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Bad take. Biden clearly isn’t up for the job anymore. If it really was “just a cold” he would be out doing unscripted interviews and reassuring the public that he isn’t too confused to work after 5pm. The fact that he isn’t means his team thinks it’s more likely than not that he can’t actually convince the public that he’s still with it.
Putting someone else in is a risk but keeping him in is a bigger risk. Models are predicting a 60-70% chance of trump winning if the election was run today. This ignores that now the trump team and conservative media will now be pushing the age issue constantly. Who is going to be confident in Biden after he hides away from the public for the next few months and then drops out of the second debate?
Last, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the Democratic Party giving cover to a president that isn’t mentally fit for the job. There was so much talk about following norms and respecting the office of president while it was trump in the white house, but now some dems are openly saying they’re ok with Biden being controlled by his cabinet and family. Even if it all works out and Bidens cabinet runs the country for 4 more years it’s going to cast a long shadow on future elections where republicans can point to Biden as proof that democrats don’t respect the office and don’t even care if the nominee is competent.
He's currently in the job and things are going reasonably well. Do I wish he was more left wing? Yes, but he's been more left than any POTUS during my lifetime. Do I wish he would stop supporting Israel? Absolutely, this is a huge mark against him.
Maybe we can argue that we can see the writing on the wall and we think he won't be able to do the job, but to argue that he clearly can't requires ignoring the reality.
Trump, on the other hand, we had 4 years of and that was a disaster that ended with people attacking the capitol. So if we can say we know any of them is not up for the job, it's clear which way that should point.
Two things though
1 if he can’t get up and speak coherently for an hour at a time I’d argue he actually isn’t doing the job. Communicating clearly and responding to crises at all hours is crucial to the job.
2 there’s little proof that Biden is actually the one calling the shots even ignoring his lack of public appearances
And normally absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence, but the total lack of transparency is a bad look for an administration that supposedly has nothing to hide.
I don’t totally disagree with you, but the logical conclusion is that if we get trump again and he goes batshit crazy the dems aren’t going to have a leg to stand on regarding the 25th amendment.
I’m worried that the democrats are playing the short game again and we’re all going to suffer.
This is a weird position for a bunch of reasons.
First, you aren't really challenging my claim. You're just kind of stating it as a given that Biden is unable to serve and thus subject to the 25th amendment. My point is that there is no good evidence of this; you're basing that just on a bad debate performance.
Second, there is no reason to assume that the next congress won't be closely split. That being said, the dems will have no power to remove the POTUS via the 25th amendment. Hell, even if by some miracle they do get some massive majority in both houses, the VP still has to be on board for it. It's not like the Dems can just invoke the 25th amendment on their own. That would require Republicans to do something. . .and if it is simply that "Trump goes crazy" well, good fucking luck getting 2/3rds of the house and senate to oust him. Never going to happen, the cult is just too entrenched and his lackies too beholden or afraid of the consequences of going against him.
It’s not just the debate performance, it’s the months of Biden being sheltered from any unscripted speaking, his relatively sparse interview schedule, the Hurr report, his refusal to do interviews following the debate, his refusal to take any kind of cognitive test, and reports that when he does do supposedly unscripted interviews his team has been feeding the interviewer questions.
I don’t have any way to know what goes on in biden’s head, but if the debate was a fluke then both Biden and his team have been acting very irrationally before and since.
On the other hand, if we assume his handlers are acting rationally then we can only assume that they believe his speaking ability has gotten so bad that even at this point putting him in front of reporters will only make his image worse.
Also the debate was pretty fucking bad. Don’t forget his team basically got everything they wanted in terms of no audience, cut microphones etc. and they had weeks to prepare. Biden should have been at his best for the debate and his best didn’t seem very good.
I don’t think we should fight fire with fire here. If the answer to Republican fascism is democratic fascism then I’m out