Presidential Debate Thread

[Edgy MD]

Has anybody expressed certainty that a replacement ticket would beat the former president? I don't think any path leads to certain victory. It's a question of what's for the best.

Marathon gets my vote.

[MFS62]

Mine, too.
Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Biden campaign official: He’s not dropping out

https://www.aol.com/news/biden-campaign ... 38115.html

[batmagadanleadoff]

Maybe Biden could fix this mess with a humongous ad campaign destroying Trump's debate, if not in real time, then after the fact. Better late than never. I mean, it was wall to wall bullshit.

[whippoorwill]

I don’t think Biden has been a stellar president and it’s disappointing that he will be the democrat candidate but it would be devastating for him to pull out now unless for health reasons.

Locally, my county has twice as many republicans as democrats and I wonder why we bother to even put out candidates for higher offices. The Democratic candidates we have this November are appalling and I will not campaign or vote for them, let alone contribute money.
We used to fill our yard with Democratic political signs because it was just good clean fun but not anymore.

Finding good political leaders has become a fruitless search in this country and the future doesn’t look good when you scan for younger, honest, and eager candidates that aren’t just in it for power.

[metirish]

Joe comes out swinging, he sounds like he's fighting a cold or whatever

[MFS62]

If he's going to drop out, it should be as soon as possible. If you bail out of a burning plane, you pull the rip cord on your parachute before you hit the ground.

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

[Lefty Specialist]

I don’t think Biden has been a stellar president and it’s disappointing that he will be the democrat candidate but it would be devastating for him to pull out now unless for health reasons.

Locally, my county has twice as many republicans as democrats and I wonder why we bother to even put out candidates for higher offices. The Democratic candidates we have this November are appalling and I will not campaign or vote for them, let alone contribute money.
We used to fill our yard with Democratic political signs because it was just good clean fun but not anymore.

Finding good political leaders has become a fruitless search in this country and the future doesn’t look good when you scan for younger, honest, and eager candidates that aren’t just in it for power.

Well, don't give up yet. Biden had a bad night. Trump has had a bad life. And Biden has done a LOT more for America in his term that Trump did in his. Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? 4 years ago I was hoarding toilet paper. Let's not forget.

There are lots of people who'll be competing in 2028 on the Democratic side, and none of them are geriatric. Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom and your own governor Josh Shapiro will be in the mix in 2028. Plenty of others, too. This of course presupposes that Trump hasn't banned elections by then.

Yeah, the debate sucked, but I'm getting over it. Obama's first debate against Romney was a disaster, too. And most people thought Hillary won all three of her debates against Trump. So it was hard to watch but it doesn't change the fact that Trump is an lying asshole who must be defeated.

[Bob Alpacadaca]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opi ... 391737613d

New York Times editorializes that Biden needs to step aside.

It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.

The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.

[metirish]

I'm trying to find a link to the NYT Editorial boards article calling for convicted felon Trump to drop out , can't find it

[Bob Alpacadaca]

There is plenty of criticism of Trump in the editorial. They are saying, essentially, that Biden needs to step out to prevent Trump from winning.

[whippoorwill]

There are lots of people who'll be competing in 2028 on the Democratic side, and none of them are geriatric. Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom and your own governor Josh Shapiro will be in the mix in 2028. Plenty of others, too. This of course presupposes that Trump hasn't banned elections by then.

I hope you are right, but why wait?

[ashie62]

LBJ abdicated March 1968. It is widely believed that this delay cost Hubert Humphrey the election

I can't in good vote for either.Biden or Mango

[Lefty Specialist]

LBJ abdicated March 1968. It is widely believed that this delay cost Hubert Humphrey the election

I can't in good vote for either.Biden or Mango

Not voting for either is a vote for Trump. Enjoy the Fascism.

I'm sorry, but this really frosts my begonias. Every election is a choice between two people you can find fault with. It's always the Lesser of Two Evils. Sitting it out because you're not happy, or wasting your vote on a vanity candidate because you want to 'protest' or be purer than the driven snow is poppycock.

That's the attitude that got us Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016. We all need to put our Big Boy and Big Girl pants on and do what's best for the country. Biden's too old? Yes! He walks slow and stutters? Yes! But Trump is an existential threat, and people need to wake up to that.

(dismounts from soapbox)

[Edgy MD]

Trump voters tell me the opposite. That not voting for either is a vote for Biden.

I don't believe either of those statements are true, and I'm totally a big boy. My pants are terrific. The talk of the town.

[MFS62]

My pants are terrific. The talk of the town.

LOL!
Are you still wearing those Manhattan College green pants?


Later

[whippoorwill]

Prolly those red pants

[Lefty Specialist]

Trump's voters aren't disillusioned. They don't care about ***** grabbing, sexual assault, fraud, 34 criminal convictions, the fact that he's 78 and overweight, that he lies like other people breathe, fomenting an insurrection, or anything else. They're not saying, "Oh my goodness, he's not perfect, I may not vote for him." They're saying 'give me more'.

Then there are the young people who say "he's supporting Netanyahu, I'll withhold my vote, that'll show Biden."

Or the Arab Americans in Michigan who don't like the war in Gaza either, who could tip the balance to a guy who LITERALLY BANNED MUSLIMS from this country.

Or the people who are pissed that Biden hasn't helped them with college loans, despite his trying a bunch of things that get blocked by activist judges. I could go on.

If there's anything the last two elections have shown us, it's that it only takes a few people to swing things one way or another. And all the handwringing is on one side. I'm hoping sensible people come to their senses and vote. As Biden says (too often) "Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative."

Sorry, but I really get worked up over this.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Sorry, but I really get worked up over this.

Rightfully so. And don't apologize.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Trump voters tell me the opposite. That not voting for either is a vote for Biden.

It's all relative. For someone who knows precisely what kind of level of batshit craziness QAnon is and loathes Trump and knows damn well what the terrible consequences of a second Trump presidency will mean (and guess who the fuck I'm looking at), a vote for Jill Stein or Elie Mystal or a write-in vote for David Wright or Tom Seaver or Uncle Fester is a vote for Trump.

This is a binary choice. An either or. Next year, we are either going to have a Democratic President or a Republican President.

Every Presidential candidate who does not belong to one of the two major political parties has a zero percent chance of winning the next Presidential election. Zero. None.

[Frayed Knot]

And just to return to my comments earlier in the thread. I have no intention of NOT voting for Biden if the contest does indeed come down to the presumptive two candidates. I just have doubts as to whether he can pull it off and the Dems -- out of politeness?, out of pretending that the king actually has clothes then he must have them? -- have put themselves behind the eight ball in being in a position to do anything about it. And I think that acting as if Thursday was simply 'a bad night' ignores that this has been coming along for years: the blank stares, the word salads that make Bush (pere & fils) penchant for syntax-murdering gaffs look scholarly, the number of times he's claimed over the last few years that son Beau died in Iraq, etc. 'We beat Medicare' (Huh?)

As Bucket mentions, if they pull off a switch the right way it could be a big boost.
Difficult? Sure. Who? I dunno. I likely wouldn't start with Kamala, being Veep doesn't give her special automatic line of succession privileges, but there's gotta be a better candidate than the one they're propping up there now. Fewer negatives are what they need to defeat Agent Orange and they should have been working on this for the last two years instead of having the need for it plastered all over national TV less than five months from E-day.

[Lefty Specialist]

And that's the crux of it. If this were to be done, it should have been done a year ago. Trump was definitely going to be the candidate by then, and they'd passed all the stuff they were going to pass at that point, given a Republican House. He could have passed the baton to Kamala, who still would have had to run the primary gauntlet against Newsom, Whitmer and others. But it would have been an organized plan. Not 'oh he had a bad debate, let's pull the plug'. That's panic talking.

Let's not forget he gave a State of the Union where he was on fire. And he knows more about being a good president in his little pinky than Trump has in his entire body. Absent a major health event, he's on the ballot in November. He's not backing out, and no one's going to make him.

Also, not that I like polls, but the Morning Consult poll had Biden actually gaining a point on Trump AFTER the debate. So go figure.

[Frayed Knot]

And that's the crux of it. If this were to be done, it should have been done a year ago.

Sure it should have.
But to say that we should have done it earlier but can't do it now is the equivalent of saying that:
- we have to go through with this Bay of Pigs invasion because we're already put so much planning into it
- we can't pull out of Vietnam now because of how deep we're already invested
- we've already agreed to trade Scott Kazmir so just because we've lost nine straight and should no longer be in 'Buy Now' mode doesn't mean we should change our strategy now

It comes down to are the Dems better off:
- going with Biden because they've stuck with him this long even as his slippage has become increasingly embarrassing and obvious?
OR
- do they pivot to someone else before it's officially too late?

I vote for choice B

[batmagadanleadoff]

I don't know how good those analogies are, being steeped in all kinds of hindsight. It's pretty easy to say today, for example, that the Bay of Pigs invasion should have been canceled or revamped. But nobody knows how this will play out.

Replacing Biden now might make things even worse. Any candidate coming in at the convention will have tremendous, maybe even insurmountable disadvantages, that Biden will never have.

On another note, I can't even believe this conversation. The other's guy's a sociopath who commits an outrage every single fucking day. Nobody could keep up with his litany of scandals because there's always a new one to replace the most recent one and so in the end, nobody can focus on any particular outrage because there's so many of them. It's like Josef Goebbels' theory about killing Jews: (paraphrasing) "If you kill 10 Jews, it's an international scandal. But if you kill a million, hardly anyone will even believe it, because the number's so outrageously large."