Joe Biden must find a way to quit — for the good of the nation. His struggling performance in Thursday night’s debate will drive enough voters to Donald Trump to insure that the former president returns to the White House.
None of this is fair. Joe Biden is a good and decent man. He has been a good president. He has competent advisers, and he would continue to take their advice in a second term. But he will not get that far. Trump, whose plans to destroy American democracy are not secret, will assemble a team of toadies who will encourage his worst instincts. The debacle in Atlanta was not about governance. If governing were the issue, Biden would win hands down. He has done an excellent job, and he deserves reelection. But the national discussion now is not about Biden’s record; it is about his prospects in November.
Perception matters in politics. My heart sank from the very beginning when Biden shuffled to the podium. Things quickly deteriorated from there. Biden’s raspy voice, blank stares, often with mouth agape, and stumbling responses only confirmed the widespread concerns that he is not up to the job, that he is too old. True, Biden got more assertive and coherent as the evening wore on, and Trump began to betray cognitive problems with wandering answers and a string of non sequiturs. But it was all too late. Initial impressions will remain with many voters.
In the battle between a doddering old man and a pathological liar, the pathological liar won.
Trump was a Vesuvius of lies. It would probably be difficult to find one sentence of his that did not contain something that was either a lie or disinformation. And he was shameless in his lies. So shameless that he accused Biden of his own failures and claimed Biden’s successes as his own. One example of the former president distorting his record will suffice. Trump bragged falsely about his alleged environmental accomplishments: “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. And we did -– we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever. And my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually.” Really?
Trump falsely claimed Biden had not accomplished anything, ignoring that Biden has presided over the most comprehensive and sweeping legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s. Unmentioned by the former president was that the only signature accomplishment of the Trump administration were sweeping tax cuts that further enriched the obscenely wealthy and blew a big hole in the national deficit. Other than that, Trump has precious little to cite. (Remember infrastructure week? Repeal of Obamacare?)
Biden blamed his shaky performance on a “sore throat.” Biden claimed “we did well,” and added, “It’s hard to debate a liar.”
It sure is, which is why the decision to debate Trump was a case of gross political malpractice by the Biden campaign. A bad decision was made worse by the Biden team’s insistence on muted mics when the candidates were not speaking. Afraid that Trump would repeat his performance from the first debate in 2020, when he constantly interrupted Biden, causing Biden to utter the memorable, “Will you shut up, man?, Biden and his advisers evidently thought muted mics would be advantageous. The opposite happened. With CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash intent on keeping the peace and relegated only to asking questions, no one effectively challenged Trump’s lies.
Incumbents rarely do well in first debates, often showing up cocky and unprepared. Barack Obama bombed against Mitt Romney in 2012. The same was true for George W. Bush in 2004 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. So, if history is prologue, there is reason to hope, I suppose, that Biden will rebound in the second debate in September. But I doubt it. The damage from this encounter will last. Besides, there might not be a second debate. Trump might decide he won this round, and there is nothing to be gained by facing Biden again.
Can Biden be replaced? It would be chaos, but what is the alternative? Fortunately, the Democratic National Convention is in late August this year, providing a bit of breathing room if Biden were to decide to quit now. But the jockeying for a successor could tear the party apart. Democratic voters would have no say in selecting the nominee, opening the party to charges of choosing a candidate the old-fashioned way, in smoke-filled rooms.
And, then, there is the Kamala Harris problem. No one wants her as president, unfairly, perhaps, but the reality is that she polls worse than Biden, whose unfavorable ratings are scary enough. But, again, the problem of perception is at play here. How does the Democratic Party pass over a Black woman?
In the end chaos trumps inevitability. Better the tumult of an open convention choosing the Democratic nominee than the near certainty that Biden lost the election in Atlanta.
Posted June 28, 2024
Don't agree.