I will start right off the bat by saying I hate debates, and saying anything more would be redundant given Adrastos and I are lock-step in agreement about why, as if we mind-melded. That said, hoo boy, let’s get into it.

The hot takes are flying fast and furious around the teevees and Interweb. Hot takes are not the greatest, warm takes are much better, so I point you to Cassandra’s debate post.

I’ll start with how I sees it, as they say in the old classic movies Adrastos watches. The debate started out poorly for Biden. There’s just no getting around that, no amount of spin will change that. He seemed to be trying to cram an hour’s worth of policy statements in two minutes, and also appeared nervous. And yeah, his voice sounded terrible, like an old man with a cold because Biden last night was an old man with a cold.

Trump meanwhile had one job to do: lie. His stream of lies was delivered vigorously, because lying is much easier. Just ask a liar, who will probably tell you lying is hard. Many of his lies were insane, such as after-birth abortions being a-ok under Roe, he never had sex with a porn star, Biden solely caused inflation, Biden has only created jobs for migrants, and that when he was president air and water was somehow clean. Standard stuff for the weird right-wing uncle you hate seeing at Thanksgiving, insane for a presidential candidate.

One takeaway from last night is anyone still saying on the Interwebs “uh, uh, oh wow, lol so you really think Trump would be worse than Biden” after hearing what Trump said about Gaza, I am not sure what say. Like a person watching an ef-5 tornado approaching and saying “how is this any worse than a regular severe thunderstorm?” He repeated his “Israel needs to finish the job” line and went at Biden about the pressures the U.S. put on Netanyahu and rattled the sword at Iran. If you have half a brain, you can see how under a Trump presidency, two right-wing authoritarians like Trump and Bibi would create a wider war that could engulf the entire world.

Biden missed multiple opportunities during the debate, and a more adept debater would have rolled Trump on it. Also, given TV is a visual medium, Biden’s mouth hanging open during Trump’s bizarre rants wasn’t great. Late in the debate, he began to laugh at him, which is exactly what he did when he debated Paul Ryan in the 2012 vice-presidential debate. Really should have done that the entire time.

Biden did get a few punches in, including “you have the morals of an alley cat” to Trump. That leads me to something I noticed about the debate, at the start Trump seemed “competent” and Biden, notsomuch, and around the 40 minute mark, it was like a lightbulb went off in Biden’s head that this was just going to be a lie fest. So slowly the tables began to turn, Trump started to become the Nonsensical Trump we know and hate and Biden seemed better. Trump’s closing remarks were pretty much two minutes of WTF.

So where do we go from here? Oh, the hot takes are flying all over the place. The demands for Biden to drop out are loud right now, and it’s safe to say that while it’s still unlikely he steps down, it’s not as unlikely as it was before the debate. But such a move would be a HUGE political risk also. People seem to believe that such a move would be simple, but it would risk a contentious convention fight that could turn off a lot of people. As much as I am a Gretchen Whitmer stan based on the fantastic progressive changes she has pulled off in Michigan, I am not sure the party can pull off such a change of pilots in mid-air.

There are ways to recover from this. There are focus groups representing such key voters as Latinos and Michigan voters who seemed more bothered by Trump’s lying than Biden’s delivery, despite every outlet outside of MSNBC pretty much ignoring that part of the debate in their post-event analysis. So in some ways, Trump blew an opportunity to do greater damage to Biden.

Additionally, Trump’s verdict comes in two weeks, that will capture attention. Despite the bad instapolls about who won the debate, it remains to be seen how this moves the race, I have a feeling both people who want to think it will hurt Biden and those who argue it won’t matter will both have evidence over the next few weeks. As Cassandra pointed out in her post about the debate linked above, the GOP convention is coming and it will be a real shitshow.

We also have three recent examples to pull from of how to recover from a bad debate. To be clear right off the bat, this election is unique and batshit nuts, so keep that in mind. But Dubya Bush got schooled by John Kerry in their first debate in 2004 (with little to no effect on the race, btw). This might come as a shock given the mythology that has sprung up around St. Barack Obama, but he was AWFUL in his first debate with Mitt Romney. Perhaps most applicable to the current situation, PA Senator John Fetterman had a disturbingly bad debate soon after he suffered a stroke and the hot take was that it doomed his chances to win the seat.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the night was what happened after the debate. Biden appeared at a watch party soon after the debate and spoke forcefully and coherently. Biden also seemed much better debating reporters during a late night visit to a Waffle House. Where was this version of Biden just a few hours before?

Of course, the debate was where the action happened. Perhaps Biden was unprepared for the types of questions asked by CNN anchors, including Part-Time Cartoonist Jake Tapper and Blank Stare Expert Dana Bash. There was no mention of Trump’s felonies or Jan. 6 until well into the debate. Perhaps they underestimated how perfectly the format fit someone like Trump, who was free to lie unimpeded. Perhaps their plan of fighting a cheating babbling madman with policy statements were a poor fit for Biden, given he did much better when it got scrappy.

Nevertheless, no one knows how this debate affects the race. Biden has been counted out before and bounced back strong, like his last two State of the Union addresses. Democrats have been told electoral disaster was looming in the leadup to every election since 2016, and the opposite has happened. What we do know is Biden cannot afford another performance like this.

Late breaking news: Biden says he’s not dropping out and looks forward to the September debate.

The last word goes to Paramore.