The Big Takeaway From Biden’s Extremely Rough Debate Night

Almost exactly five years ago to this day, following the first Democratic presidential primary debate of the 2020 election cycle, a then-colleague wrote a column about how Joe Biden was old. “The question has been whether he’s too old-fashioned, too much of another era,” the column read. “After Thursday’s debate, you have to ask whether he’s just too old, period.”

This wasn’t a particularly controversial take at the time. He did look less than his prime fighting self in that debate. In spite of this development, though, Biden would go on to win the primary as Democrats settled on him as the odds-on bet among imperfect candidates to stop Trump. He was—then.

In this run, any mention of Biden’s mental fitness for office—despite its repeated listing as a top concern for voters, who have eyes and ears—has been dismissed by the White House, by Democratic partisans, and by party enforcers as a dishonest smear that, if repeated, will only help to put Donald Trump back in the White House. It is a conversation that has been shot down with prejudice.

Well. How does that strategy of suppression look now? How was that debate for something that will help put Donald Trump back in the White House?

Biden’s performance was such a disaster that it immediately shifted the Democratic conversation to whether Biden should be replaced atop the ticket. Biden sounded terrible, looked terrible, and debated terribly, either whiffing or missing opportunities to hammer Donald Trump, who was there to be hammered. When Biden did have strong points to make, it was frankly difficult to hear what he was saying. His resting mumble would occasionally rise for the recitation of a statistic, and then descend back into the murk. If you didn’t see the debate, it’s honestly hard to describe what went on here: Biden could not speak extemporaneously in a coherent manner for much of the debate. He didn’t look confident, staring down and around, mouth slight agape.

If you don’t want Trump back in the White House, it was your worst fear.

It began immediately. Biden’s first answer about inflation was a pure ramble. In his second response, Biden accused Trump of giving “the largest tax cut in American history”—an accusation Trump was happy to receive—and declared himself the only president “this decade that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.” In both cases, you can see what Biden is trying to say. That Trump gave the wealthy the largest tax cut, and that Biden ended United States’ involvement in post-9/11 wars in the Middle East. He didn’t say either.

Only a couple of answers later, after several other oddities that would merit their own paragraphs on a more normal night, Biden completely froze in the conclusion of an answer. Describing his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy, Biden said those new revenues would help in “making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, uh, with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with … look … if we finally beat Medicare.” There, I could not see what Biden was trying to say.

Trump was in surprising control of himself in the first half-hour, while Biden frankly looked like Trump’s caricature of Joe Biden. He resisted the urge, after several of Biden’s unfollowable responses, to be a jackass to his opponent. That could not last forever. Eventually, after a Biden immigration response that concluded with, “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the—the total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,” Trump allowed himself a crack.

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Trump did appear to have taken some advice. He wasn’t screaming down Biden’s throat, as he did in the first general-election debate of 2020, or shooting menacing looks in Biden’s direction. He was certainly, however, lying left and right, going on with his usual riffs about how Democrats’ preferred abortion plan is to kill live babies, and how Social Security and Medicare’s finances are strained because of “migrants” who, in his mind, all come from insane asylums. (There was no live fact-checking or moderator pushback of any sort in this debate.) Biden struggled, however, to respond to these absurd suggestions—and lord, if Biden can’t communicate Democrats’ advantage on social safety net programs and abortion, what is he doing out there?—because he struggled to respond, period.

Trump, fortunately (we guess?) for Biden, deteriorated from his best-prepared form as the evening went on. He went on a riff about how Biden doesn’t fire enough people, and he and Biden got into a back-and-forth about historians’ ranking of presidents. The prompt here was a question about the candidates’ plans for child care costs. Trump had to say, at one point, that “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” He dodged a question about climate change by saying we had the cleanest air and water when he was president. And, of course, he yet again refused to say unconditionally that he’d accept the results of the election.

A couple of moments in the last 15 minutes of the debate provided the clearest sign yet of the end of American global leadership. Biden attempted to make a joke about how Trump lies about his weight and could not do it. The two then got into an argument about golf ability and whether Joe Biden is a true six handicap. Trump did not accept that.

Woof.

By the very end of the night, Biden finally seemed able to pull off a punch. After Trump hedged on accepting the election results, Biden summoned himself.

You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time, you continued to appeal and appeal to courts all across the country. Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit, state or local, none. But you continue to provoke this lie about somehow there’s all this misrepresentation, all the stealing. There’s no evidence of that at all. And I tell you what? I doubt whether you’ll accept it because you’re such a whiner. The idea if you lose again, you’re accepting anything, you can’t stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost the last time.

It was the clearest thought he’d communicated all night. And it was the last thing said before closing statements, when the bulk of viewers had surely turned off this misery.

The debate was not spinnable in Biden’s favor. The best excuse that Biden’s team could summon, about midway through the debate, was leaking to some campaign reporters that Biden had a cold. A cold!

That there even was a debate in June—specifically this week in June, with the Supreme Court dropping bombs left and right, heading into a holiday week, heading into Trump’s sentencing, and then heading into the Republican National Convention—was a pitch from the Biden campaign, in case something should go horribly awry. But this may have gone too awry to bury.

At least, at long last, Democrats are finally having an honest conversation tonight. But the moment to snap themselves out of the delusion may have come too late.

Slate wants to help. Submit your questions here. It’s anonymous! No question is too dumb—or too existential.