r/thebulwark • u/Ill_Ini528905 • 2d ago

They doth protest too much

I think u/amoryblaine is/was tangled up on this on Twitter but that sneering “Davos Dems” quote set off alarm bells. That the WH is retreating into intra-party resentments is 1) the last thing they need to be doing at a perilous moment for the coalition 2) what you would do if you were scared and angry and 3) wasted energy when they are STILL not out there actively refuting the competency questions.

I was hanging my hat on what I thought was a solid belief that Joe Biden is a patriot and will put beating Trump above everything else, but man, this jolted me. They might dig in, polls be damned.

His team has a lot of I told you so’s but you can’t beat age the way you beat Bernie.

12 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

13

u/CorwinOctober 2d ago

There's a lot of people who legitimately don't agree that Biden should step down. I remained unconvinced. The casual dismissal of any of the legitimate concerns is wild

4

u/Agile-Music-2295 2d ago

I wanted him to step down before the primary. It was clear he had little chance of winning. But once you vote you voted.

He’s our guy.

1

u/thabe331 Center Left 1d ago

I took the Davos Dems line as more a critique of the opinion writers who have never liked Biden on a personal level. He's never talked or acted like they think a politician should, that's partly why he was never an amazing fundraiser.

The polls seem to have barely moved after the bad week so I tend to defer to the president's judgement on this. Dumping a candidate with 4 months til an election and opting for a potentially contentious convention seems to be a very reactive response

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u/fossil_freak68 1d ago

Do you think he should be more active, or should we keep him away from public events more?

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u/thabe331 Center Left 1d ago

I have long thought his advisors do a disservice to him by keeping him in the oval office instead of out talking to people. They're so terrified of him having a gaffe (which he has always had) that they're taking away his greatest strength of how personable he is.

1

u/fossil_freak68 1d ago

Are you looking forward to debate #2 if it happens?

1

u/thabe331 Center Left 1d ago

I hope they learn from this and that they put the focus back on trump. I look forward to the after effects of a second debate but given what a shitshow and embarrassment these debates have been for the last decade I can't say they're something I look forward to seeing

8

u/Objective_Cod1410 2d ago

The administration's petulant responses to legitimate, good faith concerns make me worry its even worse than we think. Ultimately they have to convince 50,000-100,000 swing voters in a handful of states to affirmatively vote for him. Not pundits, not the base, not anyone else. I have a hard time seeing enough of those folks being convinced. Once a person at his age starts declining, it only gets worse and it can happen very suddenly.

0

u/PublicFurryAccount 2d ago

What response are they supposed to give? Biden is old, there's not much else to say about it. If that's someone's primary concern, they're the fatal flaw in American democracy.

2

u/fossil_freak68 1d ago

The best response they could give is show, not tell. If they had Biden doing a weekly townhall, live unscripted interviews, and press conferences once per week, I would 100% stop all critiques, start donating again to the Biden campaign, and become the most obnoxious Biden stan in the world.

But lashing out at other Dems while also hiding Biden from live, unscripted performances makes me even more worried about his condition.

2

u/PublicFurryAccount 2d ago

Democrats like to wet their pants. That's pretty much everything you need to know about the party. Its elites are overeducated neurotic urbanites and its most influential below that level are as well.

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u/thabe331 Center Left 1d ago

This

And no other news going on right now is just making the neuroticism worse

7

u/Early-Juggernaut975 Progressive 2d ago

It’s been six days of the media and Biden’s allies focusing almost exclusively on how he is unfit rather than the authoritarian who stood next to him lying and threatening everyone.

Trump and MAGA don’t need to beat Biden. We will do it for them!

I’m all for having a “conversation” but not everyone has to fucking agree with Tim Miller.

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u/Ill_Ini528905 2d ago

Man, that is just not true. It was newsworthy today that the first elected Dem actually called for him to step aside. Allies and surrogates have actually done a pretty formidable job of circling the wagons but the signs that the WH doesn’t know the play here (or they do, and are unable/unwilling to execute it) are piling up and they are concerning. Treating this as analogous to the time the NYT endorsed Klobuchar and Warren is absolutely ill-advised.

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u/Early-Juggernaut975 Progressive 2d ago

Ill advised by who?

Joe Biden has done several interviews in the past month or two. CNN with Katie Hunt, Howard Stern. Some other guy… I forget his name on CNN.

He was negotiating with Mike Johnson in the White House four or five months ago.

He’s an old dude and had a really bad night.

We are letting the media and MAGA turn one bad debate into a Comey Letter. Trump has been trying to get someone else has an opponent for years now.

He would love it if it were anyone of the other candidates. You know why? Because none of them would’ve been vetted. All of them would have baggage that hadn’t been rifle through. Years ago someone didn’t pay taxes or child support. Maybe an illegitimate child. A girlfriend you can pay to say he beat. It’s a whole new ball game if MAGA and their millions of dollars can get a whole new candidate to destroy by making shit up or twisting unknown past events that will be too late to explain.

Joe Biden is the one guy who doesn’t have any of that. All his shit has been gone through and Trump has come up mostly empty. That’s why he wanted Ukraine to start investigations.

And we are playing right into their hands.

4

u/greenflash1775 2d ago

You know both people running can be unfit for the office for different reasons, right?

1

u/evilbarron2 1d ago

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

1

u/sbhikes 1d ago

There is so much panic nobody can see the coup happening in plain sight.

If we keep Biden we keep the government he has set up. All the appointments stay put. We choose someone new that person has to set up a new government and Republicans will block all appointments. It's sort of a no-win situation. So the conversation needs to change right away.

Republicans don't even need to win the election to complete their coup. This whole debacle of his performance or the chaos of picking a new candidate can be the pretext or excuse for why all the state legislatures and Congress couldn't certify a win and for Congress to throw the election back to the states.

Biden needs to prove to the country that he is not infirm. If Joe Biden truly is infirm they must act quickly or they are throwing us into the arms of the coup. If he isn't infirm, he must change what he is doing. This isn't really about Trump, it's about a complete and total takeover of the government that has been in the works for over 60 years. See James McGill Buchanan, the father of the theories that have informed the people behind the coup.

The panic isn't helpful, but also unhelpful is the inaction we are seeing. We must demand our politicians see this is a coup and that they don't just walk blindly into it like the last time.