What Does Biden’s Disastrous Debate Mean for Democrats?
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss President Joe Biden’s flubs, and Donald Trump’s lies, in the first Presidential debate. Plus, how American politics arrived at this point and what is next for the Democratic Party.
This week’s reading:
- “Was the Debate the Beginning of the End of Joe Biden’s Presidency?” by Susan B. Glasser
- “The Writing on Joe Biden’s Face at the Presidential Debate,” by Vinson Cunningham
- “Do the Democrats Have a Gen Z Problem?” by E. Tammy Kim
- “Some Faint and Likely Temporary Relief on Abortion Rights,” by Jessica Winter
To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, what can you say about last night? |
| 0:04.0 | We're live from Georgia, a key battleground state in the race for the White House. |
| 0:11.0 | In just moments, the current U.S. president will debate the former US president as their |
| 0:17.1 | party's presumptive nominees of first in American history. |
| 0:21.7 | The question we had last week was do debates make a |
| 0:25.4 | difference for voters? But today the question that seems far more urgent is |
| 0:30.4 | this one. How will President Biden move forward from his performance? And can he? |
| 0:38.8 | It's true the 78-year-old Donald Trump was as rambling and incoherent and untruthful as ever. |
| 0:46.0 | But watching President Biden, age 81, seeking a second term, his voice horse and his answers |
| 0:52.1 | unclear, it now seems all but impossible for him or his |
| 0:56.9 | campaign to escape the question of his age and fitness for another term in office. Today we'll talk about what happened last |
| 1:06.1 | night and what we should take away from this disaster of a debate. Welcome to the political scene. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm Susan Glasser and I'm very grateful on this week of all weeks to be joined as always by my colleagues |
| 1:23.8 | Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos. If there was ever something that needed talking about |
| 1:28.6 | it was this. Hi Jane, hi Evan and thank you for telling us. |
| 1:35.0 | Good to be weird too. Now here in the clear light of morning, do we have a better sense of what just happened? Jane, what do you think? |
| 1:57.0 | You know, okay, for me, I have to say this was kind of a deja vu moment. I was transported back to covering Reagan's debate in |
| 2:05.6 | 1984 when he started wandering away verbally. The system is still where it was with |
| 2:12.1 | regard to the progressivity as I've said. |
| 2:21.9 | After that debate, Mondale got off the stage and turned to an aid and said, we've lost him. |
| 2:26.0 | This is terrifying. |
| 2:27.0 | I remember talking to Mondale about it too. |
... |
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