ATLANTA- Chairman Joe Biden should reassure the nation about his physical and mental capabilities with his debate broadcast on Thursday evening.
But from the start of the debate, the 81-year-old seemed to struggle to speak, using a weak, hoarse voice. In the opening minutes, the president repeatedly stumbled over his words, mispronounced himself and lost the thread of his thoughts.
In one of the most notable moments, Biden ended a boisterous statement without focus by saying, “We finally defeated Medicare,” before the moderators cut him off and turned back to Trump.
While Biden warmed up and gained rhythm as the debate progressed, he struggled to land a punch against Trumpmuch less fact-check anything the former president said as Trump unleashed a flood of bad information.
Trump also attacked Biden, saying at one point that he didn’t understand what Biden had just said about the border.
“I don’t know if he knows what he said either,” Trump said.
Nearly an hour into the debate, a Biden aide and others familiar with his situation offered an explanation for the president’s hoarseness: He has a cold.
But there were problems besides Biden’s shaky voice. When he wasn’t speaking, he often stared into the distance. Trump regularly bullied Biden, accusing him of being a criminal and spreading disinformation — often without Biden responding, though the president did hit back with a handful of one-liners.
Biden’s campaign acknowledged that the debate would be a pivotal moment in the election, with officials hoping it could shake the race in the president’s favor. Most polls have shown the race neck and neck, with razor-thin margins that have been negligible for months, even after a jury in New York found Trump guilty of 34 crimes.
Questions about Biden’s age and vulnerability have dragged down his polls for months. Public concern is exacerbated by misleadingly edited videos, some of which have gone viral, that cut relevant parts of an event, making it appear Biden is wandering off or confused. This was Biden’s first chance since the State of the Union address to debunk that narrative.
Instead of a new beginning, many Democrats saw it as a moment to panic.
“Democrats just committed collective suicide,” said a party strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “Biden sounds hoarse, looks tired and babbles. He confirms everything voters already thought. President Biden cannot win. This debate is a nail in the political coffin.”
“It’s hard to argue that we shouldn’t nominate someone else,” added a Democratic consultant who focuses on down-ballot races.
Biden increased his support as the debate progressed.
“Only one of us is a convicted felon, and I look at him,” Biden told Trump. That was a moment that tested particularly well in the Biden campaign’s internal real-time polling at the time of the debate, according to a person familiar.
A Biden aide said it was “not an ideal start” for the president at the beginning of the debate, but that there was “no mass panic” at campaign headquarters in Delaware.
Muting the candidates’ microphones during the debate, a stipulation agreed to by both campaigns before the debate, added a new dimension to the confrontation. The first Biden-Trump matchup in 2020 had been marked by repeated interruptions by Trump, leading to moments of frustration for Biden.
“Will you shut up, man?” Biden complained in that first debate in Cleveland.
The reaction is pouring in
“I think Democrats are thinking about who is the Barry Goldwater who can walk in tomorrow and tell the president to step aside,” said Ben Proto, chairman of the Republican Party of Connecticut.
In 1974, after key Watergate tapes were made public, then-Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., along with other prominent lawmakers, went to President Richard Nixon and told Nixon that he would be convicted by the Senate and should step aside — which the president did.
Biden’s campaign defended his performance, saying he offered a “positive and winning vision” for America.
“On the other side of the stage stood Donald Trump, who offered a dark and backward vision of what America will look like when he steps back into the White House: a country where women are forced to beg for the health care they need. to have. stay alive. A country that puts the interests of billionaires above working people,” Biden campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “And a former president who, not once, not twice, but three times, failed to promise that he would accept the results of a free and fair election in November.”
Some Democrats also defended Biden’s presidency more broadly after the debate, pointing to his policies over Trump’s.
“One thing this debate won’t change is Trump’s basic instinct to betray anyone to make a quick buck or to put his own image on a steak, a golf course or even the Bible,” said Brandon Weathersby, a spokesman for the pro. -Biden American Bridge 21st century super PAC. “Trump puts himself first every time and that won’t change if he becomes president again.”
Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed his own questions about whether he has become smaller over the years, including his struggle to stay on topic and his meandering statements. Biden has posited that the former president “snapped” after his 2020 election loss and is unstable, which he rebroadcast on Thursday evening.
Trump often gave his typical, incoherent responses and sometimes seemed to be making up facts and figures.
“During my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people actually gave me that statistic right before I walked on stage,” Trump said.
Trump also said he would lower insulin prices for seniors, but it was Biden who signed a law in 2022 that lowered the co-pay for Medicare patients to $35 per month and covered all insulin products.
Setting the stage for fall
The first debate of the 2020 election cycle took place in early September, putting the first 2024 general election debate significantly earlier than normal — more than two months before Labor Day, which is often seen as the point at which most voters begin paying attention to presidential contests.
“Debates move numbers,” said Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist who worked for Tim Scott’s presidential campaign. “And with this so early — and the next one not until September — you’re stuck with the story for four long months.”
“And the performance of one and the other will set the tone for the next,” he added.
For months, Trump’s team has pressed Biden’s mental acuity, a strategy at odds with the way campaigns typically handle the run-up to debates, trying to build opponents into adept debaters to set expectations.
Expectations for Biden were low, and by almost all estimates he failed to meet them.
“Biden just had to beat himself; Unfortunately, the stumbling and weakened Joe Biden the world has come to know made Trump look competent and energetic,” said a former Trump campaign official who is not working for his 2024 campaign. “I expect there will be some loud calls from Democrats for a change at the top of the ticket.”
“The floor for Biden was so low,” the person added. “After Biden’s debate performance, it looks like the floor is six feet under.”
The 90-minute debate covered a wide range of topics, but many of the most dominant themes focused on those that have been most prominent during the campaign in recent months.
Trump has hit Biden with two major policy battles that dogged his campaign: immigration and inflation.
Since Biden took office, 15 million jobs have been created and the unemployment rate is at a relatively low 4%. However, consumer goods prices have remained high and are a consistent line of attack from the Trump campaign and Republicans in general.
In a heated exchange, Trump bluntly said “he caused inflation.” In response, Biden said there was less inflation under Trump because he undermined the economy.
“When I took office, there was no inflation,” Biden said before that retort — a quote quickly seized upon by Republicans as evidence that all of the current price increases occurred during Biden’s administration.
Trump continued to attack Biden on his border policies, which his campaign has used as one of its biggest lines of attack throughout the campaign. That has often included amplifying the crime rate every time an undocumented migrant commits a crime, even though the data does not support the idea of a wave of migrant crime.
““We have a border that is the most dangerous place in the world,” Trump said.
Earlier this year, Trump used his influence with Republicans in Congress to successfully block a bipartisan border deal that Biden supported.
Biden also tried to strike a blow on January 6, building on the much-discussed idea that Trump’s return to the White House would threaten democracy.
“He encouraged these people to go to Capitol Hill,” Biden said. “He sat there for three hours and was begged by his vice president and many of his colleagues on the Republican side to do something.”
Trump dodged the question, saying Biden should be “ashamed” of arresting those who took part in the attempted insurrection.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
