US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

Some of this is just guy-who-garbles-his-speech-sometimes but he's gonna get zero forgiveness at this point.

A Morbs thread, naturally: The articulate Vice President Joe Biden thread

Some of this is just guy-who-garbles-his-speech-sometimes but he's gonna get zero forgiveness at this point.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, July 4, 2024 9:51 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just listened to it and this description is charitable.

I know that a stutterer speaking 'haltingly' is not indicative of much and that Joe has a long history of verbal gaffes, but this does seem to me like slippage.

I try to remind myself that while Biden may sit at the pinnacle of the executive branch, ultimately he stands up there supported by the whole of the Democratic coalition, which raised him up there on a platform of people and policies they will pursue regardless. They are the substance of his presidency. They won't follow him very far away from their interests into the weeds of confusion.

It's the voters I worry about. They don't seem to understand the first damn thing about what they're doing. Too many of them have all the political sophistication typical of 16 year olds.

I haven't listened, fully accept that it's bad. Just saying that even normal word salad that would have breezed by in the past will get skewered now. Makes campaigning hazardous.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/conspiracy-of-silence-to-protect-joe-biden.html

Those who encountered the president in social settings sometimes left their interactions disturbed. Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names. At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all.

Others told me the president was becoming increasingly hard to get ahold of, even as it related to official government business, the type of things any U.S. president would communicate about on a regular basis with high-level officials across the world. Biden instead was cocooned within mounting layers of bureaucracy, spoken for more than he was speaking or spoken to.

Saying hello to one Democratic megadonor and family friend at the White House recently, the president stared blankly and nodded his head. The First Lady intervened to whisper in her husband’s ear, telling him to say “hello” to the donor by name and to thank them for their recent generosity. The president repeated the words his wife had fed him. “It hasn’t been good for a long time but it’s gotten so, so much worse,” a witness to the exchange told me. “So much worse!”

He just needs an Arsenio moment, maybe playing a mouth harp.

Very unsettling to see the media going all in on this (as they should) while being fairly certain at this point that the only way he’s going to be replaced is death.

Maybe some of these leakers could have started last November…

My god, it’s Ron and Nancy in ‘87 all over again

LOL at some butthurt donor not being IMMEDIATELY recognized by POTUS.

Very unsettling to see the media going all in on this (as they should) while being fairly certain at this point that the only way he’s going to be replaced is death.

Maybe some of these leakers could have started last November…

― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, July 5, 2024 12:49 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Even more infuriating when the next best option is said ingesting bleach is a covid combatant option. The guy had an actual four year run of how not to be a president and the fact they’re still behind shows a clear messaging/staffing/candidate problem.

Literal battle of two cranky old fucks but it’s clear one has a better, less racist support group

What was Clinton's margin in July of '16?

https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-poll/index.html

Trump was 5 points ahead including 3rd party candidates, 3 points H2H.

Oh well that's fine then, if it's just a repeat of 2016 then there's nothing to worry about.

Catching up on this thread after yesterday’s holiday, and wanted to give a late shoutout to “The curious case of Benjamin Biden.” A+

ty

that CNN poll was the GOP convention bounce, yes. HRC led in almost every poll most of that year.

skewed polls iirc

also can I just say that while I’m sure most of what she reported is true, I fucking despise olivia nuzzi

I can never forget

Fangirling so hard over Ann Coulter at CPAC

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) March 8, 2014

whoa, i only barely recognize nuzzi's name but instant lifetime disqualification and a giant fuck you to olivia nuzzi. even in 2014 you could not be THAT wrong

maybe that tweet was some sort of truth or dare consequence or something

https://deadspin.com/boy-do-i-feel-naive-1819223797/

I'm not sure this big interview tonight is going to matter much in reversing what seems inevitable. When the two Clintons did their 60 Minutes interview in 1992 ("I'm not Tammy Wynette," etc.), they had to fix one thing: present like a husband and wife devoted to their marriage. They managed to do that, or at least well enough temporarily to move on. Much harder cosmetic fix for Biden--even if he were to have a good interview (whatever that might mean at this point), hard to imagine erasing the past few days.

Yeah I'm guessing it'll be kind of a wash, not a triumph or disaster. If it's a disaster, that's it for him. But I don't even know what kind of triumph he's capable of that would fundamentally shift anything.

well, for one thing, he's going to stand on one leg for the entire interview. with one finger on his nose while he pats his head with his other hand. and then he will recite the alphabet backwards.

they should honestly just simulate real life and invite the rest of biden's handlers and advisers to the interview with george, and let everyone answer as a team

where were all the "concerned" people last year. He should never have run for reelection in the first place, but welp.

Only joking because it seems like it would be impossible, but Biden doing a Maron or Rogan podcast (or even a Breakfast Club) would lend more to his credibility than a polished, edited, teased-out conversation with George Stephanopolous, just because it would show him capable of chatting for 1-3 hours.

We've been concerned, but he seemed to be holding his own in any appearances. Physical/mental fumbles felt more like the edited right-wing videos of Hillary stumbling into an SUV in 2016.

Something I've been wondering: not live, but not edited:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/media/abc-biden-interview/index.html?utm_source=business_ribbon

(Of course not live: starts at 8:00 p.m.)

Joe smokes DMT with Rogan and starts taking policy advice from the clockwork elves.

He just did a fairly informal chat with Howard Stern recently?

I forgot about that and missed it, curious to see how it is. Here it is from May 3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz45sMb4js8

where were all the "concerned" people last year. He should never have run for reelection in the first place, but welp.

― Dick Cavett Poo Party (Boring, Maryland), Friday, July 5, 2024 1:41 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it’s important to understand that the media’s relationship to a broadly politically acceptable democratic president is different not in degree but also in kind to that of a republican president, and one as insane as trump in particular: there is always going to be an appetite for a story, which is why we’ve seen trickles of this stuff for years, but the threshold to report truly damaging inside information, let alone for hack pundits like chait, van jones, even NYT editorial board etc to actually call for a shakeup is going to be extremely high — their viability as pundits is deeply dependent upon their coziness to the party and their need for access, both to the insiders themselves and the sort of career opportunities that brings.

which is why when, as generously as I can put this, some of the most dyed in the wool dem voters who follow brooklyndaddefiant on twitter or who paste blogs from the eric feigl-ding of popular historians or whatever wonder why the media isn’t spending more time fact-checking trump’s debate performance, or when they liken this to the clinton e-mails panic, it just scans as incredibly naive: this is a genuine crisis of confidence among the chattering class of the very institutions not only on which their careers depend but in which they seemed to have had true, unshakeable faith. it’s been a long time coming and it’s incredibly unfortunate that it’s happened four months before an important election, but here we are

The only thing stopping Biden from dropping out is Biden. The campaign finance and ballot access rationalizations are absurd and people should stop taking them seriously. pic.twitter.com/qOEEfJV9wc

— Jerusalem (@JerusalemDemsas) July 5, 2024

I’ve chosen to remain agnostic on this question because so much of the content people have posted to this thread and that I’ve seen elsewhere just seemed so half-baked and coming from people who are clearly not experts

No worries, it's Friday, Jack!

https://media.vogue.fr/photos/5fa8fbdb39c5194ff9752ca5/2:3/w_2560%2Cc_limit/124239583_428644175200500_6936559859947098421_n.jpg

That photo reminds me of why I never thought Biden not even halfway hot.

Eh, he’s hot in a frat boy way

Biden interview- odds on whether someone else's voice dubbed in?

Anyway as I have stated before I am on team ws hall of shame with Hunter

young biden looks like connor o’malley

which is why when, as generously as I can put this, some of the most dyed in the wool dem voters who follow brooklyndaddefiant on twitter or who paste blogs from the eric feigl-ding of popular historians or whatever wonder why the media isn’t spending more time fact-checking trump’s debate performance, or when they liken this to the clinton e-mails panic, it just scans as incredibly naive: this is a genuine crisis of confidence among the chattering class of the very institutions not only on which their careers depend but in which they seemed to have had true, unshakeable faith. it’s been a long time coming and it’s incredibly unfortunate that it’s happened four months before an important election, but here we are

― brony james (k3vin k.), Friday, July 5, 2024 2:03 PM (forty-eight minutes ago)

The chattering classes will continue to chatter -- profitably -- should Trump win reelection in November. I've no idea how to gauge their sincerity: I guess Van Jones is one of the party's true believes, though I've never forgotten even though his own chattering class colleagues have how he said Donald Trump became president in spring 2017 after a SOTU.

Like tipsy and a couple of us posted on Wednesday, I think what we're seeing the last couple days is the combination of appetite for a story that's the normal instinct of reporters, plus, I'd suggest, the genesis of a story from people who are at least on basic levels more three-dimensional human beings than MAGA types wanting to confide misgivings they'd suppressed. The combination has produced a conflagration far hotter than the HRC email scandal. I've never seen anything like it. It's personal for the sources -- anonymous and on-the-record -- because they still have souls. Adam Johnson posted the following yesterday:

NYT, Axios and CNN are not giving up, they are going all the way on this. They will keep this fever pitch at an 11 nonstop for weeks, regardless if there’s any new dissent. They will kidnap and force a damaging quote from a county commissioner in Duluth if they have to. It’s OVER

— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) July 3, 2024

Okay this is getting annoying. Some of these tweets are from the same people who’d been saying “Biden is too old, he can’t win” for along time and now that the Libs have caught up, I guess instead of just taking a victory lap saying “I told you so” instead we’ll lose because Libs are freaking out?

Speaking for myself, Biden should drop out: a damned-if-you-do-etc. position because the Beltway green room denizens are calling for it too.

Okay this is getting annoying. Some of these tweets are from the same people who’d been saying “Biden is too old, he can’t win” for along time and now that the Libs have caught up, I guess instead of just taking a victory lap saying “I told you so” instead we’ll lose because Libs are freaking out?

― Dick Cavett Poo Party (Boring, Maryland), Friday, July 5, 2024 3:10 PM

yeah Adam Johnson is not LOL a fan of the Dem establishment. I quoted him only because his thread expresses surprise at the degree to which The Political Press has attacked Biden with such virulence.

More big-time donors are through with Biden

https://deadline.com/2024/07/biden-donors-outrage-abigail-disney-barry-diller-1236001923/

I know about Adam Johnson, it's now that at least one or two "left" commentators have now pivoted to "actually it would have been okay if everyone had immediately rallied around Biden (ignore my previous skeets/tweets lambasting the Dem establishment for refusing to face facts) but now the libs are going to lose the election by freaking out".

That’s an… interesting way to read Johnson’s tweet.

I know, it’s like people are so accustomed to pissing all over establishment liberal voices — with good reason in a lot of cases — that even when those voices are belatedly saying things they agree with, they assume it’s a trap or it must be wrong because how can Thomas Friedman and David Brooks be right? (It’s a fair question, of course.)

MA governor Maura Healey knows this campaign is a wash

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/05/maura-healey-biden-debate-consider-dropping-out-00166654