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Jun 28Liked by Timothy Holmberg

Honest, clear words, Timothy. I agree and like you was ready to vote for the best of the worst until last night! We cannot allow Trump to sit in our White House and represent the people of the U.S. again. Open conventions in both parties might alleviate this disastrous duo.

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Jun 28Liked by Timothy Holmberg

And then there's the support of Israeli war crimes thing

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Deeply saddening and disturbing. FDR interned the Japanese, Reagan turned a deaf ear to AIDS, Bush went to war on a lie. And Biden continues whispering softly to Netanyahu. They all pale in comparison to a second Trump term. If my vote mattered in this election, Biden would still have it. But I wont be deciding it.

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sorry. Disagree completely. I really do think that those watching the debate will be more impressed with the number of trump's lies. All we have to do is keep pounding on those lies--the debate certainly creates a lot of fodder. "If you know he lies, how do you know he will keep promises? Or even be able to."

This was ONE bad "performance" at a debate. If you look at the transcript you can see that he was actually making cogent statements throughout. Do we really think the American people judge entirely on who makes the flashiest, completely wrong, statements? If you do, perhaps we all deserve trump.

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I wish we could focus on Trump’s lies, but here we are. You can blame me, or David Axelrod, or a litany of other people for saying what we saw (the gall, I know).

A transcript? Repeat that to yourself while thinking of the electorate in the swing states that will decide this election. Or anyone really. How often have you gone back to read a transcript during a presidential debate or interview? I’m in the business of writing about this stuff, and I think maybe once I did.

We both want to stop Trump, on that, we are simpatico. We are both deeply terrified of what a Trump second term would mean to our democracy. We now need a candidate who can forcefully take that message to a deeply skeptical electorate, and perhaps a vision of a future for this country. That person should be able to defend that vision under questioning, and communicate in a way that doesn’t need a read back from a transcript. Because nobody, but nobody is going to go read one. And honestly, they shouldn’t have to.

Biden is no longer the person who can stop Trump, and I think his advisors have known that for some time now. Much like Reagan’s advisors kept his condition from the media. Which, if true, makes me a bit more than outraged that they let things get this far. This was not just one event. It is a collection of them. Gaslighting isn’t a winning campaign strategy in my view. Democrats have always operated at a disadvantage, because we generally refuse to blind ourselves from the truth. I’d rather we stay that way. Otherwise, we’d just be Republicans. And look at where that’s got them.

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DO note the date of my comment. Maybe by now he can't win, and maybe by now NO ONE will be able to win against trump. Name me that forceful candidate. I hope it's Kamala but the reality is she is a black woman and this is, lord help us, America. So how did we GET here? It wasn't the debate---that was one event at one time.

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Yes, I blame the press because it has been relentless in focusing on Biden only since that date. I am SICK of "I saw it with my own eyes" because I too saw it with my own eyes, worried, checked the transcript, and realized that whatever happened it was not actually incoherence. Like, y'know, checking evidence of what might have gone wrong, not falling into the media party line.

Of course people saw it and aren't going to read the transcript. It was the job of the media to TALK about the transcript as well as the delivery because, you know, evidence. They should be TALKING about his post-debate speeches, his energy. They should be pointing out that if the future brings actual decline, Kamala will be there to take up the reins. But no, they go round and round and round like a Chatty Cathy or the proverbial broken record.

How the HELL do you know what "his advisors have known for some time?" Have you spoken with them? WaPo actually did 50 interviews with at least advisor-adjacent folks, and the evidence they came up with took three prongs. 1> His gait. DO tell me how FDRs "gait" affected his abilities 2. His soft voice. Yeah, trump has proven to our own eyes that only loud people are competent. 3. BRIEFLY losing the train of thought and recovering "quickly." Have you never been thinking suddenly of a new point and then said "now where were we?" If so, join the angels.

What "collection of events?" Perception is guided way more than people think by expectations. Almost anything you see with your own eyes has more than one interpretation. There are multiple books by neuroscientists showing just that. Which media pundit has interviewed a neuroscientist and what has s/he said? Has anyone talked about framing and what being primed to see something does to perception? What we needed was someone to look at what happened, look at the evidence of actual inability to follow a train of thought, look at what might happen in the future, look at what is in place to deal with that.

What have they said about the more recent appearances? The main thing I see is "oh, a teleprompter." I have yet to see how anyone connects a teleprompter to the strength of one's voice. "But someone else probably wrote the speech." Uh, since when has ANY candidate written their own speeches? Even "ask no what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country

I wish the Stephanopoulos interview had done what it really should have--gone over the same questions as the debate lobbed, sans cold, and see what came out. But no, it was another relentless focus on ability without actually testing that ability against anything but attacks. I saw THAT with my own eyes, by the way. I SAW what Stephanopoulos was doing.

I am deeply saddened by the media playing with a toy that could well destroy the nation. It has SO played on the willingness of Americans to look only at the superficial--after all, that's what TV and "reality shows" does best. You are actually being TOLD what you saw with your own eyes, without any consideration of anything other than declining ability.

If anyone is gaslighting, it isn't the close advisors. It is the pundits. I don't CARE that most people would not read the transcripts. The transcripts are THERE and nary a pundit is telling us about them or discussing what they mean.

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I appreciate to notion of normative politics and normative journalism as much as the next person, but there comes a point where you have to deal with the reality you have, not the one you want. Trying to cast this a some stylistic issue trumping substance is a charitable interpretation.

Listen to what you are saying. Play it back without the glasses on. You want George Stephanopoulos to lead him through a sit-down replay of the debate questions so can have taksies-backsies? Seriously? Do you remember Sarah Palin? The media went in on what they saw, and what the rest of us saw. That’s part of their job. A campaign is VETTING PROCESS, not afternoon tea in the park. Stephanopoulos was doing his job. And in the process of doing his job, we learned that the president was not doing his job. He does not think he watched his debate performance after the fact? What? Really?

You just had the worst debate of your career. You want to go back out and reassure the public that lessons were learned. How? Was it part of a vitamin injection?

The media is not an apparatus of the Biden campaign, unless your name is Donald Trump, and by media, you mean Fox, OAN, and News Max.

The rest of us are just supposed to stand silently by and wave Biden 2024 flags while we whistle to the voting booth. Sounds like a plan . . for losing. Nothing to see here, move along folks.

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