I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
No serious politician chose to participate. Either for their own political reasons (Newsome) or because they preferred Biden as a better and more strategic option (Sanders). It’s still a primary when you don’t like the choices. It’s disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Just to clarify - the briefly stated “political reasons” you mentioned are being dog-piled by the establishment and having your political career torpedoed.
No it’s literally not what I said or implied. If you think Gavin Newsom is staying out of this because he’s worried about having his career torpedoed you’re nuts. I said political reasons because it’s political reasons. For his own personal political benefit. I think that should have been obvious. If Newsome wanted to run he’d be running. I doubt Biden would be in this race if Newsome was running. He would have stepped aside. If for some reason he hadn’t, the party would have pushed him aside.