One House Democrat said he spoke for others in the wake of the president’s stunningly feeble debate performance on Thursday: “The movement to convince Biden to not run is real.”
The House member, an outspoken defender of the president, said that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should consider “a combined effort” to nudge President Joe Biden out of the race.
Crestfallen by the president’s weak voice, pallid appearance and meandering answers, numerous Democratic officials said Biden’s bet on an early debate to rebut unceasing questions about his age had not only backfired but done damage that may prove irreversible. The president had, in the first 30 minutes of the debate, fully affirmed doubts about his fitness.
A second House Democrat said “reflection is needed” from Biden about the way ahead and indicated the private text threads among lawmakers were even more dire, with some saying outright that the president needed to drop out of the race.
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Stayed mum? They actively fought against allowing anyone to hold primaries.
They did? That’s weird I remember voting in them just like I do every 4 years.
You weren’t paying attention. Many states banned anyone else from the ballot, even though there wasn’t cause for that by the rules.
There were no debates (Something that would have given Democratic party members time to decide if they thought Biden was electable.)
Some states were told their delegates wouldn’t count.
There was no fair Democratic Party primary. If you think there was you were either not paying attention, or you didn’t want a fair primary in the first place.
This problem is a problem of the Democratic Part{EDIT}y’s own making.
Even Russia puts the opposition on the ballot. That wasn’t an election it was a roll call.
I didn’t get to vote in a primary here in Florida
That’s cuz Biden ran unopposed.
So that’s the point that DancingBear was making and I was reinforcing- as Democratic voters, we were not presented with a choice this cycle
You can generally vote in primaries every year where one is needed, not just every four years fyi, if you’re in to voting and all.
We’re pretty clearly talking about presidential primaries here buddy.
Sure but you specifically mentioned it so I wanted to say we can vote in primaries outside of presidential elections
Thank you for your pivotal contribution to the conversation.
Anything I can do to help with your circle jerk
That’s the point - they closed ranks and kept riding the Biden train whilst quietly hoping that no one would notice it was in danger of coming off the rails.
https://theintercept.com/2024/06/28/biden-debate-dnc/
But we did hold primaries and Biden won in a landslide
Putin also wins by a landslide. It’s easy to do if you ban all the competition.
Nobody noteworthy was competing and all of the elections were landslides. I understand wanting to go through the motions in all states, but it really made zero difference.
Nobody noteworthy? “Going through the motions”? I guess democracy is just like making love with some kind of boring spouse? Okay, fine by me just don’t blame me when I leave the presidential option blank in November if Biden and Trump are the only two options on the ballot. But I do live in a blue state, Jesus H Christ thank god I can vote my conscious.
Weird, my conscience is to vote against the corrupt, fascist, rapist with a grudge against America. After dealing with Trump’s presidency and the aftermath, I can’t even imagine not voting for Biden. And I’m in a red state, so my vote definitely doesn’t matter.
Well before this we had neoliberals I guess so…. But yes vote… even if you have to leave it blank, vote your conscious…… in a red state I don’t think I could live there, but vote regardless
Mmmmm, yea…. Mmmkay. No debates, no media coverage, rarely allowing any primary candidates on corporate media, I’m gonna have to give your statement a mostly false
He has never sounded like that before and he has the record to show that he can do the job. Republicans tried to say he was on drugs because they heard him actually speak at the State of the Union.
There was no reason to expect him to sound like he did. If they do the second debate, I hope he doesn’t try to recall every single statistic and just stick to the big points. But Trump might just not debate like he did in the primaries. In fact, it would be stupid to give Biden a chance to recoup.
Biden has been conspicuously avoiding speaking at unscripted public encounters for quite a while now, though, and reading from an autocue at SotU is a far cry from having to react on the fly and put together coherent arguments in response to moderator questions and Trump’s lies during a debate. I have the feeling Biden’s staff knew full well that the debate was going to be rough going into it.
I don’t think they were expecting this at all. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had him recite such specific information. You could tell he was flustered. If they knew it was going to be like this, I think they would have done a completely different strategy.
I think the cold threw him off and they couldn’t pivot strategy. It should have been a focus on his image from the start. A few times where he laughed at Trump he looked good. In the after party he even sounded completely fine. That should have been the goal of the debate instead of reading receipts.
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“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
I think the cold legitimately threw him off. Not that he was feeble from the cold. Just that it made him more easily flustered and he snowballed.
I’ve also had interviews that I was “prepared for.” But trying to remember all the information at the moment was difficult. Hell, I was told one of my interviews was the best they had ever seen, and the last question had me flustered until I finally came up with my talking points after a minute.
That’s what it felt like to me, a flustered man in a bad interview that snowballed.