Thoughts on the Debacle...I mean Debate
Biden hoped to demolish Trump in the debate. He may have demolished his chance at a second term instead.
I’ve had a few days now to reflect on what was supposed to be a debate. It was, instead, a debacle. Certainly for President Biden, who appeared confused and nearly incoherent at times. But also for the nation as well.
Peter Baker, one of the New York Times most experienced political reporters described Biden’s debate performance as “halting and disjointed,” adding that it “prompted a wave of panic among Democrats and reopened discussion of whether he should be the nominee at all.” A New York Times headline the morning after proclaimed A Fumbling Performance, and a Panicking Party. And like a “morning after,” I was feeling sick, though this hangover has lingered five days later.
Some might have dismissed such doomsday thinking as typical of a post-debacle, ummm, I mean debate, performance that some Biden supporters and aides, including former President Obama, called a “blip.” But it was more “bleep” than “blip.”
Since Friday morning, reactions to Biden’s performance have dominated newscasts and media platforms. Critiques and fallout over Biden’s poor performance are still fueling leading stories at the New York Times and other major news sources. Democrats are feeling betrayed, Republicans are overjoyed, Undecided voters are perhaps more confused than Biden was.
Speaking of the morning after, after what we are politely referring to as a “debate,” a New York Times Editorial on Friday morning implored Biden to step away and end his candidacy. “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” screamed the editorial’s headline. “At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term,” they wrote. “Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.”
To many a Democrats horror, Trump was.
The Times is certainly no right-leaning rag, and they are not alone among major news outlets calling for Biden to reassess his decision to run. “If President Biden had weekend plans, he should cancel them in favor of some soul-searching,” said a Washington Post editorial last Friday. “His calamitous debate performance on Thursday raises legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job. It’s incumbent on this incumbent to determine, in conversation with family and aides, whether continuing to seek reelection is in the best interests of the country.”
Biden, however, didn’t cancel his weekend plans, instead heading to New York’s Hamptons for a series of fund-raisers with high-wealth donors that had likely been planned as a “victory lap” after demolishing Trump. What Biden may have demolished instead is his campaign—and hopes for a second term.
After the campaign events, where Biden reportedly needed a teleprompter to deliver his remarks, he, his family, and his entourage, retreated (literally) to Camp David, where, according to the Times, “his family is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite last week’s disastrous debate performance.” The Times also reported that “some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how he was prepared for the event by his staff,” and noted that “there have been calls among family members to fire some key advisors.”
But, sadly, this isn’t a case of being unprepared FOR a debate, it’s a case of being unprepared TO debate. While “Trump came across as an older adult with a normal level of cognitive functioning for his age,” wrote Quico Toro in Persuasion, “Biden came across as someone in need of round-the-clock care.”
Five days after the debate disaster Biden and his team continue to insist his performance was only a “bad night”—though the Washington Post described it as a “meltdown”— and claim that the President is otherwise sharp and at the top of his game. But Biden is the President of the United States, the world’s preeminent military and economic power, and embroiled in international conflicts pitting Russia and Iran against the US and its allies. Can we afford a President who has “bad nights?”
“Though Mr. Biden’s aides have forcefully and repeatedly said publicly that the president has no plans to leave the race,” reported the Times Wednesday morning, “the first public calls for him to step aside from elected lawmakers made clear that the matter remained far from settled.”
“By Tuesday, however,” reported the Washington Post, “the business-as-usual calm the Biden team sought to impose had backfired, with some Democrats complaining of being gaslit.” Two prominent Democrats, US Senator Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC), have suggested that Biden drop out of the race, with Clyburn saying that if he did he would throw his support behind Vice-President Harris.
This afternoon (Wednesday), the New York Times reported that Biden’s Press Secretary said the president is “absolutely not” considering withdrawing from the race. Also on Wednesday it was reported that Biden told his campaign staff that he was “in this race to the end.”
While Biden was pep-talking his campaign staff and his press aides were fending off numerous questions about the president’s competence and how he would respond to increasing calls from some prominent Democrats and the media to abandon his candidacy—it got worse. A New York Times/Siena College poll, released Wednesday afternoon, showed Trump leading Biden by 6 percentage points nationally among likely voters, and 8 points ahead among registered voters. “Overall,” reports the Times, “74 percent of voters view him as too old for the job, up five percentage points since the debate.”
So now what?
“The problem,” argues a Wall Street Journal editorial, “is that Democrats are now left with a likely nominee who is in obvious mental decline, and a Vice President in Kamala Harris who is even less popular than Mr. Biden.” The one reason that Biden ran again, wrote the Journal’s Editorial Board, “was fear that Ms. Harris couldn’t defeat Mr. Trump.”
Democrats are now faced with the consequences of their own “identity politics.” By running on a promise to choose a woman as his running mate, and in this case a minority woman, Democrats are stuck with Kamala Harris—who, to put it politely, has struggled with her role and failed to gain the trust of the public. Her approval rating has hovered in the 30’s throughout her Vice-Presidency, even lower than Biden’s.
According to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, “If Biden withdrew, the party would face two core decisions: first, whether to nominate Vice President Harris, and if not, whom it should pick from a list of hopefuls who could easily run to a dozen alternatives.” However, cautions, Dionne, “Unless Harris decided to stay on as the vice-presidential candidate, the up-or-down decision on her future would be deeply divisive.”
Harris supporters have warned that if Harris is stepped over if Biden does leave the race, “there would be an uproar.” Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee Chair, told the Washington Post that “Any attempt to try to change a horse after the voters have selected the team they want to see on the team, there would be total chaos.”
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Biden campaign team is trying to scare skittish Democratic donors into sticking with Biden, hinting that otherwise they’ll be stuck with Harris. “News reports this week.” says the Journal, “say a Biden aide told donors their money would go to Ms. Harris if Mr. Biden dropped out. This was meant as a threat, not a promise.”
“The irony that readers won’t miss,” writes the Journal’s Editorial Board, “is that Americans are likely to get Ms. Harris as President if Mr. Biden stays as the party nominee and somehow wins re-election. It’s hard to believe that the President Biden everyone saw last Thursday could serve four more years.”
The Greatest Debate Performance Ever!
Even the President is beginning to admit that the debate didn’t go well for him. On Friday, after the debate, he responded to questions about his performance by telling reporters “It’s hard to debate a liar.” However, reports the Times, Biden “still adamantly views his debate showing as a bad performance…not a revelatory event about his capacity to do the job for four more years.”
But while it was a disaster for Biden, not surprisingly, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he “won” the debate and heaped on the self-praise. “As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated 'Debate,' anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates. They all said, effectively, 'Trump was fantastic!'," the former President wrote on his social media platform TruthSocial.
It’s perhaps unfair to say that Trump “won” the debate—because it turned out not only not to be a fair fight—but unfair to the American public as well. For those voters who have yet to make up their minds it might seem to them that Trump is too much in control—and that Biden doesn’t seem to be in control at all.
Love him, hate him, Trump was, well, Trump. One of the criticisms of the Trump Presidency was that he often ignored the counsel of his advisors and dismissed their advice—and often, literally, dismissed those who dared disagree with him. But for better, or worse, there was no doubt who was in charge. I can’t help but wonder who is in charge of the White House now? While Trump clearly controlled his inner circle—some would argue over-controlled—it seems that Biden’s inner circle, not unlike the Wizard Oz hiding behind the curtain—might be controlling him.
Debates—when they are not debacles—are meant to shore up support among your base and to court undecided voters. By that measure, Biden’s performance was a double whammy. “Given the extent of political polarization in the U.S. today, there is little chance of Republicans changing their minds about the job Biden is doing,” according to the polling and consulting firm Gallup. “The question hovering over Biden’s reelection chances, then, is whether he can make sufficient gains in approval among his fellow Democrats, and especially independents, during the final four months of the campaign to give him a reasonable chance of winning.”
Independent, or otherwise uncommitted voters, are the key to the election, and for the most part, they’re not happy with either candidate. According to the Pew Research Center “a quarter of Americans hold unfavorable views of both major party candidates,” which is “the highest share expressing negative views of both candidates in surveys conducted at about this point in the election cycle by the Center and other organizations dating back to the 1988 election.”
It all boils down to this—for now. If you’re for Trump you’re still for Trump. If you’re for Biden, well, your worried but probably still for Biden. But either way, you might be weeping.
Although extremely well written, and accurate analysis of Biden's pathetic "performance", this article is simply not acknowledging a fact that Biden, as incompetent and incapable as he is to be in ANY position of authority, whether INSTALLED or not, is disregarding the fact that this debacle between our TRUE ELECTED PRESIDENT, President Trump, versus an installed, incompetent, treasonous fraud was the Agenda's plan to PIVOT, oust their installed Biden, who sold his SOUL... and this country... and VALIDATE replacing him with another CCP-WEF groomed candidate, and my guess is that will be slime ball Governor Newsom, who did an outstanding job of destroying the state of California! And for those of you who don't remember, he is Pelosi's nephew. A family who SOLD AMERICA and profited greatly from their efforts to DESTROY our SAFETY, FREEDOM, and our CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC!
REMEMBER: We are the MAJORITY despite what the globalist controlled, MSM narrative and propaganda keeps telling us! BE BOLD! SPEAK UP! AMERICA... LAND of the FREE, because of the BRAVE! 💪
Chew on this, America! 🇺🇲