Debate Proves Biden Unable to Run Country He Is Currently Running

95% of Voters Give 0% Shit

June 28: Biden loses debate … Voters lose interest … Democrats lose their shit … Newsfuckers don’t lose hope …

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Former Pres. Donald Trump and Pres. Joe Biden in last night’s presidential debate. (Screengrab / CNN video.)

Pres. Joe Biden’s debate performance last night inspired Democrats around the country to do what they do best: Panic.

A snap survey of reaction to Biden’s debate against former Pres. Donald Trump showed that Biden had lost a key constituency: People paid to ignore substance in a medium that values style and performance and actively discourages meaningful engagement with serious policy issues that have material impact on people’s lives.

Biden was shaky, scattered, and hard to follow. Fun fact: If you’re hard to follow, it’s hard to believe you can lead.

So, naturally, the media are responding to last night’s debate predicting that voters will absolutely abandon Biden. Even though we literally already have polling showing they did not.

Spoiler: Voters did not give a shit.

So when you hear the pundits and prognosticators predict how voters will respond, remember that we already know. CNN did a snap poll last night — before the media could tell people how to think. So we don’t need pundits to tell us what voters thought before pundits told them what to think.

Spoiler: Voters did not give a shit.

Voters are smart. They understand that one night in the weird, not-relevant-to-reality format of corporate-media TV debates is not the best predictor of who will president best.

In fact, voters already have another metric other than the debate to gauge how Biden would be as president: Current reality. 

People have lived President Trump. They’re living President Biden. So here’s the key takeaway from that poll, which we here at Camp TFN are going to dedicate to those despairing newsfuckers seeking a reason to keep living: Only 5% said the debate made them change their mind. And the number of Trump and Biden voters who said the debate made them change their mind was equal: About 3% each.

God freaking bless the Trump voter who switched to Biden based on last night!

Now, you math-savvy newsfuckers will realize that 3% from each camp can’t give us 5% total. So put your seatbacks and trays in an upright position, because here comes the turbulence.

Ten percent of alleged independents said the debate changed their mind.

Alas, it turns out that voters are also stupid. Forty-two percent thought Trump offered “a better plan for solving the country’s [alleged] problems.” Only 27% thought Biden did. And a whopping 27% thought “Neither” was a sane response to “who offered a better plan,” despite the accepted meaning of the word “better.”

The whole country agreed, though, that Biden did a bad job of TV debating. 

He was, at times, both mumbly and jumbly with his facts, while Trump was clear and assertive with his mumbo jumbo fiction. The New York Times put it well:

“While Mr. Trump at times rambled and offered statements that were convoluted, hard to follow and flatly untrue, he did so with energy and volume that covered up his misstatements…”

But it wasn’t just misstatements Trump covered up with his bullshit. He, too, lost his train of thought, didn’t always respond with sequiturs, and got basic things violently wrong repeatedly. But he did so confidently. And that’s the bread and butter of TV news.

Reading the transcript can be instructive in this regard. While it may have felt as if Trump were clear and assertive in his bullshit, that’s actually not the case if you look at the order in which word things hosed out of his face hole.

Consider what Trump had to say after Biden defended his record when asked in the very first question what he’d say to voters who feel they’re worse off than four years ago. Here’s Trump’s response, from the transcript:

We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression, the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished — so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.

So much to unpack just in that one bouillabaisse. But it’s also worth noting how old and incoherent the media were last night.

The very first question was premised on the idea that voters feel they’re better off today than they were in June of 2020 … when COVID was raging unchecked and people were hoarding toilet paper.

Just two months prior to June 2020, Trump signed an executive order forcing meat-packing companies to stay open. Why? Not because meat is essential; it’s actually essential that we get rid of meat. Trump declared meat-packing plants essential because meat companies wanted him to.

Meat-packing company owners wanted to keep packing their wallets, so they wanted Trump to let them fire workers who didn’t show up to avoid catching a virus and dying. So Trump used his presidential power to require meat-packers to pack meat and didn’t even require other companies to make the protective gear meat-packers would need to pack meat at least semi-safely.

And we don’t even remember any of that when the media asks “How come things aren’t great like that anymore?”

I know, I know, we can’t blame Trump for COVID. But we can blame him for dismantling our pandemic preparedness beforehand. And it doesn’t even matter, because Biden’s record, too, suffers from COVID: Imagine what our economy would look like if Biden hadn’t had to start in the COVID hole.

All of that notwithstanding, the media drumbeat this morning is a Biden funeral dirge. Here’s what Politico looked like:

Here’s Drudge, by no means a fan of Trump, leading with one of many reports about panicked Democrats working each other up into a lather of sufficient volume to shampoo Gavin Newsom’s hair:

And here’s a live, behind-the-scenes shot of Democratic politicians, consultants, and operatives watching the debate last night:

Naturally, after the debate, TV anchors concluded that Biden crapped the first pants with his shitty performative style. And Democratic guests were pressured to agree by TV anchors whose jobs are defined by performative style.

And some did. Even Vice President Kamala Harris said, “It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone.” Ironically, Biden improved, as Harris said, while Trump got less good. Something stamina something.

But for the moment, the chatter will be about whether Biden will step aside, and whether or how he can be replaced, before, during or after the convention. 

There’s no way to know whether that would help or hurt Democrats and/or Earth’s future. But meanwhile, weirdly, the corporate media chattering class had zero chatter about finding an alternative for something everyone wants a replacement for: Them.

To wit, the debate moderators did not ask about the Supreme Court’s historic level of ethical compromise, loss of public faith, and rampant shift of power from the people to corporations.

And at a moment — decade — when America is literally under assault from white Christian nationalism…

…there was not a single mention of this most grave domestic enemy in any of last night’s questions.

And that’s on a day when an entire state (albeit one of the lesser states) decided to impose forced religious training on every single child whose parents are still stuck there.

Biden did make one tactically genius move: The debate came earlier in the campaign season than ever. Meaning that both voters and the media will have months to forget all about, thanks to our terrible memories, whatever it was I talking about. Hell, Trump’s sentencing is less than two weeks away.

The bad news: There’s another debate coming. Sept. 30.

The good news: Lots of incumbent presidents have rebounded from bad first debates.

Then-Pres. Barack Obama — that’s right, Mr. Famous for Talking Nice — had a rough first debate in 2012. Against Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) — Mr. Famous for Talking Boring.

In Ronald Reagan’s first 1984 debate, he came off poorly and doddering against Walter Mondale. Who’s only remembered today for being not memorable.

Biden doesn’t need more prep. He seemed overprepped, as if chief prepper, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, thought issues mattered. (Is anyone talking about replacing Ron Klain?)

What Biden needs isn’t fact-prep it’s emotional prep. Stop trying to act tough. Act calm. Not outraged, focused on the job. No-drama Obama won, so let’s see, uh, No-elidin’ Biden. That doesn’t work. How about Law-abidin’ Biden? We’ll workshop it.

The important thing is that what Biden really needs to do in the three months between now and Sept. 30 is not get three months older.

Bottom line, it was a bad night for Biden. Should Democrats organize to replace him as the candidate, now or at the convention? Maybe. They could end up fielding a young, dynamic candidate who’d make Trump look like what he is despite the media’s power to make him look like what he isn’t.

On the other hand, maybe Democrats choose a candidate who’s worse. With much less of a record to run on. Maybe inflation keeps fading, which they wouldn’t be able to take credit for.

And if Democrats do try to replace Biden, but fail, they hand Trump a dynamite weapon against Biden come Election Day: Even your own party agrees you’re not qualified to serve as president.

Never mind the expanding universe of Republican leaders already on record saying the same thing about Trump. 

Never mind that when Trump was four years younger, his own cabinet — which he chose — considered Trump so dangerously unfit for office that they discussed and contemplated using the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to force his removal from office.

The existential horror right now is that no one knows for sure the right way to proceed. But knowing that we don’t know should be liberating, too. No one knows. Or has ever known. That’s reality. That’s life.

What we can’t do is be certain. Even about the depressing stuff that TV anchors pressure Democrats to be certain about. Certainty is dangerous. It blinds us to alternate futures. And, maybe worse, it justifies not doing the work.

We can stipulate that Biden did a shitty job in the shitty format of a shitty medium. That doesn’t mean he can’t president — he’s literally doing exactly that right at this moment. It doesn’t mean he can’t campaign — he’s doing that, too. And it doesn’t mean he can’t win.

You don’t have to keep calm. But FFS carry on. Remember: everything is rocking good.

TCB

A lot of news happened yesterday that got blown out by Bidenpocalypse. Hell, your humble TFN broke an important story last night knowing that it was the Platonic ideal of worst possible time to break an important story. Point being, I’m feeling like maybe a bonus-edition TFN is appropriate this weekend. What do you think?

If you don’t cast your vote by putting your money where my mouth is with a donation, at least lemme know via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, and/or Threads. I tend to think people want a break from the news, and even newsfucking, over the weekends, so tell me if I’m wrong!

Go get ‘em, kids. It’s weekend time!