MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2024
Sanders-Townsend jumps in: The very fact that the question could have been asked helps define the shape of this potentially disastrous era.
The question was asked on yesterday's Meet the Press. Actually, we refer to a pair of questions:
WELKER (1/5/25): Leader Schumer, what do you say to Americans who feel as though you and other top Democrats misled them about President Biden's mental acuity?
SCHUMER: No. Look, we didn't. And let's—let’s look, let’s look at President Biden. He's had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since the New Deal—since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, putting in 235 judges, a record. And he's a patriot. He's a great guy. And when he stepped down, he did it on his own because he thought it was better not only for the Democratic Party, for America. We should all salute him. We should all salute him.
WELKER: Do you feel, as we have this conversation today, that President Biden could serve another four years, had he stayed in the race and potentially won?
SCHUMER: Well, I'm not going to speculate. As I said, I think his record is a stellar one. And he'll go down in history as a really outstanding president.
At that point, Welker moved on.
Could President Biden have served another four years? The simple fact that the question was asked helps define the shape of the political era—and of last year's presidential election, which Blue America narrowly lost
Welker believed it made sense to ask if President Biden could have completed a second term. We were struck by Senator Schumer's answer, in which he didn't say yes.
Schumer said that he and his colleagues didn't mislead the public about the president's mental acuity. He also said he wasn't willing to speculate about the answer to Welker's follow-up question.
Later in that same program, Welker asked Symone Sanders-Townsend about that exchange. We were surprised, but not surprised, by what Sanders-Townsend said:
WELKER: Symone, let's talk about the Democrats. I thought the conversation with Leader Schumer was fascinating. I asked him if he thought President Biden could serve another four years. He kind of pivoted, didn't answer that directly. There's obviously a lot of soul searching going on right now in the Democratic Party. What did you make of what we heard from Leader Schumer?
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: Well, I was very surprised that, when you asked the question about mental acuity, he didn't more forcefully push back. The question on the table is, "Is—is the president all the way there?” And the answer is unequivocally yes. Now, people can say that you feel as though President Biden might be a little too old to do the job, but he is doing the job. And his mental acuity is there. So, I think that there's a conflation of two things here: his mental capacity and serving another four years, as old as he is. But those are two separate things in my opinion. And look, these people that have known Joe Biden their entire political lives, I know Joe Biden is like, "Can you all just please defend me a little more?"
At that point, Welker moved on.
Sanders-Townsend said she was surprised by Schumer's reaction. Turnabout being fair play, we were surprised by hers!
She said she's sure that President Biden "is all the way there." We aren't sure about that ourselves, and we haven't been for some time.
As we'll start discussing tomorrow, this could surely be one of the ways Blue America lost some potential votes during last year's election.
Schumer wasn't willing to say that President Biden could have continued to serve. He said he hadn't misled the public about the president's mental acuity.
(President Biden is "a great guy," he added as he continued.)
This week, we're looking for the various ways we Blues may have lost the last election. We're looking for some of the factors which may have led otherwise persuadable people to vote for Candidate Trump.
On June 27 of last year, President Biden produced a disastrous debate. Four weeks later, he left the race.
Is that one of the ways we lost some votes? Tomorrow, our discussion continues.
Oh for fcks sake Somerby. This post on the anniversary of the end of American democracy.
ReplyDeleteThe debate was a disaster. Once Biden claimed the nation had an "epidemic of post-birth abortions", which isn't even a thing, there was no way he could stay in the Presidential race.
ReplyDeleteObama had a disastrous debate too. He went on to win the election. Biden went on to give excellent speeches and interviews but that didn’t matter.
DeleteWhen sarcasm flies right over the head…
DeleteMore good work by Kevin:
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/unemployment-is-up-but-hardly-apocalyptic/
Remember when the Right made believe Antifa was behind January 6th? LOL.
ReplyDeleteAntifa is so biased against the Republican Party, they put it in their name.
Ha! True.
DeleteOn the other hand, even David in Cal knows Trump was only saying stupid lies to amp-up the Republican voter base of bigots, not because he was confused and addled.
ReplyDeleteOne of the primary ambitions of TDH is to examine and critique something Our Host refers to as "our discourse." Today's post offers an illustrative example of How It Works, or Doesn't.
ReplyDeleteJoe Biden is an old man. As we humans age, we lose some of our intellectual agility, our ability to recall specific facts quickly, and formulate nuanced explanations of complex subjects. This happens to all of us. Even those lucky folks who remain sharp into their nineties aren't as mentally flexible as they were in their 50s.
Joe Biden is no exception. As a man in his 80s, he has lost some intellectual capacity. He is diminished.
To what extent have his abilities declined? We don't know. Is anyone asking that? Damned few.
In place of any reasonable discussion we have the machinery of the Republican National Committee churning out artfully barbered video clips that seem to show a president who can't be left on his own for 60 seconds.There are a handful of cable news channels and newspapers that engage in bald speculation about what the bogus video clips tell us. And there is a burgeoning industry of social media influencers who point to all of this as evidence that Joe Biden isn't just diminished, he's supposedly suffering from dementia and has lost contact with reality.
Is anyone anywhere discussing how these various entities are manipulating public opinion? Does anyone ask if the other candidate in the race is intellectually up to snuff?
The correct answer to those questions is self-evident.
Do the leaders of either major party examine the suitability of candidates? Or do party leaders simply defer to an emerging, self-creating, self-sustaining consensus?
Of Democratic Party leaders, Nancy Pelosi stood nearly alone in questioning Biden's ability to complete another term in office. Shouldn't Chuck Schumer have done the same? Shouldn't the leaders of the Republican Party ask these same questions in regard to candidate Trump?
That discussion seems to be off-limits. Instead, an all-or-nothing tug of war fills the vacuum. "Is Biden 'sharp as a tack' or is he a drooling vegetable?"
The actual answer is that he is elderly and his capacity is diminished to some unkown degree. Does his diminishment mean that he would not have been capable of completing another term?
We' don't know and we never will because the important question is replaced with an imitation, and exaggeration of that question.
Quaker, Biden took a yearly cognitive exam by a neural specialist who said he was fit to serve. Those who worked closely with him said the same thing, including foreign leaders and members of congress. Calling him “diminished” without evidence is dishonest and unfair not just to Biden but those supporting in this current administration.
DeleteAny president, including Trump, could become incapacitated by a stroke or heart attack. We have a procedure for dealing with that. You don’t interfere with a presidency because of it. Biden was old when he won the primaries yet the will of the voters was set aside.
The felon, three years younger than President Biden, is clearly scrambled eggs in the egg noggin.
DeleteTrump is a stable genius.
DeleteQuaker - what prompts did you use to come up with this disorganized mess of a comment? What were you asking the AI to say? The point of the post is the fact Welker would even have to ask if Biden could have served another four years shows how political and media leaders don't have honest and balanced conversations. It's not about Biden’s capabilities. It's about a system that prevents meaningful scrutiny of any candidate's fitness for office, including Trump.
Delete9:25 " It's about a system that prevents scrutiny of any candidates fitness for office, including Trump's."
DeleteApparently you were so lathered up about criticizing QiB that you missed the fact that this was a major part of his comment.
Biden appears to be with a Parkinson's like disorder; videos of him 4 years ago show more fluid movement and facial expressiveness. The trajectory of his condition mentally is anybody's guess but running for a second term was a very bad idea of his doing. Same for Trump whose gibberish on the campaign trail was not given enough airplay. I would have run ads centered around some of the incoherent shit that came out of his mouth. Four years of Trump's cognitive decline will be interesting times.
Mendacious stories out of corporate media aside, Biden appears to be fine, running one of the most effective and positively consequential administrations in our lifetime.
DeleteTrump’s condition is of no consequence, as his voters are too wounded to care, and Trump is a mere puppet anyways.
Somerby didn’t discuss 1/6 when it happened, so why would he talk about it today?
ReplyDeleteBob didn't blame it on Antifa?
DeleteHe ignored it.
DeleteThe statement that Somerby didn’t discuss 1/6 in real time is false. It’s easy to check, if you want to.
DeleteThe statement that the Right-wing wasn't horrified by 1/6 when it happened, is a lie.
Delete6:48, What happened to change that opinion?
Delete9:02 right wingers have no ideology, they blow in the wind, chasing an emotional hit centered on feeling dominant.
DeleteThis was an important essay on insurrection written yesterday by Heather Cox Richardson. It connects the cybertruck explosion to the 1/6 insurrectionist goals and the gulf between right and left. Well worth reading.
ReplyDeletehttps://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-5-2025?r=brgvh&utm_medium=ios
That is actually dangerous propaganda. Be careful when you see emotional language, cherry picked data and implicit guilt by association. It's usually a sign someone is trying to deceive you. I would not take her at her word but look for multiple sources and evaluate her claims with hard evidence. She always leans heavily toward a pro-Democratic perspective and frames the Biden administration as delivering an almost idyllic state of the nation. She doesn't even pretend to be objective - so please be careful.
DeleteShe didn’t write what came off that guy’s phone.
DeleteExactly. She unfairly draws conclusions about what he wrote without presenting evidence, conflating his writings with other actions without taking alternatives into account. She uses these unfair conclusions to serve her goal of demonizing one side rather than truly exploring a nuanced understanding of the event. By doing this she manipulates her readers who miss that she has implied connections and motivations that are not clearly demonstrated to feel like what she wrote was import and and well worth reading. That's propaganda,
DeleteShe well described a far right vein of the Republican party that includes this guy and Timothy McVeigh as examples. She was historically correct. There is nothing about your criticisms that bears weight here.
DeleteBe careful not connecting the dots.
DeleteFor example, everyone saw Republican voters throw a childish temper tantrum in D.C. when black people's votes were counted in the 2020 Presidential election. While no one heard them make a peep of protest, when Trump gave that HUGE tax break to corporations and the rich.
If you refuse to connect the dots, you could easily fall for the media's propaganda that Republican voters are "economically anxious", and that they obviously aren't just a shit pile of bigots.
Orange Chickenshit's lawyers would kindly like AG Garland to block the Jack Smith report from being made public. He knows his moronic rube cult fans will not care.
ReplyDeleteThere is no other day more befitting of a second Trump presidency certification than January 6. Ka-mala doing the honors is chef's kiss.
ReplyDelete