The New Cleveland Show

America had a chance to ask the question one more time. What the hell was that? No one was quite sure what had happened, but this had happened:

President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden met in the first of three scheduled debates, this one at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University and moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News. The topics addressed were the Supreme Court, as Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett meets with Republican senators, the covid-19 outbreak; the economy; race; the candidates’ records; the climate; and the integrity of the election.

Trump frequently interrupted both Biden and Wallace, taking swipes at Biden’s son, going over his allotted time and ignoring other rules. Trump, when asked about whether he would condemn white supremacists, failed to fully do so, telling the Proud Boys group, “Stand back and standby.” He also continued to cast unwarranted doubt on mail ballots.

Okay, no surprises there – Trump was being Trump – his positions on such issues have always been clear. The surprise here was Trump himself. He seemed to be losing it, losing control of himself. The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan saw this:

Donald Trump came to heckle. He came to interrupt and to pontificate and to flail his arms, batting away questions and facts in a chaotic fury. He was a boor and a troll, holding up his stubby mitts in an angry pantomime as he tried to halt the words coming from former vice president Joe Biden’s mouth. Trump seemed to believe that with a single rude hand gesture, one that he regularly uses to assert his dominance, he could hold back the truth so he could be free to spin and hype and vent.

It was an exhausting mess that spun beyond moderator Chris Wallace’s control and outside the bounds of anything that could reasonably be called a debate. It was a 90-minute display of a president’s testosterone-fueled, unmanaged rage and insecurity.

And then there was that other guy:

Biden came to debate, God bless him. Trump arrived seemingly hopped up on grievance and indignation, determined just to bellow his way through the evening without ever having to answer a question or speak with clarity and sincerity to the home audience. He raised issues with Biden about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings and then refused to let his political rival answer. He yammered about fake news and Hillary Clinton. He talked over both Biden and Wallace. He talked so much that it became impossible to even understand what he was talking about. He talked ceaselessly, and yet he said very little. He talked so much it was as though he was trying to pummel the viewer into submission with his words.

“Will you shut up, man?” Biden said in a moment of dismay and exasperation. It was a plea that surely channeled the desires of a significant percentage of the viewing audience.

Of course it did:

It was awful. It was miserable. And one wished desperately that there were commercials during the grotesque spectacle if only to give someone a chance to throw cold water on the president. But there were no breaks. It was an endless display, and it was frustrating to hear Wallace calling the president “sir” as he pleaded with him to adhere to the rules to which he had agreed. Sir. Trump did not deserve that nicety because he did not come to the debate bearing the mantle of the presidency. He came with the demeanor of a thug.

He usually saves that for his rallies, not for this sort of event:

Surely no one thought the evening would be dignified and civil. That’s not the way in which Trump gins up ratings and attracts attention. Bellicosity is his rule. But Tuesday evening, Trump was exquisitely inexhaustible. He stepped to his lectern with a scowl and a jutting jaw. Biden walked out with an expression of geniality. Because of coronavirus precautions, the audience was limited to only about 80 people sitting socially distanced in wooden chairs… The stage was set with the trappings of democracy. The carpet was blue with a ring of white stars. A large eagle with a banner reading “The Union and the Constitution Forever” was draped overhead.

In many ways, the setting was one that should have inspired a sense of calm and a more conversational tone. There was even a certain sobriety to the location, which at one point had temporarily been turned into a covid-19 hospital. There was no need to yell with such a small audience. There were no bursts of applause, laughter or cheers to fuel a candidate’s energy. One might have thought it was the perfect occasion for a reasonable back-and-forth.

One might have thought that these would have served as reminders or encouragement to speak seriously, to speak compassionately.

One might think many things. One is often wrong:

The night had only the accoutrements of decorum. The yelling began forthwith. The president was asked about the racial upheaval with which the country has been struggling. He talked about law and order instead. He was asked to denounce white supremacy. He hedged. He was asked about his long-promised health plan. He didn’t have a coherent answer.

He bragged about having created the greatest economy in the world. Everything that had gone wrong on his watch was someone else’s fault: Democratic governors, China, anyone who disagreed with him.

And of course Trump ripped into Chris Wallace. That gave Biden an opportunity to “break the fourth wall” with an aside, like in a Shakespeare play where a character steps out of the action and addresses the audience directly and conversationally. Trump and Wallace had at each other in the background. Biden let them. He turned to the audience. He shrugged and looked right into the camera. Those two are busy. Let’s talk:

Biden often spoke directly into the camera so that he was, in effect, speaking directly to citizens. He aimed for empathy. The president regularly interrupted him – not so that he could address the nation but so he could yell at Biden. At one point it seemed as though the president was content to simply debate Wallace over the very premise of the moderator’s questions. The president smirked and rolled his eyes and did everything but snort and spit. He reveled in his display. He fed off it.

And when Wallace finally, blissfully announced that the debate had ended, Biden looked relieved. And Trump was still talking.

Biden was relieved. He could move on. He’d been having a fine discussion with America on the side. But back to work.

Philip Bump puts that this way:

The first debate, held Tuesday, was one of the few remaining chances for Trump to redirect the race. It was an opportunity for him to shift public perceptions of what his presidency has accomplished and to present Biden as a less desirable alternative. It would not be easy, given the deficit he faced coming into the evening, but it was at least theoretically possible.

What Trump did instead was something quite different. Instead of engaging with Biden in good faith, his approach was quite simply to bluster and bully his way through every discussion. Rather than let Biden offer a thought and respond to it on the merits, Trump decided not to let Biden offer any thoughts in the first place.

Bump suggests that was a miscalculation:

At first, he was clearly trying to fluster Biden, probably in an effort to reinforce his long-standing, baseless assertion that Biden is suffering from mental decline. And for a while, it worked: Biden, clearly expecting an actual debate, was forced to adjust. But soon he adjusted – at times letting his frustration with Trump’s flailing punches seep through, as when he flatly suggested that the president “shut up.”

But Trump’s strategy didn’t change. On question after question, he tried to pester Biden so he couldn’t offer any coherent answer – not because Biden had any deficiency but simply because no one could, any more than one could have an elegant tea party in the middle of a dodgeball game.

Bump also suggests that this was entirely predictable:

Over the past few weeks, there were repeated reports that Trump wasn’t preparing for the matchup. He wasn’t holding standard debate sessions and wasn’t setting aside time to get ready to face Biden. Asked about those reports, Trump said his job was all the preparation he needed.

That turns out to have been accurate. Trump has prepared for his approach to the debate for months in full sight of the American public. His approach was the approach he takes on Twitter: lifting up various unfounded allegations, shouting at everyone for hours on end, celebrating obscure memes and jokes. Biden found himself debating @realDonaldTrump and not the president of the United States.

So this was no more than a Twitter attack in real time with actual people:

The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson noted that it was the human equivalent of a distributed denial-of-service attack, a hostile effort in which a website is flooded with so much garbage traffic that good requests can’t get through. Few rational debate topics survived Trump’s tsunami.

But as a strategy? Voters, even many of those who like Trump, consistently say that it’s his Twitter persona they find most distasteful.

Trump took the least popular aspect of his approach to politics and elevated it for what will probably turn out to be the most-watched debate of the cycle.

But something else might be happening here:

It’s easy to look at Trump’s bizarre actions and assume there’s intentionality behind them, which is often a mistake. One does have to wonder, though, whether Trump would be terribly upset if his approach, his aggressive attacks and his interruptions led people to not want to watch the debate at all. If you are worried about voters being compelled by Biden, getting them to turn off the TV is certainly a tactic.

Bump is kidding. He knows what’s really happened here:

Trump was not going to beat Biden in a debate on policy or on his record on things like the coronavirus pandemic. So Trump decided not to have much of a debate at all.

That’ll do, Pig, that’ll do. But that won’t do. Elahe Izadi gathers reactions to this disaster:

Perhaps the most chaotic presidential debate in modern American history inspired unprecedented reactions on cable and broadcast news by pundits who, in other circumstances, would have been combing over minor moments to gauge who won and lost.

The consensus among many commentators: The losers of the night were the American public.

“That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck,” said CNN host Jake Tapper. “That was the worst debate I have ever seen. It wasn’t even a debate, it was a disgrace.”

His CNN colleague Dana Bash had even sharper words: “I’m just going to say it like it is: that was a shit-show.”

“As someone who has watched for 40 years,” said ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, a previous primary debate moderator himself, “that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen.”

But wait, there’s more:

On NBC, “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt said “if hearing that this debate is over was music to your ears, you may not be alone,” and declared “I’m at a bit of a loss for words here to describe what we’ve just witnessed.”

NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd called it a “train wreck of the making of one person. We know who did it. President Trump did this. And in some way it’s the only way he knows what to do. He bulldozed over Chris Wallace, bulldozed and, at times, flustered Joe Biden.”

Back on CNN, Anderson Cooper started out his segment with: “I don’t know what came out of this debate. I don’t know what side won … But you cannot watch that debate and be proud of our president, the way he thinks of us, as viewers, as Americans who are trying to decide about the future of this country.”

There’s that, and the racism:

While the pundits zeroed in on President Trump’s constant interrupting and talking over former vice president Joe Biden, and debate moderator Chris Wallace’s inability to gain control over the night, one moment in particular caused extreme distress for several commentators: Trump telling the far-right militia group, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by” when asked by Wallace whether he would denounce white supremacists.

“We are in an immoral swamp of misbehavior,” Van Jones said on CNN. “This was not a normal night.”

Other political writers and journalists were similarly dismayed. “I’m the most horrified I’ve been in my career as a political journalist,” tweeted New York Times op-ed writer David Brooks. He also predicted: “This election won’t be close. Have faith in the American people!”

That gets harder by the day, and Dan Balz sees this:

The dreary debate fittingly ended as it began, in a moment that foreshadowed a tumultuous and divisive end to the election, as Trump pressed his argument, without evidence, that mail ballots are rife with fraud and the election therefore will be invalid.

Trump declined to say that he would ask his supporters to stay calm until a final count had been validated and instead chillingly indicated that he plans to rile up his backers to challenge and contest the counting everywhere possible. He said he would accept the outcome only if he believed the election had been fair.

Biden said he would accept the outcome and predicted that Trump would too, once the votes were counted, no matter the winner. Perhaps.

But no one is sure of that. Trump might not ask his voters to remain calm, should he lose. He may tell them to grab their guns, which is a bit dangerous. But that’s always an option. As in the tale that Matt Shuham tells here:

The floor was his. He was asked to do it. And yet Donald Trump on Tuesday repeatedly failed to condemn white supremacists and other violent right wingers that support him. Instead, he pivoted and dodged.

Moderator Chris Wallace teed up the question for the President. And it was a softball: “Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland.”

Sure, Trump began, “I’m willing to do that, but…”

“Then do it!” Joe Biden said.

But Trump didn’t: “I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing.”

Wallace pressed again, but Trump asked for specifics: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”

White supremacists, Wallace said.

“The Proud Boys,” Biden interjected, referring to the right-wing street gang that relishes physical confrontations.

Trump wound up, and then let out a dribble:

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” he said.

Stand by for what? The Proud Boys knew:

Within minutes, a social media account for the Proud Boys had turned Trump’s quote into a celebratory graphic. Their leadership cheered Trump. Joe Biggs, a prominent Proud Boy in Portland, subsequently wrote, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! This makes me so happy.”

“President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA!”

“Well sir!” Biggs wrote separately. “We’re ready!!!”

Someone is going to get fucked up, as in beaten to death or shot dead.

This is getting dangerous. Or it’s not that dangerous. Trump may have just ended his presidency. Josh Marshall sees this:

I worried what this momentous night would bring. In the event I think it was somewhere between bad and disastrous for President Trump.

The most important fact about this debate is that going into it President Trump was clearly behind. He needed to shift the dynamic of the race, force some major error, to introduce some new factor. That didn’t happen. I saw nothing tonight that seems at all likely to improve things for President Trump. Nothing.

Biden did fine. Not great. But fine. I’d say he had a B performance with some B+ or even A- minus moments. But for him that’s fine. He’s ahead. He’s not running as best debater. He’s not running as most dynamic figure. He’s not competing for most unstable affect.

He’s running as the guy who will end the nightmare. If that’s the goal he turned in just the right performance.

And of course Trump’s performance was all wrong:

To the extent there was any strategy to Trump’s ranting – and I think it was mainly instinctual – it was to create chaos in the hopes it would throw Biden off his stride and prompt some scattered or damaging moment. That didn’t happen. It was really just Trump yelling.

That was the strategy his surrogates previewed. And if he had triggered some embarrassing flub perhaps it would have been a winning strategy. Everybody knows Trump’s a bully and a loudmouth. That’s not new information. But maybe it would be worth it if he forced some major error from Biden.

He didn’t. And so what we had was Trump ranting, visibly angry, launching off on numerous digressions, lying. It was ugly, unhinged and exhausting – a good summary of Trump’s entire presidency.

And that presidency deserved this:

Biden spent a lot of time simply laughing at Trump. That made for a good visual and it also clearly enraged the President. That spurred Trump to be even more self-injuring. It made him more spluttering. Donald Trump is the President of the United States. And yet half the time during this spectacle he looked like the loudmouth yelling taunts and insults outside a party he’s pissed he wasn’t invited to.

He looked weak and angry.

So, mission not quite accomplished:

I think there’s a decent chance this performance will be quite damaging for Trump. But who knows? Other outrages have rolled over him like water over a duck’s back. What I’m very confident of is that Trump needed to change things in his favor.

He failed to do that. Since he’s behind and significantly behind that is a huge missed opportunity and a big loss.

That’s a huge missed opportunity and a big loss, but only for now. There will be two more debates. But no one knows why.