r/politics • u/Murky-Site7468 • 4d ago

'Chill The F**k Out': John Fetterman Urges Democrats To Stick With Joe Biden | The Pennsylvania senator reminded panicked Democrats on Friday that he too had a bad debate once, yet he went on to win his Senate seat.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-debate-john-fetterman_n_667ea850e4b0415858d6a2f1
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u/essidus Minnesota 4d ago

The problem is that, right now, all of America believes that the Joe Biden we saw last night is an accurate reflection of how he is normally. If that's the case, we're in trouble.

Some people are saying that Biden has a cold or something. That might be (though it still doesn't reflect well on his cognitive function), but if that's true, Biden is going to prove it hard. He's going to need another extended public session showing how effective he really is. Otherwise, this debate is going to haunt him all the way up to the election.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yeah I agree. Here’s what I hope they’re considering:

  1. ⁠Run a bunch of ads that show Biden speaking clearly and forcefully to get that into everyone’s consciousness.

  2. ⁠Prep him for the next debate with a few key points to consistently hammer Trump on. Don’t worry about any stats or names that can trip up anyone regardless of age. Hardly anyone answers the questions perfectly anyways. He needs ZINGERS. And he needs to practice them daily until the next debate.

  3. Get Kamala some carefully crafted good exposure. Sticking up for Biden. Reassure people that she will step up if necessary.

Here’s what I hope everyone else is considering.

  1. ⁠Trump is a felon and he’s about to be sentenced.

  2. ⁠He tried to overthrow democracy and is unapologetic.

  3. ⁠Climate change is a serious threat that the republicans will accelerate if they win.

  4. ⁠The Supreme Court will be even more one-sided and we can say goodbye to abortions, birth control, gun control, and any protections for minority groups.

  5. ⁠I really hope we don’t have another pandemic because Trump screwed up the last one and everyone paid for it.

  6. ⁠Biden has four years of decades-high great results and had a great State of the Union address. He has an amazing team around him. That’s what matters. Get over a bad night where he stumbled on a dozen words.

Everyone should watch his fiery and well-spoken speech from today. It will make you feel a lot better about last night.

https://youtu.be/s5CVZHAjrW8?si=IDSZz7kgFHaTy_iq

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u/Gishra 4d ago

Here's another one: live town halls on the news networks between now and the next debate. If this really was just one bad night and is not representative of how he normally is, he needs to show that in a non-scripted environment.

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u/Clovis42 Kentucky 4d ago

Yeah, if Biden is staying as the nominee he needs to be in interviews and town halls all the time. He's bascially dodged the media for his whole presidency. If he can't appear sharp-minded in real interviews, they've gotta' replace him.

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u/sir_mrej 3d ago

He’s not getting replaced. These are our choices. Stop hoping politics is Burger King. You can’t have it your way.

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u/Clovis42 Kentucky 3d ago

Yeah, that's a good point. We should stop talking about politics in r/politics ...

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u/sir_mrej 3d ago

I said stop hoping politics is Burger King. This is a debate on a subreddit, and I'm telling you you're bad and wrong. This is where you tell me I'm an asshole.

I never told you to not talk about politics.

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u/Clovis42 Kentucky 3d ago

My point is that discussing things like this is the point of the sub. I obviously know that I can't get what I want out of politics by complaining on reddit. I don't think the DNC is here looking for tips from randos ...

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u/sir_mrej 2d ago

HEY DNC GET YOUR FUCKING HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND ACTUALLY RUN ADS THAT MAKE PEOPLE VOTE FOR BIDEN/HARRIS

I wish they did listen to us :(

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u/Cayucos_RS 4d ago

No. No no no. Biden had to go or we lose

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u/Gina_the_Alien 4d ago

I’m going to contend that #2 was the strategy going in. In order to keep Biden on topic, the strategists had Biden memorize key facts that he was supposed to get across - this is evidenced by Biden literally saying “number 1, number 2…” etc. during the debate.

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u/TheDude2600 4d ago

Biden has done that #1, #2 line after making a point and wanting to make another point for years and years.

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u/ThomasVivaldi 4d ago

That's probably an old technique he learned to manage his stutter.

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u/JollyRancher29 Virginia 3d ago

I hear my family do it all the time (and it’s passed to me), and afaik none of us have a stutter. I think it’s just an old white people thing lol

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u/gnulynnux 4d ago

Here's a different idea:

Replace Biden's skeleton and joints. Surely this is possible. Give him a body that's 90% that of a 25 year old athlete.

Then have him start regularly doing backflips at all his public appearances.

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u/ShotoGun 4d ago

It’s probably possible but no sane person would volunteer for the procedure.

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u/sharp11flat13 Canada 4d ago

Everyone should watch his fiery and well-spoken speech from today. It will make you feel a lot better about last night. https://youtu.be/s5CVZHAjrW8?si=IDSZz7kgFHaTy_iq

This is the Joe Biden I expected to see last night. Please everyone, share and post this video everywhere.

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u/felinedancesyndrome 4d ago edited 4d ago

This Biden is def a little better. But the lighting on him in this speech is much better than the lighting that washed out the top half of his face during the debate. It made him look even more half dead.

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u/SpaceTimeinFlux 4d ago

The CNN lighting was fucking atrocious.

Just like most of the shit that CNN cobbles together.

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u/WoodPear 4d ago

It was the Biden team that demanded CNN (and ABC) host the debate though.

They should have said something if they were unsatisfied with the lighting.

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u/cryptogram 3d ago

Yea but that’s also a Joe Biden with a teleprompter,  not required to think on his own or on his feet, and with no pressure. 

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u/sharp11flat13 Canada 3d ago

True. But even recently I’ve seen him speak clearly and rationally on the issues extemporaneously and he was fine. In fact his answers reflected a cool head and years of experience in administrative affairs.

I’m not saying there’s nothing to be concerned about here, only that since last night is not the norm, how anomalous is it and how might things progress, if they do?

I also think this

But I’d still support a potted plant over Trump.

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u/Rifledcondor 4d ago

Oh you mean when he was using a teleprompter and didn’t have to think about what he was saying?

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u/TheDude2600 4d ago

(Gets teleprompter back) (Still mumbles and stutters)

Ah yes guys I feel so much better!

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u/automaticfiend1 4d ago

If there's anything to hit Biden on the stutter we've all known he's had for 80 years isn't it.

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u/TheDude2600 4d ago

You're right.

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u/bonerdrag 4d ago

It’s evidence that he’s maybe not seconds away from death which to me is pretty reassuring 

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u/wobble_dobble 4d ago

When Putin escalates the war or China invades Taiwan, I guess we´ll just have to hope Biden is having a good and lucid day.

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u/DonkeyPunchCletus 4d ago

Reassure people that she will step up if necessary.

Have Kamala go around and tell everyone she is ready to go if she is needed? You think that's a good strategy?

I hope the Biden team isn't reading reddit lol

Doesn't Trump have his felony sentencing coming up? And various other legal problems? Everyone is panicking about Biden but it's actually Trump that's caught in a shitstorm right now.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

Not directly say it but at least show that she’s there and capable.

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u/felinedancesyndrome 4d ago

She can’t directly say it though. That would be suicide for their campaign.

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u/Think_Discipline_90 4d ago

Honestly I wish they would just double down on the age instead of trying to hide it. He’s old as fuck, but does the job well still, and we know that because shit gets done.

So what if he’s slow, who cares lol

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u/Plunderberg 4d ago

And if he can't do that in the next (last) debate he is absolutely cooked.

Wr need a new candidate who we don't need to reinvent the wheel for, with a chance to win greather than 27 percent. If Trump is the antichrist we're being told he is? They need to start acting like it.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Wr need a new candidate

Could you and others stop saying something this nonsense? You dont get a new candidate. Every interest group has locked in, every voter knows who they're voting for if theyre comitted. There is literally zero fucking time to change this and changing this now with no primary means no stakeholder buy in.

Biden could take his dick out and begin masturbating on TV and he will still be the candidate. Focus on real things that can be done.

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u/paultheschmoop 4d ago

You don’t get a new candidate

You’re right, and this is the biggest problem. Biden should never have been the candidate in the first place, and voters didn’t have the choice to pick a better candidate. And now we’re risking losing the most important election of our lifetime because the DNC fumbled what should’ve been the easiest layup in election history. Infuriating.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Voters didn't have a choice

Voters could have chosen from any of the available candidates back in 2019/2020. They chose, to a significant margin, Biden. I dont think people get that every time they do this "omg biden was chosen for us!" thing it's basically an attempt to disenfranchise every voter who did support him.

If your argument is "I wish we had people more representative of me" then yes, that's a reasonable wish. I understand it. I dont know you, so I dont necessarily agree with you, but I understand it and it's more valid than "we just yoink people's choices from them and appoint someone!"

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u/paultheschmoop 4d ago

Biden was chosen by the voters after the DNC put the order out for all of the centrist candidates to fall in line. He was, in fact, not being chosen by a significant margin before that happened, where Biden was selected as the “unity” candidate.

Regardless, I wasn’t even talking about 2020. I was talking about 2024, where the voters indeed did not have the choice of another candidate. Biden should not have been a candidate in 2024, as he is too old. He should’ve stepped aside to give voters the choice between coherent candidates, but chose not to. Now we are paying the price.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Candidates dropped out. Voters chose to vote for Biden.

Wow. Amazing. Voters made a choice and their choice aligned with Biden, not with Bernie. Fucking amazing. It's like people have free will and generally understood what they wanted to vote for.

I get it, you demand a recount until you get your way as you dont accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election. It's been all we can hear from MAGA for ages, it's amazing how it keeps making it's rounds.

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u/paultheschmoop 4d ago

If you’re going to invent a straw man to argue with, have fun with that. Allow me to reiterate:

I wasn’t even talking about 2020

You misunderstood me, argued against something I wasn’t talking about, and then doubled down when I clarified that you actually weren’t even discussing the same thing I was. Truly impressive.

I do not give a shit about 2020.

Many voters, myself included, thought that Biden’s age and the visible aging signs that he’s shown over the past 4 years were an electoral liability in 2024. If given a less risky candidate, many would have voted for them instead of Biden, since we don’t want to take any chances of Trump winning. No choice was given. There was no legitimate primary in 2024. Biden was the only option. Now, what do you know, his age is a serious problem and very well could lead to Trump winning the presidency again despite the comical amount of baggage that Trump comes with.

Pretty much literally any other milquetoast democrat would not have this problem. But the one choice that we were given is indeed now a liability.

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u/Plunderberg 4d ago

There is nothing to do so long as Biden is the candidate. He's cooked. It's that simple.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Were you planning on Voting for him in 2024?

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u/Jorge_Santos69 4d ago

Don’t bother, dude can’t even vote lol

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Like, While I think the debate was a stupid fucking idea no matter what happened it just solidified my position for me in general. Biden is still old. Ok. Trump is still a lying rapist who'd fuck our entire nation and the world.

Biden is still delivering great policy and progress. Trump literally wants to kill people. Just.. dont fucking give Trump more attention jeeze.

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u/Plunderberg 4d ago

Everyone who disagrees with me is a foreign agitator!

-a moron

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u/Plunderberg 4d ago

Yes? You should be convincing any of the people who aren't instead of arguing with me, but that's not why you're here so whatever.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Great. And you're still planning on voting for him right? My point is to get people to chill the fuck out and stop doom posting. For anyone who's been paying attention to anything the past 8 years nothing should have changed from last night other than our desire to make sure people know what we have accomplished from 2020-2024 so they're informed.

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u/Plunderberg 4d ago

It's not doom posting to say this is a problem. It's avoiding a fucked disaster like 2016. 

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u/huskersax 4d ago

Get Kamala some carefully crafted good exposure. Sticking up for Biden. Reassure people that she will step up if necessary.

Naw, they need to keep her on MSNBC otherwise her presence just reminds people that she's statistically likely to be president at some point in the next term.

But it is still June. The question isn't whether Biden will rebound from this, he will, but whether it was a one-off bad showing or whether it's more consistent with what will come down the road.

And by bad showing, I don't mean the 'debate' as it's a complete denigration of the station of the office of the president to even equate that shitshow to something having decorum or utility - but rather will he continue to seem absolutely old as shit?

My guess is the cold thing is true and he'll be better - but he does have a very established 'old person walk' at this point and his voice is weaker generally.

His appearance on Seth Meyers where they favorably edit all of their guests had the same underlying issues, just not as exaggerated.

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u/testrail 4d ago

Yes but all the Trump campaign has to do is just air footage from last night with the same amount of ads.

Don’t agree to another debate, and just keep the message that putting such a weak senile man on show for the world again is literally a security risk for the country until January 2025.

Let Harris put her foot in her mouth. We’ve watched this repeatedly.

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u/mostuselessredditor 4d ago

He prepped for a week. It’s over.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

I hope he steps aside, that’s what we as a party need to be calling for.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

Watch the speech from today. He’s clearly sharp and it was just a bad night.

Everyone loses their train of thought sometimes.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

“Speech”. Exactly. “Everyone loses their train of thought”. Read the transcripts of those answers. It wasn’t once or twice.

Y’all delusional in your tribalism and we’re veering towards disaster because of it. He lost the soft 5% last night for good. Somebody needs to speak truth. Contested convention should be what we’re universally calling for.

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u/Parahelix 4d ago

Dems don't have anyone else that could start a campaign at this point, except possibly Harris, and that would just cause a whole different set of problems.

You'd have a massive amount of scrutiny, which could screw up any new campaign, but which isn't really an issue for Biden since he's been scrutinized to hell and back already.

As I've said before, Biden could die a month after his inauguration and I wouldn't worry too much, because he will appoint competent people and things will continue to function just fine.

Trump is a criminal, who appoints the worst people (often also criminals), and then ends up telling us that they're the worst people as he fires them via tweet. He also lies about what he's going to do, and has the absolute dumbest policy ideas imaginable.

Why anyone would vote for that over even a comatose Biden, I can't fathom.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

They don’t? It’s June, not October. Convention hasn’t happened, plenty of time for a horse race. Is it ideal? Obviously it isn’t, but staying course ends in defeat.

The political reality is we’re deeply entrenched. 40-45% of the electorate won’t vote for either regardless of what they do. Personally, I’d crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump. However, we need to target that last 5-10% that remains soft. Their biggest complaint is “he’s too old, weak, etc”. Last night laid bare all their worst fears and they won’t soon forget. It was a disaster, and any talking head who tells you otherwise is being at best desingenous, and at worst purposefully deceitful.

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u/honkoku 4d ago

They don’t? It’s June, not October. Convention hasn’t happened, plenty of time for a horse race. Is it ideal? Obviously it isn’t, but staying course ends in defeat.

The main problem is that right now, there is no obvious single person that can step up and replace Biden. If Biden were to decide to step aside, we would be back to the progressive vs. moderate fight again with 12 different candidates trying to elbow their way in. That's not a good position to be in 5 months before the election and even less time before the convention.

If Kamala Harris were widely respected and thought of as a future president she could take over, but (perhaps due to sexism and racism) she isn't viewed that way, meaning there's no clear successor.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

The obvious choice is literally anybody else. Whitmer, Newsom, Warnock, etc. let them fight it out, but Biden is toast with the sliver of the electorate he needs to win this election and doing nothing is political malpractice.

Not a good position to be in? Give me a break. You act like we’re in a good position now. Trump about to open up a 5-10% lead in the polls, our candidate is incoherent, good god we have to try something.

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u/honkoku 4d ago

You are overestimating the effect Biden's bad performance will have on the election, and underestimating the chaos it would cause to try to replace him now.

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u/taco_guy_for_hire 4d ago

Yeah, unfortunately it is clear that Biden is too old for the job. I like Biden but it was sad seeing him up there. He cannot do the job, and his administration cannot do the job of a president without a president. And this is 2024…what does he look like 2-3 years from now? Another presidency could possible kill him. The man needs to retire, and if the DNC can’t rally behind another candidate, then it’ll be their own fault when they loose in November…because that’s exactly where we are going with Biden. I’m sorry, it sucks, but it’s true. It’s not all right to just have a president up there who can’t speak in a straight line for more than 10 seconds at a time. I can’t believe I’m not seeing more comments like this.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

This was one of the earliest debates ever. There’s still almost five months and Trump is about to be sentenced for his felony.

The speech from today shows that he’s still sharp. I’m not that worried tbh. Especially after seeing the speech.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

Have fun in your delusion, wish I could be as ignorant of political realities.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

Watch the speech.

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

I did. It’s a speech, that’s my point. You keep saying that and it’s self-defeating.

Until Biden has a long, unscripted public appearance where there’s unknown variables and he’s coherent, I will remain apocalyptic. He lost the soft 5-10% who’s biggest concern was laid bare for all to see.

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

Lose it to Trump? Not that easy. He’s a felon, responsible for Jan 6, bungled covid, already lost to Biden, found liable for sexual assault, etc.

But oh no, Biden lost his train of thought last night!

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u/Mr_peanut_butterrr 4d ago

News flash: I do not disagree! I’m as far from a Trump supporter as possible. I’m also pragmatic, and understand our current political realities. He alienated the very people he needs to win, I’m not those people, and your lying to yourself if you don’t see that. This election is going to come down to 50K votes across 5ish states. Biden losing is most certainly a possibility.

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u/TheoBoogies 4d ago

So…propaganda? I’m liberal too but come on man lol

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

If someone has a stutter and isn’t that great of a debater, but I know is a good president, I’d advise them to move away from trying things like spitting out a lot of stats that trips them up. What matters most is his four year record which is a good one.

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u/TheoBoogies 4d ago

I’m referring to the first numbered point you were making

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u/MrEHam 4d ago

That’s not propaganda. It’s a recording of him. People play it up for their recordings.

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u/Cayucos_RS 4d ago

Nothing will make me feel better about this. We need someone better than Biden to defeat Trump. Period. Stop making excuses. We all know he is WAY too old for this job and he will lose if he runs