Perhaps the most surprising thing about the presidential debate on CNN Thursday night was the gang-up on President Joe Biden the moment the event ended.
Longtime political journalist John King opened the post-debate commentary by reporting there was “deep panic in the Democratic party.” He said high-ranking Democrats had bombarded him with texts pronouncing President Joe Biden’s performance “dismal” and “so terrible.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. What do we do?” King quoted. He said in his long career as a political reporter, he had never had his phone blow up with messages as it did during Thursday’s debate.
Half a dozen people on the CNN panel had similar floods of text messages to report. “Panic” and “painful” were frequently recurring terms. “If he’s at the top of the ticket,” one Democratic elected official reportedly said, “I won’t win.”
This was followed by a discussion of the need to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee and how that might be accomplished, while on-screen graphics flashed messages such as, “Sources: ‘Aggressive panic’ for Democrats after Biden’s performance tonight.”
In contrast, a group of undecided voters watching CNN’s coverage in Warren, Michigan, was evenly split on the question of who won the debate. Apparently they didn’t get the memo.
While Biden occasionally struggled to keep his train of thought on-track, he was not very different than he has appeared at countless other events in recent years. Did the Democrats who now declare “panic” suddenly find out the true state of the president’s acuity?
“Time for an open convention,” someone identified as a “prominent operative” texted a reporter for Politico.
One might think that a conversation of this type would be held more quietly within the Democratic party, rather than in a swarm of text messages to commentators on live television. Perhaps such conversations were already held, and Biden expressed no interest in stepping aside. On Thursday night, the president and the first lady spoke at a watch party after the debate and beamed as the crowd chanted, “Four more years.”
Apart from the Shakespearean maneuverings in the Democratic party, the debate was generally uneventful. Former President Donald Trump’s performance was restrained and on-message, likely a surprise to TV viewers who have had it drummed into their heads that Trump is another Hitler.
The former president talked about inflation and border security, contrasted his record on the economy and foreign policy with Biden’s, and answered questions about his views on abortion, saying he supports having the states decide the issue and agrees with a recent Supreme Court decision maintaining access to abortion pills.
Biden insisted that Trump would sign a national abortion ban. He also said Trump had the worst record on jobs since Herbert Hoover and that “things were in chaos” when Trump was president.
The two candidates argued over who had the better record on the economy and foreign policy, who was responsible for cutting the price of insulin, and who was a better golfer.
Weirdly, Biden repeated several debunked hoax stories, including the one about Trump supposedly calling Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people” when the truth is that Trump said he was not talking about those groups. Even the fact-check site Snopes.com has formally corrected the record, seven years later.
The 90-minute debate showed that Trump is no Hitler, and Biden is no kid. Anyone who was pretending otherwise can stop now.