Biden is shipwrecked in a tidal wave of lapses, hesitations and lost phrases | USA Elections

Joe Biden began to lose the debate against Donald Trump in the first minute. His voice wasn’t flowing, he had it. He coughed to clear his throat, but it didn’t work. He launched into a full-speed response about the economy that seemed rehearsed, but lacked nerve and clarity. Then came the lapses, the unfinished sentences, a moment when he seemed to go blank… The Democrats’ worst nightmare came true. If what Biden intended is to show himself as a fit politician, capable of tackling a second presidency that would end at 86 years old,…

Joe Biden began to lose the debate against Donald Trump in the first minute. His voice wasn’t flowing, he had it. He coughed to clear his throat, but it didn’t work. He launched into a full-speed response about the economy that seemed rehearsed, but lacked nerve and clarity. Then came the lapses, the unfinished sentences, a moment when he seemed to go blank… The Democrats’ worst nightmare came true. If what Biden intended was to show himself as a fit politician, capable of tackling a second presidency that would end at the age of 86, he failed in the attempt.

Biden failed in form and substance. In the debate everything was weaknesses. He was unable to refute the hoaxes and lies that Trump bombarded him with. His attempts to be aggressive didn’t work either. He called Trump an “idiot” and a “loser,” of course blamed him for being a “convicted felon,” and accused him of having “the morals of a stray cat.” Trump, however, was discouraged by these attacks and responded with his apocalyptic messages full of lies.

Even at the entrance to the stage, Biden was seen arriving with an unsteady step and with a greeting lost in the void. The president has always fought against stuttering and has often done so successfully. The first presidential debate was not one of those occasions. Coughing, stuttering, and missed phrases ruined his performance. Some Democrats circulated that the president had a cold.

Biden has been holed up with his advisers at the Camp David summer residence since Thursday of last week. There he has been practicing against rivals who pretended to be Trump, preparing answers on various topics and preparing his attacks on the rival. None of this has worked well. At times, the president tried to rush his message, to the detriment of clarity. Other times his speech seemed too artificial. At worst, he even lost the thread of his answers a little, as when he went blank and ended up getting out of the mess with a nonsensical sentence, saying that his administration had “finally defeated Medicare,” the health policy that Democrats pride themselves on.

Biden, 81, had not debated since his 2020 clashes with Trump, in which he emerged victorious. The intervening four years have left a candidate clearly aged, with less verbal ability and physically weaker.

Biden’s performance has set off alarm bells in the Democratic Party. The president has a second chance on September 10, but the two and a half months until the second presidential debate are going to be very long. In August, the Democrats will hold the convention in which they will formally nominate Biden as their presidential candidate, but the voices calling for an alternative will not be silenced after his performance on Thursday in Atlanta.

Follow all the information about the elections in the United States at our weekly newsletter.