Already Locked In

Okay, there was one last presidential debate. The debate changed nothing. Trump sort of behaved himself but did no more than, as usual, say he’s wonderful, and everyone knows it, and anyone who isn’t him is a fool – and China did this Covid stuff to him, and to all of us, to make him, specifically, look bad – so none of this is his fault. Biden was calm and coherent and sensible and pleasant, and boring. There was nothing new. He was appropriately outraged when a bit of outrage was appropriate. He made sense, not news, as he no doubt intended. And his son, Hunter, wasn’t a factor. Trump couldn’t quite explain the problem. Biden shrugged. And yes, Kristen Welker, the moderator that Trump had decided would be totally unfair to him, because she was a socialist or something, did fine. She kept things moving without offending Trump – he didn’t give her the finger and walk out. And strategically muting the microphones helped too. That made it hard for either of these guys to be a total asshole, but neither wanted to go there after that first debate anyway. Being the “crazy man” in the situation no longer impresses anyone. People recoil at that now. There are no votes there.

But none of it mattered much. About one third of the nation had already voted before this odd chat-session began. And there are like seven undecided voters left out there – perhaps in Altoona. Everything is already locked in. Everything has been locked in for months. This debate wasn’t going to change anything, and it didn’t change anything.

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum put that this way:

Both Trump and Biden mostly just rehashed things they had said before, using much the same words as before. There was nothing even mildly unexpected.

If there’s an exception to that, it was Trump’s relentless effort to claim that Biden had accepted money from practically every endeavor he’s been associated with. On the one hand this is typical Trump: he always accuses other people of doing the things that he himself has done. But there’s hardly any chance this will work. First of all, it’s not true. More importantly, though, Biden has absolutely no reputation for being corrupt or money grubbing. People simply won’t accept wild accusations like these that come out of the blue and go against everything they’ve ever heard about someone.

That’s another way everything was already locked in, in this case many years ago, but Drum sees how Trump locked himself in, in an odd way.

On policy, Trump doesn’t want to do anything about COVID-19. He doesn’t want to do anything about health care except repeal Obamacare. He doesn’t want to do anything about immigration. He doesn’t want to do anything about civil rights. And he doesn’t want to do anything about climate change.

At least, he never mentioned anything. All he did was attack the stuff Biden wants to do. I suppose he thinks that after four years of Trump there’s nothing left to do.

Voters might not agree with Trump on that. The New York Times’ Frank Bruni saw this:

Trump bellyached about how the Internal Revenue Service treated him, about how Robert Mueller treated him, about the messes supposedly bequeathed to him by President Barack Obama, about his general tragic unappreciated lot in life. Trump has taught America and Americans that there’s always someone else to blame. That lesson hasn’t bettered us a bit.

As Election Day draws nearer and Trump’s opportunity to recast and redeem himself shrinks, he just offers up more noise, more nastiness. And it has cost us, dearly.

That was evident in the coverage of the debate, much of which remarked on how relatively restrained and substantive it was. Relative to the previous debate, sure, but that was pure bedlam. Trump still flung fantastical accusations, still trafficked in extravagant lies and still interrupted, at least when his microphone wasn’t muted. That this was deemed to be in the neighborhood of normal just proves how thoroughly he has lowered our expectations and debased the presidency.

And then there was Biden:

For most of the evening, Biden shook his head in disbelief, smiled the way you do at an incorrigible toddler, and counted down the minutes until it was all over.

He actually looked long and hard at his watch. In a different debate with a saner opponent, that gesture might have been fatal. In this one, it was merely relatable.

Bruni knew he was watching a disaster:

Trump came into the evening in miserable shape, the odds against his re-election growing longer with each daily snit. His economy has tanked, his base has shrunk, his attempts to vilify Biden have failed and his downplaying of the coronavirus has been undercut by his own infection with it and its rampage through the White House.

The debate itself presented a tough, even impossible, task. On the one hand, Trump had to rattle Biden, because the way to catch up to a front-runner is to halt his stride, and Trump was hardly going to do that with politeness and affirmations.

But he couldn’t repeat his disastrous turn in their previous encounter, when he wasn’t so much fierce as feral. To repair the damage, he had to exhibit at least a whisper of decorum and the faintest murmurings of a heart.

He did that, but it was a struggle that everyone saw, and he gave in and got nasty in the end. He is who he is, but then Biden is Biden too:

I would love to be able to write that Biden, in contrast, was dazzling, but I live in a realm more truthful than Trump’s. Biden is never dazzling. On Thursday night he was frequently wobbly, failing to nail comebacks that should have been a cinch, and spoke more negatively of the oil and gas industry than he intended to, so that he was forced to try to clean up his remarks after the debate. Trump will probably spend the coming days telling workers in that industry that Biden is coming for their jobs.

That’s happening already, but Bruni thinks that might not change much of anything, because Biden is Biden, and not Trump:

What I’ve come to appreciate about Biden is that he’s not claiming greatness, not the way Trump does with just about every breath. He’s claiming good intentions. If he wins, he may be the rare president who’s not convinced that he’s the smartest person in every room.

That could actually help him get things done.

And then there’s E. J. Dionne with this:

Trump lost the night because he misunderstood what he needed to do to turn the presidential contest around.

He thought if he looked reasonable, in contrast to his crazed performance in the first debate, journalists would fall all over themselves to declare that a new, sober Trump had arrived, just in time to save his presidency. That sort of thing happened early in his presidency. It’s way too late for that now.

He thought he could knock Biden out with Fox News and right-wing media reports about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. But it’s no longer 2016, when any negative story concerning Hillary Clinton was treated credulously. And Trump’s overconsumption of sympathetic media has hurt him. He explained nothing, tossing out disjointed pieces of a story that only the crazy uncles out there understood.

But most importantly, Trump failed in his most important task: to show that he cared about his fellow citizens, and not just himself. The president needed to close the gigantic empathy gap with Biden at least a little bit. Instead, he turned it into a canyon.

He did that because that had been locked into his personality long ago:

Biden used Trump’s attacks on Hunter to drive this home. “It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly. … You’re sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding, ‘Well, we can’t get new tires. They’re bald, because we have to wait another month or so.’ We should be talking about your families, but that’s the last thing he wants to talk about.”

Trump brusquely pushed this aside as “a typical political statement. … ‘The family, around the table, everything.’ Just a typical politician when I see that.”

Dionne thinks that Alyssa Rosenberg explains that well:

In his four years as president, Trump has proved that he’s not a typical politician not by bringing new efficiency and principle to the job, but by constantly demonstrating utter disdain for the simple ideas of human connection and emotions. In the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis, a “typical politician” who cares about families and kitchen tables looks pretty good.

Dionne thinks so:

Biden is ahead because most Americans have decided that narcissism is not an effective governing style and that self-involvement is not a demonstration of strength.

Alexandra Petri has a bit of fun with that, and offers this version of the debate:

TRUMP: When you think about how many people died, remember that an even bigger number of people could have died but DIDN’T! Meanwhile, here is the vision of America that Joe Biden would like: a big windmill, killing every bird. Eagles are birds! Does Joe Biden hate America?! And kiss your windows goodbye, folks! Joe Biden will take all your money and burn it and sacrifice it to his only god, an enormous turbine. He is not even from Scranton! Don’t trust this sneaky windmill! Look at those flailing arms! I bet if we were to get to the bottom of his birth certification situation, we would find out that he’s actually a windmill who hates prosperity and wants to make all windows smaller. We are looking into it very strongly. What is Joe hiding? What doesn’t Joe want us to see through our normal-sized windows? Better reelect me to this job I am bad at and hate doing so that we can avoid the window thing. I would not raise the minimum wage even though a majority of Americans favor doing so.

BIDEN: Thousands of people are dead now who do not need to be. Families miss their loved ones. Believe me when I say this, I am a human being who has experienced grief and loss, and I will not make fun of you for being sad to lose a family member.

TRUMP: Anyone who does not make fun of people for being sad to lose a family member is a loser! “I love my family,” and “I enjoy spending time at the dinner table with my family,” and, “I love you, son,” are the cynical words of a career politician (windmill) that do not reflect the reality of most Americans. No one could possibly ever mean to say such things in a sincere way! No one could ever want to connect meaningfully to another person, to be vulnerable even for an instant before another human being. … Right?

This last debate did seem to be like that, which worries most Republicans, as Politico reports here:

The president’s campaign advisers and Capitol Hill allies say their candidate delivered a restrained performance and persuasive closing pitch – one that could pull late-breaking voters into his column and put vulnerable GOP candidates at ease after months of being dragged down by the president’s deteriorating standing in key battleground states.

“His performance last night did what it needed to do to let the Senate candidates win or lose their own races,” said Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. “I didn’t see any drag created.”

“It was helpful for our Senate candidates and hopefully helpful for the president,” added Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri.

But they know that’s not quite true:

Whether Trump receives the eleventh-hour boost he desperately needs will depend on which version of the president voters see coming out of the final debate in the week that remains before the Nov. 3 election. As he returns to base-revving campaign events where unpredictability reigns, Republicans are worried Trump could quickly undo any gains he might have made here Thursday.

They know their man:

The president’s hourlong rallies have become ground zero for his worst impulses – from coarse language and meandering monologues to misleading claims about the Covid-19 pandemic – and often result in controversies that aides must spend days cleaning up. Recently, Trump has used the venues to push dubious and unconfirmed reports about Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, that have little resonance with pocketbook voters.

“The president’s job 10 days out is to convince voters that Joe Biden would decimate American industries, pack the courts and send small businesses back into coronavirus lockdowns,” said one adviser to the Trump campaign.

“He’s screwing himself with the Hunter Biden stuff and he needs to cut it out,” the person added.

And that led to this:

By the end of the night, some Trump aides and allies were grappling with simultaneous feelings of euphoria and frustration. Pleased with his decision to ditch the erratic behavior that caused Biden’s poll numbers to rise after the first presidential debate in September and focus on casting the former vice president as a creature of the political establishment, they griped that the past month of intense catch-up could have been avoided if Trump had turned out a similar performance last time around.

“Why didn’t he do this in the first debate?” wrote a second Trump campaign adviser in a text message at the end of the night.

That second Trump campaign adviser spoke too soon:

During a segment focused on immigration, Trump said undocumented immigrants who show up for court hearings are those “with the lowest IQ.” Against the backdrop of a summer filled with race-related demonstrations and legislative measures to combat police brutality, Trump squandered an opportunity to speak directly to people of color in a calm and empathetic way – using the moment to instead compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, dismiss the Black Lives Matter movement and praise his own push for criminal justice reform, increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and so-called opportunity zones in economically distressed communities.

“As far as my relationship with all people… I am the least racist person in this room,” Trump said, trying to scan the crowd gathered in the darkened debate hall.

“I don’t know what to say,” he added.

No one knew what to say, but everyone knew what to expect now. Philip Rucker and his team at the Washington Post reported this:

An upbeat President Trump moved swiftly Friday to capitalize on what his campaign saw as a well-executed debate performance, cutting an ad that includes Biden stumbling over energy policy, touting a record day of digital fundraising and considering adding events to his schedule in the campaign’s final days.

“I thought I did great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden and his allies took a different tack, seeking to refocus the conversation on the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which the campaign believes is overwhelmingly the most important issue to voters.

In a speech in Wilmington, Del., Biden hardly mentioned the debate and instead talked about Trump’s handling of the contagion, saying, “The president quit on you.”

Expect a whole lot of that, not that it matters now:

Trump hopes that holding several massive rallies over the next few days can help him drive home the themes from the debate, in which he used unverified news reports to cast Biden as corrupt, said the former vice president has little to show for his five decades in Washington and sought to paint Biden as a big-government liberal.

But in a contest that has remained remarkably stable, the president faces challenges to any effort to reset the race with 10 days to go. Millions of voters have already cast ballots, and few remain undecided. The Trump campaign has less money to spend than Biden’s, and coronavirus cases are spiking in many places, underlining the Democratic message.

Everything is locked in now, with Biden cleaning up his small oil spill:

Trump’s camp worked Friday to amplify Biden’s inartful response during an exchange on energy policy, when the former vice president said on the debate stage that he would “transition” away from the oil industry.

Jason Miller, a senior strategist on the Trump campaign, called that a “massive stumble” that “probably will put the nail in the coffin for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania,” a state both campaigns view as must-win and where Biden has held a consistent lead.

Trump advisers suggested that the moment could also help them in other industrial Midwestern states, including Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Biden supporters dismissed the notion that the comment was some kind of game-changer. The Democrat clearly did not mean he would shut down the oil industry in the short term, they said, and in any case the energy industry is already shifting toward renewables on its own.

“Joe Biden is right: We need to transition off of fossil fuels to stop the climate crisis and prevent needless pain and death,” said Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement, a climate activist group that has sometimes been critical of Biden. “The reality is the oil industry is already bleeding jobs.”

There’s a real problem. Biden wants to address it. Trump’s camp wants to throw stones. David Frum, the apostate Republican from the “W” Bush days long ago, directly addresses Trump with this:

You’re losing. You’re losing bad. You’re out of money. Your ads are coming off the air in must-win states. Here it is, the last chance to speak to a big national audience – and for free, really the last opportunity to win back voters who have drifted away from you.

But then Trump wasn’t listening to Frum:

Another politician might have tried to speak to those voters’ deepest fears and concerns, to reestablish an emotional connection, to arrive with consolation for present troubles and credible plans for future improvement. But that is not Donald Trump’s way. Even when invited by the moderator, Kristen Welker, to speak directly to racial-minority families, President Trump could talk only about himself – boast that he had done more for African Americans than all previous presidents except maybe Abraham Lincoln, maybe. He could never, ever manage even the appearance of care and concern for anybody else. Trump erupted in sneering sarcasm when Joe Biden summoned the image of middle-class families at the kitchen table. The very idea of it irked Trump.

That’s because Trump lives in his own world:

Trump still arrived with only one plan: Attack and attack. Some of the attacks were wholly phony: Biden as the beneficiary of Chinese cash. Some of the attacks had a basis in reality: Incarceration of under-age border-crossers did begin under Barack Obama and Biden, not Trump. But none of them did what Trump so desperately needed to do: reach voters who suspect he doesn’t care about them at all. These have been difficult months. I feel it. I understand.

He could not say it. He could not do it.

He is who he is:

Trump does not do empathy. Even Trump supporters know that by now. Some of them may appreciate it. They prefer anger. But those supporters might consider: Trump showed on that stage why he has so often failed at the job of being president. He rejected reality (that he’s losing because of COVID-19) in favor of a fantasy (that he’d win if only he could tell more people about these latest allegations from Rudy Giuliani). He refused to care about what voters care about – and instead insisted that voters care about what he cares about.

So it comes down to this:

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.” That’s how the detective Philip Marlowe bids farewell to a narcissistic criminal in Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye.

If America dismisses Trump in November, he may hear the same send-off.

That’ll do. But it should be a short goodbye. And maybe that’s already locked in.