The debate was a one-off for Biden, and that's the way the cookies crumble.
Trump said the Dems were doing post-birth abortions.
Biden had a raspy voice.
Who was destroyed by the media?
Howard Dean said “yeaaahh!” strangely that one time and that was it for him. It doesn’t take much.
Because our media is shit
Biden really was visibly too old. But they’re also pretty good at ginning up issues literally out of nothing when they want to.
The media still haven't realized that they're a bunch of highly educated puppies. They write well and can form a compelling story, but at the end of the day they get distracted by, and tend to focus on, any flashy or squeaky object in their periphery.
That's confusing cause and effect. Howard Dean's speech was supposed to be a concession speech after losing the only early primary/caucus he was trying to win. He poured in all of his resources in the hopes of winning Iowa, underperformed expectations against a backdrop of dropping in the polls for weeks, and coming in third (with no real prospects for New Hampshire or South Carolina) basically made it impossible for him to have the volunteers, money, or press coverage to survive into the next stage of competing in bigger states with primaries clumped up together.
He showed everyone his plan of winning Iowa or going home, lost Iowa, and then gave some kind of rallying speech as if he had a plan to recover from that loss. He never did, and it wasn't the scream that killed his campaign. His campaign was dead before the scream happened. It's just that the scream was a particularly memorable way for a campaign to die.
Big pet peeve of mine when people attribute his decline to the Dean Scream. The scream was the final nail in the coffin.
people didn't like that scream?
That's a pretty rad scream.
EEeeYEAH-HyeeuuUH!
There's a lot of fragile people out there who can't handle things like rad screams, dijon mustard, or women's right to self-determination.
Back when the internet was fun, there was a flash game where you could play as the different presidential nominees, and Howard Dean's special move was the "Dean Scream" where he would scream flipping back and forth from left to right, and all the enemies on screen would fall down. Top tier.
Don't forget that we voted for Bush because people would rather have a beer in their back yard with him than with Kerry.
That's a pretty generous summation of the problems with Biden's debate performance. It was also hardly a one-off. Every time Biden appears it's a coin flip for which Biden shows up, which is why he appears so infrequently.
You are absolutely right about how Trump's bullshit gets largely ignored by the press though.
It was hardly a one-off. He was setting off alarm bells left and right beforehand, and the debate was his chance to regain some confidence. And he had a bad night then as well. So yah, he has his good days, but it's pretty apparent that his good days are getting far between.
This was the right decision, it's a shame he had to be pretty much forced into it by everyone else that saw it. I blame his handlers, and they should have their asses handed to them for trying to fuck the rest of us by keeping him past his best-before date and giving Trump the presidency.
Biden had a raspy voice.
Biden said we finally beat Medicare.
It blows my mind that “Biden just had a raspy voice!!” isn’t banned as misinformation here. Because it literally is, there is no reasonable way to interpret “we beat Medicare” being yelled over and over as the result of a raspy voice. Absolute memory hole shit.
My favorite bullshit excuse was when they pretended it was jet lag when he hadn't been on a plane in two weeks.
The debate was a one-off for Biden
Bullshit.
Biden had a raspy voice.
I really thought we were past the gaslighting that the only thing wrong with Biden was a sore throat. But here we are....
Yeah - let's not glaze him up too much, or they might try to swap back.
Let him ride off into the sunset. The speech was okay, but I'd still rather have almost anyone else than him as the candidate (probably still not Hill-dawg)... and Kamala isn't at the bottom of that list of my prefs, so let's get her in office before we worry about whether or not the 80+ year old current president was awesome at his little send-off / goodbye speech.
Awesome to hear they let AOC speak though. Times really are shifting. You love to see it.
He was also getting hammered on Gaza. Over 650,000 Democrats voted "uncommitted" in the primary.
It's one event with a month of prep time and a teleprompter. Biden hasn't lost all faculties, but he can't be this "on" every day for the next 3 months while also being president. This is carefully curated to his strengths, making him look good, which is great, but it's no sign he could be president in 4 years.
And it's not like he delivered flawlessly, he still has at least one part where he seemed to get lost, and the crowd covered for him.
Did have real mixed feelings about the "Thank You Joe" chant. It was kind of wholesome in a way, but I imagine it feels bad to have been pushed out like he was.
I hope he recognizes that he needed to do it. Even in 2020, "making" him run (I put making in quotes because you can't make a person run for office) felt like elder abuse. That is even more true now.
They needed him to run to stop a Bernie nomination. So... he kind of was "made to", in that he also agreed that Bernie shouldn't get the nomination.
And I'm in agreement with Biden, I think. I love Bernie and think he would have made a great president, but with how close 2020 was for Biden, I doubt he would have won the election. In fact I think part of why Kamala's doing well is for the same reason that Biden did well in 2020: Trump wanted to run against Bernie in 2020, and he wanted to run against Biden in 2024. Trump struggles when things don't go the way he expects them to, and I remember in 2020 a lot of trump's arguments were about how Biden was too far left, almost like he wanted to be making those arguments about Bernie instead
Polls showed Bernie had the largest lead in a head to head against Trump in 2016 and 2020 iirc. He's the most popular politician in the US.
I imagine it feels bad to have been pushed out like he was.
I'm sure it feels bad but he shouldn't have been running again in the first place. The dead horse has been beaten to powder but he is way too old to be running a country - especially 4 years from now.
“I’ve got a lot to do. I intend to get it done. It’s been the honour of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.”
Attaboy, Joe. Good man.
I think the biggest difference is that it is far easier to recite a static speach he has practiced 100 times than it is to dynamically adapt to a live debate.
I think the difference is that he was recovering from a bad cold during the debate.
They DO NOT practice these speeches, there's no time. Rather, they become like actors and are able to just go, pretty much like how news presenters do.
Well, yeah, it was a rehearsed speech, read off a teleprompter, with a sympathetic crowd. Much different than a debate, where you have to speak off the cuff, within a time limit, and the crowd (if there is one) pledges to be non-partisan.
And, maybe Biden took Trump's advice and hopped himself up on pills. I wouldn't blame him for it, personally.
Biden's job was to save the party from a Bernie Sanders nomination. The DNC and the corporations couldn't have that.
I watched the whole speech. He still had the same issues. The pauses, stutters, stammering over sentences, and these were in the teleprompter. The difference is these were prepared remarks that were rehearsed, and he was speaking loudly for an audience. I wouldn't say he was "unrecognizable" from the debate, just a different situation. I woukd have voted for him, but I'm glad he stepped aside. It was time.
pauses, stutters, stammering over sentences
The dude has had a lifelong stutter. Has no one heard Joe Biden talk in the last several decades? He paused and stuttered when he was in the Senate too.
He doesn't usually have those pauses when he's reading from teleprompter though, or at least it's less noticable. His off the cuff pauses and stutters seem more natural when they happen. When he's reading from a teleprompter and still having the same issues, it reads as if he's having issues comprehending the words that are coming out of his mouth as he saying and expressing them, which is understandably not illustrating confidence for some people.
"I love the job, but I love my country more."
That's a strong sentence. I hope he can now just enjoy the rest of his life.
It's because he can focus on doing one job. Asking an 80.year old man to run the country on the campaign trail was laughable at best.
That's because it didn't take place at 8pm. Even people 20 years younger than Biden almost can't stay up later than 8pm.
Biden did not appear until 10.26pm Chicago time – which was 11.26pm in New York and Washington.
It was actually after 10pm when he spoke at the DNC.
I'm half his age and staying up past 9 is rare for me
I honestly thought he still sounded pretty weak. He's never been a great public speaker.
The debate wasnt fucking disasterous, god damn what is this fucking collective hallucination about the debate.
You know why he was better this time? Cause he hadnt spent the past 3 days traveling around the world and as a result wasnt jetlagged to fuck, and wasnt sick this time to boot.
And he still did 10,000 times better at the debate than Trump did.
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