There are three ways last night’s debate could have gone worse for President Biden:
He could have suffered a debilitating stroke mid-debate.
A rogue meteor could have struck the earth, destroying the studio and with it all human life.
I lied. I could only think of two ways it could have gone worse for Biden, and I’m honestly not sure the first one didn’t happen.
I was anxious in the lead-up to the debate, but I assured myself that Biden had a lot of experience in the field, and that Donald Trump would self-destruct as he always does.
And then Biden emerged onto the stage. And in that moment, I knew this was going to be a really bad night. He seemed to have aged twenty years since 2020.
As usual, I’m seeing a lot of “working the refs” this morning, with Biden supporters (many of them now former Biden supporters) blaming CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash for not fact-checking Trump more often. It’s a fair point, though in Presidential debates I tend to think it’s primarily up to the opponent to do the fact-checking.
If you can blame CNN for anything, it’s that a format designed to rein in Donald Trump - no crowd, microphones turned off after time expires - backfired and prevented him from exhibiting his worst instincts.
Had Trump gotten the chance to loudly heckle and constantly interrupt Biden, it might have made up for the incumbent’s obvious struggles and maybe even hurt Trump by making it look like he was bullying a fragile old man.
Instead, by his exceptionally low standards, Trump performed well. Almost everything that came out of his mouth was a lie, of course, but at least they were mostly coherent lies.
You can blame CNN for a lot, but it wasn’t CNN that put Joe Biden up there when he obviously wasn’t suited for it.
More than anything, as someone who’s long backed Joe Biden - and, to be clear, will still support him even in his diminished state over a Donald Trump at the height of his intellectual powers - I feel betrayed.
There was a lot of talk about his “senior moments” and borderline senility, but I wrote off these reports as exaggerated if not completely false and defamatory.
So did many other commentators, reporters, and Democratic politicians. And then last night happened.
The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.
But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.
Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”
Cast your mind back to February, when Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, came out with his report that included details about Biden’s health, which explained why he would not prosecute the president.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Can anyone doubt that characterization after watching Biden’s debate performance?
Yet Eric Holder told us that Hur’s remarks were “gratuitous.” The former attorney general tweeted: “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser, said Hur’s report was a “partisan hit job.” Vice President Kamala Harris argued: “The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts, and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.” The report does not “live in reality,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, stressing that the president was “sharp” and “on top of things.”
Shall I go on? Okay.
Here was The New York Times last week in an extensive piece headlined: “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” The story went on to attempt to convince readers that “there is the distorted, online version” of Biden, which is merely “a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.”
With forensic detail, three Times reporters compared these videos from various angles. “Some of the videos of Mr. Biden circulating during this year’s campaign are clearly manipulated to make him look old and confused,” they wrote, pulling clips that were meant to debunk the idea that he was either. Watch them. See for yourself.
When The Wall Street Journal earlier this month came out with a story for which reporters had interviewed 45 people, soberly laying out concerns about Biden’s age, it was trashed as an “egregious hit job.” Some people called for it to be retracted.
I wish I practiced personal injury law, because a lot of people have whiplash this morning.
In retrospect, Biden should have planned to be a one-term, transitional President all along. He could do math and knew he’d be 81 years old by 2024.
At this stage, I don’t think he can be forced out of the nomination against his will. If anyone else is going to take over - like Richard Dreyfuss’ kid, I’d even take my chances with Vice President Harris right now - Biden must step aside voluntarily.
And if he won’t? Honestly, he needs to debate Trump again.
There have been several election campaigns in which the incumbent stumbled in the first debate - though none as badly as Biden did last night - only to score a knockout victory in the second. Romney crushed Obama in the first 2012 debate, and still lost. Mondale was considered the winner in the first 1984 debate against an aged Reagan, but no one remembers because of the “my opponent’s youth and inexperience” zinger during the rematch.
Plus, it’s not like the internet has left us with anything resembling an attention span. By September, when the next debate is scheduled, we might have forgotten this one just like Homer Simpson forgot he once had a snow plowing business.
I’ve long said we can’t assume Trump is guaranteed to lose nor guaranteed to win, and I stand by that. A lot can happen between now and November.
I just hope that, come the next debate, Biden doesn’t have a cold again. Or, in the alternative, that his team makes sure everybody knows about it well in advance this time.
You. Are. So. Wrong! Along with the rest of the otherwise-unemployable political illiterates.
This is what I wrote last night at That's Another Fine Mess:
Once again, the Cretin News Network and the overage yuppies still stupid enough to continue to work there lived down to my expectations: no mic control, no holding El Jefe Del Mar A Lardo to the rules, and Alex Wagner proved how desperate she is not to get dropped at MSNBC like happened back in 2008 (I just canceled recording her show). I’ll laugh if he wins and they and the rest of the DC Press Corpse find themselves looking out from the wrong side of the barbed wire fence at the tent city in West Texas they’re confined to. They all fucking well deserve it, but we don’t.
Once again, I will say that if the DC Press Corpse and the rest of the cable news yuppies and the “Democratic Consultants” had been in the Navy between December 7, 1941 and June 4, 1942, someone would have thrown their useless asses overboard.
Oh, it’s terible! The enemy is winning! Whatever can we do??? Well, as Dick Best told me, “We did our jobs and didn’t think about losing because it was unthinkable.” And then on June 4, 1942, they cut out the heart of the Japanese in six deadly minutes.
Too many Americans act like professional-level nitwits. They’re the reason we didn’t get The GI Bill For Everybody in the Second New Deal that didn’t happen because they were (sniff, sniff, boo hoo) “disappointed” by the way the war had been going, so they didn’t show up to vote on the first Tuesday in November 1942…
Four days before the US Army landed in North Africa. Step One on the hard-fought road to Normandy.
And let me tell you from ten years’ experience as a “professional Democrat” that the term “Democratic Consultant” is a two word quickie for “over-educated otherwise-unemployable moron who’s a legend in his own mind”.
I agree completely with what Josh Marshall wrote to a TPM subscriber:
“It sucked. It was brutal. But this is where we are. And a million people in history have been in suck and brutal situations and they pushed forward. Maybe they were in a battle and then they all died. Or maybe that was the moment when they made the critical decision to pull together and they won. This is living in history where we don’t know which story we’re in. That’s life. It provides an immense psychic relief to break the existential glass and say he should withdraw. Okay, then what? This is where we are and we have to keep fighting because that’s the only realistic choice we have.”
We. Have. To. Keep. Fighting. Because. That’s. The. Only. Realistic. Choice. We. Have.
Just like the guys on the carriers at Midway who tore the heart out of the enemy after six months of retreat and defeat.
Tturn off the rest of MSNBC till the day after the election.