Joe Biden, an Empty Headed Empty Suit

By now, most savvy commentators have decided that Donald Trump lost the first, and perhaps the only presidential debate. His strategy was to interrupt Biden constantly, thus provoking Biden into saying something incoherent. It did not work, and it showed that Trump, for the good and the bad, is not a great communicator. He is not a great debater, either. Mike Pence clearly did a better job.

Sorry, to be the bearer of bad news, but unless something drastically dramatic happens, the radical left is about to take over America. If only Trump had remained quiet, Joe Biden would surely have put both feet in his mouth. Biden cannot speak coherently off the cuff for two minutes-- such is the nature of his cerebral deficiency.

Curiously, a never Trumper called Andrew Sullivan, after opining about Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis and issuing his usual rant about Trump’s tyrannical tendencies-- a rank absurdity, on its face-- launched a description of Joe Biden at the debate. Unfortunately, too many people were distracted by Trump, so much so that they missed the real Joe Biden. 

Since Sullivan is probably going to vote for the hollowed out husk called Biden, we grant some added credence to his analysis-- which is very, very good. 

Sullivan notes that, even when compared to the Democratic primary debates, Biden seems even more diminished, more frail, more out of it:

Biden looked older than I’ve ever seen him, and with less of a grizzled-elder-vibe than a nursing-home-visit one. In the primary debates, he managed at times to look vigorous, even sharp, to the relief of many of us. Last Tuesday, he looked … well, the word that comes to mind is simply frail. His voice was relatively quiet, higher-pitched than usual and often hushed, his whispery white hair and pale color accentuating the sense of a beloved great-uncle who gets confused at times, but whose heart is nonetheless in the right place. When Biden looked directly at Trump, and we saw his profile, he looked even frailer: less like an authoritative statesman ready to take back the helm with vigor than a reluctant draftee, called out of retirement, like Bob Mueller, doing his duty, barely able to comprehend, let alone counter, the walking, talking shit-show to his right.

There is no way such an individual, diminished and declining, can do the job of president. One agrees with Sullivan that we should recall the incoherent Robert Mueller, the great hope of the Democrats who wanted to depose Trump, appearing before a Congressional panel, dazed and confused, sounding like he had not even read the report that had been issued in his name.

Viewers who were looking for a reason to vote for Biden, were disappointed. Sullivan says he was like a flickering pilot light, ready to die out:

The hackneyed phrase for a key sign of a presidential winner — “fire in his belly” — did not and does not seem to apply to Biden. It’s more like a flickering blue pilot light you’re worried may go out at some point. “I was praying that Biden was going to come in and slam dunk, and I was really disappointed,” said one female 2016 Trump voter, in a focus group organized by Sarah Longwell. “I agree that we weren’t able to get a full idea of Biden. I was hoping I was going to come away with more,” said another. “I understand why you’d tell someone to ‘shut up’ but I wish he could’ve been a contrast to Trump a little more,” another complained. “I felt like Biden stuck to talking points. I was disappointed all around,” whined another.

It gets worse-- especially for those who thought they had elected a macho warrior, a man who could take the fight to Trump. In the end, Biden was not up to the fight. He had lost too many little gray cells to mount an attack or even a counterattack:

The best line of the night — “Will you just shut up, man?” — was wonderful in the moment, but also showed just how reactive Biden was throughout. He never seized the initiative, and was constantly on the back foot. He never demonstrated the kind of authority you want to see and feel in a president. Days after Trump had been humiliated by tax returns that showed he was both a massive business failure and a stupendous tax dodger, the issue came and went with Biden barely making a dent. Even on Covid19, as Michael Tomasky noted, Biden failed to lay out clearly the chronology of Trump’s lies and incompetence. He even flubbed what was an obviously rehearsed (and good) line: “He said he didn’t tell us or give people a warning of it because he didn’t want to panic the American people. You don’t panic. He panicked.” He garbled the last two sentences.

On policy Biden was similarly lost and incoherent:

And, yes, at the start of the evening, Biden made a decent start: “The president … wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. He’s been running on that, he ran on that and he’s been governing on that. He’s in the Supreme Court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which will strip 20 million people from having health insurance now.” But when challenged on the new policy he’s proposing, a public option in Obamacare, this is how Biden described it: “It’s only for those people who are so poor they qualify for Medicaid they can get that free in most States, except Governors who want to deny people who are poor Medicaid. Anyone who qualifies for Medicare, excuse me, Medicaid would automatically be enrolled in the public option. The vast majority of the American people would still not be in that option.” Say what?

Say what? A perfect riposte to what is essentially a word salad, from someone who has no idea what he is talking about and can barely hide it any more.

The polls after the debate have swung to Biden, but one focus group saw women rejecting Biden and moving toward Trump:

Stan Greenberg saw Trump actually gain with white working class women in his debate focus group — from 44 percent to 53 percent support — largely because of this issue: “they headed into the debate favoring Biden on the issue by an 11-point margin and came out supporting Trump by 6 points.” Losing white working class women on healthcare access is not good for a Democratic candidate. While nothing else hurt him as badly, Biden also added some clunkers. On core Constitutional and procedural questions — like adding members to the Court or ending the filibuster — Biden simply refused to say what he supports, saying “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.” Well, yeah, it will. But that’s also how we decide elections. If you can’t tell us where you stand, how are we to make a decision?

Of course, Biden has consistently refused to say whether he would pack the Supreme Court-- which means that he will-- but, aside from a few intrepid intellectuals, like Sullivan, the media is happy to ignore the issue. The media has simply become the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. They do not even pretend any more. For that reason, we are today turning to someone who walked away from New York Magazine, rather than allow himself to browbeaten by brain dead millennials.

Forget about the content of Biden’s character-- it has long since retired from the fray-- and examine some of Biden’s responses. Sullivan does so, and the result is devastating:

He portrayed critical race theory as a completely harmless attempt not “to hurt other people’s feelings,” which is the kind of view you’d expect from someone who has no idea what is actually happening, and someone who, as president, will do nothing to stop it. He had no solid response to the obvious fact of his son Hunter’s sleaze at all, except to say it’s all been “discredited,” when a lot of it hasn’t been. He said that he was opposed to AOC’s “Green New Deal” and then said that “the ‘Green New Deal’ will pay for itself as we move forward.”

And also,

He said he supports both “equity” and “equality”, two directly contradictory goals, one supporting equality of outcome, the other equality of opportunity. He doubted the existence of antifa, suggesting he really has drunk the left kool-aid. On police and criminal justice reform, he repeated that he was against any defunding of the police, and then we got this big bucket of blah: “I’m going to call together an entire group of people at the White House, everything from the civil rights groups, to the police officers, to the police chiefs, and we’re going to work this out.” Weak.

And this is the best that one of America’s two leading political parties can find to run for president.

Sullivan concludes:

If Trump had let Biden speak more, Biden’s inadequacies might have been more visible. And if Trump hadn’t engaged in a menacing, fascistic hissy-fit, Biden’s failure to score many points might have become a much bigger story — which is, perhaps, a coda to this entire campaign. With any luck, Trump’s infection will preclude any more debates, keeping the race roughly where it is. But we should be wary, I think, of assuming that Biden won this debate. If he did, it was by default.