Even some expected to be in Biden's corner [including] liberal comedian Jon Stewart.
What. The. Fuck.
Jon Stewart is in Biden's corner, he's just being honest that age is a concern. If you watch his segment you'd see he dropped a big steaming dump on Trump.
And, as an aside, to avoid having your candidate critiqued for their age just fucking run a different candidate.
People are extremely bad at understanding what Jon said. It fucking sucks. Sorry, Democrats, you're not going to win over voters by demanding they pretend your stinky candidates don't stink. That's not how this works.
And, as an aside, to avoid having your candidate critiqued for their age just fucking run a different candidate.
This is what bugs me the most, their instinct is to get worried not to you know, do something because they are the ones behind the wheel…
Stuff like this convinced me that democrats are not interested to do anything but show that they are following “the correct process”, results be damned.
You’d think in an election where they claim “democracy is on the line,” correct process would include a fully fledged primary election, with debates, campaigning on a strong platform from which to lead, etc.
Stuff like this convinced me DNC is just controlled opposition, and from that perspective results have been spectacular.
They're confused that Democrats are capable of criticizing their own while still supporting them unlike the right wing cult.
Honestly, good fucking point. I never thought about how infantilizing this bullshit is.
Yeah, well, welcome to why you don't talk shit about your candidate during a campaign. Your nuanced point is going to get flattened down to "even his allies are criticising him". Weirdly, this exact quote dismantles his entire monologue there.
The best joke in that entire thing was Klepper accusing him of bothsiderism and asking whether he had saved democracy yet. Because it was poignant. Lampshading it is funny, but it doesn't change the outcome.
Well, second best joke, the best was Ronnie Chieng going to town on potato skins, but that's neither here not there.
I don't think it's fair to say Stewart shouldn't critique Biden during a campaign just because dishonest talking heads will spin it to their advantage. Someone has to be willing to give an earnest and nuanced take that doesn't ignore valid criticisms of their own side. That's having integrity. And we need more of it, not less.
If Stewart had ignored all the criticisms of Biden during the show, the talking heads would have just spun some other show's takes like they always do. They're gonna do it regardless of how honest Stewart is cause that's their job.
It's not about if, it's about when.
People had three years to convince Biden that he shouldn't run. They didn't. Now you get Biden, and until he's elected again criticism equals promoting the Trump campaign.
I mean, Stewart isn't a complete idiot, he did make a case for both candidates being too old, which is a smarter counter than most of the Democratic campaign, let alone the Dem left, is using to push back. You're not gonna successfully deny Biden is old, but you can convince people that Trump is also, maaaaybe.
But that doesn't change the fact that any statement right now is a campaign statement. People think they can ignore politics for years and then act all surprised when they're told to postpone "valid criticism". Nah. The one thing Stewart said that I agree with wholeheartedly is that this is life now. Forever. And in this life you don't mess with your candidate's campaign even a little bit until after the votes are counted.
Welp, guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think Stewart needs to campaign for Biden. We know Stewart is rooting for Biden to beat Trump. I'd rather he be a voice of reason than a campaign staffer. I doubt anyone watching Stewart's show is now going, "Hmm, maybe I'll stay home or vote for Trump instead cause Biden is too old."
Stewart's primary audience is already rooting for Biden. The audience of conservative talking heads spinning Stewart's reasonable criticisms already weren't gonna vote for Biden. Ultimately, I think Stewart has just introduced much needed earnest discussion into what is going to be an insane and vitriolic election year.
I'm not worried about the people watching the Daily Show.
I'm worried about people reading the article above reminding them that even Stewart thinks Biden is too old.
Is that what he said? It doesn't matter, it's something you can say out loud now. And repeat endlessly in campaign rallies and propaganda disguised as news.
I think I may be more frustrated by this pretense of normality than by activism of any political sign. What are reasonable criticisms for? What goal could they possibly achieve? What action can the political class take to address them that is even remotely viable in the next eight months?
More to the point, what do people think is happening right now? Do they think this is business as usual, the populace making up their minds about the future of the country (planet!) based on policy proposals? We left that behind a while ago. At least the trumpist weirdos have a sense of urgency. This beige normcore approach to politics seems baffling to me, and I was disappointed to see Stewart jump right back into it with both feet after the sense of dejected futility he left behind during his last Daily Show run. At least John Oliver (and even Stewart's own Apple TV show) had the honestly of highlighting very specific things that need practical, attainable fixes urgently.
It seems to me that your issue is with disinformation, which isn't Stewart's fault. You seem to be blaming him for the fact that people will take him out of context or misrepresent what he said. I don't fault him for that when he's being fair with his criticisms. Sure, he could completely avoid ever criticizing Biden at all to avoid getting taken out of context, but I do not fault him at all for not participating in the insanity by refusing flatly to ever criticize his preferred candidate. You seem to dislike that he has chosen to speak freely even though he knows disinformation campaigns will use his statements as ammunition, but I certainly don't. I appreciate his candor and I don't fault him for speaking his mind even though bad actors will be waiting in the wings to corrupt his positions.
It's not a problem of disinformation. Campaigns have been weaponizing image since TV entered the conversation, and have weaponized narratives since day one. None of the things Stewart or this article say are false.
Stewart chooses what to talk about. Focus is message. If you focus on Biden being old as opposed to, say, Trump being an actual rapist, you're choosing how the narratives are selected and framed. And if you think you're dodging that by also talking about Trump being old then you're either being naive or disingenuous.
He's not "speaking his mind", he's making an insanely hyped comeback to the limelight specifically targeted towards the liberals who became politicized watching him act as an arbiter of common sense on-screen during the 2000s.
And he went "but her emails".
The Daily Show has always talked about the current news cycle, specifically to try to inject some sanity into the discussion because people are going to talk about whatever the current hype is regardless of whether or not The Daily Show ignores it or not.
And Stewart absolutely is speaking his mind. He's telling his audience what he thinks about the current thing being talked about. Which is that Biden and Trump are both the oldest candidates to ever run for office, and questions about their faculties are valid from their voters.
Do you think next week Stewart will still be talking about Biden and Trump's age? Doubtful. He'll likely be talking about some different topic that has been making the rounds in the news cycle, like aid for Ukraine or the Isreal/Gaza conflict, etc. He could've covered those topics last week, but that would've just been ignoring the elephant in the room regarding the fact that many voters are unhappy with geriatric candidates. So he addressed it. That's speaking his mind.
Yes. I don't care about his mind.
He can speak his mind at home. He's been doing that for years.
Can we at least agree that Stewart's mind has many things in it, and choosing to turn a specific one into a TV show is a conscious decision? I'm not gonna convince you that we should be treating this entire election as an act of information warfare at all times, that much is clear, but man, for the sake of a shared reality, at least let me shake off the blindfold where framing is a random event and the most notorious political voice in a generation lacks any sort of influence.
If Jon Stewart doesn't shape the political viewpoint of at least some liberals, then what the hell is he doing on TV? He can't possibly be "injecting sanity into the discussion" and also be a completely harmless, neutral event in the political conversation.
I believe we fundamentally disagree about what Stewart's job is. He spoke his mind in public for years, retired for several years, and now is back to speaking his mind in public again.
Can we at least agree that Stewart's mind has many things in it, and choosing to turn a specific one into a TV show is a conscious decision?
Sure? But that hasn't exactly been the fundamental issue you seem to be taking with his actions, is it? First you said:
Yeah, well, welcome to why you don't talk shit about your candidate during a campaign. Your nuanced point is going to get flattened down to "even his allies are criticising him". Weirdly, this exact quote dismantles his entire monologue there.
To which I replied that it isn't fair to say Stewart can't criticize his preferred candidate just because talking heads will spin it whichever way benefits them. Then you said:
But that doesn't change the fact that any statement right now is a campaign statement. People think they can ignore politics for years and then act all surprised when they're told to postpone "valid criticism". Nah.
To which I replied that Stewart's audience isn't on the fence and the conservative talking heads' audience isn't either. Then you said:
I'm worried about people reading the article above reminding them that even Stewart thinks Biden is too old. Is that what he said? It doesn't matter, it's something you can say out loud now. And repeat endlessly in campaign rallies and propaganda disguised as news.
To which I replied that your core issue seems to be with disinformation, not Stewart himself. Then you said:
It's not a problem of disinformation. [...] Stewart chooses what to talk about. Focus is message.
To which I replied that TDS has always talked about the current news cycle and attempted to inject sanity into the discussion, which is absolutely true; I won't argue this point with you.
So yeah, Stewart made a conscious choice to talk about... the topic that everyone is currently talking about. And he didn't treat his preferred candidate with kid gloves. And pundits will use it as ammunition. If Stewart had been silent about this completely valid criticism of Biden, pundits would have just used someone else's out-of-context quote, or just made something up entirely.
It appears we will not agree on this issue, which is fine. Just giving my perspective on why Stewart isn't obligated to silence himself when he's not being in any way unreasonable. He's a comedian and a commentator, not a campaign staffer.
Stewart wasn't retired, mind you. He's had a show for the past two years. He only recently got cancelled for speaking of subjects Apple didn't like.
Also, please don't rehash our conversation. It's still written up there. The only possible purpose of that exercise is to put together a straw man. I remember what I said.
You could have skipped to the last line, which is where we disagree and where I think democrats and their larger sphere of influence are repeating a catastrophic mistake.
He's a campaign staffer. You're a campaign staffer. Everybody is a campaign staffer until such time as the opposing force isn't a fascist cult of personality.
If you don't see that, you're part of the problem. If Stewart is back to pretending that he can "restore sanity" by acting as if the other side had legitimate concerns that should be heard, he's part of the problem. That's not the game we're playing anymore. If you didn't realize the rules had changed when Trump won the first time, surely you must have noticed after January 6th, or when the poll numbers of the, again, actual rapist refused to climb down.
So no, his honest statements aren't irrelevant. They're a drop in a pond of, once again, information warfare. The wilful blind spots and bothsideism may be naivete or disingenuous misinformation, but my entire point is at this stage it doesn't mater. They don't belong. We're past those. You either play the game we're all playing or you're playing for the other guys.
Biden said he wouldn't run again three years ago. We already did that.
Here's the thing that pisses me the fuck off: Biden is old - he'll be critized about that... Jon Stewart is basically the kids gloves warm up round. If pundits and Biden don't have counter arguments for Stewart then they'll be fucking worthless when it comes to Trump and Fox News... and those assholes will be a lot less polite and even in their attack.
I was a voter in 2016, I remember "Thou shalt not validly critize Hillary during the primary"... and Sanders didn't, he used fucking kids gloves on her and then in the general when she was accused of being a corporate stooge she deer-in-the-headlights and we got Trump.
Candidates will be critized, it'll happen regardless of what their party does - Trump's team has had a big folder of oppo research on Biden since 2018. It's the candidate's job to respond to that criticism and it's our, the candidate's buddies, job to attack him early to defuse those flaws so they don't come out two days before the election.
Trump is just as old. Ask a Republican, a conservative pundit or a vaguely conservative voter and Trump is the peak of the human form, strong as an oak and in full posession of superhuman intellectual prowess.
You want to complain that a candidate is old? That's the one you are supposed to be focusing on.
For the record, Sanders didn't criticise Clinton. His followers did. Ruthlessly. Constantly. With this exact playbook. He tried to stop them and we all realized in horror he couldn't. The berniebros didn't lose the 2016 election, because they didn't really influence much either way, but they sure as hell didn't help.
They should have convinced him the first time but instead they all got behind him and smothered any opposition because they were terrified that Sanders had a shot at beating their very bad candidates.
There's no way they could not do reelection, though. We're stuck with him, one way or another. He can't even step down because his VP is even less liked.
Unfortunately, that means Trump (another historically weak candidate who just has a rabid but small fan base) has a good shot at taking this.
And trump/republicans would???!? What a fucking joke of an article to push lmao.
A reminder trump is a few years younger than Biden. Not by much.
If Trump drops dead from being old, bully for us. If Biden drops dead but Trump doesn't we are fucked. That is the issue and risk. That is why we want a younger candidate. Why take the risk when you can avoid i?
Why?
Because Biden is still the person with the best odds to defeat Trump in an election.
That's really all there is to it.
This is likely true but after the election does it matter? Trump likely won't survive long enough for the next election anyways. This will finally leave everyone looking for real candidates.
Who knows, by then the Republicans might actually have a platform they can campaign on that doesn't revolve around MAGA. I'm not holding my breath for that last one though. One can dream.
They'll probably just keep running an AI Trump. Doesn't even matter if the stormfront-sourced training set isn't big enough because even the real Trump can blather on about changing Pennsylvanias name, toilets not flushing hard enough, and somehow injecting UV light into your body to fight viruses. AI fever dreams won't even register as anything weird.
Covfefe.
It's funny, when comedians imitate Trump they're always more coherent. Because you have to make some sense to make a proper joke.
What's incredible to me is that Seth Meyers' impersonation of Trump is nothing like Stephen Colbert's impersonation of Trump and yet you can tell both of them are impersonating Trump without being told.
I'd rather run a younger candidate now and save the incumbent advantage for 2028.
It's reasonable to think that the 2028 Republican candidate might be more of a threat.
I disagree. There have been LOTS of attempts to reproduce that Trump funk, but they all fall flat. I was far more worried about DeSantis. He's modeled his whole persona after Trump and had quite a bit of success passing Trump policies in Florida... but he fell flat on the national stage. I can't tell you why. He doesn't seem like more or less of a conman. He's equally sleezy and seems to have the same policy goals. But there's clearly something the Qult sees in Don that Ron lacks.
It's looking to me like the Trumpers are ride-or-die until Trump dies. I don't know what will happen after that, but I don't think they'll seemlessly integrate back into any normal political party. Hopefully, they'll form their own little ultra-right party and split the conservative vote permanently.
This doesn't make any sense to me. If Biden dies and Trump doesn't then we will still have the VP. By the time the next election rolls around, assuming Trump loses, Trump will have already faded into obscurity.
They're saying that if Biden died right now, President Harris would lose to Trump. Which she almost certainly would.
Eh. I don't think so. She's not Hillary Clinton she knows how to campaign and I'm pretty sure a dead fish could beat Trump after his last term.
I hope so, but after his rise to power I don't know what to think, I just know we can't get complacent. But I have no idea what the fuck the American people want so I have no idea if Harris would be seen as a good candidate by the non trump demographic.
According to polls she's just outside the margin of error. (Usually about 3 percent). Polls that have her farther out also have Biden losing.
So that seems horrible but politics is weird and the act of swearing her in will actually bump her in the polls. Any competent politician will turn that into a "rally" moment. And this close to the election they can ride that bump straight into November.
I also want this, but it will not fucking happen this year. Both sides don’t play fair, just look at what they did to Bernie Sanders when he was fucking running.
Personally I was a fan of Yang too, but as far as I can tell, this machine seems to only have 2 gears. You can’t expect to try and hot swap one of those out without getting your fingers punched.
Local elections were always more effective, I think everyone could probably agree with that
Except there is a line of succession for president, whereas trump got to pick RBG'S successor.
Which of course, was 100% her fault. Holding on to power into your 90s is really fucking stupid.
Republicans have entered the chat and proceed to make up reasons why the line of succession doesn't apply.
Look, my ONLY goal is to have D’s in leadership because the alternative ushers in a totalitarian fascist hellscape russian client state. If Brandon fucks off to the next life while in office, I don’t care. His replacement won’t be a traitor.
No other consideration carries any weight.
Look, my ONLY goal is to have D’s in leadership
DAE read this as dicks in leadership?
Its an election of Hindenburg vs Hitler. It doesn't matter. By participation you're only giving it legitimacy.
BoTh SiDeS!!!!1!
Go read up on Hindenburg. He also was the "lesser of two evils". That's the comparison I'm making.
seems to me they are teh one who wants to stop fascism
They're arguing that we should elect Hitler, that's their metaphor. I don't think they are against fascism.
Lolwut
I think you are misreading
No pretty sure that's what they're arguing. Same dumbass argument that leftists made in the Weimar Republic. Let the fascists take over and then we'll win the next one, and then they all were murdered. Idiots. There's no weedling around fascism. You fight a head-on with no mercy. You don't try to work around it, you don't try to outlast it, you don't try to use it. You murder it. That's what they deserve and that's the only way to fight them.
they're proposing undermining the legitimacy of the fascists, not any of what you said.
Yeah, I'm confused about this take. RBG should have stepped down because by not doing it she created the opportunity for Trump to tilt the majorities in the Supreme Court. Notably, nobody had the balls to criticise her for it, even after she died and made that exact thing happen.
If Biden dies in office Trump doesn't get to pick the vice president. And somehow he still gets constant crap despite the other guy being just as old.
We're doing "but her emails" again. I thought we weren't gonna do "but her emails" again.
I have a feeling that if Biden dies in office, suddenly there will be this concern whether Harris was born in Kenya and can't be president and the Speaker of the House should be elevated instead (assuming the GOP maintain their leadership).
I think a lot of the "concern" over Biden's age is really because they're terrified of a black woman getting the presidency. They hate her more than they hate him.
She's Indian, not black
Well, they can be concerned all they want, but ultimately things work how they work. So no, that scenario is complete fiction and there is no valid equivalence between a Supreme Court Justice and a President in terms of succession.
If the president dies in office, the constitution requires the vice president to become president. It doesn't matter if anyone has concerns, there is no mechanism to prevent the VP from taking over.
The constitution also requires that the vice president to meet all the conditions for a president. The constitution also requires that the president appoint judges and that the Senate confirms them.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with you. But at the end of the day, the constitution is just a piece of paper. Its power is in the individual people who swear to honor, uphold, and protect it. One party has definitely shown that they won't do that.
I'm not holding my breath that the Republicans will do the right thing if power is to be had.
Any claims of her ability to be president were satisfied the moment she was seated as vice president.
Their point is that Republicans will claim she doesn't. And they control the Supreme Court. Which means they are the final arbiters of this, not you, and not me. And not the plain text of Constitution either
This isn't about textual interpretation and this isn't about what the Constitution says. This is about power. That's it.
The Republicans will control the judiciary for a generation. That means they have sole authority over what the Constitution means and does not mean. Their rulings can be as arbitrary as they want and it won't matter. There is no oversight of the Supreme Courts rulings and there is no appeal from their orders.
SCOTUS has been captured by a domestic terrorist organization masquerading as a political party. That is a problem that needs to be solved before we ever start seriously talking about how process and procedure can save us. Hopefully law enforcement can prosecute some of the GOP Justices for their obvious corruption, but even that is unlikely as federal law enforcement has also been infiltrated by Trumpists.
This is a very bad situation. But you can't put your trust in the rule of law. Because Republicans control the rule of law, and they will achieve their desired outcomes by any means necessary
My point is that there is no opportunity for Republicans to do the right thing, wrong thing, or anything at all. Succession is automatic.
LBJ was sworn in only two hours after JFK died. While he was flying home on Air Force One.
Unlike appointing judges, there was no need for action on the part of Congress and therefore no way for the GOP to stop him. LBJ didn't even need the SCOTUS, a lower judge administered the oath and it was all over. If the GOP had a problem with LBJ's qualifications, the only recourse would be impeachment after the fact.
there is no opportunity for Republicans to do the right thing, wrong thing, or anything at all. Succession is automatic.
Not if SCOTUS disagrees
Precedent has no binding control over what they will do
The SCOTUS can't hear a case on two hours notice. So if they have anything to say, it would be after the succession.
We're doing "but her emails" again. I thought we weren't gonna do "but her emails" again.
Your making it sound like that strategy was a mistake and not intentional.
It's intentional from the Republicans, and that's fair.
It's the amount of slack and the "just asking questions" and the "it's reasonable criticism" from the centre and the far left that is the problem. Trump is running after having judges confirm that he raped a woman, committed fraud and tried to commit a coup, and the entire party and their base rallies around him against all evidence.
Biden is old and Clinton was moderately technically clumsy and the dem base is out there going "huh, maybe you make some fine points, actual fascists".
It is infuriating. It'd be funny if it weren't terrifying.
I think she was trying to wait out Trump before stepping down. And even if she stepped down before Trump took office the GOP would've tied that seat up, Obama couldn't even his pick in with a year left till election.
Biden is probably in a similar boat.
That's why she should have stepped down much sooner. Had she done it on the first year of Obama it wouldn't have been feasible to delay for that long. And yet you heard the mildest possible suggestion that this was the case before she died and barely anything at all after.
So why go so hard with Biden when the other guy isn't even four years younger and was already in a questionable mental state before he ran?
Because her emails.
You know what pisses me off the most? When all is said and done and democracy is a vague memory among the cave-dwellers, we'll all have to admit that the stupid combover and the orange spray actually worked. Dumb orangutan guy managed to hold the fiction that he's not decrepit by spray painting himself and shouting past his brainfarts, and it's actually gonna get him the election, with the cooperation of tons of well meaning "just asking valid questions".
I could see her staying on the court even through Obama's first term, but when he won his reelection, that was the time.
And that's not just hindsight either, there was plenty of discussion about it.
Of course there's also the issue of McConnell's shitty stunt in the Garland nomination (and the reverse shitty stunt for Barrett) and I will celebrate the day that piece of shit dies for those, but the first year of Obama's second term would have been plenty of time to get it done.
But yeah, in a just world, a senator from Kentucky deciding for the entire country that he's going to go against his constitutional duty and refuse to take up the Garland nomination for a year and a half?
That's when he's dragged out off the Senate floor, out onto the capital lawn, and hanged for attempting a coup.
After that's done, everybody goes back inside and whoever is the backup Senate majority leader is asked to take up the nomination. At that point it's unlikely they refuse.
Dragged out by whom?
Because we all watched and nobody did anything meaningful. The trumpies didn't even win the last election and were willing to overrun the Capitol to complain about it being stolen. At some point all the violent fantasies have to either trigger some action or get realistic.
For now with "everybody shut up about Biden's age and go vote when the time comes" I'd be just fine. Because, in case we forget in all the fervor, that stuff would also not have been a problem had Cinton won.
I really wonder how much of this “Biden old” talk is just GOP propaganda.
It might be a "broken clock is right twice a day" situation.
Jon Stewart's glorious return to The Daily Show covered this very topic.
Liberals have the right to question our leadership. It's okay for us to wonder if the president has the ability to make good decisions.
The problem is that conservatives won't hear the same questions for their candidate.
Liberals have the right to question our leadership.
And those of us to the left of liberals have the right to question the leadership liberals have stuck us with.
Exactly. You don’t get to have orthodoxy when your party is made up of a massive coalition because of our shitty voting system.
I don’t want to vote for Biden, but I’m gonna. And I reserve the right to be unhappy about it and express this.
But if the Democratic Party wants to be jackboots like the Rs then democracy is already dead here.
Is it propaganda if it's true? 80 is old as fuck.
Name one other industry or company who would hire an 80 year old. Not saying he can't do the job, just saying 80 is fucking old to still be working and it's a valid concern.
Is it propaganda if it's true?
Yes. Propaganda is just promoting a certain ideology over another. That classification has nothing to do with truthfulness or even the virtues of the ideology it is used to promote.
I had literally never seen this dumbass RBG comparison until a day or so ago. Suddenly, in the past few days, I've seen multiple people use RBG as an argument against Biden.
This is absolutely astroturfing.
I've been thinking it since he started hinting that he'd run again, as have most of my left-to-left-leaning friends
You and most of your left leaning friends have been making a specific comparison between Biden and RBG for weeks? Can you articulate why?
Yes, but it isn't necessarily complicated. We don't want people wielding power longer than they should. RBG, whom I admire immensely, was a fool to not step down. Biden represents a political return to form that inadequately services vast swaths of Americans. They aren't specifically related, true. But I think Biden, while certainly effective at certain objectives, is incapable of navigating the pulse of many younger Americans.
I'm not sure what "mistake" Biden could be repeating here. If he dies in office, Harris becomes President.
If they want to argue that if he dies before the election that leaves the Democrats with no clear candidate which would lead to a Trump win they need to be more clear about that.
Harris, undoubtably, would see herself as the candidate as the sitting President, which makes sense, see Johnson - 1964, but her unpopularity even among her own staff would make her unelectable.
But that's not a Biden problem and that's not the same mistake Ginsberg made.
My only real concern is if he dies after getting on the ballot, but before January 20th. We need him in a plastic bubble those months.
There's a fantastic novel on the topic called "The People's Choice" by Jeff Greenfield of all people.
Here's the scenario:
Election happens, winner dies, but he dies before the electoral certification.
VP thinks he's the candidate, but he isn't.
The 2nd place finisher argues he should be President as the next largest vote getter.
Faithless electors then decide who becomes President.
In reality, electors are generally party loyalists. They would vote along party lines, probably for the VP.
I'm not sure I understand your comment, if him and Harris win the election then she would still become president if he dies in The intervening time between then and January 20th. They would have voted for her on the ballot that's how the election works.
I guess I’m less certain that is correct. Maybe after the house certifies the election it’s fine. But you know Republicans will stink about it, and SCOTUS may side with them,
Well I mean they can make a stink about it and and the Supreme Court is certainly an illegitimate body at this point. But democratically speaking if Harris was on the ballot and won the election she is the elected president at that point. I mean weather other bodies try to illegally subvert the election is irrelevant to that. The votes were cast for her.
Manufactured outrage.
It’s not like he could legally do another term after he’s elected in ‘24.
He’s extremely competent, ethical, and experienced.
Genocide Joe is the most ethical president the US had in a while.
Edit: to all the people trying to paint him as being in the "hot seat" (wtf lol), he wanted and worked towards this for a long time now
Decades of presidents on both sides of the aisle have supported and sent arms to Israel.
It’s unfortunate (for everyone, especially the poor Palestinians) that Netenyahu is such a fucking creep and sleazeball that he manufactured this whole thing to distract from his deep shittiness. Biden happened to be the guy in the hot seat.
What do you mean he "happened to be the guy in the hot seat"? He gleefully sent more bombs during an ongoing genocide, no one really forced his hand did they?
It’s not quite as simple as that.
But I agree that it ain’t a good look.
It kind of is though, his stance has been well known for a while now
What Israel is doing is horrible. Don’t get me wrong.
Biden inherited a long-standing strategic alliance which was not ideal.
Biden helped build that alliance for over 37 years now, thats how old that clip is. And he explicitly says that they would have to "invent an israel if it didn't exist". This man is not in some moral quandary, this is what he wants, what he wanted for a long time.
Simple rules for rulers. You don't become president of the US if you don't commit genocide for all the rest of the people who want it; they ultimately elect you afterall. But remember if you aren't president of the US, you can't enfore any change at all, you have no power.
The most benevolent presidents will still continue to feed the war machine because they wish to be president and enact good. Biden just happened to be in the hotseat in this case, and if it has been Trump there would be war all over europe, nato disbanded and Russia getting Military funds instead.
Biden was not reluctant in his aid to genocide, he was gleeful. This wasn't some lesser of two evils shit for him, this is what he wanted what he worked towards for decades.
Just because I keep having to spell this out preemptively:
150million USD in equipment - 106 million USD as price = 44 million USD in military aid to an ongoing genocide without requiring approval from congress. Gleeful.
I'm not wrong, says right there in your article he had to "bypass congress" to send the measly 150 mil to uphold US relations because half of your government is trying to sabotage the other half no matter the cost, reasons or means. Do you know the difference between 150 mil and 40 billion? You're being played by these numbers that Biden "bypassed" out, the entire US government funds Israel.
Go read up on how your government works and then we can chat. Start by your own article
The point wasn't the amount you dingbat. He is giving aid over and beyond what some mysterious "hot seat" requires him to. Even when hampered he still looks for ways to aid ethnic cleansing. He willingly, gleefully is participating in this genocide. You don't vote for people like that. That's beyond any reasonable red line, but seemingly people are willing to let it slide regardless.
Genocide is an american problem, not a presidential one lmao.
It's baked into the very soul of the nation.
The sad part is that’s probably true. Before that was Trump, Dronebama, and Bush - all four of them continued to support Israel so that’s a moot point when comparing them.
"That's the way we've always done it" is a really shitty justification for supporting genocide.
The same on the concentration camps on the border, the same on the policies in the middle east, the same on women and minority rights, they just all look the same don't they.
Did I say they’re the same, or did I say Biden was the best/least worse of the most recent 4?
Im saying they're the same. Or close enough to not matter.
Well I’m not, there’s a clear difference on them when it comes to minority/women’s rights.
Not in terms of policies enacted. The concentration camps on the border were built by Obama and continued and expanded by both Trump and Biden, there is no discernible difference between them on immigration. Roe v Wade was never codified, Trans rights aren't codified, nothing is getting done. The Iran deal just died and that's it, Biden made no effort to reverse the stuff Trump did. At best some lip service "commitments" like the Paris Agreement. There was more covid relief under Trump than under Biden. Like what harm has the "harm reduction" candidate reduced?
Funny how they never seem to mention trumps age even though they are almost the same age...
Because they're both unfit for office.
Similar to how a bonfire and the Sun are both hot.
Yea, I guess that's true. Do you want to be standing in the middle of either?
How does that even make sense in this context? It's not like one of them are in their 50s. They're both pushing 80.
Regarding the term "unfit," one is worse than the other. One is old and not doing enough; the other is old, actively dragging the country backwards, and did an insurrection.
One being exceptionally bad doesn't automatically make the other one good though.
Okay?
RBG was a Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment.
The comparison literally doesn't make sense on any level whatsoever.
That's not how the presidency works? If he dies, the Senate can't hold the presidency open until they place a Republican in there. Kamala Harris just steps into the position.
Even some expected to be in Biden's corner — from liberal comedian Jon Stewart to progressive journalist Ezra Klein — have publicly worried the incumbent president will be unable to maintain the energy needed to face off against Donald Trump in this year's election.
Instead, Ginsburg, who had a long history of health problems, including multiple bouts with cancer, died in 2020, allowing Trump to nominate a third justice — Amy Coney Barrett — which solidified the conservative court majority and led to the rollback of abortion and voting rights across the country.
On the campaign trail, Clinton indicated she'd fill Supreme Court vacancies with justices who supported women's rights, as well as LGBTQ+ issues, and would defend Roe v. Wade, CNBC reported at the time.
Gavin Newsom — have other hurdles to overcome: Harris is widely regarded as "unlikeable" (a criticism often levied against female politicians, The Washington Post noted years ago).
"The only time that an incumbent president stepped down rather than running for reelection in the modern era was Lyndon Johnson and there is no evidence that that helped Hubert Humphrey, who eventually lost to Richard Nixon anyway," Buchler said.
"It's worth noting that Trump is roughly the same age as Biden, and his verbal missteps more egregious," Peter Loge, the founding director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication, told BI.
The original article contains 1,491 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fuck RBG. Her legacy is pure dog shit to me. Fucking selfish bitch.
What. The. Fuck.
Jon Stewart is in Biden's corner, he's just being honest that age is a concern. If you watch his segment you'd see he dropped a big steaming dump on Trump.
And, as an aside, to avoid having your candidate critiqued for their age just fucking run a different candidate.
People are extremely bad at understanding what Jon said. It fucking sucks. Sorry, Democrats, you're not going to win over voters by demanding they pretend your stinky candidates don't stink. That's not how this works.
This is what bugs me the most, their instinct is to get worried not to you know, do something because they are the ones behind the wheel…
Stuff like this convinced me that democrats are not interested to do anything but show that they are following “the correct process”, results be damned.
You’d think in an election where they claim “democracy is on the line,” correct process would include a fully fledged primary election, with debates, campaigning on a strong platform from which to lead, etc.
Stuff like this convinced me DNC is just controlled opposition, and from that perspective results have been spectacular.
They're confused that Democrats are capable of criticizing their own while still supporting them unlike the right wing cult.
Honestly, good fucking point. I never thought about how infantilizing this bullshit is.
Yeah, well, welcome to why you don't talk shit about your candidate during a campaign. Your nuanced point is going to get flattened down to "even his allies are criticising him". Weirdly, this exact quote dismantles his entire monologue there.
The best joke in that entire thing was Klepper accusing him of bothsiderism and asking whether he had saved democracy yet. Because it was poignant. Lampshading it is funny, but it doesn't change the outcome.
Well, second best joke, the best was Ronnie Chieng going to town on potato skins, but that's neither here not there.
I don't think it's fair to say Stewart shouldn't critique Biden during a campaign just because dishonest talking heads will spin it to their advantage. Someone has to be willing to give an earnest and nuanced take that doesn't ignore valid criticisms of their own side. That's having integrity. And we need more of it, not less.
If Stewart had ignored all the criticisms of Biden during the show, the talking heads would have just spun some other show's takes like they always do. They're gonna do it regardless of how honest Stewart is cause that's their job.
It's not about if, it's about when.
People had three years to convince Biden that he shouldn't run. They didn't. Now you get Biden, and until he's elected again criticism equals promoting the Trump campaign.
I mean, Stewart isn't a complete idiot, he did make a case for both candidates being too old, which is a smarter counter than most of the Democratic campaign, let alone the Dem left, is using to push back. You're not gonna successfully deny Biden is old, but you can convince people that Trump is also, maaaaybe.
But that doesn't change the fact that any statement right now is a campaign statement. People think they can ignore politics for years and then act all surprised when they're told to postpone "valid criticism". Nah. The one thing Stewart said that I agree with wholeheartedly is that this is life now. Forever. And in this life you don't mess with your candidate's campaign even a little bit until after the votes are counted.
Welp, guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think Stewart needs to campaign for Biden. We know Stewart is rooting for Biden to beat Trump. I'd rather he be a voice of reason than a campaign staffer. I doubt anyone watching Stewart's show is now going, "Hmm, maybe I'll stay home or vote for Trump instead cause Biden is too old."
Stewart's primary audience is already rooting for Biden. The audience of conservative talking heads spinning Stewart's reasonable criticisms already weren't gonna vote for Biden. Ultimately, I think Stewart has just introduced much needed earnest discussion into what is going to be an insane and vitriolic election year.
I'm not worried about the people watching the Daily Show.
I'm worried about people reading the article above reminding them that even Stewart thinks Biden is too old.
Is that what he said? It doesn't matter, it's something you can say out loud now. And repeat endlessly in campaign rallies and propaganda disguised as news.
I think I may be more frustrated by this pretense of normality than by activism of any political sign. What are reasonable criticisms for? What goal could they possibly achieve? What action can the political class take to address them that is even remotely viable in the next eight months?
More to the point, what do people think is happening right now? Do they think this is business as usual, the populace making up their minds about the future of the country (planet!) based on policy proposals? We left that behind a while ago. At least the trumpist weirdos have a sense of urgency. This beige normcore approach to politics seems baffling to me, and I was disappointed to see Stewart jump right back into it with both feet after the sense of dejected futility he left behind during his last Daily Show run. At least John Oliver (and even Stewart's own Apple TV show) had the honestly of highlighting very specific things that need practical, attainable fixes urgently.
It seems to me that your issue is with disinformation, which isn't Stewart's fault. You seem to be blaming him for the fact that people will take him out of context or misrepresent what he said. I don't fault him for that when he's being fair with his criticisms. Sure, he could completely avoid ever criticizing Biden at all to avoid getting taken out of context, but I do not fault him at all for not participating in the insanity by refusing flatly to ever criticize his preferred candidate. You seem to dislike that he has chosen to speak freely even though he knows disinformation campaigns will use his statements as ammunition, but I certainly don't. I appreciate his candor and I don't fault him for speaking his mind even though bad actors will be waiting in the wings to corrupt his positions.
It's not a problem of disinformation. Campaigns have been weaponizing image since TV entered the conversation, and have weaponized narratives since day one. None of the things Stewart or this article say are false.
Stewart chooses what to talk about. Focus is message. If you focus on Biden being old as opposed to, say, Trump being an actual rapist, you're choosing how the narratives are selected and framed. And if you think you're dodging that by also talking about Trump being old then you're either being naive or disingenuous.
He's not "speaking his mind", he's making an insanely hyped comeback to the limelight specifically targeted towards the liberals who became politicized watching him act as an arbiter of common sense on-screen during the 2000s.
And he went "but her emails".
The Daily Show has always talked about the current news cycle, specifically to try to inject some sanity into the discussion because people are going to talk about whatever the current hype is regardless of whether or not The Daily Show ignores it or not.
And Stewart absolutely is speaking his mind. He's telling his audience what he thinks about the current thing being talked about. Which is that Biden and Trump are both the oldest candidates to ever run for office, and questions about their faculties are valid from their voters.
Do you think next week Stewart will still be talking about Biden and Trump's age? Doubtful. He'll likely be talking about some different topic that has been making the rounds in the news cycle, like aid for Ukraine or the Isreal/Gaza conflict, etc. He could've covered those topics last week, but that would've just been ignoring the elephant in the room regarding the fact that many voters are unhappy with geriatric candidates. So he addressed it. That's speaking his mind.
Yes. I don't care about his mind.
He can speak his mind at home. He's been doing that for years.
Can we at least agree that Stewart's mind has many things in it, and choosing to turn a specific one into a TV show is a conscious decision? I'm not gonna convince you that we should be treating this entire election as an act of information warfare at all times, that much is clear, but man, for the sake of a shared reality, at least let me shake off the blindfold where framing is a random event and the most notorious political voice in a generation lacks any sort of influence.
If Jon Stewart doesn't shape the political viewpoint of at least some liberals, then what the hell is he doing on TV? He can't possibly be "injecting sanity into the discussion" and also be a completely harmless, neutral event in the political conversation.
I believe we fundamentally disagree about what Stewart's job is. He spoke his mind in public for years, retired for several years, and now is back to speaking his mind in public again.
Sure? But that hasn't exactly been the fundamental issue you seem to be taking with his actions, is it? First you said:
To which I replied that it isn't fair to say Stewart can't criticize his preferred candidate just because talking heads will spin it whichever way benefits them. Then you said:
To which I replied that Stewart's audience isn't on the fence and the conservative talking heads' audience isn't either. Then you said:
To which I replied that your core issue seems to be with disinformation, not Stewart himself. Then you said:
To which I replied that TDS has always talked about the current news cycle and attempted to inject sanity into the discussion, which is absolutely true; I won't argue this point with you.
So yeah, Stewart made a conscious choice to talk about... the topic that everyone is currently talking about. And he didn't treat his preferred candidate with kid gloves. And pundits will use it as ammunition. If Stewart had been silent about this completely valid criticism of Biden, pundits would have just used someone else's out-of-context quote, or just made something up entirely.
It appears we will not agree on this issue, which is fine. Just giving my perspective on why Stewart isn't obligated to silence himself when he's not being in any way unreasonable. He's a comedian and a commentator, not a campaign staffer.
Stewart wasn't retired, mind you. He's had a show for the past two years. He only recently got cancelled for speaking of subjects Apple didn't like.
Also, please don't rehash our conversation. It's still written up there. The only possible purpose of that exercise is to put together a straw man. I remember what I said.
You could have skipped to the last line, which is where we disagree and where I think democrats and their larger sphere of influence are repeating a catastrophic mistake.
He's a campaign staffer. You're a campaign staffer. Everybody is a campaign staffer until such time as the opposing force isn't a fascist cult of personality.
If you don't see that, you're part of the problem. If Stewart is back to pretending that he can "restore sanity" by acting as if the other side had legitimate concerns that should be heard, he's part of the problem. That's not the game we're playing anymore. If you didn't realize the rules had changed when Trump won the first time, surely you must have noticed after January 6th, or when the poll numbers of the, again, actual rapist refused to climb down.
So no, his honest statements aren't irrelevant. They're a drop in a pond of, once again, information warfare. The wilful blind spots and bothsideism may be naivete or disingenuous misinformation, but my entire point is at this stage it doesn't mater. They don't belong. We're past those. You either play the game we're all playing or you're playing for the other guys.
Biden said he wouldn't run again three years ago. We already did that.
Here's the thing that pisses me the fuck off: Biden is old - he'll be critized about that... Jon Stewart is basically the kids gloves warm up round. If pundits and Biden don't have counter arguments for Stewart then they'll be fucking worthless when it comes to Trump and Fox News... and those assholes will be a lot less polite and even in their attack.
I was a voter in 2016, I remember "Thou shalt not validly critize Hillary during the primary"... and Sanders didn't, he used fucking kids gloves on her and then in the general when she was accused of being a corporate stooge she deer-in-the-headlights and we got Trump.
Candidates will be critized, it'll happen regardless of what their party does - Trump's team has had a big folder of oppo research on Biden since 2018. It's the candidate's job to respond to that criticism and it's our, the candidate's buddies, job to attack him early to defuse those flaws so they don't come out two days before the election.
Trump is just as old. Ask a Republican, a conservative pundit or a vaguely conservative voter and Trump is the peak of the human form, strong as an oak and in full posession of superhuman intellectual prowess.
You want to complain that a candidate is old? That's the one you are supposed to be focusing on.
For the record, Sanders didn't criticise Clinton. His followers did. Ruthlessly. Constantly. With this exact playbook. He tried to stop them and we all realized in horror he couldn't. The berniebros didn't lose the 2016 election, because they didn't really influence much either way, but they sure as hell didn't help.
They should have convinced him the first time but instead they all got behind him and smothered any opposition because they were terrified that Sanders had a shot at beating their very bad candidates.
There's no way they could not do reelection, though. We're stuck with him, one way or another. He can't even step down because his VP is even less liked.
Unfortunately, that means Trump (another historically weak candidate who just has a rabid but small fan base) has a good shot at taking this.
Having allies doesn't mean you're immune from criticism. The entire concept is dumb.
This logic destroys my fucking brain cells.
And trump/republicans would???!? What a fucking joke of an article to push lmao.
A reminder trump is a few years younger than Biden. Not by much.
If Trump drops dead from being old, bully for us. If Biden drops dead but Trump doesn't we are fucked. That is the issue and risk. That is why we want a younger candidate. Why take the risk when you can avoid i?
Why?
Because Biden is still the person with the best odds to defeat Trump in an election.
That's really all there is to it.
This is likely true but after the election does it matter? Trump likely won't survive long enough for the next election anyways. This will finally leave everyone looking for real candidates.
Who knows, by then the Republicans might actually have a platform they can campaign on that doesn't revolve around MAGA. I'm not holding my breath for that last one though. One can dream.
They'll probably just keep running an AI Trump. Doesn't even matter if the stormfront-sourced training set isn't big enough because even the real Trump can blather on about changing Pennsylvanias name, toilets not flushing hard enough, and somehow injecting UV light into your body to fight viruses. AI fever dreams won't even register as anything weird.
Covfefe.
It's funny, when comedians imitate Trump they're always more coherent. Because you have to make some sense to make a proper joke.
What's incredible to me is that Seth Meyers' impersonation of Trump is nothing like Stephen Colbert's impersonation of Trump and yet you can tell both of them are impersonating Trump without being told.
I'd rather run a younger candidate now and save the incumbent advantage for 2028.
It's reasonable to think that the 2028 Republican candidate might be more of a threat.
I disagree. There have been LOTS of attempts to reproduce that Trump funk, but they all fall flat. I was far more worried about DeSantis. He's modeled his whole persona after Trump and had quite a bit of success passing Trump policies in Florida... but he fell flat on the national stage. I can't tell you why. He doesn't seem like more or less of a conman. He's equally sleezy and seems to have the same policy goals. But there's clearly something the Qult sees in Don that Ron lacks.
It's looking to me like the Trumpers are ride-or-die until Trump dies. I don't know what will happen after that, but I don't think they'll seemlessly integrate back into any normal political party. Hopefully, they'll form their own little ultra-right party and split the conservative vote permanently.
This doesn't make any sense to me. If Biden dies and Trump doesn't then we will still have the VP. By the time the next election rolls around, assuming Trump loses, Trump will have already faded into obscurity.
They're saying that if Biden died right now, President Harris would lose to Trump. Which she almost certainly would.
Eh. I don't think so. She's not Hillary Clinton she knows how to campaign and I'm pretty sure a dead fish could beat Trump after his last term.
I hope so, but after his rise to power I don't know what to think, I just know we can't get complacent. But I have no idea what the fuck the American people want so I have no idea if Harris would be seen as a good candidate by the non trump demographic.
According to polls she's just outside the margin of error. (Usually about 3 percent). Polls that have her farther out also have Biden losing.
So that seems horrible but politics is weird and the act of swearing her in will actually bump her in the polls. Any competent politician will turn that into a "rally" moment. And this close to the election they can ride that bump straight into November.
I also want this, but it will not fucking happen this year. Both sides don’t play fair, just look at what they did to Bernie Sanders when he was fucking running.
Personally I was a fan of Yang too, but as far as I can tell, this machine seems to only have 2 gears. You can’t expect to try and hot swap one of those out without getting your fingers punched.
Local elections were always more effective, I think everyone could probably agree with that
Except there is a line of succession for president, whereas trump got to pick RBG'S successor.
Which of course, was 100% her fault. Holding on to power into your 90s is really fucking stupid.
Republicans have entered the chat and proceed to make up reasons why the line of succession doesn't apply.
Look, my ONLY goal is to have D’s in leadership because the alternative ushers in a totalitarian fascist hellscape russian client state. If Brandon fucks off to the next life while in office, I don’t care. His replacement won’t be a traitor.
No other consideration carries any weight.
DAE read this as dicks in leadership?
Its an election of Hindenburg vs Hitler. It doesn't matter. By participation you're only giving it legitimacy.
BoTh SiDeS!!!!1!
Go read up on Hindenburg. He also was the "lesser of two evils". That's the comparison I'm making.
False equivalency, fuck off.
Fallacy fallacy reconsider the argument.
No u. Also, fuck off fascist.
seems to me they are teh one who wants to stop fascism
They're arguing that we should elect Hitler, that's their metaphor. I don't think they are against fascism.
Lolwut
I think you are misreading
No pretty sure that's what they're arguing. Same dumbass argument that leftists made in the Weimar Republic. Let the fascists take over and then we'll win the next one, and then they all were murdered. Idiots. There's no weedling around fascism. You fight a head-on with no mercy. You don't try to work around it, you don't try to outlast it, you don't try to use it. You murder it. That's what they deserve and that's the only way to fight them.
they're proposing undermining the legitimacy of the fascists, not any of what you said.
I wouldn’t say it’s entirely apples to apples, but I get where you’re going with the comparison at least.
Yeah, I'm confused about this take. RBG should have stepped down because by not doing it she created the opportunity for Trump to tilt the majorities in the Supreme Court. Notably, nobody had the balls to criticise her for it, even after she died and made that exact thing happen.
If Biden dies in office Trump doesn't get to pick the vice president. And somehow he still gets constant crap despite the other guy being just as old.
We're doing "but her emails" again. I thought we weren't gonna do "but her emails" again.
I have a feeling that if Biden dies in office, suddenly there will be this concern whether Harris was born in Kenya and can't be president and the Speaker of the House should be elevated instead (assuming the GOP maintain their leadership).
I think a lot of the "concern" over Biden's age is really because they're terrified of a black woman getting the presidency. They hate her more than they hate him.
She's Indian, not black
Well, they can be concerned all they want, but ultimately things work how they work. So no, that scenario is complete fiction and there is no valid equivalence between a Supreme Court Justice and a President in terms of succession.
If the president dies in office, the constitution requires the vice president to become president. It doesn't matter if anyone has concerns, there is no mechanism to prevent the VP from taking over.
The constitution also requires that the vice president to meet all the conditions for a president. The constitution also requires that the president appoint judges and that the Senate confirms them.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with you. But at the end of the day, the constitution is just a piece of paper. Its power is in the individual people who swear to honor, uphold, and protect it. One party has definitely shown that they won't do that.
I'm not holding my breath that the Republicans will do the right thing if power is to be had.
Any claims of her ability to be president were satisfied the moment she was seated as vice president.
Their point is that Republicans will claim she doesn't. And they control the Supreme Court. Which means they are the final arbiters of this, not you, and not me. And not the plain text of Constitution either
This isn't about textual interpretation and this isn't about what the Constitution says. This is about power. That's it.
The Republicans will control the judiciary for a generation. That means they have sole authority over what the Constitution means and does not mean. Their rulings can be as arbitrary as they want and it won't matter. There is no oversight of the Supreme Courts rulings and there is no appeal from their orders.
SCOTUS has been captured by a domestic terrorist organization masquerading as a political party. That is a problem that needs to be solved before we ever start seriously talking about how process and procedure can save us. Hopefully law enforcement can prosecute some of the GOP Justices for their obvious corruption, but even that is unlikely as federal law enforcement has also been infiltrated by Trumpists.
This is a very bad situation. But you can't put your trust in the rule of law. Because Republicans control the rule of law, and they will achieve their desired outcomes by any means necessary
My point is that there is no opportunity for Republicans to do the right thing, wrong thing, or anything at all. Succession is automatic.
LBJ was sworn in only two hours after JFK died. While he was flying home on Air Force One.
Unlike appointing judges, there was no need for action on the part of Congress and therefore no way for the GOP to stop him. LBJ didn't even need the SCOTUS, a lower judge administered the oath and it was all over. If the GOP had a problem with LBJ's qualifications, the only recourse would be impeachment after the fact.
Not if SCOTUS disagrees
Precedent has no binding control over what they will do
The SCOTUS can't hear a case on two hours notice. So if they have anything to say, it would be after the succession.
Your making it sound like that strategy was a mistake and not intentional.
It's intentional from the Republicans, and that's fair.
It's the amount of slack and the "just asking questions" and the "it's reasonable criticism" from the centre and the far left that is the problem. Trump is running after having judges confirm that he raped a woman, committed fraud and tried to commit a coup, and the entire party and their base rallies around him against all evidence.
Biden is old and Clinton was moderately technically clumsy and the dem base is out there going "huh, maybe you make some fine points, actual fascists".
It is infuriating. It'd be funny if it weren't terrifying.
I think she was trying to wait out Trump before stepping down. And even if she stepped down before Trump took office the GOP would've tied that seat up, Obama couldn't even his pick in with a year left till election.
Biden is probably in a similar boat.
That's why she should have stepped down much sooner. Had she done it on the first year of Obama it wouldn't have been feasible to delay for that long. And yet you heard the mildest possible suggestion that this was the case before she died and barely anything at all after.
So why go so hard with Biden when the other guy isn't even four years younger and was already in a questionable mental state before he ran?
Because her emails.
You know what pisses me off the most? When all is said and done and democracy is a vague memory among the cave-dwellers, we'll all have to admit that the stupid combover and the orange spray actually worked. Dumb orangutan guy managed to hold the fiction that he's not decrepit by spray painting himself and shouting past his brainfarts, and it's actually gonna get him the election, with the cooperation of tons of well meaning "just asking valid questions".
I could see her staying on the court even through Obama's first term, but when he won his reelection, that was the time.
And that's not just hindsight either, there was plenty of discussion about it.
Of course there's also the issue of McConnell's shitty stunt in the Garland nomination (and the reverse shitty stunt for Barrett) and I will celebrate the day that piece of shit dies for those, but the first year of Obama's second term would have been plenty of time to get it done.
But yeah, in a just world, a senator from Kentucky deciding for the entire country that he's going to go against his constitutional duty and refuse to take up the Garland nomination for a year and a half?
That's when he's dragged out off the Senate floor, out onto the capital lawn, and hanged for attempting a coup.
After that's done, everybody goes back inside and whoever is the backup Senate majority leader is asked to take up the nomination. At that point it's unlikely they refuse.
Dragged out by whom?
Because we all watched and nobody did anything meaningful. The trumpies didn't even win the last election and were willing to overrun the Capitol to complain about it being stolen. At some point all the violent fantasies have to either trigger some action or get realistic.
For now with "everybody shut up about Biden's age and go vote when the time comes" I'd be just fine. Because, in case we forget in all the fervor, that stuff would also not have been a problem had Cinton won.
I really wonder how much of this “Biden old” talk is just GOP propaganda.
It might be a "broken clock is right twice a day" situation.
Jon Stewart's glorious return to The Daily Show covered this very topic.
Liberals have the right to question our leadership. It's okay for us to wonder if the president has the ability to make good decisions.
The problem is that conservatives won't hear the same questions for their candidate.
And those of us to the left of liberals have the right to question the leadership liberals have stuck us with.
Exactly. You don’t get to have orthodoxy when your party is made up of a massive coalition because of our shitty voting system.
I don’t want to vote for Biden, but I’m gonna. And I reserve the right to be unhappy about it and express this.
But if the Democratic Party wants to be jackboots like the Rs then democracy is already dead here.
Is it propaganda if it's true? 80 is old as fuck.
Name one other industry or company who would hire an 80 year old. Not saying he can't do the job, just saying 80 is fucking old to still be working and it's a valid concern.
Yes. Propaganda is just promoting a certain ideology over another. That classification has nothing to do with truthfulness or even the virtues of the ideology it is used to promote.
I had literally never seen this dumbass RBG comparison until a day or so ago. Suddenly, in the past few days, I've seen multiple people use RBG as an argument against Biden.
This is absolutely astroturfing.
I've been thinking it since he started hinting that he'd run again, as have most of my left-to-left-leaning friends
You and most of your left leaning friends have been making a specific comparison between Biden and RBG for weeks? Can you articulate why?
Yes, but it isn't necessarily complicated. We don't want people wielding power longer than they should. RBG, whom I admire immensely, was a fool to not step down. Biden represents a political return to form that inadequately services vast swaths of Americans. They aren't specifically related, true. But I think Biden, while certainly effective at certain objectives, is incapable of navigating the pulse of many younger Americans.
I'm not sure what "mistake" Biden could be repeating here. If he dies in office, Harris becomes President.
If they want to argue that if he dies before the election that leaves the Democrats with no clear candidate which would lead to a Trump win they need to be more clear about that.
Harris, undoubtably, would see herself as the candidate as the sitting President, which makes sense, see Johnson - 1964, but her unpopularity even among her own staff would make her unelectable.
But that's not a Biden problem and that's not the same mistake Ginsberg made.
My only real concern is if he dies after getting on the ballot, but before January 20th. We need him in a plastic bubble those months.
There's a fantastic novel on the topic called "The People's Choice" by Jeff Greenfield of all people.
Here's the scenario:
Election happens, winner dies, but he dies before the electoral certification.
VP thinks he's the candidate, but he isn't.
The 2nd place finisher argues he should be President as the next largest vote getter.
Faithless electors then decide who becomes President.
In reality, electors are generally party loyalists. They would vote along party lines, probably for the VP.
I'm not sure I understand your comment, if him and Harris win the election then she would still become president if he dies in The intervening time between then and January 20th. They would have voted for her on the ballot that's how the election works.
I guess I’m less certain that is correct. Maybe after the house certifies the election it’s fine. But you know Republicans will stink about it, and SCOTUS may side with them,
Well I mean they can make a stink about it and and the Supreme Court is certainly an illegitimate body at this point. But democratically speaking if Harris was on the ballot and won the election she is the elected president at that point. I mean weather other bodies try to illegally subvert the election is irrelevant to that. The votes were cast for her.
Manufactured outrage. It’s not like he could legally do another term after he’s elected in ‘24.
He’s extremely competent, ethical, and experienced.
Genocide Joe is the most ethical president the US had in a while.
Edit: to all the people trying to paint him as being in the "hot seat" (wtf lol), he wanted and worked towards this for a long time now
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4962369/user-clip-joe-biden-israel-usa-invent-israel-protect-interest-region
Decades of presidents on both sides of the aisle have supported and sent arms to Israel.
It’s unfortunate (for everyone, especially the poor Palestinians) that Netenyahu is such a fucking creep and sleazeball that he manufactured this whole thing to distract from his deep shittiness. Biden happened to be the guy in the hot seat.
What do you mean he "happened to be the guy in the hot seat"? He gleefully sent more bombs during an ongoing genocide, no one really forced his hand did they?
It’s not quite as simple as that. But I agree that it ain’t a good look.
It kind of is though, his stance has been well known for a while now
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4962369/user-clip-joe-biden-israel-usa-invent-israel-protect-interest-region
What Israel is doing is horrible. Don’t get me wrong.
Biden inherited a long-standing strategic alliance which was not ideal.
Biden helped build that alliance for over 37 years now, thats how old that clip is. And he explicitly says that they would have to "invent an israel if it didn't exist". This man is not in some moral quandary, this is what he wants, what he wanted for a long time.
Simple rules for rulers. You don't become president of the US if you don't commit genocide for all the rest of the people who want it; they ultimately elect you afterall. But remember if you aren't president of the US, you can't enfore any change at all, you have no power.
The most benevolent presidents will still continue to feed the war machine because they wish to be president and enact good. Biden just happened to be in the hotseat in this case, and if it has been Trump there would be war all over europe, nato disbanded and Russia getting Military funds instead.
Biden was not reluctant in his aid to genocide, he was gleeful. This wasn't some lesser of two evils shit for him, this is what he wanted what he worked towards for decades.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4962369/user-clip-joe-biden-israel-usa-invent-israel-protect-interest-region
the one good thing Trump threatened to do (he won't actually do it).
Lmao "gleeful". I think you misunderstand how your government works. Congress allocates the money, the president executes the spending.
The president sold weapons for Netanyahu's genocide and didn't have to go through congress to do it.
You're pulling the "you don't know how government works" Standard Centrist Gaslighting because you can't defend Biden's support for genocide.
Wrong again
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/29/politics/biden-congress-israel-military-aid/index.html
Just because I keep having to spell this out preemptively:
150million USD in equipment - 106 million USD as price = 44 million USD in military aid to an ongoing genocide without requiring approval from congress. Gleeful.
I'm not wrong, says right there in your article he had to "bypass congress" to send the measly 150 mil to uphold US relations because half of your government is trying to sabotage the other half no matter the cost, reasons or means. Do you know the difference between 150 mil and 40 billion? You're being played by these numbers that Biden "bypassed" out, the entire US government funds Israel.
Go read up on how your government works and then we can chat. Start by your own article
The point wasn't the amount you dingbat. He is giving aid over and beyond what some mysterious "hot seat" requires him to. Even when hampered he still looks for ways to aid ethnic cleansing. He willingly, gleefully is participating in this genocide. You don't vote for people like that. That's beyond any reasonable red line, but seemingly people are willing to let it slide regardless.
Genocide is an american problem, not a presidential one lmao.
It's baked into the very soul of the nation.
The sad part is that’s probably true. Before that was Trump, Dronebama, and Bush - all four of them continued to support Israel so that’s a moot point when comparing them.
"That's the way we've always done it" is a really shitty justification for supporting genocide.
The same on the concentration camps on the border, the same on the policies in the middle east, the same on women and minority rights, they just all look the same don't they.
Did I say they’re the same, or did I say Biden was the best/least worse of the most recent 4?
Im saying they're the same. Or close enough to not matter.
Well I’m not, there’s a clear difference on them when it comes to minority/women’s rights.
Not in terms of policies enacted. The concentration camps on the border were built by Obama and continued and expanded by both Trump and Biden, there is no discernible difference between them on immigration. Roe v Wade was never codified, Trans rights aren't codified, nothing is getting done. The Iran deal just died and that's it, Biden made no effort to reverse the stuff Trump did. At best some lip service "commitments" like the Paris Agreement. There was more covid relief under Trump than under Biden. Like what harm has the "harm reduction" candidate reduced?
Funny how they never seem to mention trumps age even though they are almost the same age...
Because they're both unfit for office.
Similar to how a bonfire and the Sun are both hot.
Yea, I guess that's true. Do you want to be standing in the middle of either?
How does that even make sense in this context? It's not like one of them are in their 50s. They're both pushing 80.
Regarding the term "unfit," one is worse than the other. One is old and not doing enough; the other is old, actively dragging the country backwards, and did an insurrection.
One being exceptionally bad doesn't automatically make the other one good though.
Okay?
RBG was a Supreme Court Justice with a lifetime appointment.
The comparison literally doesn't make sense on any level whatsoever.
That's not how the presidency works? If he dies, the Senate can't hold the presidency open until they place a Republican in there. Kamala Harris just steps into the position.
But then again, this is Business Insider.
oh fuck off
this is uncivil
No u
No, this is Patrick!
So we’d get president Harris. What’s the issue?
Normally I would not like that outcome, but considering that the alternative is a man who thinks “indictment” starts with the letter N, I can stomach it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Even some expected to be in Biden's corner — from liberal comedian Jon Stewart to progressive journalist Ezra Klein — have publicly worried the incumbent president will be unable to maintain the energy needed to face off against Donald Trump in this year's election.
Instead, Ginsburg, who had a long history of health problems, including multiple bouts with cancer, died in 2020, allowing Trump to nominate a third justice — Amy Coney Barrett — which solidified the conservative court majority and led to the rollback of abortion and voting rights across the country.
On the campaign trail, Clinton indicated she'd fill Supreme Court vacancies with justices who supported women's rights, as well as LGBTQ+ issues, and would defend Roe v. Wade, CNBC reported at the time.
Gavin Newsom — have other hurdles to overcome: Harris is widely regarded as "unlikeable" (a criticism often levied against female politicians, The Washington Post noted years ago).
"The only time that an incumbent president stepped down rather than running for reelection in the modern era was Lyndon Johnson and there is no evidence that that helped Hubert Humphrey, who eventually lost to Richard Nixon anyway," Buchler said.
"It's worth noting that Trump is roughly the same age as Biden, and his verbal missteps more egregious," Peter Loge, the founding director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication, told BI.
The original article contains 1,491 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fuck RBG. Her legacy is pure dog shit to me. Fucking selfish bitch.