Debate Thoughts

Several reactions

That was a rough night.

Next time must be better.

For Joe Biden.

For the media.

For America. (I kept wondering what other countries must’ve thought watching it).

I’ll let the last 14 hours of commentary cover that. And leave it to people above my pay grade to fix what needs to be fixed.

For now, I’ll share five couple quick thoughts:

1. Big Picture > Factoids and Details

Debates and the campaign are about big issues. Large arcs and enormous stakes and consequences for every day Americans and the country and globe at large.

Loading up President Biden with a basket of specific facts and figures to recite, as opposed to hammering home on the big stakes and those larger arcs is a mistake. He wasn’t elected as the king of details, nor will he be reelected on that basis.

When he’s done his best, as at the State of the Union speeches, it wasn’t from details.

Stick to that big stuff—in the opening, in the closing, and throughout. Go with emotion.

As for details that should come up—they aren’t the facts and figures. They are the real-life stories about how Trump’s extremism and continued attacks on democracy will upend everyday lives. Talk about those lives. Talk about those stories.

They are real, they are impactful.

2. Trump’s True Weakness

Mehmet Oz lost the Pennsylvania Senate debate to John Fetterman—even as the now-Senator recovered from a stroke—due to a single line in an equally one-sided and tough debate: Oz said abortion should come down “to a woman, her doctor, and the local elected official.”

And that was the end of that election.

I won’t say the same thing happened last night, but it started.

Early on, Trump declared that “everyone” agreed with Dobbs. He went on and on about it.

That is wrong, and absurd. And it’s also a big opening. It taps into the single largest and most consistent force in American politics right now.

The truth is, Dobbs so outraged Americans that there’s been an ahistorical, counter cyclical winning streak for democracy and freedom ever since, in red states and blue, at all levels. Again and again and again. Since Kansas voted 60-40 to protect reproductive freedom in August 2002.

And that winning streak has been less about candidates and far more about Americans seeing the threat to individual freedom clearly, and showing up in higher numbers—consistently—protecting their freedom.

Do NOT underestimate the American people when it comes to protecting their freedom. And do NOT forget WHY and HOW we built the streak.

Trump was on incredibly thin ice when he talked about Dobbs that way. Given two years of election results (often defying polls), it’s a huge opening.

3. No More Disinformation Channels

CNN seemed to think disseminating fact checks after a fusillade of lies accomplishes something.

That was a historic blunder, and symbolic of a media that continues to allow itself to become a streaming channel of endless and massive disinformation.

Even worse, when you pre-announce that you will not be correcting blatant lies or propaganda, you are giving an advance gift to the propagandists. And they will game it out accordingly: use every answer to disseminate lies and wild theories. This leaves their opponent with only two choices: spend their answer rebutting the lie, or simply letting the lie go unresponded to so they can get to their preferred answer.

Either way, signaling in advance that you will not even call out the most outrageous lies is both an incentive for lying as well as a reward for those who spew untruths the most. That explains so much of what happened last night.

4. Another Big Lie

Speaking of false narrative and myths, we usually refer to the allegation that the 2020 election was stolen as the “Big Lie.”

But there’s another “Big Lie” that I think is actually more relevant to this campaign than even that whopper.

And it’s emerged as a cornerstone of the Trump campaign, it’s completely false, yet the media NEVER corrects it.

What is it? It’s the absurd myth that all was going well in Trump’s America before COVID.

There are two problems with that:

1) Trump himself was responsible for the disastrous response of COVID. It happened on his watch and he did a horrific job in just about every imaginable way. I believe he was voted out in 2020 largely because of how ineptly he responded to it, and how scared people still were. When he says, “all was great until COVID,” we should all use that as the opportunity to remind folks just what a terrible job he did throughout that terrible time.

2) Trump’s policies were failing before COVID. As I point out in the video below, Trump inherited a very strong economy from Obama. But, no accident, once Trump’s tax scam took effect, and amid erratic policies and pronouncements, that steady growth slowed to a halt…and for much of America, that happened BEFORE COVID ever hit.

In Ohio, I know this…because I explained it all at a press conference in Toledo in January 2020. I was there to prebut a Trump rally where he touted that the Ohio economy was the “best ever” (like he said last night), when the truth was, 2019 had been Ohio’s worst jobs year since the Great Recession.

Ohio actually lost jobs between January 2019 and January 2020. Lost manufacturing jobs. Lost mining jobs. All while the deficit exploded.

And yes…January 2020 came BEFORE COVID.

The entire Trump campaign is built on the lie that his first term was succeeding until COVID interrupted it.

The truth: his policies were already failing in countless ways, and his inept response to COVID made all those outcomes even worse.

WATCH:

5. Keep. Going!!

Going forward, remember this:

One reason 2016 happened is that most didn’t expect it. It was unimaginable.

That November, we learned painfully that it can happen. Many probably looked back and thought—if I’d known that the risk was real in 2016, I would’ve done more.

But now in 2024, the risk is clear.

And yes, it’s even more clear after last night.

This is real. This is scary. More real than it felt for most in 2016.

So with that reality much more clear, we have the opportunity to not make the mistakes of 2016 over again.

Each of us can and must use every part of our footprint to save democracy.

And, know that as in recent elections, this will be razor tight.

And it will all come down to turnout….

…and one question: Do we (greater in numbers than the other side) care more about protecting democracy and freedom than they do about destroying both?

The answer must be yes.

Keep going. Do all you can!