If You Can’t Communicate, You Can’t Run for President

Sifting through last night's wreckage

The spectacle after the spectacle last night was watching Democratic operatives — who are professionals with a job to do — try to spin Biden’s performance. Imagine executives from the Graf Zeppelinworks watching the fiery wreckage of the Hindenburg crash to earth, and then turning to their PR person and saying: “Go out there and tell everyone that the blimp is fine.” That was the task for professional hacks last night. An extra layer of surrealism was added by the fact that some of the people arguing the unarguable were people who might replace Biden on the ticket — Gavin Newsom had to go on TV and pretend that his phone wasn’t melting with texts saying “YO BRA IT’S GONNA BE YOU!!!” In a nihilistic era of politics in which nothing ever seems to matter, everyone instinctively knew: Last night mattered.

The funniest attempt at spin was “Biden has a cold.” Oh? A cold? What are the symptoms of this cold — being incoherent and lost and generally seeming like a man in his 80s who needs to have his responsibilities dramatically dialed back? Is the cold why Biden spent half the debate gawking at Trump with a blank stare, as if he was a specter trying to make contact with the corporeal world? Did the cold force Biden to shuffle onto the stage with itty-bitty steps like he was wearing socks on a newly polished floor? I imagined the Biden flak who sent the “Biden has a cold” text feeding new excuses to their media contacts throughout the debate: “Biden also has Typhoid.” “The President is on heroin.” “Joe was struck by lightning shortly before he took the stage.” “Biden accidentally ate a uranium fuel rod and got on the bad side of a Voodoo priest who seems to be enacting his revenge.” Though even those explanations might not justify what we saw.

Many partisans decided that the most viable line of defense was: “Biden spoke softly and mixed up his words but Trump was a relentless gusher of ignorance and lies.” This, of course, is true. In a sane world, we’d be making more of the fact that the guy who “won” was a tornado of mendacity and bullshit, as per usual. Some outlets dutifully performed fact checks that did — for a brief moment — focus the conversation on the fact that saying things like “my opponents murder babies after they’re born” is a batshit bananas thing for a presidential candidate to say. Biden’s defenders have a point when they argue that what was said should matter more than the manner of delivery.