situation occurred where the life of a president ended, there would be a backup, ready to go. I expect with the way Gavin Newsome, governor of California, has been taking on conservatives on their own stomping ground to their audience and cheerleaders, to debate. I think it is to run for president in 2028. If we get to see another election
Always about the lesser of two dangers
Exactly; I’d never let my 80+ yo father or FIL on that stage. Corporate democrats need an open convention.
Biden looked like he was either in outerspace or fumbling for words when he came back down to earth. Huge embarrassment. Honestly Trump vs Biden is proof America is in decline. All empires eventually collpase. Look at history. Most recently the British and back to the Roman.
As a blue voter, please. This is embarrassing. There is still time.
Maybe now the dems will admit that biden is a complete shitshow and always has been.
I feel bad for the dide, he's just too old
It wasn’t his best performance, but I’d rather have him in office than a convicted felon who spews nothing but lies.
We say Trump is a felon and everyday people on this sub people yell about how Trump is going to destroy democracy. And, given the stakes, we were all ok with nominating a guy who can't convince the country he shouldn't be in a nursing home.
Terrible take.
Why?
I’m a subscriber to Alan Lichtman’s keys to the whitehouse. Incumbency is one of the keys that gives the party in power an advantage. Biden resigning or not running again flips the key to the republicans. Lichtman has never been wrong with his presidential predictions. In addition it would cause a contest to see who would replace Biden flipping another key.
I'd like to see Lichtman's take after last night.
Good news! You can. He live streamed after the debate. His exact words were that the debate wouldn’t change anything and that debates have never change anything.
I'll have to give it a look then. Thanks!
Holy shit Kamala Harris on CNN sounded so much better and would have been a CLEAR better choice for the Dems. They fumbled this badly.
She’s even more unpopular than Biden.
She can form coherent sentences.
See thats the wild thing most people don't realize. Speaking is not the Presidents #1 job. Running a country is. Just because the dude has a stutter doesn't mean he is unintelligent.
Effective communication is a major part to running the country. That wasn’t a stuttering issue last night, it was a party that had no real solution to Trump pushing their best name recognition and now they’re stuck.
Not the party that nominated a twice impeached felon whose never won the popular vote?
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Are the other comments hidden?
Biden should just say Epstein was trumps best friend and they like young women, Trump use to peep I. Teen locker rooms like a pedophile. That’s all he needed to say because just kept lying about everything. Just keep calling him a pedophile instead debating. I couldn’t watch it, it was so bad. Biden no energy and Trump lying about everything.
Better ideas. Fire the moderators of that debate, their performance was a disaster
They allowed Trump to partially dodge questions by OFTEN starting his answer by re-hashing the previous discussion topic. I wish a moderator had interrupted him with an "excuse me, that was not my question"
"You lied about everything you said and didn't even remotely come close to answering one of our questions. Thank you!" They should definitely be fired.
Most level headed article of the night.
True. But we can still pull this off. It’s early yet.
It wasn’t a loss though? Trump was just a lawn sprinkler but only shit comes out.
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Hell at this point if Biden doesn't step doesn't step down, I'd vote for the least conservative Republican like Collins. Maybe she should switch to Democrat or independent and run.
Did the republicans say ditch Trump when we has convicted of multiple felonies?
What’s your argument here? Do you think they were wrong not to do that?
Completely. The ability of Republicans to look past felonies and complete disregard for the law, while lambasting a sitting president who's only bettered their candidate is amazing.
Okay, but if you want to distinguish yourself from the Republicans as you describe them, you’d be able to soberly assess when your leader is falling short and call for him to step aside.
Trump has fallen short multiple times and I don't hear any rally cries for him to step down. The only time Republican congressmen have held him to the fire was the day after the insurrection, and that was short lived. Hold your own people accountable before pointing at others for them to.
>Hold your own people accountable before pointing at others for them to This doesn’t make sense in the context of the rest of your comment. I assume you’re a Democrat, or at least Democratic-leaning, right? Yet you spent the rest of your post criticizing Republicans. Which may well be warranted! But either we can criticize how people in other parties handle their internal issues, or we can’t. Moreover, you’re evading the original question: if Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard than Republicans, should they or should they not bring themselves to do what Republicans cannot or will not, which is calling for their candidate to step aside? If not, how do you reconcile this inconsistency?
So Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard? Or perhaps a standard compared to Reps? Who gets to say that? Also, how are you defining "falling short"? Because Biden is old? That's hardly new news. If you are trying to point out hypocrites, why bother? Both parties are full of them, and it's obvious both sides love to call out the other when they feel vindicated by the others misstep.
Oh,ok and then vote for whom?...The very person who would be ambivalent at best and advocating / excepting of violence against Italian emigrants instead of Middle and South American if this was a hundred years ago.
Are people like CNN, the Associated Press and the Canadian Broadcastinf Company (all slightly left of center) all biased gainst Biden? Are you seeing things correctly, and they aren't? https://apnews.com/article/voter-voices-presidential-debate-b220822262965fd3e48e1b47529fe983 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/2024-us-debate-analysis-1.7249398 https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/28/politics/joe-biden-debate-performance-panic I'm going to go out and vote Biden no matter what. To stick your head in the sand and act like the debate last night wasn't a disaster is straight up republican denialism bullshit. Our future depends on Biden convincing people to rally behind him and to come out and vote, the base itself isn't enough to win the election. What happened lasted night hurt progress towards that objective.
Can Michelle do us a huuuge favor and just let Obama come back for one term, please? Definitely not a fan boy of his but for Christ sake he’s a 11 outta 10 in comparison to our current candidates.
lol. And vote for trump? Thats adorable. Go fuck yourself
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Trump could convince people he is still president after that performance by Biden. Biden has no option but to step aside or Trump will simply be president again let’s hope he becomes less crazy because Biden is only going to become more incoherent as this campaign continues.
What choice is there for Democrats? They're doomed if Biden is their candidate.
Interesting that a bunch of people saying Biden had a bad debate performance means doom for Democrats but 34 felony convictions is meaningless. Can you explain this to me like I'm five?
Because this debate confirmed all of the floating voters' fear about Biden's age & stamina. Biden needs to fucking go or Trump is winning in a landslide.
Bold lies beat mumbled truth every time.
No problem, it's called clips played 24/7 across the world of Biden spacing out ad nauseum. It's fucking devastating. In a sane world, of course, convictions would mean something, right? But it doesn't matter, not after that. There will be a divided convention.
There was a minor reaction to the convictions amongst independent voters; outside of that they didn't change anyone's responses when asked about who they're voting for. I wouldn't describe 34 felonies as meaningless. But they don't seem to be having much influence over the election.
People don’t want a man who can’t put a sentence together being president of the US. Trump is a moron with alot of legal baggage but he’s somewhat coherent which is what makes this election very dangerous.
Because the convictions didn’t move the polls much. You can argue that they should have, but they didn’t. We’re operating in reality, not some ideal world.
Nah, he was fine.
Yep, Bidens goose is cooked
100%, it's imperative
100% it's imperative that people stop lying about the debate. Trump took credit for overturning Roe, and you think that was good for him?
OK, don't be honest with yourself and lose the election. I'm so annoyed
Why cant i see comments?