Opinion: Some thoughts on the presidential debate

A weekend of reflection on the debate

I’m going to be honest: I needed the entire weekend to process last Thursday’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Not only have I been working every day since then, but I needed a few days to cool off. Fortunately, I left work just in time for happy hour on Friday.

The debate was exhausting in and of itself, so I have been avoiding TV and social media all weekend. I didn’t have the patience to hear analysts and journalists breathlessly pontificate over a debate that we learned absolutely nothing from. Jon Stewart has been my only “source” for post-debate coverage up to this point.

Before we dissect what we saw last Thursday, I cannot put into words how close I was to turning it off. We are facing crises both at home and around the world: families are continuing to feel the pinch of inflation. There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Some pregnant women are traveling to other states to obtain life-saving medical care. Troops in Ukraine are wondering if they will even have a country to defend this time next year. And those are just a few of the problems facing the eventual winner of this election.

Folks were also looking to see if this debate would generate any kind of momentum for either candidate in what has been a remarkably stable race.

Despite all the high stakes heading into last Thursday’s debate, it did little to change the public’s current perceptions of both men. President Biden was hoping to hold former President Trump’s feet to the fire on issues like abortion and the January 6 Capitol attack. But the President looked and sounded frail for most of the evening and also struggled to finish some of his responses to the point where he was hard to understand.

This rendered even some of his strongest attacks against his opponent unable to land the way he and his campaign wanted. The White House later said that Biden had a cold, though he was far more forceful at a rally in North Carolina the next day (with the usual teleprompter).

Trump was quick to mock Biden’s slowed speech during their debate, at one point joking “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he does either.”

But Trump didn’t hit it out of the park: most of his responses were filled with falsehoods and he avoided directly answering some yes or no questions. He continued to sow doubt in the results of the previous election and said that he would accept this November’s results if they are “free and legal.”

Then there’s moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who let both candidates say whatever they wanted when it was their time to speak without any fact-checking — even though they both said a number of things that are untrue.

Less than 10 minutes into the debate, Biden claimed that he is the only President this century with no U.S. troops dying overseas. Back in January, an attack in Jordan killed three active-duty U.S. servicemembers (and injured dozens of others). American lives were also lost during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Trump continued to insist that he “never had sex” with a porn star, even though he was convicted this spring by a Manhattan jury for falsifying business documents to try and cover up a payment to one. He also repeated his attack that Biden and Democrats support abortions “after birth,” an exaggerated claim often made by abortion rights opponents.

All the while, key questions about the kind of country Americans will wake up to under either leader on January 20, 2025, remain unanswered.

If the current and previous presidents are looking for a positive way to spin their debate performances, they can start by breathing a sigh of relief that they were debating each other and not anyone else. If either one had been onstage with another candidate, there is no question in my mind that we would be having a different post-debate conversation.

If you think the calls for Biden to drop out are bad now, just imagine, for instance, if the 81-year-old had stumbled through a debate against a more polished face in the Republican Party like a Nikki Haley or a Mike Pence. And it would not be hard to imagine a Democrat like Vice President Kamala Harris or California Gov. Gavin Newsom eviscerating Trump on a debate stage, particularly on his legal troubles and personal conduct.

One has to wonder if the same thing could be said about this whole election.

Last week’s debate served as nothing more than a reminder of why most voters didn’t want this rematch to begin with. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that either Biden or Trump will be replaced as their party’s standard bearer between now and November.

So the question then becomes: are the small few swing voters who will decide this election more alarmed by the bombastic liar or the feeble octogenarian they saw onstage last week?