Not great, Joe
Biden's debate showing stunk up the joint. But don't give up hope.
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I think we can all agree that President Biden didn’t drink enough Mountain Dew ahead of Thursday night’s debate, amirite?
Seriously, though, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Biden’s performance was a crushing disappointment. It was close to a worst-case scenario.
Biden clearly had a cold of some sort, but that’s no excuse. He spent a week at Camp David preparing for the debate. Unless he’s suffering from something severe, an illness can’t account for the difficultly he had at various points expressing himself clearly and cogently. (See here and here for prime examples.)
It’s true that the format did Biden no favors. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash avoided fact-checking like it was the plague, which allowed Trump to steamroll an unsteady Biden with his usual stream of lies. Trump served up whoppers about abortion, his bungled covid response, Charlottesville, January 6, and more. The below exchange, where Trump refused to answer the question he was asked and instead changed the topic to a stream of unchallenged lies about Biden being “paid by China,” illustrates how useless Tapper and Bash were — and how Trump used that to his advantage.
CNN finally ran an on-air fact-check of Trump more than an hour after the debate ended. But considering the relatively minuscule size of the audience at that late hour and the fact Trump was allowed to lie with impunity on the same network at length earlier in the evening, CNN’s belated attempt at basic journalistic accountability was worth very little.
It’s also true that Trump had some bad moments. He creepily nodded along as Biden noted that he was found liable by a jury for “groping a woman in public,” went on a bizarre tangent about how migrants are “taking Black jobs,” asserted that Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney should be in jail while defending January 6 rioters, sounded completely unhinged while dodging simple questions on topics like child care, seemed to let slip that Putin told him privately it was “his dream” to conquer Ukraine, and — most notably — repeatedly refused to commit to accepting this November’s election result regardless of who wins. (Watch below.)
In our clip-obsessed culture, the Biden campaign has ample material to work with to accurately portray Trump as an existential threat to democracy and women’s rights. And they still have plenty of time to do it.
But Trump was more or less the same Trump he’s been for the past eight years. Biden, by contrast, came across as significantly diminished from the guy who held his own during the 2020 debates. He has never seemed weaker or less up for the job than he did last night.
To be clear, none of this changes the fact that Biden has a strong record and deserves another term on the merits. There’s no denying that the country is in much better shape now than it was in January 2021, which was a point Biden tried to make at a few points throughout the debate. Obviously a lot can and will happen between now and November that will probably mean more to the ultimate result than one bad night in June. And it’s far from unprecedented for an incumbent president to struggle in a debate.
As long as Biden’s in the race, it would be an insane and irresponsible choice to do anything but vote for him. But given his poor debate performance and still shaky polling, there’s no avoiding that we’re in for weeks of punditry and hot takes about him possibly bowing out ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August — especially if his numbers sag over the next couple weeks, which seems more likely than not. Trump’s July 11 sentencing date can’t get here soon enough.
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In short, it’s probably more accurate to say Biden lost the debate than it is to say Trump won it. The race has been very close for months and I expect it to remain that way. It’s a shame, however, that we’re coming out of last night talking about anything other than Trump’s criminality and unfitness to serve. The bottom line is that Republicans set the bar ridiculously low for Biden, but instead of making them regret it, he reinforced the perception he’s lost his fastball.
Those are my two cents, but I’m curious to read what readers thought of the debate. Am I being too harsh? Let’s talk through it in the comments.
There is no reason why CNN could not have fact checked it in real time and put the results in writing like close caption TV! They knew the topics and everyone knows Trump’s usual rants and lies so much could’ve been prepared ahead of time. The moderators were totally ineffective. Much of the time, President Biden seemed in disbelief of the loud, forceful, and easy way that the lies and fabrications just kept on coming from Trump. I was a bit dumbstruck myself that this was allowed to go on without the moderators calling him out.
Heather Cox Richardson explained Gish galloping, a technique in which one person in a debate tries to overwhelm his opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments and, in this case, a constant fire hose of lies. It worked in this case, especially given the format and the fact that the moderators did no fact-checking. When it was Biden's turn to speak where do you start, which lies do you challenge in 1 or 2 minutes. However, the focus groups on MSNBC (Arizona), CNN (Michigan) and a Latino TV station showed that the voters watching the debate were clearly aware of Trump's lies and disgusted by his lies. Voters may have a different perspective than pundits, except of course for MAGA and most Republicans. Republicans lie and Democrats panic. I am glad that, considering how Biden performed, this happened now in June. I wonder if Trump will still want to debate in September. For anyone who's had to participate in debates and numerous public speaking events sometimes you bomb (Obama bombed his first debate and everyone said GW Bush bombed one of his debates), but that doesn't mean you should freak out. It will take a few news cycles to get past this, but I believe that Biden will successfully move on. And, Trump will be sentenced in a couple of weeks because he is a convicted felon. It doesn't matter how poorly Biden did in this debate since nothing changes the fact that Trump has lost numerous civil suits and is a convicted felon. We'll also have the Supreme Court immunity decision soon and this may be able to change the trajectory of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election case, and the GA case about the state conspiracy to overthrow the election may also be able to at begin once the case about Fani Willis is decided. Of course there's no telling if those cases can move forward or not, but let's hope for the best. As Gavin Newsom said after the debate, Biden has our back and now it's time for us to have Biden's back.