Micah: I hope you're right, I really do, and I guess we'll see how this weekend's interviews go but I am not convinced, not with the depth of worry across the party I would be absolutely delighted to eat shit here

I think the freakout has been absurd and overblown and far more damaging than the debate itself, which would have been survivable if everyone had been willing to circle the wagons and push back on it I am, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, extremely concerned that the damage cannot be overcome

Breaking news: President Biden and his senior team said they accepted the grim ultimatum they’ve been hearing from almost all quarters of the Democratic Party — to demonstrate his fitness for office or face a significant effort to force him to step aside.

Biden and aides concede he needs to quickly demonstrate his fitness for officewww.washingtonpost.com Critics have been shaken by his relative inaction to directly address the panic ignited by his halting debate performance last Thursday.

I may well be wrong about this - it's still the beginning of July, and a number of people I respect have a different view of the situation but at this point the only thing that matters to me is beating Trump in November and I don't think Biden can do that without full support from his party

tbh i think it just requires biden doing an interview, spouting off some of his malarkey talk, and making a few disparaging jokes about the nyt and it'll be fine

I hope you're right, I really do, and I guess we'll see how this weekend's interviews go but I am not convinced, not with the depth of worry across the party I would be absolutely delighted to eat shit here

i mean, legitimately, if he flubs an interview with stephanopolous it would be disasterous. but i doubt it'll happen.

the flubbing, i mean. not the interview. he's obviously doing the interview

I think seriously underestimating how poorly this can go considering what we saw during the debate. I don’t think there was any way to convince anyone but the most committed partisans that there’s no reason to worry even if everyone decided they’d just push that line. He was obviously struggling.

Hopefully he bounces back, I really hope he does, but there was no way to deny what everyone could see and hear without sounding totally disingenuous. Again, hopefully he comes out strong the rest of the way.

i mean if he fucks it up, its probably curtains

Yeah it'd be hard to convince anyone who isn’t steeped in this that it’s just no big deal he couldn’t complete his thoughts.

Yeah, “clap harder” isn’t a solution. Campaign needs to stop fucking up.

if he can nail that and we can get a round of "Dems feel reassured by Biden's performance, donors back on board, etc" stories that would be ideal

honestly? i think he'll do fine. i don't know if it will be enough for the panic frenzy, though.

Legit think a lot of people have already made their minds up and will not accept any showing of strength from him

that's basically what I mean by "can the damage be overcome" I don't know if even a great interview would shift the narrative here, and if it doesn't... like, the whole thing is shit, I am not endorsing the ratfucking campaign, I just worry that it worked in the eyes of the voters

doesn't seem to have moved the needle much yet. very little will, in this race, i think.

I am stuck on this too. What I really want is for them to publicly acknowledge that the reason SCOTUS did what they did is that they know one side will not take the gun and get out of jail free card, but the other will grab and use both. Then threaten to use them unless changes are made.

Unfortunately, yeah. The tail is absolutely wagging the dog now. If Dem establishment doesn't solidify around Biden American media will 100% try to gin up a contested convention.

This was absolutely made worse by the panic. No question.

eh. long way to go. but the news frenzy has to break

You can break the news frenzy by just outlasting it and aggressively telling them “the thing your coverage suggests should happen will *never* happen.”

Maybe after three weeks of the NYT front paging this horseshit people we stop worrying and start laughing.

I think it would be enough, but what are all the folks who've explicitly gone on record as saying they want him to go going to do if that happens? Explicitly recanting will just make them look like completely useless cretins.

i mean, as far as i can tell the on-the-record shankers are like a couple of backbench house mediocrities and rahm emanual's brother

like nobody gives a fuck about susan collins' little protoge in maine

this took literally moments of research (which means maybe I missed something, but um... maybe not) bsky.app/profile/nied...

In case you're wondering, here is the donation record of "stalwart democratic fundraiser" Ari Emanuel's Endeavor PAC from 2018 to 2024. www.opensecrets.org/political-ac...

doggett coming out for this was embarrassing man

raul from az isn't a back bencher, but hes like, not very healthy

The first one I think was some at-risk congressman from Texas I’ve never heard of?

Yeah there is a more fundamental problem here where the media reporting on democrat nervous breakdowns is going to make the entire party look ridiculous regardless of what happens. The NYT handed them shovels and they started digging.

"Explicitly recanting will just make them look like completely useless cretins." me, very politely: ...and?

To quote The Thick Of It's Jamie McDonald: "Oh, I know you *are*, but we don't need everyone to know that!" 😜

Considering the majority of the panic seems to be from folks who've been complaining since the primary, I don't think anything will shut them up.

The interview was kept to 15 minutes. Not great.

where'd you see that? only thing i've seen is people calling it "extended".

I heard it on a podcast, not sure which one. I don’t have anything more than that.

media friggin loves interviews and formal press conferences. if he's capable of doing a few good ones, hopefully something else will take over the news cycle

Wasn’t there a lower key version of this leading into the State of the Union

yeah

"Dems feel reassured by biden's performance, donors back on board, why this is bad for old man biden, and why he should still drop out" -NYT

And he can’t just be passable, IMO. He needs to sharply redirect every question about his age to the threat of Trump. It can’t look defensive.

yeah, kinda feel the worst case for this stuff looks a lot like that Times poll - not bad enough to force him out, but nothing to suggest a candidate who can close the gap.

Yeah, you’re going to be left hoping for a systemic polling error, which isn’t nothing but isn’t where elite Democrats want to be with the stakes this high. They haven’t felt like underdogs in a campaign in two decades.

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