Fiery, what fiery?
Biden is covering himself with glory.
Joe Biden lashed out at an Iowa town hall Thursday after a man suggested the former vice president helped his son get a sweetheart deal in Ukraine and was “selling access” like President Donald Trump does.
The fiery exchange with the man, who only identified himself as a non-Republican Iowa farmer, ended with Biden challenging him to a contest of push-ups, running or an IQ test before he yelled at him.
Brilliant. The age issue isn’t about doing push-ups, it’s about the likelihood of dying on the job. Ok it’s also about stamina and cognitive faculties and so on but it’s especially about that whole sell-by date thing. Biden is 77. He would turn 80 two years into his term if he were elected. That’s not ideal. I’m a geezer myself and that doesn’t stop me thinking geezers are not an ideal choice. Biden’s face lift could be seen as evidence that he knows that but doesn’t care enough to do the right thing.
And he has a hell of a nerve getting stroppy about the Hunter issue. It is an issue; he shouldn’t have let it happen; it’s an example of profiting from the office and we don’t need more of that in the Trump era.
How in the world is this the front runner?
As someone pointed out on Twitter: if (e.g.) Elizabeth Warren challenged a hostile voter to an IQ test, her campaign would be over the next day amid cries of elitism, unlikeability, “angry woman,” etc. Yet somehow Goofy Uncle Joe gets away with it. Which, hell, may be a reason to nominate him, if he’s really that Teflon-y.
Ah, Handsy Uncle Joe. First he was telling people that Bernie’s the candidate for them, then telling a man he should vote for Trump. Now he’s challenging people to IQ push-ups?
That he’s the frontrunner is a testament to the shittiness of our national media.
Unless you are of the opinion that such was already established when Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016.
Indeed. Gotta make sure to use ‘a’ and not ‘the’ before testament.
I think it’s more a testament to the shittiness of Americans on average…
He’s a good strategic choice to win over the racist fucksticks of the Rust Belt and motivate black voters due to his Obama ties.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time Biden has challenged a voter to an IQ test. Way back in his 1988 run, he got into an argument with a voter and declared that “I have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect, and I’d be delighted to sit down and compare…”
This was in response to a NH voter’s question about Biden’s education. (It’s possible that the voter was just asking about Biden’s education policy, but the record is unclear.) Biden flipped his lid and ranted about how he had graduated with three degrees (false), went to law school on scholarship (partial scholarship), graduated near the top of his class (nope). Incidentally, Biden got himself in trouble in his first year of law school for… wait for it.. plagairism (the same thing that derailed his ’88 campaign).
There’s a video clip of the IQ statement on YouTube; the rest is sourced from Ben Cramer’s excellent book on the 1988 campaign, What It Takes
Funny, because someone else who does that “My IQ is SO BIG” nonsense is…Trump.
Blood Knight in Sour Armor
That, I think is the real problem with the Democrats, its as Machiavelli put it:
Or to put it another way – the Democratic Party has pushed so hard towards this sort of centrist “we can appeal to the other side” thing that they’ve lost a lot of what appeal they once had. It is often better to pick a side.
The line I thought that summed up best why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 was this from Chuck Schumer:
And that’s the exact same thinking with Biden. He is in the lead on “electability” – but I honestly think he’s the worst option the Dems could go with in this election.
If you’re going after Trump’s sexism, you can’t pick “Handsy uncle Joe”. If you’re going to go after Trump on racism, well, who bragged about working with segregationists during this primary? If you’re going to go after Trump on corruption – Hunter Biden pretty much killed that angle.
I mean what makes Biden electable is fundamentally that he has name recognition and is awful enough that you could imagine holding your nose at the ballot box, and I can’t see that unseating a presidential incumbent. The Dems need somebody people actually like, and the first step in finding that somebody is picking someone in the primary they actually like.
And I think Warren fits that bill. She’s not perfect, nobody ever is, but she’s at least got credibility for standing up for what she believes in, for not being the neutral party – and even for those who disagree with her, that’s something that is at least respectable in a way Biden just isn’t.
But of course the Democratic supporters have been trained to see some great virtue in compromise, even when it is both unnecessary and deeply undermining the party.
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