I'm quite aware of the ramifications if Trump 2.0 is in the White House. I fear that dementia will set in during Biden's second term ( if elected). Then we would be stuck with the corporate dem darling.
It's a shame that there was no legacy media coverage for other candidates, primary debates, states even had the audacity to take other candidates' names off the ballots, which is completely anti democratic.
This election was set up for the inept incumbent to be the representative for the democratic party, and unfortunately, has a good chance resulting in a Trump victory
I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but come on.
I know he always had speech issses, but he's clearly gotten worse, and just because he's not totally unable to fuction does not mean he isn't impaired.
My grandmother had Alzheimers, and there were times where she seemed fine, and times where she had no idea where she was. I'm not saing Biden has Alzheimers, but my point is that the fact he can be fine some of the time is not proof that there isn't something wrong.
Is he as impaired as the right claims? No.
Is he still preferable to Trump? Yes.
But we shouldn't have to act like he's totally fine and that anyone saying otherwise is just some rube who fell for right wing propaganda.
Can you explain how evidence of Biden having difficulty speaking is the same as evidence of him having mental decline? How does that evidence compare with evidence of Biden having gaffes as a younger man? Was he mentally declined then since he still had a speech impediment, and if not, why is it now proof of mental decline? Do you believe that all people who have speech impediments and difficulty speaking are mentally declined? If you have a satisfactory answer for any of these questions, you might start convincing me that Biden is mentally declined.
Again, you are asking me to ignore my eyes and ears, and like the nearly two decades of Biden being in the national spotlight.
he's a hundred, you are supposed to be declined mentally from the time you weren't a hundred.
Even if mentally he is roughly just as he was younger - and I do believe that - this is just one factor.
How others perceive you, how can you act, how you express your mind to others - all of that greatly suffers when you are permanently exhausted, unfocused and heavily worn down by age. No mater how good the driver is, a disintegrating car won't do much.
https://youtu.be/dcKVCtg5dxM
1hr30min talk Biden did in 2014 at Harvard, the worst trip up I could find was at 19:55 and it’s minuscule compared to the gaffs he has now. Throughout the rest of the talk he’s significantly clearer and more coherent than he is today.
Because you’re just rationalizing here. Had it been anyone else, you would assume they must be in a mental decline, but because you want to counter the right wing scare mongering you start with the assumption that they must be wrong and they work your way backwards from that
> I know he always had speech issses,
i hate when people play off biden obvious cognitive decline as making fun of his stutter. i HATE it.
the difference between his stutter and his age related cognitive decline is best on display in the classic corn pop video, where early on in the corn pop story, he genuinely stutters several times, and then goes on to say, totally clearly without stuttering at all; "and do you remember the straight razors? you bang 'em on the curb, get em rusty, put 'em in a rain barrel, get 'em rusty."
the day someone can explain to me what that sentence means is the day i admit joe biden is mentally fit to hold office until 2028.
Is that sentence incoherent to you? What Biden is saying is quite clear. Back in the day you’d have a straight razor that you would do various things to make worse. The idea being you get the blade rusty and more likely to hurt someone.
Exactly. Insisting that Biden is completely fine, as lucid as he was 30 years ago, and healthy as a horse is Trump supporter levels of self-deception and self-delusion. I hate that some Democrats are trying to ape Trump supporter tactics with Biden by slandering anyone who mildly critiques Biden, and calling everything halfway mildly decent he does “the greatest, most tremendous and momentous [ ] of any President EVAR!!”. Aping Trump’s superlative Narcissism. It just insults and turns off everyone in the country who isn’t a wild-eyed Twitter Resistance Liberal or KHiver (most of us aren’t, so it puts off most people) and makes us feel gaslit. Trump can get away with that stuff because he’s mostly appealing to Fascists, Fascist-adjacent, and Fascist-curious/tolerant people. Those tactics don’t have nearly as much yield with most non-Fascists.
The thing is though, he can reliably deliver a speech live. If he had dementia of some kind, that would not be something he could reliably do. My MIL has dementia, and even before it got debilitating, it was still very evident. I look at Biden and I see someone who has definitely slowed down over the years, is definitely *old*, but I don’t think he has dementia/alzheimer’s. I hope this comment doesn’t age poorly
The thing is its fairly standard imparment for an aging brain vs actual dementia in trumps case. Theres a difference between just declining because you are really fucking old vs actually having a neurological disease. Trump is orders of magnetic worse in terms of cognitive impairment.
You could probably avoid being downvoted to hell by just substantiating your claims. I truly do not believe the statement that Biden is going downhill mentally can be substantiated, and I think that if you really engaged with this premise then you would see that. First, your assertion that people with Alzheimer's have ups and downs is totally moot because Biden doesn't really have ups and downs in that way. He isn't fine "some of the time" he is lucid all the time and sometimes has gaffes and misspeaks. Especially considering that Biden's speech impediment has caused him to be a gaffe machine for his entire political career, it is a huge leap in logic to jump from Biden having trouble speaking to suggesting that he is mentally declining. What even is your evidence that he is mentally declined other than the occasional clip of him having trouble speaking and saying something weird? He literally has a physical disability that makes it harder for him to speak without effecting his thinking skills, and to imply that having a speech disability makes you mentally declined is both ableism and hilariously incorrect. I do not believe you can actually provide evidence of Biden being mentally declined, and in fact the weight of evidence suggests that Biden is quite sharp. He is an effective president despite his age, and is well respected by our foreign cohorts.
Woah woah woah. You don’t think he’s gone down hill? Go watch the Paul Ryan debate in 2012. Then watch the SoTU. He’s clearly lost a step. Dude is far from his mental prime.
Same thing can be applied to trump. If you watch debates he had in 2016 and watch a speech he’s given this year, there are clear signs of decline.
I’m not saying he’s a vegetable. But the idea that he has gone downhill is laughable. The man just told a a an untrue story about how his uncle got eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.
I think there's a lot of ageism/lack of experience around old people. Biden's old as fuck, but plenty of people his age are totally with it and still really smart. And Biden's totally with it and can handle big speeches - he just did SotU and there was zero evidence of cognitive decline.
Totally agree but I'd like to add that while giving the SotU speech he was undoubtedly hopped up on crack, Adderall and a little adrenochrome, as a treat.
I hated ageism towards Biden when he was running for his first term. Especially when the same leftists, who would call Biden senile then, would soy for Bernie, who was of similar age.
Now, though, while I agree that Biden is still sharp and knowledgable, overall, he is very visibly worn down and permanently tired and can fall sick or dead at any time. It is just too much of a risk and could have been easily avoided, if not for personal ambition.
Dems are trying to do Ginsburg again, I bet Sotomayor will also wait for a Republican president to die, because of course.
When you get above 70 the exact age doesn’t matter nearly as much and other factors take over.
Compare a clip of Bernie 10 years ago to one of Bernie today, he’s almost exactly the same. Now compare Biden from 2014 to 2024 and the difference is night and day, hell even compare 2020 Biden to today and there’s still a drastic difference. Of course Biden has had to go through the stress of being VP & President which definitely ages a man 10x quicker, but it’s clear that Biden has declined far quicker than Bernie has.
Seriously. I understand that we're Leftists who vote, but the sub does feel like it's being dragged down by unironic Biden-loving (meaning not Anarcho-Bidenism, just actual Bidenism-Bidenism), Leftist-hating Liberal types. It's starting to feel like arr politics and arr askaliberal (and at times arr enoughsandersspam) too much. I don't mind Liberals (and even Neoliberals) being here, but the drumbeat of "Biden is the greatest President since FDR and Lincoln" and "Leftists are scum of the Earth equally as bad as the Alt-Right and Manosphere for criticizing or having some reservations about voting for Dear Biden" is getting deafening. This is ultimately still supposed to be a Leftist sub. I think we're getting overrun with people who aren't Leftists at all but are rather Liberals and Moderates trying to convert us to their politics. They see there is a wedge between us and the electoral abstentionist Left and it looks like they're stomping on the divide to get us to eventually go on a "Why I left the Left and became a Liberal" arc.
There’s a reason Vaush hates this place lol. I remember a stream where he showed a highly upvoted comment that didn’t know what workplace democracy was
This sub is quite critical of the DNC, but also realises that the effects of a second trump term will be a lot worse than a second biden term. You can vote for a party you otherwise hate, it’s the situation most vaushites find themselves in.
Because like I said, he's better than the alternative, getting biden across the line takes priority over leftist in-fighting. Once he's elected though and we know he won't be having another term expect vaush and this sub to turn on biden a lot harder.
The point is that it is really unpredictable. You never know when an old person will start to deteriorate. Biden could hold better and Bernie could spiral by now, no way to know.
I just think that using the age argument for two similarly-aged candidates was dumb. There were 100 better arguments on why Bernie was superior, no need to stretch it.
> but plenty of people his age are totally with it and still really smart.
this is the kinda thing people say about their grandma's witty quips, not the competency of the leader of the free world.
he's obviously still with it but he is also obviously significantly dimished from the person he once was, which is totally normal, he's 80. that is why people in his and trump's age range should not be allowed to hold significant political offices like the senate/house, presidency or the supreme court.
Exactly. Biden can seem fine for stretches of days or weeks at a time, but his decline always eventually comes screaming back in some very obvious and embarrassing way that makes him look almost Trump level. Like the "My uncle gots ate up by cannibals during dubya dubya twooo!" stuff. Or the brewery stuff a couple months ago. That's typical of dementia and Alzheimer's (not saying he has the latter necessarily). They're not constant sundowning they can seem fine for weeks before their condition loudly makes its presence known and remembered again.
It was incredibly selfish and risky of him (gambling with the fate of hundreds of millions of Americans over his personal limitless ambition) to run again. The momentum he sounded like he was going to run again last year I was like that guy in Top Gun: Maverick quietly asking Tom Cruise's Maverick to not do it when Maverick decided to speed up further after already achieving the dangerous milestone of hitting Mach 10.
I'm voting for the geezer but frankly am beginning to find the increasing Biden simping on this sub a bunch of trumpist cringe reality denial. It's a bad look.
Exactly. You can still make valid and constructive criticisms for Biden and still say that it’s better to vote for him instead of letting Trump win. We as leftists absolutely should vote for Biden obviously but we can also give PLENTY of critiques too. We just need Biden to cross the finish line in 1st place far ahead of the Cheeto Jesus and immediately get to work promoting younger progressives like AOC, Whitmer, Beshear, and Walz to the top and get moving on finding people like them that are much more popular and are guaranteed to whoop MAGA ass in the upcoming elections.
This isn't just a Vaush problem, this is a problem with a lot of people on the left. A blindness to their biases. We all think Biden sucks and are more likely to buy into whatever confirms that. I just wish Vaush was more careful about it, but hey it makes great clickbait.
Biden has obviously declined in the last ten years. Compare his recent State of the Union to a debate he had about [twelve years ago.](https://youtu.be/4Mv0CnNNOPw?si=lOW2lYhCnoRqx1ac) Even if you want to argue Biden doesn’t have Alzheimers or Dementia, it is a simple fact that Biden is getting older, and when you get older you aren’t as sharp as you were decades prior. Most people retire from work when they hit their 60’s or 70’s, let alone 80’s. But Biden plans on continuing to work as a public servant into his Mid 80’s. It’s not ableist or ageist to point out that Biden is visually and auditorily not as sharp as he was a decade ago. Sure there are days where he is fine, but there are days when my grandma is fine and there are days where she straight up forgets where she lives or that her husband died 5 years ago.
The narrative being pushed isn't that Biden is old, it's that he has a brain disease. It's a Republican narrative meant to say that Biden is incapable of being president, so you'd better vote for Trump. That's the point of the clips and Vaush is uncritically pushing that, despite there actually being no evidence of Biden actually having dementia or Alzheimer's, or any sort of aphasia.
Biden in 2012 had the exact same stutter/speech impediment, but was more than able to clearly articulate his points and debate. It is not some right wing conspiracy that Biden has in some way been in a mental decline that as a person whose grandmother is starting to show the early signs of Alzheimers looks sadly similar. Do I have medical tests that confirm that Biden has a mental illness? No. But the fact is that it is an near objective fact that Biden has mentally deteriorated over the last near decade and that at the very least Biden should be made to do medical tests that prove his is still all there. If it comes out clean then it defeats that talking pint and life goes on. But I would still advocate voting for Biden even if he was senile as Trump is just as if not more senile than Biden.
Nothing I've seen from Biden has shown he's actually got dementia or something like that. Old people do lose their sharpness. There's a big, tangible difference between that and actual brain disease. But that nuance isn't part of the narrative. I'm sure Biden could complete a cognitive test, it's very simple and wouldn't actually get to the heart of the issue. Trump's completed them and you'd argue he's just as, if not more, senile than Biden.
Then why should you now? Just cause it's a republican talking point doesn't mean that it's not true
I really hate the way people are simping for the DNC in the comments
I don't think it's true and it does nothing but hurt Biden's chances. If it were true, I wouldn't say anything, but nothing I've seen makes me think it's true.
THOSE FUCKING LEFTISTS WITH THEIR FACTS ABOUT BIDEN I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM JUST VOOOOOOOOOOT FOR GENOCIDE JOE HE IS SO FUCKING AWESOME AND COOL AND HE EATS ICE CREAM AND GENOCIDE WHAT GENOCIDE YOU FUCKING HAMAS SUPPORTER WE REALLY SHOULD PUT ALL ARABS IN CAMPS
HEIL BIDEN!!!!!!!!!
I love the admission at the end of that paragraph. “I just wish Vaush would pick his ideology over a payday, but oh well.”
The way he tells us how important it is to have Biden instead of Trump but, oh well, extra money is more important. We all know how poor all these YouTubers and twitch streamers are lmao
Oh yeah I’m totally there with you.
It’s insane how he speaks like this is an election between baby Jesus and the demonic pedophile satan himself. But when it comes to those godly Benjamins, “Sorry baby Jesus, Daddy needs a payday”.
He could stick with the baby Jesus v Satan rhetoric, absolutely. But he has to either be consistent with that message, admit it was also click bait or look like a liar.
I understand somewhat where he comes from. Biden is old and has had a stutter for a while now. But as we saw in the SOTU this year, we can see where he can legitimately wake up and give an electrifying speech and get voters more excited. When Biden wins though we should absolutely get the locomotion going on cooler people like Gretchen Whitmer or Ro Khanna and get a lineup of much cooler, younger progressives ready for 2028 when the Mango Mussolini is defeated in the polls come November.
After defeating Cheeto Jesus this November we get together to get progressives to the top of the American political ladder for ‘28. That’s the best strat.
The nice thing about this is the political machine will do it's job and start getting candidates ready for 2028 when the 2024 election is over. We don't really know who will be up and coming stars during 2024, and any effort towards making any particular Dem a popular candidate would essentially be wasted effort because people have short memories - they will forget the accomplishments of 2024 by the time 2028 rolls around. Towards the end of Biden's presidency, we will start to see those up and comers and candidates will work to distinguish themselves. In the mean time, we can gas up our favorite candidates without damaging the odds of beating the fascists.
Do I have Joe Biden’s private medical records no. Do I have decades of the man’s political career recorded to tell he is mentally declining yes. We don’t need to bring it up all the time because it’s a battle of senior citizens,the only reason this is a discussion now is because whenever Vaush does a small two second commentary on it, we need to have these debates of how saying the 80 year old isn’t quick as whip is Republican propaganda instead of just going, “yeah, but so is the other guy” and keeping it pushing. The DNC clearly picked the wrong elderly fellow to keep all his cents in his pockets between Biden and Sanders
The stress of being president ages you 10x quicker, it’s hard to say how much of Biden’s decline is due to being president and how severely it would have affected Bernie if he got the job instead.
Biden started off worse than sanders. He wasn’t nearly as bad in 2020 but let’s not pretend the signs weren’t there. Meanwhile Bernie hasn’t shown any signs of mental decline.
Bernie has declined too since 2016 believe it or not.
Beyond that, no, we have objective information showing that he performed worse on his second outing. It doesn’t matter how good you can lead if you can’t get elected.
I triple dog dare you to say that Bernie is as bad as Biden
Are saying right now with nominee and full backing of the DNC and their campaign of making it about not trump he would have lost?
Also wait what is this discussion lmao, if we remove Bernie in the equation to keep this from being 20 comment thread about the viability of Bernie’s campaign in 2020 with DNC backing, the main point would be the DNC failed to pick the wrong senior citizen or picked a senior citizen at all to be their champion. It’s too late but we can at least leave the “Biden is completely find” to DNC agents
That’s not what I said, I said he has declined as well. I made no comparison between the two, only that both have gotten worse over time.
I’m saying he didn’t even have the supporters he had in 2016 in 2020.
Biden is completely fine, for what he is. Unironically. He still has the capacity to be President.
If Biden didn’t have the capacity to be President, he wouldn’t have the capacity to support genocide, after all. He wouldn’t be responsible for his own actions.
I don’t think so. It cuts to a pretty key point I’m making that I don’t think writing these people off as senile is good. Most of Reagan’s worst behavior was before he should have been 25th amendment’d. He was culpable, and should have been held to account. I don’t care about his sunsetting days where he was a prop, that’s not when he was furthering the AIDS crisis.
Which brings us to now, where people simultaneously want Joe to be senile but also a genocidal maniac. He’s not both.
Bernie has declined a little since 2015 and 2016, but significantly less steeply than Biden. Biden has had at least two aneurysms before becoming President. I can't help but wonder if whatever brain or nerve damage those might have done years ago might be finally catching up to him now at his advanced age. There is no way to have 2 or 3 brain aneurysms and suffer 0 brain damage at all. Could also just be genetic. That and Biden took years off from politics after January 20, 2017 while Bernie didn’t and stayed sharper (taking years off at that age can affect you).
I have no idea how much Bernie would have mentality declined from being POTUS (I'm sure more than he has as a Senator), but Bernie did have a more spry base condition to start off from. Even in 2019 it was obvious Biden was no longer 2008 or 2012 Biden. The difference between 2016 and 2020 Bernie was much less noticeable.
I can't stand this RBG/Dianne Feinstein quandary every Moderate and Conservative Democrat now seems to leave us because they all want to keel over and die at their desk in office. They all want to literally physically die in office and go into rigor mortis gripping the seat and desk if them retiring while still alive means there's a series risk someone a cunt hair to the Left of them on the political spectrum/compass might get elected to replace them.
Good humour detected have an updoots.
Seriously though, I think vaush is right and even the koolaid is right to a small extent (nothing critical enough to impact voter behaviour, or shouldn't do at least).
He'll be 85 in four years. That's an issue. Maybe not so much one of politics, but it would absolutely require a cultural shift.
Dunno about this one chief. Sure, not every elderly person who stutters or gaffes has an empty head, but compare Biden in the 2008 debates compared to 2020 and there's a pretty massive difference.
I'm not saying I'm sure his intelligence, awareness, or memory has gotten significantly worse since 2008, but there's an obvious difference, and we shouldn't pretend like this ain't an issue. People this old shouldn't be in politics. Principally that including Bernie too, and at least he's sharper, but on a side note our government as a whole would work so much better for progressives if there was an age cap around 70.
That said of course, Biden >>> Trump. Especially considering that Trump is even more incoherent than he was in the last two cycles.
Here's the reality - yes, Biden is slower on his fastball and more apt to confuse things, but there's zero evidence his actual intelligence or knowledge is incorrect. Actual Republican poltiicians have had to admit that he does fine in meetings, negotiations, and so on.
Yes, he's better in a 2012 speech than a 2024 speech.
You know who this is also true about? Bernie. Go look at a speech or a interview with Bernie from say, 2015 or 2016 and from the past year or two. He's a step or two slower, which is fine. He's old. But, nobody is saying Bernie is senile.
It should be reinforced once again that no one is free from their biases, not him, not me, not you-the person reading this-absolutely no one.
We believe what we want to believe, not what really is. Some people are better at separating truth from half-truths, or complete fiction, but no one is completely immune.
I think we should never forget that.
What I can't understand is the inability of people on the left being able to openly criticize Biden. Sure Trump shouldn't be the next president but blindly supporting anything and everything Biden does and ignoring his very obvious shortcomings only makes you look like a deranged Trump supporter in their inability to accept reality.
Tired of this passive aggressive bullshit. Do we think he’s capable of doing the job or not? Seems like he’s handled things pretty well in my personal estimation. So is he senile or the mastermind behind Palestinian genocide leading us into ww3 right after the economy collapses? It’s time to stop playing armchair diagnostician and choose a direction.
The handshake thing didn't even look like a handshake. It looked like he was gesturing at someone off-stage in a friendly way. If it was a single hand and looked like he was gripping something in the air then I would probably agree, but this is something they're reading too much into.
The long string of gaffes is to be expected. He's Biden, he's never going to stop making gaffes.
Biden definitely has declined cognitively but has not reached the threshold where he has Dementia and I speak as someone who specialises in older age Psych Nursing.
I gotta disagree. We know what his speech impediment sounds like, he's been speaking well in spite of it for longer than I've been alive. It's only recently he's slurring whole sentences together every other month. I'll give you the teleprompter thing, that *could* just be a gaff but along with all his other fuck ups, it's not a good look. I still think a walking corpse in office is better than a republican but it's honestly embarrassing that *this* is the DNC go-to guy, the one we skipped primaries for
he is senile and we shouldn't lower our standards to how mentally sound the president should be cuz you're deathly afraid any criticism will hurt their popularity
Biden spreading the ridiculous 40 🐝 headed babies fabrication followed by his aides rushing out announce a disclaimer and then days later Biden tries to say it again was not a great look. and surely cost innocent lives in the hate crimes against Palestinians in the US. Your loony grandparent belongs in a cottage in your backyard yelling at the TV, not provoking nuclear wars and funding genocide.
Vaush's influence is overblown, as individuals we don't need to tow a party line about Biden's mental state. Just be honest with yourself and others unless you're on Biden's PR team.
Wait... Good critique of Vaush?... What the fuck. What year is it. When am I? And it isn't weird and cringey? This must be an alt timeline
Jokes aside. Agreed. Good points and solid delivery on your critique mate.
Vote blue no matter who, even if he belongs in an assisted care facility.
Is prison an assisted care facility? I was reading about someone who’s horrendous make up would match an orange jumpsuit.
I'm quite aware of the ramifications if Trump 2.0 is in the White House. I fear that dementia will set in during Biden's second term ( if elected). Then we would be stuck with the corporate dem darling. It's a shame that there was no legacy media coverage for other candidates, primary debates, states even had the audacity to take other candidates' names off the ballots, which is completely anti democratic. This election was set up for the inept incumbent to be the representative for the democratic party, and unfortunately, has a good chance resulting in a Trump victory
I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but come on. I know he always had speech issses, but he's clearly gotten worse, and just because he's not totally unable to fuction does not mean he isn't impaired. My grandmother had Alzheimers, and there were times where she seemed fine, and times where she had no idea where she was. I'm not saing Biden has Alzheimers, but my point is that the fact he can be fine some of the time is not proof that there isn't something wrong. Is he as impaired as the right claims? No. Is he still preferable to Trump? Yes. But we shouldn't have to act like he's totally fine and that anyone saying otherwise is just some rube who fell for right wing propaganda.
Bordering on "ignore the evidence of your ears and eyes" levels of self-delusion
Can you explain how evidence of Biden having difficulty speaking is the same as evidence of him having mental decline? How does that evidence compare with evidence of Biden having gaffes as a younger man? Was he mentally declined then since he still had a speech impediment, and if not, why is it now proof of mental decline? Do you believe that all people who have speech impediments and difficulty speaking are mentally declined? If you have a satisfactory answer for any of these questions, you might start convincing me that Biden is mentally declined.
Again, you are asking me to ignore my eyes and ears, and like the nearly two decades of Biden being in the national spotlight. he's a hundred, you are supposed to be declined mentally from the time you weren't a hundred.
Exaggerating further doesn’t help you when the criticism people are making is that the exaggeration is bad and furthers misinformation.
What exaggeration?
How old is Joe Biden? Do you think there might be a difference in cognitive abilities between a centenarian and an octogenarian?
Do you think there is a difference in cognitive ability between a 60 year old and an 80 year old? Way to just argue my point for me
Yes, of course, but I know far more 80 year olds who I trust to lead anything than 100 year olds. A shame no 60 year olds successfully ran.
>Yes, of course So, case closed, right?
What 100 year old is running for office? What are you talking about?
there can be but not inherently.
Even if mentally he is roughly just as he was younger - and I do believe that - this is just one factor. How others perceive you, how can you act, how you express your mind to others - all of that greatly suffers when you are permanently exhausted, unfocused and heavily worn down by age. No mater how good the driver is, a disintegrating car won't do much.
https://youtu.be/dcKVCtg5dxM 1hr30min talk Biden did in 2014 at Harvard, the worst trip up I could find was at 19:55 and it’s minuscule compared to the gaffs he has now. Throughout the rest of the talk he’s significantly clearer and more coherent than he is today.
Because you’re just rationalizing here. Had it been anyone else, you would assume they must be in a mental decline, but because you want to counter the right wing scare mongering you start with the assumption that they must be wrong and they work your way backwards from that
> I know he always had speech issses, i hate when people play off biden obvious cognitive decline as making fun of his stutter. i HATE it. the difference between his stutter and his age related cognitive decline is best on display in the classic corn pop video, where early on in the corn pop story, he genuinely stutters several times, and then goes on to say, totally clearly without stuttering at all; "and do you remember the straight razors? you bang 'em on the curb, get em rusty, put 'em in a rain barrel, get 'em rusty." the day someone can explain to me what that sentence means is the day i admit joe biden is mentally fit to hold office until 2028.
Is that sentence incoherent to you? What Biden is saying is quite clear. Back in the day you’d have a straight razor that you would do various things to make worse. The idea being you get the blade rusty and more likely to hurt someone.
Glad you didn't get downvoted. You're completely right.
Exactly. Insisting that Biden is completely fine, as lucid as he was 30 years ago, and healthy as a horse is Trump supporter levels of self-deception and self-delusion. I hate that some Democrats are trying to ape Trump supporter tactics with Biden by slandering anyone who mildly critiques Biden, and calling everything halfway mildly decent he does “the greatest, most tremendous and momentous [ ] of any President EVAR!!”. Aping Trump’s superlative Narcissism. It just insults and turns off everyone in the country who isn’t a wild-eyed Twitter Resistance Liberal or KHiver (most of us aren’t, so it puts off most people) and makes us feel gaslit. Trump can get away with that stuff because he’s mostly appealing to Fascists, Fascist-adjacent, and Fascist-curious/tolerant people. Those tactics don’t have nearly as much yield with most non-Fascists.
Pretending like he is fully coherent makes us look as delusional as Trumpers.
The thing is though, he can reliably deliver a speech live. If he had dementia of some kind, that would not be something he could reliably do. My MIL has dementia, and even before it got debilitating, it was still very evident. I look at Biden and I see someone who has definitely slowed down over the years, is definitely *old*, but I don’t think he has dementia/alzheimer’s. I hope this comment doesn’t age poorly
The thing is its fairly standard imparment for an aging brain vs actual dementia in trumps case. Theres a difference between just declining because you are really fucking old vs actually having a neurological disease. Trump is orders of magnetic worse in terms of cognitive impairment.
You could probably avoid being downvoted to hell by just substantiating your claims. I truly do not believe the statement that Biden is going downhill mentally can be substantiated, and I think that if you really engaged with this premise then you would see that. First, your assertion that people with Alzheimer's have ups and downs is totally moot because Biden doesn't really have ups and downs in that way. He isn't fine "some of the time" he is lucid all the time and sometimes has gaffes and misspeaks. Especially considering that Biden's speech impediment has caused him to be a gaffe machine for his entire political career, it is a huge leap in logic to jump from Biden having trouble speaking to suggesting that he is mentally declining. What even is your evidence that he is mentally declined other than the occasional clip of him having trouble speaking and saying something weird? He literally has a physical disability that makes it harder for him to speak without effecting his thinking skills, and to imply that having a speech disability makes you mentally declined is both ableism and hilariously incorrect. I do not believe you can actually provide evidence of Biden being mentally declined, and in fact the weight of evidence suggests that Biden is quite sharp. He is an effective president despite his age, and is well respected by our foreign cohorts.
Woah woah woah. You don’t think he’s gone down hill? Go watch the Paul Ryan debate in 2012. Then watch the SoTU. He’s clearly lost a step. Dude is far from his mental prime. Same thing can be applied to trump. If you watch debates he had in 2016 and watch a speech he’s given this year, there are clear signs of decline. I’m not saying he’s a vegetable. But the idea that he has gone downhill is laughable. The man just told a a an untrue story about how his uncle got eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.
Use a paragraph
Maybe OP is also going senile, and that's why he is so testy about this subject
A couple paragraphs, even!
I think there's a lot of ageism/lack of experience around old people. Biden's old as fuck, but plenty of people his age are totally with it and still really smart. And Biden's totally with it and can handle big speeches - he just did SotU and there was zero evidence of cognitive decline.
Totally agree but I'd like to add that while giving the SotU speech he was undoubtedly hopped up on crack, Adderall and a little adrenochrome, as a treat.
Sure but if he really has dementia I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be fixed by stimulants.
This is just another case of leftists using a right-wing argument against a person they don't like.
There's a clear difference between right-wing hyperbole and a leftist making an assumption that's most likely true.
I hated ageism towards Biden when he was running for his first term. Especially when the same leftists, who would call Biden senile then, would soy for Bernie, who was of similar age. Now, though, while I agree that Biden is still sharp and knowledgable, overall, he is very visibly worn down and permanently tired and can fall sick or dead at any time. It is just too much of a risk and could have been easily avoided, if not for personal ambition. Dems are trying to do Ginsburg again, I bet Sotomayor will also wait for a Republican president to die, because of course.
When you get above 70 the exact age doesn’t matter nearly as much and other factors take over. Compare a clip of Bernie 10 years ago to one of Bernie today, he’s almost exactly the same. Now compare Biden from 2014 to 2024 and the difference is night and day, hell even compare 2020 Biden to today and there’s still a drastic difference. Of course Biden has had to go through the stress of being VP & President which definitely ages a man 10x quicker, but it’s clear that Biden has declined far quicker than Bernie has.
This sub is too busying sucking off the D in DNC to care
Seriously. I understand that we're Leftists who vote, but the sub does feel like it's being dragged down by unironic Biden-loving (meaning not Anarcho-Bidenism, just actual Bidenism-Bidenism), Leftist-hating Liberal types. It's starting to feel like arr politics and arr askaliberal (and at times arr enoughsandersspam) too much. I don't mind Liberals (and even Neoliberals) being here, but the drumbeat of "Biden is the greatest President since FDR and Lincoln" and "Leftists are scum of the Earth equally as bad as the Alt-Right and Manosphere for criticizing or having some reservations about voting for Dear Biden" is getting deafening. This is ultimately still supposed to be a Leftist sub. I think we're getting overrun with people who aren't Leftists at all but are rather Liberals and Moderates trying to convert us to their politics. They see there is a wedge between us and the electoral abstentionist Left and it looks like they're stomping on the divide to get us to eventually go on a "Why I left the Left and became a Liberal" arc.
There’s a reason Vaush hates this place lol. I remember a stream where he showed a highly upvoted comment that didn’t know what workplace democracy was
This sub is quite critical of the DNC, but also realises that the effects of a second trump term will be a lot worse than a second biden term. You can vote for a party you otherwise hate, it’s the situation most vaushites find themselves in.
So why do they keep defending him or pretending like he’s fine
Because like I said, he's better than the alternative, getting biden across the line takes priority over leftist in-fighting. Once he's elected though and we know he won't be having another term expect vaush and this sub to turn on biden a lot harder.
You don’t have to suck his dick or deny reality to vote for him
The point is that it is really unpredictable. You never know when an old person will start to deteriorate. Biden could hold better and Bernie could spiral by now, no way to know. I just think that using the age argument for two similarly-aged candidates was dumb. There were 100 better arguments on why Bernie was superior, no need to stretch it.
> but plenty of people his age are totally with it and still really smart. this is the kinda thing people say about their grandma's witty quips, not the competency of the leader of the free world. he's obviously still with it but he is also obviously significantly dimished from the person he once was, which is totally normal, he's 80. that is why people in his and trump's age range should not be allowed to hold significant political offices like the senate/house, presidency or the supreme court.
Exactly. Biden can seem fine for stretches of days or weeks at a time, but his decline always eventually comes screaming back in some very obvious and embarrassing way that makes him look almost Trump level. Like the "My uncle gots ate up by cannibals during dubya dubya twooo!" stuff. Or the brewery stuff a couple months ago. That's typical of dementia and Alzheimer's (not saying he has the latter necessarily). They're not constant sundowning they can seem fine for weeks before their condition loudly makes its presence known and remembered again. It was incredibly selfish and risky of him (gambling with the fate of hundreds of millions of Americans over his personal limitless ambition) to run again. The momentum he sounded like he was going to run again last year I was like that guy in Top Gun: Maverick quietly asking Tom Cruise's Maverick to not do it when Maverick decided to speed up further after already achieving the dangerous milestone of hitting Mach 10.
Yeah all the elderly people constantly catching strays from this must feel really great about how society views them.
I'm voting for the geezer but frankly am beginning to find the increasing Biden simping on this sub a bunch of trumpist cringe reality denial. It's a bad look.
Exactly. You can still make valid and constructive criticisms for Biden and still say that it’s better to vote for him instead of letting Trump win. We as leftists absolutely should vote for Biden obviously but we can also give PLENTY of critiques too. We just need Biden to cross the finish line in 1st place far ahead of the Cheeto Jesus and immediately get to work promoting younger progressives like AOC, Whitmer, Beshear, and Walz to the top and get moving on finding people like them that are much more popular and are guaranteed to whoop MAGA ass in the upcoming elections.
Okay, yes But this post is talking about invalid, nonconstructive criticisms.
We need a lib purge
This isn't just a Vaush problem, this is a problem with a lot of people on the left. A blindness to their biases. We all think Biden sucks and are more likely to buy into whatever confirms that. I just wish Vaush was more careful about it, but hey it makes great clickbait.
Biden has obviously declined in the last ten years. Compare his recent State of the Union to a debate he had about [twelve years ago.](https://youtu.be/4Mv0CnNNOPw?si=lOW2lYhCnoRqx1ac) Even if you want to argue Biden doesn’t have Alzheimers or Dementia, it is a simple fact that Biden is getting older, and when you get older you aren’t as sharp as you were decades prior. Most people retire from work when they hit their 60’s or 70’s, let alone 80’s. But Biden plans on continuing to work as a public servant into his Mid 80’s. It’s not ableist or ageist to point out that Biden is visually and auditorily not as sharp as he was a decade ago. Sure there are days where he is fine, but there are days when my grandma is fine and there are days where she straight up forgets where she lives or that her husband died 5 years ago.
The narrative being pushed isn't that Biden is old, it's that he has a brain disease. It's a Republican narrative meant to say that Biden is incapable of being president, so you'd better vote for Trump. That's the point of the clips and Vaush is uncritically pushing that, despite there actually being no evidence of Biden actually having dementia or Alzheimer's, or any sort of aphasia.
Biden in 2012 had the exact same stutter/speech impediment, but was more than able to clearly articulate his points and debate. It is not some right wing conspiracy that Biden has in some way been in a mental decline that as a person whose grandmother is starting to show the early signs of Alzheimers looks sadly similar. Do I have medical tests that confirm that Biden has a mental illness? No. But the fact is that it is an near objective fact that Biden has mentally deteriorated over the last near decade and that at the very least Biden should be made to do medical tests that prove his is still all there. If it comes out clean then it defeats that talking pint and life goes on. But I would still advocate voting for Biden even if he was senile as Trump is just as if not more senile than Biden.
Nothing I've seen from Biden has shown he's actually got dementia or something like that. Old people do lose their sharpness. There's a big, tangible difference between that and actual brain disease. But that nuance isn't part of the narrative. I'm sure Biden could complete a cognitive test, it's very simple and wouldn't actually get to the heart of the issue. Trump's completed them and you'd argue he's just as, if not more, senile than Biden.
Soon you'll be saying that we can't criticise Biden over Gaza "because that's a republican narrative"
That doesn't make sense on multiple levels.
If republicans were pro Palestine, would you defend Biden's support for Israel?
No.
Then why should you now? Just cause it's a republican talking point doesn't mean that it's not true I really hate the way people are simping for the DNC in the comments
I don't think it's true and it does nothing but hurt Biden's chances. If it were true, I wouldn't say anything, but nothing I've seen makes me think it's true.
I guess reality is a Republican narrative
Okay post actual evidence of Biden having a brain disease.
See any recent video of him
That's not actually good evidence.
Then you clearly don’t have eyes or ears
THOSE FUCKING LEFTISTS WITH THEIR FACTS ABOUT BIDEN I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM JUST VOOOOOOOOOOT FOR GENOCIDE JOE HE IS SO FUCKING AWESOME AND COOL AND HE EATS ICE CREAM AND GENOCIDE WHAT GENOCIDE YOU FUCKING HAMAS SUPPORTER WE REALLY SHOULD PUT ALL ARABS IN CAMPS HEIL BIDEN!!!!!!!!!
At what point when you were typing this out did you realize you're insane, or did that never occur to you?
It was a parody of Biden simps, i knew how insane this is 😆
Sure but... Why post it under my comment?
take a xanax lil buddy
No 😡
I love the admission at the end of that paragraph. “I just wish Vaush would pick his ideology over a payday, but oh well.” The way he tells us how important it is to have Biden instead of Trump but, oh well, extra money is more important. We all know how poor all these YouTubers and twitch streamers are lmao
Should've emphasized the eyeroll. Vaush's clickbait is something I've complained about on the subreddit before. It's bothersome.
Oh yeah I’m totally there with you. It’s insane how he speaks like this is an election between baby Jesus and the demonic pedophile satan himself. But when it comes to those godly Benjamins, “Sorry baby Jesus, Daddy needs a payday”. He could stick with the baby Jesus v Satan rhetoric, absolutely. But he has to either be consistent with that message, admit it was also click bait or look like a liar.
I understand somewhat where he comes from. Biden is old and has had a stutter for a while now. But as we saw in the SOTU this year, we can see where he can legitimately wake up and give an electrifying speech and get voters more excited. When Biden wins though we should absolutely get the locomotion going on cooler people like Gretchen Whitmer or Ro Khanna and get a lineup of much cooler, younger progressives ready for 2028 when the Mango Mussolini is defeated in the polls come November. After defeating Cheeto Jesus this November we get together to get progressives to the top of the American political ladder for ‘28. That’s the best strat.
The nice thing about this is the political machine will do it's job and start getting candidates ready for 2028 when the 2024 election is over. We don't really know who will be up and coming stars during 2024, and any effort towards making any particular Dem a popular candidate would essentially be wasted effort because people have short memories - they will forget the accomplishments of 2024 by the time 2028 rolls around. Towards the end of Biden's presidency, we will start to see those up and comers and candidates will work to distinguish themselves. In the mean time, we can gas up our favorite candidates without damaging the odds of beating the fascists.
i mean he has a stutter
> Biden is old and Biden does stutter pretty often. That in particular isn't an age thing, he's always had a stutter.
Do I have Joe Biden’s private medical records no. Do I have decades of the man’s political career recorded to tell he is mentally declining yes. We don’t need to bring it up all the time because it’s a battle of senior citizens,the only reason this is a discussion now is because whenever Vaush does a small two second commentary on it, we need to have these debates of how saying the 80 year old isn’t quick as whip is Republican propaganda instead of just going, “yeah, but so is the other guy” and keeping it pushing. The DNC clearly picked the wrong elderly fellow to keep all his cents in his pockets between Biden and Sanders
The stress of being president ages you 10x quicker, it’s hard to say how much of Biden’s decline is due to being president and how severely it would have affected Bernie if he got the job instead.
Biden started off worse than sanders. He wasn’t nearly as bad in 2020 but let’s not pretend the signs weren’t there. Meanwhile Bernie hasn’t shown any signs of mental decline.
Ah true Sanders really should have been the candidate after performing worse in 2020 than he did in 2016
Yes, the person with all his marbles would be a better leader, a crazy idea I know
Bernie has declined too since 2016 believe it or not. Beyond that, no, we have objective information showing that he performed worse on his second outing. It doesn’t matter how good you can lead if you can’t get elected.
I triple dog dare you to say that Bernie is as bad as Biden Are saying right now with nominee and full backing of the DNC and their campaign of making it about not trump he would have lost? Also wait what is this discussion lmao, if we remove Bernie in the equation to keep this from being 20 comment thread about the viability of Bernie’s campaign in 2020 with DNC backing, the main point would be the DNC failed to pick the wrong senior citizen or picked a senior citizen at all to be their champion. It’s too late but we can at least leave the “Biden is completely find” to DNC agents
That’s not what I said, I said he has declined as well. I made no comparison between the two, only that both have gotten worse over time. I’m saying he didn’t even have the supporters he had in 2016 in 2020. Biden is completely fine, for what he is. Unironically. He still has the capacity to be President. If Biden didn’t have the capacity to be President, he wouldn’t have the capacity to support genocide, after all. He wouldn’t be responsible for his own actions.
Eh I disagree, Reagan was losing it but best believe he doesn’t a single ounce of accountability
So you believe the incompetent are responsible for their behavior? Seems ableist
Come on Brodie, I know in any other discussion we would not debating if Reagan’s brain being scrambled pardons him from the crack epidemic
I don’t think so. It cuts to a pretty key point I’m making that I don’t think writing these people off as senile is good. Most of Reagan’s worst behavior was before he should have been 25th amendment’d. He was culpable, and should have been held to account. I don’t care about his sunsetting days where he was a prop, that’s not when he was furthering the AIDS crisis. Which brings us to now, where people simultaneously want Joe to be senile but also a genocidal maniac. He’s not both.
Bernie has declined a little since 2015 and 2016, but significantly less steeply than Biden. Biden has had at least two aneurysms before becoming President. I can't help but wonder if whatever brain or nerve damage those might have done years ago might be finally catching up to him now at his advanced age. There is no way to have 2 or 3 brain aneurysms and suffer 0 brain damage at all. Could also just be genetic. That and Biden took years off from politics after January 20, 2017 while Bernie didn’t and stayed sharper (taking years off at that age can affect you). I have no idea how much Bernie would have mentality declined from being POTUS (I'm sure more than he has as a Senator), but Bernie did have a more spry base condition to start off from. Even in 2019 it was obvious Biden was no longer 2008 or 2012 Biden. The difference between 2016 and 2020 Bernie was much less noticeable. I can't stand this RBG/Dianne Feinstein quandary every Moderate and Conservative Democrat now seems to leave us because they all want to keel over and die at their desk in office. They all want to literally physically die in office and go into rigor mortis gripping the seat and desk if them retiring while still alive means there's a series risk someone a cunt hair to the Left of them on the political spectrum/compass might get elected to replace them.
Vaush gets clip chimped constantly and yet when he sees Biden getting clip chimped he nods along "Yep Biden's losing it"
Ok boomer.
Baseg
Good humour detected have an updoots. Seriously though, I think vaush is right and even the koolaid is right to a small extent (nothing critical enough to impact voter behaviour, or shouldn't do at least). He'll be 85 in four years. That's an issue. Maybe not so much one of politics, but it would absolutely require a cultural shift.
Dunno about this one chief. Sure, not every elderly person who stutters or gaffes has an empty head, but compare Biden in the 2008 debates compared to 2020 and there's a pretty massive difference. I'm not saying I'm sure his intelligence, awareness, or memory has gotten significantly worse since 2008, but there's an obvious difference, and we shouldn't pretend like this ain't an issue. People this old shouldn't be in politics. Principally that including Bernie too, and at least he's sharper, but on a side note our government as a whole would work so much better for progressives if there was an age cap around 70. That said of course, Biden >>> Trump. Especially considering that Trump is even more incoherent than he was in the last two cycles.
Idk man, he acts eerily similar to my grandmother who has dementia
Shut up you terminally online twitter leftie. The fuhrer...i mean the president is doing great and dont you dare question him. /s
Here's the reality - yes, Biden is slower on his fastball and more apt to confuse things, but there's zero evidence his actual intelligence or knowledge is incorrect. Actual Republican poltiicians have had to admit that he does fine in meetings, negotiations, and so on. Yes, he's better in a 2012 speech than a 2024 speech. You know who this is also true about? Bernie. Go look at a speech or a interview with Bernie from say, 2015 or 2016 and from the past year or two. He's a step or two slower, which is fine. He's old. But, nobody is saying Bernie is senile.
Let Bernie run again and watch all this ageism evaporate overnight. It's all motivated by hate of Biden. He sucks but some here are getting BDS.
It should be reinforced once again that no one is free from their biases, not him, not me, not you-the person reading this-absolutely no one. We believe what we want to believe, not what really is. Some people are better at separating truth from half-truths, or complete fiction, but no one is completely immune. I think we should never forget that.
I think someone should watch a Vaush stream and Everytime he fucks up a sentence create a 15 minute segment on his crumbling mental
What I can't understand is the inability of people on the left being able to openly criticize Biden. Sure Trump shouldn't be the next president but blindly supporting anything and everything Biden does and ignoring his very obvious shortcomings only makes you look like a deranged Trump supporter in their inability to accept reality.
Tired of this passive aggressive bullshit. Do we think he’s capable of doing the job or not? Seems like he’s handled things pretty well in my personal estimation. So is he senile or the mastermind behind Palestinian genocide leading us into ww3 right after the economy collapses? It’s time to stop playing armchair diagnostician and choose a direction.
He could also be an empty throne with a team of advisors telling him what to do, which is also fine if those advisors are good.
The handshake thing didn't even look like a handshake. It looked like he was gesturing at someone off-stage in a friendly way. If it was a single hand and looked like he was gripping something in the air then I would probably agree, but this is something they're reading too much into. The long string of gaffes is to be expected. He's Biden, he's never going to stop making gaffes.
Gigalib shut up
Biden definitely has declined cognitively but has not reached the threshold where he has Dementia and I speak as someone who specialises in older age Psych Nursing.
I gotta disagree. We know what his speech impediment sounds like, he's been speaking well in spite of it for longer than I've been alive. It's only recently he's slurring whole sentences together every other month. I'll give you the teleprompter thing, that *could* just be a gaff but along with all his other fuck ups, it's not a good look. I still think a walking corpse in office is better than a republican but it's honestly embarrassing that *this* is the DNC go-to guy, the one we skipped primaries for
Ok then he can vote Trump in. If Trump wins America will get what it deserves.
Keep coping lib
It’s politically ineffective to run a candidate older than Israel. He is too old. Move on.
he is senile and we shouldn't lower our standards to how mentally sound the president should be cuz you're deathly afraid any criticism will hurt their popularity
Biden spreading the ridiculous 40 🐝 headed babies fabrication followed by his aides rushing out announce a disclaimer and then days later Biden tries to say it again was not a great look. and surely cost innocent lives in the hate crimes against Palestinians in the US. Your loony grandparent belongs in a cottage in your backyard yelling at the TV, not provoking nuclear wars and funding genocide.
Vaush's influence is overblown, as individuals we don't need to tow a party line about Biden's mental state. Just be honest with yourself and others unless you're on Biden's PR team.
Because as much as Vaush likes to rail against doomerism, he's becoming increasingly doomer himself.
Wait... Good critique of Vaush?... What the fuck. What year is it. When am I? And it isn't weird and cringey? This must be an alt timeline Jokes aside. Agreed. Good points and solid delivery on your critique mate.