Categories
October Surprise 2016

Nobody won that debate, but Biden lost ground

  Nobody won that debate, but Biden lost ground

posted at 10:39:37 UTC via latimes.com

?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brig

WASHINGTON — 

When two flawed presidential candidates, President Biden and former President Trump, met in their high-stakes debate Thursday night, each hoped to pass a test in voters’ eyes. Both failed — but Biden’s stumbles, fairly or not, are likely to cost him more than Trump’s.

Biden needed to quell concerns that he’s too old to serve effectively for another four years. His stumbling, occasionally incoherent performance fell far short. He looked every one of his 81 years — markedly less vigorous and crisp than the commanding figure who delivered an effective State of the Union address about four months ago.

Trump, who is 78, needed to look and sound presidential to appeal to voters who doubt his temperament and his stability. He needed to avoid his self-indulgent temptation to claim that every election he loses was rigged and every legal setback he suffers was politically motivated. He failed, too.

The 90-minute debate was a dispiriting race to the bottom, pitting a tongue-tied octogenarian against a pathological liar. Undecided voters looking for a positive reason to vote for one or the other were unlikely to find enlightenment.

But that doesn’t mean it was a tie. If it had been a boxing match — an apt analogy, given its flurries of verbal punches — a referee would probably have awarded Trump a win on points, for two reasons.

First, Biden came into the debate as the candidate who needed to shake up the campaign. Trump has led recent national polls by a hair, but he is clearly ahead in most of the half-dozen battleground states that will decide the election. Biden hoped to change that, so he needed a win.

Second, while Trump missed an opportunity to appeal to undecided voters and expand his support, he did a more effective job than Biden of presenting his favorite talking points. Many of them were untrue and some were nonsensical, but most went unrebutted by either Biden or CNN’s moderators, who had sworn off fact checking for the evening. That left Trump no worse off than when he started.

A debate’s impact often comes down to a few memorable moments. Many voters didn’t watch at all, and some who tuned in didn’t stay for all 90 minutes. But over the next week or two, some of their worst moments will be played and replayed, magnifying their effect.

A few examples of each candidate’s worst moments may convey the flavor of the evening. (A list of their best moments would be sparse.)

Biden’s voice was hoarse and halting, especially early in the debate. He appeared to lose his train of thought more than once; his voice trailed off at the end of several answers. He ended one tangled explanation of his tax proposals with the puzzling phrase: “if we finally beat Medicare.” After another such moment, Trump seized the opportunity to make sure viewers noticed, saying: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

Trump lied with his customary enthusiasm, reeling off bogus claims he has honed in dozens of stump speeches. He said he produced “the greatest economy in the history of our country” during his term as president, but that isn’t true under any definition of economic success. He claimed Democratic states are routinely killing infants “after birth,” a luridly inaccurate description of late-term abortion. He claimed Biden’s immigration policies have allowed “18, 19, could be 20 million” undocumented migrants into the country, a wild exaggeration, and that the Biden administration is “putting them on Social Security and Medicare.” (It isn’t.)

All those whoppers are familiar to anyone who has sat through any of Trump’s rallies; all have been debunked. But there were too many for Biden to knock down one at a time, so he responded: “Everything he just said was a lie.”

And Trump ducked any question he didn’t want to answer — including whether he will abide by the result of the election. “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” he said — but instantly undercut that semi-pledge by claiming that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. (It wasn’t.)

There are vast differences between these two candidates on important issues before the country, and voters deserved a debate that illuminated their choice. This was not that debate.

Instead, it was a missed opportunity for both candidates — and one that not only damaged Biden’s chances of shaking Trump’s lead, but was certain to reopen the barely suppressed debate among Democrats over whether they have their best possible nominee.

With four months remaining before election day, the race undoubtedly has more twists and turns to come. But Thursday’s debate was surely a pivotal moment — a setback for Biden that he must now try to repair.

Read more from columnist Doyle McManus on Trump and California.

Saved Web Pages Review – The News And Times – TheNewsAndTimes.com

WASHINGTON —  When two flawed presidential candidates, President Biden and former President Trump, met in their high-stakes debate Thursday night, each hoped to pass a test in voters’ eyes. Both failed — but Biden’s stumbles, fairly or not, are likely to cost him more than Trump’s.Biden needed to quell concerns that he’s too old to serve effectively…
posted 13m ago via latimes.com
 

21 minutes agoBy Will Grant, Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent • Kathryn Armstrong, BBC News • Ido Vock, BBC NewsBolivia’s General Zuniga arrested for coup attemptBolivian police have arrested the leader of an apparent attempted coup, hours after the presidential palace in La Paz was stormed by soldiers. Hundreds of troops and armoured…
posted 1d ago via bbc.com
 
Министр внутренних дел РФ Владимир Колокольцев прилетел в Нью-Йорк для участия в IV саммите руководителей органов полиции государств – членов ООН (UNCOPS-2024). Об этом в среду, 26 июня, сообщила пресс-секретарь министерства Ирина Волк. Саммит пройдет 26-27 июня, его цель – обсуждение вопросов по укреплению международной безопасности и сотрудничеству…
posted 1d ago via dw.com
 

Bolivian President Luis Arce stared down a short-lived attempted coup on Wednesday, after calling on the public to “organize and mobilize” in defense of democracy as soldiers and armored military vehicles withdrew from surrounding government buildings in La Paz. Bolivia has a long…
posted 1d ago via edition.cnn.com
 

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Armored vehicles rammed the doors of Bolivia’s government palace Wednesday in an apparent coup attempt against President Luis Arce, but he vowed to stand firm and named a new army commander who ordered troops to stand down. The soldiers later pulled back as supporters of Arce waved Bolivian flags and cheered in a central square.In…
posted 1d ago via apnews.com
 

Two international bodies have on the same day accused Russia of carrying out war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine.The International Criminal Court (ICC) pretrial Chamber said on Tuesday it had issued arrest warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov for “the war crime…
posted 1d ago via newsweek.com
 

It’s the same narrative that was used just a few months ago when armed militants killed 145 people at the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow, even though an affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility. Instead of investigating how Russia’s intelligence services could have missed an attack of such significance, Moscow immediately accused…
posted 1d ago via nbcnews.com
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pardoned potentially thousands of former U.S. service members convicted of violating a now-repealed military ban on consensual gay sex, saying Wednesday that he is “righting an historic wrong” to clear the way for them to regain lost benefits.Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted…
posted 1d ago via apnews.com
 

Министр обороны США Ллойд Остин во вторник провёл телефонный разговор с министром обороны России Андреем Белоусовым. Обсуждалась важность сохранения открытых линий связи, сообщил Пентагон. Официальный представитель Минобороны США генерал-майор ВВС Патрик Райдер сообщил на брифинге журналистам, что Ллойд Остин был инициатором разговора и что это…
posted 2d ago via svoboda.org
 

Export All Images to PowerPoint File Bhattacharjee, Debanjan; Agrawal, Adesh Kumar; Gowda, Guru S. Author Information Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Address for correspondence: Dr. Debanjan Bhattacharjee, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health…
posted 2d ago via journals.lww.com
 

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov attend a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia February 27, 2022. Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabTHE HAGUE, June 25 (Reuters) – The International Criminal…
posted 2d ago via reuters.com
 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is reported to have replaced an official within his Federal Security Service (FSB) who laid the groundwork for his country’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.Sergei Beseda, 70, who served as head of the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) fifth directorate, has been replaced by Alexei Komkov, who formerly worked…
posted 3d ago via newsweek.com
 

More on the New Abwehr Hypothesis  Investigate the Investigators! GRU, the Russian Military Intelligence masks as FBI – (?!). Do we know about it? Do we think about it? | Suspect in Capitol car attack posted about fears of FBI and CIA week before ramming officer. | M.N.: FBI: Declassify and disclose all the background information on Noah Green. …
posted 3d ago via russia-news.org
 

A moment of strike on Sevastopol beach. Screenshot: video on social media The Russian occupation authorities of Crimea and the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation have claimed a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol, which killed five people, including three children, and injured over 120 others. Source: Mikhail Razvozhayev, the so-called governor…
posted 3d ago via pravda.com.ua
 

Officially, the IDF probes on October 7 will only be disclosed to the public in mid-July. On Wednesday, Channel 12 reported leaks of some of the key findings; the IDF, notably, did not deny the report.Although the IDF also did not confirm it, the military has been aggressive in its denials of other leaks about failures related to October 7, so the…
posted 5d ago via jpost.com
 

Ukrainian envoy to Israel cautioned Jerusalem about the potential consequences of the mistreatment faced by Ukrainian individuals attempting to enter Israel in August warning that Hasidic pilgrims might become the target of Kiev’s retaliatory actions. In 2010, Israel has entered into a visa-free agreement with Ukraine. But in 2024, Israeli authorities…
posted 5d ago via eturbonews.com
 

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty.What I saw inside the government’s response to COVID-19This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.On New Year’s Day 2020, I was zipping up my fleece to head outside when the phone in the kitchen rang. I picked it up to find a reporter on the…
posted 2w ago via theatlantic.com
 

U.S.WorldBusinessArtsLifestyleOpinionAudioGamesCookingWirecutterThe AthleticSKIP ADVERTISEMENT Credit…Matthew MonteithBy David BrooksRecently, while browsing in the Museum of Modern Art store in New York, I came across a tote bag with the inscription, “You are no longer the same after experiencing art.” It’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but is it…
posted 2w ago via nytimes.com
 

When Russian troops seized Crimea in 2014, German chancellor Angela Merkel, reporting on her conversation with Vladimir Putin, told President Obama that the Russian president seemed to dwell “in another world.” In a sense she was right: Russians and Westerners see the world quite differently, and our failure to understand Russia’s perspective made…
posted 2w ago via nybooks.com
 
The News And Times Information Network – Blogs By Michael Novakhov – thenewsandtimes.blogspot.com