Comments

  1. billseymour says

    Let’s hope that Biden’s performance won’t be so shocking that it eclipses everything else and keeps the corporate media from mentioning Trump’s lies.

  2. Captain Kendrick says

    “There’s going to be another debate in September.”

    We’ll see about that. I can easily see Trump backing out/refusing. Even saying something like: “I not going to debate someone who shows that kind of mental decline – it’s just sad, very sad.”

    Unfortunately it’s about nothing more than optics and perception at this point, and it does not look good for democracy.

  3. says

    @billseymour #1
    Alternatively, let’s hope that the fact that Trump doesn’t get the headlines drives him into such a rage that he pops an aneurysm and becomes mute.

  4. billseymour says

    LykeX, yes.  Although I wouldn’t wish serious medical problems on anyone, even Trump; I agree that that might ultimately be better for democracy. 8-)

  5. Dunc says

    @1: The corporate media does not regard adjudicating truth as part of its remit. As they see it, their only job is to report on the horse race. Trump could claim that 2 + 2 = banana and they’d merely report the fact that he’d said it.

  7. says

    I could swear it wasn’t always like this. I remember a time when telling a truckload of lies in a political debate was embarrassing and people would be talking about how badly you did, and your campaign would come out afterwards with all kinds of explanations of what you really meant to say. But now the lies are ignored and instead people talk about how old Biden looked.

  8. seversky says

    “… But I’m Biden my time
    ‘Cause that’s the kind of guy I’m
    While other folks grow dizzy
    I keep busy
    Biden my time “

  9. Akira MacKenzie says

    I admit to my shame that I panicked after the debate, but after having time to think about it and I realized it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

    My reaction was mainly out shock that Biden seemed utterly gobsmacked by Trump, confirming the rumors of mental decline. This was supposedly supposed to be a cake walk, but it seems that Trump’s rambling insanity is well suited for Guish Galloping. Also the lack of fact checking and reigning in Trump’s rants from the so-called moderators didn’t help either. I doubt the world’s most articulate debaters could contend with that.

    BTW, I had heard that the lack of fact-checking was agreed upon by both parties. Now, as I try to verify it, I’m finding nothing.

    Throw in my general disgust at the conservatism of liberals (ironic, I know) and the cowardice of the Democrats and you got my reaction.

    I voted for Hillary in 2016 despite her being a smug warhawk in bed with Wall Street because I didn’t want Trump to win. I voted for Biden in 2020 despite him being an out-of-touch conservative because I really, REALLY didn’t want another Trump term.

    I hate capitalism and capitalists. I hate theism and theists. I want both gone from my life. I hate the stupid system and want to see it replaced before I die. I’ll even go as far as to say that I hate America: Land of the greed, home of the breathtakingly stupid. That said, I stand a better chance of living under the two-faced, status-quo-loving Dems than I would if Trump were back in office.

    Even if Biden were a drooling, senile, incompetent, I would vote for him again, I’d fucking hate it, but I’d do it.

    There, you two-faced centrist fucks in the audience happy? Or do I have to sing the praises of Dear Leader Joe too?

  10. Akira MacKenzie says

    And as I wrote my post, I learned that the SCOTUS just made the President a god-king.

    We’re fucked.

  11. Walter Solomon says

    As I said, Biden is the only choice but he had one goal, show that he’s cognitively healthy, and he failed that goal. This has nothing to do with Trump’s tactics. Biden struggled to even finish a sentence in a debate where the mics are muted.

  12. says

    I see we’ve mastered the “denial” stage of grief. Biden isn’t a senile old man who was very clearly sundowning on stage! Trump didn’t just run rings around Biden despite all the Democratic-leaning media stories over the last few years about how Trump’s mental state is deteriorating! This doesn’t clearly imply that the White House is spending hours every day being effectively run by unelected handlers! We can get the young and minorities to turn out for a pro-cop, pro-genocide candidate who very blatantly should be in a nursing home! It wasn’t totally obvious long before he even got the VP slot that Biden’s best-before date was sometime in the 1980s!

    Keep that up. Next you can get mad at me for pointing out the obvious, and then when you finish the “anger” stage — because you sure as hell aren’t going to get mad at Biden for running in 2020 despite his age, or at the party for backing him despite his political history — you can move on to the “bargaining” stage by trying to convince the public that Biden will totally do all the stuff he promised to do in 2020 and then very conspicuously did not even try to do (take Covid seriously, cut fossil fuels instead of massively increasing them, stop putting “kids in cages”, etc.). Heck, you’ll promise that this time you really will hold his feet to the fire and make him stop collaborating with the Israeli genocide at a cost of billions of dollars. Really! You promise! And then when that doesn’t work — because, frankly, nobody with a functioning brain will ever believe in the Democrats again; that ship has not just sailed, it’s made the return journey and set off again — you can get depressed, and then finally accept the loss and get to work fundraising for the Democrats for 2028, because that’s the really important thing when the Democrats once again screw up in the name of chasing right-wing votes and lose everything to the Republicans. I can hardly wait to see the e-mails asking for money from the same Democrats in Congress who just sided with Republicans to hide Palestinian casualty numbers! Fun! No doubt they’ll find a candidate who’s even further to the right — maybe an actual Republican this time, since they love appeasing them so much.

  13. John Morales says

    I see we’ve mastered the “denial” stage of grief.

    When did you achieve yours, Vicar the singular?

    Keep that up.

    Be yourself!

  15. rrhain says

    And exactly who is this phantom you will vote for instead of Biden?

    You realize that they would have no campaign money? It’s all gone to Biden and he can’t give it to anybody else. They haven’t been campaigning. They have no delegates.

    If you don’t like Biden, where were you 20 years ago to vote for someone who would be able to run now? There’s a reason Republicans come out to vote for every election and for every race. The City Councillor you vote for today is tomorrow’s State AG who then goes on to Governor and then runs for President. It takes years of work and requires us to vote in every election, every race, every time, always to keep the Republicans out of power. The primary is where you get to vote your heart but the general is where you MUST vote to protect what you’ve gained.

    So feel your feelings about how you think Biden’s a disappointment.

    And get over it.

    Because he’s been the most successful President in our lifetimes and if you can’t get behind that, then pretend you care about your own self-interest and protect what you’ve gained under him.

    He isn’t senile. He isn’t sundowning. Young voters and minorities are behind Biden. In fact, that was the same nonsense we had four years ago. Has everybody forgotten all the stories about how Biden had no chance to win the nomination and he should just drop out…and then South Carolina happened. And all the pundits were outraged that the electorate of SC should choose Biden.

    The BLACK electorate of SC.

    See, this is nothing more than warmed over white supremacy and racism: How dare Black people decide who the candidate ought to be! Because that’s what allowed Biden to win the nomination and the Presidency: The Black vote. The Democratic candidate for President hasn’t won the White vote in more than 50 years. The only reason the Democrat ever wins is because the non-White vote in general and the Black vote in particular come out to elect the Democrat. If the White vote were to be anywhere near what the non-White vote is, the Republicans would vanish as a party.

    And sure enough, the Black vote isn’t abandoning Biden.

    How dare they not go along with your oh-so-objective analysis?

    How strange that this “senile” guy managed to troll the Republicans into publicly declaring to not cut Social Security or Medicare. How weird that he was able to make such a successful speech with Obama just a few days before and in Raleigh the day after.

    And let’s not even try to pretend that this was the “worst” debate ever. Someone has forgotten Obama’s first debate against Romney or Reagan’s 1984 performance.

    Since we know that winning the debate doesn’t guarantee a win (H. Clinton, Gore, Mondale), why the call for suicide?

    Get the everliving F over yourself. Before you open your yap again, ask yourself this question:

    Is what you are about to say going to help defeat TCF?

  17. Pierce R. Butler says

    markmcglone @ # 7: I remember a time when telling a truckload of lies in a political debate was embarrassing and people would be talking about how badly you did, and your campaign would come out afterwards with all kinds of explanations of what you really meant to say.

    You must go way back, then: Remember in ’80, when Pres. Carter let Reagan’s lies slide during their debate, in confidence that the networks and newspapers would call him out on at least the most egregious bullshit – and how they in turn left that job to the crickets?