Debate debacle in Atlanta

Last night, Americans sat down to watch the first 2024 debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump knowing that presidential debates can change history. The 1960 debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy changed history when Kennedy and Nixon effectively tied on the issues but Kennedy appeared youthful and Nixon sweated profusely under the television lights. In 1976, President Gerald Ford debated Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter and declared there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” He never recovered from the fallout. The debate in Atlanta last night will go down in history for one reason alone: President Biden turned the debate into a disaster, a debacle, and effectively a meltdown.

Former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan declared the event “the most important presidential debate ever.” Mincing no words, she wrote, “It was in fact as consequential as any presidential debate in history, and the worst night for an incumbent in history.” If anything, that was an understatement.

Headlines ranged from “Biden Stumbles” and “A Fumbling Performance, and a Panicking Party” at The New York Times to “Democrats Panic” at The Washington Post and “Biden Crashes” at The Wall Street Journal. On the major news networks, the mild-mannered John King of CNN came out with an honest assessment that President Biden had basically tanked his campaign for reelection. A panel of commentators agreed. On MSNBC, the hosts did their best to carry the official Democratic Party line, but their faces told the story. On Fox News, the president’s debate performance was described as a “train wreck.” It certainly was.

At the human level, the sight was just profoundly sad. Joe Biden demanded this moment, but it was a face-plant from which it is difficult to imagine recovery. The Democratic Party let this happen, and now it may reap the whirlwind.

Presidential debates are now part of the media age, and in a digital world, a mistake can quickly become an international meme. Biden’s performance last night provided an endless supply of facial expressions, garbled speech, broken sentences, and slurred words. In a strange twist, the optics were even worse than the audio feed. It was a human tragedy, and one that will live on as a political parable. The politicians and political managers who had assured us of Biden’s basic competence were exposed as liars. He is clearly an elderly man who has no place in the Oval Office.

The Democratic Party is clearly scrambling in the aftermath of the event. Party insiders had been acknowledging for weeks that they needed an early test of Biden’s ability and readiness for the campaign. They got it. But what will the Democrats do now? The party’s rules make it impractical if not impossible to deny Biden the nomination at this point. If he is somehow convinced to leave the race, the party will have to debate and fight over how he can be replaced. If Vice President Kamala Harris is chosen as the nominee, the Democrats expect to lose. But if she is passed over, the party would be insulting and sidelining a vice president who could legitimately claim a right to the nomination and run as the first black woman to be a major party nominee. Denying her that role would expose the Democrats as liars and posers when it comes to inclusion and representation. They run incessantly on identity politics and clearly run the risk of being seen as major league hypocrites.

In the debate, Donald Trump for the most part ran true to form. He was more restrained that in some previous debates and scored major points against Biden on inflation, uncontrolled illegal immigration, and America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden went directly against Trump on character questions, and Trump threw the character question back at Biden. The CNN moderators were in control of the event and the new rules removed some of the problems in previous debates. The entire debate, however, revealed the coarsening of American political life, right down to the language, especially from Biden.

Both candidates failed on the issue of abortion, but they did not fail equally. Biden was partly incoherent and partly dishonest. When Trump accused him of supporting late-term abortions, Biden denied the charge and blustered about legislating Roe v. Wade. The dishonest part is when Biden got away without saying that he would not sign a bill supported by congressional Democrats that would indeed allow for late-term abortions (perhaps right up to birth). He would surely sign such a bill, and he knows full well that all the talk about legislating Roe, as horrible as that would be, is patently dishonest.

For his part, Trump wavered on abortion, insisting again that the issue should be left to the states and asserting that Republicans simply have to get elected. He cited President Ronald Reagan in affirming “exceptions” that would allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. It was a disappointing performance, but Trump did take credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and would reject the legislation Biden would sign. There is still a lot of distance between Trump and Biden on the abortion issue, but pro-lifers clearly have a huge challenge ahead of us.

The debate last night made history, and the days immediately ahead are going to be dominated by headlines and arguments, overwhelmingly about the future of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. The Biden crash is going to be followed by seismic reverberations. But remember that the Supreme Court is likely to hand down decisions of massive importance today. Any way you look at it, this is going to be a week to remember.