My biggest takeaway... sad to say

[Goodheart]

Joe looked and sounded too old for the job. This was a disaster and I feel sick.

[PatrickforB]

1. Yep.

Not all that good. Sorry to say that. MSNBC is trying to spin it, but I've been hearing from my Millennial kids and their friends and the upcoming election is gonna be a squeaker.

[Oakenshield]

2. This debate never should have happened.

This debate never should have happened. You can’t debate a complete and utter sociopath.

[regnaD kciN]

6. But Biden has done it before with the same sociopath...

…and won.

[Oakenshield]

12. That sounds like complacency

That rings of complacency to me. He won before so no need to be alarmist. Democracy is literally at stake. Both here, and abroad if Trump is re-elected and serves up Western Europe on a platter to Putin. Performances like tonight shouldn’t be allowed to happen. And we don’t need to. Trump is a felon. Biden doesn’t need to share a stage with a gaseous con-man.

[Oakenshield]

14. Four years matters

Four years absolutely matters when we’re talking about advanced age. More importantly, we have millions of dim witted independents with the attention span and political thinking of a goldfish who’ve constantly been skeptical of President Biden’s age relative to his suitability for the office….and we don’t need those people being anymore put-off than they already are. Too much is at stake.

[Archae]

3. He did look and sound bad, BUT...

Trump lied and lied and lied...

[tman]

7. Yeah...i'm not sure how this is bad for trump.

It's always worked well for him.

[IcyPeas]

4. Trump is a felon and has more trials upcoming... the man is a crook

This should've been a slam dunk.

[Arthur_Frain]

5. Take heart.

It isn’t over yet.

[Johnny2X2X]

9. Biden did better the second half

But that first half was damaging. He was over prepared and couldn’t get out his message.

[Goodheart]

11. For whatever reason trump was spared

Biden did a very poor job attacking Trump's character.

[Tom of Temecula]

13. A few weeks ago I posted an article

... that was quickly pulled by DU. The article claimed Joe Biden needs to step aside and allow an open Democratic Party convention to pick our next president.

Nothing I saw tonight has made me feel it was wrong to post it.

[DemocraticPatriot]

16. But no prospective "replacement" Democratic nominee

comes close to President Biden's polling numbers---
most of them run about 10 percentage points BEHIND President Biden against Trump...

The idea of a successful 'replacement nominee' is a TOTAL FANTASY.

And historically, no party has ever been successful in electing a president
after failing to renominate their incumbent president,
going deep back into the 1800s....

[Tom of Temecula]

17. Extraordinary times

... require extraordinary actions.

I'm not sure polls play a role in something like that.

Also, here is an opportunity to increase your knowledge.

When Has A President Been Denied His Party's Nomination?
https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2009/07/a_president_denied_renominatio.html

This question is from Michael Stubbs of Cincinnati, Ohio:

When was the last time, if ever, that a sitting president was not nominated by his party for a second term?

It only happened once to an elected president. That was Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, who was elected as a Democrat in 1852. His pro-Southern sentiments and his policy of failing to lead on the divisive issue of slavery badly hurt his standing with the voters. Especially damaging was his support for the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which backfired on him as Kansas was overrun by pro-slavery forces, mostly from the slave state of Missouri. The events angered Northerners everywhere and helped lead to the creation of the Republican Party. When Democratic delegates gathered in Cincinnati for their convention in 1856, it was clear that they had had enough of Pierce. James Buchanan, who had been defeated by Pierce for the nomination four years earlier, won the nomination on the 17th ballot.

[DemocraticPatriot]

19. Yes, I did suppose it happened during the times immediately preceding our civil war,

but I could not recall the specific case... thanks.

As I recall Franklin Pierce was a 'dark-horse nominee', perhaps the 'classic' dark horse presidential nominee, who had no notable record on issues regarding slavery--- thus he became the nominee of the Democratic party of that time, who were on the verge of splitting between north and south over the slavery issue, but the Pierce nomination allowed them to be "all things to all people" in the 1852 election...

After his election, he clearly sided with southern Democrats over slavery and supported "Kansas-Nebraska" act, which split the party regionally about Pierce, and thus prevented his renomination in 1856.

So in 1856, the Democrats opted for Buchanan, who luckily for himself had spent many of the most recent years serving as an ambassador outside of the country, and thus had not been making any political arguments about slavery one way or the other...
(Echoes of the 1852 Pierce nomination).

Of course Buchanan, probably the most experienced and "most qualified EVER" presidential nominee offered by the Democratic Party--- his major claim to fame was presiding over the dissolution of the country and the secession from the Union of the various southern states just prior to the civil war. He said that it was illegal--- but also said that he could do nothing about it.

[DemocraticPatriot]

15. Hey, don't worry---

Maybe God will send America a hero to resolve this situation...

God or The Devil. I don't much care which.

[alarimer]

18. Yes

It’s not good. I am not hopeful.