XPost: alt.politics.trump, dc.politics, talk.politics.guns
XPost: talk.politics.misc
From: biden.stupid@disney.com
On 03 Jun 2023, Lou Bricano posted some
news:WDVeM.859436$PXw7.447635@fx45.iad:
> Oozing scarlet red maxipad, whose mouth waters at the thought of his
> mommy's warm fishy snatch, can't keep up. I win, and oozing scarlet
> red maxipad loses. That's just how it goes.
>
> Oozing scarlet red maxipad dreams of his mommy's warm fishy snatch,
> and it makes his mouth water. He's a sick fuck.
>
Minutes after the special counsel report landed on Thursday afternoon,
House Democrats stood and cheered for President Joe Biden as he used their
annual retreat as the latest chance to make a forceful case for four more
years on the job.
By the time they took their seats as the president returned to the stage
minutes later, murmurs were rippling around the room, according to several
who spoke afterward to CNN.
How damaging are all the renewed questions about age and mental acuity
going to be? Does anyone have a plan to make more Americans see the
behind-the-scenes sharpness and lucidity that they know is far from the
public image? And why was the leader of the free world sitting in front of
one of the friendliest audiences he could find, long after the press had
been escorted out, answering scripted questions off prepared notecards –
even if he did end up quickly moving past them to riffs of his own?
Whether brutally honest or – as Biden aides charge – a partisan hatchet
job by a Donald Trump appointee out to damage a president he couldn’t find
cause to prosecute, the special counsel’s report aimed straight at what
every Biden adviser has known would be the president’s consistent
liability from the moment he started talking about running for reelection:
At 81, he’s clearly aged, and to many that looks like he’s not up to the
job.
One Democratic member of the House responded to being told of the
questions about age and memory raised in the report with a morbid laugh
and sullen shake of the head. Another started anxiously asking for a sense
of how others were responding, palpably feeling at wit’s end. Even members
who feel like ageism, double standards for Trump and overblown concerns
about Biden are all at play say they are getting worried that the
questions about age – which have been showing up in many Democratic focus
groups for over two years – keep getting louder.
And they’re loud enough to leave leading Democrats worrying undecided
voters might believe that four more years of the far right, anti-
democratic agenda Trump is promising would be better than four more years
of Biden if he seems on the decline.
Inside the White House and among Biden’s reelection campaign staff, the
tension is constant. Top aides have set the strategy that the president
need not play the Washington news cycle game of constant appearances that
risk embarrassing flubs, while others complain that this unfortunately
reinforces the image put forward by his political opponents that he is
barely bumbling through his days.
Biden is constantly caught coming off “stilted,” and looking “like a
caricature,” complained one sympathetic former West Wing aide, who asked
not to be named to speak bluntly about the situation.
“Some of the folks around him create this weird bubble because they’re
trying to be protective, but they’ve got him so anxious he makes
mistakes,” the former aide said.
Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster, who was initially skeptical of Biden running
for reelection instead of making way for a younger candidate but has since
come around, said that she and three other members of the New Hampshire
congressional delegation left an Oval Office meeting last week all
chattering with each other about Biden’s impressive command of the issues.
“It’s like, ‘No, he’s fine,’” Kuster said. “Most people don’t get an hour
with him. He’s sharp. He’s doing fine.”
This isn’t just allies covering for a president at a tough moment. Dozens
of officials, aides and others who have spent time with Biden in private
have told CNN over the last three years that they find him to be
completely on top of things. And White House aides liked to point out, for
example, that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – who would often
publicly question Biden’s mental fitness – also told reporters after
meetings that the president was on top of all they discussed.
More informal moments planned
The internal debates go beyond staging speeches or agreeing to interviews.
Current and former aides tell CNN that decisions about opening White House
events to the press, how long they are scheduled for and other logistics
are obviously clouded by considerations about the president’s age and how
it will come across.
How much sleep the president is getting and how he looks have been topics
of conversation among advisers, with several pointing to the speeches he
delivered at the beginning of January at Valley Forge and the Mother
Emanuel church in Charleston as examples of finally getting him to come
across with the strength and vigor they wanted.
Biden aides also feel themselves that this hasn’t been enough. In internal
meetings over the last few weeks, they have focused on plans to have the
president do more informal campaign stops, like his swing by a boba tea
store in Las Vegas on Monday, where he chatted with the cashier as he was
shown how to put the straw through cup’s plastic cover. These play up
Biden’s famous retail politics virtuosity, and they also feed content that
the campaign is trying to disperse online as they try to break through in
a fractured media environment.
Most importantly, they reflect what Biden aides have learned from
experience: Nothing combats questions about the president’s competence as
much as people seeing him in action.
“I want to see the president do what he does best: Be with people in their
homes, see him on an individual level, so that he’s connecting not just on
the policy successes but that he’s connecting to the people,” said Rep.
Gabe Amo, a newly elected Democratic congressman from Rhode Island who
until last summer worked for Biden in the White House. “I think less about
the details that the president remembers, and more about the values he’s
portraying. And that’s what you get when you put the president with the
people.”
Of course, each unscripted moment is a chance Biden will make a slip, like
last weekend’s mixing up French President Emmanuel Macron for long-dead
French President François Mitterrand. Or when he came back to the
microphone on Thursday night after forceful remarks about the special
counsel report to have his carefully weighed comments about negotiations
over the Israel-Hamas war distracted by his referring to Abdel Fattah el-
Sisi as the president of Mexico, rather than Egypt.
Those remarks were quickly added to his schedule, reflecting an internal
acknowledgement that seeing the president in action was the best way to
combat the special counsel’s allegations.
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