Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. (Brendan McDermid and Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Dear Commons Community,
With President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign in crisis mode following last week’s disastrous debate performance, and polls showing a small but significant swing in former President Donald Trump’s direction, many dismayed Democrats and other critics have complained about what they perceive as a double standard on the question of the candidates’ fitness to hold office. As reported by Yahoo News and Reuters.
“Given who Republicans have chosen as their nominee, it’s pretty ironic that it’s Democrats who are worried about their choice of candidate,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said this week.
Maddow then proceeded to list all of Trump’s legal troubles, including his recent convictions on New York felony charges of falsifying business records.
In the hours after the debate had wrapped up, a Biden campaign memo declared that Biden had won and that “the more they saw of Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive behavior, the more they remembered why they voted against him in 2020.”
Top Biden surrogates like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also sought to shift attention away from Biden’s performance and onto Trump’s.
“How can you have a legitimate debate when somebody’s totally lying and you have to dispel their falsehoods?” Pelosi said.
While many outlets, including Yahoo News, conducted fact-checks of what each candidate said at the debate, Biden’s halting and confused delivery became the story. Several leading editorial boards promptly called for Biden, 81, to step aside so Democrats could have a better chance of defeating Trump.
“To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” the New York Times wrote.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board embraced the same frame to make the opposite argument. “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race,” it wrote back.
“President Joe Biden’s debate performancewas a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked callsfor him to drop out of the presidential race,” the paper said. “But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.”
YES!
Tony
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