New Delhi: The last thing one expected from Donald J Trump in the 90-minute debate was maturity. Surprisingly, the only moment of clarity in the first 2024 presidential debate came from him.
“Let’s not act like children,” Trump said to US President Joseph R Biden. It’s another matter that they were boasting about golf handicaps.
And the one job Biden had in the debate was to convince desperate American voters that he wasn’t too old. That’s how low the bar was.
But in the US, the low bar seems to be too high for Biden, if his hoarse and meandering performance is what the voters expect for the next four years. His performance has set off panic across the Democratic Party, and provided memes for the Republicans to hammer home the message,”Joe Biden is unfit for office.”
Soon after the debate ended, the Republican Party ran a one-minute video on Biden’s fumbles, with social media users posting photos of the President’s facial expressions to Trump’s points. The overall message from the party was of Trump’s victory and Biden’s incompetence.
Didn't watch the debate and wondering why Democrats are panicking?
WATCH:pic.twitter.com/oCd1GfSyhp
— GOP (@GOP) June 28, 2024
I don’t know how anybody can look at this and think “four more years”. pic.twitter.com/Sx0onpJUkW
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 28, 2024
They have Biden’s goal for the night written in the lower corner. pic.twitter.com/Cj4h3tuVl8
— Joe List (@JoeListComedy) June 28, 2024
Tonight was a clear victory … for memes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2024
Ninety minutes is a long time in politics. The debate could just be the push the Democratic Party needed to change the course of the presidential campaign. This is why the first presidential debate is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
The debate performance summed up the choice before US voters – a candidate who could not complete his sentences or thoughts and a convicted felon with an inclination to lie most of the time. Expectations of a debate on policy, or promises of hope for a better country, or even offering ideas to the masses are no longer the norm in US politics.
“Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar,” Julián Castro, a former government official under Barack Obama said in a post on X, adding that the incumbent President “seemed unprepared, lost and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump.”
Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar. He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump, who lies constantly.
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) June 28, 2024
The Democratic panic
Never run against an incumbent is a convention that both American parties have tried to maintain over the years. The Democratic Party, in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives for a while last year coalesced around Biden during the early days of this campaign.
Soon after the debate, though, that unity seems to have fractured.
“Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he did not do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was to reassure America that he was up to the job at his age and he failed at that tonight,” Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic Senator, told MSNBC.
Andrew Yang, a former Democratic candidate for presidency in 2020, called on the party to “nominate” someone else before it is “too late”. Panic ripped through the Democratic voters, who expressed alarm over Biden’s struggles in the debate.
Politico reported that a prominent Democratic donor and Biden supporter said it was “time for the president to end his campaign” and that his debate was “the worst performance in history”.
Biden’s age a liability
The American voter is faced with the same dilemma that others in the world are – vote for the old and bland establishment candidate or a radical Right challenger.
If Thursday’s debate showed that the US offering is poor, then there is not much hope from the rest of the G7 economies either. In France, the choices before the voters for the Sunday polls aren’t encouraging, while in the UK, it is hard to identify a plan or promise from the leading candidate.
The Biden-Trump rematch is indicative of how the choices for voters in the triumvirate of countries that led the Allies to victory in World War II have reduced to the bare minimum of expected competence.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Biden is “too old to be president” in comparison to Trump, while 59 per cent are very concerned by his age, according to a recent poll by Gallup. The debate, if at all, did more harm than good to Biden’s biggest liability.
A halting performance by Biden gave Trump openings for one-liners that otherwise did not exist.
“I really do not know what he said at the end of that sentence. I do not think he knows what he said either,” Trump responded to an incoherent reply from Biden on the immigration issue. In another exchange, he took on Biden’s world salad on the Covid pandemic and medicare with, “Oh, he is right, he did beat medicare, he beat it to death, and he’s destroying medicare.”
There were moments during the debate when Biden attempted to veer off the script and attack Trump, especially on his conviction on 34 felony counts, or on the 6 January 2021 attacks on Capitol Hill. He appeared to perk up when comparing giving abortion law to the states to transferring implementation of civil rights to the states. But they were too few and far between to convince voters that he is still capable of being commander-in-chief, despite his age.
But one person appeared to be satisfied. His wife.
“Joe, you did such a great job, you answered every question, you knew all the facts,” exclaimed Jill, almost as if cheering on a child who finished second at a science quiz in school.
(Edited by Prashant)