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.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          It’s not about the diehard voters. It’s about the the undecided voters. Which presumes they’d be fine with either.

          • VoterFrog@lemmy.world
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            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.

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      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.

    • nieceandtows@programming.dev
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      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)

    • Psycoder@lemmy.world
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      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.

  • rainynight65@feddit.de
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    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.

  • 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.

    • EurekaStockade@lemmy.world
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      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?

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        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.

          • I make no excuses. We’ve seen what Trump presidencies look like; the last was bumbling and did massive damage to civil rights, the next won’t be. Project 2025 ensures that.

            Biden’s biggest crime has been supporting Israel. His presidency was categorically and measurably better for the US than Trump’s. Aside from Palestine, he wasn’t a bad president. Now, if Trump wasn’t saying that Israel isn’t going far enough; if Trump were supporting Palestine, then there’d be something to talk about. But he isn’t, and he did terrible things to our country while in charge, and should never be allowed near the White House again.

  • warm@kbin.earth
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    Are all American “debates” like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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.

    • hypnoton@discuss.online
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      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.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        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.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        No. I’m a Leftist who’s outraged that my government is funding said genocide while actively denying it’s happening.

        • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          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.

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    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.

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      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.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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          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.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            Don’t let the optimism here fool you. Biden needs to bring on board undecided voters. And they aren’t impressed.

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              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.

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                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.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    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

        • AIhasUse@lemmy.world
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          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.

  • Jesus@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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      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”

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        He could also have ended all of his answers with “I’ll hand this back over to the convicted felon.”

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    having no crowd was so fucking stupid, such a dry dry awful environment. the guys need to be able to feed off the energy and rattle off a few applause lines, not just speak to the camera. such a dumb unforced error

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    They only asked for the debate because they assumed Trump would say No to all the stupid stipulations they set for it. Then, they could’ve ran and told everyone that they tried to debate Trump but he wouldn’t accept. They were really just left with no choice when Trump accepted their terms

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    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”.

      • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
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        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

      • discount_door_garlic@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • vonbaronhans@midwest.social
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          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.

      • Psycoder@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • berno@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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            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.

            • berno@lemmy.world
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              That as well, but make no mistake - there is a ton of astroturf laid down on that site daily.

        • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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          You just made facts up. “He lost votes during the debate” is not measurable in any meaningful way. It’s still 5 months from now. There are other debates to come.

        • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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          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.

    • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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.
      • Big Miku@lemm.ee
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        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.

      • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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          Lol @ mr “Gaza is the worstest genocide 4evah” going “at least donnie doesn’t start no wars”

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            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.

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              Why would you choose to mention Donnie ‘Factually, just get it over with’ T started just as many wars as Biden, if you weren’t his #1 simp?

              • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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                Because Donnie didn’t. Donny retreated from Aghanistan. The dumbest thing he did was bomb Suleimani. But in the end that did not lead to war.

                Biden is currently illegally at war with Yemen. He did not ask congress to go to war.

                And Biden is currently supporting the israeli Genocide of Gaza with both military intelligence personell and weapons.

                As much as you want to believe it, during his 2016-2020 rule Trump somehow did far less crazy shit than expected.

                Will Trump continue the Genocide? Very likely.

                Will Biden continue the Genocide? 100%.

                • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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                  Biden is currently illegally at war with Yemen. He did not ask congress to go to war.

                  Lolsimp

                  Did your donnie ask congress before he put missiles on Syria? Did he ask congress before he put a genocide on IS?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      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.