WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2024
Also, The Madness of [Our Own] King George: What might a medical assessment look like—a medical assessment concerning last Thursday's debate?
We're referring to a medical assessment of President Biden—and of Candidate Trump as well.
Last week, a few days before the debate, the New York Times published a guest essay which seemed to tackle that general question. The essay appeared beneath this headline. We assume the essay was well intentioned, but we'd call it par for the course:
I’m a Doctor and a Voter. Here’s How I’m Thinking About the Health of Trump and Biden.
We plan to walk you through that essay before the week is done.
For today, a winner of last Thursday's debate has finally been declared. Also, Gail Collins has come around concerning the question of what President Biden should do.
It all happened in yesterday's version of her weekly Conversation with Bret Stephens. Headline included, here's the way the colloquy started:
Will One Bad Debate Night Mean One Bad Election Day?
Bret Stephens: Gail, in our last conversation I asked you whether you would join me in calling for Democrats to find a new nominee if Joe Biden had a disastrous debate performance. You replied that it would have to be “super disastrous.”
Did the president’s performance on Thursday night meet your definition of “super disastrous”?
Gail Collins: Bret, I was thinking about you all through the debate. You were worried Biden would “lose it with some obvious memory lapse, slurred sentence or troubling blank stare.”
I pretty much dismissed your concerns, and I was, um, sorta wrong. But I did say I’d join you “if the president suddenly goes blank and stares at the screen in silence or forgets where he’s speaking.”
But hey, it wasn’t that bad. Quite.
Bret: It wasn’t?
Gail: OK, I’m coming around to your way of thinking. Biden shouldn’t be the nominee...
Collins goes on to say that it would be years before President Biden would be stepping down if he's able to stay on the ticket and win. Implied (we think) was the sense that his apparent condition, whatever it may be, would only be worse by that point.
At this point, we offer an aside.
In all the discussions which have occurred since last Thursday night, we don't think we've seen a single person speak about what any of this may mean for President Biden's mortality, but also for his personal health in the years to come.
Many people say how much they love him. No one seems to say squat or squadoosh about that.
Fellow citizens, we're just saying! As with so many other things, no one seems to care.
At any rate, Collins has now agreed that the president should step aside. As the conversation continues from above, Stephens names the winner of last Thursday's debate:
Gail: OK, I’m coming around to your way of thinking. Biden shouldn’t be the nominee. Even if he makes a comeback from the he’s-way-too-old moments of the debate, we’ve got months before the election. And years before he’d be stepping down for good, should he win.
Bret: Which, I am 99 percent convinced, he can’t.
What America saw last week wasn’t a guy having a bad debate night. It’s the man Robert Hur, the special counsel in the Biden documents case, described this year as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur is owed a public apology from every pompous pundit who dumped all over him for telling the truth. And Americans are owed better from the Democratic Party than a president tipping into senescence while his dishonest aides pretend that everything about the president’s health is hunky-dory.
Have dishonest aides been pretending that the president's health is O.K.?
At present, that's a perfectly sensible question—a question we ourselves can't answer. Meanwhile, Stephens has named the winner of Thursday's debate:
In his assessment, the winner was Robert Hur!
Did President Biden's behavior with Hur resemble what happened last Thursday? At this site, we have no idea, and we don't think Stephens knows either.
That said, a lot remains to be sorted out concerning what happened last week. Beyond that, a very important question looms—a question concerning the vastly disordered person who retweeted the crazy posts we alluded to this morning.
There was only one madman on the stage last week. His name was Donald J. Trump. Judged by any normal standard, he's been visibly crazy for years.
Until last Thursday night's debacle, the mainstream press corps had largely ignored questions of President Biden's health. They've grossly ignored the endless evidence of the ongoing Madness of Our Own King George.
Why has the press corps behaved that way?
There are many aspects to that extremely important question. They involve the behavior of the mainstream press, but also the behaviors of the "cable news" stars who serve each of our current countries, Red America and Blue.
What explains the way this madness has gone unaddressed? It's a very important question. We plan to frisk it here.
"speak about what any of this may mean for President Biden's mortality, but also for his personal health in the years to come."
ReplyDeleteI also find this strange. President Biden deserves compassionate care, not years burdened with the responsibility for a complicated, stressful job with millions of lives at stake.
But has Trump's troubling behavior "gone unaddressed" by the media?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that many examinations of his derangement have been made and waved off as partisan. Then we move on to a diner in Iowa.
New Wall Street Journal poll:
ReplyDelete- Donald Trump has a 6-point lead over President Biden nationally, with 80% saying Biden is too old to run for a second term.
- Trump leads Biden 48% to 42% in a two-person matchup, the widest lead in Journal surveys since late 2021.
- The share of people who say Biden is too old to run rose 7 points since February.
- Only 34% view Biden favorably, with 63% viewing him unfavorably.
- Less than 40% approve of Biden’s handling of inflation, immigration, the economy, or his overall performance.
- 47% of voters would replace both Biden and Trump on the ballot if they could, and 53% are not enthusiastic about any presidential candidate.
- 76% of Democrats say Biden is too old to run.
- Two-thirds of Democrats would prefer a different nominee than Biden.
- Trump's 48% support is the highest recorded for him in a Journal poll.
- Trump leads Biden 42% to 36% in a test ballot including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other independent candidates.
- Only 6% of those who watched the debate or heard news of it said Biden exceeded their expectations, compared to 46% for Trump.
- More than half of the voters described Biden’s debate performance with negative terms like “abysmal,” “embarrassing,” or “confused.”
- One-third of voters, including 31% of independents, said the debate made them more likely to vote for Trump
This is why you need to look at polling averages and not individual polls (Wall Street Journal is conservative). They have Trump up 1 point over Biden on average nationally, which is still within the margin of error, making the presidency a virtual tie. Biden was trending up before the debate, so this gain by Trump is not good, but neither is it the disaster portrayed by the Wall Street Journal's poll.
DeleteYou can conclude that voters are being moved by the press reporting, but not that they changed due to the debate. The reaction of focus groups and voters after this cumulative press barrage was not negative like this.
The election is still a long ways away and there is plenty that can happen. Biden is staying the nominee, so this attack on him can be overcome. Meanwhile, Trump's sentencing will happen in September and may affect Republican support more than this temporary attack on Biden, especially if Biden continues to campaign normally.
Biden is old. There is nothing new about that. But Trump is a convicted felon, in addition to talking about what he will do with immunity and Trump is sounding crazier every day.
Extremely telling that the people defending Biden aren't even trying to make an argument he can beat Trump.
DeleteThe fundamental problem for Dems is that the sort of actions that a campaign would need to reassure both regular voters and "party elites" don't seem to be actions that Joe Biden is capable of.
DeleteHe has been giving strong speeches and interacting well in meetings and crowds.
DeleteNot strong enough to reassure regular voters and party elites. A vast majority don't think he his competent and don't want him to run. This is the problem. Biden will have to face voters without teleprompters and pre written scripts. He better do it soon as it already probably too late.
DeleteDems are standing by Biden.
Delete4:54,
DeleteIf those polls are indicative of November voting, Biden might have to officially ignore the results and remain President anyway, which is legal.
Every poll for the last 6 months has shown that Biden would lose.
DeleteIt's okay, because Jill will tell him that he won anyway. And he will happily continue oozing decency, empathy and competence.
Delete9:45,
DeleteThat’s no more illegal than weekly IRS audits of Supreme Court Justices.
Win or lose, Trump will be oozing into his diapers.
Delete"the endless evidence of the ongoing Madness of Our Own King George."
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence? "Amplifying" some mildly trolling comment in social media?
A majority of Hispanic voters are now saying Biden can’t perform his job capably because of his age.
ReplyDeleteA majority of Hispanic voters are saying you're full of shit.
DeleteA majority of Hispanic voters are saying, “If the Democrats lose, Trump will send us back to Hispania.”
DeleteHispania is the name for the country of Spain. When referring to Hispanic voters, it denotes the culture, not a country. The Hispanic culture was spread to the places that were colonized by Spain. These include Latin and Central America, large parts of the United States, Puerto Rico and several other Caribbean Islands including Cuba, the Philippines, and Islands near Spain, the Spanish Sahara. Hispanic voters in the USA are those coming from a culture influenced by Spain. There are a lot of them.
DeleteDiscrimination against Hispanic voters, including people whose families have lived in the territorial US for many generations, will likely be increased if Trump engages in a roundup of so-called immigrants. Bigoted people are not very picky when it comes to assuming the citizenship status of people who seem "foreign" to them. This is called nativism and it has a long ugly history in the USA.
We illegal Hispanic voters are good decent persons.
DeleteWe will vote for Kamila, and then we will go back to our beautiful homeland of Hispania and make it great again.
But we need your help. $50/week, which is less than a cup of coffee a day, would really help. Make this call now.
How did 9:18’s response morph into a plea for cash? Did Justice Thomas hijack it?
DeleteIf Trump promises to deport Marco Rubio, I'll vote Republican for the first time in my life. Of course, knowing Trump, he'll break his promise.
DeleteKudos to Bob Somerby for being a honest liberal with integrity. He has been warning for a long time about Biden’s cognitive decline and his insane policies on spending and illegal immigration. On the other hand TDS-addled regime media, including Bob’s good friends Kevin Drum and Paul Krugman, have been shamelessly and exclusively pimping approved Blue tribe narratives. Bob has also been asking his tribe to imagine how the others view issues, always a good advice if your goal is to win. Well done and thanks Bob.
ReplyDelete“Insane spending policies” means “policies which help the people, not corporations and the rich”, for those who don’t have a Plain talk to Elite speak translator.
DeleteI’m always happy to help.
The Heritage Foundation intends to impose its will on us:
ReplyDeletehttps://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753439-heritage-leader-second-american-revolution/
Anonymouse 5:47pm, anonymices don’t just resent the way Bob sweated over something going down like what did go down with Pres. Biden, but are also livid that Bob caused it to happen by virtue of typing his concerns into a blog.
ReplyDeleteYou don't speak for any anonymous commenters here and you certainly are not a good enough mindreader to know what we are feeling. Why do you write things like this? It makes you sound more foolish than necessary.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:42pm, I may not represent
Deleteanonymices, but I understand your actions and intentions. It doesn't require supernatural abilities to see through your behavior.
It’s dumb and disingenuous to criticize a blogger for quoting the individuals that he is discussing.
If anyone needs to be assessed for mental impairments, it's anonymices.
Mindreading and name-calling.
DeleteCecelia, I assess you: beautiful.
DeleteI have my doubts about Collins changing her mind about Biden due to his performance.
ReplyDeleteThat decision was prefaced upon how the wind is now blowing at the NYT.
Agree, but so is Stephens (who is conservative and toeing the Republican line out of self-interest, every bit as much as all the other right wingers).
DeletePrefaced? Or predicated?
DeleteAnonymouse 9:41pm, no doubt whatsoever.
DeleteObviously "predicated," but it gets tiring correcting Cecelia's ridiculous gaffes for her. She claims she knows how to look words up, but then she never does it.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:55pm, and I never will.
Delete
DeleteBtw- anonymices 9:41pm, it wasn’t JUST the media and pols who pretended that Biden has no cognitive impairment, anonymices were forever raving over the nude emperor’s new clothes as well.
Ewwww, just thinking about a nude Trump.
DeleteBragging about being ignorant is like going thru life fat drunk and stupid. You don’t have enough money to adopt Trump’s approach to life. He never looks anything up either and always makes stupid remarks.
DeleteAnonymouse 10:38pm, you protest too much if you consider your emperor to be a nude Trump
DeleteAnonymouse 10:41pm, then what’s your excuse since a dictionary hasn’t done a bit of good for you.
Delete???
DeleteI dream of a nude Cecelia.
Delete"We assume the essay was well intentioned, but we'd call it par for the course"
ReplyDeleteHe is referring to the doctor talking about how he reacts to Trump and Biden. Apparently Somerby considers himself qualified (competent) to evaluate what is written by doctors now. Note that the right kind of doctor to evaluate dementia is a neuropsychologist (who does testing for brain-related dysfunction) or a neurologist (who specializes in brain disorders). Expertise matters. I know that Somerby has none, including no knowledge of how to evaluate doctors, but he doesn't say what the training or qualifications of the essay writer are.
I dropped my subscription to the NY Times because of its anti-Biden bias, especially after the debate. That means I cannot read the essay Somerby plans to discuss. I hope he will not hide this doctor's qualifications but will tell us whether he is a qualified expert or a primary care physician with an opinion.
How can an essay be "par for the course" when it is one of a kind? Par refers to an average score and there haven't been enough doctors talking about Biden's mental functioning to have formed an average or par score.
Delete"Par refers to an average score"
DeleteNo. No it doesn't. It means you played without major errors.
I don't think this changes the point -- how does Somerby know what par would be for an essay written by a doctor, without the experience of reading more such essays? There has been no such experience.
DeleteThese polls are demonstrating that it is possible to change the public's view of a politician using massive negative coverage. That is ALL they are showing. But keep in mind that we have no idea how close they were to actual voter opinions in the first place. The polls have been overestimating support for Trump in the sense that he has underperformed polling by earned far less (10-20 % points) than the polls said he would during the primaries, even after Nikki Haley dropped out. Analysis has also showed that polls differ depending on how the questions are phrased (what is being polled) and who is being asked to respond (likely voters vs registered voters vs swing voters). Biden does far better under some circumstances than others. But if you tell people bad stuff continuously for a week, you cannot then say it was the result of the debate that people are less favorable toward Biden.
ReplyDelete"Did President Biden's behavior with Hur resemble what happened last Thursday? At this site, we have no idea, and we don't think Stephens knows either."
ReplyDeleteThe DOJ already provided congress with a transcript of Hur's conversation with Biden. That should answer both Stephens' and Somerby's questions about whether Biden responded competently. It has previously been discussed with the conclusion that Hur mischaracterized Biden's testimony for partisan reasons and that Biden was not as described.
I can see that I neglected to list Hur's attack on Biden among the evidence of a campaign to destroy Biden's credibility by portraying him as a senile old fart. This is akin to the fake videos and the ongoing claim that Biden is too old but Trump is neither too old nor too corrupt to be the nominee. And that is just politics, not science.
There was a video that showed Biden wandering off from a staged photo op with other world leaders. It's not like people don't walk off from photo ops though. So it's not that big of a deal. But he looked pretty foolish and senile when he did it.
DeleteAs far as Hur goes, some are saying Biden is lucky he found him too old and forgetful to prosecute because he probably would have been prosecuted had he not.
That was a fake video. Biden didn’t wander off.
DeleteHur didn’t charge Biden because he couldn’t — there was no crime, so he smeared him instead.
DeleteOn the video, Biden wanders off:
Deletehttps://www.c-span.org/video/?c4976503/user-clip-biden-wanders-aimlessly-stage
Wait wrong link. He wanders off at 9:34. Which isn't such a bad thing. 80 year olds wander off all the time.
Deletehttps://www.c-span.org/video/?536367-1/president-biden-7-leaders-watch-skydiving-demonstration
Biden has not been wandering off. This is a troll attempting to link to a fake video.
DeleteHere at 9:34 he wanders off.
Deletehttps://www.c-span.org/video/?536367-1/president-biden-7-leaders-watch-skydiving-demonstration
He walks over to speak to a paratrooper. That's the opposite of "wandering."
Delete"Until last Thursday night's debacle, the mainstream press corps had largely ignored questions of President Biden's health. They've grossly ignored the endless evidence of the ongoing Madness of Our Own King George."
ReplyDeleteFinally! Something Somerby has said that I agree with! However, you do not raise questions about a president's health without some evidence that such questions need to be answered. Biden has been an excellent president, gave a heck of a SOTU speech, gave a fine rally Friday after the debate, but had difficulty dealing with Trump's inappropriate and confused debate statements. So now Somerby wants him evaluated, when the cause of Biden's behavior is right there in front of all of us -- Trump's behavior.
There is a scene in the movie Clueless where Cher is giving a debate statement about immigration and instead talks about her father's dinner party and winds up saying "The more the merrier." Her opponent (Amber) is given her turn and she turns to the teacher and says "How can I give a response when she didn't do the assignment?" That is what Biden should have said, but instead he tried to deal with a mishmash that was incoherent and thus could not yield a coherent response. But Biden gets the blame, not Trump. From Democrats, who should be promoting the interests of our party, not trying to play politics by pushing Biden off the national scene before he is finished with his presidency.
Somerby is among the various idiots who are doing exactly what the Republicans have set them up to do -- he is undermining our own candidate and helping Trump get elected.
Until Biden takes the Montreal test (like Trump did) and obtains a score of 16 correct or less (the acknowledged cutoff for mild cognitive impairment), I will not believe he is showing any signs of dementia, nor that he is incompetent to continue in his job, simply because he stutters or got distracted in the middle of a technical answer to a complicated question. Trump has never revealed his actual score on that test. Why isn't anyone asking what he is hiding?
One issue facing Biden is a large percentage of his supporters don't think he is competent and don't want him to run.
ReplyDeleteThat idea is coming from the media not from the grassroots. If they don’t think he is competent, then they aren’t actually supporters, are they? Biden’s record donations after the debate says people are still supporting him.
DeleteAgainst Trump, I support even an incompetent Biden. I would even support a comatose Biden.
DeleteDid I miss where 40/44 hand picked advisors to Biden publicly have stated that he is unfit for office? That would be Trump appointees and cabinet members, based upon their impressions from working with him + 4 years ago. The intervening 4 years have not been kind, as video evidence of his blathering, sometimes incoherently, at rallies attests, so I don't think that number is going up. Trump supporters like to ignore that number and pretend it doesn't exist because they have no answer for it. Biden is on a likely mental trajectory that disqualifies him from serious consideration, in my opinion. But his tenure has been exemplary and he will not be judged anywhere near the lowest 5 presidents in history by large panels of presidential historians, as Trump has. Trump's Gallup approval rating has registered as low as 34%.
DeleteYes, I think we all already know that.
Delete(Except it omits Biden's foreign policy has been disastrous.)
Delete9:36,
Delete(Since inflation has ebbed, Biden’s foreign policy is the replacement gripe. The key is to make it sound like it’s bad for the average American, if it constrains Russia.)
(Biden's foreign policy of supporting a sovereign country against a Russian invasion has the bipartisan support of Democrats and Republicans, as has his support of Israel. Whenever right wingers use the word disastrous without explanation it is always histrionic bloviating lacking substance.)
DeleteDershowitz reports that Biden is telling insiders that he's considering withdrawing. Dersh interprets that to men Biden probably will withdraw.
ReplyDeleteThis will allow the Dems to follow a strategy of opposing Trump with someone much less nationally known than Biden. In a race based on negatives, the less known about their candidate the better for the Dems. An awful lot of people will vote against Trump unless they know something really bad about his opponent.
Why would Biden tell him anything?
DeleteToday's news:
ReplyDelete1. Seven negative articles about Biden in the New York Times, one positive article.
2. Trump said this:
"New video footage obtained by The Daily Beast shows former President Donald Trump at a golf outing, boasting that he forced President Joe Biden out of the race and speculating that he'll have to run against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“He just quit, you know — he’s quitting the race,” Trump can be heard saying in the video.
“I got him out of the — and that means we have Kamala.” He went on to call Biden a "broken-down pile of crap" and said of Harris, “I think she’s gonna be better” as an opponent, but even so “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic.”
I hope Somerby is proud of his role in aiding the Republicans to benefit Trump's campaign. Fortunately, Biden has more spine than Trump thinks, and he will be staying in the race. We actual Democrats can only hope the people joining in this attack on Biden haven't damaged his campaign to the point of no return. Polls are showing minimal decreases in Biden's support and he has taken in a huge amount of donations since the debate, so perhaps not much damage has been done by this Republican attack.
The idea that Democrats had a media narrative problem, instead of a real problem, is exactly what got them into them into this mess in the first place.
DeleteThe idea that Someday had a role in anything substantive is ludicrous. This is a blog where, in all likelihood, most readers skim or go straight to the comment section. His posts need an editor or Cliff Notes. He ain't changing the world here, just voicing an opinion, and probably making a paycheck. Via posts that are commonly, in the words (albeit letters) of the wretched Mao: TL/TR.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSomerby .
DeleteSomeday Somerby will give up.
DeleteThe problem for the Senate is no one can come up with any good reasons not to abolish it for the good of the country.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteJoe Biden is oozing decency, empathy and competence.
I have made $200 reliably in one day.That was my ideal day in my life and my boss was to a great degree content with me..CNN is additionally awed from my work and is outstandingly happy..check also unpretentious parts by open the affiliation and tap on HOME TECH OR MEDIA………
ReplyDeleteBegin here>>>>>>>>> Home System