Debate disaster: is there a way back for Joe Biden?

This is The Guardian.

I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don't think he knows what he said either.

Not much doubt over who came out on top, but it certainly wasn't the American people. I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

I think going into this that everyone was extremely aware that Biden needed to put on an extremely strong performance.

Nikki McCann-Ramirez is a politics reporter at Rolling Stone Magazine.

So I think for myself and a lot of people going into this, this debate felt really consequential, especially amongst Biden's perception amongst undecided voters and how the rest of this campaign would unfold.

That was how you felt going into it. It is the middle of the night UK time, it's late where you are. We have both now just watched that debate. Immediate gut reaction.

I think that went a lot worse for Biden than even a lot of people could have anticipated. I think it was an incredibly poor performance by the president, especially in the beginning. Which is, you know, when you as a candidate want to hook viewers, you want to come out strong, you want to come out swinging. He seemed extremely low on energy, he was fumbling over his words.

We have a thousand trillionaires in America, billionaires in America, and what's happening? They're in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they just paid 24 percent, 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they'd raise $500 million billion dollars, I should say.

His answers? Trump, by contrast, seemed his usual self. I can't say that the performance was above and beyond what we expected for Trump.

By the time we finished, we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.

But the contrast it drew between Biden, where Biden just plainly seemed incredibly old and uncomfortable on the debate stage.

Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the Covid, excuse me with dealing with.

And I think this is raising a lot of alarms, not just among voters who were looking toward this debate to sort of quell their concerns. But also amongst the democratic establishment and other lawmakers who, in general election years, tend to rely on a strong presidential candidate to help pull down ballot races to victory. Whether that's going to pan out this year?

Yeah, as we're speaking, it seems the Democratic establishment, or many people in it, are freaking out. I mean, people are texting reporters and anxiously saying, Can we move forward with this guy on the ticket? I mean, we'll get into the specifics and substance, but in a way that is secondary. It was about the physicality, the optics and the big problem. As you said, going into this Biden has had is old, old, old, and tonight he just looked old.

It cannot be overstated. What an incredibly stark contrast it was. Biden I'm amazed they didn't give him a throat lozenge before he went on stage. We've now seen some sort of damage control reports that he has a bit of a cold. But I don't know how the campaign is going to be able to spin this in a positive light later on in the debate.

This is a guy who says, Hitler's done some good things. I'd like to know what they are. good things Hitler's done. That's what he said. This guy has no sense of American democracy.

And I think for the Trump campaign, this has just been a gift on a silver platter. You really see how Trump. Despite the many lies, the many falsehoods he told on stage, the many answers he outright avoided giving, and the various rambling statements. Still felt like a charismatic, prominent presence on that stage that, regardless of how coherent and concise his message was, I think, made a much stronger impact with viewers.

Yeah, I would agree with that assessment completely. I think two things shaped the way this would have been perceived and received by the American public. One of the physical things we've talked about. Maybe some people hearing this will say, that's trivial. I care about the substance and the issues, but that's how these messages are communicated. But the second thing is the format, the way this thing was conducted as a debate.

Look, we had the safest border in history, now we have the worst border in history. There's never been anything like it. And people are dying all over the place, including the people that are coming up in caravans. Thank you, President Trump.

And so you did have this dynamic where you had sort of doddery guy on the right. Often incoherent. And we'll get into some of the specifics versus, you know, stream of lies on the other side. But they sounded coherent because they came out in a strong voice and no one challenged them.

I think CNN felt that relying on the system they created of muting microphones would be enough. But there were multiple instances where, particularly, Trump was asked critical questions about his potential policies going into a second administration. That Trump just completely ignored, rambled about whatever was on his mind. And Bash and Tapper made no effort, until very late in the debate, to redirect the conversation, to restate the question, to press Trump for an answer. A couple instances were a question about the fentanyl epidemic, what he would do to help lower childcare costs. He had to be asked three times if he would accept the results of the election in November, and only the third time he was asked. Did he give a deflective answer? The boilerplate answer he's been giving for the past couple months of, Oh, if I think it's fair and honest, then sure, I'll accept it.

President Trump, the question was, Will you accept the results of the election, regardless of who wins yes or no? Please? If it's a fair and legal and good election? Absolutely. I would have much rather accepted these, but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.

He also completely ducked a question on if he would support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. And American voters aren't just watching these debates to see which of these two candidates feels like the older, older man here. They're watching to understand what policies these candidates are going to come in with. And it really felt like CNN had the opportunity here to really force the candidates to explain to American voters what differentiates them in terms of policy, in terms of their attitude toward American institutions. And that did not take place.

Yeah, I think many people will feel exactly that way. Let's just go into some specifics to flesh out the point, and I think you and I see it the same way. Let's start first with this performance problem of Joe Biden's and the kind of incoherence. There was one moment where he was asked about the economy and it ended up in a line about Medicare that I think confused anybody watching it.

Everything we have to do with.

Thank you, President Biden. President Trump was right, he did beat Medicaid, beat it to death.

Yeah, moments like that took place throughout the debate, and it really felt like Biden's own stumbling over his words were really just handing Trump opportunities to sort of turn around the conversation and be like, Yeah, absolutely, you bashed Medicare to death. And there were several moments within the debate where Biden seemed to just lose his train of thought. And Trump would just jump in and sort of hit him with a reminder. Hit not only hit Biden with a reminder, but hit viewers with a reminder of all these things. He's been saying that Biden is too old to handle this, this role, the role of the presidency.

And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.

PresiDent Trump I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either.

And the terrible thing about that moment is, even though it was Trump and all the people who maybe hate Trump, would have sort of found themselves nodding. Because it did sound like Biden himself didn't quite know what he was trying to say there.

There were some moments where Biden did really manage to kind of stick it to Trump. There was an instance where they were discussing immigration and Trump tried to turn it around and say that Biden had abandoned veterans, that he hated the military, that he was undoing all these policies in support of veterans. And at one point, demanded that Biden apologize to him when Biden pointed out that Trump had called deceased veterans suckers and losers during a visit to France.

My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You're the sucker, you're the loser.

But that moment itself was overshadowed by the overall performance. And Trump is far more used to being on stage for really long periods of time.

And being on camera, it's something he's used to, isn't he?

Absolutely, I think one of the big contrasts here and one of the issues going into this debate was Biden and his campaign. The White House are so much more calculated in what public appearances Biden makes, there's a lot more preparation that goes into them. They tend to be much more selective, whereas Trump, he's taking the stage multiple times a week at rallies.

I think that's right. I mean, the effect of all of this was that Donald Trump was able to get away with a whole lot of falsehoods. The fact checkers have been unbelievably busy tonight off stage, not the moderators on stage. There was no real time fact checking for anyone watching the broadcast.

Let's just hear a bit of that. You had Roe v. Wade. And everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. everybody wanted it back, religious leaders.

That is just so obviously a lie. And yet was he able to get away with it? Donald Trump?

Oh, absolutely. And he was able to get away with several other lies within that one answer. He also claimed that Democrats support killing babies after they've been born. He claims that Democrats universally support unchecked, unchallenged abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy, which is not true. And this, like you said, this question should have been a slam dunk for Joe Biden.

I supported Roe v. Wade, which had three. Trimesters. First time is between the woman and the doctor, second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor. I mean, between the woman and the state.

But he stumbled over it multiple times. That really just signals to me how misguided and unprepared his campaign staff was going into this debate. They just did not put in the very baseline work to ensure he had prepared answers to expected questions.

Well, or maybe they did, and just Biden himself couldn't deliver. They've been training at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, for days, well over a week. And just maybe this guy couldn't be drilled. Interestingly, it could be just something that happens that this, you know, you were saying before. He's not as used to being on TV as Trump, one reporter has just tweeted. As we're speaking, Olivia Nutzi tweeting Where the hell was the Joe Biden, who is currently speaking at the Atlanta Watch party? Where was he during the debate?

The only person on this stage is a convicted felon. Is the man I'm looking at right now.

He then went on to talk about the Manhattan case, the Stormy Daniels case. He said You know you had sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant?

What, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat.

What did you think of those moments? Did they at least cut through some of the sort of fog around Joe Biden and Land?

You have the morality of an alley cat is a fantastic line. It's also just absurd that a candidate for the presidency is standing on stage and saying, by the way, I never had sex with a porn star. And that not be a campaign ending statement, but that that's the world we're living in right now. The initial performance in the debate, this idea that Biden is now speaking at an after event and is completely eloquent. It rings hollow with the American public when that level of performance can't be turned on, when it most matters for a lot of viewers.

A whole lot of independent voters, I think, were expecting to, or hoping, perhaps even to go into this, currently undecided. But to be reassured that Biden is vigorous enough to do another term. And then they would, because a lot of them don't want to vote for Donald Trump, they would move from Trump to Biden, but they did not get that reassurance tonight.

And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago on tape. To her daughter, who is a documentary filmmaker, they say what she's saying, Oh, no, it's my responsibility. I was responsible for this because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard.

So what about that? He was once again spinning a story that was not true about his role, trying to offset, offload the blame onto someone else. But your sense, Nikki, did he just get away with it?

The claim he made about Pelosi is based on a video that was released earlier this month showing Pelosi on January 6th in the car with her daughter. Who's a documentary filmmaker, where Pelosi is kind of wondering out loud about why the National Guard wasn't more prepared. She feels that she had a responsibility that, you know, Capitol Security, Capitol Police wasn't prepared for the events of January 6th. And that resulted in this riot. And Republicans have really been pushing this video as evidence that it was Pelosi's fault that the riot took place in the first place.

Yeah, and all of that insanity in a way encapsulated in one of the final exchanges, a truly bizarre back and forth about of all things golf.

Look, I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which when I was vice president, down to a six.

Think you can do it?

That's the biggest lie, that he's a six handicap of all.

I was an eight handicap eight.

I've seen you swing, I know you swing. Let's not act like children, President Trump, We're going to go, let's not act like children.

I saw a post on Twitter that was like, These two men are arguing about golf and you want me to give them the nuclear codes.

What I was amazed by by that is that Biden sank down to that level. He started talking about his handicap and his ability at golf, where all he needed to say was Sure, I'm old. But you're crazy and you're a lawbreaker, and you're a danger to the United States. And instead, he got into this ridiculous match. People were tweeting out that meme of Homer Simpson's aged father getting into an argument with another equally old man. And the headline Old men shout at each other. That's what it sounded like.

There has already been a lot of chatter amongst behind the scenes Democratic Party officials, operatives about deep concerns regarding what's going to happen at the convention. Biden's ability to carry through this campaign. But I think as much as these discussions are taking place, we are five months out from the election. It's kind of the devil, you know, versus the devil you don't do. You continue to run this campaign, making the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy, who has authoritarian tendencies? A convicted felon who's promised to institute a slew of draconian policies that will materially harm Americans. And hope that that's enough to overcome the concerns about Biden's age and capabilities. Or do you slot in a completely new candidate and knock on wood? That voters are enthusiastic and willing enough to not only change their vote, but to actually make the effort to turn out and support this new candidate.

Yes, although you say a few more weeks, there isn't that much time, but I think you've absolutely set it out right. Which is that both options are pretty awful is how many Democrats will be thinking. Sticking with a man who really did perform as badly as Joe Biden did tonight is a nightmare. But equally, going into a nomination process with unknown quantities, who knows how that shakes out?

Not at all.

Nikki McCann-Ramirez, politics reporter at Rolling Stone, Thanks so much for talking to me for Politics Weekly American.

Thank you so much for having me, Jonathan.

And that is all from me for this week. If you're looking to delve a little deeper into the psychology of extremism and how politics is driving it these days, do make sure to listen to our sister podcast Science Weekly with Madeleine Finley and Professor Richard Petty of Ohio State University. It's fascinating. And, of course, with less than a week to go until Election day here in the UK, I do suggest you keep listening to Politics Weekly UK and Politics Weekly Westminster, as well as Today. In Focus Extra. Just search for all of those wherever you get your podcasts.

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