∞ Monkeys: You'll have to provide the articles citing anonymous WH staffers, because I haven't seen any I'd consider credible. I mean again- first hand experience with sundowning & you don't go to the waffle house later that night. Maybe, he's not sharp enough, but it's not like Trump is.

Blocked.

Why would a major civilization-ending crisis be a reason to NOT replace the person who cannot do the job with someone who can?

Were you unhappy with the job Biden was doing before last week? I wish there was someone who could jump in & obviously win, but the people blaming Biden for the price of eggs & Gaza aren't going to go away. Let's see what happens in the next couple weeks before dooming.

I rarely saw him, like the rest of us. I assumed the person we saw at SOTU was how he always is. And maybe it was, back then. I'm not saying this to be mean. What I saw was terrifying.

I'm probably more of a political news nerd than you. Biden is more prone to brain farts & his voice is often too whispy for what you want from a POTUS, but his mind is working. The start of the debate was *rough*. The fact that Biden picked up as it went along makes me think "bad prep" was a factor

I'm willing to give him a couple weeks to do some things to show he's not going to have a repeat in the debate in September, which is the one that might actually matter. If it's not Biden, the nominee is Harris, unless you think Obama & the Clintons will lean on delegates to pick someone.

The fact remains that Trump is unfit for the office & we were always looking at election where ~ 46% of people want the guy, while another 10% want a pony. No new candidate changes that equation, so I'm not ceding an inch of ground to the NYT Editorial Board.

For the voice thing- this was today & no one is talking about it here. Biden sounds like he's sounded in the last few years. Either he had a cold, or he blew his voice out in the debate prep. It's also a good speech for the moment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rPH...

President Biden delivers remarks on the Supreme Court's immunity ruling — 7/1/2024www.youtube.com President Joe Biden deliver remarks on the Supreme Court's immunity ruling on Monday.In a 6-3 opinion along partisan lines, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled...

I feel bad disagreeing about this.

I saw what you saw & I'm not pretending it's something that needs a strong response. I'm unconvinced Biden is incapable of being President, or winning in November. We're talking about this, instead of focusing on the firehose of falsehoods & racist conspiracies Trump spewed. bsky.app/profile/soma...

Trump is relying on an explicit Great Replacement argument & shameless lies. Who thinks the winner of this debate is a litmus test for racism.

Trump did not win that debate in any way that changes the election in the long term. If you don't feel right about pushing back on Biden's performance, Trump is your focus for now, imo.

It's okay to not feel great about this. Four years ago, it was "Biden is hiding in his basement". Either Biden rights the ship soon, or the campaign takes a long hard look at the alternative of putting their hopes on Harris.

Imo, if we lose, it's not the candidate, it's people showing up for fascism & others deciding it wasn't worth showing up to stop it.

I mean that I feel bad having to tell you such hard truths when I can see how much you wish it wasn't true. All I can say is watch it again and watch the Waffle House visit afterward. Watch his face very closely. Then watch him try to navigate the steps of the stage. Then the crowded restaurant.

You can SEE his mind lose its grip on the thought he was in the middle of speaking. You can see the panic, the reaching for it, but it is gone. As someone pointed out, Trump is the cruelest of men, but he pulled his punches. He could see that he didn't need to do anything, he was already imploding.

In the restaurant, think back to how it was when Obama would visit, or even how it was when Biden would visit four years ago. Usually the candidate is in the lead, walks up to the counter, banters with the staff, talks to lots of people, POTUS staff fade into the background. He needed help to focus.

He needed a staffer on one side and Jill on the other, to make sure that he made it to the counter for the symbolic food purchase that's usually such a delight of campaigning. He looked dazed and it was very awkward, and so quiet that a reporter could easily shout a question and be heard.

When asked how he thought he did he said it's very hard to debate a liar, a one-liner that anyone could have told him to say on the way over there. He didn't add anything to it, or extemporaneously talk about any of his campaign issues. He was barely making it through and everyone could tell.

It seems almost certain that the reporting from White House staff that he is only reliably lucid from 10 to 4 is true. Otherwise he would prove that he can be alert at night. It's going into the fifth day. We just had a major catastrophe, he spoke five minutes and said go vote.

I'm sorry but it's just Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is not that cold medicine suddenly caused an episode that looks just like sundowning in cognitive decline. The simplest explanation is that the POTUS became incapacitated but racists around him don't want the VP to take over for him.

As someone who had to care for a parent with cognitive decline, I would be very cautious of making a diagnosis based on 90 minutes of video. The "sundowning" claim was made in 2020 by leftists who just hated Biden.

Two things can be true. People who hated Biden for Communist reasons started claiming he was in decline when he was fine, years before anything was wrong. And, also too, reporters aren't lying that sources say in the past 6 months he's had a steep decline.

It looks like sundowning *to me* because of how lost he is trying to get off the stage and navigate a restaurant, like this is someone who should be in a home, but then the next day at 11 AM he was fine again.

You'll have to provide the articles citing anonymous WH staffers, because I haven't seen any I'd consider credible. I mean again- first hand experience with sundowning & you don't go to the waffle house later that night. Maybe, he's not sharp enough, but it's not like Trump is.

WH reporters tried to make a story out of Commander biting the Secret Service agents I've seen video of using the leash to yank the dog around. I start with the premise that the WH press corps are bored, self important & have felt neglected after being stars during Trump's time.

This is Carl Bernstein. I don't think that describes him.

What appears to be happening, as much as the Bidens want to deny it, is that he had a steep decline starting six months ago and they have been trying to just accommodate his good times, which are still really good, a lot of the time. I have to think that many in the press and staff have known.

I now think it seems likely that the unusual early debate was actually suggested to the Bidens as a way to force the issue, by concerned staffers, though sold to them as a way for Joe to prove he's still got it. Because now the press is speaking out about things they knew. They already have sources.

Nobody would want to be the first network to ask if he's still okay. Not just out of the blue. You'd look like some MAGA nut.

Your reporter can be telling you "I saw him totally lose track of what he was saying, his face go completely slack, he froze like a zombie and never got back to what he was saying" and if you can't get that on camera in an obviously explicitly consensual way, you can't run it.

Ah. Ok, I completely lost trust in Bernstein after he sat on Trump's admission that he minimized covid. Since Watergate, his career is being the Lady Whistledown of White House intrigue.

He's just one of them, the latest one on CNN.

You can if you have two aides, one at each elbow, and you stay about two minutes. As he did.

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