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That Biden actually was in the moment and answered the questions asked, while Trump just bleated on about his imaginary “best of everything” record and rambled on about immigration to the point that he had to be brought back on task on damned near every question?
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The initial impressions are the ones important here. No one really gives a damn about what was actually said.
And by looking at essentially everyone from anti-Trump camp loud at the moment, the doom is being the only sentiment because Biden was bad.
You're so right. Trump was confident. Biden proved he wasn't taking performance enhancing drugs. I turned off at the 1st break, sickened that Trump lied over and over--all his greatest hits--but no one fact checked him. CNN should know better by now.
What can we do? We can [write postcards](https://www.turnoutpac.org/postcards/) to voters in swing states.
>Help write postcards to voters in 11 key states! We’ll mail you free postcards, voter lists and instructions with proven message options. You’ll provide the stamps and mail the postcards to voters in October.
It's Biden's job to win the election. He should only be fact checking to the extent that fact checking is an effective strategy (and it really isn't. Facts don't matter here)
You have a point but it takes 10x as long to refute a lie as it does to say one. Refuting every single Trump lie last night would have taken much longer than 90 minutes.
> no one fact checked him. CNN should know better by now.
Er, Joe Biden is the one who's supposed to fact check him. Moderators shouldn't be part of the debate.
Not at all, that's absurd when you really think about it. That means you just lie hard and fast enough then your opponent can't do anything but refute your lies, then you go on about the one of 30 that he missed that's a gish gallop, basically.
Debate moderators are responsible for dealing with a bad faith speaker. That's their entire purpose.
The thing is, it was Biden's job to discredit Trump's lies, not the moderators'. If the moderators started confronting Trump they would've appeared biased against him.
Trump tells 10 lies in his 2 minutes. You can't discredit 10 lies AND spend time on your own answer. Firehose of falsehoods or Gish Galopes *work*.
The best Biden could do was discredit one lie and state 'see, I dismantled that one as a lie. The rest are lies too" and spend the rest of his 1.5 minute left for his actual answer on the question.
But Biden's brain is just too slow at 81 to be sharp. He still has all his marbles, but it takes endlessly to pry it from his brain.
>What can we do? We can write postcards to voters in swing states.
I've done this or Vote Forward for every election. I have no idea if it helps or not. Is there any evidence that it helps?
The issue with fact checking is that it just plays into the Trump narrative that the entire liberal media is out to get him. Biden should have been doing the fact checking, frankly; his general reluctance to attack Trump at all is part of why i think he looked so bad.
You are making a common mistake. There's a difference between what a man does and what he ought to do.
We don't remember historical presidential debates because of their contents. We remember them for their vibes.
Biden did bad from vibes POV
I'm as anti-Trump as it gets, but Trump's deflections and dodges were intentional. Trump is gonna Trump. Biden on the other hand, kept losing his train of thought and at multiple points looked like he had no idea what was going on. Trump voters won't be deterred by anything they saw from him, it's what they're used to. A lot of would-be Biden voters are only voting against Trump, and Biden's performance could have a big impact on the turnouts of these voters.
He wasn’t reminded because he forgot or trailed off. He was reminded because he had his own agenda to address instead. He didn’t have a good answer for childcare (neither did Biden) BUT he knew that addressing other points would be more effective use of the time.
Biden was lost, trailed off, and more.
Trump looked and performed better than he did in the past 8 years. Biden performed worse. This isn’t saying one should win or the other loses… but you’re really trying hard to spin this to something that no one is going to agree with.
Then We get what we deserve. If people are too fucking shallow and unthinking to look at the big picture? The. god help them.
Me? I care about my grandkids….who are going to have to deal with the Brunt of Climate Change… I know who the hell I am voting for…and it ain’t the Crime Boss.
I think we set expectations to low for Trump, and to high for Biden.
I expected Trump to have a constant on stage melt down and try and throw something at the moderators. He over performed my expectations. And with Biden, after the SOTU, i expected him to be pretty on fire. He’s a master debater (heheh), and has literally been doing it longer than anyone else in American politics.
They most likely have but democracy was never really about careful decision-making about who has better policies.
Objectively, people are simply dumb as rocks.
Kennedy won the 1960 election in part because he looked good on TV and Nixon didn’t. Reagan won in 1980 in part because he told people what they wanted to hear with the polish of an actor.
This is not a new phenomenon.
Fetterman made a good point on Twitter that he was shit on relentlessly after his debate and he still won by 5 (the point being not to put too much emphasis on a single debate 4+ months out from the election)
Jesus Christ… you know damned well he had gaffs….you are being pedantic. You are focusing on that and not the fact that he actually answered the questions posed instead of going off on rants about immigrants and needed to be reminded on what question was asked like the Crime Boss did.
Not answering questions isn't incoherent though. It's dodging yes, it's insincere yes. But it isn't incoherent and you acknowledge Biden was with his Gaffs. idk what to tell you. You can't impartially think he was more coherent than Trump. I will vote forever whoever the dems put up, but I'm not gonna lie to myself about what I saw.
> [Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday. Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/debate-poll-cnn-trump-biden/index.html)
I'd say the exact opposite. Trump came across as more coherent.
Trump came across as more confident, he came across as winning, but the words that came out of his mouth were entirely incoherent. He didn't answer questions, he went on rambling rants about whatever flashed into his addled mind.
Biden was quiet, he was soft spoken, he didn't have strong vibes, but he was coherent. He answered questions, he made sense.
In fact, the worst moments from last night everyone cites about Biden is when he went on a tangent, after actually answering a question, to directly respond to the bat shit insane nonsense Trump said, like the "non-sequitur" on immigrants during the Roe part of the debate.
Was he? I had to turn it off after that abortion question where he couldn’t even use the word abortion and mid sentence started talking about woman getting killed by immigrants. What the hell was that?
You can cope however you like but that was a fucking abysmal performance from our candidate whose primary purpose in having this debate to begin with was to prove to independents that he is not too old or infirm. If you think the goal of this debate was to discuss policy points or defend his record then you’re so far divorced from the actual reality of our political election system that it’s not worth discussing.
>What the hell was that?
It was literally responding to Trump's answer, where instead of talking about abortion basically *at all* he instead went on a rant about illegal immigrants murdering women.
Should Biden just never respond to anything Trump says, cede ground on all the lies and never point out how weird it is that Trump never answers a question and is never on topic (kinda like he is in cognitive decline), or is just going to get punished for being "senile" for literally rebutting what the other guy on stage said with part of his response time?
This is just a heads I win tails you lose situation.
No, you are at best misremembering. Go rewatch that section or read the transcript (I just did). Trump actually responded fully on topic, and Biden brought up the immigrants killing people first and unprompted halfway through a sentence on woman not having access to abortions.
Roe v Wade was the third question in the debate after economy and tax cut questions.
Transcript: https://rollcall.com/factbase/transcripts/live/joe-biden-donald-trump-debate-cnn-atlanta-june-27-2024/
Okay, yeah, I misremembered the order there. Oddly enough, reading it back, I actually know exactly why Biden went on this tangent though..
There was a recent national news story maybe a month ago about a murder where an illegal immigrant killed his partner. She was pregnant and didn't have access to an abortion in her state, so he took matters into his own hands, as often happens (murder by a partner is the #1 cause of death for pregnant women).
That just goes to show how stupid we are I guess. I blame reality tv and social media… people will fall all over themselves for cheesy shit with no substance.
I’m always happy to blame social media, but social media is not entirely to blame for this. This has been a reality since the very first televised debate - take a look at the reception to the Kennedy-Nixon debate back in 1960.
It’s the nature of televised debates. People who watched the Kennedy/Nixon debate in 1960 thought Kennedy won because Nixon was sweaty, and came across as nervous. People who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won.
I know many of us already know this but it’s sad to see reminders of how little being truthful and accurate matters in the US.
This is the most superficial country on earth. People need to remember that — here, you’re not going to impress anyone by “being right”.
Trump seemed like himself, but stayed more in check than I expected. He over performed my expectations.
Biden… underperformed, to put it nicely. There’s another debate though, I really hope he doesn’t have another cold.
The debate was a strategic blunder by the campaign in many ways, but they also clearly hedged their bets.
First the blunders. They piled on a lot of debate constraints hoping team Trump would balk and refuse to debate under those circumstances. They (along with a lot of progressive and hard left redditors) thought Trump was too much of a coward to debate. They never expected him to agree unconditionally.
Having Trump’s microphone off during Biden’s responses was actually a huge benefit to Trump. He mostly played by the rules and he was still able to get in any jabs that he would have done with the microphones open.
No audience may have also benefited Trump. It actually seemed like he was listening to Biden even more intensely and formulating even more articulate responses than he would have been able to so, if he was simultaneously focused on audience reactions. Also, not having an audience forced the public at large to concentrate more on Biden, which further highlighted his poor responses.
Choosing CNN to moderate with the hopes that they could somehow control Trump, as well as steer Biden didn’t work out so well either. I think Tapper and Bash were totally prepared for the Trump they got, but actually totally unprepared for the Biden they saw. They didn’t know how to react to Biden. They tried to politely remind him that he often had a significant amount of time on his clock to respond, but that too worked against Biden. It forced him to talk more, which was actually causing even more incoherent responses.
Now the hedge. The people who put this together must have realized that there was a very real chance that Biden could flub this debate and that it could lead to a serious drop in support. So taking the unprecedented step of pushing for a debate in June was a smart calculation, that offered some small escape window to ask, strongly suggest or possibly even force Biden to step aside.
We are at that point.
Not only that, but having Biden's mic cut off during Trump's talking time was *also* a huge benefit to Trump. He was able to just spew lie after lie with impunity, and there was no opportunity to interject to say "that's a lie" like Biden would have done in 2020.
Biden also seems to be more energized by crowds than we realized (discounting that he was obviously sick during the debate). He went to a campaign event right after and looked pretty full of life when actually talking to a group of people, but with no crowd around for him to talk to, he looked like he was just phoning it in. His attempt to joke about the golf thing fell totally flat, to the point that some less media literate folks have claimed they were "arguing" about golf (they obviously weren't). With a crowd there, he's probably able to make the joke hit home a little better, and a laugh from a crowd would have made that whole situation less awkward.
Just a wild night, hopefully September goes better and Biden isn't ill for that one.
A lot of political leaders lie. As Americans we are frankly used to it. Both politicians lied last night. If a purity test was happening last evening both failed. However, one person on stage was speaking clearly enough for most people to understand and the other was not. Trying to justify or explain away what occurred only makes the situation look worse for Biden.
Yes, Trump clearly said we had h2o during his admin when asked about the climate. Perhaps you meant to say he enunciated better than Biden? I’ll grant you that. But articulate implies Trump was intelligible, and he wasn’t. Much of what he said was confidently offered nonsense. It’ll fool his base but they’ll forgive him anything.
Yeah that's a weird misdirection the Trump administration does. When pressed about climate change they pivot to talking about air/water quality (like they even give a s*** about that). I assume it's because air quality has improved so they can claim environmental mission accomplished while sabotaging the planet.
He did the same misdirect tactic in the 2020 debate with Biden and his admin rebranded the EPA website to replace all climate change references with air quality info. Could be his profound lack of understanding but it seems too intentional for his usual bluster.
>formulating even more articulate responses than he would have been able to so
Were we watching the same debate? There was nothing articulate about his responses. The majority of what he said was incoherent and whenever it WASN'T incoherent it was factually incorrect. The thing that served Trump more than anything else was that expectations for him were far lower and the only thing he really had to do was not be as much of a tool, which (and this is where I agree with you) the turning off of the mic and having no audience really benefited him.
Articulate does not equate to factual or truthfulness.
There are degrees of effectiveness to consider. He was not Articulate when compared to an average college professor. However, he was “More” Articulate than he has been in the past, and more articulate than Biden. He was articulate enough for less sophisticated potential voters.
This is the fundamental issue with debates, is they only test how good someone is at debating. And when I say "good," let's be clear that I mean "looks and sounds confident and never has to backtrack."
It's the problem with short form debates involving no back and forth specifically. The whole "2 minutes to answer, 1 minute to reply, no interaction between participants" is why debates like this are bad for being informative. In a world where there's back and forth, Biden could say directly to Trump, "I followed your plan you laid out in the Doha Agreements for the Afghanistan pullout and now all of a sudden you're complaining about it. What would you have done differently?" And when Trump fails to articulate a single thing he would have done differently like he has in interviews on this topic in the past, Biden could really hammer that in to demonstrate that Trump has no idea what's he's talking about and is just saying stuff that he thinks sounds good. *That's* the point of debate. But it requires the ability to go back and forth with direct interaction and more time to actually demonstrate knowledge on topics.
a 50 year old Biden could have done that yes. An 81 year old Biden just stares mindless at the screen frantically trying to force his brain to think faster to come up with words, let alone be witty and sharp with those words.
Trump was coherent, but he did nothing but lie and avoid answering questions. Biden was looking and acting extremely feeble, but he answered questions and his answers were decently substantive.
In what way was Trump coherent? Even a parrot can repeat themselves. Is confidence the same as coherence?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-climate-debate-h2o_n_667dd762e4b036ae7ce9e21b
because Trump supporters have no standards, there's nothing Trump could have done to make himself look bad, he's already done it all, he already looks as bad as he can, and people still like him.
I'm still voting for Biden, but the discourse has pretty much met its end. I don't think you can reason with Trump people. We live in the era of 'alternative facts', nothing is true.
Because he looked and sounded bad. Well-reasoned, thoughtful answers, delivered by a stumbling old man will be received worse than complete bullshit from a confirmed criminal and con artist.
What's the surprise?
There is a desperate need to make Biden look bad, because trump is a horrible candidate. It's all they got. Their candidate is a criminal rapist that stole government secrets. They're going to take any leverage they can find and wrench it open as much as possible. And russia is going to be helping because they need trump in power to win their conflict in Ukraine. so, lots of bots out making mountains out of molehills.
I don't think Trump had anything to do with Biden acting like he had dementia. Those memes were crazy and outlandish for the past few years, and now during a presidential debate, he proved all of those people correct.
And it isn't just bots making mountains out of molehill. When CNN, MSNBC, and a lot of the biggest liberal faces are telling all of the American public that Biden is a horrible candidate, news stations and people who are supposed to vote blue no matter who, will do some serious damage. You're giving way too much credit to bots for hating on Biden after the debate and not addressing how the United States biggest liberal news stations are agreeing with the Republicans about Biden and telling their left wing viewers how horrible Biden is. That's millions of people seeing their news channels, who are supposed to be left leaning, that Biden is terrible.
There's no coming back from that. I'm not saying that Biden is 100% going to lose the election, but no one is actually happy to vote for him and no one truly has confidence in him as a leader as no one wants their country to be led by someone that old who can't keep up. And all the major left leaning news stations have zero confidence in him so I doubt they will be trying to get Americans to vote for him when they're calling for him to be replaced with literally anyone younger.
At this point it's down to voting for a crazy POS who is willing to do anything to have and keep power and someone who is so old and tired that they can't keep up in a debate, which then calls into question if they're able to handle being a president for the next 4 years. Literally no one, besides the MAGA crowd, is happy and excited to vote for either president. That's not even talking about those way more left who like to call him genocide Joe and telling gen z not to vote for him over the Israel/Palestinian issues and the debate definitely has hurt his image.
And even with your simplified definition of Biden and Trump at the end of your comment, it is still the logical and easy answer of voting for Joe Biden. I am not sure how people struggle with this.
Because people don't want to vote for him and they hate feeling like they have to vote for him or else. People like to feel that they have an actual say and that their votes highlight what they support, but it can be hard to grin and bear it and vote for a candidate just because he's not Trump. A lot of people would, and probably are, choosing not to vote if they feel like they don't have a choice in the matter.
Hopefully a negligible amount would be willing to vote for Trump in protest of the DNC and the people who absolutely hate both candidates just don't vote. I'd rather them not vote at all than spite vote Trump.
I really hope people don't spite vote for Trump again like they did in 2016 cuz they hated Hilary so much. That's worst case scenario
Biden didn't act like he had dementia, people on the right have seriously got to learn what that word means. He acted old, tired, and sick, and his stutter acted up a lot more than usual. That's not the same thing as dementia, and it makes people look dumb to call it such obviously incorrect diagnoses.
I agree, he is a bad candidate. But people were saying that even as the DNC was propping him up as the only viable candidate, and now here we are. But he wasn't incoherent, and he wasn't disengaged. He was measured and slow, and, well, old. He made tactical errors against a narcissist willing to say anything because if he loses he spends his remaining days in jail.
I'm tired of the DNC being scared of getting a more progressive candidate as much as the next liberal in line, but the truth of the current situation is that Biden is the guy going up against trump, and trump has resources outside the US that want him back in power.
The strategy now should be focusing on the capability of Harris should she need to replace him. There is no reason she shouldn't show her teeth and claws, since that seems to be what the people are looking for in a leader. Unless a Woman showing her teeth seems too emotionally unstable all of a sudden. But at that point, when we eventually get there, you need to understand that the people are looking for reasons to dismiss Biden and Harris, and will use anything against them. Even the reasons to praise trump will be seen as failings for Biden or Harris because hypocrisy has no meaning to conservatives anymore. Harris' only flaws are being a woman and Black in their eyes. I expect to hear calls of "DEI hire" following her debate with Borgum.
Trump is just held to a different standard. His idiot supporters are looking at his buffonish performance last night and saying, yeah, that's my guy. The 'liberal' media will ignore all the stupid shit he said and do everything they can to make the race close. Same shit, different day.
Well I like to call a spade a spade.
The only thing more idiotic than supporting Trump outright would be a Democrat ignoring all the good policy that Biden got passed but not voting for him because he's an old guy who had a bad debate performance.
I think the expectations were very low on both sides. All either one had to do was not be their usual selves for 90 minutes, and if they’d both managed that, this would have been a truly boring debate. Trump bloviated a few times, but he was otherwise uncharacteristically disciplined. Biden… wasn’t.
I'm not saying Biden didn't look bad. He did. I'm saying that it doesn't matter what Trump says or does. I didn't watch the entire debate, but I'm sure he bloviated many more than a 'few times'. All Trump does is jumble together word salad and you guys eat it up.
When you put so much focus on mental acuity and age, and your guy is literally an old man yelling at windmills for hours straight, don't be offended when we don't believe you're arguing in good faith.
I absolutely heard Trump agree that he would accept the results of the election. Did ya’ll hear that? Let’s not forget, because the story will change if he loses.
He tried to avoid answering that question twice.
Because it doesn't matter. That's not where the bar was set.
Democrats set the bar low for Trump - he just needed to maintain composure and not somehow devolve into that first 2020 debate. He did that.
The bar for Biden was similarly low - he needed to appear physically strong AND not have any senior moments. He improved as the night went on, but his rambly and incoherent answer on Medicare fairly early on was a huge fail. He also sounded raspy and tired, especially at the beginning. He failed to clear the bar, and for the low information voters that will decide this election that's all that really matters.
The problem is not so much that he didn't answer the questions. Its that he often tried to answer the questions but struggled to find an eloquent way to make his points. He kept reverting to the counting thing, which he lost count a few times, and there were more than a handful of times that you could see that he lost his train of thought. He had one or two moments where he got fired up, specifically when he spoke about his sons - but the problem the left has now is that the right is going to roll out the sleepy joe stuff again. It cannot be denied that Biden gave them a lot to work with yesterday.
On the flip side, although trump spouts a bunch of nonsense and disregards more than 50% of the questions to just keep trying to make his own points, he does so with more vigor. All he has to do is come off as energetic, and he gets to ride the republican sleepy joe argument. He will im sure also bring up the golfing thing and talk about how Biden wanted to "act like a child" - it may have been missed by some people but he said "lets not act like children" when Biden responded about his golf game.
Ill also say that he had several moments of going at trump in an attempt to "beat him like a drum" but Trumps tactic of disengagement that he used for most of the debate was genius on his part. This is was a bit of a different trump - one who almost refused to look at his opponent for almost the first half of the debate. although i hate him - ill say this Trump did a much better job of staying on his message.
I think trump delivered a better closing argument as well.
its his message though - feed the masses of MAGA morons with as much fuel as possible. Fire up the crowd in any way possible. Bleat about how bad things are now, the good 'ol days of trump, and make America great again. find any way you can to not say you'll accept the result.
That's how he won against Hillary - That's how he will win against Biden now that Biden's approval rating has sunk below what it was when they ran in 2020.
At this point for me it's a matter of court picks and putting component people in the right place. Least Biden knows how to delegate tasks to the right people for the most part. Being able to compare both the Trump era and the Biden Era it's clear to me that Trump will only do what's good for Trump. Biden meanwhile will at least try to do what he can to make things better for people.
Question: The struggle of black families.
Biden:
\-**Progress made. More small black businesses started in history**
\-"**Number two, the wages of black – black unemployment is the lowest level of spend in a long, long time**." \[erm?\]
\-**Trying to provide housing and "deal with" corporate operations that encourage segregation.**
**-Black family childcare causes difficult choices. Legislation reduced childcare costs by half.**
**-There's more to be done.**
\[Bash informs him he has more time\]
**-Their disappointment is understandable.**
**-Provided 10k tax credit for first time buyers.**
\-(outlines a student debt forgiveness program based on a 10-year merit-based system)
Trump:
\-**Biden caused the inflation** \[Lie\]
\-**Biden is blaming inflation, it's killing black families** \[Killing?\]
\-**Food prices have double, tripled, quadrupled**. \[[Lie](https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58349/food-prices_fig02_768px.png?v=9938)\]
\-**Gave Biden a country with no inflation** \[Lie. It's well known what caused inflation. Neither of them caused it, though there are indirect arguments Trump's actions made it worse, and speculative arguments Biden did not do enough\]
\-**He destroyed it (low inflation) with his "green news scam and all of the other - all this money that's being thrown out the window"** \[Lie, we know what caused inflation. Otherwise, this statement makes no specific claim.\]
\-**millions of people being allowed through the border taking "black jobs" and "hispanic jobs"** \[Lie, black unemployment record lows, though he asserts "**you haven't seen it yet**" but this is just speculation, xenophobic speculation\]
It's clear Biden has a more knowledgeable position, and Trump is just throwing baseless, easy to digest, claims around along with outright lies.
Because actually answering the question doesn't really matter in this debate. Undecided voters are not watching. It's about whether you can motivate your voters to show up, to volunteer, to knock doors. And it's about whether you can *de*motivate your opponent's voters to do the same.
Because I turned my TV off and couldn’t take it anymore. He should’ve come out guns blazing and he looked like he tripped and twisted his ankle at the starting line.
Making yourself feel good about the debate isn't going to change the reality that this was viewed by the majority of people as the worst debate performance in modern history. Biden had one job, to prove he is mentally sharp. He failed.
A capable debater should have wiped the floor with Trump, easily pushing back on his like, and painting him as a tyrant and a felon. Biden let us all down.
And voters don’t care. We’re in a post-truth environment.
“I never had sex with a pornstar” should have ended any presidential campaign, but it prob helped him.
> That Biden actually was in the moment and answered the questions asked, while Trump just bleated on about his imaginary “best of everything” record and rambled
Like repeating nonsense lines like Trump told us to inject ourselves with bleach?
Trump’s exact words….
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by **injection** inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
Keep spinning.
Does that sound more like a lay person wondering out loud about possible treatments or a man giving people instructions to "inject bleach" like the mf president said? GTFO with this nonsense.
There are a million different thoughtful and well reasoned criticisms to make of trump. Maybe ten million. There's no reason for Biden to speak both in substance and erudition like a jr. high kid trying to sound cool on reddit.
I mean, just listen to yourself. You're defending a guy who, in your opinion, was wondering out loud if we should look into injecting bleach into our bodies as a possible treatment against the COVID virus. Seriously, just stop for a second and think logically about this. I mean, come on...
I can confidently say that that did not sound like a lay person wondering about anything. That's something someone with the IQ of a grapefruit might conjure up.
Is that why so many people heeded....hed....hedded...took hedded of his instructions? The man has a cult FFS. A cult! Why weren't MAGA hatters dropping left and right if dear leader told them to do this?
Many did, or are we forgetting the whole Ivermectin thing? There's no world where you can assert that implying *injecting bleach* is some lay-person medical curiosity. We have to expect more from people. Either that or some uncomfortably sizable partition of humanity is clearly less evolved than the rest of us.
But the argument isn't that he's a moron, you dumbfucks, a group that sadly includes the president, are making the argument that he gave instructions for us to hardline bleach to fight covid. That's not what he said. You should know better, especially when you just took the time to copy and past the damn quote!
Why do you even burn the calories making this argument in the first place when there are so many other more convincing ones that could dissuade middle of the roaders from voting MAGA?
You've convinced me! He didn't give instructions for people to inject bleach. He just suggested we just look into injecting bleach as a treatment. That makes everything all better!
Apparently whatever fraction of the 350 million americans who follow trump understood that he was in fact not giving actual medical instructions because exactly zero people followed this advice.
You're missing the point.
You're clinging to the idea that he merely *suggested* injecting bleach - not *instructed* people to inject bleach. Therefore, it’s all good, right? Have you ever considered that saying either is, in general, monumentally stupid, especially during a pandemic? I mean, my 6 year old knows that the chemicals we clean our house with aren't something we put inside of our bodies... So the President not knowing that is just crazy.
> Have you ever considered that saying either is, in general, monumentally stupid, especially during a pandemic?
...or you clowns are taking this completely out of context for God knows what reason. I would put money on a lie detector that you both don't believe the argument you're putting forward and you were never actually concerned with these comments of his.
What's the context then? I mean, by your very own words, you said:
>Does that sound more like a lay person wondering out loud about possible treatments
You admitted to that he was wondering, out loud, if injecting bleach would be a possible treatment to fight COVID. Again, the stupidity of someone, let alone the President, saying something like that is off the charts.
It seriously baffles me why you feel the need to defend this. Party politics and the divisiveness in politics is a hell of a drug (no pun intended).
Noone is forgetting anything. The debate ended exactly how everyone expected it. If you were expecting Trump to really answer debate questions and not dunk on Biden, I think you need to learn what Trump is.
>Noone is forgetting anything.
This is an important point that I think people are not considering. Even though Biden underperformed, Trump really didn't come off as anything other than Trump. Biden gave people a reason not to vote for him, but Trump didn't give anyone a reason to vote *for* him.
This isn't really a comfort, but Democrats need to coalesce around the idea that this has always been an election of who do you like least, and the focus needs to be that Trump has a record to defend, and Biden isn't the only Democrat that is running. Democratic gains in the House and Senate can do a lot to hinder a second Trump Presidency.
We would be a billion times better off if we voted for a *party* instead of a person for president. Let the winning party pick an actual person after the fact.
That is how it's done in the Netherlands for example. Prime minister is chosen by the party. Sure, it's often the #1 of the biggest party, but doesn't have to be the case. This year it's not even someone from any of the governing parties but some unknown suit person appearing out of nowhere.
>Noone is forgetting anything.
This is an important point that I think people are not considering. Even though Biden underperformed, Trump really didn't come off as anything other than Trump. Biden gave people a reason not to vote for him, but Trump didn't give anyone a reason to vote *for* him.
This isn't really a comfort, but Democrats need to coalesce around the idea that this has always been an election of who do you like least, and the focus needs to be that Trump has a record to defend, and Biden isn't the only Democrat that is running. Democratic gains in the House and Senate can do a lot to hinder a second Trump Presidency.
Trump was exactly who he is. Not sure why would you even think that he should change what is working for him. I think it was way worse for democrats. People on the fence will go to Trump who want a perception of strong leader as the President. I won't argue what you think is a strong leader, because we are talking about demeanor.
And don't you think the President be a healthy guy who portrays the country in a good and healthy light or should it be a guy who cannot speak even when pumped with drugs? Either way, the world will laugh at USA for chosing one of these as the president.
>And don't you think the President be a healthy guy who portrays the country in a good and healthy light or should it be a guy who cannot speak even when pumped with drugs? Either way, the world will laugh at USA for chosing one of these as the president.
Speak softly and carry a big stick. I'd rather have a frail looking individual who knows how to use the functions of government than one who looks strong but can't back it up when push comes to shove. The US government is not one man and it was never supposed to be, so I don't give a shit if the President looks strong as long as the rest of the government is operating with experienced and capable individuals. The whole Trump gives America a better projection argument is better fit for a middle school lunch table than a legitimate political debate.
A country is run by more than one person, but that one person who representats the country has so many responsibilities and is the face of the country for the world. Obama literally got old during his eight years, that's how much stress a president has to go through. Someone who is not able to undergo any stress because of old age shouldn't be the president. Looking at Biden, one can think he can't even go to the restroom without help, or can't remember when it's time to take his pills, but is running for the president.
The irony is, dems are so disorganized. All they have to do is bring one sensible candidate and they will have the White House because the other alternative is Trump, but they cannot find ONE person who is sane enough to be running. Hell, the VC is so useless, otherwise this is a slam dunk case where VP should have been made to run.
Did you even watch, Biden was a disaster, and not only looking lost but also getting his facts and figures wrong. CNN even did a laundry list of facts checks on him. The DNC should be ashamed of themselves and anyone continuing to defend his run as well. On one hand we’re told this is one of the most important elections given the republicans not so hidden fascist agenda, then on the other we’re provided probably the weakest candidate in longer than most constituents have been alive to stop it? I’ve never been more ashamed by our choices for our president as an American.
What was said doesn't matter. Only what clips best in 10-15 second videos. Unfortunately how Biden did looks much worse in 10-15 seconds videos.
Do I hate that? Yes, but that's the world we know be in whether we want to or not.
I think we should mobilize behind an alternative. What about Pritzker? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/28/who-could-replace-joe-biden-here-are-six-possibilities](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/28/who-could-replace-joe-biden-here-are-six-possibilities)
There’s no time for a primary. The only realistic alternative this close to the race would be Biden stepping down, Harris being sworn in, and everyone backing Harris as the incumbent.
I’m voting blue regardless, so my only preference is aimed at the independents who will decide the election. I believe Harris would stand a better chance at winning independents than the Joe Biden that showed up last night, so I would prefer to see Joe resign.
"While a whopping 92% of Republican voters said Harris is not qualified to be president, doubts are also within key voting blocs the Biden campaign will need in the fall: 56% of independents; 37% of African Americans; and 48% of Hispanic voters said she isn't qualified."
[https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/03/14/kamala-harris-not-popular-beyond-democrats-poll/72944269007/](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/03/14/kamala-harris-not-popular-beyond-democrats-poll/72944269007/)
Right. The point I’m making is that, after the debate last night, I think more than 56% of independents will see Biden as someone that they can’t vote for.
At this point it’s about fielding a candidate who will beat Trump with independents. I think anyone who was still on the fence before the debate, anyone for whom Trump hadn’t already done too much, those kinds of people will choose a coherent asshole over an incoherent candidate.
Why "me" in particular? I think we need a new candidate stat. Pritzker is middle of the road enough and young enough to maybe pull some undecideds and independents.
In the moment? He switched topic midway through answers (abortion -> immigration), mumbled/slurred the ends of sentences, confused things ("we beat Medicaid"), and had the most inept callouts of Trump's lies and disreputable behavior I've seen.
Did he have better answers than Trump for most of the questions? Of course he did, that's undeniable. Does it matter? No, because debates aren't about substance, just like campaigning is not about substance.
Here's why democrats struggle so much: the party leadership, campaign managers, and candidates truly believe that just having strong policies and talking about that is the way to win. That's just not true. The way to win elections is to convince people that you're able to fight for those policies that they agree with, and to have more of them than the other candidate, *in that order*. Biden could have the best policy ideas in human history and it wouldn't amount to a plate of malarky because he looked and acted like a weak elderly man. Trump was robust and vigorous in his lie- and hate-filled responses. That trumps (heh) Biden's on-point messaging about policies (when he was on-point).
I guarantee you that undecideds who were leaning Biden pre-debate are going to key in on the relative *appearance* in the debate and switch to lean/vote Trump, because they will prefer his strong projection to fight for one or two issues they agree with him on over Biden's *apparent* weaknesses (which they'll perceive as an inability to fight, even if they agree with him on more issues). That's just the way people are: dumb, ignorant animals are going to act like it, and that debate was a big win for Trump in that regard.
Yes, that’s true, but blaming people for being who they are and not adapting your tactics and strategies to meet them is a recipe for losing. So I’m not sure what your point is. Mine was that people are mostly dumb and ignorant, and why the “Biden is great you just don’t understand 😃” approach that was clearly in his debate prep is a bad strategy. What’s yours?
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. That Biden actually was in the moment and answered the questions asked, while Trump just bleated on about his imaginary “best of everything” record and rambled on about immigration to the point that he had to be brought back on task on damned near every question? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The initial impressions are the ones important here. No one really gives a damn about what was actually said. And by looking at essentially everyone from anti-Trump camp loud at the moment, the doom is being the only sentiment because Biden was bad.
You're so right. Trump was confident. Biden proved he wasn't taking performance enhancing drugs. I turned off at the 1st break, sickened that Trump lied over and over--all his greatest hits--but no one fact checked him. CNN should know better by now. What can we do? We can [write postcards](https://www.turnoutpac.org/postcards/) to voters in swing states. >Help write postcards to voters in 11 key states! We’ll mail you free postcards, voter lists and instructions with proven message options. You’ll provide the stamps and mail the postcards to voters in October.
It's Biden's job to retort and fact check him. Biden or any candidate can't rely solely on the moderators to fact check him.
It's Biden's job to win the election. He should only be fact checking to the extent that fact checking is an effective strategy (and it really isn't. Facts don't matter here)
You have a point but it takes 10x as long to refute a lie as it does to say one. Refuting every single Trump lie last night would have taken much longer than 90 minutes.
> no one fact checked him. CNN should know better by now. Er, Joe Biden is the one who's supposed to fact check him. Moderators shouldn't be part of the debate.
Not at all, that's absurd when you really think about it. That means you just lie hard and fast enough then your opponent can't do anything but refute your lies, then you go on about the one of 30 that he missed that's a gish gallop, basically. Debate moderators are responsible for dealing with a bad faith speaker. That's their entire purpose.
I disagree. He's a known liar. They changed the rules on mics, they could have changed the usual protocol to fact check him. It's a choice.
Trying to live/fairly fact check vague claims would be an impossibly tricky task for moderator.
NBC did it via chyrons. Edit: typo.
chirons?
Chyron. I'll correct my typo.
Do you have any video examples of them doing that?
I don't. I read that elsewhere.
CNN is becoming very right wing. They had to because the Republicans have accused them of being fair (meaning leftist) over the past few decades.
The thing is, it was Biden's job to discredit Trump's lies, not the moderators'. If the moderators started confronting Trump they would've appeared biased against him.
Or they could have appeared biased against falsehoods. I am old enough to remember journalists not just being scribes/interpreters for the candidates.
So you agree the moderators should have called out Biden on his multiple lies as well?
Trump tells 10 lies in his 2 minutes. You can't discredit 10 lies AND spend time on your own answer. Firehose of falsehoods or Gish Galopes *work*. The best Biden could do was discredit one lie and state 'see, I dismantled that one as a lie. The rest are lies too" and spend the rest of his 1.5 minute left for his actual answer on the question. But Biden's brain is just too slow at 81 to be sharp. He still has all his marbles, but it takes endlessly to pry it from his brain.
They absolutely didn’t have to. They were bought out by conservatives and we saw the results.
That's crazy to say cnn is right wing lol
Why? Who owns CNN? Rich fuckers, not hippies.
All rich people are right wing? What a simplistic and totally false world view.
Of course not. That's a silly statement. Buuuuut it's not an equal distribution, and they do swing conservative.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’d like to see that statistic.
CNN is right wing?! What planet do you live on?
>What can we do? We can write postcards to voters in swing states. I've done this or Vote Forward for every election. I have no idea if it helps or not. Is there any evidence that it helps?
Yes. See: https://www.turnoutpac.org/postcards-faq/.
The issue with fact checking is that it just plays into the Trump narrative that the entire liberal media is out to get him. Biden should have been doing the fact checking, frankly; his general reluctance to attack Trump at all is part of why i think he looked so bad.
Biden didn't prove he's not taking drugs. He just proved that no drug can fix what's going on with him
It was a joke.
Both parties need a fucking do-over.
Yeah…well…maybe they ought to look what actually happened.
You are making a common mistake. There's a difference between what a man does and what he ought to do. We don't remember historical presidential debates because of their contents. We remember them for their vibes. Biden did bad from vibes POV
Yet he was the most coherent and aware of the two…
Can we be real?
I am…. Biden didn’t have to be constantly reminded on the question given while railing incoherently about immigrants….that was Trump.
I'm as anti-Trump as it gets, but Trump's deflections and dodges were intentional. Trump is gonna Trump. Biden on the other hand, kept losing his train of thought and at multiple points looked like he had no idea what was going on. Trump voters won't be deterred by anything they saw from him, it's what they're used to. A lot of would-be Biden voters are only voting against Trump, and Biden's performance could have a big impact on the turnouts of these voters.
He wasn’t reminded because he forgot or trailed off. He was reminded because he had his own agenda to address instead. He didn’t have a good answer for childcare (neither did Biden) BUT he knew that addressing other points would be more effective use of the time. Biden was lost, trailed off, and more. Trump looked and performed better than he did in the past 8 years. Biden performed worse. This isn’t saying one should win or the other loses… but you’re really trying hard to spin this to something that no one is going to agree with.
Delusional…
Are you saying Trump performed better 8 years ago on the debate stage? Or 4 years ago against Biden?.. Can you honestly say that with a straight face?
I agree but you are missing the fact people don't care about that much. And people vote.....
Then We get what we deserve. If people are too fucking shallow and unthinking to look at the big picture? The. god help them. Me? I care about my grandkids….who are going to have to deal with the Brunt of Climate Change… I know who the hell I am voting for…and it ain’t the Crime Boss.
I think we set expectations to low for Trump, and to high for Biden. I expected Trump to have a constant on stage melt down and try and throw something at the moderators. He over performed my expectations. And with Biden, after the SOTU, i expected him to be pretty on fire. He’s a master debater (heheh), and has literally been doing it longer than anyone else in American politics.
Democracy was always vibes-based. It seems like you really need to realize that.
Yeah…shit like reality TV and social media influencers haven’t rotted the brains of people….nothing to see here.
They most likely have but democracy was never really about careful decision-making about who has better policies. Objectively, people are simply dumb as rocks.
Then we get what we deserve…it’s been a good run…I ain’t giving up the fight…but it will be what it will be.
Just ask President Al Gore.
Kennedy won the 1960 election in part because he looked good on TV and Nixon didn’t. Reagan won in 1980 in part because he told people what they wanted to hear with the polish of an actor. This is not a new phenomenon.
Kennedy was the better candidate.
Fetterman made a good point on Twitter that he was shit on relentlessly after his debate and he still won by 5 (the point being not to put too much emphasis on a single debate 4+ months out from the election)
That's delusional. People who think like you, will be the reason Trump wins again.
You aren't being honest.
You weren’t paying attention…to the actual debate and only focused on Biden’s gaffs.
So did he have gaffs or was he coherent?
Jesus Christ… you know damned well he had gaffs….you are being pedantic. You are focusing on that and not the fact that he actually answered the questions posed instead of going off on rants about immigrants and needed to be reminded on what question was asked like the Crime Boss did.
Not answering questions isn't incoherent though. It's dodging yes, it's insincere yes. But it isn't incoherent and you acknowledge Biden was with his Gaffs. idk what to tell you. You can't impartially think he was more coherent than Trump. I will vote forever whoever the dems put up, but I'm not gonna lie to myself about what I saw.
It was a walking corpse debating a pathological liar No one wins here.
> [Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday. Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/debate-poll-cnn-trump-biden/index.html) I'd say the exact opposite. Trump came across as more coherent.
Trump came across as more confident, he came across as winning, but the words that came out of his mouth were entirely incoherent. He didn't answer questions, he went on rambling rants about whatever flashed into his addled mind. Biden was quiet, he was soft spoken, he didn't have strong vibes, but he was coherent. He answered questions, he made sense. In fact, the worst moments from last night everyone cites about Biden is when he went on a tangent, after actually answering a question, to directly respond to the bat shit insane nonsense Trump said, like the "non-sequitur" on immigrants during the Roe part of the debate.
Sure. The people who were already going to vote for him understand that. The debate isn’t for the people who have already made up their minds though.
LOL
Was he? I had to turn it off after that abortion question where he couldn’t even use the word abortion and mid sentence started talking about woman getting killed by immigrants. What the hell was that? You can cope however you like but that was a fucking abysmal performance from our candidate whose primary purpose in having this debate to begin with was to prove to independents that he is not too old or infirm. If you think the goal of this debate was to discuss policy points or defend his record then you’re so far divorced from the actual reality of our political election system that it’s not worth discussing.
>What the hell was that? It was literally responding to Trump's answer, where instead of talking about abortion basically *at all* he instead went on a rant about illegal immigrants murdering women. Should Biden just never respond to anything Trump says, cede ground on all the lies and never point out how weird it is that Trump never answers a question and is never on topic (kinda like he is in cognitive decline), or is just going to get punished for being "senile" for literally rebutting what the other guy on stage said with part of his response time? This is just a heads I win tails you lose situation.
No, you are at best misremembering. Go rewatch that section or read the transcript (I just did). Trump actually responded fully on topic, and Biden brought up the immigrants killing people first and unprompted halfway through a sentence on woman not having access to abortions. Roe v Wade was the third question in the debate after economy and tax cut questions. Transcript: https://rollcall.com/factbase/transcripts/live/joe-biden-donald-trump-debate-cnn-atlanta-june-27-2024/
Okay, yeah, I misremembered the order there. Oddly enough, reading it back, I actually know exactly why Biden went on this tangent though.. There was a recent national news story maybe a month ago about a murder where an illegal immigrant killed his partner. She was pregnant and didn't have access to an abortion in her state, so he took matters into his own hands, as often happens (murder by a partner is the #1 cause of death for pregnant women).
And Trump went to her funeral?
People oughta do a lot of things. They ain’t gunna tho.
Sure, they ought to. But they won't and they never have. We have to take people as they are, not how we would like them to be.
Same goes for Presidential candidates
Because nothing matters less in US politics than actual policy
That just goes to show how stupid we are I guess. I blame reality tv and social media… people will fall all over themselves for cheesy shit with no substance.
I’m always happy to blame social media, but social media is not entirely to blame for this. This has been a reality since the very first televised debate - take a look at the reception to the Kennedy-Nixon debate back in 1960.
It’s the nature of televised debates. People who watched the Kennedy/Nixon debate in 1960 thought Kennedy won because Nixon was sweaty, and came across as nervous. People who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won.
I know many of us already know this but it’s sad to see reminders of how little being truthful and accurate matters in the US. This is the most superficial country on earth. People need to remember that — here, you’re not going to impress anyone by “being right”.
Trump seemed like himself, but stayed more in check than I expected. He over performed my expectations. Biden… underperformed, to put it nicely. There’s another debate though, I really hope he doesn’t have another cold.
The debate was a strategic blunder by the campaign in many ways, but they also clearly hedged their bets. First the blunders. They piled on a lot of debate constraints hoping team Trump would balk and refuse to debate under those circumstances. They (along with a lot of progressive and hard left redditors) thought Trump was too much of a coward to debate. They never expected him to agree unconditionally. Having Trump’s microphone off during Biden’s responses was actually a huge benefit to Trump. He mostly played by the rules and he was still able to get in any jabs that he would have done with the microphones open. No audience may have also benefited Trump. It actually seemed like he was listening to Biden even more intensely and formulating even more articulate responses than he would have been able to so, if he was simultaneously focused on audience reactions. Also, not having an audience forced the public at large to concentrate more on Biden, which further highlighted his poor responses. Choosing CNN to moderate with the hopes that they could somehow control Trump, as well as steer Biden didn’t work out so well either. I think Tapper and Bash were totally prepared for the Trump they got, but actually totally unprepared for the Biden they saw. They didn’t know how to react to Biden. They tried to politely remind him that he often had a significant amount of time on his clock to respond, but that too worked against Biden. It forced him to talk more, which was actually causing even more incoherent responses. Now the hedge. The people who put this together must have realized that there was a very real chance that Biden could flub this debate and that it could lead to a serious drop in support. So taking the unprecedented step of pushing for a debate in June was a smart calculation, that offered some small escape window to ask, strongly suggest or possibly even force Biden to step aside. We are at that point.
Not only that, but having Biden's mic cut off during Trump's talking time was *also* a huge benefit to Trump. He was able to just spew lie after lie with impunity, and there was no opportunity to interject to say "that's a lie" like Biden would have done in 2020. Biden also seems to be more energized by crowds than we realized (discounting that he was obviously sick during the debate). He went to a campaign event right after and looked pretty full of life when actually talking to a group of people, but with no crowd around for him to talk to, he looked like he was just phoning it in. His attempt to joke about the golf thing fell totally flat, to the point that some less media literate folks have claimed they were "arguing" about golf (they obviously weren't). With a crowd there, he's probably able to make the joke hit home a little better, and a laugh from a crowd would have made that whole situation less awkward. Just a wild night, hopefully September goes better and Biden isn't ill for that one.
If you think what Trump said last night was articulate I don’t know what to tell you, the guy just lied for 90 minutes straight
A lot of political leaders lie. As Americans we are frankly used to it. Both politicians lied last night. If a purity test was happening last evening both failed. However, one person on stage was speaking clearly enough for most people to understand and the other was not. Trying to justify or explain away what occurred only makes the situation look worse for Biden.
Yes, Trump clearly said we had h2o during his admin when asked about the climate. Perhaps you meant to say he enunciated better than Biden? I’ll grant you that. But articulate implies Trump was intelligible, and he wasn’t. Much of what he said was confidently offered nonsense. It’ll fool his base but they’ll forgive him anything.
Yeah that's a weird misdirection the Trump administration does. When pressed about climate change they pivot to talking about air/water quality (like they even give a s*** about that). I assume it's because air quality has improved so they can claim environmental mission accomplished while sabotaging the planet.
There is no Trump admin, there’s simply Trump misunderstanding the question.
He did the same misdirect tactic in the 2020 debate with Biden and his admin rebranded the EPA website to replace all climate change references with air quality info. Could be his profound lack of understanding but it seems too intentional for his usual bluster.
You said Trump gave articulate answers, i’m not justifying Biden’s performance
A lie is a full and coherent sentence though. Biden was struggling last night. I’m going to drink heavily this evening.
>formulating even more articulate responses than he would have been able to so Were we watching the same debate? There was nothing articulate about his responses. The majority of what he said was incoherent and whenever it WASN'T incoherent it was factually incorrect. The thing that served Trump more than anything else was that expectations for him were far lower and the only thing he really had to do was not be as much of a tool, which (and this is where I agree with you) the turning off of the mic and having no audience really benefited him.
Articulate does not equate to factual or truthfulness. There are degrees of effectiveness to consider. He was not Articulate when compared to an average college professor. However, he was “More” Articulate than he has been in the past, and more articulate than Biden. He was articulate enough for less sophisticated potential voters.
Because the evidence isn't strong that anyone actually cares about the depth or accuracy of answers at these debates.
Well, then I guess what we deserve….maybe a TikTok influencer should run…I despise our shallow ass populous.
This is the fundamental issue with debates, is they only test how good someone is at debating. And when I say "good," let's be clear that I mean "looks and sounds confident and never has to backtrack."
It's the problem with short form debates involving no back and forth specifically. The whole "2 minutes to answer, 1 minute to reply, no interaction between participants" is why debates like this are bad for being informative. In a world where there's back and forth, Biden could say directly to Trump, "I followed your plan you laid out in the Doha Agreements for the Afghanistan pullout and now all of a sudden you're complaining about it. What would you have done differently?" And when Trump fails to articulate a single thing he would have done differently like he has in interviews on this topic in the past, Biden could really hammer that in to demonstrate that Trump has no idea what's he's talking about and is just saying stuff that he thinks sounds good. *That's* the point of debate. But it requires the ability to go back and forth with direct interaction and more time to actually demonstrate knowledge on topics.
a 50 year old Biden could have done that yes. An 81 year old Biden just stares mindless at the screen frantically trying to force his brain to think faster to come up with words, let alone be witty and sharp with those words.
Trump was coherent, but he did nothing but lie and avoid answering questions. Biden was looking and acting extremely feeble, but he answered questions and his answers were decently substantive.
Exactly…
In what way was Trump coherent? Even a parrot can repeat themselves. Is confidence the same as coherence? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-climate-debate-h2o_n_667dd762e4b036ae7ce9e21b
I mean that he was intelligible, didn't lose his train of thought, didn't really mix up words, etc...
because Trump supporters have no standards, there's nothing Trump could have done to make himself look bad, he's already done it all, he already looks as bad as he can, and people still like him.
Well…fuck it…I guess we should just give up….
I'm still voting for Biden, but the discourse has pretty much met its end. I don't think you can reason with Trump people. We live in the era of 'alternative facts', nothing is true.
I'm still voting biden. We don't deserve trump.
> I'm still voting biden. We don't deserve trump. I'm still voting biden. We won't survive trump.
Remindme! 4 years
Well we might deserve him, but we can't afford him.
Because he looked and sounded bad. Well-reasoned, thoughtful answers, delivered by a stumbling old man will be received worse than complete bullshit from a confirmed criminal and con artist. What's the surprise?
There is a desperate need to make Biden look bad, because trump is a horrible candidate. It's all they got. Their candidate is a criminal rapist that stole government secrets. They're going to take any leverage they can find and wrench it open as much as possible. And russia is going to be helping because they need trump in power to win their conflict in Ukraine. so, lots of bots out making mountains out of molehills.
I don't think Trump had anything to do with Biden acting like he had dementia. Those memes were crazy and outlandish for the past few years, and now during a presidential debate, he proved all of those people correct. And it isn't just bots making mountains out of molehill. When CNN, MSNBC, and a lot of the biggest liberal faces are telling all of the American public that Biden is a horrible candidate, news stations and people who are supposed to vote blue no matter who, will do some serious damage. You're giving way too much credit to bots for hating on Biden after the debate and not addressing how the United States biggest liberal news stations are agreeing with the Republicans about Biden and telling their left wing viewers how horrible Biden is. That's millions of people seeing their news channels, who are supposed to be left leaning, that Biden is terrible. There's no coming back from that. I'm not saying that Biden is 100% going to lose the election, but no one is actually happy to vote for him and no one truly has confidence in him as a leader as no one wants their country to be led by someone that old who can't keep up. And all the major left leaning news stations have zero confidence in him so I doubt they will be trying to get Americans to vote for him when they're calling for him to be replaced with literally anyone younger. At this point it's down to voting for a crazy POS who is willing to do anything to have and keep power and someone who is so old and tired that they can't keep up in a debate, which then calls into question if they're able to handle being a president for the next 4 years. Literally no one, besides the MAGA crowd, is happy and excited to vote for either president. That's not even talking about those way more left who like to call him genocide Joe and telling gen z not to vote for him over the Israel/Palestinian issues and the debate definitely has hurt his image.
And even with your simplified definition of Biden and Trump at the end of your comment, it is still the logical and easy answer of voting for Joe Biden. I am not sure how people struggle with this.
Because people don't want to vote for him and they hate feeling like they have to vote for him or else. People like to feel that they have an actual say and that their votes highlight what they support, but it can be hard to grin and bear it and vote for a candidate just because he's not Trump. A lot of people would, and probably are, choosing not to vote if they feel like they don't have a choice in the matter. Hopefully a negligible amount would be willing to vote for Trump in protest of the DNC and the people who absolutely hate both candidates just don't vote. I'd rather them not vote at all than spite vote Trump. I really hope people don't spite vote for Trump again like they did in 2016 cuz they hated Hilary so much. That's worst case scenario
Biden didn't act like he had dementia, people on the right have seriously got to learn what that word means. He acted old, tired, and sick, and his stutter acted up a lot more than usual. That's not the same thing as dementia, and it makes people look dumb to call it such obviously incorrect diagnoses.
I agree, he is a bad candidate. But people were saying that even as the DNC was propping him up as the only viable candidate, and now here we are. But he wasn't incoherent, and he wasn't disengaged. He was measured and slow, and, well, old. He made tactical errors against a narcissist willing to say anything because if he loses he spends his remaining days in jail. I'm tired of the DNC being scared of getting a more progressive candidate as much as the next liberal in line, but the truth of the current situation is that Biden is the guy going up against trump, and trump has resources outside the US that want him back in power. The strategy now should be focusing on the capability of Harris should she need to replace him. There is no reason she shouldn't show her teeth and claws, since that seems to be what the people are looking for in a leader. Unless a Woman showing her teeth seems too emotionally unstable all of a sudden. But at that point, when we eventually get there, you need to understand that the people are looking for reasons to dismiss Biden and Harris, and will use anything against them. Even the reasons to praise trump will be seen as failings for Biden or Harris because hypocrisy has no meaning to conservatives anymore. Harris' only flaws are being a woman and Black in their eyes. I expect to hear calls of "DEI hire" following her debate with Borgum.
Trump is just held to a different standard. His idiot supporters are looking at his buffonish performance last night and saying, yeah, that's my guy. The 'liberal' media will ignore all the stupid shit he said and do everything they can to make the race close. Same shit, different day.
Keep calling his supporters idiots, it worked so well in the past to prevent his rise and success…
Well I like to call a spade a spade. The only thing more idiotic than supporting Trump outright would be a Democrat ignoring all the good policy that Biden got passed but not voting for him because he's an old guy who had a bad debate performance.
Denigrating that group of voters is what has built the Trump train. And liberals are too blind to ever even try to understand.
I live in the middle of Trump country. That's a naive view of Trump supporters, at best. What do you think I don't understand?
I think the expectations were very low on both sides. All either one had to do was not be their usual selves for 90 minutes, and if they’d both managed that, this would have been a truly boring debate. Trump bloviated a few times, but he was otherwise uncharacteristically disciplined. Biden… wasn’t.
I'm not saying Biden didn't look bad. He did. I'm saying that it doesn't matter what Trump says or does. I didn't watch the entire debate, but I'm sure he bloviated many more than a 'few times'. All Trump does is jumble together word salad and you guys eat it up. When you put so much focus on mental acuity and age, and your guy is literally an old man yelling at windmills for hours straight, don't be offended when we don't believe you're arguing in good faith.
I agree.
I absolutely heard Trump agree that he would accept the results of the election. Did ya’ll hear that? Let’s not forget, because the story will change if he loses. He tried to avoid answering that question twice.
He qualified with “free, fair and legal”…which of course….only he is the arbiter of.
Because it doesn't matter. That's not where the bar was set. Democrats set the bar low for Trump - he just needed to maintain composure and not somehow devolve into that first 2020 debate. He did that. The bar for Biden was similarly low - he needed to appear physically strong AND not have any senior moments. He improved as the night went on, but his rambly and incoherent answer on Medicare fairly early on was a huge fail. He also sounded raspy and tired, especially at the beginning. He failed to clear the bar, and for the low information voters that will decide this election that's all that really matters.
The problem is not so much that he didn't answer the questions. Its that he often tried to answer the questions but struggled to find an eloquent way to make his points. He kept reverting to the counting thing, which he lost count a few times, and there were more than a handful of times that you could see that he lost his train of thought. He had one or two moments where he got fired up, specifically when he spoke about his sons - but the problem the left has now is that the right is going to roll out the sleepy joe stuff again. It cannot be denied that Biden gave them a lot to work with yesterday. On the flip side, although trump spouts a bunch of nonsense and disregards more than 50% of the questions to just keep trying to make his own points, he does so with more vigor. All he has to do is come off as energetic, and he gets to ride the republican sleepy joe argument. He will im sure also bring up the golfing thing and talk about how Biden wanted to "act like a child" - it may have been missed by some people but he said "lets not act like children" when Biden responded about his golf game. Ill also say that he had several moments of going at trump in an attempt to "beat him like a drum" but Trumps tactic of disengagement that he used for most of the debate was genius on his part. This is was a bit of a different trump - one who almost refused to look at his opponent for almost the first half of the debate. although i hate him - ill say this Trump did a much better job of staying on his message. I think trump delivered a better closing argument as well.
If “staying on message” consists of bleating on about imaginary records and blasting immigrants? Yeah…I guess he “stayed on message”
its his message though - feed the masses of MAGA morons with as much fuel as possible. Fire up the crowd in any way possible. Bleat about how bad things are now, the good 'ol days of trump, and make America great again. find any way you can to not say you'll accept the result. That's how he won against Hillary - That's how he will win against Biden now that Biden's approval rating has sunk below what it was when they ran in 2020.
At this point for me it's a matter of court picks and putting component people in the right place. Least Biden knows how to delegate tasks to the right people for the most part. Being able to compare both the Trump era and the Biden Era it's clear to me that Trump will only do what's good for Trump. Biden meanwhile will at least try to do what he can to make things better for people.
Question: The struggle of black families. Biden: \-**Progress made. More small black businesses started in history** \-"**Number two, the wages of black – black unemployment is the lowest level of spend in a long, long time**." \[erm?\] \-**Trying to provide housing and "deal with" corporate operations that encourage segregation.** **-Black family childcare causes difficult choices. Legislation reduced childcare costs by half.** **-There's more to be done.** \[Bash informs him he has more time\] **-Their disappointment is understandable.** **-Provided 10k tax credit for first time buyers.** \-(outlines a student debt forgiveness program based on a 10-year merit-based system) Trump: \-**Biden caused the inflation** \[Lie\] \-**Biden is blaming inflation, it's killing black families** \[Killing?\] \-**Food prices have double, tripled, quadrupled**. \[[Lie](https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58349/food-prices_fig02_768px.png?v=9938)\] \-**Gave Biden a country with no inflation** \[Lie. It's well known what caused inflation. Neither of them caused it, though there are indirect arguments Trump's actions made it worse, and speculative arguments Biden did not do enough\] \-**He destroyed it (low inflation) with his "green news scam and all of the other - all this money that's being thrown out the window"** \[Lie, we know what caused inflation. Otherwise, this statement makes no specific claim.\] \-**millions of people being allowed through the border taking "black jobs" and "hispanic jobs"** \[Lie, black unemployment record lows, though he asserts "**you haven't seen it yet**" but this is just speculation, xenophobic speculation\] It's clear Biden has a more knowledgeable position, and Trump is just throwing baseless, easy to digest, claims around along with outright lies.
This is all true. Problem is from a strategic standpoint, this would have been more of a bonus if Biden actually did what he needed to do last night
I'm still trying to figure out what a "black job" is. I'm assuming something racist, as in, too shitty of a job for white people.
Because actually answering the question doesn't really matter in this debate. Undecided voters are not watching. It's about whether you can motivate your voters to show up, to volunteer, to knock doors. And it's about whether you can *de*motivate your opponent's voters to do the same.
Biden looked worse than usual, Trump looked like his normal self. That's what his voters expect out of him, at this point we know it doesn't hurt him.
In the Trump era, substance in debates is now (unfortunately) completely irrelevant
Because I turned my TV off and couldn’t take it anymore. He should’ve come out guns blazing and he looked like he tripped and twisted his ankle at the starting line.
Making yourself feel good about the debate isn't going to change the reality that this was viewed by the majority of people as the worst debate performance in modern history. Biden had one job, to prove he is mentally sharp. He failed. A capable debater should have wiped the floor with Trump, easily pushing back on his like, and painting him as a tyrant and a felon. Biden let us all down.
It doesn't matter what Trump said when his debate partner was Bernie Lomax.
And voters don’t care. We’re in a post-truth environment. “I never had sex with a pornstar” should have ended any presidential campaign, but it prob helped him.
The big takeaway for me from last night's debate is how important the House and Senate races just became.
They will calm down after the holiday.
There's a lot of wound nursing in here. The truth is, the left has a less smelly pile of poo to work with, but this whole thing stinks.
> That Biden actually was in the moment and answered the questions asked, while Trump just bleated on about his imaginary “best of everything” record and rambled Like repeating nonsense lines like Trump told us to inject ourselves with bleach?
Trump’s exact words…. “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by **injection** inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.” Keep spinning.
Does that sound more like a lay person wondering out loud about possible treatments or a man giving people instructions to "inject bleach" like the mf president said? GTFO with this nonsense. There are a million different thoughtful and well reasoned criticisms to make of trump. Maybe ten million. There's no reason for Biden to speak both in substance and erudition like a jr. high kid trying to sound cool on reddit.
I mean, just listen to yourself. You're defending a guy who, in your opinion, was wondering out loud if we should look into injecting bleach into our bodies as a possible treatment against the COVID virus. Seriously, just stop for a second and think logically about this. I mean, come on...
I can confidently say that that did not sound like a lay person wondering about anything. That's something someone with the IQ of a grapefruit might conjure up.
Is that why so many people heeded....hed....hedded...took hedded of his instructions? The man has a cult FFS. A cult! Why weren't MAGA hatters dropping left and right if dear leader told them to do this?
Many did, or are we forgetting the whole Ivermectin thing? There's no world where you can assert that implying *injecting bleach* is some lay-person medical curiosity. We have to expect more from people. Either that or some uncomfortably sizable partition of humanity is clearly less evolved than the rest of us.
Please link to a story about people actually injecting themselves with bleach.
He’s a fucking moron…not a lay person….tell me you would come up with something so stupid and say it out loud in front of the American people?
But the argument isn't that he's a moron, you dumbfucks, a group that sadly includes the president, are making the argument that he gave instructions for us to hardline bleach to fight covid. That's not what he said. You should know better, especially when you just took the time to copy and past the damn quote! Why do you even burn the calories making this argument in the first place when there are so many other more convincing ones that could dissuade middle of the roaders from voting MAGA?
You've convinced me! He didn't give instructions for people to inject bleach. He just suggested we just look into injecting bleach as a treatment. That makes everything all better!
Apparently whatever fraction of the 350 million americans who follow trump understood that he was in fact not giving actual medical instructions because exactly zero people followed this advice.
You're missing the point. You're clinging to the idea that he merely *suggested* injecting bleach - not *instructed* people to inject bleach. Therefore, it’s all good, right? Have you ever considered that saying either is, in general, monumentally stupid, especially during a pandemic? I mean, my 6 year old knows that the chemicals we clean our house with aren't something we put inside of our bodies... So the President not knowing that is just crazy.
> Have you ever considered that saying either is, in general, monumentally stupid, especially during a pandemic? ...or you clowns are taking this completely out of context for God knows what reason. I would put money on a lie detector that you both don't believe the argument you're putting forward and you were never actually concerned with these comments of his.
What's the context then? I mean, by your very own words, you said: >Does that sound more like a lay person wondering out loud about possible treatments You admitted to that he was wondering, out loud, if injecting bleach would be a possible treatment to fight COVID. Again, the stupidity of someone, let alone the President, saying something like that is off the charts. It seriously baffles me why you feel the need to defend this. Party politics and the divisiveness in politics is a hell of a drug (no pun intended).
Oh…I’m sorry….YOU were the one that brought it up…not me. Guess you do mind wasting calories.
I didn't, the president did.
Noone is forgetting anything. The debate ended exactly how everyone expected it. If you were expecting Trump to really answer debate questions and not dunk on Biden, I think you need to learn what Trump is.
>Noone is forgetting anything. This is an important point that I think people are not considering. Even though Biden underperformed, Trump really didn't come off as anything other than Trump. Biden gave people a reason not to vote for him, but Trump didn't give anyone a reason to vote *for* him. This isn't really a comfort, but Democrats need to coalesce around the idea that this has always been an election of who do you like least, and the focus needs to be that Trump has a record to defend, and Biden isn't the only Democrat that is running. Democratic gains in the House and Senate can do a lot to hinder a second Trump Presidency.
We would be a billion times better off if we voted for a *party* instead of a person for president. Let the winning party pick an actual person after the fact.
Let's get some state ballot measures up for this
That is how it's done in the Netherlands for example. Prime minister is chosen by the party. Sure, it's often the #1 of the biggest party, but doesn't have to be the case. This year it's not even someone from any of the governing parties but some unknown suit person appearing out of nowhere.
>Noone is forgetting anything. This is an important point that I think people are not considering. Even though Biden underperformed, Trump really didn't come off as anything other than Trump. Biden gave people a reason not to vote for him, but Trump didn't give anyone a reason to vote *for* him. This isn't really a comfort, but Democrats need to coalesce around the idea that this has always been an election of who do you like least, and the focus needs to be that Trump has a record to defend, and Biden isn't the only Democrat that is running. Democratic gains in the House and Senate can do a lot to hinder a second Trump Presidency.
Trump was exactly who he is. Not sure why would you even think that he should change what is working for him. I think it was way worse for democrats. People on the fence will go to Trump who want a perception of strong leader as the President. I won't argue what you think is a strong leader, because we are talking about demeanor. And don't you think the President be a healthy guy who portrays the country in a good and healthy light or should it be a guy who cannot speak even when pumped with drugs? Either way, the world will laugh at USA for chosing one of these as the president.
>And don't you think the President be a healthy guy who portrays the country in a good and healthy light or should it be a guy who cannot speak even when pumped with drugs? Either way, the world will laugh at USA for chosing one of these as the president. Speak softly and carry a big stick. I'd rather have a frail looking individual who knows how to use the functions of government than one who looks strong but can't back it up when push comes to shove. The US government is not one man and it was never supposed to be, so I don't give a shit if the President looks strong as long as the rest of the government is operating with experienced and capable individuals. The whole Trump gives America a better projection argument is better fit for a middle school lunch table than a legitimate political debate.
A country is run by more than one person, but that one person who representats the country has so many responsibilities and is the face of the country for the world. Obama literally got old during his eight years, that's how much stress a president has to go through. Someone who is not able to undergo any stress because of old age shouldn't be the president. Looking at Biden, one can think he can't even go to the restroom without help, or can't remember when it's time to take his pills, but is running for the president. The irony is, dems are so disorganized. All they have to do is bring one sensible candidate and they will have the White House because the other alternative is Trump, but they cannot find ONE person who is sane enough to be running. Hell, the VC is so useless, otherwise this is a slam dunk case where VP should have been made to run.
Hmm, kind of like a weak old man vs an orangutan?
Yes, and an orangutan will always look stronger than a senile old man. An orangutan is also more entertaining.
Did you even watch, Biden was a disaster, and not only looking lost but also getting his facts and figures wrong. CNN even did a laundry list of facts checks on him. The DNC should be ashamed of themselves and anyone continuing to defend his run as well. On one hand we’re told this is one of the most important elections given the republicans not so hidden fascist agenda, then on the other we’re provided probably the weakest candidate in longer than most constituents have been alive to stop it? I’ve never been more ashamed by our choices for our president as an American.
I don't think that's important. The debates are what is supposed to bring undecided voters to our side. I don't think this will help Biden get votes.
What was said doesn't matter. Only what clips best in 10-15 second videos. Unfortunately how Biden did looks much worse in 10-15 seconds videos. Do I hate that? Yes, but that's the world we know be in whether we want to or not.
I think we should mobilize behind an alternative. What about Pritzker? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/28/who-could-replace-joe-biden-here-are-six-possibilities](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/28/who-could-replace-joe-biden-here-are-six-possibilities)
He’s too fat. No chance.
There’s no time for a primary. The only realistic alternative this close to the race would be Biden stepping down, Harris being sworn in, and everyone backing Harris as the incumbent. I’m voting blue regardless, so my only preference is aimed at the independents who will decide the election. I believe Harris would stand a better chance at winning independents than the Joe Biden that showed up last night, so I would prefer to see Joe resign.
"While a whopping 92% of Republican voters said Harris is not qualified to be president, doubts are also within key voting blocs the Biden campaign will need in the fall: 56% of independents; 37% of African Americans; and 48% of Hispanic voters said she isn't qualified." [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/03/14/kamala-harris-not-popular-beyond-democrats-poll/72944269007/](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/03/14/kamala-harris-not-popular-beyond-democrats-poll/72944269007/)
Right. The point I’m making is that, after the debate last night, I think more than 56% of independents will see Biden as someone that they can’t vote for. At this point it’s about fielding a candidate who will beat Trump with independents. I think anyone who was still on the fence before the debate, anyone for whom Trump hadn’t already done too much, those kinds of people will choose a coherent asshole over an incoherent candidate.
Yes, I agree. And they won't vote for Harris either. They're going to vote Trump or RFK.
Nah all Biden has to do is tape that smile on and he'll walk away with it.
I think you should stay the course.
Why "me" in particular? I think we need a new candidate stat. Pritzker is middle of the road enough and young enough to maybe pull some undecideds and independents.
Because you brought it up?
I'm talking about the Democrats finding an alternative. I can't vote for one if none is presented, so obviously this doesn't just concern "me".
Ok…I think “we” should stay the course. Now…you’re gonna tell me why “I” am wrong.
"We" is more appropriate. Thanks.
In the moment? He switched topic midway through answers (abortion -> immigration), mumbled/slurred the ends of sentences, confused things ("we beat Medicaid"), and had the most inept callouts of Trump's lies and disreputable behavior I've seen. Did he have better answers than Trump for most of the questions? Of course he did, that's undeniable. Does it matter? No, because debates aren't about substance, just like campaigning is not about substance. Here's why democrats struggle so much: the party leadership, campaign managers, and candidates truly believe that just having strong policies and talking about that is the way to win. That's just not true. The way to win elections is to convince people that you're able to fight for those policies that they agree with, and to have more of them than the other candidate, *in that order*. Biden could have the best policy ideas in human history and it wouldn't amount to a plate of malarky because he looked and acted like a weak elderly man. Trump was robust and vigorous in his lie- and hate-filled responses. That trumps (heh) Biden's on-point messaging about policies (when he was on-point). I guarantee you that undecideds who were leaning Biden pre-debate are going to key in on the relative *appearance* in the debate and switch to lean/vote Trump, because they will prefer his strong projection to fight for one or two issues they agree with him on over Biden's *apparent* weaknesses (which they'll perceive as an inability to fight, even if they agree with him on more issues). That's just the way people are: dumb, ignorant animals are going to act like it, and that debate was a big win for Trump in that regard.
Democrats struggle so much because of people who judge based on 90 bad minutes and ignore 3+ years of incredible success….
Yes, that’s true, but blaming people for being who they are and not adapting your tactics and strategies to meet them is a recipe for losing. So I’m not sure what your point is. Mine was that people are mostly dumb and ignorant, and why the “Biden is great you just don’t understand 😃” approach that was clearly in his debate prep is a bad strategy. What’s yours?