Why has Joe Biden failed to excite?

Excite isn't what Joe is about. Stability isn't exciting. That's the point of it.

Hillary's fatal flaw was being out of touch with modern voters and underestimating the threat Trump posed, not failing to excite.

Hillary was much more unliked than Joe Biden. That is a crucial difference.

I don't mean to me personally, but when you look at the numbers. People forget that 2016 was a contest between the two most unliked candidates in the modern era of polling.

He hasn't failed to excite. He is a solid choice. People won't spring into action until he appears to fall back.

Because he looks like Skeletor

Better Skeletor than an orange with an anus.

Hillary's fatal flaw was the Electoral College.

People don't want Cryptkeeper's great-grandfather.

How can you get excited about a 75 year old man that represents nothing new or e citing?

It's a media creation that voting and democracy need an element of excitement. Nothing more important and they treat it like theatre. No one owes you excitement. Someone is going to win and be in control of things, you would be wise to participate.

Because he is a woefully subpar candidate.

He has a great resume.

He speaks like this: Now you know because I, well, I’ve been doin’ this a long time and I can tell ya that—back when I used to do it, I used to say this, and Ralph, my friend Ralph, he’s from Wilmington, good guy, calls me Uncle Joe, anyways, Ralph always used to josh me and I’d say, ‘You wanna do this, Ralph? OK, let’s do this. Get down and let’s see who can do more push-ups,” that how I handled that and that’s how I’ll handle Trump. Anyways!

Our choices are crazy angry old incoherent evil Republican man, crazy angry old socialist man or crazy old incoherent man. Who could get excited?

Because he’s basically a Republican who’s had a failed career, such as authorizing the Iraq invasion.

He's a shitty senator from an extremely small state. He has NEVER commanded a large following. Not as a senator. Not in any of his three presidential campaigns. He is always a non-starter.

It's hard to be seen as exciting when you've spent your whole career playing the part of second banana.

He's been in the limelight for years and ran in the presidential primaries. He's old, too moderate to please the woker-than-thou types, and makes too many faux pas. He's also a straight white man, so no points for excitement based on identity (however superficial).

He's old and boring and has no new ideas. No one under 50 will vote for him.

R7 Is the same cunt-hole who stood there nodding in approval as superdelegates nominated Hillary...

R17, do you mean the same Hillary who pulled 3,000,000 more votes than the other candidate?

R18 So you men to tell me that an extremely seasoned politician, former SOS AND former first lady with a very experienced political team doesn't know how to strategize and win the electoral college?? I guess it is easier to have rubes like you carry her water for her in the excuse-making department.

Biden had years after Trump's election to study the ground. Take in the new means of communications. Hire some fresh staff including comedians who could hand him A+ zingers. Meet with young people, listen to their concerns and create talking points for the areas of agreement and how his policies will deliver what they want. Instead, he sat on his bony ass and decided he'd run like it was still 1996 because the country would want to turn back the clock.

people were pissed off in 2016. Even the black community was pissed after nearly a decade with a black president and attorney generals with virtually no criminal justice reform. biden chose to ignore all of it. When Bernie listed the progressive agenda tonight, Biden has run on none of it. He didn't need the most liberal policies, he just needed to display that he understood what people wanted. He literally chose not to and instead spent years on the phone racking up support from washington insiders. FUCK HIM.

I’ll vote for any candidate with a history of getting good things done. This criteria excludes Mayor Pete and the 3 Kremlin Candidates: Sanders, Yang & Gabbard.

Uncle Joe doesn't understand that people who aren't MAGAts are over the whole "entitled ancient white guy sliding effortlessly from one position of power to the next" thing. We want to know what the next president will do for us and those we care about, and Biden offers NOTHING.

Nothing.

The Dems have nothing to offer the voter but grumpy, grouchy geezers and unsuitable supporters of bigots. The general election is in 10 months.

[quote]Why has Joe Biden failed to excite?

Really shitty foreplay.

Bernie's wagging finger is starting to look appealing.

I can't understand why his campaign hasn't given him a stance or a mission or a ' vision thing'. It's just, "Vote for Joe".

He was NEVER EVER going to win the Iowa caucus. Let's wait with the "fail" threads until he actually fails.

He’s old old.

Warren is young old.

Bernie was young old until his heart attack. Now he’s just old.

Nice try Bros.

Mayor Pete is old young.

Obama was also old young when he first ran in Iowa.

I’m just saying...

Elderly, to be honest, you're just babbling.

R25 They have. His big opening announcement was “we’re fighting for the soul of America.” His ad was heaped with compliments from pundits, who said he had his priorities straight while Kamala was attacking him and other democrats were fighting with one another. The story was Biden was so far above and beyond his peers that he was focused on what mattered while they were trying to get ahead.

That changed. And then his campaign tried to make MALARKEY! their thing and they were laughed offstage.

Biden is a terrible candidate running a lacklustre campaign. The single solitary reason why he has been leading polls is not his leadership qualities or policy ideas but the mistaken perception that he's best placed to beat Trump. This is all he has to offer and that offer is finally being exposed as seriously flawed. Pete and especially Bloomberg are now well placed to start eating into Biden's already wobbly support base with one or other eventually emerging as the 'establishment' choice to face off against Bernie as the 'progressive' choice.

Why does Trumputin continue to decompensate, Boris?

There’s no widespread interest in Joe Biden. His high poll numbers were exclusively the result of older blacks supporting him.

I'm not surprised he has failed to excite, but why were his Iowa poll numbers so wildly off?

I am 41 and I am bothered by his incoherence. He can’t string together a basic sentence without interrupting himself with multiple tangents. Sometimes he gives up (“Anyways!”) before he comes back to his initial thought. That worries me.

My father is 41 and he feels, plainly, that Biden, Sanders and Trump are just too old, period. He says, “it’s not that you can’t be old and competent. You can. But when age takes its toll, it happens fast. Break a bone, have a major event like a heart attack, or get dementia, and it all falls apart in months, not years. They’re all too old to be president.” That’s an old person’s opinion.

Young people I know through work don’t mention his age. They don’t mention him at all. One is a Bernie bro. One is a Warren volunteer who thinks Pete is the Great Evil of our time for some reason. Other Millennials in my office seem resigned to more Trump and are hopeless.

One white man, 60, in my office is an acquaintance of the Bidens. He was VERY pro-Biden a year ago and now he says, “Don’t get me started on Joe!” He thinks Biden has blown it.

One woman I work with, who is 67 and black, is a big Biden supporter. She thinks he is being unfairly bullied by the media. She buys into the media depiction of Buttigieg as an enemy of black people. She hated Kamala Harris more than anyone, loves Booker, loves Pelosi.

Too goddam old and decrepit. Note it’s not age alone as Bernie and Bloomberg are also in their late seventies. But Joe is just low energy nowadays.

Joe isn’t “just low energy these days.” He’s not coherent. Just as Trump is not coherent. As in, when they speak, their words and their thoughts don’t cohere. They ramble, they self-interrupt, they have no control over where their thoughts go. It’s obviously early stages of dementia in both cases because the severity of it fluctuates wildly among appearances. When Trump stays on the TelePrompTer script, he is always very obviously drugged; it’s obvious because he speaks more slowly and sounds delayed, and whatever he is given to make him focus always makes him sniffle. Biden’s first two primary debates were very sad showings; he was overly emotional, broad and general in content and and entirely freeform. His thoughts were unfocused and unbridled. He has improved but it’s touch and go, varying from appearance to appearance—good days and bad days. As it goes with dementia. Nice guy or not and experienced or not, we cannot install someone who is at the early stage of mental decline in the top position for four years. If we do, someone else will be calling all the shots and we will never know who that is. With Reagan it was Nancy. With Bush, it was Cheney.

[quote]Too goddam old and decrepit. Note it’s not age alone as Bernie and Bloomberg are also in their late seventies.

Nobody is more decrepit than ancient Bernie.

He will gain steam in South Carolina, Nevada, etc. Iowa doesn't matter all that much.

I’d like to see an all in brawl between all the septuagenarians - Biden. Bernie. Bloomberg. Trump. They are all pretty weak looking specimens although Trump has his heft.

He appears in terminal decline and already has a record of worse primary failures than anything Bernie Sanders experienced, so you can prop him up but if people don't want him they don't want him..

But they have wanted him. He just has the flaw where the more people are exposed to him, the less they want to vote for him. Like Hillary Clinton but worse because Clinton actually bothers to have a media and political machine roaring behind her at all times. Biden decided to coast on his guts and moxie and that he's gonna take it to the bad man in the white house and that might, might not be enough.

Younger voters don't want him at all unless they're already embedded in his particular corner of politics. Otherwise its nothing (same towards anyone bit Sanders and Warren largely).

Trump's an old guy with health problems, and I don't think most Democrats are real excited to vote for either Biden or Sanders, who are also old guys with health problems.

Every candidate has some flaws

Big effing deal

He's creepy, lame, and has a lot to answer for in Ukraine. His son is a disaster. Both Joe and his son are corrupt. Nobody is going to vote for him in any large numbers.

Anybody else remember in the lead up to Iowa, pretty much all of the media proclaiming "Biden is polling pretty well in Iowa." and their STRONG efforts to not discuss Bernie's growth in polling??? Makes you wonder how deep their research is....

Bernie didn't have a surge in polling until very recently, starting on Feb 2nd. Immediately prior to that it was back-and-forth Biden-Sanders in several polls, and the media mentioned that plenty of times.

And with all due respect, "the media" is not a monolith. Each media outlet has its own agenda. "The media" doesn't decide to keep one candidate down. That's tinfoil hat talk. Some outlets might try to undermine Sanders but the entire American media complex has not.

Americans will never vote for anyone with the word 'socialist' attached to them. It goes against their dreams of becoming millionaires and living the bling life they admire Trump living.

And the Russiapublicans will gleefully saturate the airwaves with dark, cryptic ads- scaring people to death.

Which is why Putin is funneling million$ into the Sanders campaign.

He did a CNN town hall. I turned it on for a little while. Anderson Cooper asked him something and he gave his standard answer of “Look. Here’s what I’ll say about that...stammer stammer, tangent, stammer, tangent two. Sigh. Listen. Stammer stammer. Main point and uh like I said and so tangent, sigh. Abrupt end.” And I turned it off. If he gets the nomination, I won’t have the psychic strength to watch the debates. Too surreal. Stammer stammer. Anyways!

Joe is my guy, but I'm old, too (70). I would, frankly, rather have Mayor Pete as President Pete, but snowball's chance and all that.

As for the women: Nobody wants their school librarian as their leader. I mean, come on. And if HRC couldn't make it, even with bringing along the extremely popular Big Dog, well....

Bloomberg? Great; another NYC mogul. No.

Sanders? Socialist Sanders? Commie Sanders? The ads are already in the Trump projectors (pun intended).

But Joe? No vim or vigah, as JFK would have said.

He obdurately insists that there exist honorable Republicans with whom he not only can work, but from whose ranks he would even consider a Vice-presidential partner! Even if that's empty blather, who needs it?

He has old-age spots on his face, and bad hair, too. He gets testy with questions. He hasn't really proven himself a winner. He was on the wrong side of some crucial votes, notably for Clarence "Silent Bob" Thomas. Plus, nobody has any idea of what he did during the Obama Administration, and Trump's lies have perverted the national memory of that time, anyway.

More to his detriment, word is that Biden is having trouble raising money.

Nonetheless, I would vote for Joe, and likely will in my Primary. He yet has that one quality the nation needs: he is not threatening.

He is not radical in any direction. He won't promise free money to either billionaires or indebted students. He won't provoke wars. He won't commit crimes against the people or the Constitution. He will preserve the ACA.

Is Joe Biden a man for all seasons? No. But he might be the man for this one crucial, momentous, watershed season.

[quote] He has old-age spots on his face, and bad hair, too. He gets testy with questions. He hasn't really proven himself a winner. He was on the wrong side of some crucial votes, notably for Clarence "Silent Bob" Thomas.

My seventy year old aunt (who’s voting for sanders, BTW) mentions the same thing. She can still see the look on Biden’s face when he ignored Anita bill’s plea And will never forgive him

[quote]He was on the wrong side of some crucial votes, notably for Clarence "Silent Bob" Thomas.

Also the Iraq War.

Oh I'm tired of hearing about the Haliburton War. Bush/Cheney lied lied lied. And in that post-911 PTSD state, we all believed them.

Stop punishing people for believing someone.

Biden is done. There is no coming back from a distant fourth place finish in Iowa.

R53, Stop with the revisionist history.

MILLIONS of us, here and around the world, did NOT believe Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, or Powell. Not in the LEAST. Not even when they testified (aka, purjured themselves) under oath about "mobile bio labs," "yellow cake uranium," "mushroom clouds," and most infamously, "Nobody could have anticipated using planes as projectiles into buildings," even though the Pentagon had practiced just such scenarios, including the very morning of 9/11/01.

And we marched in multitudes to express this disbelief; I participated in the two NYC protests.

[quote]Biden is done. There is no coming back from a distant fourth place finish in Iowa.

Bill Clinton came fourth in 1994. I think he had some kind of comeback, didn't he?

Bill Clinton was an unknown in 1992. Joe Biden was a fucking Vice President for Chrissakes. A 4th place finish means nobody is interested in him and he’s done.

He's a hack.

OK, you keep telling yourself that. Myself, I'll wait a few more primaries, but I'm crazy like that about facts v. feelings.

I've never understood why he was considered a good candidate. A rehash of old politics - some late 70s aged white man.

I want something different. He's the same typical politician, albeit somewhat better than his colleagues.

I'm not surprised.

Because he's another half dead old white guy who doesn't really stand for anything

I like Joe but he really needs to lift. Only he can’t can he? He’s past it. In fact he’s so far past it, he can’t even see it anymore.

I think he's a sweet man, every ones friend, but he just has no game at this point. He stumbles over himself. The thing he has going for him is that world leaders respect him, important trait seeing that the whole world hates Trump.

Joe relates to people more like a therapy dog than a Presidential candidate.

Because he is old and sounds old.

He just made a scene about a young woman's innocent question.

That's why.

Biden looks like he just stepped out of a coffin and his brain damage is getting worse.

His voice is weak and wispy. That conveys overall weakness, body, mind, and spirit. Biden is simply not the man he was four years ago. He is never shown even riding a golf cart. No Energy Joe.

Indeed, the SNL parody just now of him is waaaay off the mark, showing an animated and even loud man. If only.

Hillary did not underestimate the threat Trump posed. She warned us but too many were too fucking sexist to listen.

The face in the article linked to in r66 is very unsightly. Joe's eyes look alien. His skin looks ancient.

This is Biden’s third presidential run. His first ended in scandal, his second ended with a 5th place finish in Iowa. He placed 4th this time. He’s never won a single delegate.

Republicans have long viewed him as the Democratic version of a Quayle or Palin or W.; a walking gaffe machine prone to embarrassing gaffes, twisted verbiage, and generally head-scratching stupidity. He’s only given them more fodder recently.

His weird behavior on countless videos around women and girls is another red flag. Whatever your opinion of that behavior, you’d have to agree that it creates an unnecessary distraction that isn’t an issue with the other candidates.

Taken with all this, and more, it’s really hard to see how Biden is “electable.” Somehow he’s expected to draw on his legendary rapport with working class white people (who love Trump), and his parallel rapport with “black folks,” (who love Obama, not Uncle Joe), and stitch together a winning coalition where the rest of us just fall in line and blindly support another old white man from 3-4 eras ago. A literal relic of another time.

Of course barely anyone under 50 wants him. No one under 35 does. His base is 60+ and most of them will be dead in 20 years, so they don’t give a fuck about global warming and they equate Medicare for all and free public education with Stalinist Russia.

Don’t underestimate old people, R71. A lot of them are going for Pete.

If you look at Bernie Sanders’ numbers, he loses percentage points for every ten years of age. That is, his biggest base is frat boys, his smallest base is old people. He promotes that as “only the young can understand me,” when in reality, it’s the older you get, the more you have his number.

If you want to get the old vote, Pete could get most of them. The only ones he can’t get are homophobics. And it’s the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, so the homophobics are probably old people of color. That can be helped by getting a solid person of color as VP.

Biden’s voters aren’t dealing with reality. And if you’d never heard of Biden, a guy who constantly places third or fourth is unelectable. South Carolina can’t prop him up all by themselves.

Joe's other difficulty, besides age and burgeoning "Scandal in Ukraine" propped up by Russian lies, is his record.

Absolutely nobody has any idea of what a Vice President does, let alone what Biden did. Pence the White Cypher has a accomplished...what? See?

Plus, as R71 mentions, there exist very disturbing videos of Joe being a chest groper, not merely a Hair Whisperer, of women and of little girls, complete with inappropriate remarks about dating. There is no point in denying he has a serious and demonstrable problem just because we want to think he's a good guy. Republicans won't be so shy.

He fails to excite because he's not exciting. Dull. Poor speaker. Too old to govern. We don't need another president that presents himself so poorly.

What he really needs is Drew Barrymore to run his campaign.

Does anyone else think he still might do OK in Nevada, then steamroll through Super Tuesday?

He'd be lucky to get a couple of delegates out of Nevada.

His facelift is a big part of it, and I’m 100% serious.

Has he ever gotten a delegate?

He has 6 from Iowa. R79.

Apparently turnout this morning in Nevada is much heavier than expected, and somehow I don't think most of them are interested in Joe Biden.

[quote] I am 41 and I am bothered by his incoherence.

[quote] My father is 41 and he feels, plainly, that Biden, Sanders and Trump are just too old, period.

Lol.

His age and his pro-corporate bank record bother me the most.

He looks like he’s already dead or a cancer victim or something.

It’s depressing looking at his face.

Joe's eyes are a tad Gray Alien now.

Plus, we mock Trump, and rightly so, for his coiffure, but Biden never should have let his hair go white for the public. "Washed out" is not a healthy look, when looks are vital for an older candidate.

Joe's hair is unfortunate. It looks like a team of experts is trying desperately to keep hair on his head. Every hair is precious.

R76 No, absolutely nobody still thinks this. He's sinking fast in the polls and all momentum from his campaign has totally dissipated, along with his campaign funds. Bloomberg is likely to take over his role and much of his support.

[quote] Joe's eyes are a tad Gray Alien now.

I've watch all the debates and have noticed a change in his appearance each time. The last debate it was his eyes. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but Gray Alien did cross my mind.

Biden’s only problems are his mouth and the thoughts that come out of it. He is incoherent. He is backward. When he inevitably confuses or offends with his rambling non-sequiturs, he inevitably confuses and offends as he tries to talk his way out of the mess he caused himself.

Imagine the Hunter Biden scandal had never happened. Would Joe Biden be any better positioned as a candidate? He wouldn’t. He was blessed with a huge share of voters who “like” him because they think they know old Uncle Joe—and through his own hard work, he has undermined and picked apart much of the goodwill support he started with. That takes a very special kind of incompetence and buffoonery.

[quote]Joe's hair is unfortunate. It looks like a team of experts is trying desperately to keep hair on his head. Every hair is precious.

He’s had so many facelifts that his hairline has been pulled back too far on top of his head. It’s tragic.

Because polls are different than elections, always have been.

Biden polled very well, because of his purported 'stability' against Trump. When people get to the voting booth, they get more honest.

We now have more Millennials voting than Boomers for this election. Seeing the first two primary races unfold against Biden really tells the tale. This is going to be a very interesting year.

R90 Unfortunately, the same Millennials who won’t vote for Biden because he is ancient and out of touch are clamoring to vote for an angry old man who just had a heart attack.

Biden has the support of a lot of senior women who find him dashing.

Since Biden announced his campaign, the whole media story has been “Biden is the hands-down heir apparent and all others must give up. Who will he choose to be his VP??!”

He floundered. Not a single person I know prefers him, from people aged 25 up to people in their 80s.

Buttigieg and Sanders won in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the media story changed overnight to “Bloomberg is the likely winner. He’s the only one with the superpowers to beat Trump.”

I heard a poll this morning supposedly shows a three-way tie in Virginia among Biden (as if), Sanders and Bloomberg. I’m really fucking sick of the media doing all it can to influence voters. It always backfires for non-Republicans.

This new NYT Daily podcast about Bloomberg makes me want to surrender my right to vote. According to it, he basically owns everyone progressive. The Center for American Progress self-censored its own materials to eliminate any criticism of Bloomberg and “coincidentally” he has given them millions. He claims not to have known about the censorship, but there’s no question it was done because CAP wants the money to keep flowing. The reporters say that usually when Democratic leaders meet with a candidate the candidates thank them for their time at the top of the meeting; when Bloomberg met with them, they all began the meeting by thanking him for his generous support of their candidacies. He is keeping women gagged with Weinstein/Trump-style non-disclosure agreements from sexual harassment and discrimination settlements. He’s unapologetic.

If Bloomberg beats Trump, good, fine. Trump needs to be ousted by any means. But this country is fucked anyway.

[quote]Since Biden announced his campaign, the whole media story has been “Biden is the hands-down heir apparent and all others must give up. Who will he choose to be his VP??!”

Maybe on DL... maybe. I won't deny media characterized him as the lead based not the polling but then almost invariably went into the but can he sustain it/gaffe machine narrative. Joe existed for them to attack the inevitability... but media were the ones pimping it to begin with. Biden's initial message (which as much as I like him made me vomit) was not about being the heir but that soft pablum about the soul of the country (in my view, it should have been a much starker 'enough is enough.')

I think he's a lousy campaign performer, his campaign is way over managed and over thought and he is making modest performance skills worse by being over rehearsed. A good, decent guy who would have been a skilled and experienced president got bogged down in worrying to much. He should have just showed up as he is, come what may... instead they made a tricky offer worse.

“Biden’s initial message (which as much as I like him made me vomit) was not about being the heir but that soft pablum about the soul of the country...”

...and then he couldn’t resist emulating Trump and calling a woman a “lying dogface.” That made me abandon any goodwill I had for the crazy old man up to that point, and it has disappointed me to see the very same people who rightly condemn Trump for calling women “fat pigs” shrug off Biden’s equally dehumanizing and childish comment as “that’s just Joe.” That’s what Trump’s idiot supporters say about him when he does that shit—that’s just Donald. Fuck them both. That’s why we call Trump supporters deplorable. Decent people don’t even think things like that.

I can't explain that and I don't defend it. It was a stupid, odd thing to say and if anyone wants to back away from him on that basis, I get it. But I will say I think Joe Biden deserves far more slack cut than Donald Trump ever will.

Seeing him manhandle women grossed me out. I’d still vote for him over Trump, but I’m not fooled. He’s another one who feels completely entitled.

Why has Joe Biden failed to excite?

Because he doesn't understand that the 2016 election signaled dissatisfaction with both political parties. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans were addressing the problems besetting large swaths of the American electorate. People do not want the status quo ante. You cannot get elected simply by saying you are not that racist, sexist, irresponsible imbecile. Beyond that, Biden does not stand out from the crowd.

There is nothing to the Hunter Biden/Ukraine story. Doesn't matter. It will become an albatross around his neck, if it hasn't already.

R93

Those Virginia numbers represent the fact that Biden still seems to have a hold on a fair amount of black voters.

I shit you not - Biden’s team are passing out shirts to the majority black crowds at his SC rallies that say

“South Carolina Works for Joe”

Who approved that shit?! It should be “Joe Works for South Carolina”

Tone deaf.

Joe’s latest official endorsement!

“ When Biden arrived in Columbia Tuesday night for his South Carolina launch party, that energy was evident: at its peak, the predominantly black crowd was standing room only. Attendees took pictures in front of a backdrop decorated with Biden paraphernalia and were given “South Carolina works for Joe” t-shirts. ‘

R100 Malarkey!

The proof is in the Politico article, r103.

R104 Malarkey, I say! Balderdash and poppycock! Keep on tryin’ man, you ain’t gonna bring me down, bud. You wanna, you wanna, get why don’t you get down on the floor and let’s do pushups, huh? Let’s see who’s a man. I’m gonna wipe the floor with—malarkey! I...and, like I was, I uh was, I...I’m out of time. Anyways.

The same ones with came up with "I'm with HER!" (not "She's For Us!"), R100.

11/03/20.

BIDEN

TIME.

MALARKEY, R107!