Thursday’s Debate
A Loss for President Biden and for America.
There is not any Democrat—lay-person, strategist, elected representative, or otherwise—with any political sense or reason that believes that President Biden’s debate performance was anything other than an utter calamity, a disaster of the highest order.
President Biden’s success during Thursday’s debate was always going to be hard-fought, and it was never going to be an unmitigated victory. Presidential candidates’ debate performances are not judged in a vacuum; rather, debate victories are most often decided by the oft-mentioned “expectations game,” i.e., the ability of a candidate to meet or exceed the existing expectations or perceptions of the voting public. It is safe to say that, at the beginning of the 2024 election, the general public had little faith in either candidate—one a rambling, temperamental demagogue, and the other of such an advanced age (born in 1942) that in his birth year, the most popular non-war related film was a remake of Charlie Chaplin’s silent film “The Gold Rush.”
Had these universally low expectations remained unchanged, perhaps the debate would have been irrelevant. However, rather than touting his many accomplishments, President Biden’s entire campaign has hinged upon the assertion that Donald Trump (a 34-time felon) was entirely unfit for office. Additionally, the Biden campaign team’s confident assertion that the President’s age is not a debilitating factor, paired with the President’s unexpected—and pleasantly surprising—aggressive convention speech and subsequent such performances during his State of the Union speeches, had partly assuaged voters’ anxieties about a geriatric candidate in the Oval Office. These voters tuned in on Thursday, hoping for a confirmation that President Biden was alright, and that he was up to the rigors of the office, and many believed that they would see a confident President Biden, who would further assuage their fears.
In most debates, actual substantive policy factors very little into the voters’ assessment of a candidate’s success. In President Biden’s case, this was more nuanced. President Biden’s claim that Donald Trump was wholly unqualified for office also hinged upon the fact that President Biden possessed policy expertise entirely absent in the previous—and any future—Trump Administration, and thus, President Biden had to run circles around Trump on substantive policy matters, in order to meet expectations. However, whereas in the past it was possible for a presidential candidate to be both intelligent and a bad performer—mostly by coming across as too intellectual or erudite, and thus, as unrelatable or condescending to the average American—this was not an option for President Biden. In Thursday’s debate, the focus was upon the President’s age to such a degree that, regardless of his answers to the moderator’s questions, his policy credentials would be judged in relation to his performance—a debate answer that sounds principled, profound, or sagacious when given by a charismatic young man, comes across as out of touch (at best) and, at worst, it is perceived as nonsensical when it is delivered by an elderly candidate. As it stands, none of President Biden’s answers could have been perceived as profound from a candidate of any age.
As for the performative aspect, President Biden stumbled onto the stage, wide-eyed and mouth agape, with a slightly bewildered look upon his face—that one might expect from someone unsure of where he was or what he was doing there. He was pale, stiff, with a raspy voice, and a pesky cough. Every audience member including (if not, especially) the President’s strongest supporters—a group in which I proudly include myself, even after this debate—felt their confidence slip away, only to be replaced by aghastness, nausea, dismay, and trepidation. Paired with President Biden’s mumbling, stutter, and bumbling answers, the stage was set for the worst event of the night: the moderator asked President Biden what he had to say to voters concerned about his age, since he would be turning 86 at the end of his second term. It couldn’t have mattered any less what President Biden said in response to that question, because the same thought ran through all of the audience members’ minds—“Oh my God, that’s almost 90!” Suddenly, all of Biden’s supporters were imagining the worst-case scenario, that Thursday’s debate might be the new, permanent state of affairs.
It is also worth noting that, while I don’t pretend that my five years of campaign experience at the local and state level qualify me to offer advice on the messaging of a presidential campaign, amidst the utterly absurd argument between President Biden and Donald Trump about their respective golf games, it was likely not particularly wise for President Biden to refer to his “golf handicap” several times over. Very few Americans, outside of some members of the upper-class have any idea what a “golf handicap” is, however, every American understands what a “handicap” is, and in their minds it was what they saw from President Biden in the debate on Thursday. If you have a candidate that is attempting to prove that he is not in cognitive decline, while appearing as though he is rapidly declining, it is probably not wise for the word “handicap” to leave their mouth in any context, let alone repeatedly.
To make matters worse, since President Biden’s success depended upon Donald Trump largely proving himself to be unqualified with his all-to-familiar apoplectic fits of rage and conspiratorial madness, when this new Donald Trump walked on stage, suddenly able to feign restraint and civility, it put the final nail in the coffin of President Biden’s debate performance. In many ways, it revived the hopes of the 2016 GOP, that Donald Trump would abandon his bombast and demagoguery, and begin to act presidential, upon feeling the full weight of his office—hopes that were dashed, it is important to remember.
How bad IS it?
Well, it is not yet DEFCON 1 for the Democratic Party, but all the same, it is pretty bad.
Almost every public opinion poll or estimate showed the all-important unaffiliated voter-bloc as relatively evenly split between Donald Trump and President Biden; and before the debate, President Biden had a slight lead with 45 percent versus Trump’s 41 percent, with a relatively small pool of undecideds at 14 percent—a statistical tie. This is interesting because two-fifths of unaffiliated voters decided that, knowing all of Trump’s personality flaws and crimes, they were prepared to support him due to the perception that their life was better under the Trump Administration. In other words, no matter how Donald Trump performed in the debate, he was unlikely to lose any of these voters. It is interesting that Trump’s solid claim to two-fifths of the unaffiliated electorate is nearly equal to the one-third of unaffiliated voters who believe that Donald Trump should not face trial for his role in the January 6th, 2020 insurrection, plus the small segment that believes any trial, if it were to take place, should take place after the November election—by which time the verdict would be largely irrelevant.
In light of President Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of business or financial misdealings, Politico conducted a poll to ascertain how the trial would affect voting patterns. This poll produced a result that should have flashed warning lights for the Biden re-election campaign strategists: only a third of unaffiliated voters said that it was an important factor in determining how they were going to vote. An insignificant portion of those unaffiliated voters said that it would make them more likely to vote for Trump; thus, it is reasonable to assume that the same segment (one-quarter to one-third) of unaffiliated voters were squarely in the President Biden camp. Yet, unless Politico’s poll was not a representative sample—and with no evidence to the contrary, it is safe to assume that our nation’s leading political minds know the basic rules of statistical method—there seems to be no logical reason that President Biden was consistently garnering half of the unaffiliated vote in general election polling, when that is twice the proportion who indicated disapproval of Trump’s conviction in the Politico study. However, there is a simple explanation.
These respondents’ nonchalant attitude was for one reason: the conviction did not present them with any new, relevant information. In other words, these unaffiliated voters knew that Donald Trump was wretched, and the trial didn’t change their calculus, thus it didn’t influence their electoral decision-making. All of Trump’s unaffiliated support was drawn from this base of voters. However, the remaining one-fifth to one-quarter of unaffiliated voters, making up approximately half of President Biden’s unaffiliated support, were also drawn from this bloc, and that should have been a significant cause for concern.
These unaffiliated voters were not necessarily supporters of Trump and his crimes; however, they were not part of the vehement opposition either—almost all of which informed Politico that they would be “less likely to support” Donald Trump due to his conviction purely as a matter of principle—although it likely was not possible for them to become any less likely to support Trump. Unaffiliated voters who chose to support President Biden, and yet, did not seem to react to Donald Trump’s conviction were involved in a delicate balancing act: they did not like Donald Trump’s unbecoming behavior—although they were largely desensitized to it and they remember a better life under the Trump Administration—and they were willing to stick by Biden, very reluctantly, as long as it seemed that the Biden Administration was doing reasonably well despite the President’s age, and so long as Donald Trump seemed determined to be a public dumpster fire. Both of these presumptions were shattered in Thursday’s debate. When these voters are analyzed by pundits, they are often referred to as “dual haters,” or by a few sources as “soft” or “somewhat disapprovers.” These voters are universally recognized to be critical to President Biden’s success in this re-election. According to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, President Biden performs unusually well amongst these dual haters, which might allow him to win re-election despite poor approval ratings. The Center for Politics noted that Donald Trump, despite having a higher disapproval rating than Hillary Clinton in 2016, significantly out-performed Clinton’s campaign amongst this segment of voters, enabling his election to the Presidency of the United States.
A victory for President Biden in the debate would have been to re-enforce the support of the “somewhat disapprover” half of his unaffiliated voting-bloc, maybe even widen his unaffiliated support by drawing upon the exceptionally small pool of undecideds, and perhaps, win over some of the “Never Trump” Republicans left over from the Nikki Haley coalition. As it stands, he almost certainly lost this half of his rather weak unaffiliated support, as many voters find it difficult to justify voting for a seemingly deteriorating President, against a newly-reformed Donald Trump and vaguely nostalgic recollections of a better life—cheaper gasoline and general prosperity—during Trump’s first term (even if these are largely misconceptions.) As UVA’s Center for Politics stated, this election will be decided based upon which candidate repulses these “dual haters” more, and after Thursday’s debate, it might just be President Biden. President Biden also virtually guaranteed that all Never Trump Republicans would stay home and hide under their mattress on election day. If the Biden campaign team doesn’t take immediate action, to fix its errors, and if Donald Trump remains on his best behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Republican carry 60 percent to two-thirds of the unaffiliated votes on election day—the very definition of calamity.
Is this even fixable?
Some Democrats, amidst the panic, have begun to talk about replacing President Biden on the ticket by forcing him to step down or through an open convention—that would be the nuclear option, hence the earlier reference to DEFCON 1—and we are not there yet. First of all, national Democrats have no bench; as in, there are no potential candidates with enough name recognition to win a national race, or with the moderate bona fides to generate broad cross-party or unaffiliated appeal. Of well-known, high-profile Democrats, California governor Gavin Newsom comes to mind, but he would be a lost cause outside of the coastal metropolitan areas. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or Vice President Kamala Harris—or, perhaps, a Hillary Clinton re-emergence—might have a chance of posing some challenge to Donald Trump, but victory would be impossible to achieve in four months. David Dayen with The American Prospect said it best:
“After seeing this debacle [Thursday’s debate], why would anyone think those handlers, or the ones who couldn’t beat them out to get into the White House, would be able to pull off a four-month sprint presidential campaign with a substitute candidate, or the automatically messy process it would take to get there?”
President Biden is who the Democrats have, he is the only candidate who can pull off a—now, underdog—victory.
Tuning in to Thursday’s debate, Biden’s supporters hoped—indeed, desperately needed—to see a “Dark Brandon” redux. “Dark Brandon” is the moniker given by meme culture to President Biden’s other side, a tough, brilliant leader willing to endlessly challenge extremist Republicans on their policies that make lives harder for average Americans—a stubborn, stalwart defender of liberal values. To a class of internet pundits, who communicate through meme graphics, this side of President Biden is America’s superhero, and he was nowhere to be seen at Thursday’s debate. The advantage of “Dark Brandon” is that, the persona’s vigor makes President Biden appear—somewhat—ageless; the Uncle Joe personality that President Biden brought with him on Thursday reminded everyone of their Great-Great Uncle, who “doesn’t get out very much.” If the Biden re-election campaign is to recover, voters need to see the version of their President that they lionized as “Dark Brandon,” every minute of every day from now until the polls close on election day. As President Biden, himself, noted in Thursday’s debate, Donald Trump has a tendency to snap and lose control when he is publicly challenged, or when he loses—which is such a great quality for a president in a democratic society. If “Dark Brandon” shows up to the next debate, performing well and challenging Trump on every one of his false statements, the Republican nominee will be unable to maintain his façade of civility for very long.
It is important that President Biden’s supporters not give up, or give into despair. In all likelihood, President Biden was always going to struggle to exceed expectations, and win that game. While President Biden entered the debate with more unaffiliated support than Donald Trump, Trump’s support could have been described as relatively strong and stable, he was not at risk of losing much of it.
To the contrary, President Biden’s support was anything but stable. President Biden walked into the debate with everything to lose and very little to gain; Donald Trump entered the debate with everything to gain and nothing to lose. Is it any wonder that President Biden’s choice to engage in a debate, with that disparity of risk, proved utterly imprudent?
It is important, however, that voters not be fooled by Trump’s act of feigned civility, or forget how meaningful this election is to the United States and the world. Donald Trump seems to be learning the same lesson that many would-be autocrats learned after the Third Wave of democracy and in the first decades of the twenty-first century: that weaponizing nascent, unstable, or deteriorating democratic institutions is a far more effective method of gaining the power and influence to subvert liberal democracy, than declaring an all-out, public war. This contemporary phenomenon of “elected” populist autocrats, whom proceed to corrupt, seize, or raze pre-existing democratic institutions upon rising to power, is the same process that gave Venezuela—and the world— Hugo Chavez. This phenomenon is so prominent in twenty-first century Ibero-America that is forms the core of the exploration and analysis in the Latinobarómetro, an annual survey designed to measure the attitudes towards democracy within Latin America—and designed to explain, through public opinion research, “how Latin American democracies become vulnerable and open to populism and authoritarianism.” So-called popular dictatorships are the key to democratic retreat in Latin America, parts of Europe (Such as Viktor Orban’s Hungary), and certain states in Asia (such as Malaysia). Project 2025 is a roadmap to such seizure of existing democratic institutions in the United States, and that is what this election must continue to be about, which candidate represents the preservation of America’s values, and which president understands the liberal and moral imperative that the United States possesses as the “city upon a hill,” to continue its service as the leader of the free world.
