Trump Romps in a Pedestrian Debate

Biden fails to counter his lies.

Joe Biden lost a  =Presidential debate, rather than assuaging voters' fears about his age and capabilities only reaffirmed them. 

Biden was halting, encumbered by a raspy voice, and at times seemingly confused or losing his train of thought. The picture of the President standing there mouth open, eyes darting was devastating for the 81-year-old incumbent. Trump is only three years younger; the difference seemed more like decades.

On substance, Trump ran roughshod, confident, full of specifics, viciously attacking Biden at every opportunity. Biden, with the exception of  assailing the former President for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol in an effort to overturn a legitimate election, missed opportunity after opportunity to clearly counter his opponent. He was either poorly prepared or just not up to the challenge.

On the economy and even Covid, where Trump's own top adviser said his malfeasance cost hundreds of thousands of lives, Biden failed to coherently gain any advantage. On  a plethora of measures, Trump either engaged in blatant misstatements or lied and paid almost no price.

 These included:

-- denying he had sex with a porn star. Yet, he authorized a payment of $130,000 to that adult movie actress not to talk about it before the 2016 Presidential election.

-- insisting that he never called soldiers and marines "suckers" or "losers" and that was propagated by political opponents. Actually, it was confirmed by four-star Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump's White House Chief of Staff, who said he was standing by the President when he made those insults.

-- claiming that every legal scholar approved of overturning Roe V Wade that afforded protections for abortions rights. That wasn't true, and neither was his charge that Democrats favor late term abortions right up to birth.

-- charges that undocumented migrants, under the Biden Administration, are being put up in luxury hotels. They aren't.

--asserting that his huge proposed across the board tariffs would not be inflationary. Even many conservative economists say that's absurd.

Biden only took on these assertions erratically.  The CNN moderators let Trump get away with this, though the prime responsibility rests with the debaters.

Even on abortion, an issued that decisively favors Democrats ended up a virtual draw. Biden did a little better on immigration, which favors Republicans, though Trump's fear-mongering demagoguery often drowned out any substantive discussion.

The pedestrian debate was illustrated when the two candidates for the most important office in the world argued about their golf scores.

You don't score political debates like a boxing match, says Bob Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California; it's the overall impression left.

In the CNN debate Trump prevailed on both counts.

The pattern over the last 40 years, is that polls rarely change much after the initial debate. Given Biden’s desultory performance, he would be lucky if that’s the case this time.

That wasn't the case when televised presidential debates began with the John F. Kennedy vs Richard Nixon in 1960; most of the country was tuned in.

It was the height of the Cold War and the 43-year-old Kennedy had to prove he could be commander-in-chief. Nixon made a mistake and opted for Kennedy to make the opening eight minute remarks in what was supposed to be a domestic issue debate.  The young Democrat, instead, focused on the global threat of the Soviet Union; it was so good, Nixon basically agreed.

More than 60 years later, it's still worth watching.

The next presidential debate was in 1976 when President Gerald Ford debated Jimmy Carter. Ford, overcoming  a huge deficit, had steam heading into the final debate. This, again, was during the Cold War, and the President inexplicably claimed Poland and Eastern Europe were not under Soviet domination.

The momentum stopped, and a week later, Ford barely lost the election.  

In 1980, President Carter and Ronald Reagan avoided any debate until a week before the election. The contest was tied with many voters wanting change but worried the Republican might be over his head.  Reagan more than held his own that evening -- including some memorable lines  --"Are you better off than you were four years ago?" - went on to win resoundingly.

That's the last time a presidential debate affected the outcome; voters seem to have been discounted by many voters. .

In 2016, Hillary Clinton, according to the Gallup poll, devastated Donald Trump in three debates, winning the final one by a 2 to 1 margin.  Several weeks later she won the popular vote by a couple percentage points but lost the election.

Similarly, Biden, according to polls, was thought to be a big winner in the debates against Trump. Unlike four years earlier, he also won the election, though by a much smaller margin.

Biden’s only hope may be that this debate will prove equally erroneous.