Well, shit.

 

That was an awful debate.

I'm gutted that President Joe Biden didn't do better. He had one job, and he failed. He failed. 

The Felon didn't eviscerate Biden. Biden eviserated himself. 

If you missed it, and I hope you did, here Jon Stewart has it in a nutshell. At least someone can find some humor in it. 

Joe Biden had one task. He was to convince a tiny sliver of voters – a tiny sliver but nevertheless the most important voters in recent history – that he was physically and mentally up to the job. He failed at that mission. Instead, he panicked the entire Democratic Party, as well as many old-school Republicans. He gave abundant fodder to the MAGA bullies on the right. He proved them right, as hard as it is to type those words.

Voters did not want numbers and statistics and calls of "malarkey." They really really didn't want to see jumbled words, blank stares, trains of thought going headlong into a ditch, and golf handicap boasting. Nevermind the raspy voice and imprecise speech. Voters wanted to see a strong push-back to the toxic clown poisoning the debate stage. Voters wanted to see an energetic President. Voters wanted to feel better about choosing him. It simply didn't happen. 

I refuse to be ageist. Of course an 81-year old can do a complex job and do it well. And he is indeed doing a great job. He has passed some impressive legislation and has overseen many strong economic improvements. In today's political reality, though, his age and his aptitude are unmistakably a biggie. His age – and more than that – his apparent ability is the referendum on him. It is unfortunate, but it is the political reality. And this debate was meant to show the naysayers and the undecideds, and frankly, the rest of us, that this 81-year-old can and will continue to strongly and effectively lead the country.

The Felon's Performance

It was what was expected. Lies, lies, lies, hyperbole, and more shameful lies. In fact, I was going to take notes in preparation for an after-debate post, but this is as far as I got:

The Felon's performance did not redeem him in any way. It cemented him as a miserable, mephitic, malicious, mendacious moron. He did not suddenly become a better choice.

It was The Felon's "normal" – far from normal normal – and somehow the prep team or Biden forgot that that was who was going to show up at the other podium. Biden did not prepare for a T****-style come-out-with-all-lies-blazing-style debate. When faced with ridiculousness, Biden still treated it as if it were a "normal" debate with a "normal" opponent. And that's besides his feeble performance.

There's been chatter about the Gish gallop, an argument technique which The Felon seemed to have been employing, either by design or because it comes naturally to him. The Gish gallop is the technique where the debater uses all manner of arguments, lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations in rapid-fire, in order to overwhelm the opponent. It certainly did the trick. 

CNN's Role

The moderators failed to fact check and failed to insist on staying on topic. They were milquetoast placeholders while they let The Felon spout lie after lie after lie. The silence in letting the lies stand, I found later, was designed to be part of the format, a format which Biden agreed to. SMH again.

The Spin

Pundits and spinners point out that in the past, for a half-dozen or so recent incumbent presidents, most of them lost their first debate, their poll numbers went down, sometimes dramatically, and yet they went on to win the election.

Small comfort. This is hugely different. Those other incumbent candidates who lost their first debate? Those were normal political days. Those were less divided times. The stakes of losing were less for the country. But mostly, outward appearance of ability to perform the damn job was not The One and Only Issue. There was no call for them to step aside immediately. The June 27, 2024 debate was a referendum on Biden's aptitude to hold office. It is hard to imagine how he could have done worse. He failed. Period.

Surrogates like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom trotted out in their cheerleading outfits to all the networks to rah-rah-rah their candidate, pretending that everything was all right, without acknowledging the elephant in the room. Yes, that's their job, but to not acknowledge this disaster was disingenuous. 

Some Dems are continuing their support: Democrats struggle to respond to Biden debate performance

The Immediate Reaction

My reaction? And undoubtedly many others of my ilk? I am sad, I am heartbroken. It was like watching someone you love die. In this case, it is our beloved Great Experiment, seeming to gasp its last breath.

There were calls for Biden to step aside just as soon as the moderators uttered "goodnight." 

Immediately after the debate, pundits were reporting that, privately, Democrats up and down the chain were looking for an exit plan. It didn't take long for it to be a public question. 

So many of us thought the same after watching the train wreck. I was absolutely sick to my stomach. And if someone like me thinks he should drop out, then maybe he should drop out. Let alone the party insiders. Let alone the big donors.

The Calls

Liberal columnists and TV media allies called on him to drop out of the race. From Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough at MSNBC to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, among others, all questioned his fitness to continue. 

Though we don’t have voter polls yet, here is one early indication: "Most voters, including a 47% plurality of Democrats, say Biden should be replaced as the Democratic candidate for president." 

Overnight after the disaster, there was a ton of speculation about how a replacement could happen. I had trouble sleeping that night, and my phone kept me busy reading article after article outlining if and how a new candidate could be placed. 

Here are some of them:

Politico: ‘WTF’: Panicked Dems start looking for alternatives to Biden

Washington Post: It’s time for Jill Biden to have a hard talk with her husband

Vox: Can Democrats replace Biden as their nominee? Eh, no, not really.

The Hill: Bye-bye, Biden — hello, Harris?

The Guardian: Who could replace Joe Biden? Here are six possibilities

TL;DR version: It would be hard and it would be complicated to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. Joe Biden himself is the only one who can pull the plug. It would mean an very unusual convention in August. It would be democratically unfair for him and/or a bunch of Democratic Party bigwigs to choose the replacement candidate. It would be difficult to know which replacement candidate could win. At this point, though, there is enough panic that it may be the only chance for Dems to retain the presidency. 

It's hard to be optimistic now. 

Help me, Pollyanna LSR, you're my only hope!: Pulling out some optimism

• The Felon didn't do well either. He lied and lied and lied. He exaggerated, he untruthed. He avoided answering the questions (Will he accept the results of the election? How does he respond to January 6?). He hammered at immigration and inflation without giving any substantive answers. He was at times calm and collected while he spouted his lies - lies - lies. And at times he was unhinged. "Aborting a baby after it is born"? He repeated this accusation several times. Do you mean to say murder? Cuz that ain't happening. He didn't help himself any. Heather Cox Richardson outlines this well:

June 27, 2024 (Thursday) 

Tonight was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events. Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness.

Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.  

In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list. 

Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.  

Dale went on: Trump lied that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has when it’s the other way around, and he was off by close to $100 billion when he named the amount the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. He was off by millions when he talked about how many migrants have crossed the border under Biden, and falsely claimed that some of Biden’s policies—like funding historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and reducing the price of insulin to $35 a month—were his own accomplishments. 

There is no point in going on, because virtually everything he said was a lie. As Jake Lahut of the Daily Beast recorded, he also was all over the map. “On January 6,” Trump said, “we had a great border.” To explain how he would combat opioid addiction, he veered off into talking points about immigration and said his administration “bought the best dog.” He boasted about acing a cognitive test and that he had just recently won two golf club tournaments without mentioning that they were at his own golf courses. “To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way,” he said. “I can do it.” 

As Lahut recorded, Trump said this: “Clean water and air. We had it. We had the H2O best numbers ever, and we were using all forms of energy during my 4 years. Best environmental numbers ever, they gave me the statistic [sic.] before I walked on stage actually.” 

Trump also directly accused Biden of his own failings and claimed Biden’s own strengths, saying, for example, that Biden, who has enacted the most sweeping legislation of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t get anything done while he, who accomplished only tax cuts, was more effective. He responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape. 

It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. 

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective. 

There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him.  

That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”  

A much bigger deal is what it says that the television media and pundits so completely bought into Trump’s performance. They appear to have accepted Trump’s framing of the event—that he is dominant—so fully that the fact Trump unleashed a flood of lies and non-sequiturs simply didn’t register. And, since the format established that the CNN journalists running the debate did not challenge anything either candidate said, and Dale’s fact-checking spot came long after the debate ended, the takeaway of the event was a focus on Biden’s age rather than on Trump’s inability to tell the truth or form a coherent thought.  

At the end of the evening, pundits were calling not for Trump—a man liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, under three other indictments, who lied pathologically—to step down, but for Biden to step down…because he looked and sounded old. At 81, Biden is indeed old, but that does not distinguish him much from Trump, who is 78 and whose inability to answer a question should raise concerns about his mental acuity. 

About the effect of tonight’s events, former Republican operative Stuart Stevens warned: “Don't day trade politics. It's a sucker's game. A guy from Queens out on bail bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, said in public he didn't have sex with a porn star, defended tax cuts for billionaires, defended Jan. 6th. and called America the worst country in the world. That guy isn't going to win this race.” 

Trump will clearly have pleased his base tonight, but Stevens is right to urge people to take a longer view. It’s not clear whether Trump or Biden picked up or lost votes; different polls gave the win to each, and it’s far too early to know how that will shake out over time. 

Of far more lasting importance than this one night is the clear evidence that stage performance has trumped substance in political coverage in our era. Nine years after Trump launched his first campaign, the media continues to let him call the shots.

• Most polls aren't out yet. Maybe it didn't do any more damage with voters. We just have to wait and see. 

• Biden has some time to rehabilitate his image and mitigate the damage. This June debate was extraordinarily early. We still have 51 days until the Democratic National Convention.

• The Dems still have time to install someone new. We still have 128 days until Election Day.

• President Obama is standing by Biden and is downplaying the importance of this one debate.

• Historian Allan Lichtman, who successfully forecasts presidential races, feels it is "foolhardy nonsense" to try to replace Biden.

• But on the other hand, as Zach Beauchamp in Vox writes, this may be a silver lining. It may show that we as a Nation can rise engergetically to this challenge and swiftly make some changes. It may give a boost to the doldrums that we've been facing with these two as our only choices. What if we found an exciting new candidate?!

And finally....

The Speech-Language Pathologist's Eye

We know that Joe Biden has a stutter. It was more apparent than usual on Thursday night. A stutter is not a sign of incompetence. Not in the least. Some who know less than you and me will think that it is, especially the MAGAts. They will pounce on this like stink on shit. That, they are good at. Put the stutter aside.

There were the blank stares and what we call masked facies. There was the low-volume, hoarse or raspy voice and the rapid, imprecise speech. Biden's motor movements were limited, and he does indeed shuffle rather than stride. He seemed to not blink much. And he doesn't swing his arms much when he walks. 

I was working with a patient the morning after the debate on his voice disorder resulting from Parkinson's Disease. As I was encouraging him to use more power in his voice, I very nearly said, "You know, speak like Joe Biden should have spoken last night." 

And then it hit me hard. All those behaviors during the debate? They are signs of Parkinson's disease. And I wonder now if Joe Biden is suffering from PD. NOTE: I am not diagnosing! I am pointing out that his physical and voice traits look like the same traits that a typical Parkinson's patient demonstrates. Remember: the majority of PD patients do not have cognitive changes. Some do, however, often taking the form of word-finding problems or problems finishing their thoughts, as well as memory issues.

Biden doesn't have a tremor that I have seen, but not all PD patients have tremor. Symptoms he does exhibit:

✅ Masked facies

✅ Low-volume voice

✅ Hoarse/raspy voice

✅ Imprecise phonemes 

✅ Rapid speech

✅ Stiff or shuffling gait

✅ Reduced arm swing

✅ Reduced blinking

✅ Slow movements

✅ Falls

✅ Stuttering (though Biden has a childhood "classic" stutter, many PD patients develop stuttering, too)

 I don't know if this is part of Biden, and I don't know if it is a factor. LSR is just reporting what LSR sees.

Sorry. Not in the mood for cartoons today. But I will submit a thought. Maybe Jimmy Carter is available to run?  Has anyone reached out? 

Have a better day, Resisters. Much love to all.