Jim’s Political Notebook: Biden’s debate performance a hard-to-watch train wreck
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Thursday, June 27, 2024 — The first presidential debate ended about an hour ago, and it was one of the hardest political broadcasts I’ve ever watched.
Former President Trump, well, he turned in his expected performance of over-the-top descriptions of his administration, along with a heaping helping of lies and distortions. I can’t fault him for that however, since he was first elected, Trump has never had a problem stretching and massaging “truth” to fit his political goals. The truth, in Trump’s world, is usually whatever he says it is.
For President Joe Biden, the debate was nothing short of an absolute train wreck — a debate that started out bad and though he scored a few points, it ended up as nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
According to the CNN panel that discussed the debate afterward (which included Scott Jennings of Louisville), the panel members’ phones were blowing up early during the debate with panicked texts from Democrats who saw their biggest fears become reality.
Some of the Democrats on the CNN panel couldn’t hide their emotions — or the devastation of watching the head of their party falter in this first debate.
Publicly, for many months, Democrats have rushed to defend President Biden when people suggest he’s too old to be president. There’s a long line of video clips of Biden on social media that show the president to be a doddering, sometimes confused elderly man who needs guides to show him where to walk, where to stand and what to say.
No, none of those things are true, the Democrat faithful have claimed for years. Biden’s mind is sharp as ever, his mental acuity is superb.
Unfortunately, the debate stripped away that facade. The emperor has no clothes.
Privately Democrats have discussed for months if Biden is the right candidate to face off against Donald Trump and win. My wife’s theory is that the early scheduling of this debate was an intentional litmus test to judge how well Biden would perform in a one-on-one debate against Trump.
Last night’s debate underscored a reality the Democratic party must now face: If they want to defeat Donald Trump in November, they cannot win with President Biden at the top of the ticket.
The Democratic Party is in full panic mode in the debate’s aftermath. There’s no way to put a positive spin on Biden’s debate performance. Fortunately for the party, there’s time to consider another candidate.
The problem facing Democrats as well as the GOP is right now, neither of their respective candidates is very popular or generates much excitement with the voting public.
Trump played hard and fast with facts during the debate, but to his credit, he showed considerable restraint and didn’t come across like a raving lunatic. If you do what most Republicans do and discount the lies and half-truths he told, his debate performance was mildly respectable.
However, there’s a sizable segment of the Republican Party who don’t want to vote for Trump — the “never Trumpers.” They probably won’t vote for Trump or whoever becomes the Democratic nominee.
For many, many months, we’ve all had doubts in our minds regarding Biden being too old to run for a second term. Does he have the mental capacity to do the job?
Biden’s debate performance confirmed all of our worst fears — Biden is certainly an honorable man with a lengthy record of public service, but Biden is not the candidate the party wants or needs at the top of the ticket to defeat Donald Trump.
WHO SHOULD REPLACE BIDEN? This question is a particularly sticky one, given how fractured the Democratic party is at present. While the party has a reputation for being known as “the big tent,” its a tent has numerous groups that are all vying for influence and control.
Biden was a good choice to beat Trump in 2000 because of his reputation as a moderate Democrat. In my opinion, if Democrats want to beat Donald Trump in 2024, the candidate they choose to run against him should be another middle-of-the-road moderate Democrat.
A far-left candidate will go down in flames, as we’ve seen happen to leftist candidates in the past Democratic presidential primaries.
Unfortunately, moderate Democrats have become something of an uncommon breed these days. The loudest voices on the Democratic spectrum are usually the radical activists on the far left supporting any one of a number of social causes and experiments. None of those activists can win as a Democrat running for president.
The person who we won’t see replace Joe Biden as the Democrat running for president is Kamala Harris.
Harris is widely unpopular, even among Democrats. And if you think videos of Biden on social media are vicious in their depiction of Biden as a bumbling old man, the videos of Harris’s off-the-cuff speeches evolved quickly into little more than word salad equally as cringe-worthy as the videos of her boss.
Democrats at the highest levels of the party will be looking at their next moves. I wonder which Democrat will be the one tapped to ask President Biden to step aside.
At times, tonight’s debate was hard to watch as Biden sometimes appeared confused and his answers seemed to wander.
What Democrats were hoping for Thursday night was the Joe Biden who delivered that rousing and powerful State of the Union address. What they got instead was the embarrassment that their candidate was little more than elderly man who lost his train of thought at times and fumbled answers to questions.
While third-party candidates don’t get elected, it will be interesting to watch Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s poll numbers as an independent candidate for president. The debate may give voters across the political spectrum a reason to give RFK Jr. another look as a candidate for president.
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