In a country where 45% will vote Blue and 45% will vote Red no matter what then a Republican polling at 20% in a right wing swayed poll vs a Democratic President indicates you have absolutely no chance. (Actually just looked it up and didn’t realise he pretends to be a Democrat, not a Republican. His support would be almost exclusively from the extremists though. He is popular with the far right - InfoWars have been openly supportive of him recently for example).
RFK is an absolute lunatic anyway. Far right, white nationalist, anti-vacc conspiracy theorist. Very niche appeal even these days.
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When you hear him speak, he actually sounds as decrepit as Biden. It isn’t him as a credible candidate. More canary in coal mine. Someone more credible may throw his/her hat in the ring. Biden’s handlers seem to want to keep him out of live situations as much as possible. Bad idea not to have him debate other Democrat candidates in the primaries. He’ll definitely have to debate in the general (if he’s the nominee). A bit of competition will do the process good. If he is tottering toward diminished mental capacity, we have a right to see it and know it and decide.
Biden these days is looking more and more like Benjamin Button…!
How on earth is his face becoming more wrinkle-free by the day :0)
Brazilian wax? Or mortician’s wax?
There have to be candidates for there to be a debate, and no one in the party, reasonably so, will consider RFK or Williamson and actual Democratic party candidate.
Really? Williamson participated in debates in 2020. So did Tulsi Gabbard.
Yes, and 2024 is a completely different campaign than 2020.
It was an open nomination and to there were about 20 candidates registered in time for the first debate. That makes most of them fringe by definition and so the rules they had to create to figure out who qualified also opened the door for such absurd pointless candidates to get invitations. You couldnt get people like Hickenlooper and Swalwell in without setting rules that also gave Williamson an opening to participate.
But the rules then were 1% in 3 relevant polls or a fairly trivial number of signatures in relevant states. When you have a sitting president running for renomination there is no requirement nor reasonable expectation to treat such fringe candidates as worthy of recognition.
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I don’t think 9% (Wliiamson) and 20% (RFK, Jr.) qualifies as fringe. I doubt they’ll have those numbers in the fall, but if they do, he should debate them. The larger point is the American people in their infinite wisdom are going to require an 82-year-old man at some point to demonstrate he remains competent to hold the position.
On the subject of debates, Trump has said that he will skip any Republican debates himself.
Which is a good idea as he has regressed massively in his cognitive abilities since the 2016 election. He rarely is capable of finishing a sentence.
Isn’t he doing that every day? Making a few quips in a debate is hardly proof of qualification.
Was he ever cabable of starting a sentence, let alone constructing one?
All I heard was gobblygook.
Rubbish, they never have and never will, just look at Regan or are the requirements different in your opinion for Democrats and Republicans.
Some real dodgy fuckers have been president of the USA, Bush, Nixon … never stopped the American people.
Anyway if Biden declares he’s running it’s going to be him vs whatever the Republicans come up with.
At least Biden has some resemblance to a politician!
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I don’t follow him closely, but I’ve read he’s doing very little unscripted stuff. No news conferences, etc. Even his campaign announcement was taped.
Reagan’s age was actually a big issue when he ran the first time…at 69. He was visibly less with-it mentally when he ran for re-election, but he debated Mondale three times and more than held his own (after his not-so-great first debate performance). We now know that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s toward the end of his presidency.
Those data are not from polls that would be used to qualify a candidate. Do you really think those figures are remotely reflective of the primary electorate?
Sitting presidents running for reelection use their job performance to demonstrate that.
I’d have thought the general feeling of most educated people would be that even an aging Biden is a vastly preferable option to an any age Trump, but you seem to be dead set against him. Is your political preference actually Republican by any chance?
Arnie talks well about the current state of America and is worth listening to. He likens the conditions now, with all the hatred, to what happened in Europe, leading up to WWII.
He is a Republican, and is obviously unimpressed with Biden, but if it came to it, he is unequivocal: Arnie would vote for Biden in order to defeat Trump. That part of the video is from 6.30mins.
Biden is past it, no two ways about that. He has had a long career in politics and to my mind, he is a garden variety politician. By that I mean he has his convictions, he stands for some things, and he has a record of serving in different offices, cutting deals, getting stuff done, and so on. But now he is past it.
Whatever skeletons are in Biden’s closet are low level nothing burger stuff, and impossible to avoid with such a long career in politics, and with extreme enemies trying to discredit you.
These days he is an unimpressive man, a doddery old codger who should be putting his feet up, well into retirement.
But he is magnitudes better than Trump, who represents a clear danger to the republic itself. Keeping Trump out of the White House will be the prime objective.
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