If Biden is staying, he needs to do something to assuage concerns

[Bismarck]

As someone who won’t vote for Trump and had planned to vote for Biden before this debate, how is “OMG dementia” not serious? His empty look reminds me of my grandfather who suffered from dementia for the last 5 years of his life. Just because he isn’t a vegetable and can read a teleprompter sometimes doesn’t mean he doesn’t have dementia. I can’t be an outlier here. Nothing he could do now could “assuage my concerns”. I’m not interested in voting for whichever random appointee is actually running our government.

Because any person who actually is in the medical field would tell you that someone who had any form of dementia, small or wide, could not do the job that he's doing, nor could they present themselves the way he has in numerous other settings this year alone.

There's a big difference between "the man is 81, slow sometimes, with a stutter" than "senile and dementia." To me, people are being extremely overdramatic with that. A gaping mouth certainly doesn't medically instantly translate to dementia, that seems like a weird jump to make. Even a slight case of dementia would prevent him from doing almost all of the things that he's doing as president. But that's just me.

Either way, if you really care about defeating Trump, I hope you reconsider.

Okay even if whatever the president is going through isn’t clinically dementia he still is obviously incapable of making decisions. So fine you win the semantic argument but who cares? If the concern with Trump is that he undermines democracy, I don’t see how voting for a figurehead president is any better.

[wbrocks67]

As someone who won’t vote for Trump and had planned to vote for Biden before this debate, how is “OMG dementia” not serious? His empty look reminds me of my grandfather who suffered from dementia for the last 5 years of his life. Just because he isn’t a vegetable and can read a teleprompter sometimes doesn’t mean he doesn’t have dementia. I can’t be an outlier here. Nothing he could do now could “assuage my concerns”. I’m not interested in voting for whichever random appointee is actually running our government.

Because any person who actually is in the medical field would tell you that someone who had any form of dementia, small or wide, could not do the job that he's doing, nor could they present themselves the way he has in numerous other settings this year alone.

There's a big difference between "the man is 81, slow sometimes, with a stutter" than "senile and dementia." To me, people are being extremely overdramatic with that. A gaping mouth certainly doesn't medically instantly translate to dementia, that seems like a weird jump to make. Even a slight case of dementia would prevent him from doing almost all of the things that he's doing as president. But that's just me.

Either way, if you really care about defeating Trump, I hope you reconsider.

Okay even if whatever the president is going through isn’t clinically dementia he still is obviously incapable of making decisions. So fine you win the semantic argument but who cares? If the concern with Trump is that he undermines democracy, I don’t see how voting for a figurehead president is any better.

The point I'm making though is that he's been making decisions for 3 years now. Where has there been proof that any decision he's made has been effected by this so called mental decline? I haven't seen it. That's why I think it's a bit unfair to base things off one night when we have 3 years of decisions and being president to go off of. He hasn't been a "figurehead president" for the past 3 years - so why would I think that based off of one bad performance?

[Roll Roons]

As someone who won’t vote for Trump and had planned to vote for Biden before this debate, how is “OMG dementia” not serious? His empty look reminds me of my grandfather who suffered from dementia for the last 5 years of his life. Just because he isn’t a vegetable and can read a teleprompter sometimes doesn’t mean he doesn’t have dementia. I can’t be an outlier here. Nothing he could do now could “assuage my concerns”. I’m not interested in voting for whichever random appointee is actually running our government.

Because any person who actually is in the medical field would tell you that someone who had any form of dementia, small or wide, could not do the job that he's doing, nor could they present themselves the way he has in numerous other settings this year alone.

There's a big difference between "the man is 81, slow sometimes, with a stutter" than "senile and dementia." To me, people are being extremely overdramatic with that. A gaping mouth certainly doesn't medically instantly translate to dementia, that seems like a weird jump to make. Even a slight case of dementia would prevent him from doing almost all of the things that he's doing as president. But that's just me.

Either way, if you really care about defeating Trump, I hope you reconsider.

Okay even if whatever the president is going through isn’t clinically dementia he still is obviously incapable of making decisions. So fine you win the semantic argument but who cares? If the concern with Trump is that he undermines democracy, I don’t see how voting for a figurehead president is any better.

The point I'm making though is that he's been making decisions for 3 years now. Where has there been proof that any decision he's made has been effected by this so called mental decline? I haven't seen it. That's why I think it's a bit unfair to base things off one night when we have 3 years of decisions and being president to go off of. He hasn't been a "figurehead president" for the past 3 years - so why would I think that based off of one bad performance?

Do you work in the White House? Because otherwise you have no way of really knowing how many of these decisions are made by Biden directly as opposed to his advisors and staff.

[wbrocks67]

As someone who won’t vote for Trump and had planned to vote for Biden before this debate, how is “OMG dementia” not serious? His empty look reminds me of my grandfather who suffered from dementia for the last 5 years of his life. Just because he isn’t a vegetable and can read a teleprompter sometimes doesn’t mean he doesn’t have dementia. I can’t be an outlier here. Nothing he could do now could “assuage my concerns”. I’m not interested in voting for whichever random appointee is actually running our government.

Because any person who actually is in the medical field would tell you that someone who had any form of dementia, small or wide, could not do the job that he's doing, nor could they present themselves the way he has in numerous other settings this year alone.

There's a big difference between "the man is 81, slow sometimes, with a stutter" than "senile and dementia." To me, people are being extremely overdramatic with that. A gaping mouth certainly doesn't medically instantly translate to dementia, that seems like a weird jump to make. Even a slight case of dementia would prevent him from doing almost all of the things that he's doing as president. But that's just me.

Either way, if you really care about defeating Trump, I hope you reconsider.

Okay even if whatever the president is going through isn’t clinically dementia he still is obviously incapable of making decisions. So fine you win the semantic argument but who cares? If the concern with Trump is that he undermines democracy, I don’t see how voting for a figurehead president is any better.

The point I'm making though is that he's been making decisions for 3 years now. Where has there been proof that any decision he's made has been effected by this so called mental decline? I haven't seen it. That's why I think it's a bit unfair to base things off one night when we have 3 years of decisions and being president to go off of. He hasn't been a "figurehead president" for the past 3 years - so why would I think that based off of one bad performance?

Do you work in the White House? Because otherwise you have no way of really knowing how many of these decisions are made by Biden directly as opposed to his advisors and staff.

I don't, but you don't know the opposite either. None of us do. We don't have proof either way, but he's the president, and his remarks in public back up all of his decisions internally so...

[kwabbit]

He can't. I said this in another thread, but the narrative is set. Biden is too old and the sooner this band-aid is ripped off the better off every Democratic candidate will be.

If Biden delivers a perfect speech (which we all know he can't do) but has one tiny flub at the end, that flub will be the headline across every outlet. Doesn't matter if you think it's fair, that's where we're at and there's no changing it.

This is no different than the past three years.

It's going to get a lot worse.

It didn't get worse on Friday, though? Why are we just ignoring that? Forget the teleprompter, the energy level was there. Biden didn't look as old as he did on Thursday. He sounded good, he sounded energized. You can't just say "oh he had the teleprompter, that changed everything". Nah, if he has dementia, he'd be clearly unable to stand up there and do what he did on Friday. (Frankly, I think it's very underrated that he can even read a teleprompter so well at 81, I don't even think I could read it that well now, let alone 81)

Everyone has their opinion on this but frankly I think people are ignoring any other context to believe what they want to believe. He got up there on Friday and was fine, yet it feels like that's being overrided by "all that counts is Thursday, not anything else"

The teleprompter is absolutely essential for Biden to give an energetic performance. He can’t multitask when giving a speech, ie. he can’t come up with his own words and then perform that speech energetically. That’s why he was so quiet on Thursday except when he got angry and wasn’t trying to articulate anything. It’s also why he is fine in front of teleprompter. Biden should just give rousing speeches in front of teleprompters. Most people don’t know or care that it’s there and it would serve him better than giving mediocre at best interviews where he’s certain to flub some questions.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Biden needs to prove that his is both still mentally and physically vigorous.

Why haven’t we seen any videos or even photos of Biden biking in over a year?
I brought this up a few months ago, and people were like “of course he’s not biking in the winter, just wait until the Spring”. 
Well, we’re way past Spring and into summer and we haven’t seen any biking or really any evidence of physical activity from Biden.  He needs to get back to this.

Biden has also done way fewer press conferences than almost all recent presidents.  He should do at least weekly open press conferences of at least an hour.
And scheduled extended nationally live televised interviews with all the major network, and some townhalls as well.

Maybe he could even offer to appear on something like celebrity Jeopardy to show how quick his mind still is.

[7,052,770]

Why haven’t we seen any videos or even photos of Biden biking in over a year?
I brought this up a few months ago, and people were like “of course he’s not biking in the winter, just wait until the Spring”.  
Well, we’re way past Spring and into summer and we haven’t seen any biking or really any evidence of physical activity from Biden.  He needs to get back to this.

....

OK, do you want to place a bet on whether we will ever see him biking again?

Oops. Not really sure why you were so confident over something you just made up.

https://twitter.com/josh_wingrove/status/1796935158081237257

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Why haven’t we seen any videos or even photos of Biden biking in over a year?
I brought this up a few months ago, and people were like “of course he’s not biking in the winter, just wait until the Spring”.  
Well, we’re way past Spring and into summer and we haven’t seen any biking or really any evidence of physical activity from Biden.  He needs to get back to this.

....

OK, do you want to place a bet on whether we will ever see him biking again?

Oops. Not really sure why you were so confident over something you just made up.

https://twitter.com/josh_wingrove/status/1796935158081237257

I had not seen that, thanks! I’m glad to be wrong about that one.

[Almost Anyone But Biden Or Trump (ABBoT but not Greg Abbott)]

snip

I'm glad to see this post from you. TBH, I do entirely agree with you. If Biden wants to stay, he absolutely does have to do something big to assuage the legitimate concerns that have been raised in a decisive manner.

However, that raises the question...

Why hasn't he?

Is it because he can't?

If so, we have a problem, wouldn't you agree?

Alternatively, if he can - then why the *bleep* doesn't he do so and why is he hanging out at Camp David? Why doesn't he do a big press conference like he did after the Hur Report came out? Is it because when he tried to do that, he couldn't manage to do it and it backfired? If so, we're back to the problem of "he can't do it."

Biden said "watch me". We watched. We're still watching. We're still waiting to see if there is anything more to watch. He still hasn't done anything in any sort of unscripted setting of the sort that could hypothetically show the world that he is mentally competent.

Another thing he could do is take a bunch of tests and release the results to show that he is mentally competent. But he has not done that either.

If this were Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign responding to one of his scandals, he would have done something by now. Or really, if it were any other Democratic Presidential candidate from the past 20-30 years (including Biden 2020), they would have done something to address it more than merely that 1 scripted teleprompter NC rally.

Instead, it appears that Biden's staff is still hiding him from the public.

[7,052,770]

Why haven’t we seen any videos or even photos of Biden biking in over a year?
I brought this up a few months ago, and people were like “of course he’s not biking in the winter, just wait until the Spring”.  
Well, we’re way past Spring and into summer and we haven’t seen any biking or really any evidence of physical activity from Biden.  He needs to get back to this.

....

OK, do you want to place a bet on whether we will ever see him biking again?

Oops. Not really sure why you were so confident over something you just made up.

https://twitter.com/josh_wingrove/status/1796935158081237257

I had not seen that, thanks! I’m glad to be wrong about that one.

Maybe he could ride his bike onto the set of the Kimmel show and crack some jokes about his bad debate performance. Like John Kerry with the motorcycle 20 years ago.

[Obama24]

snip

I'm glad to see this post from you. TBH, I do entirely agree with you. If Biden wants to stay, he absolutely does have to do something big to assuage the legitimate concerns that have been raised in a decisive manner.

However, that raises the question...

Why hasn't he?

Is it because he can't?

If so, we have a problem, wouldn't you agree?

Alternatively, if he can - then why the *bleep* doesn't he do so and why is he hanging out at Camp David? Why doesn't he do a big press conference like he did after the Hur Report came out? Is it because when he tried to do that, he couldn't manage to do it and it backfired? If so, we're back to the problem of "he can't do it."

Biden said "watch me". We watched. We're still watching. We're still waiting to see if there is anything more to watch. He still hasn't done anything in any sort of unscripted setting of the sort that could hypothetically show the world that he is mentally competent.

Another thing he could do is take a bunch of tests and release the results to show that he is mentally competent. But he has not done that either.

If this were Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign responding to one of his scandals, he would have done something by now. Or really, if it were any other Democratic Presidential candidate from the past 20-30 years (including Biden 2020), they would have done something to address it more than merely that 1 scripted teleprompter NC rally.

Instead, it appears that Biden's staff is still hiding him from the public.

He actively -refused- to take any cognitive testing.

[jaichind]

Get the Sept debate rules to be changed back to the same rules as the 2020 first debate.  Then hope a repeat of that debate. That can mostly get the situation back to where Biden was before this debate. 

[BlueSwan]

If he COULD do any of those things he WOULD have done so already.

Asking for more debates and freeform interview expecting a different outcome is lunacy. Biden is done. The sooner he and everybody else realizes that, the better.

[Donald Trump’s Toupée]

He needs to do more public events, and interviews.
But the more he does, the worse it will become.
So he has to do more.
Which will make things worse.
Etc.

He’s literally in a death spiral.

[Obama24]

If he COULD do any of those things he WOULD have done so already.

Asking for more debates and freeform interview expecting a different outcome is lunacy. Biden is done. The sooner he and everybody else realizes that, the better.

His wife, who I feel with a team of people actively runs the country day to day, will never allow it. Some people enjoy the trappings of power too much.