Thought he couldn't lose to Trump and should play four corners. I'm also guessing a lot of his staffers are left of left and think some of his moderate opinions are embarrassing (gaza, when he moderates on abortion, etc.)

I also think they might get caught up in winning the day/week and not overall perceptions. He just has to be OK to surprise people. A few innocent gaffes a week are OK.

Basically they've been playing not to lose rather than going for a win. Some of it may have been intentional hoping to get the border deal through but now it's election time.

His one saving grace is that in a side to side comparison with Trump talking really any issue he sounds like Albert Einstein.

in Biden? Obviously there are some of the public issues we've seen, and rumors/leaks about it from people who are closer to him (hard to know what to believe), but do you think his memory and cognitive issues are made up or overexaggerated?

Reagan's age and mental acuity was a major issue in his reelection campaign against Mondale.

be the standard. Not saying your point isn't relevant, just not what I was asking AD. Also, compare their speeches and interviews at the time, there is a major difference.

Was Tom Brady as good an athlete at the end of his New England tenure as the start? No. Could he still serve as an NFL QB? Yes. Was he at higher risk of injury or flaming out in a year or two? Yes. People start mentally declining in their 50's/60's so this is a matter of degree. I'd be fine with a 70 year old president. Slower to the draw but maybe more wise than in his 50's. I think Biden's lost speed on his fast ball but is still serviceable.

I think Biden is mentally there enough to be president. But he might have a McConnel moment in the campaign or just fall off during his presidency. If Haley were running I'd be conflicted on the two (Preferring his policies but seeing her as more likely to stay with it and execute foreign policy).

I think he was selfish to run again. I think he should have trusted the primary process to elevate someone with a good chance of winning. However liberal the base is, 2020 showed us they're pragmatic in picking a nominee who could win. If Kamala won that process it would mean she'd drastically improved as a politician.

The error he made on Mexico/Egypt is the kind of mistake I see from competent clinicians in their prime during rounds all the time in the ICU. You clearly describe a disease process or treatment but then state the disease/treatment for another patient.

I think the reaction to the flub shows he has 0 margin for error and needs to get out there a lot. He either shows he's got it or he doesn't. But this low volume speaking strategy leave him open to media freak outs for any mistake, no matter the severity.

time I understood the point he was making and didn't really thing twice about it. I can see how some of the talking heads will make an issue of it but I didn't think that one was a big deal. What concerns me more is the things like we hear in the Hur report (not sure why Hur would make any of that up), his misremembering of basic facts ("my son died in Iraq"), his ever-changing stories of static historical events, falling asleep at world events, putting a lid on his day extremely early, his constant battles with the teleprompter, the random trailing off and non-sequiturs, and the great lengths his staff takes to hide him from the public (which again indicates to me that they don't trust him).

Look, you're a doctor so your opinion carries weight here, but neither of us are shrinks or spend any time with Biden to be able to render a fully informed judgment on this. I've just seen people first hand at the early stages of senility/dementia, and this report caught my eye when it's put in the context of some of his public issues. I'm open to the fact that I could be totally off here.

He would have a horrible gaffe where he just gets everything wrong. Start talking about Ariel Sharon and complaining that all the Arab countries invaded Israel on Yom Kippur. Forget Mexico borders us. Something like that. They tend to be massive lapses.

People with age related slowing tend to be self aware at some level. The anger over losing the car gets exacerbated because at some level they know they're declining.

People with alzheimers/Dementia tend to be blissfully unaware. You usually bring them in w a family member and do the test Trump brags about passing. They miss some huge things. Not knowing the year, no short term recall, thinking a wife or a dead kid are still alive.

I'd also note Kevin McCarthy said Biden was sharp during budget negotiations. The attorney who created the report is a Republican. His conclusions were about the most damaging thing you could hit Biden with if you didn't think you could prosecute the case.

But again, Biden has to put up or shut up. Either he pulls off a successful campaign or he flounders. If he flounders he has close advisors/family members who I think would tell him to hang it up. To me, watching the press conference I see an old dude who's with it and spitting mad. When I watch Trump talk for more than a minute I think the guy can't hold a coherent thought together but that's just me.

Conversations he claimed to have in 2021, talking about January 6th. He was explicit about when and where he had the conversation. He told the story at two separate events on the same evening. The problem is, Kohl has been dead for over a decade. He was mixing up
and
Biden also confused Mitterand and Macron, claiming to have spoken with the former a quarter century after the French president's death.
Neither look anything alike.
These three stuttering incidents took place three days apart.

dementia/alzheimers? I guess what I'm getting at is aren't there different stages of this, and early on it's very inconsistent and might be harder to pick up on given we rarely see him and he's rarely allowed to go off the teleprompter? I ask not to be difficult, but because I do not know and from what I've personally experienced it seems to snowball rather than a cliff-type progression.

A number of Republicans have grudgingly acknowleged he's still annoyingly with it. You'd also see it more in Q and A.

Even early alzheimers people have some totally off the rails moments.

Age related slowing can get bad enough where you can't be POTUS but you can be pretty functional. I don't think Biden's there but he could be in 4 years. That's why I wish he'd have opened the primary up a year ago.

I just think from both a personal mental competence and advisor perspective he runs circles around Trump. I wish the Republicans would nominate Whaley or someone who'd beat him. I'd dislike their politics, but I'd prefer we set a higher floor for the country.

Alas that's not the world we live in.

Overall, we should be concerned about the outcomes of a Presidential administration and not the day-to-day exposures we see. The Biden Administration has been very effective in getting things done and handling a lot of very difficult foreign policy situations. Nothing seems to be running off the rails, whatsoever. Most of the time, people would attribute that as a sign of great leadership. Not so much, these days.

are as bad as they've been in a generation at least. Whether you can attribute that to Biden or not can be up for debate, but in my worthless opinion his strategy towards Iran has been disastrous, if not enabling/encouraging. That's my opinion and the opinion of many others, so I do think that's where these kinds of things matter. If we had a president who was stronger/more present would Russia have invaded? Would Iran be as bold as they've been? Would they have given the green light to Hamas and the Houthis? It's impossible to know one way or the other, but my point is people are connecting these issues, and I don't think it's a totally unfair connection.

No surprise there. The same complaints were voiced during the Obama administration. They seem unrelated to mental competency issues.

people are linking the policy issues with the chaos in the Middle East / Russia, and questioning his ability to navigate all of this given his declining cognitive abilities. His strategy in both arenas is confusing to many, and he's not really able to artfully articulate or make the case for why we're doing some of the things we're doing. For example, I was always afraid to get more entangled in more wars (particularly in Afghanistan), and Biden certainly didn't give any comfort that this is a good use of American money/attention/resources aside from bumper stickers like "Russia bad, Ukraine good", or "democracy good, tyranny bad". 3 different posters back here were able to articulate and explain why it was important to us in a way neither Biden nor anyone in his administration was able to do. Now, given Biden's flip-flopping on this issue regarding what we'd provide, what we'd accept (minor incursion), etc. and his continued cognitive decline, is he going to be able to navigate this? That's the link people are making now.

Is that anything he advocates too much for Republicans become reflexively against. He didn't want CHIPS/the debt ceiling deal/Ukraine to be too associated with him or it might lose bipartisan support.

He needs to run for reelection now. There aren't really more deals to be had outside of the Israel/Ukraine bill.

This SOTU in a month is shaping up to be the most important for a president giving it in decades. If he gets a good back and forth like the last one he should be able to right size his campaign. If he flubs it the knives are out for him.

Was Bush by a long shot. The reaction to 911 vis a vis Iraq screwed us up foreign policy wise. Had he kept his powder dry ziran would be boxed in and we'd have had the bandwidth to be more decisive countering Russia as it was expanding.

Honestly, I think we needed out of Afganistan. Had we stayed we'd have needed a surge. Things were quiet because of Trump's truce and the Afgan national forces needed a lot of help. Given manning shortages the op tempo is actually quite high now with Ukraine going on. If we had a bunch of boots on the ground in Afganistan it wouldn't be pretty.

He also executed Ukraine's support well. His current issue is MAGA sabotaging US interests to serve glorious leader.

He's also gotten more buy in from China's neighbors in aligning with us (Phillipines and Vietnam mainly)

He's also played the Israel situation as well as he could. He's applying pressure to Bibi in a manner and at a time to mitigate the humanitarian disaster and be able to push Israel to stop at some point when they're clearly spinning their wheels.

I can see preferring someone like Hsley who's competent and more traditional GOP/hawkish making decisions.

As to Trump, the potential for self inflicted disasters like NATO withdrawal, starting trade wars w allies, giving China chip tech as a reward for a meaningless trade deal, attacking Mexico unilaterally over Fentanyl etc. Are terrifying. As PJ Orourke said of Hillary "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

I think people really underestimate the damage Trump can do with only sycophants and no adults advising him on national security.

alternative or even some kind of bar, and fully agree with you on the disastrous Iraq decision. That no one has been held to account on both Iraq and Afghanistan and the lies we were told in both over the course of 2 decades shows that politicians protect themselves. But on Iran, the strategy of engagement has only worked to fill their coffers to fund their deadly mischief, and prior to that engagement I read credible reports that their terrorist proxies were being picked up on wires complaining that the mothership was no longer funding them at the necessary levels. Obviously we're funding their various wars as well by continuing to buy their oil (election year I get it), but that will continue to have deadly consequences. The sanctions and pressure we had on them previously really did have a material impact on their cash reserves if you look at the trends over the years.

On Ukraine, what is the strategy there? We held off on tanks as some kind of red line, then decided to provide that. Same as the jets. We tipped our hand that a "minor incursion" wouldn't really be seen as a big deal. If the objective is to help Ukraine drive Russia out of its territory, we haven't really acted in that way by drawing lines in the sand (for a while at least) about what we would provide.

We really feared Putin escalating early on. We also feared Ukraine folding in the first month.

As to Tanks, we assessed that Abrams were not the tanks you wanted to start them off with. We ended up releasing our tanks to shame the Europeans into giving up the Leopards Ukraine wanted.

With the financial shortage (imposed by MAGA) we didn't want to focus on big ticket items in later packages to eat up the financial runway we have left.

I think the war likely goes into 2025 whatever happens with negotiations or an armistice. The terms will be decided by balance of power.

It's in our selfish interest to see Russia attitudes as much as possible. We don't want Putin to be able to sell this as a win and keep expanding into countries with Russian minorities like the Baltics. It's also in our interest to integrate Ukraine into the EU/NATO infrastructure to further deter Russia/reduce the need for American boots on the ground in Europe.

We need to fund them so they can hold the line this year and shame Europe into contributing what they really need to be doing. Our generals and theirs are painting a pretty dire picture of what happens when their ammunition/air defense shortage gets worse than it already is.

I don't know that my mom, who lives in Texas, has ever voted for a Republican for federal office, and she despises Greg Abbott intensely. Even she is perplexed and frustrated about the border issue. For the first time ever last week, I heard her (almost) defend Abbott.

Is that campaign operatives in both parties tend to be younger, more urban, and more liberal than the party.

For Republicans it means operatives tend to moderate the candidate's instincts at least culturally.

For dems it means they get people telling them Defund/Open borders are popular and consensus with the base.

The flip side is there's way less talent on the Republican side because the left has more intelligencia folks to choose from and their people tend to be more talented when you ignore ideology.