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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

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      Trump v Biden in the first 2024 presidential debate: our panelists’ verdict | Panelists

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      Moustafa Bayoumi: ‘The Democrats must select someone other than Biden as their candidate’What a catastrophe. From the moment the debate started, Joe Biden was meandering, confused and charmless. It never improved. Donald Trump, however, was relatively restrained, at least for Trump. Of course, he resorted to lies, insults and exaggerations throughout the 90 minutes. By citing things called “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” and by calling Biden a “bad Palestinian”, Trump managed to hit all his usual racist notes.Yet the whole thing was simply painful to watch, mostly because it was useless on any practical level. This much ballyhooed confrontation between two political foes for the most important office in the world turned out to be featherlight on substance, policy, interest, intellect, imagination, vision, energy, ideas, humor and hope. It was heavy on one thing (besides cringe), though: ego.The presidency should not simply be a vanity project, but that’s exactly what it has become. Biden’s performance was so far below acceptable that the Democratic party should be ashamed of itself for allowing him to stand for re-election. With tonight’s performance as evidence, the Democrats will almost certainly lose. Trump’s narcissism is notorious, and it too has destroyed the Republican party from within. The stakes are much too high to allow the inflated egos of these two men to determine the fates of millions of people here and around the world. If the Democrats truly believe that democracy is on the line during this election, they must select someone other than Biden as their candidate. There’s still time.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
      Jill Filipovic: ‘Neither man came off looking good’Well, that was a disaster.The debate was an unmitigated calamity, especially for Biden. The president was often hard to follow and at times incoherent; he struggled to answer questions that should have been easy gimmes on issues favorable to Democrats. It would be nice if substance mattered more than style, because the substance of Biden’s remarks were important, and promised a more prosperous, secure and free future for Americans than Trump’s. But his delivery made it extremely difficult for even the most plugged-in politics addicts to follow, let alone your average viewer at home.For Trump’s part, what he didn’t say was more telling than what he did. He was unwilling or unable to answer questions on how he would help families with childcare, the costs of which are a drag not only on family budgets, but on the US economy. He was unwilling or unable to answer questions about opioids and the US’s addiction crisis. And, perhaps most importantly, he refused to clearly answer a thrice-asked question about whether he would accept the results of the election – saying only that he would do so if such an election were fair, and then claimed the 2020 one wasn’t. In other words, Trump will accept the results of the election only if he wins – and contest it if he doesn’t.That’s remarkably dangerous. And his wholesale lack of interest in the issues that matter most to American families is remarkably negligent. But unfortunately, his would-be foil – Biden – proved simply unable to take on even a truly terrible opponent. Neither man came off looking good. But if Americans are counting on Biden to save us, we might want to start making a Plan B.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
      Lloyd Green: ‘Biden looked lost’Joe Biden’s age and acuity took center stage. He looked lost, and the Democrats are almost certainly panicking. At times, the president could barely stitch two coherent sentences together. Donald Trump won the evening, and it wasn’t even close.Trump took command from the outset. He appeared energized and engaged. What Trump said mattered less than how he said it; he forcefully responded to whatever question was posed. He repeatedly mocked, taunted and bludgeoned Biden. If this were a boxing match, the referee would have stopped the match in the third round.Despite Biden’s efforts to nail Trump on his own record as president, Trump was mostly unbowed. He seemingly stood by his picks to the supreme court and the end of Roe v Wade. At one point Trump seemingly mouthed the words “let’s not act like children,” which may be the evening’s most memorable line. He also got away with calling Biden “the Manchurian candidate”.Trump lied aplenty. He acted as if he never had said there were “good people” on both sides in Charlottesville, and pretended that he hadn’t dissed America’s war dead. But little of that may matter come November. Americans want a president who exudes vigor. And Biden isn’t that.The debate will supply Trump with a wealth of material for campaign ads. It may be time for an open convention. August could be interesting.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      Arwa Mahdawi: ‘This was not a debate so much as a farce’My expectations for this debate weren’t just low, they were dungeon-in-hell levels of low. I still wasn’t prepared for how shocking it would actually be. Trump lied unashamedly, Biden waffled incoherently, and the moderators just said “thank you” a lot and moved on. This was not a “debate” so much as a farce.If Biden’s team thought this debate would assuage worries about the president’s age and competence, their plans spectacularly backfired. For the first half of the debate, Biden looked dazed and could barely get his words out. He noticeably improved towards the end; still, this was not a man who instills confidence. Trump blustered and lied and dog-whistled his way through the night, but if you were going on optics alone the convicted felon had the upper hand.For those of us distraught by Gaza, tonight was a gut-wrenching reminder that neither candidate gives a damn about Palestinian lives. Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur and Biden, meanwhile, reiterated his support for Israel no matter how many Palestinian kids are killed. Neither candidate answered the question of whether they support a Palestinian state and the moderators didn’t press them on it.Responses to questions about abortion were also bleak. Trump advanced inflammatory misinformation about late-term abortion and Biden didn’t seem interested in talking about abortion in detail – he didn’t even mention it in his closing statements. He seemed a lot more interested in talking about golf. Indeed, the only part of the night when both men seemed to really come alive was when they got into a fight about their golf handicaps.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead
      Osita Nwanevu: ‘Democracy is at stake. Biden failed to make that point’Half an hour into the worst presidential debate of all time, Jake Tapper finally put a question to the candidates about “the issue of democracy”. As president, Tapper said, Trump had sworn an oath to the constitution that many voters believe he violated by instigating the riot on January 6. What would he say to those voters?“Well, I don’t think too many believe that,” Trump sniffed. “And let me tell you about January 6th. On January 6th, we had a great border. Nobody coming through. Very few. On January 6th, we were energy independent. On January 6th, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever … We were respected all over the world.” He was asked again and babbled about Nancy Pelosi’s daughter instead.This was Biden’s golden opportunity. Because as stubbornly pessimistic as Americans might be about the economy or Biden’s age, Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election illustrate that democracy itself is at stake. It’s a simple, clear and potent message. Biden failed to deliver it effectively. “He talked about these people being great patriots of America,” Biden rasped. “In fact, he says he’ll now forgive them for what they’ve done. He’ll … and they’ve been convicted. He says he wants to commute their sentences … and say that … that no, he went to every single court in the nation, I don’t know how many cases, scores of cases, including the supreme court. And they said, they said: ‘No, no, this guy, this guy is responsible for doing what is being that was done.’”It is generally the case that the substance of the issues discussed in presidential debates matter far less than a few one-liners and soundbites that might travel well. That will be especially true of this debacle ⁠– a joust between an inveterate liar and a man who couldn’t manage to deliver more than garbled responses even on what his campaign would like journalists to believe is his best topic.Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that Biden’s capacities will improve by November. Although he does sometimes have a command of facts and figures, Biden has lost his ability to communicate effectively ⁠– not something one wants in a political candidate or, for that matter, a president.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump-Biden debate likely amplified Americans’ dismay about the election

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump both walked into the presidential debate on Thursday hoping to sway the so-called “double haters”, those voters who disapprove of both candidates and could play a decisive role in the outcome of the election.In the end, those voters probably walked away from the debate with a more visceral understanding of why they hate their options.Trump spent the night spouting lies about immigration, abortion and foreign policy while deflecting moderators’ questions on the climate crisis and election denialism. But Biden largely failed to capitalize on Trump’s vulnerabilities and struggled to offer concise and coherent answers.Biden’s gravelly voice became such a distraction that the White House had to clarify that he was suffering from a cold. When asked early in the debate about tackling the national debt, Biden offered a rambling answer in which he stumbled through his words before concluding, “Look: we finally beat Medicare.”The bizarre slip of the tongue caught the attention of Trump, who retorted: “He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare.”Trump then pivoted to the subject of immigration, a tactic that he deployed repeatedly throughout the night. Trump’s successful rebuttal may have obscured the fact that his claim about Biden “destroying Medicare” is false; the president has actually taken steps to expand Medicare benefits, including lowering enrollees’ prescription drug costs.That dynamic played out over and over again on Thursday. Biden’s attempts to call out Trump’s endless stream of lies often missed the mark because of his uneven delivery, while CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to the network’s previously stated plan of not fact-checking the candidates in real time.Biden may have been at his strongest when he was discussing foreign policy, as he defended his robust support for Ukraine and mocked Trump’s claims that he would have the war resolved before his inauguration.“[Vladimir Putin] wants all of Ukraine. That’s what he wants,” Biden said. “And then you think he’ll stop there? You think you’ll stop when he takes Ukraine? What do you think happens to Poland?”But perhaps Trump’s greatest vulnerability – his recent felony conviction in New York – went unmentioned for the first half of the debate. Trump tried to deflect attention from his legal battles and ]threats of political retribution by referencing Hunter Biden’s recent conviction, and he oddly suggested that Biden “could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office”.Biden replied by listing off some of the many criminal charges and civil penalties that Trump faces, including damages for his sexual abuse and defamation of E Jean Carroll. Referencing Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels, Biden delivered the zinger: “You have the morals of an alleycat.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a historic first for a presidential debate, Trump then uttered the words: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one.”The comment was one of several that stirred up memories of Trump’s chaotic first term, along with his reference to the “peaceful and patriotic” Americans who attacked the US Capitol on January 6. When pressed by Bash on whether he would accept the results of this election regardless of the outcome, Trump offered a halfhearted response : “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”The debate culminated in Biden and Trump bickering over their golf skills, an appropriate end to a disappointing spectacle that probably amplified many Americans’ dismay about the election.According to a Gallup poll conducted this month, less than half of Americans view either Biden or Trump favorably. The poll found that 59% of voters believe Biden, 81, is too old to be president while just 18% said the same of Trump, 78. Although Americans express fewer concerns about Trump’s age, an NBC News poll conducted in April showed that his criminal and civil trials could be his largest liability heading into November.Many Americans went into tonight’s debate believing that Biden was too old for a second term and that Trump was too chaotic to return to the presidency. It seems unlikely that their performances on Thursday will do anything to dispel those fears. More

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      This debate was a disastrous opening performance for Biden | Moira Donegan

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      The Biden campaign is probably hoping that you did not watch the first presidential debate. Over the course of 90 minutes in Atlanta, the president was only sometimes coherent, delivering meandering statements that were often inaudible, frequently veering off topic, and often running out of his allotted time mid-sentence, so that his message remained unclear or outright incomprehensible to viewers.It was a disastrous opening performance for a president whose greatest electoral vulnerability is his age and perceptions about his fitness for the demands of his office. Biden’s showing at the first presidential debate has placed his campaign’s least favorite issue – the president’s stamina and acuity – back at the center of the electoral contest.In one of his more energetic and clear moments, Biden responded to a question about his age by pointing out that Donald Trump is only three years younger than he is, “and a lot less competent”. That may be true, but Trump – the convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault, was impeached twice, and attempted to overturn the last election when he lost – was forceful, alert, and on message, even as he repeatedly lied.In contrast, when the cameras cut to Biden, he was often slack-jawed, his eyes unfocused, seeming to stare into the middle distance with a look of vacant horror. The contrast was stark. Many of the liberal-leaning voters watching no doubt despaired at Biden’s performance, which they feared would permanently cement the popular opinion that he is simply too old for the job.He may well be. Even in response to what should have been easy questions, Biden fumbled. He frequently failed to remember words; he often seemed to lose his trail of thought, his voice quieting into silence. When asked about abortion rights – the issue that polls show is his most favorable contrast to Trump and his best chance to win in November – Biden described his preferred abortion rights regime as one in which “you go to see a doctor and have him decide if you need help or not” – a scene that relegates women to supplicants, begging for relief from male authorities, rather than citizens endowed with an entitlement to control their bodies and lives in their own right.Later, when Trump characterized Biden as a criminal, Biden defended his own actions, instead of simply pointing out that it is Donald Trump who is a convicted felon and emphasizing the simple, persuasive core argument for his own re-election: that Trump is a mendacious criminal who will ban abortion and destroy the democratic system of government in pursuit of his own interests.Instead, Biden attempted to do what the CNN moderators, to their shame, had decided not to do: factcheck Trump’s lies. This meant both that the president was repeatedly sidetracked from talking about his own agenda and also that he was fighting only on Trump’s territory. And he is not equipped to fight well. On social media, some pundits renewed calls for him to drop out of the race so that a younger and more capable candidate could replace him.There is genuine cause for alarm, because in-between the Democratic panic about Biden’s performance, Trump made the stakes of his re-election clear to everyone. In response to questions about abortion policy, Trump again took credit for the repeal of Roe v Wade, and claimed, falsely, that women in Democratically-controlled states can murder their infants with impunity. His surrogates and allies have put forward multiple proposals to enact a nationwide abortion ban upon his return to office.In fact, when asked questions about abortion, January 6, climate change, social security, inflation and racial justice, Trump repeatedly declined to answer, instead delivering ominous, hysterical rants about immigrants. He repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He was asked whether he would accept the results of the 2024 election three times, and three times he refused to answer with a simple “yes” – suggesting that Americans can expect more lies, more attempts to subvert election results, and possibly more political violence come November.If Trump wins this election, the consequences for our country – for our civil liberties, for our economy, for our democratic mode of government, for our international standing, for our aspiration to be a nation of free and equal citizens – will be dire. It is vital to the American project that Democrats beat him. On Thursday night, Biden did not look like someone who can.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More