With the benefit of letting the matter gel a bit, to assemble a variety of respected takes on the evening we range from disappointment to seeing method or silver lining in the Trump performance. Photo via HP’s FB post. First dlh’s initial analysis —
Of the many various analyses, from right and left, this from PowerLine’s Scott Johnson best approximates my own analysis of Tuesday night’s “debate”.
No minds were changed. If you didn’t have a mind…which seems to be what “independents” inadvertently say of themselves, maybe you were moved a bit by Trump’s unsatisfying behavior, moreso than by Biden’s inability or unwillingness to express his own thoughts…if he has any. On many things, it was Biden who lied or refused to answer:
Green New Deal? Biden doesn’t’t support it. But he tells the Left, AOC, and Bernie that he does, and the “plans” he admits to having sound very close to the NGD.
“Pack the Supreme Court”? Can’t seem to get an answer from Joe…but the Left seems satisfied that he’d go along with that, gladly.
And, so on. dlh
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
A LONG NIGHT
To Paul’s assessment of last night’s proceedings in the adjacent post, I would only add this. If President Trump entered the debate trailing in most battleground states, as I believe he did, his performance served him poorly. I can’t believe he won over a single persuadable voter.
Trump’s performance must also have cemented the negative perceptions held by voters who have turned against him. He carried his do not go gentle into that good night mode to wild excess. Perhaps it was President Trump who needed pharmaceutical assistance to dial it back. As it happened, I thought Trump interrupted Biden on a few occasions when a Biden brain freeze was in progress.
Was Trump following a plan? RCP’s Philip Wegmann reports that he was. My impression was that Trump couldn’t have prepared for the debate. He can’t have been coached or advised to go at it in the fashion he did. His instincts have usually served him well in arguing his case, but I am afraid they showed their limitations last night.
Joe Biden has no policy or program to recommend his candidacy. On the contrary, he has to conceal or misrepresent them before general audiences. Were his insults of Trump calculated? Trump is a racist. Trump is a clown. Oh, excuse me. The insults belied Biden’s theme promising an alleged return to civility or normalcy after Trump.
Trump might have turned these insults to his advantage. His failure to do so was another missed opportunity.
Biden was still pushing the Russia hoax and asserting that Antifa is just a beautiful idea. We are apparently to be spared Biden’s views on the Democrats’ plans to pack the Supreme Court and end the filibuster. Unbelievable.
Chris Wallace was a miserable moderator. The planted assumptions and rank ignorance of his questions deserve separate comment. However, Wallace was not the source of the president’s difficulties last night.
The choice between Trump and Biden is momentous. It shouldn’t be difficult or close. Bill Voegeli ably elucidates the stakes in his Claremont Review of Books essay “The weak leading the woke.”
I gave up any inclination to predict election outcomes in 2016. I will only say that Trump needed to help himself last night and didn’t. The debate was therefore a bitter disappointment.
Different takes from folks at The Federalist and Dan Bongino — Our interpretive summary — Trump went there intending to shore up his base not to convince suburban housewives of anything — and he knew Chris Wallace was not going to ask a totality of evenhanded questions – so he was not going to let either carry the day or prevent his responses. The silver lining is that Trump forced Biden to undercut enthusiasm for his campaign from his base “Green New Deal”, “HE is the Democrat Party”, and more. Read the following articles (links) . Could he have done these thing better, no doubt but Trump is Trump.
Calm down, the debate was fine
Ted Cruz Calls Chris Wallace’s Moderating ‘Abysmal,’ ‘Whiny,’ And ‘Petulant’
Did Biden Really Forsake The Left? Not By A Long Shot
This latter commentary in spite of the theme points out the reasons the energizing Biden Base IS undercut, we find them substantial and don’t think a wink and a nod is good enough for them.
Also Bongino who also said similar to the preceding, and others raised the specter of Biden cheating — see Bongino and here.
