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So, by now everyone has heard about Biden's lackluster performance in the debate.
I don't want to talk about Biden. I want to talk about the fact that everybody has heard about it. There has been very little effort to suppress it.
If CNN, the NYT, and Time Magazine, and the rest had all held ranks and denied everything, this would probably have blown over. Most people didn't even watch the debate. Those who did could be persuaded to remember it differently. The general public isn't reacting to the debate, they're reacting to the reaction to the debate. Let's face it, this isn't the first time Biden has had a senior moment in public. This was unusually public and unusually difficult to edit around, but it's just a difference in scope, not a difference in kind. The media could easily have put the spotlight on Trump's deranged rambling about abortion clinics murdering babies, or that time he said that under his Presidency America had all the H2O.
Instead, CNN started openly freaking out the moment the debate was over. Prominent Democrats were apparently sending frantic texts to prominent journalists even before it ended. The NYT is openly speculating about replacing Biden. Time Magazine's new cover shows Biden wandering off the page with the caption: 'panic'. They didn't have to do this.
What I find interesting about this isn't the fact that Biden made his biggest gaffe yet. What I find interesting is that everyone broke ranks at once.
That's not necessarily surprising. Nobody wants to be the last person trying to hold the line after everyone else has run away. Still, it was so fast it almost looked coordinated. Were prominent figures prepared for something like this to happen? Were certain powerful individuals thinking to themselves, 'If Biden really acts his age during the debate, we might get the chance to replace him'? Could this perhaps have been the reason that this debate was scheduled unusually early - scheduled, in fact, before the convention where Biden is expected to be formally nominated by the party? Perhaps to give them a reason to nominate someone else?
Even if it wasn't, I think it's obvious that a lot of people have been thinking about this for a long time. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have all suddenly found themselves on the same page.
In my paranoid mind, if we wanted to believe in a conspiracy line of thinking, I think a theory for the surprisingly unified harsh open acknowledgement of the emperor's clothes would be:
a. In the mainstream media's supreme narcissism and entitlement to (attempt) socially engineer, they believe as a gestalt that only they could save the Republic and the Democratic party system (for most of the MSM it's one and the same) by setting the narrative for the Democrats to force them to swap out Biden. In their mind, because the media can shape the public's mind at whim, they can force people to abandon Biden by smearing him, and thus force a swap. So they got in their backroom group chats and all agreed "this is the talking points memo."
b. The American Deep State is genuinely concerned about Trump. Actual, important people, lives are on the line, because if he gets elected he might start putting allies of theirs in legit jail in vengeance. Perhaps he really is a rogue free agent from the usual bread and circuses show with its vetted actors, and that's always been a concern. Similar to point a, but this presumes most of the MSM basically takes marching orders from entrenched shadow elites from the likes of the CIA or whatever. An order was given out that "Biden really can't be the one to win against Trump. We tried our best with him with this performance and it's still not enough. Force a swap now before it's too late - or we are fucked."
As an addition to b. While I don't fully believe it myself, a predictive test of this theory might be that said elite influencers will go full gun blasts against Trump and do something really nutty. Like actually sentence him to prison this coming July criminal trial sentencing. Again I don't believe this will likely happen, I'm betting on a more level headed slap on the wrist since the real goal was the prestige of calling Trump a convicted criminal, but I want to get it in writing for a still "you heard it hear first" rights - just in case.
Either way it's astounding to me this event is what finally made people acknowledge Biden's obvious mental decline. So much so it's weird and suspicious.
I think if they jail him they turn him into a martyr. Everyone would ask what did he do and what was the evidence. It won’t be east to explain.
Also I heard in NY you can basically appeal a jail sentence to a single appellate judge to put the sentence on hold if the judge thinks it’s likely that you win on appeal. You get to hand pick that judge. Trump has a good shot to win that and will then be able to say “see it was a witch hunt.”
No the only reasonable approach is a fine and probation (which of course also underscores the silliness of the whole thing).
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I think people like the NYT have been pretty explicit about what happened: Biden's age was a known issue to voters, the media was happy to simply...give him the benefit of the doubt in a variety of ways with the expectation that he'd clean it up at some point. Enough to get over the finish line.
He utterly failed to do that. So the issue blew up beyond anyone's control.
The media can't actually suppress something like this, it's been consistent in the polling. They can delay. They can trim. They can buy the guy time to study and perform so they don't have to deal with it (which is what happened with the State of the Union). But they can't kill the topic.
Biden shitting the bed not only made it impossible for them to do their jobs, it likely triggered a "we were all rooting for you!" frustration. They did their parts, after all.
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Even the maestros can't sweep something like this under the carpet. People saw it, those 30 second clips would've circulated around facebook and twitter, not to mention international news media. They can't exactly say it was Russian misinformation. They've tried to reframe it, 'oh it was a cold' 'oh it was because it was late in the day', 'Trump lied'... That's really only damage control. If they directly lied in such a blatant way it would be a major blow to their credibility.
Effective media work maximizes use of the truth. Take Russia Today: they mostly present true events that show them favourably or advance their favoured narratives: 'we dropped a big bomb on the Ukrainian town of New York' 'we blew up this drone' 'former colonial empires are doing stuff in Africa.'
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Preference cascades often look like coordinated action.
Another thing that often looks like coordinated action is coordinated action.
I kinda tend to agree with this. I don’t see how anyone in Biden’s orbit would be unaware of his mental state. And if they really wanted to get people behind getting him out, this seems like the best way to do so while maintaining the idea that they had no idea. And it also gives the public sympathy for Biden in a way that him just deciding to drop out would not. And it does protect the person replacing Biden seem less like someone pushing Biden aside and more like someone coming to the rescue.
The republicans need to hit them and say people knew about Biden for a long time but here we have the democrats again using undemocratic means to get what they want.
That would probably be the best response they could give. But then you’d open yourself up to calling it a conspiracy or kicking Biden while he’s down.
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This will be less obvious as time goes on so it's important to make explicitly clear: the betting markets didn't have Biden's probability of winning the election drop until after the debate.
I saw some headlines partway through the debate and immediately pulled up Manifold Markets to see if it was really as bad as the headlines made it sound. The red line was indeed spiking upward at that point. So I watched the debate later that evening.
So I guess it depends on which betting markets you were watching. Manifold in particular seemingly moved in realtime.
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No? I'm pretty sure it dumped after the, "if... we finally beat Medicare," line.
I read glassnosers comment as meaning "the drop didn't happen before the debate" not the difference between during/after.
I had that idea too, but it didn't seem to make any sense. No one would think the big swing in odds on June 27 occurred before the debate, but it is conceivable that one would think that it happened as a result of the debate reactions, not the debate itself. Indeed, this thread seems to be about the distinction between the debate itself, and the reaction to the debate.
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I feel like I've said this before, but it feels like the establishment has just kind of bluntly acknowledged Biden is going to lose and Trump will be presidents #45 and #47. In that context, 'holy shit Biden's too old' is probably just the default response to seeing that debate performance, and these people are both highly conformist and all on groupchats with each other.
What's remarkable in the left wing circles that I frequent is that "70% chance of Trump being President" is not far removed from "government agencies should be able to fine people without trial" and "courts should defer to whatever the appointed heads of federal agencies say".
Is that not just how the federal government operates?
Which one? And not any more.
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Not anymore (hypothetically)
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I don't think it was coordinated. It just seems to be human nature.
These things have happened before. In 1989, the dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was giving a public speech. Suddenly a single person started booing. And then another. Within a day, Romania was in revolt and four days later Ceaușescu had been tried and executed.
Tipping points can happen with staggering speed. Biden was the emperor who had no clothes, and suddenly as of Thursday, it's okay to talk about it.
From Romanian Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
The population, however, remained indifferent, only the front rows supporting Ceaușescu with chants and applause. His lack of understanding of events and inability to deal with the situation was again highlighted when, in an act of desperation, he offered to increase workers' wages by 200 lei per month and continued to praise the achievements of the "Socialist Revolution ", not realizing that another revolution was unfolding right in front of him.
"For a long time it was not known who "ruined" Ceaușescu's rally on December 21, 1989. Various characters appeared who claimed this credit. Now it is known that this fact is due to some groups of Timișoara residents who moved to Bucharest." [32]
Sudden movements from the periphery of the gathering and the sound of firecrackers turned the demonstration into chaos. Frightened at first, the crowd tried to disperse. Some of the participants in the meeting regrouped near the Intercontinental Hotel and started a protest demonstration that later became a revolution.
Subsequent attempts by the Ceaușescu couple to regain control of the crowd using formulas like "Hello, hello!" or "Stay quietly in your seats!" they remained without effect. The live television broadcast has been interrupted for the moment. A large part of the crowd went to the streets, the party activists, the members of the patriotic guards, the soldiers in civilian clothes, the most loyal people of the dictator remained in the square. After a few minutes, Ceaușescu was able to continue his speech, promising salary increases and pensions, then returned inside the CC building.
People who left the square were panicked, throwing flags and placards with slogans on the ground. Many of them regrouped in the streets adjacent to Palatului Square and began to shout anti-communist and anti-Austrian slogans
In short, it was all very much coordinated by groups of provocateurs setting off explosives with the specific aim of causing chaos and a general sense of uncertainty in the capital. Which should not be surprising, because in reality the revolution was a coup by the Party leadership in order to dispose of him and his family and seize power, with the help of the regular army, using false flag methods, with (at least) the tacit approval of the American and Soviet intelligence services, as his regime was by that time a nuisance for both superpowers and long outlived whatever usefulness it ever had.
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The context for that was that the rest of Eastern Europe was already in revolt.
If by 'revolt' you mean objectively peaceful political mass demonstrations, then yes. If we use the word in its normal everyday definition, Romania was the only example of a revolt in Eastern Europe in 1989.
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The context for Biden getting shivved is that he was already losing before the debate. If he was polling well the media wouldn’t have broken ranks.
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As a factual matter, all Democrats did not break ranks at once. The biggest ones have not broken, such as the head of the DNC, either Congressional main leader, etc. Most people saying things were still doing so anonymously. The fact Democrats did not have a plan B was well-known for months. Personally, I think that both the decision not to explore a plan B was both cynical as well as effective. If the whole thing were really planned, at least one major leader would have said something sooner.
As it currently stands, only a select few people can practically change Biden's mind: Harris (maybe), Jill (most effective), a few inner-circle staffers, and that's it. Maybe a larger revolt in the DNC offices.
Have any Democrats actually broken ranks? The only suggestion I've seen that Biden should step down is from the media and one article that cited three big donors (speaking anonymously). I haven't heard calls for him to drop out from anyone who matters.
A few advisor-types, including a former DNC head, and a handful of newspapers, but leadership ended up circling the wagons.
However, apparently there is still some vocal non-public movement among House Democrats, who are (rightly) worried that this is going to doom down-ballot efforts. A few of them have had "let's have a conversation" type quotes. At this point the biggest question is probably whether or not some House Dems decide to explicitly run on a "limit Trump's power" platform as opposed to a traditional "help me help Biden" platform or prefer it even over the more mild ignore-Biden, local-focus approach.
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The interesting thing is that there are people in this very thread who believe that the media will do an about face, fire those responsible, and switch to propping up Biden any day now. It really is two movies, one screen.
I don't know that there's a conspiracy to move the debate earlier. I'm not sure how the sausage is made, but it seems to me that the people setting the date of the debate could probably get Joe to step aside. Instead, some prominent gray eminences (e.g. Obama) continue to support Joe. We may be seeing a kind of power struggle in the party.
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This is the first general candidate debate I can ever remember that occured prior to the conventions. This was planned to rally support for removing Biden from the ticket to the rank and file.
The debate was so early because: a) Biden wanted to, related to b) the typical debate committee in charge for years was blown up, leaving both more flexibility and doubt, c) both candidates wrapped up their nominations way earlier than usual, d) mail-in ballots are an ever-growing thing and some states mail them quite early nowadays.
The first reason is the most interesting one, but we still have to take the others into account. This NYT article from May outlines three reasons for part a, Biden's preference. One, Biden was trailing in the polls and wanted to try and change the narrative as soon as possible. Two, they were worried he might have a bad performance and wanted to give him time to recover if so. Three, both Dems and Reps happened to want to make sure RFK Jr was shut out of the debate, and race overall. The earlier the better, for this purpose. This is pretty interesting and speaks to how even the big party leaders in both parties weren't sure if RFK would be a helpful spoiler or not for them.
So yes, it was early, and yes, a bad debate possibility was one of the reasons, but the other reasons are strong enough I could plausibly see the debate being held this early even if that were not a concern.
Limiting the debates to only two, however? That is probably due to Biden's age. Normally the one behind in the polls wants more debates, not less, as a pretty hard rule.
Nate Silver thinks the earliness is also age: give any bad impressions extra time to wear off.
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Both parties presumably have a shared cartel interest in maintaining a duopoly. They're effective enough in it that people just take it for granted, so it doesn't really come off as a joint mutual operation.
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Why would Biden go along with that?
I don't suspect anyone with his own interests has much power left.
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I guess he could run as an independent? By my understanding, Biden isn't entitled to the Democratic nomination, so if the party wants him gone, he's gone.
I mean why would Biden agree to debate early if a foreseeable consequence was that he would be couped.
In order to give any bad impressions extra time to wear off.
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Biden is an extremely arrogant, compulsive liar. He probably does genuinely think that he is saving democracy, that he is the only person who can beat Trump, that he has some unique geopolitical insight, etc.
Here's a clip from 1988 where Biden is basically just making shit up about his academic credentials and achievements on the fly, as a way to make some guy at a campaign stop look stupid: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D1j0FS0Z6ho
Here's a list of a bunch of things he plagarized, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/trump-campaign-press-release-copy-that-joe-bidens-long-record-plagiarism
There's also the recent amtrack lie.
He's a narcissist. He thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, thinks he's playing some complex manipulation game, and just makes random shit up all the time. Funnily enough, this is exactly what his compatriots accuse Trump of.
During the 2020 primary season, I was still clinging to my last shreds of belief in the Democratic Party’s ability to steady the ship of state and eject Trump in favor of a staid, professional, competent, technocratic Leader™️. (I was, until her candidacy was unceremoniously double-tapped in the back of the head by shadowy DNC insiders, genuinely feeling the Klomentum.)
So, when Joe Biden was installed as the nominee, I started pointing out to all my liberal friends just how much Biden resembled Trump in several quite unflattering ways. I showed that clip, among others, to people who for some reason had either failed to notice Biden’s tenuous (at times verging on hostile) relationship with the truth, or else misidentified it as the sort of jocular and harmless embellishment you’d expect from Grandpa telling you the fish he reeled in that one time was the size of a Ford Pinto.
No, I said, Joe Biden’s lies are just as often of the maliciously and vindictively self-aggrandizing and ass-covering variety. His ego is, if anything, even more fragile than Trump’s; blame it if you want on his struggles with a stutter growing up, or his insecurity about being a fairly working-class guy forced to deal with effete moneyed DC snobs for fifty years, but the man clearly has a massive chip on his shoulder about his perceived limited intelligence and Springer-esque family scandals, and he’s willing to say anything, no matter how outlandish, to try and pump up his own self-image. Add to that the obvious corruption and influence-peddling his immediate family members are involved in, likely with his direct and explicit involvement, and you’re talking about someone every bit as vulgar and un-Presidential as Trump, albeit with more finely-honed optical instincts and a wider network of enablers/brand managers. He’s Irish Catholic Trump, except rather than slapping his name on chintzy hotels, Biden has just been a stooge for Delaware-based credit card companies for his whole career, with a moonlighting side gig as the central hub of a family grift.
Klobuchar? She would have been awesome. What an alt-reality.
Can you tell me why you think she would've been awesome? This is a genuine question. I definitely preemptively disagree with you, but I'm not going to argue and your posts of the past make me think you're intelligent.
So, again, genuinely want to know.
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If he was incompetent, controlled, deceived, or otherwise making a bad decision.
I agree that there's no good reason, but this theory already requires that he's past his prime.
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