And wasn’t he at Camp David for pretty much the entire week preparing for this event?
What in the hell were they preparing for? Were their practice debates that awful?
1 Like
I only want us to run the candidate with the highest likelihood of beating Trump. I would like to see more polling, but based on early results I am open to the idea that Joe is still our best bet.
If that is the case, and if we are rolling with Joe, I would like the campaign to understand why that is and focus the campaign on those reasons - people would be voting for the Biden administration and what that represents. “Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes, Joe is as vital as he’s ever been” is insulting.
And on that note, I really hope they’re working on The Case for Kamala Harris, and I think that pitch is “The ship will remain the same and keep going in the same direction even if it has a new captain”. Voting for this administration is still the right thing to do even if you don’t like Kamala Harris, just as the same is true about Joe Biden.
8 Likes
It is very hard to make that argument while simultaneously saying that Biden is the appropriate man for the next four years. They could have begun the ship captain transition 18 months ago.
It’s possible/probable I’m overthinking this because the voting public is a bunch of idiots, but it really does fail pretty basic logic.
I think it would be better than completing the campaign and the presidential term
Well, they didn’t and here we are. I’m trying to focus on what I think is the best thing to do now.
2 Likes
Well, yeah, you can’t do it on the honor system, because people have no honor.
Buttigieg unfortunately has probably been ruined. He should be in the Senate or a governor’s mansion learning how to win elections while accomplishing policy stuff. It will be really good for his career if Biden loses and he has to go convince some voters to hand him his next position of influence. Otherwise he’s going to end up like Julian Castro.
3 Likes
They had two good options
-
Say no to debate. When asked why. Trump will lie every sentence no thanks
-
Match trump lie for lie and laugh at him
“Inflation is down 87% this year and my penis is 10 inches long” then smile
1 Like
Right, but #2 doesn’t work if you have trouble speaking.
1 Like
Tough to do that in a Trump +15 state.
It seems like the least they can do in the convention is making sure all delegates know the actual rules and regulations regarding replacing a candidate.
4 Likes
Trump is saying the same things he tweets and in his rallies. Biden just needed to have a few zingers ready about the economy, covid, Russia,etc. use those when the topic comes up and completely ignore what trump said and go to Biden talking points if it didn’t come up. Most of trumps lies could be dismissed with body language, eye rolls, head shakes , etc
2 Likes
Right, and anyone who is a half competent politician could have easily jumped on those zingers. Trump threw out multiple softballs just waiting to be dunked on, and we got “uhh the idea that you could say that is just some uhh malarkey”.
4 Likes
As someone else said, it was like they had this decision tree of numbers and facts to counter whatever Trump bullshitted with, thinking that actually mattered and they’d zing him with that. lol dems always and forever.
2 Likes
I imagine after the practice debate Biden’s campaign manager being like a football coach whose team just got obliterated and can’t bear to watch the film, nothing to learn here folks, burn the tape and let’s just run it back.
Because I can’t bring myself to believe they actually watched Biden mouth agape like an elderly Cletus The Slack-Jawed Yokel and they were like yup, yup looks good looks fine.
1 Like
fyi—Skydiver is a gal.
3 Likes
No, The NY Times has been correctly covering the fact Biden is too old to run again for awhile now and Biden’s enablers conned us into believing that it was because they are petty, entitled elitists. Link:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219
1 Like
O’malley?
I’m just curious why you get to tell the technocrat what, objectively, is or isn’t a really bad take.
Why not just disagree and state your case?
The cult comment is borderline gaslighting, and putting words in her mouth.
1 Like
I think you have a bad sample size, even though I do too. I’ve been in development on a TV project for 6 years where every principal person has crossed from mid or late 70s to early mid 80s or from 80 to late mid 80s. I am hyper aware of each’s cognition, because of how important their memory is to events that happened nearly 50 years ago.
Here are my ‘findings’:
Principal 1-world famous AP reporter who covered the story soup to nuts and wrote the best book on it
I met him in 2018 when he was 81. Physically, he was on a major downhill slide by the time I met him. He was still driving, but was taking a ton of medication. He was frail and moved slowly but could walk significant distances in 2018.
His brain was still mostly there, but some of his cognition and computer related issues detrimentally delayed the contract for purchasing the filming rights to his book that was signed the day the pandemic was declared. He largely remembered the story well, but told me his damn brain had begun losing finer details he wished he could remember. If I’d met him three years earlier, he would have been a much different guy. During 2020, a person in the story died in a car wreck, and he called me late on a Friday night to try to help him find information about whether it was true. He was in full reporter mode and while the news was tragic it was fun working with him on it.
At some point in 2020 he had a couple of bad falls, one of which fractured a vertebra in his neck. This forced him and his wife (who is now 86 and I’ll talk about in a bit) into an assisted living house on the grounds of an assisted living place. It was just a bland house, with people coming in when necessary.
I finally got a window to come visit them in April 2021, after I’d received my first vax. It was a very fruitful trip where I dropped off a research filled computer I’d been trying to get to him since 2019. He ultimately never touched it. On my second day of visiting, his wife grabbed my arm and said ‘can you see how much he’s declined?’ I told her he seemed a little off, but it wasn’t striking to me…yet.
For most of the rest of my trip, which was going through bins to find anything related to the story to take back with me, I’d occasionally find things and try to drag a memory, or he would find something and ask me to help him find a memory. I’d have success answering his question, but it didn’t find the memory for him.
Physically, he was frail. He’d lost a ton of weight from his previously already light weight and driving for him was out of the question. He largely sat on the couch with a blanket in his lap watching TV, but could walk slowly when he needed to go to the bathroom.
My producing partner visited him in July, where he was told the author had liver cancer, which had not been diagnosed on my April trip. My understanding is you can still live through that cancer with even a tiny amount of liver left. That put an impetus on us getting his key interview asap and we arranged it for late August. His cognition had slipped more by July.
His interview had to be cancelled because of a health scare with another principal who was going to prepare him for the interview. We rescheduled it for late October, and it happened over 5 days. The first day was at a principal’s house with all the key people there to help him try to unlock memories. Some of it was successful some of it was not. His cognition was in major decline and he had a hard time remembering a lot of stuff he should have remembered easily. He was remarkably frail, but still looked better on camera than many in his condition because of his movie star head. If anyone saw the Ted Bundy Tapes doc, a contemporary of his was interviewed for that. After editing, I think the author will come off better in our doc than the other guy did in that one.
The walk to the front door was terrifying to him, but he was a trooper that first day and got through a 10 hour day. When it was time to leave he had another terrifying experience getting back to their car, where he had a hard time walking down the steps at the front door.
We determined the rest of his interviews would be done at his bland assisted living house to require the least amount of effort from him. That was a good move, because that first day had exhausted him.
By August, he was largely laying on the couch watching TV. He was using a walker to get around by then too. Other than cognition his physical seemed about the same from August to late October.
On the last day of the interview, he got our arrival time wrong due to probably a cognition issue. On the previous interview day as I was showing him footage at the end of the day’s filming we told him about a scheduling revision for the final filming day. Throughout the night, he couldn’t process the change and I had to keep correcting him. His wife was there as we told him the new schedule so she was aware of it as well.
A group dinner was scheduled with him at a restaurant for his off day, that he really wanted to go to, but his wife overslept and she didn’t have time to get him ready for it. Based on his energy level the previous day, we felt it was best he missed the meal so he could rest more for his last day.
When we showed up for the last filming day, he thought we were early and he was ornery. He had a loud speaking voice and we could hear his anger clearly from behind a closed bedroom door. Both me and my partner had corrected him on the time at least 8 times prior to filming but what he had in his mind was what stuck.
We scrambled and were able to do an unexpected filming with another key reporter in the morning so he could keep the original time he had in his head. While appreciative, he let his unhappiness over the scheduling snafu be known very clearly to us. That day was his best interview day, though he went through massive discomfort we had to help him get through.
One thing that speaks to a cognition issue is that as part of his interviews, we had the principals have conversations with him on camera in hopes of jogging more memories. At his second interview day in one of these he did something he never would have done professionally that I won’t get into details on. He was having a conversation and nice memory lane set of moments with one of the defense lawyers, and then he did a 180 degree switch like a light switch and went into gleaming eyes reporter mode and started grilling the defense lawyer. In it, he asked an extremely inappropriate question, that deeply disturbed the defense lawyer, something he never would have asked or presented in the way he did professionally.
When my partner walked the defense lawyer to his car, the defense lawyer let him know he was deeply disturbed by what the author did. My partner did minor damage control and thought everything was smoothed. We were attempting to come back in December to interview the citizen accused, but the defense lawyer hadn’t gotten back to us on it in a timely manner. I finally reached out to him in early December, and he told me he’d been slow walking that and not reached out to the guy because he was questioning whether he’d remain involved in the project due to what he felt might be a developing but nonexistent agenda that could damage his legacy related to the story. This was all because of the author’s cognition causing him to say something he never would have professionally if his cognition was normal. I had to go into personal full damage control at that point, and the defense lawyer remains involved in the project today.
We spent time with the author after his interviews were done and expressed our deep appreciation for his time. He will be represented across every episode of the documentary series and that was our goal going in. That interview day was the last day I talked with him. I called numerous times after but his wife always said he wasn’t feeling well enough to talk and I’d talk with her instead.
Then comes January 2022. The mansion where the major event happened began being torn down. Right as this happened, he began a major decline. He decided it was time for hospice to try to take pressure off his 84 year old wife. It was not intended as a death hospice. It was at this point we found out the citizen accused was in good mental and physical acuity at 88 years old and was amenable to doing an interview with us.
The day before we got the news the author went into a coma. I told his wife to whisper the news in his ear, but he had no reaction. On January 11, 2022, only a few days into hospice, he was gone. He’s the best example of severe cognitive decline I have and Biden seems nothing like that.
Principal Two-lead prosecutor in main criminal trial and a great legal mind
He was 35 in 1976, and has crossed into his early mid 80s since we’ve been in development.
He is slipping a little bit from when I originally met him, but it’s not in a usual way. Most of his cognitive issues are in repeating things he’s previously said (welcome to aging) and that sometimes stories can be a little bit like trying to wrangle a cat. His overall memory continues to be exceptional. We recorded his key interviews in January. He is still 100 percent there and considers himself to be a political junkie. As someone of a similar age to Biden, he makes fun of Biden’s foibles. He was D.A. of a major county I believe as late as 2012 that I believe started in 2009 (forgive if I got the dates wrong). After that, he stopped practicing law.
Principal Three-Prosecutor of last two criminal trials.
He was 75 when I met him and is now 81. He is still a practicing defense lawyer who still does capital cases at 81 years old. He is 100 percent there cognitively. He would blow your mind, by how much he is there. He has zero cognitive decline since I met him. This is the guy whose job was to prep the author. We recorded his key interviews in January.
Principal Four-Defense lawyer I mentioned above
He was 75 when I met him and is a named partner in a highly successful civil law firm with enormous clients. He was still the managing partner when I met him but has been transitioning that to his son over the last 2 or 3 years. He has had a series of health scares during development, many due to his large size and being a former professional baseball player. The most recent one cancelled his scheduled January key interview and threw the project’s momentum into a bit of chaos. We are hoping to interview him soon as his will be the most in depth interview we will be doing.
In the time I’ve met him he has zero cognitive decline…zero.
The wife of the author is now 86 years old. She has memory issues, but her cognitive decline is very subtle. She moves well and can still drive, though she has many physical maladies now. I would say she seems more on the Biden path, though I haven’t met him to know. She is not riding a bike but he is.
That’s my sample size over a longer period of time than what you describe of Biden. Biden is not on the author’s path, that is clear. Biden is seemingly not like the others either. The one prosecutor I mentioned with no cognitive decline also still rides bikes and ice climbs despite suffering several injuries during development doin these activities.
Biden is absolutely capable of being president and he is surrounded by the best doctors in the world if he needs them. I disagree he needs to step down or stop running. If he feels he needs to, I’d expect him to even with the ego attached to being president. It’s the only way we can make the Veep TV show storyline a reality.
2 Likes
Tl;dr
10 Likes