[update below]
Thirty-four, to be precise. On last night’s “debate”: I didn’t watch it live, as it was at 3AM my time, though woke up at 5, just after it ended, and read through the instant commentaires on my Twitter and Facebook feeds. The universal consensus being that it was a ‘shitshow’, ‘chaotic’, a ‘disaster’, a ‘disgrace to American democracy’, an ’embarrassment to the United States of America’, and quite simply ‘the worst presidential debate in history’—not to mention a ‘dumpster fire’, ‘train wreck’, ‘grotesque spectacle’, et on en passe—I thought at first that I wouldn’t bother catching it on YouTube and subject myself to 90-minutes of a Trump even more unhinged and wretched than usual. As one friend put it on Facebook, Trump “once again challenged the English language,” as we long ago ran out of adjectives to describe his abject odiousness as a human being, who is devoid of a single redeeming quality. But I finally did watch it and am glad, as one should always form one’s own opinion about these things.
One of the social media refrains, from pundits, fellow academics, and friends alike, was that Biden was ‘weak’ and ineffective—one lefty friend called him “an establishment geezer long past his prime”—and that Chris Wallace was terrible as moderator. On Wallace and losing control of the debate: I thought he did as good a job as he could have given the circumstances. If there was a single potential moderator out there who could have gotten control of an out-of-control loud-mouthed bully with the maturity of a 3-year-old like Trump—and who happens to be President of the United States, so commands a minimum of respect in such a situation—I would like to know his or her name (it could likely never be a her).
As for Biden, I thought he acquitted himself quite well, again given the circumstances. We were all nervous that he would have a senior moment, fumble over his words, or commit one of his famous gaffes, but he didn’t. His responses were lucid and were as they should have been. And telling the idiot to ‘shut up’ and calling him a ‘clown’ were pitch perfect and impeccably timed, as was his body language in the face of Trump’s bullshit and lies. I also liked that Biden avoided answering the question about abolishing the filibuster and enlarging the Supreme Court. And the ‘inshallah’ he let out was cool; I had seen mention of it on Twitter though didn’t catch it during the debate, but he did indeed say it (as I do on most days myself BTW). Calling Antifa an idea, not an organization, was also spot-on. Biden’s keeping his cool while constantly being interrupted was admirable, as I doubt I could have had I been in his place (while watching the spectacle I continually blurted out “You are such as asshole!” whenever Trump opened his trap out of turn and wouldn’t STFU). Some on social media regretted that it wasn’t Warren or Sanders who was squaring off against the idiot, that these two would have landed one body blow after another, maybe even a K.O. punch. That’s possible, even likely, but it’s not clear that a proactive reaction—which would have delighted the liberal-progressive gallery—would have been more effective with moderate Republican women in the suburbs of Philadelphia or Charlotte than Biden’s more understated approach—such voters being one of his targets as he looked straight at the camera—and not at the idiot—as he spoke. And on being more aggressive, one knows the old adage about wrestling with a pig.
The huge takeaway from the “debate” was Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy, his calling on the Proud Boys to “stand by,” and declaring that he will both not recognize the election result and seek to disrupt the vote unless he wins. On Trump possibly winning legitimately, Thomas Edsall’s cold shower column last week, “Five things Biden and his allies should be worried about,” spelled out possible reasons why the election may end up being a lot closer than the polls currently suggest—and with a Trump Electoral College victory—without voter suppression—in the realm of the possible. But as Biden remains at +7 to 8 in the FiveThirtyEight poll of polls and with solid leads in the key swing states—the stability in the polls is striking, and what happened last night won’t be changing that (not in Trump’s favor at least)—it looks most unlikely that Trump will be able to pull off a clean EC victory (FWIW, FiveThirtyEight presently rates that a 21% probability). And à propos, we were informed in The New York Times the day after Edsall’s column appeared that “Trump faces challenges even in red states, [the NYT/Siena College] poll shows, as women favor Biden: Close races in Georgia, Iowa and Texas show President Trump’s vulnerability and suggest that Joseph Biden has assembled a formidable coalition.”
On Trump’s threats to stage a coup d’État, everyone has by now read Barton Gellman’s bone-chilling essay in The Atlantic, “The election that could break America: If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?” It’s a scary piece, in which even those with deep knowledge of American politics learned new things about the workings of the Electoral College (and which further confirmed a thought I’ve had for a while now—which I’ll maybe develop in the future—that the USA has a terrible constitution, which should serve as an anti-model for incipient democracies). If Trump, enabled by the Senate Republicans and right-wing majority on the SCOTUS, succeeds in his projected coup d’État and rules as a dictator, the constitution will not save us. We are entering a truly dangerous period.
On the Republican Party, I read an NYR Daily article just the other day dated August 12th, by historian of Italian fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Co-opt & corrupt: How Trump bent and broke the GOP.” It’s a must.
The fundamental problem in American politics, however, goes beyond Trump and GOP. It is summed up in the title of the post-debate commentary by The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last: “The president is a sociopath. And 60 million Americans like it.”
I have much more to say but will leave it there for now. À suivre.
UPDATE: Steven Waldman, who is president and co-founder of Report for America, has an interesting contrarian take on the debate on his Facebook page:
I thought the debate was great. And Chris Wallace was outstanding, too.
Since I know pretty much everyone is saying that both the debate and the moderator were global embarrassments, let me explain. The purpose of a debate is to reveal useful things about the candidates. We pretend that we learn by observing a careful exchange of policy positions, and sometimes that happens. But has there ever been a debate where one of the candidates revealed more about himself than this one? Wasn’t it far more clarifying than most debates?
And Chris Wallace was, for that reason, pretty perfect. He inserted himself enough to clarify that Trump was breaking the rules. That was hard to do; he defiantly, on the spot, did not engage in false equivalence. The fact Trump blew right past him was great for the country – because we got to see Trump in his rawest, truest sense. We didn’t learn about the differences in approaches to health policy – but we did learn about character, temperament and personality.
We also got to see how Biden handled such a volatile situation. He mostly showed self restraint and calm. Isn’t that more telling than a few more minutes of him explaining his buy America procurement rules?
Debates should help voters make their decisions. This one provided a deluge of useful information.
Journalists are sometimes criticized for not ‘nailing’ the subjects that they interview. That misunderstands the journalist’s role. The job is often to reveal not rebut. If I’m really honest, I have to admit that when I do interviews, especially for print publications, I will intentionally let subjects continue to say stupid or offensive things, without challenge – because that is far more revealing than if I pointed out their stupidity and thereby prompted them to clarify.
I feel the same way about debates. The point is not to catch the candidates; it’s to reveal them. In that sense, this was the best debate in modern American history.