The Terrible Debate

It's Joever. Or At Least, It Should Be

This will not be a good article. It is 2:00 AM, I have had several drinks, I am tired and I am furiously angry.

I did not start this evening angry. I started it drinking an enormous frozen margarita at a swank Manhattan bar with some friends waiting for the debate to come on. I was nervous, yes, but hopeful.

And then, the debate began. Biden looked exhausted. One eye more open than the other. He kept looking down, which made it look like he was closing his eyes. Stumbling over his words, badly. He froze, at one point — four or five seconds of silence.

But then, things seemed to get better, at least from my perspective. Sure, I couldn’t really understand what Biden was saying, but my hearing is pretty shot and it was a loud bar so I figured he probably didn’t sound as bad as he sounded to me (turns out he sounded worse: because I couldn’t entirely make out what he was saying, I missed how often he tripped over words and fumbled over facts). Sure, he was missing a lot of opportunities to hit back at Trump, but he was more or less coherent. He wasn’t freezing up. His mix-ups were relatively minor. Sure, Trump was giving the best debate performance of his political career (a very low bar), but this wasn’t catastrophic. Biden’s performance was so much better than I was expecting.

I was enjoying my drink and laughing about the whole pathetic golf score exchange and feeling genuine relief when I heard Rachel Maddow — RACHEL MADDOW — declare that Biden had botched this horribly.

Then I heard Joy Reid suggest that Biden should step down.

Then I looked at my phone.

**

I have been trying to wrap my head around America’s reaction to this debate for hours now, trying to figure out why the same Biden I’ve been seeing for months has shocked America to its core. They must really not have known. They must have meant it when they dismissed all those videos of Biden freezing up and shaking hands with no one as right-wing propaganda. All those people swearing up and down that Biden’s sharp as ever: that the whole “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” thing was a conservative hit job, that anyone could have mixed up Egypt and Mexico, anyone could have forgotten that a man who’s been dead for seven years is no longer the Chancellor of Germany. Didn’t you see his State of the Union Address? Didn’t he look great, standing up there with a prepared speech and a teleprompter?

This is who Biden has been throughout the campaign. Why now? Was it because the debate lasted 90 minutes? Was it stumble after stumble, gaffe after gaffe, that finally added up into something people noticed and cared about?

I am losing my mind. So is everyone else who saw it coming. Months and months of shouting that Biden is too old, too frail, showing clear signs of decline. Months of being told we’re carrying water for Trump, that because we are saying out loud the things any eyes could see, any ears could hear, we must want Trump to win. We don’t want Trump to win! That’s why we were shouting so loudly!

And now, I suspect, it’s too late.

The Democrats have smoothly transitioned from the delusion that Biden is a great candidate, never better, totally able to win this election and be President for four more years, to the delusion that Biden will step down for the sake of America. That anyone on this earth can convince him to do this.

I hope Biden steps down in the next few days. I hope someone in the Democratic party has the guts to go full Ramsay Bolton on him if necessary to get him to do it. Nobody wants this candidate. When you’ve lost Nicholas Kristoff, it’s hard to imagine holding onto the nomination.

And yet, I think he will hold onto it. I do not think anybody has the guts to force him to step down, and I do not think Biden is constitutionally capable of stepping down willingly. Stepping down now would involve more than just forgoing a second term. It would mean coming to terms with his own decline, the fact that his life is coming to an end and that he will spend the rest of it fading into a shadow of the vibrant politician he used to be. He would have to confess this not just to himself but to the whole world. He can’t. Not willingly.

I think Biden holds on, and I think he has enough control over the party apparatus to force the party to nominate him. By tomorrow, many pundits will recover. He had a cold. People are overreacting. Calm down. It’s all conservative propaganda: who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

I hope I’m wrong. I don’t think I am.

This is how Democracy dies, apparently. Not with a bang, but the fumbling whimper of a man who should be enjoying retirement after a very long career in public service. What else is there to say? What do you do after witnessing a moment that historians will talk about for decades, if not centuries, to come?

After four long years chock full of cataclysmic world events, we already know the answer: Go to sleep. Wake up. Go to work. Cling to whatever normalcy remains to us and await the inevitable return of numbness. It’s fine because it has to be. Kids keep growing. Rent keeps coming due. The business of life continues, and so, therefore, must we.