PuroPeriodismo/BBC Mundo
Antes de la noche de este jueves, muchos estadounidenses habían expresado su preocupación por la edad de Joe Biden y su idoneidad para el cargo. Decir que este debate no disipó esas preocupaciones es decir poco.
El presidente, quien tiene 81 años, llegó al debate con el listón muy bajo y tropezó. Estuvo plano. Divagó. No fue claro.
Hacia la mitad del debate, la campaña de Biden les dijo a los periodistas que el presidente estaba resfriado, en un intento de explicar su voz ronca. Puede que así fuera, pero también sonó como una excusa.
Durante 90 minutos, Joe Biden estuvo contra las cuerdas. Sobre todo al principio de la noche, algunas de sus respuestas no tenían sentido. Terminó una respuesta diciendo: “Por fin hemos vencido a Medicare”, una extraña referencia al programa de asistencia en salud para ancianos administrado por el gobierno.
PuroPeriodismo/BBC Mundo
Especial PuroPeriodismo
There is no sugarcoating Biden’s bad night
Dan Rather and Team Steady
I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened last night in Atlanta. According to texts and emails from friends and colleagues, many didn’t sleep well after the so-called “debate.” That’s understandable. Let’s hope you can catch up over the weekend. Folks, I’m not here to pump sunshine, but this is not the end of the race. A poor debate performance doesn’t seal a candidate’s fate. Barack Obama lost big to Mitt Romney in their first debate. Yes, Joe Biden had a really terrible, very bad night. Some are calling it the worst debate in our history. But please don’t seek out the nearest ledge. We all need to take a deep breath and hold steady. The next four months will see many ups and downs. I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunrise. The Republic is still standing. And Joe Biden is on the ticket.
Will he remain there? If you read editorial and opinion writers, many believe the president should pack it in ASAP. “Joe Biden … must bow out of the race,” according to an editorial in The New York Times. The Washington Post called it “90 minutes of pain” and ran its analysis with a photo of a woman clasping her hands in front of her face in disbelief.
There is dissension among Democrats who are rightfully panicking about Biden’s performance. A dip into social media reveals any number of potential Democratic tickets for November that don’t include President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
Per Politico, the movement to convince Biden not to run is real, according to a Democratic member of the House. But “real” is a thousand miles and three letters from reality.
At a campaign stop in North Carolina today, Biden acknowledged his poor performance. A decidedly more energetic president told supporters, “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easy 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. I know how to get things done. And I know like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.”
Let’s hope he rallies quickly, because the alternative is no alternative. In this writer’s opinion, Trump should never have been allowed to share that stage last night. The man who tried to overthrow the last presidential election should have no role in this one. And if not for some dubious delays by federal courts, he might already be behind bars. The presumptive Republican nominee, who is now a convicted felon and will be sentenced in less than two weeks, is not fit to lead this nation. He is a serial liar and a gaslighter, which he amply demonstrated again on Thursday night. It took a CNN fact checker more than three minutes just to list all the lies he told.
Joe Biden is a good and decent man. But in last night’s joint appearance, he was bullied and lost badly. Giving up power is so difficult to do. The president, his staff, and his supporters cling to the idea that a good and decent man can beat a convicted felon at the polls.
What do party leaders think of this mess? The kingmakers have so far been silent. But the debate will be the elephant in the room when President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries headline a fundraiser in New York tonight. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.
For all the pre-debate hype, the ratings were actually down dramatically from the first Biden-Trump debate in 2020, 73 million vs. 48 million. If there is one small nugget of good news, it’s that the debate was so early in the campaign cycle, many voters just aren’t tuned in yet.