Don Moynihan: What is remarkable is that no-one has made a compelling argument that Biden's age has affected his decisionmaking or performance as President, whereas Trump's erratic behavior and deep self-interest did so in a myriad of ways.

What is remarkable is that no-one has made a compelling argument that Biden's age has affected his decisionmaking or performance as President, whereas Trump's erratic behavior and deep self-interest did so in a myriad of ways.

This is the other one that got to me today. Biden's age is the only thing we've been talking about for weeks! It's so much easier to just repeat "why won't democrats address the concerns!?" over and over than it is to actually address them by comparing Biden's acuity to Trump's.

This is my entire problem with the discussion. He’s demonstrated nothing but lucidity while his opponent is almost completely incoherent half the time.

Ah yes, but he did not do the superbowl half time interview, and Nate Silver can't be bothered watching any of his other public events

I did not know this was a thing, and then discovered it has only BEEN a thing since... The Obama administration? Who cares? He skipped the Annual White House Burger King Feast too. And the Ceremonial Defunding of the Pandemic Response Team his predecessor held. variety.com/2024/tv/news...

President Biden Declines Super Bowl Interview for Second Consecutive Year (EXCLUSIVE)variety.com President Joe Biden will not grant an interview on Super Bowl Sunday to CBS News, marking the second consecutive year he has declined to participate

The public / media mistake visible energy for competency, which is a problem that the Biden campaign has to figure out how to deal with.

Yes. The evidence-free nature of these claims is really starting to bug me

And it’s despite clearly investing a lot of resources trying to find it! Not even a hint of a real issue bsky.app/profile/troy...

The thing is by now the rushing-transitioners rule of nyt coverage applies: if they had even the meagerest evidence age has affected Bidens job performance, it’d be wall to wall. They don’t, despite obvi throwing tons of resources at it. Gotta conclude biden simply is sharper than he gets credit for

right? like the palace intrigue capacity of those stories is enormous. so either it's not happening or it's being handled with an efficiency that is probably good enough.

It would be less remarkable if the purpose of these pieces was for media outlets to be able to do a “but her emails” on Biden. Then it would be in your interest not to investigate any further than “Biden old”

For some it may ultimately be tacit opposition to Harris. After all, a VP's constitutional function is to take over if/when POTUS is unable to do the job. It's also notable there seems little pundit interest in Trump's VP choice, or what might happen should he be convicted or ruled ineligible.

Worse, Klein concedes that Biden’s age is not a barrier to effective president-ing—he just thinks it’s a bad look for a campaign. And he just waves away the argument that he’s being ageist by saying, well, the electorate is ageist, we can’t do anything about that, so, Biden should step aside 🫣

Ezra Klein doesn't lose his job if the Democratic Party destroys its relationship with African Americans on the grounds that Ezra Klein has a "hunch" about something. By not throwing Kamala under the bus in the way Klein wants, Biden is being a responsible caretaker of that constituency.

his focus (correctly) is, the point of the election is to win.

I mean is he wrong? It sucks that electability is such a big factor but it’s very real and the reason why Biden was picked in 2020 in the first place. Well-known moderate with appeal to the working class and PoC. Age is just another one of those metrics.

Biden has always fumbled his words even when he was young and I agree that just parts of it are age-related and it’s not fair that public perception of him is that he’s losing his grip. But it’s not going away just by recognizing that and e.g. Whitmer might have a better chance with the electorate.

Then problem for me is that all the data we have shows Whitmer etc. doing substantially worse.

I really wouldn’t put any of my eggs in the Emerson polling basket.

I hear that, but there’s not really any data that contradicts it.

lol no

Maybe in March 2023. Not in March 2024. This handwringing now is absurd.

It's a tautology. Biden is in trouble because the press is talking about Biden is in trouble.

The press makes up an issue and screams about it for months straight and then innocently raises questions about why the public might believe that strange thing and how democrats should address it by doing what a news pundit demands of them as if news pundits were in charge of politicians

yes, he is wrong

It is certainly wrong. You could say with equal assurance that time has shown the data management policies of Hillary Clinton was the most pressing issue facing the public in 2016, but that was not true either.

The email stuff was bullshit and I said so at the time. I also think that she would have been a decent president but in the end she didn’t lose because of it but because she was a horrifically uncharismatic candidate. Biden is better but hearing him speak doesn’t really evoke a lot of confidence.

It doesn't matter. He is the caretaker of the coalition that won in 2020, period, and any suggestion to dismantle the coalition because some op-ed person wet his pants is beyond ridiculous. If you want to put in the 3rd string QB that is your problem. Common sense says it's a bad idea.

your problem here is projecting your own lack of confidence onto the voting public

Remember when he *insisted that the Secret Service drive him around the block against doctor's advice because he felt like Superman and wanted a Superman shirt, but that he almost died because of his vitals were so bad when he first there?

Yes, but now it's evolved into nonstop claims that sure, he's fine governing, but his age is ruining him as a candidate because everyone is writing about it nonstop. Anyway, the latest round of this stuff doesn't seem to have hurt his approval, so it may not have any effect (beyond being annoying).

And to be clear, it is quite annoying.

one can only hope.

Kevin Drum has pointed out that literally everyone who actually deals with Biden has said he is fine. You can't find an exception to this. It's difficult to find a former crony of Trump who has *not* called him batshit crazy or stupid or ignorant or all of the above. The Times could report on that.

I tried to make a similar point in this thread from last week. bsky.app/profile/larr...

This kind of thing happened all the time in the Trump administration: Cabinet officers--in this case, Bill Barr--either sycophantically seeking to curry favor with Trump or trying to prevent his hissy fits (or both) by making public policy on the basis of Trump's whims and moods.

They feel like they have to say something and this is all they got. A.R. Moxon made this point about people asking questions about Trans people. As long as you don't address the questions you're posing you can keep up a cloud of questions. Once you realize they've been addressed then you're done.

Yes And also, too much headline framing clings to bothsides-ism and thus sacrifices accuracy Biden and Trump are both noticeably older Trump is about to face criminal trials and has been found liable for sexual abuse, Lusby $450 M for business fraud Not equivalent

They couldn't without making themselves totally ridiculous. That's why it's always couched in terms of voters' opinions--"Not something *I* think!" (Politico's Jack Schafer in a radio appearance sternly denied that media reports had any influence on voter opinions, too. What a performance.)

That's here www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm... unfortunately they don't run transcripts any more.

What’s stoking all this terror about Joe’s “well-being”? Is it fear of a black woman President?

That’s part of it. And, they make more $ from fascist dabbling incompetent leadership.

You know, even if I have concerns that Biden might lapse in remembering something or make a questionable decision, I do feel that he has smart people around him that aren't afraid of stepping in to make a correction, or ask if he's sure of something out of fear of retribution.

yeah, supporting someone who actually signs equitable policy into law is so unfashionable, because: old. and I'm told that I must abandon any claim to leftism myself because I support Biden. funny about the last 45 years then; but obviously comments on bluesky overrule anything I think.

If there is cognitive decline, I don’t know how it wouldn’t affect him. The narrative is out there, so it does matter. It’s also not fair because the other guy is worse and horrifying. His decline is passed over because holy shit everything else with him

Biden is a mass-murderer but that has nothing to do with his age.

His team secretly wants all the hubbub to be on his age instead of the genocide that he is actively supporting.

Ok sure. Yes. Biden’s age is not a contributing factor in his full on support for genocide. He’s just a completely deplorable human by nature.

There’s an argument to be made there - his genocide enabling is only the latest in a long career of deplorable positions - but all the talk of age also serves to keep us off that topic.

yeah it’s all “optics,” catastrophizing, and clickbait circle jerks

Well if you ask the conspiracy theorists, they’ll tell you Biden is doing anything Trump did—and worse!—but we’d never know it because the media covers for him whereas they were out to get DJT. There is no fact they can’t wave away with another conspiracy. It’s exhausting.

Not to put to fine a point on it… I have enormous respect & admiration for Tribe but let’s look at his recent record: emoluments, impeachment conviction, 14th Amendment exclusion, all failed. So he’s right about Constitutional Law but he’s certainly not clairvoyant about the outcomes.

But that would require something that doesn’t happen too often in our endless, churning social media content-generation cycle, namely being deeper than a puddle…

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