Stephen Collinson of CNN said last night’s presidential debate – which was hosted by his employer – may cost Biden the election, John Guida, who authored this morning’s New York Time’s Opinion Today newsletter echoed Collinson’s sentiment, also citing many who called Biden’s performance “disastrous,” he even quoted a journalist I never heard of, Matt Labash, who said Biden “sounded like a dying humidifier.”
Nevertheless, I think Biden performed better than expected. Although he blanked out once a few questions into the debate, pausing for about five seconds before saying “Medicare”—which didn’t pertain to the original question—and stumbled over himself as he tried to recall specific facts to counter Trump’s claims throughout the debate, it was not a “disaster,” just not amazing, but his recollection never has been, it’s just age-related memory loss.
In addition, it’s common knowledge now that presidential debates hardly have any effect on the electorate, especially one without an audience taking place in June. If anything, presidential debates affect those who do not have preformed opinions about either candidate, so may serve to influence swing voters toward the end of the election cycle.
If the general consensus is that Trump won the debate, it’s only because he’s more cognizant than Biden. Trump had a Freudian slip of sorts last night where he implied that he knew Putin really well. We’ve always known this was a problem, hence the violation of the emoluments clause from yesteryear that was eventually thrown out by a federal appeals court judge. If he knew him so well, perhaps Trump could have prevented Russia’s eventual invasion into Ukraine long before Biden took over. But that’s besides the point. Trump then denied ever having sex with a porn star when Biden called him out for having the “morals of an alley cat” for cheating on his wife while she was pregnant with Stormy Daniels. That was a good retort from a member of the Looney Tunes generation, who as far as I can tell, has only appointed a few female judges, selected a controversial/unpopular female vice president (could there be anything but?), and fought for abortion – not much else – with respect to women’s rights.
I think the most “disastrous” element of last night’s debate, which embarrassed the nation, and made my friend exclaim “I am embarrassed to be white!” was when the two went at it over their golf game. Two unfit, mentally unwell geriatric white males fighting over whether Biden can hit more than 50 yards and debating whether he needed a handicap. It got even more absurd when the two started to come to terms on whether they’d actually play a game of golf together. This just threw everything out the window – all the initial discussion about inflation causing grocery prices to double – how Iran has been funding Hamas, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, everything. The absurdity of this golf discussion made the idea of Richard Nixon, a man no one wanted to play games with, golfing with Jackie Gleason, who was eager to see the hangars where the U.S. government allegedly hides crashed UFOs [which Nixon allegedly showed Gleason after their golf game], seem entirely plausible.
