N8: I align myself with whoever has the best chance of beating the fascists this November Until that debate, I assumed it was JB Now I think Kamala would probably do a better job She looks alive & I doubt she would willingly segue into immigrant murder from a softball Q about abortion It’s a low bar

Reminder for people who seem to be convinced that a deficit barely outside the margin of error in July is insurmountable

it’s less the current polling and more the “candidate cannot complete a sentence, let alone make an argument about why to elect him” everyone supporting JB before Thursday despite the polls assumed he would be able to campaign and grow his support the debate showed that’s a not a fair assumption

Here's a thread with the president's post debate appearances. You're entitled to your own opinion, but it seems rash to say this if you've not at least looked at what's happened since then.

It's not just the controlled, teleprompter events since the debates, it's his degrading performance since '20.

You mean the performance where he's presided over the most pro-labor and progressive administration in modern history? Wild.

This actually undermines your argument. Biden has had a good administration. Voters are rejecting him despite that, and their main reason is his age, not his administration’s policies. Further evidenced by the fact he’s running behind fellow members of his own party as well as the open fascists.

The reason is because the media is shouting "Biden is old" from the rooftops, probably because their corporate masters are finally being regulated/prosecuted by Biden's DOJ. We're in the middle of a right-wing propaganda spree, and you're trying to pretend like Biden's admin actions don't count.

1.) “the media” is a meaningless boogeyman. Newspapers are in freefall. Cable News median viewer is 70 years old. No podcast has more than a 5% marketshare. Most of the population completely avoids political media. 2.) *voters* have been shouting “Biden is old” for longer than the media has

1) yeah, the media is terrified of its own irrelevance and upset that Biden refuses to hand them viewers like Trump did. 2) Voters had several options, including Dean Phillips. Voters instead chose Biden.

1) pretending “the media” is a coherent monolith with a consistent agenda indicates you have no idea what decade you are living in 2) ask those same voters who they would’ve voted for if they knew JB wouldn’t be able to complete a sentence during a debate that his own campaign orchestrated

1) they are private companies that are kept alive by ad sales, which require views and clicks. There's no conspiracy needed, Trump is controversy, and while he was in office, media viewership soared. After Biden came into office, it plummeted. Simple as.

That is only true of like cable news and legacy newspapers. So it just confirms you are pretending to live in a different decade Most people interact with media via tiktok influencers, independent podcasters, subreddits, micro-blogging platforms, discord communities, whatsapp group chats, etc

The outlets calling for Biden to resign/step aside are literally those who were affected by the readership/viewership drop once Biden was elected lmao what are you talking about? TikTok influencers, notoriously free from right-wing propaganda /s

Hey buddy idk what to say if you think that legacy newspapers and cable news are going to have a larger effect on the election outcome than tiktok. WaPo has lost *50%* of its unique visitors since 2020. The median MSNBC viewer is *72 years old*.

And they are incandescent at Biden refusing to engage them. They are also the primary drivers of the "Biden should resign/step aside" discourse.

*candidate refuses to engage with friendly outlets* (relative to right wing media) would actually be another indication of his declining fitness. But that’s not really the point, any “discourse” driven by CNN or NYT is fundamentally irrelevant, as their plummeting viewership and readership shows

But you just repeatedly stated that these outlets are irrelevant, now Biden needs to be engaging them? Make up your mind! Meanwhile, the donors themselves are mostly annoyed about...not getting big boy birthday calls? Are these really the people you choose to align yourselves with?

I align myself with whoever has the best chance of beating the fascists this November Until that debate, I assumed it was JB Now I think Kamala would probably do a better job She looks alive & I doubt she would willingly segue into immigrant murder from a softball Q about abortion It’s a low bar

FWIW, I think it's obvious from the transcript what was going on there: he was contrasting the very real harm abortion bans do to large numbers of women, to Trump's emphasis--to the point of making a woman's funeral all about him--on the comparatively rare violent crime from undocumented immigrants.

It was a valid point!

you ever seen the dilbert guy breakout a whiteboard to diagram Trump’s Charlottesville speech in order to prove what he *really* meant? That’s what this comes off as. We have fascists on track to take the govt in November and you have to parse transcripts to try and make sense of JB. That’s bad.

I mean, I reference the transcript because it's faster than finding a specific point in a video. Plus it cuts out all the distractions of delivery, which is mostly style-over-substance fluff that only benefits silver-tongued charlatans who want to wow you with bullshit.

Debates are a performance. They (obviously) are not about substance. In what universe does good substance delivered horrifically win out over silver-tongued charlatans with stylish bad ideas? All of American (human?) history points to the exact opposite conclusion.

OK. So debates are artifices that don't actually reflect things that matter. So now the question becomes, do debates themselves matter in swinging elections--that is, do debate performances, however superficial they may be, nevertheless still impact elections? The evidence suggests they don't!

(from 2020) www.scientificamerican.com/article/pres...

Presidential Debates Have Shockingly Little Effect on Election Outcomeswww.scientificamerican.com The upcoming debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump may be one of the least consequential in decades, experts say

"I'm concerned with performance over substance, of which I care nothing about" Well that explains a lot.

I’m sorry were you under the impression that *televised political debates* are won and lost on substance instead of style??? that’s a level of delusion that disqualifies you from having any other opinion on electoral politics

Oh dang, you actually just can't parse basic meaning and are doubling down. That's neat for you.

do you think the average swing voter is pouring over the debate transcripts to try and make JB’s performance better? … or maybe that’s something done by partisans in deep denial about their candidate chances in November

I think they're actually able to engage the points being made instead of latching onto whatever right-wing narrative they consume.

It’s pretty telling that whenever I unfold one of these logic pretzels it ends on “okay fine but someone on the right wing might agree with you therefore you are automatically wrong” but that argument somehow doesn’t apply to the heritage foundation trying to ensure JB remains the nominee 🤔

I love how anything more than "Trump sux lol" goes over these folks' heads to the point where they think that *Biden* must be cognitively impaired. True projection.

Same.

Enjoy being strung along by a right-wing ratfucking op. bsky.app/profile/drki...

What is your plan to overcome The Heritage Foundation lawyers who are as we speak crafting legal challenges to keep any other DEM beside Biden off the ballot? Spoiler: You have no plan, just vibes. www.foxnews.com/politics/her...

Heritage Foundation working on election legal challenges in case Biden pulled from DNC nominationwww.foxnews.com The Heritage Foundation, a major conservative activist organization, is prepared to start legal battles in multiple swing states if Democrats try to swap Biden out of the party nomination.

There's nothing they can challenge if she is nominated at the convention. It's not a ratfuck, our president just became impaired, and some people are in the denial stage. But you should realize that if the Heritage Foundation would go to court to stop her running...that's because she's better.

Or there’s more to a plan they’ve been working on for a while and this was always how it was going to start. They’re sewing chaos.

"There's nothing they can challenge if she is nominated at the convention." I'm glad you're confident about this, because they're confident that they can tear the Democratic Party apart. "became impaired" So you want him to resign right now?

If the delegates nominate her, it's exactly the same as any other convention vote. Why would the Heritage Foundation be trying to block her from replacing Biden if they thought that she would be easier to beat? You guys don't understand your own link.

And as for his resigning, yes, I think he should resign and let her run with the incumbent bump. There are only six months left in the term and no major policy agenda to get through, it's a good time to pass the torch. And yes I do think it's unsafe to have any time, at all, a POTUS isn't capable.

It's not exactly the same, it's literally taking votes entirely out of the equation and bypassing the democratic process. Why would you purposefully align yourself with the billionaire donor class and NYT's editorial board? Do you genuinely think they have your best interests in mind?

I'd like to know how to get rid of the Heritage Foundation. And Federalist Society. And actually Fox NoNews. And maybe the Koch Bros. Koch Bro.

You're literally repeating talking points being pushed by billionaire donors and corporate media outlets. How exactly are you concerned with beating fascists when the outlets publishing these opinions regularly publish "why I don't vote" articles? You're just repeating right-wing smears now.

I just cannot emphasize enough how little I care about “outlets” and their random op-Eds The talking points I am repeating is what *I experienced* watching the debate. He couldn’t speak. He looked more ancient than ever. The immigrant murder thing happened.

Buddy, I don't actually think you have an original thought in your head, given you've just been repeating the same right-wing talking points over and over again.

Which talking points? Because if “joe biden looks old” counts as a right wing smear, you’re telling on yourself

Your lack of awareness truly is incredible.

I think anyone who disputes that Joe Biden looks old should avoid criticizing other’s awareness

Post