The good news about last night’s presidential debate is that there was a clear winner: the format.
The format was awesome. No audience. No interrupting. The traditional debate format, at least in modern times, puts a premium on being obnoxious at the cost of actual substance. As far as the structure of CNN’s debate went, it was one of the best I’ve seen.
As far as everything else went, not so much.
Each candidate had a job to do. Donald Trump had to come across as relatively normal and avoid appearing dangerous or unhinged. President Biden had to demonstrate that he has plenty of gas in the tank and is perfectly capable of being president for the next four years, despite his age. Trump more or less succeeded (although, in the process, he told multiple outrageous falsehoods and often refused to answer questions).
Biden did not. Though he got a little better as the night progressed, Joe Biden’s delivery was often halting and confused. At one point, he ended a long rambling answer by saying, “We finally beat Medicare.”
He also missed multiple opportunities, both to fact-check Trump and for devastating comebacks. When Trump was going on about migrants killing 12-year-old girls, for example, I was on the edge of my seat, expecting Biden to say something like, “Those deaths are on your conscience. You, sir, are responsible. I had a bipartisan border security bill in place and you killed it because you’d rather campaign on the issue than let us fix the problem.” This should have been a lay-up for the president, as it’s just a variation of what he said at his State of the Union address this year.
Instead, Biden started talking about veterans. At times, his answer strayed into Miss South Carolina territory. It got so bad that halfway through the debate, the Biden campaign began tweeting that he had a cold and was under the weather.
From a purely policy perspective, Biden won, in that his answers were both more substantive and more truthful. But as a matter of optics, Biden lost, probably catastrophically. This debate was going to answer the question about Biden’s fitness to be president, the biggest single concern among independent voters. Perhaps he did have a cold and was just having a bad day, but over 60 percent of voters watched this debate and none of them had their concerns put to rest.
The panic among Democratic movers and shakers began well before the first commercial break. Can Biden be replaced? Who should replace him?
As the convention isn’t for two months, replacing Biden would be easy — provided, of course, he decides to step aside. (The rules governing the convention are such that Biden can’t be denied the nomination without his consent.) Putting aside the issue of whether this is likely to happen, his obvious successor would be his vice president, Kamala Harris.
But having Harris at the top of the ticket doesn’t improve the ticket much, if at all.
For one thing, Harris may even be less popular than Biden. For another, one of the few clear outcomes of tonight’s debate is that she’s already at the top of the ticket, in a way. Trump will now most likely start running against “President Harris” and claiming that, should he win, “Grandpa Joe” will be quickly shouldered aside to make way for his “ultra progressive” successor.
If Democrats really believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then both Biden and Harris should step aside. In that case, the ideal in-case-of-emergency-break-glass ticket would be Gretchen Whitmer, the popular governor of Michigan, and Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.
Whitmer has a national reputation and Biden is currently behind in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. Roy Cooper, outgoing governor of North Carolina, would also make an interesting VP choice, especially if Biden stepped aside and Harris became the nominee. Of course, there are problems with nominating Whitmer, including the risk of alienating African American voters. But there’s a good case that a Whitmer/Shapiro ticket would outperform Biden/Harris.
After tonight’s performance, a Biden campaign is going to be strictly a referendum on Donald Trump rather than a vote of confidence in four more years of Joe Biden. But people who are voting against Donald Trump — which amounts to about half the country — are going to vote for the Democratic candidate regardless. Whitmer, or someone like her, can make inroads with undecideds and “double haters” in a way that Biden now cannot. In an election that may well come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of swing states, that may make all the difference.
All this is extremely messy and unlikely to happen. Biden will probably remain the nominee. A week is a long time in politics and the Democratic convention is seven weeks away. Nor can you go by outside appearances. It is the nature of these things that Biden’s support in the party will appear rock solid…until it isn’t.
Chris Truax is a Republican and an appellate attorney.