Yee-Haw! Post-Debate Roundup

Team Biden’s debate conditions screwed their candidate but good

I did not stay up five hours past my bedtime to watch the CNN presidential debate live. In hindsight, after reading several news reports and spending two hours reading tweets from Washington reporters and news outlets, I’m rather sorry I didn’t bite the bullet and watch the trainwreck unfold in real-time.

At the same time, I’ve been suffering for several weeks from excruciating edema caused by a combination of medication and inflammation that makes it quite painful to repeatedly cringe with embarrassment, so maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t.

Boy, the Biden campaign crapped the sheets when they demanded certain conditions from CNN.

Team Biden’s first mistake was insisting that the debate take place in a studio without a live audience.

I get why they did it. They feared that audience applause, laughter, and cheers would gin up Donald Trump and turn the debate into a circus.

However, they didn’t consider that Trump isn’t the only one who benefits from audience reactions. Biden needs audience responses to stay engaged. They animate Joe more than any drug cocktail ever could. Cheers and applause are like a syringe full of amphetamines injected straight into his veins. Without that, Joe can barely summon up the energy to appear lifelike.

On the other hand, Trump spent years starring in a reality TV show and is used to performing in a television studio without an audience. Team Biden’s demand rolled off him like rain on a slicker while Joe was as lumbering and somnambulant as an extra from “The Walking Dead.”

The lack of an audience benefited Trump by keeping him in check, making him appear steady, commanding, and in control of his faculties.

The stark contrast did not go unnoticed.

Then there was the demand that the microphones remain off when a candidate is not answering a question, preventing Trump from talking over Biden or the moderators. I’m sure that sounded like a great idea to Team Biden when they thought of it but it too was a tactical mistake.

Without Trump’s constant interruptions, Biden’s mumbling, stumbling incoherence took center stage — something Trump took full advantage of.

Democrats and the media, after the initial panic wore off, were quick to remind us that Barack Obama’s performance in the first debate with Mitt Romney was underwhelming.

But Biden’s performance wasn’t underwhelming. It was an unmitigated disaster — for the Biden campaign, for Democrats, and for the media who all spent the last four-plus years pretending that Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Joe’s performance Thursday night can’t be blamed on so-called “cheap fake,” selectively edited videos.

Biden’s senility was out there for the whole world to see, live on CNN.

The Trump campaign is already running a brutal ad highlighting Biden’s debate performance that is bound to leave a mark.

Team Biden continued making catastrophic decisions when the debate was over by shoving Jill Biden into the spotlight.

Have you seen the video of Jill at the post-debate rally talking to Joe like he just successfully made poopie in the potty while he stands there, well past his bedtime, looking lost and small?

Hoo boy.

The last thing Joe needs right now is the visual image of his enabler wife taking the reins.

I’d venture that even Norm and Norma America who don’t use social media or read right-leaning blogs were aghast that a loving wife would subject her elderly, senile husband to such public humiliation.

But Team Biden can’t shake the idea that Jill is the campaign’s secret weapon. That’s why at yesterday’s rally in North Carolina, there was Jill front and center while Grandpa stood vacant and lost behind her.

I just wandered over to the White House website to check on something else, and this is the main picture:

Subtle, guys.

Panicked reporters and Democrat operatives debated on Twitter whether the Biden campaign should pull out of the second scheduled debate on ABC in September rather than risk a repeat of Thursday’s debacle.

Team Biden is leaking to friendly news outlets that the president fully plans to debate Trump again, but what else could they say?

There are certainly downsides to both pulling out and staying in.

If Biden pulls out, voters will conclude that the campaign is trying to avoid another public humiliation viewed by more than 50 million people.

The campaign may risk it if they can blame the decision on something else. For example, if the judge in Trump’s hush money case sentences him to even a single day in prison, Biden could make a show of refusing to debate a guy who is heading to jail.

However, that still leaves Biden’s performance at Thursday’s debate lingering like a rancid stench from now until November and the campaign can’t risk that being the last impression voters are left with.

They could try to negotiate new conditions, like allowing ABC to include an audience, to improve Biden’s chances in the next debate. However, doing so could open the door to unforeseen variables that come to bite them in the ass in the same way that not having an audience did.

I’m not spending a lot of time on the media’s culpability in hiding Biden’s cognitive decline, except to say that you should read Bari Weiss’ column in The Free Press.

The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.

But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.

You should read the column in its entirety. It is outstanding.

My brother Mark asked me yesterday if I thought Karine Jean-Pierre would hold a daily press briefing on Friday or if she would lay low to avoid questions about Joe’s debate debacle.

As it happens, there was no White House press briefing yesterday.

Jean-Pierre did hold a press gaggle aboard Air Force One on the way to a New York City fundraiser but she didn’t answer a single question. Instead, she called on reporters and let Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler field the questions.

So that answers your question, Mark.

We won’t know how Thursday’s debate will affect polling for at least a few days but from the way Team Biden is hammering the “all Trump did was LIE!!!” talking point, I suspect they’re nervous as hell.

By the way, I hope you all had a lovely June. I apologize that I couldn’t spend it with you. The medication problem has since been resolved and I can walk without using a cane or clinging helplessly to furniture. I still can’t put on shoes, but baby steps.