Subject: Re: 10 days ago, just 10 days
That is your opinion, based on 90 minutes of late night television. Some have other opinions

Actually, quite a few we are no finding out.

More than a setback, Biden’s showing at the debate was a revelation, confirming the worst fears of his doubters. Since then, several news reports have made it clear that the Biden we all saw onstage is familiar to those who see him behind the scenes. Axios reported that, according to presidential aides, Biden is alert and engaged from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but not necessarily outside of those hours. The Wall Street Journal reported that European officials were worried about Biden’s “focus and stamina” even before the debate, “with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer.” This is not a fixable problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/0...

The debate appears to have compounded Biden’s already-vexing age problem. A CBS/YouGov poll showed the percentage of voters saying Biden has the requisite mental and cognitive abilities to serve dropping from 35 percent last month to 27 percent after the debate. As many as 4 in 10 Democrats now say he’s not up to the job.


• The same poll showed 45 percent of Democrats said Biden should step aside for another candidate, and 72 percent of Americans say Biden should not be running. A Suffolk University poll showed 41 percent of Democrats said Biden should be replaced.


• A CNN poll conducted shortly after the debate showed Biden’s favorable rating dropping from 37 percent to 31 percent among debate-watchers, while Trump’s rose from 40 percent to 43 percent. (And it bears emphasizing that these were the same people contacted before and after the debate.)


• The Suffolk poll showed about 1 in 6 voters who supported Biden in 2020 said the debate made them more likely to back either Trump (3 percent) or a third-party candidate (13 percent).
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

I believe it’s true that Republicans will march together, sing together, and stick together no matter what. It’s the core of their belief system. God is always right. My country right or wrong. Trump can do no wrong. That sort of thing. Democrats are more questioning, less likely to be swayed to authoritarianism (although it has happened.) As Mark Twain said “I belong to no organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

Some allies of the president have even suggested that Democrats learn from Donald Trump’s unswerving followers. “If Republicans are standing lock step” with the 78-year-old disgraced criminal Trump, said the MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart, “then Democrats damn well should be standing lock step with their ethical and morally decent 81-year-old president.”

Not gonna happen. Period.

Finally, This:

There was nothing hidden about Biden's condition if you followed Fox news.

The problem with that is that Fox is, itself, a firehose of lies. The $800 million Dominion lawsuit is just the start. Remember “Oh her emails!” Remember “Vince Foster”? Fox has an audience that willingly slurps up any factoid no matter how distorted with endless repetition, but other people aren’t so gullible. It’s “the little boy who cried wolf” syndrome.

I used to watch Fox occasionally when Shep Smith was on. Their “news” hours used to be reasonably watachable - but now the news hours are less and less, and the inflammatory chat is more and more, and more and more hyperbolic. They certainly have a solid audience, but it is directed propaganda, not “news” in any sense. The fact that they might have been right this once is like the blind squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn.