Primed to Panic: The Biden Debate Narrative Debacle

Rightly, questions about Joe Biden’s fitness for office arose about 12 minutes into his debate with Donald Trump. His deer-in-the-headlights moment, in which he fell silent as he lost his train of thought, searched for his place, and blurted “We finally beat Medicare”, certainly was newsworthy. The real question, though, is why in the media’s coverage of the event did his poor performance at the beginning of the debate – he grew stronger and more resilient as the debate continued, as others have acknowledged – overshadow Trump’s flood of lies, vagueness on policy, refusal to unequivocally support the results of the election, and occasional incoherence? And why did it create a panic among his Democratic supporters?

The short answer: Because for more than four years, Trump and his Republican supporters had spun a narrative of old, slow, “Sleepy Joe” whose cognition Trump repeatedly called into question while bragging about his own success on cognitive tests. So, when Biden lapsed very briefly into a McConnell-esque freeze, Democrats and the news media were primed to pile on despite Biden’s successful leadership over the last three-plus years – despite an economy that has defied expectations, despite a stock market that has reached record highs, despite passage of important bipartisan legislation on inflation, climate change, and the war in Ukraine and a near-miss on immigration, and despite delivering a robust State of the Union address in March. In other words, despite showing no signs that he might not be up to the job of running the country.

It’s another moment of narrative control in a pattern that we’ve seen time and again over the last 40 years. Democrats fail to push back against a Republican narrative that pokes at their vulnerabilities and puts them on the defensive, and the news media passively reports the narrative without seriously questioning it – even when their own reporting, not to mention common sense, tells them they should.

Consider that throughout the ‘90s, Republicans established a narrative that equated being Republican with being a law abiding, pro-life patriot, and being Democrat with being corrupt, anti-family, and unAmerican. In fact, the GOP created a training brochure entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” that explicitly instructed party members to use those and other terms to create a clear contrast between the two parties. As Republican candidates and elected officials, the news media regularly quoted – and still quotes – them without questioning the validity of their characterizations. And Democrats, perhaps believing they were still engaged in politics-as-usual, failed to sufficiently highlight the common ground that unites most Americans and so, failed to prevent Republicans from manufacturing what’s long been known as the red-blue divide.

Let’s also remember that since the controversial Bush-Gore election in 2000, many Republicans have talked of voter fraud to justify their efforts to pass legislation that can be used to suppress votes. Even after studies showed voter fraud is virtually non-existent, Republicans persisted with their claims as they proposed and often passed voter ID and other burdensome legislation, intimating that such fraud was rampant and mostly favored Democratic candidates. The media dutifully reported the claims without qualifying them as “misrepresentations”, “falsehoods”, or “lies”. And no Democrat made headlines with any such response. The strength and longevity of the fraud narrative laid the groundwork for Trump’s utterly baseless claim of a rigged and stolen election in 2020 – what the media finally and appropriately dubbed the Big Lie.

Too bad no one had called out those smaller lies for what they were. If the media had been less passive in their reporting and if the Dems had been more aggressive and less intent on maintaining civil dialogue, our democracy might be in a stronger place.

The pattern repeatedly repeats. Joe Biden’s candidacy is in trouble mostly because of a narrative that had prepared people to look for and overreact to the first sign of trouble. It surely came at 12 minutes into last month’s debate. When you go back and watch what came before and after that moment, it’s still not a great performance but it is better and less panic-inducing than most are giving Biden credit for.

Those media pundits who raised the alarm set off a weeks-long news cycle that is not about how dangerous Donald Trump would be should he win in November but about the Democrats’ dirty laundry. And those who are now calling for Biden to drop out of the race should carefully consider the implications of that choice: More squabbling – and many more headlines – about how he should step down and who should replace him. Infighting that might only be settled at the Democratic convention in mid-August. That’s another five weeks of a narrative that distracts from Trump’s lies and the dictatorial framework of government being established by recent Supreme Court decisions and Project 2025.

If the Democrats hope to keep Trump out of the White House, they better make their decision sooner rather than later – and then make sure they show no sign of wavering when things get tough. There can be no more second-guessing down the stretch. The Democrats will need to show some strength through unity and, if not loyalty to the candidate, then commitment to getting that candidate elected.

Whatever their choice, the faster Democrats can put their indecision behind them, the more time they will have to deliver a resolute message of personal and national resilience, policy success, and faith in the Constitution and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people – a message that might be compromised if they choose a candidate other than the one Democratic and (in some states) Independent voters elected during the primaries.