It Was Over the Moment It Started

Some quick thoughts on the Biden/Trump debate.

This will be a short piece, since we’re heading into the weekend and the topic I’m about the write about remarkably doesn’t seem to have many competing views.

President Biden’s performance at last night’s debate was devastatingly bad. Hell, it was downright scary. Mere minutes (perhaps even seconds) in, everyone with concerns about the president’s mental fitness to serve (from voters to world leaders) had those concerns both validated and amplified.

Biden often looked lost and animatronic, staring blankly into space with his mouth dangling open in response to the moderators and his opponent. When he spoke, his delivery was frail, disjointed, and confused. Even on the occasions when he managed to capture some rhetorical footing, and latch onto rehearsed talking points, he couldn’t stick the landing. Trump would tell bald-faced lies, spew conspiratorial nonsense, and project his worst attributes onto Biden, and the best the president could offer in return was halting, meandering angst that effectively let Trump off the hook, and in some cases didn’t even make sense.

If you can’t prosecute a political case against someone as prosecutable as Donald Trump — a guy who tried to steal the last election, caused an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and now has a criminal record (with more serious criminal cases in the queue) — what are you even doing?

Biden shouldn’t have been up on that stage. He shouldn’t be running for president. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether he’s mentally fit to be president right now.

It’s really quite extraordinary that every political analyst on CNN (the network that hosted the debate) basically agreed last night with everything I just wrote. We’re talking about liberal Democrats, partisan Republicans, and everyone in between. Finally, a moment of political unity in this country!

But this is no laughing matter. The Democratic party, especially those within the Biden administration and the president’s inner circle, obviously knew about these problems, and understood just how serious they were. Lots of us had strong suspicions, of course, but they knew. Their response was to downplay the situation, cover it up, and keep the president well insulated from public scrutiny. Thus, I don’t have a lot of sympathy in regard to all of the Democratic-operative freakout stories that reportedly started making their rounds even before the debate was over. Biden’s stubbornness and ego, and their sanitizing, has put the party (and the country) in one hell of a predicament.

For Trump’s part, he did what he needed to do in the debate, which was remain relatively tame. Otherwise, it was the typical gibberish, word salads, and BS that are already baked into people’s views of the former president.

Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did a very good job. They were fair and asked good questions. I’m sure a number of viewers were frustrated that they didn’t fact-check either candidate, but if they’d done that, they probably wouldn’t have had time for more than three questions.

I liked the debate format. Having no audience, and managing orderly questions and answers, at least made for a clean exchange. I’d like to see other presidential debates conducted this way in the future.

But none of those things were the story of the night. All that mattered was Joe Biden’s performance. Calls to replace him at the Democratic convention are already coming in, and I suspect they’ll only grow louder over the next few days. If it’s logistically feasible, and the Democrats build up the nerve to go through with it, I think the party could actually salvage this election and keep the White House.

Prior to the debate, National Review’s Jim Geraghty explained why:

If you’re pulling for Trump, you don’t want Biden to go out there and prove himself to be so egregiously senile that he creates a consensus among Democrats that he must be replaced at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Trump has a straightforward message against Biden: “Had enough?” If the Democrats were to panic and somehow replace Biden (and Kamala Harris?) with Gavin Newsom or Amy Klobuchar or Cory Booker, the Democrats would be able to shed the burden of the past four years, like a snake shedding its skin, and pitch themselves as a party of change.

Frankly, I think Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would be the Democrats’ best bet, but even after last night I’m not convinced that the party will do what so clearly needs to be done.