On Tuesday evening, we watched Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump during the first presidential debate of the election. Three things are worth discussing.
First, polls indicate a clear winner: Joe Biden. According to a CNN poll, six in 10 debate watchers voted for Biden as the winner of the debate, with only 28% of watchers voting for Trump. There is no doubt that Biden outperformed Trump, who did nothing but incessantly sabotage the event, without realizing that he, in fact, sabotaged himself.
Secondly, other measures beyond debate performance polling must be noted. Post-debate trends reaffirmed the lead that Biden enjoyed before the debate. Strategically speaking, Biden was also a winner from this perspective. The same poll done by SSRS for CNN indicates that the debate neither significantly changed people’s prior preference for Trump or for Biden, nor it moved undecided voters significantly, however, the data shows a slight leaning against Trump after debate performances, but specifically, people who think Biden will win the election (regardless of their preference) jumped from 53% to 60%, after watching the debate.
Most importantly, debates also show the character of the participants. This debate served as yet another monumental evidence that Trump is unfit to be President, and that Biden is presidential. Biden, successfully struggling against Trump’s sabotage, was able to speak directly to the audience a few times, and showed his empathy for the people of our country in the midst of this crisis we are living in, and specifically briefly outlined his health plan and preliminary thoughts on how to reconcile the economy with protecting people’s health and life from COVID-19. Trump, on the other hand, showed what his actions have been telling us all along: he does not care, it is all about him and to impose his personal agenda (and that of those with economic power surrounding him) through his presidency.
It must be emphasized, over and over again, that the current President of the United States, given the chance to do so, could not condemn white supremacy. Rather, he asked the white supremacist group, Proud Boys, to “stand by.” The refusal to condemn violence and white supremacy, and as a matter of fact, the incitement of such (as evidenced by Proud Boy members taking to social media to flaunt their new slogan, “Stand By”) is simply un-American.
This call to white supremacists to just “stand-by” is very troubling in itself, but particularly dangerous when correlated with Trump’s rhetoric of not pledging to recognize the outcome of the election, and not committing to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, as it is the American tradition. The Senate had already passed a unanimous resolution last week responding to that absurdity, previously asserted by the POTUS. Nonetheless, he insisted with it at the debate.
Trump’s alarming claim is unfounded. The chance of vote-by-mail fraud or error is less than 0.0025% (virtually non-existent) according to all bipartisan studies. The Trump administration’s own FBI Director has flatly and categorically denied that possibility to date. The postal vote is a legitimate and legal voter alternative, essential in a pandemic and, according to polls, the preferred method of voting for Democratic voters and older adults. This opens the possibility that Trump is incurring another “dog whistle” at white supremacists (so they are ready if he pulls the trigger of not going down the institutional path), before the final results are obtained, counting, under the law, all mailed ballots.
The American people deserve much better than what we saw at the first presidential debate. And no doubt that it is, based on what just happened, exclusively incumbent on the POTUS to deliver a performance consistent with democratic norms. But the world is also looking at these debates, wondering whether the American people will bring change to the White House and reclaim moral leadership in international affairs, or if the Trump presidency is a fatal indication of a decline in America’s standing in global affairs.
Surveys collect the reactions of those polled, what they say to a question, but they do not record the impressions that have begun to take shape in collective psychology. Tuesday’s debate left no room for doubt. The country and the world know who is who. Any decision will be made on the basis of very clear options.
As of the writing of this post, Trump has been confirmed to be infected with COVID-19. The diagnosis casts a shadow of uncertainty on many things, but certainly on the two future debates, given that the President has entered into quarantine and we will have to wait for how his health evolves. In any case, with or without more debates, let’s hope democracy and hope triumph in the face of the obscurantism embodied by Trump.