Is being accused of varying degrees of sexual assault by 14 women disqualifying?
Is bragging about getting away with unwanted kisses and grabbing women by their vaginas disqualifying?
How about cheating on a wife who just bore your son with a porn star and playboy model?
Apparently not. So how can we even start a conversation about how Biden's behavior "disqualifies" him?
Or is the supposition here that Democrats have higher standards than Republicans for the moral behavior of their representatives?
I think the logic for some Independents is "If I'm going to lean Democrat, they have to be the anti-Trump - pure in the ways he is not." It's a binary, black/white, sort of thinking. But I talk to people who seriously will not vote for anyone unless some party coughs up someone elegant and stainless and incorruptible. It's sort of the other side of the coin of cynicism, the cynical view that all politicians are lying corrupt and sociopathic. This attitude makes it oddly easier to vote for a Trump ("hey, they're all like that") and yet harder to vote for a moderately decent person with flaws. Surprisingly few people actually use reasoned analysis to select a candidate. #gutbrain
Some good points here. I think the attitude that "all politicians are corrupt" helps Trump a great deal. Though the same people who make that assumption without evidence seem to be the ones who actively ignore evidence of Trump's real corruption, so go figure.
To the point, yes I expect that there are independents that will look to vote for the moral opposite of Trump. I expect that there are Democrats looking to do the same (and think Biden may, for that and other reasons, dampen the enthusiasm of certain sectors within the Democratic party) but my point was really addressed to the Trumpist Republicans here highlighting the complaints against Biden and asking if they are “disqualifying.” I’m genuinely curious what the objective is here. Because, while I don’t think it’s intended, there is an inferred position here that Democrats are the more moral party, and thus should hold its candidates to a higher standard.
There is also the fact that Trump lays bare almost every bad faith argument made by the GOP during the Obama years. You could not have come up with a better vehicle to expose their lies if you had designed one explicitly for that purpose. And the shadenfreaude and fake inquiries into Biden’s fitness for office is another example of this. Anytime a Republican utters the word “unpresidential” or some associated argument, the Democrats have a devastating retort; Donald Trump. The GOP plan for dealing with this, it seems, is to just pretend that Trump doesn’t and never existed.
I’m not convinced that is going to work for them. Certainly will be a problem in 2020.