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Some of the latest Biden-camp excuses coming up seem plainly and on their face delusional. I'm paying close attention to who is saying what, using what words, to see their degree of participation in this farce. The obvious logical implications of these claims are, well, obvious.
Exhibit 0: Biden himself talked about his debate the next day. He said:
Are we supposed to be impressed about telling right from wrong? That he knows how to do the job he's been in for four years? These are not reasons to be elected President again, they are basic pre-requisites. For that matter, "speaking smoothly" and "walking" might actually be core requirements as well.
Exhibit 1: He traveled too much before the debate. He did go on some global travel, but then spent 11 days at Camp David afterward preparing and recovering. But who on earth takes a whole week and a half to recover and is still at the point where he, as he himself said at a recent fundraiser, almost fell asleep on stage? Even on its face, that's worrying. This is not an excuse, it is a condemnation.
Exhibit 2: Biden struggles after 4 p.m.. Staffers say that he really does everything between 10 and 4. Six useful hours is, on its very face, a very worryingly short amount of time to not "make verbal mistakes and become tired". The debate was at 9pm local time. But the job of President isn't really seen as a part-time gig! If I said to you, "yeah my grandpa has six good hours, but after that he gets tired and makes a lot of mistakes" I wouldn't go "great, let's put him in charge of the country for four years and hope that that window of time doesn't shrink too much". This is not an excuse, it is a condemnation.
Exhibit 3: It was "preparation overload". Okay, fine, some candidates self-destruct for no reason on the debate stage, or lean too hard on canned phrases (Marco Rubio I'm looking at you). But usually this is limited to a few occurrences. Biden was consistently off all night and responded to comments Trump was expected to make, but did not yet make, on at least four separate occasions. If a candidate takes 11 days to prepare for one 90 minute stretch and still blows it, surely that says something about the candidate? That's like saying "I did poorly on the test because I studied too much". Like, it happens, but not to this extent. This is not an excuse, it is a condemnation.
Exhibit 4: It's hard to debate when the other person lies a lot, says Nancy Pelosi and others (though, credit due, just today she said whether it was a condition or episode is a fair and legitimate question). But a candidate lying in the debate should make your job easier, not harder, because even if the moderators don't fact-check, what's to stop you from doing so? Biden did at least once or twice, or tried to, so clearly it can work. Sure, you don't have notes per the rules, but surely if there are 20 false statements (per NYT's count) you can pick out at least a few with your week+ of prep. On its face, this is not a good excuse.
Exhibit 5: A columnist claiming replacing him would be undemocratic. Yes, he got votes in the primaries. However everyone knows that the party endorsed and supported him before other challengers even got going, which makes this argument eerily similar to the obvious horseradish of saying Iran is democratic because people vote (ignoring how candidates are selected). Furthermore, there's evidence the Biden team has withheld information and exposure to Biden on purpose, and as at least one media outlet likes to remind us, "democracy dies in darkness".
Sidenote, related: Here for example, you get stories about the insularity of his team recently. Corporate wants you to find the different between this picture:
...and this picture:
Pam: They're the same picture.
Okay, well to be fair, one is an intelligence briefing (Trump) about core national security issues and the other (Biden) seems to be more domestic political briefings (I think, from context), so the level of severity is actually quite different but... I'm still struck by the similarity.
tl;dr: We all know a debate is not the same thing as actual governing. But just like how excuses tell you hints about the character of the individual, I think the excuses given by the people around Biden give you hints about Biden, too. Good on the press for calling them like they are: excuses.
I'm going to be contrarian and say I thought Biden's debate performance was horrifying but I think it's still fine to run him if voters were like me and not like normal people.
I realize he looks terrible but is the President not being in peak fitness actually that important? Biden doesn't strike me as insane, or malevolent, or like he's so completely out of it that he'll launch nukes because he mistook the big red button for the toilet handle.
I'm probably too cynical but I think the President's job is probably a lot like a doctor's job in a hospital: the nurses all know more or less what the patient needs but they need the MD to make decisions. Sure you'd like a brilliant doctor like House for the truly difficult problems but any doctor that just did what the nurses told him to would probably make for an okay hospital. Biden probably spends his days picking from a set of reasonable proposals offered by his handlers. If he makes too many batshit decisions in a row too often he'll eventually get replaced.
I also don't think Trump has any edge on the mental side that would make up for the fact that he's him. Also his edge isn't great anyway, he's also incoherent, except he presents with speed freak energy. I wouldn't expect his judgment to be any better and he could just as likely start sundowning any day now as well.
It'd be sweet if they ran a Biden that was 20 years younger, but I still think he's better than Trump.
I wish. Take it from me that's not how it works, there's certainly a lot of rubberstamping involved where you need a Magic Signature™ for medicolegal and regulatory purposes, but a hospital de-facto run by the nurses would be a disaster in short order. It's not like rushing them through a year or two of training to proclaim them Nurse Practitioners with more autonomy particularly helps, the moment things go beyond the obvious and algorithmic, there's trouble.
I'm sure /u/Throwaway05 could say much the same.
Nurses are blue collar construction workers and physicians are architects. Yes one implements the vision of the other and can see patterns in what the other requests, but that doesn't mean they can safely do the planning. They do think they can however.
Not commenting if this has situational parallels lol.
Nurses, unlike construction workers, are usually not actual crackheads. Experienced and not drug addicted construction workers can and often do plan projects on their lonesome.
Yeah nurses can figure out basic things. That's the point. Basic.
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Sounds like Harvard and Yale needs to put together a "presidential science" master's program. People in the future will be horrified that politicians without presidential science degrees were allowed to be president.
We’re getting there with the Oxford PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) degree in the UK. Explicitly intended as a ‘preparing to govern’ degree.
https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-oxford-university-degree-that-rules-britain
Often criticised for being too wide-ranging and shallow, producing an elite who think they understand everything about everything.
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Teaching there could become the automatic next job of any new ex-president (as long as he was not removed by impeachment or 25th Amendment), and they would all give a different class.
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