I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
I don’t know the details for how far ahead all the rules were decided. I would have assumed months but clearly not.
A BIG news story yesterday was that republicans were angry that there would be live fact checking during the debate. So CNN got rid of that literally the afternoon of the debate. That makes a massive difference because it means that Biden now needed to actively refute the increasingly blatant lies in addition to getting his talking points across.
And the format always went against Biden. His stutter and aphasia do not mix well with short 3 minute responses. With proper debate prep and a focus on talking points, he is mostly good. We had a few moments but even when he was at his most feeble sounding he was fine. But once he had to respond to things like “you are a manchurian candidate” and “you are basically a Palestinian but a bad one”? Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”
And that fucked Biden. Because that is not something a POTUS needs to be able to handle. If Kim Jong Un started talking like that during a meeting… we might literally invade North Korea. Almost all meaningful conversation between world leaders is basically heavily scripted speeches or closed door conversations where people acknowledge others are human.
But also? CNN didn’t even follow their own format. They repeatedly unmuted candidates (mostly trump but a few times Biden) so they could get a juicy comeback in.
I mean. Sure I guess?
So it was unfair. Sure.
But Biden and his camp didn’t need to agree to a debate. It was going to get them nothing. There was NOTHING to gain here and everything to lose.
And they lost… everything .
It shows that the Biden team isn’t capable of manging this election; it showed that Biden isn’t capable of offering the rhetoric it takes to win.
The Presidential role is a communications job. If he can’t do the communications part of this, he__cant__win.