"The word 'unprecedented' was invented for 2024," the political writer Matthew Continetti remarked in a round-table discussion ahead of the presidential face-off. A general-election debate in June (seriously, June?) featuring a current and former president? On Thursday night, that's exactly what we got. In the first presidential debate of 2024, the stakes were high for President Biden and Donald Trump. For all the novelty and unpredictability of the event itself, Times Opinion turned to a trusted tool of coverage and, in a manner of speaking, kept score — and the score, and commentary, was not promising for the current president. Columnists and other writers used words like "debacle" (the Times columnist Lydia Polgreen) or "disastrous" (Josh Barro) or "unsettling" (Kristen Soltis Anderson) to describe Biden's performance. The writer Matt Labash said Biden "sounded like a dying humidifier." Not a single scorer thought Biden won. Most went for Trump. For Trump, he "won as the more commanding presence, with a tighter focus on his themes, particularly immigration," wrote Daniel McCarthy. The Times columnist Bret Stephens said that he "evaded questions, made false statements and preposterous claims and was bombastic from the first moment to the last" — but "he was forceful, confident and energetic." Biden's performance will raise new doubts among Democrats about his campaign. Frank Bruni, in a post-debate column, wrote: "Is it really too late for another Democrat to take Biden's place? With stakes this high, mustn't that be discussed one more time before the convention?" The Times columnist Michelle Goldberg suggested that the answer will be yes. "There will now be a new chorus of cries for him to drop out," she wrote, "and I'll be joining it." After the debate, the topic of replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee (and perhaps a contested convention) is discussed in today's crossover episode of The Ezra Klein Show and Matter of Opinion. In February, Klein, a Times columnist, kicked up a storm when he explored the idea of picking a new nominee at the convention in depth. For now, last night's debate "was a disaster for America," Polgreen said. The year 1912 was the last time a sitting president faced a former one in an election, when the incumbent William Howard Taft ran against his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. They both lost to Woodrow Wilson. The Trump-Biden debate kicks off a summer season of grinding campaigning and what have been standard party rituals: the conventions. Only one of the presidents is likely to emerge pleased with Thursday night's unprecedented event. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Friday, June 28, 2024
Opinion Today: “This was a disaster for America”
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