Much has already been written about the awful Thursday night debate. President Biden’s performance made Rick Perry look like a college debate champ. I can’t say I expected a Will Ferrell “Old School” moment on the debate stage from Biden, but I didn’t think I’d end the night longing to hear the word strategery again.
Of course, Donald Trump spun tall tales from start to finish. There was more fiction and fantasy coming from Trump than a J.K. Rowling novel. That’s not new. Trump’s a practiced liar. He spews falsehoods with confidence and manufactures the bogus details that sell the snake oil.
A more capable opponent might have been able to point out Trump’s statements for what they were – a wholesale rewriting of the past decade. But capable is a word that will likely never be used to describe Joe Biden again.
The Democratic response to the debate has jumped around from panic to excuses: He had a head cold, the moderators didn’t ask the right questions at the right time, CNN didn’t fact-check in real time, Biden was still on European time. None of those excuses matters. Their candidate flopped and confirmed the fears about Biden that Democrats have been so frantically trying to beat back over the past several months.
Some left-leaning commentators are trying to change the subject, arguing that Biden’s performance was irrelevant and pivoting back to the basic premise of almost every federal election for the past six years – that Trump must be stopped at all costs. They’re echoing the sentiments of Mark Cuban, who a couple of weeks ago suggested that he’d vote for Biden even if Biden were receiving the sacrament of Last Rites on the day of the election.
While Cuban’s glib statement was meant to impugn Trump’s fitness for office, it now seems more like an indictment of those around the president. After last night’s performance, Biden’s continued candidacy is tantamount to elder abuse. The trappings of power and the perks of office can be intoxicating for those around the President, but maintaining them comes at the expense of Biden’s legacy. Biden supporters have tried to frame his past 50 years as a life committed to public service (albeit with a sustained family grift on the side). Continuing the campaign after last night will make one question if it wasn’t merely an act of self-service all along.
If Biden loses the election, which now looks increasingly likely, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Those political insiders who so aggressively sought to limit competition both within the Democratic Party and from independents will have to wear their actions like a scarlet letter. Thinking they could re-enact “Weekend at Bernie’s” on the way to a second Biden term was arrogant and deeply dismissive of the American people. They should have allowed their candidate to be challenged and either rise to the occasion or retire in dignity.
The only positive to come from Thursday’s debate may be a realization by more Americans that the two-party system is failing us. They’ve given us two candidates who wouldn’t be hired to be greeters at Walmart. One is a convicted felon who would invariably lie on his application. The other would struggle to give customers coherent directions to the hardware department. (Though they’re both evidently good golfers.)
The debate should be yet another in a long line of wake-up calls to the American people that we deserve better than what these two parties are giving us. We deserve better candidates, more problem-solving and less partisanship, and real leaders who care about our futures more than they care about their own.
