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Former President Donald Trump’s crushing victory over President Biden in the first presidential debate raises important questions about the 2024 presidential election.
The big question after the showdown is whether Biden will be the Democratic presidential nominee in November. I say this because the only issues that matter now as a result of the debate are the uncertainty of Biden’s presentation, his husky voice, and his numerous gaffes. The answer depends on whether the post-debate polls swing dramatically toward Trump.
The only thing really working in Biden’s favor is that voters are so entrenched in their attitudes that their support for Trump is unlikely to be as pronounced as the gap between the candidates’ performances on Thursday night. That said, I fully expect the national election, which is now statistically tied, to tilt toward Trump by at least a few points. And there’s every reason to believe the former president will consolidate his lead in at least five or six battleground states that favored Trump more than the national electorate.
Biden criticized for ‘old’ appearance and ‘weak’ voice during first presidential debate: ‘Very disturbing’
During the debate, I received numerous unsolicited messages from grassroots Democrats asking when Biden would be replaced, whether Biden is someone who should be buried in a cemetery, and whether Biden really is, as I and apparently many others felt, sometimes incoherent.
To be fair, I don’t think Trump changed many people’s minds on Thursday night — he dodged many questions about how to end the Ukraine war, how to solve the opioid crisis, how to unite the country amid the polarization we see every day — but there’s no doubt in my mind, even to the most ardent Biden supporters, that Trump seemed coherent, persuasive and right most of the time.
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To be clear, Biden’s answers on issues like abortion, NATO, and indeed many aspects of our foreign policy were strong and persuasive in substance, but they were all overshadowed by his inability to speak clearly, his hesitation in answering questions, his hesitation in his choice of words and phrases, and his closing remarks that left everyone, especially me, unsure about whether Biden is fit for the office of the president.
Indeed, I believe Trump did not adequately answer questions about his own legal challenges, although his answers about Hunter Biden went a long way toward clearing the issue.
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Still, the most important thing for me coming out of this 90-minute showdown, and indeed what will emerge from this from the highest levels of the party to the grassroots, is whether the Democratic Party can survive Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. And the corollary is this: Should the party elders, led by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, begin the same conversation that Republican elders began with Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974? That year, Republican elders told Nixon that he no longer had any support in his party and that he had to resign. The question now is whether Democratic leaders can and will do the same with President Biden.
I think this is an important issue, and I say that as a Democrat who would prefer to vote for Democrat in November, but I think it will be very hard for many Democrats to vote for Joe Biden after watching him on Thursday night.
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