Still Biden

I've made my position on Joe quite clear - I think he's a fucking racist monster. Just deeply fucking racist and in that super hard "actually racist" way where the bigot doesn't give a shit whether the subhumans live or die. But despite this, I believe that the efforts to replace him are bullshit.

Has he slowed down? Yes. Is he incompetent and senile? No. Joe clearly still has at least as good a grasp on the world as he always has. Does he forget names sometimes? Yes, he does - but also, he's done this basically his entire public life. Joe Biden misspeaks - a lot. He sometimes has long extended pauses in the middle of a sentence which he will then abandon and start on a different tangent. That is Joe - he's always done this sort of shit. To be clear - he's done that more often the past couple weeks, but he has always done it.

The speculation of whether or not Joe is up to the crazy pace of a presidential campaign and then four more years of governance? Maybe there's a bit more reason to be concerned if Joe can do this - but really, not that much more than any other candidate. The past few weeks Joe has seemed like Joe. Never a great orator, and actually kind of famous for his gaffes and slip ups.

One of the issues here is that people have a stupid idea of what it takes to be president. That it requires one to be functioning at 100% of super-genius brain levels 24 hours a day, every day. This is bullshit. Donald Trump managed four years as president and in that time also managed to completely subsume the entire Republican Party, forcing them to abandon every thing they have ever stood for and replaced it with loyalty to his own self. Despite spending like half his waking hours golfing. So you can be POTUS as a sidegig even if you are a narcissistic moron.

It's not hard to be president. Yes, you get to make all the big decisions - as another shockingly mediocre man who managed to put in two full terms said, the president is "the Deciderer". But making those decisions is not hard - and choosing wrong does not necessarily ever have any consequences. It does not require high levels of intellect or perception or self-awareness. Arguably, these things might hamper an Administration's ability to get shit done.

The arguments that Joe is not up to the job or that there exists someone who has a better shot at beating Trump despite not being able to start their campaign until late July - are purely vibes based. And also are handwaving aside a lot of very strong arguments about how their position is delusional bullshit.

All of that said - I've now been convinced. Joe must go. He cannot be the candidate - and the reason why is entirely on him.

He's had weeks to put this to bed. Weeks to answer the criticisms and reassure the public that his brain hasn't turned to mush. And how has he done on that?

I said earlier that it doesn't matter much how good a job the president does at deciderer-ing the deciderer-choices. And it really doesn't. But it does matter how he sells those decisions. His job is to lead - which involves getting people on side and following. Joe has not been able to do that with members of his own party. It's just been a steady stream of mutineers sticking him in the back, one after another after another. He has lost control and influence among his allies - how the hell is he supposed to get anything done? He can't. He has to go.

It was that first week after the debate that did him in. He knew he had a bad debate. And instead of reassuring the public that it was just an off day - he fucking turtled. He answered zero questions for a full week - just small and brief appearances where he read a couple paragraphs off a teleprompter and then vanished to the undisclosed location. Now I get it - the president is a busy man. He has a lot of shit to do. But he and his team clearly fucked up beyond imagining when they looked at the whisper campaign and considered it low priority. And then this belief that one interview - 20 ish minutes long - with George Stephanopoulos was going to settle everyone down? Come on.

In those early days, the strategy from the Biden camp was described as "this will all blow over". And I was Team Blow Over then. The criticisms of Biden's debate performance were massively overexaggerated. All Joe had to do was make himself available to the press and demonstrate in person that he still had his marbles. And he didn't. For way too long. And then we were all left with the impression that "omg, maybe Joe is senile and that's why they are hiding him away in a shoe box!" For things to blow over, the story has to be replaced by something else. There was no something else to go in there - so it was replaced by confusion as to why Joe hasn't faced the public. The original story did blow over - but a much worse version of the same story took its place. And that was entirely the fault of Biden and his team. He dug his own hole here.