I feel like I'm going insane. How is this even happening right now? One of two presidential candidates is so old, that his own party is asking him to not run because he looked like an elderly person that got lost at the grocery store during a live presidential debate. The other is a deranged narcissist that was the previous president, clearly colluding with Russia, has be found guilty of 34 felonies, attempted to overthrow the previous election, and has explicitly stated he will be a dictator.
News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
Biden is only like 18mos older than Trump. They're essentially equally old. Like a 2% difference in their ages.
Sure, but Trump didn't sound like he was lost at the grocery store. Most of what Trump said was nonsense he made up on the spot but he said it with confidence. Trump knows his supporters won't fact check him; Biden is burdened with the truth. It's not fair but we unfortunately need someone who can spar with Trump on stage. If someone flusters Trump on stage he will spiral out of control.
Out of two old men, I would prefer a bald man with a stutter who’s burdened by truth, than a bald man who’s such a compulsive liar he can’t remember which lie he told which group.
Great could you convince the rest of the nation or are we just taking about you here?
Trump sounds like he's lost all the time. He constantly wanders into deranged tangents. Why do we have to pretend otherwise.
Biden is 5 months short of being 4 years older than trump. Almost an entire presidency. I hate trump also but we have to stop saying Biden isn’t THAT old.
Being in the White House drastically ages the president, VP, and senior staff due to the insane amounts of stress and long hours that come with the job.
It's not easy.
Biden has been in the WH for 12 years.
trump for four, but he's too fucking stupid to be worried. So the stress never got to him. If he saw something he didn't like, he ripped up the paper, tried to eat it, then flushed it. And trump would have 100% forgotten about it immediately.
Which is why they can be essentially the same age (18 months is nothing in your 80s) but Biden seems so much worse. Biden is used to thinking about what to say, trump just opens his mouth and rambles like he always has.
But with all that being said:
We need higher standards to get Dem voters onboard. A bad candidate that's better than trump is still a bad candidate. We don't need someone who tries to think of what to say but can't say it, we need someone that can think of a competent response and then communicate that effectively.
but Biden seems so much worse
I don't get this take. Trump has been shouting incoherent word salad and confabulations for years at this point. Biden seems like a decent man who is too old for the job. Trump is a treasonous piece of shit rapist criminal who is also old and senile, and backed by actual fascists who want to take the US back to the dark ages.
I don't think voting will be enough, they tried a coup once and now they're being invited to try again since there were no consequences last time.
The fact that anyone (let alone half the country) would pick a literal traitor who failed in every way possible as president over a guy that had a bad interview while sick, with a B+ resume is ridiculous. Just a week ago the right was accusing him of doing drugs because of how well his State of the Union went. We avoided a recession and we're recouping from the pandemic better than any other country.
Hell, just look at the debate itself. Biden memorized 90 minutes (or 45 minutes) worth of facts and used them to back up every claim he had while Trump literally lied the entire time and took credit for everything Biden (or Obama) did.
Between all that and literally being the only thing that kept the Republicans from throwing the US into default with clever negotiations (seriously, the dude fucking manipulated McCarthy so bad he lost his job), the only thing crazy is that people pay so little attention to politics over the last 8 years that all they know is that he sounded weak during a debate.
TIME TO GET YOUR CLOWN SHOES AND HONKY NOSE READY WE'RE IN FOR THE GOOD TIMES
That's exactly what I will expect him to say, right up until he leaves.
It is extremely disappointing that he didn't take this opportunity to gracefully step back. People who watched the debate saw his performance and him trying to say "Nah bro, I got this" is really stupid.
This is bigger than me, so I'll step aside to beat Trump.
Would pretty much guarantee whoever filled his spot became president.
But moderates demand 100% loyalty. Even if Biden thinks they're right eventually, he's not going to change his mind for "the left". Even when it's other moderates. He's been turning on a lot of allies immediately after they even questioned if he should stay in, and claiming CNN and the NY times all sorts of shit despite them backing him all the way up till now.
Biden has never been good at accepting criticism or dealing with confrontation. It's what torpedoed his first primary back in 88. If someone isn't with him, Biden considers them against him.
He's a lot like trump in that regard, loyalty is a one way street.
Would pretty much guarantee whoever filled his spot became president.
100%. Biden is and has been the worst possible candidate.
I don't know why people are looking at both of their performances at a debate when people can look at their performances as presidents.
It's honestly infuriating how everyone is struck on that like it means anything. All presidential debates gave always been awful. This is no exception and this time we have an alternative POV.
People probably are looking at their performances as president.
The polls have barely budged since the debate. That tells you people aren't really using debates to decide who to vote for.
Biden definitely is thinking about Johnsons disastrous late departure from the race in 1968 leading to brawls on the convention floor and competing slates of delegates that ultimately led to Humphrey getting nominated. His loss was blamed on the chaos at the convention.
if he leaves at all it wouldn't be right before the convention.
This can't go all the way to the convention, because they made the convention so late. They actually have to make the formal nomination before the convention, in time to meet Ohio's deadline.
The only path forward is for Harris to take over the nomination. This is far easier if Biden resigns totally. He can say he's doing it for medical reasons, even if all he has is a chronic case of notgonnawinatall, complicated by inflammation of the opeds.
I suspect it's probably too late for the Democrats to switch horses now, but I hope that this finally pile-drives some smidgen of a lesson into them that they need to actually try to win elections rather than just assume that since they're not crazy or evil like the Republican candidates people will naturally prefer them. They need to pick candidates that the people like and put in the effort to run those candidates well.
There's still five months until the election, there's plenty that Biden can do between now and then to show people that he's a good choice. And then maybe this time once it's all over the Democratic Party can do a major rethink of what exactly they're doing with all this. Like they should have the last time they ran a candidate against Trump that they thought simply "deserved" to win.
I'm starting to think the best move might not be to replace Biden, but to swap out Kamala... Kamala has lower approval than Biden and missed her chance to make an impact during this term. If Biden had a strong VP, the question of his health wouldn't be as big.
A progressive VP would make me a lot more excited about voting Biden.
Especially since whoever's VP in Biden's next term would have a big leg up on running for president in 2028.
If we used a voting system like Ranked Choice voting, it wouldn't matter! Biden could run all he wants and we could vote for someone else and if they didn't win... our vote would get transferred to the next in line (in this example biden).
The sheer audacity and hubris of this admin is negligent and infuriating.
"Democracy is under threat, but not enough for us to listen to any feedback about stopping genocide, forgiving student loans, or running a candidate who isn't terrifyingly out of it. None of your feedback matters to us."
Fuck this guy. The country and freedom are more important than his ego and hubris. A real leader would work to facilitate onboarding a capable candidate so we can avoid devolving into a christo-fascist hellscape.
Well, that's on him, and so is his loss and all the consequences that come from it. All to try and satisfy his ego. Insanity.
Then you'll be remembered as the egotistical, arrogant piece of shit that doomed our Republic when you had the last best chance to save it. Like RBG but worse.
Jan 1st, 2029, neither Trump nor Biden will be president of the United States.
If Biden wins this year, I’m pretty sure trump is both stupid and stubborn enough to run again in 2028 if he’s still alive, and I’m pretty sure the republicans are both stupid and stubborn enough to nominate him again.
Good.
This is just the "I won't vote for Biden because Israel refuses to sign a ceasefire" bullshit all over again.
Notice how literally none of these people have any problem whatsoever with any of Trump's gaffes?
They have no problem whatsoever with Trump's policies.
They have no problem whatsoever with project 2025.
They have no problem at all that Donald Trump is 79 years old.
But they have a huge fucking problem with the fact that Joe Biden is two and a half years older than Donald Trump.
You would think if they actually gave a damn about the welfare of the country they would be concerned about Donald Trump in the least, yet crickets.
I think it might be a bit of a bold assumption that everyone who thinks Biden is too old to do an effective job and should step aside is a huge Trump supporter.
There are plenty of people who hate Trump with a passion that thinks Biden isn't up to the task of winning this election.
No, it isn't. Biden is letting his fucking pride erode our chances of avoiding a dictatorship.
We'll see how future appearances are but he was incoherent at the debate and if that keeps up it makes another Trump presidency much more likely.
Also, fuck off for blindly assuming what everyone else thinks and assuming everyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.
We saw this recently with Ruth Bater Ginsberg, too, unfortunately - she could have chosen to step down when Obama was president and secured a democrat nominee in the SCOTUS for 50+ years, but she didn't, and now look where we are.
Most of the people I hear who are bothered by Biden's chances aren't talking about Trump's policies, age or lack of cognitive ability not because they support Trump, quite the opposite. They are scared of a second Trump presidency and are scared that the DNC will drop the ball again, fumble the election by sticking with a poorly liked candidate and they'll have to suffer the consequences of America veering headfirst towards fascism. There's no point to mentioning Trump's similar or more dire issues, because he was never an option to them to begin with.
I don't have faith that the DNC actually cares about the looming threat of fascism, the threat to civil liberties, etc, I think they saw how much in donations they got during the last Trump presidency and the surge in popularity even their most milquetoast center left candidates got and they think they can ride the wave for 4 years.
Bidens admin has done a lot of good and the DNC has been dogshit at demonstrating that with effective messaging. He's also done a lot of things I find abhorrent and in a just world, neither candidate should be eligible as they'd be locked away in The Hague. But that isn't the case, this is America, and I think the powers that be are willing to risk the election to save face.
It's not good. Biden stands the worst chance against Trump, which is why concern trolls are so desperate to shut down and dismiss any discussion of replacing him.