"He's earned second term because of the job he's done" is a perfectly good message for surrogates to make about an incumbent candidate.
"I've earned a second term because of the job I've done," is fine, but not really an optimal message for the candidate to make, imho.
And fwiw, on domestic policy, legislative achievement and macro-economic stewardship the former is an argument I have made on our show many many many times.
Which gets to me to a huge issue that is connected to but distinct from the question of age. Elections are about the future. They're about where we're going. Trump's argument about the future is very literally a time-machine to 2019, before covid. That's the argument in a nutshell. Let's go back
Which is obviously not future-oriented! But it's a kind of alternate reality future. I do think whatever happens with this period and whether it's Biden or someone else, a vision of what's over the horizon is pretty important and has been a bit absent in this campaign.
And there really is a story to tell, one I've tried with varying success to describe. We are now in the midst of the greatest civilizational transformation - the green transition - since the industrial revolution and the mass adoption of fossil fuels for energy. It's already changing so much.
Thanks largely to Biden and the Democratic party there is now a kind of global race to get to the mass, chear carbon-free energy. We're going to hit peak global emissions (fingers crossed) this year or next. We're deploying solar at a level that blowing away every single prediction.
There's a world on the other side of this with a huge, vibrant, unionized and high-paying industrial base remaking the physical world for the post-fossil fuel age. It's already starting and I think even Trump can't *fully* destroy it, but he can slow it down and make us lag wayyy behind.
Biden can't do it before the election because he needs the Saudis to not send gas prices to the moon but I would love to see him start taking on the Sanders/Duss theory of international relations as seen through the lens of authoritarian corruption.
And this vision of the future can be connected to Americans' current struggles, because food prices are rising partly due to climate change — housing costs too, through rising insurance rates — and decarbonization will be...
Would have loved to hear the guy with a large platform ask any question approaching that tonight!
Much to my chagrin, I learned for the first time that Biden is an elderly man and needed nearly a half hour of rephrasing of the same question to decide whatever it is I needed to about that fact.
“We are now in the midst of the greatest civilizational transformation - the green transition - since the industrial revolution and the mass adoption of fossil fuels for energy.”
People DO NOT CARE.
There’s also a crystal clear vision of the near future that Biden/dems just *aren’t* making…which says:
“Give us the House, 50 senate seats, and the WH, and we WILL kill the filibuster on day 1, then we will immediately expand the Court, re-enshrine voting rights, pass Roe, and ban machine guns.”
Another reason not to vote for Trump, who, according to an exec on the call, promised to crush all non-oil energy in exchange for a billion dollar donation from the industry.
The why the Republicans are so desperate for a recession. “Clean energy” is too expensive. We need coal and tax cuts that a steep recession will deliver!
It’s frustrating because he even said as much in the interview- roughly: “whatever we do in the next few years will set the course of this nation for the next several decades” - but it doesn’t come through in the campaigns messaging so far, and especially not now that they’re on the back foot
It's fascinating, despite Republicans railing against green energy and evs, they are more than eager to build them. If they keep it up, they are going to put America's economy on the back foot and stuck in the past, and let China run up the economic and energy score.
Let's go back to 2019, but without reproductive rights or voting rights or LGBTQ rights or anything else. It's like the Back To the Future II "skewed into this tangent alternate reality where George McFly is murdered and Biff is married to Lorraine." No thanks.
Not sure I follow. Trump doesn’t want us to go into the future, but the past. Biden doesn’t want us to go back to the craziness of Trump’s term, specifically 2020 & Jan 6, but instead build things like infrastructure. That’s what a lot of his commercials have been about
Elections are not about who is better and deserves to win … it’s about who will win.
There are a lot of people who believe the felon is the better choice.
There are a lot fewer people who think the decent old guy is the better choice.
Reminder: Hillary was capable and qualified. And she lost.
The polling showing Trump pulling ahead since the debate just defies logic, there are too many important issues to let Tired Biden be the determining factor.
In many ways FDR's social, labor agenda was about the future. In other ways not: Japanese/American families put in camps, Black Americans not given their rights, but he did step into the future and Nixon & Regan tore it apart. Even DDE a Repug POTUS signed the Civil Rights Act.
Elections are about the future! Honestly, I am not worried about Biden too far into 2025, but by 2028 he will be 86 and that scares me after seeing elders at that age just turn into wisps of themselves.
The problem is that most of these questions don’t have good answers. How will you feel if Trump wins? What’s he supposed to say? I’ll feel great? I’ll cry like a baby? Why do you deserve a second term? Besides “my record,” and “the alternative is Germany circa 1936,” there’s no great answer.
"do you, the american worker, see all these big wins for organized labor? yeah, we're gonna keep doing that."
"you notice how some of the worst people on the supreme court ain't spring chickens anymore? guess who's gonna replace them."
"we're going to pass a national law protecting abortion."
Yup. And his answer on the polls question even got Stephanopoulos to admit that we are in an era where polling is really unreliable. I’m 39 and no one I know answers their phone if it’s not a number they know.
I'm curious, are you not preaching to the choir on your show? You think Biden shd be more modest when running against Trump? C'mon -- I respect you, but you're spamming.
