After Biden's disastrous faceplant in the debate, Josh Marshall pointed out something I'd been feeling and even articulating to myself: the debate felt like election night 2016. You had that same sense of dread and disbelief that this was happening. Of course, it is not election night, and we have seen Biden perform better since then, and Black voters in particular are swarming to support him.
Even more, we have panels of undecided voters who watching the debate feeling pretty split about who won. Some of this is likely just being reminded why they didn't like Trump four years ago. He's either your Orange Julius Caesar or he's a flaming asshole. As one undecided voter put it, at least Biden tried to provide substantive answers and didn't lie all the time. Snap polls show no movement away from Biden.
However, the freak out will create its own narrative. The Times has been after Biden for months now, but their editorial calling on him to drop out will drive one narrative. The ideal way to respond to this is how Republicans would: rally around Biden. You can still have conversations behind closed doors, but there's almost no plausible way to nominate Johnny Unbeatable. Don't drive the Freak Our narrative.
Secondly, I think a lot of Democrats have been desperate for the relief of finally burying this monstrosity of Trump in the ash heap of history. We thought we had it on election day in 2020, maybe the second impeachment...E.Jean Carroll...fraud convictions...felony convictions...none of it seemed to matter. The hope was that Biden would come in with an Aaron Sorkin moment and everyone would acknowledge that Trump was toast. Ideally he would die of embarrassment right there on the stage.
Biden effectively let the side down, the same way Tim Weah let the USMNT team down a few hours earlier in the same city by drawing an idiotic red card. This was similarly bad. People are pissed at Biden for not giving them the moment that they thought he had given them in 2020.
Anyway, let's see whether the polls show that the panic narrative and the debate itself have hurt Biden. Maybe the age stuff is baked in?
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