southpaw: never happened before www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/u...

never happened before www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/u...

Am obviously just one of many many reporters getting their phones blown up by elite Dems in positions of influence, power, money freaking the fuck out tonight. All I’ll say before pivoting to writing copy is this is Not the usual bed wetting, Biden should step aside fan fic. Tonight was different

Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances (Published 2011)www.nytimes.com Elected officials and party leaders at all levels said that their concern about President Obama’s vulnerability in 2012 has intensified as the economy has displayed fresh signs of weakness.

dude you are doing yourself and your followers a massive disservice by posting through it without actually having watched it. You have no idea what you are explaining away! You can watch and still ultimately feel how you currently do but I’m willing to bet there’d be a little more humility.

If you can’t articulate what you learned that’s new, and no one has been able to so far, then I feel okay about my suspicion that it would be a big emotive wankfest.

The really notable thing about the freakout going on on this website this evening is that no one seems to be backing a single bit of it up with actual data.

I suspect they’ll get some data in the next week or so, given some of the headlines, but it’ll still be June/early July pre-convention data.

1) 4 months is an eternity in politics 2) Everyone who seems upset was already anti-Biden before this, or one of the Church of the Savvy (h/t Charlie Pierce) who want a horse race (at best)) so I'm not sure what the real effect, if any, is.

Will there be any consequences for pundits regarding whether they get it right/wrong? Are they incentivized to focus on being correct in their prognostications? Seems that we all sense not, but somehow we pretend otherwise

I'm not even seeing instapolls or anything!

That used to be a big thing, but polling is such a mess now that they’re probably impossible.

What? Data? It's not about that now. Fatty's lizard brain is so fast at lying that it's about going on offense to focus on his weaknesses. Sat, like, he's a convicted felon. Biden blew it.

New: multiple times he clearly lost track of the sentence he was in the middle of speaking. I hadn't seen that from him before. Certainly not on a prominent stage. It's a new level of "old/feeble/frail"etc that is, in some specific ways, worse than has been publicly visible before.

I don't know how much that will mean or if it matters or whatever. And maybe that point is adjacent/irrelevant to your broader point (I haven't been following your whole back and forth). But something different was on display tonight than what Biden has previously displayed.

Biden us good on policy but he can't maintain focus. This example from early in the debate is sadly representative. He improved a bit as it went on, had many great policy points, but this is a Dukakis moment squared. 2 minute clip. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdOf...

Watch: Biden Stumbles Over His Words During Debate Against Trump | WSJ Newswww.youtube.com President Biden stumbled and appeared to lose his train of thought as he discussed healthcare, while on the debate stage with former President Donald Trump. ...

I can report from here in suburbia that my democratic friends are also freaking the fuck out. Biden seems to have dementia. My 18 year old son doesn’t want to fucking vote for him because he’s so goddamn old. And tonight‘s debate just proved it.

I’m not trying to antagonize people who have these doubts about Biden, just noting they are longstanding and not fully supported by the evidence. I wish his every appearance contradicted them as strongly as the State of the Union did, but they don’t always.

1 - Yeah, I'm freaking out. 2 - I'm old enough to remember the freakout after Reagan's halting, bumbling performance in his first debate as an incumbent. IIRC, he did OK in that election.

Reagan was utterly hobbled by dementia at that point, so maybe not great.

Counterpoint: www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wf...

President Reagan, Mastermind - SNLwww.youtube.com President Reagan (Phil Hartman) acts hopeless and clueless in public, but in private he's an evil mastermind who knows every detail about everything happenin...

Yeah, we later learned that Reagan was a robot following scripts two years into his first term, and Nancy was making policy with the help of her astrologist. To be clear, Biden isn't senile.

One of the best skits ever.

Oh wow. Then what happened? Oh Ollie North and a bunch of other psychos got free reign to do some wheeling and dealing in coke and weapons.... oh..... Totally a non issue to have the executive not there mentally!

The problem is there probably won’t be another debate if Biden is the nominee — it’s going to be a bumpy few months.

I'm older than you because I remember how things ended up for Hubert Humphrey.

Reagan was a young lad of 73 during those debates.

A wildly different media and political ecosystem existed at that time. It was another world and the press was not gunning for Reagan on that issue.

I was in first grade in 1984 (but still remember being the only one in my class to raise his hand for Mondale). Could you tell me again how this played out on TikTok, Instagram, and Fox News?

I'm old enough myself. Reagan was only 73 versus 81. Reagan was professionally trained in putting on a show. Reagan was running against a weak politician. Reagan had an approval rating in the mid to high 50s.

I think it's worse they are long-standing and the evidence only gets stronger the when he actually appears, while the sense he's being hidden because he's practically incapacitated gets stronger when he isn't allowed in public, or starts threatening influencers

Yeah that’s not really a description of reality, so I don’t take it too seriously.

Yeah that's fine to deny what 67% of people who watched tonight said, and what dem insiders are also acknowledging too. It's definitely easier to deny anything that challenges prevailing worldviews. It's nice to know that Trump could never defeat Hillary either, cuz people all think rationally

It sounds like he had a bad night! How could I deny it? I just don’t really buy that a blown debate justifies all this extra weight people are putting it. The state of the union didn’t settle the age discussion for all time, and this won’t either.

Dem insiders also chose Hillary.

I thought 'Dem insiders' were who chose Biden in 2020.

And Hillary won all the debates, so maybe they aren’t the most critical factor.

So many falsehoods in one sentence

They are longstanding and that's part of the problem. Both my parents are the same age as Biden. One is in a nursing home with dementia, the other as sharp as ever. I'm sorry, but Biden increasingly sounds disabled, notwithstanding his extensive policy skills.

We're talking about the steward of this God-awful empire here and it's 350 million charges depending on its function. It needs a president that can function, think, and communicate 24/7 that isn't a crook that stiffs contractors working for this. Like... it's all we have.

I’d always been skeptical about the reporting on Biden‘s mental acuity. I’m a political junkie, and last night was a turning point for me. We ignore reality at our own peril.

Old age is a relentless, progressive decline with variable highs and lows along the way. SOTU showed us a high. This debate showed us a low they probably try to shield from public view.

My mother has cognitive decline, possibly early dementia, but she won’t get diagnosed. in the evenings when she’s tired, she starts slurring her words and her voice gets weak. And she’s not as sharp. Biden reminded me of her last night.

You raised a moron.

Biden didn’t look like he had dementia. He looked old and frail, for sure. I understand someone who watched that debate and was worried he wasn’t going to be alive in 4 years. But he didn’t have dementia.

I wouldn't be all that confident in predicting he'll still be alive in November

no he doesn't

I mean....it's not like Trump is exactly a spring chicken

Srsly, that all discussions in the media focus on analyzing Biden’s decline and no one talks about his opponent’s constant misspeaks, non-sequiturs and clear physical issues is kind of ludicrous. I get that it reflects a feeling DT is clearly hopeless and wanting his opp to appear stronger but still

I dunno, my Democratic friends didn’t watch the debate, aren’t plugged into the socials, and as a result aren’t freaking the fuck out.

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