OhByTheWay…
My Nurse Practitioner wife – straining to stay tuned in to the debate – commented about five minutes in:
Biden needs physical therapy
About ten minutes later
And occupational therapy
And ten minutes after that
And speech therapy
In a different world, with a different candidate running against Biden, I would have LOL’d.
If you’re right, how does the campaign reply if Trump then accurately says he’d be glad to debate Biden again before the election — explaining that, as you say, one more performance like that from Biden could swing it for Trump — and here I am, ready and willing and able; is he ready and willing and able? I can do this every month or every week, whatever he wants; or do his advisors absolutely forbid even one?
Someone once said: “Ignorance on fire beats knowledge on ice.”
Worse, the 2028 campaign will begin before inauguration day.
If any good stems from last night’s debacle, it may be that we election reform advocates will find more voters open to our ideas.
I think it depends on what the polls say in September. Generally, whichever side is losing has the most to gain from debates, it’s their chance to catch up. If Biden is trailing Trump by then, he (Biden) has every incentive to debate Trump as many times as possible. He might do better then.
My mother had a neurological disorder that made her voice weak. It didn’t sound anything like that. Biden may not have a temporary cold. But he sounded like he had a respiratory disorder of some kind last night.
Yup. That would have been the true and effective answer.
Well, at least the book wasn’t “How To Feed Fifty Humans” and covered in space dust.
I don’t really understand why Biden was looking so far off to his left. Looking at the stage, it doesn’t seem like he was looking at the moderators. He was often turned to his left and looking at something in that direction. I wonder if his wife or advisors were over in that direction and he was looking at them.
If he was looking at the moderators, it seems like he should have been basically looking straight ahead no matter which one he was looking at.
My best guess is that he kept looking over at Rep. Jackie Walorski.
The Fourth Estate has devolved to the point where a 34-time convicted felon, a man charged with stealing military secrets AND an admitted sexual abuser, can openly lie to the face of the President of the United States, in a bid to get his job, and they will sit there quietly, saying nothing.
Then he’s had a bad cold for the last couple of years. He’s clearly changed how he appears in public. He looked like grandpa at the G7 memorial celebration. He was late joining in clapping with the other heads of state, wondered away from the main paratrooper and had to be redirected and then stood there slightly stooped with his mouth open while he slowly puts on his sun glasses which nobody else is wearing. He couldn’t look more over-the-hill if he tried.
Stuff Biden could say next debate (but won’t):
“I knew a guy once, a good salesman and fast talker but not honest or ethical. He sold toothbrushes. Orange hair. His angle was that he’d offer people these tasty free snacks; told them they were the best snacks ever. They’d eat them, wince in disgust, then tell the guy that these snacks were disgusting and that they tasted like shyt. ‘It is shyt’, he’d reply, with a big smirk on his face. ‘You wanna buy a toothbrush?’ Good salesman. You wouldn’t trust him to be your dentist.”
“After the debate, there’s gonna be guys who fact-check. Make a list of every lie Trump told. It’s gonna be a long list. Too long for me to reply to most of these lies now. If I took a small sip of whiskey for every lie Trump just told, I wouldn’t be allowed to drive home. I want you to look at this list after the debate. Ask yourself if you want someone who lies about their personal business to be the President. Ask yourself if you want this person with their finger on the button. Ask yourself if this person is going to make decisions that benefit themselves and give power to their family, or if they will do the ethical thing put you and the American people first.”
Before this debate you would have been shouted down for suggesting that. The phrase I used was whistling in the dark.
I actually came in here to say that I thought that Tapper and Bash (“Tapper & Basher”) were absolutely terrible moderators. It wasn’t just the absence of fact-checking, which was apparently a pre-determined decision and would have really nailed Trump. It was also letting him get away with completely avoiding answering the question. There were a number of times when he’d start off with “first of all …” and then bloviate about something Biden had said earlier that was totally unrelated to the question, and use up his full two minutes doing it. And Tapper & Basher were just fine with it.
He was also allowed to blather about how he would instantly stop the war in Ukraine without ever being challenged on the specifics of how he would do it, which is such an obvious question since he clearly has no plan. Just terrible moderation, and typical of CNN’s low journalistic standards.
never mind
You know, I think that’s a great point. That would have been the mood.
When I get a cold, I can barely form sentences. Before I retired, my staff thought it was hilarious. Set the stage!
As far the job Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did as hosts I think they did what was expected of them.
The candidates are supposedly to be debating EACH OTHER and if one of them says something WRONG it is their opponent that should be calling them out–not the HOSTS.
I agree. They were there to ask questions. Each candidate had minute rebuttal. All Biden had to do was refute the answer with “Well that’s a lie” or “He didn’t answer the question let me do it for you.” That he didn’t wasn’t the moderator’s fault. They were there to facilitate the debate not become active participants.
When they reported he’d been fighting a cold at a commercial break, that was my exact thought. I am barely functional with a bad cold. I just am.
I realize that now it may not matter, but I am not ruling out that it was entirely attributable to the fact that he felt like shit.
It is NOT over. In a little over a week, Trump gets sentenced. There’s time for the narrative to change. If it wasn’t a because of a cold, if despite all the steady performance at pressers and rallies he’s truly in significant decline, then we’re doomed. I don’t think there’s a viable Plan B.
I have a hard time being too critical of the moderators. From the moment we turned on the TV, it said, “began 1:57 ago”. I thought, “Did we miss it?” But, no! It was hours of breathless pre-game, a la the Superbowl. Then they switched to the anchors (we watched on Peacock) who gave some breathless BS, before turning over to CNN.
Before the first “response” was given, it was depressingly clear that the real loser would be any hope of substance.
What an embarrassment of our culture.