Suddenly teetering
Yeah good luck with that “damage control” thing.
With countless calls and a rush of campaign events, the president’s team began a damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors.
But pressure and pleading aren’t going to turn back the clock. They’re not going to make Biden any younger or sharper or more robust.
Later on Friday, top White House aides worked the phones, with Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, calling the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to check in, according to a person familiar with the call. And by the afternoon, the Biden campaign had transformed its weekly all-staff call into a virtual pep talk to dispel any doubts creeping into the campaign offices in Wilmington, Del., and beyond.
Well they should stop doing that. This is like racing toward the middle of a bridge that has just broken in half.
This isn’t a damn football game or sheep-shearing contest. This is whether we do or do not have Donald Trump destroying everything for another four years. Everybody needs to put ego aside and focus.
But they won’t, I suppose. Maybe they can’t. Maybe it just isn’t possible.
The 48 hours after the debate were a frenzied campaign within a campaign to save Mr. Biden’s suddenly teetering candidacy, a multiday damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors to stand by the president, the party’s presumptive nominee.
But they shouldn’t. The grim reality is that age hasn’t slowed Trump down but it definitely has slowed Biden down, and everyone can see that, and it’s not going to work out well.
I have no idea how they could go about swapping someone else for Biden, but if they don’t, we’re on the slide into hell.
“The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”
— Monique Pressley
What does “run the country” even mean?
I have no idea who Monique Pressley is.
Pathological and sociopath are redundant.
What a president does once elected is one thing and getting elected is another. If Biden turns out to be unelectable then we’re stuck with the lying sadistic self-dealing monster.
Should I be screaming at my Congress critters? Is that likely to help in anyway? ‘Cuz I honestly don’t know.
All this stuff is seeming unavoidable; I was really hoping the Republicans would select anyone other than him because the Dems can’t have the presidency forever. Can no one do anything?
‘Run the country’ is what Biden has been doing for 3 and a half years – you know, the appointing judges, passing legislation kinda thing.
Yes Ophelia, not knowing who someone is is reason enough to dismiss them, she’s a woman anyway amirite?
So what if you think two terms are redundant, it’s Trump we’re talking about.
Democrats do the panic routine everytime they hit a bump, they’ve been doing it for 40 years. Replacing Biden will just give the Presidency to Hair Furor.
And not replacing Biden won’t?
Blood Knight – I don’t know either. I suppose I think ideally Biden should step back and The Perfect Candidate should step up – but I have no idea who that would be. I think we’re screwed.
starskeptic part 2 – Ok but a comment that is nothing but a not particularly brilliant remark by a random remark-maker is not much of an argument. She’s right that governing is far more important than debating, but the reality is that the debates are important to campaigns. I don’t think they should be, but the fact is they are. Of COURSE Biden does the governing better than Trump but that’s no help if he bombs out.
Dems cannot win by claiming Biden is not young, because that is an obvious lie. Yet Biden is still a better candidate than Trump, by far, because Trump too has his own moments of confusion (sadly not evident in that debate), and was far less knowledgeable to begin with.
And there is always the backup represented by the VP, who seems …actually, I have no idea what she is like. But I’m very much in favour of Biden becoming president and then having to retire over the alternative.
Biden is a better president than Trump, of course. But candidate? In the sense of most likely to win? That’s very much in doubt; that’s the problem.
I don’t think it’s too late to pick another candidate. It would be weird, but what isn’t? Trump weirded everything.
Find someone smart who’s not beholden to the identitarians and not afraid to speak his or her mind.
Am I dreaming? I’m dreaming again, aren’t I.
Yes, but we might as well.
The lesser of two evils is still evil, and once again the options boil down to “do you want it in the head or the stomach?”
I think that most voters are smart enough to realize that it does not really matter whether Biden is fit enough to run the country right now. His visible decline in the last 4 years makes it quite clear that voting for him as president means voting for Harris because he will not be able to do the job another 4 years. I suspect that secretly, democrats were planning for him to step down in 2025/2026, passing the job to Harris and giving her time to get on the good side of voters. Sadly, unless Trump has a mental breakdown with obvious dementia, this is not going to happen now.