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      ‘Morals of an alleycat’: who won the debate meme wars, Biden or Trump?

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      Winning a presidential debate is one thing, but coming out victorious in the meme wars is something else.Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump understand how important it is to go viral. According to NBC News, Biden’s campaign headquarters enlisted 18 influencers with a combined following of 8 million to post about the event, amounting to a “post-debate social media clip sharing battle”.Both contenders delivered soundbites. During Trump’s presidency, “everything was rockin’ good”, according to him. Biden hit back at Trump’s felony convictions, saying the former president “has the morals of an alleycat”.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
      Biden v Trump: 90 miserable minutes
      Who won the meme wars?
      Biden’s performance sends Democrats into panic
      Six who could replace Biden
      Trump and Biden’s claims – factchecked
      Though Biden’s voice grew stronger as the debate went on – a low bar, considering how weak he sounded at the start – it was impossible for viewers to ignore, especially as concerns about his age are a constant source of stress for Democrats this election.“I’ve watched a lot of Biden talks. I’ve never heard him sound this frail,” Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp wrote on X. “Someone has to pull a fire alarm and help Biden out here,” writer Bhaskar Sunkara added, referencing Jamaal Bowman’s infamous congressional incident.X users wondered: did the president need a cough drop? An energy drink – maybe Panera’s infamous charged lemonade? What about the “secret sauce” he posted a photo holding shortly before the debate, a canned water containing, according to the label, “zero malarky”? (Actual cans later hit the Biden campaign’s official store, costing $4.60 each.)On social media, people were obsessed with performance-enhancing drugs – and how it appeared that Biden needed to take some. “The Adderall shortage is tearing this country apart and it has finally hit Biden,” read one tweet. “They accidentally injected Biden with ketamine instead of adrenaline,” another wrote. Some fantasized about feeding Biden Adderall through the TV screen.According to CBS chief White House reporter Nancy Cordes, a “source close familiar to the president’s debate prep” confirmed he’s been “battling a cold” in the past few days.Despite CNN’s rule of turning off the candidates’ mics to deter petty arguments, Trump was able to get in one diss during a moderated rebuttal: “I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’m sure he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.”The empty-eyed, uncomfortable stare Biden kept for much of the debate got parodied online, with some saying he looked like he kept seeing ghosts, or like a dog does when it’s been caught misbehaving.Neither candidate faced rigorous, or even cursory, factchecking from the debate moderators, CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Trump spoke of “post-birth abortions”. No pushback after that. Ditto when Trump blamed Nancy Pelosi for turning down a chance to deploy the national guard on January 6. And no one spoke up when Trump called Biden a “Palestinian” as if it were a slur.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile speaking on immigration, Trump said that migrants were “taking away” “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs”. On X, users wondered what, exactly, he meant, spurring jokes and memes about searching for “Black jobs” on LinkedIn or writing a resume for a “Black job”.Biden’s official campaign TikTok account posted through the debate. Their strategy: have staffers, or friendly influencers, make videos praising his performance. In one clip, a young man shares a moment where Biden called Trump a “sucker” and a “loser”. “Biden just slammed Trump,” he claims – a bold statement, considering Biden’s overall shaky performance. People in the comments weren’t buying the TikTok, though. “Did we just watch the same debate?” one asked.Watching the two candidates bicker proved exhausting, depressing, and downright terrifying. It felt as if the entire nation – or at least people who care about debates –was sitting in front of their TV screens, preparing for the worst. One meme of Simpsons character Ralph Wiggums sitting on a bus, chuckling to himself while saying “I’m in danger” struck a chord. “All of the US right now,” read a caption to the photo posted on X.Post-debate pundits suggested that Biden performed so terribly, he should be replaced by a new candidate. Social media users echoed the sentiment, and many agreed when the rapper Ja Rule, of all people, tweeted: “This can’t be our only choice of candidates… WTF.” More

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      Calls for Biden to stand aside grow after shaky debate performance against Trump – live

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      Could there be a contested Democratic convention? How would that even work? Replacing the president may not be an option, they said, but many acknowledged Democrats are talking about it, spurred by Biden’s troubling debate performance.MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace laid out how a candidate could release their delegates. Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules.“The rules are circulating,” Wallace laughed.“No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid reiterated.The fact that a liberal network would broach the idea of whether an incumbent president running for re-election could be replaced after they’ve won the nomination shows how Democrats are scrambling after the debate to affirm Biden’s ability to lead the nation. Many are questioning whether the party should have serious conservations about what else could be done instead.David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.“The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns – and it’s both swing voters and base voters – with his age, and those were compounded tonight,” Plouffe said.Read the full story:Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit has also delivered her verdict, saying the American people were the true losers last night:Debates exist so that people can hear from the candidates, which makes sense when they’re relative unknowns. We’ve heard plenty from both of them for 40 years or so, since Biden was a young congressman and Trump was a young attention-seeker in New York City’s nightclubs and tabloids, and both of them have had the most high-profile job on earth for four years.We didn’t need this debate. Because 2024 is not like previous election years, and the reasons it’s not are both that each candidate has had plenty of time to show us who they are and because one of them is a criminal seeking to destroy democracy and human rights along with the climate, the economy and international alliances. If you are too young to remember 2017-2021, this would not help you figure that out.Much has been said about the age of the candidates, but maybe it’s the corporate media whose senility is most dangerous to us. Their insistence on proceeding as though things are pretty much what they’ve always been, on normalizing the appalling and outrageous, on using false equivalencies and bothsiderism to make themselves look fair and reasonable, on turning politics into horseraces and personality contests, is aiding the destruction of the United States.Read more from Rebecca Solnit here: The true losers of this presidential debate were the American peopleJess Bidgood, writing for the New York Times On Politics newsletter, summed it all up as “Well, that was ugly” and said the main takeaway was “mostly, they fought about each other.”She writes:
      Both Biden and Trump are deeply unpopular, and voters have for months been telling pollsters that they did not want this rematch even as they sent the candidates to the top of the ticket. Watching the debate last night, as each cast the other as the reason that he is running again, it seemed clear that the two Americans who most want this rematch were standing onstage.
      “I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself,” Trump said, adding, “The only reason I’m here is that he’s so bad as a president”. Biden portrayed Trump as a unique threat to the country, castigating him in deeply personal terms and repeatedly calling him a liar. The deep enmity on display – and the messiness of the night – may have damaged them both.
      David Smith was in Atlanta for the Guardian, and this is his sketch of what was a terrible debate night for the Biden campaign:That sickening thud you heard was jaws hitting the floor. That queasy sound you heard was hearts sinking into boots. That raspy noise you heard was a US president embodying what felt like the last gasp of the ailing republic. Say it ain’t so, Joe.The first US presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday was the night that Democrats went from “Don’t panic!” to “OK, time to panic!” After months of preparation and expectation, they got to the altar and suddenly realised they were marrying the wrong man.In 90 miserable minutes, Joe Biden achieved two things that had seemed impossible. He lived down to expectations that were already rock bottom. And he managed to make Donald Trump sound almost coherent. Trump did not win the debate but Biden certainly lost it.Democrats had been lulled into a false sense of security by Biden’s high energy performance at the State of the Union address. They expected Superman again. Instead they got Clark Kent in his dotage.Read more of David Smith’s verdict here: ‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’: 90 miserable minutes of Biden v TrumpShould Joe Biden decide not to go for reelection in November after all, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place 19-22 August, would have to nominate somebody else. There isn’t a clear frontrunner, but there would be some of the potential options.Kamala HarrisThe most obvious default pick would be Biden’s vice-president. She has been widely criticised for not carving out her own role in the Biden administration and has poor polling approval ratings, suggesting she would struggle against Donald Trump in the glare of an election campaign. The 59-year-old was backing Biden after the debate, but would also be maybe the easiest for the party to install as a replacement. She would automatically become president if Biden resigned from the White House, but that would not automatically make her the nominee.Gavin NewsomThe 56-year-old California governor was in the spin room last night talking down any alternatives to Biden being the nominee, saying it was “nonsensical speculation”. He had a primetime debate with Florida gov Ron DeSantis last year, which could be a presidential match-up of the future, and has made a point of supporting Democrats in elections away from his home state, which looked, at times, like a shadow White House campaign.J B PritzkerThe 59-year-old governor of Illinois would be one of the wealthiest of potential picks, but also can flourish the credentials of having codified the right to abortion in Illinois and declaring it a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortions. He has also been strong on gun control, and legalised recreational marijuana.Gretchen WhitmerThe Michigan governor was on the shortlist for VP pick for Biden in 2020, and a strong showing in the midterms for the Democratic party was in part put down to her governership. The 52-year-old has been in favor of stricter gun laws, repealing abortion bans and back universal pre-kindergarten.Sherrod BrownThe 71-year-old would be the most elderly of the alternate picks, but still seven years younger than Donald Trump. It was considered a surprise when he didn’t have a tilt for the Democratic nomination for 2020, at the time saying he saw remaining as Ohio’s senator as “the best place for me to make that fight” on behalf of working people. A strong voice on labor rights and protections, he has also spoken out on protections for IVF and abortion.Dean PhilipsThe main contender to Joe Biden during the primaries earlier this year has already demonstrated an inability to appeal to the broader party, and so is unlikely to be a factor.Democratic strategist Theryn Bond has told Sky News that the party needs to replace Joe Biden as presidential nominee, but that it should not be Kamala Harris as the “country is not ready” for a Black woman to be president.She said that California governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer could be candidates, explaining:
      Unfortunately as much as I want the US to be ready for Black woman to be president, they are not ready. This country is not ready. This country is too divisive, unfortunately, we’re just not there. I don’t think she would be the one to take the Democratic Party to victory.
      Joe Biden does not become the party’s nomination for president until endorsed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place 19-22 August.There is no formal mechanism to replace him as the presumptive nominee, and it would be the first time a party has attempted to do so in modern times. Effectively the only option is that he would have to agree to step aside.He won through the primaries almost uncontested, and has about 95% of the delegates who choose the nominee pledged to vote for him. There isn’t a legal requirement that they vote for who won in the primaries, but they are asked to vote in a way that “in all good conscience reflects the sentiments of those who elected them”.Were Biden to step aside as a candidate, he might try to nominate someone – most likely vice-president Kamala Harris – as his preferred alternative, which would carry some weight with delegates, but which would not be binding.The most drastic course of action open to Biden – resigning the presidency itself – would make Harris president. But that would not automatically make her the Democratic nominee for 2024.The party would still have to carry out an open, contested convention, leaving about 700 party insiders the choice of picking someone, and then having only three months to unite behind and campaign for them.And here are the top (by which I mean terrible) moments from that debate. Warning: there’s a lot of golf talk.On that note, this is Helen Sullivan, doing whatever the opposite of teeing off is on this live coverage. My colleague Martin Belam will be with you for the next while.It’s worth watching this from MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill (you’ll hear her use the word “surrogate” a lot – that is a person who speaks on behalf of a candidate, usually to promote them):Politico has this explainer for how the Democrats could replace Biden (again: this is extremely unlikely to happen – not quite as unlikely as it was before this debate):
      If Biden agreed to decline his party’s nomination, it would kick off an open and unpredictable process of picking his replacement.
      Other names — from Vice President Kamala Harris, to Govs. Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker, to numerous others — could be placed in nomination. The candidates, who could span the Democratic Party’s geographic, ideological and generational wings, would be working to sway the thousands of Democratic delegates to support them on the first ballot.
      The pledged delegates aren’t the only ones who have a say. The Democratic Party has stripped “superdelegates” — elected officials and party leaders who can vote for anyone they please — of most of their power since the contentious 2016 primary. These superdelegates would be free to vote if no candidate won a majority of delegates on the first ballot. An open, contested convention would give more than 700 party insiders a major role in picking the new nominee.
      Here is Jon Stewart on how that went:Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist-turned ardent Biden supporter, told the AP in the spin room after the debate, “That was the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates”. More

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      ‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’: 90 miserable minutes of Biden v Trump

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      That sickening thud you heard was jaws hitting the floor. That queasy sound you heard was hearts sinking into boots. That raspy noise you heard was a US president embodying what felt like the last gasp of the ailing republic.Say it ain’t so, Joe.The first US presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday was the night that Democrats went from “Don’t panic!” to “OK, time to panic!” After months of preparation and expectation, they got to the altar and suddenly realised they were marrying the wrong man.In 90 miserable minutes, Joe Biden achieved two things that had seemed impossible. He lived down to expectations that were already rock bottom. And he managed to make Donald Trump sound almost coherent. Trump did not win the debate but Biden certainly lost it.There was a suitably funereal silence as the president, wearing blue tie and flag pin, and Trump, wearing red tie and flag pin, entered CNN’s red, white and blue studio. This was the first presidential debate without an audience since John F Kennedy v Richard Nixon in 1960 (those two candidates had a combined age of 90; this time they had a combined age of 159).Journalists in Atlanta were forced to watch on TV like everyone else. But the mutual animosity and contempt between the men exuded through the screen. It was clear neither was even thinking about shaking the other’s hand.Democrats had been lulled into a false sense of security by Biden’s high energy performance at the State of the Union address. They expected Superman again. Instead they got Clark Kent in his dotage.The crisis was clear almost as soon soon as Biden opened his mouth. His voice was hoarse and hard to hear. Clear your throat, man! His team later claimed that he had a cold. Or had he over-prepared?Early on, he bumbled: “We have 1,000 trillionaires in America – I mean billionaires in America.” Then: “ … making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the – with – with – with the Covid. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with … ”His voice trailed away. “Look, if – we finally beat Medicare.”Trump pounced: “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”Trump is only three years younger, but is a creature of television. When Biden spoke, the former president, hair hovering above his head like a shiny cloud, could be seen frowning, pursing his lips or revving up for a reply. But when Trump spoke, the white-haired Biden stared into the middle distance, his mouth open, looking as feeble and frail as the democracy that now rests on his shoulders.It was a Greek tragedy because the Biden campaign pushed for this debate, the earliest in history, to “drag Trump into Americans’ living rooms” and wake them up to the threat. They set rules, including muted microphones and no studio audience, that seemed to backfire and work to his opponent’s advantage.The restrictions helped Trump stay relatively controlled and disciplined, at least by his own epically low standards. He did not constantly interrupt as he did in the first debate in 2020. He did not play to a crowd and get carried away with unhinged stories about sharks.Not that Trump should be let off the hook. This was an unwatchable debate between an old man who could not finish a sentence and an old man who could not tell the truth. It was Rip Van Winkle versus Pinocchio.Biden failed to push back on Trump’s lies. But so did CNN’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. This gave the impression of Trump’s falsehoods carrying just as much weight as Biden’s facts, especially to viewers who are just tuning in to the election. Expect Democrats to use this argument to deflect attention from their own man’s failings.More than an hour after the debate, when most people had turned off and gone to bed, CNN factchecker Daniel Dale came on air and said Biden made nine false claims while Trump made 30. Trump’s included some Democratic states wanting people to execute babies after birth; the US currently having the biggest budget deficit ever; Biden getting a lot of money from China; no terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency; Biden wanting to quadruple taxes; the US providing way more aid to Ukraine than Europe; Nancy Pelosi turning down Trump’s offer of 10,000 national guard troops on January 6; “ridiculous fraud” in the 2020 election; Nato going out of business before he became president; Biden indicting him; his tax cut being the biggest in history.First impressions – and viral clips – are everything, so voters will forget that, as the debate wore on, Biden gradually became stronger on style and substance. He went for Trump’s character: “The only person on this stage who is a convicted felon is this man I’m looking at right now.”Angry and glowering, Biden insisted: “My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker, you’re the loser.”And again: “How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night – and while your wife was pregnant? I mean, what are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat.”Trump shot back: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one.” An immortal line, never before uttered in a presidential debate. Carve it in marble!Biden and Trump debated which of them is the worst president in history. And which is the better golfer. Trump boasted: “I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. And I do it. He doesn’t do it. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match. He can’t hit a ball 50 years.”Biden retorted: “Look, I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice-president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?”Trump: “That’s the biggest lie that he’s a six handicap, of all.”Biden: “I was eight handicap.”Trump: “Yeah.”Biden: “Eight, but I have – you know how many … ”Trump: “I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.””As Bash tried to interject, Trump said: “Let’s not act like children.” Biden shot back: “You are a child.”Tellingly, once the horror show was over, it was Trump’s surrogates who flooded the “spin zone” at the media centre. Standing on a bright red carpet on what is normally a basketball court, former housing secretary Ben Carson said of Biden: “I really felt sorry for him. He struggled to come up with answers. He was trying to remember the things that they’d told him.”Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said: “I think President Trump was strong and coherent and I think President Biden was weak and confused most most of the time. What started out as a policy debate is turned into a capability debate … It’s pretty hard to believe that President Biden can continue in this job.”After a while, Biden’s surrogates emerged, including California governor Gavin Newsom and his beaming smile. It is still highly, highly unlikely he will be the Democratic nominee in November. But a little less unlikely than it used to be. More

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      The true losers of this presidential debate were the American people | Rebecca Solnit

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      The American people lost the debate last night, and it was more painful than usual to watch the parade of platitudes and evasions that worked in the debate format run by CNN. The network’s glossy pundit-moderators started by ignoring the elephants in the room – that one of the two men standing at the podiums was a convicted felon, the leader of a coup attempt, an alleged thief of national security documents who was earlier this year found liable in a civil court for rape, and has promised to usher in a vengeful authoritarian regime if he returns to office.Instead they launched the debate with the dead horse they love to beat in election years, the deficit and taxes. Throughout the excruciating evening, Joe Biden in a hoarse voice said diligent things that were reasonably true and definitely sincere; Donald Trump in a booming voice said lurid things that were flamboyantly untrue. The grim spectacle was a reminder that this is a style over substance game.Debates are a rite in which not truth but showmanship wins the day, and in which participants get judged as though it was a sporting event – which it pretty much is, in high school and college debate events. Before 2016, presidential debates were relatively decorous events in which the participants slammed each other, but more or less within the parameters of the true and the real with maybe a little distortion and exaggeration.Then came Trump. You cannot win a debate with a shameless liar, because what you’re supposed to be debating are facts and positions. A lie is a kind of poison; once it’s in the room it makes an impression that is hard to undo, and trying to undo it only amplifies it.Trump’s positions on anything and everything shift and slide at will, and he lies about his own past with pathological confidence – in this debate he both denied that he had sex with Stormy Daniels and that he praised the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville in 2017. More substantively he lied – unchallenged, except by Biden – about his role in the January 6 coup attempt, and the CNN pundits did not trouble him further about his crimes. Trump talked about whatever he wanted – asked about the opiates crisis, he reverted to the lurid stories about sex crimes and open borders that obsess him and inflame his followers.Most outrageous of all, and of course utterly unchecked, was one of the outrageous falsehoods Trump has been pushing for years – the claim that abortion continues on into infanticide, that doctors and new mothers are murdering babies at birth. That one candidate has long supported reproductive rights and the other has led the attack on them was not something you would learn from this debate.Debates exist so that people can hear from the candidates, which makes sense when they’re relative unknowns. We’ve heard plenty from both of them for 40 years or so, since Biden was a young congressman and Trump was a young attention-seeker in New York City’s nightclubs and tabloids, and both of them have had the most high-profile job on earth for four years.We didn’t need this debate. Because 2024 is not like previous election years, and the reasons it’s not are both that each candidate has had plenty of time to show us who they are and because one of them is a criminal seeking to destroy democracy and human rights along with the climate, the economy and international alliances. If you are too young to remember 2017-2021, this would not help you figure that out.As political journalist John Nichols put it, “CNN is illustrating how a ‘debate’ where the moderators reject the basic responsibility of fact-checking in real time, and refuse to challenge blatantly false statements, is not a debate. It’s a chaos where lies are given equal footing with the truth.”Much has been said about the age of the candidates, but maybe it’s the corporate media whose senility is most dangerous to us. Their insistence on proceeding as though things are pretty much what they’ve always been, on normalizing the appalling and outrageous, on using false equivalencies and bothsiderism to make themselves look fair and reasonable, on turning politics into horseraces and personality contests, is aiding the destruction of the United States.The major American newspapers have been unable or unwilling to convey to the voting public that the fate of the country and its constitution are at stake, that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a game plan for authoritarian rule and the loss of long-protected rights for many kinds of Americans.Trump dodged a mild question about taking action on climate change, and though moderator Dana Bash brought him back to the subject he then just boasted about how under his reign we had “the cleanest” air and water, on the very day that the US supreme court justices he appointed savaged yet another piece of environmental protection. The highly-paid pundits could have asked him about his recent promise to leaders of the oil and gas industry that he’d serve their interests if they donated $1bn to his campaign.Because it’s not just the fate of the US but of life on earth that’s at stake in this election; in 2016, the US undermined global cooperation on climate by electing Trump, who withdrew us from the Paris climate treaty, installed Exxon’s longtime CEO as his first secretary of state, and went to war against environmental protections. Biden has a flawed record but many huge achievements on climate – plus less huge ones too many and complex to bring up in a debate format.But the hacks running the debate were no more interested in substance or the fate of the country or the earth than Trump. They were putting on a show, and they were putting it on as though we still lived in a world that no longer exists. By so doing they further endangered the world in which we do exist.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      ‘Defcon 1 moment’: Biden’s debate performance sends Democrats into panic

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      Democratic operatives and officials have reacted with panic and dismay after Joe Biden’s stumbling performance in the presidential debate refocused attention on his age and sharpness.David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.“The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns – and it’s both swing voters and base voters – with his age, and those were compounded tonight,” Plouffe said.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, appeared on CNN and MSNBC after to reiterate the reasons voters should side with Biden, but even she acknowledged his poor performance. “It was a slow start, there’s no question about that, but I thought it was a strong finish,” the vice-president said.Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, said she loves Biden and knows he’s a good man, but the evening was “heartbreaking in many ways”.“This is a big political moment. There’s panic in the Democratic party. It’s going to be a long night.”Nicholas Kristof, the leftwing political columnist, said on social media that he hopes Biden reflects on the debate and decides to withdraw from the race, letting the convention decide who should be the nominee. He suggested someone like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio senator Sherrod Brown or commerce secretary Gina Raimondo.Former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that Biden had one job, and he didn’t do it: He needed to “reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed”. Democrats are doing more than hand-wringing in private and wondering why the Biden surrogates, who were performing well to counter the Biden debate performance, aren’t the ones at the top of the ticket, she said.“I know how this felt tonight: it felt like a gut punch,” McCaskill said.Cable commentators were left wondering whether there be a contested Democratic convention if so, how Biden might be replaced – an option some say is not possible even while others are talking about little else.On the liberal network MSNBC, anchor Nicole Wallace laid out how a candidate could release their delegates, while fellow journalist Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules for doing so.“No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid said, but added that the atmosphere among Democrats was “approaching panic” .From the start, Biden faltered in the debate, the first of the 2024 presidential election. He was hard to hear, mumbling and muffling his lines, some of which – were they delivered with the intended force – could have landed successfully. He said Donald Trump has “the morals of an alley cat”, but even that one-liner was difficult to discern.Biden had challenged the former president to a debate, set earlier than normal, to shift the momentum of the race. He had delivered a strong State of the Union speech in which he appeared sharp and energetic, and his campaign appeared to calculate that a debate could give his approval ratings some lift at a time when he is polling behind Trump.Instead of a victory march, or even the more common volleying over who claims to have won the debate, it was clear that Democrats saw Biden’s performance as a liability.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth Harris and Gavin Newsom, the California governor and Biden surrogate, appeared on various TV networks later in the evening to talk about how Trump lied and deflected throughout the debate – and sought to remind voters what a Trump presidency was like and could be again.“It was a slow start, there’s no question about that, but I thought it was a strong finish,” the vice-president said on MSNBC before launching into a list of Biden’s accomplishments, saying Biden fights for the people while Trump fights for himself.Newsom, on MSNBC, called the questions “unhelpful” and “unnecessary”. The conversations are “rabbit holes” that detract from Biden’s record and hinder democracy and the country’s fate.“We’ve got to have the back of this president,” Newsom said. “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”Some Democrats laid out ways the Biden camp could turn the moment back toward him and get his performance out of voters’ minds: send out his surrogates to support him, put strong speakers like Harris or Newsom on the morning shows, or announce an initiative or endorsement or big idea in order to change the narrative. More

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      Even factchecking Trump’s constant lies probably wouldn’t have rescued Biden | Margaret Sullivan

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      From the moment the candidates walked out on to the stage in Atlanta, it was obvious that this debate was a big mistake for Joe Biden. By the end, it was a train wreck for his campaign.The incumbent president, who desperately needed to show vitality, looked from the start like an old man. His gait was stiff and his voice tentative. His energy was markedly different from his triumphant State of the Union address just a few months ago.Donald Trump had a thuggish look, but he seemed vigorous and energetic. He seemed … the same.Then the barrage of lies started, as they always do with Trump.Among them: Democrats favor post-birth executions. The former president never slept with a porn star. The 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Trump never called prisoners of war losers and suckers. Biden would quadruple people’s taxes.On and on and on, in nearly every Trump sentence. Biden had occasional moments, too, of exaggeration or misstatement. But there is no comparison.No comparison – and no fact-checking by the moderators.That was the policy going in. CNN’s political director, David Chalian, made that clear a few days ago when he said that debate moderators shouldn’t make themselves into participants but remain mere facilitators. There would be no live factchecks during the debate.And so, Trump rolled over Biden, landing punch after punch. Not with logic. And certainly not with truth. But with force of personality, and sheer chutzpah.The damage was obvious to everyone, even Biden loyalists who started off upset and ended up in a panic.Biden “had a test to meet tonight … and he failed to do that”, said CNN’s Van Jones, a former Obama administration adviser, after sadly attesting that he loves Biden and thinks he’s a great person.How much of it was a result of the lack of factchecks and early questions that seemed to play to Trump’s strengths?Plenty, but not everything.“You don’t let a proven propagandist on stage without stopping him when he lies. Instant refutation is key,” observed Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian “strongmen” and their techniques to gain power.Biden, for the most part, tried to counter with facts. But he often delivered them tepidly or hesitantly. At times, he seemed to lose his train of thought.When he did get fired up, some of his lines came off like rehearsed insults. True as it might be, Biden’s diss that Trump has “the morals of an alleycat” was not dreamed up spontaneously.I can’t imagine that most people lasted more than about 30 minutes in front of their screens. (Thirty minutes, by the way, in which there was little mention of Trump’s 34 felony convictions or of Trump trying to overturn the 2020 election.)It was that painful.One progressive friend texted me early on that she couldn’t take the punishment any more, and would need to turn off the TV to protect her wellbeing. “I’m out. My body was making it painfully clear, in every sense, that I can’t handle this.”Before the debate started, the news outlet Axios – which specializes in brevity – summed up what needed to happen for each candidate to win this debate.Biden would need to “cast his [Republican] rival as a fundamental threat to the nation, who as president would bring instability and chaos”. Trump would need to argue that “the country has gotten more expensive and dangerous under Biden”.But the more fundamental test was this: would Biden seem vigorous enough to lead for four more years? Would Trump seem truly unhinged?Biden did not seem vigorous enough. And Trump? He seemed in control of himself, not deranged as he sometimes appears in his rallies. There were no flights of fancy about sharks and electrocution.I thought this debate might go badly for Biden. I didn’t think I’d be hearing immediate calls for him to step aside – even coming from those who have been stalwartly supporting him.Would Biden have benefited if CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash had been encouraged to challenge and refute Trump’s lies, and did so immediately?Yes, but it’s hard to say how much. It might have slowed Trump’s juggernaut. I don’t think it would have made Biden look any more potent.As for where the Democrats go from here, it’s hard to say. If Biden truly wants to continue his campaign, and it seems he does, they’ll just stumble on.If so, it’s going to take many weeks – and maybe a miracle – to recover from this disastrous night.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More