I Have Faith in Joe Biden

President Biden at the CNN Presidential Debate on June 27, 2024. Photo by Justin Sullivan/via Getty Images.

The debate last night was a disaster with a capitol D-I and I woke up this morning with a deficit of energy in my tank. I will be tuning out from all main stream media today, which will no doubt be repeating the same few tag lines about Biden’s seemingly weak performance last night ad nauseum. The entire point of a political debate is to accurately provide the electorate with the candidate’s political intentions so they can make an informed vote. To say that the CNN moderators failed to provide the appropriate forum is an understatement.

Last night was my first round of holding a live chat on Substack for my faithful subscribers and I decided to cross post on Twitter at the same time because that is like a home base of sorts for many of us during big political events. I wanted to make sure I could gage the reaction of everyone last night, because I had such State of the Union hopes.

President Biden had a cold, and had clearly been worked too hard during debate prep at Camp David over the weekend as evidenced by his hoarse voice and the exhausted look on his face. If I had a cold and had to deal with Donald Trump yapping in my ear, I would, as my Mimi used to say, look like the The Wreck of the Hesperus. I’m also much younger than Biden, who does so much physical work that I could hardly keep up, but if I were sick and then forced to be sickened, I would have dark, puffy eye circles with that thick makeup smeared all over me that would make me look like a walking corpse.

We were only a minute into last night’s debate when I realized I was in real trouble with my live-tweeting. How do you assess the performance of a candidate who does not even appear to be speaking the English language. Donald Trump’s statements were so fantastical that he was weaving his own narrative that re-created reality and the result was a confounded look from President Biden that would have been hysterical had it not meant that Republicans would jump on him for looking feeble.

So, you have Biden with a stunned look that I am assuming everyone with a functioning brain was experiencing, and a man who made himself appear strong because he was performing at story time and the public library. Instead of fact checking the candidates in real time, the CNN moderators decided that using a cut off mic system would be best, which was an epic failure. I also take issue with the purported members of “Biden’s team” who insisted that this debate was a good idea, despite a complete lack of reality safeguards, and I wrote about that here.

A lot of Biden surrogates, myself included, look to the president for an injection of inspiration at these larger events, so that we can continue to rally other people to get excited and to vote. Many of us are running on empty at this point, because while President Biden excels in the Office of President of the United States, he is not communicating well as a candidate for the presidency. This does not make me fear his ability to do the job, or to worry about his physical fitness for the next four years — Joe Biden is in better shape than most Americans half his age.

Instead, this stumble in judgement from the moderators, his team and anyone who should have forced the president to rest more, just means that we need to pivot our approach and focus on the accomplishments of President Biden, which are numerous and truly outstanding. This election is not about who can play a better game of golf, despite last night’s devolution into senior bragging, it is about who will protect the rights of all Americans and give us a better future. In this respect, the proverbial golf game is not even close.

I liked Lawrence O’Donnell’s point best last night during the post-debate analysis where everyone, even at MSNBC, was screaming that the sky was falling. He pointed out that some of our best presidents, like FDR and JFK, were not men who could present themselves as physically strong and robust in this day and age. The American public has made a shift into choosing a candidates like they would choose a WWF wrestler, and for those sorry voters, we are out of luck.

But there remains a strong block of undecided voters who does understand what is at stake and who was able to see that Donald Trump is incapable of truthfully pledging anything to the American public. President Biden has a record that is easy to sell and now has to become the focus of everything we talk about. In law school, we had a saying that was so helpful and really applies to this situation: this election and the eradication of Donald Trump from public office is not a sprint, it’s a marathon and we still have a lot of game left to play until November.

What bothers me most about last night was not Biden’s performance, but rather the anonymous quotes that were coming from the Biden team and supposedly heavy hitters within the Democratic Party. The same people who decided that these debates were an excellent idea decided to tell the press, that they were seriously worried about Biden’s performance and freaking out.

If you are going to make these kinds of elusive and derogatory statements to the press about the person you have hand-picked, decided to back and then pressured into a debate, you better be willing to put your name on the statement. Frankly, the lack of professionalism and class from the Biden camp worries me more than the Biden performance.

I want to remind everyone that the issue of abortion is truly a safety net for Democrats in this next election. The numbers on this issue and how people, particularly white women, have come out to vote in favor of liberal principles in this area give me the daily confidence to keep going.

When polling continues to be so close and is exasperating and confounding, I think about women coming out in droves to make a demand for their rights at the ballot box. When Trump continues to lie and answers every important question he is asked with a pivot to migrants and racist tropes, I think about Roe v. Wade. While we watch these two very different men battle it out for power and control, remember that the women of America are going to save us, again. That is inspiring as hell.

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Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter, is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and an analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.

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