If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you …
Rudyard Kipling
“If”
Calm down.
Many supporters of democracy are in panic mode following a poor debate performance by Joe Biden last week. Hardly anyone is focusing on the poor performance of Donald Trump (except for the Philadelphia Enquirer, which called for Trump to withdraw from the race. Now that’s responsible journalism!). The rest of the media is in full-blown headless hyper-gallop, heading for the cliff.
Panic is the flood of fear that spills over into reckless behavior. Reckless behavior leads to wreckful consequences. Calling for Joe Biden to withdraw is reckless and wreckful.
The one guy I dearly hope is not in panic mode is Joe Biden because if he leaves the race, Donald Trump will be our next president. Guaranteed. If Biden stays in the race, on the other hand, he will most likely win. No guarantees, but I like those odds much better.
The debate was definitely a setback. But panic is an all-out surrender.
Panic unhinges the brain. If you’re feeling its deadly tingle, take some deep breaths and resist rushing into hasty decisions or leaping to faulty conclusions. Above all, avoid stampedes, which wreck everything in their path. When you’re in panic mode, don’t kid yourself that you’re being “rational.”
Context helps.
Did Biden do poorly in this debate because he’s too old and showing cognitive decline and therefore not up to doing the job as president? Or are there more reasonable explanations?
He’s not a good debater, particularly with a ridiculously short time-clock (We should ditch debates altogether). He didn’t do well in the 2019 Democratic debates either, under similar pressures. But anyone who has paid attention the past four years knows Biden and his administration have done an exemplary job under difficult circumstances. That’s why many of us are enthusiastic supporters. If you’re just tuning in, you missed that remarkable performance. It may be why you focus too much on his age and are wildly overreacting to a single bad debate performance.
Biden made the mistake of trying to squeeze too much into too little time. He also suffers from a lifelong stutter. He learned to control it for the most part, but under this kind of pressure, it was a problem. He stumbled over his words, which was proof for those who already believed he is too old and were looking for confirmation of their bias.
Another mistake was trying to respond to Trump’s disjointed rants and ludicrous accusations — a veritable firehose of lies and distortions. As journalist/historian Heather Cox Richardson pointed out, Trump employed a rhetorical device called the “Gish gallop.”
“Someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them,” she wrote. “Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has.”
Yet Biden didn’t make any major gaffes, didn’t suffer mental meltdowns, and got better as the debate went along. He had plenty of stamina.
Biden’s performance didn’t prove he was too old. It proved he had the wrong strategy. Trump, meanwhile, who is content-free, logic-free, scruples-free and truth-free, could say anything he wanted and get away with it. The format is tailor-made for a con man.
But suggesting Biden should withdraw as a candidate is irresponsible and incredibly naive. As Lawrence O’Donnell said on MSNBC, there is no “magical candidate” waiting in the wings to take his place, and any replacement would have to build an organization from scratch with only four months till the election, not to mention raising enormous amounts of money. The last time Democrats tried that (replacing LBJ in 1968), we ended up with Richard Nixon. This time it would be Donald Trump. Replacing a candidate at this point is utterly unrealistic, and the anti-democracy movement would fully exploit our desperation.
Judging by Biden’s energized performance in Raleigh, North Carolina at a rally the next day, the debate debacle may be the best thing that could have happened to him. But the only way we’ll know is if he stays in the race.
If Biden pulls out and Trump wins this election, historians will not point to the debate as the cause but to the freak-out that followed. That’s what gives aid and comfort to the opposition. That’s what will rip the pro-democracy movement to shreds.
Biden can’t defeat Trump by himself. “We” are the ones who must defeat him. And “we” are the ones to blame if Trump wins. Every time we panic, we increase the odds that it will happen.
We can’t afford the luxury of fantasies about magical candidates riding to our rescue.
We cannot afford to panic.
So before you do irreparable damage to yourself and your country …
Calm down.