WASHINGTON (AP) — The sound you may have heard after last week’s presidential debate was that of voters caught between two fires.
Apart from the vast and inflated universe of Donald Trump‘s supporters, the debate suddenly crystallized the concerns of many Americans, some of President Joe Bidenamong them, that neither man is fit to lead the nation.
Heading into the first debate of the general election campaign, voters were faced with a choice between two strikingly unpopular candidates. They then watched as Trump delivered a barrage of falsehoods with sharpness, force and conviction, while Biden struggled mightily to secure debate points and even to get many sentences through. It deepened doubts about the 81-year-old Democratic president’s fitness to stay in office for another four years.
Now the options are even more daunting for many Democrats, undecided voters and anti-Trump Republicans. More than a few people came back from watching the debate very conflicted.
Outside a Whole Foods in downtown Denver on Friday, registered Democrat Matthew Toellner tilted his head to the side, with his mouth open, in an imitation of his favorite candidate, Biden, who did so occasionally on the split screen as Trump gave a speech Thursday evening .
“I’m going to vote for Biden,” said Toellner, 49, leaning against the supermarket’s wooden siding. “Actually, maybe not.”
A few minutes later, Toellner looked out at the street and thought about it again. “I’m going to vote for Biden, I think it would be crazy not to. But I just hate that I have to.”
His call to Biden and the Democrats: “Please resign and make sure someone runs for office.”
On a park bench in Detroit, Arabia Simeon felt politically homeless after voting Democratic in the past two presidential elections. “It just feels like we’re doomed no matter what,” she said.
Trump’s disregard for the facts permeated his arguments, though he was rarely challenged on the details during the debate. For example, on abortion, one of America’s most divisive issues in generations, the former Republican president claimed there is universal agreement that states should decide its legality. There is a heated debate about this.
But did it matter? The public reaction, in dozens of interviews across the country, was reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s post-presidential assessment of what voters want in tough times: “When people are insecure, they’d rather have someone who’s strong and wrong than someone who’s weak and right.”
The debate stirred Simeon as much as Toellner.
The 27-year-old owner of a Detroit start-up entered the debate night with a choice between Biden and an independent candidate, the most prominent outsider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is. Now she’s leaning against Biden.
“I think it just confirmed the feeling I had that this election was going to be extremely hectic, and it’s no longer a conversation about the lesser of two evils for me,” she said from a park bench during a break at work. “It’s more like both candidates don’t feel like viable options.”
Simeon said that as a Black and queer person, “it’s really disheartening to know that no matter how far we get as a country, we’re still going back to factory settings when it comes to the president and having to choose between two white men.”
For the most part, Democratic lawmakers in Washington and party officials across the United States closed ranks around Biden, despite the panic that gripped many of them during his debate performance. But their remarks were measured and seemed to leave an opening if Biden made the extraordinary decision to let Democrats find another candidate.
“It’s President Biden’s decision what he wants to do with his life,” said Sharif Street, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and a state senator. “So far, he’s decided he’s our nominee, and I stand with him.”
Of course, many Biden supporters saw no reason to be dismayed, even though they previously thought he had messed up.
“Troubling,” said Jocardo Ralston of Philadelphia about Biden’s performance on stage. Still, Ralston said, “I’m not conflicted, nor do I feel like I’m choosing the lesser of two evils. … Biden is not the ideal choice for many, but he is the only choice for me, without regret or hesitation.”
The third-year PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work focuses on the experiences of queer black and Latino boys in special education classrooms, watched the debate at a Cincinnati bar during a visit to the city. “Everything I do and everything I fight for is diametrically opposed to Trump and his values and his policies,” he said.
Biden gave a more energetic performance at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, where he acknowledged that he is no longer the debater he used to be. “I know how to do this job,” he said. “I know how to get things done.” He attacked Trump in ways that escaped him the night before.
“I thought, ‘Well, Joe, why didn’t you say that last night?’” said Maureen Dougher, 73, who called Biden “strong,” “definitive” and “very clear” in his rally remarks. In a debate watched by an estimated 51.3 million people, Biden’s performance “didn’t come across as well as it did today,” according to a preliminary estimate from the Nielsen company.
Amina Barhumi, 44, of Orland Park, Illinois, is a member of the Muslim Civic Coalition and judges Biden and Trump in part by how she expects them to act in the interests of American Muslims. Consider her demoralized by the candidates’ choices, too. She hears “essentially the same rhetoric” from both.
“We have not-so-great options that are front-runners on the ticket,” she said. “Yesterday was confirmation of exactly that.”
“Honestly, I found it very difficult to watch,” she said of the debate. “I have teenagers and it felt like a lot of bickering and nonsensical name-calling. And I think the American public expects more.”
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Associated Press journalists Jesse Bedayn in Denver; Mike Householder in Detroit; Carolyn Kaster in Cincinnati; Melissa Perez Winder in Bridgeview, Ill.; and Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
