BIDEN'S DISASTROUS DEBATE: Democrats in 'full-on panic,' openly discussing replacing Biden before convention after 'extremely feeble' performance
Fights over of Israel, Hamas, Iran irrelevant in light of Biden's vacant stares, mumbles, raspy voice
RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA – A total meltdown.
President Joe Biden on Thursday night delivered the single most disastrous debate performance in American political history.
And upwards of 60% of Americans were watching.
America's enemies were watching.
So were Israel's enemies.
I was certainly watching – and even I didn't think it would be this bad.
HOW WILL OUR ENEMIES REACT?
I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, right now.
On Thursday, I addressed pastors and other Evangelical leaders from all over the state on the immense spiritual, social, financial, and political challenges facing both the United States and Israel.
I told them – and explained in my debate preview article here on ALL ISRAEL NEWS – that Biden's age and mental acuity was going to be watched closely during the debate.
And it almost could not have gone worse for Biden.
His performance was a train wreck.
The most serious risk right now is not political – I'll get to that in a moment.
The most serious risk is that Biden's pasty white face, raspy voice, vacant stares, incoherent mumbling, and inability at times in the debate to complete a thought may very well tempt such enemies into dangerous new attacks and invasions.
Biden's weakness over the past four years has already tempted Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to give Hamas and Hezbollah the green light to attack Israel.
Will Chinese President Xi Jinping now be tempted to invade Taiwan?
What will North Korea's Kim Jung Un do?
TRUMP GAVE HIS BEST DEBATE PERFORMANCE
By contrast to Biden's weakness, former President Donald J. Trump delivered his best performance I've ever seen from him.
He was strong, clear, forceful, and disciplined.
He looked and sounded presidential.
I expect his poll numbers to go up and for independents and undecided voters to move towards him.
HOW WILL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REACT TO THIS DISASTER?
Democrats are now in a full blown panic.
Within seconds of the debate ending, reporters and political analysts on CNN, MSNBC, and other so-called "mainstream media" outlets began reporting this level of unprecedented panic.
They also began reporting the active conversations that have already begun among top Democratic strategists about asking Biden to withdraw from the race so that he can be replaced before or at the Democratic convention in August.
Consider just a few examples:
SENATOR CLAIRE McCASKILL, Democratic Senator from Maryland, appearing on MSNBC just before midnight – "My job right now is to be very honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight. And he didn't do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was to reassure America that he would be up for the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight....My phone was blowing up with Senators and campaign operatives and donors from all over the country. Does that mean that Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate? I don't know that....But I'm not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There's a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. And you have to ask, 'How did we get here?'....Based on what I'm hearing from a lot of people – and some of them are people that are in high elected offices in this country, and you might guess where they serve – there is more than hand-wringing tonight. I do think people feel like we are confronting a crisis."
CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN political analyst and former columnist for the Washington Post – "This debate was a total and complete disaster for Biden. He looked old. His answers trailed off repeatedly. He was hard to understand. He would stop in mid-sentence and move on to something else. I NEVER thought he would be this bad....The scale of the disaster of that performance by Joe Biden – with tens of millions of people watching – is hard to describe."
JOY REID, MSNBC political commentator – "I was on the phone [texting] most of the debate with [former President Barack] Obama, with world people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with campaign operatives. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic. The people who were texting me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak."
JOHN KING, CNN senior political analyst – "Right now, [the conversation among Democrats] involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers, and they're having conversations about the president's performance, which they think was dismal....Some of those conversations include, 'Should we go to the White House and ask the President to step aside?'"
CHUCK TODD, NBC political commentator – "One of the things [people were watching for] was would either candidate look like the caricature of what the other campaign has been trying to paint of them? And at the end of the day, Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting....You saw it before your eyes. Look, I don't want to just tell you what I think here. I've been talking to a lot of leaders in the Democratic party, elected, coalition leaders. There is a full-on panic about this performance. Not like, 'Oh, this is recoverable.' It's more of a, 'Okay, he's got to step aside.' There's a lot of that chatter. This is about as bad a performance that Biden could have delivered."
VAN JONES, CNN political commentator – "I just want to speak from my heart. I love that guy [President Biden]. That's a good man. He loves his country. He's doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base and he failed to do that. And I think that there are a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider take a different course now. We're still far from our convention and there is time for this party to take a different way forward, if he will allow us to do that. That was not what we needed from Joe Biden and it was personally painful for a lot of people. It's not just panic. It's painful."
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, New York Times columnist – "I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention."
FRANK LUNTZ, pollster – "After the first commercial break, I asked my focus group of undecided voters how many of them would vote for Biden. Zero raised their hands. Half of them say they voted for Biden in 2020....After the second commercial break, I asked my focus group of undecided voters how many are more convinced to vote for Donald Trump. 10 of 14 raised their hands, even if they didn't like Trump. One said: 'I don't even know if Biden can make it to November.'"
The White House tried to explain Biden's catastrophic performance by claiming that he has a cold, something that wasn't said before the debate.
TRUMP, BIDEN DISAGREEMENTS OVER MIDDLE EAST POLICY COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWED
Both Trump and Biden were asked about Israel, Hamas, the war in Gaza, Iran, and the danger of suspected Middle Eastern terrorists illegally entering the United States via Mexico.
Biden laid out his three-stage plan for peace in Gaza.
He insisted the only group that wants the war to continue is Hamas.
Trump strongly disagreed.
He pushed back hard at Biden's answer, saying that "Israel is the one that wants to keep going. He said that the only one that wants to keep going is Hamas. Actually, Israel is the one. And you should let them go and let them finish the job."
Trump argued that Biden doesn't want Israel to finish the job and achieve total victory in Gaza.
"He's become like a Palestinian," Trump said of Biden. "But they don't like him because he's a very bad Palestinian. He's a weak one."
Trump also argued that if he were still Commander-in-Chief, the Iranian regime would not have dared to order Hamas to attack Israel.
"Israel would never have been invaded in a million years by Hamas," he said. "You know why? Because Iran was broke with me."
Trump was referring to his "maximum pressure" campaign of severe economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.
At one point, Biden was on the defensive about allegations that he has been slowing down the transfer of U.S. arms and ammunition to Israel in recent months.
"We're providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them," Biden insisted, though he admitted he has held back 2,000-lb. bombs that he claimed "don't work well in populated areas and kill a lot of innocent people."
Biden was responding to allegations brought up in recent days by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who insists Israel needs U.S. military aid to come faster, especially as tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon heat up, but says Biden has been systematically holding up critically needed arms shipments.
Biden insisted that "Hamas should be eliminated" but added that Israel "has to be careful" when using certain weapons in population centers.
That said, however the sparring between Biden and Trump over Israel, Hamas, and other Middle East and terrorism issues was essentially irrelevant.
They were completely overshadowed by Biden's disastrous performance.
So, where does the Democratic party go next?
More than ever before, Americans, Israelis, and the whole world will be watching closely.
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Joel C. Rosenberg is the editor-in-chief of ALL ISRAEL NEWS and ALL ARAB NEWS and the President and CEO of Near East Media. A New York Times best-selling author, Middle East analyst, and Evangelical leader, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and sons.
