That these two old men are up for the most powerful democratically elected position in the world is beyond staggering (or wheezing). It’s disgraceful. Shameful. Horrifying.
I was nervously hopeful that Biden would come across as cool and competent. He came across as a husk of a man, waiting in line at the Post Office and talking to himself to pass the time. He no longer has the energy to shout at clouds. God damn it, put a rug over his knees and wheel him into the shade.
I expected Trump to lie, bluster, and lie. I wasn’t disappointed. A witless, bullying braggart hosting a trailer park barbecue.
Who won? Nobody. America lost, and by extension, the world lost.
Let’s face it. Trump won. Biden showed his age. He was slow, quiet and half asleep. Trump was full of shit but seemed sharper and more on the ball, enjoying the fact he could lie with impunity.
If they went in tied, they emerged with Trump ahead.
Is it too late for the Democrats to find another candidate?
Yes.
Or, in actual fact, no – it is not too late.
Whether they will or not is another matter.
They won’t. It is.
They will.
They have to.
For all our sakes.
Our sakes do not come into it.
This is party politics, American-style.
For the Democrats to change candidate at this stage, Biden would have to become seriously*-ill or die.
*=terminally.
Not correct.
A change is possible.
Like I said, whether they do or not is a different matter.
At this late stage, as Mike says, the only way Biden is leaving the podium is in a box. To suddenly push someone up in his place would be a disaster. like starting over, but with a disadvantage. They’ve had enough time to groom a replacement, but they don’t seem to have bothered. AOC is the candidate they need, but not the one they want, apparently. Kamala Harris? Pete Buttigieg? Anyone?
I think you have to be at least 35 – so AOC is still too young.
We shall see what happens.
But the fact still remains that it is not impossible, within the rules, for him to step down – alive – and be replaced by someone else.
Not saying that they can’t change candidate or that it’s not possible.
I’m saying that they won’t, because both party campaigns are juggernauts and they are no longer in control.
Biden (or Trump) dying or ending up on life support is the only scenario that could stop it now.
I joined the debate about 10 minutes in and it was almost instantly clear that Biden was out of his depth, bewildered and hesitant, speaking slowly and softly – not with quiet, dignified authority but like the croaky old man who nurses one pint of mild for 3 hours at Weatherspoons while staring into space.
It’s not too late for the Democrats to change. I cannot imagine Biden lasting until the next debate in September, let alone 2028.
It might actually emerge as a positive for the Democrats in making clear that Biden isn’t up to another four years in the job. And (not 100% on this but pretty sure), there is scope for a candidate to withdraw even if they have won the primaries. It would lead to a messy selection process at the party convention, but I would take any other credible candidate to beat Trump.
Yeah he can be replaced … you probably won’t know the alternatives and I’m sure the average American won’t be much better informed
Problem is there don’t seem to be any credible alternatives.
Surprised it’s taken this long for someone to mention Taylor Swift….
She’d certainly shake it up.
Must be somebody in the Democratic party (preferably in their forties and with the ability to hold a train of thought) who could be parachuted in? No guarantee he/she would win but anybody but Biden surely?
Jimmy Carter’s an option….
Once famously Confessed to Committing infidelity in his mind – Won’t play well in the flyover states.
Probably a bit young for dem voters in Florida
We call upon Jed Bartlet!
Just listened to an expert on Radio 4. Seems nobody is clear about how you could offer up a challenger to Biden if he doesn’t want to stand down. Only way it could happen is if he agrees “this can’t go on”.
God, this is depressing…
Keith Olbermann’s take is valuable, as always:
Good heavens, I thought Alistair Darling was no longer with us.
“I didn’t understand the end of that sentence and I don’t think he did either” was the moment the world ended. The Dems have found the only person in the universe who could lose a debate to Donald Trump.
Trump doesn’t debate. It’s hard to beat someone at chess when he’s playing noughts and crosses.
When Biden won the last election, consensus seemed to be that he was a safe pair of hands to stay in for a couple of years and then pass the baton over. I don’t think anyone, apart from maybe Biden, dreamed he would run again in 24.
The Dems deserve everything they get. They ran Hillary and lost the un-losable election, they ran Biden and only just beat the most grotesque elected official in a modern democracy, and now they are running Biden again against a candidate who many assumed would be in prison by now. Another Trump term is all but certain, and the damage that will do the world is incalculable. Thanks, fuckwits.
Maybe Biden could be persuaded to step aside in favour of California Governor Gavin Newsom? Then we’d have a Democratic Party candidate who’s the cousin of the well-known duck-voiced harp-plucking songstress Joanna Newsom. Hurrah!
The duck-plucking harp-voiced songstress?
I think he’s referring to Denzel Washington.
I’m reading a few Dem spins on Biden’s lamentable performance, and they’re more or less true:
– The debate won’t have swung a significant number of votes either way
– Biden gets a second chance later
– Debates make absolutely no difference to voting in the distant election; they’ll be forgotten
I suppose so. But if Biden had “come out swinging”, and mastered Trump as he should have, they wouldn’t be offering the same argument. And Trump has been given a boost that’ll energise his dipshit base. So this debate does matter, even if not much in the long run.
Not sure I buy that – it sounds hopelessly optimistic. The whole point of this debate from Biden’s point of view was to robustly counter the growing narrative that he isn’t up to it physically or mentally. And not only did he fail to do so, he actually will have confirmed that view for many who may have been on the fence. Added to that, the format, which the Demoncrats wanted, without an audience and with no interruptions meant that Trump looked slightly more presidential and less unhinged than normal. I know there is a long way to go, but this was a disaster for Biden, and I can’t see how he can win from here. We only have to hope that Trump screws up so hugely in the coming months that he loses it – but it won’t because people actively think Biden will be a good President
*nodding in agreement*
Agreed re the debates.
Given the numerous incidences of his awfulness, it’s hard to imagine what else DT could do to derail his candidacy
“Need to call a real estate agent in New Zealand”. Yep, just about sums it all up.
Amazing too that neither he, his wife or his staff saw the negative implications of Joe’n’Jill stopping off at the Waffle House for food before flying on to the next campaign stop
I woke up in the U.K. this morning to watch the viral clips. I can’t watch the whole debate now. I don’t want to see Biden fail over the whole 90 minutes , nor do I want to see the other one purse his awful weird mouth and spout lies from his 70 word vocabulary.
Yep. Well done USA. How TAF isn’t Trump in prison or at least on remand by now and how is a thoroughly good but knackered old man the only hope?
The System. That’s why. Well the System needs to fucking do a better fucking job and yesterday. MSNBC, Keith Olberman, Steve Schmidt and The Lincoln Project won’t save anything.
@Beezer
The system is working just fine for those watching an endless loop of the “highlights” of last night’s shambles in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang
Quite
As voting is not compulsory if these 2 remain the candidates it could be the lowest voter turnout in history.
Not voting at all is the thinking voter’s only recourse, in a two-horse race between two such unattractive candidates.
The percentage of votes cast in an election should be more than 50% for it to be deemed valid. Any less and the result should be declared void, all candidates dismissed and the whole thing run again.
While completely unworkable, your modest proposal does have merits.
Chief amongst them being that DT and JB are likely to be either dead
or full-on gaga by the time choosing candidates for a second vote rolls around.
Or they could just have that driving competition. Not at one of Don’s clubs though, I suspect he has magnets in his golf balls..
Where was THIS guy during the debate?
Night and day.
It’s an impressive speech but he is among his own supporters, cheering his every word.
Well, duh!
He was also reading a rehearsed and well-written speech. Entirely different context. What he could have taken into the debate was he spirit and voice he demonstrates here.
And probably helped by a few frantic jabs of vitamin B12 in his ass, three double espressos and knowledge that if he fucked this one up, he’s toast.
Barely 24hr later and the debate is already yesterday’s news (SWIDT). Biden has picked up some points in the polls, which was an outcome nobody expected, as the horrified reaction softens. Stepping down is not an option, never was. There’s another debate in September.
@h-p-saucecraft
If you think that JB’s performance in the debate is old news, HP, I suggest you gird your loins in readiness for the avalanche of attack ads Trump will run between now and Nov.
Trump is happy as a pig and shit with how things are right now. Barring his opponent’s undergoing some kind of Cocoon-like regenesis, his chances of beating JB are better than probably any other candidate. The only possible replacement Trump would rather face right now is the appallingly ineffectual Kamala Harris.
Given the narrowness of the race and the number of “double hater” voters who are appalled at the choice currently in front of them, the Dems are almost certainly already chatting to possible replacement candidates holding office in States with big electoral college numbers
I find myself aligning with MC “Esher” here in the misunderstood category. Have you not read my post? Or can can you not remember it? I think you must have Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. I’m not defending Biden’s performance. Here it is again, just to clarify:
*cough* “That these two old men are up for the most powerful democratically elected position in the world is beyond staggering (or wheezing). It’s disgraceful. Shameful. Horrifying. [Biden] came across as a husk of a man, waiting in line at the Post Office and talking to himself to pass the time. He no longer has the energy to shout at clouds. God damn it, put a rug over his knees and wheel him into the shade.”
My post of 1035 (above) was in response to your post of 0713 rather than the one you upped a day earlier.
Nowhere in said post did I imply you were defending B’s performance.
Given the number of people here who’ve lost friends and family members to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s (myself included), your flip put down is in extremely poor taste.
Perhaps you might like to ask the mods to allow you to amend the wordings to something less insensitive
Less than a week later after the car crash, US voters’ “horrified reaction” has “softened” into a 6 (WSJ) to 8 (NYT) point lead for Orangey
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=he%27ll+have+to+go+ry+cooder
Still standing?
Barely and rarely for very long.
Coming up from HPS – Chumbawumba Tubthumping
Bit of a misstep there, HP?
That debate performance is now being spun as a Deep State plot (but of course, fucking of course) by team Trump and his wingnut cohort as a means of replacing Biden on the Democrat ticket.
No real thought or explanation behind just why “they” would do that, but that’s not the point, I suppose.
The election is November 5th. Do the math, because the calendar confuses me (never mind! Its days are numbered!). This leaves four months to choose and sell a replacement. With no campaign funding (existing accumulated funding are belong to Biden, apparently). This is why it’s just not going to happen. Four months in a presidential campaign is four weeks anywhere else. Be stupidly optimistic and say they find and agree on a replacement with broad appeal in a month. That leaves (iff my kelkuleshions are korrrekt) three freaking months to sell him* to the electorate. “Ri-ight, like that’s gonna happen.”
*her/them/it
I don’t imagine that it will happen, either. The “plot” is illustrative of a certain mindset, is all.
IIRC, there are comments above that refer to – wupes – reference – the “possibility” of it happening. He’d have to be dead, or have a note from his Mum. The magahats believe that John-Boy Kennedy Jr. will land in a Space Ark and make America Great Again. They are beyond the reach of reason.
The MAGA crew aren’t the target. The Undecided have just witnessed a frail, old man displaying overt dementia. The danger is that they decide he simply can’t be president and can’t vote for him.
Biden doesn’t have dementia. Google the question. He’s old and forgetful. This:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-07/joe-biden-age-memory-alzheimers-cognition
is typical of informed opinion. If you know better, tell us.
He may not be diagnosed with it formally, he just displayed overt signs of it to the American Undecided, in plain sight.
I diagnose a definite case of confirmation bias on HP’s part
(Actually, I never listen to him)
Tigger, it’s all subjective, innit? I mean, one opinion is the same as another, innit? Except when one opinion (many, in fact – do that “does Biden have dementia?” Google search) is informed, and yours isn’t. You’ll be diagnosing Parkinson’s next,
I’m not making any kind of diagnosis, just making an observation about his performance in the debate. He clearly lost his train of thought, sentences mumbling into nothing, and he failed to score a hit on the Democrats’ strong point, abortion. Worse than that, he switched the topic to their weakest point, immigration. And that’s just one example.
It was the kind of performance that made most people think, “how can that man be president?”
Trump has been getting these “observations” almost every time he appears in public. Neither of them, on the basis of this shambles, is qualified to be president, but it’s nothing to do with Alzheimer’s, which needs a medical diagnosis based on examination, not an opinion. It’s a choice between one old man who is a convicted felon and a despicable human being, and an old man who is also a good man but …
If Trump gets in, it’ll be a horrorshow. Backed by an out-of-control and corrupt Supreme Court and street mobs of baying racists with open carry automatics. Biden has to get enough of a grip to see him through the election.
It’s not just Biden you have to worry about, it’s the people behind Biden.
His missus is beginning to come across like Angela Lansbury’s character in Manchurian Candidate
“a good man but…” what? … frail, old and losing his memory?
If course, Trump would be a disaster. However, he came out smelling of roses, every false assertion unchallenged, every sentence completed coherently (I know!) and, because he couldn’t interrupt, he seemed, well, presidential compared to the other guy.
If you think Trump, under any circumstances, looks “presidential”, Tig … I worry about you. He looks like what he is, a mob boss. A thug. But you go ahead – keep making points about Biden’s infirmity that I’ve already made, right up there in the piece, and tell us how “presidential” Trump is. Yes, I know, you hedged about your opinion with the “in comparison” qualifier, but that’s not enough to make me not worry about you.
The whole thing was an opportunity to compare one guy with another. One failed the test. In comparison, the other did not, though the format helped him lie and kept his normal bullying tactic in check, to a degree.
@MC-Escher
Trump lied something like 30 times during the debate and pretty much got away with it because Biden is sadly not fit to be running for – never mind actually holding – high office.
Why on earth would Trump want to replace JB when he can spin out the senile old man trope endlessly between now and election day?
I refer the reader to my comment of 0913 hrs. GMT where I said “I don’t imagine that it will happen, either.”
My use of the phrase “Team Trump ” refers allusively to people on his – Donald Trump’s – “team”. His supporters, his “fanbase”, if you will. Not the man himself. Who, if he listens to clever people advising him, will want Biden to remain exactly where he is.
I hope that’s clearer.
I don’t think anyone – myself included – is misunderstanding or misinterpreting or disagreeing with your comment. It’s what we call “a discussion”. Points are raised and elaborated upon in a raging linguistic torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
It does rather seem that way when two separate posters kindly explain that what I suggested might happen would never happen, even though – and this is the science bit – I didn’t suggest it.
I’m off for a walk to smell some flowers.
Whilst you were sniffing the blooms I telephoned Mrs Biden.
“You told the old feller he done good the other night? You crazy, woman , he’s as lost as Atlantis and nobody found Atlantis in like forever.”
She said “Damn, you right. Let me have a word with him when he wakes up, see if I can’t make him give this whole mess up. Time for one of his lootenants to take over. Damn.”
If two people independently get the wrong end of the stick, perhaps the fault lies with the way the stick has been presented
Hope the flowers are generous with their fragrance
I blame the stick, personally.
Stupid wood from a stupid tree.
So hard to tell which end is which.
“I don’t imagine that it will happen, either.”
I know, I know, I really should. make things clearer.
Went for a walk by the seaside instead, and it was lovely. 😘
A rare example of something worse not happening at sea
What have you got against walking by the seaside? i really like walking by the seaside.
Who doesn’t like the seaside?
Well I do (like to be beside the seaside).
He hates flowers, too.
I don’t (like the seaide)
My money is on Biden having Parkinson’s.
Have you noticed a tremor?
An MP down here , also a doctor, cites hesitancy before speaking , walking , stiffness, expressionlessness as all classic symptoms.
Hesitancy before speaking , walking (eh?) , stiffness, expressionlessness are all classic symptoms of being very old. You’ll be diagnosing Ebola next.
Coming soon to Netflix – a dystopian drama about a US election in a distant future where democracy is on the verge of collapse across the world. A bullying egotistical misogynist campaigns for an entrenched far right Republican Party against an old man with dementia who is liberal democracy’s final hope for salvation. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Europe, in frightening echoes of Hitler’s rise to power, a disillusioned population systematically votes in a series of extreme right wing governments, while in Russia an evil dictator patiently awaits the outcome before plotting the next move in his bid to destroy Western civilisation.
Oh please, too far fetched. I certainly won’t be watching.
Marine Le Pen (“La Pouffiasse”) is deeply troubling.
The electors of La Belle France have pulled back from the brink and pushed National Rally back to third position, behind the leftists and centrists, in the second stage of the vote.
I notice Farage is blatantly borrowing from the Trump playbook now.
Channel 4’s exposé of those Reform activists was a putup job using actors, apparently, and not actual Neo-Nazi supporters of his party at all.
Say what you like about Farage, he does bring some colour into the debate! And you know what – I’m no racist, but I reckon he’d be good company over a pint! Can’t blame the man just for saying what many ordinary folk are thinking! More power to his elbow, I say! He’s the shot in the arm this country needs, if you ask me!
I shudder at the very notion of having a pint with Nigel Farage.
Quite apart from him being no more than an odious chancer with a gift for the gab, he also just seems much, much too pleased with himself.
I can fully understand people wanting to throw things (and punches) at him.
And now he appears to have Declared War on the BBC too.
He looks more like a lager man to me.
Rather than make him larger, I think that all that beer he drinks would have more of a detumescent affect
I hear they are planning to start selling lager in pint units, too.
I suspect Farage only drinks beer when in front of cameras.
Weak tea drinker. With a very large brandy to follow.
Now I see the orange one has immunity to almost everything he did when president.
Granted by (to an extent) people he appointed.
Wasn’t one of those appointments made possible by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s stupidity in not standing down when BO was President andcould easily have got a Dem to replace her
All this triggered by the tawdry alleged criminal acts of the vilest stupidest weakest man to walk the planet.
The voters of the USA, mind bogglingly, may still allow him to kill us all.
Doesn’t the same ruling grant Biden the power to have Trump executed in the morning?
Does this mean that Nixon should be reinstated?
Great readers comment quote in this morning’s Thunderer:
“The stark choice facing US voters is between a candidate who can’t finish a sentence and
a candidate who should be starting one”
… shouldn’t be starting one ?
I think you need to start the sentence again
Oh I got it. Bit tired today
Go easy on all that Wilco, D.
Are you going to do a review?
What an absolute mess of a system. In the scenario where Joe can be persuaded to step aside, the rules relating to the megafinances in running mean the only person who could access Joe’s battle fund and, therefore, replace him now is Kamala Harris (and I don’t think she’s much less popular than Trump and America seems about a hundred years away from electing a woman as president).
But a Republican majority has to ratify any replacement V.P. so there might be no vice president, which would leave the election result denying creationist who opposes women’s reproductive rights, house speaker Mike Johnson a heart attack away from the top seat..
While Harris is VP now, there’s no guarantee she will be candidate for VP in November’s election after the upcoming Dem convention so surely the possibility of her having sole access to campaign finances is equally up in the air
Now many huge Dem donors are suspending their donations in order to pressure JB to drop out.
Someone in this morning’s Times suggested other way JB might be persuaded to withdraw is if Bill C and Barack O privately visited him and urged him to either stand down or face public withdrawal of their backing.
Given that the enormous pressure that comes with the job has destroyed men far younger than JB, It’s gobsmacking his wife and son aren’t doing their all to dissuade him from standing for a second term
Hubris.
Greed?
Bit o’ both, probably – being King of the World must be great for the ego, perhaps just as much for the First Family. If he died, they might prop him up until he takes the oath.
But then the moneymaking opportunities must be pretty damn’ good as well…
POTUS-branded Sanatogen or WIncairnis Tonic Wine
Joe Biden Incontinence Pads (“Say goodbye to…to…to.. that
brown gunk that messes up your undies and looks like it came
out of Donald Trump’s mouth”
Eeeewwww! Politics – it’s a shit business!!