If Biden were to step aside and Kamala Harris were the Democratic nominee

[Spider-Dan]

There's one more thing I need to address here.  When it comes to the "safety of the republic" argument (as opposed to the "best chance to win the election" argument):

None of this means that Trump is better.  But we have an opportunity now to not be like them.  I am not going to be Blue MAGA.  We can force a change of our candidate when we see something wrong with him, when they refused to do so.

I'm not sure what you believe the stakes of this election are; in my opinion, given Project 2025 and the associated plans, the stakes are democracy itself.

You say that you don't want to be like the other side and vote for somebody that you don't believe is fit for the job.  And guess what?  That's why they won and we lost in 2016.  If you would prefer to slide into fascism rather than "violate your principles," consider that after fascism arrives, your principles won't mean dick.

And, most importantly: no one is asking you to support a ticket that has governed in a way you oppose.  You aren't being asked to support children being stolen from their parents, or an attempted government coup, because you want tax cuts or whatever.  You are being asked to support a candidate who you suspect (but, notably, don't know, because you are not professionally qualified to make such an assessment) may be mentally impaired.

Whether you would rather have fascism than "become Blue MAGA" is ultimately up to you.

[masterfins]

Just because people want Biden to drop out because he is unfit, doesn't mean Trump is automatically going to win the Presidency.  The Democratic nominee would be chosen at the National Convention.  And at this point I'd bet whoever that is would beat Trump more easily than Biden would.

[Spider-Dan]

In practice, it's no different than people screaming "Hillary is a neocon" because they want Bernie to replace her.

People like Dave made the argument that Biden was too old back in 2020.  The voters rejected it.  And now, since they can't convince Democratic primary voters to reject Biden, they're trying to do an end-around and replace him via the heckler's veto.

Unlike the media figures who have been desperately and unsuccessfully trying to push this "Biden is old" narrative for the past year, I don't think that Dave is doing this out of pure vindictiveness at being scorned (either by the candidate or the voters).  I think he does actually believe it... just like he believed it in 2020.  But in practice, he's simply enabling those who are cynically pushing this narrative... just like those who insisted they could never vote for a lesser evil because it violates their principles in 2016.

Voting for a second term of the current administration is not just like MAGA devotion to Trump.  That is an artificial and false comparison, made by those who need to inflate the "danger" to justify their opposition to Biden.

[Spider-Dan]

Here is an hour-plus-long interview with Biden and Howard Stern from all the way back in May of this year.

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

The idea that we must ONLY consider the worst Biden appearance (among multiple appearances THIS YEAR) as fully representative of his mental fitness is absurd.  It's no different than seeing Hillary stumble into a car once in 2016 and declaring that she is irredeemably medically unfit to serve.

People are choosing which narrative they want to believe.

[Dave Gray]

I'd hope that you would refrain from trying to convince people to stay home instead of voting for Biden, but I realize "I told you so" is a powerful motivator.

I don't think this is fair to me.  I am not suggesting anyone stay home.  I certainly wouldn't suggest it.  If Biden is the nominee, I'll do everything in my power short of lying about things, to make sure he's elected.  Also, in terms of "I told you so", that's again not fair.  We are both making a guess about what we think is better for the state of the race.  It's like you're giving yourself an out at my expense.

I would like you to consider that 8 years ago, people saw this video and decided that Hillary clearly had Parkinson's and was medically unfit to be President.

I can't speak for "people".  I never thought Hillary had Parkinsons and I think that was probably not an argument made in good faith.

I disagree with you about Biden's mental state, but even if I agreed with you, I believe that the administration he has in place has proven competent and effective in the most challenging term since I was born.  To reject and discard (what we both agree has been) a proven-effective administration based solely on bad vibes from a debate is a take I cannot get on board with.

I am not asking you to get on board.  If you think that Biden is tip-top, do you.  But I definitely do not.  I think that there are a lot of people who interpret whatever that "performance" was as some kind of mental issue and it's potentially going to cost us a winnable election.

Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack while on the campaign trail in 2019, and you've never expressed as pessimistic of a view about his health as you currently are about Biden; if Biden had suffered a heart attack on stage, I think you would be calling for his resignation right now.  Like much of the media, I think you are using this event as a sort of vindication of your previous "Biden is too old" takes.

Sanders is also too old.  All of these people are too old.
If Sanders had a heart attack on stage, I never knew about it.

Also, it's not just health.  It's mental acuity.  If I thought Sanders was showing signs of dementia, I would say the same of him.

It's not like I have some kind of outlandish take.

It's pretty basic:  I think Biden is demented and I want to change the bus before the wheels fall off.  I think that Kamala is a more obvious choice than some of you, apparently.  And I think her chance of winning a general is much higher, since she is mentally fit.

[Spider-Dan]

Looks like Biden has something in common with Obama:



Note that this was on NPR via a Washington Post writer.

On a related note, did you guys hear that a Parkinson's expert has visited the White House eight times in the last eight months?  More conclusive evidence that Biden is already incapacitated.

...or it could be because the Biden Administration had been working on a Parkinson's bill that he just signed into law.

There may be honest, sincere people who had valid concerns about information security in 2016 and were troubled by Hillary's decision to maintain her own private e-mail server.  These people were later misled by cynically excessive coverage of Hillary's e-mails by a media looking for clicks and eyeballs; a media that dropped the issue the day after the election and never once considered best practices in information security a concern during the following four years.

I read that there have been over two hundred stories about Biden's mental acuity over the last week.  I am forced to wonder how many stories were devoted to Trump being found liable for sexual assault, or being fined hundreds of millions of dollars after being found guilty of fraud, or even all the insane things he says every time he gets in front of a mic.

We are in the But Her Emails cycle once again.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Let’s take your worst case example:

It is 3 am and Jeff Zients wakes up Biden and tells him, “China has launched a full scale invasion of Taiwan, General Brown wants to know how you wish to respond”.

Biden responds, “Covfefe, I like Covfefe“.  What happens next?  Very simple: Zients says to Gen. Brown, “the President authorizes you to use your best judgment”

What would be the ideal response? Biden saying, “What is Brown’s recommendation? �

[Spider-Dan]

That scenario basically already happened with Ukraine and Biden did fine, so I have to guess that's not what Dave means by "a crisis." I guess it means WW3?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

That scenario basically already happened with Ukraine and Biden did fine, so I have to guess that's not what Dave means by "a crisis." I guess it means WW3?

Not quite.  With Ukraine Biden asked the experts for their opinion, understood it  and made the decision to follow it.  In the worst case scenario Biden is unable to comprehend the experts advice and their advice is followed without any real involvement from Biden.

My point is that because Biden delegates to experts (as opposed to Trump who knows more about waging war than generals, more about diplomacy than the state department, more about health issues than doctors, etc.) His involvement is really not that important. 

[Spider-Dan]

With Ukraine Biden asked the experts for their opinion, understood it  and made the decision to follow it.

But the entire premise of this discussion is that we don't know this.

Unless the argument is that Biden suddenly went senile right before the debate, then he's been incapacitated for some unknown period of time, potentially including the invasion of Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the appearance at the union picket line, etc.  The premise is that Biden is, was, and continues to be propped up by his handlers who are hiding his mental unfitness from us, and if we accept that premise as true, anything "he" has done could have been implemented by Biden's shadow government.

He's an empty suit just reading off of teleprompters, which sounds strangely familiar...

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

But the entire premise of this discussion is that we don't know this.

Unless the argument is that Biden suddenly went senile right before the debate, then he's been incapacitated for some unknown period of time, potentially including the invasion of Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the appearance at the union picket line, etc.  The premise is that Biden is, was, and continues to be propped up by his handlers who are hiding his mental unfitness from us, and if we accept that premise as true, anything "he" has done could have been implemented by Biden's shadow government.

He's an empty suit just reading off of teleprompters, which sounds strangely familiar...

It isnt a dichotomy of Biden either being perfectly fine or being completely incompetent.  There are signs of decline.  Once the decline begins it gets worse sometimes rapidly. 
president on
It is foolish to tp pretend that there aren’t signs of decline. Rather it shouldn’t be put in context:

1.  Both men are showing signs of decline. But the guy who thought Obama was president on 9-11, thinks George Washington ceased the airports, and routinely gets lost mid sentence is given a pass unlike Biden

2. The guardrails exist in a Bden administration that the country could survive Biden going senile as he is surrounded by experts who will make sure the right steps are taken.  Trump is surrounded by loyalists and nepotism.  Trumps erratic decisions are never put in check.

[Brian Fein]

At this point the only thing that matters to democrats is making sure the country doesn't devolve into a fascist dictatorship, wherein we have a leader who's only interest is to keep himself from being tried and potentially convicted of an additional 60-or-so felonies.

If Biden is the vehicle to saving the country from the opposition, then fine.  If Biden gets a second term and steps aside within the first 20 days of his second term, also fine.  The question is really - who has a better chance of accumulating the votes needed to win?

Joe Biden has made about 18 public appearances since the debate and has not had another public episode like we saw that night.

[Dave Gray]

I want to say one last thing, but then I'm going to step away from this conversation.  I don't want to be accused of costing the eventual candidate, so I'm not going to sour grapes my way into being or encouraging others to be a PUMA (Party Unity My Ass, of old).

Also, in the last 48 hours on Threads, I've seen a sea-change of support towards Biden from the big liberal social media presences with which I'm familiar.  I've been called "someone who has never met a stutterer", "someone who doesn't have experience with sundowning", a Nazi, a White Supremacist, "someone who hates Democracy", a bot, "must be a millennial", spineless, among other, more traditional name-calling.

So, I think this is set, unless things behind closed doors change.

I also think that the online discourse is now filled with bad-actors, both pro and anti-Biden-stepping-down.  I see some takes so bad that I can only assume that they're being levied to weaken the position that they're trying to support.  And people are dug in.  And frankly, I'm just exhausted.

I will leave you with this:

* I believe that Joe Biden is in a state of mental decline.  I am probably an ageist and I also probably have this hit close to home because I saw this same song and dance with my Dad.  This was something I thought was possible before, but was solidified with whatever happened at the debate.  I have not felt better seeing him since -- the Stephanopolous interview was still hard to listen to and his answers are not only scary, but they are also nonsense politically.  He isn't doing a good job advocating for himself.  Admittedly, I'm not sure even if he seemed coherent (which he doesn't) that I would change my opinion.  I also recognize and have been very outspoken about our geriocracy and Biden is the culmination of that bad trend, but it stretches to so many other politicians.  I just don't believe that we should have politicians working well into their twilight years.  He's not just too old.  He's 15 years too old.

* Given that I think that he is in a state of mental decline, I can either choose to care about that or ignore it.  But I care about that.  I don't want to be the blue version of the cult that I accuse MAGAs of being.  Truth matters to me, or at least I think it should.  I found myself having to explain why I thought it was dangerous to have a senile person in office and then I realized that we're just not on the same page if I'm trying to be talked into that being acceptable.

* I know that polls aren't everything.  I know that sometimes the panic exacerbates the story.  But I know what I'm feeling.  And I have checked in with several friends of mine in varying demographics and every single one of them is thinking what I'm thinking.  These are people I don't talk to regularly, but I reached out to get perspective.  Maybe it's because they're more my age or that my views are partially defined by the similar nature of our backgrounds...who knows?  But polling suggests that this is a major problem and it's also what I'm seeing, though anecdotally.  Therefore, I think that politically, a switch gives us the best chance to win.  However, after seeing the response from the rapid Biden-supporters, now I'm not so sure.  I think we may be damned if we do, damned if we don't.  In a strange twist, some part of this has shifted the narrative to Trump's craziness.  I've heard more about Project 2025 and seen less about Gaza complaining since this fallout.  Maybe, in some weird way, this is energizing his base.

* And the last thing, though I've said it before, I'll say it again.  I will gladly vote for Joe Biden if that's the name on my ballot and I will encourage anyone I know to do the same.

[Fau Teixeira]

anyone watch the press conference last night ?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

One commenter I like said that *if* Biden steps aside it should be *after* Trump names his VP