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

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
2Birds1Stone
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

I have no dog in this fight (the presidential race), but Biden is clearly not all there mentally. I would NOT feel confident in his ability to make important decisions regarding the future of this country and its people. That being said, Trump has proven to be awful in many dimensions as well.

It's a real shame that this was the best they could come up with to challenge him. IMHO any moderate democratic candidate with a polished public image and decent IQ could have given Donald a run for his money.

den18
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by den18 »

Hillary's loss was MUCH more due to the strategy problems you mentioned then misogeny and russian intereference. That and there was a LOT of hatred for her in the midwest, rightfully or due to republican propaganda. Biden does not have that problem currently at least.

How exactly is Sanders handing it to the Republicans? I know that is the media narritive, and I am sure the establishment is ready and willing to blame any loss on Bernie, but I do not see it. He literally has not even mentioned Biden during this entire crisis.

Frankly the whole notion is completely hypocritical. Every moderate democrat, including Biden, said on the debate stage that if someone had a pluraity, but not a majority, they would take it all the way to the convention and let the super delegates decide. When Warren stayed in the race, and the Sanders camp said she was hurting Sanders, complete outrage from the media and establishment. How dare you pressure a candidate to drop out? All candidates deserve to try! I guess that only applies if Sanders is winning.

I personally do not think it matters what Sanders does. Biden not only has not tried to get his supporters, but has actively driven them away. It is mind-boggiling. He flat out said, then reaffirmed, that if M4A passed the congress and senate he would veto it. Sanders literally told BIden that his people care about the issues, not Sanders himself. Saying you would veto the main issue the voters care about, after it has actually passed, is literally the opposite of "Unifying".

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

Post by IlliniDave »

CS, to the extent I can I try to vote in line with my beliefs, but in light of idiosyncratic aspects of a particular candidate or candidates, circumstances will cause me to shy away from that. I am an independent, and if the clocks were rolled back 30 or 35 years I'd probably be a middle of the road democrat of that era. Trump stole the heart of those traditional moderate democrat planks (mainly those centered around promotion/protection of American workers of the blue-collar/middle class, all races and ethnicities and genders). So if I held my nose and voted based on my beliefs regarding everyday policy, well, lets just say it would be an unpopular vote here. If I made a decision based on my assessment of leadership potential and character ... the convention is a ways off so we'll see who the opposition candidate is, but so far the Dems have not produced someone so strong in those regards I would vote against my beliefs (edit: I've said before that Gabbard was top of field in that respect IMO). No matter what I do I might influence someone somewhere else to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Looks to be another election with no good choice. Last time it was the woman who keeps government secrets on a server in her bathroom for blackmail I suppose vs the narcissist. Now we get a senile old man to face down against ego boy. This is the best we can do?

Jason

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

Post by Jason »

(@) ID

Not only has the pandemic muted Biden, he has been eclipsed by someone in his own party, namely Andrew Cuomo. I am not being facetious - there are articles in the NY post discussing Cuomo's nipples (he claims they are in fact, not pierced). It's like the Cuomo brothers are to Biden what the Kennedy brothers were to LBJ. They are the younger, more vigorous, more desirable option. Cuomo is playing it right. Lead NY through this and start campaigning in 2022 against Pence when this shit is hopefully over and make Chris his press secretary.

Let's face it - they are trying to prop up Biden to be President when he should either be the President or an ex-President by now. You are not voting for him. You are voting for his staff, his handlers, his teleprompter, his wife and probably Kamala Harris. The guy has said nothing besides "I am not Donald Trump." All they need for him is to be boring. But he's giving everybody "WTF?" And its not that he's old. Buffet is old. Munger is old. Trump is old. Grandma Fucking Moses was old. It's that Biden appears befuddled. Guys leave this job looking 20 years older. That makes him dead by 2023. In any event, he's going to say stupid and baffling shit and Trump is going to mock him and that will be the end of it.

Tyler9000
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by Tyler9000 »

IlliniDave wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 8:06 am
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
Yep -- that pretty much sums it up for me as well. I don't see how it's debatable that he's not the same as he used to be. Personally I think the recent buzz around Cuomo is an indicator that many Dems have the same worries.

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

Post by CS »

ffj wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 6:02 pm
It'll happen when a quality candidate comes along.
Like Trump? :lol: :lol: :lol: That statement right there ^ is misogyny. Perfect example of it. Some mystical higher standard that woman have to live up to. Meanwhile, the mediocre white guy...

Edit, meanwhile the incompetent as shit white guy...

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

Post by Saltation »

@CS

From what I'm gathering the misogynistic behavior is displayed from the Democratic party. There were plenty of better than Biden candidates that had an opportunity and the Democratic party and their voters just simply refused to vote for them.

As an independent voter it is simply stunning that during the last presidential election my choices were Trump and Hillary. Both have significant drawbacks, both ultimately fail in leadership situations. Trump is demeaning, condescending and pays very little attention to the scientific facts. Although he does pay attention to the political facts and that is what keeps is base strong and his electability high. Hillary proved she could not beat prior Democrats (remember she lost to Obama) and that she is incapable of proper strategy (how many times did she come to Wisconsin? Michigan?) which cost her the election. She is great at playing the victim card though. I voted for neither last time and voted for Gary Johnson.

Now we come to this election. Trump.....and.....Biden. Both put their foot in their mouth regularly. Trump talks like a clown and Biden acts like one. Trump has experience as President. Biden does not (but he was Vice President). Both will be mostly incapable of getting anything done (divided Congress). So what are we to do? I can throw my vote and pick Klobuchar, Harris or Warren so I'm not misogynistic. Or I can vote for Gary Johnson again to demonstrate what bullshit the Democratic pulled with Biden because I was 100% voting for Sanders if he was on the ticket.

den18
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by den18 »

CS wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:45 pm
Like Trump? :lol: :lol: :lol: That statement right there ^ is misogyny. Perfect example of it. Some mystical higher standard that woman have to live up to. Meanwhile, the mediocre white guy...

Edit, meanwhile the incompetent as shit white guy...
Wow. That is your response to his post. Yes, judging candidates based on their merit instead of thier identity is mysogeny... Wanting a polical representative to represent your interests is also clearly mysogeny...

You know why Trump won? Because he spoke to what tbe people cared about and promised to act in thier interest. He was lying, but he knew how to sell himself. You know what people do not care about? Whether the person who is going to screw them over is a woman, man, black, brown or anything else.

Hillary ran on identity/woke politics and lost. So did Kamala Harris. So did Corey Booker. So did Kristten Gillibrand. Every single candidate running on identitiy lost until all that was left were old white dudes. Why? Because voters care about if the candidate can help them, not what they look like. I highly recommend expanding your news sources away from MSNBC and CNN. No one except the media cares about identity.

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C40
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by C40 »

@CS

I think Hillary was a horrible candidate. She had so many problems herself, plus the DNC's scandals... I don't think its even necessary to list them out here.

Joe is a horrible candidate too. He also has a long list of problems. I understand explanations of what happened in the primary, but I'm still a little perplexed/disappointed. I didn't pay really close attention to this round of Democratic candidates, but it seemed to me that numerous women candidates were way better than Hillary or Joe.

---------------

In terms of misogyny related to voting, I do agree it's a real thing and is a problem, though I think the impact is debatable and those who conclude that misogyny is the main reason why Hillary lost is are leaving out many other larger factors.

Among potential Democrat voters (which is all that matters if we're talking about female Democratic candidates), I think there are some different groups that would be less likely to vote for a woman, all other things equal. One of those groups is people in the Southeast US. While most people in most of the country don't have a problem with women in leadership, a much larger portion of men (and women) in the southeast do.

I couldn't say how much this impacts the numbers of votes, but whether that's "the" reason Hillary lost depends on how you interpret things. I think both are true:
1 - The votes she lost by being a woman may have been enough to change the result of the election (though I don't know... because I don't really understand how close the race was, given the differences between popular and electoral votes)
2 - Her actual problems as a candidate cost her WAY more votes than what lost by being a woman. A better female candidate would have obliterated Trump
Last edited by C40 on Wed Apr 01, 2020 11:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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

Post by Peanut »

I need to not follow this thread for my mental health, but I'm just going to share something I've noticed with the reception of female candidates by women. I've observed that there are some women, mostly older but not exclusively, who do not want other women to succeed at the highest levels because it makes them feel like they themselves do not measure up, especially if they were never career women themselves. So they would rather see men in those roles. IMO the issues matter far less to people than many, including themselves, think.

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

Post by classical_Liberal »

I would have backed (ie volunteered for campaigns) and voted for Buttigieg or Klobuchar, younger blood, intelligent, some proven leadership in smaller roles, diplomatic, and less evil than the crowd. Even if some of their individual positions are a bit more left leaning than my own. I didn't/don't consider Warren a moderate as others have stated. Instead I will not vote (for president)... again.

I now sign off from the 2020 political discussions

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

Post by IlliniDave »

C40 wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 9:28 pm
... While most people in most of the country don't have a problem with women in leadership, a much larger portion of men (and women) in the southeast do.
I'm not a "southerner" although I've lived in the Southeast for over 30 years, the last 20 in Alabama, a deeply red state which as we all know had a troubled past. Realizing it is not irrefutable proof of a thesis, I'll offer a bit of anecdotal data. Alabama has a female governor. I grew up in Illinois, a fairly blue state. Illinois has never elected a female governor. Over the last 40+ years, Minnesota has been the most reliably blue state in presidential elections (only state in the country that did not vote for Reagan's reelection). I don't think Minnesota has ever elected a female governor. California is the current progressive stronghold. Never elected a female governor. I don't recall NY ever having a female governor, but to be fair I didn't check. Also in 2018, along with Alabama electing a female governor, Georgia came pretty close to doing the same. Of the states I consider comprising in the Southeast, about half have had female governors: AL, NC, SC, KY, LA, TX. FL, GA, MS, TN, AR, and VA have not.

And in the private sector, again anecdotally, at work I basically have three bosses--a primary boss (from HR perspective), and managers of the two customer teams I'm embedded with on two different projects. Two are female (one a minority) and the other is a minority male (I mention the second immutable trait because the Southeast is typically accused of being a hotbed of racism as well). On my company's side, my boss's boss is a female, as is our site executive.

I'm not going to count it up, but I'm confident it's true that if you look across the breadth of elected office holders in Alabama they are probably predominantly male and white. About 2/3 of the state's population is Caucasian. More relevant is that the majority of residents, and a larger majority of those that show up to the polls, are female. I suspect that is true nearly everywhere, from sea to shining sea. So I have a little trouble with attributing voting trends to systematic misogyny. Taken literally misogyny means dislike/contempt towards women. It's a loaded term that I think overreaches a long way when used to explain the voting preferences of a majority female electorate.

I don't belong to any political party so I do not participate in primaries, and only follow them loosely. Both parties, especially Democrats because of their claims of being the greater champions of women (and because this time the Republicans aren't having meaningful presidential primaries), should maybe examine how their field of primary candidates campaigned, and what they campaigned on, to determine why Biden remains as the presumptive nominee. I don't really have a horse in that race so I'll keep my opinions to myself, except to say that the surprise to me was that Gabbard got no traction whatsoever. She's as well-spoken and accomplished as most of the candidates were. She's generally pretty far left/progressive. She did break ranks in that she's an outspoken opponent of what she feels is excessive overseas military intervention (unfortunately for her maybe it's a tiny Venn diagram overlap with Trump). And in 2016 she resigned from the DNC after the debate question incident, and supported Sanders. Even while she was still in the race the MSM was bemoaning that no female candidates were left after Warren and Klobachar dropped out. It was like she didn't exist at all. I guess that shows how out of touch I am with whatever turns the gears in the Democratic party. To be fair, in 2016 there were some candidates on the Republican side I was surprised got little or no traction, and of course one I was very surprised did.

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

Post by jennypenny »

I think the main difference isn't any more nefarious than simply that most psychopaths are men, hence men succeed more often in politics and other careers where being a psychopath is helpful. Most of the social reasons have died off.

The Atlantic: The Startling Accuracy of Referring to Politicians as 'Psychopaths'

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C40
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by C40 »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:05 am
Taken literally misogyny means dislike/contempt towards women. It's a loaded term that I think overreaches a long way when used to explain the voting preferences of a majority female electorate.
Yes, I didn't think the term seemed very representative of the reasons some people might not vote for a woman.. So I looked up the definition last night. There is more to it than what you wrote:

"dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women."

It's the ingrained prejudice part..

Jason

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

Post by Jason »

How is misogyny an explanation when she won the popular vote? It was a campaign issue (heavily reliant on data) with some bad timing thrown in. And her husband warned her she was missing the point. Incompetence is not a respecter of people. She screwed the pooch.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... t-she-see/

And psychopath is thrown out way too liberally. Ted Bundy is a psychopath and his own psychiatrist claimed he was the only one she ever met. Richard Nixon was paranoid. Dick Cheney thought he was Churchill. Nancy Pelosi is one of the most successful US politicians in Congressional history possessing the sharpest elbows in recent memory. But psychopath? I don't see it. Raging narcissists, ok, but that crosses gender lines.

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

Post by IlliniDave »

C40 wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:34 am
Yes, I didn't think the term seemed very representative of the reasons some people might not vote for a woman.. So I looked up the definition last night. There is more to it than what you wrote:

"dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women."

It's the ingrained prejudice part..
Okay, fair enough, but to more accurately convey meaning in a discussion, given the breadth of what that word can mean, what it typically is used to signify in current political dialogue; choosing it over other alternatives without any contextual clarification leaves it open for misinterpretation. Even "prejudice" is a loaded term. I'm not convinced all that many women have decided a priori they won't vote for women in the future as a matter of policy, or men prejudging the same for that matter, but of course I can't prove that. What they do when they look at a field of candidates I would hazard a guess is a complex process.

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

Post by Bankai »

jennypenny wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 5:36 am
I think the main difference isn't any more nefarious than simply that most psychopaths are men, hence men succeed more often in politics and other careers where being a psychopath is helpful. Most of the social reasons have died off.
This is unhelpful and pure misandry.

What about men being more competitive, willing to work longer hours, willing to commute longer, picking careers with more upside, sacrificing more (including family and health)? These and many more are all valid reasons why men succeed more often in competitive fields/careers and make more money on average. What sane person would like to sacrifice everything and work 100h a week to get to the top? Most of those insane people are men and not because they are psychopaths. It might be a tiny factor but no way it's the key factor.

Jason

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

Post by Jason »

So does this mean that Bernie Sanders inability to win the Democratic presidential nomination is because of anti-semitism? As both an African American male and a caucasian women have advanced further than any Jewish person when it comes to sitting in the Oval Office? Most people's answer to Donald Trump's celebrity driven candidacy was Oprah Winfrey, an African American woman. Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Theresa May have all been elected to lead their respective modern Western political states. Hillary Clinton first got Obamad which was out of her control. But Trumped? I'd blame never going to Wisconsin sooner than being a woman.

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C40
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Re: What is going on with Joe Biden? (losing his mind?)

Post by C40 »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:13 am
Okay, fair enough, but to more accurately convey meaning in a discussion, given the breadth of what that word can mean, what it typically is used to signify in current political dialogue; choosing it over other alternatives without any contextual clarification leaves it open for misinterpretation.
Yeah I still don't think it's quite the right word. And I don't know what other word fits better. Bias? It means almost the same thing, but seems like it's a bit less derailing.

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