After receiving some positive feedback on a comment in another story, I decided (against my better judgment) to expand and rework it somewhat and make it into its own story in order to give it more visibility.
I’ve been a member of this site for about a year and a half. I joined because of the (at the time surprisingly) excellent Ukraine War coverage compared to mainstream news. I don’t recommend posts as much as I should, comment infrequently, and I’m often combative when I do comment, but I’m only human. The last 12 or so hours are the first time I feel that I've truly observed the bulk of Daily Kos's commentariat collectively lose its shit and jump the shark. Many of you ought to be absolutely ashamed of yourselves.
I'm not going to relitigate the debate last night point by point. I'm simply going to state facts: Biden actually debated whereas Trump did not, Biden did pretty decently at it, and got decent numbers with undecided voters in the process. Yes, those are facts, until someone has evidence to the contrary, and I’m going to yet again repost these tweets to force people to see the supporting evidence:
The media has subsequently characterized this as Trump “crushing” Biden. Yeah, the same media that blithely accepted intelligence on Iraq, still downplays COVID, hypes up China’s fake economy while also ignoring their role in the fentanyl crisis, and all that jazz. That media. You know, the one that brought us Trump in the first place by platforming him all throughout 2015 and haranguing us endlessly with, “But her e-mails!” as an October surprise. The one that has a vested profit interest in selling a neck-and-neck horserace narrative to keep eyeballs on ads. That one.
Hey, do you remember when David Zaslav said “Republicans are back on the air [at CNN]” last year? You think maybe CNN might’ve rigged the debate a little not just by not enforcing the fact-checking that they said they would, but by messing with the audio, lighting, and camera angles? You think maybe all that distracted Biden a bit given his cold and gave him a little more pause? You think maybe the rush to sell the narrative about Biden losing is to distract you from all that? I know, I know; maybe that sounds a little crazy. A little conspiratorial.
Hey, do you remember when Trump totally didn’t try to assassinate Biden with COVID at the first debate in 2020? I bet that would sound crazy too... if it hadn’t happened. (Trump would have died from COVID if he hadn’t had access to then-experimental treatments as POTUS. That is a matter of record. Don’t tell me he didn’t fervently hope it would kill Biden.)
Hey, do you remember when Trump rallied a mob of insurgents to attack the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempted coup d'état? Wild, huh?
Hey, do you remember when Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Senate Majority Leader threatened the President of the United States with making it a political football if he came forward to the American public with it? (Hey, Biden corroborated that. Weird, huh?)
Hey, have you heard about Leonard Leo’s Project 2025 that Trump plans to implement in order to turn America into a theocratic dictatorship?
Anyway.
For some reason, here on Daily Kos, a presumably Democratic-aligned website full of liberals and progressives, suddenly a lot of people who practically climaxed at Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this year—who maybe even own Dark Brandon mugs, though they would vehemently deny that now—have forgotten all about that and everything else the man has accomplished so far.
They’re suddenly so disgusted by an objectively decent 90-minute performance that they want to replace the guy who has spent the last three and a half years creating the strongest economy on Earth, and put the United States leagues ahead of its other first world contemporaries in recovering from COVID and adapting to the loss of Russian oil, in order to pick somebody—anybody!—else at the 11th hour.
They want anybody but Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the most successful and effective President since a little somebody you may have heard of named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You know, FDR? Ring any bells?
These people for some reason seem to think that reads as a really strong move to anyone with a functioning brainstem, and not as pants-shitting weakness. They especially think this will be true for undecided voters, independents, and Republicans on the fence for this or that reason.
I don’t really want to tell you about myself at all, but I’ve already gotten really tired of hearing all you liberals and progressives talk about what independents think as though you know, so I guess I have to put some of my cards on the table. I am a 38-year old, straight, white, male, college-educated Arizona independent from a military family. Only two of those things are by choice, and it’s the college-educated and independent parts. I don’t particularly feel like trying to dumb my politics down into a few words for your edification, so let’s just say I agree with you guys on domestic issues about 85-95% of the time, and on foreign policy and national defense issues I wish a lot of you would talk a lot less about things you clearly don’t understand very well. I helped put Biden in office back in 2020 by helping tilt Arizona blue. You’re welcome.
I also voted for Clinton in 2016, Obama in 2012 and 2008, and Bush in 2004 during my first time voting. I started my voting life as something like a neoconservative. I supported the Iraq War (a position I no longer hold), among other things. It was when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his Vice President that I truly started to become disgusted with Republicans. Paul Ryan and the floating of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House repulsed me even more. After seeing what a collection of traitorous, treasonous, hypocritical scum the party has become under Trump, I won’t vote for a Republican for local dogcatcher through to my dying breath. I’m telling you this because I am one of the kinds of people you need in 2024 to win again.
I’m here to tell you that all the people in all these comments sections who advocate for replacing Biden because of this debate are being dumb as hell. Stop it.
Biden said he “beat Medicare”? So what? Trump unironically called him Brandon without even realizing it and said he was 86 years old. We’re really doing all this over some gaffes and pauses, after all Biden’s accomplishments? You all do understand that the actual Presidency is not an episode of The West Wing where snappy Aaron Sorkin dialogue counts for anything, right? You understand that debating has essentially nothing to do with being President? Just mentally compare Trump and Biden’s first terms. Has Biden told you to drink bleach, or shine a UV light up your ass or through your circulatory system or whatever Trump was implying? Has he gaslighted you that you know what “covfefe” means? Has he gotten a million Americans needlessly killed in a pandemic?
One of these men is the most effective President since FDR, and the other man was the worst President in history and will make his first round look like a picnic if reelected. It will quite literally be the end of the American experiment. You’re ignoring that to privilege how a 90-minute screen test made you feel? Give me a break. You already know who both of these guys are from their records. You know this debate didn’t actually matter. The facts prove it. (The media endlessly bleating that Biden lost might change opinions, just like Democrats now hold as unvarnished truth that Obama’s first debate with Romney was a catastrophe on par with Pearl Harbor, but the former will not be any truer than the latter lie.)
Stop shamelessly embarrassing yourselves. You folks are quite literally the reason why the Democratic Party is often perceived as a bunch of bedwetters. It was already old when the first polls started coming out late last year, and it’s even worse now. Stop making the perfect the enemy of the good. Just stop.
Your guy is good. He’s strong. He’s done exceptionally well domestically, and actually pretty good internationally. He didn’t meet your expectations for an hour and a half on one night, yet to the people who actually matter because they haven’t made up their minds, he still did fine. There are also still five four months until the election and this will be ancient history by then. That’s a fact too, because if it wasn’t, Trump saying “I don’t take responsibility at all” would have long-since disqualified him from running, among upwards of 30,000 other things.
Stop with the rending of garments and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Lift Biden up. Carry him to victory.
Please.
I’m begging you: recognize what you have and preserve the Republic.
