Normally, after a presidential debate, we’d examine the policy claims and promises raised by the candidates, detailing their economic plans and dissecting their differences. There’s little point in delving into that today, given President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his showdown last night against former President Donald Trump.
Biden had one main job to do: dispel questions about his mental and physical fitness for the presidency. He failed miserably, appearing feeble and often fumbling for words. Biden’s most notable stumble came early on in response to a question about the national debt. He started talking about how he’d undo Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and fix the tax system, then lost his train of thought and trailed off awkwardly before concluding, “We finally beat Medicare” — a confusing and bungled attempt to claim credit for beating Big Pharma by enabling Medicare to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs.
That answer cemented the impression that Biden was struggling, and his performance overall drew Democratic reactions ranging from deep disappointment to outright panic — and more than a few calls from both party members and outside commentators for him to drop out of the race. Veteran political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics told CNN that he has watched every single presidential debate since the four Kennedy-Nixon matchups in 1960. “It gives me no joy to say this, but President Biden’s performance was the worst by a major party nominee for president in that entire time period,” Sabato said.
Trump, on the other hand, largely skated through the debate, rarely challenged on a series of lies, fabrications and falsehoods — dozens of them. You can find plenty of detailed fact checks of both candidates, including ones rejecting Trump’s assertion that Biden would “raise your taxes by four times,” addressing his claim that he oversaw “the greatest economy in history,” and correcting the details Biden mangled about lowering out-of-pocket payments for insulin and capping prescription drug costs. But any post-debate discussion of those lies is inevitably overshadowed by the unavoidable truth of Biden’s atrocious showing.
At The American Prospect, David Dayen makes the case that Biden’s team overstuffed him with stats, numbers and policy arguments, especially for a debate against Trump. “Filling Biden’s head with all of these details and this precise sequencing created the slipups. It was clearly calibrated by committee, an attempt to thread the needle of boasting, empathy, and vision in a way that did none of it,” Dayen writes, laying blame on the advisors “who thought you could bring a white paper to a knife fight.”
Biden tries to rescue his candidacy: At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, Biden sought to do damage control. "I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don't walk as easy as I used to, I don't speak as smoothly as I used to, I don't debate as well as I used to,” Biden said, appearing far more vigorous than he did last night. “But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know like millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up.”
The bottom line: Biden didn’t get knocked down so much as he tripped himself up. That will make it much harder for the president and Democrats to turn this election into anything besides a referendum on Biden’s fitness to serve another four years.
