Debatable Conclusions
Biden Was Not "Confused" During Debate — Here's Proof!
Sometime in June there was a debate that took about 90 minutes. But the Democrats and the media have been stuck there, mouths agape, ever since. What they saw, I’ll argue, is not what they think they saw: mental decline. Being absent this insight has given rise to the increasing chorus calling for Joe Biden to step aside. Herein I will walk through the two most cited debate moments and establish they are not indicative of mental decline, but only difficulty communicating. Joe Biden deserves this careful reconsideration of this debate performance. Amongst those asking him to step down, everyone agrees he has done an excellent job as president. Every article calling for him to step aside in the past three weeks has been of a piece and every one—all of it—is rooted in Biden’s debate performance. Biden’s poor debate performance has in turn been tied to his age, and his age anchored to an ugly bias: ageism, the last refuge of the bigoted. We must call it what it is. Perhaps what we’ve seen—his difficulty communicating—is owing to his age. But no one knows that. It’s an assumption and it’s nasty at its core. No one deserves that.
So, I’m pushing back on those assumptions because it’s right for it to be said, but I’m not here to bring that reckoning. I’m here to tell you Biden’s debate performance, while objectively poor, is much to do with his physical condition recovering from a bad cold, his lifelong stutter that seemed worse than ever, his usual tendency of gaffes, and the typical poor preparation of an incumbent. Nevertheless, none of it—especially examining the most cited instances—appears to indicate lessened mental acuity. Unless you’ve gone back after the fact and watched and studied the footage, read the transcript, and listened past the sound quality of his voice and the structural excursions within his sentences demanded by his exasperated stutter—as I have done—then you’re unlikely to get past the first impression. The clamor of calls from inside the house (again, rooted in the debate) that claim Joe Biden exhibited mental impairment or was lost or confused are demonstrably false. He was not confused. He was not lost. He knew at every point what he was saying—or trying to say. He did struggle to be heard. He had to maneuver to find words his stutter would allow—like a linguistic athlete crossing a rushing stream, he must agilely avoid the stones with slippery moss. He of course did have a few of his famous Biden gaffes. His speech was burbled at times. But he knew what he was saying, and it was tangible, coherent, and at times powerful. But you must listen. You must read. You can’t go by your memory or first impression.
I watched the debate on MSNBC which featured anchor commentary as the CNN feed came in and out of commercials. Like watching election poll results published while voting was still ongoing—something every media outlet has learned not to do as it affects the vote—I watched in horror as each anchor described how their phones were “blowing up” with high level sources reportedly panicking, in and out of government, within the Democratic party. Joe Biden got off to a rough start during the debate as his voice was thrashed by a severe cold and his stutter was flaring worse than we’ve ever seen. But he had no chance with an audience who was made aware in real-time that his party of weak worriers were busily scuttling their own flagship candidate. Everyone watching was taken aback, there’s no arguing against that. The news anchor framing (and whatever double screening people on uncommented broadcasts might have gleaned) didn’t cause that impression, but it might have helped it stick, even as Biden’s responses and speech grew stronger throughout the debate.
Turning to the debate itself, what set the stage for the rampant attacks on his mental faculties was what I call “The Medicare Moment.” In his editorial, Ezra Klein of the New York Times hung his entire assessment of Joe Biden’s mental decline upon this section of the debate, so much so that he included the entire transcript of Biden’s reply within the precious wordcount of his piece.[i] The prompt from CNN was to Donald Trump on his plan to lower corporate taxes again. At the very end of his response, Biden said, “We finally beat Medicare.” It was confusing, he seemed lost. But he wasn’t as I shall explain. In full, Biden’s response was:
We’d be able to– wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that – all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to 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, with dealing with everything we have to do with—Look, if—we finally beat Medicare.”While Biden was speaking, his stutter put him in a terrible place. At one point it got so bad that he stopped talking altogether to the point where only a faint hiss of air could be heard escaping his lips. That wasn’t a mental lapse, though. We were seeing and hearing a speech disorder. A stutter. Let us have the humanity to examine past a communications impairment to see what he was trying to say, as evinced by what he did say and has said in the past. Resuming from the italicized section of the transcript excerpt above, starting marked with a caret (^) to give context and replacing the bold portion, we arrive at something like his intended remarks:
^making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the costs of prescription medication for seniors when we finally beat Big Pharma by allowing Medicare to negotiate.The first word in the underlined section is “Covid,” which may seem a non sequitur but it isn’t. It’s an effect of the stutter and a simple gaffe—probably due to the fact that Donald Trump had just said “Covid” eight separate times within his two minutes. When Biden tried to hit the hard-C in the word “costs,” it came out as “Covid” instead, a simple gaffe. We can confidently guess he meant to say “costs” because he’s spoken many times about the cost savings to seniors that his legislation was able to provide to Medicare users. Biden caught his own error and said, “excuse me,” just as he had most times if he misspoke during the debate. He then takes another go at the same sentence “dealing with everything we have to do with—" but aborts before he gets to the trouble word “costs.” This time, as the speech timer counted down to zero, he tried to reset his stutter as he often does by injecting “Look—” into the sentence. He ends up blurting out a gaffe saying Medicare instead of Big Pharma (as his press secretary later confirmed). That’s it. That is the memorable flub and coming off the Covid gaffe, it seemed concerning. There’s no doubt he was having a terrible night—he’s said as much. But it’s not incoherence. It’s not mental decline. It’s a bad, bad, stutter and a flub. It’s fair to ask why his speaking is so tortured, but it’s unfair to answer he’s confused.
There isn’t space to litigate the entire debate, but I will tackle one more of the most cited instances of the same: stutters…gaffes… flubs…all dressed up by well-meaning but uncareful observers as signs of mental decline. Unfortunately for Biden, and perhaps not coincidentally as to how active or debilitating his stutter was at the beginning of the debate—this followed the previous by only four minutes—and both were within the first fifteen or so impression-setting minutes of the debate. The CNN debate topic was about abortion. After Trump had finished lying about how “everyone wanted to get rid of Roe,” Biden was up. He led off with what some thought (perhaps rightly) was a faux pas or nonstrategic avenue to begin down: referring to a young girl—only 12 years old—who had been killed and sexually assaulted by what Trump calls “illegal immigrants.” Biden’s aim was quite coherent, but he had a difficult time speaking because his voice was weak, and because his stutter regularly requires substituting words on the fly so as to not get stuck. He said:
Look, there’s so many young women who have been [raped] – including a young woman who just was murdered, and he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in and ... they talk about that. But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their – by their in-laws, by their – by their spouses, brothers and sisters, it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they try to arrest them when they cross state lines.Being on the topic of abortion, Biden begins to go after a contentious issue between the parties: how to handle victims of rape. He begins his remarks intending to set the context about such rapes by saying, “Look, there’s so many young women who have been—” Been what? Been raped. But he doesn’t say it— “raped”—so it creates confusion. He goes on, “including a young woman who just was murdered, and he went to the funeral,” meaning Trump who’d been touting this in the press before the debate. He continues, “The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in and … they talk about that.” But they ignore the rape, he means. After all, Republicans have consistently stressed violence by immigrants for political points; but as for a young girl having to carry her rapist’s baby to term, as we’ve seen in news reports, it’s not their concern and they don’t want to talk about it. That it’s about rape not murder is made clear when he finally circles back to finish his first thought, “But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped…” He goes on from there to list the sort of trusted people who often betray that trust when they rape. It doesn’t have to be an immigrant it can be someone in their own homes. If his linguistic faculties had been free of his aggravated stutter on this particularly bad night he could have landed this point powerfully. Some have called his reference to the murder another non sequitur. You may disagree with the diversion as for debate-points scoring, but it’s not a non sequitur. It’s deliberate and it’s part of a larger idea to turn Trump’s chambered immigration story around on him.
The rest of the debate is better for the reading. For the listening, he struggles throughout to be heard, to say what he means, and to convey a strong message. But he is also in no way mentally diminished whatsoever—not as evinced by his performance in this “disastrous” debate. No matter this analysis, it’s readily admitted it was a poor performance, he objectively couldn’t communicate well, he may have made some poor strategic decisions. He certainly left out jabs at his opponent, which he had opportunity to make. But let’s not argue for Biden’s removal as a candidate based on him having shown diminished mental capacity at the debate. He was in no way hampered by an inability to construct cogent thoughts. If his communication skills are below the bar to run for office—and this wasn’t an episode or a brief period—make that case. But don’t call him non compos mentis.
This was one debate performance. The press and many fellow Democrats have misconstrued it as evidence the president is addled by age. A careful reading of the transcript and viewing of the footage makes clear he was suffering from a severe cold, a debilitating stutter, and his usual gaffes. There’s no wonder now why he’d avoid live interviews; he’d have every reason to dodge giving the scalawags the chance to dishonor his speech impediment in the way they have with his debate. Franklin Delano Roosevelt ably led our country for four of the most critical presidential terms in our history, despite being crippled by polio. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has ably led our country’s return from the abyss of Covid and against the rise of authoritarianism, despite his speech impairment. Instead of offering Biden the “space and grace,” to make his decision to bow out, it should have been offered around this impairment so he could soldier on in our war against the anti-democratic forces assembling within our borders. He ought to have been allowed to finish the job, stutter and all.
[i] Opinion | This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault - The New York Times (nytimes.com)