Why Trump was the true debate loser

The great panjandrums of the Democratic Party were in panic last night after President Biden’s faltering, mumbling, confused and often incoherent performance in the presidential debate with Donald Trump.

It might not have been a complete car crash. But it was pretty close.

‘We’re freaking out,’ said one Democratic Party strategist.

‘The well of affection for Biden among Democrats has run dry,’ said another.

Yes, Trump sprayed around wild accusations and even the odd outright lie, regularly failed to answer the question and at times must have crippled the fact-checking machine. But his voice was strong, his answers clear, his discipline uncharacteristically impressive.

Crucially, Biden was unable to call Trump to account on any of his falsehoods or nonsense.

He was just too weak, too feeble, too old, too infirm — as many feared he would be.

When he should have been going in for the kill he merely flubbed and meandered, leaving Trump largely unscathed. So much for all the White House lies about Biden still being up to the job.

After being holed up for seven days at Camp David with his advisers prepping for the debate — a remarkable amount of time for a man with a country to run — he emerged with his brain crammed with facts but without the mental acuity to process them and deploy them in a logical, telling manner.

Instead, his ripostes often just tailed away into nothing.

A friend said to me she wished there had been subtitles. But no subtitle software, even one using the latest AI, could have coped with Biden’s rambling incoherence.

His spinners let it be known he was suffering from a cold. Nobody quite believed it. Nobody thought it a good enough excuse even if true.

I have watched, live, every TV presidential debate since the genre was restarted by Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976 (there was a 16-year interregnum after the original and historic John F. Kennedy v Richard Nixon debates in 1960). Biden’s first 15 minutes last night was the worst start of any presidential candidate ever.

There’s been a nascent ‘Dump Biden’ tendency in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party for some time. I wrote about it several times last year. But it’s been too timid to go public, too afraid to act.

After last night, senior Democrats and their media cheerleaders are now flocking to the cause.

The post-debate analysis of the unofficial broadcasting arms of the Democratic Party, like CNN (which hosted the debate) and MSNBC (or MSDNC, as Trump calls it), were dominated by left-wing pundits in despair and calls for Biden to step down.

The immediate reaction of the pro-Democratic public prints was also brutal.

The oh-so-woke New York Magazine bluntly opined that Biden had ‘failed’.

Variety, wise after the event, was reduced to saying: ‘Biden should never have debated Trump.’

Not for the first time, the Babylon Bee was most cutting of all: ‘Biden invents new language on live TV.’

We do not yet know if the growing head of steam behind the Dump Biden movement will get its way. There is still a reluctance to force him out. They would much rather he fell on his sword.

The pressure on him to do so will now be immense. In the days ahead a cacophony of Democratic voices will at last find the courage to speak out.

Democratic strategists had hoped Jill Biden, by now, would have taken her husband aside and told him not to run again. To remind everybody that he beat Trump in 2020, righted the economy, brought stability back to government. To say he always intended to be a transitional president and that it was time to pass the baton to a younger generation after a job well done. In other words, to declare victory and go home.

That, at least, is how it could be spun.

But the First Lady has grown rather fond of the privileges and prominence of her position and was rather looking forward to four more years in the White House. So she has done nothing to help ease Biden out, gently and humanely.

Quite the opposite, in fact. She urged him to go for a second term.

After last night, a compassionate wife would surely have second thoughts.

If not, and if (as is almost certain) upcoming polls confirm the worst fears of Democrats — that Biden will struggle to recover from last night’s calamitous setback — then the party’s bigwigs will have to visit Biden and quietly but firmly lay out some harsh realities.

With enough influential names, their entreaties will be impossible to ignore.

We now know why so many in the DNC wanted a June debate.

It was unprecedentedly early in the annals of presidential election schedules. But it gives enough time, just, for Biden to withdraw from the race and to turn the party’s August gathering in Chicago into an open convention which will chose a new Democratic candidate.

Those who think the mantle will fall naturally to Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t be more wrong.

Too many leading Democrats regard her as even more of a liability than Biden for the crown to fall to her. The air will be thick with hats being thrown into the ring in the run up to Chicago. Lists of runners and riders are already being compiled.

This is Trump’s worst nightmare. He wants Biden to remain his opponent because he’s sure he can beat him. He doesn’t relish being up against a new, younger, more vibrant candidate (though, like many Democrats, he thinks Harris even easier to beat than Biden).

Trump went into last night’s debate with the latest polls showing him ahead in five of the seven swing states, tied with Biden in Pennsylvania and with Biden ahead only in Wisconsin (which has the fewest electoral college seats among the swing states bar Nevada).

He had hoped Biden would do bad enough last night to extend his lead in the swing states and to bring even New Hampshire, Virginia and Minnesota (which has not gone Republican since the Nixon landslide in 1972) into contention.

That would have been sweet indeed for Trump. But if the President has done so badly that there is now an unstoppable momentum behind ‘Dump Biden’ then all bets are off again.

One of the ironies to emerge from last night is that the most insistent voice saying ‘Joe, don’t go’ will be Donald J Trump’s.

Last night was not American democracy’s finest hour.

Not when one candidate accuses the other (Trump) of having the ‘morals of an ally cat’. Or when the other implies his opponent (Biden) is too gaga to know what he’s saying.

Both points, of course, might well be true.

But perhaps the lowest point was when both started arguing over who has the better golf handicap. That must have had America’s many enemies across the world scratching their heads and asking: is the USA really that bereft of credible leadership these days?

To which the honest answer for now is: sadly, yes.