What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

[C40]

I'm seeing assertions from various people and around the internet that Joe Biden's mental capacity is quickly deteriorating..... And I'm seeing various video clips showing him speaking nonsense (like this one)

What is going on? Is he really losing his mind? (or are these videos just cherry-picked to trick people?)

I'm listening to his recent podcast right now. He sounds ok, but so far I can't tell whether he's speaking off the cuff or is reading.


If he really is losing his mind, what the heck will happen in the election? Will he actually run and get obliterated? Would/could the DNC oust him and handpick pick someone else? Or take #2 from the primaries?

[Lemur]

I sound pretty senile when I've days and days of little sleep. My suspicion is the same with Biden. Hard campaigning...hes traveling too much, old....doesn't have time to prepare for every appearance and speech so his mind is running on E. I remember when everyone thought Bush Jr was running the country with dementia...he probably has dementia though but since it looks like it hasn't progressed, I'm thinking it was just the duties of being the President.

[BMF1102]

I've heard a theory they pushed Biden to beat out Bernie, specifically to sacrifice him in the Election. Sort of a malicious "we lost because poor old Joe was loosing his mind."

[Jason]

To be charitable, he has a stutter. And he is old. He never was a brain surgeon. And these guys are all out of touch based on the lives they live.

However, in the comfortable confines of his own home, in a non-debate atmosphere, he can't string a sentence together. Plus, he says bizarre things. All that is asked of him is to be a cipher. Just walk around like a statesman, a not-Trump mannequin, a Democratic door stopper for four years. And he can't pull it off. My two cents, if he wins, secret service will find him dressed in his Presidential pajamas at 3:00AM in the Rose Garden, jerking off in front of squirrels. Like Reagan in his second term, I suppose.

[IlliniDave]

It's sad, really, to see that happening to someone. The way I summarize it is that if my dad was doing the same things I'd have already retired and relocated, and I'd be looking for options in terms of memory care facilities (huge caveat, I'm not a neurologist and would seek a diagnosis for my dad as part of the process).

I never paid much attention to Biden, other than noting he made Ryan look like an inept fool (which it turns out he was, so less of an accomplishment than I thought at the time) in a VP debate. I think it's clear that the movers and shakers in the Dem machine jumped in his camp to push Sanders away. My conspiracy theory alter-ego expects at some point after the convention the Dem Nat'l Committee will slip someone else in as their candidate. Maybe Clinton, maybe Cuomo, who knows.

I have heard the theories that coalescing behind Biden was a move to "save" the party at the cost of the 2020 presidential race (and maybe minimize the down-ticket damage they thought Bernie would cause). That does not resonate with the, uh, fervency with which they've tried to pry DT out of the White House. But what do I know? I think the Dem party is due for a bit of a makeover.

[jacob]

Well, if it's posted on reddit (the "17 yo suburban male" demographic) by someone supporting his main political rival, it must be true. I mean especially, if it's documented by short video clips, since those can't be taken out of context or manipulated in any way Also, everything you see on reality TV shows really happened as it was depicted! Seriously, though ...

About 10% of people over 60 develop dementia increasing to about 20% by age 80, so dementia is possible (but unlikely).

About 100% of all political attack strategies will find a theme (Burisma, handsy misconduct, health problems, ... and so on) by throwing mud on the wall and seeing what sticks. Then run with whatever works best until it doesn't. Low-information voters are very susceptible to memes which can therefore spread in a way that resembles an mental epidemic. If a meme-disease peters out, just invent a new one. There are certain groups on the interwebs that make such things for fun even.

[C40]

@Jacob - are you saying he's ok?

I understand about memes and political attacks and such. Those existing doesn't mean that what they're saying is untrue

I'm just curious about whether he's ok, or losing his marbles

[C40]

He does seem lucid here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN0gSTjYbbE

[Jason]

I would bet the mortgage Hunter wouldn't let his father take his kids to Chuck N' Cheese unaccompanied. Even the illegitimate ones.

[IlliniDave]

Jacob, you might be the first person I know that looks on reddit.

I guess time will tell. He does have some lucid moments, and has been prone to smh-level gaffes in the past. Maybe I'm just holding him to a higher standard since he wants to be president instead of a senator from somewhere I've never been.

It will be interesting to see the presidential debates if he gets the nomination, since he'll be competing against someone judged by a certain vociferous demographic as being mentally unfit to hold the office. Should be a mic drop event for him is he's up to it.

[Jason]

Biden did not distinguish himself in the Democratic debates. From what I recall, he did not have a single "thinks on his feet" moment. He rode in on "the best bet to beat Trump" wave. He is not a compelling public speaker. He's a hand shaker and the pandemic has been costly to him. Yes, Trump misses his rallies, but he has the press conferences. As opposed to Biden, Trump has shown an ability to land a good jab ("You'd be in jail"). In the rhetorical Battle Royale of "Grumpy Old Men" I'd wager on Trump. Even if Biden does not have dementia, he's the equivalent of an aging actor who can't remember his lines anymore, something that Trump doesn't have to worry about because he couldn't stick to a script if it was handed to him by ISIS.

[den18]

No offense Jacob, but you yourself just sounded like a low-information voter. Anyone paying attention to the democratic race will know that BIden has had these issues since the beginning and that it grew worse throughout the race. This is not an out of context example, even in just the last few weeks, he has had this issue constantly. It is so bad he is reading from his notes on live television, and unable to continue when he loses his place! His team knows this, they tried to hide him from view for a week, during a crisis, before having to stop from people asking where the heck he was. Just because it is being used as a political attack does not mean it is not true.

As far as Biden goes, whether he is actually losing his mind, or is just experiencing normal mental detioration, is not relevant IMO. Watch any recent interview with him and tell me honestly that you believe this is the man that can beat Trump and lead us in a crisis. His entire selling point was electibility and experience being in charge. The fact that he is struggiling on a short fluff interview, from his home, where all he has to do is point out what he would do better then Trump is just mind-boggling. How will he do in an actual debate with Trump?

Watch his previous debates with Sarah Palin or Paul Ryan and tell me he has the same faculties. The guy was sharp. He projected confidence. He was in politics doing TV appearances for over 40 years and it showed there. This is not that Biden.

I don't know what will happen at this point. Biden surged because the establishment got behind him at the last minute, because there was no other option to stop Sanders, and because Sanders took it too easy on Biden. Could they pick someone else? Yes, they are a private organization, they could pick literally anybody without legal issue. Politically ,I don't think it is an option, that is what they were trying by offering a million other moderate democrats. Biden has a lot of support just from being Obama's VP that no other demoocrat seems too.

[chenda]

I don't know about this guy but I imagine many leaders are currently at high risk of nervous breakdowns or similar.

Imagine been someone like Modi right now...

[jacob]

@C40 - I've watched 10 out of the 11 primary debates so far but that's about it in terms of what I've seen of Biden in a "live" setting. The rest has been endless reporting spent in the timewasting sinkhole of memeorandum.

Biden is likely an ESFJ which in the "car model" means Fe(driver), Si(codriver), Ne(child), and Ti(toddler)).

An Fe driver relates to the world in terms of [great] people and the Si codriver keeps a ready file of all the people he's worked with, supported, etc. over the years. The constant references to knowing this or that politician. Talking about people and how he relates to them is pretty much his standard mode. The Ne child is where the deal-making/coalition stuff happens. The extraverted intuition functions mainly in terms of people (because the FeSi), so politics for Biden is mainly about getting people on the same page. The Ti toddler is the weakness. You can see this when he has to explain an abstract policy question in a logical matter. It will often be in a simple list form, like "Blablabla ..., number one. Number two, blablabla ... Number three, blabla ... and it looks like I ran out of time [smiles]". <- That's how it usually goes.

Trump is an ESTP (Se(driver), Ti(codriver), Fe(child), Ni(toddler)) aka "the used car salesman"-type. The Se driver takes in concrete information that is right in front of them and the Ti codriver tactically acts on this to figure out the best immediate response. There's little concern for a historically consistent policy (no Si) nor future hypotheticals (no Ni). The Fe child is where the jokester appears. In a high-functioning ESTP this is what makes them entertaining and affable to be around building connections and starting new ventures. In a stressed/low-functioning ESTP, they're more likely to close off to those nearest to Fe (family/loyalty) and bullying everybody else. The Ni toddler is the inferior function and Ni at the inferior level is not a source of strategy as much as a source of "novelty ideas". This can be a liability in terms of being susceptible to various conspiracy theories, etc. even if the self-impression is "a healthy skepticism".

It's pretty easy to make anyone look like a terrible person by cutting and editing to selectively focus on their inferior and tertiary functions. Highly biased reporting or memeing does exactly that ... showing the strengths of "our guy" and the weakness of "their guy".

On the left-bias you see the FeSi strengths of Biden ("he knows everybody, a return to moderation across the aisle") contrasted with the FeNi weaknesses of Trump ("he's a bully prone to conspiracy thinking").

On the right-bias you see the SeTi strengths of Trump ("he's a successful businessman who is making America great again") and the NeTi weaknesses of Biden ("he's a senile/low-energy has-been who can't complete a sentence").

In terms of mudslinging, also notice that attacking the strengths doesn't work very well. Sexual or handsy misconduct allegations against Biden were like water on a goose. Ditto were any highlights about serial business failures and bankruptcies of Trump.

So yeah, ... there's some truth to meme-style messaging but it's more like a half-truth or a quarter-truth which is oftentimes more destructive than an outright lie. In that regard, memes and short video clips are part of the Idiocracy that favors biased (tribal) affirmation content. They act as high-bias messaging for people who don't like to read.

[Jason]

I don't know about this guy but I imagine many leaders are currently at high risk of nervous breakdowns or similar.

Imagine been someone like Modi right now...

https://nypost.com/2020/03/29/german-st ... s-despair/

[jacob]

FWIW, the "old and senile" attacks were used against Trump as well with large disagreements on whether it's a) age-based neurological decline, b) simply a different pace of speaking (some speak fast, some speak more slowly), c) dialing in the vocabulary to the base audience, ... all depending on who you asked.

This link has a discussion of all these angles along with interviews of Trump over the years:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/don ... nterviews/ (compare the 1995 Trump to the 2015 Trump).

The whole [mental] health issue seems to be a default attack on anyone over 65. It is of course a valid point, but that's what A25 is for once in power.

Before the election, what appears to be important to voters is whether whatever "words" comes out their preferred candidate makes sense to them. Not whether they makes sense to mental health experts or anyone who is almost surely voting for the other guy. To answer the OP's question... unless there's a serious difference between now and November, I think Biden represents a vote for a return to the moderate-center regardless of his mental faculties---basically a vote for Biden is a vote against Sanders rather than for Biden. Therefore it doesn't matter if Biden is not his 50yo self as long as he's not Sanders. The NeverHillary voters should be able to appreciate this dynamic.

The coalescence simply happened because the smart people in the room (Buttigieg and Klobuchar) realized that splitting the voters between them would lead to the same situation that got Trump the nomination in 2016. That is, we had Sanders+Warren on the "revolutionary left" with Biden+Buttigieg+Harris+Klobuchar+Bloomberg on the "moderate center". I'm not deliberately ignoring other candidates like Yang or Gabbard. This is more to the point that in terms of combined votes, the revolutionary left had less than the moderates, but the moderates had more candidates and thus "worse math", e.g. 20+20<20+10+10+10+10 to illustrate the point. Basically, [Buttigieg and Klobuchar] made a game theoretic choice. Warren then did the same. So here we are.

[den18]

I agree with most of what Jacob said, apart from the point about a vote for Biden being a vote against Sanders. While true for a segment of the democratic party (and certainly for most of the media), the polls show people are voting for Biden due to electiibiliy. Polls found Sanders as the most popular senator in the united states and the most trusted on healthcare and other issues. The key issue for voters however was beating Trump, which is what the Biden narrative pushed.

The voter perspective seemed to be that "I like Sanders, and what he says, but we need to beat Trump" for a lot of non-DC democrats.

[IlliniDave]

jason, along the lines of what you said, things couldn't have worked out worse for Biden re the pandemic. It's consuming the national attention and Biden doesn't have a place in it since he's been out of government employment for a while. He tried his "shadow briefings" but they didn't work out so good--podcast format apparently isn't his strong suit. And I think Trump's approval ratings for the pandemic response have been as high or higher than he's had for anything else, so along the line of jacob's observations, it was a case of Biden trying to hit him where he's strongest with punches that lacked weight behind them.

May be another Libertarian protest year for me unless I relo to a state that's actually in contention.

[CS]

Hillary was not a weak candidate (3 million more votes, eh?) but the misogyny in this country is real problem, plus the strategy mistakes and the Russian hacking (of course they got into the voting machines and roles, does anyone really believe they didn't?)

Biden has some faults but he'll have a good VP. As a main stream democrat, I'm not worried about the outcome if he gets elected. Not getting coverage though is going to be an impediment. I'm not holding my breath that he'll win, unfortunately. Bernie is doing a great job of helping hand it to the republicans. Way to go. No wonder he has no allies in congress. Even AOC is breaking from him.

[CS]

The problem with libertarian protests is that most protest voter has connections in other states that are up for grabs and their behavior influences others. No one is free from the responsibily of voting an a good, strategic way.