People really need to give up the idea that politicians have the power to 'sell' their actions to the public. Regardless of what he says, Biden's message will be filtered through the media and boiled down into horse-race headlines. It will be *very* obvious he's stepping aside after a bad debate.
I think Biden could easily sell stepping aside. "I have served my country for 52 years. As many Americans know first hand, it is hard to admit when you've slowed down." Then talk about spending time w/ grandchildren, efforts best spent fulfilling elected duties, VP Harris is well-prepared, I endorse
If you want to make the case that Biden should step aside anyway, that's fine. But the entire concept of giving the right speech or deploying the perfect "framing" to make this not look extremely bad for Democrats just isn't possible in the media environment we have.
Yeah, and instead of doing that they decided to lie to the public to reenact the impeachment plot from the West Wing. Really great showing by team D. Happy they represent me.
Everyone who thinks they know the angle or speech that would work (including me!!!) needs to ask if they are thinking of a useful political strategy or just what would make for a good movie.
I know low-info voters exist, but when people talk like this, I feel like they are suffering under a delusion that “the electorate” is some vague entity distinct from (and dumber than) themselves and their audience — as opposed to literally being all of us, collectively.
“Obviously, we see the field for what it is, but they may be able to convince voters…”
Buddy, the voter is me. Presumably it is also you. What conversation are we even having here?
Not sure it’s fair to conflate people who may not be media-savvy to low-info voters. Those are two different things. We hear all the time about the effects of media-spin, so it’s not irrational to think one might be able to use that to their advantage, even if the reality is different.
I guess my position, in part, is formed by the belief that we may *all* be more susceptible to media spin than we realize.
The paradox is that the media often seems to frame it in these horse-race, inside-baseball terms, for their “savvy” audience, as if they are not, in so doing, engaging in spin.
They’re already moving on to the “cover up” stage of this “scandal.” If Democrats had a single functioning testicle between them, every question about Biden’s fitness should be met with “your focus is on a bad debate while the other candidate is promising to jail and kill his political opponents.”
I mean also, running a candidate and deciding at the last possible second he's medically unfit and changing him in a panic doesn't so much look bad it's it just is very bad
Clinton had a website full of policies, some of the most solid and detailed stuff I've ever seen.
The media still happily reported that she had no policies other than "I'm not Trump"
Her 'deplorables' comments were both completely fine in context and 100% accurate and they still spent a week talking about how disastrous it was. If you read the text of that speech in a vacuum you would think the framing was perfectly fine.
I think all the time about her and Kathy Griffin and Michelle Wolf and all the people who were forced to apologize for accurately describing Trump and his followers as exactly what they have turned out to be
They did the same to Obama with his ‘clutching their guns’ comment. They do it because they know the left will react while the right will ignore anything similar about their candidate.
I feel like we need to teach Americans the term "monstering".
That's what it's called when the UK tabloids do this to someone. Only, it's not just the tabloids here.
We learned "gaslighting" in the Trump admin. We can do this!
I both think that if he does step down the only alternative is Harris and also that anyone who thinks that this sort of move will improve media optics is naive bordering on delusional. The media will flip to open racism and misogyny overnight, they won't miss a beat
That's not an argument for or against a course of action but a plea for things to be done for the right reasons. There may be a serious case that voters will actually respond differently to Harris; right now it feels like everyone is scrambling to "fix the optics" as if they're a weather phenomenon
Biden certainly does less media hits than past presidents… however almost everyone talks about him like he did the SOTU and the debate was the first time anyone had seen him since. He’s on camera like 2-4 days a week!
Literally nobody seems to care what Biden does if it’s not feeding the narrative
Agreeing to the debate will be looked back on as the biggest mistake of the campaign. His other public appearances this week could have gone exactly the same and they wouldn’t have led to calls for him to step down.
If he withdraws, we will see four-plus months of what did Harris know and when did she know it, up to and including lawsuits, Congressional hearings, impeachment proceedings and round the clock inquiries on every news channel, front page and opinion page. And the press whisperers will not be spared.
They already said Conalds team started the whole Biden is dropping out thing so everyone will be talking about that and not the epstein files that were unsealed July 1st where conald fuc* d 12 year olds i think like 20. One being his daughter's friend.
The beauty of horse-race coverage is he could get all hopped up on butterscotch ice cream, say he's dropping out because of a bad debate, mic drop moonwalk off stage and there'd still be a not insignificant chunk of contrarian 'takes'
Amazing that the media is conjuring the idea of Biden being too old to be competent on such a widespread degree but if he just steps down then oh well there's nothing the media can do to spin THAT as a loss for Dems
There would be a ton of sympathy for him! Most people have first hand experience with watching the elders in their family having to face up to their limitations.
