When would be the most strategic time for the Dems to replace Biden? Two weeks before the convention?
For real if they want to neutralize the "he's old" attacks, all they have to do is run a series of ads that highlight Trump's obvious early stage dementia. The garbled speech, the replacing of names or objects by unrelated words, the rambling, unconnected thoughts...it's all part and parcel of a man whose gray matter is deteriorating quickly. In a way, doing that would be an admission of how old and slow Uncle Joe is, but it's not like they're fooling anyone anyway. Just have to lean into the fact that when you're in a race, you're not racing an ideal. You're racing the other guy. So as long as you can say, "I'm shitty but he's worse," you will always have a point.And in many ways it would be a more honest and resonant point than trying to pretend he has any vim and vigor left in him.
Biden is way more cognizant than anybody is giving him credit for. Through prior work, I have quite a few right-voting colleagues who have met him. These are consistent Trump voters who have ALL (begrudgingly) said that he was incredibly sharp.
That's encouraging to hear. Obviously, you run in circles that the rest of us can only imagine, so I would not pretend to have any insight on how Biden "actually" is. However, I would still go with the numbers and say there is a highly nonzero chance that he can't finish a term. At his age, there's an 8% chance of dying within a year and by the end of the term it increases to a 12% chance. Similarly, even if he's fine now, his chances of developing cognitive impairment accelerate exponentially each passing year. I find it downright hubristic to run for president at age 78 (a la Trump), let alone age 82. In the 70s, we derided the USSR as a gerontocracy, and Brezhnev died at 75!
From UN translators through John Oliver to people here, folks have been laughing at Trump's speech 'patterns' since around 2015. Why would it matter to anyone now?The garbled speech, the replacing of names or objects by unrelated words, the rambling, unconnected thoughts...it's all part and parcel of a man whose gray matter is deteriorating quickly.
I'm not talking about his halting style and general inability to finish a sentence. I'm talking about his misuse of words, which is quite a bit newer. Like saying "Pelosi" when he means "Haley". Or just a "grahgrahgrah" when he means "Venezuela." This appears to be accelerating, and my guess is that it's due to underlying dementia (because it looks like budding aphasia). Natural age associated cognitive decline doesn't usually come with aphasia. It's also possible I'm merely seeing out of context video clips, and he's usually fine. Idle speculation is sort of the point of the internet, I guess.