Did he do it for the memes?

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I remember when Biden was picked as Obama’s VP, and everyone laughed because he’s known to make gaffes like this.

    Obviously, there’s a lot of scrutiny on him, but let’s not pretend it’s all because he’s too old. It’s just Biden being Biden, and while he’s probably too old for the job, that’s what happens when you don’t impose upper age limits…

    • Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’s not just “biden being biden” by a longshot. He is 81 and significantly worse.

      We are rightly worried he’s going to lose against trump.

        • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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          5 months ago

          His voting base doesn’t care if they’re led by an unfit leader.

          Be better than them.

          • otp@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            The choices are

            • Be “better” and help Trump win, or
            • Help Trump lose

            Seems like an easy choice to me.

            • FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Even as a vegetable, Biden’s administration wouldn’t let the country fall into a kleptocracy. And that’s enough for me.

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Letting the country fall into a kleptocracy is exactly what Biden and his democratic party handlers are doing with their insistence of “nothing would fundamentally change” by pushing through the weakest presidential candidates and placing the status quo over actual progress.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              No. This is an either/or fallacy the DNC has been pushing for over a year to quell any dissent. Well the chickens have come home to roost. We can apply pressure to change the candidate. That’s an option. We do not have to have either Trump or Biden and nothing else.

              • irreticent@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                It’s interesting to see all the pro-Trump accounts suddenly change their talking points to “Biden should step down.” It makes you wonder…

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Oh joy. That’s a new one. Nobody has ever called me a pro Trump person for attempting to remind people that there are other options. Never before.

                  Just kidding. This is exactly how we got here. People like you bullying anyone that dares talk about Biden having electability issues. It was too effective and now we’re in this dumb position that could have been avoided so easily.

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              5 months ago

              It is not nearly so binary. This issue is complex and intertwining - think rocket science where to get more thrust you need more fuel, but adding more fuel adds more weight, so you need even more thrust… that’s mere child’s play compared to politics.

              For one thing, replacing Biden now may help Trump win, but it may also help Trump lose, whereas in contrast NOT replacing Biden now may help Trump lose, or it could help Trump win.

              And somehow, we’re all back to everything Everything, EVERYthing being all about Trump, all the time.:-( Democracy has had cracks in it forever, especially when mixed with capitalism, and he exposes all of those.

              • hogmomma@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                replacing Biden now may help Trump win, but it may also help Trump lose, whereas in contrast NOT replacing Biden now may help Trump lose, or it could help Trump win.

                Either that quote doesn’t really mean anything, or maybe I’m missing the nuance to it.

                • OpenStars@discuss.online
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                  5 months ago

                  Both action or inaction may either increase or lessen the likelihood of either outcome. Hence why politics is more complex than rocket science - think quantum entanglement.

                  • hogmomma@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Turning the thermostat up will either cool the house or warm it. Turning the thermostat down will either warm the house or cool it.

              • otp@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                The voters can’t replace Biden, and as I’ve mentioned in another comment, they’re not making these decisions blindly. They’ve likely come to the conclusion that replacing Biden would cost more votes than it’d gain. Right or wrong, they’re not going in blindly.

                All the voters can do is vote. And realistically, on election day, a vote not made for Biden is a vote in Trump’s favour.

                If you’re okay with that, that’s your decision. But I believe Trump has said that if it were up to him, the genocide would’ve been “completed” by now.

                • OpenStars@discuss.online
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                  5 months ago

                  The general election isn’t for another four months. That is the time to STFU and vote. Although who are we kidding, >90% of people live somewhere where their votes barely matter if at all - maybe, maybe helping Trump voters see that Biden’s re-election is “real”, but otherwise every city will vote Dem and every rural area will vote Repub and there’s like 10 counties that will determine the course of the entire world for the foreseeable future. Btw I’m not worried about either me or you, but I am worried about the independents in those 10 counties.

                  Our news media is out for blood, like sharks in the water. Right or wrong, or left or whatever, they don’t care, they smell PROFIT to be made by ruthlessly making fun of every tiny thing that Biden will do from now on. We ignore this at our peril - I’m not saying that I take evil glee from this horrid fact, merely that this inconvenient truth should be accounted for. We can bow before facts, or we can be crushed by them in turn - but either way, we will have to reconcile with them. The choice is whether we do so before, and use them to turn the situation to our advantage as best we can, or whether we wake up some day later wishing that we had done so previously. Exactly like 2016 with Hillary, or like that other time with RBG, but this time there will be no second chances, bc this at least looks to be our last election. Maybe second to last, possibly with yet another interspersal of another Dem, but there are no guarantees for such - Trump has already declared his intentions to become a dictator, and SCOTUS has already made it legal for him to do so.

                  And in the midst of all of this, with the stakes higher than they’ve ever been for our little democracy experiment… Biden, well, “has a cold”. Okay then, so hype up on crack, cocaine, or whatever you need to do, just get it done, or move aside and let Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg or AOC or Gretchen Whitmer or whoever take the lead. This is not the time to be playing authoritian games with our literal democracy at stake. BuT hE’s OuR lEaDeR? Then LEAD. He’s old - it’s not his fault, but the Democratic primary choosing him would be our fault.

                  I agree that they had some kind of strategy in place. It relied on deception. It failed. Now that the cat is out of the bag, and we all saw what has been happening with our very own eyes and heard it with our very own ears, the strategy of telling everyone “he’s fine, you don’t see it but behind closed doors everything is totally fine, I totally have a girlfriend, you don’t know her bc she goes to another school, in fact she’s in Canada, but we are totally happy together… t-t-totally, yeah!” - this approach (!?!), is backfiring.

                  People are tire of being lied to. They won’t vote. Trump now has a greater likelihood of winning. That’s… no bueno.:-( Maybe we should do something about it? Something other than simply saying “what are you going to do?”, before it’s too late and nothing is all that can be done, as it gets even later in the game. It might be time to update the strategy, to fit the new set of updated facts. Otherwise, we roll the dice and hope for the best - but now is our last chance to affect change, if we really do want to see Trump not win?

                  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Not to mention Mega donors publicly stating that debate Biden is the Biden they got at donor events. The curtain has been well and truly pulled back.

                • hark@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  The voters couldn’t even practically choose anyone other than Biden in that sham of a primary. People were warning about Biden since long before the primary and yet democratic party leadership decided they knew better than the voters and forced him through. Now you’re blaming their fuck up on voters.

                  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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                    5 months ago

                    You don’t know for a fact that it is a fuck up.

                    You (should) know for a fact that, if you consider Trump getting elected to be a fuck up, that not voting for Biden would be a fuck up because it’d be helping Trump win.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  All the voters can do is vote.

                  And protest, and contact representatives, and organize, and join their local party… Again with the national party lines meant to make people disengage.

                  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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                    5 months ago

                    Yes, you’re right. There is more they can do to influence things. But on election day, only the vote truly counts.

          • PlainSimpleGarak@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            The top comment in this thread is “yeah Biden might be a vegetable, but vote blue no matter who.”

            How exactly are lefties any better? Your leader is losing his mind, clearly not fit to lead the country, but you’ll back him anyway.

            • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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              5 months ago

              Biden and the Dems are right wing?

              Leftists don’t support them. “Centrists” do.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          People aren’t going to vote for Trump over Biden, they are just going to sit out. America doesn’t have mandatory voting.

          • otp@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            If those people are fine with Trump being president, then that’s on them. Sitting out instead of voting against Trump is helping Trump win.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              5 months ago

              You can blame them if you want, but the original push is from Biden and the DNC’s failures and support for genocide.

              The point is, Biden is tanking, so swapping him is better. Defending Biden hurts DNC chances.

              • otp@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                support for genocide

                The same genocide that Trump supports, likely more than Biden?

                If the genocide in Palestine was someone’s single issue, they’d be pretty disappointed if Trump were making decisions about the Palestine…

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  5 months ago

                  People aren’t voting for Trump, they just won’t for Biden. America isn’t a mandatory voter country, so actively contributing to genocide hurts the DNC’s chances by disengaging voters, not by flipping them to Trump.

              • rekorse@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                “Excuse excuse excuse, I feel bad voting for Biden so I won’t”

                Very inspiring. What other emotions do you have trouble dealing with?

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          It’s impossible to dintinguish when Trump makes mistakes from when he’s genuinely lieing or confidently incorrect.

        • Asifall@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          True, but I feel like people have been talking past each other about this.

          On the one hand, you have people saying Biden’s cabinet would do a better job than Trump, which is true. On the other hand, you have people saying Biden is going to lose to trump unless he somehow makes a dramatic turnaround in the next couple months, which is also true according to all available data.

          The real question isn’t whether Biden is better than trump, it’s whether Biden would serve the country better by stepping down.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            Exactly. Biden is a lost cause electorally, regardless of how good or bad he is, because he has tanked his approval with his own voterbase. Nobody is going to see Biden and then vote for Trump, they would just sit out or vote third party. Biden is just handing the win to Trump.

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              5 months ago

              Nobody is going to see Biden and then vote for Trump,

              I am not so certain of that. Granted the numbers would be low, but given how the Electoral College works, the entire election may hinge upon precisely that.

              We’ve been down this road before, in both of the previous elections.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                5 months ago

                The number is non-zero, sure, but close to it. “Nobody” is just to drive the point, the DNC’s best path to victory is to reengage their voterbase with popular policy and firmly standing against genocide. The “fall in line” narrative works for only so many people, and it may not be enough for the DNC to win, so the DNC should focus on voter outreach instead of fearmongering about Trump for a third election cycle in a row.

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            5 months ago

            Except that’s not the real question, bc he’s already said that God Himself could not cause Biden to step down (I’m being literal here). He’s doubling, tripling, and whatever more down, digging his heels in and refusing to even consider that option, regardless of who asks.

            At this point he is either removed by force - which won’t happen - or it’s already over.

            And either way, the SCOTUS ruling holds firm.

            I wish him luck, but I don’t expect good things to come. Even if he wins, heck even if he like rigged the election at this point and gave himself a large majority of numbers in the process, the other side won’t believe it and there’s a goodly chance of an actual civil war, or something along those lines (bad riots or such). Or maybe I’m full of shit, but it bothers me so much that everything that I say sounds “fatalistic” to my own inner ear - except that word means closing your eyes to the truth and choosing to believe only the worst, whereas this is my attempt to be realistic with eyes wide open!? I am saying that it does not bode well that this seems a realistic possibility rather than hyperbolic exaggeration of words for like comedic effect:-(.

            Once again, there’s like ~11% of the country who is die-hard Trump red maga, another ~11% Biden blue maga, and the LARGE majority of us in the middle don’t matter in the slightest as we get caught between these two extremes (Russian oligarchy encroachment vs. American oligarchy establishment, tbf the latter cares far more about the common folk, but is really bad at showing that).

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          as Jon Stewart also pointed out, but that’s not the issue here. the issue is expected performance. people expect want one of them to be a crazy loon. the other not so much. so when he acts like he’s not all there people are concerned whether he can perform well enough at the election to defeat the fascist. the polls aren’t optimistic.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      “Um… let me be clear. My former VP pick has always sucked. He’s not old. He’s simply got a head full of busted marbles and wasn’t employable anywhere outside of the US Senate. That’s why I endorsed him to run in 2020. You people disgust me. You deserve what you get.”

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      So I should be able to look at 2020 debate footage and compare it to 2024 debate footage without a problem right?

      Right?!?

      This isn’t just gaffes. The man is getting to an age where this stuff get harder every year. There’s a reason the military has a mandatory retirement age of 62, even if you have a desk job.

    • nekandro@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      It’s a concern because Putin, Xi, Khamenei, Kim… They’re all well-spoken. They’re all quick-witted.

      What kind of message does that send would-be American allies in Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, in South America?