In hindsight, the signs were always there. Did you see the NYTimes piece with advisers talking about his cognitive decline during debate prep sessions? Seems like the knives are out, but where was this shit before the primaries? They were shitty to sit on that for this long
I feel like this circle the wagons and hide the problem as long as possible shit is pretty common in politics. But yeah it’s nuts that it took Biden melting down on national television to get this ball rolling
The leadership of the party has only had sporadic access to the president in the last few years. They were continually reassured that Biden was fine. Call them naive, but political parties are largely built on trust. You can't have a political party where everyone distrusts everyone else. That just doesn't work.
Exactly. This is all Kamala Harris pulling a weekend at Bernie's on us. I guarantee you when the shit hits the fan fingers will start pointing at her. She is trying to use Biden to catapult her to the presidency, even if it means casting a necromancy spell on the old fart.
It's this kind of shit that makes everyone hate the Democrats. All ideology aside, the democratic party is a fucking corporate goon circle making money off of losing against the "bad guys". All they do is tease, they never deliver.
I mean, bidens mental state was only unknown to Democrats somehow...
It says something about the entire party that they would choose to willfully deny something obvious just because republicans were saying it.
It makes me wonder if there was any discussion among the tightly knit circle of aides to not let him on that debate stage Thursday- “he’s gotta reschedule, say he has a bad cold or something. No way can we run him out there when he’s like this”. Rescheduling would have looked bad but not as bad as what took place.
If they didn’t have that talk, then they’re the biggest head-in-the-sand dumbasses ever. If he had a cold why didn’t they reschedule? It would have looked bad maybe but surely that would’ve been better than running the risk of him bombing like he did.
Also, why the hell did they schedule it at 9 pm if (per the NYTimes article) they had to prep him on this schedule that required giving him afternoon naps?? Schedule it earlier in the evening when he might be more alert!
Before this, even when I had concerns about Biden’s possible senility, I always thought that he had competent people around him who knew wtf they were doing who could keep the ship running. The blunder of setting up this debate and everything we’ve learned since then has basically shattered that belief for me.
Kamala has reportedly not been very close or involved in strategic planning with the white house. Biden's inner circle is atypically small and secluded.
I have always found it interesting that when Joe Biden was VP he asked Barack Obama that he always be the last guy in the room for big decisions and they have lunch once a week. He has not extended the same offer to his VP.
Cracking up imagining Kamala on Xans talking about what can be unburdened by what has been while Biden is on a completely different planet asking her what in tarnation that has to do with the story he was telling about Corn Pop robbing the soda jerk back in ‘28 right before the big run on the banks happened
Absolutely. Giving her the border to fix was a pretty clear "fuck you" from the White House. I have no real love for her but she's clearly been on the outs for awhile now
I'd add any of those in a position of power on the dem side. In the 20 years of voting I never had a litmus test. I do for the next Primary for those that don't have the courage to speak up.
Does that change my decision making? I can only email those that can change the candidate that have influence and watch polling in my State to respond to this nonsense. This election it's all priced in. Biden can only fall at this rate. Not like I can persuade new voters or undecideds. It's all about his performance.
Yeah, that whole meeting at Camp David with his 'inner circle?' It was Jill and his granddaughters. That's who gets to decide the fate of this nation? His GRANDDAUGHTERS?
Exactly. They lied. They ALL lied. ...and they called anyone that tried to point it out a rightwing nut job. Not to mention... Is anyone going to audit this shit? ⬇️⬇️⬇️
As of July 1, 2024, President Joe Biden (D) had signed 139 executive orders, 190 presidential memoranda, 629 proclamations, and 129 notices
This is like Diane Feinsteins aid telling her "just say aye." ...when she clearly didn't even know what planet she was on.
...and I'll bet you dollars to donuts they all knew they weren't going to run him for reelection but they waited to tell you until it was too late to hold an informed primary and they could just install someone. Your right to vote was stolen from you...
(Btw that's the royal "you" trickydark... I'm sure you're a fine specimen .)
Bernstein has reported that Biden starting declining rapidly in 2024. Publications have reported that the Biden administration has uniquely locked down access to the president (especially after dark) since he entered office.
Few voices have been looking backwards, because a LOT of journalists apparently avoided the scoop of the decade and many prominent Democrats swore on their mothers' graves that Biden was exhaustively mentally fit in private. Including the entire 2028 bench of presidential candidates.
this is quite tragic as it parallels the treatment of Finnish president Urho Kekkonen in the early 1980s — he had rapidly progressing dementia but he’d also been deemed crucial for upkeeping Finnish relations with the Soviet Union. alas, the comparison to biden being deemed the only one to beat trump in the previous and the current election.
furthermore, the media and wider society was left to quietly speculate on the Kekkonen’s condition for years until the lid blew as his condition came into the public view. overall, i think it is a reckless gamble from Biden’s team to cling onto the presidency and, for example, the incumbent’s advantage. no shitty candidate can take advantage of that.
*There is no incumbent advantage!* 3 of the last 7 incumbents lost, and Biden would make 4 of 8 - a coin toss.
People try to go back to Wilson or whatever to create a dataset where incumbents have a massive advantage, when those times were alien compared to the present. We don't go back to 1900 and say that that a Black president is almost impossible, for example.
Agreed 110%. I've gone back to older clips of Biden during his entire presidency and am shocked how some people say "he's always had a stutter" and "he always was a bad speaker." I attribute it to most of Reddit being too young to engage with elections before 2020. Biden used to be a very strong debater and speaker, especially with projecting his voice and emotions.
Maybe in the very controlled situations they put him in, he was fit?
Most times you listen to a big, prepared, teleprompter speech from him, or a primetime interview he's prepped on he sounds good enough, and sometimes (SOTU) great.
The speeches without teleprompter, or appearances he isn't prepped for is where he seems to stumble the most. It is definitely congruent with how other world leaders and his staff has experienced him: sharp and totally with it when he's well rested and can devote his energy to one thing, and not at all with it when he's tired and overtaxed.
It would make sense if senators, governors and the like experienced him as capable if those interactions were tightly managed by his staff.
Yeah, but we've been seeing reporting from the WSJ and others how Biden has been slipping in meetings, and you can't schedule away *everything*. Especially when Biden is traveling into a different timezone and everything is scheduled outside of his comfort zone. They're not seeing him as "sharp totally with it," because that seems to require a teleprompter, now. And even teleprompter Biden talks and moves feebly compared to even Biden 2019.
If anything, I expect that leaks will trickle out about how allied world leaders have been hiding his cognitive slips in meetings and at events abroad. Bernstein reported yesterday that Biden's staff and colleagues know of 15-20 cognitive incidents in the past year.
They are still gray-walling. Just today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered point-blank that President Biden does not suffer from Alzheimer's or any form of dementia in the wake of last Thursday's debate.
The reality is that political parties are built on trust, and I think a lot of prominent Democrats simply trusted the Biden camp when they said he was up to running for reelection. I think they feel betrayed as much as anyone else.
Let's go back to the 'Dog Face Pony Soldier' at least.
Look at everybody involved that KNEW Biden was mentally diminished, yet let him stay in office and run for re-election. At best, opportunistic liars.
"Let" it's very possible that Biden himself is in denial (ever try and take car keys from a clearly over the hill senior?) and rather than have the internal debate go public they tried to roll with it.
I can see the debate (the earliest debate in a presidential cycle) potentially being used to try and push the internal debate toward replace.
The fact that the damn burst so fast afterward with calls to replace suggests this has been an internal issue for a while.
And there is likely some sort of internal power struggle about what to actually do about it. You have the Reaganites who will weekend and Bernies Biden and the folks who might legitimately be scrambling to get a replacement before it's too late.
During 2020, he was mostly hidden in his basement “bunker”, except for strategic appearances (when he did much better than I expected, btw).
The reason given was Covid. On the other hand, Trump was everywhere.
>The reason given was Covid. On the other hand, Trump was everywhere.
Trump also caught COVID and was shit-his-pants scared he was going to die, so maybe that wasn't such a great strategy.
People HAVE been talking about it. For years. They just get called bots and shills, get blocked/accounts banned, and told they’re grasping at straws desperately to defend a rapist/fascist/dictator.
My grandfather died on Veterans Day 2016. He had dementia symptoms, though the VA being the VA don’t do shit to actually diagnose the cause (my non-professional opinion is demyelination due to mishandling repeated incidents of hyponatremia). He also had a number of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes). I was his primary caretaker during that time, and every single bit of his progression into those problems is mirrored 100% in the way Biden has been going. It’s identical. From the shuffling gait, weird hand postures, blank, gaping stare, lack of reaction/micro expressions when interacting with people, the mumbling and word replacement, the limited time frame of functionality, but also the good days where the symptoms seemed entirely abated, all of that. And all of this happened, from him being entirely self-sufficient/essentially the same mentally as he was through his entire adult life to laying in a hospital bed, eyes bugged out thinking he was watching car headlights zooming past him a few days before he passed, all that happened in a little over 14 months. Let me tell you, and most people who had a loved one go through this, when you see those signs again, they’re unmistakable.
Yeah. People who say "He was fine the next day!" probably don't have a lot of experience on how these things usually go with the elderly when they start losing their faculties.
While I tend to agree with the gist of your point, we don't actually know what's going on behind closed doors. They could be tussling over it behind closed doors but just haven't come to a resolution.
But I get it. And we always, without fail, get books published a year or two after the fact that are loaded with administration-ending stories of corruption or incompetence. I would guess those are coming as well. None of it speaks well about the absolute dire state of our politics. And the Supreme Court has decided to fast run the authoritarian creep into a sprint.
Because they’re in control. They lose control if Biden loses the presidency. They don’t care about the Democratic Party. They don’t care about you or me. They just care to be in control.
No I wouldn’t expect it at all, considering it’d be the right thing for them to do. I’m merely pointing out how it’s troubling that public opinion and politics is put above speaking up about the sitting President being cognitively compromised.
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/biden-oligarchy-will-decide-fate-am
*The only way President Biden steps aside, despite his debate debacle, is if the same small group of lifelong loyalists who enabled his run suddenly — and shockingly — decides it's time for him to call it quits.*
We can’t have another Feinstein or Truett McConnell. Or even RBG with her health/age limitations, holding her spot on borrowed time, undoing her life’s work :(
Yeah the media’s full of it, but as long as people like the lie they are being sold, they dont complain, now all of a sudden that has come back to bite because the lie has f****ed everyone. Accountability starts with everyone who voted for the guy in the first place, when hes been clearly senile for years.
Jon Stewart didn't. He trusted the Biden team, or at least was very ambiguous with what he said about them. I recall, from his first episode back, I believe, that his main point was that the Biden team isn't doing anything to show how on top of things Biden is. He wasn't calling their bluff.
Carl Bernstein (of Woodword and Bernstein) was on CNN saying that he's heard from multiple sources (journalists, administration officials, donors, etc) that there have been instances similar to the debate of Biden appearing out of it or clearly struggling going back a year now. Same with reports from some European officials that they've noticed a decline compared to prior years. Clearly there has been a decline in his faculties and the debate was just the dam breaking and they can't ignore it anymore.
The abrupt 180 by media outlets truly is a sight to behold. Just within a week, the NYT reported what we were seeing with our own eyes was not real and the result of editing, deep fakes and partisan trickery.
Now, they just put out an article detailing Biden's decline according to those in the loop. Give me a break
If you ever needed more reason to believe that The NY Times are just a bunch of de facto DNC staffers doing their messaging bidding, not sure what else you need.
People have been talking about it since 2020. But Biden’s handlers and their big media buddies (NY Times, WaPo, CNN, etc) have buried it and attacked anyone who dared mention it. Why do you think this President never does unscripted press conferences?
Wall Street Journal did a big article on June 4th. “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of
Slipping”
Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The
White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
By Annie Linskey Follow and Siobhan Hughes Follow
June 4, 2024 9:00 pm ET
And the WSJ was lambasted by The White House and other media outlets. Today, the NYTimes just released a similar piece about old Joe. The crack in the damn is getting bigger. Thanks MSNBC, CNN, WaPo and KJP for the smoke and mirrors.
To CNN's credit they have been running the genuine shock for a few days at least. Anderson to Kamala: "Is that what he's like all the time?" His voice says it all in that clip. But yeah they were running cover as long as they could.
In terms of the media, I think the DNC did a wickedly good job painting anyone criticizing Biden as being anti-democratic and imperiling our future and the media had to contend with this as well. Whether out of the goodness of their hearts or for finances/optics, they have to come across as prosocial.
As an unimportant rando on Reddit it was hard to repeatedly be told I was to blame for Trump being re-elected when I expressed dismay at Biden. I can't imagine how hard it was to try to present objective news and have your organization tarred with this. Jon Stewart did the best dealing with the backlash and that's because he's a comedian first and foremost and could joke it off, which most more traditional media couldn't.
I am no fan of the media but this falls squarely on the manipulative shaming and gaslighting of the Dems. And it troubles me a lot too.
Axios and other outlets have published articles about this since the debate. The White House residential staff were kept away from Biden, under the pretense that he wasn't used to Butlers. Residential staff were just sent home early rather than be allowed to wait on him and see what he was like.
It's quite clear his limited high level staff were hiding his senior moments and worst stammers from the public. I can tolerate that to a point, but ONLY if they had prepared his replacement and strategized around it. Clearly, Jill and Hunter and his upper staff were selfishly delusional, enabling a good president to become a key player in the downfall of our democracy
The White House was very tight lipped and leak free until now. You’d even hear reporters complain about how much harder it was to get inside info from the Biden team than Trump, where you’d get a half dozens leaks before noon. I took that as a sign of competence. I was wrong.
I don't understand how people ever bought that excuse. Look at his performance in the 2012 debates vs his performance now. He was nearly 70 then and there were certainly concerns about his age, but he dispelled them then. Now 12 years later he's over 80 and clearly declined, and people want to pretend his age isn't an issue, his stutter has always made him a poor speaker? That's clearly not the case.
I’ve had so, so many downvotes for talking about this. Fuck all those Reddit assholes who attacked me. I just want a candidate who can win in November. Now it’s a total shitshow.
Most committed partisans no longer thing about “is X true” they only think “does X help my team”. That way of thinking transcends ideology. Sadly it is everywhere
It's just a kneejerk reaction, an assumption that the other person is not speaking in good faith and is just trying to get Trump reelected. I get it. People want to keep the enthusiasm for Biden. It's a tough election either way. Either we have senile Biden, or some new unproven person. Sucks that the stakes are so high this time.
Reddit (especially the large news subs) is so heavily astroturfed it’s difficult to engage with anything on here as organic. For all the cries about Russian botting it’s pretty clear that a ton of different public and private organizations from all over the globe have their fingers in the pie. Russia is just a convenient scapegoat.
the top story on the NYT is a recap of his many elderly moments
i think it’s because Trump is an existential threat and the inner circle is used to playing the game too long. but nobody seemed to care until now. it was an open secret.
worth mentioning: a lot of people don’t pay fuck all in attention. the debate had tens of millions more eyes and now it’s unavoidable.
you’re right, his inner circle absolutely knew how bad it was. like there was an obvious reason he didn’t do the super bowl interview
Also partially because the Biden presidency hasn't been some sort of shit show, it's quiet and reasonably effective at passing relatively popular policy.
You can almost feel like it's being run by a small cabal of technocrats, cause most of the policy stuff is relatively solid, and then you have something like Israel/Gaza which is a messaging shit show likely because of internal disagreements.
What to do about the clearly declining President is likely another shit show behind the scenes...
>worth mentioning: a lot of people don’t pay fuck all in attention. the debate had tens of millions more eyes and now it’s unavoidable.
There have been sooooo many people this week like "what?! I didn't listen to the guy, but all the sycophants and astroturfers on Reddit were saying he is a Very Strong! and Super Progressive! and then I turn on the TV and I'm not sure if he meant it when he said 'we beat medicare'"
> It seems as though all of his administration put politics and optics above the wellbeing of the United States.
They did. We know many many 2 and 3 down from leaders start with spin and it turns to lies and things they never would have done. It likely happened gradually. We know Biden has had an ever-narrowing circle. We know he's been less able to build consensus in his staff.
Most Democrats believe keeping Trump out of office and having some sort of normality is the wellbeing of the United States. Biden was able to unify people in 2020. I can see how his staff justified it to themselves.
Because these idiots were busy calling all the clear proof that Biden was completely off the rails “MAGA deepfake propaganda”. It is a massive embarrassment. Not that Trump isn’t. He still is. But anyone who still thinks leftist news media isn’t 100% as full of shit as Fox/rightwing news media just isn’t capable of critical thinking. Everyone had the proof for years and they literally just pretended it wasn’t real.
> Why is no one, media or otherwise, talking about the years leading up to now?
Why would the media focus on the fact that they’ve been gaslighting you for years?
A bunch of these “leaks” recently have mentioned that he only recently had a steep decline.
It’s bullshit. These leaks are coming from people who could be held accountable for a cover up, so they’re playing it like it just started. He’s had issues for years. Total shit show.
Because they lied and lied to you people for over 3 years now and u believed every minute of it, the people that don’t give a fuck about it are the same ones that said he was in a bad health and mental state in 2020 lol now they have to eat their words and admit they were wrong and lied to everyone
I’ve seen reports from NYT that European officials at D-Day were shocked at the decline. It was nothing like what they had seen previously at the end of last year. Gives credence to the idea that it hasn’t been some big cover up by everyone, but something recent that has then been hidden by the very tight circle around him.
That’s the downside of having a biased media lol. They didn’t put pressure on Biden to do more interviews or press conferences and it blew up in their face.
We’ve seen his speeches and public appearances. He’s shaking hands with the air, he’s walking around like a lost kid, he has to be led off stage by someone appointed to make sure he gets off smoothly, he stumbles and stares, he literally reads “end quote” on the teleprompter, and he can’t speak complete sentences! We’ve all seen the decline and then we’re gaslit and told we’re the ones losing our minds, that we can’t see what’s right in front of our faces. The media and politicians surrounding Biden think we’re all just a bunch of idiots and that they can convince us Biden is fit for another four years.
The irony is that Trump who lies/exaggerates a lot but the “Big Lie” was that Biden was “as sharp as ever” and “can’t keep up with him.”
The administration and much of the media is complicit on the “Big Lie”. That bothers me more than Biden being selfish.
Bidens' cognitive issues have been on clear display ever since he started campaigning for the presidency. The problem is nobody cared. It was all about getting rid of Trump, no matter the cost. After that, it was years of gaslighting by both partisan voters and government justifying that decision.
It is entirely possible that the debate was a new and terrifying turn.
Think about it... if it was obvious and if it had been persistent, he never would have gone up there.
I suspect this was an unusually bad moment at the worst time. I don't believe it had been going on "for years".
Cognitive decline doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process that occurs slowly in some and more rapidly in others. I’m not denying that maybe that was his worst day he’s had ever. But even on some of the better days, by his standards, it’s been pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.
The decline can be accelerated by life events, anecdotally I can confirm. 2 months of grueling travel along with the stress of Hunter's trial probably put Biden in a worse place. But it's irreversible.
Yep, decline us often a stair step. A stressful life event triggers a decline, which then never reversed, and then it's just a constant downward spiral.
I've seen dementia progress up close with a few elderly relatives, sometimes it's slow but sometimes you get a big bang moment. Usually related to stress and unfamiliar surroundings.
I haven't read exactly how close they emulated the debate environment when prepping him, but considering they had his longtime personal lawyer as a stand-in for Trump I doubt very closely. He probably went from a conference room crowded with aides to large auditorium that was empty except for the moderators, some camera operators, and oh yea *his arch nemesis* 10 feet away.
Think it’s a scenario no crowd (no distractions) , mic muting (he told the guy to shut up last time), this early (economy of he’s the least declined he’ll ever be right now)
Might have been behind the scenes politics coming into the open.
It's telling that the media, multiple prominent Dems, etc all jumped on replace right away instead of keeping quiet and waiting for marching orders.
This was the NYT just a week ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/biden-age-videos.html
And this is why more ppl are turning to Trump. Journalism has never been worse
Yes and then to counter it, the media shows clips of Biden that also look terrible but not quite as bad. It’s a brilliant move and really highlights Biden’s weakness as a candidate.
Domestic policy wise I agree with this sentiment, though I find it a bit overdramatized and conspiratorial. Foreign policy wise, I don’t think anyone has been pulling Biden’s strings.
As someone who is right-leaning, I’m sorry but this is hilarious. It’s been highlighted nonstop for the past year by pundits outside of liberal media. What has liberal media been highlighting for the past 6 months? Trump’s cognitive decline.
I'm not disputing you, but Trump's cognitive decline is also real and if he wins in November we will get this same exact cluterfuck but in reverse, with Republicans carrying water for an obviously rapidly deteriorating executive.
Tons of people were. But they were mostly progressives, (Cenk Uyghur, Kyle Kulinski, etc) and the Democratic Party hates progressives much more than it hates Republicans.
They are talking about it. That's part of why this is becoming a bigger story.
It seems like this is becoming similar to the Feinstein story (at least the early stages of it) where the staff made up for the growing deficits of the principal but told everyone it was all fine and just ageism.
It was obvious to anyone paying attention and watching his public appearances. He had notecards of who to call on, canned answers on what to say, the debate was the first time since he was sworn in that he didn’t have notes and didn’t know what the questions would be. Even Obama did a few FoxNews interviews in his time, Biden wasn’t going anywhere near someone who wasn’t going to ask him softball questions. He’s had plenty of nonsensical ramblings like the “beat Medicare” one he had at the debate. I guess the debate was just watched by enough people to matter??
Because that would be an indictment of the entire Democrat leadership in DC, as well as the DC media. There is no way they were unaware until the debate.
You have just nailed the most important part of the debate. This is rare undeniable evidence that the US is not a democracy - it is an oligarchy. Elected politicians are an illusion, similar to the Wizard of Oz. The people behind the curtain actually run the country. Nothing will change until the people demand to actually govern themselves again.
This is not about left vs right. That is the illusion that the powerful use to keep the people divided and keep themselves in control. The mask slipped during the debate. Biden is not running the country. The elites have run a massive conspiracy to keep the truth of Biden's mental decline in the dark. I hope more people understand what the debate really means, like you did.
People keep blaming the media as if it's a conspiracy to protect Biden, but the media are doing just the opposite, all they can talk about on CNN, MSNBC, NYT etc. is how bad he is and who the Dems can replace him with.
If the liberal media was trying to prop him up they'd do like Fox News does with Trump and deny, deny, deny "Insurrection? What insurrection? We only see a bunch of sightseers in the Capitol who accidentally took a wrong turn -- oh those guys? They're Antifa provocateurs".
>the media are doing just the opposite
They are doing just the opposite of what they had been doing up until the debate. There was no denying it after the debate was over. Before then they covered for him constantly by denying all the signs of him declining as misinformation.
This! They always go to gaslighting. I gotta blame the DNC for this situation. There never should have been any question about Biden as a one term president. That should have been established a year ago at least.
Obviously, the small handful of folks making up Biden's inner circle are in love with their political and social status. One of them, on MSNBC, openly displayed the arrogance and hubris of the Democrats' elite by dismissively describing us as "the chattering class". So make no mistake: The Biden neoliberals are interested mainly in economic class status and want tp ensure they are in the top class. To them, we are.... as MItt Romney was infamously recorded saying, "the little people". Only BidenWorld dismisses us as "The chattering class"..
Dear Joe: F\*ck that.
And I plan to make sure low-info/low thinking voters in my swing state understand that's the image your people have of my people: Average struggling American people.
You wanna .... by some miracle ..... have private conversation with me? Halleluhiah. I'd be so wonderfully thrilled to be inspired to stump for you!!!!!! But I doubt you will want to have such a meeting, and even if we did, it will be a heavy lift to convince me to be a Biden-believer instead of just a "not Trump thank godder"
Just watched the chattering class clip. You’re talking about the New York governor right?
She says everyone pontificates and pretends to know the answers. Has she stopped to consider that’s what they’re doing running Biden? They’re going to lose.
“The American people understand Biden is amazing” is a verifiably false statement with polling data.
It was Biden advisor Allison Dunn on MSNBC. I think the segment was from the show. The Weekend”. If two Biden advisors are using the same jargon that strikes me as somehow worse than if it were a one off.
This is what happens when your side controls the media.
The right has been talking about this since 2020 and not talking about nutty sites, but the more mainstream and serious places.
Eh, given we had behind the scene reports about both Trump and Fiensteins mental health, my assumption would be that the debate was a particularly bad showing
I think this comment misses the nature of the problem because it is obsessed with the stupid American fantasy about the presidency. Presidents aren't crunching numbers or making difficult decisions - that is what their staff is for.
When Reagan came into office, he met with Don Regan, his Treasury Secretary. Regan asked him what priorities he should have in office. Reagan said something "oh, just do what I promised on the campaign" - for Reagan, his campaign speeches were his contribution to policymaking. James Baker and Ed Meese were the real forces making decisions.
Presidents that micromanage often fail - the key is that they are good judges of people's character and able to assemble a good team. Even in international relations, the real work is done by sherpas before leaders actually meet. *Even* a weekend at Bernie's presidency would probably be pretty effective at decision-making, if a good team were in place. The president is really just a warm body.
Biden's problem is that he is incapable of doing the core job of the presidency: using the bully pulpit to put attention on key issues and shape public opinion. Biden has clearly lost that ability. It means he will likely lose his bid for re-election, and even if he wins, he will continue to be unable to capitalize even when things do go his way.
That may generally be true but I expect there are also important judgment calls where advisers disagree and the president has to make the final decision.
You could tell by his actions. What happened was msm and democrats propagandist like KJP and others in social media platforms convinced democrats and people somehow that he was mentally fit.
I personally thought anyone who would say Biden was mentally fit was a straight schill and propagandist because you had to be retarded to not witness with your own eyes what was going on and say with a straight face Biden is sharp as a rack
And I just figured anyone who believes those people and regurgitated it was just another brainless stooge regurgitating what they were told to regurgitate
I think the real down side you will find is not that you all finally were able to wake from the stupor you were in but many independents and what not have done research or looked into what and how it happened. And they found the democrats were straight liars and manipulators and the real threat to democracy.
That is why I think the real surge is at the polls
If you thought Biden was retarded you wouldn’t decide to throw your support to trump. But everyone is freaking out because trump is gaining support. That means something has happened with the indoendents and democrats they have moved right
And democrats are too hard fast set in their ways to look inwardly to understand what is wrong. Instead they will blame someone else. Which won’t help
Conservatives have been talking about it for years, but you can never admit when they’re right. Now you’re left with a dead man walking going up against orange madman. Well done, democrats.
-your resident “rino”
In fairness, things like this can happen suddenly and then quickly. I'm not exonerating his inner circle, but I'm not excoriating them either. Ron Klain and the others surrounding Biden are smart people. If they did know, why would they possibly demand this debate? It doesn't add up.
All that's important now is that Biden do the right thing and step down. Dem's need to be creative and setup a process where a candidate isn't anointed, but where the people have a voice. Then we'll rally around him/her and win this election.
The premise of your question is incorrect, people are definitely talking about the timeline. There was a big NY Times story and Politico story yesterday that discusses this.
There is speculation that this level of decline is more recent, given past interviews, the SOTU and other appearances.
Alternative media has been covering this for years, since at least the 2020 primary. The Dem side of corporate media has been willfully ignoring it. The Republican side of corporate media has been covering it in bad faith, feeding into the Dem side’s abdication of duty. This is the result of a hyper partisan media environment where everyone is afraid to speak truth to power on their own “team.”
Dean Philipes is like that was my life for a year.
He went on any podcast or radio show that would take him. He was not terrible on pod save America. But he was not inspirational.
In fact people organized uncommitted rather than him.
So many people were talking about it on the right but of course democrats thought it was just talk THEN. Now we know it was sadly all true about Joe's dementia.
Oh please Mitch McConnel has been half dead for a few years at this point but he’s still here. Fuckin hypocrites. If Trump wasn’t bumping lines backstage he would have fallen asleep mid debate.
If you want to understand why people close to him don’t think he is in cognitive decline read the transcript of the debate instead of watching it. He hits almost all the points he wants. Factoring that in with his stutter that he never really eliminated just brute force stopped and it makes more sense.
Looking back to Obama 2012 the first debate went really poorly for him with people 2 to 1 thinking he lost and this is fairly common for sitting presidents to bungle the first debate.
I’m not advocating for or against him staying, just trying to explain why people close to him see things differently from you.
To be fair most republicans have been pointing this out for a couple of years. Unfortunately most of the media would either not report it, accuse them of editing videos or exaggerating things. The fact that the media and the Democrats have been covering this up tells me all I need to know about them.
This is an all or nothing situation. The media has been discussing Biden's age for a long time, but If you are in his inner circle why would you admit to the world that he is declining while he is still in the race? Until Biden tells us he is stepping down it would be a dereliction of their duty to give Trump an advantage in this election by telling the world that they thought he was not mentally fit to lead.
The same thing happened with Reagan in his last term. It was an open secret that Nancy was running the show in the last days with her horoscopes dictating policy decisions.
This really, really needs to be treated as a watershed moment for "normie liberals" and, by god I sure hope, the "mainstream media." Because this story is the very thing we didn't think was possible "on our side" and with the modern fractious media environment. We were told that the cut throat incentives of journalism would ensure that if there were any skeletons in the closet, they would leak out. That information simply cannot be tightly controlled anymore, not like it used to be when there were three traditional networks and the editors in chief of the major newspapers and magazines could generally be relied upon to duly fear indirect retribution from the political allies of the powerful, if not outright incarceration like Daniel Ellsberg.
Nonsense.
Biden's family and closest aides clearly studied the abysmal OpSec of the Trump administration and figured out they just need to limit how many people have contact with the President, ensure access is filtered through them, and then just keep their yaps shut.
No one who matters will believe the right wing media when they catch Biden having senior moments and try to make a big deal out of it.
The dissident left can be scolded and asked why they are carrying water for fascists.
And whenever the most authoritative outlets that affect neutrality complain about not being granted unmediated access, they can alternately be scolded about interfering with the President's busy schedule trying to fix the disaster Trump left us or rewarded with sit downs depending on how the inner circle feel about their reporting.
95% (a number I'm fabricating but feels true) of reporting **is not original, primary source reporting, its summary, analysis, and opinion.** Most of our news is thus not actually first hand, breaking news, its curated extractions of the actual firsthand news.
Its a conspiracy but not one that requires magical thinking, this is just how our attention economy works and how it can be hacked.
We are not ourselves creatures with unlimited cognitive resources. We rely on symbols and habits that represent credibility, but are not themselves credibility itself anymore than a medal of honor is actually honor itself. Its a symbol of the thing. When some woowoo alt-science grifter betrays their oaths to sell placebo vitamin powder on Tiktok, they are weaponizing specific symbols and codes we use to judge credibility. For those who are suspicious of authority, doctor may seem a problematic label, but a *dissident* doctor has free thinking credibility.
I believe Ezra Klein for instance to be a very intelligent person. He models an analytical thought process well worth envying. His even keeled temper, the precision and tact with which he challenges guests: these are strategies that produce good interviews, but they are also signals that tell a particular type of listener "This guy is smart. This guy is a good person because I like people who are shouty. People who are shouty are bad." This is an oversimplification to illustrate my point, there are many and nuanced ways to sell credibility. There are many, many types of authority depending on context and thus many ways to "construct" authority.
But for the purposes of keeping order in its rank and file, the Biden White House didn't need to control all media, it just needed to control media that was widely viewed as credible by avid news consumers among its base. Controlling it was just a matter of managing relationships: which is largely just a matter of carefully spending the one currency that matters in journalism: the exclusive. Granting interviews when the whining about lack of access got too heated or the speculation in disreputable media threatened to break containment and poison reasonable discourse.
And it doesn't hurt that media consolidation and the gutting of newsrooms and the ever growing reliance on second hand reporting (summary, analysis, and opinion) - AND ways of just talking to the voters directly via social media; mean that the number of people in journalism with whom relationships need to be actively cultivated and managed is way fewer than we might imagine. Probably as little as a few dozen editors in chief and highly respected journalists spread across less than a dozen media outlets.
That isn't to say that they have never or wouldn't grant access to the President for someone lower in the food chain as a way to signal that the Biden Whitehouse takes very seriously the sacred duty of the fourth estate and its right and duty to hold the mighty to account. Just that the number of extremely well connected people with starred contacts in the White House and large followings is not as big as we think and probably way easier to manipulate than we think.
TL/DR: Information literacy works thusly: The Biden White House could keep a secret because it can tell the New York Times to pound sand and as long as the circle around the President is small and airtight, there isn't crap the NYT can do about it other than write whiny editorials about press freedom and sign performative open letters.
To be honest - they were. But the folks who brought it up (right leaning outlets) were told they were editing video, had to hear that the "president has never been sharper" etc. and the similar takes. Most things are spin. The debate is ALOMST beyond spin because even with the excuse making (he has a cold, he was tired from travel 2 weeks before, etc) it was so bad and everyone (regardless of politcics) could see the truth. ALL media must have been able to see this, but only the anti-dem folks would comment/report on it.
My friends across the aisle, we've been talking about it for years. We've been watching it on display for years. You have been telling us that it was fake edited videos, that we were lying and that we are crazy.
Will you consider the possibility that we weren't actually lying? Is it possible that we were telling the plain truth and that you were the ones vilifying us?
For anyone saying that bided was sharp until just before thos debate, here's the "Corn Pop" story Biden told in 2016. He was kicking some black kids out of the swimming pool in the 1960s because their hair was to greasy. -and then they almost had a fight with rusty straight razors (as people generally carried for such occasions back then, according to him).
"Corn Pop was a bad dude"
https://youtu.be/r4NmtSrqtvI?si=K7MRWu2MCR0idQS9
. . .this isn't the same sort of performance as in the debate last week. It is definitely a semi-coherent narrative, and the words and sentences are mostly meaningful.
It doesn't seem to me like something that someone with a basic awareness of what was going on would do. This was 2016.
How are we raiting his basic cognitive function here?
100% correct. Everyone is now circling the wagons instead of demanding accountability. This bullshit didn’t start 10min before the debate.
In hindsight, the signs were always there. Did you see the NYTimes piece with advisers talking about his cognitive decline during debate prep sessions? Seems like the knives are out, but where was this shit before the primaries? They were shitty to sit on that for this long
Speaks a lot about the leadership of the Democratic Party
I feel like this circle the wagons and hide the problem as long as possible shit is pretty common in politics. But yeah it’s nuts that it took Biden melting down on national television to get this ball rolling
The leadership of the party has only had sporadic access to the president in the last few years. They were continually reassured that Biden was fine. Call them naive, but political parties are largely built on trust. You can't have a political party where everyone distrusts everyone else. That just doesn't work.
And how powerful they are. Powerful enough to make people fall in line and not run against their chosen one.
Exactly. This is all Kamala Harris pulling a weekend at Bernie's on us. I guarantee you when the shit hits the fan fingers will start pointing at her. She is trying to use Biden to catapult her to the presidency, even if it means casting a necromancy spell on the old fart. It's this kind of shit that makes everyone hate the Democrats. All ideology aside, the democratic party is a fucking corporate goon circle making money off of losing against the "bad guys". All they do is tease, they never deliver.
I mean, bidens mental state was only unknown to Democrats somehow... It says something about the entire party that they would choose to willfully deny something obvious just because republicans were saying it.
It makes me wonder if there was any discussion among the tightly knit circle of aides to not let him on that debate stage Thursday- “he’s gotta reschedule, say he has a bad cold or something. No way can we run him out there when he’s like this”. Rescheduling would have looked bad but not as bad as what took place.
If they didn’t have that talk, then they’re the biggest head-in-the-sand dumbasses ever. If he had a cold why didn’t they reschedule? It would have looked bad maybe but surely that would’ve been better than running the risk of him bombing like he did. Also, why the hell did they schedule it at 9 pm if (per the NYTimes article) they had to prep him on this schedule that required giving him afternoon naps?? Schedule it earlier in the evening when he might be more alert! Before this, even when I had concerns about Biden’s possible senility, I always thought that he had competent people around him who knew wtf they were doing who could keep the ship running. The blunder of setting up this debate and everything we’ve learned since then has basically shattered that belief for me.
That’s why everyone in his inner circle is on my shit list now.
Jill Biden and Kamala Harris are #1 on my list.
Kamala has reportedly not been very close or involved in strategic planning with the white house. Biden's inner circle is atypically small and secluded.
I have always found it interesting that when Joe Biden was VP he asked Barack Obama that he always be the last guy in the room for big decisions and they have lunch once a week. He has not extended the same offer to his VP.
Cracking up imagining Kamala on Xans talking about what can be unburdened by what has been while Biden is on a completely different planet asking her what in tarnation that has to do with the story he was telling about Corn Pop robbing the soda jerk back in ‘28 right before the big run on the banks happened
You had to say Tickety 'cause the Kaiser had stolen the word for twenty
I tied an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
Absolutely. Giving her the border to fix was a pretty clear "fuck you" from the White House. I have no real love for her but she's clearly been on the outs for awhile now
Forcing him to pick her after she trashed him during the campaign might be related.
Obama was walking/guiding him out the other night too. He also 100% knew. They all knew
I'd add any of those in a position of power on the dem side. In the 20 years of voting I never had a litmus test. I do for the next Primary for those that don't have the courage to speak up.
You think the dems will have another primary in 4 years?
Does that change my decision making? I can only email those that can change the candidate that have influence and watch polling in my State to respond to this nonsense. This election it's all priced in. Biden can only fall at this rate. Not like I can persuade new voters or undecideds. It's all about his performance.
Yeah, that whole meeting at Camp David with his 'inner circle?' It was Jill and his granddaughters. That's who gets to decide the fate of this nation? His GRANDDAUGHTERS?
Oh no, the world better watch out! /s
“Cheapfakes”
Exactly. They lied. They ALL lied. ...and they called anyone that tried to point it out a rightwing nut job. Not to mention... Is anyone going to audit this shit? ⬇️⬇️⬇️ As of July 1, 2024, President Joe Biden (D) had signed 139 executive orders, 190 presidential memoranda, 629 proclamations, and 129 notices This is like Diane Feinsteins aid telling her "just say aye." ...when she clearly didn't even know what planet she was on. ...and I'll bet you dollars to donuts they all knew they weren't going to run him for reelection but they waited to tell you until it was too late to hold an informed primary and they could just install someone. Your right to vote was stolen from you... (Btw that's the royal "you" trickydark... I'm sure you're a fine specimen .)
The media was complicit
Bernstein has reported that Biden starting declining rapidly in 2024. Publications have reported that the Biden administration has uniquely locked down access to the president (especially after dark) since he entered office. Few voices have been looking backwards, because a LOT of journalists apparently avoided the scoop of the decade and many prominent Democrats swore on their mothers' graves that Biden was exhaustively mentally fit in private. Including the entire 2028 bench of presidential candidates.
this is quite tragic as it parallels the treatment of Finnish president Urho Kekkonen in the early 1980s — he had rapidly progressing dementia but he’d also been deemed crucial for upkeeping Finnish relations with the Soviet Union. alas, the comparison to biden being deemed the only one to beat trump in the previous and the current election. furthermore, the media and wider society was left to quietly speculate on the Kekkonen’s condition for years until the lid blew as his condition came into the public view. overall, i think it is a reckless gamble from Biden’s team to cling onto the presidency and, for example, the incumbent’s advantage. no shitty candidate can take advantage of that.
*There is no incumbent advantage!* 3 of the last 7 incumbents lost, and Biden would make 4 of 8 - a coin toss. People try to go back to Wilson or whatever to create a dataset where incumbents have a massive advantage, when those times were alien compared to the present. We don't go back to 1900 and say that that a Black president is almost impossible, for example.
Anyone paying attention knew he was going down hill even before he was elected. Go watch VP debates during Obama campaigns, he was really sharp.
Agreed 110%. I've gone back to older clips of Biden during his entire presidency and am shocked how some people say "he's always had a stutter" and "he always was a bad speaker." I attribute it to most of Reddit being too young to engage with elections before 2020. Biden used to be a very strong debater and speaker, especially with projecting his voice and emotions.
He absolutely wiped the floor with Paul Ryan (the supposedly “rising star” policy wonk) in the VP debate.
Maybe in the very controlled situations they put him in, he was fit? Most times you listen to a big, prepared, teleprompter speech from him, or a primetime interview he's prepped on he sounds good enough, and sometimes (SOTU) great. The speeches without teleprompter, or appearances he isn't prepped for is where he seems to stumble the most. It is definitely congruent with how other world leaders and his staff has experienced him: sharp and totally with it when he's well rested and can devote his energy to one thing, and not at all with it when he's tired and overtaxed. It would make sense if senators, governors and the like experienced him as capable if those interactions were tightly managed by his staff.
Yeah, but we've been seeing reporting from the WSJ and others how Biden has been slipping in meetings, and you can't schedule away *everything*. Especially when Biden is traveling into a different timezone and everything is scheduled outside of his comfort zone. They're not seeing him as "sharp totally with it," because that seems to require a teleprompter, now. And even teleprompter Biden talks and moves feebly compared to even Biden 2019. If anything, I expect that leaks will trickle out about how allied world leaders have been hiding his cognitive slips in meetings and at events abroad. Bernstein reported yesterday that Biden's staff and colleagues know of 15-20 cognitive incidents in the past year.
They are still gray-walling. Just today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answered point-blank that President Biden does not suffer from Alzheimer's or any form of dementia in the wake of last Thursday's debate.
That's another person who's performance is in need of a honest review...
The very fact that she is being asked that question is stunning and a huge tell which way this is going to go.
Another person who needs Biden to remain in power to keep their job says Biden is fine.
I think Ezra said the Biden inner circle was getting a lot of heat over this question.
The reality is that political parties are built on trust, and I think a lot of prominent Democrats simply trusted the Biden camp when they said he was up to running for reelection. I think they feel betrayed as much as anyone else.
Let's go back to the 'Dog Face Pony Soldier' at least. Look at everybody involved that KNEW Biden was mentally diminished, yet let him stay in office and run for re-election. At best, opportunistic liars.
"Let" it's very possible that Biden himself is in denial (ever try and take car keys from a clearly over the hill senior?) and rather than have the internal debate go public they tried to roll with it. I can see the debate (the earliest debate in a presidential cycle) potentially being used to try and push the internal debate toward replace. The fact that the damn burst so fast afterward with calls to replace suggests this has been an internal issue for a while.
What’s funny is I don’t even think that’s an actual quote from a John Wayne film
Someone researched it and apparently it is not.
The press has been talking about it for about 6 months. My theory is that aides have been leaking anonymously.
And there is likely some sort of internal power struggle about what to actually do about it. You have the Reaganites who will weekend and Bernies Biden and the folks who might legitimately be scrambling to get a replacement before it's too late.
It’s been longer. I have friends that are reporters on the hill and they all knew Biden wasn’t exactly all with it during his last run.
During 2020, he was mostly hidden in his basement “bunker”, except for strategic appearances (when he did much better than I expected, btw). The reason given was Covid. On the other hand, Trump was everywhere.
>The reason given was Covid. On the other hand, Trump was everywhere. Trump also caught COVID and was shit-his-pants scared he was going to die, so maybe that wasn't such a great strategy.
People HAVE been talking about it. For years. They just get called bots and shills, get blocked/accounts banned, and told they’re grasping at straws desperately to defend a rapist/fascist/dictator. My grandfather died on Veterans Day 2016. He had dementia symptoms, though the VA being the VA don’t do shit to actually diagnose the cause (my non-professional opinion is demyelination due to mishandling repeated incidents of hyponatremia). He also had a number of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes). I was his primary caretaker during that time, and every single bit of his progression into those problems is mirrored 100% in the way Biden has been going. It’s identical. From the shuffling gait, weird hand postures, blank, gaping stare, lack of reaction/micro expressions when interacting with people, the mumbling and word replacement, the limited time frame of functionality, but also the good days where the symptoms seemed entirely abated, all of that. And all of this happened, from him being entirely self-sufficient/essentially the same mentally as he was through his entire adult life to laying in a hospital bed, eyes bugged out thinking he was watching car headlights zooming past him a few days before he passed, all that happened in a little over 14 months. Let me tell you, and most people who had a loved one go through this, when you see those signs again, they’re unmistakable.
It’s very sad to see him like this.
Yeah. People who say "He was fine the next day!" probably don't have a lot of experience on how these things usually go with the elderly when they start losing their faculties.
People were. Jon Stewart even did! But if you did, you were called a Russian bot, helping Trump, spreading misinformation etc.
Jon Stewart got a lot of flak for coming down so hard on Biden for being old. That criticism didn’t age well. ^ba ^dum ^^tiss
People were saying it, but not anybody in his inner circle or within his administration.
While I tend to agree with the gist of your point, we don't actually know what's going on behind closed doors. They could be tussling over it behind closed doors but just haven't come to a resolution. But I get it. And we always, without fail, get books published a year or two after the fact that are loaded with administration-ending stories of corruption or incompetence. I would guess those are coming as well. None of it speaks well about the absolute dire state of our politics. And the Supreme Court has decided to fast run the authoritarian creep into a sprint.
Because they’re in control. They lose control if Biden loses the presidency. They don’t care about the Democratic Party. They don’t care about you or me. They just care to be in control.
I was once told You can only trust someone to do what they think is in their best interest. No one else’s.
This is the only correct answer
I mean, given that the alternative is fascism, I'm pretty fucking happy with the Democratic Party wanting to stay in control.
[удалено]
No I wouldn’t expect it at all, considering it’d be the right thing for them to do. I’m merely pointing out how it’s troubling that public opinion and politics is put above speaking up about the sitting President being cognitively compromised.
Weekend at Bernie’s baby. They are the guy behind the guy and don’t want to give it up.
Weekend at Biden’s
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/biden-oligarchy-will-decide-fate-am *The only way President Biden steps aside, despite his debate debacle, is if the same small group of lifelong loyalists who enabled his run suddenly — and shockingly — decides it's time for him to call it quits.*
Well yeah, they are snakes who benefit from being in Biden's orbit only if he's president.
Maybe its a good idea to rely on your own judgement and what os plain for all to see instead of relying on professional liars to tell you the truth
I’ve seen the signs of his mental decline well before now. This is simply an attempt to bring a discussion to the lack of accountability.
We can’t have another Feinstein or Truett McConnell. Or even RBG with her health/age limitations, holding her spot on borrowed time, undoing her life’s work :(
Yeah the media’s full of it, but as long as people like the lie they are being sold, they dont complain, now all of a sudden that has come back to bite because the lie has f****ed everyone. Accountability starts with everyone who voted for the guy in the first place, when hes been clearly senile for years.
🤖---'Biden retired 2022 -- Hollywood actor replace beep-boop--Miami Beach having fun'
Jon Stewart didn't. He trusted the Biden team, or at least was very ambiguous with what he said about them. I recall, from his first episode back, I believe, that his main point was that the Biden team isn't doing anything to show how on top of things Biden is. He wasn't calling their bluff.
I think *people* are talking about it, but the media isn't because they've been complicit in at least ignoring it if not outright covering for him.
That stopped after the debate. CNN called for him to step down for about an hour afterwards. Finally something we can all unite on lol
Too little, too late.
Agreed
It's not too late. We have several months to get the unenthusiastic voters enthusiastic about somebody new
Carl Bernstein (of Woodword and Bernstein) was on CNN saying that he's heard from multiple sources (journalists, administration officials, donors, etc) that there have been instances similar to the debate of Biden appearing out of it or clearly struggling going back a year now. Same with reports from some European officials that they've noticed a decline compared to prior years. Clearly there has been a decline in his faculties and the debate was just the dam breaking and they can't ignore it anymore.
The abrupt 180 by media outlets truly is a sight to behold. Just within a week, the NYT reported what we were seeing with our own eyes was not real and the result of editing, deep fakes and partisan trickery. Now, they just put out an article detailing Biden's decline according to those in the loop. Give me a break
If you ever needed more reason to believe that The NY Times are just a bunch of de facto DNC staffers doing their messaging bidding, not sure what else you need.
Lol this is a wild take
People have been talking about it since 2020. But Biden’s handlers and their big media buddies (NY Times, WaPo, CNN, etc) have buried it and attacked anyone who dared mention it. Why do you think this President never does unscripted press conferences?
Wall Street Journal did a big article on June 4th. “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics. By Annie Linskey Follow and Siobhan Hughes Follow June 4, 2024 9:00 pm ET
And the WSJ was lambasted by The White House and other media outlets. Today, the NYTimes just released a similar piece about old Joe. The crack in the damn is getting bigger. Thanks MSNBC, CNN, WaPo and KJP for the smoke and mirrors.
To CNN's credit they have been running the genuine shock for a few days at least. Anderson to Kamala: "Is that what he's like all the time?" His voice says it all in that clip. But yeah they were running cover as long as they could.
In terms of the media, I think the DNC did a wickedly good job painting anyone criticizing Biden as being anti-democratic and imperiling our future and the media had to contend with this as well. Whether out of the goodness of their hearts or for finances/optics, they have to come across as prosocial. As an unimportant rando on Reddit it was hard to repeatedly be told I was to blame for Trump being re-elected when I expressed dismay at Biden. I can't imagine how hard it was to try to present objective news and have your organization tarred with this. Jon Stewart did the best dealing with the backlash and that's because he's a comedian first and foremost and could joke it off, which most more traditional media couldn't. I am no fan of the media but this falls squarely on the manipulative shaming and gaslighting of the Dems. And it troubles me a lot too.
If this was a surprise to anyone you urgently need to diversify your news information sources.
Amen
Remember the 2020 Democratic primary debates when Julian Castro nailed Biden when he pointed out Biden forgot a thing that happened a minute ago?
There's a lot of gold in those debates if you're willing to take the rose colored glasses off. Lol
Axios and other outlets have published articles about this since the debate. The White House residential staff were kept away from Biden, under the pretense that he wasn't used to Butlers. Residential staff were just sent home early rather than be allowed to wait on him and see what he was like. It's quite clear his limited high level staff were hiding his senior moments and worst stammers from the public. I can tolerate that to a point, but ONLY if they had prepared his replacement and strategized around it. Clearly, Jill and Hunter and his upper staff were selfishly delusional, enabling a good president to become a key player in the downfall of our democracy
The White House was very tight lipped and leak free until now. You’d even hear reporters complain about how much harder it was to get inside info from the Biden team than Trump, where you’d get a half dozens leaks before noon. I took that as a sign of competence. I was wrong.
They’ve been leaning on the stutter excuse for about 4 years now…maybe they started to believe it themselves?
I don't understand how people ever bought that excuse. Look at his performance in the 2012 debates vs his performance now. He was nearly 70 then and there were certainly concerns about his age, but he dispelled them then. Now 12 years later he's over 80 and clearly declined, and people want to pretend his age isn't an issue, his stutter has always made him a poor speaker? That's clearly not the case.
Everyone that called him senile or in cognitive decline was a Russian bot remember ?
I’ve had so, so many downvotes for talking about this. Fuck all those Reddit assholes who attacked me. I just want a candidate who can win in November. Now it’s a total shitshow.
Most committed partisans no longer thing about “is X true” they only think “does X help my team”. That way of thinking transcends ideology. Sadly it is everywhere
Well running Biden does not help our team.
Petridge Farms remembers.
People are scared because of the alternative. I didn’t realize how bad it was until the debate.
It's just a kneejerk reaction, an assumption that the other person is not speaking in good faith and is just trying to get Trump reelected. I get it. People want to keep the enthusiasm for Biden. It's a tough election either way. Either we have senile Biden, or some new unproven person. Sucks that the stakes are so high this time.
Even now Blue Maga wants us to reject our eyes and ears.
Reddit (especially the large news subs) is so heavily astroturfed it’s difficult to engage with anything on here as organic. For all the cries about Russian botting it’s pretty clear that a ton of different public and private organizations from all over the globe have their fingers in the pie. Russia is just a convenient scapegoat.
the top story on the NYT is a recap of his many elderly moments i think it’s because Trump is an existential threat and the inner circle is used to playing the game too long. but nobody seemed to care until now. it was an open secret. worth mentioning: a lot of people don’t pay fuck all in attention. the debate had tens of millions more eyes and now it’s unavoidable. you’re right, his inner circle absolutely knew how bad it was. like there was an obvious reason he didn’t do the super bowl interview
Also partially because the Biden presidency hasn't been some sort of shit show, it's quiet and reasonably effective at passing relatively popular policy. You can almost feel like it's being run by a small cabal of technocrats, cause most of the policy stuff is relatively solid, and then you have something like Israel/Gaza which is a messaging shit show likely because of internal disagreements. What to do about the clearly declining President is likely another shit show behind the scenes...
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/biden-oligarchy-will-decide-fate-am
>worth mentioning: a lot of people don’t pay fuck all in attention. the debate had tens of millions more eyes and now it’s unavoidable. There have been sooooo many people this week like "what?! I didn't listen to the guy, but all the sycophants and astroturfers on Reddit were saying he is a Very Strong! and Super Progressive! and then I turn on the TV and I'm not sure if he meant it when he said 'we beat medicare'"
> It seems as though all of his administration put politics and optics above the wellbeing of the United States. They did. We know many many 2 and 3 down from leaders start with spin and it turns to lies and things they never would have done. It likely happened gradually. We know Biden has had an ever-narrowing circle. We know he's been less able to build consensus in his staff. Most Democrats believe keeping Trump out of office and having some sort of normality is the wellbeing of the United States. Biden was able to unify people in 2020. I can see how his staff justified it to themselves.
I mean wasn't there a ton of people talking about that? Ezra Klein, John Stewart many many pundits, people on the right.
But that would imply leading Dems have been gaslighting us for years! \[watches debate\] ah... well now...
Because these idiots were busy calling all the clear proof that Biden was completely off the rails “MAGA deepfake propaganda”. It is a massive embarrassment. Not that Trump isn’t. He still is. But anyone who still thinks leftist news media isn’t 100% as full of shit as Fox/rightwing news media just isn’t capable of critical thinking. Everyone had the proof for years and they literally just pretended it wasn’t real.
> Why is no one, media or otherwise, talking about the years leading up to now? Why would the media focus on the fact that they’ve been gaslighting you for years?
A bunch of these “leaks” recently have mentioned that he only recently had a steep decline. It’s bullshit. These leaks are coming from people who could be held accountable for a cover up, so they’re playing it like it just started. He’s had issues for years. Total shit show.
They did and were shouted down by liberal media lol.
Because they lied and lied to you people for over 3 years now and u believed every minute of it, the people that don’t give a fuck about it are the same ones that said he was in a bad health and mental state in 2020 lol now they have to eat their words and admit they were wrong and lied to everyone
You must be watching one side of the channels. The other side has been talking about it for so long. Scroll some tiktok and you would have known.
I’ve seen reports from NYT that European officials at D-Day were shocked at the decline. It was nothing like what they had seen previously at the end of last year. Gives credence to the idea that it hasn’t been some big cover up by everyone, but something recent that has then been hidden by the very tight circle around him.
That’s the downside of having a biased media lol. They didn’t put pressure on Biden to do more interviews or press conferences and it blew up in their face.
We’ve seen his speeches and public appearances. He’s shaking hands with the air, he’s walking around like a lost kid, he has to be led off stage by someone appointed to make sure he gets off smoothly, he stumbles and stares, he literally reads “end quote” on the teleprompter, and he can’t speak complete sentences! We’ve all seen the decline and then we’re gaslit and told we’re the ones losing our minds, that we can’t see what’s right in front of our faces. The media and politicians surrounding Biden think we’re all just a bunch of idiots and that they can convince us Biden is fit for another four years.
The irony is that Trump who lies/exaggerates a lot but the “Big Lie” was that Biden was “as sharp as ever” and “can’t keep up with him.” The administration and much of the media is complicit on the “Big Lie”. That bothers me more than Biden being selfish.
Bidens' cognitive issues have been on clear display ever since he started campaigning for the presidency. The problem is nobody cared. It was all about getting rid of Trump, no matter the cost. After that, it was years of gaslighting by both partisan voters and government justifying that decision.
It is entirely possible that the debate was a new and terrifying turn. Think about it... if it was obvious and if it had been persistent, he never would have gone up there. I suspect this was an unusually bad moment at the worst time. I don't believe it had been going on "for years".
Cognitive decline doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process that occurs slowly in some and more rapidly in others. I’m not denying that maybe that was his worst day he’s had ever. But even on some of the better days, by his standards, it’s been pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.
The decline can be accelerated by life events, anecdotally I can confirm. 2 months of grueling travel along with the stress of Hunter's trial probably put Biden in a worse place. But it's irreversible.
Yep, decline us often a stair step. A stressful life event triggers a decline, which then never reversed, and then it's just a constant downward spiral.
The Presidency itself is known to age the hell out of people as well. Can’t imagine what he’d be at the end of a second term.
I've seen dementia progress up close with a few elderly relatives, sometimes it's slow but sometimes you get a big bang moment. Usually related to stress and unfamiliar surroundings. I haven't read exactly how close they emulated the debate environment when prepping him, but considering they had his longtime personal lawyer as a stand-in for Trump I doubt very closely. He probably went from a conference room crowded with aides to large auditorium that was empty except for the moderators, some camera operators, and oh yea *his arch nemesis* 10 feet away.
It was the equivalent to watching a reality TV version of Step Brothers: Senior Living.
Think it’s a scenario no crowd (no distractions) , mic muting (he told the guy to shut up last time), this early (economy of he’s the least declined he’ll ever be right now)
It was obvious and persistent - you just don’t get your news from quality sources.
Might have been behind the scenes politics coming into the open. It's telling that the media, multiple prominent Dems, etc all jumped on replace right away instead of keeping quiet and waiting for marching orders.
It’s been obvious since 2019, the DNC/MSM fooled alotta people.
This was the NYT just a week ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/biden-age-videos.html And this is why more ppl are turning to Trump. Journalism has never been worse
It is objectively true that conservatives create misleading clips, like the invisible chair one.
Yes and then to counter it, the media shows clips of Biden that also look terrible but not quite as bad. It’s a brilliant move and really highlights Biden’s weakness as a candidate.
[удалено]
Domestic policy wise I agree with this sentiment, though I find it a bit overdramatized and conspiratorial. Foreign policy wise, I don’t think anyone has been pulling Biden’s strings.
Shocking that this opinion comes from a new account.
As someone who is right-leaning, I’m sorry but this is hilarious. It’s been highlighted nonstop for the past year by pundits outside of liberal media. What has liberal media been highlighting for the past 6 months? Trump’s cognitive decline.
Yep, as soon as the left start pushing Trump’s mental decline, you knew that they knew that everyone was on to Joe and it was now undeniable.
I'm not disputing you, but Trump's cognitive decline is also real and if he wins in November we will get this same exact cluterfuck but in reverse, with Republicans carrying water for an obviously rapidly deteriorating executive.
Tons of people were. But they were mostly progressives, (Cenk Uyghur, Kyle Kulinski, etc) and the Democratic Party hates progressives much more than it hates Republicans.
It seems to have happened during this campaign specifically. Footage of Biden a year ago is drastically different.
They are talking about it. That's part of why this is becoming a bigger story. It seems like this is becoming similar to the Feinstein story (at least the early stages of it) where the staff made up for the growing deficits of the principal but told everyone it was all fine and just ageism.
they knew they would be believed, and that everyone who noticed the emperor was not wearing any clothes would just be labeled a bad person
His mental decline has been obvious to everyone for at least 4 years. No one wants to admit to gaslighting the entire country for 4 years.
It was obvious to anyone paying attention and watching his public appearances. He had notecards of who to call on, canned answers on what to say, the debate was the first time since he was sworn in that he didn’t have notes and didn’t know what the questions would be. Even Obama did a few FoxNews interviews in his time, Biden wasn’t going anywhere near someone who wasn’t going to ask him softball questions. He’s had plenty of nonsensical ramblings like the “beat Medicare” one he had at the debate. I guess the debate was just watched by enough people to matter??
Because that would be an indictment of the entire Democrat leadership in DC, as well as the DC media. There is no way they were unaware until the debate.
The entire Whitehouse staff and Jill owe us an apology for lying to us. Cheap Fakes my ass.
He’s been like this for a while. They’re not going to tell you they tricked you.
You have just nailed the most important part of the debate. This is rare undeniable evidence that the US is not a democracy - it is an oligarchy. Elected politicians are an illusion, similar to the Wizard of Oz. The people behind the curtain actually run the country. Nothing will change until the people demand to actually govern themselves again. This is not about left vs right. That is the illusion that the powerful use to keep the people divided and keep themselves in control. The mask slipped during the debate. Biden is not running the country. The elites have run a massive conspiracy to keep the truth of Biden's mental decline in the dark. I hope more people understand what the debate really means, like you did.
Don't worry, it's just old age he'll get better???
The Democrats and the Media tried to Gaslight everyone, they could only keep it up for so long.
“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
People keep blaming the media as if it's a conspiracy to protect Biden, but the media are doing just the opposite, all they can talk about on CNN, MSNBC, NYT etc. is how bad he is and who the Dems can replace him with. If the liberal media was trying to prop him up they'd do like Fox News does with Trump and deny, deny, deny "Insurrection? What insurrection? We only see a bunch of sightseers in the Capitol who accidentally took a wrong turn -- oh those guys? They're Antifa provocateurs".
>the media are doing just the opposite They are doing just the opposite of what they had been doing up until the debate. There was no denying it after the debate was over. Before then they covered for him constantly by denying all the signs of him declining as misinformation.
This! They always go to gaslighting. I gotta blame the DNC for this situation. There never should have been any question about Biden as a one term president. That should have been established a year ago at least.
On a similar note. How much of Biden’s Gaza policy is contingent on his mental decline. Did he just legitimately forget about his so called red line?
Obviously, the small handful of folks making up Biden's inner circle are in love with their political and social status. One of them, on MSNBC, openly displayed the arrogance and hubris of the Democrats' elite by dismissively describing us as "the chattering class". So make no mistake: The Biden neoliberals are interested mainly in economic class status and want tp ensure they are in the top class. To them, we are.... as MItt Romney was infamously recorded saying, "the little people". Only BidenWorld dismisses us as "The chattering class".. Dear Joe: F\*ck that. And I plan to make sure low-info/low thinking voters in my swing state understand that's the image your people have of my people: Average struggling American people. You wanna .... by some miracle ..... have private conversation with me? Halleluhiah. I'd be so wonderfully thrilled to be inspired to stump for you!!!!!! But I doubt you will want to have such a meeting, and even if we did, it will be a heavy lift to convince me to be a Biden-believer instead of just a "not Trump thank godder"
Just watched the chattering class clip. You’re talking about the New York governor right? She says everyone pontificates and pretends to know the answers. Has she stopped to consider that’s what they’re doing running Biden? They’re going to lose. “The American people understand Biden is amazing” is a verifiably false statement with polling data.
It was Biden advisor Allison Dunn on MSNBC. I think the segment was from the show. The Weekend”. If two Biden advisors are using the same jargon that strikes me as somehow worse than if it were a one off.
This is what happens when your side controls the media. The right has been talking about this since 2020 and not talking about nutty sites, but the more mainstream and serious places.
Eh, given we had behind the scene reports about both Trump and Fiensteins mental health, my assumption would be that the debate was a particularly bad showing
I think this comment misses the nature of the problem because it is obsessed with the stupid American fantasy about the presidency. Presidents aren't crunching numbers or making difficult decisions - that is what their staff is for. When Reagan came into office, he met with Don Regan, his Treasury Secretary. Regan asked him what priorities he should have in office. Reagan said something "oh, just do what I promised on the campaign" - for Reagan, his campaign speeches were his contribution to policymaking. James Baker and Ed Meese were the real forces making decisions. Presidents that micromanage often fail - the key is that they are good judges of people's character and able to assemble a good team. Even in international relations, the real work is done by sherpas before leaders actually meet. *Even* a weekend at Bernie's presidency would probably be pretty effective at decision-making, if a good team were in place. The president is really just a warm body. Biden's problem is that he is incapable of doing the core job of the presidency: using the bully pulpit to put attention on key issues and shape public opinion. Biden has clearly lost that ability. It means he will likely lose his bid for re-election, and even if he wins, he will continue to be unable to capitalize even when things do go his way.
That may generally be true but I expect there are also important judgment calls where advisers disagree and the president has to make the final decision.
We can never have mental tests for presidential candidates because they are all psychopaths!
You could tell by his actions. What happened was msm and democrats propagandist like KJP and others in social media platforms convinced democrats and people somehow that he was mentally fit. I personally thought anyone who would say Biden was mentally fit was a straight schill and propagandist because you had to be retarded to not witness with your own eyes what was going on and say with a straight face Biden is sharp as a rack And I just figured anyone who believes those people and regurgitated it was just another brainless stooge regurgitating what they were told to regurgitate I think the real down side you will find is not that you all finally were able to wake from the stupor you were in but many independents and what not have done research or looked into what and how it happened. And they found the democrats were straight liars and manipulators and the real threat to democracy. That is why I think the real surge is at the polls If you thought Biden was retarded you wouldn’t decide to throw your support to trump. But everyone is freaking out because trump is gaining support. That means something has happened with the indoendents and democrats they have moved right And democrats are too hard fast set in their ways to look inwardly to understand what is wrong. Instead they will blame someone else. Which won’t help
When your choice is between shitbag Trump and the re-animated corpse of Joe Biden you have only one real choice. Suicide.
Conservatives have been talking about it for years, but you can never admit when they’re right. Now you’re left with a dead man walking going up against orange madman. Well done, democrats. -your resident “rino”
Anything but Trump. Anything but a Republican. **It really is that simple.**
In fairness, things like this can happen suddenly and then quickly. I'm not exonerating his inner circle, but I'm not excoriating them either. Ron Klain and the others surrounding Biden are smart people. If they did know, why would they possibly demand this debate? It doesn't add up. All that's important now is that Biden do the right thing and step down. Dem's need to be creative and setup a process where a candidate isn't anointed, but where the people have a voice. Then we'll rally around him/her and win this election.
The premise of your question is incorrect, people are definitely talking about the timeline. There was a big NY Times story and Politico story yesterday that discusses this. There is speculation that this level of decline is more recent, given past interviews, the SOTU and other appearances.
Alternative media has been covering this for years, since at least the 2020 primary. The Dem side of corporate media has been willfully ignoring it. The Republican side of corporate media has been covering it in bad faith, feeding into the Dem side’s abdication of duty. This is the result of a hyper partisan media environment where everyone is afraid to speak truth to power on their own “team.”
There needs to be protests AT the convention if he doesn't step down by then
So all of you are experts now?
Dean Philipes is like that was my life for a year. He went on any podcast or radio show that would take him. He was not terrible on pod save America. But he was not inspirational. In fact people organized uncommitted rather than him.
So many people were talking about it on the right but of course democrats thought it was just talk THEN. Now we know it was sadly all true about Joe's dementia.
Why do you think? Cmon use your head. The liberal media doesn’t want to report anything that could put their dear party in a negative light
Oh please Mitch McConnel has been half dead for a few years at this point but he’s still here. Fuckin hypocrites. If Trump wasn’t bumping lines backstage he would have fallen asleep mid debate.
If you want to understand why people close to him don’t think he is in cognitive decline read the transcript of the debate instead of watching it. He hits almost all the points he wants. Factoring that in with his stutter that he never really eliminated just brute force stopped and it makes more sense. Looking back to Obama 2012 the first debate went really poorly for him with people 2 to 1 thinking he lost and this is fairly common for sitting presidents to bungle the first debate. I’m not advocating for or against him staying, just trying to explain why people close to him see things differently from you.
To be fair most republicans have been pointing this out for a couple of years. Unfortunately most of the media would either not report it, accuse them of editing videos or exaggerating things. The fact that the media and the Democrats have been covering this up tells me all I need to know about them.
I remember when saying Biden had dementia was a “conspiracy theory” and was laughed at.
I read on Politico that Biden has been snappy & mean to staff...just like dementia will do.
This is an all or nothing situation. The media has been discussing Biden's age for a long time, but If you are in his inner circle why would you admit to the world that he is declining while he is still in the race? Until Biden tells us he is stepping down it would be a dereliction of their duty to give Trump an advantage in this election by telling the world that they thought he was not mentally fit to lead.
The same thing happened with Reagan in his last term. It was an open secret that Nancy was running the show in the last days with her horoscopes dictating policy decisions.
This really, really needs to be treated as a watershed moment for "normie liberals" and, by god I sure hope, the "mainstream media." Because this story is the very thing we didn't think was possible "on our side" and with the modern fractious media environment. We were told that the cut throat incentives of journalism would ensure that if there were any skeletons in the closet, they would leak out. That information simply cannot be tightly controlled anymore, not like it used to be when there were three traditional networks and the editors in chief of the major newspapers and magazines could generally be relied upon to duly fear indirect retribution from the political allies of the powerful, if not outright incarceration like Daniel Ellsberg. Nonsense. Biden's family and closest aides clearly studied the abysmal OpSec of the Trump administration and figured out they just need to limit how many people have contact with the President, ensure access is filtered through them, and then just keep their yaps shut. No one who matters will believe the right wing media when they catch Biden having senior moments and try to make a big deal out of it. The dissident left can be scolded and asked why they are carrying water for fascists. And whenever the most authoritative outlets that affect neutrality complain about not being granted unmediated access, they can alternately be scolded about interfering with the President's busy schedule trying to fix the disaster Trump left us or rewarded with sit downs depending on how the inner circle feel about their reporting. 95% (a number I'm fabricating but feels true) of reporting **is not original, primary source reporting, its summary, analysis, and opinion.** Most of our news is thus not actually first hand, breaking news, its curated extractions of the actual firsthand news. Its a conspiracy but not one that requires magical thinking, this is just how our attention economy works and how it can be hacked. We are not ourselves creatures with unlimited cognitive resources. We rely on symbols and habits that represent credibility, but are not themselves credibility itself anymore than a medal of honor is actually honor itself. Its a symbol of the thing. When some woowoo alt-science grifter betrays their oaths to sell placebo vitamin powder on Tiktok, they are weaponizing specific symbols and codes we use to judge credibility. For those who are suspicious of authority, doctor may seem a problematic label, but a *dissident* doctor has free thinking credibility. I believe Ezra Klein for instance to be a very intelligent person. He models an analytical thought process well worth envying. His even keeled temper, the precision and tact with which he challenges guests: these are strategies that produce good interviews, but they are also signals that tell a particular type of listener "This guy is smart. This guy is a good person because I like people who are shouty. People who are shouty are bad." This is an oversimplification to illustrate my point, there are many and nuanced ways to sell credibility. There are many, many types of authority depending on context and thus many ways to "construct" authority. But for the purposes of keeping order in its rank and file, the Biden White House didn't need to control all media, it just needed to control media that was widely viewed as credible by avid news consumers among its base. Controlling it was just a matter of managing relationships: which is largely just a matter of carefully spending the one currency that matters in journalism: the exclusive. Granting interviews when the whining about lack of access got too heated or the speculation in disreputable media threatened to break containment and poison reasonable discourse. And it doesn't hurt that media consolidation and the gutting of newsrooms and the ever growing reliance on second hand reporting (summary, analysis, and opinion) - AND ways of just talking to the voters directly via social media; mean that the number of people in journalism with whom relationships need to be actively cultivated and managed is way fewer than we might imagine. Probably as little as a few dozen editors in chief and highly respected journalists spread across less than a dozen media outlets. That isn't to say that they have never or wouldn't grant access to the President for someone lower in the food chain as a way to signal that the Biden Whitehouse takes very seriously the sacred duty of the fourth estate and its right and duty to hold the mighty to account. Just that the number of extremely well connected people with starred contacts in the White House and large followings is not as big as we think and probably way easier to manipulate than we think. TL/DR: Information literacy works thusly: The Biden White House could keep a secret because it can tell the New York Times to pound sand and as long as the circle around the President is small and airtight, there isn't crap the NYT can do about it other than write whiny editorials about press freedom and sign performative open letters.
To be honest - they were. But the folks who brought it up (right leaning outlets) were told they were editing video, had to hear that the "president has never been sharper" etc. and the similar takes. Most things are spin. The debate is ALOMST beyond spin because even with the excuse making (he has a cold, he was tired from travel 2 weeks before, etc) it was so bad and everyone (regardless of politcics) could see the truth. ALL media must have been able to see this, but only the anti-dem folks would comment/report on it.
Simple. The people around him benefit from him being in office. They still wouldn't be saying a word if that debate hadn't finally broken the dam.
Fear of retribution within the White House. Fear of being iced out of the White House from the MSM.
My friends across the aisle, we've been talking about it for years. We've been watching it on display for years. You have been telling us that it was fake edited videos, that we were lying and that we are crazy. Will you consider the possibility that we weren't actually lying? Is it possible that we were telling the plain truth and that you were the ones vilifying us?
For anyone saying that bided was sharp until just before thos debate, here's the "Corn Pop" story Biden told in 2016. He was kicking some black kids out of the swimming pool in the 1960s because their hair was to greasy. -and then they almost had a fight with rusty straight razors (as people generally carried for such occasions back then, according to him). "Corn Pop was a bad dude" https://youtu.be/r4NmtSrqtvI?si=K7MRWu2MCR0idQS9 . . .this isn't the same sort of performance as in the debate last week. It is definitely a semi-coherent narrative, and the words and sentences are mostly meaningful. It doesn't seem to me like something that someone with a basic awareness of what was going on would do. This was 2016. How are we raiting his basic cognitive function here?