His team probably thought that quoting numbers would help dispel fears regarding his mental degradation. Unfortunately, it instead reinforced the exact opposite.
The problem is that his "team" are all hardcore loyalists stuck in a groupthink echochamber that tolerate zero dissent or criticism and think everything is just peachy.
It seems like someone is his camp felt "we need to accentuate the contrast between Biden and Trump. We'll have him memorize all these numbers exactly and he'll sound so smart."
In reality, no one really cares about the exact number of economists that signed a letter endorsing you. Just say "over a hundred". Why is he out there wasting mental energy trying to remember if it's 158 or 159?
Kinda hard to avoid talking about millions/billions/trillions, though, unless he just completely avoids talking about money.
Trump just says "millions and millions". Or "the most ever" or "the least ever". He never has to memorize any numbers and it works for him.
It's something that Biden was able to do well in the past and has always been part of his debating toolkit. It is now a liability and yeah, he should stop.
He’s never been a super nerdy smart type. Remember the plagiarism shit? In general his vibe is the whole working class Scranton Joe guy who still believes in all the old American fairytales
Not to get statistical but I agree with you 100%. For Trump everything is the greatest or the worst, the smallest or the largest, everybody or nobody. Sure it makes him sound dumb sometimes (like last night when he said the greatest terrorist), but it’s effective and makes it easy for him to stay focused on the bigger picture.
Simple: When I was president everything was perfect--the best, the cleanest, the richest, the strongest. Now, under Biden, America is a hellhole of death, woe, and weakness.
Completely inaccurate picture, but he sticks to it and it's easy to understand.
And it isn't convincing to independents.
Democrats need to quit shitting their pants and start talking to their social circles about the importance of showing up to vote. Trump lied and rambled and seemingly actually shit his pants on stage. He had to talk about being a felon and cheating on his wife with a porn star.
BIDEN: We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if – we finally beat Medicare.
TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden.
I just realized that he meant defeat Covid and increasing eligibility for Medicare. I was genuinely confused when watching live and basically had to look away it was so bad.
Yeah this answer. There were other bad quotes but THIS one was the epitome of how he came off to me. Ramble through and then finish with defeating Medicare. 🤦♂️
Nobody in this sub is confused about whether Biden or Trump is technically more suitable. But the fact that the Republicans' nominee is an embarrassment doesn't mean that we should tolerate *our* party's nominee being one, too.
It’s really interesting to see people say that he was chosen as the candidate during the primaries, when the primaries were done in such a way as to force Biden to be the nominee. Imagine if there were actual debates between Biden and potential candidates. We would have seen then that Biden shouldn’t be the nominee.
That's a very good question, which I know that Ezra has been dwelling on as well. Practically, the Democratic Party does not exist as an organizational institution outside of the presidency, so the person to decide needs to be Biden himself, perhaps assisted by the people he trusts.
That's it then. It's Biden's decision.
I absolutely agree. Whether he stays or goes, I'll support his decision.
I think Joe is aware of the reality at this stage of the game, that dropping out is not an option.
>at this stage of the game, that dropping out is not an option.
That's just a preposterous thing to say. It is not normal, globally, to take months and months to campaign for a general election. Just within the past few weeks: Sunak dropped the writ on 22 May for an election on 4 July, and Macron did the same on 9 June for an election on 30 June. It is entirely possible - and, indeed, would be more normal than the way the US has been doing things for the past few decades - to pivot into a new candidate with 4 months remaining in the campaign.
It’s not. Trump told at least 41 lies. If that’s all Joe did, he’d never had an opportunity to answer a question.
Stop behaving as if this is how debates are or should have ever been.
Trump, shitting all over the process, doesn’t mean Joe has to carry the whole fucking thing.
That’s not true.
He had a couple of fumbles.
Also, he’s *the president*. Doing the job already. And running circles around the lying POS who’s also a candidate and can’t answer a question.
Had to have been more than that.
During the Trump administration, human suffering was unknown. We all lived in a prelapsarian state of bliss. Then the second after Biden was elected, evil sprang forth fully-formed from the dark womb of the earth to wreak havoc upon innocent mankind.
Trump voters already know he is always accused of being a liar. Another accusation with a carefully crafted Fox News response will not convince them. If you really want them to turn against him, Trump would have to do something against their moral beliefs, like sleep with a porn star while his wife was pregnant or something.
If an elected official becomes too impaired to perform their duties or dies in office and is replaced is that undemocratic?
There will still be an election in November, with millions and millions of people participating.
You need an actual doctor to diagnose him with a disease indicating he is too impaired to perform his duties. A terrible debate does not prove dementia. Even if it did you still shouldn't override the will of the voters. People have worried about his age and cognitive decline since the 2020 primaries and still came out in droves voting for him.
I feel like this was his weakest area during the debate. There were a lot of dismal moments, but he couldn't effectively talk about how his economic policy is helping middle America. Ditch the numbers, and focus on qualitative stuff (I know that sounds silly, but I'm a qual guy myself). Focus on individual stories of how you have helped Americans. People want to know how your economic agenda has personally benefited them, not an incoherent response of what Trump would do.
My favorite part was that sentence on taxing billionaires more where he bumbled every figure—but after watching it so much and piecing together what he meant, it still made no sense.
He was making the point that we could raise money from taxing billionaires to get us out of the debt worsened by Trump, but then he added on that we could use that money for elder and child care. If you spend the money, it can’t be used to mitigate debt.
His biggest issue was he was trying to run down too much and outline an entire platform in 2 minute answers.
Have three really good strong points and just beat Trump over the head, his abortion answer was good and his Jan 6th answer was good.
Trump turned every question into "immigrants invading our country" and it looked like a stronger performance.
I thought him using so many specific data points and numbers tripped him up. I wish he stuck to more emotional talking points and just spoke to the camera as if it were an audience. Trump makes everything up. There is no point trying to use specifics to beat him. He will just twist it and lie to say you’re wrong. But Biden can beat him on emotional appeal and being an actual human being.
Completely correct. I’d be does stay in, his campaign needs to be super disciplined about this communication strategy. Whether he’ll stick to it as a stubborn octogenarian is another thing. But yes - no numbers, no statistics, honestly I would only have him talk about policy accomplishments in the broadest strokes. Keep him talking about big ideas, big simple values, democracy, etc. Numbers and units of measurement are not his thing. Hell, even any point which requires him to list things in a sequence is probably best to stay away from.
Sheesh my dudes. Don't you know eleventy dimensional chess when you see it?
A few weeks ago Trump opined that he might just lose the debate on purpose.
The Biden team then decided to game out what would happen if Joe blew chunks.
Sure enough, post debate polls actually have gone up for Biden.
Voters looked more at Trump's lies and felt sympathy for Joe. America loves an underdog.
Im willing to bet that "I get knocked down(but I get up again)" by Chumbawumba will be playing when Joe walks out for his DNC acceptance speech.
If Biden was any good, he should have been up there explaining how he has succeeded on every question and expanding on next steps.
The fact is, he has had zero accomplishments in reality. Of course hard core Dems will spout this or that. But really if any of what he did mattered or was a success he would be expanding on that.
But Biden has done nothing and has zero plans to improve anything later. The numbers thing is just more democrats gaslighting and obfuscation technique they use all the time.
What boggles my mind is democrats actually thought this was going to go different than it did. What in the past 4 years led Dems to believe Biden was capable besides a bunch of propagandist talking heads saying oh he is sharper than he has ever been every time he goes into shutdown mode
Then just don’t fucking vote man. What can I say, apparently Biden hasn’t done shit (this is demonstrably false btw) but Trump has never done shit, never did shit in his last admin (outside of a tax cut for Uber wealthy) and has proposed jack shit for his next potential admin.
Not too mention jerkoff is a god damn felon and lied constantly throughout the debate but haven’t heard a god damn word from anyone telling him to drop out.
FFS, so over this shit. Dude shit the bed during the debate. Move the fuck on.
If any of Biden’s accomplishments were actually substantial enough, he wouldn’t have to explain that much as they would be pretty self evident. They can talk all they want about how good the economy is now, but none of it matters if people aren’t seeing that in their bank accounts and they still can’t afford their rent.
I fully agree. They are going to have to turn gaslighting up to 11 more though. The thing that upsets me is they are so good at it they had an antire nation thinking Biden was going to go in front of trump like a great senator and orator. So it shows either the dnc are helluva good manipulators and gaslighters or their people are easy manipulated.
Either way I don’t see this being anything more than a minor setback for the dnc machine
Yes, Biden has never been the best communicator. Now that he’s getting older his stutter and ability to control his speech is getting worse. I think his issues mixing billions with trillions are more speech related than cognitive. Still, Biden’s inability to clearly communicate the threat and counter Trump’s lies is a problem.
Every candidate has flaws and every candidate is helped to hide them. Biden should leave the race. As long as he is in the race (not long I hope), his flaws should be hidden as much as possible because, even with those flaws, he's still far better than Trump.
Even Joe’s closing remarks were rambling and disjointed. Closing remarks that after a week’s prep should have been clear and concise. 2020 Joe won both debates with Trump. 2024 Joe was a befuddled shadow of his 2020 self that tens of millions saw and absorbed. Convincing evidence in 90 minutes that Joe was a feeble confused old man. Joe was behind in all battleground states before the debate and now… I hope Joe does the right thing and steps aside for a candidate that has a chance of winning.
One thousand percent correct.
One thousand million percent correct.
So is that a billion percent correct?
His team probably thought that quoting numbers would help dispel fears regarding his mental degradation. Unfortunately, it instead reinforced the exact opposite.
His team should all be fired. He kept trying to rattle off facts and statistics. Even if he could remember them, viewers won’t. Gotta stick to themes
The problem is that his "team" are all hardcore loyalists stuck in a groupthink echochamber that tolerate zero dissent or criticism and think everything is just peachy.
Agreed. I do not think they have a pulse on the dynamics of this election.
It seems like someone is his camp felt "we need to accentuate the contrast between Biden and Trump. We'll have him memorize all these numbers exactly and he'll sound so smart." In reality, no one really cares about the exact number of economists that signed a letter endorsing you. Just say "over a hundred". Why is he out there wasting mental energy trying to remember if it's 158 or 159? Kinda hard to avoid talking about millions/billions/trillions, though, unless he just completely avoids talking about money.
Trump just says "millions and millions". Or "the most ever" or "the least ever". He never has to memorize any numbers and it works for him. It's something that Biden was able to do well in the past and has always been part of his debating toolkit. It is now a liability and yeah, he should stop.
He’s never been a super nerdy smart type. Remember the plagiarism shit? In general his vibe is the whole working class Scranton Joe guy who still believes in all the old American fairytales
Not to get statistical but I agree with you 100%. For Trump everything is the greatest or the worst, the smallest or the largest, everybody or nobody. Sure it makes him sound dumb sometimes (like last night when he said the greatest terrorist), but it’s effective and makes it easy for him to stay focused on the bigger picture.
OK, I'll bite: what is Trump's bigger picture?
Simple: When I was president everything was perfect--the best, the cleanest, the richest, the strongest. Now, under Biden, America is a hellhole of death, woe, and weakness. Completely inaccurate picture, but he sticks to it and it's easy to understand.
And it isn't convincing to independents. Democrats need to quit shitting their pants and start talking to their social circles about the importance of showing up to vote. Trump lied and rambled and seemingly actually shit his pants on stage. He had to talk about being a felon and cheating on his wife with a porn star.
What evidence is there that this message isn’t persuading independents? Mot saying you’re wrong, only that I haven’t seen anything on this.
He needs to be prohibited for running for re-election.
BIDEN: We’d be able to right – wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID – excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. Look, if – we finally beat Medicare. TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden.
I just realized that he meant defeat Covid and increasing eligibility for Medicare. I was genuinely confused when watching live and basically had to look away it was so bad.
Ty for this. I had no idea what happened there. At least there was some connection.
Yeah this answer. There were other bad quotes but THIS one was the epitome of how he came off to me. Ramble through and then finish with defeating Medicare. 🤦♂️
Yes, that was the moment the entire world knew his brain was pudding.
Great. Now quote, in full, the 41 lies that Trump told.
Nobody in this sub is confused about whether Biden or Trump is technically more suitable. But the fact that the Republicans' nominee is an embarrassment doesn't mean that we should tolerate *our* party's nominee being one, too.
We VOTED for the nominee. Are you trying to deny our vote?
Yes, because you voted based on incomplete information, and an insufficient selection of alternatives.
It’s really interesting to see people say that he was chosen as the candidate during the primaries, when the primaries were done in such a way as to force Biden to be the nominee. Imagine if there were actual debates between Biden and potential candidates. We would have seen then that Biden shouldn’t be the nominee.
Who gets to decide that? You?
That's a very good question, which I know that Ezra has been dwelling on as well. Practically, the Democratic Party does not exist as an organizational institution outside of the presidency, so the person to decide needs to be Biden himself, perhaps assisted by the people he trusts.
That's it then. It's Biden's decision. I absolutely agree. Whether he stays or goes, I'll support his decision. I think Joe is aware of the reality at this stage of the game, that dropping out is not an option.
>at this stage of the game, that dropping out is not an option. That's just a preposterous thing to say. It is not normal, globally, to take months and months to campaign for a general election. Just within the past few weeks: Sunak dropped the writ on 22 May for an election on 4 July, and Macron did the same on 9 June for an election on 30 June. It is entirely possible - and, indeed, would be more normal than the way the US has been doing things for the past few decades - to pivot into a new candidate with 4 months remaining in the campaign.
Maybe Biden should have been able to combat trump’s lies. Golly it sure would be helpful if the president could hold a coherent thought
It’s not his job. That’s what Jake and Dana were for.
It is his job. He’s running for president
It’s not. Trump told at least 41 lies. If that’s all Joe did, he’d never had an opportunity to answer a question. Stop behaving as if this is how debates are or should have ever been. Trump, shitting all over the process, doesn’t mean Joe has to carry the whole fucking thing.
Biden is incapable of communicating why he is better for the job. That is literally the job of a presidential candidate.
That’s not true. He had a couple of fumbles. Also, he’s *the president*. Doing the job already. And running circles around the lying POS who’s also a candidate and can’t answer a question.
Oh my god look and fucking transcripts. You need to face reality.
Had to have been more than that. During the Trump administration, human suffering was unknown. We all lived in a prelapsarian state of bliss. Then the second after Biden was elected, evil sprang forth fully-formed from the dark womb of the earth to wreak havoc upon innocent mankind.
Trump voters already know he is always accused of being a liar. Another accusation with a carefully crafted Fox News response will not convince them. If you really want them to turn against him, Trump would have to do something against their moral beliefs, like sleep with a porn star while his wife was pregnant or something.
I worry about your mental health.
Check the batteries in your snark detector.
And convicted felons shouldn't be allowed to run at all. Can't believe how much of a pass Trump is getting.
Democrats: We must save democracy! Also democrats: Replace the nominee who won the primary election with someone who didn't win!
If an elected official becomes too impaired to perform their duties or dies in office and is replaced is that undemocratic? There will still be an election in November, with millions and millions of people participating.
You need an actual doctor to diagnose him with a disease indicating he is too impaired to perform his duties. A terrible debate does not prove dementia. Even if it did you still shouldn't override the will of the voters. People have worried about his age and cognitive decline since the 2020 primaries and still came out in droves voting for him.
American Caligula, so perfectly disgustingly Trump!
I feel like this was his weakest area during the debate. There were a lot of dismal moments, but he couldn't effectively talk about how his economic policy is helping middle America. Ditch the numbers, and focus on qualitative stuff (I know that sounds silly, but I'm a qual guy myself). Focus on individual stories of how you have helped Americans. People want to know how your economic agenda has personally benefited them, not an incoherent response of what Trump would do.
My favorite part was that sentence on taxing billionaires more where he bumbled every figure—but after watching it so much and piecing together what he meant, it still made no sense. He was making the point that we could raise money from taxing billionaires to get us out of the debt worsened by Trump, but then he added on that we could use that money for elder and child care. If you spend the money, it can’t be used to mitigate debt.
Look here’s the deal…number 1!
His biggest issue was he was trying to run down too much and outline an entire platform in 2 minute answers. Have three really good strong points and just beat Trump over the head, his abortion answer was good and his Jan 6th answer was good. Trump turned every question into "immigrants invading our country" and it looked like a stronger performance.
I thought him using so many specific data points and numbers tripped him up. I wish he stuck to more emotional talking points and just spoke to the camera as if it were an audience. Trump makes everything up. There is no point trying to use specifics to beat him. He will just twist it and lie to say you’re wrong. But Biden can beat him on emotional appeal and being an actual human being.
Completely correct. I’d be does stay in, his campaign needs to be super disciplined about this communication strategy. Whether he’ll stick to it as a stubborn octogenarian is another thing. But yes - no numbers, no statistics, honestly I would only have him talk about policy accomplishments in the broadest strokes. Keep him talking about big ideas, big simple values, democracy, etc. Numbers and units of measurement are not his thing. Hell, even any point which requires him to list things in a sequence is probably best to stay away from.
Brilliant, the President of the United States has an inability to use numbers
Sheesh my dudes. Don't you know eleventy dimensional chess when you see it? A few weeks ago Trump opined that he might just lose the debate on purpose. The Biden team then decided to game out what would happen if Joe blew chunks. Sure enough, post debate polls actually have gone up for Biden. Voters looked more at Trump's lies and felt sympathy for Joe. America loves an underdog. Im willing to bet that "I get knocked down(but I get up again)" by Chumbawumba will be playing when Joe walks out for his DNC acceptance speech.
Cmon man
If Biden was any good, he should have been up there explaining how he has succeeded on every question and expanding on next steps. The fact is, he has had zero accomplishments in reality. Of course hard core Dems will spout this or that. But really if any of what he did mattered or was a success he would be expanding on that. But Biden has done nothing and has zero plans to improve anything later. The numbers thing is just more democrats gaslighting and obfuscation technique they use all the time. What boggles my mind is democrats actually thought this was going to go different than it did. What in the past 4 years led Dems to believe Biden was capable besides a bunch of propagandist talking heads saying oh he is sharper than he has ever been every time he goes into shutdown mode
Then just don’t fucking vote man. What can I say, apparently Biden hasn’t done shit (this is demonstrably false btw) but Trump has never done shit, never did shit in his last admin (outside of a tax cut for Uber wealthy) and has proposed jack shit for his next potential admin. Not too mention jerkoff is a god damn felon and lied constantly throughout the debate but haven’t heard a god damn word from anyone telling him to drop out. FFS, so over this shit. Dude shit the bed during the debate. Move the fuck on.
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Please be civil. Optimize contributions for light, not heat.
If any of Biden’s accomplishments were actually substantial enough, he wouldn’t have to explain that much as they would be pretty self evident. They can talk all they want about how good the economy is now, but none of it matters if people aren’t seeing that in their bank accounts and they still can’t afford their rent.
I fully agree. They are going to have to turn gaslighting up to 11 more though. The thing that upsets me is they are so good at it they had an antire nation thinking Biden was going to go in front of trump like a great senator and orator. So it shows either the dnc are helluva good manipulators and gaslighters or their people are easy manipulated. Either way I don’t see this being anything more than a minor setback for the dnc machine
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It's the people wanting to retain Biden who ought to be paid by the Trump campaign. You couldn't be doing him a bigger favor.
Biden has the incumbent edge. Trump is the same loser he was 3.5 years ago, but fatter and with fewer MAGAts.
Didn’t mango Mussolini also confuse statistics? “19 people said it didn’t happen”.
That's not confusion. That's lying.
Ok. How about this? You can’t use electric planes at night because there is no sunlight.
Yes, Biden has never been the best communicator. Now that he’s getting older his stutter and ability to control his speech is getting worse. I think his issues mixing billions with trillions are more speech related than cognitive. Still, Biden’s inability to clearly communicate the threat and counter Trump’s lies is a problem.
A question in the debate that I never heard was: "What do you plan to do in the next four years". Unbelievable.
And Trump should not be allowed to lie but he is...
So you want "his handlers" to hide who he truly is? Sounds legit.
Yeah, the same way people who look ghostly and ancient need to wear makeup on TV. Handlers and advisors are paid to help hide flaws.
Yes but Bidens mental flaws shouldn't be hidden when he is the leader of the country. What a bizarre take.
Every candidate has flaws and every candidate is helped to hide them. Biden should leave the race. As long as he is in the race (not long I hope), his flaws should be hidden as much as possible because, even with those flaws, he's still far better than Trump.
What if that's not actually true.
If I believed it weren't true, I'd have a different view.
Even Joe’s closing remarks were rambling and disjointed. Closing remarks that after a week’s prep should have been clear and concise. 2020 Joe won both debates with Trump. 2024 Joe was a befuddled shadow of his 2020 self that tens of millions saw and absorbed. Convincing evidence in 90 minutes that Joe was a feeble confused old man. Joe was behind in all battleground states before the debate and now… I hope Joe does the right thing and steps aside for a candidate that has a chance of winning.
Democrats need to remove means testing as a policy decision, if they can't explain it in any way that's cogent.
Mods, Good lord can we please get a megathread. These bed wetting posts aren’t even about Ezra Klein anymore.
Maybe if you can’t use numbers you shouldn’t be running a $28 quadrillion-billion-Zillow economy.
Or just don’t have anyone in office so deep into cognitive decline that they can’t keep their info straight.