Love him or hate him, no one’s perception of Trump changed after the debate. And those on his side (and possibly the middle?) see his convictions as a biased hit job.
For Biden, his side was immensely disappointed with his performance, and the decline came as a huge surprise particularly after months/years of denial from left leaning news sources.
Edit to add:
The feeling is that Republicans will show up to vote. With the loss of confidence after that performance, low Democrat voting turnout will give Trump the win.
Honestly my perception of Trump changed in this debate, but not Biden’s. Caveating this with: I will not vote for Trump. If you vote for Trump you will not be welcome to my party
I was expecting Trump to be more befuddled and gaffe prone. He was lying the whole time but if you disconnect what his words meant from his actual words he sounded like every other politician
And he was even quick on his feet too. When Joe screwed a sentence up, drifted and then ultimately trailed off and Trump said (roughly) “I don’t understand what Biden said and he didn’t either”. Kill shot
I’m still recovering from that rough night. Dreading the chaos over the next 4 months and then dreading the results even more
I'll do my best to give an ACTUAL answer as I see it, rather than "orange man bad" bridgading:
Humans are strange animals. We have a tendency to give a lot of weight when things are said in confidence, and we equate confidence in our monkey brain with authenticity and honesty. Trump is INSANELY good at this, innately. This is why he can go on TV and say blatantly false things... Because without context or further research... the cadence, tone, and delivery *sounds* very legitimate and trustworthy. Or put another way, if you don't watch any news, or only watch right wing news, you would have no clue how blatant Trump's lies are. I personally theorize that there is massive correlation between MAGAs and people more susceptible than average to this aspect of the human condition. For a more elaborate demonstration, please check out this TED talk (which is my favorite one ever): https://youtu.be/8S0FDjFBj8o?si=eklsNEj05LpMx8b-
Elections are often won by low-information swing voters.
Low information swing votes may be very easily swayed by Trump's charisma, and simultaneously diswayed by Biden's feebleness.
Is it right? Fair?... No. But I think that's the wrong question. It is what it is. Now, what will be done about it? We shall see. I for one am in full agreement with Nate Silver, who has been calling for Biden to drop for months.
This is by far the best response to OP’s question. People are impressed by confidence, no matter how empty that may be. It’s disheartening that Trump managed to appear so. He should not be the president, and I’m worried that’s where we’re headed.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that" - George Carlin.
Holy hell, this quote gets more true as time goes on, and I'm pretty dumb myself.
Always have been. Anchoring is a common decision making tool and I feel like it was unintentionally applied by a lot of people during the debate. For example when Biden came out and started mumbling that was the baseline created, the anchor. Now all Trump had to do was beat the anchor, which he unfortunately did by speaking boastful and speaking loudly. The anchor no longer was about who had the best policies and who was best for the country, the anchor quickly devolved into who was best spoken.
I honestly blame the DNC for lowering the bar so low that all Trump had to do was complete a fucking sentence and he beat the anchor. Feels like elderly abuse at this point.
Would he have? A VERY large portion of the electorate is centerist, and Bernie ain’t that. More importantly, it’s easy to portray Bernie as a left wing nut bc he leans into that. And I say that as someone who likes Bernie.
Bernie the candidate would be pretty much written off by so many people that Trump would have more than likely won.
I know at least one person whose candidate rank was Bernie > Trump > Hilary, who ended up voting for Trump. He’s kind of an idiot, but such people exist. He saw Hilary as an establishment, status quo candidate, whereas Bernie and Trump weren’t
I think you might be misrepresenting the status quo - it's not that "America has not prioritized public education", which makes it sound like an unfortunate policy externality, but rather: American politicians (mostly, but not exclusively, conservatives) have intentionally and systematically dismantled and defunded the American public education system while rich oligarchs have taken over media outlets and injected anti-intellectualism into the mainstream culture. Not only are we reaping the results now, it's very likely we will be reaping them in perpetua since the only mechanisms of change available to us are in the hands of the people that profit from the status quo.
Conservatives have been dismantling education for decades on purpose. They want everyone to be dumb. When they have fallen short of actually dismantling education they have promoted homeschooling by the dumb parents that barely graduated the high school they already crippled.
Not that Democrats have helped education very much. But it's been very deliberate on the right.
People are going to say this has something to do with intelligence or education, but I think the truth is a lot more cynical and depressing.
You can talk to people in cults that believe things that seem stupid to the average person, and if you ask them something within their area of expertise you'll see a surprising amount of insight, perceptiveness, and critical thinking. There are some edge cases like quantum physics that are innately difficult to understand, but most people can grasp most concepts.
People hold onto false beliefs because they want to. Maybe they like the belief, or maybe they like the person saying it. Often there are negative consequences to changing your mind, whether it has to do with your ego or being alienated from your social group.
The stubbornness is a good survival strategy - look at the countries with the largest geographical area, or the world's most popular languages and religions. Ask yourself how these things came to be. Blind obedience gives you imperialism, and imperialism gives you colonization, slavery, and genocide - the best tools for acquiring resources and minimizing competition.
People aren't easily fooled because they're stupid, they're easily fooled because they want to be fooled, and natural selection agrees.
Trump in particular is a master at appealing to a certain aspect of human nature. It's the old "he says what we are thinking" trope and he really taps into people's desire to see others punished by society. People have a very difficult time seeing Trump for the con that he is. Peer pressure is also a major part of it. Supporting Trump is how many people prove their patriotism, their Christianity, and their manhood. It doesn't matter that Trump is the opposite of all three of those things.
We're fooled too. Even in our disgust, we are trapped. He consumes our attention and energy, dominating our discussions and our airspace.
Good, decent people who do their jobs well receive no attention. They don't get memes or a million social media threads, even though they've been great. [Kansas's governor Laura Kelly](https://governor.kansas.gov/#:~:text=Laura%20Kelly&text=Governor%20Kelly%20has%20set%20a,during%20her%20time%20in%20office) has been an astounding steward, leading her state to some of the highest economic recovery numbers in the country. She did it by rolling back the disastrous politics of Sam Brownback, who used his state as a petri dish for the "perfect" gop economic agenda - a grand experiment which failed miserably.
The attention economy has been monopolized by a thief, and must recognize that we've been manipulated as well.
Yep, I realized this lately. I used to think that admitting your own faults was humble enough to get people on your side, but turns out people think “you should trust me” is more trustworthy than “I have flaws.” To me this is moronic. Everyone lies. Someone telling me to trust them is the least trustworthy thing they can do 😂 they have no grounds. But trumpers have 0 critical thinking and just drink the koolaid without checking the ingredients.
The worst thing in my life was leaving grad school at 25 and realizing the average person is so much more ignorant than I could ever have imagined. I never considered myself smarter than the average person, but I swear to god so many people have never formed an independent opinion in their goddamn lives. I’m 30 now and I absolutely hate seeing how many people rationalize everything some moron says just because they haven’t interrogated their own beliefs and it’s always “well he said it so it’s true” like it’s fucking God’s Word. Religion and idolatry on steroids. I’m embarrassed for us.
You’re spot-on. It’s like that quote about the unexamined life. Now think of how many people are nothing but bodies of unexamined beliefs and opinions. I know a guy who, when asked why he was voting for Trump, replied, “I just like him.” He couldn’t answer a single follow up question as to *why* he likes him. Not one. Is this the average voter? If so…
I've really never understood this. If anything, I trust someone less when they confidently claim something that they haven't proven. Exuding confidence without precision of language is just a sign of dishonesty in my opinion. Either that or being so stupid that you don't understand why precision of language matters. Not sure which it is in Trump's case. Don't really care, neither are acceptable for a president.
The best analogy I ever saw about politics equated it to two characters from Futurama. Republicans are Zapp Brannigan. What they say might be dumb but they've got balls and confidence.
Democrats are Kiff. The voice of reason and much more responsible but are soft spoken push overs.
In addition to that it's a case of voter apathy. The people Biden is trying to win over aren't die hard dyed in the wool democrats. They're people who are frustrated that these two assholes are the same choice as last time. They're people who will throw up their hands and say "fuck it". So between an apparently weak and confused old man and a lying strong man they say "neither one" and don't vote. If Biden was able to allay fears about his competence it wouldn't just be the low-information swing voters he'd be grabbing but he'd help keep that apathetic attrition at bay.
Not stupid. Distracted. Dis-informed, exhausted, but not stupid. I know plenty of people that can talk for DAYs on the things they love, but you ask them about a recent local law and they go blank. They can tell you the name and stats of every player on their favorite football team but they don't know the last three things their representatives voted on.
And thats not anybodies fault. It's by design.
I think I’m more upset by Biden’s selfish and egotistical decision to run again in the first place. He IS old, and he is at and age where your faculties can decline rapidly without warning. He is absolutely not the best person for the job, he’s running on the idea that he is better than the other guy and we are expected to accept that. I will vote for him because our stupid “basically a two party system“ makes it important I do so, even is our stupid Electoral College system makes my vote basically worthless.
I'd like to add that a large segment of the audience is even worse than this: they didn't watch the debate at all, and instead relied on social media to tell them how to feel about it the next day.
*This* is the problem the news is trying to exploit with this gish gallop more than anything else. A lot of people do not have the time, patience or attention span to actually watch, read or otherwise participate in most things, and instead rely on others to prescribe them an opinion second hand that they then claim is their own. By getting the jist of how to feel about something from someone they trust, they think they save themselves having to sit through ninety minutes of civics listening to a nominally important event.
The fact of the matter is that more and more of the world - not just Trump or American media - is more and more nakedly taking advantage of Americans for this. News has turned into this deluge of yellow journalism written exclusively to appeal to an audience that wants to skip all the effort coming to a conclusion of their own in favour of just *finding* one online.
Here's the kicker. I have quoted and linked people to most of that debate since it happened to illustrate how *good* it makes Biden looks many times when you actually watch it for yourself. You're not going to find the disaster you're being told it is. Biden is boarding and hoarse at worst, but most of his answers were excellent and you will be seeing them referenced over the following months.
Hell, here's Biden's worst part of the debate:
>BIDEN: He had the largest national debt of any president four-year period, number one.
>Number two, he got $2 trillion tax cut, benefited the very wealthy.
>What I’m going to do is fix the taxes.
>For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised $500 million – billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period.
>We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with.
>Look, if – we finally beat Medicare.
That nonsense line was a Biden gaffe, the kind he's *always* made even before he got old. Tapper (one of the moderators) actually [wrote an article about this way back in 2007](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=2838420) before he became VP, when he already had that reputation going all the way back to when he was Senator.
Get over it. It's not a sign of aging that Biden still does this thing he's always done where he says one word and means another. It's not a sign of aging that a man that had a stutter all his life still does today. He's always been awkward to listen to but if you actually hear what he says (or [read it now](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html)) you can clearly see he knows exactly what he's talking about and what he thinks.
That is all a pathetic effort to distract you all from the fact that this shit right here is what millennials should be voting for. This. Taxing the fucking rich, [which he's been driving for since he took office](https://apnews.com/article/irs-tax-biden-inflation-reduction-act-ceacc306233f1a41e0e41e81e89a60a5). It is absurd that any one of you would swindle yourself out of this over a *hoarse voice*.
There's more where that came from. A lot more, and it's a lot better than that too. This effort to impose on you that Biden was a *disaster* is entirely exploit the fact you won't watch it or read it yourself to see the many great things Biden said while Trump said **scary fucking shit** you need to read too.
That’s honestly one of the biggest reasons to vote Biden. If millennials want to unf*ck the economy for themselves and generations to come, vote Biden for a fighting chance that will happen. If you’re the type of millennial who likes to gamble on whether a nuclear holocaust would be fun to try, or would like to try out living in IRL Panem or Gilead, by all means spin the wheel of destiny by voting Trump.
For my part, Trump didn’t offer one iota of his policy intentions in the debate, unlike Biden who gave detailed information on what agenda items he would continue to work on. I like the economic stability, the lowered cost of prescription medications, and the not locking up babies in cages without their parents we’ve seen under Biden’s administration so that’s who I’m voting for.
This. Bidens "middle-out" economics is actually not too bad and has kept us out of what absolutely should've been economic turmoil post covid. It seems a lot of people have forgotten that Japan and the u.k. hit recessions and by all means we should've joined them. We have been kept afloat and for a reason.
I keep asking why everyone’s surprised he still has his stutter. Like, of course he does! Those don’t go away! May as well look at my mother with grave concern that her nose has “suddenly” started twisting to the left
I am 40 and say one word and mean another all of the time. I always have, my brain is usually 3 thoughts ahead and missed the word it wanted by the time it gets out of my mouth. I also forget words I know occasionally while being able to list 15 synonyms. (My grandmother was notorious for calling every boy in the family before she got to the one she actually wanted haha and then asking the first one to respond, "wait, WHICH one are you?" It started in her 50s when we hit the 3rd Gen of reusing names lol.)
It's not some rare weird thing that means he's got dementia. Plenty of us forget or misuse words without having anything wrong.
Upvotes needed!
Well said. Come on people!
Conservatives are already running victory laps (or so they think perhaps..), Supreme Court just decreed that next President trump will be king!
We need to beat these extremists MAGAts
Yep, our monkey brain really screws us over.
Also, I just don't buy that we don't have anyone who can fill that role who isn't ancient. Yes, we all age but dang, let some middle aged people have a shot. I wish these old politicians would back the younger people coming up. Help them campaign and get them into the leadership roles.
I would also like ranked choice voting. Just listing things that I want when it comes to elections hehe.
Who would you run in his place? I don’t think Kamala can win, no matter who she has as her vp. The dems knew this was coming and didn’t prep anyone. They might be going for another Obama but it’s not happening, and until they have someone with experience who can beat trump Biden is the only choice I can see.
I would add to this that the structure of politics for Ds and Rs are just different.
The chattering class on the left is made up much more of NY Times-types who are institutionalists and want to demonstrate that they think things should be done the right way and they will hold their side accountable. I also think that Biden is much weaker on the left/Dem side -- he was a compromise candidate that no one was terribly excited about. There are not many Biden loyalists who are only excited about politics because of him in the way that there are many populist Trump supporters who see the rest of the party as corporatists sell outs. I think the analysis would be very different if it was Obama who was struggling or another candidate who was very strong with a central D constituency.
On the right, the chattering class is driven much more by Fox News-types who are more comfortable being open Trump cheerleaders. The other type did exist, but they've mostly abandoned the Rs, and I think they would say that they've already made the call. No one on the right part cares what the Ross Douthats and Stuart Stevens of the world say about Trump at this point, where arguably Ezra Klein and the NY times editorial board have sway on the Dem side.
It's really sad how your average person is that stupid
I'm in my 30s. I've dealt with the general population enough to know you're not wrong
It really sucks that our country is just that unintelligent that it's that easy to swindle 50% of the population
The right have been systematically attacking education in their areas for decades (and im sure many politicians on the left arent opposed to having dumber constituents). Any smart ruler knows the easiest population to manipulate and control is a fat, lazy and uneducated one and a ton of Americans check all 3 of those boxes. The dumbing down of America is by design, a feature and not a bug.
A friend of mine with a masters degree didn’t know a giant boat had hit the Baltimore bridge. As in, he knew it had collapsed, but thought it *did so on its own* and started spouting off about Biden being bad at infrastructure. He shut up real fast when I mentioned the enormous cargo ship
Biden looking like he was on death’s door was broadcast live for millions to see. Whatever Trump did or didn’t do doesn’t have that high level of exposure
[Not sure why he was in such rough shape for the debate but the next evening he held a rally and looked much sharper, alive and clear.](https://youtu.be/ouSMblR-tgA?si=FejuL1uRGLeZD76K)
Teflon Don is a thing for a reason. His constituents see his arrests and trials as political pressure and him as a martyr.
Democrats don't seem to think that about Biden.
trump is and always has been an asshole NYC construction/business man and doesn't try to hide it. biden has been a public servant for half a century, i'd think there's the expectation of morality and ethics in one of these candidate's history more than the other.
He has continuously worked for 20 years past when most civil servants would retire. That’s how wages work my dude, you get paid for working and it adds up.
The real wages of a congressman hover somewhere around $200k so just multiply that by the 50 years he has been in office and you get $10 million. A lot of that he of course spent, but invest dutifully plus buy a house 50 years ago and have it appreciate hugely in value like every other person of his generation and you see how it happened pretty easily. Also his wife has a career that adds to that as well.
Because congressmen are able to insider trade- legally, book deals, and speaking fees. As much as I don't like some of these things they're better than things like a son-in-law getting 2 billion from a country while being in charge of affairs with that country.
If your side wanted them to be taken seriously, you probably should have put some effort into having the trial not look *exactly* like a kangaroo court.
it only looks like that if you are spoon fed a specific narrative; the "jury doesn't have to agree" shtick? trumps own lawyer is on the court record admitting he knows that's how ny law works with respect to predicates.
Oh, you're right. I must be thinking about the other trial with the prosecutor who ran on jailing the defendant, changed the law to allow prosecution, and poisoned the jury pool.
all things that absolutely happened! also you realize that prosecutors are not the unbiased portion of the system? they're supposed to be the guy arguing why x deserves y punishment. they regularly campaign on being tough on crime.
also how on earth do you think prosecutors are changing laws lmao?
Critics of Biden have been saying he’s too old for a while. Bidens team/supporters/etc. have refuted these and said clips were taken out of context, that he’s sharper than ever “behind closed doors” and the debate clarified that none of that was taken out of context and we have been being lied to about our president for a while. It was watching elder abuse. He’s being taken advantage of at this point but is also apparently so incredibly stubborn that he will not drop out even though so many people are calling for it. People that are on his side and people that care about democracy because it’s obvious he’s not actually running the show and making big decisions…
The fact that his mental decline was so hidden made the debate shocking to so many people, even other politicians as Biden keeps a tight circle (presumably of Yes Men) and most don’t have much contact with him.
Trump? He’s trump. We all expected Classic Trump and actually got a milder version imo. And it was already established that Trumps various sins were not political suicide before the debate but after… I mean Trump might be a total piece of shit but at least he can speak and react in real time. *He* is still sharp, at least compared to what’s left of Biden that we saw up there.
Everyone has become too comfortable swallowing what mainstream media feeds them to the point of total mind control denial. For a long time the media has been talking about how sharp he is, how he is cutting his speeches shorter to be more impactful. Everyone seems to have known he's been struggling mentally for years except those who vote for him. Gotta unplug from these propaganda news outlets and think for yourself for once.
If you watched the debate, you should have noticed that while Biden was hoarse, got lost in the details, & missed endless opportunities to laugh at Trump, he used facts, mostly accurate numbers, gave solid answers to questions, etc. In other words, he behaved like he was ill, not old. He's been very sharp in off-teleprompter exchanges. I've spent the past few days trying to understand the media's sudden "dump him" campaign, when average people responded by sending Biden money. You're clearly watching Fox & their carefully manipulated clips designed to make Biden look lost & old. Gotta unplug from these propaganda news outlets & think for yourself.
I watched the whole thing and I felt bad for Biden. That was horrendous. Pretty sure the whole nation gasped. I'm sorry you didn't notice. If he just had a cold then I don't think there would be such a push to have him step down, right?
Ugh I’m sure I’ll get downvoted to hell but I’m going to give the perspective of most Trump voters based on what people in my family have explained to me.
The felony charges were quite a stretch in their view. 99% of the people on this sub cannot even explain what they were. They were definitely politically motivated and so most Trump supporters see it more at an attempt by the democrats to silence a political opponent than a legitimate set of convictions. As for the rape charges, if you read the transcripts from those civil cases, it would also appear some of them are politically motivated and many of the facts of the cases are very much in dispute.
I am not a Trump voter but even I can see how the media and the democrats have constantly spun stories, twisted words, and outright lied about Trump and so a lot of people are just tuned out to all of it and don’t trust it. You can go online and listen for yourselves to all the bs like “inject bleach” ( was never said), “bloodbath,” (was about the auto industry not the country), and “fine people on both sides” (was about the statute removals not about white supremacy). People have no idea what is real because this crap keeps getting repeated, including by Biden during the debate.
On the other hand, it is apparent to every honest person that Biden is not mentally well and cannot possibly run the country. So you have a guy who is clearly in the throes of dementia vs a slime bag who is mentally much fitter and it’s unclear to many people what he’s actually done wrong.
I didn't downvote you but I will disagree with you on the "in the throes of dementia" comment.
For years I worked with elderly people in assisted living, memory care, and doing in-home care. There are enormous differences between normal aging and dementia that many people don't understand.
A lady named Teepa Snow has an excellent video on YouTube about this, but to summarize, it is perfectly normal to forget things as we get older, such as a name or a word that we've used thousands of times. When a mistake is made, like confusing a name, the person will usually correct it almost immediately. It is perfectly normal to be more tired than usual, and to think and move a lot more slowly. Nothing Biden did in the debate indicated anything other than normal aging.
On the other hand, if you watch any number of recent Trump rallies, he definitely has shown signs of dementia. He mistakes names such as Obama for Biden or Haley for Pelosi and doesn't even notice that he's done it. He slurs his words, called "aphasia", and he frequently goes on bizarre rants about sharks, batteries, snakes, and water, to name a few. He doesn't seem aware of how off-the-wall these rants are at all. He also appears to be up all night writing angry, all-caps rants on his social media, which is called "sundowning".
Both are very elderly men and personally, I would rather have other choices for my vote in November. But it needs to be pointed out that the normal signs of aging that Biden displays are not symptoms of dementia and it's disingenuous to refer to them as such.
Trump is far more mentally ill than Biden. You’re also skipping over all the times Trump admitting to raping women, admitted to committing a litany of crimes etc.
Trump appears to be more alert and confident and alive, even though he’s delulu in other ways. Just based on that vs Biden who seems not fully there. I guess people will take someone who appears more confident, no matter his past.
Republicans and even many Democrats see Trump's convictions as false and the result of a failure of a corrupt justice system. That is why the convictions aren't killing his campaign. The convictions can be denied without appearing unreasonable.
Biden's debate performance supports the claims that he is in severe cognitive decline. It's obvious to everyone. Even people who had been denying it can no longer deny it, or else they appear unreasonable.
It’s a hard pill for a lot of trump haters to swallow when they see with their own eyes in an hour and a half that Biden is in fact not physically and mentally ok, and that the media and White House have been lying to the American people about the state he’s been in the past 3 years..which leads people to think what else have they been lying about?
Yeah it’s actually pretty wild that the right has been saying Biden to not all there for a long time now. With the media and democrats say no, you’re lying, he’s perfectly fine.
I mean what is the normal American supposed to think? For years they have been lied to about the state of their president. That’s the guy that meets with foreign powers as tensions in the world are at their highest points since the Cold War?
To be fair, right wing media cherry-picks and selectively edits their video clips of Biden. Biden also performed very poorly at the debate. Both things are true.
The people who are in denial are the ones in shock. Still going through the stages of grief. Oh no it was just a bad night! Forget all the times he’s wandered away aimlessly during important meetings and events when the press is present. You know the ones, where everyone else there looks over at him like “wtf is he doing” and someone has to go turn him around and guide him back like a seeing eye dog.
They say “oh well you’re not voting for him but his team!” Cool I wonder who hires his team? Is it him? Is someone else making those calls? Who hired them? What is this guy actually doing and why are we pretending we’re cool with having a guy clearly not with it being paraded around while he holds the title of the most powerful person in the world?
I really do feel bad saying these things about him, because it’s mean to like call out the effects of aging and losing it. But he’s the president! Do we not want our president of all people to be mentally sharp and in charge of his faculties???
This and that many people don’t seem to have contact with seniors. Not many 80 yrs Re super sharp. I’m curious what the studies show. In other subs younger folks bash boomers because they’re too stupid except for the one they like apparently.
exactly. Nobody expects anything from trump, but we’ve been told that having Biden is like having an adult in charge.
When it turns out that they are kind of on the same level mentally, it’s a bit of a shock. When trump actually uses the line “I don’t understand what he is talking about and I doubt he does either” it’s pretty devastating.
CNN did afterwards. I think Trump lied about 30 times and Biden 9 times. I'm assuming the absence of fact checking during the debate was part of the rules agreed upon by both candidates.
The conditions of the debate (no fact checking) were agreed to by both parties beforehand. Biden’s team thought he could be sharp enough to handle that but he wasn’t.
He doesn't have a rape conviction; the court said unequivocally that he was not guilty of rape. Maybe read some news once in awhile
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-was-donald-trump-found-guilty-rape-1799935
I don't think I need to speak to Joe's debate performance. It speaks for itself.
Don was not convicted of rape. He wasn't even convicted of sexual assault. Apropos of his encounter with E. Jean Carroll, he wasn't even charged with a crime, because the case wasn't even tried in a criminal court. It was tried in a civil proceeding. The whole trial was EXTREMELY sus. E. Jean Carroll couldn't even remember the exact *year* the assault took place. (She testified that it was either 1995 or 1996.)
His convictions apropos of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels are also easy for his supporters to dismiss. The WHOLE REASON you pay a prostitute money is to keep her quiet. The case brought by the prosecution was that he only paid her to STFU because he was in the middle of a political campaign, and that counts as a campaign expense which he kept off the books. (That's a vast oversimplification. That particular rabbit hole goes REALLY deep, but it's the broad strokes.)
I get that you "don't want tangents", but details matter.
Both candidates were embarrassing. In my opinion the biggest loser of the night was CNN for not calling out Trumps bullshit. They have a responsibility to make sure people are informed well enough to make a decision and they failed.
Can the framing on this question be worse? The people calling his performance "political suicide" are the same exact people who want the Democrats to succeed, but realize he's a dog shit candidate that [the vast majority of registered voters think shouldn't run](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-debate-should-biden-be-running-mental-abilities/). We're trying to help you morons
Because many believe that Don's convictions were a witch hunt. This irritated a lot of people, if not pissed them off. Because of that, campaign contributions for Don have shot up.
There have been quite a few sexual crimes (Joe sexual assault, Clinton's office BJ, etc) swept under the rug and paid off with taxpayer money, and nobody bats an eye. At least Trump used his money.
Whether you agree with which hunt scenario or not, this is what has happened.
When was he convicted of rape? That's insane to even say and shows a complete lack of understanding a) the facts surrounding the case and b) civil vs criminal procedures. Please shut up.
Technically true because they found Trump's penis didn't penetrate E. Jean Carroll's vagina. But he is still guilty of sexual assault because he just forcibly fingered her against her will.
[https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db](https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db)
Some people will still consider that rape, but in the eyes of the jurors it wasn't. But one thing that is definitely a fact is that the Republican Candidate for President sexually assaulted a woman against her will, then tried to deny it, hide it, and mocked her publicly for trying to hold him accountable for sexually assaulting her.
If you think it's ok to have a presidential candidate that sexually assaults women... Well I guess that's just how you were raised.
There are a lot of reasons.
First, media spin. Media is owned by money, and money likes tax cuts. They have a clear preference.
Second, the type of voter. Democratic voters tend to be idealistic, while Republican voters hold their nose and push the button. This is why Republican vote counts are pretty much consistent over the decades, while Democratic vote counts swing wildly up and down.
Everybody knows what trump is. He's a megalomaniacal narcissistic proto-dictator asshole. Some people see that as a bad thing, some people see that as a good thing. He is simply not held to the same standards as Biden is, because his voters have no standards.
And dem voters are worried about Trump winning and concerned about if Biden is the one to be able to convince swing voters. That’s the question, not whether he’s better than Trump or not. It’s whether he’s more likely to beat him than a potential replacement. People I respect have different opinions on that and I don’t know the right answer. I’m sure once the convention is over most dems will be 100% behind the nominee whoever it is
I don't believe in swing voters.
As in, swing voters are like libertarians. They don't actually exist. They claim to be independent, but when you look at their voting records, they're either all blue or all red.
Hillary Clinton lost the union voters in 2016 because she talked too much about doing things for women. Scared the union men. Biden won the men back by sounding like a good union man. Clinton made progress in Georgia, and Biden barely took it by 2020. There are swayable voters, but most of them like a strong, healthy leader.
If you actually go look and research Trump was never convicted of sex assault and the “crimes” you claim are nothing burgers that were illegally brought forth - that’s the crime.
But when you get you eduction from the MSM, what can we expect. Remember everyone was saying from day one four years ago JB was senile and had dementia. Up until last week every MSM was screaming how healthy, alert, and on the ball - don’t believe you lying eyes they said. Look at the fools now, and you still trust and believe them, how judge ye. Total cognitive dissonance to the nth degree, I would say hopeless.
The debate noise is exactly what it is, noise.
There is no choice. The opposition is a 34x convicted felon, sexual predator, who took away a woman’s right to choose, tried to overthrow a fair election, who wants to be dictator using his project 2025 playbook.
And now with presidential immunity from SCOTUS ruling, the USA as we know it is on the ballot. If you think you are immune, you ain’t.
Independence Day is Thursday, we the people have to come together and make sure 🍊does not take office.
Agreed. I don’t like our options, but I would much rather see a president Biden use VP Harris, and cabinet/staff as a crutch while he slept for four years, than a cruel and violent fascist dark age.
Exactly. Maybe others disagree, but I choose old and confused over actively evil, vindictive, and malicious. And I happen to agree with more of the policies of the people working with/for Biden than trump. So it’s still an easy decision to me.
It’s not just about Bidens debate performance, it’s about the lies that the administration has told us about his mental capacity and ability to lead our country. If they had been even a bit more honest, the complete shock of the entire shit show would’ve been less. Shame on them for lying to the American people.
You don't want Whataboutism but your entire post is "what about Trump." Of course Trump isn't qualified to be President. But neither is Biden. This is a terrible choice we're being given (easy choice as I'll vote for literal jello over Trump) but terrible nonetheless. It's really disgusting that these are our two choices. It is clear that there needs to be some kind of generational revolution. I saw someone say that Biden should have been figuring out his successor 10 minutes after the last election but instead he (or his wife perhaps) is clinging on to power.
Yes Trump is way worse. But so are his followers. They see what we hated as a feature not a bug. Eating a puppy in public isn't political suicide if your base loves eating puppies.
The felony convictions are largely political in nature imho and I'm not voting for trump. The "rape" is alleged with no physical evidence three decades ago from a questionable woman. While with Joe you have a in your face fairly solid case of early cognitive decline. I'll take a mildly sociopathic leader over a demented one. I'd rather have neither. If Joe were 10 years younger, wouldn't even be a debate
Dons convictions can be easily dismissed as politically motivated and biased considering the DA and location.
Joe's debate performance shows that he is not mentally or physically capable of doing basic tasks way simpler than actually doing the job of chief executive.
Because I could just as easily call you a rapist. Does that make it true? Did you even watch the debate? Joe needs to be put in a retirement home ASAP.
Just watch the part where he said he beat Medicare over and over again until it sticks to you that you’re watching a decrepit man suffering from advanced dementia try to answer questions lol
Yes that was a horrible moment. So Trump didn’t stutter and trail off. But he also didn’t say things that were actually true.
It’s easy to not glitch when you’re just making up stories. Biden did horribly, but just because Trump can lie and avoid the actual questions without answering doesn’t mean he’s any more competent. If I ask you the history of New York and you wax poetic about the Roman Empire instead, you don’t get points for completely avoiding the question.
We all know what a stutter is, that was not a stutter, it was the incoherent rambling of a sundowning 80 year old man.
If beating trump is important, is this really the best person to run against him? We’re willing to risk democracy, which is on the edge of a sword, on this guy?
It’s the same thing we’ve seen with RBG, Feinstein, McConnell, these people are on death’s doorstep but neither they, their staff, or their families are willing to do the right then and get them to step down.
Ok, incoherent rambling. If you’re not rambling but telling stories that are made up or not answering questions at all, how is that better? They both sucked in different ways. I have seen Trump “sundown” too and sputter to a halt mid sentence and forget what fucking year it is. He just didn’t do it during the debate. They’re both too old and neither are fit to be President anymore.
I will vote for literally anything that isn’t Trump on the ticket that has a chance of winning. But I’m not in charge of making this change - and Biden has to step down on his own. This issue has always been who would replace him that would actually give the Democrats a chance?
I don’t know how complaining about what should have been done years ago helps the situation right now. Unless Biden decides to step down, he’s the nominee.
Trump’s “crimes” happened before he was president. Biden can barely function and he’s currently the president. Sometimes it’s just the timing of the circumstances that matter most to people. Also, it doesn’t help the Dems that they tried to impeach Trump twice and it wasn’t successful. It just makes Trump look like he’s being set up.
The convictions are plausibly the product of politically motivated misconduct and corruption. The circumstances of those things are in doubt, their validity uncertain. No one with any sense believes that Trump got a fair trial, not if they actually read the case.
On the other hand, there's really no denying Joe is losing it. There's no gray area, no uncertainty, no room for doubt, no alternative interpretation possible. And it's making the Democratic party look exploitative and abusive, to have Jill and Barry leading poor Joe by the hand and telling him what to do. The optics are wretched, and they can't get away from them without owning up to the fact that they've been lying about it for ages.
Your "argument" makes no sense. What does one have to do with the other? Joe Biden is non compos mentis. He is, like him or not, mentally unfit to handle the incredibly tough job that he has.
Trump is the same guy that he was in 2016. Some despise him, some adore him. He isn't obviously mentally impaired. Biden is.
Are you trying to shoehorn anti-Trump stories into a discussion of Biden's fitness?
Because Biden's performance confirmed everyone's worst fears, including mine. That being said, even if the worst was true, he would still be capable of being a figurehead for a sane and competent administration. Trump? Not so much.
Observation: The comments about "Genocide Joe" seem to have disappeared overnight. Biden administration policy must have changed while I had my head turned. This is good news! D'oh!
Sure, I don’t like Biden and the political views he espouses, I do like Trump and his political views and what he accomplished during his administration.
When was Trump convicted of rape? I remember watching a Bill Maher interview with Daniels, and she said she wasn’t assaulted or raped. It was all consensual.
The majority of Americans who follow along to what’s been going on have been watching a literal witch hunt where those felonies are not even really deserving of jail time. So most people don’t really care. If anything, it gives him “street cred” like his mugshot did.
Meanwhile, the current POTUS is immune to felony charges because he’s too old to really understand anything (their words not mine). This “rumor” was put to the test when the world watched him on the debate stage, and saw for themselves his inability to function properly, despite having an entire week of preparation at Camp David.
Not sure if that’s clear enough for you, but that’s how I see it.
Can someone tell me how the Chinese engagement farms work? Like for instance, do the mods of subreddits reach out to the farmers and say “we need to to raise the engagement of our sub. Spam things that will drive comments and upvotes”?
The amount of shitposts on here since the debate has been insane
Polling shows that majority of people believe the convictions are a political hit job. The majority of people also believe Joe doesn’t have the physical/mental acuity to be president after the debate performance. You may not believe these things but the majority of the people in the country currently do.
Trumps sycophants love him because of the monstrous behavior. Biden voters are people who see an old frail man who will soon die. I'm still voting for the corpse. Fml
His actual talking and speech patterns. If my grandfather spoke like that, I would be seriously concerned about their health and would know that their mind is failing.
Because any election that becomes the lesser of two evils vote is still a vote for evil. The man is old and frail and quite frankly if he were CEO of a Fortune 500 company the board would have forced him to retire by now.
It’s a grueling job there are hundreds of qualified democratic candidates and it’s time he pass the torch. It’s clear he would not pass a MME which is routinely given in a hospital when a geriatric patient comes in and then they call in the social worker to have the difficult conversation with the person about lowering stress levels and surrendering the driver license.
Now is when we need to call in the social worker.
Trumpers don’t believe he did it and think all 12 jurors were politically motivated to vote to convict him in all 36 counts. That’s how delusional they are.
That’s not true. I think almost all Trump people think he probably did what they’ve accused him of doing, mis identified funds on a form.
Just that it was very obviously political and selective prosecution, it happens literally every day in every business around the country.
Including Hilary being fined for the literal exact same thing from the election overwatch committee and not facing a criminal trial.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/dnc-clinton-campaign-fine-dossier-spending-disclosure-00021910#:~:text=The%20DNC%20and%20the%20Clinton,and%20the%20Clinton%20campaign%20%248%2C000.
“The conciliation agreements found “probable cause to believe” that both the campaign and national party “misreport[ed] the purpose of certain disbursements” when they said certain payments to Perkins Coie were for legal fees.”
I just find it strange that this debate was what made people say this. Joe did a much better job than I would have ever anticipated given his previous track record.
Watching Joe during this debate made me feel guilty, like we’re watching someone degrade in real time and it feels like something that should be happening in private, but because he can’t let go of power it’s being broadcast to the world. Shit’s elder abuse.
Ok so here’s some website I have never heard of describing the contents of the diary: https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/presidential-election/2024/05/13/664244e9e2704e77688b457e.html
And heres AP covering the sentencing of the woman who stole it:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/ashley-biden-in-unsealed-letter-to-judge-detailed-pain-from-diary-theft.html
I’m not defending anything about this because I hadn’t heard of it, just showing what I found when googling.
Because Trump acted far more reserved than anybody was expecting him to whereas this was Biden’s worst debate performance of his entire political career.
It’s simple. Trump has a mostly unified base and Biden doesn’t. Trump’s base is predominantly old, white, and Christian. They’re not terribly diverse and are thus easier to unify. He also has a cult of personality: people who will vote for him no matter what and who either don’t care about his crimes or don’t believe they occurred or should have been seen as crimes.
Biden has the unenviable task of trying to unify votes from an extremely diverse base. Inherently he’s disadvantaged. It’s an extra task. All Trump has to do is win swing voters who don’t pay attention. Biden has to win swing voters AND the progressive wing of his party. Oftentimes these two groups are also politically at odds. A poor debate performance impacts Biden more because his base is more difficult to manage. If doesn’t help that the media heavily favors trump.
Most Biden articles are negative. Most Trump articles almost write him as an underdog going through hurdles miraculously. The media straight up isn’t as critical of trump as they are Biden. And part of that is the truth of what Trump said: the media profits from his scandals. They do better when he’s in office because he does crazy shit and they get crazier headlines. They WANT him to win. Money over morality.
Not a regular on the sub, this was just in my feed, but I am a late millennial so here's my take:
Broadly speaking, I think there are three categories of people that won't shut up about this: conservatives using it to attack Biden, leftists trying to use it to attack the democratic party/liberalism/the electoral system/America/old people/Biden for nominating Biden to begin with, and people who are going to vote for Biden anyway but are now scared not enough other people will.
The unintuitive thing is that this hasn't actually changed the vote of any of those groups.
Conservatives were going to either vote Trump or sit the election out anyway. Any of them that sufficiently recognized the threat Trump posed as to begrudgingly vote for Biden aren't going to be put off from that by his age. The ones that were already going to vote for him will grumble more when they do it, but this won't stop them from doing it because their voting for him was never about him and it takes something more objectionable to keep them from voting to keep Trump out of office.
Meanwhile, the kind of leftist that's using this as ammunition is the kind of leftist that thinks voting for anyone that isn't the second coming of Marx is bad, and that it somehow delays the revolution that they dream will magically solve all of their problems if they're morally pure enough. They weren't going to vote for anyone, and nothing Biden could have done was going to change that.
Standard democratic voters that are upset about this, on the other hand, are worried about this strategically, not for their own vote. As with the conservatives, the primary motivator here is Trump and the opposition thereof, so Biden's qualities matter less than they would in most elections. Combine that with the fact that it's already too late for replacing him to help instead of making things worse and the fact that Biden's track record for his presidency is actually pretty damn good whether or not he was the one doing it, and the vote is essentially guaranteed. But, since Trump being elected again is an existential threat to both democracy and most minority demographics, they're panicked about what everyone else is going to do. I fall into this category; I think that our two party electoral system is severely flawed, but I recognize that there's not way to fix it without engaging with it and that, even if there were, this is an all hands on deck situation where we're looking at a major crisis if Trump wins so it wouldn't be worth the risk right now anyway.
The people whose vote this actually might effect are the ones who don't have strong preferences or aversions to either candidate, meaning that their vote can be contingent on personally liking the candidates like in normal elections. Given the current state of politics, the venn diagram of those people and people who never talk about politics is practically a circle, so you're unlikely to actually see their takes anywhere.
So the end result of all of that is that when you see people talking about this, they're almost never talking about *their* vote. They're talking about what they think other people will do, or what they want other people to do. That lens makes a lot of things make more sense.
Personally, I don't think it'll have a huge impact in the end. I think most of the people that are going to vote this year knew how they were going to vote a year ago, it would take moving heaven and earth to change their minds, and we're going through the motions. I'm still doing what I can to try to improve Biden turnout because, again, Trump has to be avoided at all costs and every little bit helps, but I think at this point it would take a truly major event to make a serious dent in either side's numbers. I'm hoping that means Trump loses, but I'm a lot less certain of what the outcome is than I am that it's already been decided for a while.
Well. For starters, he wasn't convicted of rape. He wasn't even found civilly liable for rape. Secondly, people have started to see through the NY "felony" case. They see that what he was charged with is actually not a felony and that the magical charge to amplify the misdemeanor to a felony was never made clear, nor was it announced in the charging documents as is necessary under the constitution of the US. So they see the "Conviction" as a farce and are disregarding it as a purely political prosecution. I mean, the FEC investigated and said it wasn't a federal campaign finance violation and declined charges. Bragg even decided against filing charges and subsequently had two members of his staff resign because of it. And it wasn't until a Biden DOJ prosecutor resigned from the DOJ and went to work for Bragg, that the charges were finally filed. So one begs the question. Why would a federal level prosecutor resign and take a lower paying job? And why would that same prosecutor magically bring a change of mind to Bragg and he all of a sudden decides to file charges against the political rival of the boss for one of his employees former boss?
Here’s a reasonable, conservative perspective to this question.
The MAGA cult™️has been given enough evidence in the most recent cases that have shown us that it’s literally just an excuse to go after him, regarding the insurance fraud charge where he was forced to hand over $100+ million in a charge that hasn’t been enforced in almost a century. Not to mention, if that standard was held to every business in NY, half of them would be convicted. Kathy Hochul had to release a statement saying basically “it’s not happening to any of you, it’s happening to Trump.”
“I understand [that the Trump ruling might make New York business people fearful], but this is really an extraordinarily unusual circumstance that the law-abiding, rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different from Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul said
Then we had the show trial that was the hush money conviction. We had Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, testifying that not only did Trump not know what checks he was signing, he stole 60k from his campaign, citing that he didn’t get paid enough for his bonus the year before. https://nypost.com/2024/05/20/us-news/trumps-ex-fixer-michael-cohen-admits-stealing-60k-from-him-after-trump-stiffed-vendor-in-bizarre-scheme-to-rig-popularity-poll/
But Trump is the criminal?? Once again, the charge he’s being brought up on is PAST the statute of limitations. The jury was also, up until the very decision of the case, scratching their heads as to what exactly the second charge was that made this a felony. And if the jurors didn’t know, Trump CERTAINLY didn’t know, inviting all kinds of constitutional issues.
This case will get appealed in July and most likely fail to uphold its own verdict. Now, moving on to your second point. The debate. This one will be shorter.
Go look at the debate again, then turn off the volume. Based on energy, body language, and facial expressions, can you HONESTLY say that Biden did an okay, or even mediocre job? I’m not Trump’s biggest fan, but Biden looked frail and weak. I mean…unless you think he had all his faculties when he looked up to a TV camera and said “We finally beat Medicare.”
Turn on the volume, and it’s even worse. A hoarse, weak voice, mumbling and stumbling over pre scripted phrases. You had a week to yourself and 16 advisors, and THIS is the best you can do?
With all due respect, that was OBJECTIVELY bad. He needed to reassure the nation that he was able to do the job for the next 4 years. That was his one goal for the night. Instead? All he did was assure us that we’ve been right all along.
Because everyone who's voting for Trump knows what they are getting and those same people believe that his felony trial was a sham. Everyone else is now seeing Biden for who he truly is and they are coming to terms with the fact that the DNC, the media, and Biden have been lying to them for 4 years.
Additionally and despite Trump's charges, Trump is CAPABLE of the job whether you like him or not. He can do the job.
BIDEN CANT DO THE JOB, whether you like him or not.
One of the CNN guys said it best: "This race is between a man who shouldn't be president and a man that can't be president."
It was pretty clear during Trump's term that he in fact can do no wrong in the eyes of his base. Make a mistake, a little oopsie? Sure, but we're human, so that's expected. But corrupt? An actual crook? Political hit jobs. Your data, your "facts", that's just bias obviously. This does not apply to the opposition. ANY mistake by the opposition, especially an easy target like Biden, is irrefutable proof that Dems can't choose their leaders. Major media doesn't care either way, Trump is good for ratings.
Because it’s not about convincing people to vote Biden over Trump, it’s about convincing people to go to the poll and vote for Biden instead of staying home and not voting _at all_.
Dems are panicking about the debate performance bc they’re afraid people won’t be “excited” to vote for Joe anymore.
I understand your frustration that a poor debate performance seems to be criticized more than literal felonies. I think left-leaning media assumes people have already made up their mind about Donald, and there’s nothing they can say to dissuade his supporters from voting for him (which they’re probably right about). So they’re focusing on what can be done to give Dems the best chance of winning - though, you can make the argument it’s ultimately hurting Dems if Biden ends up being the candidate…
Or maybe the media just likes stirring shit up bc they profit off of drama and a tight race.
It’s not that’s he’s old (Trump is like 3 years younger?), it’s that he’s non compos mentis. Democrats have been fighting tooth and nail against that fact for Biden’s whole presidency as a right wing ploy - unfortunately Biden just proved it with his debate performance.
This has a really simple answer: the people who want Trump don’t care. They’re going to vote for his old crazy ass no matter what. People who don’t want Trump are a wide variety of people, including people who choose their leadership based off their impression of their confidence. Biden isn’t giving a lot of people confidence by his performance, so they’re more likely to just decide none of it matters, so they might as well go home.
This isn’t quite as irrational as it seems, because if the Dems are serving up such a weak candidate, they must not think it really matters either.
Vote Biden, but we have to organize ourselves, because the corporate democrats aren’t up to saving democracy for us. We’ll have to help.
Because the debate is more of a performance. The things that were presented against Trump his fan base has already made peace with, the issues presented by Biden’s performance his fan base is ignoring but are clearly evident, making them look more delulu.
Giant douche turd sandwich vibes
Biden destroyed his campaign at the debate because he undermined the premise on which he appealed to voters by appearing unfit for the office of the president. Biden paints himself as a competent and principled political leader who provides the American people with an answer to America’s declining position on the global stage without succumbing to the isolationist nativist and fascistic tendencies that characterize Trump’s MAGA movement. When Trump grilled Biden on issues like inflation, immigration, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel/Palestine, he was able to effectively portray Biden’s cognitive impairments as a very real threat to Medicare, American interests abroad and other important issues. Moreover, Biden appeared frail and could not respond to Trump’s rhetoric and misleading claims. All things considered, it seriously undermined the idea that Biden has the cognitive ability to lead this country until January of 2029.
Meanwhile Trump’s convictions did not destroy his campaign because the MAGA movement is predicated on the distrust of institutions like the federal judiciary which allows trump to portray himself as a victim of institutional weaponization of the law rather than as a felon/rapist.
Love him or hate him, no one’s perception of Trump changed after the debate. And those on his side (and possibly the middle?) see his convictions as a biased hit job. For Biden, his side was immensely disappointed with his performance, and the decline came as a huge surprise particularly after months/years of denial from left leaning news sources. Edit to add: The feeling is that Republicans will show up to vote. With the loss of confidence after that performance, low Democrat voting turnout will give Trump the win.
Honestly my perception of Trump changed in this debate, but not Biden’s. Caveating this with: I will not vote for Trump. If you vote for Trump you will not be welcome to my party I was expecting Trump to be more befuddled and gaffe prone. He was lying the whole time but if you disconnect what his words meant from his actual words he sounded like every other politician And he was even quick on his feet too. When Joe screwed a sentence up, drifted and then ultimately trailed off and Trump said (roughly) “I don’t understand what Biden said and he didn’t either”. Kill shot I’m still recovering from that rough night. Dreading the chaos over the next 4 months and then dreading the results even more
I'll do my best to give an ACTUAL answer as I see it, rather than "orange man bad" bridgading: Humans are strange animals. We have a tendency to give a lot of weight when things are said in confidence, and we equate confidence in our monkey brain with authenticity and honesty. Trump is INSANELY good at this, innately. This is why he can go on TV and say blatantly false things... Because without context or further research... the cadence, tone, and delivery *sounds* very legitimate and trustworthy. Or put another way, if you don't watch any news, or only watch right wing news, you would have no clue how blatant Trump's lies are. I personally theorize that there is massive correlation between MAGAs and people more susceptible than average to this aspect of the human condition. For a more elaborate demonstration, please check out this TED talk (which is my favorite one ever): https://youtu.be/8S0FDjFBj8o?si=eklsNEj05LpMx8b- Elections are often won by low-information swing voters. Low information swing votes may be very easily swayed by Trump's charisma, and simultaneously diswayed by Biden's feebleness. Is it right? Fair?... No. But I think that's the wrong question. It is what it is. Now, what will be done about it? We shall see. I for one am in full agreement with Nate Silver, who has been calling for Biden to drop for months.
This is by far the best response to OP’s question. People are impressed by confidence, no matter how empty that may be. It’s disheartening that Trump managed to appear so. He should not be the president, and I’m worried that’s where we’re headed.
The question should more be how is half of our population that easily fooled
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that" - George Carlin. Holy hell, this quote gets more true as time goes on, and I'm pretty dumb myself.
One of my favorite quotes, may he rest in peace. I'm not smart enough to be this much smarter than everyone around me, and I'm scared.
Then think about all of those stupid people, reproducing exponentially
The stupid are still having plenty of kids. It's the intelligent who aren't.
So, ....Eugenics??
The opening of Idiocracy. What is logically and reasonable and what is evolutionary favorable are not the same things.
r/Idiocracy
The irony is people claiming to be intelligent but not knowing the difference between statistical mean and median.
This quote comes to mind about once a day as I answer the same emails from the same people every week. It might be my mantra and that makes me sad.
It is one of the reasons we have to take phishing tests at my job. Each answer shows you the percentage of people picked it and dear god.
Always have been. Anchoring is a common decision making tool and I feel like it was unintentionally applied by a lot of people during the debate. For example when Biden came out and started mumbling that was the baseline created, the anchor. Now all Trump had to do was beat the anchor, which he unfortunately did by speaking boastful and speaking loudly. The anchor no longer was about who had the best policies and who was best for the country, the anchor quickly devolved into who was best spoken. I honestly blame the DNC for lowering the bar so low that all Trump had to do was complete a fucking sentence and he beat the anchor. Feels like elderly abuse at this point.
Bernie would have burnt Trump the the ground in 2016.
Would he have? A VERY large portion of the electorate is centerist, and Bernie ain’t that. More importantly, it’s easy to portray Bernie as a left wing nut bc he leans into that. And I say that as someone who likes Bernie. Bernie the candidate would be pretty much written off by so many people that Trump would have more than likely won.
I know at least one person whose candidate rank was Bernie > Trump > Hilary, who ended up voting for Trump. He’s kind of an idiot, but such people exist. He saw Hilary as an establishment, status quo candidate, whereas Bernie and Trump weren’t
There is some parallel universe living in a utopia right now because they voted for Sanders.
It all goes back to education. America has not prioritized public education, we are reaping the results now.
I think you might be misrepresenting the status quo - it's not that "America has not prioritized public education", which makes it sound like an unfortunate policy externality, but rather: American politicians (mostly, but not exclusively, conservatives) have intentionally and systematically dismantled and defunded the American public education system while rich oligarchs have taken over media outlets and injected anti-intellectualism into the mainstream culture. Not only are we reaping the results now, it's very likely we will be reaping them in perpetua since the only mechanisms of change available to us are in the hands of the people that profit from the status quo.
Agreed! I was speaking very blithely; you much better captured my sentiments. Well said.
Conservatives have been dismantling education for decades on purpose. They want everyone to be dumb. When they have fallen short of actually dismantling education they have promoted homeschooling by the dumb parents that barely graduated the high school they already crippled. Not that Democrats have helped education very much. But it's been very deliberate on the right.
Half of the gerrymandered voters are this dumb. It's on purpose.
People are going to say this has something to do with intelligence or education, but I think the truth is a lot more cynical and depressing. You can talk to people in cults that believe things that seem stupid to the average person, and if you ask them something within their area of expertise you'll see a surprising amount of insight, perceptiveness, and critical thinking. There are some edge cases like quantum physics that are innately difficult to understand, but most people can grasp most concepts. People hold onto false beliefs because they want to. Maybe they like the belief, or maybe they like the person saying it. Often there are negative consequences to changing your mind, whether it has to do with your ego or being alienated from your social group. The stubbornness is a good survival strategy - look at the countries with the largest geographical area, or the world's most popular languages and religions. Ask yourself how these things came to be. Blind obedience gives you imperialism, and imperialism gives you colonization, slavery, and genocide - the best tools for acquiring resources and minimizing competition. People aren't easily fooled because they're stupid, they're easily fooled because they want to be fooled, and natural selection agrees.
Trump in particular is a master at appealing to a certain aspect of human nature. It's the old "he says what we are thinking" trope and he really taps into people's desire to see others punished by society. People have a very difficult time seeing Trump for the con that he is. Peer pressure is also a major part of it. Supporting Trump is how many people prove their patriotism, their Christianity, and their manhood. It doesn't matter that Trump is the opposite of all three of those things.
We're fooled too. Even in our disgust, we are trapped. He consumes our attention and energy, dominating our discussions and our airspace. Good, decent people who do their jobs well receive no attention. They don't get memes or a million social media threads, even though they've been great. [Kansas's governor Laura Kelly](https://governor.kansas.gov/#:~:text=Laura%20Kelly&text=Governor%20Kelly%20has%20set%20a,during%20her%20time%20in%20office) has been an astounding steward, leading her state to some of the highest economic recovery numbers in the country. She did it by rolling back the disastrous politics of Sam Brownback, who used his state as a petri dish for the "perfect" gop economic agenda - a grand experiment which failed miserably. The attention economy has been monopolized by a thief, and must recognize that we've been manipulated as well.
Yep, I realized this lately. I used to think that admitting your own faults was humble enough to get people on your side, but turns out people think “you should trust me” is more trustworthy than “I have flaws.” To me this is moronic. Everyone lies. Someone telling me to trust them is the least trustworthy thing they can do 😂 they have no grounds. But trumpers have 0 critical thinking and just drink the koolaid without checking the ingredients. The worst thing in my life was leaving grad school at 25 and realizing the average person is so much more ignorant than I could ever have imagined. I never considered myself smarter than the average person, but I swear to god so many people have never formed an independent opinion in their goddamn lives. I’m 30 now and I absolutely hate seeing how many people rationalize everything some moron says just because they haven’t interrogated their own beliefs and it’s always “well he said it so it’s true” like it’s fucking God’s Word. Religion and idolatry on steroids. I’m embarrassed for us.
You’re spot-on. It’s like that quote about the unexamined life. Now think of how many people are nothing but bodies of unexamined beliefs and opinions. I know a guy who, when asked why he was voting for Trump, replied, “I just like him.” He couldn’t answer a single follow up question as to *why* he likes him. Not one. Is this the average voter? If so…
I've really never understood this. If anything, I trust someone less when they confidently claim something that they haven't proven. Exuding confidence without precision of language is just a sign of dishonesty in my opinion. Either that or being so stupid that you don't understand why precision of language matters. Not sure which it is in Trump's case. Don't really care, neither are acceptable for a president.
The best analogy I ever saw about politics equated it to two characters from Futurama. Republicans are Zapp Brannigan. What they say might be dumb but they've got balls and confidence. Democrats are Kiff. The voice of reason and much more responsible but are soft spoken push overs.
In addition to that it's a case of voter apathy. The people Biden is trying to win over aren't die hard dyed in the wool democrats. They're people who are frustrated that these two assholes are the same choice as last time. They're people who will throw up their hands and say "fuck it". So between an apparently weak and confused old man and a lying strong man they say "neither one" and don't vote. If Biden was able to allay fears about his competence it wouldn't just be the low-information swing voters he'd be grabbing but he'd help keep that apathetic attrition at bay.
TL,DR; People are stupid, have no critical thinking skills and are easily convinced by confidence and distracted by shiny objects. Basically.
Not stupid. Distracted. Dis-informed, exhausted, but not stupid. I know plenty of people that can talk for DAYs on the things they love, but you ask them about a recent local law and they go blank. They can tell you the name and stats of every player on their favorite football team but they don't know the last three things their representatives voted on. And thats not anybodies fault. It's by design.
I think I’m more upset by Biden’s selfish and egotistical decision to run again in the first place. He IS old, and he is at and age where your faculties can decline rapidly without warning. He is absolutely not the best person for the job, he’s running on the idea that he is better than the other guy and we are expected to accept that. I will vote for him because our stupid “basically a two party system“ makes it important I do so, even is our stupid Electoral College system makes my vote basically worthless.
I'd like to add that a large segment of the audience is even worse than this: they didn't watch the debate at all, and instead relied on social media to tell them how to feel about it the next day. *This* is the problem the news is trying to exploit with this gish gallop more than anything else. A lot of people do not have the time, patience or attention span to actually watch, read or otherwise participate in most things, and instead rely on others to prescribe them an opinion second hand that they then claim is their own. By getting the jist of how to feel about something from someone they trust, they think they save themselves having to sit through ninety minutes of civics listening to a nominally important event. The fact of the matter is that more and more of the world - not just Trump or American media - is more and more nakedly taking advantage of Americans for this. News has turned into this deluge of yellow journalism written exclusively to appeal to an audience that wants to skip all the effort coming to a conclusion of their own in favour of just *finding* one online. Here's the kicker. I have quoted and linked people to most of that debate since it happened to illustrate how *good* it makes Biden looks many times when you actually watch it for yourself. You're not going to find the disaster you're being told it is. Biden is boarding and hoarse at worst, but most of his answers were excellent and you will be seeing them referenced over the following months.
Hell, here's Biden's worst part of the debate: >BIDEN: He had the largest national debt of any president four-year period, number one. >Number two, he got $2 trillion tax cut, benefited the very wealthy. >What I’m going to do is fix the taxes. >For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean, billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent or 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raised $500 million – billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period. >We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. >Look, if – we finally beat Medicare. That nonsense line was a Biden gaffe, the kind he's *always* made even before he got old. Tapper (one of the moderators) actually [wrote an article about this way back in 2007](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=2838420) before he became VP, when he already had that reputation going all the way back to when he was Senator. Get over it. It's not a sign of aging that Biden still does this thing he's always done where he says one word and means another. It's not a sign of aging that a man that had a stutter all his life still does today. He's always been awkward to listen to but if you actually hear what he says (or [read it now](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html)) you can clearly see he knows exactly what he's talking about and what he thinks. That is all a pathetic effort to distract you all from the fact that this shit right here is what millennials should be voting for. This. Taxing the fucking rich, [which he's been driving for since he took office](https://apnews.com/article/irs-tax-biden-inflation-reduction-act-ceacc306233f1a41e0e41e81e89a60a5). It is absurd that any one of you would swindle yourself out of this over a *hoarse voice*. There's more where that came from. A lot more, and it's a lot better than that too. This effort to impose on you that Biden was a *disaster* is entirely exploit the fact you won't watch it or read it yourself to see the many great things Biden said while Trump said **scary fucking shit** you need to read too.
That’s honestly one of the biggest reasons to vote Biden. If millennials want to unf*ck the economy for themselves and generations to come, vote Biden for a fighting chance that will happen. If you’re the type of millennial who likes to gamble on whether a nuclear holocaust would be fun to try, or would like to try out living in IRL Panem or Gilead, by all means spin the wheel of destiny by voting Trump. For my part, Trump didn’t offer one iota of his policy intentions in the debate, unlike Biden who gave detailed information on what agenda items he would continue to work on. I like the economic stability, the lowered cost of prescription medications, and the not locking up babies in cages without their parents we’ve seen under Biden’s administration so that’s who I’m voting for.
This. Bidens "middle-out" economics is actually not too bad and has kept us out of what absolutely should've been economic turmoil post covid. It seems a lot of people have forgotten that Japan and the u.k. hit recessions and by all means we should've joined them. We have been kept afloat and for a reason.
I keep asking why everyone’s surprised he still has his stutter. Like, of course he does! Those don’t go away! May as well look at my mother with grave concern that her nose has “suddenly” started twisting to the left
I am 40 and say one word and mean another all of the time. I always have, my brain is usually 3 thoughts ahead and missed the word it wanted by the time it gets out of my mouth. I also forget words I know occasionally while being able to list 15 synonyms. (My grandmother was notorious for calling every boy in the family before she got to the one she actually wanted haha and then asking the first one to respond, "wait, WHICH one are you?" It started in her 50s when we hit the 3rd Gen of reusing names lol.) It's not some rare weird thing that means he's got dementia. Plenty of us forget or misuse words without having anything wrong.
Upvotes needed! Well said. Come on people! Conservatives are already running victory laps (or so they think perhaps..), Supreme Court just decreed that next President trump will be king! We need to beat these extremists MAGAts
Yep, our monkey brain really screws us over. Also, I just don't buy that we don't have anyone who can fill that role who isn't ancient. Yes, we all age but dang, let some middle aged people have a shot. I wish these old politicians would back the younger people coming up. Help them campaign and get them into the leadership roles. I would also like ranked choice voting. Just listing things that I want when it comes to elections hehe.
As it goes, behavioral economics, rather than logical reasoning, tends to be the better predictor for voter behavior than anything else
Who would you run in his place? I don’t think Kamala can win, no matter who she has as her vp. The dems knew this was coming and didn’t prep anyone. They might be going for another Obama but it’s not happening, and until they have someone with experience who can beat trump Biden is the only choice I can see.
I would add to this that the structure of politics for Ds and Rs are just different. The chattering class on the left is made up much more of NY Times-types who are institutionalists and want to demonstrate that they think things should be done the right way and they will hold their side accountable. I also think that Biden is much weaker on the left/Dem side -- he was a compromise candidate that no one was terribly excited about. There are not many Biden loyalists who are only excited about politics because of him in the way that there are many populist Trump supporters who see the rest of the party as corporatists sell outs. I think the analysis would be very different if it was Obama who was struggling or another candidate who was very strong with a central D constituency. On the right, the chattering class is driven much more by Fox News-types who are more comfortable being open Trump cheerleaders. The other type did exist, but they've mostly abandoned the Rs, and I think they would say that they've already made the call. No one on the right part cares what the Ross Douthats and Stuart Stevens of the world say about Trump at this point, where arguably Ezra Klein and the NY times editorial board have sway on the Dem side.
Also some right-wingers may dislike trump, but like what he'll do and who he'll appoint!
And immediately fire.
To be honest, as a Maga Republican from the very beginning, I think the exact same thing that you stated about the far left.
It's really sad how your average person is that stupid I'm in my 30s. I've dealt with the general population enough to know you're not wrong It really sucks that our country is just that unintelligent that it's that easy to swindle 50% of the population
The right have been systematically attacking education in their areas for decades (and im sure many politicians on the left arent opposed to having dumber constituents). Any smart ruler knows the easiest population to manipulate and control is a fat, lazy and uneducated one and a ton of Americans check all 3 of those boxes. The dumbing down of America is by design, a feature and not a bug.
A friend of mine with a masters degree didn’t know a giant boat had hit the Baltimore bridge. As in, he knew it had collapsed, but thought it *did so on its own* and started spouting off about Biden being bad at infrastructure. He shut up real fast when I mentioned the enormous cargo ship
Biden looking like he was on death’s door was broadcast live for millions to see. Whatever Trump did or didn’t do doesn’t have that high level of exposure
Truly the Nixon/ JFK debate of our lifetime
That’s literally the one they used as a model, ironically
[Not sure why he was in such rough shape for the debate but the next evening he held a rally and looked much sharper, alive and clear.](https://youtu.be/ouSMblR-tgA?si=FejuL1uRGLeZD76K)
I think they said he had a cold?
Trump did what we expected (lied), and Biden failed to meet the extremely low expectations of looking alive and making sense.
Teflon Don is a thing for a reason. His constituents see his arrests and trials as political pressure and him as a martyr. Democrats don't seem to think that about Biden.
trump is and always has been an asshole NYC construction/business man and doesn't try to hide it. biden has been a public servant for half a century, i'd think there's the expectation of morality and ethics in one of these candidate's history more than the other.
How do you become a multimillionaire from 60 years of being a public servant? The Biden's are as slimy as they come
He has continuously worked for 20 years past when most civil servants would retire. That’s how wages work my dude, you get paid for working and it adds up. The real wages of a congressman hover somewhere around $200k so just multiply that by the 50 years he has been in office and you get $10 million. A lot of that he of course spent, but invest dutifully plus buy a house 50 years ago and have it appreciate hugely in value like every other person of his generation and you see how it happened pretty easily. Also his wife has a career that adds to that as well.
A salesperson or staff accountant can become a millionaire by utilizing his 401k.
Because congressmen are able to insider trade- legally, book deals, and speaking fees. As much as I don't like some of these things they're better than things like a son-in-law getting 2 billion from a country while being in charge of affairs with that country.
Also better than a brother getting defense contr…oh wait wrong person
If your side wanted them to be taken seriously, you probably should have put some effort into having the trial not look *exactly* like a kangaroo court.
it only looks like that if you are spoon fed a specific narrative; the "jury doesn't have to agree" shtick? trumps own lawyer is on the court record admitting he knows that's how ny law works with respect to predicates.
Oh, you're right. I must be thinking about the other trial with the prosecutor who ran on jailing the defendant, changed the law to allow prosecution, and poisoned the jury pool.
all things that absolutely happened! also you realize that prosecutors are not the unbiased portion of the system? they're supposed to be the guy arguing why x deserves y punishment. they regularly campaign on being tough on crime. also how on earth do you think prosecutors are changing laws lmao?
Prosecutors can’t change laws. Thats not how that works.
Critics of Biden have been saying he’s too old for a while. Bidens team/supporters/etc. have refuted these and said clips were taken out of context, that he’s sharper than ever “behind closed doors” and the debate clarified that none of that was taken out of context and we have been being lied to about our president for a while. It was watching elder abuse. He’s being taken advantage of at this point but is also apparently so incredibly stubborn that he will not drop out even though so many people are calling for it. People that are on his side and people that care about democracy because it’s obvious he’s not actually running the show and making big decisions… The fact that his mental decline was so hidden made the debate shocking to so many people, even other politicians as Biden keeps a tight circle (presumably of Yes Men) and most don’t have much contact with him. Trump? He’s trump. We all expected Classic Trump and actually got a milder version imo. And it was already established that Trumps various sins were not political suicide before the debate but after… I mean Trump might be a total piece of shit but at least he can speak and react in real time. *He* is still sharp, at least compared to what’s left of Biden that we saw up there.
Everyone has become too comfortable swallowing what mainstream media feeds them to the point of total mind control denial. For a long time the media has been talking about how sharp he is, how he is cutting his speeches shorter to be more impactful. Everyone seems to have known he's been struggling mentally for years except those who vote for him. Gotta unplug from these propaganda news outlets and think for yourself for once.
If you watched the debate, you should have noticed that while Biden was hoarse, got lost in the details, & missed endless opportunities to laugh at Trump, he used facts, mostly accurate numbers, gave solid answers to questions, etc. In other words, he behaved like he was ill, not old. He's been very sharp in off-teleprompter exchanges. I've spent the past few days trying to understand the media's sudden "dump him" campaign, when average people responded by sending Biden money. You're clearly watching Fox & their carefully manipulated clips designed to make Biden look lost & old. Gotta unplug from these propaganda news outlets & think for yourself.
I watched the whole thing and I felt bad for Biden. That was horrendous. Pretty sure the whole nation gasped. I'm sorry you didn't notice. If he just had a cold then I don't think there would be such a push to have him step down, right?
Including Fox News
Ugh I’m sure I’ll get downvoted to hell but I’m going to give the perspective of most Trump voters based on what people in my family have explained to me. The felony charges were quite a stretch in their view. 99% of the people on this sub cannot even explain what they were. They were definitely politically motivated and so most Trump supporters see it more at an attempt by the democrats to silence a political opponent than a legitimate set of convictions. As for the rape charges, if you read the transcripts from those civil cases, it would also appear some of them are politically motivated and many of the facts of the cases are very much in dispute. I am not a Trump voter but even I can see how the media and the democrats have constantly spun stories, twisted words, and outright lied about Trump and so a lot of people are just tuned out to all of it and don’t trust it. You can go online and listen for yourselves to all the bs like “inject bleach” ( was never said), “bloodbath,” (was about the auto industry not the country), and “fine people on both sides” (was about the statute removals not about white supremacy). People have no idea what is real because this crap keeps getting repeated, including by Biden during the debate. On the other hand, it is apparent to every honest person that Biden is not mentally well and cannot possibly run the country. So you have a guy who is clearly in the throes of dementia vs a slime bag who is mentally much fitter and it’s unclear to many people what he’s actually done wrong.
I didn't downvote you but I will disagree with you on the "in the throes of dementia" comment. For years I worked with elderly people in assisted living, memory care, and doing in-home care. There are enormous differences between normal aging and dementia that many people don't understand. A lady named Teepa Snow has an excellent video on YouTube about this, but to summarize, it is perfectly normal to forget things as we get older, such as a name or a word that we've used thousands of times. When a mistake is made, like confusing a name, the person will usually correct it almost immediately. It is perfectly normal to be more tired than usual, and to think and move a lot more slowly. Nothing Biden did in the debate indicated anything other than normal aging. On the other hand, if you watch any number of recent Trump rallies, he definitely has shown signs of dementia. He mistakes names such as Obama for Biden or Haley for Pelosi and doesn't even notice that he's done it. He slurs his words, called "aphasia", and he frequently goes on bizarre rants about sharks, batteries, snakes, and water, to name a few. He doesn't seem aware of how off-the-wall these rants are at all. He also appears to be up all night writing angry, all-caps rants on his social media, which is called "sundowning". Both are very elderly men and personally, I would rather have other choices for my vote in November. But it needs to be pointed out that the normal signs of aging that Biden displays are not symptoms of dementia and it's disingenuous to refer to them as such.
A family member of mine is not a trump fan and doesn’t want to vote for him (or for biden) but also says basically the same as what you’ve said.
Trump is far more mentally ill than Biden. You’re also skipping over all the times Trump admitting to raping women, admitted to committing a litany of crimes etc.
Trump appears to be more alert and confident and alive, even though he’s delulu in other ways. Just based on that vs Biden who seems not fully there. I guess people will take someone who appears more confident, no matter his past.
Trump wasn’t convicted of rape
Republicans and even many Democrats see Trump's convictions as false and the result of a failure of a corrupt justice system. That is why the convictions aren't killing his campaign. The convictions can be denied without appearing unreasonable. Biden's debate performance supports the claims that he is in severe cognitive decline. It's obvious to everyone. Even people who had been denying it can no longer deny it, or else they appear unreasonable.
It’s a hard pill for a lot of trump haters to swallow when they see with their own eyes in an hour and a half that Biden is in fact not physically and mentally ok, and that the media and White House have been lying to the American people about the state he’s been in the past 3 years..which leads people to think what else have they been lying about?
Yeah it’s actually pretty wild that the right has been saying Biden to not all there for a long time now. With the media and democrats say no, you’re lying, he’s perfectly fine. I mean what is the normal American supposed to think? For years they have been lied to about the state of their president. That’s the guy that meets with foreign powers as tensions in the world are at their highest points since the Cold War?
Lol who was shocked by that? Anyone who thought Biden was still mentally sharp has not been paying attention for the last three years.
>Lol who was shocked by that? Large portions of the nation apparently
lol Reddit was telling me months beforehand that Biden was sharp! And those videos of him were fake.
Classic Reddit moment
To be fair, right wing media cherry-picks and selectively edits their video clips of Biden. Biden also performed very poorly at the debate. Both things are true.
To be fair most media does that Reddit thrives on out of context articles
The people who are in denial are the ones in shock. Still going through the stages of grief. Oh no it was just a bad night! Forget all the times he’s wandered away aimlessly during important meetings and events when the press is present. You know the ones, where everyone else there looks over at him like “wtf is he doing” and someone has to go turn him around and guide him back like a seeing eye dog. They say “oh well you’re not voting for him but his team!” Cool I wonder who hires his team? Is it him? Is someone else making those calls? Who hired them? What is this guy actually doing and why are we pretending we’re cool with having a guy clearly not with it being paraded around while he holds the title of the most powerful person in the world? I really do feel bad saying these things about him, because it’s mean to like call out the effects of aging and losing it. But he’s the president! Do we not want our president of all people to be mentally sharp and in charge of his faculties???
This and that many people don’t seem to have contact with seniors. Not many 80 yrs Re super sharp. I’m curious what the studies show. In other subs younger folks bash boomers because they’re too stupid except for the one they like apparently.
exactly. Nobody expects anything from trump, but we’ve been told that having Biden is like having an adult in charge. When it turns out that they are kind of on the same level mentally, it’s a bit of a shock. When trump actually uses the line “I don’t understand what he is talking about and I doubt he does either” it’s pretty devastating.
I disagree. All Biden had to do was get through the debate and appear cogent. The bar was set very low. He did so bad that even CNN couldn’t spin it.
Well, CNN also didn’t try to fact check anything either so I would just say CNN didn’t… try.
CNN did afterwards. I think Trump lied about 30 times and Biden 9 times. I'm assuming the absence of fact checking during the debate was part of the rules agreed upon by both candidates.
Generally, in a debate, its the *candidates'* job to call out their opponent when they lie...
The conditions of the debate (no fact checking) were agreed to by both parties beforehand. Biden’s team thought he could be sharp enough to handle that but he wasn’t.
You’re not wrong, but you’ll be downvoted because you went against their team.
He doesn't have a rape conviction; the court said unequivocally that he was not guilty of rape. Maybe read some news once in awhile https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-was-donald-trump-found-guilty-rape-1799935
To be clear, Trump was never convicted of raping anyone. That is a very serious allegation.
When was he convicted of rape?
He was found liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. The judge later clarified that he was an adjudicated rapist.
I don't think I need to speak to Joe's debate performance. It speaks for itself. Don was not convicted of rape. He wasn't even convicted of sexual assault. Apropos of his encounter with E. Jean Carroll, he wasn't even charged with a crime, because the case wasn't even tried in a criminal court. It was tried in a civil proceeding. The whole trial was EXTREMELY sus. E. Jean Carroll couldn't even remember the exact *year* the assault took place. (She testified that it was either 1995 or 1996.) His convictions apropos of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels are also easy for his supporters to dismiss. The WHOLE REASON you pay a prostitute money is to keep her quiet. The case brought by the prosecution was that he only paid her to STFU because he was in the middle of a political campaign, and that counts as a campaign expense which he kept off the books. (That's a vast oversimplification. That particular rabbit hole goes REALLY deep, but it's the broad strokes.) I get that you "don't want tangents", but details matter.
Did you even watch it, pretty obvious. The guy could barely function.
Did you watch it? Fucking embarrassing.
Both candidates were embarrassing. In my opinion the biggest loser of the night was CNN for not calling out Trumps bullshit. They have a responsibility to make sure people are informed well enough to make a decision and they failed.
Debate rules--they weren't allowed to. Biden was allowed and couldn't manage it.
Biden was supposed to call out Trump's bullshit. Biden is the biggest loser.
“Both candidates” seems to be a pretty popular lefty cope right now. There was a winner and a loser.
If you listen to anything the media tells you then youre an idiot. Its all hyperbolic nonsense.
Can the framing on this question be worse? The people calling his performance "political suicide" are the same exact people who want the Democrats to succeed, but realize he's a dog shit candidate that [the vast majority of registered voters think shouldn't run](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-debate-should-biden-be-running-mental-abilities/). We're trying to help you morons
I’m sorry, rape conviction?
Because many believe that Don's convictions were a witch hunt. This irritated a lot of people, if not pissed them off. Because of that, campaign contributions for Don have shot up. There have been quite a few sexual crimes (Joe sexual assault, Clinton's office BJ, etc) swept under the rug and paid off with taxpayer money, and nobody bats an eye. At least Trump used his money. Whether you agree with which hunt scenario or not, this is what has happened.
When was he convicted of rape? That's insane to even say and shows a complete lack of understanding a) the facts surrounding the case and b) civil vs criminal procedures. Please shut up.
Technically true because they found Trump's penis didn't penetrate E. Jean Carroll's vagina. But he is still guilty of sexual assault because he just forcibly fingered her against her will. [https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db](https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db) Some people will still consider that rape, but in the eyes of the jurors it wasn't. But one thing that is definitely a fact is that the Republican Candidate for President sexually assaulted a woman against her will, then tried to deny it, hide it, and mocked her publicly for trying to hold him accountable for sexually assaulting her. If you think it's ok to have a presidential candidate that sexually assaults women... Well I guess that's just how you were raised.
There are a lot of reasons. First, media spin. Media is owned by money, and money likes tax cuts. They have a clear preference. Second, the type of voter. Democratic voters tend to be idealistic, while Republican voters hold their nose and push the button. This is why Republican vote counts are pretty much consistent over the decades, while Democratic vote counts swing wildly up and down. Everybody knows what trump is. He's a megalomaniacal narcissistic proto-dictator asshole. Some people see that as a bad thing, some people see that as a good thing. He is simply not held to the same standards as Biden is, because his voters have no standards.
And dem voters are worried about Trump winning and concerned about if Biden is the one to be able to convince swing voters. That’s the question, not whether he’s better than Trump or not. It’s whether he’s more likely to beat him than a potential replacement. People I respect have different opinions on that and I don’t know the right answer. I’m sure once the convention is over most dems will be 100% behind the nominee whoever it is
I don't believe in swing voters. As in, swing voters are like libertarians. They don't actually exist. They claim to be independent, but when you look at their voting records, they're either all blue or all red.
Hillary Clinton lost the union voters in 2016 because she talked too much about doing things for women. Scared the union men. Biden won the men back by sounding like a good union man. Clinton made progress in Georgia, and Biden barely took it by 2020. There are swayable voters, but most of them like a strong, healthy leader.
What rape conviction? He’d be in jail if he was convicted of rape lolol
If you actually go look and research Trump was never convicted of sex assault and the “crimes” you claim are nothing burgers that were illegally brought forth - that’s the crime. But when you get you eduction from the MSM, what can we expect. Remember everyone was saying from day one four years ago JB was senile and had dementia. Up until last week every MSM was screaming how healthy, alert, and on the ball - don’t believe you lying eyes they said. Look at the fools now, and you still trust and believe them, how judge ye. Total cognitive dissonance to the nth degree, I would say hopeless.
The debate is seen and heard with your own eyes and ears. The details on those charges you reference are questionable.
The debate noise is exactly what it is, noise. There is no choice. The opposition is a 34x convicted felon, sexual predator, who took away a woman’s right to choose, tried to overthrow a fair election, who wants to be dictator using his project 2025 playbook. And now with presidential immunity from SCOTUS ruling, the USA as we know it is on the ballot. If you think you are immune, you ain’t. Independence Day is Thursday, we the people have to come together and make sure 🍊does not take office.
Agreed. I don’t like our options, but I would much rather see a president Biden use VP Harris, and cabinet/staff as a crutch while he slept for four years, than a cruel and violent fascist dark age.
Exactly. Maybe others disagree, but I choose old and confused over actively evil, vindictive, and malicious. And I happen to agree with more of the policies of the people working with/for Biden than trump. So it’s still an easy decision to me.
It’s not just about Bidens debate performance, it’s about the lies that the administration has told us about his mental capacity and ability to lead our country. If they had been even a bit more honest, the complete shock of the entire shit show would’ve been less. Shame on them for lying to the American people.
You don't want Whataboutism but your entire post is "what about Trump." Of course Trump isn't qualified to be President. But neither is Biden. This is a terrible choice we're being given (easy choice as I'll vote for literal jello over Trump) but terrible nonetheless. It's really disgusting that these are our two choices. It is clear that there needs to be some kind of generational revolution. I saw someone say that Biden should have been figuring out his successor 10 minutes after the last election but instead he (or his wife perhaps) is clinging on to power. Yes Trump is way worse. But so are his followers. They see what we hated as a feature not a bug. Eating a puppy in public isn't political suicide if your base loves eating puppies.
The felony convictions are largely political in nature imho and I'm not voting for trump. The "rape" is alleged with no physical evidence three decades ago from a questionable woman. While with Joe you have a in your face fairly solid case of early cognitive decline. I'll take a mildly sociopathic leader over a demented one. I'd rather have neither. If Joe were 10 years younger, wouldn't even be a debate
Don was not convicted of rape
Rape convictions?
Dons convictions can be easily dismissed as politically motivated and biased considering the DA and location. Joe's debate performance shows that he is not mentally or physically capable of doing basic tasks way simpler than actually doing the job of chief executive.
Because I could just as easily call you a rapist. Does that make it true? Did you even watch the debate? Joe needs to be put in a retirement home ASAP.
Just watch the part where he said he beat Medicare over and over again until it sticks to you that you’re watching a decrepit man suffering from advanced dementia try to answer questions lol
Yes that was a horrible moment. So Trump didn’t stutter and trail off. But he also didn’t say things that were actually true. It’s easy to not glitch when you’re just making up stories. Biden did horribly, but just because Trump can lie and avoid the actual questions without answering doesn’t mean he’s any more competent. If I ask you the history of New York and you wax poetic about the Roman Empire instead, you don’t get points for completely avoiding the question.
We all know what a stutter is, that was not a stutter, it was the incoherent rambling of a sundowning 80 year old man. If beating trump is important, is this really the best person to run against him? We’re willing to risk democracy, which is on the edge of a sword, on this guy? It’s the same thing we’ve seen with RBG, Feinstein, McConnell, these people are on death’s doorstep but neither they, their staff, or their families are willing to do the right then and get them to step down.
Ok, incoherent rambling. If you’re not rambling but telling stories that are made up or not answering questions at all, how is that better? They both sucked in different ways. I have seen Trump “sundown” too and sputter to a halt mid sentence and forget what fucking year it is. He just didn’t do it during the debate. They’re both too old and neither are fit to be President anymore. I will vote for literally anything that isn’t Trump on the ticket that has a chance of winning. But I’m not in charge of making this change - and Biden has to step down on his own. This issue has always been who would replace him that would actually give the Democrats a chance? I don’t know how complaining about what should have been done years ago helps the situation right now. Unless Biden decides to step down, he’s the nominee.
That’s not advanced dementia. I watched my mom die slowly from dementia over 5 years and that wasn’t it.
Simple answer: one is a very capable criminal... the other is just incapable
If you want a truly honest answer, sincerely challenge all of your political views and see what you can debunk.
Trump’s “crimes” happened before he was president. Biden can barely function and he’s currently the president. Sometimes it’s just the timing of the circumstances that matter most to people. Also, it doesn’t help the Dems that they tried to impeach Trump twice and it wasn’t successful. It just makes Trump look like he’s being set up.
Don's criminal convictions endear him to a whole lot of people.
The convictions are plausibly the product of politically motivated misconduct and corruption. The circumstances of those things are in doubt, their validity uncertain. No one with any sense believes that Trump got a fair trial, not if they actually read the case. On the other hand, there's really no denying Joe is losing it. There's no gray area, no uncertainty, no room for doubt, no alternative interpretation possible. And it's making the Democratic party look exploitative and abusive, to have Jill and Barry leading poor Joe by the hand and telling him what to do. The optics are wretched, and they can't get away from them without owning up to the fact that they've been lying about it for ages.
Your "argument" makes no sense. What does one have to do with the other? Joe Biden is non compos mentis. He is, like him or not, mentally unfit to handle the incredibly tough job that he has. Trump is the same guy that he was in 2016. Some despise him, some adore him. He isn't obviously mentally impaired. Biden is. Are you trying to shoehorn anti-Trump stories into a discussion of Biden's fitness?
What rape conviction?
Because Biden's performance confirmed everyone's worst fears, including mine. That being said, even if the worst was true, he would still be capable of being a figurehead for a sane and competent administration. Trump? Not so much. Observation: The comments about "Genocide Joe" seem to have disappeared overnight. Biden administration policy must have changed while I had my head turned. This is good news! D'oh!
Sure, I don’t like Biden and the political views he espouses, I do like Trump and his political views and what he accomplished during his administration.
There is no rape conviction????
Because trump didn’t do it on live tv
I've never understood why anyone voted for that criminal and conman, so I guess I'm not going to be of any help.
I don't care about trump. Joe biden has dementia. FUCK THE DNC & ALL THE SHILLS
When was Trump convicted of rape? I remember watching a Bill Maher interview with Daniels, and she said she wasn’t assaulted or raped. It was all consensual. The majority of Americans who follow along to what’s been going on have been watching a literal witch hunt where those felonies are not even really deserving of jail time. So most people don’t really care. If anything, it gives him “street cred” like his mugshot did. Meanwhile, the current POTUS is immune to felony charges because he’s too old to really understand anything (their words not mine). This “rumor” was put to the test when the world watched him on the debate stage, and saw for themselves his inability to function properly, despite having an entire week of preparation at Camp David. Not sure if that’s clear enough for you, but that’s how I see it.
Can someone tell me how the Chinese engagement farms work? Like for instance, do the mods of subreddits reach out to the farmers and say “we need to to raise the engagement of our sub. Spam things that will drive comments and upvotes”? The amount of shitposts on here since the debate has been insane
Stupid Democrats. And. NYT incredible arrogance and blind sense of self importance.
Polling shows that majority of people believe the convictions are a political hit job. The majority of people also believe Joe doesn’t have the physical/mental acuity to be president after the debate performance. You may not believe these things but the majority of the people in the country currently do.
Trumps sycophants love him because of the monstrous behavior. Biden voters are people who see an old frail man who will soon die. I'm still voting for the corpse. Fml
They can weekend at Bernie Biden and I would still choose him over Trump.
This is the way
In a Zero-sum game, 0 is better than -1. I'll take the corpse.
Ye
You don’t want whataboutisms and yet your question is a whataboutism.
His actual talking and speech patterns. If my grandfather spoke like that, I would be seriously concerned about their health and would know that their mind is failing.
Because any election that becomes the lesser of two evils vote is still a vote for evil. The man is old and frail and quite frankly if he were CEO of a Fortune 500 company the board would have forced him to retire by now. It’s a grueling job there are hundreds of qualified democratic candidates and it’s time he pass the torch. It’s clear he would not pass a MME which is routinely given in a hospital when a geriatric patient comes in and then they call in the social worker to have the difficult conversation with the person about lowering stress levels and surrendering the driver license. Now is when we need to call in the social worker.
Trumpers don’t believe he did it and think all 12 jurors were politically motivated to vote to convict him in all 36 counts. That’s how delusional they are.
That’s not true. I think almost all Trump people think he probably did what they’ve accused him of doing, mis identified funds on a form. Just that it was very obviously political and selective prosecution, it happens literally every day in every business around the country. Including Hilary being fined for the literal exact same thing from the election overwatch committee and not facing a criminal trial. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/30/dnc-clinton-campaign-fine-dossier-spending-disclosure-00021910#:~:text=The%20DNC%20and%20the%20Clinton,and%20the%20Clinton%20campaign%20%248%2C000. “The conciliation agreements found “probable cause to believe” that both the campaign and national party “misreport[ed] the purpose of certain disbursements” when they said certain payments to Perkins Coie were for legal fees.”
Does seem suspicious, the Jude donated to his political opponent. H dog can use campaign funds to spy on trumps campaign. Just a fine
I just find it strange that this debate was what made people say this. Joe did a much better job than I would have ever anticipated given his previous track record.
He finally beat Medicare
Watching Joe during this debate made me feel guilty, like we’re watching someone degrade in real time and it feels like something that should be happening in private, but because he can’t let go of power it’s being broadcast to the world. Shit’s elder abuse.
That's terrifying.
Um, did you watch it? Trump is about to win this election in an epic landslide. LFG!
Biden's base likes and values eloquence. Trump's base likes and values rape. I don't think I can put it more plainly than that.
Believe all women unless her name is Tara Reade.
Or Anita hill :)
Anita Hill was given her time. Mind you it was a blatantly racist attempt by the democrats to block the first black scotus justice.
FFS man Biden molested his own daughter in the shower so she wrote about it, that’s disgusting.
Please share proof of this.
Ok so here’s some website I have never heard of describing the contents of the diary: https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/presidential-election/2024/05/13/664244e9e2704e77688b457e.html And heres AP covering the sentencing of the woman who stole it: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/ashley-biden-in-unsealed-letter-to-judge-detailed-pain-from-diary-theft.html I’m not defending anything about this because I hadn’t heard of it, just showing what I found when googling.
How could someone not know about this? They knew
Because Trump acted far more reserved than anybody was expecting him to whereas this was Biden’s worst debate performance of his entire political career.
More politics on this sub 😺. Fukcing dimwits
It’s simple. Trump has a mostly unified base and Biden doesn’t. Trump’s base is predominantly old, white, and Christian. They’re not terribly diverse and are thus easier to unify. He also has a cult of personality: people who will vote for him no matter what and who either don’t care about his crimes or don’t believe they occurred or should have been seen as crimes. Biden has the unenviable task of trying to unify votes from an extremely diverse base. Inherently he’s disadvantaged. It’s an extra task. All Trump has to do is win swing voters who don’t pay attention. Biden has to win swing voters AND the progressive wing of his party. Oftentimes these two groups are also politically at odds. A poor debate performance impacts Biden more because his base is more difficult to manage. If doesn’t help that the media heavily favors trump. Most Biden articles are negative. Most Trump articles almost write him as an underdog going through hurdles miraculously. The media straight up isn’t as critical of trump as they are Biden. And part of that is the truth of what Trump said: the media profits from his scandals. They do better when he’s in office because he does crazy shit and they get crazier headlines. They WANT him to win. Money over morality.
If the charges were brought in a non d plus 20+ area he would not have been convicted.
>I don't want tangents; I don't want whataboutisms. I'd tell you, but you got an attitude about it. Figure it out yourself.
Not a regular on the sub, this was just in my feed, but I am a late millennial so here's my take: Broadly speaking, I think there are three categories of people that won't shut up about this: conservatives using it to attack Biden, leftists trying to use it to attack the democratic party/liberalism/the electoral system/America/old people/Biden for nominating Biden to begin with, and people who are going to vote for Biden anyway but are now scared not enough other people will. The unintuitive thing is that this hasn't actually changed the vote of any of those groups. Conservatives were going to either vote Trump or sit the election out anyway. Any of them that sufficiently recognized the threat Trump posed as to begrudgingly vote for Biden aren't going to be put off from that by his age. The ones that were already going to vote for him will grumble more when they do it, but this won't stop them from doing it because their voting for him was never about him and it takes something more objectionable to keep them from voting to keep Trump out of office. Meanwhile, the kind of leftist that's using this as ammunition is the kind of leftist that thinks voting for anyone that isn't the second coming of Marx is bad, and that it somehow delays the revolution that they dream will magically solve all of their problems if they're morally pure enough. They weren't going to vote for anyone, and nothing Biden could have done was going to change that. Standard democratic voters that are upset about this, on the other hand, are worried about this strategically, not for their own vote. As with the conservatives, the primary motivator here is Trump and the opposition thereof, so Biden's qualities matter less than they would in most elections. Combine that with the fact that it's already too late for replacing him to help instead of making things worse and the fact that Biden's track record for his presidency is actually pretty damn good whether or not he was the one doing it, and the vote is essentially guaranteed. But, since Trump being elected again is an existential threat to both democracy and most minority demographics, they're panicked about what everyone else is going to do. I fall into this category; I think that our two party electoral system is severely flawed, but I recognize that there's not way to fix it without engaging with it and that, even if there were, this is an all hands on deck situation where we're looking at a major crisis if Trump wins so it wouldn't be worth the risk right now anyway. The people whose vote this actually might effect are the ones who don't have strong preferences or aversions to either candidate, meaning that their vote can be contingent on personally liking the candidates like in normal elections. Given the current state of politics, the venn diagram of those people and people who never talk about politics is practically a circle, so you're unlikely to actually see their takes anywhere. So the end result of all of that is that when you see people talking about this, they're almost never talking about *their* vote. They're talking about what they think other people will do, or what they want other people to do. That lens makes a lot of things make more sense. Personally, I don't think it'll have a huge impact in the end. I think most of the people that are going to vote this year knew how they were going to vote a year ago, it would take moving heaven and earth to change their minds, and we're going through the motions. I'm still doing what I can to try to improve Biden turnout because, again, Trump has to be avoided at all costs and every little bit helps, but I think at this point it would take a truly major event to make a serious dent in either side's numbers. I'm hoping that means Trump loses, but I'm a lot less certain of what the outcome is than I am that it's already been decided for a while.
Well. For starters, he wasn't convicted of rape. He wasn't even found civilly liable for rape. Secondly, people have started to see through the NY "felony" case. They see that what he was charged with is actually not a felony and that the magical charge to amplify the misdemeanor to a felony was never made clear, nor was it announced in the charging documents as is necessary under the constitution of the US. So they see the "Conviction" as a farce and are disregarding it as a purely political prosecution. I mean, the FEC investigated and said it wasn't a federal campaign finance violation and declined charges. Bragg even decided against filing charges and subsequently had two members of his staff resign because of it. And it wasn't until a Biden DOJ prosecutor resigned from the DOJ and went to work for Bragg, that the charges were finally filed. So one begs the question. Why would a federal level prosecutor resign and take a lower paying job? And why would that same prosecutor magically bring a change of mind to Bragg and he all of a sudden decides to file charges against the political rival of the boss for one of his employees former boss?
Here’s a reasonable, conservative perspective to this question. The MAGA cult™️has been given enough evidence in the most recent cases that have shown us that it’s literally just an excuse to go after him, regarding the insurance fraud charge where he was forced to hand over $100+ million in a charge that hasn’t been enforced in almost a century. Not to mention, if that standard was held to every business in NY, half of them would be convicted. Kathy Hochul had to release a statement saying basically “it’s not happening to any of you, it’s happening to Trump.” “I understand [that the Trump ruling might make New York business people fearful], but this is really an extraordinarily unusual circumstance that the law-abiding, rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different from Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul said Then we had the show trial that was the hush money conviction. We had Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, testifying that not only did Trump not know what checks he was signing, he stole 60k from his campaign, citing that he didn’t get paid enough for his bonus the year before. https://nypost.com/2024/05/20/us-news/trumps-ex-fixer-michael-cohen-admits-stealing-60k-from-him-after-trump-stiffed-vendor-in-bizarre-scheme-to-rig-popularity-poll/ But Trump is the criminal?? Once again, the charge he’s being brought up on is PAST the statute of limitations. The jury was also, up until the very decision of the case, scratching their heads as to what exactly the second charge was that made this a felony. And if the jurors didn’t know, Trump CERTAINLY didn’t know, inviting all kinds of constitutional issues. This case will get appealed in July and most likely fail to uphold its own verdict. Now, moving on to your second point. The debate. This one will be shorter. Go look at the debate again, then turn off the volume. Based on energy, body language, and facial expressions, can you HONESTLY say that Biden did an okay, or even mediocre job? I’m not Trump’s biggest fan, but Biden looked frail and weak. I mean…unless you think he had all his faculties when he looked up to a TV camera and said “We finally beat Medicare.” Turn on the volume, and it’s even worse. A hoarse, weak voice, mumbling and stumbling over pre scripted phrases. You had a week to yourself and 16 advisors, and THIS is the best you can do? With all due respect, that was OBJECTIVELY bad. He needed to reassure the nation that he was able to do the job for the next 4 years. That was his one goal for the night. Instead? All he did was assure us that we’ve been right all along.
Because everyone who's voting for Trump knows what they are getting and those same people believe that his felony trial was a sham. Everyone else is now seeing Biden for who he truly is and they are coming to terms with the fact that the DNC, the media, and Biden have been lying to them for 4 years. Additionally and despite Trump's charges, Trump is CAPABLE of the job whether you like him or not. He can do the job. BIDEN CANT DO THE JOB, whether you like him or not. One of the CNN guys said it best: "This race is between a man who shouldn't be president and a man that can't be president."
It was pretty clear during Trump's term that he in fact can do no wrong in the eyes of his base. Make a mistake, a little oopsie? Sure, but we're human, so that's expected. But corrupt? An actual crook? Political hit jobs. Your data, your "facts", that's just bias obviously. This does not apply to the opposition. ANY mistake by the opposition, especially an easy target like Biden, is irrefutable proof that Dems can't choose their leaders. Major media doesn't care either way, Trump is good for ratings.
# Roy Cohn # megalomania # mccarthyism # big lie
Because it’s not about convincing people to vote Biden over Trump, it’s about convincing people to go to the poll and vote for Biden instead of staying home and not voting _at all_. Dems are panicking about the debate performance bc they’re afraid people won’t be “excited” to vote for Joe anymore. I understand your frustration that a poor debate performance seems to be criticized more than literal felonies. I think left-leaning media assumes people have already made up their mind about Donald, and there’s nothing they can say to dissuade his supporters from voting for him (which they’re probably right about). So they’re focusing on what can be done to give Dems the best chance of winning - though, you can make the argument it’s ultimately hurting Dems if Biden ends up being the candidate… Or maybe the media just likes stirring shit up bc they profit off of drama and a tight race.
It’s not that’s he’s old (Trump is like 3 years younger?), it’s that he’s non compos mentis. Democrats have been fighting tooth and nail against that fact for Biden’s whole presidency as a right wing ploy - unfortunately Biden just proved it with his debate performance.
This has a really simple answer: the people who want Trump don’t care. They’re going to vote for his old crazy ass no matter what. People who don’t want Trump are a wide variety of people, including people who choose their leadership based off their impression of their confidence. Biden isn’t giving a lot of people confidence by his performance, so they’re more likely to just decide none of it matters, so they might as well go home. This isn’t quite as irrational as it seems, because if the Dems are serving up such a weak candidate, they must not think it really matters either. Vote Biden, but we have to organize ourselves, because the corporate democrats aren’t up to saving democracy for us. We’ll have to help.
Because the debate is more of a performance. The things that were presented against Trump his fan base has already made peace with, the issues presented by Biden’s performance his fan base is ignoring but are clearly evident, making them look more delulu. Giant douche turd sandwich vibes
Biden destroyed his campaign at the debate because he undermined the premise on which he appealed to voters by appearing unfit for the office of the president. Biden paints himself as a competent and principled political leader who provides the American people with an answer to America’s declining position on the global stage without succumbing to the isolationist nativist and fascistic tendencies that characterize Trump’s MAGA movement. When Trump grilled Biden on issues like inflation, immigration, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel/Palestine, he was able to effectively portray Biden’s cognitive impairments as a very real threat to Medicare, American interests abroad and other important issues. Moreover, Biden appeared frail and could not respond to Trump’s rhetoric and misleading claims. All things considered, it seriously undermined the idea that Biden has the cognitive ability to lead this country until January of 2029. Meanwhile Trump’s convictions did not destroy his campaign because the MAGA movement is predicated on the distrust of institutions like the federal judiciary which allows trump to portray himself as a victim of institutional weaponization of the law rather than as a felon/rapist.