JOE'S TRY ... ON THE ULTIMATE DEMOCRATIC PHA-REEK!-OUT OF ALL DEMOCRATIC PHA-REEK!-OUTS - AND WHY TRUMP REALLY IS THE GUY WE ALL NEED TO WORRY ABOUT AGE-WISE

Or, Why Second Listens Really DO Pay For Themselves - No Matter How Wet and Stinky

It's not quite 24 hours since the first Presidential debate of 2024 - one I absolutely did not believe would take place because of how decrepit Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist) has been on the stump for at least the last six months - and, after a little rest which I had hoped would calm social media, I have been watching what can only be described as The Ultimate Democratic Pha-REEK!-Out of All Democratic Pha-REEK!-Outs.

If you're reading this, you may be a part of this … and that’s okay.

Admittedly, I was about a third of the way through the debate feeling a lot of those feelings myself, for the same reasons you were: the first half hour was brutal for President Biden. With a hoarse and barely audible voice, Biden looked and more importantly sounded like every day of his 81 years - while Trump, brandishing what had to be his first professional makeup job in years (the bronzer wasn't orange, it was applied correctly, and most importantly blocked his recent propensity to sweat like a pig on stage), seemed to personify the Bill Clinton adage that strong and wrong beats weak and right.

Add to that the utterly atrocious non-moderation of CNN talking heads Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, whose disgraceful rolling over should make us stop calling them journalists, much less "debate" host, and the snowball of despair of the Left watching, and the entire punditocracy pegged on red and is still there as of this writing.

By my count at least three dozen pundits and outlets I can count - among them The Atlantic, The New Republic, Democracy Now!, Thom Hartmann, and literally every New York Times columnist with a column (including Paul Krugman) - have thrown in the towel and are essentially begging Biden to drop out for the good of the party and for some kind of effort to defeat the must-be-defeated-or-else Trump.

I am here with my modest little Substack and loyal group of readers (thanks!), and after a needed nap and a second listen to the debate thanks to the Hal Sparks Podcast Megaworldwide, I am here to throw my two cents in on all of it.

You may already be asking why I am being such a masochist to listen to the cacophony again. The answer is, did I hear what I thought I and everyone else heard? And, yes, what I heard was a bad, brutal night for Biden.

For the first half hour of the debate.

No doubt - and if you saw my diary of the moment-by-moment (as best I could) of the debate - you will note my point that, after the first half hour, Biden actually did better than passing. On content, Biden was more solid than you realized and are giving him credit for, except for the raspy voice. A report came out about an hour into the debate that Biden had a throat cold, and one of the simplest and most profound errors Biden made was not acknowledging it. A simple mention/apology would have gone a LONG way to defuse the depression that Democrats are currently wallowing in - and if there's one thing Democrats do too well, it's wallow in their own despair.

Because let's be clear: even if we admit Biden "lost" the debate last night, one thing we can agree on is that Trump sure as Hell did not win the debate by ANY stretch of the imagination. Indeed, one of the things that got people so frustrated at Biden was the tsunami of lies that Trump spewed pretty much literally every time he opened his anus mouth. The number of jawdropping whoppers were innumerable - and even THAT played into the BIDEN B OLD impressions, as Biden would often stare at Trump in utter disbelief as Trump got crazier and crazier blerping about "Black jobs and Hispanic jobs" (one a number of Black and Hispanic commentators took particular note on) and how he created $35 insulin (apparently there was one company during Covid as a temporary fix) and how his economy was the greatest ever (we were in a recession when Covid hit) and, in the single most outrageous lie, Trump claiming he "never slept with a porn star" (a fib so outrageous I yelled out and scared my dog).  

On the second listen, Trump was very much the ranting nutbag he has been on his stump - and it must be noted that during the debate, a number of focus groups gathered by entities such as CNN, MSNBC, Univision, and noted liberal/progressive influencer Frank Luntz, were noted to have changed their votes from Trump to Biden specifically because of the lies Trump spewed. Which is a total and utter rebuke of virtually every single Democratic caterwaul by itself, IMHO.

Also, shortly after Tapper asked Trump a question about the opioid crisis (at around the hour fifteen mark or so) and with Trump's microphone on and Biden's microphone silent per the pre-debate instructions, Trump clearly can be heard ... shitting himself.

If you listen to the Sparks podcast, go to the 2 hour 25 minute mark and gird your loins in case you need to have the ultimate counterargument to BIDEN B OLD, which is what we've been hearing for years: Donald Trump truly IS VonShitzInPants!

DAYAUM! Biden may have been raspy but he sure as Hell DID NOT SHIT HIMSELF ON STAGE like Trump did!

SO ... if you can see where this is going - and it was going there even before Hal Sparks picked up on it - you can see that I am absolutely, positively NOT going to be one of the hordes demanding Biden resign. Even before The Belching Squirt is heard (and boy, we need to make THAT go viral!, gross as it is), my view is that one bad debate would not and should not kill Biden's candidacy - but forcing him to drop out because of one bad debate all but guarantees a Trump victory. Doing that would fulfill every single stereotype of Democrats being weak, would re-enforce Donald "The Crapper" Trump's worst tendencies, and put someone as a Democratic candidate that is unvetted and fighting a NewzMedia that would be thrilled to have a pelt on their wall thanks to our party.

Mind you, I am not unmindful that Biden's polling numbers are likely to not be good (pending getting that sound clip of the Trump Dump) (and HELL NO I'm not gonna let THAT go!), and that if after two weeks that will include the immunity decision, the imprisonment of Human Canker Sore Steve Bannon, and Trump's sentencing for the Stormy Daniels scandal (you know - the porn star he DIDN'T sleep with ARHAHAR?!), and Biden hitting the stump (more on that in a sec), Biden not only stays behind Trump but also starts to drag down ballot races, THEN there may need to be a discussion about doing something at the convention - and at that point, my personal opinion for what it's worth is that Biden should not just drop out of the race, he should step out of the Presidency to give Kamala Harris the power of the office of the Presidency and a chance to go for it with a bold VP pick (I always figured she'd pick a J.B. Pritzker type, but if that came up I'd be okay if Pete Buttigeg got the nod - but this is WILD speculation I will speak no further about unless circumstances warrant).

Biden was also breaking still more fundraising records - for the two hours before the debate, and $14 million post-debate. Not bad for a guy the rest of PuditAmerica saw as a literal DEFCON-1 event.

The post-debate period was and is going to be important - and early indications are, Biden is recovering more than nicely. Biden had a post-debate rally before a raucous crowd where he is so energized and with it that people who saw it were already going WTF WAS THAT BIDEN AN HOUR AGO?, and followed it up with an actual spontaneous appearance in a Waffle House where he is at ease and not looking like Decrepit Grandpa. And Biden gave a new stump speech in North Carolina where Comeback Joe was in full voice and energized, with an audience so in tune with his every word that MAGAts on the Biden feed tried to claim Biden was faking the crowd with a green screen.

Several saner pundits, including Jen Psaki and Michael Steele, said Biden should own the bad night - and at the North Carolina speech, he did. "I may not be as good a debater as I used to be, but I KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG!" Biden thundered, as the speech leaned in on the steaming pile of ... lies ... that Trump told last night, with excellent one-liners ("Trump has the morals of an alley cat!" "I'm the only candidate that isn't a convicted felon!") and went off with Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" thundering off (a more American cut than my choice would've been, Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping").

Let's not forget about MAGA, either. As you can imagine, while trying to get an endorsement from Depends (nope, not gonna stop!), MAGA has been even more triumphalist and cocky since the end of the debate, most notably with Rep. Matt Gaetz (Hey, Baby - FL, Man) macabrely claiming "the only thing left (of Biden) are his dental records!" and Trump Right GhoulHand Stephen Miller gushing about the greatest performance in Presidential debate history and getting all huffy when he tried to pawn off Trump's porn star comment on "the media" and getting called on it by MSNBC's Alex Wagner.

We should also talk about history. It was noted on Threads yesterday (forgive me for not getting the attribution) that Presidents running for re-election often have really awful first debates (see Reagan/Mondale in '84, W/Kerry in '04 and Romney/Obama in '12), so on that score Biden's performance was kind of the mean. There are also all kinds of reports that debates, especially recent debates, simply don't move opinions (see, sadly, Hillary curbstomping Mr. "I Do Number Two Boom!" in 2016) - so IMHO, any move downward on Biden's numbers are more on Democrats letting them free-fall than any actual Biden performance.

Finally, the one person that remains Biden's biggest asset in this election is one Donald John Trump. There was no question Trump got more unhinged the further he went, and he already has taken his "win" to his head if not the bathroom, as evidenced by numerous reposts on social media where, again, Trump is promising that if he regains power he has no intention of leaving after 2029. As out of control as he was, he will be even more insane, which in turn will feed every bit of sociopathy and/or mental illness and/or age and/or twisted ego and/or irritable bowel issues and make him all the easier to attack, which Biden can and already has done.

Yesterday was a bad day. The only way it becomes catastrophic is if we Democrats let it - and we do that by letting ourselves get needlessly despairing while not backing our guy and doing something really rash and stupid like forcing Biden out. The notion that a good Biden night would have squashed Trump was unrealistic, anyway, and I hope there is some strategic reassessment (and maybe a Biden strategist or two jumping on a sword) going forward. But it was bad, he's starting to tend to the bad night, and in the end if we treat is as the one bad night it was, it will be just that. One bad night on the way to re-election.

And ... I like Presidents and candidates that don't crap themselves on live TV.

Breathe ... but not too close!