Also, if one were taking the accusation Biden is unfit seriously, and one wanted to bypass Harris, pointing out that as Veep she's integral to the 26A process would be my move
People aren't serious, they don't think he's unfit, and they want do a fantasy football swap
Yeah. Good Democrats have good faith concerns about Biden's capabilities right now. I say that as someone who thinks Biden is capable and we need to stay the course.
E.g., no one can say Greg Sargent is a bad Democrat or wishcasting. Or at least I'll give no one making those claims the time of day. newrepublic.com/article/1832...
It is very hard to describe a debate that by all evidence available has not moved the needle a single inch one way or the other an "unmitigated disaster" unless you are in the grip of a panic attack.
Our mental states would be a lot better if there had just been a 3-day blackout on debate posting (looking at you, NYT). At this distance, looking back on the debate, I think we can definitively say it was a nothing-burger. The only narratives now are the ones we make for ourselves.
Our pundit class has never fully recovered from the 2020 South Carolina primary, which showed clearly that it's Black church ladies, not failson columnists and podcasters, who wield the power in the Democratic Party.
I think you can even say it was clearly bad! And Greg is definitely a good democrat! But yeah he’s panicking and I don’t think it’s justified. He tweeted something to the effect that Biden would have to run an essentially perfect campaign from here on and I don’t see why that’s necessarily true.
I mean obviously I hope Biden is perfect but his opponent is legitimately insane, so, a lot of things could happen. He’s going to be sentenced for 34 felonies soon!
It’s June. I don’t know the exact timeline but we had polls around this time 4 years ago showing Biden winning FL by like 10 points. Election is a long, long way away, and the other guy sucks really, really bad.
great example of Murc’s law here
he presupposes that Trump is so strong, it almost doesn’t matter what he does. the implication is that Biden is such an underdog that he needs “miracle on ice” level execution to beat the almost-mythical Trump, who will wriggle out of any jams he creates for himself
On the one hand, we absolutely should treat this election as a crisis and do everything we reasonably can, including getting other people to see the stakes, to beat trump. But, having what-ought-to-be-dem-voices-of-reason shit their pants publicly I think hurts more than it helps.
you realize you are doing the exact thing I talked about in my post, right?
there’s another person in the race, and what he said on that stage will also play a part in the campaign.
you’re viewing this through the lens of political hobbyist who has strong priors, not a swing voter, who does not.
to put it another way: the election is a choice between Biden and Trump. it is not a measure of Biden’s approval.* Biden “meeting expectations” is not the end-all-be-all.
* Biden is facing his predecessor, which changes the standard “referendum on the incumbent” dynamic of 2nd term elections
Proof's in the pudding, I think. The needle barely twitched, and while I don't put a lot of stock in where the needle's pointing an "unmitigated disaster" would have moved it.
"It was a bad debate" is the correct framing, not "Biden is losing it." The reason so many Dems are panicking is that Biden has been out in public a lot, and *hasn't* been showing signs of incapability, so nobody was prepared for him to look so befuddled.
