Joe Biden had been preparing for days for this debate, the rules of which he had set. I had no doubt about the meticulousness of the operation and I believed that, without being exciting, he could deliver the goods.
After listening and, above all, watching this debate, who can still say with certainty that the man is ready to lead a tough campaign and lead the country for the next four years?
A debate that confirms perceptions
The outgoing president’s main opponent is not Donald Trump, it is rather the tough perception that Americans have of the veteran of American politics. Yesterday, he confirmed the apprehensions of a majority of his fellow citizens.
I am one of those who wanted Joe Biden to give up running in 2024 and I wrote it after the midterm elections.
After fifty years in politics, after serving honorably during the Obama presidency and after driving Donald Trump from the White House, he could go out in full glory.
His pride has driven him to a rematch, and if he loses, he will have caused his downfall.
Democratic strategists must also take some of the blame for this fiasco. How could they allow Biden to run in this state?
One of these strategists also admitted on condition of anonymity that if the debate could have a positive effect, it would be to convince Biden to leave. Phew.
An abyssal pit
While I believe that Biden’s departure is imperative to avoid an embarrassing defeat, replacing him so close to the November 5 deadline carries a large share of risks and pitfalls.
So it is not impossible that Joe Biden will hang on, but since yesterday, a task that already seemed difficult has become titanic.
The president is lagging behind in the majority of swing states and the situation was already very worrying before the debate.
Biden had already tried almost everything. For example, he wanted to seduce young voters by paying off student debts, he could present a positive economic record, he divided his troops on the Palestinian question and he even did what no democrat had done before him, or to close the border.
Despite this, the odds of a Donald Trump victory were slightly higher. Propose something else? The problem is Biden.
At the end of Thursday’s debate, I felt a certain sadness. Not for Biden, but rather for American voters, for us and for America’s allies. Unless there is a spectacular turnaround on November 5, we will have to choose between a diminished man and a weapon of massive disinformation. Are you brimming with confidence?
Image of the week:
The president dejected and hesitant during the debate.
The quote of the week:
“It’s kind of a DEFCON-1 moment.” Interviewed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow after the debate, David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former strategist, used a strong image to illustrate Joe Biden’s very poor performance during the debate. DEFCON-1 is the maximum military alert level. Plouffe added that Biden had not been able to exploit his rival’s weaknesses and lies.
The lie detector: true, but requires significant clarification
“(Donald Trump) is the only president other than Herbert Hoover to have lost more jobs than he had at the start of his presidency.”
This is not the first time that Joe Biden has tried to associate his opponent with President Herbert Hoover. The latter, one of the most unpopular since the beginning of the 20th centurye century, will be eternally associated with the stock market crash of 1929 and the economic crisis of the 1930s. What Biden does not specify, a major element of context, is that the jobs lost during the Trump presidency were lost in a context of pandemic.
Number of the week
6 out of 7
The most recent polls of the Washington Post (June 28) indicate that Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden in six of the seven pivotal states in the 2024 election. Only in Wisconsin where the outgoing president enjoys a small lead. Four months before the election, these figures, obtained before the Democrat’s poor performance in Thursday’s debate, explain the panic of several Democratic strategists.
