Welcome to Thunderdome. There’s something that happens when you’re around people with feeble minds that make communication a challenge — whether they’re old, disabled or toddlers — where their inability to find the right word or express themselves isn’t a barrier to understanding what they mean. When my one-year-old toddles around the living room and says “baba,” I know she’s asking for her bottle. But there’s an insulation factor here. You understand them even though others don’t.
If you are a White House staffer, I have to tell you: you have been suffering from this same disease. You have become insulated and completely resistant to the signals, the ringing flashing klaxons that indicate Joe Biden cannot do the job of the commander-in-chief any more. And that’s how you get this debate — maybe the worst single performance by any incumbent president since debates began.
The Democratic Party is in chaos over this, and so are his water-carriers. From the very first lines of the debate, Biden stumbled and botched his prepared remarks. He swayed and meandered. And in the single most central issue for Democrats’ campaign plans this cycle — abortion — Biden made an absolute mess of his answer, falsely describing both the policies of his own party, losing his train of thought, stumbling through what clearly had to be a carefully prepared line of attack.
You have to wonder if this was a plan all along. Did Democratic operatives convince the White House they needed to do this debate so early to give party figures and donors time to decide to make a change? That’s certainly a possibility. The spin from the White House seems to just be that Biden had a previously unreported cold. That might explain the cough or the whispering voice — it doesn’t explain what it means to veer at the end of your statement to declare that you “beat Medicare.”
The CNN approach to the debate was unexpectedly favorable to Trump, helping keep him on the rails and leading to a more disciplined approach. The limited ability to interrupt was actually helpful for him, as it left Biden to spin his wheels, repeatedly failing to fill the time allotted for his answers. The only time he interrupted significantly was, of all things, over a debate about golf handicaps. We can only dream that the two actually take this challenge to fruition.
As for Biden’s challenger, it is unique in this way: for the first time since he has entered the world of politics, Donald Trump’s performance is not the most memorable thing about a debate. He won the first third and last third of the debate on policy matters — Biden only really held his own in the foreign policy exchanges in the middle, post a commercial break that seemed to rejuvenate him. But there’s no solace to be found in it. Instead this looks like a moment that threatens to absolutely blow up an incumbent president’s campaign, in a way that will leave the party scrambling for a new solution. Does that look like Gavin Newsom, who was there in Atlanta tonight? It’s his decision if he even wants to try in this environment.
More analysis in the morning. But right now, Democrats are freaking out. They are right to be afraid.
