sorry but this is just wrong. yes, there’s a bad faith media feeding frenzy. but *fifty million* people watched Biden sputter his way through that debate. it is not a creation of the media, it is a real problem.
I don’t like to embrace doomerism but I’m pretty sure the moment we took on this narrative as a true “concern” Biden needed to disprove, especially party leadership, we were fucked.
the implied premise here is that the decline in Biden’s polling numbers is being driven by the media coverage rather than the debate itself. but several awful polls came in the days immediately following the debate. the debate itself was the problem
But that's really hard to disentangle from the center left elite media collectively freaking out and calling for Biden's withdrawal immediately after the debate.
That's why I didn't say NYT oped page but rather a big chunk of center left media, including people immediately after the debate on CNN, MSNBC, etc. Biden was bad, but the TV coverage was immediately asking if he should withdraw, and it's been relentless since.
I believe someone responded to me and then blocked me by sarcastically saying that the average person has their opinion zig zag around based on headlines. I don't think that, and I don't know why they think I think that. It only takes a 1 or 2 point change in the election to make a difference
More people will see a stream of out-of-context op ed headlines that they don't realize aren't actually news headlines (and also will not read) than watch the debate.
The net effect of how the Internet works now is that people will see 100 snippets of text or video saying people think Biden should drop out and just assume that's the conventional wisdom without really looking into it.
Never had a chance to divorce debate effects from renewed and fresh calls among Dems for him to step down save one reaction poll. IMO the calls are the root cause of the frenzy. Massive lack of message discipline trying to relitigate the nomination via the press.
When Biden said in his Stephanopoulos interview tonight that he would be at peace if he lost to Trump because "I gave it my all", that's when I knew for sure that he needed to be replaced. He has lost the plot if he thinks this is only about him.
The only polls I saw either didn't change or only dropped within the margin of error. It's far enough away from election day that it's barely different from random noise. Obama saw a bigger drop after his first debate in 2012. Where was the party calling for him to drop out then?
I stand by what I said the night of:
I would vote for Biden over Trump even if his staff were doing a Weekend at Bernie’s with him.
The debate made me think they’re inclined to test that
why wouldn’t they test it when folks are on here saying they’d vote for a corpse? It’s really note cute to admit you don’t expect anything from the party.
But the media coverage also immediately followed the debate. Not sure which is the bigger driver, but I know I personally didn’t start freaking out until I saw NYT calling for Biden to drop out
Thank you. It was HIS fucking performance. I agree most of the pundits are shitheads who called us all ageist POS 6 months ago, but Biden ultimately fucked his. They buck stops there.
All my friends have the same story—freaking out within the first 15 minutes or so. No media narrative needed to reach our own conclusions. A text convo a friend started with me. See the time stamp:
