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In today’s debate-yet-again edition:
- The debate was a painful routing of substance by style that moderators maybe could have stopped. President Biden wasn’t up to the task, and Democrats are freaking out. And they should be; it’s time to replace the president.
- The Supreme Court kills Chevron deference
Post-debate …
Okay. So. Do you want the bad news or the bad news?
Bad news it is. You know by now that the debate was not pretty, not for Biden and not for democracy. Thirty-five minutes into Thursday night’s debacle, Catherine Rampell said in our columnists’ live chat, “This is excruciating to watch.” Forty minutes in, she said, “I am now yelling at the TV.”
The Editorial Board, in its recap of the debate, characterized the whole thing as “Ninety minutes of pain.”
I want to be very clear: This has just as much — more — to do with Donald Trump’s voluminous falsehoods than Biden’s stumbling, mumbling attempts to bat them down. As I edited late into the East Coast night Alexandra Petri’s satirical summary of the debate, the two of us texted, wrestling with how to balance talking about a thing that’s ultimately a performance even though the stakes are who ends up running the country.
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Where we ended up was moderator Dana Bash turning to the camera at the end of the recap and asking, “Are you waking up in a cold sweat and wondering: How did we get here? How did we decide that live television performance was the best way to determine who should run the country? And how was this that performance?”
Well, how did we get here?
Alexi McCammond thinks CNN fell down on the job by not fact-checking Trump, a topic she discusses in her latest Prompt 2024 newsletter. Erik Wemple, however, points out to her the huge roadblocks to real-time verification, writing that “for media people, I believe we are no closer to cracking the code on whether you can ever allow Trump onto live television, under any circ*mstance whatsoever.”
But the greater blame might fall on the Democrats who allowed this to happen.
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As Dana Milbank writes in a column engulfed by Trump’s lies, “the truth needed a standard-bearer on that stage.” It is woeful that the country discovered all at once that “Biden plainly was not up to the job.”
Didn’t the people around him know this already?
Karen Tumulty writes that now comes the “Great Democratic Freakout,” not just for the inner circle but for everyone in the party. “The anxieties that Democrats have had all along about Biden’s decision to run for a second term will come to the fore,” she predicted at 11:52 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, to be proved right on Twitter and cable news approximately seven nanoseconds later.
Karen thinks the “far-fetched” scenario of replacing Biden on the ticket would cause catastrophic turmoil that would hurt the Democrats more than help them. This is not the consensus view at Post Opinions.
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As George Will writes in his column (on how perhaps this was just the debate we deserved), “persisting with Biden’s candidacy, which is as sad as it is scary, rather than nominating a plausible four-year president, would rank as the most reckless — and cruel — act ever by a U.S. party.”
Ramesh Ponnuru reminds Democrats that the pity they feel for Biden “should not wholly take the place of anger” because “his inadequacy is more damning the more you believe what he had to say.”
To wit: Trump is dangerous and disgraceful. This is the greatest argument for his opponent’s reelection, and it is selfish and unfair of Biden to be making that less and less likely.
Back in the columnists’ live chat, Jim Geraghty thought the debate might have gone too well for Trump: The incumbent is the easiest person for him to beat, and now, Jim muses, “maybe we won’t get that Trump-Biden rematch after all.”
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Chaser: Ann Telnaes’s cartoon of the matchup captures the tragedy of substance failing to overcome bluster.
More politics
Okay, now that the bad news is out of the way, time for the bad news.
that debate was grueling but I know what will be sure to cheer me up! a few words with my good friend, Chevron Deference, alive and well this morning as always
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) June 28, 2024
Sorry, Alex. As Karen writes in another column today, the Supreme Court’s conservatives on Friday overturned Chevron, the four-decade-old precedent that allowed agencies broad discretion to interpret federal law. The streets are saying it’s the biggest judicial power grab since Marbury v. Madison!
Karen knows all this might sound technical, but “the implications of the court’s 6-3 ruling could affect vast swaths of American life, from the cleanliness of our air and water, to the safety of consumer products, to how financial markets work.”
Expect Congress to flail about trying to write more detailed law on subjects about which it possesses zero know-how (and about which federal judges have perhaps even less).
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Then again, Karen writes, if Chevron deference hadn’t allowed Congress’s expertise to atrophy, we wouldn’t be in this mess. If there’s a “silver lining to the Supreme Court’s unwise decision,” she says, it’s the “opportunity for Congress to reclaim the authority that the founders intended it to have.”
Smartest, fastest
- Kathleen Parker writes that the abortion fight has pushed GOP women out of South Carolina’s senate, where Republican men get what Republican men want.
- Jason Rezaian explains why low turnout might actually be what Iran’s regime fears most in its sham election.
- And to end on, a glimmer of hope from Fareed Zakaria. He writes that even as the United States loses confidence in itself, the world still knows better.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
After last night’s shame
Now begins the real debate
To save race: Replace?
Plus! A Friday bye-ku (Fri-ku!) from reader Leonora O.:
A sober look now
Democracies are stronger
Than one or two men
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. Have a great weekend!
