it's a big deal jack

You had one person trying to listen, keep track and respond earnestly to each point of a serial liar, and struggling to do it.
The serial liar would make one statement making light of the last thing that was said and then confidently go off on whatever they wanted.
We've seen before that Americans want a confident but evil self-serving idiot over a tepid but smart, compassionate leader.
Next morning Edit: My one hope is that the news of Grants Pass, EPA SCOTUS decisions show the real consequences of electing Trump.
- Gish Gallop, I don't know why they even try against that crap
  
  Biden used to be really good against that tactic, it's why he won the debate in 2012 against Paul Ryan. Ryan gish galloped and Biden responded with a simple 'POPPYCOCK!'. It worked.
- a tepid but smart, compassionate leader.
  Is that really what you saw on that stage tonight? I saw a guy who lost his car keys because he was so angry at those kids on his lawn. Whether or not the narrative on Biden is fair, he just totally legitimized it.
  I get what you're saying about debating with Trump, or any Republican really. Debate is a lot easier when you care nothing for the truth. Overcoming that is the Democratic candidate's job. That's what Biden signed up to do. That's what the Democrats picked him to do. A candidate who can't function in that situation has no business on that stage. There are a great many Democrats who could have wiped the floor with Trump.
  
  There are a great many Democrats who could have wiped the floor with Trump.
  AOC would fucking shred him
  
  Yes, he is smart, and showed great intelligence, but in this instance severely underperformed in his ability to communicate clearly, like someone having a panic attack at a presentation. If you read a transcript of the debate it would be clear who is a leader and who is a clown. The raspy cold voice compounded things but those are all superficial elements, not on the substance (which Trump had nothing but lies and snide remarks).
  I agree this isn't what any Democrat including Biden wanted in the debate and AOC, Sanders would be way better orators. I'm saying regardless of tonight, Americans have picked before a charismatic comic in Reagan over a tepid, but smart, compassionate leader like Carter.
  
  I'm confident half of my highschool debate team could wipe the floor with Trump, including the ones who quit because it was boring to them.
  But can they wipe the floor, AND get elected?
  The sad reality is that is our choice.
  Eat a shit sandwich, or let the entire house get set on fire.
  There's a secret third option, but most are too comfortable with their lives. ✊✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿
  
  I saw a guy who didn't just lose his car keys. He shouldn't be allowed to drive period. America is so fucked and thus so is the rest of the world.
  
  You told on yourself here.
  The first part of your response is illustrative of the bigger issue, Americans just can't focus on substance over style. We're solely fixated on tonality, body language and facial expressions... Like a still-developing toddler... Or a dog.
- I didn't watch the debate, but this is exactly what I expected. There was never a reason to have this debate. The democrats are so fucking stupid.

Honestly I don't know how much better I could do than biden in an argument with trump. His look of just complete confusion as trump just continued to say complete nonsense was pretty much the same look I had listening to it.
- really fair, it’s certainly an uncommon skill but it’s definitely a skill we should be able to expect of our literal leaders
  
  Imagine downvoting "I think the President should be good at public speaking"
  
  Imagine if Trump had been debating John Stewart
- That’s pretty much been the playbook since day one, just shotgun blasts complete bullshit left and right, it’s the equivalent of verbal chaff. Misdirect, confuse, and trip up the opponent so that they have to waste time refuting your BS than actually talking about the facts.
  
  It's really clear to me that that was trumps entire playbook. He more of his time attacking Biden and spouting lies and bullshit than answering the questions. It went exactly how I expected.
  I had really hoped that Biden would find his public speaking voice. He's competent but not a great speaker.
- The man couldn't even properly answer the abortion questions, I seriously hope you'd do better than that.
  
  He did OKAY on the abortion question, but then incoherently rambled for a few seconds and somehow brought immigration up. Still better than Trump's response.
- But this was bog-standard Trump for his entire political career. Gish galloping is what he does. This shouldn't have been a surprised Pikachu moment.
- I think you can do a lot better than he did, any of us could. Just look at the transcript here. ctrl+f for "golf". You're gonna tell me you don't have a better response than Biden here?
  I'm just gonna come up with 5 things right now Biden could've said:
  "I don't think the American people care how good my opponent's golf game is. They care if he can run the country, and as you can tell from his answer he doesn't even remember what that involves."
  "Again with the cognitive tests. No one asked whether you took a cognitive test Donald. But if you wanna brag about it, at least release them to the public so we can see if you actually passed."
  "I think everyone's seen enough from both of our 4 years in the white house - they can see I'm focused on the economy and foreign policy, while he was focused on golf as he still is."
  "I'll fully concede that he's a better golfer than me. After all, he spent so much of his last administration practicing."
  "This guy claims he won two club championships at the age of 82? Does anyone seriously believe that? This guy is delusional folks."
  Instead Biden talked about his height (which he didn't mention) and challenged him to a driving contest. WTF. I recognize how bad this would've sounded before yesterday, but literally any random person we pick from this thread has better odds than Biden at this point.
  Trump did absolutely horribly. His answers can be fairly described as completely and transparently delusional. But Biden managed to make him look good.

Thank fuck I'm not American. Now, if you'd excuse me, I must get ready for the potential imminent arrival of fascism in about 2 days in my country (France). Can't wait to see the US fall as well! Wow! What a wonderful fucking world awaits us, huh? 💀
- Shall we both bring out the guillotines? Or should start at setting things on fire? As an American, I'm not sure how your French protesting works, but I'm willing to learn.
  
  As someone living in the UK, I'd also like to learn from the French
- omg twinningggggggg 👯‍♀️
- We still kind of owe you for everything you guys did in the revolutionary war.
  Tell you what: when the time comes to fight the fascists again we'll send your resistance movement munitions if you send us dope "uniforms" for ours.
- Spoken like a true Englishman.
- Everybody said the same thing when the Swedish Democrats got into power in Sweden or when Meloni got into power in Italy or the Finns party in Finland... and every time nothing happened. In the Western world and it's close allies, there have only been 3 examples of a right wing movement going rogue: Trump in the US, Orban in Hungary, and Netanyahu in Israel. If you consider Turkey a part of the West then Erdogan definitely fits into this category. Even then, it's a stretch can any of these 4 fascist when considering the actual definition of the word. I highly doubt Le Pen is going to do anything. She'll most likely be Meloni 2.0.
- We are in the 4th turning. History repeats. The end of the 4th turning is a crisis. Call it mysticism but things are looking like a repeat of the 4 turnings in the past. Usually ends with war, disease, and famine before revolution.

cynically i feel the DNC might just dig in their heels and hope people memory hole this. because jesus fuck i sure want to, that was horrifying
- At this point what I think is happening is Joe has one of those old age bugs except this one specifically makes the brain to mouth communication issues that come with a stutter a lot worse.
  Because communication seems to always be this guy's biggest stumbling block, if this were just a report card comparison there wouldn't be a race, he's obviously still a competent guy as old as he is, the problem is that something's going on that makes it way harder for him to adequately communicate that whenever he needs to.
  That's really the only way I can self reason why he then proceeded to be completely fine in the much lower pressure environment of his after debate rally.
  Edit: report card not credit card, although personally I'm willing to bet that Joe's credit score is way better than Donny's too
  
  I don't even need Biden to be competent. Just surround himself with a competent cabinet. Which he has, and is why we've gotten so many wins and why Trump did so horribly in his first term.
  
  Yeah, good thing all that matters for a president is the ability to have good ideas, and there is no need to be able to convey these ideas to other humans.
- I only got to see the closing statements. Biden looked worn down. Unconfident. Soft spoken. I could barely understand what he was saying and I had to turn on closed captioning.
  Then Trump starts talking...and it's all bullshit, but God if he doesn't sound good spewing it.
  America is fucked. The world is fucked. We're all gonna die. Buckle in.
  
  I listened to about half an hour, as long as I could bear in any case. Your description fits all of what I saw, and probably the whole thing.
- People will memory hole it IF Biden does better in the future. The last thing that happened is always the only thing that matters in US elections.
- They’ll tell us that Joe did great, and that anyone thinking otherwise is being subliminally influenced by Russian propaganda.
  
  He had a decent performance. I understand more about his policies and called trump a felon and a fat loser. That's what I wanted out of it. Trump literally could not answer half of the questions because he was still rambling about the previous question.
  Biden had a hoarse throat from a cold and a bit of a stutter but he turned on a dime when he was asked different questions. Both dudes are old af. The choice is: do you want senile grandpa who can't answer the question or the guy who has a soft voice?
  Biden's clearly still with it but slower, and trump is clearly still nuts, possibly moreso. I choose Biden because he's the only one who occasionally says things that make sense.

To anyone thinking, “We surived one term of Trump. How bad can another one be?”
Very bad, as John Oliver points out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYwqpx6lp_s
- He said he'd be a dictator in day 1. How many dictators ever gave up power voluntarily? He's going full fascist jan 21 if he wins.
  This could literally be the last real election the US ever has.
  
  No, no, you don't get it, letting fascism win is Making A Moral Stand. I have been assured of this many times on here.
  
  Cincinnatus would.
  
  This is why America needs a constitutional monarchy
- Video not available outside the USA, and yes, the rest of the world is very worried about Trump getting back into power.
  
  It's available in my non-US country. Probably there's some local deal wherever you are (edit: using a restrictions checker app, the link is only blocked in Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, and Iceland, and available everywhere else)
  They also go out of their way to put up whole episodes for non-US viewers (these are not available in the US) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCRySbsLKiA
- To anyone thinking "we survived one term of Trump, how bad can another one be?"
  Read this:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
  And then read this:https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2022/dec/us-maternal-health-divide-limited-services-worse-outcomes
  A lot of us straight up didn't survive one term of Trump
- His voice is too annoying for me to listen too, unfortunately.
  
  That’s a shame cause he is by far the best legacy from Jon’s Daily Show and HBO money lets him do all kinds of wacky shit
  
  It might be a smart people thing

To be fair Biden has had a stutter for all his life. How quiet he was and with everything going on it didn't look good though. I wish we could have different candidates. I'm not sure if this will change anyone's vote or not though.
- It for sure will, republicans have been ripping critical thinking out from the educational system since Reagan. In fact, it looks like they got a hold of journalists first.
  
  it looks like they got a hold of journalists
  Republicans understood that that they must control the news in order to control the people. Problem is that they made the "news" into a dumpster of lies. They are now going after education. Idiocracy, here we come.
- To be fair Biden has had a stutter for all his life.
  That gets repeated a lot, but I think the people who think that's a good enough excuse have not actually seen middle aged Biden speak.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_v00iGJCLY
  The Biden of that video has some incredible charisma, but he has nothing to do with the person today.
  
  Can you imagine a president like that, even Obama wasn't close to that level of eloquence and charisma. Every president in my lifetime has been a joke, to mirror the circus in every tent in DC.
  
  It is obvious age has effected his ability to communicate. I suppose it's just something to keep in mind, not an excuse. Like I said before, I wish we had younger candidates on both sides. I think most people didn't want this rematch. The person in that video would have been great, but we only have what's left of that now.
  
  Joe should’ve told ‘em how he really felt.
  Wow, I’m impressed. Thanks for sharing that.
- I was considering voting for Biden. I've never voted before. I think after seeing all this though the only way I'll vote for Biden is if my dad votes for Trump just so I can cancel his vote out lol
  
  Voting for Biden is not voting for the man, it's voting for an ideology, for hope, for a future less grim. Vote for Biden.
  
  If you like the ability to vote then there's only one choice my man.
  
  Please consider just doing it either way.
  
  I've got more uncles than my siblings and I can cancel out - wanna help us? :P
  
  You should vote regardless if your dad does or who your dad votes for.

I love the part where the democratic leadership made sure there were no viable alternatives during the primary.
- Its ok they'll be back in a few decades having learnt nothing.
- How did they do that?
  
  Didn’t have a primary in FL at all.
  
  Biden is the incumbent so obviously the only one that can possibly win. Crush all other prospects and tell them to wait their turn
  
  For one thing, they didn't have a primary candidate debate, which would have helped the challengers get some exposure.

We're so fuckin cooked lmao

Trump is the perfect representative of the US tourists we see here in Europe.
Not all, of course, because you don't notice the quiet / decent ones. (Hey, just like the election , huh)
- The quiet/decent ones all claim to be Canadian
- I'm currently visiting Greece, the Americans don't seem to be any more clueless than the rest of us. The only difference is that they use taxis instead of public transport.
  
  I wouldn't call them clueless. Just obnoxious.

Yo, what kind of sick joke are y'all forcing your elderly from the closed ward to participate in?
Just ease their life for as long as viable and take care of them.
- It's starting to feel like elder abuse.
  
  Elders are supposed to scroll, not make policies for next generations when their cause of death could legitimately be listed as 'old age'.

You forgot the golf argument they had towards the end
- Things I didn’t expect to read in Bloomberg Tax
- trust me i wish i could forget
- What's weird is part of me just wishes they'd just settle it in a golf match. 1 month practice, PGA rules. I don't even like golf.
  
  Biden challenged trump to a game, but only if trump carries his own clubs.
  🤣🤣🤣
  We all know that will never happen.
- I literally had to turn it off. What was this golf argument?
  
  Here's a transcript:
  [While talking about the Intelligence Tests he did]
  TRUMP: [...] He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. [...]
  BASH(Moderator): Thank you.
  President Biden?
  BIDEN: You’re going to see he’s six-foot-five and only 225 pounds – or 235 pounds.
  TRUMP: (inaudible).
  BIDEN: Well, you said six-four, 200.
  TRUMP: (inaudible).
  BIDEN: Well, anyway, that’s – anyway, just take a look at what he says he is and take a look at what he is.
  Look, I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a 6.
  And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?
  TRUMP: That’s the biggest lie that he’s a 6 handicap, of all.
  BIDEN: I was 8 handicap.
  TRUMP: Yeah.
  BIDEN: Eight, but I have – you know how many…
  TRUMP: I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.
  (CROSSTALK)
  BASH: President Trump, we’re going to…
  (CROSSTALK)
  TRUMP: Let’s not act like children.
  BIDEN: You are a child.
  
  Trump just said Biden sucks at golf, then Biden gave an incoherent response.

Lol yeah pretty much. Just got round to watching the highlights today and what a joke. Nobody even bothers to mention democracy or freedom any more because now its pure politics. It's been perfected to the point that it finally bears no resemblance to human nature whatsoever.
- Well, to be fair, you said you only watched the highlights.
  I guarantee you that none of the normal question and answer sections made it into the highlights reel.
  Both candidates said plenty of substance through the night.
  
  Trump's words were definitely a substance. A smelly, viscous, substance usually used for fertilizer.
  
  "Both", "plenty", "guarantee", etc.
  I'm getting the impression you have barely a passing understanding of what these words actually mean.
  
  The whole debate was designed to generate clips. One minute responses is a terrible format. All the responses were just high energy rapid fire buzzwords with no real substance.

Democrats are handing Trump another term on a silver platter. But I don't expect them to do much soul searching if it happens. I expect them to just shift the blame onto everything else.
Swing voters and those who haven't decided yet often make the difference. I don't believe for a second they will turn out in droves for Biden. He is not the guy. If he's like this now, what's he going to be like in 4 years time?
If the Dems had a young firebrand type as a presidential candidate who could really take Trump to task, I think they'd walk the election.
- I'm confused why people don't consider the idea of Kamala taking over if Biden does win and steps down. I know she's not popular, but it's like everyone forgets our system can handle the president being incapacitated.
  
  She also does not excite voters tho. Don't get me wrong, better than trump sure, but no one wants a cop in the white house.
  
  Probably doesn’t help that the administration has used Kamala as the bearer of bad news. Any time bad news gets released, it’s coming from Kamala instead of Biden. Because the administration wants to keep Biden’s nose clean, but that comes at the expense of Kamala.
  
  Would Kamala beat Trump in the election?
- 2016 part two
- If Trump wins there could be a major realignment of parties in the near future.

This whole night was so many layers of exhausting, but probably not for the reasons you think... No rational, serious person was expecting Biden to Willy Wonka front somersault into this debate? it was going to be what this was, the only true surprise was probably the volume of his voice (which they chalk up to a cold, okay fine, I guess) and actually how well he did quickly processing and responding to trump's gish gallop and unchecked stream of consciousness mistruth firehose with little help from the impotent moderators for the majority of the night.
The people in this country, in their immediate reaction to this debate, demonstrate that they just fundamentally lack the focus, empathv and frankly basic intelligence to process the substance of this or any debate. On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler... Or a dog.
- On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler…
  You wouldn’t believe how close you are.
  […Researches] recruited 684 Swiss students and asked them to rate pairs of politicians who had run against each other in the 2002 French parliamentary elections. Based solely on black-and-white photos of the candidates, they had to say who was more competent and by what degree. There were 57 pairs in all, and each volunteer rated just one.
  They found that the students’ competence judgments predicted the actual winners of the run-offs with a 72% accuracy.
  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/voters-use-child-like-judgments-when-judging-political-candidates
  [A] group of children would be able to predict the outcome of elections in another country, based only on photos of the candidates […] is exactly what a recent study in the journal Science has found.
  Swiss children as young as five years can predict which candidates are more likely to win French parliamentary elections.
  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-look-of-a-winner/
  The children were just as good at predicting election results as the grown-ups were;
  (first article again)
- I don’t know if you missed the part where he brought up “rapist immigrants” when trying to answer a question about abortion that should have been a layup and was absolutely key to this debate being meaningful to voters who are confused, apathetic, or considering voting 3rd party, especially those in swing states.
  That was also very unexpected, highly disappointing, and totally unrelated to his tone or volume. No amount of moderation could have helped that.
  
  That's part of the point, the gettable "swing voter", who was hanging on this debate and nothing else to get their confidence just isn't real... If that was the case, why didn't the fucking SOTU seal it for them (again that's if they even exist, as I challenge your basic premise).
  People generally know where they stand, with these two especially. And if they do exist and they are truly that "confused"... They are actually just ashamed to be 98% trump leaning and just waiting for any strong fart to push them towards him with " justification' ( if it wasn't this, they would have sought something to fill that need between now and election).
- People were expecting state of the union Biden. Instead we got Magoo. We don't need a strong man to lead, we just need more than what Biden currently is. The DNC is out to fucking lunch and probably handed Trump an easy win. Does this stop me from eating a shit sandwich to help protect our democracy? No, will angrily eat that shit sandwich for a few more good years.
  
  The presidency is not one person, it's an entire administration and general philosophy. We're fed a lie that these debates always matter, they matter when candidates are unknown and then have a forum to stand out as leaders and educate voters about a vision for the country. That's NOT the case here, the candidates are wholly known entities and these fucking debates absolutely do not matter.
- they just fundamentally lack the focus, empathv and frankly basic intelligence to process the substance of this or any debate.
  The good side, if you can call it that, is that because they lack the focus they also don't remember shit. If Biden has a good performance in the future this will be forgotten about.
  
  Hopefully, but the focus on "performance" in a stage moment, versus performance in the job done (collective accomplishment of the administration over the last 4 years) is core to the problem here. Oh well.
- On average, we respond solely to voice pitch, tonality, body language and facial expressions, like a still developing toddler... Or a dog.
  Welcome to leadership 101. Projecting confidence is 90 percent of getting people to listen to you. This is why Con Artists are effective and Military Leaders cultivate an air of Stoicism. If you're lucky you find a confident person who informs their decisions with science.
- I think we all labour under the misapprehension that the person delivering the performance has correctly read the room.
- I agree with everything but the comment on the moderators. It's not their job to hold the candidates to account, that's the job of the dude standing right next to the speaker. If a presidential candidate needs to rely upon a journalist to correct disinformation in a debate that he himself is participating in, they shouldn't be the candidate.
  I'm a smooth-brained imbecile, but everytime that Trump opened his mouth I had 14 better responses than Biden had. He permitted the most outlandish untruths to go on the record unchecked. Biden would have done a better job by just replying "bulls*hit" in answer to Trump's ramblings. The moderators just ask questions. They are not supposed to prop either side up.

Just sitting here watching the US elect a man who openly buffalo buffalo buffalo wants to turn it into a theocratic dictatorship...
- what does buffalo (x3) mean /gen
  
  Random gramatically correct nonsense to mess with data scraping.
- Imagine US turning into a dictatorship.
  Imagine US being on the Axis side of the WW3.
  
  The US chose the winning side in both wars, was extremely permeable to fascism after the second war, and use the Red Scare to purge political dissensions.
  The US not helping Germany is mostly due to financial interests (for the politicians) and Pearl Harbour (for the masses).
  My point is, let's not pretend that the US being on the wrong side if history in WW3 is a surprising idea.
  
  We were halfway there with Prescott Bush and Hoover.
  But Biden is no FDR. Dude isn't going to save us from a dozen George Wallace types crawling through the country's interior.

To everyone who has downvoted me both here and on Reddit for saying "I think Biden is too old to run in 2024", I have two things to say: the first of them is "I hope you take advantage of this opportunity to wake up to your own biases", and the second one is "Fuck you".
You have been eating up every single tought-terminating cliche put in circulation by the elites of your party and parroting it online not just when it did serve your ideology or your electoral success, but also when it was just a cover for incompetent fools looking over their own asses and the hierarchies they form a part of. Many tried to warn you that just because 90% of every Conservative talking point was cooked in a meth lab by a blind monkey doesn't mean you should also close your ears when they said that the sky was blue or that Biden is old. Yes, Trump is old too, yes, THEY were arguing in bad faith, but you still were morons for refusing to even consider that it might have been a problem.
I don't have the misfortune of living in the US, but even as someone who just cares for the general stability of the world, I hope you can get the fuck out of this mess, if nothing else because contemporary Democrats don't collaborate with Latin American golpists noawadays, and because Republicans are a walking menace for green energy transition, but for the love of everything that is holy PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING from yesterday's disaster.
- Biden went to the 2020 primaries under the premise that he would be a single-term president, specifically to kick Trump out, and it was immediately used as a hammer against internal critics. Once president, his policies couldn't be criticized in any way (not even in a constructive one), because it was "ammo for the republicans", or else "but he's doing good things too!" (never mind that the positive Biden policies, positive as they were, were always patchworks, and never structural reforms); once the time for primaries was getting closer, the mantra became "saying that Biden is too old is a Republican talking point", and "you can't run primaries in a party with a sitting president". And perhaps there was well intentioned people who took all of these ideas at face value and believed in them, but they always refused to see the subtext: "do not question the official Democrat party line", regardless of its blind spots and conflicts of interest.
  Well, what are you going to do now that the official party line has crushed all opposition year after year and the Democrats have suddenly discovered themselves in front of the abyss, sacrificing all possible alternatives for the sake of electoral success when even the people most ideologically aligned with the Old Guard are scared? Are you going to continue justify all the bad decisions that took you to this place, or are you going to analyze what the hell is wrong with the party to start reforming it immediately after the elections? I understand not wanting to have an open-air debate immediately before the presidential elections, but if you guys refuse to work it out right next, I'm just going to assume that the USA is just going to be a fascist country by 2033.
  
  People need a reality check on Biden's senility. Some of us saw it earlier than others who continued to live in a silo. I am willing to vote for Joe but I also knew he's a liability with no strength versus Trump under these circumstances.
  And we both had options and have options right now. Convention is 8 weeks away. Democrats can still jump ship and I can think of 6 alternative, younger, more charismatic candidates to win this stupid fucking popularity contest with ease.
  
  We could have told him it was time to retire. Instead we gaslit an octogenarian into thinking he had to give up his retirement.
- Statistically both these men should be dead. Biden beat Reagan as oldest president. Trump would be second oldest president behind Biden and beating Reagan if he won, with Trump already being older than Reagan when he left office.
  This is ridiculous. They belong on an iceberg but there aren’t any left.
  
  Stealing that last bit!
- There's nothing we can fucking do about it at that level of government. The party caucuses make it very difficult to decide who our presidential candidate should be. Remember how Bernie tried running back in 2016 and the entire DNC conspired against him in favor of their insider Hillary? Trump managed to win the nomination because he understands he can make the Republican base eat shit off his hand and have them demand more, even with the RNC doing everything they could to avoid him. Let's face it, the average American is a confused, exploited, poorly educated bigot who would latch on to any hateful speech to blame harmless parts of the population for their problems. There are even highly educated people who believe in his nonsense because they want to pay fewer taxes.
  Between regulatory and judicial capture by major corporations, our future isn't gonna be a bright one any time soon. Project 2025 will also cause irreversible damage to all sectors of the government in which only Republican party loyalists can work. We're getting really close to how Germany was in the mid 1930s.

Old guys need to pass the torch for their brands to stay relevant.
It's a selfish act to be 80 whatever with this much political capital and not have been developing protégés with whom to share and support.
Biden should be on a rocking chair sipping a lemonade for the rest of his life at this point, maybe calling in favors as necessary for a 40 or 50-year-old high energy leader who actually has to live in the future he creates.
- i want to cry that this needed to be said

I've yet to see any footage yet and with all these comments now I'm wondering if bumbling Bush Jr looks like a genius now compared to these guys...
- Biden's voice was very faint and weak, unusually so.
  Trump was Trump. Incoherent, but in a way that morons adore, apparently.
  
  That faint weak voice was straight up embarrassing compared to Trump's booming confident voice. Of course it's easy to be confident when disregarding the truth. It still didn't do Biden any favors.
- Biden did not do particularly well. I think his voice and tone made it seem worse than it was, but it wasn't good.
  Especially with Trump just lying about anything and everything, as usual.

Also, 100k likes? Having not been on corporate social media sites for a couple of years that just looks grotesque.
I'm as partial to the old dopamine hit as the next guy but after a point surely it's meaningless?
- Eh this was one of the biggest joke tweets and the biggest microblog site, and I believe over half of America was watching. It makes sense.
  
  No doubt it's there. It just feels outlandish and meaningless to me these days to see it.
- It's because they use every dirty trick for views.
  Stuffing it into your feed unsolicited, autoplaying it, promoting it everywhere because it's an engaging post, spamming push notifications, whatever. Not to speak of a swarm of bots liking it.
  It's probably as inflated as can be without being obviously legally negligent.

And somehow you'll still be vilified if you say: why not vote for a 3rd party candidate?. Clearly both Pepsi and Coke are laced with cyanide, don't mind me if I choose RC Cola.
personally I prefer Jarritos, not Pepsi, Coke or RC. All of this is of course metaphorical, Biden and Trump aren't actually laced with cyanide but may as well be.
- Just because you think Alfred is too old to take care of the Batcave, you don’t replace him with the Joker.
  
  Holy shit this is a great take! Well said!
  
  Exactly. You also don't put Alfred in a fight he will lose against the Joker. Time for fresh and young Alfred Jr.
- If you choose RC Cola, you get RC Cola. If picking a soft drink was like the elections, you wouldn't want to choose RC because you'd still get Pepsi or Coke and you'll just be throwing away your ability to influence it to be the one with the lower concentration of cyanide.
  
  Meanwhile nobody wants to acknowledge that the soda machine is already cooked and needs to be put out to pasture when asking for "no cyanide, please" gets you accused by the supposedly "civil, thoughtful" soda drinkers for being foreign plants hellbent on shoving the soda they don't like down their throats, instead of regular people who think not dying of cyanide poisoning might be pretty cool.
- I suppose this take would be easy if you consider both of those examples to mean the exact same thing.
  I’ll vote for a tree stump over a wannabe-dictator that’s also a rapist and a convicted felon.
  
  I would vote for a tree stump, I agree. Might even write it down if the Democrats do what they did in PA in 2020 and have no 3rd party candidate on the ballot.
- Fun fact: America was actually created as the world's largest scale Prisoner's Dilemma experiment. Sure, you could do the right thing but it only works if a bunch of other people also do the right thing, and you kind of know they won't.

https://votesocialist2024.com/
- That's a vote for Trump.
  
  If you think voting stops fascists from seizing power, you better buckle the fuck up.

#bothSides
- not the intent 👎