Biden failed in the debate, but his enablers failed the nation | Opinion
If there was a winner in Thursday’s alarming presidential debate it was Robert Hur, the Republican special counsel who, after declining to charge President Joe Biden with mishandling sensitive government records, wrote in his report that a jury was unlikely to convict because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said, “The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts.”
After Thursday’s debate, Hur’s description looks kind.
Biden opened the debate appearing and sounding confused. He mangled numbers, veered off on tangents and lost his train of thought. Somehow, he managed to look even older than this 81 years.
Former President Donald Trump, who had set the bar low for Biden by saying he couldn’t put two sentences together, watched with wonder as the president fell short of the bar. Trump glibly spouted lies that Biden ignored or failed to effectively expose.
At one point, the two debated who was the worst president ever. Trump has earned that title, but Biden’s performance ranked as the worst ever in a presidential debate.
What should really rankle Democrats isn’t Biden’s failed performance, but those who have refused to concede his failing abilities – beginning with himself and First Lady Jill Biden and extending outward to prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama.
Someone should have stopped Biden from seeking a second term. Trusted figures said he was up to four more years. On Thursday, we saw that he isn’t. Now it looks like Biden’s best chance for reelection is that the prospect of Trump back in the Oval Office will be too terrible for a majority of voters in swing states to accept.
As Biden’s substantial accomplishments have not resonated strongly with voters, he is increasingly offering himself as the protector of the democratic process that Trump threatens. But a system that has produced Trump and Biden as the choices appears already broken. After the debate, a focus group member told MSNBC it’s now a choice between, “Hell, no!” and “Oh, no!”
In a healthy democracy, Biden would have stepped down gracefully after one effective term and allowed the smooth passage of power to a younger generation. His stubbornness and ego blocked that.
Now it also seems unlikely that the Democrats will select a more capable and popular nominee at their August convention in Chicago. In the Windy City, there will be many Democrats and little democracy.
On Friday, Biden rolled into Raleigh trying to erase Thursday. There was a boisterous crowd at the State Fairgrounds event. Gov. Roy Cooper gave a rousing warmup speech, but the message was undercut by the truth behind one the rally’s opening songs, Bruce Springsteen singing, “You can’t start a fire without a spark.”
Biden tried to ignite the crowd and reignite his campaign. Speaking in a stronger voice, he read from a Teleprompter that gave him a coherence he lacked during the debate. Speaking in a state he narrowly lost in 2020, he said North Carolina could decide the upcoming election for him: “We win here, we win the election.”
But Biden also knew that his debate performance had made such a victory less likely. He addressed the age issue directly.
“I know I’m not a young man,” he said. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong and I know how to do this job.”
Biden is a man of integrity. He does know how to tell the truth. But in seeking reelection, he was unable to accept the truth. He is “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man.”
All he and his supporters can hope for now is that voters also find Trump to be who he is -- an unsympathetic, ill-meaning, elderly man.
Associated opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
