Agreed. I am a Biden supporter and believed the concerns about his age were overblown - until I watched the debate. I have no idea what is the best way forward. But I do know that the President and his family and staff owe it to this country that he not proceed unless his cognitive and physical health have been comprehensively evaluated and the results show his debate performance was an anomaly caused by medication, etc. I will vote for Biden if he continues, which seems likely, because even a diminished Biden is better than losing our democracy. But if he has been evaluated and there are clear signs of serious impairment that will only worsen with time, his staff and family owe it to this country to stop gaslighting the rest of us and convince him to hand off the election to someone else.
Thank you, David. Your take is exactly my take. It’s frustrating when one’s reasonable, measured, empathic response to a national emergency (the return of Trump and destruction of democracy) is met with vitriol and blind rage and relentless gaslighting. It’s blue MAGA and it won’t help us survive what’s coming. I hope people slept it off and will sober up in light of the new week.
It is the height of irresponsibility to use a platform to call for the democratic nominee to step aside this late in the election year based on one debate performance when debating is not at all part of the job of being president, when he has shown zero poor performance on the ACTUAL job and most of all, when there is no proven alternative!! This passion you were surprised by is because our democracy is hanging by a thread. Joe Biden has had a winning amount of support. He IS STILL doing an incredible job and so all these calls for him to step aside now only serve to weaken the chances for us to keep trump out of office. It is not blind loyalty to Biden. It is that there IS no alternative that would not be more destabilizing and dangerous. Some of us have been on the ground working our butts off to get democrats and the Biden Harris admin reelected and the anti Biden rhetoric coming from all of you is like being kicked in the stomach. It is only making our job harder, making victory harder, and driving away people who might have voted for Biden but who don’t seem to look at anything but performance on stage. FFS. 🤦 So much is on the line and Biden is the ONLY person experienced enough to get us to the other side. This isn’t blind loyalty. This is just an assessment, a realistic one, of where we are and what is at stake.
I respect your right to that opinion. And if you are right...and what happened Thursday was just "one bad night," well then, great. But if you are wrong...and we all need to be open to such possibilities...and it was a sign of a decline that may manifest itself closer to the election...then it is in all our interests to acknowledge and consider that. I recognize you have made up your mind. All I ask is that you respect the notion that other people who share your objectives may have a slightly different point of view.
Nicely said. I support Biden. I was not happy with the debate, but I am not ready to cut bait and run, the sky is not falling, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, etc. Biden/Harris have accomplished a great deal that is good for America and done it with limited Congressional support. And seriously, who polls better than Biden against trump? (Though I do not put any credence in poll results since The Great Polling Debacle of 2016.). What real person that is, not a made up generic democratic candidate, a one size pleases all fantasy. No one. There is no White Knight waiting in the wings, no calvary coming over the hill. Stop your bellyaching you fair weather Chicken Littles and work to get Biden/Harris elected.
Nicely said. We all need to look at this issue with an open mind. And we can still love and support President Viden at the same time. Thank you David.🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏💙💙
David, I respect very much what you've written on the subject, but you may be missing something: that what you see as "blind loyalty" is at least in part a reaction to the immediate declaration of so many pundits that Biden should step down on the basis of one bad (really bad) performance. I haven't seen much of this blind loyalty myself, but then I spend almost no time on X/Twitter either.
Those who insisted, and are still insisting, that Biden should step down rarely express a plausible "what then" scenario. What would happen at Democratic convention? Would the Democratic Party emerge unified enough to win this must-win election? Many of them don't even mention VP Harris, and those who think she could step into the top spot *on the ballot* have to be dreaming. IMO she's well qualified to be president, but I have a pretty good idea how prevalent racism and sexism are in the body politic, and I have zero trouble imagining what the attack ads would look like. I wonder if this is at heart a cosmic freakout by older white guys who are projecting at least some of their own frailties on President Biden.
Maybe some of these pundits will eventually sit back, reflect, and even speak or write about why they panicked the way they did. That'll be interesting, but I'm not holding my breath. We've got work to do.
I felt a scism was going to take place and your thoughtful analysis portrayed it perfectly. I hope we can all remember your words, we share a common goal.
Do not let honest and sincere disagreements on the next step destroy the alliance of beating Trump.
Bidens appearance in Raleigh on the following day and on Monday, both fine and what we normally see,, make it pretty clear he and his team really f'd the debate up- it was their play after all- delivering him to the event exhausted and clearly under the weather. Someone needs to be fired, or hired, or both. Biden does need a Mike Deaver
The anger directed at you is certainly not all, or even primarily, "blind" loyalty. That's pretty much a straw man. It's utter exasperation. This narrative (Biden too old) has been been pushed so long and so relentlessly, and is now so 'baked in', that the debate has had little or no effect on the electorate.
We say "Presidents are not Kings", but many unconsciously see them as just that. And we have an old King, not fit to smite the Great Orange Ogre. Hence the grasping at people who would not look out of place on Game of Thrones (Whitmer especially).
But Biden is a President, and our Republic has a history, and consulting that history, as Stuart Stevens has, gives us a clear answer. Don't. It won't work, we will lose.
This would have been a great discussion to have a year ago. Or perhaps a year from now. But this is not the right time.
Those arguing that Biden should step down have failed to provide any coherent plan of how changing candidates should be implemented. Or, they will say they have a plan, and all their plans differ from one another.
Those arguing that Biden should step down are mostly self appointed pundits asking us to trust their judgment over that of the most experienced politician in America.
Biden is a good man, we all know that. If he thinks he should go, he will go. He doesn't need advice from bloggers.
I did not watch the debate in real time but read all the terrible comments after, then watched it two days later. Biden did not perform well. That's a given. Perhaps I'm blindly loyal but I don't think it warranted the chorus of pundits and MSM calling for him to withdraw though. Trying to fact-check a barrage of lies in two minutes is an impossible task. The debate team should have prepared a different strategy. But that's hindsight. At this point, it is Biden's decision, with advice from family and close advisors, to stay or drop out. To win the election, Biden now has to prove to his supporters that he deserves to win while democracy is on the line. A distressing situation.
Something to take into consideration. Seth Abramson writes: “a new poll by a U.S. pollster with an ‘A+’ rating for accuracy from ABC News reveals that Trump voters who’ve told pollsters they’re ‘Democrats’ are leading the charge for President Biden to end his campaign”. It's worth reading the rest:
"A phalanx of partisans has moved to attack and condemn people who until days before had been acknowledged as their allies simply over a difference of opinion...this is gaslighting."
With due respect, this is not gaslighting, either my definition or intent. With the Internet so readily available, anyone can look up the definition (came from an old movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains) and the criticism, by definition, doesn't fall under that. It's shocking that so many pundits like Tim Miller (whom I follow and generally respect) are misusing that word.
As for the intent of the criticism, it is not to deceive someone into not accepting reality and then think they are crazy (like Claude was doing to Ingrid). If one looks through the criticism, they all accept that Biden performed poorly. No gaslighting here. But the difference is that many still think he is best candidate. A difference in opinion. Not gaslighting.
You and I had a nice, polite exchange earlier. We both agreed that any potential replacement other than Kamala would fracture the party. We also agreed that a open/brokered convention would be chaos.
Given that many don't want Kamala (even though you and I would be fine with her), that's a virtual guarantee if a chaotic convention. Therefore, many people are of the opinion that we should back Biden and quit this step-aaide talk. I've come to this position as well. Again, just our opinion. No gaslighting here.
First, it was not Claude Rains. It was Charles Boyer. Secondly, it is gaslighting if you are trying to persuade someone that something they saw with their own eyes didn't actually happen or was a sign of something else that served their purpose. (Moving around furniture to make Ingrid think she was losing her marbles.) That said, what I want to know is what the real reason for the problem was and to act accordingly. If making a change were in our interest, sooner is better and the way to get their is not an open convention but a negotiated agreement orchestrated by Biden.
Ah, thanks for the Boyer correction. It's been over 30 years since I watched it with my mom (she's an Ingrid fan) and I probably was thinking of when they were in Casablanca.
Again, I think you're overstating the gaslighting. Just look through all the comments to your post and the vast majority all concede that Biden performed poorly. None of these people are trying to persuade you "not to believe what your saw with your own eyes."
But back to the main issue, you honestly think that an orchestrated agreement by Biden wouldn't cause a crack in the base? Especially with so many pundits calling for an open convention? The ones who claimed that the DNC "handed" the nomination to Hillary over Bernie wouldn't be streaming mad?
I'm skeptical of that approach, but if you could address this in very-near-future substack, that would be great. Because right now, the leading choices are Biden to stay in vs. open convention. If your idea is better, now is the time to put it out there.
I'm not sure, of course. No one is. But what I know is this: This is not like any other election year given Trump and the stakes. And I don't know how much Biden's limitations (to the extent they persist) may impact voter turnout which I think will be crucial to winning in November. So I could paint scenarios both ways. But what I do believe is that if there are other similar incidents closer to election day the consequences would be devastating and we need to avoid that at all costs.
Now that I think about it more, I'd encourage you to write a column, not a substack, so that we get your idea out there. Just like scientists who put there ideas out there for the rest of the academic world to vet.
Maybe it will get traction, maybe it won't.
But if it's a choice between, what you fear, another similarly bad event, versus a near-certain calamity of an open convention, it's not difficult to understand why many think that Biden is still the best bet.
1. Just asking questions is the Tucker Carlson excuse for irresponsibility. It’s the election deniers’ excuse for tossing election results. There are questions too stupid or poorly premised to ask in good faith. They cause harm when allowed to proliferate.
2. You and other quick-take commentators did not just ask questions. You raised alarms. If there is no genuine emergency, pulling a fire alarm is dangerously wrong. You did it too fast, while too much remained unknown. That you and others had preexisting doubts does not mean you were responsible about the import of the debate.
3. Your new piece casts your critics as “blindly loyal” and belligerently hostile to valid concerns. You have zero basis for that theory either. There is plenty of tolerance for reasonable criticism. But the “drop out” chorus’s initial take wasn’t reasonable, and your “just asking questions” defense today doesn’t change that.
4. Your more constructive piece today ought to have included some constructive self-reflection. Could your long-standing doubts about Biden have been triggered unduly in those ninety minutes? Could the days and data since then provided you and fellow alarm-pullers with better perspective? Did you feel undue pressure to say something quickly instead of contemplatively?
David, I’m here because 1) you are level headed and speak the truth the best you can and 2) even if we disagree, I’m willing to admit that I can be wrong and learn and 3) I see those same qualities in you. So I will always be respectfully honest with you and hope this is never seen as a personal attack. Asking questions and seeking solutions in good faith is never wrong and I will always think highly of those who do that. If we were just an echo chamber, we might feel good but never learn or grow. Thank you.
I wonder do you call for McConnell and Grassley, and other older people in congress to step down. They are the ones responsible for the mess that we have now. They were responsible for the Supreme Court mess that we have. But you go on and bad Biden. Never mind that he was sick after flying around the world doing what the clown wouldn’t do in France and still was running the country. While you are still bashing Biden, would you kindly tell trump that Hannibal is not real and that the sun shines regardless even though you can’t see it.
You are 100 percent correct David. I was pretty surprised by the Carville email I got fundraising and decrying bedwetters- he raised EXACTLY the same concerns you are doing now some months ago.
Agreed. I am a Biden supporter and believed the concerns about his age were overblown - until I watched the debate. I have no idea what is the best way forward. But I do know that the President and his family and staff owe it to this country that he not proceed unless his cognitive and physical health have been comprehensively evaluated and the results show his debate performance was an anomaly caused by medication, etc. I will vote for Biden if he continues, which seems likely, because even a diminished Biden is better than losing our democracy. But if he has been evaluated and there are clear signs of serious impairment that will only worsen with time, his staff and family owe it to this country to stop gaslighting the rest of us and convince him to hand off the election to someone else.
Exactly.
Thank you, David. Your take is exactly my take. It’s frustrating when one’s reasonable, measured, empathic response to a national emergency (the return of Trump and destruction of democracy) is met with vitriol and blind rage and relentless gaslighting. It’s blue MAGA and it won’t help us survive what’s coming. I hope people slept it off and will sober up in light of the new week.
Thanks. And me too. Happy Fourth!
It is the height of irresponsibility to use a platform to call for the democratic nominee to step aside this late in the election year based on one debate performance when debating is not at all part of the job of being president, when he has shown zero poor performance on the ACTUAL job and most of all, when there is no proven alternative!! This passion you were surprised by is because our democracy is hanging by a thread. Joe Biden has had a winning amount of support. He IS STILL doing an incredible job and so all these calls for him to step aside now only serve to weaken the chances for us to keep trump out of office. It is not blind loyalty to Biden. It is that there IS no alternative that would not be more destabilizing and dangerous. Some of us have been on the ground working our butts off to get democrats and the Biden Harris admin reelected and the anti Biden rhetoric coming from all of you is like being kicked in the stomach. It is only making our job harder, making victory harder, and driving away people who might have voted for Biden but who don’t seem to look at anything but performance on stage. FFS. 🤦 So much is on the line and Biden is the ONLY person experienced enough to get us to the other side. This isn’t blind loyalty. This is just an assessment, a realistic one, of where we are and what is at stake.
I respect your right to that opinion. And if you are right...and what happened Thursday was just "one bad night," well then, great. But if you are wrong...and we all need to be open to such possibilities...and it was a sign of a decline that may manifest itself closer to the election...then it is in all our interests to acknowledge and consider that. I recognize you have made up your mind. All I ask is that you respect the notion that other people who share your objectives may have a slightly different point of view.
This is the same Democratic party that refused to demand RBG's resignation. Look what happened.
The same Democratic party that insisted Diane Feinstein was fine.
We didn't choose Biden as the 2024 candidate. We weren't given a choice.
We've watched 2 years of a flailing campaign that's failed to land any coherent messaging.
Even if nothing changes, and Biden wins, the erosion of trust in the party will be irreversible.
Nicely said. I support Biden. I was not happy with the debate, but I am not ready to cut bait and run, the sky is not falling, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, etc. Biden/Harris have accomplished a great deal that is good for America and done it with limited Congressional support. And seriously, who polls better than Biden against trump? (Though I do not put any credence in poll results since The Great Polling Debacle of 2016.). What real person that is, not a made up generic democratic candidate, a one size pleases all fantasy. No one. There is no White Knight waiting in the wings, no calvary coming over the hill. Stop your bellyaching you fair weather Chicken Littles and work to get Biden/Harris elected.
Nicely said. We all need to look at this issue with an open mind. And we can still love and support President Viden at the same time. Thank you David.🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏💙💙
Thank you.
David, I respect very much what you've written on the subject, but you may be missing something: that what you see as "blind loyalty" is at least in part a reaction to the immediate declaration of so many pundits that Biden should step down on the basis of one bad (really bad) performance. I haven't seen much of this blind loyalty myself, but then I spend almost no time on X/Twitter either.
Those who insisted, and are still insisting, that Biden should step down rarely express a plausible "what then" scenario. What would happen at Democratic convention? Would the Democratic Party emerge unified enough to win this must-win election? Many of them don't even mention VP Harris, and those who think she could step into the top spot *on the ballot* have to be dreaming. IMO she's well qualified to be president, but I have a pretty good idea how prevalent racism and sexism are in the body politic, and I have zero trouble imagining what the attack ads would look like. I wonder if this is at heart a cosmic freakout by older white guys who are projecting at least some of their own frailties on President Biden.
Maybe some of these pundits will eventually sit back, reflect, and even speak or write about why they panicked the way they did. That'll be interesting, but I'm not holding my breath. We've got work to do.
I felt a scism was going to take place and your thoughtful analysis portrayed it perfectly. I hope we can all remember your words, we share a common goal.
Do not let honest and sincere disagreements on the next step destroy the alliance of beating Trump.
We should be able to weather this storm.
Thanks again David for saying it perfectly.
Thank you.
Bidens appearance in Raleigh on the following day and on Monday, both fine and what we normally see,, make it pretty clear he and his team really f'd the debate up- it was their play after all- delivering him to the event exhausted and clearly under the weather. Someone needs to be fired, or hired, or both. Biden does need a Mike Deaver
The anger directed at you is certainly not all, or even primarily, "blind" loyalty. That's pretty much a straw man. It's utter exasperation. This narrative (Biden too old) has been been pushed so long and so relentlessly, and is now so 'baked in', that the debate has had little or no effect on the electorate.
We say "Presidents are not Kings", but many unconsciously see them as just that. And we have an old King, not fit to smite the Great Orange Ogre. Hence the grasping at people who would not look out of place on Game of Thrones (Whitmer especially).
But Biden is a President, and our Republic has a history, and consulting that history, as Stuart Stevens has, gives us a clear answer. Don't. It won't work, we will lose.
This would have been a great discussion to have a year ago. Or perhaps a year from now. But this is not the right time.
Those arguing that Biden should step down have failed to provide any coherent plan of how changing candidates should be implemented. Or, they will say they have a plan, and all their plans differ from one another.
Those arguing that Biden should step down are mostly self appointed pundits asking us to trust their judgment over that of the most experienced politician in America.
Biden is a good man, we all know that. If he thinks he should go, he will go. He doesn't need advice from bloggers.
I did not watch the debate in real time but read all the terrible comments after, then watched it two days later. Biden did not perform well. That's a given. Perhaps I'm blindly loyal but I don't think it warranted the chorus of pundits and MSM calling for him to withdraw though. Trying to fact-check a barrage of lies in two minutes is an impossible task. The debate team should have prepared a different strategy. But that's hindsight. At this point, it is Biden's decision, with advice from family and close advisors, to stay or drop out. To win the election, Biden now has to prove to his supporters that he deserves to win while democracy is on the line. A distressing situation.
Something to take into consideration. Seth Abramson writes: “a new poll by a U.S. pollster with an ‘A+’ rating for accuracy from ABC News reveals that Trump voters who’ve told pollsters they’re ‘Democrats’ are leading the charge for President Biden to end his campaign”. It's worth reading the rest:
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/donald-trumps-shocking-box-score
"A phalanx of partisans has moved to attack and condemn people who until days before had been acknowledged as their allies simply over a difference of opinion...this is gaslighting."
With due respect, this is not gaslighting, either my definition or intent. With the Internet so readily available, anyone can look up the definition (came from an old movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains) and the criticism, by definition, doesn't fall under that. It's shocking that so many pundits like Tim Miller (whom I follow and generally respect) are misusing that word.
As for the intent of the criticism, it is not to deceive someone into not accepting reality and then think they are crazy (like Claude was doing to Ingrid). If one looks through the criticism, they all accept that Biden performed poorly. No gaslighting here. But the difference is that many still think he is best candidate. A difference in opinion. Not gaslighting.
You and I had a nice, polite exchange earlier. We both agreed that any potential replacement other than Kamala would fracture the party. We also agreed that a open/brokered convention would be chaos.
Given that many don't want Kamala (even though you and I would be fine with her), that's a virtual guarantee if a chaotic convention. Therefore, many people are of the opinion that we should back Biden and quit this step-aaide talk. I've come to this position as well. Again, just our opinion. No gaslighting here.
First, it was not Claude Rains. It was Charles Boyer. Secondly, it is gaslighting if you are trying to persuade someone that something they saw with their own eyes didn't actually happen or was a sign of something else that served their purpose. (Moving around furniture to make Ingrid think she was losing her marbles.) That said, what I want to know is what the real reason for the problem was and to act accordingly. If making a change were in our interest, sooner is better and the way to get their is not an open convention but a negotiated agreement orchestrated by Biden.
Ah, thanks for the Boyer correction. It's been over 30 years since I watched it with my mom (she's an Ingrid fan) and I probably was thinking of when they were in Casablanca.
Again, I think you're overstating the gaslighting. Just look through all the comments to your post and the vast majority all concede that Biden performed poorly. None of these people are trying to persuade you "not to believe what your saw with your own eyes."
But back to the main issue, you honestly think that an orchestrated agreement by Biden wouldn't cause a crack in the base? Especially with so many pundits calling for an open convention? The ones who claimed that the DNC "handed" the nomination to Hillary over Bernie wouldn't be streaming mad?
I'm skeptical of that approach, but if you could address this in very-near-future substack, that would be great. Because right now, the leading choices are Biden to stay in vs. open convention. If your idea is better, now is the time to put it out there.
I'm not sure, of course. No one is. But what I know is this: This is not like any other election year given Trump and the stakes. And I don't know how much Biden's limitations (to the extent they persist) may impact voter turnout which I think will be crucial to winning in November. So I could paint scenarios both ways. But what I do believe is that if there are other similar incidents closer to election day the consequences would be devastating and we need to avoid that at all costs.
Now that I think about it more, I'd encourage you to write a column, not a substack, so that we get your idea out there. Just like scientists who put there ideas out there for the rest of the academic world to vet.
Maybe it will get traction, maybe it won't.
But if it's a choice between, what you fear, another similarly bad event, versus a near-certain calamity of an open convention, it's not difficult to understand why many think that Biden is still the best bet.
You are expertly elaborating on the two key points I made in this comment on Alison's Muellershewrote.com Substack:
The Democratic messaging around the Biden campaign should be twofold:
Biden is doing leadership development and succession planning, and he is partnering with the VP and Cabinet as key influencers in his decision-making.
Secondly, and bottom line, is that he's defending American democracy against domestic enemy Trump and his wholly owned criminal organization, GOP.
These two critical points need to be engraved in the hearts and minds of voters, regardless of whether he decides to step down.
1. Just asking questions is the Tucker Carlson excuse for irresponsibility. It’s the election deniers’ excuse for tossing election results. There are questions too stupid or poorly premised to ask in good faith. They cause harm when allowed to proliferate.
2. You and other quick-take commentators did not just ask questions. You raised alarms. If there is no genuine emergency, pulling a fire alarm is dangerously wrong. You did it too fast, while too much remained unknown. That you and others had preexisting doubts does not mean you were responsible about the import of the debate.
3. Your new piece casts your critics as “blindly loyal” and belligerently hostile to valid concerns. You have zero basis for that theory either. There is plenty of tolerance for reasonable criticism. But the “drop out” chorus’s initial take wasn’t reasonable, and your “just asking questions” defense today doesn’t change that.
4. Your more constructive piece today ought to have included some constructive self-reflection. Could your long-standing doubts about Biden have been triggered unduly in those ninety minutes? Could the days and data since then provided you and fellow alarm-pullers with better perspective? Did you feel undue pressure to say something quickly instead of contemplatively?
Just asking questions!
Sincerely,
Penny Shane
(A very disappointed reader)
David, I’m here because 1) you are level headed and speak the truth the best you can and 2) even if we disagree, I’m willing to admit that I can be wrong and learn and 3) I see those same qualities in you. So I will always be respectfully honest with you and hope this is never seen as a personal attack. Asking questions and seeking solutions in good faith is never wrong and I will always think highly of those who do that. If we were just an echo chamber, we might feel good but never learn or grow. Thank you.
Thank you.
I wonder do you call for McConnell and Grassley, and other older people in congress to step down. They are the ones responsible for the mess that we have now. They were responsible for the Supreme Court mess that we have. But you go on and bad Biden. Never mind that he was sick after flying around the world doing what the clown wouldn’t do in France and still was running the country. While you are still bashing Biden, would you kindly tell trump that Hannibal is not real and that the sun shines regardless even though you can’t see it.
You are 100 percent correct David. I was pretty surprised by the Carville email I got fundraising and decrying bedwetters- he raised EXACTLY the same concerns you are doing now some months ago.