Tag: debates

In Last Night’s Biden-Trump Debate, America Lost

W.J. Astore

Two Angry Old Men Tell Us Much About America

Last night’s political debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was a sad spectacle. Clearly, Biden performed poorly. Trump, I suppose, was Trump. The CNN post-debate commentators were universal in saying the Democratic Party is panicking after Biden’s appearance and performance, almost as if they were reading from the same script. It’s finally OK in the mainstream media to state what’s been obvious for years: that Biden is simply too old and infirm to serve as president for another four years. Look for Biden to be replaced as the Democratic candidate, though how gracefully remains to be seen.

Neither candidate did well in last night’s debate

Biden started poorly and never fully recovered. He walked out haltingly. His voice was raspy. He was arguably over-prepared, talking too fast, spouting too much detail, looking confused. A low point came when he lost his train of thought and then concluded by saying “We finally beat Medicare.” Trump pounced. If this had been a fight, the referee would have stopped it then and there.

There’s a catchphrase from a Clint Eastwood movie that “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Biden doesn’t know them, not anymore, and the people around him are doing him a grave disservice in continuing to push him forwards, in continuing to prop him up. It’s time for Biden to retire, to be a one-term president, which was initially the plan when he ran and won in 2020.

After the debate, Trump walked grumpily off the stage. Biden stood there, seemingly at a loss, until Jill Biden came and guided him carefully down a few steps to greet the moderators.

The debate itself was a charisma-free zone. Both men spent most of their time bashing the other. It was a house of frowns. As I watched and took notes, I wrote this: Biden and Trump trade insults while America burns.

In a rare burst of pseudo-agreement, Trump and Biden both said their opponent was the worst president in U.S. history. Both also had surprisingly weak and inept closing statements.

That being said, Biden and Trump did offer a sharp contrast. Biden continues to assert America is the envy of the world, the best country bar none, with the finest military in all of human history. For Trump, America is a failing state, a “sick” country, akin to a “rat’s nest,” overrun with illegal immigrants.

Turning to foreign affairs, both men eagerly supported Israel, with Trump going the extra mile in saying he wants Israel to finish the job in Gaza, the job being genocide of the Palestinians there. Interestingly, Dana Bash, the CNN moderator, said only that Israel’s massive offensive in Gaza had killed “thousands” of Palestinians. She, of course, said nothing of ethnic cleansing or genocide, and neither did the candidates. Pro-Palestinian protests went unmentioned.

“We’re a seriously failing nation,” Trump said, and he’s right about that. The problem is that Biden is too old to run again and Trump remains temperamentally unfit to serve as a public servant at any level. Both men toward the end got into an argument about their respective golf handicaps. It was really that bad—and that out of touch with the needs and concerns of workers and families across America.

The Democratic Debates, Part 8: Live Free or Die

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W.J. Astore

Last night, seven candidates took the stage in New Hampshire to joust before next Tuesday’s primary (where hopefully the votes will be counted quickly and accurately, unlike in Iowa).  Showing my usual streak of political masochism, I watched the entire debate; after tossing and turning in the night, here’s my take on how the candidates performed.

Joe Biden: Biden seems to be fading fast.  He came in fourth in Iowa and is slipping in the New Hampshire polls.  In this debate, he came across as angry but unfocused.  He has a “Get off my lawn!” vibe.  Biden’s never done well as a candidate for the presidency (see 1988 and plagiarism), and this time is no different.

Mayor Pete: Buttigieg talks a lot but says very little.  To me, he panders to the audience while simultaneously being disingenuous.  (I was waiting for someone to ask, “Where’s the beef?” when he stopped gabbing.)  For a politician, these are marketable skills, but Democrats are going to need a lot more than this to defeat Trump.

Amy Klobuchar: She had a very good night.  Especially strong was her closing statement.  But another way of putting this is that she was well coached and well prepared.  Perhaps she’ll pull moderate votes from Mayor Pete, which would only be a good thing.

Bernie Sanders: Always passionate, always on message, Bernie had a solid night.  But Bernie’s personal warmth doesn’t translate well in these debates.

Tom Steyer: Steyer had a good night as well, positioning himself for future contests in Nevada and South Carolina.  I’m warming to Steyer because I think he’ll take votes from Mike Bloomberg.

Elizabeth Warren: The more you listen to Warren, the more you realize “I have a plan for that” is not a compelling answer.  Warren has a habit of starting her replies with, “So, look …”  She proceeds to lecture the audience with a “smartest person in the room” vibe.  Lord knows we need competence in the White House, but I don’t think she’s connecting well enough with voters.

Andrew Yang: It was great to see Yang back on stage, since he tackles questions from a different angle than his rivals.  Still, he didn’t get much time to speak, and it’s hard to see him staying in the race for much longer.

Who wasn’t on the stage?

Mike Bloomberg: The $60 billion dollar man, Bloomberg is testing whether the presidency can be bought.  You’ve heard of the golden rule, as in he who has the money makes the rules, so who knows?

Tulsi Gabbard: Tulsi is staking everything on New Hampshire, where she’s held more town halls than any other candidate.  Will her ground game pay dividends?  Due to the high number of registered independents in NH, she has a chance to make an impression.

Final Comment

As usual, questions from the mainstream media, in this case ABC News, were framed to put progressives on the defensive.  Of course, no questions were asked about runaway military budgets, the widening gap between the richest Americans and everyone else, stagnant wages and personal bankruptcies, gun deaths and mass shootings, or climate change.  Even racial issues were ignored until the last third of the debate.  As ever, consent was manufactured by keeping topics and answers within narrow boundaries approved by the establishment.  And so it goes …

Post-Debate: Trump the Undisciplined

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Congratulations, Hillary!

W.J. Astore

Last night’s debate made for grim watching.  I’m a fan of neither candidate, but Hillary performed far better than Trump.  She kept her poise, she smiled, she stayed on her talking points.  She was, in a word, disciplined.  Measured.  And smart.  She admitted she was wrong about the emails, apologized, and moved on.  She projected calm.  Not surprisingly, she was well prepared and knew her stuff.

Trump was the total opposite: ill-prepared, mugging and pulling faces for the camera, angry and unsmiling, wandering from his talking points, often losing himself.  He was, in a word, undisciplined.  And Trump never admits he’s wrong, whether about the Iraq war or the birther issue or his tax returns or what have you.  Instead of calm, Trump projected anger.  Despite running for president for more than a year, he seemed ill-prepared and not in command of the narrative.

Whether any of this matters in the long run remains to be seen.  But what surprised me the most about Trump was the lack of a positive message.  Where was Reagan’s sunny optimism? Where was George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism?  Where was the hope?  Trump just seemed angry: angry at Mexicans, angry at the Chinese, angry at corporations for taking American jobs overseas, angry at Hillary for her negative ads.  (I guess “Crooked Hillary” doesn’t count as negativity.)

Can you win a presidential campaign when your primary appeal is an angry one?  Anger that is often directed at various minority groups as well as your opponent?  I suppose we’ll find out, come this November.

Trump sniffled a lot and was perhaps suffering from a cold.  As the debate dragged on, he lost steam and grew increasingly incoherent.  You could see Hillary’s confidence grow. She’s not the best debater; she has a tendency to lecture, to drone on, to lose the attention of the audience. But his dismal performance overshadowed her occasional forays into the weeds of wonkishness.

Trump, in sum, emerged the loser, and for a self-professed “winner” like Trump, that is indeed a bitter pill to swallow.

The Republican Debate of Texas

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Let the insults fly (Rubio and Trump)

W.J. Astore

Last night’s Republican Presidential Debate in Texas would dismay almost anyone interested in debates or politics.  Insults flew.  Boasts filled the air. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio postured about which could be meaner toward “illegals” (undocumented workers).  There was more talk of border walls, of higher defense spending, of cutting taxes, of eliminating Obamacare, of reanimating Antonin Scalia and restoring him to the Supreme Court (think of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” but retitled as “SCOTUS Sematary”) — OK, that last one I made up, but if they could, they would.

I took a high school course on “debate and discussion,” and later as a professor I graded my students on debates.  Remember rules like staying on subject?  On following the rules? On keeping to the time allotted, on being civil to your opponent, on sticking to facts, on relying on evidence?  If you don’t recall those criteria, join the club of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.

Almost any objective observer of the debate would score a win for John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.  He was clear, passionate, and stuck mainly to the subject.  He stressed his executive and governmental experience, spoke in complete sentences, and avoided insults and sound bites.  I don’t agree with much of what Kasich advocates, but he has the temperament and qualifications to make him a sound choice for the presidency.

Trump, of course, plays up his business acumen as preparing him for the presidency, and his argument against bickering politicians like Cruz and Rubio is compelling.  But let’s face it: watch the debates for just a few minutes and you realize Trump is a bully whose main attribute is bombastic self-confidence. By temperament he is unsuited to be president. The grim reality is that Republicans appear to have no answer to him.

This is partly because the debates are about issues only in passing.  They’re mainly about show, and “The Donald” knows how to put on a show.  As Cruz and Rubio split the vote, and Kasich and Carson slowly fade, Trump tightens his grip on the delegate total needed to grab the Republican nomination.

The amazing thing is this: It’s now quite conceivable that come January 2017, we will see Donald Trump inaugurated as president.

The Republican Alternate Universe of Paranoia

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Paranoia will destroy ya

W.J. Astore

I watched last night’s Republican debate so you wouldn’t have to.  Leaving aside the usual mugging by Donald Trump, the usual jousting over side issues like whether Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, I thought I’d take an impressionistic approach to the debate.  You can read the debate transcript here (if you dare), but here is my admittedly personal take on the main messages of the debate.

  1. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are coming to take your guns. So you need to elect a Republican who will allow you to keep your guns and to buy many, many more guns while carrying them openly in public.
  2. Related to (1), ISIS is coming to these shores. In fact, they’re already here.  That’s one big reason why everyone needs guns – to protect ourselves from ISIS and other terrorists out to kill Americans on Main Street USA.
  3. America is weak. Obama has gutted our military.  The Iranians and Russians laugh at us.  To stop them from laughing, America needs to rebuild its military, buy more weapons, and use them freely.  In fact, all the next commander-in-chief needs to do is ask military leaders what they need to win, give them exactly that, then stand back as our military (especially Special Ops troops) kicks ass.  Victory!
  4. America is weak (again), this time economically. The Chinese are kicking our ass.  They’re tougher than us and smarter than us.  We need to teach them who’s boss, perhaps with a big tariff on Chinese imports, combined with intense pressure on them to revalue their currency.
  5. The American tax system is unfair to corporations. We need to lower corporate tax rates so that American companies won’t relocate, and also so that American businesses will be more competitive vis-à-vis foreign competitors.
  6. The most oppressed “minority” in the U.S. are not Blacks or Hispanics or the poor: it’s the police. Yes, the police.  They are mistreated and disrespected.  Americans need to recognize the police are there to protect them and to defer to them accordingly.
  7. The only amendment worth citing in the U.S. Constitution is the Second Amendment.
  8. The National Security Agency, along with all the other intelligence agencies in America, need to be given more power, not less. They need broad and sweeping surveillance powers to keep America safe.  Privacy issues and the Fourth Amendment can be ignored.  People like Edward Snowden are traitors. “Safety” is everything.
  9. Bernie Sanders is a joke. Hillary Clinton just might be the anti-Christ.
  10. Immigrants are a threat, especially if they’re Muslim. They must be kept out of America so that they don’t steal American jobs and/or kill us all.

What I didn’t hear: Anything about the poor, or true minorities, or gender inequities, or the dangers of more war, and so on.

My main takeaway from this debate: Republican candidates live in the United States of Paranoia, a hostile land in which fear rules.  Think “Mad Max, Fury Road,” but without any tough females about.  (I have to admit I missed Carly Fiorina/Imperator Furiosa on the main stage.)

Only one candidate struck a few tentative notes of accord through bipartisan collaboration and compromise: Ohio governor John Kasich.  In his closing statement, he spoke eloquently of his parents’ working-class background.  He’s also the only candidate with the guts not to wear the by-now obligatory flag lapel pin.  I’m not a Republican, but if I had to vote for one, it would be him.  Why?  Because he’s the least batshit crazy of the bunch.

Yes, it was a depressing night, one spent in an alternate universe detached from reality.  In the end, old song lyrics popped into my head: “paranoia will destroy ya.”  Yes, yes it will, America.