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

wait'll Meemaw or Pep-pep stop getting their Social Security checks 'cause no-one knows what they are doing. (They'll probably blame migrants).

Honestly would like to see a groyper navigate the Metro system without shitting their pants or opening fire on a faregate

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a large section of younger/middle-aged people who have personally dealt with their elderly relatives on the decline that are finding all of this incredibly frustrating. Like, I remember once going on an errand with my grandfather and being utterly terrified that I was going to be in car accident in a way I've never felt before or since. Same goes with my mother-in-law - my wife and I both agree she's had terrible hearing for years and she's been stubbornly denying it's the case until just a few months ago. Imagine that - but it's for the most powerful position in the world AND there's a wannabe dictator potentially steamrolling your ass!

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a large section of younger/middle-aged people who have personally dealt with their elderly relatives on the decline that are finding all of this incredibly frustrating. Like, I remember once going on an errand with my grandfather and being utterly terrified that I was going to be in car accident in a way I've never felt before or since. Same goes with my mother-in-law - my wife and I both agree she's had terrible hearing for years and she's been stubbornly denying it's the case until just a few months ago.

We've seen how before the debate older people, particularly older whites, have moved into the Democratic column. I'd like to read a story after the debate about the old/young divide. It wouldn't surprise me if the loudest part of the stay-in-Joe crowd consists of people over 65 while those who want'em skew way younger, i.e. the people like us who've watched grandparents suddenly deteriorate.

btw here's the Morning Joe appearance:

President Joe Biden called into MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this morning. Here's the segment (part 1): pic.twitter.com/skpmZt9qlY

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) July 8, 2024

Great point by Osita Nwanevu:

Democrats simply cannot spend the next four months insisting to the American people that Joe Biden is fit for another four years as president. Doing so would push Americans more deeply into the political nihilism that has made Trump an attractive prospect for so many and that has, rightly or wrongly, encouraged many more Americans to disengage from a political system they see as hopelessly tainted by dishonesty and corruption. It would, in sum, continue the corrosion of the faith in politics Biden promised to help restore in the first place.

yeah 2028 seems likely to be a, como se dice, shitshow for democrats if he stays in

The "age is just a number" crowd has plenty of adherents over 65. The dominant US culture values youth over age and that attitude produces lots of denial among the aging. That dynamic applies here, both to Joe and to many older voters.

the political nihilism that has...encouraged many more Americans to disengage from a political system they see as hopelessly tainted by dishonesty and corruption. It would, in sum, continue the corrosion of the faith in politics Biden promised to help restore in the first place.

i tried to say something about this twice and my typing just went out of control. trying to be more succinct: it can't be overstated how demoralizing the 2020 primaries were, with all of the energy and enthusiasm, and YOUTH, with bernie sanders. the rug was swept out from under him - klobuchar and buttigieg were the most visible parts of that, but clearly the establishment was totally against sanders, as they had been in 2016. instead they gave it to biden, who was no one's first choice, and i don't think anyone's second choice either. iirc he was 3rd-5th in the primary polls, at least the early ones where people were just indicating their preference for who they liked, rather the later primaries/gen election when we all get to choose from a platter of liquid shit and try to figure out which one would be less gross to swallow. anyway, no wonder people are disengaged and see it as hopelessly dishonest! they gathered all the most enthusiastic people with the biggest ideals and real dreams for the future and then said fuck off, we believe the next 8 years belongs to this guy that no one likes

clearly the establishment was totally against sanders as they had been in 2016

OTM

instead they gave it to biden,

Bullshit. Sanders failed to win enough primaries. He failed to convince enough POC to join his coalition. I can't believe we're going through this again -- and Biden wasn't even my pick in 2020.

It's just crazy for me to think that given the circumstances I am extremely willing to vote for a guy who will be 82 when his second term starts, and 86 when it ends.

xp alfred

it's ok - we don't have to go through (why did sanders lose) again! i'm just saying, faith in the system is not only absent right now, but there's a good case that it doesn't make sense to have faith in the system

bleh, nobody wanted gore, kerry, clinton, OR biden. they are all duds.

i highly respect ya'll's opinions, they're a big factor in how i form my own. but i'm not sure it's sunk in what last week's SC rulings mean, and how thorough the rot is. the debate happened and, absurd as it is, yeah it makes sense that biden's capabilities and trying to get him to step down are what most people are thinking about right now. but holy shit, i'm not sure that we're going to recover from Trump vs. USA (the name of which...god it's just too fucking on the nose)

left out of that list...obama. people did want obama. i was there, i remember! there was huge energy for him that was not manufactured

Sorry for cursing at you, zach

The DNC absolutely fucking stacked the odds against Sanders, and personal attacks on him from assholes like Buttigieg and Hillary Clinton shows the organization’s rotten core

At first nobody wanted Biden in 2020. Nobody! Then the pandemic creeps in and the old boring hack looked reassuring.

i hate to be that guy but the reason we have this shit sandwich is because we have the electoral college and disproportinate representation.

biden got 7 million more than trump and nobody wanted him in the first place

just to wildly throw out another topic and confuse all discussion, i think in anything approaching a normal time, the big question for both candidates would be how to respond to Trump v. United States. joe biden would be talking about...what are his thoughts on this, btw? does he support expanding the supreme court, now? does he support term limits, now? how would doing that be accomplished, legislatively? how many votes does he need? would it involve killing the filibuster? etc etc etc

but, none of that is being discussed, and if it is, i doubt it's going to be biden saying it in anyway that is comprehensible. it's a very, very bad time to have an unpersuasive president! expanding the court and calling it out as baldly corrupt makes a ton of sense to me, but uuuuuhhhh i think there'd be a lot of pushback too, a lot of WWIII/civil war narrative stuff from the fascists and probably even more pushback from liberal democrats. getting SC reform done - and it must be done - will take a lot of persuasion. but it's not even a topic, somehow! just like, after every other election when the electoral college magically fucks us all over, there is never any discussion about how to actually change that. we're always just like ....wow what a country, yakov smirnov, what a country, wow!... and that's the end of it

/very frustrated

Yes, the Dem establishment did not want Sanders, but losing to Biden one on one is not evidence the he had a strong candidacy.

a million x posts

xp oh no problem alfred! i know where you're coming from, and this is a very curseable era

xp waterface i was typing my own diatribe against the electoral college (and how we don't do shit to change it) while you posted that, otm

Sanders was also an Independent who caucused with the Democrats. Tend to doubt over the years he had done much work for the Democratic Party in fund raising etc, so why is it a surprise that the machine did not help him?

Sanders is now one of Biden's most ardent defenders. He was doing the rounds yesterday -- and I think it was scott who pointed out he sounded waaaaaay more vigorous than Biden.

does he support expanding the supreme court, now?

There was a line about the Supreme Court in the "fuck you, I'm not going anywhere" letter.

Re Sanders, I'll just say:

- he was not a Democrat but wanted to be the Democratic nominee for president; not the best look
- he is a bad politician with good ideas, and would have been a catastrophe as president, likely getting pummeled and steamrolled by Congress and accomplishing very little
- I cannot personally say the words "President Bernie Sanders" with a straight face

re: sanders talk, i'm legitimately sorry that i brought it up, just because i'm with alfred, i don't feel like trying to hash that out for the millionth time. my point in bringing 2020 primaries up was the demoralizing affect it has on young voters, many of whom were engaging with our wonderful political system for the first time.

*effect

it's a very, very bad time to have an unpersuasive president!

Yeah, which I think is a substantive reason for no-Joe beyond the pragmatic electoral concerns about winning the election. I think his lack of ability to be a strong advocate for himself and his administration has already hurt him and contributed to his unpopularity. There are a whole lot of issues where we really need someone to be out there fighting and making strong cases and he's already not able to do that during this campaign, and if he stays in and wins he will be progressively less able to do that as president. Which goes back to why you shouldn't run a weak candidate in the first place, because the best case scenario you get out of that is a weak president.

Sheryl Crow says leaving is weak. So Joe, would you be President enough to be my President?

that sounds perhaps more trolling than I intended. It might be persuasive to spin no-Joe as a path to a much better outcome rather than just preventing a terrible one, but it seems to land on the wrong target. I tend to think "Joe will lose" is more effective for the people who need convincing.

Seeing what happened in France, I wonder if the palpable and well-deserved panic will work to Biden's advantage, really energizing voters in a way that a cogent, vigorous Biden could never do.

In terms of governance, my impression is the "weak sleepy Joe" persona has been pretty key to Biden, or rather his team, getting a lot of good policy changes through under the radar while his middling retrograde stances on border control/labor/Bibi etc... take center stage, convincing right-leaning swingers even at full strength he's no threat to their way of life.

I don't really see too much written about Biden's staff -- are there a key set of behind-the-scenes heroes who we should know about (or is the whole point that we're not supposed to pay attention to the elves operating behind the animated corpse?)

In a weird way I'm looking forward to a Weekend at Bernie's Biden's 2024-2028 term

So...a prominent liberal blog began beating a very particular drum last week, suggesting that Biden might have Parkinson's (or "parkinsonism," a vaguer term). Their big piece of evidence, beyond "him talk slow, him walk slow," was that Dr. Kevin Cannard, an expert in Parkinson's, had been visiting the White House a whole lot the last few months.

On July 3, Biden signed the National Plan to End Parkinson's into law. It's the first-ever federal legislation aimed at eradicating the disease, and passed the Senate in May.

I expect to see nothing about this on that prominent liberal blog I mentioned.

Biden ran on criminalizing Black people in the 90’s, putting more restrictions for abortion in the 80’s, and coddling segregationists in the 70’s. He’s a relic of the past, and this reckless hubris of his is going to be the death knell of the Democratic Party when he gets annihilated come November. Fucking idiot

Dr. Kevin Cannard, an expert in Parkinson's

"Hello, I'm Dr. Michael Redd Herring. I'll be performing your fakeonoscopy."

Biden ran on criminalizing Black people in the 90’s, putting more restrictions for abortion in the 80’s, and coddling segregationists in the 70’s.

And since no one ever changes their views on anything, he implemented all these policies immediately upon taking office in 2021. I'm not sure Biden is the one with brain damage.

Personal attacks make you look pathetic. The man hadn’t changed. He surrounds himself with handlers who know how to read the room (and focus group data). Independents and apathetic voters are going to kill his ability to get reelected, and he’ll open the floodgates for fascism

"btw here's the Morning Joe appearance:"

He sounds pretty much cornered here.

dems are going to have to push him out, but i don’t think they have the stomach for it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

curmudgeon’s passing on of speculation about schumer’s calculation could apply to any national dem - if they push him and kamala loses they’ll be blamed. if he stays in and he loses, he’ll be blamed. the incentives run the wrong way

If only they had all thought longitudinally, say, 4 years ago

"On July 3, Biden signed the National Plan to End Parkinson's into law. It's the first-ever federal legislation aimed at eradicating the disease, and passed the Senate in May"

Looks like a crappy bill that I have a few questions about but its neither here nor there. Its about what tomorrow brings -- or more likely, not, if Biden himself is not around for.

lol

Oh, you think Biden is too old? Well then, how do you explain the fact that he still remembers an obscure grudge from a long time ago that no one else cares about?? https://t.co/8yk471sVAg

— Jesse Brenneman (@Jesse_Brenneman) July 8, 2024

Me, in high school English class: I’m really enjoying this Greek tragedy but don’t you think it’s kind of overwrought? An aging leader, refusing to give up power, steering his country into crisis, openly tempting the gods — pretty over the top

Me, reading the news: pic.twitter.com/dodec38mGC

— Robinson Meyer (@robinsonmeyer) July 8, 2024

Reminds me when Fernando Trueba won his Oscar in 1997. ”I would like to believe in God so that I could thank him, but I just believe in Billy Wilder. So thank you, Billy Wilder.”

The next day Billy Wilder picked up the phone. "It's God calling."

Belle Époque won an Oscar in 1994, not 1997

yeah, a typo

don't piss off God

If Joe were trying to win back Hunter's trust and affection while also competing to be arm wrestling champion? now that would be Over the Top.