Each man had to address grave doubts about his candidacy for the world’s most powerful office and reassure millions of concerned voters that he could be trusted with that power.
Neither man got the job done.
The debate was a shambles.
It wasn’t the epic disaster that the first such encounter—the one in which Trump shouted incoherently for much of the night and Biden at one point called him a “clown”—between the two men in 2020 was, but it was a depressing embarrassment, nonetheless.
It was impossible to watch the entire event and come away believing that the nation would be in good and capable hands if either man were to be elected.
In many ways, this should have been Biden’s night.
Trump came out being Trump.
He stacked lie on top of lie on top of lie. He interrupted his strings of prevarications with one non sequitur after another.
Trump refused, despite being asked several times, to say he would abide by the will of the voters and accept legal election results. He boasted of his success in overturning Roe v. Wade yet offered no comfort or consolation to the millions of American women and families who struggle with the consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court decision stripping away reproductive rights that had been enshrined in law for a half-century. He ducked and evaded repeated requests for pledges that he would not use the power of the presidency to exact “retribution” on Americans who disagree with him politically.
The doubts about him going into the debate focused on his character and trustworthiness. Instead of dispelling those doubts, the former president highlighted and underscored them, spouting untruths so casually as to create fresh doubts about whether he’s even connected to reality or knows the difference between truth and falsehood.
Trump’s performance should have made him an easy mark for any competent debater.
But Joe Biden was not a competent debater.
No, he was far from it.
From the opening, the president appeared frail and almost stunningly inarticulate. He struggled to put sentences together in ways that made any sense at all. His voice often dropped to a barely audible whisper.
Worse, he couldn’t make his case even when doing so should have been effortless for him.
Abortion is not an issue for Democrats. It is the issue—the one that prompts the suburban women voters across the country who will decide this election’s outcome to leave their traditional Republican allegiances behind and vote for Democrats.
When the abortion question came up, Trump—predictably—flailed. He tried to take credit for getting Roe repealed while evading any responsibility for stripping women of the right to control their own bodies.
It should have been a golden opportunity for Biden.
But when the pitch came, the president swung—and missed. Then he missed again. And again.
Sadly, that was not the night’s worst moment.
At one point, when they’d been asked a question about escalating costs of childcare, the two men bickered back and forth about who the better golfer was and who had the lowest handicap.
Yeah, that’s really what Americans want to hear when they’re concerned about how to provide for their families. Knowing that two elderly men get to spend enough time on the links is a much higher priority than making sure that America’s children are safe.
Before this debate even started, polls showed that anywhere from 60% to 75% of the nation’s voters would prefer to have a different set of choices than Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Their debate won’t decrease those numbers.
If anything, the calls for both men to step aside will—and should—intensify.
In the aftermath of a presidential debate, the analysis always comes down to the same questions.
Who won?
And who lost?
In this case, those questions are easy to answer.
Neither candidate won. Neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump gave anyone fresh and convincing reasons to support his candidacy—and both offered the public plenty of reasons to doubt his fitness for office.
Neither Biden nor Trump, though, was the night’s biggest loser.
Tragically, that dubious distinction belongs to the citizens of the United States of America.
