It goes without saying that in the hours and days following a debate, the parties do all they can to spin events in their favor, giving voters diametrically opposed narratives of the night. Not so today. The parties — and I haven’t seen numbers, but I’m guessing the country — are in full agreement over how last night went. Biden lost. And, to paraphrase one headline I read this morning, he lost more than the debate.
Typically after a debate night, I link to Niall Stanage’s rundown of the winners and losers. That had been my plan for today since the recaps are terrific and devoid of spin. But the backlash to Biden’s performance from his fellow Democrats has been so strong that I thought it would be more interesting and informative link to one of them. I would have loved to feature Damon Linker’s column about last night. It’s paywalled, though, so this is the back-up, which is terrific as well. It just comes from a someone already featured this week.
I’m curious to see what happens in the coming days and weeks. I suspected the Biden campaign wanted this debate early in the calendar so it would have time to recover if he did poorly. They couldn’t have expected this, though.