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.
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…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op7IMFlE5do
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, it’s not too late. The convention is still 2 months out
Sure kid.