The great panjandrums of the Democratic Party panicked last night after President Biden’s halting, stammering, confused and often incoherent performance in the presidential debate with Donald Trump.
It may not have been a complete car accident. But it was pretty close.
“We’re going crazy,” said one Democratic Party strategist.
“The well of affection for Biden among Democrats has run dry,” said another.
Yes, Trump spread wild accusations and even the occasional outright lie, regularly failed to answer the question, and at times must have crippled the fact-checking machine. But his voice was strong, his answers clear, and his discipline unusually impressive.
Crucially, Biden failed to hold Trump accountable for any of his falsehoods or nonsense.
He was simply too weak, too feeble, too old, too sick, as many feared he was.
The Democratic Party’s big panjandrums were in a panic last night after President Biden’s hesitant, stammering, confusing and often incoherent performance in the presidential debate with Donald Trump.
Yes, Trump spread wild accusations and even the occasional outright lie, regularly failed to answer questions, and at times must have brought the fact-checking machine to a standstill. But his voice was strong, his answers clear, and his discipline unusually impressive.
When he should have gone in for the kill, he simply made mistakes and wandered, leaving Trump largely unscathed. So much for the White House lies about Biden still being up to the job.
After being holed up for seven days at Camp David with his advisers preparing for the debate — a remarkable amount of time for a man with a country to lead — he emerged with a brain full of facts but not the mental acuity to process and use them in a logical, insightful way.
Instead, their responses often simply fell flat.
A friend told me she wished there were subtitles, but no captioning software, even one using the latest artificial intelligence, could have coped with Biden’s incoherence.
His spinners let it be known that he had a cold. No one quite believed it. No one thought it was a good enough excuse, even if it were true.
I’ve watched every televised presidential debate live since Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter rebooted the genre in 1976 (there was a 16-year interregnum after the original, historic debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960). Biden’s first 15 minutes last night were the worst start of any presidential candidate in history.
For some time now, there has been a trend in the highest echelons of the Democratic Party to “dump Biden.” I wrote about it several times last year, but they have been too timid to make it public, too afraid to act.
After last night, top Democrats and their media cheerleaders are now flocking to the cause.
Post-debate analysis by non-official Democratic Party media outlets such as CNN (which hosted the debate) and MSNBC (or MSDNC, as Trump calls it) was dominated by desperate left-wing pundits calling for Biden to resign.
The immediate reaction of the pro-democratic public media was also brutal.
New York Magazine, well aware of his stance, bluntly opined that Biden had “failed.”
Variety, sensible after the event, simply said: “Biden should never have debated Trump.”
Not for the first time, the Babylon Bee was the most scathing of all: “Biden invents new language on live TV.”
We don’t yet know whether the growing force behind the Dump Biden movement will get its way. There is still reluctance to oust him. They would rather he fell on his sword.
Now the pressure to do so will be immense. In the coming days, a cacophony of Democratic voices will finally find the courage to speak out.
Democratic strategists had hoped that by now Jill Biden would have taken her husband aside and told him not to run again. To remind everyone that she beat Trump in 2020, she righted the economy and returned stability to the government. To say that he always intended to be a transitional president and that it was time to pass the baton to a younger generation after a job well done. In other words, to declare victory and return home.
At least that’s how you could say it.
Democratic strategists had hoped that by now Jill Biden would have spoken to her husband aside and told him not to run again.
But the First Lady has grown rather fond of the privileges and prominence of her position and was looking forward to spending four more years in the White House, so she has done nothing to help Biden depart gently and humanely.
Rather, quite the opposite: he urged him to run for a second term.
After last night, a compassionate wife would surely think twice.
If not, and if (as is almost certain) the upcoming polls confirm Democrats’ worst fears — that Biden will struggle to recover from last night’s calamitous setback — then party bigwigs will need to visit Biden and lay out, quietly but firmly, some harsh realities.
With enough influential names, their pleas will be impossible to ignore.
Now we know why so many in the DNC wanted a debate in June.
It was an unprecedented moment in the annals of presidential elections, but it gave Biden enough time to drop out of the race and turn the party’s August gathering in Chicago into an open convention that will choose a new Democratic nominee.
Those who think the mantle will naturally fall to Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t be more wrong.
Too many top Democrats consider her an even bigger burden than Biden for the crown to fall to her. The atmosphere will be loaded with candidates who will throw their hats into the ring in the run-up to Chicago. Lists of runners and cyclists are already being compiled.
This is Trump’s worst nightmare. He wants Biden to remain his opponent because he is sure he can beat him. He does not relish facing a new, younger, more vibrant candidate (although, like many Democrats, he believes Harris is even easier to beat than Biden).
Trump entered last night’s debate with the latest polls showing him ahead in five of the seven key states, tied with Biden in Pennsylvania and with Biden ahead only in Wisconsin (which has the fewest electoral college seats among the key states, except Nevada).
I had hoped Biden would perform badly enough last night to widen his lead in key states and even bring New Hampshire, Virginia and Minnesota (which hasn’t been Republican since Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972) into contention.
That would have been great for Trump, but if the president has done so badly that there is now an unstoppable momentum behind him to “Get rid of Biden,” then all is lost.
One of the ironies that emerged last night is that the most insistent voice saying ‘Joe, don’t go’ will be Donald J. Trump’s.
Last night was not the best moment for American democracy.
Not when one candidate accuses the other (Trump) of having the “morals of an ally cat.” Or when the other insinuates that his opponent (Biden) is too crazy to know what he is saying.
Of course, both points could be true.
But perhaps the lowest point was when the two began arguing about who has the better golf handicap. That must have made America’s many enemies around the world scratch their heads and wonder: Is the United States really that bereft of credible leadership these days?
To which the honest answer for now is: unfortunately, yes.
