By Kerry Eleveld
Daily Kos Staff
The thoughts of many Americans who tuned in to Thursday night's first 2024 presidential debate were perhaps best summed up by an Arizona voter and self-identified Republican named Jeff.
"The feeling I had inside was, Trump, hell no—he lied through the whole thing,” Jeff told MSNBC, “and Biden is like, oh no—he is really in bad shape."
Jeff is exactly the type of swing voter President Joe Biden needs to win over in November and whom the Biden campaign clearly hoped to assuage at the very least. Stylistically, however, Biden routinely stuttered and stumbled and generally reminded voters of one of their biggest hesitations about him: that he's old.
But while Biden may have fallen short of expectations on that count, the live primetime face-off did appear to have the desired effect of reminding persuadable voters what a menace Donald Trump is. Trump lied liberally throughout the debate, but his most disqualifying moments came on questions related to the rule of law and the preservation of democracy.
On the subject of Jan. 6, Trump tried to sell himself as an innocent bystander who merely had incidental contact with the rioters.
"They asked me to go make a speech," Trump explained during the debate.
Then he took several cracks at blaming former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to stymie the attack, claiming she turned down his offer of sending 10,000 national guard troops to defend the Capitol and has since taken responsibility for not being more prepared.
Trump's entire explanation is sheer fantasy that surely plays great to the MAGA masses but reads as patently false to anyone who isn't living in the Fox fever swamps.
Trump also defended the Jan. 6 rioters while taking aim at Biden.
"What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Trump said to Biden during the debate. "What you have done, how you’ve destroyed the lives of so many people."
There's a reason no pollster has ever asked voters if they believe Biden has mistreated the Jan. 6 rioters—no sane person believes that. Also, defending the people who brutalized police officers and ransacked the Capitol that day is a deeply unpopular cause.
On the 2024 election, Trump was given multiple opportunities to say he would accept the results in November, but he couldn't bring himself to simply say yes.
After several tries by the moderator, Trump finally conceded, "If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely."
Perhaps not coincidentally, Biden's finest moments came in defense of democracy and American ideals. He blasted Trump for standing idly by on Jan. 6 as the rioters stormed the Capitol.
“He didn’t do a damn thing,” Biden said. “And these people should be in jail, and they should be the ones who are being held accountable. And he wants to let them all out.”
Biden revisited Trump calling World War I veterans "losers and suckers," a story first reported in The Atlantic in 2020 and later corroborated by former four-star Marine general and Trump chief of staff John Kelly.
"My son was not a loser, not a sucker," Biden said. "You're the loser, you're the sucker."
And after Trump repeatedly disparaged America as "destroyed" and "failing," Biden came to the nation's defense.
"The idea that somehow we are this failing country, I never heard a president talk like this before," Biden said. "We’re the envy of the world. Name me a single major country president who wouldn’t trade places with the United States of America. For all our problems and all our opportunities, we’re the most progressive country in the world and getting things done. We’re the strongest country in the world."
Biden also hammered Trump for proclaiming he would seek retribution if elected president, calling it "wrong."
"No president’s ever spoken like that before," Biden said. "No president in our history has spoken like that before."
The Biden campaign surely didn't accomplish everything it hoped to during the debate, but the contrast was clear. Biden came across as a decent man who cares for his fellow citizens and still believes the United States is the greatest country on earth; Trump presented an unrepentant, self-obsessed bloviator whose appetite for lying is insatiable.
But ultimately, it's the assessment of voters like Jeff that will matter most, and how that shakes out remains to be seen in the coming weeks.
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