Joe Biden collapsed in an Atlanta studio on Thursday night. Never in the history of presidential debates has a candidate for president of the richest and most powerful country in the world delivered such a disastrous performance.
We could have called this debate Dead Man Walking, if the title had not already been taken.
The 46e The president had only one thing to do: prove to the nation that despite his 81 years (82 at the start of the next term), he has the intellectual and physical capacities, the energy to lead the country.
It missed. Very unsuccessful.
He arrived at the lectern walking unsteadily, which is not fatal as long as one remains standing. But from the first sentence, it was his fragility that he exposed. His voice was veiled, weak. He had to clear it by coughing several times, as if he had been pulled from the couch where he was napping. His gaze was absent. His gestures uncertain.
He searched for his words. He seemed confused. Some of his sentences remained hanging on the stage, waiting in vain for other words to be completed…
Speaking of abortion, he himself brought up the case of this child murdered by an illegal immigrant, which Trump uses constantly.
After 15 minutes, the matter was over. Joe Biden showed himself to be exactly as special prosecutor Robert Hur described him this winter: “a friendly, good-willed elderly person with a bad memory.”
We just need to look back at the 2020 Trump-Biden debate to see it: Joe Biden has seriously declined. At the time he was sometimes hesitant, he sometimes stammered (he always bravely fought stuttering). But he still had the stature of a leader. He exuded competence, experience, political strength.
It seems that aging is not a continuous line, but a series of levels from which we fall in sequences, as if we were skipping two or three steps on a staircase.
Somewhere between the summer of 2020 and the summer of 2024, Joseph Robinette Biden missed a few steps, and the whole world saw it. The voters saw it. Democratic organizers saw it.
There will surely be Democrats telling the orchestra to keep playing on deck, but the fact is that the Biden ship will continue to sink in the waters of this campaign even before he is their candidate.
There will also be those who will point out all of Donald Trump’s lies on Thursday evening, and they will be right. His speech was disjointed, his assertions gratuitous and he did not answer questions.
But not once was Biden able to respond with anything remotely convincing, not once was he able to land a blow. That’s how calamitous he was.
PHOTO ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Donald Trump
Trump was much the same, but less snarling. The muted microphone, which prevented him from interrupting, made him seem more disciplined than he is. And, remarkably, it was he who said, “This is a little childish,” after the two men argued over the crucial question for the future of the planet: who can hit a golf ball farther.
Maybe Trump is right that this country is in serious decline after all…
Even on issues that benefit him, like abortion or taxes on the rich, Biden has failed. Whereas in 2020 he repeated, every other sentence, “here’s the deal,” this year it was “the idea that…” But in 2020, he followed up with a clear proposition. This time, his sentence was either unfinished, or a simple lament breathed from the top of his lungs—for very little air seemed to come out of that pale body. It was as if, like Richard Nixon, he had refused to wear makeup, or had taken out the Marquis de La Fayette’s powder.
I watched this man break down in public, and I thought back to the harsh words of former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, now an anti-Trump activist. If Trump wins, he said, it will be because Biden has chosen to run again. He is, increasingly clearly, Donald Trump’s best chance. In March, during the State of the Union address, Biden had been brilliant. He had reassured the troops. Including those who were hoping for his departure and a real old-fashioned convention in August in Chicago.
But now it’s ruined. Even if it was because of a temporary illness, he will not be able to recover from this pathetic performance. He has just cemented the fear of voters who find him too old.
If old age is a shipwreck, Americans have seen it sink before their eyes.
Democrats still have one chance: Biden is not yet the nominee. For the first time in the history of televised debates, in fact, the contest was between two future candidates.
It is therefore possible, as in 1968, to make the Chicago convention a real old-fashioned convention, where the candidate will be chosen.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no shortage of political talent in this country. Several governors could make a better candidate in the current state of affairs, and not just Governor Gavin Newsom of California. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senator Amy Klobuchar, or Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina are names that are often mentioned.
But as things stand, with Trump leading in most of the key states, continuing with Biden means heading for defeat.