It wasn’t so much what Joe Biden said, it was how he said it. His voice was weak and shaky, he lost his way, forgot what he was saying. He sounded feeble. He sounded old. Very old. And the storm of white-hot criticism that rained down on his head from friends and foes alike after the 2024 election’s embarrassing and disastrous first presidential TV debate with Donald Trump was blistering. It was sad and painful to watch.
Republicans were jubilant. They think it’s all over bar the voting. They claimed Biden had only one objective: to prove, at 81, that he was fit to lead as president for a second term – and he failed. Many Americans will agree. Except they already thought he was too old. It’s unclear as yet how much this flop will sway undecided voters. Proud, stubborn Biden will fiercely resist pressure to stand down. And no leading Democrat is publicly willing as yet to wield the knife. That may change.
It’s undoubtedly a moment of acute electoral crisis for America. Yet the world should pause and take a deep breath before burying Biden and the Democrats’ re-election hopes. Almost lost in the noise was the hideously repulsive performance of Trump himself. He looked more like a predator than a president, less candidate, more loathsome, reptilian bully. He lied persistently and without a blush. For him, all policy is prejudice. The debate was a timely reminder of how dangerous this man is.
Trump’s jabs and punches were mostly fact-free make-believe. He claimed Biden was corrupt and paid by China: no evidence. He said waves of illegal migrants were “coming over and killing our citizens” at unprecedented levels: absurd hyperbole. Most ridiculous was his claim that Biden “encouraged” Russia to invade Ukraine. Trump admires Vladimir Putin. He’d love to be a dictator like him.
This debate proved two things. One is that Biden is struggling, perhaps fatally. He should have had the sense and selflessness to step down voluntarily before he reached this sorry pass. The other is that Trump, wholly lacking in principle and propriety, is a hate-spewing ethical vacuum who will stop at nothing to get elected – and, if allowed back into the Oval Office, will launch a reign of revenge.
This debate showed it’s time to get serious again about Trump. His lies, crimes, anti-democratic views, misogyny and racist xenophobia have grown familiar over time. His 2020 defeat eventually brought relief and a certain complacency. But as the polls show, he’s back. In truth, he never went away. If November’s election were held today, he would probably win.
For real-time as opposed to prime-time insight into the Trump menace, consider the testimony of John Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff – a man who watched him up close daily. Kelly describes his ex-boss as “not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women”. Trump, Kelly said, “has no idea what America stands for… [He] admires autocrats and murderous dictators [and] has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our constitution and the rule of law”.
Or consider Trump’s plans for America and the world. They include deportations of millions of undocumented migrants, a sweeping, global trade war-triggering 10% tax on imports, unlimited oil drilling, the abandonment of Ukraine to Russia and the evisceration of Nato. Trump, 78, wants the supreme court, packed with his appointees, to agree that, as president, he can do anything he likes. He has again refused to say he would accept defeat.
The debate not only highlighted Trump’s unchanged, unhinged behaviour, it also underscored fundamental constitutional problems that have enabled this lowlife to move within touching distance of the world’s most powerful job once more. This crisis is not just about Trump. It’s about how America works – or doesn’t.
The founding fathers, writing laws 235 years ago for an inward-looking agrarian society of fewer than four million people, 700,000 of them enslaved people, could not envisage a freak like Trump. Their big concern was preventing the “tyranny of the majority” – by which they meant the power of the many (including non-whites) to dictate to the few. Yet today’s problem is the opposite.
Thanks to the anachronistic electoral college, unbalanced bodies such as the Senate (where each of the 50 states has two representatives regardless of population size) and lifetime appointments of federal judges and supreme court justices, political minorities wield disproportionate power. Like George W Bush in 2000, Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the presidency. He could soon do so again.
In a new book, Tyranny of the Minority, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that repeated failures to reform antiquated institutions that facilitate and encourage the advance of ever more extremist minorities have left the country vulnerable to exactly the kind of crisis now enveloping it.
Like Trump, the 147 congressional Republicans who backed his election coup no longer respect the democratic rulebook, they suggest. “We got through the 2020 election, just barely. Even if we get through the 2024 election with our democracy intact, unless we reform our democracy, we will remain in this fragile position where every national election is a national emergency,” Ziblatt said.
Biden’s position before the debate was already perilous. One authoritative survey last week gave Trump a three-point national lead. He’s ahead in all seven key swing states. Biden, if he can stay the course, needs a small miracle between now and November. Yet the alternative is utterly appalling. As one pundit put it, voters must choose between an old man and a conman.
How did it come to this? It’s no way to run a country. Those founding fathers have a lot to answer for.
• Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator
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