EXCLUSIVE: 2024 Presidential Debate
Just as the sun was setting on the afternoon of June 27th, 73 million Americans tuned in to CNN to watch the first presidential debate between former president Donald Trump, and current president Joe Biden. The candidates will answer debate questions and represent their policies and official intentions if elected. The Republican Party fully intends to double down and expand their power with Schedule F and Project 2025, flaunting democracy and centering our government around Christian nationalism. The Democratic party realizes this and have campaigned on few other issues than stopping Trump and saving democracy. With the democratic primaries closed, 81-year-old Joe Biden is their only hope.
The 2024 Presidential Debate was a tragic performance of senility and incompetence. Multiple times, instead of answering the debate question, Trump would continue his rebuttal against Biden’s defense of the last question in a splutter of blatant lies or propaganda. To the voter who knows how to discern fact from falsehood, this was unremarkable. But the swing voter who is yet undecided and impressionable will undoubtedly be swayed, especially after comparing Trump’s performance to Biden’s.
The current president stammered, muttered, and froze up throughout the debate, with rare moments of clarity when passionate about a topic. But it was too little and Biden couldn’t help but look geriatric as he stood there, pale, starting at the former president in confusion. He could have very easily refuted Trump’s lies, if only he could get the words out.
To call the debacle a “debate” would be generous: the two candidates held a back-and-forth that resembled a heated argument more than a formal, televised event that millions of Americans would be watching. The nation sat on the edge of their seats as Biden tried to link words together, then groaned as Trump tied anything and everything back to “the border” for the nth time. Biden would fall for Trump’s blustering and try to refute it, just to sputter and choke. Eventually, the debate devolved into a verbal slap fight, with each candidate at one point calling the other “the worst president in history,” then talking about their golf game in a competition between two old men trying to prove they were the most youthful.
To say the entire thing was a wash would be fair, but to admit that Biden lost in a spectacular way would be the truth. Biden is too old and tired for the job, and Trump is no better just a few years his junior. At this point a stray dog could receive more votes than either of the nation’s elderly candidates, but thanks to the two-party system, these are our choices: Don the Con or Sleepy Joe.
Trump isn’t going anywhere; the Republicans love him, and are relying on his victory to move forward with Project 2025. But the Democratic National Convention is in panic mode. With eighteen weeks until the election, their candidate just torpedoed his campaign live in front of the nation. If they want a Democrat in office for the next four years, they’d better come up with a better plan before the next four months is up.
The DNC made a mistake in 2016, running “moderate” Hillary over “radical” Sanders. To run Biden again would almost guarantee a Trump victory, clearing the way for Project 2025 and a Christian theocracy. The only way to prevent this bleak future would be to run anyone else, preferably someone with moderate politics who doesn’t look and act like they are two million years old. But the democratic primaries are closed and their fate is sealed in Biden.
Anyone paying attention to politics and remembers Trump’s presidency is not enthusiastic about voting for Biden. They already held their noses once in 2020, but to see what happened last night and reflect on the failures of the last four years, asking them to hold their nose again would be too much.
The wise move for the DNC would be to do something completely unprecedented: rescind their vote for Biden, and run a competent candidate, fast. Otherwise, if our democracy is in the peril that they say it is, their next chance for election in 2028 may never come.