Trump Coward Watch, version infinity: Will he show up to debate??

Policies also matter.

 

which is what i said

 

OP bailed on his dumbass thread haha.

 

Sam is too smart and cultured to jump in now.

 

hmm...that's not the impression I got from his post

 

link should work for everyone

https://www.wsj.com/politics/electi...e88j33j339b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The Inevitability of Biden’s Reckoning
Democrats are paying the price for overriding voter concerns about the president’s age
By Molly Ball
July 1, 2024 at 5:00 am ET

The fallout from last week’s presidential debate has thrust the Democratic Party into a spiraling crisis. Yet many in the party view the current reckoning as sadly inevitable—the product of years of defensive refusal by the president and his protective inner circle to acknowledge the decline in Biden’s public presentation that has long been obvious to voters.

Now, insiders admit, the party is reaping the consequences of its long failure to confront an issue that was only ever fated to get worse.

“This was all predictable, and it pisses me off that everyone is acting shocked now,” one longtime Democratic operative said on Sunday. “The shocking thing is that people engaged in this deception, or delusion, or both, for so long.”

President Biden’s shambolic performance in Thursday’s opening face-off with former President Donald Trump confirmed the worst fears about his competence and thrust previously whispered concerns into the open, forcing a wrenching and open-ended conversation about his ability to continue as the party’s standard-bearer. Over the weekend, officials, operatives, donors and party rank and file frantically groped for a way forward amid plummeting confidence about their chances to win the November election. Party insiders agonized over the chaos that a late attempt to reshuffle the ticket might unleash and fretted about the impossibility of forcing the president’s hand to drop out.

But the risks of seeking a second term should have been no surprise. For years, polls have clearly indicated that a majority of the electorate viewed Biden as too old to serve another term and questioned his faculties as a result of his age. Large percentages of Democratic voters have consistently said they would prefer a different nominee. Yet the president’s insular inner circle and the party’s top leadership continued to insist that these concerns are overblown or irrelevant, and they worked to squelch doubting voices.

“They were already behind, and they were hoping and assuming that the debate would change the dynamic of the campaign,” said Michael LaRosa, a former aide to first lady Jill Biden whose mild public criticism of the campaign’s strategy got him nasty pushback from many in Biden-world. “Now they’ve put themselves in an even more dire position, and put the party, frankly, in a really dangerous position.”

That Biden was slowing with age has been evident for years to those familiar with the quick-witted patter and glad handing vigor he once exhibited. Some longtime aides say it first became noticeable after his son Beau died of cancer in 2015.

Biden’s age was a liability for his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination: In the first nominating contest, which traditionally privileges up-close-and-personal retail politics, Iowa caucus goers who had ample occasion to witness his rambling presentation issued a stark vote of no confidence in the ostensible front-runner. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, now the transportation secretary, won the most caucus votes, while Biden barely squeaked into fourth place.

Biden nonetheless powered to the nomination when the Democratic establishment, fearing a Sanders nomination, rallied behind him and South Carolina voters gave him his first primary win in the calendar’s fourth contest. By that point, the emerging Covid-19 pandemic had already made traditional campaigning impossible, forcing (or allowing) Biden to keep a limited schedule through November.

Still, the Biden of 2020 was vigorous enough to put in credible performances in primary and general election debates. As president—a tough job that famously ages those who hold it—his stumbles have increased in frequency and severity. In response, the White House has shielded him from the media, exposing him to far fewer press conferences and tough interviews than his predecessors. And they have reacted with fury to anyone who has dared raise the subject. When former Obama strategist David Axelrod gently suggested in November that Biden should consider whether running for re-election was in the country’s best interest, Biden aides publicly attacked him.

Biden’s allies worked behind the scenes to stave off a potential primary challenge, making clear that politicians and operatives who contemplated one would be summarily blackballed. As a result, a little-known Minnesota congressman, Dean Phillips, was the only Democratic officeholder to do so, arguing that voters deserved an alternative and that Biden couldn’t win. For his trouble, he was rewarded with the destruction of his once-promising political career. He forfeited his position in congressional leadership and was facing a primary challenge in his suburban Minneapolis district until he decided not to seek re-election.

Reporters and commentators who pointed out the obvious got similar treatment, berated in public and private and accused of helping Trump return to the White House. The White House also pilloried special counsel Robert Hur when he announced in February that he wouldn’t charge Biden with a crime for his handling of classified documents, describing the president, whom he interviewed for hours, as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Democratic lawmakers excoriated Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, in a congressional hearing, painting him as a Republican stooge out to damage Biden.

Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who ran for president in 2020, said on NBC News Now on Friday that the Democrats’ current situation was the product not of one night but of two years’ worth of establishment pressure. “Anybody that stepped forward as a potential contender, the idea of having debates, campaign consultants that might think about supporting somebody else, all of them were shut down,” Castro said. “At each juncture, the opportunity for an off ramp was cut off, and now the party finds itself in a position where we only have four months left…to try and switch course.”

For some, the sadness of seeing an elder statesman in this state is curdling into anger that he and his allies let things get to this point, putting the country and the world in danger. “He’s always been so well respected. I’d rather he ended his career differently,” said one former Biden campaign aide. “He has earned his place in history. They are making a fool of him, and it’s upsetting. If you love your brother, your dad, your husband, you pull him out right now.”
​

more at the link

 

Jill is grabbing that microphone like Hannah McNair before Cal sees it.

I kid, I kid.

 

Biden lost the debate in the first 5 minutes... and short of Trump completely collapsing, that wasn't going to change.

Later in the debate, Biden did better and Trump just started clearly making up stuff that he believed people would believe - which is also a sign of senility, but - at their age, 4 years makes a big difference ... and a Trump that lacks gusto or is devoid of reality is still better than a Joe Biden that is gaunt, translucent, has had obvious plastic surgery and is still .... and appears to be sleeping if he isn't looking directly into the camera. Couple that with his typical stutter and lapses - and it did not matter what Trump did or did not do.

Do I believe that if Biden was given 30 minutes and had time to explain himself at his own pace, that he would be as cognizant or more so than Trump? Yeah, but that isn't how debates work - and history has shown that psychologically Americans want someone quick and with energy. I am sure Richard Nixon and GHW Bush whined about how it wasn't fair that Kennedy and Clinton got praise for simply not looking old like their opponents.

Trump is declining - it is obvious, just comparing his debate to his debates 4-8 years ago --- but that 3-4 year difference is HUGE when you are talking about people in their 80's. Biden from 4 years ago beats this version of Trump easily, but that isn't the reality - the reality is that the US people in close detail got to see what an 83 year old man looks and acts like, and they are not used to that in politics - and the Democrats should have known that. As for the Republicans, there isn't really a party at this point - it is all Trump ..... but seeing the Democrats roll out Biden, you have to wonder if the Democrats are really all that much different.... because they are sacrificing an election because of tradition.

Donald Trump is old - but Joe Biden is even older in a country that does not especially value old age and hides it........ how will Biden be in 2-4 years? Same question for Trump, but he will likely be like Biden now.

 

No he wasn't - Trump was terrible. His lies are more absurd than ever and he seems to think they are believable, which only separates him even further from reality. He also lacked the energy that he had 4-8 years ago. Trump is clearly slowing down - however he just doesn't look as old and answers faster than Biden does.

Biden from four years ago would wipe the floor with this Trump - hell, Trump from 4-8 years ago would crush the 2024 Trump.

Trump is old - and it is showing, he just isn't as old as Biden.

There is a reason that we don't have 80-year-old candidates historically....

 

I learned this as a lawyer. Sometimes, when your opponent is doing really poorly ..... you don't say anything and let them sink themselves. Trump could not help it though, the mask slipped - and it could have really hurt him - but it was too late, everyone was shocked to see Fire Marshall Bill at the podium.

 

This applies every bit as much for Trump and the Republicans.... and Orwell was concerned with fascists, and indoctrination ... something that is present in both parties in the USA right now. Politically, Orwell was a liberal democratic-socialist. His main concern was the use of language, and how it was used as a means to indoctrinate, control people and as a form of propaganda.

Disseminating false information, using language and information to obfuscate and not illuminate... calling people subhuman, animals, labeling whole groups of people as rapists, murderers and criminals.

Relying upon the most negative opinions and fears that people have - to justify them, to use that emotion as a way to control them. No one in modern American politics does that better than Donald Trump.

So - I find it really sad that Orwell has become a common talking point for Conservatives, because they obviously do not understand Orwell at all - because if they did, they would be worried about the "woke" but would be horrified by their Presidential candidate and their supporters in the House and Senate, that are using the same techniques that Orwell fought against.

 

Yes. Absolutely. The fact that so many people heard Trump's words, saw the evidence of the planning, and assault on our Capitol building, but would still support the person leading those acts as he calls the criminal assailants patriot hostages is absolutely Orwellian and people listening to Trump's command to ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears. It's remarkable.

 

I keep reading that nobody wants to be the "first" prominent Democrat to call on Biden to step aside. I have to ask why. He's 81. He likely won't be alive in 10 years and, if you believe his ego is leading the US into a fascistic buzzsaw, short-term consequences would be minimal. If Josh Shapiro came out and said "President Biden will cost the party my otherwise winnable home state of Pennsylvania which is currently served by myself and two Democratic senators" and that bears out, assuming we can still hold regular elections in 2028 instead of voting on Draft Kings for Don Jr vs. Eric in a wrestling match, what is the consequence of being wrong? The donors are rightfully panicking and everybody aside from Joe's family seems to agree he should not be the nominee.

What influence does the Biden family have? He represented a tiny state in the Senate and held an office "not worth a bucket of warm spit" for eight years. Unlike the Obamas, who are broadly popular and will remain influential for decades to come, the Biden family political legacy dies with him and any subsequent endorsements he issues will have the same weight as Jimmy Carter's. They fundamentally don't understand that nobody is loyal to him or reveres him: we picked him in 2020 because we understood that, of that field, he was the only Democrat who could beat Donald Trump. It's that same rationale that demands he step down now. Doesn't he want to be alive to see the opening of the Biden presidential library in Newark, Delaware?

 

Its time to be fair with Trump, people consider Biden a whole lot more due to his age, fragility, lack of concentration and newfound speech impediment. I have never seen someone treated as unfairly as Trump.

Trump has got to be exhausted, he is juggling political persecution, lawsuits, campaigning, debates and he isn't exactly 20 years younger than Joe but what Trump is going through would break nearly anyone. Pair that with unfair treatment from celebrities and mainstream media and you have a recipe to completely crush someone's spirit. How the hell do you think you have a shot at winning when apparently everyone in power with a voice and platform hates you.

You can hate Trump but not giving this man props for still standing and fighting is honestly unfair, yeah he says absurd things like "we had the cleanest, clearest water"...... I don't think he believes anyone believes what he just said but its his style to say $hit like that and only someone being unfair would take that in the literal sense and say he is lying.

Now, is Trump slowing down.... Yeah I thinks so, however I think 2024 Trump is closer than 2016 Trump than 2020 Trump were he was just an angry conspiracy spewing old man..... His energy is back and while it may not be the same energy from 4-8 years ago he still funny as hell and producing high quality meme content on the backs of Biden and Dems....