The media still haven't realized that they're a bunch of highly educated puppies. They write well and can form a compelling story, but at the end of the day they get distracted by, and tend to focus on, any flashy or squeaky object in their periphery.
That's confusing cause and effect. Howard Dean's speech was supposed to be a concession speech after losing the only early primary/caucus he was trying to win. He poured in all of his resources in the hopes of winning Iowa, underperformed expectations against a backdrop of dropping in the polls for weeks, and coming in third (with no real prospects for New Hampshire or South Carolina) basically made it impossible for him to have the volunteers, money, or press coverage to survive into the next stage of competing in bigger states with primaries clumped up together.
He showed everyone his plan of winning Iowa or going home, lost Iowa, and then gave some kind of rallying speech as if he had a plan to recover from that loss. He never did, and it wasn't the scream that killed his campaign. His campaign was dead before the scream happened. It's just that the scream was a particularly memorable way for a campaign to die.
Back when the internet was fun, there was a flash game where you could play as the different presidential nominees, and Howard Dean's special move was the "Dean Scream" where he would scream flipping back and forth from left to right, and all the enemies on screen would fall down. Top tier.
That's a pretty generous summation of the problems with Biden's debate performance. It was also hardly a one-off. Every time Biden appears it's a coin flip for which Biden shows up, which is why he appears so infrequently.
You are absolutely right about how Trump's bullshit gets largely ignored by the press though.
It was hardly a one-off. He was setting off alarm bells left and right beforehand, and the debate was his chance to regain some confidence. And he had a bad night then as well. So yah, he has his good days, but it's pretty apparent that his good days are getting far between.
This was the right decision, it's a shame he had to be pretty much forced into it by everyone else that saw it. I blame his handlers, and they should have their asses handed to them for trying to fuck the rest of us by keeping him past his best-before date and giving Trump the presidency.
It blows my mind that “Biden just had a raspy voice!!” isn’t banned as misinformation here. Because it literally is, there is no reasonable way to interpret “we beat Medicare” being yelled over and over as the result of a raspy voice. Absolute memory hole shit.
Apparently universal healthcare (AKA Medicare for All, single-payer) is some kind of glass ceiling for Democrats. You have to reject it in order to get nominated. Hillary reversed her position on it; so did Harris.
I might not be steeped enough in politics to immediately be able to parse the sentence with the word swap. I do like to think I’m usually pretty good at finishing somebody else’s sandwiches but drew a blank with that line.