My wife made the observation that she sounded like the voice over for the ASPCA commercials with the abused animals.
Cold open is definitely going to feature a whole lot of Mikey Day screaming as Biden, and I’m guessing Chloe Fineman (although possibly Ariana Grande if they put the musical guest in sketches this week) jolting through words, shaking her head, and sighing dramatically as Katie Britt.
I personally might have preferred the more laid back, bipartisan, grandpa Biden, but we got Joe Pop. Hope they know what they’re doing!
Between her slightly open shirt and cross necklace, reports are that the market is bullish on the Covenant Eyes app.
Given that his biggest electoral advantage is literally just “well, at least he’s not Donald Trump,” I’m not sure that telling him to go out there and scream about your predecessor and how everything wrong is the other side’s fault for an hour or so was really playing to his strengths.
Yeah, I question whether it was too partisan and loud. Also not sure if he should have referred to Trump that much. Cringed at the Four More Years chants. I just don’t like that. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Biden is only arguing that he’s not Trump. Biden at least presented a list of agenda items and ideas, whether people agree with them or not. I sincerely have no idea what Trump or the Republicans in Congress intend to get accomplished other than I think Biden is vulnerable on immigration, in particular.
To be clear, I don’t think that Biden’s own argument for himself is only that he’s not Trump, he’s at least going through the song and dance of “I can name parts of the DNC platform” (although arguably it was in 2020 when the party took the candidate strategy of hide him in the basement until Election Day). That is, however, most of why he’s a viable candidate. His approval ratings are underwater on essentially every issue, and there has never (pre-2020 or now) been any real sizable group of people out there saying “man, wouldn’t it be great if Joe Biden was president!” The fact that his public persona was, for a long time, something along the lines of friendly doofus is probably both a symptom and a cause of that to some degree. My point was that, because he’s not a particularly exciting candidate, what’s driving a lot of people to the polls for him is mostly the perception that he’s less toxic/divisive and isn’t Donald Trump. And sending him out to engage in angry hyper-partisan yelling seems counterproductive if you’re trying to capitalize on that.
I agree with most of that. If Trump hadn’t become President, I don’t think Biden would have been one either. Biden was never a great candidate or speaker but he benefitted from Obama and from the Trump chaos. I do think Biden beat Trump in their debates despite the basement mockery. I think he actually cares about things like healthcare and infrastructure. I also think Biden will win the popular vote in 2024 even if he loses the Electoral College. But I’d switch him out tomorrow happily if I thought someone else were clearly better.
