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Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

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Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#581

Post by kernal »

navjack27 wrote: post #120
readthenotes1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental. I know people in their 90s who are able to speak clearly at any hour of the day...

Speaking clearly has nothing to do with mental fortitude. Tons of things can affect the fluency of speech. We really need to move past the days where we judge people's intelligence and competence based on how well the connections of their brain are able to influence the movement of the vocal cords and the tongue the lips and the jaw.

[flagged]

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#582

Post by fluidcruft »

Supermancho wrote: post #565
BurningFrog wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's considered to be up to the voters to pick the best candidate.

This is flawed. How are is a voter supposed to be able to pick the best, with inaccurate/no information? It's impractical. Like a laws passed to protect a person by name would be impractical. It doesn't scale. The US has suffered for the lack of information. How can this be addressed, in the next 20 years, is a much more interesting question.

Seems more like a competition issue. In general if both parties weren't entrenched to this degree, they would be out competed by a group with increased transparency. "Vote for the black box behind the curtain!" vs "Vote for the person who's talking to you!" should be a pretty easy win at the poll. IMHO what we are seeing is a systemic result of the lack of competitive elections and winner-take-all and how it interacts with parties. The parties are far too comfortable. If they expected to have to compete, they wouldn't select vegetables.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#583

Post by karmajunkie »

tiffanyh wrote: post #533

Putting politics aside … Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)? E.g., you must be younger than the average life expectancy (currently men: 73yo / female: 79) - while in office. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

the glib answer is that every election is a decision on that politician’s age or term limit, which is almost certainly the position SCOTUS would take here.

in reality, the advantages of the incumbent in an era of safe districts, where the real election is a primary with poor turnout composed mostly of older voters, are almost insurmountable.

and we are currently witnessing what happens when someone hits an age limit the national electorate is unwilling to accept.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#584

Post by Aloisius »

oezi wrote: post #276
purple_ferret wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately his domestic achievements have been somewhat mediocre. His signature achievements essentially were one time cash payments to people. I really do think his major failure was not pushing for a lasting achievement like implementing federal parental leave. He had the chance, but opted for a 1 year extension of child tax credits. And of course the US has an illegal immigration problem. European right on the…

1/10th the number of illegal immigrants? The US gets less illegal immigrants than Europe per capita. If you look at the charts from the last 10 years of the immigrants as percentage of population you recognize that the US is seeing slower growth while European countries see faster immigration. This is happening while the US has a high immigration rate of desirable skilled workers. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers…

Even on a per-capita basis, the US has considerably higher levels of both legal and illegal immigration.

About 3% of the US population is in the US illegally compared to about 1% in the EU.

Overall, about 15.8% of the US population are foreign born, compared to 6.1% of the EU.

Just like in the US, immigrants aren’t evenly distributed though so some countries have far higher percentages - just as some US states do.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#585

Post by jader201 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #318

Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ? Has it ever been done? Would it work to attract the center/swing vote, or more likely to be a negative?

The VP used to be the runner up [1].

E.g. the current administration would be Biden and Trump.

I couldn’t imagine that working today, as divided as the parties have become (especially in the last 20 years).

[1] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/s...

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#586

Post by beloch »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #29
strangelove026 wrote: post #8

Dannnnnng. I think it's definitely for the best (probably never should've come to this, reminds me of RBG). And that said I really, really liked his presidency, but, he is undeniably really old.

The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental. I know people in their 90s who are able to speak clearly at any hour of the day...

Biden was never the quickest guy (or tongue) in the room. During Obama's term, he was legendary for putting rooms to sleep with plodding, off-topic monologues where he set up irrelevant straw-men and then knocked them down. Obama was, by far, the quicker of the two. Time has probably not improved matters, but it's going a bit far to say Biden's declining sharply. Even in his prime, Biden might have stuttered and stumbled through a debate with somebody as consistently unpredictable and utterly unhinged as Trump.

Is a younger leader better? Possibly. Speaking as a non-American, I have to note that, when Americans vote for a President, they're not just voting for one guy. They're voting for a guy who will select the entire white house staff. Biden surrounded himself with highly competent people with good ideas and they're why he's been an effective President. Obama could have easily done worse if he'd been less lucky with his staff selection. An old president who selects good staff can be effective.

Trump did worse during his previous term and would be objectively worse in his next precisely because he'll surround himself with family and yes-men. When staffing, a good leader tries to make himself the dumbest person in the room. Biden did that. Trump never will.

Case in point: The VP. In a Biden vs Trump contest, it was a very real possibility that either of their VP's would have to take over during their terms. Biden had Harris as his VP, and she's clearly ready to do the job. Trump chose a rookie senator yes-man with a profound lack of principles for his VP. The thought of Vance becoming President in 2026 or 2027 should terrify people.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#587

Post by thunky »

kernal wrote: post #568
tiffanyh wrote: post #533

Putting politics aside … Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)? E.g., you must be younger than the average life expectancy (currently men: 73yo / female: 79) - while in office. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

[flagged]

Yup and before that they tried to remove their opponent from the ballot and imprison him.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#588

Post by gcanyon »

dotancohen wrote: post #382
gumby wrote: post #32

One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. But he did campaign on a single term. Let’s hope the Dem’s circular firing squad puts down its guns so they can quickly concentrate on winning the election with someone … probably Harris is the simplest answer.

> One of the most effective presidents since Johnson or Truman. In what way? I don't live in the US, so what did I miss? I don't remember Biden doing anything of note (good or bad). > But he did campaign on a single term. Biden said that he was running for only a single term, and during this entire second election campaign nobody called him out on that, not even outspoken Trump?

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1143149435/despite-infighting...

There's more; that's just the first two years.

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#589

Post by mandmandam »

wilg wrote: post #240
kccoder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You behave as though you’re in the race right up to the moment you are not.

It's bizarre people don't get this. What's he supposed to do, tweet "thinking about not running" and flip everybody out?

Well, yeah.

Then we could have had a better primary process, instead of putting huge amounts of effort into pushing a critically weak candidate.

People have been saying this for many months, and were basically told to stop helping Trump win. Turns out those people were right - so why defend the lies?

Re: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

#590

Post by avar »

tiffanyh wrote: post #533

Putting politics aside … Why don’t they have an age limit on the president (or any elected office)? E.g., you must be younger than the average life expectancy (currently men: 73yo / female: 79) - while in office. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

    > you must be younger than
    > the average life expectancy
    > (currently 73yo) - while in
    > office.
As an aside, it's a common error to think that overall life expectancy is relevant to this sort of thing, it's not. That number includes those who die in infancy, etc.

If you wanted to limit it by "life expectancy" you'd want to limit it by the statistical expected remaining years of life at the candidate's current age.

For example, while the overall life expectancy in the US is around 73, for an individual at age 50 it's around 80[1].

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/

Edit: Even if you pick the "right" life expectancy it's still pretty weird. You want the candidate to "only" have a hypothetical 50% chance of dying due to old age before their last day in office?

Then imagine something like COVID-19 happens again. Now a candidate on the cusp of being ineligible is suddenly ineligible because the latest life expectancy statistics shifted?

There's a reason political systems tend to prefer boring and predictable arbitrary limits.

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