A Tough Night (and a Mea Culpa)

Joe Biden came up short in the first debate. Now what?

If you’re like me, you didn’t sleep well last night. Many had approached last night’s debate with anxiety, but if anything I was guilty of some overconfidence that Joe Biden would easily hold his own against Donald Trump. After all, we had just heard Biden in interviews on ABC and Howard Stern. He had met with G7 leaders who praised his leadership and experience. This was a debate on policy, where he normally shines.

I was live blogging the debate over at The Big Picture, and I have to admit, the first 20 minutes sent my blood pressure up sharply. Biden’s voice was noticeably weak and hoarse, and his facial expressions made him look tired or confused rather than resolute and confident. It was hard to pick out his words. I wish his campaign had let the world know that he had a cold; that would have set expectations more appropriately. I also wish that they had prepped him on how to take on a gish-galloping conman by answering with sentiment rather than just facts and policy.

Biden’s performance unfortunately added to a familiar concern about him: that he is simply too old to do the job another four years. As former Sen. Claire McCaskill said candidly in a post-debate interview with Rachel Maddow,

Well first, the easy part. Donald Trump is a liar, a flawed character, mean, a jerk, very unlikeable, and that was obvious tonight.

Now, the hard and heartbreaking part. I’ve been a surrogate for some presidential candidates in my time. I know what the job is after the debate of a surrogate. I’ve never wanted to be a surrogate more than I do right now. Because when you’re a surrogate, you have to focus on the positives. But I’ve said very clearly and very plainly, and my job now was to be really honest. Joe Biden had one job to do tonight. And he didn’t do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.”

In the wake of his underperformance, there have been widespread calls in editorial pages for Biden to step aside, including from Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, who penned a heartfelt OpEd honoring his long time friend yet urging him to decline the nomination.

I get where Friedman was coming from. I admit, I was feeling the panic, too, as text messages came in from friends and colleagues all over the country. And frankly, I let the moment get the better of me. I wrote and posted on social media that I love and respect Joe, but didn’t believe he was the man to lead us to November.

In retrospect, I think that was, to borrow a recent phrase from the Supreme Court, “improvidently” shared. For that, I apologize. Upon calmer reflection and some admittedly fitful sleep, there were three main reasons I took it down and have changed my mind on this. I hope they offer you some helpful perspective.

First, even as I could feel my own anxiety and stress hitting peak levels after the debate was over, I remember asking myself, “Where the hell was the Joe Biden I know?” Against my better judgment, I doomscrolled through my feed and landed upon the address Biden gave to followers at the after party in Atlanta. There, Biden sounded confident, jovial and presidential. “Why couldn’t this Joe Biden have shown up on stage?” I lamented. You can see the clip for yourself:

But my own question reminded me that anyone can have a bad night, and that 90 minutes can sometimes feel like an eternity. But it’s really just one awful bump on a very long road.

The Joe Biden I know is the guy in the above clip. He’s the one who negotiated hard for bipartisan bills on infrastructure, chips, climate change and prescription drugs. He’s the one who defied the haters and gave a tremendous State of the Union speech.

Second, I have always considered myself a pragmatic progressive. When I asked myself honestly whether it is at all likely that Biden would step aside, the answer I came back with is “no.” And that meant my post was academic, not practical. Seasoned political advisors know that one bad debate performance, which happened to nearly every incumbent from Reagan to Obama, does not spell certain electoral doom. Granted, Biden’s debate performance was worse than those, but there is still a long time between now and November. And both Reagan and Obama became two term presidents after they faltered badly in their first debate.

That means any call for a change at the top is both impractical and unhelpful. Those two things don’t align with my personal values in politics, and in this post-debate hangover I can see that more clearly.

Finally, I asked myself, “What will people remember from last night?” The answer is not surprising: that Biden was halting and seemed old, and that Trump the felon lied and lied and lied. In other words, they will come away with the exact same impressions they already have of the candidates. Our job is to continue to make the case that soft-spoken and old is far better than fascist and criminal. And that remains a battle we can win.

When you read the actual transcripts of the debate, Biden comes off sounding fine, while Trump sounds like the unhinged one who uttered some truly remarkable things. For example, he claimed that illegal immigrants are coming over and taking “Black jobs,” which has spawned a whole new category of memes about what a “Black job” is in Trump’s racist and deranged head. For someone who claims he will win a lot of the Black vote, it was a revealing and damaging moment.

Trump also lied over 30 times in the course of 90 minutes according to CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale. It’s worth watching him recite them all:

CNN’s moderators maddeningly did not fact check Trump in real time, per their announced rule, even when the question of what Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly had confirmed to moderator Jake Tapper came up multiple times. As The Hill had reported,

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly confirmed several remarks his former boss, former President Trump, reportedly made during his time in the administration, including one where Trump referred to dead U.S. service members as “suckers.”

In a statement to CNN, Kelly, the longest serving chief of staff in the Trump administration, confirmed to network anchor Jake Tapper a number of details published in a 2020 article by The Atlantic, including remarks made by Trump during an official visit to France in 2018. 

The fact-checking fell instead to Biden to attempt to do, but that would have eaten up all of his time and turned the debate even more into a chaotic he said / he said. Imagine if Dale had been allowed to run chyrons against false claims by Trump in the moment he uttered them. Much of my frustration, I realized, was over how the lies were allowed to sit there unchallenged. I was mad at the world, and specifically at the network and its useless moderators.

Later today, I have the surreal honor of meeting President Biden in person for the first time here in New York City after having raised $178,000 so far for his reelection, largely from my amazing readership. The Bidens are coming here to celebrate Pride weekend, a reminder that his administration has done more for the LGBTQ+ community than any other in history and fully has our backs.

I should have had Joe’s. He deserved better from me.

But I am going to be kind to myself a bit here, too, and I want to extend this grace to anyone else who may have spent the last 12 hours casting about desperately for another solution. These are very stressful times, and it’s understandable that the idea of a second Trump term causes people, including me, to lose it a bit. There will be low points, and this was one of them for both the Biden Campaign and its supporters. But as the Buddhists say, wisdom is like rain: It gathers in low places.

Coming back around, committing to repair, and getting back to work are the best therapeutics I know. I’m already rolling up my sleeves.