Biden-Harris is the ticket. Nothing else is viable at this stage of the campaign.
The non-debate was a disaster and the media has made it a thousand times worse. I think Joe's brain is still working just fine, it's just that his mouth occasionally goes for a stroll without it.
If Joe and Jill think he's still good to go, then I'm 100% behind him. If he decides to step down, I'm 100% behind Kamala. She is absolutely electable.
No other candidate could mount a campaign in the 4 months before the election. There is no other choice other than conceding the election.
Margaret, I appreciate the topic of this column but it seems to me that there are more important issues. The American media is failing miserably. It's wall-to-wall focus on Biden's viability has left no room for analysis of Trump's own decline, lies, and lunacy during the debate. Nor does it leave room for covering the Supreme Court's decision to overturn American rule of law when it comes to the presidency or the GOP/Trump's plan for a revolution ("bloodless if the left allows it to be") based on the radical Project 2025. Then there is alternate universe journalism. Examples: Yesterday the Times had an article on how Trump's public comments have been restrained since the debate. This is a day after Trump called Biden "an old, broken-down pile of crap." What editor would green light a story on Trump and restraint on any topic? Also yesterday, the Washington Post had an article on how Amy Coney Barrett is cutting her own path as a justice. My goodness. This after she voted with the Trump majority to take away healthcare rights from women, give the president the power to use government agenices to go after political opponents, and to gut government's ability to regulate business. On the court's biggest decisions, Coney Barrett is fully aligned with the conservative majority. Again, what editors at the WaPo thought this was good reporting?
I agree 100%, Gary. There seems to be a coordinated strategy to knock out of the race the most centrist candidate who appeals to the widest range of voters and so is most likely to win.
As best I can tell, the US media wants to elect Trump. They aren't reporting on Biden's candidacy in a well-researched, big-picture, responsible way that promotes understanding of the stakes and the legal, financial, and political obstacles of switching. They're acting like a pack of unleashed hounds, baying for the blood of a fox they're chasing.
I also fiercely resent the media nullifying the vote I cast in the primary. They have no right to tell me THEY have decided that the candidate I want isn't allowed to run. That arrogance, that inexcusable hubris, has cost them the trust I held onto all through their blunders during the Trump years. I no longer believe in the news media's neutrality, research skills, logic skills, and ethical principles. (With the notable exceptions of Margaret Sullivan and a few individual reporters and pundits.)
Everyone should take a look at this thread by David Roberts on Twitter (X). Here's a snippet:
"Preventing a fascist takeover of the US is my top priority--as a journalist, as a voter, as a human. If it isn't yours too, you should feel bad about yourself. If you haven't made the stakes of this election clear to everyone within the sound of your voice, you should feel bad."
It’s moved from possible to likely. Harris is the only person legally able to tap the $200 million the Biden-Harris campaign has in the bank — a not insignificant factor in the electability equation. She’s also been winning supporters for the way she’s traveled the country arguing for reproductive rights post Roe vs. Wade. At 59 years old, she’s seen as a new, younger generation and likely to mobilize youth to vote more than Trump or Biden can. And then there’s her being a “person of color.”
I’d like to see her paired with Pete Buttigieg, because he’s even younger, has boundless energy, he’s shown he’s not afraid to go on Fox News and earned grudging respect for doing so, and would attract LGBTQ+ voters from all political parties.
But I don’t think it will be Vice President Harris on the ticket. I have a feeling it will be President Harris running for reelection with a new Vice President at her side.
Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular better watch out. The Kamala Harris few Americans know is a fierce and experienced prosecutor with a record of fighting crime as California’s attorney general. They haven’t faced a hard-edged prosecutor in an election fight for way too long. It’s likely she’ll eat Trump’s lunch.
Media malpractice continues and it is hurting Biden and Harris. trump had a disastrous debate but all the attention is on Biden's disastrous debate. There is absolutely no focus on substance or policies. The media and the courts continue to give trump a tremendous advantage.
trump showed little mental agility also. He evaded and lied but all that has become acceptable, as long as he doesn't stop mid sentence, which he also does. He just didn't do it that night. He frequently can't complete sentences and sometimes even words but the media overlooks it for him. trump is also a public figure but not held to the same standard.
Trump is bad because, as I say below, he is a blustering self-absorbed ignoramus who would rather dominate the conversation more than get things more exactly right. I don't think he's ever been much different. Biden on the other hand is a likable unique character who is now moving into observable dementia. That's different. A young woman interviewed on the News Hour last night said she's having a panic attack. That's how dementia affects people differently from someone who is just full of shite. It's an unnerving handicap not a character flaw. The NYT is managing this transition, so to speak, with anonymous comments from people close to the President inside and outside of the government. These close observers see this as something that has progressed in the last year or so. His allies don't serve the nation well by hoping they can get by until the election.
I'm not debating that Biden isn't declining. I'm not sure it's dementia though you are. trump is definitely suffering dementia as did his 2 parents and it is not being publicized which is the double standard. Here are the known traces of trump's dementia.
Trump has shown a "decline from baseline" since he first announced his run for the presidency in 2015. He argued that while the 45th president of the United States used to speak "in polished paragraphs with a sophisticated vocabulary," he now is exhibiting a "shocking decline in verbal fluency" and "often can’t finish a sentence or even a word."
"Typical of dementia patients, he repeats himself and overuses superlatives and filler words," Gartner said. "Based on his current accelerating rate of decline, it seems very unlikely that Trump could see out a second term without falling off the cliff and becoming totally incapacitated."
Second, Gartner pointed to Trump's failing memory as evidence of cognitive decline. He noted that earlier this year, he mistook former UN ambassador Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), saying "Nikki Haley" was in charge of security at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He also noted that Trump has, on multiple occasions, confused President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama on the campaign trail. While Trump's campaign played it off and suggested that Trump was just joking or that Biden was somehow a puppet of Obama, Gartner was not convinced.
The third sign of Trump's dementia is, according to Gartner, Trump's "disordered speech" that he said is typical of "organically impaired dementia patients." He observed that in 2024, Trump has exhibited a pattern of using "non-words in place of real words," like "saying 'mishuz' instead of missile, or 'Chrishus' instead of Christmas." Other examples he listed include "'President U-licious S Grant' (For Ulysses S. Grant), 'space-capsicle' (for space capsule), 'combat infantroopen' (for combat infantry), 'sahhven country' (for sovereign country) [and] 'renoversh' (For renovations)."
"As he deteriorates, these deficits will make themselves apparent more and more often. Now he can’t get through a rally without an example," Gartner told Kuo. "Cornell psychologist Harry Segal speculated Trump may be 'sundowning' and hence most vulnerable to going off the rails at night-time rallies."
Lastly, Gartner referenced Trump's pattern of poor "motor performance" as another reason for his decline. He pointed out that the former president has "shown deterioration in his fine motor coordination," noting that Trump sometimes "swings his right leg in a semi-circle as if it were dragging a dead weight." He added that he sometimes has "difficulty drinking a bottle or a glass of water without two hands."
According to DeVega, "The former president appears to be suffering from behavioral variant fronto-temporal dementia, Dr. Zoffman concludes, and needs to be evaluated by neurologists who specialize in the condition."
Ok. Thank you for introducing me to John Gartner, former prof of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and other scholars. My wife says she once heard him speak at an anti-Trump rally in NY. Their analysis of Trump seems at the very least credible and more thoroughly documented than the press and people's apocryphal observations of Biden. However, I can see why even a Trump-hating press was reluctant to push the analysis. It's made at a distance and not the average guy's idea of psychopathology. Seems unfair even to Trump. I found a recent interview of Gartner on the thinkbigpicture substack.
This is my easy, glib response. People may be normalizing Trump's cognitive pathology and pathologizing Biden's normal aging, but, people vote. In the last few years I've seen two elderly relations go from being normally sharp relative to their old selves to being a lot worse than Biden, but their journey looks like the same path Biden is on. No question that Gartner gives me all the more reason not to vote for Trump, but, Biden and his team should no longer ask people to deny their common sense that Biden also lacks the ex temporaneous verbal and cognitive tools for the job. I think a no-confidence vote has been in process for a long time but now it has been taken.
Again, let's give benefit of doubt to trump. Bandy Lee and a group of Psychiatrists differ. It is dangerous.
Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline,known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”
I'm not saying, give Biden a free pass. He looked terrible but I am saying there is clearly a double standard being applied to him and trump. I believe trump has dementia and he is mentally ill but the media is afraid to address it.
Hi Margaret. Paid $8 in hopes you'll read this short comment. I loved your work as Public Editor of NY Times. It changed how I think about the ethics of journalism. (I am not a journalist.) I believe NYT got rid of the position a year after you left to avoid having to face all the difficult, necessary questions you raised. On Kamala Harris: she cannot win because she has underdeveloped human relation skills. Her 2020 campaign, as reported by insiders, imploded because of this. Dems originally though that with her stellar performance as prosecutor and AG in California, they could leverage her as a law and order president, but when they asked around, they found she was hard to work with, so the party shunned her. After the first Biden debate, the invisible hands of big money abandoned her. Because Kamala seems difficult to work with, she has had high turnover in the VP office now.
People rightfully wonder whether she is being negatively judged for not being the "nurturing mother" image craved by America, dismissed because of this. It's a fair question, but the answer is no -- it's because she is hard to get along with. Her lack of human relations skills, of empathy, is a critical deficit. Every American President of the last 50 years has had this skill forefront. The candidates who did not have this skill lost: Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, both of whom were smart, dedicated, patriots and policy experts, were nevertheless unable to look into the cameras and transmit an authentic bonhomie. Biden doesn't have this quality either, which is why he barely ousted Trump in the first go around.
Empathy and feeling for America is not a peripheral aspect of winning, it's essential, and we don't see much of it in Kamala. What we see is a prosecutor who likes being in charge.
As an unpaid Democratic Party supporter and GOTV person, this matters a lot to me. I wrote a lengthy column at my Medium account on why Kamala will not win, if she is foisted upon the rank-and-file of the democratic party, the GOTV workers, which includes me.
Mehdi Hasan has no truck with any of this. He is a public opinion commentator who over the last 20 years has gone from right-wing to liberal and now is headed towards centrism. He's just floating on a rough ocean.
The Democratic Party Machine Operators have not gotten us affordable health care, nor raised the minimum wage. Instead, they have given us lackluster corporate democrats whose campaigns are funded by the billionaire class who operate behind the scenes, and who we finally see now because they want us to know they are not putting their money behind Biden. The DNC is playing car-crash chicken with them to see who will blink first.
DNS says "Biden" -- no one else, and is prepared to lose to preserve the tiny probability they can win, against overwhelming odds. Billionaires say "no deal," and are prepared to not fund the losing candidate. We're not doing Hillary 2.0 where the candidate simply cannot connect with the middle part of the electorate needed to win.
Meanwhile, the unpaid Dems, like me who do the grunt work to get out the vote (GOTV) have had enough. We're not accepting Biden or Harris from these professional elections losers who are working now mostly to try to hold onto their jobs.
Anyone can see Kamala has an edgy personality. Unless you are Bernie Sanders and can somehow spin this as a positive affiliation with American workers, it is a disadvantage which cannot be overcome.
All this is obvious to the 80% of us in the party that don't want Biden.
Read column here, about why emotional intelligence and relatability are essential to getting elected. Vote blue !!
I followed up and assessed Mehdi Hassan's argument endorsing Kamala. It doesn't make any sense.
He admits that either Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsome would be "preferable to Harris," but then digresses into the details of why Harris polls better than Biden (others Dems poll better than her vs. Biden), why Harris will get the "woman vote" (there are other women candidates who can get this vote as well), why Harris doesn't have Biden's Gaza/Israel baggage (all Dem candidates don't have this either), why Harris' access to $80 million funding inheritable from Biden's campaign (a mere 8% of the total raised by Dems in the last Presidential is not significant reason to choose a candidate), why people voted for Harris in the last Presidential (they didn't, they voted anti-Trump and she happened to be on the ticket) . . . etc . . . etc . . . etc . . .
While Hassan is digressing, the obvious question sitting in the middle of the room like the proverbial 800 pound gorilla remains unasked:
If Harris isn't the best candidate, why does the upper echelon of Dems and Kingmaker funders want Harris?
The possible answers all cause one to despair:
(1) Because the oligarchs want anyone but a younger progressive talent who will want to raise their corporate tax rates.
(2) Because the Healthcare, Warfare, Internet Service Provider and Food Production monopoly industrial complexes don't want anyone to cut into their profits (especially Health Care which during my lifetime will steal $400,000 total in excess costs from my spouse and me), and a Sanders-like candidate with populist political swagger might just be able to pull it off.
(3) Because the remote possibility that Harris might win, in which case the thousands of people in the employed in the Biden Administration would get to keep their jobs, is more important to them than having an Open Convention and risking the conventioneers choose a winner in whose administration they would not have a job.
Essentially, what Hassan says is "trust the leadership -- they're supporting the wrong candidates (Biden/Harris) but in all cases, one should defer to, and not question the authority of, your betters in the Democratic-Corporate-Billionaire-Political-Machine-Wanna-Keep-Their-Jobs-Complex."
Dems complain that Trump wants to be King, but behind each political party there already exists these billionaire-funder "kingmakers." At what point do we say that these funders are the actual king and that the president is simply their hired manager to keep taxes low on those who have hired him?
The emotion is forced, not natural, she smiles at inappropriate times. She is wholly disconnected from the narrative flow and emotional content of the text she is delivering.
Margaret, this is a big deal. It's not trifling. Trump is a master demagogic communicator. He knows how to trigger peoples core instincts and visceral fears and hatreds, their blaming impulses. Managerial proficiency, displayed by someone like Kamala, cannot compete.
What people will perceive, unconsciously, from Kamala is that she is afraid to share her core feelings. She's just "reading the speech." That's all. Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Obama, Roosevelt -- those folk delivered speeches. You don't read a speech, you embody it. Kamala's lack of emotional embodiment and her preference for the emotional safety of being correct on policy turns off the audience and will lose Kamala the election.
The presidency is not a job for the best manager. The president is a living symbol, an icon of hope for the future of the nation and people. Rhetoric need not soar always, but it cannot, cannot, cannot be pendantic.
I think the real question here is why anyone thinks Kamala can possibly win. The only people I see hitching their wagon to Kamala's are those whose employment depends on her success. At the grass roots of the party, we are dismayed.
It's taking me a while, but I'm coming around to a Harris/somebody ticket, and that that "somebody" should also be a woman, say Gretchen Whitmer or Amy Klobuchar.
Watching the debate, I realized I didn't know how President Biden could win after that performance. He's made little effort to change that impression in the ensuing days.
Trump's repeatedly ignoring questions and his seemingly endless string of ridiculous lies should receive equal attention to Biden's performance, but hasn't. Both performances were an embarrassment to the United States.
I saw the VP here in Las Vegas the morning after the debate and she was a pleasant surprise, but she was a remarkablely terrible presidential candidate in the 2020 cycle. If I recall correctly, she burned through tens of millions of dollars and couldn't even get into the starting gate, let alone out of it.
Margaret, it's not a question of Kamala learning anything new and external about "how to run campaigns". Read my column. It's a question of Kamala not having a relatable personal presence. This isn't a gender thing. It's beyond that. She'd make a great AG of the United States where you go after the bad guys. The president must have a warm, friendly countenance to be elected. It's that simple. Kamala, unfortunately doesn't exude this.
I believe we should have had a woman president by now. I initially supported Elizabeth Warren in 2020 for that reason. But Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly chose Biden that year, and that's how democracy works. Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly chose him again as their nominee for 2024 (anyone could have challenged him for the nomination, and Dean Phillips did), even though the same age questions that have caused hysteria since the debate were on people's minds then. That's how democracy works.
Yet, the D.C. commentariat, and to some extent the mainstream media as a whole, now want us to believe that the only way to save American democracy is to upend the democratic process that chose Biden as the party's nominee (after what by any objective standard has been a successful and accomplished first term) and allow party elites (with the elite media's sage guidance of course) to choose a different person, because the voters were too stupid to do the right thing in 2020 and 2024. That is the height of media arrogance and an insult to voters and everyone who values and practices democracy! If Biden and his closest advisers decide he is not up to the job for another four years, he should by all means step down and hand the baton to Harris. Absent that, the voters have spoken, and he should remain the nominee. We're not saving democracy by going back to the days of smoke-filled rooms where the elite, powerful and privileged pick our candidates for us because they think we're too stupid to do it ourselves.
For all the talk of Biden's incoherence, what has been equally incoherent in my opinion has been the media hysteria that has followed the debate.
Margaret, did you read the alarmist WaPo piece headlined "Biden’s aging is seen as accelerating; lapses described as more common"? When you actually read the article, you see that opinion is about evenly split between named sources who say they have seen no deterioration in Biden's cognitive abilities and unnamed ones (who should carry less credibility) who say they have seen evidence of "accelerated" aging. Yet, the headline indicates that the consensus is that Biden is starting to lose it. To me, that is irresponsible journalism and symbolic of the embarrassing display we've seen from the MSM over the past two weeks. I'm sure the reality is that there are times when Biden shows cognitive lapses as a result of the normal role of aging, particularly when he's fatigued and needs more rest, but on the whole, the evidence indicates that he's performing the job as well as any 81-year-old could be expected, with his experience and wisdom (that are a direct benefit of his age) largely offsetting any lapses resulting from his age. But that's not the neat, tidy, "the sky is falling" narrative the media wants. Nuance has never been a strong suit of media political coverage, but in the era of clickbait journalism, it's pretty much non-existent.
The major media wants maga. If Biden steps out of the race, the media will be relentless in pursuing their assault on any Democrat selected.
Harris - lacks experience. Buttigieg - gay. And so on - all the while ignoring agent orange’s felony conviction, civil finding of rape, tax fraud conviction, the deaths he caused by his handling of the pandemic - to name just a few. The media is also failing to underscore the impact of kevin roberts and his pet project 2025 as well as extreme white christian nationalism.
My sense is that it is either Biden/Harris or we step off the cliff for a dark future. And the anti-Biden media will be dumped on day one if maga gets into the White House.
Margaret, as I listen to the incessant questions about Biden’s fitness - and see headline after headline on the same topic, I think about Newsroom Confidential and your reaction to the incessant email coverage. While I acknowledge I would prefer there had been a younger candidate- how can we possibly change at this late date without creating chaos? Do you think we can? Some will be angry, not vote. Joe Biden has done a great job. This whole thing is such a gift to the Republicans.
Maura Healey. Why am I qualified to have an opinion? I'm a conservative from Massachusetts who cannot bear the thought of the blustering self-absorbed ignoramus being on the public stage after November unless kept there by talentless journalists who can't move on. Maura Healey is someone who checks all the Democrat and liberal boxes but is also smart, experienced, earned her way up, unlike Harris, and seems always surprisingly level-headed. A good careful communicator but not a performer. As such, she would have wide appeal, both to the real Democrat base and to the swing voters who would risk a vote for Trump rather than vote for Biden, Harris or Newsome. She's smarter than Whitmer, and, I don't think anyone who would otherwise swing to her would hesitate because she's not a mom. I think they might prefer her because of her gender identity, in the traditional sense of term.
This last point would be the question. Another politician who is a Mom vs an interesting person because she thinks. Like JFK?
To address the topic of your posting, at least Biden has an excuse for his handicap.
Unfortunately, I do not think VPOTUS is electable. If, and I still think it’s unlikely, President Biden decides that the electoral risks favor his withdrawal, I cannot imagine he’d do it if it sets off a free for all. That’s certain defeat in the fall, IMO. A leadership coordinated strategy would need to happen. In that event, I think the most skilled, qualified, vetted, and electable substitute is being almost universally dismissed by pundits. That person is, of course, Hillary R Clinton. I believe that Democrats and many, many independents would unite to support her in this electoral (ex post RvW) environment.
No doubt…initially. And it would be explosive! Internationally, too. But, after the first or second news cycle, what’s next? HRC bests Trump on every issue (incl age). Everything that could be used against her is VERY old news. Most (if not all) of the past, successful attacks either disproven or de-fused over the years. If RvW is *the* issue this election, who’s better prepared than HRC to make the case and GOTV?
Again, I think Joe’s the candidate, and I hope no change is needed, but HRC is by far the best, safest, most unifying Dem alternative for a successful election…and administration.
Is Kamala Harris electable? Didn’t that ship sail in the 2020 Democratic primaries? (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/03/kamala-harris-drops-out-democratic-2020-presidential-race-reports?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) How about a candidate with demonstrated leadership skills and executive experience, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? Her positions on the substantive issues facing our country are supported by the vast majority of Americans. There is no better or more important time in our nation's history for a woman to run for President, and Governor Whitmer has a better prospect of defeating Donald Trump than anyone else, male or female.
Biden-Harris is the ticket. Nothing else is viable at this stage of the campaign.
The non-debate was a disaster and the media has made it a thousand times worse. I think Joe's brain is still working just fine, it's just that his mouth occasionally goes for a stroll without it.
If Joe and Jill think he's still good to go, then I'm 100% behind him. If he decides to step down, I'm 100% behind Kamala. She is absolutely electable.
No other candidate could mount a campaign in the 4 months before the election. There is no other choice other than conceding the election.
Yes, VP Harris is electable particularly at this moment in our history.
Margaret, I appreciate the topic of this column but it seems to me that there are more important issues. The American media is failing miserably. It's wall-to-wall focus on Biden's viability has left no room for analysis of Trump's own decline, lies, and lunacy during the debate. Nor does it leave room for covering the Supreme Court's decision to overturn American rule of law when it comes to the presidency or the GOP/Trump's plan for a revolution ("bloodless if the left allows it to be") based on the radical Project 2025. Then there is alternate universe journalism. Examples: Yesterday the Times had an article on how Trump's public comments have been restrained since the debate. This is a day after Trump called Biden "an old, broken-down pile of crap." What editor would green light a story on Trump and restraint on any topic? Also yesterday, the Washington Post had an article on how Amy Coney Barrett is cutting her own path as a justice. My goodness. This after she voted with the Trump majority to take away healthcare rights from women, give the president the power to use government agenices to go after political opponents, and to gut government's ability to regulate business. On the court's biggest decisions, Coney Barrett is fully aligned with the conservative majority. Again, what editors at the WaPo thought this was good reporting?
I take your point.
I agree 100%, Gary. There seems to be a coordinated strategy to knock out of the race the most centrist candidate who appeals to the widest range of voters and so is most likely to win.
As best I can tell, the US media wants to elect Trump. They aren't reporting on Biden's candidacy in a well-researched, big-picture, responsible way that promotes understanding of the stakes and the legal, financial, and political obstacles of switching. They're acting like a pack of unleashed hounds, baying for the blood of a fox they're chasing.
I also fiercely resent the media nullifying the vote I cast in the primary. They have no right to tell me THEY have decided that the candidate I want isn't allowed to run. That arrogance, that inexcusable hubris, has cost them the trust I held onto all through their blunders during the Trump years. I no longer believe in the news media's neutrality, research skills, logic skills, and ethical principles. (With the notable exceptions of Margaret Sullivan and a few individual reporters and pundits.)
Everyone should take a look at this thread by David Roberts on Twitter (X). Here's a snippet:
"Preventing a fascist takeover of the US is my top priority--as a journalist, as a voter, as a human. If it isn't yours too, you should feel bad about yourself. If you haven't made the stakes of this election clear to everyone within the sound of your voice, you should feel bad."
https://x.com/drvolts/status/1809313253664985304
It’s moved from possible to likely. Harris is the only person legally able to tap the $200 million the Biden-Harris campaign has in the bank — a not insignificant factor in the electability equation. She’s also been winning supporters for the way she’s traveled the country arguing for reproductive rights post Roe vs. Wade. At 59 years old, she’s seen as a new, younger generation and likely to mobilize youth to vote more than Trump or Biden can. And then there’s her being a “person of color.”
I’d like to see her paired with Pete Buttigieg, because he’s even younger, has boundless energy, he’s shown he’s not afraid to go on Fox News and earned grudging respect for doing so, and would attract LGBTQ+ voters from all political parties.
But I don’t think it will be Vice President Harris on the ticket. I have a feeling it will be President Harris running for reelection with a new Vice President at her side.
Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular better watch out. The Kamala Harris few Americans know is a fierce and experienced prosecutor with a record of fighting crime as California’s attorney general. They haven’t faced a hard-edged prosecutor in an election fight for way too long. It’s likely she’ll eat Trump’s lunch.
Media malpractice continues and it is hurting Biden and Harris. trump had a disastrous debate but all the attention is on Biden's disastrous debate. There is absolutely no focus on substance or policies. The media and the courts continue to give trump a tremendous advantage.
Presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and late night show hosts are all public figures. Presentation matters. A modicum of mental agility matters.
trump showed little mental agility also. He evaded and lied but all that has become acceptable, as long as he doesn't stop mid sentence, which he also does. He just didn't do it that night. He frequently can't complete sentences and sometimes even words but the media overlooks it for him. trump is also a public figure but not held to the same standard.
Trump is bad because, as I say below, he is a blustering self-absorbed ignoramus who would rather dominate the conversation more than get things more exactly right. I don't think he's ever been much different. Biden on the other hand is a likable unique character who is now moving into observable dementia. That's different. A young woman interviewed on the News Hour last night said she's having a panic attack. That's how dementia affects people differently from someone who is just full of shite. It's an unnerving handicap not a character flaw. The NYT is managing this transition, so to speak, with anonymous comments from people close to the President inside and outside of the government. These close observers see this as something that has progressed in the last year or so. His allies don't serve the nation well by hoping they can get by until the election.
I'm not debating that Biden isn't declining. I'm not sure it's dementia though you are. trump is definitely suffering dementia as did his 2 parents and it is not being publicized which is the double standard. Here are the known traces of trump's dementia.
Trump has shown a "decline from baseline" since he first announced his run for the presidency in 2015. He argued that while the 45th president of the United States used to speak "in polished paragraphs with a sophisticated vocabulary," he now is exhibiting a "shocking decline in verbal fluency" and "often can’t finish a sentence or even a word."
"Typical of dementia patients, he repeats himself and overuses superlatives and filler words," Gartner said. "Based on his current accelerating rate of decline, it seems very unlikely that Trump could see out a second term without falling off the cliff and becoming totally incapacitated."
Second, Gartner pointed to Trump's failing memory as evidence of cognitive decline. He noted that earlier this year, he mistook former UN ambassador Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), saying "Nikki Haley" was in charge of security at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He also noted that Trump has, on multiple occasions, confused President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama on the campaign trail. While Trump's campaign played it off and suggested that Trump was just joking or that Biden was somehow a puppet of Obama, Gartner was not convinced.
The third sign of Trump's dementia is, according to Gartner, Trump's "disordered speech" that he said is typical of "organically impaired dementia patients." He observed that in 2024, Trump has exhibited a pattern of using "non-words in place of real words," like "saying 'mishuz' instead of missile, or 'Chrishus' instead of Christmas." Other examples he listed include "'President U-licious S Grant' (For Ulysses S. Grant), 'space-capsicle' (for space capsule), 'combat infantroopen' (for combat infantry), 'sahhven country' (for sovereign country) [and] 'renoversh' (For renovations)."
"As he deteriorates, these deficits will make themselves apparent more and more often. Now he can’t get through a rally without an example," Gartner told Kuo. "Cornell psychologist Harry Segal speculated Trump may be 'sundowning' and hence most vulnerable to going off the rails at night-time rallies."
Lastly, Gartner referenced Trump's pattern of poor "motor performance" as another reason for his decline. He pointed out that the former president has "shown deterioration in his fine motor coordination," noting that Trump sometimes "swings his right leg in a semi-circle as if it were dragging a dead weight." He added that he sometimes has "difficulty drinking a bottle or a glass of water without two hands."
According to DeVega, "The former president appears to be suffering from behavioral variant fronto-temporal dementia, Dr. Zoffman concludes, and needs to be evaluated by neurologists who specialize in the condition."
Ok. Thank you for introducing me to John Gartner, former prof of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and other scholars. My wife says she once heard him speak at an anti-Trump rally in NY. Their analysis of Trump seems at the very least credible and more thoroughly documented than the press and people's apocryphal observations of Biden. However, I can see why even a Trump-hating press was reluctant to push the analysis. It's made at a distance and not the average guy's idea of psychopathology. Seems unfair even to Trump. I found a recent interview of Gartner on the thinkbigpicture substack.
This is my easy, glib response. People may be normalizing Trump's cognitive pathology and pathologizing Biden's normal aging, but, people vote. In the last few years I've seen two elderly relations go from being normally sharp relative to their old selves to being a lot worse than Biden, but their journey looks like the same path Biden is on. No question that Gartner gives me all the more reason not to vote for Trump, but, Biden and his team should no longer ask people to deny their common sense that Biden also lacks the ex temporaneous verbal and cognitive tools for the job. I think a no-confidence vote has been in process for a long time but now it has been taken.
Again, let's give benefit of doubt to trump. Bandy Lee and a group of Psychiatrists differ. It is dangerous.
Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline,known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”
I'm not saying, give Biden a free pass. He looked terrible but I am saying there is clearly a double standard being applied to him and trump. I believe trump has dementia and he is mentally ill but the media is afraid to address it.
Hi Margaret. Paid $8 in hopes you'll read this short comment. I loved your work as Public Editor of NY Times. It changed how I think about the ethics of journalism. (I am not a journalist.) I believe NYT got rid of the position a year after you left to avoid having to face all the difficult, necessary questions you raised. On Kamala Harris: she cannot win because she has underdeveloped human relation skills. Her 2020 campaign, as reported by insiders, imploded because of this. Dems originally though that with her stellar performance as prosecutor and AG in California, they could leverage her as a law and order president, but when they asked around, they found she was hard to work with, so the party shunned her. After the first Biden debate, the invisible hands of big money abandoned her. Because Kamala seems difficult to work with, she has had high turnover in the VP office now.
People rightfully wonder whether she is being negatively judged for not being the "nurturing mother" image craved by America, dismissed because of this. It's a fair question, but the answer is no -- it's because she is hard to get along with. Her lack of human relations skills, of empathy, is a critical deficit. Every American President of the last 50 years has had this skill forefront. The candidates who did not have this skill lost: Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, both of whom were smart, dedicated, patriots and policy experts, were nevertheless unable to look into the cameras and transmit an authentic bonhomie. Biden doesn't have this quality either, which is why he barely ousted Trump in the first go around.
Empathy and feeling for America is not a peripheral aspect of winning, it's essential, and we don't see much of it in Kamala. What we see is a prosecutor who likes being in charge.
As an unpaid Democratic Party supporter and GOTV person, this matters a lot to me. I wrote a lengthy column at my Medium account on why Kamala will not win, if she is foisted upon the rank-and-file of the democratic party, the GOTV workers, which includes me.
Mehdi Hasan has no truck with any of this. He is a public opinion commentator who over the last 20 years has gone from right-wing to liberal and now is headed towards centrism. He's just floating on a rough ocean.
The Democratic Party Machine Operators have not gotten us affordable health care, nor raised the minimum wage. Instead, they have given us lackluster corporate democrats whose campaigns are funded by the billionaire class who operate behind the scenes, and who we finally see now because they want us to know they are not putting their money behind Biden. The DNC is playing car-crash chicken with them to see who will blink first.
DNS says "Biden" -- no one else, and is prepared to lose to preserve the tiny probability they can win, against overwhelming odds. Billionaires say "no deal," and are prepared to not fund the losing candidate. We're not doing Hillary 2.0 where the candidate simply cannot connect with the middle part of the electorate needed to win.
Meanwhile, the unpaid Dems, like me who do the grunt work to get out the vote (GOTV) have had enough. We're not accepting Biden or Harris from these professional elections losers who are working now mostly to try to hold onto their jobs.
Anyone can see Kamala has an edgy personality. Unless you are Bernie Sanders and can somehow spin this as a positive affiliation with American workers, it is a disadvantage which cannot be overcome.
All this is obvious to the 80% of us in the party that don't want Biden.
Read column here, about why emotional intelligence and relatability are essential to getting elected. Vote blue !!
Kip Leitner. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
https://medium.com/@kiprowlandleitner/gore-bush-hillary-trump-biden-now-kamala-2e2e623110a7
Thanks for subscribing. I’ll think about your argument.
I followed up and assessed Mehdi Hassan's argument endorsing Kamala. It doesn't make any sense.
He admits that either Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsome would be "preferable to Harris," but then digresses into the details of why Harris polls better than Biden (others Dems poll better than her vs. Biden), why Harris will get the "woman vote" (there are other women candidates who can get this vote as well), why Harris doesn't have Biden's Gaza/Israel baggage (all Dem candidates don't have this either), why Harris' access to $80 million funding inheritable from Biden's campaign (a mere 8% of the total raised by Dems in the last Presidential is not significant reason to choose a candidate), why people voted for Harris in the last Presidential (they didn't, they voted anti-Trump and she happened to be on the ticket) . . . etc . . . etc . . . etc . . .
While Hassan is digressing, the obvious question sitting in the middle of the room like the proverbial 800 pound gorilla remains unasked:
If Harris isn't the best candidate, why does the upper echelon of Dems and Kingmaker funders want Harris?
The possible answers all cause one to despair:
(1) Because the oligarchs want anyone but a younger progressive talent who will want to raise their corporate tax rates.
(2) Because the Healthcare, Warfare, Internet Service Provider and Food Production monopoly industrial complexes don't want anyone to cut into their profits (especially Health Care which during my lifetime will steal $400,000 total in excess costs from my spouse and me), and a Sanders-like candidate with populist political swagger might just be able to pull it off.
(3) Because the remote possibility that Harris might win, in which case the thousands of people in the employed in the Biden Administration would get to keep their jobs, is more important to them than having an Open Convention and risking the conventioneers choose a winner in whose administration they would not have a job.
Essentially, what Hassan says is "trust the leadership -- they're supporting the wrong candidates (Biden/Harris) but in all cases, one should defer to, and not question the authority of, your betters in the Democratic-Corporate-Billionaire-Political-Machine-Wanna-Keep-Their-Jobs-Complex."
Dems complain that Trump wants to be King, but behind each political party there already exists these billionaire-funder "kingmakers." At what point do we say that these funders are the actual king and that the president is simply their hired manager to keep taxes low on those who have hired him?
Thank-you ! Suggest you watch Kamala's 2020 Democratic Party Convention Speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JijFLcbIqMs
The emotion is forced, not natural, she smiles at inappropriate times. She is wholly disconnected from the narrative flow and emotional content of the text she is delivering.
Margaret, this is a big deal. It's not trifling. Trump is a master demagogic communicator. He knows how to trigger peoples core instincts and visceral fears and hatreds, their blaming impulses. Managerial proficiency, displayed by someone like Kamala, cannot compete.
What people will perceive, unconsciously, from Kamala is that she is afraid to share her core feelings. She's just "reading the speech." That's all. Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Obama, Roosevelt -- those folk delivered speeches. You don't read a speech, you embody it. Kamala's lack of emotional embodiment and her preference for the emotional safety of being correct on policy turns off the audience and will lose Kamala the election.
The presidency is not a job for the best manager. The president is a living symbol, an icon of hope for the future of the nation and people. Rhetoric need not soar always, but it cannot, cannot, cannot be pendantic.
I think the real question here is why anyone thinks Kamala can possibly win. The only people I see hitching their wagon to Kamala's are those whose employment depends on her success. At the grass roots of the party, we are dismayed.
Best Regards,
Kip Leitner
It's taking me a while, but I'm coming around to a Harris/somebody ticket, and that that "somebody" should also be a woman, say Gretchen Whitmer or Amy Klobuchar.
Watching the debate, I realized I didn't know how President Biden could win after that performance. He's made little effort to change that impression in the ensuing days.
Trump's repeatedly ignoring questions and his seemingly endless string of ridiculous lies should receive equal attention to Biden's performance, but hasn't. Both performances were an embarrassment to the United States.
I saw the VP here in Las Vegas the morning after the debate and she was a pleasant surprise, but she was a remarkablely terrible presidential candidate in the 2020 cycle. If I recall correctly, she burned through tens of millions of dollars and couldn't even get into the starting gate, let alone out of it.
Maybe she’s learned some things as veep but I hear you, Stuart. It was quite a collapse.
Margaret, it's not a question of Kamala learning anything new and external about "how to run campaigns". Read my column. It's a question of Kamala not having a relatable personal presence. This isn't a gender thing. It's beyond that. She'd make a great AG of the United States where you go after the bad guys. The president must have a warm, friendly countenance to be elected. It's that simple. Kamala, unfortunately doesn't exude this.
I believe we should have had a woman president by now. I initially supported Elizabeth Warren in 2020 for that reason. But Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly chose Biden that year, and that's how democracy works. Democratic primary voters overwhelmingly chose him again as their nominee for 2024 (anyone could have challenged him for the nomination, and Dean Phillips did), even though the same age questions that have caused hysteria since the debate were on people's minds then. That's how democracy works.
Yet, the D.C. commentariat, and to some extent the mainstream media as a whole, now want us to believe that the only way to save American democracy is to upend the democratic process that chose Biden as the party's nominee (after what by any objective standard has been a successful and accomplished first term) and allow party elites (with the elite media's sage guidance of course) to choose a different person, because the voters were too stupid to do the right thing in 2020 and 2024. That is the height of media arrogance and an insult to voters and everyone who values and practices democracy! If Biden and his closest advisers decide he is not up to the job for another four years, he should by all means step down and hand the baton to Harris. Absent that, the voters have spoken, and he should remain the nominee. We're not saving democracy by going back to the days of smoke-filled rooms where the elite, powerful and privileged pick our candidates for us because they think we're too stupid to do it ourselves.
For all the talk of Biden's incoherence, what has been equally incoherent in my opinion has been the media hysteria that has followed the debate.
Margaret, did you read the alarmist WaPo piece headlined "Biden’s aging is seen as accelerating; lapses described as more common"? When you actually read the article, you see that opinion is about evenly split between named sources who say they have seen no deterioration in Biden's cognitive abilities and unnamed ones (who should carry less credibility) who say they have seen evidence of "accelerated" aging. Yet, the headline indicates that the consensus is that Biden is starting to lose it. To me, that is irresponsible journalism and symbolic of the embarrassing display we've seen from the MSM over the past two weeks. I'm sure the reality is that there are times when Biden shows cognitive lapses as a result of the normal role of aging, particularly when he's fatigued and needs more rest, but on the whole, the evidence indicates that he's performing the job as well as any 81-year-old could be expected, with his experience and wisdom (that are a direct benefit of his age) largely offsetting any lapses resulting from his age. But that's not the neat, tidy, "the sky is falling" narrative the media wants. Nuance has never been a strong suit of media political coverage, but in the era of clickbait journalism, it's pretty much non-existent.
The major media wants maga. If Biden steps out of the race, the media will be relentless in pursuing their assault on any Democrat selected.
Harris - lacks experience. Buttigieg - gay. And so on - all the while ignoring agent orange’s felony conviction, civil finding of rape, tax fraud conviction, the deaths he caused by his handling of the pandemic - to name just a few. The media is also failing to underscore the impact of kevin roberts and his pet project 2025 as well as extreme white christian nationalism.
My sense is that it is either Biden/Harris or we step off the cliff for a dark future. And the anti-Biden media will be dumped on day one if maga gets into the White House.
Vote blue like your country depends on it.
I don’t think Biden has the stamina and mental acuity to beat Trump or to be a good President for 4 more years
He must step down. It’s worth the risk. The alternative is dystopic.
Margaret, as I listen to the incessant questions about Biden’s fitness - and see headline after headline on the same topic, I think about Newsroom Confidential and your reaction to the incessant email coverage. While I acknowledge I would prefer there had been a younger candidate- how can we possibly change at this late date without creating chaos? Do you think we can? Some will be angry, not vote. Joe Biden has done a great job. This whole thing is such a gift to the Republicans.
It does bear some similarities to that whole horror show; the piling on; the incessant coverage, the underlying sense of glee …
Maura Healey. Why am I qualified to have an opinion? I'm a conservative from Massachusetts who cannot bear the thought of the blustering self-absorbed ignoramus being on the public stage after November unless kept there by talentless journalists who can't move on. Maura Healey is someone who checks all the Democrat and liberal boxes but is also smart, experienced, earned her way up, unlike Harris, and seems always surprisingly level-headed. A good careful communicator but not a performer. As such, she would have wide appeal, both to the real Democrat base and to the swing voters who would risk a vote for Trump rather than vote for Biden, Harris or Newsome. She's smarter than Whitmer, and, I don't think anyone who would otherwise swing to her would hesitate because she's not a mom. I think they might prefer her because of her gender identity, in the traditional sense of term.
This last point would be the question. Another politician who is a Mom vs an interesting person because she thinks. Like JFK?
To address the topic of your posting, at least Biden has an excuse for his handicap.
Unfortunately, I do not think VPOTUS is electable. If, and I still think it’s unlikely, President Biden decides that the electoral risks favor his withdrawal, I cannot imagine he’d do it if it sets off a free for all. That’s certain defeat in the fall, IMO. A leadership coordinated strategy would need to happen. In that event, I think the most skilled, qualified, vetted, and electable substitute is being almost universally dismissed by pundits. That person is, of course, Hillary R Clinton. I believe that Democrats and many, many independents would unite to support her in this electoral (ex post RvW) environment.
Gene, I can only imagine the media feeding frenzy and freak-out.
No doubt…initially. And it would be explosive! Internationally, too. But, after the first or second news cycle, what’s next? HRC bests Trump on every issue (incl age). Everything that could be used against her is VERY old news. Most (if not all) of the past, successful attacks either disproven or de-fused over the years. If RvW is *the* issue this election, who’s better prepared than HRC to make the case and GOTV?
Again, I think Joe’s the candidate, and I hope no change is needed, but HRC is by far the best, safest, most unifying Dem alternative for a successful election…and administration.
Is Kamala Harris electable? Didn’t that ship sail in the 2020 Democratic primaries? (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/03/kamala-harris-drops-out-democratic-2020-presidential-race-reports?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) How about a candidate with demonstrated leadership skills and executive experience, like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? Her positions on the substantive issues facing our country are supported by the vast majority of Americans. There is no better or more important time in our nation's history for a woman to run for President, and Governor Whitmer has a better prospect of defeating Donald Trump than anyone else, male or female.