Gentlemanly it was not. Republican voters of eight years ago who were frustrated with Mitt Romney’s unwillingness to stand up for himself in his debates with Barack Obama had no such frustrations last night with Donald Trump.
Democrats who feared that a confused and diminished Joe Biden would show up for the debate were relieved.
If you missed it, here’s a little montage that will give you a bit of the flavor of last night:
TRUMP: You agreed with Bernie Sanders…BIDEN: Here’s the deal…CHRIS WALLACE: Let him speak…BIDEN: There is no manifesto, number one… CHRIS WALLACE: Please let him speak, Mr. President… BIDEN: Number two… TRUMP: He just lost the left… BIDEN: Number two… TRUMP: You just lost the left. You agreed with Bernie Sanders on a plan… BIDEN: Folks, do you have any idea what this clown’s doin’?” BIDEN: Here’s the deal. The fact is that everything he’s saying so far is simply a lie. I’m not here to call out his lies. Everybody knows he’s a liar. TRUMP: But you agreed… BIDEN: I, I, I want to make sure… TRUMP: You graduated last in your class not first in your class. BIDEN: (chuckle) CHRIS WALLACE: Mr. President, can you let him finish sir? BIDEN: He doesn’t know how to do that. TRUMP: If he ever got to run this country and they ran it the way he would want to run it, we would have, our suburbs would be gone – by the way – our suburbs would be gone and you would see problems like you’ve never seen before…TRUMP: He wouldn’t know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn.”
To my eye, at the end of the debate, moderator Chris Wallace looked exhausted.
In the midst of the flying beer bottles there was some substantive debate on the issues and voters got to see the stark differences between the two men. The first topic up was Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
BIDEN: The American have a right to have a say in who the Supreme Court nominee is. And that say occurs when they vote for a United States senators [sic] and when they vote for the president of the United States. They’re not gonna get that chance now ‘cause we’re in the middle of an election already – the election is already started. Tens of thousands of people have already voted. And so the thing that should happen is we should wait.
TRUMP: Elections have consequences. We have the Senate. We have the White House. And we have a phenomenal nominee – respected by all – top, top academic. Good in every way. Good in every way. In fact, some of here biggest endorsers are very liberal people.”
The contrast between the two candidates was perhaps most starkly revealed in their answers to questions about the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
BIDEN: The idea that he is insisting that we go forward and open when you have almost have the states in America with a significant increase in COVID deaths and COVID cases in the United States of America. And he wants to open it up more. Why does he want to open it up? Why doesn’t he take care of the American…you can’t fix the economy until you fix the COVID crisis.
TRUMP: A lot of people between drugs and alcohol and depression…when you start shutting it down you take a look at what’s happening in some of your Democrat-run states where they have these tough shutdowns. And I’m telling you its’ because they don’t want to open it. One of them came out last week – you saw that – ‘Oh, we’re gonna open up November 9,’ Why November 9? Because it’s after the election. They think they’re hurting us by keeping them closed. They’re hurting people.”
Joe Biden acquitted himself better than many expected. Donald Trump will be criticized for his frequent interruptions.
It was a 96-minute cage match that will likely not move the needle much in either direction.