Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

This really sounds a bit of a stretch. Hillary's conditions were way beyond losing her voice. I can assure you that if Bernie coughed for one full minute and almost fainted in front of the cameras it would be virtually over for him. And no, I don't think Warren would have been treated differently if she simply lost her voice.

 

Bernie's older than Biden. IT's by the grace of Jobu that no one mentions it -- if he starts looking like he's losing stamina, it's gonna be a thing...

Go watch The West Wing episode "The Cold"...

 

As much as I love The West Wing, please do not use it as a metric for real-life politics in any way. Real life liberals have been brainwashed by it for 20 years into buying into neoliberal compromise policies. You're one of them, frankly. It's great television. Don't make it more than that.

 

My point. Not a peep about Bernie sounding like he has a cold- not just hoarse. He looked like he was sick/fluish. And that’s fine. People get sick. But when it’s a woman, it is reported differently.

And Joe’s memory was awful. He tripped over himself in Every. Single. Answer. Not once did he give a coherent sentence without an “excuse me” to clear up a stumble. How does anyone think that is going to look against Trump? Hell, he called Bernie President at one point!

 

I'm not talking about the policies, I'm talking about running a political campaign -- it drew on a lot of real world aspects for that portion.

 

Age/health used to be a bigger concern for me. I’m not as concerned with it as I once was. I guess I didn’t realize how much longer people live now and how able people are into their seventies and eighties, especially if they’ve been rich and active their whole lives.

I wasn’t very comfortable with all the speculation that Trump had advanced syphilis or dementia or that he was going to die of a heart attack any minute due to being overweight. Sounded like hysteria. He’s been an idiot his whole life. It seemed more likely he was suffering from the advanced stages of being an ignorant ***hole.

I think the idea of the job having some sort of minimum physical requirements is valid, but those requirements aren’t all that high. Can you put in some 12, 14, or even 18 hour work days when they’re required, without suffering a severe decline in health? What are the chances you can make it through four years of high stress without suffering a severe decline in health? That’s about it, I think.

Too often, concerns are really just ageism.

Based on the huge sample size of women running for President?

I’m pretty sure people lost their minds more over Trump’s health than Hillary’s. People were also saying Bernie was too old in 2016, too old to run again in 2020, and here he is.

 

I think he was referring to an older, highly influential--but now considered problematic--study referred to (and critiqued) in this NPR piece from 2018:

 

Indeed there is a huge number of articles discussing this topic, and those who defend him don't do it because he is a man, but rather because he is the centrist on whom the establishment is betting right now.
Alao, Bernie's voice is the first thing I learnt about the debate. I wouldn't say that it hasn't been covered extensively.

 

When your analysis is vapid feminism without context

 

Biden was extremely insulting by implicitly saying that African Americans don't know how to be good parents. Joe ain't it. Apart from that, he seems a little incoherent. Record players? Seriously?

 

Agreed that the analysis is without context. But also disagree with the assessment about Warren and copays.

How much more clear can “I’m with Bernie” be? She literally supports Bernie’s bill. She even talked about how all of that would be eliminated. She cited elimination of copays and out of pocket costs as why overall costs would go down under Medicare.

The thing about Warren is that she doesn’t come up with her own plans just because- she has no problem signing onto plans that she agrees with. And like a college professor, she cites her work- such as when she said she supports Jay Inslee’s climate plan. Heck, in the debate she turned mid-answer to Cory Booker and said “I like gun licensing” as you could see the wheels in her head turning on adding it to her own plan when discussing gun control. Bottom line, if it will benefit americans, Elizabeth Warren will listen to the plan and may incorporate it into hers. Quite different from some of the “plans” the other candidates spouted on stage and how they insisted theirs was the best.

 

Joe Biden is the nice uncle that inadvertently makes casually racist/sexist comments at family dinners and bumbles over his comments but no-one wants to call out or dis-invite him because he "means well."

That's fine for a family dynamic, but it'll lose the election next year. I had a conversation yesterday with a Trump supporter at work who watched the debate. Her comments:

"We're safer in foreign policy than we've been in years."
"Biden looks weak. People will take advantage of us if he gets elected."
"I like that people think Trump is crazy. I want crazy. If they're afraid of him, they'll respect us."

When I pointed out that having an insecure, attention-craving egomaniac as President makes America less safe by eroding trust from allies and harming intelligence-sharing (among other things), she shook her head and refused to listen. It's literally that simple for his base. Everything he does is genius and according to a plan. There's no capacity to see beyond that.

Psychology always wins over facts. Trump will define Biden early, and it will stick. I'm beginning to think that only Warren can legitimately punch through that. Perhaps Harris as well, but I don't trust her.

I'm starting to become resigned to another four years of Trump and a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

 

Harris is the only one that stands a chance against Trump.

And I don't think you should trust her; ironically I think I'd be more pleased with her ideology than you would. She is a Republican in many ways and is unable to see that through the refection in her bathroom mirror. She can't get passed her own identity in recognizing her ideology.

But Warren? She's too easily painted as coo coo at best and criminal at worst because of her Native American fantasies. I hope she get's the nod, because she will be the easiest to beat. And ironically the scariest if she became president.

 

I think we just got an insight into who J-Rod really thinks stands the best against Trump...

 

Quoted wrong post.

 

Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.

 

I listened to about the first hour of the debate. Absolute chaos.

 

Nah he's right about Harris coming off as a Republican. She's a cop. They come off as Republicans.

 

Keeping our military at home would alone do wonders in saving money.

 

People only ever ask for how things are paid when it's social programs, education, and healthcare. Never when it's for giving the rich tax cuts or spending on our military.

 

I certainly wouldn't put any stock in the appraisals of any in-it-up-to-their-eyeballs Trump supporter. Soft core appeal to that crowd (ie. the least offensive Democrat they'd never vote for anyway) is not a path to defeating him.

 

I feel the same way. It's worth remembering that Reagan was literally suffering from Alzheimer's while in office but he was still very effective at implementing the Republican political agenda and his vice president succeeded him. What's important is the candidate's politics and whether they are healthy enough to be an effective leader. My issue with Biden is not that he's old or even that he's prone to gaffs, it's that his politics are retrograde and his communication skills are diminishing.