Again, I’m obviously not being clear. Yeah, his posture is terrible —- but it was also terrible in 2016. He was doing that weird lumbering walk way back his during the Hillary debate. Ditto his rambling speech.

Are you really saying that Trump in 2024 was an order of magnitude more “elderly” than in 2016? Didn’t look that way to me, at all.

I do agree the falling asleep and bruises are a sign he’s entering final phase. But he’s not fully there yet. In 5 years he’ll have dropped 40 pounds, his cheeks will be sunken in, and he’ll walk at half speed as today, and then he will be in “obvious physical decline”

Side note, just occurred to me: Biden did himself a big disservice by getting facelifts. His face got weird and stretched tight. I think it had the opposite effect of what he wanted, and made him look older still.

You’re obviously right about SCOTUS. I guess there I was more thinking about the even-longer conservative lock-in with his next appointee.

But I really do disagree on the physical decline though. Put simply, the things people see are: weight, posture, quickness and stability of movement, strength of voice, hair, face (and a few others).

If you compare T16 vs T24, and B16 vs B24, the B delta is much bigger on any of those factors.

Everyone(ish) hits a cliff where they start quickly getting weaker, gaunt, frail, shorter, slower. Where you look at a picture from the year before and think “wow they looked young by comparison just a year ago.” Biden hit that cliff, Trump somehow hasn’t

> And I mean Trump's physical and mental decline is far worse than Biden's ever was

Incorrect. Trump 2024 was as looney as Trump 2016 and all the years in between, so that doesn't qualify as mental decline. He'd lost some spring in his step but overall was physically in much the same shape as 8 years prior. Meanwhile Biden went from active cyclist to a slow elderly gait. It was plain to see.

> You don't hold a "proper primary" when you have the advantage of incumbency.

Following that traditional playbook in the face of his obvious physical condition, is why we have today's SCOTUS, DOW, Trump Kennedy Center, ...

Simple: Biden should have never run for re-election. I loved the guy but his physical decline couldn’t be denied.

A proper primary would have most likely resulted in a dem president (and most probably Newsom).

I like to think mine brought a certain je ne sais quoi to the public discourse.