• givesomefucks@lemmy.worldOP
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    5 months ago

    Above all, Joe Biden’s allies wanted him to demonstrate strength and energy on the debate stage to help put to rest questions about the 81-year-old Democrat’s physical and mental acuity.

    But on the biggest stage in U.S. politics on Thursday night, Biden did not meet their modest expectations.

    And by the end of the 90-minute showdown, the Democratic president’s allies — party strategists and rank-and-file voters alike — descended into all-out panic following a debate performance punctuated by repeated stumbles, uncomfortable pauses, and a quiet speaking style that was often difficult to understand. Publicly and privately, Democrats questioned whether the party could or should replace him as the party’s presidential nominee against the 78-year-old Republican former President Donald Trump this fall.

    "I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC. “I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”

    What we can do is run a better candidate before it’s too late.

    The convention isn’t for over a month, and the DNC has been very open about how they can just nominate anyone they want.

    We’re only stuck with Biden because Biden and the people he put in charge of the DNC would rather risk trump than Biden step aside.

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Can you imagine what it would look like if they chose someone like Jon Stewart instead? How a debate like that would have gone? A guy can dream…

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldOP
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        5 months ago

        Just anyone with more charisma than a bowl of cold oatmeal.

        If nothing matters except beating trump, why arent we coalescing around a candidate Dem voters want so that we’ll get as much votes against trump as possible

        • candybrie@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The problem is “a candidate dem voters want” doesn’t have any obvious choices.

          Like Harris isn’t that popular, but the optics of skipping over a black woman when the VP would typically be the heir apparent? You think Gavin Newsom would be a good choice? Californians don’t have a lot of good things to say about him right now. I haven’t seen a lot of other names floated.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The problem is that the DNC would never go for him or anyone like him, because he’s not a blatant neoliberal.

        If they swap, it’ll be someone like Newsom.

      • WraithGear@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I mean yea, but that’s not really fair to him. Being president seems like a terrible burden.