I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
having no crowd was so fucking stupid, such a dry dry awful environment. the guys need to be able to feed off the energy and rattle off a few applause lines, not just speak to the camera. such a dumb unforced error
I don’t see how a crowd would have helped Biden. In fact the Dems requested this since they felt Trump feeds off of crowds.
It’s almost like it was a debate, and not a clown show
If Biden faced a serious primary, we’d have known he was like this months ago and had even more time to find a competent replacement.
But people said it was too late then.
They say it’s too late now, but it still isn’t.
It’s too big of a risk to keep plowing ahead like we’re headed to Country Kitchen Buffet…
You overestimate the risk of this specific event. I do think the DNC and all Americans need a wakeup call before November and this may or may not be it, but the debate is forgettable in 1 week whereas the consequences of these Supreme Court decisions or going to be with us for years to come.
Democrats have other opportunities to energize their base, it’s up to them to use these opportunities, and avoid letting Trump dominate every election conversation.
You overestimate the risk of this specific event
This isn’t a one off thing tho.
This is Biden. He’s not going to magically change a bunch of policy positions to align with the Dem platform out of nowhere.
He’s not going to magically start acting half his age on the campaign trail.
No malarkey, what you see is what you get.
Now it really is too late. It’s Biden or Trump. Your either for democracy or fascism
No, it’s not too late. The convention is still 2 months out
Now it really is too late.
The convention still hasn’t happened.
The candidate still hasn’t been named.
It’s still not too late
Yeah, how politics and voting are supposed to work and how they actually do are 2 different things.
So you understand that it’s not too late?
Because this isn’t a thing where opinions come into play.
It’s literally not to late to change candidates. That’s just literal facts.
Despite what people on Lemmy are saying there was a primary. Votes were cast and delegates are obligated to vote accordingly at least on the first ballot. Short of Biden stepping down there is no avenue to replace him at the convention.
Why?
Because trump is guaranteed going to convince the military and entire government to behave like nazi Germany. Anyone who disagrees with this obvious take is clearly a moron who loves fascism and hates freedom. Trump will kill everyone who isn’t purely white. It’s so obvious. It’s definitely better to have a turtle without a shell as president because trump is the biblical antichrist who will surely usher in the end times. Only an idiot couldn’t see this obvious fact.
Someone educated can correct me but that doesn’t sound accurate. Even if it Trump were to go full hitler (which is dumb for an aspiring autocrat in this day and age) it wouldn’t work like that. They’d denigrate all non whites but have a specific target group that they persecute/kill. The group needs to be specific for fascism so they can have a sacrificial goat to blame everything on.
I mean, the Biden camp didn’t need to take this debate.
I don’t know the details for how far ahead all the rules were decided. I would have assumed months but clearly not.
A BIG news story yesterday was that republicans were angry that there would be live fact checking during the debate. So CNN got rid of that literally the afternoon of the debate. That makes a massive difference because it means that Biden now needed to actively refute the increasingly blatant lies in addition to getting his talking points across.
And the format always went against Biden. His stutter and aphasia do not mix well with short 3 minute responses. With proper debate prep and a focus on talking points, he is mostly good. We had a few moments but even when he was at his most feeble sounding he was fine. But once he had to respond to things like “you are a manchurian candidate” and “you are basically a Palestinian but a bad one”? Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
And that fucked Biden. Because that is not something a POTUS needs to be able to handle. If Kim Jong Un started talking like that during a meeting… we might literally invade North Korea. Almost all meaningful conversation between world leaders is basically heavily scripted speeches or closed door conversations where people acknowledge others are human.
But also? CNN didn’t even follow their own format. They repeatedly unmuted candidates (mostly trump but a few times Biden) so they could get a juicy comeback in.
Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
That would be an understandable reaction from the average person but the president should be a lot more capable than the average person. Even if this specific sort of thing isn’t something he needs to be able to handle, he still needs to handle things a lot harder than this and his performance here isn’t reassuring me that he can. Trump is so predictably rude that Biden should have been totally ready for it.
Nobody has, to my knowledge, ever faulted Biden in a crisis (… well, except the zionism and racism but those are carefully considered platforms and not knee jerk reactions). I know I get a stutter when I need to say a LOT of technical jargon in a row and others have the same issue. When your goal is to get shit done, rather than to clown on someone, people are a lot more able to understand what is being said and will ask for clarification where needed.
It does not matter. If I have trouble saying something then the person I am talking to can immediately key in on “foo?” and I can nod and move on.
It has absolutely zero bearing on leadership unless a bunch of terrorists have taken a building hostage and will kill one person every time Biden stutters while going through an actor’s warm-up exercises. And if Biden hadn’t gone up there sounding like he was dead this would not be an issue outside of the most chuddy of morons and useful idiots.
The problem is that he had all the same stutters and aphasias he has had for decades but ALSO sounded feeble.
People having the metric of “President sounds good when throwing schoolyard insults at people” is how we got less than half of the country voting for the orange fuckstick.
I mean. Sure I guess?
So it was unfair. Sure.
But Biden and his camp didn’t need to agree to a debate. It was going to get them nothing. There was NOTHING to gain here and everything to lose.
And they lost… everything .
It shows that the Biden team isn’t capable of manging this election; it showed that Biden isn’t capable of offering the rhetoric it takes to win.
The Presidential role is a communications job. If he can’t do the communications part of this, he__cant__win.
They absolutely needed to. Biden can’t hide behind Covid protocol this time, he needs to be publicly visible far more in this campaign. Also whether it was mutual or not, Trump would use no debates as an attack against Biden.
I see both sides of what you are saying; but if this is what you get when you put the guy on stage?
Bro keep him under a rock. Its just much much more evidence that Biden can-not-be the candidate if we need to win this one.
Are all American “debates” like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?
They’re getting much worse
Yes. 90% of the time is almost always off topic. Sometimes a candidate spends a whole sentence saying something related, but that’s as close to organized as it ever was.
Trump definitely does more personal attacks, but that’s about it. I’ve seen a moderator make a correcting statement once.
Nope.
Up till this year a non partisan committee handled the debates and lent it an air of impartially and at least tried to hold candidates to the questions.
Both parties decided to boycott those debates, and set up their own with CNN as the host.
I’ve been bitching about it for months now and everyone’s been telling me it’ll be fine…
Edit:
2020 debates
Hard disagree. This wasn’t unusual. Presidential debates are notorious for moderators being ineffectual and unwilling to challenge lies.
I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check. You’ll see candidates call each other out sometimes, but moderators don’t actually moderate. Timing answers to be ridiculously short so nothing of substance can be said is also a perennial feature.
Fact checkers challenged many of Trump’s statements. Trump falsely said that he “brought back (college) football”; as he had commented on his wish for the conferences to play, but took no official action. Trump also repeated the claim that he “got back” Seattle and Minneapolis from left-wing protesters, and continued to repeat conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He said, without evidence, that drug prices will fall “80 or 90 percent,” in reference to his efforts to cut drug prices[50] and exaggerated that he is making insulin at prices “so cheap, it’s like water”, despite insulin prices remaining fixed at about $300 per vial. Trump also misleadingly said that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was “the greatest economy in the history of our country”; although GDP growth was high in the first three years of the Trump presidency, it was higher under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and the unemployment rate was lower under Eisenhower.[51] Nominal GDP was higher than at any point in US history, but this is true for the large majority of US Presidencies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_debates#Format_and_debate
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Pretty much every Trump debate has been like this. This one was actually an improvement from 2020 and 2016 because his microphone was turned off so he wasn’t able to just yell over the other person and constantly interrupt.
CNN is essentially owned by John Malone now. It’s just Fox News lite.
When have any of these debates in the past twenty years been “fair”? The democrats knew what they were getting into.
I’m voting for Biden so don’t give me shit about being a Leftist helping Trump win. But if he does win, remember that Dems had a million chances to run someone better and this is what they let happen. It’ll be their fault if we get more of the bad man.
The dems suspended the primaries in a number of states and more or less coronated Biden.
The Dems believe in democracy only when against the GOP but do not believe in democracy when deciding matters inside their party.
The “Democratic” Party my ass cheeks. Clowns and hypocrites.
It’s amazing to me that “he sounds feeble” is worse than “everything he said wasn’t true.”
We know Trump is a liar.
Biden had to prove he wasn’t feeble… and he failed at that.
Voting for Biden and his administration is still 100% the correct decision, but that debate isn’t going to convince any swing voters. If you want to use the incumbency advantage you need to convince folks you can stay the course for the next 4 years.
Truth doesn’t really matter in a presidential debate, it’s not actually a debate. It’s all about appearing superior than your opponent.
It’s worse if you expect the first guy to be a strong contender against the second guy
Problem is, the lower information voters don’t know that Trump is lying, and Biden couldn’t point that out in a clear and concise way. He was soft and rambling and wasn’t campaigning competently on that stage.
He needed to make the case against Trump. Which isn’t hard.
Whoever decided that putting that old man on stage in front of a national audience was a good idea should be shot. I’m voting for Kamala Harris, via Biden.
IMHO, complaining about the refs feels like grasping for straws.
Biden was rambling, incoherent, and unlike Trump, he couldn’t get on message. And the messaging against Trump ain’t complex. He wants fascism, he’s killing women, covid was a fucking disaster under him, he’s a felon, and he’s lying. Biden struggled to get the basics out in a clear and coherent way.
IMHO, this is NOT the time to keep on and carry on. This debate is early enough that he can still step down and we can have a contested convention. The alternative is fascism. Biden is going to lose this shit.
Why doesn’t he just answer every question with:
“Yeah but this is the man who thought shooting up bleach and letting sunlight into your lungs would cure COVID and then said it on TV”
Here’s the catch: we might expect that, or think that or want that, but “that” isn’t going to happen unless Biden wants that because the world of politics has its own laws just like every other discipline / industry.
I seriously doubt there’s any chance of it, but since we’re allotted this specific window to pretend we can choose such a thing, why not. I’d go for Bernie, or Warren, or Schiff, or a few others.
Sunday, ten years too late, they’ll send talking heads to the old-people political shows to vigorously support Biden, or the “new” messaging or whatever their mitigation strategy is. But for now, just today, sure let’s imagine.
Holy cope.
People here actually deluding themselves into Biden falling for Debate tricks instead of saying he “beat Medicare” and “we need Abortion because foreigners are raping women”.
BIDEN: Fentanyl and the byproducts of fentanyl went down for a while. And I wanted to make sure we use the machinery that can detect fentanyl, these big machines that roll over everything that comes across the border, and it costs a lot of money. That was part of this deal we put together, this bipartisan deal.
More fentanyl machines, were able to detect drugs, more numbers of agents, more numbers of all the people at the border. And when we had that deal done, he went – he called his Republican colleagues said don’t do it. It’s going to hurt me politically.
He never argued it’s not a good bill. It’s a really good bill. We need those machines. We need those machines. And we’re coming down very hard in every country in Asia in terms of precursors for fentanyl. And Mexico is working with us to make sure they don’t have the technology to be able to put it together. That’s what we have to do. We need those machines.
