Our Debate Wraps
How the system failed. How Biden's stubbornness hurt him. And how it will play in November.
[We all wrote for this one. Julia kicks it off, David is second, and I’m last - JB]
[Julia:]
Everyone failed
This debate, like most debates, will likely be lost to history. The campaign stretches out long ahead of us. Very long.
But it’s hard not to see this as an example of some major system failures. Some of it was simply Biden being Biden: delivery issues aside, he doesn’t do well pivoting to big issues and repeating a bunch of key lines. He gets distracted by details. If you listened to most of his words, not the hoarse voice, most of what he said was fine – factual and straightforward, despite some early stumbles. But a more skilled campaigner could have highlighted major themes and helped to keep the debate more focused.
The larger issue can’t be minimized: Trump is unbound by the truth. Case in point: he keeps saying that all legal scholars agree that Roe v. Wade should have been overturned. That’s just very plainly not true, and it’s not even very important. He repeated a lie about undocumented immigrants receiving public benefits. He said Nancy Pelosi was responsible for January 6, and dodged questions about democracy and elections.
We can’t do democracy without truth. And the debate format, with moderators not pushing back or fact-checking, wasn’t conducive to that. And the news media now are focusing on Biden’s performance and age. Those are issues, of course. But the content of what each candidate said is much more important than how they said it. The fact that you would never know it after watching this debate is a very sad comment on the state of our democracy.
[Here’s David:]
One thing that I’ve always disliked about Joe Biden is his unwillingness to acknowledge his mistakes or faults. That’s not an unusual trait among politicians, I realize, but it seems especially pronounced in him.
So I blame that obstinance for Biden’s bewildering failure to not come out on stage and say that he’s sorry for the condition of his voice.
In case you have somehow avoided all discussion of Thursday’s debate (and good for you if that’s the case), Biden’s voice was raspy. It was unfortunate, particularly for a guy trying to convey health and vigor.
It called for an up-front acknowledgement, perhaps with a little self-effacing humor, to let people know that he sounded off for a reason: “Folks, you’ll have to bear with me, I’ve been a little under the weather and as you can tell I have lost my voice a little. I guess I should have checked the side effects on all those performance-enhancing drugs.” Or whatever. And again at the end, apologizing for the weak voice, maybe with “…but being a little difficult to hear is better than saying nonsense and lies at full volume.”
I find it hard to imagine that nobody in his camp suggested that he say something—and probably suggested that they leak out something about his cold or whatever it is during the day. And I find it very easy to imagine that Biden refused, probably thinking that admitting illness would draw attention to his health and age.
So instead, everybody watching the debate fixated on how unexpectedly bad Biden sounded, and with no explanation we were all just left feeling uncomfortable about it.
As for the rest of the debate—well, whatever. I still don’t understand why we had this early debate at all, and I still doubt that it will matter. Trump spouted absolute garbage for 90 minutes, just as he’s done before, on his way to both victory and defeat, with no discernible effect on his (low) popularity. The moderators proved helpless against his well refined methodology, as have many who came before. Biden was occasionally good at spotlighting Trump’s flaws, for whatever that accomplishes.
I just can’t understand how you get up on live television with a hoarse voice and don’t say “sorry for my hoarse voice.” I’ve done it. Wouldn’t you?
[And here’s Jonathan]
I agree with everything above,1 but I guess I’ll give the basic political science #take. People want to know how the debate will affect the election outcome. Political scientist Christopher Federico said during the debate what I had said before and what most political scientists say about these things:
[P]lease remember what we know from a vast amount of research: in terms of electoral impact, almost all these moments you witnessing will be lost in time like tears in rain (esp given the long time we have left to go before the election)
The initial media reaction is that Biden did badly, but the truth is that they both were awful. Anyone looking for reassurance that Biden isn’t too old didn’t get it; anyone looking for even a hint that Trump would run a normal presidency the second time around – or any evidence that he has any clue at all about government and policy – didn’t get that, either. And the opposite was true: If you were trying to confirm your tentative belief that Biden is too feeble or that Trump is a liar with no commitment to democracy and the rule of law, it was easy to find that in their performances.
If the media does run with Biden’s weaknesses – and that’s likely, both because they were primed to evaluate the event based on whether Biden seemed old or not and also because Biden was at his worst in the first twenty minutes or so, when media pundits often decide on what happened – a short-term polling rally for Trump is certainly possible. It’s also possible we’ll have a second-day backlash to that with more focus on Trump’s shortcomings, with predictable short-term consequences. Probably not, but we’ll see. There’s certainly more than enough material to build up either.
But soon enough other events (including, among other things, Trump’s sentencing) will take over, and the rally should fade. Biden will probably do a few more sit-down interviews and they may go well, and at any rate he’ll eventually give a strong convention speech (because everyone gives strong convention speeches). And while Democratic panic is always a good bet, the party has little choice but to support their nominee and odds are they’ll regroup before long.2 The one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the pendulum of “neutral” media coverage will whip back and forth many times before anyone starts voting.
On Julia’s spot-on critque of Biden’s very limited debate skills: Any decent debater at this level would have mocked Trump when he brought up golf, not tried to top him.
Likely counterspin: Yes, Biden sounded bad, but the transcript shows (so the spin would claim) that he was coherent and Trump wasn’t. It worked for Nixon in 1960 (in that case, that Kennedy looked good but Nixon was better if you didn’t see them) and it could work for Biden because it appeals to high-minded pundits who want to act as if they’ve carefully read and critiqued the transcript. (Note: I haven’t).
Love the three-author voices coming together to create this smart take. I was devastated watching the debate. This piece pulls back the lens a bit for some perspective.