When two flawed presidential candidates, President Biden and former President Trump, faced off in their high-stakes debate Thursday night, each hoped to pass a test in the eyes of voters. Both failed, but Biden's missteps, rightly or wrongly, are likely to cost him more than Trump's.
Biden needed to allay concerns that he is too old to serve effectively for another four years. Her shaky and at times incoherent performance fell far short. He looked each of his 81 years noticeably less vigorous and vigorous than the imposing figure who delivered an effective State of the Union address some four months ago.
Trump, 78, needed to look and sound presidential to appeal to voters who doubt his temperament and stability. He needed to avoid the self-indulgent temptation of claiming that every election he lost was rigged and that every legal setback he suffered was politically motivated. He also failed.
The 90-minute debate was a dispiriting race to the bottom, pitting a tongue-tied octogenarian against a pathological liar. Undecided voters looking for a positive reason to vote for one or the other were unlikely to find one.
But that doesn’t mean it was a draw. Had this been a boxing match (an apt analogy, given his flurries of verbal jabs), a referee would likely have awarded Trump a points victory, for two reasons.
First, Biden came into the debate as the candidate who needed to turn the campaign around. Trump has led recent national polls by a hair, but is clearly ahead in most of the half-dozen battleground states that will decide the election. Biden hoped to change that, so he needed a victory.
Second, while Trump missed an opportunity to appeal to undecided voters and broaden his support, he did a more effective job than Biden of presenting his favorite talking points. Many of them were false and some were nonsensical, but most were not refuted by either Biden or the CNN moderators, who had given up on fact-checking that night. That left Trump no worse off than when he started.
The impact of a debate is often reduced to a few memorable moments. Many voters didn't see anything, and some who tuned in didn't stay for the full 90 minutes. But over the next two weeks, some of his worst moments will play out over and over again, magnifying their effect.
A few examples of each candidate's worst moments can convey the flavor of the evening. (A list of his best moments would be scarce).
Biden's voice sounded hoarse and hesitant, especially early in the debate. She seemed to lose her train of thought more than once; Her voice trailed off at the end of several responses. He ended a confusing explanation of his tax proposals with the baffling phrase: “if we finally beat Medicare.” After another similar moment, Trump took the opportunity to make sure viewers noticed, saying, “I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either.”
Trump lied with his usual gusto, repeating false claims he has perfected in dozens of campaign speeches. He said he produced “the greatest economy in the history of our country” during his tenure as president, but that is not true by any definition of economic success. He claimed that Democratic states are routinely killing babies “after birth,” a lurid and inaccurate description of late-term abortion. He claimed that Biden's immigration policies have allowed “18, 19, it could be 20 million” undocumented immigrants into the country, a wild exaggeration, and that the Biden administration is “putting them on Social Security and Medicare.” (It is not like this).
All of those lies are familiar to anyone who has attended any of Trump's rallies; They have all been denied. But there were too many for Biden to deny them one by one, so he responded: “Everything you just said is a lie.”
Trump dodged any questions he didn't want to answer, including whether he would abide by the outcome of the election. “If it's a fair, legal, good election, of course,” he said, but he immediately undermined that promise by claiming the 2020 election was rife with fraud. (They weren't).
There are major differences between these two candidates on important issues facing the country, and voters deserved a debate that would clarify their choice. This was not that debate.
Instead, it was a missed opportunity for both candidates that not only damaged Biden’s chances of overcoming Trump’s lead but was sure to reopen the barely suppressed debate among Democrats about whether they have their best possible candidate.
With four months to go until Election Day, the race undoubtedly has more twists and turns to come. But Thursday’s debate was undoubtedly a pivotal moment — a setback for Biden that he must now try to repair.
Read more from columnist Doyle McManus on Trump and California:
