Biden’s biggest weakness – his age – on full display in the debate: ANALYSIS

From the earliest hours of the night, President Joe Biden’s greatest political weakness — his age and his frailty — became a clear liability on Thursday’s debate stage. At his lowest point for the presidency, Biden appeared to lose his mind when answering a question about the national debt, pausing and then commenting on how he was finally “defeating (on) Medicare.” Donald Trump jumped on this flub when a CNN moderator turned on him, quipping that Biden had “beat Medicare to death.”

While Biden, 81, gained momentum as the debate progressed, and was clearly prepared to answer Trump’s questions and statements on stage – supporting his answers with statistics and fact-checking the former president on the spot – – his voice was hoarse and his demeanor (which the campaign chalked up to cold previously undisclosed) play into the concerns of many Americans have come of age.

Although Trump is no spring chicken at 78 either, he seems more energetic and energetic on the debate stage, and voters typically report less anxiety about his age. So: in a poll by The New York Times and Siena College from June 20 to 25, only 16% of registered voters said that Trump’s age “is a problem that makes him unable to handle the job of president,” while 45% said that about Biden, including 15% Democrats.

Meanwhile, Trump began the night with a calmer demeanor than I’ve seen from him, and he respected the debate’s rules of time limits and interruptions. Although he doesn’t shy away from Trumpy turns of phrase or good spin, his clear but calm speaking style is a stark contrast to Biden’s speech.

Trump is doing his best to address one of his biggest weaknesses: the Republican party’s unpopular position on abortion. When asked about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago, Trump said that the three appointed judges who decided the Dobbs case “just happened” to vote against the precedent there. He took the more moderate conservative stance that abortion policy should be left up to the states — which Biden argued would open the door to reproductive rights again. Trump repeated false claims that Democratic leaders systematically favor late-term abortions and “abort” babies after birth.

(Trump claimed that Democrats “support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month,” and asserted that some Democratic states have such attitudes. It is illegal in every state.)

A Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School poll of young “deciding” swing state voters published this week found that 38% of adults said they thought Biden would do a better job handling abortion, compared to 31% who said sure Trump will. do a better job.

But monitoring live voter responses to the debate (campaigns have what’s called a “dial,” because live respondents can vote on whether they think the candidate is good or bad) shows Trump acted badly when he attacked Biden so aggressively. This is also a liability for him in the first debate in 2020, after the polls went to Biden by 2.6 percentage points. That can close up the debate there.

Overall, the substance of Biden’s response outweighed his style. He attacked Trump for previous comments he had made about there being “very good people on both sides” of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; for his role in organizing the rally that preceded the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and for his efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. He also noted Trump’s recent felony conviction, another political weakness for the former president. But his delivery lacked the energy expected of Biden on the debate stage, and many of these solid attacks fell flat.

In the end, Biden won the debate on policy but lost on presentation, and failed to convince voters that he had another four years to go.