Flirting With Disaster

I started watching the Biden-Trump debate.  I held on longer than most people - most people turned off their television sets after fifteen or twenty minutes - but I walked away from it like it was a bad movie. And I haven't walked out on or turned off a bad movie in years.

I'll come right out and say it - Joe Biden was awful.  Donald Trump was also awful, but he looked better.  Every other word that came out of Trump's mouth was a lie.  But every other word that came out of Biden's mouth was nonsensical.  He ended a sentence with the word "Medicare" in response to a question that had nothing to do with Medicare. Nor did it make sense in relation to the words he spoke immediately before it.

The debate format, meant to help Biden against Trump, actually helped Trump.  For starters, Trump is experienced with television thanks to his reality show and he responded to the camera better than Biden.  Also, moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper were too brisk to fact-check Trump in real time, and muting the microphone of one candidate when the other was speaking enabled Trump to keep his bloviating in check and seem low-keyed, even-tempered and, dare I say it, presidential.  Biden wanted this debate early to have the opportunity to put fears of his age to rest; now he's given the Trump campaign plenty of clips to use in commercials for the next four months.  And because Trump spewed out lies like a pitching machine spewing out baseballs, fact-checking him in real time was impossible anyway.  Biden responded to as many lies as possible, but he couldn't keep up.  Neither Bash nor Tapper could have kept up, either, but they're not running for President . . . although the Democrats are taking a very close look at them. 

All Biden had to do was show that he was not too old to run for another term, and he wasted practically no time demonstrating his inability to do so.  And Democrats are being forced to consider taking a look at alternatives to Biden as the Democratic nominee if it turns out that Biden can't run and serve four more years.  Too bad there aren't many, thanks again to President Barack Obama's mismanagement of the Democratic Party that turned the party's rising stars into shooting stars and forced it to rely increasingly on the party's old guard to run congressional caucuses and field electable presidential candidates.  There were numerous up-and-coming Democrats in the early 2010s that Biden could have passed the torch to in 2024, but because they had no support from Obama's Democratic National Committee (which got no support from Obama himself), they disappeared as soon as they lost their key elections.  As a result, the political action committee offices of Joe Sestak, Tom Barrett, Virg Bernero, Jack Conway, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Bruce Braley no longer have a need for full-time employees. 

Today, the number of alternatives to Biden are rare and those few are too provincial to be taken seriously . . . or Kamala Harris.  And if the Democrats can't unite behind a Biden alternative, how can they unite the country?  And, by the way, even though the Democrats were able to turn to Adlai Stevenson in 1952 when President Harry Truman withdrew as a candidate for a second full term and were able turn to Hubert Humphrey when President Lyndon Johnson withdrew as a candidate for a second full term, there are two things to remember:

1) The rules for nominating a presidential candidate in the Democratic Party were different back then.

2) Stevenson and Humphrey both lost anyway. 

To respond to the inevitable insistence that Biden can recover in the second debate on ABC on September 10, there won't be a second debate. Trump clearly bested Biden Thursday night and he will skip another debate to deny Biden the opportunity to bounce back; the Donald will act like Mary Tyler Moore or Jerry Seinfeld and end his time as a debater by going out on top instead.  And to respond to the inevitable point that Trump was lying throughout the debate and that undercut his advantage, Trump's lies are so thoroughly ingrained that they're accepted as truths.  He looked better than he spoke, and looking better in this visually obsessed nation is more important.  Also, to respond to those that there's no way, despite all of the polls, that Trump can win another term because he is so loathsome, to respond to those people who cannot fathom how Donald Trump could possibly even be competitive, let me remind you that this is country who made icons out of rappers despite their inability to sing or play an instrument, this is a country that made Jacqueline Susann and James Patterson two of the most successful novelists of all time, this is a country that constantly flocks to see movies based on comic books, and this is a country that also rejected sensible sedans and hatchbacks in favor of sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.  It's all a matter of giving the public what it wants.  And Donald Trump is an expert at that. 

In any other country, someone like Donald Trump wouldn't be popular enough to win an election for dog catcher or burgermeister.  But when it comes to elevating people as despicable as Trump, we Americans are experts at that.            

The upside?  Hillary Clinton bested Trump in every debate they had.  It didn't matter.  Maybe this debate won't matter in the end either.  If if does matter . . . that's the end.