In the aftermath of this week’s US presidential debate, the Democratic party faces an agonising choice. Loyal supporters of Joe Biden will compare his weak performance with Barack Obama’s loss to Mitt Romney in the first debate of the 2012 campaign. The current incumbent has had a similarly bad night, they will argue, but can bounce back, just as Obama did. Others will point to Biden’s robust State of the Union address earlier this year as proof that Thursday night was an aberration.
But that would be to deny the reality that millions saw unfold in Atlanta. Biden signally failed to meet the low bar which had been set for him, to disprove the widespread perception – held by three quarters of Americans and a majority of those who voted for him in 2020 – that he is too old to serve a second four-year term. His faltering delivery, confused sentences and apparent physical frailty made his opponent – only three years his junior – appear a decade younger. Unchallenged, Donald Trump was permitted to mislead and dissemble, emerging with his frontrunner status enhanced.
Biden has by many measures been an effective president; he successfully steered substantive legislation on climate and infrastructure through a divided Congress. He oversaw a period of rapid economic recovery and job creation, repairing relations with international allies and providing firm leadership against Russian aggression in Ukraine. There are items on the debit side of the ledger, too, which have hurt him domestically: cost of living increases and the migration crisis at the southern border are both contributing to his dismal popularity ratings, while war in Gaza has divided his own party.
Thursday night’s unedifying spectacle had little to do with policy, though. The standard of debate was depressingly low, as it had been when these two men clashed in 2020. The difference this time is that Biden looked truly – many would say disqualifyingly – old.
Received wisdom in US political circles has it that presidential debates are not consequential for the final outcome. Thursday night may prove the exception. It brings the Democrats to a fork in the road. One lane leads to a probable Biden defeat. The other is an unprecedented and uncharted last-minute change of course that could well end in chaos. What shifted this week is that the latter option, with all its attendant risks and uncertainties, has now become thinkable in some party circles. The prospect of a mid-ranking Democratic figure such as governors Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom facing Trump in the autumn may now seem the least worst option. However, the mechanism for achieving that outcome by the time the Democrats complete their convention in mid-August remains unclear unless Biden steps aside, which still seems unlikely.