While debates do not affect ultimate election results, it is clear that Joe's debate preppers screwed up badly.

[Deek1935]

Last edited Mon Jul 1, 2024, 09:24 AM - Edit history (2)

Yes, the buck stops with the president. Yes, he should have tossed his prep during the debate and pivoted to attacking Trump much more. Yes, he seemed to be dealing with a cold and sheer physical fatigue after a long day of other activities and work.
And most importantly we have to remember that debates have ZERO predictive value on the ultimate election results. NONE AT ALL.

However, it obviously still would have been better to have had a stronger debate performance, and lessons still should be learned. Much of the blame has to go Biden's debate preparers who were chiefly Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer, and Ron Klain.

They should have dramatically reduced the amount of details Biden was supposed to have regurgitated and kept it to a smaller number of key points repeatedly hammering on his major accomplishments. Part of Joe's problem was trying to spit out all that detail. It was overload, and it showed.

His advisers were obviously trying to have Joe spend WAY too much time on the minutiae of his record rather than doing what they SHOULD have told him to do: BRUTALLY ATTACK TRUMP AT EVERY TURN. They wanted Joe to look like "the adult in the room" but the problem was we non-MAGA Americans wanted to see an energetic STRONG FIGHTER saving America from the scourge of Trump and showing he was ready to charge head on into four more years like a damn pit bull. They thought Trump would just sink himself with his crazy talk. Which in some ways he did with all the lies, but they gave him way too much oxygen. Joe needed to be MUCH MORE AGGRESSIVE. Because THAT is how you deal with a sick psycho like Trump. YOU GET ON OFFENSE AND STAY ON OFFENSE! PERIOD!

[The Unmitigated Gall]

1. You don't argue against a firehose of lies. You hammer home your own points

I rebuilt the economy that Trump burned to the ground.

I brought the pandemic to a close that Trump allowed to kill a million people.

Trump is a liar, a bigot, a rapist and a convicted felon.

I will ALWAYS do the people’s work; Trump will ALWAYS work for himself.

[Deek1935]

7. Just say "He is a pathological liar!" over and over and then hammer home the very points you have just said. YES!

[FBaggins]

2. It's nonsense that debates have no impact

But that’s irrelevant to the current conversation because it has nothing to do with winning or losing a debate.

State of the Union addresses don’t win or lose elections either… but if this had happened during the SOTU… it could indeed impact the election

[Deek1935]

6. If debates had an ultimate impact Reagan would have lost, and Obama, and W.Bush. They have no ultimate impact.

[FBaggins]

8. Those arguments are worlds apart

“Losing a debate = losing an election” is nowhere close to “debates have no impact on elections”. There’s a world of nuance in between that you’re conveniently ignoring.

Your Reagan example makes no sense because that debate is widely regarded as creating the blowout

All of which is irrelevant- because it wasn’t losing the debate on Thursday that anyone is worried about. It merely happened to occur at the debate

[Deek1935]

10. In the long history of presidential elections debates have had NO ultimate impact on the outccome. ZERO.

Show me ONE instance in the long history of presidential elections where a debate had ONE tiny bit of impact on the
the ultimate outcome. You can not.

If they truly mattered we would have had President Mondale, President Kerry, President Romney, and President Hillary Clinton.

They do not ultimately matter. Especially when the debate is over four months before the vote. None.

Presidential elections are decided on the overall performance of the incumbent's leadership in office. And Biden's, overall, is very good.

To change candidates now would be galactically STUPID and the worst SELF-INFLICTED wound imaginable in presidential politics. We would lose the predictive advantages of incumbency and party unity, and it would hand the election to Trump. It is delusional to imagine anything otherwise given how presidential elections really work as proven by history.

[FBaggins]

14. "There you go again"

debates have had NO ultimate impact on the outccome. ZERO.

That simply isn't true

Show me ONE instance in the long history of presidential elections where a debate had ONE tiny bit of impact on the
the ultimate outcome. You can not.

There's no way to spin the 1980 Carter/Reagan debate as anything other than consequential (FAR more than "one tiny bit of impact). Depending on which polls you look at, the president was either slightly ahead or slightly behind with less than two weeks to go (the best-known poll from right before the debate showed an 8-point Carter lead)... yet mere days after the debate, Reagan won in a landslide and we lost 12 senate seats.

The second point you're dodging is that you can't reduce the question to debate win/loss and election win/loss. We lost senate races in Nevada and Arizona that we could have won if Obama had done just a couple of points better. You can't say "he lost that debate... but he still got reelected... so there was not the tiniest bit of impact"

The next point of course is that the President is currently behind in the race. If he loses, can you continue to argue that the debate had no impact because he was already losing? It's nonsensical spin.

Lastly - and once again - nobody is worried about the President losing a debate. The concern is that while he was narrowly losing the debate... he ended any ability to refute the "too old" narrative. That didn't have to happen at a debate. Indeed, it could have happened at a debate that he objectively "won"... and it would still be devastating.

Not necessarily fatal... but devastating.

[MichMan]

11. Why spend a week preparing for them if they are so inconsequential ?

[MyOwnPeace]

3. I think every response from Joe should have included the phrase...

‘CONVICTED FELON DONALD TRUMP’ - no matter what the topic was.
Yes, he was overloaded trying to state facts and figures when it would have been just great to attack tRump’s record and lies.
However, a review of the actual transcripts shows that his responses were specific regarding policy and future - but IQ45’s lies carried the show.
Joe is STILL ‘the MAN!’ -and he has my vote!

[dclarston13]

4. They got Joe's audience wrong

He does not have to convince us, he has to sway a few percentage points of low effort thinkers to understand the difference between him and the carpetbagger. Limit words and facts and go for the emotions. Tell them how Trump killed memaw and papa.

[Prairie Gates]

5. *affect

[Fiendish Thingy]

9. When your candidate answers an abortion question by talking about migrant murderers, you haven't screwed up

Blaming Biden’s debate preppers is misguided and not helpful.

Whatever missteps they may have made, or strategies they didn’t implement, Biden’s debate performance was filled with unforced errors that weren’t their fault.

[EndlessWire]

12. I disagree.

No one could have predicted that Joe would not be feeling that well.

[Torchlight]

13. Mr. trump was really off his game that night

I can certainly understand why he's failing miserably in the here and now. The bloom is off the rose for a lot of people, and Mr. trump will slowly fade away in a sea of indictments and decisions.