Is there evidence that this is true? Ive read that the US is actually not more litigious than some European nations and the idea that it is has been boosted by corporations that want to shift public opinion against plaintiffs (an example being the infamous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit)

I’m not qualified to say if this is accurate but thanks for putting in the effort to write it!

Growing up my mom didn’t understand this and always insisted that the sink plungers were the only kind that worked (she also called them toilet plungers) and that toilet plungers (the fancy kind) were some kind of trick. Took until I was in college that I learned you shouldn’t have to break a sweat unclogging your toilet.

Maybe, but nobody cares when you call them facists so I’m not sure what the best move is.

I do actually think the weirdness argument does probably play to the suburban traditional values types who want to believe they’re the normal ones and everyone else is going crazy.

I think at least some of it is because republicans already call democrats corrupt and criminal. When the dems come back and make the same accusations it just looks like bickering. Ideally the substance of such claims would matter but current political discourse in the US prioritizes sound bites and quips

Do you know what enthusiasm means? The article you linked has a number of examples of what data might lead someone to believe in the increased enthusiasm. Did you read it?

Feels like you could go after it from a campaign finance angle, not that those laws are particularly restrictive as it stands.

I guess this mostly means figuring out how to do it with the minimum amount of chaos, but the clock is ticking and I’m not sure what he can really do beyond deciding on an endorsement and writing a speech.

I mean nobody really wants Kamala but it sounds like that may be the best path. It’s one thing to have the president step down for health reasons, but it’s another to unilaterally replace the candidate after the primary as a response to bad polling.

If the second case happens you’ll see a bunch of pushback from democrats who don’t like the pick, donors who backed Biden, and virtually every Republican trying to portray the democrats in a negative light. That’s just the PR angle ignoring that there will also be legal questions around using Bidens donation money and getting a different candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

This is just a soft rent control which isn’t going to increase the supply of housing.

We don’t need this, we need to tax the fuck out of secondary residences and short term rentals.

He has been a terrible candidate though. If the polling is accurate and trump has a slight lead in popular vote, Biden has less than a 5% chance of winning the election (according to Nate Silver’s models). Unfortunately, this is probably optimistic as polling has overestimated the democratic vote in the last 2 presidential elections including the one that included these same two candidates.

True, but I feel like people have been talking past each other about this.

On the one hand, you have people saying Biden’s cabinet would do a better job than Trump, which is true. On the other hand, you have people saying Biden is going to lose to trump unless he somehow makes a dramatic turnaround in the next couple months, which is also true according to all available data.

The real question isn’t whether Biden is better than trump, it’s whether Biden would serve the country better by stepping down.

And he’s been saying for weeks that Biden is unlikely to win and should drop out

I don’t think we should fight fire with fire here. If the answer to Republican fascism is democratic fascism then I’m out

It’s not just the debate performance, it’s the months of Biden being sheltered from any unscripted speaking, his relatively sparse interview schedule, the Hurr report, his refusal to do interviews following the debate, his refusal to take any kind of cognitive test, and reports that when he does do supposedly unscripted interviews his team has been feeding the interviewer questions.

I don’t have any way to know what goes on in biden’s head, but if the debate was a fluke then both Biden and his team have been acting very irrationally before and since.

On the other hand, if we assume his handlers are acting rationally then we can only assume that they believe his speaking ability has gotten so bad that even at this point putting him in front of reporters will only make his image worse.

Also the debate was pretty fucking bad. Don’t forget his team basically got everything they wanted in terms of no audience, cut microphones etc. and they had weeks to prepare. Biden should have been at his best for the debate and his best didn’t seem very good.

I don’t totally disagree with you, but the logical conclusion is that if we get trump again and he goes batshit crazy the dems aren’t going to have a leg to stand on regarding the 25th amendment.

I’m worried that the democrats are playing the short game again and we’re all going to suffer.

And normally absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence, but the total lack of transparency is a bad look for an administration that supposedly has nothing to hide.

Two things though

1 if he can’t get up and speak coherently for an hour at a time I’d argue he actually isn’t doing the job. Communicating clearly and responding to crises at all hours is crucial to the job.

2 there’s little proof that Biden is actually the one calling the shots even ignoring his lack of public appearances

Bad take. Biden clearly isn’t up for the job anymore. If it really was “just a cold” he would be out doing unscripted interviews and reassuring the public that he isn’t too confused to work after 5pm. The fact that he isn’t means his team thinks it’s more likely than not that he can’t actually convince the public that he’s still with it.

Putting someone else in is a risk but keeping him in is a bigger risk. Models are predicting a 60-70% chance of trump winning if the election was run today. This ignores that now the trump team and conservative media will now be pushing the age issue constantly. Who is going to be confident in Biden after he hides away from the public for the next few months and then drops out of the second debate?

Last, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the Democratic Party giving cover to a president that isn’t mentally fit for the job. There was so much talk about following norms and respecting the office of president while it was trump in the white house, but now some dems are openly saying they’re ok with Biden being controlled by his cabinet and family. Even if it all works out and Bidens cabinet runs the country for 4 more years it’s going to cast a long shadow on future elections where republicans can point to Biden as proof that democrats don’t respect the office and don’t even care if the nominee is competent.

Offering to run instead of Biden at this point would basically be political suicide, so it’s no wonder nobody has stepped up. If Biden backs out though the math changes significantly. This is t a very convincing argument.