The debate Thursday night was a complete and total disaster for the Democratic Party. Joe Biden pounded his chest over the prospect of debating Donald Trump. His side was eager to do it. The party, in general, seemed to be primed for the showdown. But time is a funny thing in politics. It’s the most valuable resource, and often, operatives say there’s not enough to get everything they want done in a campaign. For Biden, too much time has allowed his weaknesses and party fractures to fester, leading to a full-blown stage 4 diagnosis of political cancer that might have undone the president against Donald Trump.
We’ve known for months that Joe Biden lacked the stamina, cognitive abilities, and skill to be president. The lack of presidential timber was apparent to most voters; 86 percent felt he was too old to run. Biden’s staff ignored the polls. How could they lose to Donald Trump? The arrogance of the Left is also to blame, the entitlement that they think they should win all elections, debates, and legislative battles because they have better feelings on the issues. Trump smashed that sentiment in 2016 and might have done it again.
Biden was slow, slurred, and incoherent for most of the debate. Trump was poised, pointed, and robustly defended his presidency and record. The president could not do the same—it was sometimes painful to watch. It was absolute domination by Donald Trump. He obliterated the president in ways that might be irreparable. The issues surrounding age and mental health have been magnified 1000x. The goal of this showdown was to pivot away from those voter concerns—they’re now the only thing we see. The cherry on top of this Biden fail sundae is Jill leading Joe off the debate stage.
The panic among the liberal media was immediate and pronounced. This epic collapse by Biden was the Hindenburg of debate performances, which led to a plethora of meltdowns and panic commentaries unlike I’ve ever seen. It may eclipse the reactions from election night 2016. Politico outright said that “Biden is toast.” It’s one of the most damning post-debate pieces, though this outlet and others had spent months propping up Biden. The portion about abortion, where Biden stumbled badly, illustrated that the president has lost it:
All Joe Biden needed to do was deliver a repeat performance of his State of the Union address.
Instead, he stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.
The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.
And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.
Biden’s team had tried to engineer the debate in his favor — pushing for it to be early and without an audience. And the president agreed to hold the event in part to calm Democratic nerves over whether he could win in November.
Afterward they didn’t try to cover up his poor performance, but instead tried to emphasize that Trump remained a threat to American interests at home and abroad.
“It was a slow start, that’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper an hour after the debate wrapped. “I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime. And do we want to look at what November will bring and go on a course for America that is about a destruction of democracy?”
Biden struggled at times to articulate strong arguments on some of his campaign’s biggest selling points, bungling his health care record and stumbling through a response on his support for abortion rights.
“I support Roe v. Wade. You have three trimesters. First time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. Third time is between the doctor — I mean, between the woman and the state,” he said.
Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chair and “Never Trumper” who is considering voting for Biden, had warned that Democrats would need to reconsider their ticket if the president delivered a poor performance on Thursday.
After the debate, Cullen said: “Anyone who has watched a parent grow old, frail, and foggy recognizes what they are seeing and knows it only gets worse, at an accelerating rate, from here.”
CNN’s Kate Bedingfield got a little testy with Scott Jennings before the debate, skeptical that Biden’s campaign was hanging by a thread, given how close the polls were in some key states. That’s not good, Kate. Some states, like Minnesota, should have Biden running away with it; Trump is tied there. The age issues, Biden’s cognition, and the defection of black voters under 50 is a five-alarm fire that these clowns refused to believe until tonight. Biden got the hinges blown off him, and with his age and frailty, I doubt he’ll get better as we approach Election Day.
CNN’s John King added that this disastrous debate has ramifications down the ticket, with some Democratic candidates surely reconsidering whether to stand near the president or even be in the same zip code. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said Biden acted like what many conservative media outlets have been noting for months, which is that this guy is cooked, and there are no deep fakes, cheap fakes, or editing going on—welcome to the party, folks. MSNBC, a network whose sole purpose was to keep liberal blood pressures low, was in all-out ‘Kill Biden’ mode post-debate:
On the far left, which already had its issues with Biden, the Young Turks are calling it: this race is over:
The president said ‘watch me’ when pressed about his age which reached fever pitch when Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report on his investigation into the president’s mishandling of classified information where charges were not filed, due to Biden’s age and memory issues. The nation watched, Mr. President, and they saw what many of us already knew about you: you can’t do the job. CNN’s post-debate poll had Trump trouncing Biden, which was no surprise:
‘Don’t believe your lying eyes’ was never a serious counternarrative. There’s no spinning this, which is why the liberal media can do only one thing: pressure this president into dropping out by relentlessly attacking him.
Liberal America won’t be sleeping tonight, but you voted for this, you endorsed this—this is your mess. Across the board, the nation agrees: Joe, you’re not it.
