Another day, another 24 hours of reeling from Thursday night’s presidential debate as though it were something consequential, which it emphatically is not. If you’re pro-Trump, the bad night that Joe Biden had is now being used to spin Donald Trump and MAGA as the normalcy candidate and platform. Puh-leeze. If MAGA is normalcy, America is already long gone and I don’t believe that’s the case. But that’s what you’re seeing. The Hill is dancing in the street today, talking about Trump’s “victory lap.” There was no victory, there was no defeat. There were two elderly men being who they are, one an inveterate liar and the other a truthful decent man, simply not at the top of his game.
Nothing has changed and while the New York Times editorial board and other people may hew and cry for a new Democratic candidate, it won’t happen. It doesn’t need to happen. It’s just pure hysteria in an already polarized and divided country. Here is the sanest overview that I’ve heard of this situation so far.
“My mission and The Lincoln Project mission since 2020 is to defeat Donald Trump & Trumpism. I understand who he is and nothing about last night changed the fact that he is a felon, fraud, a liar, sexual abuser, and a criminal…” – @TheRickWilson on @BBCNews: pic.twitter.com/VefuEslmed
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 28, 2024
Nothing changed. Nothing “normalized” Trump. The election wasn’t lost — anymore than Obama lost to McCain or Romney or Bill Clinton lost to H.W. One debate is that and only that, one debate. And sure, it would have been nice if Joe Biden hit it out of the park but you can’t always get what you want, right? Stuart Stevens penned a terrific essay in the New York Times. Read it in full. Here are some highlights.
As a former Republican who spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, I watch the current Democratic panic over President Biden’s debate performance with a mix of bafflement and nostalgia.
It’s baffling that so many Democrats are failing to rally around a wildly successful president after one bad night. But it does remind me of why Republicans defeated Democrats in so many races Republicans should have lost.
Donald Trump has won one presidential election. He did so with about 46 percent of the popular vote. (Mitt Romney lost with about 47 percent.) The Republican Party lost its mind and decided that this one victory negated everything we know about politics. But it didn’t.
One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position. […]
For 90 minutes, Mr. Trump unleashed a virulent anti-American rant. The America he lives in is a postapocalyptic hellscape of violence, with people “dying all over the place” — more “Mad Max” than “morning in America.”
Is this how Americans see themselves? When we watch the American flag carried at the Olympics in Paris, are we to feel ashamed, not proud? When Ronald Reagan was president, he believed that to be born in America was to win life’s lottery. Now, in Trump’s America, are we victims, chumps, losers?
I don’t think so. Mr. Trump has difficulty expanding his base because most Americans are still proud to be Americans. Most Americans do not wake up mad at the world, fearful to go outside their homes. What is it that you are supposed to hate the most — the record-high stock market or low unemployment? […]
The Republican Party is at war with the modern world, and it is losing. What happened when Republicans attacked Nike for its endorsement deal with Colin Kaepernick? Nike made a fortune. How is it possible to get in a fight with Disney, the happiness company? This is a party that thought it was a good idea to go after Taylor Swift when it was already suffering from problems with female voters over the death of Roe. Seriously?
Before Thursday’s debate, the presidential race was about the past versus the future. After the debate, it is about the past versus the future. And so it will be on Nov. 5.
Between Democrats’ propensity to panic and a media ecosphere which excuses Donald Trump’s excesses and normalizes him, which is how we got here in the first place, we are pretty much in a world of hurt. Let’s not make it any worse than it has to be. Let’s just calmly proceed to win this race. America v. Trump is the issue. There is no other.
The beauties of all of this are:
1. NYT is made to look foolish; misses the point on all of trumph’s lies, too. (Only bad news is some idiot paper, like WaPo, is bound to make a “story” of the NYT’s dumb editorial, and run with that for a day or so; geewhizzikers, one newspaper making its story about another newspaper, instead of reporting on the LIES trumph told – vicious cycle, ain’t it?)
2. One bad day does not a campaign make.
3. President Biden has recovered, literally AND figuratively, with his speech in NC the next day, all without “apologizing.” And pointing out the REAL story, trumph’s LIES.
4. The “story” is beginning to turn to what it should have been all along: all turmph does is LIE and that’s ALL he did for 90 minutes that night.
5. trumph is the MELON FELON.
There, I feel better already, much better, and it’s only Saturday!
Thanks, N.O.Y., for the new-to-me Von Schitzeantz nickname, “Melon Felon”
🤩😝🤩😝👍👍👍👍👍
I am amazed that the MSM doesn’t report on tRump’s lies. I saw 2 people on that stage, one was a very honest man(Biden) and the other (tRump) a complete liar.
Trump’s lies need to be called out in real time. If there is a second presidential debate, that would be the one change that should be made, is real time fact checking. I don’t anticipate it happening, though.
Our founders did not win every battle with the British. The union lost several major battles but prevailed. WW2 was dicey in Europe and in the Pacific, BUT WE WON. My point is let’s get up…find our rational minds and our balance, remember what we’re fighting for, and understand there’s more fighting to be done to keep this traitor from destroying our democracy, our planet, and our children’s futures. I don’t give a damn what the pundits say. Stick with the truth, what is right and good, and NEVER LOSE HOPE!!! VOTE!!!
The reaction to the Thursday debate is sheer nuts. Sheer nuts. Biden is running on his track record, not on his debating technique. But right now we’re living through a media manufactured conspiracy theory that Biden’s going to get replaced on the ticket.
Thought reasonable folk were past the “grassroots” or astroturff tea baggers. MSM blathersphere/echo chamber/wrecking ball of doom/big pile of nonsensical 💩/ (surely I am missing some high filuting academic terminology 😬😬👀)…
Thank you for this. I was shocked at the instant negative outcry. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, this is a very superficial society. Especially the damn media.
It was one debate. ONE. And yes it was hard to watch, I’ll admit to not being able to watch it all. I was sickened watching Trump dish out his constant fire-hose-of-lies yap that is literally meant to confuse.
You can’t keep the lies straight & by the time you get one figured out he’s already on to the next 10 & your brain is like WTF?
I think much of the media blather is because people are afraid that they’re seeing themselves in Joe Biden’s “oldness” and it scares the crap out of them. Age bigots.
People need to remember that we aren’t *just* electing Joe Biden w/our votes. We are electing TEAM BIDEN & when Joe has a bad day, they’re all right there to support him, which is how it SHOULD be.
We need media with some standards, enough with the reporting of lies like it’s fact & never speaking a fact when you need one the most.
CNN gave Trump at hour of Prime Time to do a rally & that’s what we all saw Thursday night. A f’ing Trump rally.
Shame on them. Shame on the NYT, shame on ALL of the MSM, they are failing us all in the hour of our greatest need.
If there is to be a second debate then we absolutely need to have real-time fact checking. Otherwise, it just becomes a propaganda fest for Trump.
Funny that Wilson quotes Churchill, a confirmed white nationalist who killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of Indians via starvation.
Luckily under Trump “people” like him will be given the same treatment that the Red Army gave to German housewives.
What these idiots don’t know or won’t accept is what I learned from.a medical website I follow. Biden was on OTC cough meds. Those OTC remedies cause exactly what Biden’s behavior showed: slower thinking. And he was fighting his stutter. In the 15 minutes I watched, every single sentence spewing forth from Trump.was another lie–and ones that had been debunked. It takes longer to.prevent evidence to prove lies than it does to vomit forth the liez.
CNN should have real.time fact checkers pointing out the lies in the chyrons, then designating 30-60 minutes with the fact hackers explaining them.