When I was a kid growing up in Van Meter and Adel, my Mother often stopped me as I was rushing out the door to do or say something that I hadn’t thought through and that could end badly. “Hold your horses,” she’d say. She’d sit me down in a chair at the kitchen table and tell me to think a little harder about what I intended to do.
Judging by the reaction to President Biden’s disappointing debate performance last week, I think it’s time for a similar conversation with many Democrats.
Hold your horses, folks. The panic and stampede to buck President Biden off the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket is, in my view, unwarranted and counterproductive.
I understand entirely why we are having this conversation. Biden’s debate performance was terrible in unprecedented ways.
But I believe the President has earned the right to answer questions about his fitness for the campaign and for doing the job by demonstrating that he is capable of both. I am confident that he will show that he is if given that chance.
No one has offered any credible evidence that Biden’s ability to do the job is in question. If that were the case, it would be known. While working in the US Senate, I saw several Senators who had “aged out” of their ability to do the job. It’s impossible to hide it even more so for a president.
There is nothing credible out there on that front, however. Just a one-night debate flop, which unfortunately landed on top of several years of evidence-free Republican smears.
Yes. Joe Biden had a very bad night at the campaign’s first debate match-up with ex-President and 34 x Convicted Felon Donald Trump.
But spooked Democrats need to slow down and think more deeply rather than embrace and run with emotion-driven panic and fear.
First, can we all stop bullying the man who has battled to overcome a lifelong stutter and continues to fight to overcome it every day as an adult, especially in high-stress situations? He was also reportedly battling an intense cold on debate night. Biden has never been a particularly strong debater. His stutter, the stress of a debate, and a severe cold likely contributed to his debate flop.
Time – and future performance on the job and the campaign trail – can help tell us if they were or if something bigger is afoot.
Yes, Joe Biden had a very bad night. But you know, I’ve seen plenty of candidates over the decades when I worked in politics who have had an occasional bad day or night. It happens. But those bad days or nights never determined the outcome of a race and never reflected who the candidate really was at their core.
One of the things that has always amazed me about a lot of Democrats is their eagerness to let “the perfect be the enemy of the good,” especially in intra-party politics.
They will joyfully leave a fight they are winning with a real opponent if they think there is a good shot at getting into a ruckus amongst themselves. Why? I don’t know, but that seems to be the way it works. (This is not a claim that Democrats were winning against Trump before the debate. It was and is still too close to call.)
Consider this. The Republican candidate is Donald Trump: a twice-impeached, 34 x convicted felon; a man with multiple felony indictments pending in three other jurisdictions; an adjudicated rapist, a pathological liar, a grifter, a serial fraudster, a thief, a one-man walking crime wave, and a man who betrayed democracy and tried to overthrow a free and fair presidential election which he lost.
The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is a president of historic significance. He stopped Covid cold; rebuilt the wreckage of the American economy, left behind by Donald Trump, into the strongest economy in the world; rebuilt long. overdue roads and bridges, and took historic steps to preserve the environment, all while battling opponents, foreign and domestic, who openly sabotage him – for example, price gouging giant corporations who hiked prices because – why not? – Biden will be blamed for inflation.
Guess which candidate many Democrats are now calling on to leave the race.
Not Donald Trump.
Joe Biden.
Go figure.
Some think if Biden leaves the ticket, there will be a hidden, unexpected benefit for Democrats: the new Democratic nominee would be able to head into Election Day with a clean slate. All the lies, slander, and bile Republicans dumped on Biden over the years are suddenly “inoperative,” having reached an unexpected and immediate expiration date.
They’d get to run a fresh face. Like Jimmy Carter after Nixon/Ford.
I don’t think so.
Whoever the Democratic party might choose to replace Biden will first have to go through an epic, short-circuit nomination fight within the party. They will emerge from that experience with bruises, a party with fresh divisions, and depleted financial resources spent fighting each other rather than Trump.
Then they will face a Republican slander machine that will demonize them in a New York minute as much as they’ve demonized anybody over the years – Bella Abzug, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, even Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence.
I guarantee you the files of lies on whoever even might remotely be considered a possible replacement for Biden were likely completed months ago.
There is no safe, warm, peaceful place to find shelter in a campaign world without Joe Biden.
It is important to remember that every flaw we saw in Joe Biden on debate night is fixable.
Fire his makeup person who sent him out on stage, looking like Marcel Marceau.
Revamp his debate prep. He looked over-prepared to me. I’m sure his preppers thought a presidential head filled with numbers and data would be a powerful contrast to a guy at the other end of the debate stage who is allergic to facts and data. Perhaps it might have been if Trump or any of those supporting or leaning toward him cared anything about facts and data. But they don’t.
Nor did the moderators ask him to back up any of his lies with facts or data. He lied at will with time-worn, wild, general, evidence-free smears and false, self-serving bravado. It’s easy to look confident if you don’t have to remember anything.
Don’t get me wrong. Biden has some powerful facts, data, and numbers from his presidency and Trump’s debacle in the White House. He needs to share them with the American people; a presidential debate is a good place to do so.
But Joe Biden also has some powerful stories to tell – about his life story, his remarkable years of public service, how average Americans have been positively impacted by his policies as President, and how they will be affected by them in a second Biden term.
Stories. Not just numbers.
He also has stories about the trauma inflicted on millions of Americans by Trump’s time in the White House and what American life would be like under the wannabe dictator Trump if he is able to slither back into the Oval Office for another go at stripping away the rights of women, wrecking the country in general, and destroying democracy.
The bottom line is that Joe Biden deserves a lot better than what he is getting from many in his party right now.
He had a bad night at the debate. It was an awful night. I won’t sugarcoat it. But it was far from fatal to his chances.
- First, two-thirds of American voters didn’t even see it. “Americans can’t unsee what they saw on that debate stage,” goes one refrain. Maybe not, but most American voters didn’t see it all. It attracted the lowest presidential debate viewing audience of the 21st century, and Americans have a notoriously short memory of political events.
- Secondly, Trump gave “undecideds” no reason to move to him in the debate. He was the same old, revolting, ignorant, cheating, pathologically lying self he has always been who keeps driving undecided voters away from him.
- Third, everything that went wrong in the debate for Biden:
- (a) is fixable, with time to fix it;
- (b) is unlikely to be repeated, and
- (c) is also highly unlikely to determine the outcome of the race.
Since the debate, I have talked with a number of voters who are still trying to make a non-ideological choice between the two candidates. The number I talked with is not enough to consider those conversations a scientific sampling of public opinion, but it is worthwhile anecdotal evidence.
After those conversations, I have a theory about the real impact of this first debate, at least initially for some undecided voters.
Undecided voters heard and saw both men speak directly.
What they saw were two flawed candidates. One was not a very good communicator that night, which surprised them. The other was the same old, ignorant, pathological liar and smear artist he has always been. They hoped he had changed, but he hadn’t.
Biden talked about things that mattered to them, told the truth, had a record to prove the effectiveness of his work, and talked about what he wanted to do in the future on issues important to their lives. He may not have been the most eloquent he’s ever been as he did so, but it was preferable to what they heard from Trump, which was nothing but old lies and recycled smears.
Biden “won” the contest on what they actually said. Trump, the former TV performer, predictably “won” the “how they said it” sweepstakes, appearing more. vigorous as he lied.
In the “inspiration” contest, there was no winner.
What the two men said mattered more than how they said it. How they said it was not insignificant, just thought to be less significant in the final analysis.
If that is widespread, it should give Democrats going forward with Biden some hope.
Something else that should boost Democratic spirits: I stayed with the TV coverage on the channel I was watching after the debate ended and saw Biden deliver remarks to a “watch party” near the debate site.
He looked better, was more energetic, and spoke more forcefully. The same was true at campaign appearances the following day. “Where was THAT guy during the debate?” I asked myself as I watched his later appearances.
That’s why I believe his disappointing debate performance was a one-off rather than a definitive look at the President. Time will tell.
Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains” is published as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative (IWC). His regular column can be found on Substack at