Coffee House Shots
Will Biden survive his debate implosion?
The stage is set. Get a front row seat and run up to the election by subscribing to the spectator for just three pounds for three months. We'll even send you a free election mug. Go to spectator.co.uk/mog. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shot's Spectators Daily Politics podcast. I'm Katie Bloose-Nouger and I'm Fraser Nelson and Sarah Adiot, Director of the Special Relationship Arena at the Garden Institute. Now, it's the morning after the night before of the first of the US presidential election debates. Now, over the past few weeks, we've been dissecting the UK debates, the election specials are often saying, "Is this a game-changing performance?" The answer was always no and I think we've just seen what a game-changing performance looks like. Now, let's listen to two clips to bring you up to speed. First, here is Biden getting lost for words. All those things we need to do. Child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to submit, strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID. Excuse me, dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare. And now, here's Donald Trump slamming it all up. Fraser, just to begin, can you bring listeners up to speed of what really struck you and what happened, I suppose, last night? This was an implosion. I reckon it's up there with Nixon JFK debates and the consequential television debates. For a long time now, people who follow politics have seen Joe Biden unsteady on his feet needing help to be escorted off stage, et cetera. But most Americans would really have tuned into that. What they have tuned into last night was a president who is visibly unfit for the job. He got lost in his own sentences. He would change his subjects midway through. Donald Trump, by comparison, was sharp. He was composed, which is unusual for him. And he looked almost presidential against Biden, who ended up mumbling and challenging him to a game of golf at one stage, and then it failed the Trump to say to Biden, let's not do this like children. Look, I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which when I was vice president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before I'm happy to play golf, if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it? That's the biggest lie that is the six handicap of all. I was an eight handicap. Hey, if I have, you know how I go. I've seen this way. I know this way. All over, you've seen a president who is so was visibly flailing so much that the Democrats are now in panic. And there's all sorts of comments in the States right now about whether they can really go into the election with him, because there won't be another debate, not until the middle of September. So if they want to get rid of him, then the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August is now looking like the time. That's how important this debate was. It wasn't so much what he said. It was how he came across and how he looked like somebody who had struggled to get through the last few months of his presidency, let alone his second term. Now, we'll go further into what this means for Joe Biden and the Democrats and experts. Sarah, just first, I mean, watching that debate, was at any moment particularly sprung out to you as the ones that could decide Joe Biden's fate and why Democrats are panicking so much now. We had confusion over billionaires and trillionaires, and we had a missed goal on abortion. Yeah, I think overall, it was the split screen effect. Just sitting there and watching it, the optics, where you see an older man who, by the way, is only three years older than his opponent, Donald Trump. You know, looking away from the camera, unfocused, looking down a lot, looking dazed in the distance. It was not a person with Vin and vigor or should be the leader of the free world of the United States of America, the commander in chief of the US military. It was, it was actually awkward to watch. And you, I actually felt for him, there was sympathy. And at this point, you know, you have to look to the people surrounding President Biden and going, what are you doing to this man? He needs to retire, resign gracefully. This is not the best of America. And this is not the best the Democrats can do. So why, why are they doing this to the American people and keeping him as their candidate? And Fraser, what seemed to strike me this morning in terms of reaction is, of course, they have a long time being critics. He was said that Joe Biden is too old. He's too past it. He cannot do this. But really, what seems to have changed is it's now the Democrats and figures in the Democrat movement also saying this, the CNN pundits, former senators, they all seem to now, you know, no one really I think other than Jill Biden is trying to claim this as an okay performance. Well, that's right. I mean, this debate was called by Joe Biden. He wanted to have this very early stage debate because basically he knew he was losing to Trump and he wanted to change the narrative. Well, he certainly succeeded in doing that. And if you're a Democrat watching this debate, you know the election is as good as lost if you allow Biden to go into it. So this is what I think has changed. The realization that Trump is probably going to win by a landslide if the whole of the presidential debate carries on in this format. And there's no real reason for thinking that it's going to change. So now we're seeing commentators like Thomas Friedman in the New York Times saying that he's a friend of Joe Biden, but Biden should call it off. We're seeing all sorts of anonymous quotes and the American television anchors who are getting these quotes saying, Democrat donors are calling up saying, look, we need to get somebody be it Gavin Newsom who's the California governor, be it Michelle Obama, somebody anybody by the way, not Kamala Harris, the vice president who pulls even worse than Joe Biden. So we are seeing now Democrats realizing that as of last night, their hope, it was pretty small hope that the debate was somehow turned around Joe Biden's fortunes, present them as being sharper and more presidential for the Trump who'd recently had all of these rape convictions and the rest of it. The idea was a juxtaposition between a crook on the run and a presidential Biden. Instead, the juxtaposition was between a sharp and alert, even quite funny Donald Trump and a Biden who couldn't even remember the own lines he'd been sent into. And he really struggled to deliver those lines. He would mumble them and they wouldn't really have an effect. To me, one of the things that jumped out was the way that Jill Biden afterwards congratulated him in this really kind of in this manner that suggested that he was impressed that he managed to walk on the stage at all. Joe, you did such a great job, you answered every question you knew all the time. If let me ask the crowd, what did Trump do? Yes! And that is the tenor which to me dooms him. Anybody who's cared for an elderly relative who is losing their faculties knows that tone of voice knows the care. You basically start to care for them as if they were a kid. She was helping him up stage again, just as a bama helped him up stage last time he was on one. So I think that is the body language, which makes the Democrats realize that they are going down, that Joe Biden is going down and their only choice they've got is to work out if there is a party who wants to go down with him or try at this very unprecedented late stage to find another candidate. And Sarah, if they were to try, do you think the Democratic Convention in August? I mean, that's clearly the moment where it's all supposed to be confirmed. Do you think we're going to start to see lots of moves and plots perhaps ahead of that to get ducks in a row and potentially a change? Definitely, and I think they're already starting to move. What I find really ironic, just as Fraser said, is no mention of Kamala Harris, who is, you know, the former black US Senator female from California. And she's also the first female vice president. Why not elevate her to have our first female president? And she will also be an African-American, of course, that would help with the African-American base, which at this time Biden is losing. I mean, he's losing support. He still has mass support, but not as much as he did in 2020. So they have some fights that they're going to have to deal with, which I don't think they wanted to deal with. I think they wanted to get past the election and not have to deal with identity politics and their internal competition. But now I think the belly of the beast will be exposed to all in the next several weeks. And Fraser, if there is a change of leader, and we're obviously jumping a bit ahead here, do you think this election could become competitive again? When it comes to Donald Trump, who at the moment looks like he's probably cruising to victory after that debate. But it could actually change the style, perhaps? Yes, I do think it could change the dial. I mean, it's strange that we're seeing in America a mirror of a trend we're seeing in Britain and in France. In Britain, you have an active desperation called an election thinking, okay, maybe I'm going to force them to make the choice. Macron thought exactly the same and now they're rebelling against him. And in the States, I think the Democrats will call a referendum on Donald Trump. That basically is what it was last time when Joe Biden was giving him a more respectable performance than he is now. The funny thing is that Trump looks pretty much exactly like the character who first ran for office eight years ago. Biden looks like a generation older than Trump almost. He looks to change a man not just from his first premiership four years ago, but a changed man from the confidence energetic character who gave a state of union address only recently. That will have been his hope of bouncing off that state of union address to give him even better. And that's a problem with Biden's aides. They're not quite sure which Joe Biden is going to show up. Are you going to get the man who on occasion can hold it and keep it together and make some jokes? Or are you going to get the guy who freezes life on stage? And Syria was so right about the split screen. That effect, you had Trump making all of his facial expressions, rolling his eyes, correctly. And by the way, as you'd expect, Trump, who of course made his name on television shows, he knows how to work a camera. Biden, by contrast, just looked like he had frozen. So I do think that they will be now be thinking, OK, let's roll the dice, whether it's -- and you can see, actually, Gavin Newsom was being asked on the way out of the spin room last night if he would end up being the candidate himself. Are you going to be the next Democratic nominee? No, we are -- our nominee is Joe Biden. I'm looking forward to voting for him in November. He's going to be our nominee. So make the mistake. This is going to be the question now after the debate. Not whether Joe Biden can win, but whether Joe Biden can be replaced in time for the election. And finally, Sarah, you mentioned Kamala, but do you think Newsom, he would your money beyond to offer the best threat to the Republicans from the Democratic side? Probably Gavin Newsom, who, you know, although he is a very elite governor from California, a coastal governor from a very blue state who's caught having dinner at French laundry in San Francisco under COVID restrictions. I do think he would have a better shot than Kamala Harris, because he's slightly more likable, but he still gives off this American psycho vibe and also comes from a state with that is, you know, completely crumbling economically and functionally. So I don't think he would be very popular across the country. I do, however, think that the Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro would play very well across the country. He's an exceptionally popular Democratic governor out of Pennsylvania, which is a swing state of sorts. But I don't know if the establishment figures will allow candidate like Josh Shapiro jump them, but it will be a better and fascinating fight to watch. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Fraser, and thank you for listening. (gentle music)