America's problem is not only the autocratic ideas of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, which has become more radical than its creator, but also the authoritarianism in the circles of those who are loyal to the current president Joe Biden and reject any possibility of discussing another presidential candidate.
Za "Time" from New York
The sunny morning after the presidential debate did not foreshadow the storm that later descended on Joseph Biden. Brooklynites exchanged only a few words about his televised duel with Donald Trump in the checkout line at a Cherry Valley grocery store, browsing the sidewalks of Stanley Avenue on the way home. They already know that those makeshift stalls wouldn't exist if they had enough money to shop at regular stores, so they didn't even have to listen to a CNN special discussing inflation.
But the president's televised appearance worried those living in much wealthier parts of New York. A crude joke that then spread around the city – “Uh, it looks like my power cord isn't working; it's nothing, and Biden has the same problem" - well understood by everyone who picks through boxes of second-hand goods in the working-class suburbs of New York, but also by the residents of Manhattan, who look for these things in the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. Because it is clear to both of them that the president of their country is more and more reminiscent of them mimes, gifs i TikTok clips who have been portraying him in a caricature way for a long time.
Brutal in honesty like its city, the "New York Times" was the first to say publicly what many had already guessed. "Serving his country, the president should give up the election race", because "he is not the man he was four years ago", and it would be risky to hope that "the Americans will ignore his obvious age and infirmity".
The New York sky has turned gloomy for Joe Biden because this influential, liberal daily has so far criticized only Donald Trump so harshly, calling him a "threat to democracy" and a "selfish figure" who is "not worthy of public trust."
PRE-ELECTION TURNING POINT
What the president is currently going through is all the more paradoxical because it was Biden's election campaign that initiated the holding of the first televised duel, which was in many ways different from all the previous ones. In previous years, the confrontation between the candidates was organized by the Commission for Presidential Debates, and now, for the first time, it was done by a media company; for the first time, a current and former president participated in it; for the first time, the debate is held before the Democratic and Republican parties have officially confirmed their candidacies at the conventions; the first time there is no audience; for the first time, one speaker's microphones were turned off during the presentation of another; it was the first time Trump and Biden met together in a closed room in four years. And finally, for the first time, a presidential candidate caused so much panic in the ranks of his own party with his performance.
Not at the very beginning, walking unsteadily into CNN's studio in Atlanta, with an outstretched hand that revealed a doubt as to whether he was going in the right direction, Biden revealed the full weight of his years. It is not just a matter of verbal blunders about the "thousands of trillionaires" living in America, but his husky, quiet voice, indistinct and, at times, incoherent presentation, gave the impression that he was not in full command of the situation, especially when he spoke about health care. insurance that is still used by a huge number of Americans: “…That we can enable every individual… To be qualified for what I've been able to achieve… With covid, I'm sorry, with… Dealing with all we have to do… Look… If… We've finally defeated Medicare…”
It was similar after being asked about the record number of immigrants illegally crossing the southern border during Biden's tenure, to which he replied: "I will continue to work until I get a total ban... On a total initiative about what we do with more border patrols and more... asylum officers".
When anchor Jack Tapper, otherwise one of CNN's best reporters, approached Trump for comment, the former president said what all Democratic supporters feared the most: "I really don't know what he said at the end of that." sentences. I don't think he even knows what he wanted to say."
It was no better when the issue of Republican restrictions on the right to abortion was raised, which, by the way, is one of the strongest arguments the Democrats have in their hands against the conservative part of Trump's supporters. Like a schoolboy who didn't prepare for his lesson, the president began making vague analogies about the trimesters of pregnancy, passing up an opportunity to directly call out whoever is responsible for massive numbers of women having to travel hundreds of miles away from their homes to terminate pregnancies that, in some cases , directly endangers their lives, or what they secretly order mifepristone i misoprostol from other states, which friends buy for their prescriptions at Walgreens or CBS, then repackage to hide the name of the drug and send via FedEx express.
All the restrictions that were imposed as the rules of the debate - two minutes for the answer, one minute for the reply and turning off the microphone that prevented intrusions, throwing and interrupting the interlocutors - helped Trump himself the most because he looked much more controlled and decent. Of course, everything else was in his well-known style. Unfounded claims, distortion of facts, exaggeration about their performance, underestimating the success of Joseph Biden in implementing the presidential agenda, unrealistic promises and, what always causes anxiety, persistent avoidance of answering whether they will recognize the results of the election. "If they are fair, legal and good" then they can, although it is more than clear that the election results are not disputed if Donald Trump wins.
THE POWER OF NARRATIVE
The broadcast was watched by 51,2 million people, which is thirty percent lower than the previous debate between the two rivals or even 33 million viewers less than Trump's face-off with Hillary Clinton in 2016. By choosing its best anchors, such as Tapper and Dana Besh, CNN has not had the most watched program in its history, although criticism continues that the media outlet did not verify the claims made by the two political leaders during the broadcast, regardless that everyone who watched the program can do it on their phone. Of course, if he lives where he has a mobile phone signal.
It sounds strange, but there's no phone network an hour and a half north of New York toward Delhi, although everything you need to know can be found before turning off I-87 into the mountains around Chester. The only question is how much it would change the attitudes of those who watched the telecast. Voters are more guided by their beliefs than facts, those who are for Biden will certainly not be easily swayed by his faltering gait and losing his train of thought, just as Trump's supporters do not mind when he says that the economy during his tenure was the strongest in US history, despite the fact that growth was lower then than during Bill Clinton's tenure.
Because of all this, the number of those who do not like Donald Trump any less than Joseph Biden is constantly increasing. The "double haters", as they are called, based on the latest polling by National Public Radio, currently number about 14 percent, although for their dissatisfaction with the fact that this powerful country, with millions of smart, capable and hard-working people, was faced with a choice between one a convicted felon and a man whom special prosecutor Robert Hur describes as "an older man with a bad memory," there seems to be no real solution.
Trump turned the party into his own private company, where his daughter-in-law Lara runs the Republican National Committee, so no one dared to speak out when he was convicted of 34 felonies in a court in New York, but, because of the liberal values he espouses, the Democratic Party would should have been different. For the democracy sought in action from the outside, there seems to be no place inside, as the innermost leadership refuses to listen to those who demand that Biden abandon the presidential candidacy.
Among them are some who claim he is one of the best presidents in American history, such as columnist Thomas Friedman, who has been a personal friend of the president since their joint trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan after the 11/XNUMX terrorist attacks. Friedman says the Biden-Trump debate, which he watched in his Lisbon hotel room, almost brought him to tears.
"I worked closely with him, he was fully capable of his job. Obviously that is no longer the case. Family and co-workers need to know this. They took shelter for a few days at Camp David to prepare for this important debate. If this is his best edition, he should preserve his dignity and leave the stage at the end of this term", admits Friedman.
Well-known economist Paul Krugman believes similarly, calling on Biden to voluntarily step down: "Perhaps some of Biden's loyalists will experience this as a betrayal considering how much I supported his policies, but I'm afraid we have to accept reality."
The two, of course, are not the only ones. Not only did former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield say Biden's performance was "disappointing," but influential Democrat Thomas Ryback called for pressure on Democratic leaders to remove Biden from the list. He describes the Democrats' "shocking public silence" given how many of them say in private that this would have to happen: "They fear political retribution, but they should really fear that we're going to lose the election because they don't have the courage to do what they're doing." they know it has to be done".
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin agrees with that, calling the debate "a disaster from which Biden cannot recover."
DEMOCRATIC EXCLUSIVITY
To all those invitations, advice, pleas and cries of people with whom they share political beliefs that everything be discussed openly at the August Party Convention, Biden and his team respond with a resolute refusal. One of the leaders of the presidential campaign, Quentin Fulks, says that the president will be the party's candidate in the November elections and that the question of Biden's removal is not worthy of any discussion. All members of his immediate family, and above all his wife Jill and son Hunter, whom he trusts the most, strongly supported him to stay in the presidential race, assuring him that he is capable of performing the presidential function for the next four and a half years.
It's quite normal that neighbors love and respect each other, so they don't even have to explain it, but that's why others have to come up with real mental stunts, like those congressmen who say that going backwards is positioning for a comeback or that falling is a way to move on. During that time, the latest public opinion polls conducted by CBS and SouthGov relentlessly show that as many as 72 percent of voters do not believe that Biden's mental and cognitive state is at a level to be able to serve as president for the next four years.
Despite all this, Democratic leaders insist that only he is capable of defeating Donald Trump. Why? Because he beat him four years ago. The fact that he did it once does not mean that he will do it again, what is valid for individual cases is not necessarily valid for all cases. At the same time, they do not give up the belief that Trump is such a bad choice that he has no chance of winning, and they persistently deny the fact that the majority of voters believe that Biden is too old for a second term, thus continuing on a path that increasingly resembles the president's wobbly walk in CNN studio. Thus, the personal limitations of one person turn into a social, state and problem of the entire world, which is already at the breaking point.
All this says that the problem is not only dictators and right-wingers, but also those who fight for democracy following the impulses of exclusivity and intolerance, which should be foreign to anyone who sincerely believes in liberal values. America's problem is not only the autocratic ideas of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, which is becoming more radical than its creator, but also the authoritarianism in the circles of those who are loyal to the current president and support his nomination, regardless of the fact that it is increasingly obvious that it can lead to the defeat that would represent a danger to the whole country.
This is just one of the inconsistencies of those who are supposed to make the world better, democratic values cannot be applied selectively, because that way the reality only gets closer to the caricatural ones. mimes which flooded social networks. Of course, those who live on the Manhattan will certainly not have to move to the poor sections of New York and buy cables from street vendors, but second-hand goods stalls are spreading uncontrollably in the surrounding streets along Stanley Avenue, threatening to swallow entire neighborhoods of working-class Brooklyn.
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For years past, practice has shown that in America, the final results in the polls after the TV confrontation of the candidates differ from the results of the presidential election by a maximum of three percent.
