It's like they've never seen an election before. Elections are close and scary sometimes! Grow up! This kind of public bed wetting just makes you (and the candidate) look weak. Don't do it.
I mean "weak" is a relative (and subjective) thing. You could imagine a better candidate, sure. But you don't get to make your imaginary candidate magically appear. And if Biden is "weak" his opponent is dramatically weaker.
He was a weak candidate in 2020, but Trump was so self-evidently awful that people rightly chose a return to normalcy. A single Biden term makes sense.
Biden is imho mostly good on policy. But policy is only one factor in elections. Nobody wants to ride a bus whose wheels are visibly coming off.
Nobody wants to ride a bus that is literally on fire and the seats are made of knives and also the knives are poison, either. If we're doing bus metaphors, one of the buses is clearly preferable.
If the bus breaks down, we have an extra bus available. Call it the Vice Bus, I guess. There are procedures in place and lots of people who know what they're doing.
But yeah, in the end I just don't buy any of it. Biden is old, period. He was old a year ago and will be old a year from now. It is what it is. He's not senile and the "wheels are not coming off". It's all just bullshit that's either defeatist or in bad faith.
He's not senile but he's putting out dementia vibes, whether you like it or not. I have a parent of the same age who's in a nursing home and this is how she was a year ago.
Oh please, Kamala Harris has the charisma and warmth of a breeze block. I've met her, followed her career for 25 years (I live in the Bay Area), greatly admire her forensic skills and thought she made a very fine senator, but she cannot win a Presidential campaign.
Serious contenders don't want to rock the boat with an incumbent and would naturally prefer to wait for the next election cycle.
Then again, incumbents don't usually implode on TV as Biden this evening. Harris unfortunately doesn't have campaign juice; didn't even make it to primaries in 2020.
"implode on tv"
Holy shit the hysterics. The dude needed a lozenge and y'all want to throw out the whole administration.
Serious contenders understood the stakes. And throwing out the most progressive administration in modern history is such an absurd overreaction.
Not supporting Biden's candidacy =/= voting for Trump. The best way to oppose Trump is to run a candidate that has a steady pulse. This was true last year and is even more true now.
I'm not saying 'don't vote for him in the general,' of course I don't want Trump in office. I think Democrats should have an open convention because despite Biden's virtues he's no longer viable.
This might not matter if Harris was charismatic and popular, but that's not the case.
Because the field was fractured, people wanted to go back to the sanity of the Obama admin, Biden was the safe compromise choice, and he was experienced.
He's still experienced, but he's far less sharp than he was then. Contrast 2020 debate footage with today's.
Biden didn't participate in any primary debates this cycle; if he had performed as poorly as he did this evening voters would probably have made a different choice.
It's not that he's a bad debater, it's that he completely lost focus mid-stream more than once.
The field was fractured? What combination of other candidates' votes would have allowed a different candidate to win?
I guarantee the next debate will have you eating your words.
Sanders and Warren were fighting for the same pool early on in my view.
The next debate isn't until September, too far away to alleviate voter's doubts about Biden. He can't unring the bell of him completely losing his train of thought multiple times, starting from the very first question.
Handing every warren vote to sanders or vice versa still wouldn't have come close to beating Biden.
Warren and Sanders voters also aren't interchangeable.
You have clips? Because it didn't seem like he lost his train of thought to me.
The troublesome clip that I saw was clearly a man with a speech disorder that couldn't get the prepared words to come out right. We all knew this about him and it says zero about his mental capacity.