By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
It’s been less than a week since the presidential debate on CNN, and hundreds of hours of airtime and gallons of ink have been used to tell the world how it turned out. As reported by USA Today, CNN claims that 51.27 million viewed the debate. In the 2020 General Election, www.worldpopulationreview reports that of the 231 million eligible to vote, 168 million registered, and 154 million cast a ballot. Perhaps we could say, one-third of the country watched the debate live. There are many options available for folks to view or listen after the 90-minute live debate, as well.
If you missed the debate entirely, there is a strong chance you didn’t miss much. Without any fact-checking by the two CNN moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, and without a teleprompter or prepared notes, President Biden struggled mightily. Several of his responses to questions seemed to trail off undiscernibly and other times he seemed to be confused – like when you try to combine more information than was called for by the question, and it comes out as gobbledygook. In many ways the president seemed tired and out of his element, despite the fact he had sought the debate and the restrictive format for the debate.
Much is being published in the media about President Biden being too old, at 81, and that the debate revealed evidence of that, many calling him feeble and not up to the job. The editorial boards of the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Atlanta Journal Constitution have all called for him to drop out of the presidential race following his debate performance, when none had done so previously.
Sometimes we tend to have short memories. Ronald Reagan flopped in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984. Remember his line, “Are you better off than you were 4 years before?” At their second debate he unloaded a well-rehearsed zinger: “I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I will not exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” per www.slate.com. Reagan dropped seven percentage points following the first debate, then went on to win re-election by a landslide.
In 2012, Mitt Romney dominated Barack Obama in the first debate, most sources saying by 3-1. President Obama had entered the debate with a three percent lead in the polls. With one poor debate performance, Obama’s lead evaporated, per www.pewresearch.com. He bounced back in the second debate and was easily re-elected. In those debates the candidates had notes and there was audience interaction, unlike the first debate between President Biden and Trump on June 27, 2024.
No one seems to claim anything other than that President Biden had a poor debate, dreadful might be a better word. Yet a poor debate performance and a poor presidency are two very different things. We witnessed a poor debate by President Biden. We witnessed a poor presidency by former President Trump, and he was not re-elected to a second term.
At the debate, former President Trump never deviated from the lie that he was cheated out of re-election, and even after three attempts by Dana Bash, he would not answer if he would accept the results on the coming election. He railed against immigrants, spouting false crime statistics. He claimed that Democrats want doctors to be able to abort babies after birth. He claimed that President Biden allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions, to which www.PolitiFact.com referred to as a Pants on Fire lie. He claimed that his administration had the safest border in the history of our country – again, labeled by experts as mostly false. And the list goes on.
President Biden stated presidential historians “voted who was the worst president in American history. From best to worst. They said (Trump) was the worst in all of American history.” WWW.PolitiFact.com labeled the statement as true, sharing, “the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, released in February, collected responses from 154 presidential historians, which included current and recent members of the American Political Science Association. The survey ranked Biden as the 14th best president in U.S. history and put Trump last.”
We discovered at the debate that there are Black jobs. Who knew? President Biden was responding to a question about Black unemployment, a measure that Trump did fairly well with, but Biden has done better. Next thing you know Trump was talking about Black jobs and Hispanic jobs. On June 29, 2024, The Associated Press said, “Donald Trump warned during his debate with Joe Biden and again at a Friday rally that migrants were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans, angering critics who called it a racist and insulting attempt to expand his appeal beyond his white conservative base.”
A second debate is scheduled for September 10 at 9 p.m. (EST) hosted by ABC News. It is not yet clear if running mates will have a debate.
Most major news organizations indicate that Trump has a short-list of three white men (Senator Rubio of Florida, Senator Vance of Ohio and Governor Burgum of North Dakota) as possible running mates.
One truth that is hopefully not lost on the majority of Americans despite all the lies, bombast and division – former President Trump has not and does not respect the will of the people. Nothing is more fundamental to democracy, and that makes him a threat.
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