US election 2020: Joe Biden makes mistakes in first presidential debate
The good news is that Sleepy Joe Biden managed to stay awake during the first presidential debate, but the bad news is he still had the same wacky ideas, writes James Morrow.
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Joe Biden won the battle – but his performance at the first of the 2020 debates might also have been enough to lose him the war.
Thanks to months and months of Donald Trump’s “sleepy Joe” cracks and increasingly disturbing brain-fade YouTubes, pretty much all the former VP had to do was stay upright over the course of the debate.
So, well done, Joe Biden – who was also given an assist by moderator Chris Wallace, who was quick to cut off topics that were unfavourable to the Democrat, as well as Donald Trump, who as is his wont was unable to repress his urge to press the attack when he should have stood back and given his opponent room to make mistakes.
And make mistakes he did.
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Because at the end of the day, Joe Biden was revealed as fragile and defensive. His well-rehearsed set pieces to camera felt like Jimmy Carter telling everyone to turn down their thermostats during the energy crisis of the 1970s.
And that’s before we get to what he actually said – and didn’t say.
Biden refused to answer a question (which Wallace refused to follow up) about whether he would pack the Supreme Court.
He called Antifa an idea rather than an organisation.
He said he didn’t support defunding the police but suggested, bizarrely, that there should be a psychiatrist riding along with the cops in every squad car.
Can you just imagine it? “You have the right to remain silent … you have the right to issues with your mother …”.
He said in the same breath that the radical Green New Deal would pay for itself – and then said he didn’t support it.
He called for an increase in the company tax rate, which was lowered under Donald Trump, kicking off America’s pre-COVID economic surge and bringing back manufacturing.
And so on.
While debates almost never change votes, they are revealing. But with Biden’s supporters more being anti-Trump than pro-anything else, the debate has crystallised what his people will actually be voting for.
Chances are, no small number of them won’t like what they see.
Originally published as US election 2020: Joe Biden makes mistakes in first presidential debate
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