Shouting and blinking
God this is brutal. The Telegraph on Biden:
“Anyway” is a word that is constantly being used by Mr Biden – seemingly when he senses he is starting to lose track of what he is saying.
The US president sometimes uses it as a filler, giving himself time to marshal his thoughts before returning to the subject. More disconcertingly, he often uses it to change subject abruptly or trail off altogether.
…
Mr Biden uses “look” in a similar manner to “anyway” – to throw himself a lifeline when he cannot remember how a sentence is meant to end.
The tactic, if not elegant, puts a stop to the long silences that marred his debate performance and stops him wandering up a rhetorical blind alley.
In a recent NBC News interview, he was asked about his “first reaction” to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“My first reaction was, “My God. This is –” Mr Biden said, and promptly lost track of the sentence. “Look, there’s so much violence now and the way we talk about it.”
He went on to use the word repeatedly in the interview while being pressed about his comments on putting Trump in a “bullseye”.
“I was talking about focus on – look,” he said, blinking rapidly and holding out his hands as if trying to physically grasp his answer. “The truth of the matter was what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trump’s agenda.”
…
But recently his speech has become less distinct, as he slurs his words and mumbles to the point where it is impossible to work out what he is saying.
In his NBC News interview, this happened when he was asked whether he would drop out of the race if he repeated his disastrous debate performance.
“What happened…” Mr Biden said before tailing off. NBC’s transcribers gave up at that point, marking the rest of the sentence “INAUDIBLE”.
…
At the Nato press conference, he suddenly became animated by the subject of school shootings, which had not even been mentioned by his questioner.
“More children are killed by a bullet than any other cause of death,” he shouted in an apparent fury, making stabbing motions with one hand while the other clenched his lectern.
His voice raised and brows tightly knitted together, he continued: “The United States of America. What the hell are we doing?” A few seconds later, he clenched his fist and waved it in the air.
…
Abrupt changes in volume have become a hallmark of Mr Biden’s speeches.
While he is prone to suddenly start shouting, at other times he will break into an exaggerated stage whisper without warning.
The habit is more common in press conferences than set-piece speeches, where the president seems to be suggesting to reporters that – even though up on stage with a microphone – he is confiding in them.
The effect can be slightly eerie, however. Unfriendly news outlets have dubbed it the “creepy whisper”.
He stares a lot.
In his first presidential debate with Trump in 2020, Mr Biden barely looked at his opponent and treated him as an irritating side-show.
While the Republican hectored, heckled and interrupted him, the Democrat stuck to his scripted remarks, addressing them to the studio audience or speaking directly to the camera.
The positions were reversed in their latest showdown in June. Mr Biden spent much of the night in profile as he turned over to stare at Trump, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in a permanent expression of befuddlement.
…
Recently, the Democrat has developed a habit of appearing to stare off blankly into space at public events.
At a “Juneteenth” concert in the grounds of the White House, Mr Biden appeared frozen, grinning vaguely while his arms stuck rigidly at his side. The impression was likely not helped by his spinal arthritis.
He appeared wide-eyed in a recent NBC News interview, as he defended himself from accusations of cognitive decline.
“My mental acuity’s been pretty damn good,” he insisted, sliding out of his chair towards interviewer Lester Holt, while staring at him unblinkingly. “I’ve gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time.”
And then there’s blinking.
A key sign that Mr Biden is struggling to recall something is that he will blink rapidly when he is trying to respond.
He spent much of the presidential debate struggling to dredge up various facts and figures, blinking constantly as he cast his mind back to practice sessions at Camp David.
…
During his NBC News interview, he blinked rapidly at the start of virtually every question as he tried to marshal his thoughts.
“The truth of the matter was what I guess I was talking about at the time was there’s very little focus on Trump’s agenda,” he said at one point, blinking 17 times in the space of a few seconds.
Brutal.
I cannot fathom how anyone can seriously say that Biden should not withdraw from the race (or that he should not immediately resign).
They are going to hack Biden to bits. Then, no matter who takes his place, all Trump has to say is, “You saw how they treated Biden.You saw how Democrats treat their own. If they win, just imagine how they’ll treat you.”
The truth? Yeah, Biden is too old, but at least he’s a decent man. Trump is also too old, he’s not a decent man. If I could vote in the US elections I’d vote for Biden’s corpse over Trump alive and fit. Note also how seldom the US press report Trump falling asleep in public events. Note how the press routinely reports either Trumps official printed remarks or a highly sanitised version of his speeches. If they reported his speeches verbatim the playing field might not just be levelled but re-graded.
The GOP and Trump campaign have already outlined that if/when Biden withdraws they will deluge States where primaries went in his favour with lawsuits. Sure, they might loose those, but it will take months, they will control the narrative, and all Dem efforts will be diverted to that rather than the campaign. Even putting that aside, the edge of the Dems that are publicly talking about Biden stepping aside are already eating themselves and their cause. trying to invent processes on the fly that don’t conform to the established rules and processes for this cycle? Not only legal challenges abounding from multiple sources, but split camps and toy tossing on the horizon. Most of that talk seems to be an attempt to exclude Harris. Good luck getting the required turnout if you dump the sitting VP who also happens to be a woman of colour.
Victory for the Dems is possible. Swallow hard, campaign hard. Vote, and make sure everyone who can vote does. At the moment they’re melting down without a fight. It’s worth noting that this day back in the Romney/Obama fight, Romney was way ahead in the polls. Trump is around +2 in critical State polls. People have already factored in that Biden is a walking corpse and made their peace with it.
Yeah, Biden is a decent man. But he’s not qualified to be president anymore.
Yet again, the conversation is being shaped by conservatives and the Dems are playing defence. The major media outlets are in the hands of conservative millionaires, demonstrated best by the ghoulish Murdoch rags. They play favourites. If there was the same attention given to Trump, the conversation would be about how unfit they both are, but instead we see the lapses and flubs of one candidate and not the other, despite having a large range of mental glitches of his own.
The media chooses the story, the Dems panic and discuss the story, the media reports on the Dems discussing the story, the Dems discuss it more and more, the discussions are reported on again… they bounce off each other and the end result is magnification of the story chose by the media. The talking heads and political reporters and politicians comment on and react to the story, making it self-sustaining, and the end result is the downfall of Biden.
Meanwhile, Trump carries on, bumbling almost as much in his speech to almost no attention. The Reps have never cared about holding their candidate to any standard so it just doesn’t matter to them.
As the old saying has it, a week is a long time in politics. If Biden were to ride off into the sunset, the commentariat and the Murdochracy would make the most they could of it for about a week, and then it would be stale news and time to move on. But Biden clearly deems himself irreplaceable. His ego is clearly getting in the way.
For the sake of the ego of a declining old man, America is likely to be saddled with probably the greatest political egotist since Mussolini, and with sympathies to match. But Harris can still save the day. She must have been chosen to be VP on the basis of proven political skills. She did not just come from nowhere.
So Biden vs Trump looks to me like a lay-down misere. On the other hand, Harris vs Trump is a whole different ball game.
A curated and edited collection of Trump’s bumblings and faux pas could also be easily created. But the Democrats continue to play defense and are not letting the debate and Biden’s every little flaw that’s publicized simply pass through the news cycle. This is what Trump is good at, moving on and letting his lies and corruption be forgotten under the next big “newsworthy” thing. Trump doesn’t have to campaign on his being a better candidate than Biden, not that this was ever true, but right now the Democrats themselves along with the media are doing that work for him. Trump’s phony ‘call for unity’ at the convention underlines this. Trump doesn’t want to appear worried, and if Biden is going to win, the Democrats are going to have to rally around Biden and give him something to worry about. Either that or rally around someone else, and quick.