Joe Biden had been preparing for days for this debate for which he had set the rules. I had no doubt about the thoroughness of the operation and I believed that, without being exciting, he could deliver the goods.
After listening to and, more importantly, watching this debate, who can still say with certainty that the man is ready to lead a tough campaign and lead the country for the next four years?
A debate that confirms perceptions
The outgoing president’s main opponent is not Donald Trump, it is rather the tough perception that Americans have of the veteran of American politics. Yesterday, he confirmed the apprehensions of a majority of his fellow citizens.
I am one of those who wanted Joe Biden to give up running in 2024 and I wrote it after the midterm elections.
After fifty years in politics, after serving honorably during the Obama presidency and after driving Donald Trump out of the White House, he could go out in full glory.
His pride pushed him towards a revenge fight and, if he loses, it will have caused his downfall.
Democratic strategists must also take some of the blame for this fiasco. How could they allow Biden to run in this state?
One of these strategists also acknowledged, under cover of anonymity, that if the debate could have a positive effect, it would be to convince Biden to leave. Phew.
An abyssal pit
While I believe that Biden’s departure is imperative to avoid an embarrassing defeat, replacing him so close to the November 5 deadline carries a large share of risks and pitfalls.
It is therefore not impossible that Joe Biden will hang on, but since yesterday, a task that already promised to be difficult has become titanic.
The president is trailing in most swing states, and the situation was already very worrying before the debate.
Biden had tried almost everything. For example, he wanted to appeal to young voters by paying off student loans, he could present a positive economic record, he divided his troops on the Palestinian issue and he even did what no Democrat had done before him: close the border.
Despite this, the odds of a Donald Trump victory were slightly higher. Propose something else? The problem is Biden.
At the end of Thursday’s debate, I felt a certain sadness. Not for Biden, but rather for American voters, for us and for America’s allies. Unless there is a spectacular turnaround on November 5, we will have to choose between a diminished man and a weapon of massive disinformation. Are you brimming with confidence?
Picture of the week:
The president was dejected and hesitant during the debate.
The quote of the week:
“It’s kind of a DEFCON-1 moment.” Asked by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow after the debate, David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former strategist, used a powerful image to illustrate Joe Biden’s very poor performance during the debate. DEFCON-1 is the maximum alert level in military terms. Plouffe added that Biden had not been able to exploit his rival’s weaknesses and lies.
The lie detector: true, but requires significant clarification
«[Donald Trump] is the only president other than Herbert Hoover to have lost more jobs than he had at the start of his presidency.”
This is not the first time that Joe Biden has tried to associate his opponent with President Herbert Hoover. The latter, one of the most unpopular since the beginning of the 20the century, will forever be associated with the stock market crash of 1929 and the economic crisis of the 1930s. What Biden does not specify, a major piece of context, is that the jobs lost during Trump’s presidency were lost in the context of a pandemic.
Number of the week
6 out of 7
The most recent polls from Washington Post (June 28) indicate that Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden in six of the seven pivotal states in the 2024 election. Only in Wisconsin where the outgoing president enjoys a small lead. Four months before the election, these figures, obtained before the Democrat’s poor performance in Thursday’s debate, explain the panic of several Democratic strategists.
