Donald Trump He had to show sobriety and curb his tendency toward chaos.
Joe Biden had to show strength and reassure the country about the visible weaknesses that come with his age.
In the first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle and the earliest in modern history, the former president largely achieved his goal, while the current occupant of the Oval Office often struggled to string together coherent answers and took longer to pile on the punches he needed to halt the Trump crisis and march toward a second, non-consecutive term.
Many Democrats saw it as a missed opportunity for the sitting president, who is already an underdog against the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
Biden and Trump’s 90-minute debate in Atlanta was very substantive. They fought over abortion laws, the crisis at the southern border, a complicated and confusing economy, and how to make peace in a world with multiple hot wars.
In most cases, Trump has curbed his worst impulses and avoided the kind of over-the-top attacks that have defined his personality. In fact, it was Biden who launched perhaps the most brutal backlash of the evening when he attacked Trump’s character with personal and visceral language.
“How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties, for harassing a woman in public, for having sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant with your son?,” Biden said of Trump’s legal troubles, including liability for sexual assault and convicted of 34 crimes for falsifying company records. “You have the morals of an alley cat.”
But while Trump continued to make a litany of false claims, he showed the energy and enthusiasm that Biden lacked.
Here are four lessons from the first Biden-Trump debate:
BIDEN TRAPPED OUT OF THE GATE
The 81-year-old Biden started slowly, with a gravelly voice, and his answers were muddled and lacked the energy needed to assuage voters’ concerns about his age.
He incorrectly referred to creating 15,000 jobs when he meant 15 million. And when challenged by Trump on the economy, Biden seemed to lose his train of thought and inexplicably concluded: “We finally defeated Medicare.”
It was a gift to Trump.
“He defeated Medicare and he defeated it to the death,” the former president responded.
During a discussion about immigration, Trump once again went back to the source: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Biden began to recover in the second half hour, but Trump was strongest in the first 20 minutes, when most viewers are focused on him.
TRUMPS WEAKEST PROBLEM IS STILL JANUARY 6TH
When the question came up, Trump initially rolled out an answer that must have made campaign staffers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles smile.
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked if he violated his oath to protect and defend the Constitution when rioters ransacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump quickly shifted gears to his record on taxes and immigration and gave blamed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for rejecting 10,000 soldiers.
For a moment it seemed that he would not fall into the trap of defending the day’s actions.
But that dam would not hold after Biden cited Trump’s own words calling the Jan. 6 rioters “patriots” and saying he would be prepared to leave with clemency if he were to win back the White House.
“He did nothing and these people should be in jail,” Biden said of those who entered the U.S. Capitol. “And he wants to release every single one of them.”
Trump then called a number of convicted people “so innocent,” in an attempt to minimize his own behavior that day. And when Biden directly asked Trump to condemn those involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump looked straight into the camera and refused.
According to Associated Press figures, more than 1,400 people have been charged with federal offenses, more than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes including assaulting police officers, and about 200 have been convicted through trials.
Biden also used the exchange to label Trump as a convicted felon.
It was Biden’s strongest moment and exposed one of Trump’s most enduring weaknesses.
Democrats will run away from this debate
Flash polls and quick responses from focus groups are helping shape the post-debate narrative, but it will be at least a week before more accurate polls can truly measure the impact of the conflict.
Democrats will try to turn the page as quickly as possible. But some are already panicking out loud.
“I wish Biden would reflect on this debate and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on social media, calling for a new nominee during a open Democratic National Convention in August.
Symone Sanders Townsend, a former Biden aide who is now a host on MSNBC, acknowledged Biden’s “bad start.”
“He improved during the debate, but this was not the Biden allies he hoped to see tonight,” Sanders Townsend wrote.
On CNN, Kate Bedingfield, another former Biden aide, agreed with the assessment.
“There is no doubt about it: this was not a good debate for Joe Biden,” she said.
One of the reasons the Biden campaign agreed to the historically early debate was to give the president enough time to recover in case of a poor performance. Many Democrats were already expressing an urgent need for a restart as the debate came to a close.
They can only hope that fewer people have consumed the debate, or will remember it, by the time voting begins.
While 84 million people watched Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, viewership dropped to 73 million during Trump’s first debate with Biden in 2020. Given the date in early summer, in the middle of the holiday season, ratings are unlikely to be higher on Thursday evening are then both.
The next debate is scheduled for just over two months from now, scheduled for September 10, if both campaigns agree to honor it.
Less fireworks, more substance: 5 lessons from the last Biden-Trump debate
