Dahlia Lithwick:The Most Important Thing Biden Did During Tuesday's Debate

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/biden-most-important-debate-answer-election-security.html

The Most Important Thing Biden Did During Tuesday’s Debate
The president did his best to make the whole thing an unwatchable nightmare, but this one answer saved the night.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Sept 30, 2020
11:59 AM

snip//

Here was where Joe Biden did his best work of the evening. Instead of accusing Trump, Trump’s postmaster general, Trump’s attorney general, Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee, or anyone else of outright stealing the election—which has the effect of depressing the very voter confidence he needs to encourage—Biden did almost precisely what communications expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been suggesting voting advocates do in discussing “rigged elections”: He made it clear that this is not Trump’s election, but the voters’. As Shenker-Osorio puts it in an interview with Rolling Stone: “When he says I’m not going to step down—or the ‘covfefe version’ of that in his garbled way of talking—instead of repeating him, Democrats should say, ‘Over my dead body. You don’t decide how long you’re in this job. We do.’ ” Her point is that instead of succumbing to the dispiriting possibility that Trump gets to cheat and steal the vote, refocus voters on their power to stop it. More from Shenker-Osorio:

The overarching thing is: Let’s have our conversation. If Trump believes he’s going to block us from deciding our next government, he’s got another thing coming. We’re turning out in record numbers and this will be a government by and for the people. If he needs to be ushered out of the White House by force, and that seems to be what he’s asking for—if need be, we’ll deliver.

Those are the threats and the taunts of a bully who knows he can’t win fairly, and also a man absolutely terrified of the immense legal consequences of returning to civilian life.

That is precisely the tack Biden took when, faced with Trump’s lies about millions of stolen ballots and fraudulent ballots and discarded ballots, he simply looked directly into the camera and named the game: “This is all about trying to dissuade people from voting because he’s trying to scare people into thinking that it’s not going to be legitimate,” Biden said. And then he built a seven-layer truth sandwich as he carefully outlined mail-in voting procedures, warned voters to allow time for every vote to be counted, described how to challenge invalidated ballots, and explained how the pandemic has complicated voting. Biden explained that Trump’s own national security experts have discredited his mail fraud claims. The words echoed President Barack Obama’s convention speech urging patience and confidence and determination in every voter. It was simple. Biden simply reminded everyone to just “show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote.”

“Vote whatever way is the best way for you,” he said. “Because he will not be able to stop you from determining the outcome of this election.”

snip//

What Biden did on Tuesday that matters more than anything else was to remind us how to keep Donald Trump out of our heads in the weeks before the election. In the most technical, brass tacks formulation he could muster, he simply told everyone who wants to be counted how to do that and where to do that and why, if they in fact do that, Donald Trump will be gone in January. The debate was a misery to the extent we had to witness—yet again—broken truth, shattered norms, and needless, abusive cruelty that Trump acts out for his base on every stage and in every forum. But it was a triumph as a mechanism for reframing the idea of power and agency and hope, none of which Donald Trump controls, and none of which should be surrendered when it is needed most.

[chia]

1. Very good. K & R

[musette_sf]

2. K&R

[crickets]

3. When Joe turns to the camera and speaks directly to everyone,

telling them the power is theirs and they should just VOTE... that's the best. It was really well done.

[Mr.Bill]

4. Yes, it was.

The amazing thing is, with as much experience Trump has in front of a camera, he doesn't know how to do this. It's like a mental block he has. He can't speak directly to people as individuals. Everything is a mob to him.

[Hugin]

5. I agree.

This was the single most significant statement of the event.

[niyad]

6. KNR

[denbot]

7. Your Damn Skippy 'bout voting.

The ballot box is the last defense against fascists.

[Cha]

8. So grateful to see that Joe Biden was able

to get all that in to the American People without being interrupted by the Abusive Bully!!

[KS Toronado]

9. At the next debate when Tee-Rump interrupts Joe......

Biden should quit talking, look directly at the moderator while pointing a finger Hair-Doo's direction,
with a look of "Can you make this idiot shut up?" or something similar.

[Pluvious]

10. It still would have been great if Joe had looked to the camera...

... during one of the attempted interruptions:

"Pay no attention to the raging orange orangutan over there.
Soon enough he'll be flinging his poop at us"

[JudyM]

11. CNN was live-charting how their pool of undecided men and women were responding to the debate

contemporaneously with points being made. The highest score for both men and women (who diverged on a lot) came when Biden was taking about just this topic. It’s a winner.