should an ambitious democrat distance themselves from biden in some way? yes. but this assertion that the american people are demanding an answer for biden old is just the pundit’s fallacy in overdrive
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The attention span of the average American is like 30 seconds. In 2 years you could ask who the President was before Trump and half wouldn’t even remember.
The Democratic Party told everyone for months/years that Biden's age was a MAGA lie & that he was fine, he's good to run again, etc. Then Biden showed up for the first debate & everyone realized that, no, he was a disaster and we'd been gaslit. I was furious. Does it matter now? No. But it's there.
I watched that debate and every organ in my body sunk. I had to turn it off because of my candidate. as much hope as I had in Harris/Walz, the hubris of Biden et al f'ked Dems. He should've said he was a 1-term Pres back in '22-'23 and fully supported Harris. But no he f'ked us.
Anyone who had a pulse could see with their own eyes what the situation was. A good man, a flawed Biden, is what was available and willing to serve. Frankly, this is just another shiny object distraction. Prefer to set priorities in order.
They would rather blame Biden, the most consequential President in decades, rather than their poor coverage of the dangers of a Trump Part 2. Tells me all I need to know about the national press corps.
I hate all of this, but especially the idea that it is all about age. Age may be a factor, but if we are going to have this conversation in needs to be about whether Biden was able to do the job and whether those closest to him hid evidence that he was not. 1/2
The questions you raise and the convos you propose are unnecessary to have at this juncture, given that we are facing Trump & GOP fascists. Just stop this.
Please note that I said: a) I hated this conversation and b) I’d rather not have it. I simply said IF we are going to have it, where I want the focus to be (not solely about age).
Yeah the factions of the MSM who were Big Mad at the Biden machine over how they were treated are overplaying their hand.
The fact that Biden was experiencing some age-related decline is undeniable. But all this talk of him being totally out of it, shitting his pants & not recognizing people is BS
We already know a lot of those videos the right and even some on the left would post online purporting to show Biden “confused“ or “talking to people who weren’t there” were deliberately deceptively edited to deliver maximum meme points. Biden wasn’t Woodrow Wilson redux or even late-88 Reagan.
An ambitious Democrat should embrace the post Covid recovery that created the envy of the world and compare it to the economic disasters Trump unleashes every time he gets behind a microphone.
4 years from now nobody normal is going to think about Biden, except for some Republican cultists, because they never let go of their grudges and grievances
why in hell would anyone distance from biden?? i get the reaction to being slow with bibi, but ferchrissake, his legislative wins were/are monumental! not since fdr has so much been accomplished so fast. we should be proud of that and say so, loudly! why do dems choose to be shy for NOT being djt??
also, as a prescriptive posture it just smacks of timidity & weakness, apologetic for the great things joe managed to do. so much about this stinks, & as noted, smells far more like the rahm/axelrod, middle way centrist faction. that overton window has moved so far right it's to the right of nixon.
Optics. Normal people don’t care about legislative policy wins, they just enjoy the benefits of it.
The optics is that Joe was old and out of touch. People want a revitalized Democratic Party, and appealing to the unpopular old guard just isn’t the move.
respectfully disagree that folks don't care about policy wins. also want to point out how much joe championed the youthful faction, & - along those lines - relied heavily on bernie's advice. the optics were that dems are evil & joe is the devil; thx to the Rs and the media, that's what got pushed.
"that dems are evil & joe is the devil; thx to the Rs and the media, that's what got pushed." And is still pushed by those who believe(d) the media propaganda. In effect they elected Lardy Arse.
Turns on TV:
"We don't want to report on people being kidnapped off the street by masked men or whatever else this fascist regime is doing that is fascisty. Film at 11."
The fact that Democrats accepted the notion that they had to distance themselves from Biden was a huge win for Republicans (and the corporate media that supports them.) They should have bear-hugged Biden’s achievements and embarrassed the Republicans and their do-nothingness.
They are just trying to justify the fact that they helped trump win with their Biden is old BS by pretending it was a real scandal and not just them trying to help trump win.
This pundit obsession has nothing to do with Biden's mental acuity per se, but rather it's payback for disliked policy decisions. The public doesn't yet have a good sense of exactly how much Biden refused to go along with Bibi & Co's ultra-violent plans & tried hard to keep the leash on, for example
Literally the ONLY negative consequence of Biden’s age that anyone has ever identified was allowing Donald Trump to become president and do bad things.
Well, that…..and his whole outdated slavish devotion to helping Israel no matter what.
To me, Biden‘s biggest moral failure was his refusal to yank the leash on Bibi & leverage the U.S./Israel relationship to end the ongoing decimation of Gaza. I’m no fan of the Palestinians, but genocide is wrong.
I mean, they were both driven out of the Democratic Party and likely out of politics entirely. Democrats from the voters to the officials told them they need to do better or else, and they chose “or else”, so that’s kind of how it goes.
Israel's one of those political third rails. If you don't support Israel, you risk an anti-Semitism charge, and if you do when they're committing genocide, you get called Genocide Joe. It's a lose-lose. IMO, the real failure, ages ago, was not interfering in Netanyahu rising to power.
American politicians need to realize that the vast majority of American Jews (who are the main political constituency that has historically been strongly pro-Israel) are very much against Netanyahu & the far right’s rise in power in Israel. Time to crack down on them playing eternal underdog.
In the 60s and 70s Israel was left-leaning politically. Obviously anyone pro-Palestinian would oppose them, though most of the American opposition was simply white & black antisemites not pro-Arab folks.
Shit changed over the last 30 years. Bibi & Likud turned Israel to the dark side completely.
Agreed but that's not a Biden specific issue (that cognitive decline/impairment would be). At least (honestly, only) theoretically a second term Biden could have changed the position there.
After Israel’s initial justified retaliation, it became an act of vengeance upon a largely powerless populace.
While I have no doubt most non-Hamas Gazans generally supported the goal of Hamas to destroy Israel, I doubt that was the main focus of their daily lives.
Yes, they saw the Jews as oppressors & occupiers. But getting freedom of movement & economic opportunity was probably more important to them than bloody jihad. And the idea of Gazans overthrowing Hamas relied on there being a viable alternative, which Netanyahu & others in IS deliberately obstructed
Regardless, killing tens of thousands of non-combatants, especially children and the sick & elderly, it’s just savagery.
And lying to everyone’s faces about what they’re doing not just in Gaza but the West Bank doesn’t exactly help the Israeli’s reputation. The far right in Israel is a cancer.
Yet he did “yank the leash” several times throughout his presidency and got slammed for doing so. This is a “damned if he did - damned if he didn’t” situation.
Meanwhile, this obsession with holding Biden/Harris to an impossible standard resulted in a Trump regime who wants to turn Gaza into glass.
I don’t put much blame for Gaza on Harris, I remember when she “got in trouble“ with the Dem establishment when she dared to not disagree with a college student who referred to Israel as “an apartheid state” when she was visiting a college class.
But Biden absolutely should have cut off non-defensive arms to Israel at some point to hinder their ongoing siege. He could’ve continued supplying what they needed to maintain the Iron Dome, but otherwise, if Israel wanted to keep murdering civilians, they could pay for it from their own pocket.
What was impossible about withholding the weapons Israel used to murder civilians and flatten infrastructure, hopsitals, schools, universities, neighborhoods?
You're taking an issue with Biden's political ideology. That has nothing to do with President Biden's age, competency, and ability to run the White House.
Okay but the focus should be on the guy CURRENTLY DOING THE BAD THINGS.
The press doesn’t like some of what Trump is doing, but loves Trump himself and his brutal suppression of leftists and Gaza protestors, so they need someone else to blame
I'm an American people, and a life-long D. I give not a single, solitary s**t about how old Joe B is or whether he can think straight; those things no longer impact the fate of my country. I do care about media outlets that focus on clickbait rather than issues, and I have a list of those I avoid.
"Demanding an answer" is not the same as demanding responsibility. Looking at this, the treatment of people like David Hogg (not to mention AOC and Ilhan Omar), it's very clear the old guard seems not to care about who their power-lust effects. We do have to deal with Trump AGAIN because of them.
What utter rubbish. White people centering ourselves and making poor voting choices is the reason Donald won by an extremely slim popular vote margin. About 250,000 votes in the swing states would have changed the Electoral College outcome.
As a 54 year old Black man, I largely agree. If you want to address the American public and WIN a Champaign where you have to deal with said White People, don't you think coming up with a plan they would vote for is a good idea?
If they couldn’t vote for the policies Harris presented which would have been beneficial for the majority of Americans and instead voted for their basest instincts, I don’t know what to do with my fellow people of pallor.
Assuming you meant people of color?
Here’s my reverse ask; when you’ve had tens to hundreds of your family members killed and the party that wants your vote is ignoring you and then respond to you with “I’m speaking“ it’s kinda hard to understand why they SHOULD vote for you.
No, don’t assume that. I want my fellow white folks to work on our internalized racism. I can’t say what BIPOC people should do or how they should vote because I’m not one of them.
And “I’m speaking”, well, Harris had every right to say that.
If you mean, the Latino community, particularly Cubans… They’re vying for Power. A lot of them see the benefits of white supremacy when they can pass. If you’re talking about Palestinians., I think it’s a lot to ask them to take one for the team, even if there are long-term benefits
It feels like it's also an attempt at self justification for why the pundit class hounded out Biden for his age and let Trump slide for his loss of mental function
If Presidents were graded on political achievements/outcomes and the Congressional majority they had to work with. President Biden would be S-tier and other modern presidents would be B-tier and below.
Ambitious democrats with any intelligence and integrity would do well to *not* distance themselves
I’m amazed that absolutely anyone is having trouble figuring out how to respond to this issue. “He shouldn’t have run for reelection in the first place, he should have been a transitional figure like he originally promised.” There, you’re free.
It kinda feels like the reason so many in the media keep screaming incoherently about it is because normal people keep reacting to it with a shrug and don't care about it, and that is breaking their brain in a truly unhinged way
I see all the online news groups are out in force trying to outdo each other rehashing the Biden narratives again. Good thing I don't need to read this trash for a paycheck.
I think avoid dwelling on the age issue and say something like “biden failed at his number one task, to end the danger posed by trump” to keep the focus on the real (still-present) problem
The story has existing momentum,so they pursue it. A lot of journalists are like a school of fish:going wherever the school goes. Alternatively,journalism is like the film industry: they don't want to expend energy making audiences interested in something new,so they make Marvel movies forever.
The big this is that it used to be *very* profitable because it was funded by advertising, and so the owners more or less left the journalists alone. Once big tech ganked the ad market, the huge profits disappeared, so fascist billionaires see buying media as an investment in propaganda.
I would agree, though: non-profits and co-ops would be ideal, and government funding without government interference is great if you can make it work (big "if"). Failing that, aggressively unionizing all news shops can exert some control over the tendency to propagandize. It's an uphill battle.
As an "American people" I can assure you the only I answer I want is "why the hell are people still talking about this?" Well, and "why aren't you talking about the literal crimes the current guy is doing."
I am 10000% over any pundit still "investigating" this nonsense. Blocking, boycotting....
Boring. The worst of shiny object reporting. No different than all the crap being printed about the Trad Wife “phenomenon” just a few months ago. The voting public was well aware that Biden was done. What’s the point of acting like it’s a big revelation now?
The media's obsession with relitigating the Biden issues is outrageous considering that the current occupant of the White House is behaving like a rabid ferret who's climbed up America's pants leg and is chewing on our gonades.
I don't know Jamelle. Sarah Longworth from The Bulwark who does countless focus groups said just yesterday that the issue of Biden being too old, hanging on too long, and being part of a 'cover-up' comes up all the time. You don't have to agree with all of that but I'm not sure you can write it off.
imagine if these media organizations instead put this concerted energy towards confronting Trump, the actual current president, about his dishonesty in disavowing project 2025 when he's now implementing it to the letter.
We have the most corrupt president in American history in office, who’s intent on dismantling American democracy and destroying American leadership in the world, and these guys want to talk about the last president?
yeah i have trouble with the notion of *right now* thinking "what i need to be talking about is the guy who's not president any more, rather than the guy who is actively trying to turn the US into a fascist white christian nationalist dictatorship"
What else are they going to do? Confront the reality that an extreme right wing cabal is slowly undermining the government? Can’t have that…let’s just call Biden old and make people who disagree feel bad.
There’s this weird thing playing out. Do democrats want the Trump voters back or the people that stayed home to show up? I vote the stayed home folks but that’s just because the blue dog democrats, jack boot curious democrats. We can work shop the name… want to cleanse me from society so.
Democrats have a gerontocracy problem. RBG. Biden. Nine or ten ranking Dems in the House are over 70. We’re like the kids who won’t take dad’s keys away even though he’s driven the car into a ditch multiple times. Can’t even talk about it. At least not on Bluesky.
Yes. They want a simple answer instead of acknowledging that there were so many factors at play. They think if just that ONE THING were different we'd be fine now. Total magical thinking.
Don't get me wrong, I want to bite off the head of every single person who blames Joe Biden with [insert BS thing they think he should have done to single-handedly change the trajectory of the election] instead of the warped whims of the electorate who memory-holed DJT's entire first term.
I can understand why some people feel betrayed about Palestine, enough that I think that was a pretty big miscalculation on his administration's part. But...yeah. I think I'm also pretty annoyed at people who sat out the election over that, thinking it would improve things for anyone involved.
And that is also in the range, perhaps to the annoyance of some, where I can also understand - logically and emotionally - why people voted that way and I'll cheerfully set aside my annoyance if anyone wants to argue. It's not worth it anymore, and I doubt it ever was.
If anything I demand an answer for the DNC letting that farce go on as long as it did. Biden is good in my book. I elected him not to be Trump and he delivered on that promise. Decent guy. Good President. Terrible candidate.
Although distance from his Gaza policy wouldn't be remiss.
I don't know if that's the assertion. I think it's more an attempt to set the historical record straight which seems a reasonable thing to do. The people who presented Biden as an inevitability shouldn't be the ones trusted to judge when it's time to "move on" from the topic.
I think that any of us who have dealt with a loved one who went through a rapid decline understand what MAY have happened here. It can really happen fast and catch you off guard. I
If the Dems were doing a good or even decent job of standing up against Trump’s bullshit then this story would be mostly a nonissue.
But the fact that they keep fucking up & apparently not learning anything from this massive failure means that the problem’s still in the room, so it’s still a prob.
It IS a non-issue. No one cares, except some "journalists" who are scared of tRump. Remember, these are the same people who rudely yelled questions at Biden, but are so demure around Trump. Fuck them.
You didn’t actually say why it’s a non issue and you didn’t address anything about how this rot is acrively infecting the Dem leadership. You should be way more concerned with how the Dem leadership is failing the people and not those meanies in the press.
Americans demand to know why he didn’t step down in Jan ‘24. He’s an experienced pol who’d know how vital is an authentic primary.
The scandal is also that wifey Jill didn’t try to make him leave the world stage - and in fact *she wanted him to stay* so she could keep her cushy beloved FLOTUS role.
Have you not read those Vogue articles? Check out these paragraphs which paint the picture that she was drunk on power with that role, and absolutely was enamored with it. She didn’t want to go.
it’s embarrassingly self-evident that these people are all still deeply bitter about the lack of access to him because at the end of the day what is being a political reporter if not a delirious obsession with your own perceived importance
It honestly feels like the worse Trump gets the more the corporate press is desperately trying to do anything but confront and cover him. They know what Trump is doing. Hell, they know they’re complicit. But they’re unable to reckon with either so they’re falling back on comfortable instincts.
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Consumer sentiment:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-16/us-consumer-sentiment-falls-close-to-record-low-on-inflation
The low information voters dislike Biden because legacy media told them to. Then the same media drones on about the attitude *they* created.
I’d rather focus on policies and issue going forward rather than looking back. 2/2
The fact that Biden was experiencing some age-related decline is undeniable. But all this talk of him being totally out of it, shitting his pants & not recognizing people is BS
(my rage is directed at Biden’s ego)
The optics is that Joe was old and out of touch. People want a revitalized Democratic Party, and appealing to the unpopular old guard just isn’t the move.
"We don't want to report on people being kidnapped off the street by masked men or whatever else this fascist regime is doing that is fascisty. Film at 11."
https://bsky.app/profile/pritzkerposting.bsky.social/post/3lpauqaizuk24
How is he actively in politics?
To me, Biden‘s biggest moral failure was his refusal to yank the leash on Bibi & leverage the U.S./Israel relationship to end the ongoing decimation of Gaza. I’m no fan of the Palestinians, but genocide is wrong.
1/2
Shit changed over the last 30 years. Bibi & Likud turned Israel to the dark side completely.
While I have no doubt most non-Hamas Gazans generally supported the goal of Hamas to destroy Israel, I doubt that was the main focus of their daily lives.
And lying to everyone’s faces about what they’re doing not just in Gaza but the West Bank doesn’t exactly help the Israeli’s reputation. The far right in Israel is a cancer.
Meanwhile, this obsession with holding Biden/Harris to an impossible standard resulted in a Trump regime who wants to turn Gaza into glass.
1/2
Most of the time in these types of conversations, I get excoriated for pointing out examples of her more pro-Palestinian positions.
But I'm sure you know better.
It was never about this one thing.
The press doesn’t like some of what Trump is doing, but loves Trump himself and his brutal suppression of leftists and Gaza protestors, so they need someone else to blame
Here’s my reverse ask; when you’ve had tens to hundreds of your family members killed and the party that wants your vote is ignoring you and then respond to you with “I’m speaking“ it’s kinda hard to understand why they SHOULD vote for you.
And “I’m speaking”, well, Harris had every right to say that.
Ambitious democrats with any intelligence and integrity would do well to *not* distance themselves
After that the only response to anyone bringing up Biden should be “He’s not the president now,” and changing the subject.
I am 10000% over any pundit still "investigating" this nonsense. Blocking, boycotting....
I believe you’ve created a new (and most useful) category here
(It's like the attraction of a 'Shiny Thing' that cannot be resisted)
Oh PLEASE, the punditry should just GET OVER IT
I personally think Biden was incompetent and useless; however he is just as much a symptom of the disease as Trump is.
The disease is the Oligarchy.
We have the most corrupt president in American history in office, who’s intent on dismantling American democracy and destroying American leadership in the world, and these guys want to talk about the last president?
Come on! 🤯 🤦♂️ 🙄 🫤 😑
Although distance from his Gaza policy wouldn't be remiss.
Shit like that is why Dems are where they are now.
We have an evil administration running the show but hey let’s talk about Biden some more.
No one gives a fuck.
But the fact that they keep fucking up & apparently not learning anything from this massive failure means that the problem’s still in the room, so it’s still a prob.
The scandal is also that wifey Jill didn’t try to make him leave the world stage - and in fact *she wanted him to stay* so she could keep her cushy beloved FLOTUS role.
https://bsky.app/profile/adamparkhomenko.bsky.social/post/3lphuky7oas2t