When I said during Thursday’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden that the Biden camp wanted to jump-start this race, I’m pretty sure that isn’t what they meant.
For once the problem wasn’t Trump: Despite his barrage of lies, he was the exact same person that we’ve always known him to be.
The only real good news that we have out of last night’s debate is that the next debate isn’t a few weeks from now. Instead, we have a little more than two months until ABC News holds the next scheduled debate in September.
There are some things that the Biden camp has got to be considering as they retreat to Delaware to watch the tape. Some things are out of their control, like whether Biden is fully healthy or fighting a cold, like he reportedly was the night of the debate. There’s also still no guarantee that Trump will even agree to a second debate now that he came out relatively on top, potentially leaving this the only time that the two are face-to-face before Election Day.
But there are other opportunities for improvement, should there be another shot at this. One major move for team Biden has to be reviewing the rules that they’ve agreed to with ABC News to determine whether the format is as much of a discredit to him as Thursday’s was. It’s also apparent that for once the problem wasn’t Trump: Despite his barrage of lies, he was the exact same person that we’ve always known him to be. Instead, it was their candidate that was the issue, coming across as feeble and stumbling, and rushing through his talking points, in comparison with Trump’s calm fabrications.
It’s clear that Biden’s energy and capability is still there, as he warmed up throughout the night. He even seemed like an entirely different person in an appearance at an Atlanta watch party that MSNBC aired after the debate ended. The question is how to make sure that version of Biden is on full display throughout the remainder of the campaign, countering the image that may unfortunately be locked into many voters’ minds now.
The answer may rest with reminding Americans that no matter what concerns they might have had about Biden’s performance tonight, there was nothing that Trump did that made it seem like he is the better choice to return to the White House.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.