Subject: Re: Frank Luntz- on tonights Biden interview,
The choice is really simple. And it has nothing to do with Biden. Nothing at all. As I've said before, Democrats should be able to get a half-eaten ham sandwich elected over Trump.

It doesn't matter how many times you say it - voters have not categorically rejected Trump. The voters won't vote for a half-eaten ham sandwich over Trump. Voters' choices do have something to do with Biden. Democrats have been trying for years to get votes to view Trump's many deficiencies as disqualifying, and it has not worked.

Again, if Biden were winning before the debate, none of this reaction would be happening. But he wasn't. Voters aren't indifferent to Biden's qualifications and characteristics. They're just not. As much as Democrats wish voters simply preferred any candidate - even a ham sandwich - to Trump, it's abundantly clear that this is not the case.

So Democrats go into the homestretch of the campaign needing someone to convince voters that Trump is not an acceptable option. And it's really hard to do that if the guy at the top of the ticket can't do the types of town halls (for example) that he did a few years ago. You keep talking about "Democrats" getting Biden elected, but an election is not a passive thing that the party does for a candidate. Candidates have to get themselves elected, and the concern is that Biden isn't mentally acute enough to perform the tasks a candidate has to be able to do for that to happen.

So get to work on getting your candidate elected instead of whining and moaning about a problem everyone knew about 4 years ago.

No one knew four years ago that Biden would be in the specific condition he's in right now - capable of turning in a debate performance like Thursday. People knew he would be old - but while 81 year-olds are never in as good of condition as they were in their 50's (for example), there's still a wide range of potential functionality at that age. Some 81 year-olds are fine; some are completely non compos mentis. You don't know what range of functionality a 77 year old person will have four years later.

That's one of the main reasons why people are reacting so strongly to his debate performance - this is new information for an awful lot of people. Even Trump's convictions - which dominated Democratic discussions and the news media in general last month when they happened - didn't reveal anything especially new about Trump. Which is one reason why they didn't affect the race all that much. But Biden's performance was worse than most people imagined he could be - which is why that has affected the race.