Jesus wept

Joe Biden’s family have urged him stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week, according to reports in the US media, as senior democrats and donors have expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the event.

  Guardian

What is he? A robot? Improperly prepared. Is he a meal?

If the man can't get through a debate under his own power...

During the meeting at Camp David – which included the president’s wife, children and grandchildren – Biden’s family told him he could still show Americans that he is capable of serving another four years, according to the New York Times.

While his family was reportedly aware of how poorly he performed, they also continue to think he’s the best person to beat Donald Trump.

These people are deluded. And also, they have a personal interest in Joe clinging to power.

The Associated Press reported that the strongest voices imploring Biden to resist pressure to drop out were his wife, Jill, and his son Hunter.

Elder abuse.

On Sunday, a narrative blaming the rigorous debate prep calendar which saw Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days, began to build.

“It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.

Again, is he a robot? Or a performing dog?

House of Representatives Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, acknowledged that Biden had suffered a setback, but said this was “nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”

Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia democrat and Baptist minister, said there had been “more than a few Sundays when I wish I had preached a better sermon,” relating the experience to Biden’s debate performance.

“But after the sermon was over it was my job to embody the message, to show up for the people that I serve. And that’s what Joe Biden has been doing his entire life,” Warnock said.

Circle those wagons in public, but you better be seriously considering how you're going to save the country from Trump.

Not all Democrats appeared to be in agreement however. Asked on Sunday whether the party was discussing a new 2024 candidate, Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party, because it is a political party and we have differences in point of view.”

“Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention. He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward,” Raskin said.

Fine. He should give the keynote address. He can be celebrated for his contributions. We can name a bridge after him. Just give us someone who can actually do the job without note cards to welcome foreign leaders.  Jamie Raskin would be great.

Members of Joe Biden’s family privately trashed his top campaign advisers at Camp David this weekend, blaming them for the president’s flop in Thursday’s debate and urging Biden to fire or demote people in his political high command.

There is no immediate expectation that Biden will follow through on that advice.

[...]

“The aides who prepped the President have been with him for years, often decades, seeing him through victories and challenges. He maintains strong confidence in them,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

[...]

Among the family’s complaints about the debate practice: that Biden was not prepared to pivot more to go on the attack; that he was bogged down too much on defending his record rather than outlining a vision for a second term; and that he was over-worked and not well-rested.

  Politico

And where were they while this was happening?

Also, don't be surprised if Biden does fire the aides and advisers if that's who his family is blaming his incompetence on.

Biden allies and staffers have sought to blame a variety of factors in the aftermath of Biden’s dismal debate performance, including that the president was ill, was over-prepared and that the CNN moderators failed to fact-check former President Donald Trump.

All bullshit. The moderators were not there to fact-check Trump. They said at the outset they weren't going to do that. And, besides, that was Joe's job. He failed.

He was ill? Too bad. So sad. Not an excuse for someone who knew what they needed to do, which he obviously didn't.

Over-prepared? Already addressed above.

The focus on the staff, however, also allowed the family to overlook Biden’s own failings in Atlanta, one of the people familiar noted.

No shit.

These people said the Biden family wanted the president to continue in the campaign rather than end his career with a calamitous debate performance against Trump, whom they all loathe.

Fine, give him a couple of days and a few happy rallies with teleprompters. Then he needs to come clean.

Biden’s campaign staff [complained] that Biden was not told which camera he’d be on when not speaking and that the makeup staff made him appear too pale, according to the three people. Biden did, however, agree to the terms of the debate before it was held.

In fact, Biden ASKED for the debate. Or at least his handlers did. If he doesn't know what they're doing, that's another sign he's incompetent.

Also, he IS pale. And it doesn't matter which camera he's on when he's not speaking. In a televised - or any - debate, you're "on" whether you're speaking or not. This is not a new concept.

Biden often consults his family on big decisions, and people close to him say that the only way he would come to the conclusion to drop out of the race would be if the first lady and members of his family encouraged him to do so.

At a fundraiser in Greenwich Village on Friday night, the first lady said that after the debate, the president came to her and said: “Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.”

Yeah, buddy. You WEREN'T that great. You were awful. Time to go back to Delaware and rest.  

“The way I’m talking to my donors is: The House is the last firewall, folks. We have to flip the House,” one frontline House Democrat told Playbook last night. “Ninety-nine percent of the people I talked to can’t get their credit card out fast enough.”

Those private discussions could eventually morph into an explicit campaign to place a Democratic check on an expected Trump presidency — much as congressional Republicans did back in 1996, when Bob Dole was on his way to a thumping.

[...]

Part of it is a collective action problem — no one wants to be first, and potentially the last — and part of it is that many believe that speaking out might only make Biden dig in further.

  Politico

That may be true, but he's dug in so far now there's no chance he's coming out.

But make no mistake: The despair and frustration are real, and it is pushing upward inside the party. It has been felt acutely by frontline members — the swing-district Democrats who would be the cornerstone of any majority. Donors blew up their phones over the weekend, with some prodding them to go public with a group letter calling for a new candidate, an idea that some discussed over the weekend.

“The leadership of the party should be going to the White House and knocking down the doors and saying, ‘Time’s up,’” an adviser to top Democratic donors said. “Anybody trying to prolong the inevitable here is just basically putting us on a giant fucking death march towards the end.”

Pretty much par for the Democratic Party.

That sense of anger is palpable among rank-and-file congressional Democrats, many of whom blame Biden and his family for hiding the reality of his condition. The House Democrat lamented defending the president on the campaign trail despite getting political advice to run away from him, only to find out how bad things were on Thursday.

“It’s just his egotism and his family’s enabling,” the person said. “Jill [Biden] of all people — she sees him every single day. She’s the one person who could end this train wreck. … This should have been a one-term president.”

[...]

“There is an enormous amount of affection and deference to the president — but nobody thinks this is sustainable,” one senior Democratic aide told Playbook.

[...]

In Pennsylvania, Republican David McCormick went live with a new ad that ping-ponged from incumbent Sen. Bob Casey expressing confidence in Biden’s leadership with the president’s halting debate performance.

“Casey knew about Biden’s condition,” the words on the screen read.

The NRCC has compiled a similar dossier and is planning to “weaponize the silence of vulnerable House Democrats … capitalizing on Biden’s political collapse to expand the map and grow the House Republican majority,” according to a new memo obtained by Playbook.

“House Democrats have stood by and enabled this crisis due to their own fecklessness and allegiance to their party over the people of this country,” the memo continues.

Can't say they haven't earned it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.