"But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.”
“In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.”
He’s not here to serve his country, he’s here to exploit it.
I’ve yet to hear a good criticism of Biden that isn’t also true of Trump. Yet the media rarely writes a headline like “Trump should drop out/resign/kill himself”
Because he obviously won’t. He will pursue your freedoms, wealth and sanity until his dying breath.
Biden stuttered and is old.
Neither disqualifies him for the presidency
B-B-But the raspy voice!!
If it leads that way, this meme is real. Now I’ll remember this moment forever.
Unfortunately the question isn’t whether to fire him, but if he can win an election appearing as a sickly confused old man.
He spit in the face of an energized lefty base, so he is gambling the future of the country on low information Pennsylvanian voters in a popularity contest.
This is not fair description of his debate performance. He didn’t stutter, he crashed like an old computer trying to keep 50 chrome tabs running and then barely dragged himself out of it with incoherent nonsense like “we beat Medicare.”
It doesn’t disqualify him, it just lowers the bar for Trump.
“Abortion rights are good! Why don’t you talk about all the immigrants killing our pregnant women why don’t you talk about that?”
Trump: “I will do exactly that, thank you”.
I only watched 30 minutes of the debate, but what I saw was not as bad as that. He got a couple zingers off, had some good points, rattled off some stats, seemed annoyed at Trump lying over and over and did stutter, and looked like he had a headache.
I’ll bet you that if he was on his A game, everyone would have been yelling performance enhancement drugs!
So yeah, calling for him to resign because he struggled to deal with a bunch of shitty js websites, full of ads, and several mining crypto in the background, while leaking memory… Seems like caving into republican talking points way too easily…
Yeah I also watched a 30 minute highlight video because since Trump has been involved I’ve found watching the whole thing to be intolerable. I am totally open to anybody showing me “high points” for Biden that maybe CNN skipped over in their condensed version.
He got a couple zingers off
Lol please share. “Morals of an alleycat”? (or whatever the exact quote is)
As for the rest, I agree that obviously for general factual content Biden even on his deathbed will beat Trump. However it was undermined by the errors, e.g. getting the price of insulin wrong and millions/billions mixed up more than once. That is the problem.
I’ll bet you that if he was on his A game, everyone would have been yelling performance enhancement drugs!
Almost certainly. But he wasn’t so it’s not really the point here.
Seems like caving into republican talking points way too easily…
You know what they say about stopped clocks. They will always have this shit to say about Biden, absolutely. So why have I (and many others, NYT included) all of a sudden “caved into” republican talking points after ignoring or arguing against them until now?
Honestly to me the more interesting “talking points” at the minute are from some democrats, who after (assumedly) reacting in horror with the rest of us after the debate, have latched onto the “He had a cold” excuse that they came out with and tried to pass the whole thing off as a “stutter” issue.
I think people can see the difference between a stutter and whatever the hell happened at the debate. He wasn’t stuttering, he was freezing up and getting sentences jumbled up. He was not capable of having a coherent debate, and the only saving grace is that Trump isn’t either (different reasons, but still).
So I find it a little strange how people are talking about his performance, now. We all know what we watched, and that is why everybody freaked the fuck out straight afterwards. Trying to gaslight everyone is not a productive or helpful strategy. (Not you necessarily, by the way, just “the discourse” in general. I would like to see any examples you have of what you’re saying)
It doesn’t disqualify him, it just lowers the bar for Trump
This is the real takeaway. We’ve reached a point where we’re not even sure either one can stay awake during important meetings.
See? Shoulda went with Bernie Sanders. He may be just as old, but he’s too angry to rest. He sees the injustices of the world, and he’s been barking about them since the 60s. Getting arrested for his causes.
I’m not saying Biden isn’t sincere, but Sanders is so sincere that he’s passionately angry at the system. The only thing that disqualifies him in my eyes is his age…but fuck, if these are our only other two options, it’s not much of a disqualification, is it? Biden gets confused halfway through his thought process that he moves over to another thought process midsentence. And Trump doesn’t even start the sentence with a coherent thought process.
So…uhhhh…guess we’re all just fucked?
Important meetings? During his presidency, Trump skipped most of his daily intelligence briefings.
Forget staying awake, Trump doesn’t even show up.
If you can’t stay on topic in a stressful situation then yeah, there might be a fucking problem. A Stutter is fine. Switching topics completely is not a stutter.
you mean when he kept responding to Trump’s tirade of lies? THAT was all over the place, so it makes sense that Biden would have to cover a lot of ground.
I wish. But no. No it was his own answers to the moderator.
You must not have watched the same presidential debate I did.
Are we going to construct fantasy narratives like the GOP does? I thought that was solely a GOP thing but I guess not.
Exactly! If you say that Biden should drop out for the good of the country, a bunch of people nod their heads, but if you say trump should, everyone just laughs.
I’m for sure on team “Not Trump, and not a Republican.” I think the debate really may have weakened Biden’s chances, but I can’t think of anyone who I’m confident could do better in the election. And I really mean “in the election” - there are certainly some who I think could do better as president, but they either don’t have the name recognition or wouldn’t pull in the moderates.
I’d love to see a true progressive, but there are an awful lot of people who simply won’t vote for one. So I’m sticking with Biden and hoping for the best.
It’s because dropping out is 100% not in Trump’s character. He’s in the race for himself, everyone - even his supporters - knows that, and asking him to drop out is like asking a zebra to try all-black.
Biden, OTOH, is a public servant and presents himself as trying to do the best things possible for the country. He ran in 2020 to ‘save us from Trump,’ and he’s running again with that premise. You can disagree with Biden on what is best for the country, and maybe convince him that someone else might be better able to beat Trump in 2024. I’m not really all that engaged, so I have no idea who the next-best Democrat would be, but Biden stepping aside is at least within the realm of conceivable possibilities.
I’d love to see a true progressive, but there are an awful lot of people who simply won’t vote for one. So I’m sticking with Biden and hoping for the best.
There’s an awful lot of people who also simply won’t vote for someone in Biden’s physical condition. Don’t even need to replace him with someone progressive. Most of his voters are “blue no matter who” people who wouldn’t care if he was replaced.
I think the numbers of those two groups are significantly different. There are a number of moderate Republicans who will vote for Biden but wouldn’t vote for someone like Sanders or AOC.
There are no moderate Republicans. Anyone who calls themselves a Republican in 2024 is a fascist, whether intentionally or not makes no practical difference. They will never ever vote for a Democrat. Calling them reachable voters is so hilariously out of touch that it makes me wonder where you’ve been the last 8 years.
There aren’t many, but I can name at least a few like Tim Miller, Adam Kitzinger, Geoff Duncan, and Sarah Longwell.
Enough to make a big swing politically? Maybe not. But they are out there.
Biden being replaced by a progressive like AOC or Sanders isn’t even remotely likely though, which is why I didn’t mention all of the people who won’t vote if they’re not motivated to who’d come out for someone like AOC/Sanders/Warren/etc. And replace him with a “moderate” who didn’t support Israel, and you’d get a lot more votes from people who are alienated by that issue.
Because he obviously won’t.
Exactly.
No one is talking about trump doing the selfless thing, because it’s not going to happen.
But Biden is supposed to be better than trump.
And unlike trump, Biden isn’t facing prison if he doesn’t personally win. He’s just trying to stop trump, but so are lots of other people. So shouldn’t we let the person with the best chances go?
Like, if you had a game winning free throw, and any player can take it, are you putting Shaq up there or Michael Jordan?
Like, Rudy is a great movie, and America loves to root for the underdog. But you don’t put him in on the last play of the Super Bowl.
You put your best players in. And Biden and his team in the DNC are obviously not our best people. They can step aside now, or after they lose and let trump back in the White House.
He should definitely do the last one
I hate it when people fantasizes with the death of that asshole.
Because 1) if he dies, he will be immediately elevated to god status. Not good. Case in point: Venezuela.
And 2) I want that asshole to spend his days in prison, even if it’s house arrest.
Idc if he ascends to God status, because he’s already there to his ilk. If he wasn’t alive, he wouldn’t be able to do anything else bad, and I wouldn’t have to here his stupid voice anymore. He might be a martyr, but he’d be the best kind of martyr. A dead one.
Isn’t being dead one of the main prerequisites for being a martyr?
As I was typing it out I thought that, and almost looked it up, but then I thought, can’t a living prisoner also be a martyr? In end I didn’t verify, and I am probably wrong. The essence of what I meant still stands though, and that’s what’s important.
I just threw it into duckduckgo. It came back with the American heritage dictionary having 6 definitions that were evenly split between death and great suffering.
you mean the media owned by billionaires who stand to profit again under another trump presidency like they did last time?
his country is russia, you fucking idiots.
Uuuh! I fucking agree! Oh putin! Here comes Trumpfus!
He isn’t interested in serving anyone but himself.
That’s not even the worst of it. He actively works for a hostile power.
Either putin has footage of him killing someone or he is getting paid. Either way its just more self serving crimes.
I think it’s probably more simple than that. Trump is jealous that Putin has his own country and he doesn’t. In Trump’s mind he’s the best so he also needs to own an entire country just so he can outdo Putin.
He’s probably working with putin to achieve this goal, and the details we can speculate about, but the motivation is likely that petty.
That’s a possible motivation as well, but his unwillingness to say ever anything bad Putin tells me he’s holding him with some kompromat.
I mean, Trump has never passed the opportunity to badmouth anyone else, with the exception of his crime family. Why is he making this exception also for Putin, going out of his way to always be on his good side and lick his boots?
There’s got to be some pretty damaging information about him, that would be beyond his usual shady business dealings or just Russia plain helping his campaign - people already know these and it hasn’t made a dent in his electability amongst his MAGA base. It’s got to be something amazingly awful even for Trump’s standards to keep him in line like that.
Absolutely. He’s jealous that Putin can do whatever he wants and not get on trouble for it. No one is allowed to tell Putin he did anything wrong. Trump is a spoiled brat. “Putin can have people killed and not get in trouble, Waaahh! I Wana do that too!” That’s as far as his thought process goes.
No, it’s worse than that, but not in the way you think. Him killing someone wouldn’t matter to his followers, they would love him even more for being an alpha man or some crap like that.
Putin likely has footage of Trump with a large, black woman in a BDSM situation of him crying and whimpering. That would make his voters shy away from him, shattering his tough guy image.
NYT did in fact talk about Trump in their editorial. They lamented that any sane party would consider him ineligible after his debate performance. But because we can’t have nice things, the onus is now on Biden.
All the “rebuttals” keep ignoring that.
Trump attacks the military. He denigratesthe Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.
Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.
These are the kinds of articles we need from our media, and also needed sooner. Much sooner.
Who believes that Trump would serve his country? Trump would happily see the country go down in f-ing flames if it served him. Because he is the only one who counts for him, anything else does not matter at all.
To understand this scathing rebuttal, you should know about the original NYTimes article, where their editorial board wrote:
To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race
This is a wonderfully penned counterpunch. Shout out to my local paper for serving it up
Both of the articles are correct.
Not really it ignores NYT’s actual argument.
It’s cute. But this is, of course, a given. And we don’t expect Hitler to do the right thing. We expect Biden to.
You mean the draft dodger, ressurective, dictator admiring, classified document stealing, dementing, lying, grifting, make-up wearing Cheeto ? He only serves himself.
To serve his country…
When has he ever done anything to even hint that he serves anything but himself?
He serves only himself. It is delusional to believe otherwise
We have a better chance for a herpes never flaring up again
This statement assumes that the Presidential candidates have any intention of “serving the country” as far as I can remember, they’ve only been interested in serving themselves, and all benefits and consequences the county saw was purely a coincidental side effect.
You’re half right
Going forward from Clinton I think it goes, president by president:
- Budget surplus and great GDP (fuck the poor tho)
- ACA, attempts at gun control, the occasional drone strike as a treat
- Unions, working-class wages, climate change
I think as far as the Republican side it’s pretty much always been “more for me and my immediate friends,” yes. The Democrats have pretty reliably attempted to pursue policies which are trying to benefit “the country” though, with increasingly working class aligned definitions over time of who it is that represents “the country”.
The Democrats have pretty reliably attempted to pursue policies which are trying to benefit “the country” with increasingly working class aligned definitions of who it is that represents “the country”.
And even more reliably find just enough no votes to make sure the policies they’re ostensibly pursuing don’t pass.
Dude you gotta try harder than that; you’re just teeing me up to talk about the climate change bill and the ACA and all that other stuff and just go into more depth about everything I already touched on
Just say “but Biden invented bad Israel policy” or “Genocide Joe” or “blue MAGA” and then call it a day after making some kind of flippant comment; anything still in the realm of factual (implying that literally anything I said wasn’t a thing that happened) is gonna be a losing conversation for you
You’re gonna pretend they didn’t kill the public option, the minimum wage increase, and BBB? You’re gonna pretend Democrats got rid of the filibuster so they could pursue what they ran on? You’re gonna pretend they tried to codify Roe?
The shit Democrats passed is nothing in the face of things they ran on and didn’t pursue.
ffs, you’re still trying to coast on the ACA, which was 15 years ago.
Fascinating. It sounds like your theory is that the Democrats floated the public option and the BBBA, just so they could go through an elaborate ruse following by killing it on purpose after months of work and preparation, only to introduce second weakened iterations of both of them (the ACA and IRA) which still did massive amounts for the country, and they went through all that just so their second version could… look wimpier by comparison to the initial version they shot down on purpose, maybe? IDK.
I’ll say this: If the average when put together, of brand X plus the Republicans actively trying to blow up the Washington Monument or kill all the Guatemalans or whatever the fuck, like a bunch of Batman villains, is a little trickle of sustained significant progress, I would say that the contribution to the average of brand X is probably significant and positive. To me. I wouldn’t look at that as a “well I guess there’s no difference between the two, and the lack of progress is DEFINITELY the Democrats’ fault, citation trust me bro” situation.
By way of example: The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed. It got done. It was on the books, and then the Supreme Court told them no you can’t do that. Are you saying Biden controls the Supreme Court in secret and he passed it knowing it wouldn’t really happen? I feel like I’m stepping into some kind of Q universe where that’s exactly what you’re going to say, like John Roberts is Hunter Biden in a silicone mask or something.
The shit Democrats passed is nothing in the face of things they ran on and didn’t pursue.
The shit Democrats passed in the last few years is:
- 40% predicted reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2030
- $150 billion worth of student loan forgiveness
- Big increase in working class wages even comfortably exceeding historic inflation
- Huge corporate tax increase to pay for all that
That’s off the top of my head; people have made these massive lists of accomplishments but sometimes it’s hard to tell which ones are substantive. All of those to me are pretty substantial.
I mean, I do commend you on coming up with a framing that makes it pretty easy to say “yeah but what about all the things they DIDN’T do” like the existence of some good thing that would have been theoretically possible somehow invalidates getting some particular good thing done in the real world. And also I commend the framing where you’re asserting SO FIRMLY Goebbels-style that anything they’re failing to accomplish is deliberately on purpose and definitely not the fault of the party that’s in lock step voting down things they are trying to accomplish. Your presentation is such that it’s easy to fall into “well he MUST know what he’s talking about, he is so confident in his presentation that that wouldn’t be clearly just completely made up.”
Both fairly solid arguing techniques. Bravo.
(Oh also recovering from Covid as if it hadn’t happened which basically no other 1st world economy has been able to do)
(Also, did the Democrats float the public option? I remember a bunch of left-wing people at the time talking about single payer, but I don’t ever remember it ever being acceptable to the Democrats and no one really hoping for it, just saying fuck this would be so easy if our country’s government wasn’t so awful but I hope we can get some health insurance of some description at least.)
Fascinating. It sounds like your theory is that the Democrats floated the public option and the BBBA, just so they could go through an elaborate ruse following by killing it on purpose after months of work and preparation, only to introduce second weakened iterations of both of them (the ACA and IRA) which still did massive amounts for the country, and they went through all that just so their second version could… look wimpier by comparison to the initial version they shot down on purpose, maybe? IDK.
I don’t consider it implausible that politicians would break their promises, no. I voted for the public option. I voted for Obama because his plan had a public option and no individual mandate. What we got passed by reconciliation along party lines. It had the individual mandate. It had no public option. It passed along party lines in reconciliation, meaning that Democrats abandoned so much to get the support of Republicans, who didn’t vote for it anyway. It had a medicaid expansion that was optional, so my state didn’t accept it. Biden said he was going to revisit the public option. To my complete lack of surprise, he didn’t.
I voted against Trump in 2020, since after the ACA I didn’t believe a promise from a Democratic candidate. Turns out, my distrust was founded. BBB was a bill of goods designed to be abandoned, just like the public option. They put on a hell of a show abandoning it, but at the end of the day, there were enough no votes to kill it, just like with the public option. In both cases, it died without Republicans touching it.
The wimpy remaining bills are something, yes, but the primary function seems to be something for centrists to point at when they’re ordering progressives to be happy with their presidents’ signature failures.
I wouldn’t look at that as a “well I guess there’s no difference between the two, and the lack of progress is DEFINITELY the Democrats’ fault, citation trust me bro” situation.
I have never said both parties are the same, and i provided examples of Democrats finding the votes to kill progressive legislation.
The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed.
A few things about this, It didn’t pass. It never came to a vote. It was an executive order. Centrists didn’t want it. Biden, in the only surprise of his presidency so far, listened to progressives on student loans, but only after years of pressure. Centrists insisted his hands were tied until he signed it. And we’ve discussed this before. I consider student loans to be the high point of the Biden presidency. But if it were before the Senate and not an executive order, Manchin would have killed it.
And I just got to the paragraph where you call me Goebbels. Conversation’s over. Godwin.
The half a trillion dollars worth of student loan forgiveness passed.
A few things about this, It didn’t pass. It never came to a vote. It was an executive order. Centrists didn’t want it.
Wait, hang on. I may have misunderstood you.
If your central thesis is that Democrats in congress are mostly an uninspiring pile of centrist bullshit, and that Biden has to contend with them as well as the GOP in order to get progressive things done that he is trying to accomplish, then I will 100% agree with you. I thought you were including Biden in the centrist fakery.
Your description of getting behind Democrats because you wanted good things to happen, only to see the reality that comes to pass be mostly watered-down corporate-friendly garbage, sounds pretty accurate to me. It sounded like you were blaming that on Obama and Biden, instead of Manchin and the Republicans, is why we are disagreeing. But if you’re saying we need to get rid of the GOP in congress, and replace Manchin and Sinema with actual liberal people, as the solution, I will 100% agree.
Biden, in the only surprise of his presidency so far, listened to progressives on student loans
IRA? NLRB with teeth? Trillions of dollars worth of corporate tax increases? Those were not surprising to you?
And I just got to the paragraph where you call me Goebbels. Conversation’s over. Godwin.
I said that super confidently asserting something which seems to me to be the opposite of true, and relying on the assertion itself to be the explanation of why people should believe it, is a Goebbels tactic.
Like I say, I actually agree with you about the massive gap between what Democratic presidents get done and what they should be getting done. Where it falls apart for me is where to assign the blame for that.
Happy belated Cake Day.
I like the idea of both dropping out
Life long democrat that hates everything about Donald Trump here. I once famously said I will vote for used condom before I vote for Donald Trump.
Am I taking crazy pills???
On the debate, I, with my own two eyes, saw that our president Joe Biden is senile. Yet, today everyone is saying that Donald Trump was so bad, he should drop.
Donald Trump was a selfish, narcissist, lying, arrogant, bastard in 2016, 2020, and 2024 debates. As somebody that watches all our the presidential debates, I did not see any difference in Donald Trump, and his behavior, since 2020.
Biden, on the other hand, very clearly has dementia. I would know. My father has been battling dementia for the last few years. My father is a lot more capable than Joe Biden at this moment.
All of these articles are damage control from Democrats.
Yeah I don’t get why Democrats let Joe Biden run as he WILL pass away before this term is over (not wishful thinking and I’d wish him another 50 years more, but the guy just really doesn’t look like he’ll be around for another 4 more years), but ignoring that…
Why are they focussing on Joe’s issues with Trump? Focus on the dictatorship part, perhaps? On the sheer incompetece? On the insanity? The crimes? The fucking insurrection? There are a million sun blazing red flags they could wave about trump, yet they try to.focus on things where Joe actually failed himself?
Yeah, poor Joe is senile, I get it, and people should still vote for him cuz they’re living in the greatest country where they have the choice between an evil clown dictator and a senile dying grandpa. It sucks, but those are the choices. Destroy the world, or effectively vote for Joe’s running mate, as that person will be in charge soon.
Dear god joe, please don’t die right before the elections, that would be baaaaadddd
I feel trump will also pass in the next 4 years. Dude is massively overweight and extremely unhealthy compared to Biden even if he has dementia.
