I didn’t watch the first 2024 presidential debate live, but now that I’ve seen it on replay, I’ve been trying to understand Democrats’ catastrophic (and seemingly choreographed) reaction to President Biden’s performance. Of course, unlike Democrats, I’ve been exposed to clips of Biden’s freeze-ups, slurred speech, and odd disinhibited behavior (like wandering off, or being easily distracted)1 by conservative media for the past 3 1/2 years, so to me, Biden actually seemed like he held together for this debate pretty well. He had a few bizarre lines, from claiming that “we finally beat Medicare,”2 to talking about women being raped by their in-laws, spouses, and “their brothers and sisters” (well, given Biden’s transgender inclusiveness one never knows), and saying that billions in foreign investment in computer chip manufacturing in the U.S. is "creating significant jobs for Americans from all over the world."3 What?
I think the major thing Democrats are complaining about is the clear contrast in energy level and sharpness between Biden and Trump, as well as Biden’s apparent blank expression when he wasn’t speaking. In other words, the “optics.”
At first, Democrats tried to attribute it to Biden having a cold, which may even be true, as his voice was rather thin and raspy throughout, but I don't think the Democrats’ concern is so much with Biden's performance in this specific debate, but the coming months of the campaign, and whether their candidate can do what's necessary to win, when he can no longer run a "basement" campaign as he did during 2020.
This was Biden's candidate audition and "stress test," and he only performed adequately at best, despite taking a week off to prepare. The side-by-side comparison with Trump destroyed the Democrats’ carefully maintained illusions about Biden, and their tu quoque narrative about Trump's "decline." Democrats may wish they had a younger, more charismatic candidate, but it's not clear that that's even possible, despite neither party as yet having formally nominated its contender prior to this unusually early face-off.
It's fair to say the Democrats lawfare strategy has backfired, and restored Trump's mantle as an underdog outsider fighting the establishment, despite having held office through a challenging four years.4 Biden's attempt to deflect by blaming Trump for deficits and inflation, when he's made a point of reversing most of Trump's policies, falls flat —and provides an A-B test of which policies produced better results. We have a truly unusual situation in this election, with effectively two incumbent candidates, each having their own record in the job.
Biden's vaunted foreign policy expertise, which was supposedly his contribution to Obama's team, somehow has resulted in even worse results on his own. As Trump rightly points out, nobody was fired for the chaotic debacle of Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal, or failures to secure our border against a flood of unvetted illegal aliens. The border is President Trump's signature issue, and thanks to Biden he still gets to campaign on it this time. Biden's inexplicable reversal of Trump's policy almost seems to be just spite --again, providing an A-B test for voters.
Trump sees an explanation however. "He [Biden] either wants our country to be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters."5 Earlier, Trump highlighted how Biden had reversed his policies at the Veterans Administration, and "I think that he reversed it just because I approved it, which is... crazy.”
Biden relied throughout on calling Trump a liar, and some stereotyped indignant phrases like “The idea…” as though he was incredulous at having to debate Trump, who he said had “the morals of an alley cat.” Biden even threw in one instance of calling Trump’s response “malarkey.”
Biden threw plenty of malarkey of his own, however, claiming the endorsement of the Border Patrol (who had actually endorsed Trump, and provided a realtime fact check of the claim on X), ignoring the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate in Kabul during the 2021 Afghan withdrawal, instead falsely claiming “I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any – this – this decade – doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world;”6 repeatedly returning to Trump’s supposed “suckers and losers” slur of the military (sourced only to a general Trump had fired, with no video or audio corroboration),7 and once again repeating the “fine people” hoax, recently and very belatedly debunked by “fact check” site Snopes, with Biden’s truly toxic claim that Trump had said that “Hitler had some good ideas” thrown in for good measure.8 For his part, Trump accused Biden of using the term “superpredators” to refer to black criminals (which is something Hillary Clinton did).
Towards the end, as the CNN hosts questioned both about their age, Trump’s boast that he won two club championships (“not even senior”) at his golf courses elicited a laugh from Biden, and some back-and-forth banter about their respective golf games. "He [Biden] challenged me to a golf match, he can't hit a ball 50 yards!" said Trump.
Trump's addition of levity to the debate was entertaining, and particularly on the age issue, memorable. "I'm happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?" Biden retorted. Biden claims he has a six handicap in golf, to which Trump remarks that's the biggest lie of all. "I'm seen your swing, Joe.” Trump, not wanting to overplay the humor, cuts off the quips. “Let's not act like children," he says.
There's still a long stretch of campaign trail ahead, and however much Democrats may wish they had a younger donkey with a more favorable record (especially economically), it's not clear they can do much but ride it with Biden, and hope the saddle doesn't fall off.
You know, “cheap fakes.”
Which Trump used sharply in a quick attack, saying “yeah, you beat it to death,” with the impact of illegal aliens on Medicaid snd Social Security.
A Freudian slip of Biden’s view of “migrants”?
President Trump repeatedly said that he’d not be under indictment, and facing all these civil and criminal trials if he weren’t running as Joe Biden’s political opponent.
Why not both?
An earlier version of this article omitted this whopper.
Unlike Biden’s failed joke to a group of soldiers in 2016, urging them to “clap, you stupid bastards.”
Apparently trying to ward off Trump’s increased Jewish support in the wake of the October 7th Hamas atrocities, and the vocal anti-Israel activists in the Democrat party, particularly in swing-state Michigan.
If you liked this analysis, check out my article from last year handicapping the issues in the Trump-Biden rematch.
https://darulharb.substack.com/p/joe-biden-and-the-temple-of-doomacracy