By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, June 28, 2024
If we had to use brief understatement to describe Thursday night's Biden-Trump debate, we would call it a victory for spectacle and a defeat for substance. But since modern televised presidential debates, by their nature, are always victories of spectacle over substance, we wouldn't be making an appropriate assessment.
We could simply call it a victory for fascist demagogy over liberal apology. It would be an accurate partisan judgment but also a bleak description of the politics at stake. If the task of the Democrats was to give voice to an anti-fascist majority among the electorate and mobilize its voters over the next 130 days, they fumbled the ball. Whether they can recover remains to be seen.
Everyone knew the obvious: President Biden was 81 years old, the most advanced age of anyone running for president. At 78, Trump was not far behind. Before last night, the Democrats hoped to see the testy and clear-headed Biden of his previous 'State of the Union' address to Congress. For its part, the GOP feared Trump's slurry speech rambling at any of his recent campaign rallies. What we got was the reverse. Trump was forceful and clear, even if nearly every point he made was a lie, often outrageously so. Biden tripped over his words, even allowing for his well-known stutter, and lost his train of thought more than once. He had a few strong moments but appeared weak and frail overall. His team said he was suffering from a cold. Judging by Biden’s lively and vital post-debate speeches, it may have been true.
Still, we might give some blame to those who prepared Biden for the debate. Out of the box, the President seemed to try to cram as many facts as possible into his alloted time. But debates of this sort are not won primarily by facts. They are won by a compelling narrative, with the facts, which still must be accurate, in second place.
Biden would also likely come out on top if a dispassionate fact-checker went through the entire transcript and used the normal standards for debate. Post debate analysts who only compared the transcripts largely agreed. Biden spun and stretched the truth a few times but was mainly within the realm of normal political discourse.
Conversely, Trump uttered a tirade of demagogic lies, large and small, from beginning to end. What's worse, his lies were part of a white supremacist narrative designed to set Blacks against Mexicans against Blacks, and everyone against immigrants--all hyped with statistical 'millions' that were utterly false. The only time Trump came close to the truth was his assertion that Biden was hindering Netanyahu and his Likud’s genocidal ethnic cleansing in Gaza, i.e., instead of 'letting them finish the job' without any U.S. restraint. It's a point that might be noted by any who think there's no difference between Biden and Trump on Gaza.
Biden was not more than 10 minutes into the debate before the top circles within the Democratic party started searching for ways to compel him to drop out of the race, speculating over who might be a suitable replacement. There are obvious problems with that line of thought. First is Kamala Harris. Would she be better against Trump? She is far more qualified, but could she rally an anti-Trump majority of Electoral College votes in the 'battleground' states? Would pushing her aside for a competition among other hopefuls make the party weaker or stronger among the diverse but still critical blocs of voters? Barring an unforeseen Biden health crisis, there are no clear answers here. A solution along these lines may cause even more difficulties than it might solve.
There are two certain conclusions after the debate. One, Trump has added to his record of fascist tirades. Two, the anti-fascist camp is now weaker. Our work is cut out for us, only much more so.
There will not be peace until the last Democrat is hung with the guts of the last Republican.
Where we the 3rd party candidates on the CNN podium. Not to be seen not to be heard. What a F'd up democracy we have where other candidate voices are censored from the American people. The system is rigged. Trump at least has that right.