Joe Biden's terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats

I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.

. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.

After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:

It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.

  • warm@kbin.earth
    79·
    2 days ago

    Are all American “debates” like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6910·
      2 days ago

      Nope.

      Up till this year a non partisan committee handled the debates and lent it an air of impartially and at least tried to hold candidates to the questions.

      Both parties decided to boycott those debates, and set up their own with CNN as the host.

      I’ve been bitching about it for months now and everyone’s been telling me it’ll be fine…

      Edit:

      2020 debates

      https://youtu.be/pjW6WKpSCeQ?si=kwPHhz6XQd4EcVN-&t=1780

      • njm1314@lemmy.world
        68·
        2 days ago

        Hard disagree. This wasn’t unusual. Presidential debates are notorious for moderators being ineffectual and unwilling to challenge lies.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
        411·
        2 days ago

        I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check. You’ll see candidates call each other out sometimes, but moderators don’t actually moderate. Timing answers to be ridiculously short so nothing of substance can be said is also a perennial feature.

        • JDPoZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          2 days ago

          Oh man… in all my years I have only seen one… (and it was this year!)… but it was not a presidential one… it was an AMAZING Republican primary debate in Colorado.

          I WISH they got these guys to be the moderators. Would have fucking bashed Trump.

          • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
            7·
            2 days ago

            If all debates for like that one. I would not miss a single debate. He cut through the b******* and got straight to the answers or not answers as the case may be. Which is what a debate moderator should do. A debate moderator is not intended to be a personified a cue card. The Talking Heads at CNN failed even harder than I ever thought they could with their moderation.

          • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            2 days ago

            Lol last night before the debate started, I sent a message to my friends asking if it was too late to get Kyle Clark to moderate. The guy is amazing.

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
          52·
          2 days ago

          I’ve never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check.

          During the one Obama Romney debate I remember Obama asking for a live fact check of some sort and getting it. So it’s happened before.

          • jonne@infosec.pub
            4·
            2 days ago

            Yes, Obama had to ask for it. The moderator wasn’t about to say Romney was a lying sack of shit on their own. That’s my point.

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
              32·
              2 days ago

              In general, the “debates” have always been a nationally televised pissing contest for as long as I’ve watched them.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          75·
          2 days ago

          Fact checkers challenged many of Trump’s statements. Trump falsely said that he “brought back (college) football”; as he had commented on his wish for the conferences to play, but took no official action. Trump also repeated the claim that he “got back” Seattle and Minneapolis from left-wing protesters, and continued to repeat conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He said, without evidence, that drug prices will fall “80 or 90 percent,” in reference to his efforts to cut drug prices[50] and exaggerated that he is making insulin at prices “so cheap, it’s like water”, despite insulin prices remaining fixed at about $300 per vial. Trump also misleadingly said that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was “the greatest economy in the history of our country”; although GDP growth was high in the first three years of the Trump presidency, it was higher under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and the unemployment rate was lower under Eisenhower.[51] Nominal GDP was higher than at any point in US history, but this is true for the large majority of US Presidencies.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_debates#Format_and_debate

    • bobburger@fedia.io
      34·
      2 days ago

      Pretty much every Trump debate has been like this. This one was actually an improvement from 2020 and 2016 because his microphone was turned off so he wasn’t able to just yell over the other person and constantly interrupt.

      • Jesus@lemmy.world
        191·
        2 days ago

        I don’t know if this is an improvement. As many feared, the muted mic saved Trump from himself. I’m sure his staff was actually pretty excited about that rule.

        It would prevent him from doing what he did last time, which polled terribly.

        • bobburger@fedia.io
          9·
          2 days ago

          That’s very true, I should of said “from a civility standpoint it’s an improvement”.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      121·
      2 days ago

      Yes. 90% of the time is almost always off topic. Sometimes a candidate spends a whole sentence saying something related, but that’s as close to organized as it ever was.

      Trump definitely does more personal attacks, but that’s about it. I’ve seen a moderator make a correcting statement once.