Let the Democratic panic begin
Analyzing Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
The Biden campaign sought a historically early debate with Donald Trump for three main reasons:
To dispel widespread voter concerns about President Biden’s age before negative perceptions were able to harden.
To focus the campaign conversation on Trump’s vulnerabilities, not Biden’s, and remind voters what they didn’t like about Trump in 2020.
To ensure that, if Biden did fall flat, he would have plenty of time to recover.
Anybody who watched last night’s debate knows that Biden failed miserably on the first two counts. The third is now his only saving grace as he enters the next stage of the campaign significantly hobbled.
Democrats across the country — and especially here in Washington — are spending the morning gaming out whether it is possible to replace Biden on the ticket (more on that below). Whispered conversations that, until now, took place solely behind closed doors are beginning to break into public view. Biden-friendly pundits from Thomas Friedman to Joe Scarborough have converged on the same takeaway: the president should step aside. Anonymously, legions of Democratic lawmakers are saying the same thing to outlets like Politico and Axios.
To the extent there is Democratic defense of Biden’s performance, it generally goes something like this: Well, sure, Biden didn’t do great, but incumbent presidents never perform well in their first debates. And plenty of them have still been re-elected. “This evening’s hysteria will be of particular interest to the leading biographers of presidents Mondale, Dole, Kerry, and Romney,” a Democratic congressional aide wrote sarcastically on Twitter, articulating this viewpoint.
“I was in the room when the political class wrote that Kerry had won the race after the first Bush debate. I was in the room when the political class wrote that Obama had lost the race after the first debate,” the former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, a Trump critic, added. “Politics doesn’t work that way.”
Obviously, yes, Biden could still win — the election is more than four months away. But there is a crucial difference that separates Biden’s showing from those of his predecessors: they may have performed badly, but not in a way that confirmed a perception so central to their candidacy.
For example, the morning after Barack Obama’s first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012, CNN reported that Democrats were panicking because Obama appeared “contemptuous of the whole exercise,” frequently annoyed and disengaged throughout the debate. Similarly, The Washington Post reported after George W. Bush’s first 2004 debate with John Kerry that the president’s “aggravated demeanor” is what did him in, adding that he “scowled, squinted, clenched his jaw and appeared disgusted.”
These are body language programs that look bad on TV, but that any political professional worth their salt can fix in time for a second debate. A candidate “looking contemptuous” is a setback for a campaign, not something fatal. However, there is no campaign operative or amount of debate prep that can make 81-year-old Joe Biden not be 81 years old, which was his fundamental problem last night. His issues are much more existential to his candidacy, and much harder to fix, which is why Democratic voters and strategists alike are turning to Google to familiarize themselves with their party convention rules this morning.1
There are many moments I could cite to underline Biden’s stumbling performance. Perhaps the best example is the answer he gave on the central question of the night, about whether he was too old to serve as president:
CNN’s Dana Bash: President Biden, you would be 86 at the end of your second term. How do you address concerns about your capability to handle the toughest job in the world well into your 80s?
President Biden: Well, first of all, I spent half my career being – being criticized being the youngest person in politics. I was the second-youngest person ever elected to the United States Senate. And now I’m the oldest. This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent. I think that just look at the record. Look what I’ve done. Look how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me.
As I said, 50 million new jobs, 800,000 manufacturing jobs, more investment in America, over millions – billions of dollars in private investment and – and enterprises that we are growing.
We’ve – by the way, we brought an awful a lot of people – the whole idea of computer chips. We used to have 40 percent of the market. We invented those chips. And we lost it because he was sending people to cheap – to find the cheapest jobs overseas and to bring home a product. So I went – I went to South Korea. I convinced Samsung to invest billions of dollars here in the United States. And then guess what? Those fabs, they call them, to – to build these chips, those fabs pay over $100,000. You don’t need a college degree for them. And there’s billions, about $40 billion already being invested and being built right now in the United States, creating significant jobs for Americans all over – from all over the world.
There’s nothing factually incorrect about that answer. But Biden was given a perfect opportunity to dispel concerns about his age that had been swirling throughout the debate, and instead, he hoarsely rambled about semiconductor chips, telling a story about fabs and South Korea that few voters are likely to follow.
If anything, the president consistently seemed over-prepared last night: during nearly every answer, he would spit out reams of facts and figures, delving into the minutiae of various policies. But he failed to prosecute a broader case about why he deserved to be elected president a second time.
Trump, on the other hand, returned to the same fundamental points in every answer: The U.S. under Biden is failing. The economy is struggling. The border is out of control. It was better when I was president and it will be better if I’m back. He kept it simple, and he emphasized that message again and again.
“I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now,” Trump said at one point. “I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political opponent. Because he indicted me because I was his opponent. I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that. I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again.”
Of course, Trump also repeatedly made false statements throughout the debate (such as his claim above that Biden was the one who indicted him). Here is a partial list, per CNN:
Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.
But Biden fact-checked almost none of these, allowing the vast majority to fly by uncorrected. Trump, meanwhile, rarely hesitated to jump on Biden’s missteps. When the president bizarrely finished an answer by declaring that “we finally beat Medicare,” Trump responded: “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in, they’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security.”
When Biden turned a question on abortion (one of Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities) into an answer on illegal immigration (one of his Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities), Trump immediately seized on it. “There have been many young women murdered by the same people he allows to come across our border,” Trump said. “We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world.”
And, in what may have been Trump’s best line of the night, after Biden offered a word salad about a “total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,” the former president succinctly responded: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
In short, there were few segments of the debate you could have watched where you weren’t reminded of Biden’s vulnerabilities (his age, the economy, immigration, etc). Conversely, there were few segments where viewers were reminders about Trump’s vulnerabilities (January 6th, abortion, his felony indictments, etc). In a contest between two unpopular candidates, the trick is just to hammer everyone over the head with what they don’t like about the other guy. Trump did this cogently, again and again. Biden got too bogged down in the weeds to do the same, waiting until late in the debate to mention January 6th or Trump’s convictions.
This meant that Trump answered few policy questions throughout the night. At one point, CNN’s Jake Tapper tried and failed three separate times to get the former president to answer a question about opioid addictions. But presidential debates are generally won or lost on politics, not policy. And Trump nailed the politics, while Biden was left flailing.
Polls show that a majority of Americans believe neither Trump nor Biden should have run for president this year, and after watching the two elderly men squabble about their golf game and sex with porn stars on a national debate stage, it’s not hard to see why. “Let’s not act like children,” Trump said, as Biden tried to brag about his golf handicap. “You are a child,” Biden retorted. Welcome to the United States of America in 2024.
OK. What happens now?
For Biden: Let’s get one thing straight. Unless he decides to step down, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will be selected by Democrats as their presidential nominee at their Chicago convention in August. It’s a simple math problem: There are 3,949 Democratic delegates. You need 1,975 to win the nomination. Biden has 3,894. “Uncommitted” has 36. Dean Phillips has four. And an entrepreneur named Jason Palmer has three, courtesy of the American Samoa. Ergo, the only way Biden will not be renominated is if he decides to call it quits.
Will that happen? It’s still unlikely, of course, but last night was the first time I thought it might be possible. Biden is famously stubborn and does not appear to be surrounded by advisers comfortable telling him hard truths. (“Everyone is afraid” of Biden’s temper, a former aide told the New York Times earlier this week.) If some combination of Jill Biden, Valerie Biden, Barack Obama, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Ron Klain tell the president to get out, he might. But that’s still hard to imagine, even at this deep low point for his campaign.
If Biden does stay in, what should he do? After watching last night’s debate, I think his best tack going forward would be to run an almost entirely negative campaign. Whenever Biden tried throughout the debate to sell his presidency, he would get bogged down in facts and figures and end up rambling or talking about minor, unrelated policy details. Biden is a bad salesman, but often an OK attack dog. He should just quit trying to make a sales job he can’t execute: leave that to Vice President Harris and other surrogates.
The most cogents parts of the debate for Biden was when he went after Trump (“My son was not a loser. He was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser”; “The only person on this stage that is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”) If Trump is going to waste no time reminding people of Biden’s vulnerabilities, Biden should focus on Trump’s, instead of trying to sell a presidency that few Americans believe has gone well. Make this the true double hater election, and try to ensure that voters hate Trump more.
For Trump: Just sit back and enjoy. Democrats are dissembling; the best thing Trump can do right now is to let them.
Trump may not have done much debate prep, but he clearly internalized a lesson of his first debate from 2020, refraining from hectoring Biden and instead allowing the president to implode on his own. (The new rules about the microphones also helped, preventing Trump from getting in his own way by interrupting.) Trump came off as a much more measured version of himself, rather than the aggressive persona that has often showed up on the debate stage.
He would be smart to keep up that calmer persona, remaining above the fray as Democrats freak out about their candidate. To return to Trump’s killer line about Biden’s mental acuity — “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either” — part of what made that work was that he wasn’t cruel about it, just matter-of-fact. The challenge for Trump in the coming weeks will be to continue in that lane, allowing the clips to speak for themselves and not making Biden appear sympathetic by hitting him too hard.
Last night’s debate was probably a good argument for picking a vanilla running mate like Doug Burgum (assuming that Democrats don’t nominate a more dynamic candidate). If you’re Trump, all you want to do right now is stay the course and not shake up the race.
That all from me. What a night! Thanks so much to the 200+ paid subscribers who joined the WUTP live chat last night — it was great chatting with you all. I’m looking forward to more conversations like that.
Paid subscribers will see me in their inbox next on Sunday, for the weekly R&R (recap and recommendations) issue. Free subscribers will catch me on Monday, where we’ll see where the dust is settling after the debate — and possibly have a Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity to discuss.
As always, thank you for waking up to politics. Have a fantastic weekend.
The only comparison where an incumbent president’s first debate performance was about something this existential was 1984, when Ronald Reagan’s showing against Walter Mondale also raised concerns about — you guessed it — his age. The difference, though? Reagan was able to recover because most Americans didn’t go into the debate worried about his age. Before the debate, polls showed Reagan with anywhere from a 15- to 23-point lead over Mondale, meaning he had significant runway to mess up in the first debate and still recover. Conversations about his age were so muted that a Wall Street Journal reporter remembers his editor declining pitches about Reagan age stories until after the debate. Compare that to Biden, who decidedly does not have a 15-point lead and for whom age concerns are already so widespread that the Wall Street Journal reported a huge story on it just a few weeks ago.
Reagan was partially able to recover because a) he was polling so well going into the first debate and b) most people weren’t worried about his age beforehand, so it created a new perception rather than confirming an existing one. The latter issue is a lot harder to fix than the former.
First thing I did this morning was to check to see what you had to say about the debate. Good job, Gabe!
Great job last night Gabe! Enjoyed the live chat!