2024 Presidential Election: Who should replace Joe Biden?

[CharonY]

Yes, but is that really low, around that time in their first term Obama was at an approval rating of around 47 and George W Bush 46. It does not seem that given all that is going on the ratings are really abysmal for Trump. Compared to, say, Jimmy Carter.

[StringJunky]

Listening to Roger Waters, who's eighty, argue with Piers Morgan last night shows a distinct contrast in demeanor and mental acuity between the two. Roger is still very sharp, commanding and assertive.  He certainly kept Morgan on his toes.

[iNow]

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Roger Waters, who's eighty, argue with Piers Morgan last night shows a distinct contrast in demeanor and mental acuity between the two

Without dismissing valid concerns with Biden, I don't find this to be a fair comparison.

In the previous week, Roger Waters was likely sipping wine and relaxing on a veranda with wealthy friends listening to gentle acoustic guitar music in between snacking on food prepared by master chefs, whereas Biden was flying back and forth to Europe multiple times to meet with world leaders and try to quiet a war in Gaza, a war in Ukraine, trade wars with China, civil unrest and killings in Africa and South America and Haiti and elsewhere, cyber attacks on US infrastructure, and in parallel address multiple natural disasters in multiple states at home and scores of other things that neither you nor I have the clearance nor access to understand.

It's like saying that a retired quilt knitter looked better rested than an ER doctor in a warzone, IMO. Well, yeah. No duh... of course they were better rested. They've actually been able to rest. 

Again, concerns with Biden are valid, just wouldn't put too much weight on comparisons like this one given there is no comparison to sitting in the Oval Office as the POTUS (which to say again is itself precisely why the concerns with Biden are valid). 

[StringJunky]

41 minutes ago, iNow said:

Without dismissing valid concerns with Biden, I don't find this to be a fair comparison.

In the previous week, Roger Waters was likely sipping wine and relaxing on a veranda with wealthy friends listening to gentle acoustic guitar music in between snacking on food prepared by master chefs....

Incorrect. Roger is zapping all over the world standing up for Palestinians and arguing with everyone who will argue with him. He looks bllxed in quite a few vids and has said as much, after flying to yet another protest or interview. He travels in the most "opulent" ways. This is not just a one-off image:

 

Edited July 3 by StringJunky

[iNow]

Fair. I may have undersold his activity level. Still, nothing compares with being president

[CharonY]

Still, it is weird how different the bar is set for Biden vs Trump. When the latter was elected, I have wondered whether the competence of the President actually matters to keep the country running. Empirically it seems that it doesn't unless there are emergency situations for which there are no clear mechanisms (say, a pandemic). And again, the evidence suggests that Trump failed miserably in that aspect. 

Policywise Biden's administration managed to transition the US mostly safe out of the pandemic (especially economics-wise), something that would be rather unlikely under Trump. Also, it is pretty clear that in contrast to the first presidency, Trump would pack his administration with loyalists rather than incorporate competent folks.  

 

5 hours ago, iNow said:

Fair. I may have undersold his activity level. Still, nothing compares with being president

Unless you spend your presidency playing golf and watching Fox news.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

Still, it is weird how different the bar is set for Biden vs Trump.

As was said earlier: 'water is wet with Trump'. One doesn't expect it with Biden. It's the swing voters that make the difference and obvious advancing senility could swing it against the Dems.

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, StringJunky said:

As was said earlier: 'water is wet with Trump'. One doesn't expect it with Biden. It's the swing voters that make the difference and obvious advancing senility could swing it against the Dems.

This does not sound like a swing, but more like a ratchet.

[StringJunky]

6 minutes ago, CharonY said:

This does not sound like a swing, but more like a ratchet.

By who? People on his side of the partisan divide don't appear to want him and the clamour is increasing. They want to win the election. 

Today's AP:

Quote

Why was it a surprise? Biden’s debate problems leave some wondering if the press missed the story

.....Nearly a year ago, in August 2023, the Associated Press-NORC poll found that three-quarters of U.S. adults said that the 81-year-old Biden was too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president. AP-NORC found this February that six in 10 adults were “not very” or “not at all” confident that Biden had the mental capability to serve as president, although the sentiment was roughly the same for his 78-year-old Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

<snip>

......Four reporters from the Times collaborated on a story, published Tuesday, that said several people who had encountered Biden behind closed doors noticed “he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.”

https://apnews.com/article/biden-media-condition-late-b8f568526dda9a66f2af9806903e76fa

 

[swansont]

6 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

By who? People on his side of the partisan divide don't appear to want him and the clamour is increasing. They want to win the election. 

The clamor is fueled by media hype (it’s not actual news, nor is it reporting) that feeds on itself, just “but her emails” (which I hope everyone realizes was a massive failure of responsible journalism)

[Peterkin]

46 minutes ago, swansont said:

The clamor is fueled by media hype (it’s not actual news, nor is it reporting) that feeds on itself, just “but her emails” (which I hope everyone realizes was a massive failure of responsible journalism)

Yeah. But they're not. The more it echos, the more people wonder, waver and maybe desert. Including the party. But they're not decisive enough to pull the plug on their candidate, pick someone else and get on with it. They vacillate and procrastinate and pretty much insure the big neon TRUMP on top of the White House and the end of the constitution.

[swansont]

24 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Yeah. But they're not. The more it echos, the more people wonder, waver and maybe desert. Including the party. But they're not decisive enough to pull the plug on their candidate, pick someone else and get on with it. They vacillate and procrastinate and pretty much insure the big neon TRUMP on top of the White House and the end of the constitution.

But again, we’re skipping past the discussion of whether to do it. Would it stop the media penchant for peddling narratives? Does anyone think they would pivot to actual reporting, or go on a “dems in disarray” binge that would put the current “reporting” seem restrained. My bet would be on the latter 

 

What happens when some big flaw is revealed in the replacement candidate, that comes to light when they’re placed under scrutiny? Are you going to replace that candidate, too?

edit: take a look at all the stuff about RFK jr that’s come to light recently, only because he’s running for president.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

By who? People on his side of the partisan divide don't appear to want him and the clamour is increasing. They want to win the election. 

Swing voters. Most discussions I have seen (not only after the debate) seems about folks swinging towards Trump because of failures of the Democrats on many levels. But either it is not discussed or there is no swing to the Democrats due to failures on the GOP side (at least not when it comes to the presidency). This does not seem like a pendulum to me but more like one-sided movements. 

[TheVat]

 

27 minutes ago, swansont said:

But again, we’re skipping past the discussion of whether to do it. Would it stop the media penchant for peddling narratives? Does anyone think they would pivot to actual reporting, or go on a “dems in disarray” binge that would put the current “reporting” seem restrained

There is no doubt that newspapers, for example, write reports on current events and if reputable try to derive a meaningful story based on facts.  Outlets like WaPo, BBC, and Reuters all fact-checked Biden's most recent excuse for poor debate performance, which was jet lag.  All checked public records and found Biden had finished his travels on June 15.  So, no jets for 12 days before the debate.  So, part of the problem is that you can ignore the punditry and opining and there are still things in the straight reporting that do not quite make sense and point towards some rather awkward attempts at damage control.  No one should be POTUS who can't recover from jet lag after almost two weeks.  To make such an excuse shows a lack of common sense and poor awareness of optics.  

[swansont]

23 minutes ago, TheVat said:

There is no doubt that newspapers, for example, write reports on current events and if reputable try to derive a meaningful story based on facts

This isn’t the “humor” section

26 minutes ago, TheVat said:

15.  So, no jets for 12 days before the debate.

And…? Is there an official expiration on jet lag? The one-hour DST shift messes me up for a week. 

[TheVat]

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

This isn’t the “humor” section

Heh!

You don't think there are news outlets than do straight reporting, i.e. factual accounts of matters of public record?  I found the 12 day jet lag thing to be factual and somewhat disturbing, for the reasons I gave.  Since news organizations like Reuters or the Post can be sued for libel, they do have a fairly strong motivation to report accurately.  IIRC the NY Times had a multimillion dollar settlement for libel a few years ago - they fired the writer and I'm sure that taking a hit like that concentrated their minds wonderfully on checking their facts before printing them.  

I also found this, from BBC, of interest:

White House officials have previously said he was battling a cold on the day of the debate.

The president did not mention any illness in his remarks on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the White House said earlier in the day that he was not taking any cold medication during the debate.

Mr Biden also spent six days at Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington DC, preparing for his debate against Donald Trump.

The New York Times, citing an unnamed source familiar with Mr Biden's schedule, reported on Tuesday that his days began at 11:00 each morning and that he was given time each day to nap....

(me, again - couldn't disengage the font from the quote passage):  These are all facts that seem inconsistent with the shifting narrative of Biden and his press office.  (I would personally love to start my days at eleven, and have a nap in the afternoon.  I imagine such a schedule, in a verdant retreat like Camp David, would fix just about anyone's jet lag.)

[iNow]

Both can be true at once. There can be authentic organic concerns about his age while in parallel those concerns can get annoyingly amplified and made far more salient by media coverage. 

If the media didn’t cover his debate performance at all, people would still have reluctance due to Bidens age. However, now that said coverage has turned into a feeding frenzy, the cycle self-reinforces. 

It’s not either or. It’s both and. 

[Peterkin]

The man is genuinely and legitimately old. Of course he gets tired and has down days and occasionally forgets things, stammers or gropes for words. This was never a secret.

That debate was a PR disaster. And the media ran with it like a pack of hounds that just held up a butcher shop. Meanwhile, Trump gets immunity for all crimes committed while in an office he disgraced, and there's hardly a ripple. Everybody's used to his legal crap and the Supreme Court's 'activism' - it's not really news.

Almost no one in a position to influence the situation is about to do the smartest or most ethical thing available to them. However this turns out, it's a disaster.

[MSC]

On 7/2/2024 at 2:12 AM, Alex_Krycek said:

Ok, I'll keep em' coming.  This one's from the BBC, based on a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgln3jx47go

A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday (June 30th) indicated that 72% of registered voters believe the president does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president - a sharp increase from the 65% who said the same in an earlier poll.

Forty-nine percent of voters said the same of former President Donald Trump.

Particularly alarming for the Biden campaign, 45% of registered Democrats who responded to the poll said they believe the president should step aside for another candidate.

 

And you want to roll the dice based on these numbers?  You're a heck of a gambler.  

You're forgetting a crucial detail, pollsters themselves haven't caught up with shifting demographics, as evidenced by how off the marked result they have been in recent years and there is no poll that tells you what tomorrows poll will say. Polls can change a fair number of times and there are still 5 months before the election. 5 months is a long time in politics.

Personally I don't trust polls as far as I can kick them until we are a month out and people start actually tuning in to voter mentality in earnest. Psychologically we are still a few months away from that point but political awareness will gradually increase now, but so too will propaganda like the crap you're spinning. Personally I don't care how Biden came off in one debate when Trumps threat is so dire. Trust me, film me everyday for a year and the day you catch me without having had my morning coffee is the day you accuse me of showing signs of cognitive decline. If the presidential job was just debating I'd say Biden is in trouble... but that's not what the job is at all and it's primarily the job of decision maker and management. He's not expected to be in the Senate arguing for his own bills and as president and not a campaigner, he doesn't debate opponents on stage. So why care about how well he does in a debate when his agendas and plans are laid out and transparent in other places anyway and again, it's one debate and people are allowed to have an off day. 

Honestly, the jumping to conclusions based on one TV appearance isn't even something medical professionals tend to do either, so if they aren't, on what basis do you claim to have the right to be taken seriously here?

In the end, Biden is the sort of President who will surround himself with people who are there to aid him and would actually step down if he needed to. Trump isn't that sort of president. 

Ultimately some people can be of the opinion that going with Biden would be akin to the democrats shooting themselves in the foot. Fair enough, it's a close race. Honestly though, so is dropping him and going for a new candidate so close to the Election. Where is the better choice between shooting yourself in either your right or left foot? 

Honestly though if you want someone to blame for not having a better democrat candidate; look no further than the news media. Who barely said a word or gave any coverage to the democratic primaries as it was all saturated with the lost cause republican primaries when everyone knew the base was gonna blindly follow Trump over a cliff and win the primary for him. The primary that actually could have mattered, was barely covered. I read the news a fair amount and I can't tell you a single name of any democrat challenger to Biden at all. Why? Seriously why? What the fuck were they thinking?

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

And…? Is there an official expiration on jet lag? The one-hour DST shift messes me up for a week. 

I am probably more argumentative on this than I really feel, owing to this being a political thread and the inclination to poke at what politicians say.  It just seems problematic for a US president to find 12 days insufficient to get over jet lag, given that official duties would rarely put one farther than 12 days from a trip several time zones out of DC.  IOW, it is an excuse which plays into the hands of those contending he is not fit for the job.  Even if we were to revise our nation's highest office to a Zoom presidency, this sort of excuse-making seems to show poor judgment.

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I am probably more argumentative on this than I really feel, owing to this being a political thread and the inclination to poke at what politicians say.  It just seems problematic for a US president to find 12 days insufficient to get over jet lag, given that official duties would rarely put one farther than 12 days from a trip several time zones out of DC.  IOW, it is an excuse which plays into the hands of those contending he is not fit for the job.  Even if we were to revise our nation's highest office to a Zoom presidency, this sort of excuse-making seems to show poor judgment.

1. Trump does not get held to this standard, one of many “accurate reporting” issues that exist (sins of omission ate still sins)

2. Sleeping in is completely consistent with having jet lag.

[MSC]

12 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Even if we were to revise our nation's highest office to a Zoom presidency, this sort of excuse-making seems to show poor judgment.

The line between excuse and explanation resides in whether it is false/irrelevant or true.

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, MSC said:

propaganda like the crap you're spinning

Alex may or may not have an agenda, but he’s been calm and rational and fact focused and I find the suggestion he’s spinning crap hyperbolic and unrepresentative. It’s ok to disagree, but he’s hardly deserving of this type of reply, IMO.

 

10 minutes ago, MSC said:

why care about how well he does in a debate

Bc as good of a president as he’s been, his weakness is the perception of his advancing age. He called this early debate to assuage those concerns and have a performance strong like his SOTU address a few months ago. 

Everyone was watching, inside and outside the US. Instead of extinguishing this perceptual fire, he poured gasoline on to it. It’s a problem bc it amplified what people globally were already feeling. 

The debate wasn’t the problem. It was how this was one of the first and only opportunities we’ve all had in months to see him off a prompter and he shit the bed with 60 million people watching, and hundreds of millions more consuming clips of it the days after. 

Trump is benefiting, despite his own shit performance. He is being held to a different standard, and that’s why the people who desperately want him to lose are so worried and focused about grandpa Joe spacing out. 

[MSC]

On 6/29/2024 at 6:46 PM, Alex_Krycek said:

That, or you have a personal bias that favors Joe Biden and is obscuring objective analysis.

Oh I definitely have a personal bias, towards reality and pragmatism. 5 months away from an election. Your analysis isn't objective because it's only dealing with the candidates, not the circumstances and context the candidates are in nor does it fall in line with a win contribution strategy because you're only encouraging doubt in the person we need to beat Trump in a time where it will do no good. Basically none of your criticisms are going to be constructive and this thread should have went up months ago or even a year ago in order for us to consider it an objectively viable alternative. 

[StringJunky]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

Swing voters. Most discussions I have seen (not only after the debate) seems about folks swinging towards Trump because of failures of the Democrats on many levels. But either it is not discussed or there is no swing to the Democrats due to failures on the GOP side (at least not when it comes to the presidency). This does not seem like a pendulum to me but more like one-sided movements. 

When we discuss this subject, I always assume you guy's know which side I'm on.  It is my fervent hope that the GOP are kept away from leading at least until Trump and his closest acolytes are dead or neutered. It is my opinion that Biden is no longer fit to lead and he needs to bow down with dignity and let Harris, or some other Dem, take reins at the next election.

1 minute ago, MSC said:

Oh I definitely have a personal bias, towards reality and pragmatism. 5 months away from an election. Your analysis isn't objective because it's only dealing with the candidates, not the circumstances and context the candidates are in nor does it fall in line with a win contribution strategy because you're only encouraging doubt in the person we need to beat Trump in a time where it will do no good. Basically none of your criticisms are going to be constructive and this thread should have went up months ago or even a year ago in order for us to consider it an objectively viable alternative. 

Indeed, we should have been having this conversation some time ago, but the people surrounding Biden have, it seems, been covering up his problems right up until this debate revealed his real state of mind. I don't think it's a blip.