I debated in high school and college. I coached for a bit. I was pretty good. So, apropos of nothing, I'm just gonna say not only that these *aren't* debates, but it's a huge mistake to think of them as such. For example:
Biden is less coherent in the 2024 debate. But the difference isn't great. It's within, shall we say, standard deviation. The real issue is that he looks and sounds very frail.
(He's not more inocherent than Trump. But he the aesthetics are pretty bad).
TBH, I think the democratic freakout is far more damaging than the debate itself would have been. If they'd all come out and said "POTUS was clearly tired and fighting off a cold, now let's talk about Trump's answers" we'd be having a different conversation.
If this performance really is 1) a mask-off moment or 2) for whatever reason, he's not going to be able to sound more like he did at the SOTU, then it's fine for the Ds to have these discussions — in private, over the weekend. What we saw => political malpractice; typical lack of D discipline, etc.
But isn’t the collective action problem in getting Democrats not to bicker the same one that prevented them from organizing around a new candidate or process to pick one? Just seems like the nature of the party.
yep. hence "typical."
But realistically if Biden wanted to run again he was going to be the nominee. & the advantages of incumbency are a hell of a lot to throw away. Even Carter beat Kennedy in 1980.
Worth keeping mind that there have been 0 rumblings — other than from GOP officials in a coordinated attack — about Biden's acuity, and he's seemed fine in prior appearances. So *unless* this was "the real Biden" then there's no reason we should expect much of an effort in the first place.
True, though it seems like a question of whether this was the real “Biden in a debate”. No doubt he’s sharper in person and speeches, but debates are important. Maybe it was an off night but it seems unlikely. I guess I’m just reevaluating whether I think Ezra Klein was naive, or right.
Klein was naive because even if he correctly identified the problem (a point I consider far from decided), his proposed solution would have been a world-historic disaster.
Debates are not important. At least to anyone who cares about politics as a means to implement policy in the real world, and not a fight for talking points between contestants on a reality TV show.
Yes, but I am reevaluating the credence I gave to the argument last autumn that if Biden stood down, a primary contest between Kamala and others would have been more damaging. Now that looks less convincing. Almost certainly no point debating it though—Biden isn’t going to stand down.
I mean, if a) he’s fine, he’s not going to step down and b) if he’s not fine, no one will be able to convince him to step down. He’d need to be in this narrow band of being acute enough to realize he’s not acute enough.
Another question would be: how do we evaluate Democratic leaders and administration officials who know how Biden looked in debate prep and were telling the rest of the world everything is fine.
The thing is that his surrogates (and the President) were out there saying he did great. If Joe himself just came out and said, "yknow what I had a cold, I was not at my best," it would give us a better narrative choice than a) complete freakout, or b) rejecting the evidence of our eyes and ears.
We’d also have a different Democratic Party. We’ve had decades now to figure out that neither Republicans nor the Establishment Media care about truth and operate in good faith. Why we keep playing by rules that screw us every time is baffling to me.
Sure. The problem with that is we've all had colds, and that's not what we saw. He saved the republic in '20 and is a great president, but time catches us all. There's no shame in that other than denial. He should quietly pick a unity ticket, step aside and support them. It's in his hands.
I didn’t vote for Biden in 2020; in fact, I started out doing policy work for a different campaign before I realized I wasn’t going to support it either. I didn’t want him to run again, either. But what we saw was a guy who sounded and looked old. His voice was hoarse.
He was also about as coherent as he’s always been (here’s the other excerpt I meant to post from 2012).
I just don’t see how he gets replaced in a way that doesn’t make things worse. But we’ll see how this shakes out.
That's not what I saw. I saw vacant stares. I saw an inability to think quickly. I saw confusion. I saw a man that, if I were in trouble, I wouldn't hire as my attorney... and we're in trouble. Vs Trump, if he stays in, of course he has my vote... but we can do much better.
