Joe Biden had a bad debate night. Every politician has had them. But he has developed a GREAT administration and helped us recover from a disastrous economic and pandemic downturn. Let’s keep our eye on the ball, please!
The hand-wringing has been monumental. Pundits have suggested putting him out to pasture (the 14th greatest POTUS ever!) and replacing him with people with far less name recognition and track records, even suggesting butting Kamala Harris out of the immediate “successor” slot to make the new team more “palatable” to voters.
What a load of horse shit — and what a way to treat a globally respected statesman who has given fifty eight of his 81 years of life to public service. If he didn’t feel up to the task, he wouldn’t be running again. No one in his administration has their hair on fire.
Yeah, the debate was awful. But how would any sane person fare against an opponent who bloviates and lies every time he opens his mouth (and keeps haranging even after he is muted) , and avoids answering direct questions to attack and bloviate some more, when neither of the two moderators hold his feet to the fire by turning off his microphone every time he starts to dodge a question?
The only way to win against Trump in a debate is to have rules that state:
“If a candidate doesn’t answer the question asked within ten seconds, his or her microphone will be muted and the question will default to the opponent. In this instance, the candidate who did not answer promptly will be allowed to rebut the other candidate’s comments only if they respond to the topic specified within five seconds. If they go off track, their microhone will again be muted and rebuttal at that point will not be allowed.”
“Our moderators will all have LIE cards which they can hold up to the television camera at any time any of them detects the presence of a verifiable, documentable fallacy.”
“If there is disagreement about whether something is a lie, fact-checkers will publicly certify, no later than the end of the debate, what they discovered.”
With just these three additions to the debate rules, Trump would quickly be toast, called out, for example, every time he calls himself the greatest president or Biden the worst president; that millions of druggies, rapists, and mentally ill people are pouring across the southern border in unmitigated numbers and wreaking havoc never before seen on American soil; that Trump’s economy was better than Biden’s, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.
Allowing a liar to shoot lies into watchers’ brains with a firehose without countermanding them was an abdication of the moderators’ responsibilities. It was pathetic. Biden’s slack-jawed silence and disbelief at the torrent of lies was perfectly understandable, in retrospect. He couldn’t even begin to rebut a fraction of them in the two minutes allotted to respond to the question that was actually posed by the moderators.
“You lying son of a bitch!” would not have been presidential.
But it would have been an accurate description of what came out of Trump’s lying lips.
Keep your eyes on the ball. The next president will most likely name the next Supreme Court Justices. The next president will protect or prostrate our democractic republic.
You don’t have to love Joe Biden or every one of his administration’s policies. You should love where he stands when it comes to undergirding and respecting our country and the rule of law.
If you do even that much, your choice is clear: Joe Biden is old, but his heart is in the right place. He cares about you, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. He’s a President you can count on to have your back unless your objectives are to harm or hurt other Americans by making them less worthy of respect, concern, equity and compassion than you yourself are.
Joe’s my guy. Kamala is my gal. Together, they and their administration are rebuilding America’s image globally and rebuilding America structurally even as I write this. They never stop. It’s no wonder Joe sometimes gets hoarse and exhausted. Just follow him around for a week and let me know how you feel afterward.
Cut him some slack. He certainly gives everyone else plenty!
