Post

Holy moly www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Sen. Mark Warner works to gather Senate Democrats to ask Biden to exit racewww.washingtonpost.com Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is attempting to assemble a group of Democratic senators to go to the White House on Monday and ask that Joe Biden exit the presidential race, according to two people with dir...

Jesus fucking Christ this is collective insanity

I'd like to believe that but honestly I think it seems like Biden is too risky now.

I think they’re falling for a gigantic rat fuck both of mass hysteria, personally.

Agreed.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Biden’s risky because everyone thinks he’s risky. We’re all in a Schelling tipping point game.

That I agree with. But it feels like Democrats aren't just freaking out because the media is freaked - they are legitimately questioning his ability to be reelected under these conditions.

I can’t say I have a great opinion in general of Democrat senior leadership’s stalwart resolve in the face of danger, which is also informing my opinion.

I can also say that if these people decide to replace Biden and Trump wins, they will become some of the most loathed people in history.

Inverse is also true tho. If they don’t replace Biden, and Trump wins, everyone who propped Biden up go down as villains. The stakes are so high and I see no clear answers.

(not a lawyer) but I cannot see any red state supreme court letting Dems switch the ballot that easily (TBH I'm not sure how this stuff gets set/when it gets set)

Not sure that's worth the downsides

And vice versa if they don't

God if we don’t end up with Trump 2 this fall we all have to go to boring precinct meetings and shit and get these weasels in line, don’t we.

I appreciate Run for Something and their ilk but we need the “Club for Normies” group for those of us who like to talk shit and fix things.

I've always thought the one failing people won't forgive in their leaders is abject cowardice. But based on who keeps getting reelected over and over, I may be wrong.

Hell, they make people who jump at their own shadow seem steely. They won’t even freaking hold hearings or press conferences or even make quotes on the record about anything a Republican does.

Sure

"can the biden campaign survive my worry about the biden campaign" is some really self defeating stuff

I don't know that it's SELF-defeating. It's doing exactly what the people saying it want it to do. We just can't take it seriously or let it work.

Yup. And it’s exactly where we’re at.

Yeah it's unbelievable how people WILLINGLY give up their space to rightwing propaganda. TWICE.

Exactly. “Ability to be reelected” is directly linked to what everyone is saying about the risks of him staying in the race. Perception is creating reality.

But it's linked to the reality we all saw of him faltering at the debate. Beginning to feel like we have to choose between what they say or our lying eyes.

I mean, Trump is an insane felon rapist and a lot of people still voted for him. There’s no rule that says we have to honorably give a shit about if our candidate comes off as slightly addled, especially when we’ve got a perfectly good VP who can take over as soon as he makes it past the post.

We can trust that Biden has assembled a competent team, including his VP, to get the work done, and vote to continue having a Democrat in the Oval Office Or we can split the vote and hand the nuclear football back to Trump In this world, with these systems, those are our choices 4 months out

I feel like we’re seeing different realities here, because what I’ve been seeing is he’s spent the weeks before and after the debate running around all over doing a reasonably competent job, no different than usual. Even the debate was just “meh,” not “ZOMG DISASTER” in my eyes The panic is WEIRD.

Did you see him on Friday in NC? Did you see him today in WI? (I don't necessarily mean you personally.) A tiny fraction of voters saw the debate. What is driving the narrative is the feedback loop of coverage, leading to concern, leading to more coverage, leading to more concern. At least IMO.

I just said this, but repeating: Biden coming across as "faltering," may also reflect his essential decency in not confronting Trump who was in all his mendacious glory. That's what Trump relies on: That others' humanity will restrain them so he can be as full-on despicable as he wants to be.

And yet the LITERALY FOLLOWING MORNING he had a rally in NC and was doing great. Almost like he got some much needed rest (notably also had a mild cough at the rally)

Seriously. The man is not doing well! People are freaked out because the debate was quite legitimately something that would cause a viewer to freak out, and the campaign did zero of the things that they would be expected to do if it was an isolated incident

If your worry is that you, personally, think he’s unfit for office based on what happened in the debate that’s tied to what you saw. If your worry isn’t that, but that other people will perceive it that way and it will affect the election, your worry has actually zero to do with the reality you saw

He had just traveled across Europe, had a cold, and flubbed the 1st debate like most incumbents do. I will never understand why the story isn't Trump lying his ass off. More importantly, why aren't we discussing the GOP's betrayal of the Constitution?

I love that the photo chosen for this story features Sinema and Manchin centrally. As if the digital person who uploaded the story had some thoughts about it

And noted Democrats Rob Portman, Susan Collins, and Bill Cassidy.

bsky.app/profile/wron...

So.. like all along, it's a personal mental issue on the voters (audience). Can't motivate those who are demotivated.

This assumes people's direct perception is fundamentally unreliable, and that what they do is shaped, predominantly, by the DC press. The reality that people are suddenly and directly perceiving is that this guy has declined *rapidly* and that this is not "just a cold."

I don’t know if those factors can be teased apart so neatly. Senior Dems freaking out are driving a news cycle that senior Dems have lost confidence in Biden, which is making more senior Dems freak out. It’s genuinely hard to tell which is cause and which is effect here.

I agree! Also, the media could be feckless AND at the same time Biden could indeed be declining in ways that are relevant to the campaign. So much commentary seems to assume only one of those things can possibly be true.

True

Mark Warner makes mid tuna melts in the microwave.

As someone who has spent a decade plus holding the DC press in contempt, I can safely say my visceral unease came from seeing him myself, not the stories published after the fact.

What it feels like. That's what you are basing tour actions on?

“Everyone” == “extremely online leftists and newspaper executives huffing their own farts”

And no small amount of selfish ego preservation of the “if I say Biden is risky now and he loses I can say I was right” variety. We can all pretend we’re Cassandra while we usher in fascism.

And now I see that every Biden misspeaking is gonna get attributed to senility, even stuff like flubbing billion vs million and then correcting himself.

I think the media highlights it, portrays it as risky, and harps on it. I’m not sure how many people would have thought about it.

Kinda like how he was the most electable candidate in the 2020 primary because everyone agreed he was the most electable candidate so they were voting for him because he's the most electable candidate even though the point of primaries is figuring out the electable candidate?

Not to relitigate the goddamn 2020 primary but boi that felt like a fever dream having people say they were voting in a primary for someone because they thought other people would vote for them. Like what is up with that.