CNN’s debate was not a fair fight

There’s no sugarcoating it: the best thing you can say about last night’s debate is that it was a missed opportunity for Joe Biden to put the questions about his age to rest and focus on Donald Trump’s extremist agenda and his criminality. The worst you can say is that he delivered a disastrous performance that should have led to his resignation and an open convention in August to choose a successor. There are plenty of Democrats pushing for that now, and it’s always possible that they’ll succeed in getting Biden to drop out and turning the Chicago rally into a disaster the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1968. Maybe that’s the kind of spectacle that will finally bring the Democratic Party up to the level of the Trump Show. Maybe that’s what the American people really want.

I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine they would have ever asked for a debate if he was normally like that. We’ve seen him hold press conferences and give speeches recently and he seemed fine. They said he had a cold, so maybe he was on drugs—Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and weak. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he stays in the race (which I think is almost certain), the campaign will have a lot of work to do to climb out of the hole dug last night. The media smells blood and they’re circling like a bunch of starving piranhas. If this goes the way these things often do, the public may have a very different opinion about it than insiders do today. Still, the media story may change the public consensus over the next few days.

With all that said, it must be noted that as much as Biden ruined the debate and his chance to assuage concerns about his age, Donald Trump ruined it too. He may have seemed more energetic, but he couldn’t control himself and once again acted like the undisciplined, lying, vulgar man that half the country already hates. If Biden was on Nyquil, Trump must have downed a case of Diet Coke before he got on stage. He spewed a torrent of lies, was rude and insulting, and uttered probably the most memorable line in a presidential debate in history:

That’s the least of his various crimes and sexual misconduct, but it’s the one he felt compelled to deny.

For some strange reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump at the beginning that he didn’t have to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech when he had the floor and not responding to the vast majority of questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If someone had said this would happen during a presidential debate 10 years ago, they would have been laughed out of the room.

After the debate, when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:

It certainly would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators ask stiff questions about child care like a bunch of potted plants, while Trump responded with irrelevant lies, was inexplicable. Why did they even bother asking questions? They could have just started the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about whatever they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.

According to former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, CNN is very happy with how things went. He wrote: “A CNN executive in the control room texts me: “We are very proud of Jake and Dana. Our job was to make sure candidates were heard so voters could make informed decisions and we’re glad we were able to do that.” In fact, CNN inadvertently became one of the largest spreaders of disinformation in American political history. Millions of people heard the lies from Donald Trump and because they were greeted with silence from the journalists on stage, who people depend on to tell them the facts, many of them probably assumed he must have been telling the truth.

Even if Joe Biden had been at the height of his powers, he wouldn’t have been able to counter all those lies and shouldn’t have been put in the role of Donald Trump’s fact-checker. He had the choice to ignore the lies and let them stand so he could use his time arguing his own case, or to spend the entire debate correcting the facts. It wasn’t a fair fight.

It will be a few days before the debate results are known. Biden’s poor showing could cause his poll numbers to plummet, or it’s possible that the whole thing won’t change opinions at all. According to CNN’s instant poll of debate viewers in Michigan, it was a near tie, with half saying Biden won and half saying Trump. And a Univision focus group of Hispanic voters said Biden won. So who knows?

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1806544532051497025

In the last election cycle, we saw Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, who had recently suffered a stroke, have a debate in which he clearly had difficulty communicating. He was written off by all experts and the assumption was that the Democratic majority in the Senate had been lost. In the end he won. Not that this will necessarily go the same way, but I’m just bringing it up to illustrate that these kinds of things do happen. A lot depends on who else is on the ballot.

Clearly, Biden’s terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats, liberal pundits and analysts. The calls for him to withdraw are loud and meaningful and it will be a very difficult period in this campaign, whatever happens. To me this isn’t really a question. As long as Donald Trump is on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic candidate. If it’s Biden or someone else, the calculation remains the same. Nothing is worse than a new Trump administration, and I suspect Democratic voters will ultimately agree. So it’s still a matter of those undecided voters in swing states, just like Thursday morning.

In my view, Biden is a successful president and I expect his administration to continue on that path in a second term. But if he becomes convinced that this debate has ruined his chances and he decides to drop out, I only hope that the party can resist the temptation to descend into a bloodbath that gives Trump even more power. If there was ever a time to keep calm and carry on, it’s now.