Tag: former Vice President Joe Biden

Debate Audience Wins as Trump and Biden Mind the Mute Button

By Charles Dervarics

Voters claimed at least a small victory Thursday night when the major party presidential candidates had to accept a tool familiar to anyone working in remote video meetings during the pandemic – the all-important mute button.

Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden had to follow this new rule, which significantly reduced interruptions during their final debate in Nashville. The president showed occasional frustration at having to wait for an open microphone, but the new guideline kept shouting to a minimum and gave viewers a chance to hear the candidates’ views on key issues.

During the 90-minute debate moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, the two candidates sparred over every issue from COVID-19 and race relations to China, North Korea, immigration and climate change.

On COVID-19, Trump laid blame primarily on China and said that “we’re rounding the corner” on the virus with a vaccine announcement likely within weeks. “We can’t close up our nation or we won’t have a nation,” he said. Biden countered that the president’s performance has fallen far short with 220,000 Americans dead from the disease. “Anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States,” he said.

The former vice president also said he planned to implement “Bidencare,” with Affordable Care Act improvements such as lower premiums and drug prices and the ability of low-income individuals to opt into Medicaid. Trump criticized this plan, saying it would lead to socialized medicine and a loss of private insurance for 180 million Americans. 

An extended segment on race relations saw the candidates approach the issue from different directions. Trump touted his administration’s passage of criminal justice reform and more funding for historically Black colleges, saying the Obama-Biden administration failed on these and other issues. “I ran because of you,” he said. “If I thought you did a good job, I would’ve never run.”

For his part, Biden said he regretted past support for minimum sentencing laws and promised to give states $20 billion to eliminate these standards and create drug courts so offenders go to treatment rather than prison. “We should fundamentally change the system, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Some of the most heated moments came when Trump challenged Biden over alleged misdeeds by his son in gaining international business and whether the former vice president benefitted from deals in China and Ukraine. Biden denied any wrongdoing and the debate turned to Trump’s own international business dealings, bank accounts and unseen tax returns. At one point, Biden turned to the camera and noted that the election is “not about his family or my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly.”

With the debates now complete, both candidates head into the final 11 days of campaigning. Nearly 50 million Americans already have cast early votes, with Election Day set for Nov. 3.

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All the Metaphors

By Andrew Boyd

I struggle to talk about these debates in the fashion of the day, as if we were watching something as superficial as a UFC bout; but as political heavyweight contests go, there were no big surprises. Adopting as non-partisan perspective as I can manage, I thought both men got in their shots, but the roundhouses were few and far between, and neither combatant went face-to-canvas. 

Trump’s best line of attack was the right hook to Joe’s legacy as a careerist pol, and the watery, flavorless stone soup of ‘accomplishments’ over 47 long years that should do little to satiate anyone’s desire for a candidate possessed of the capacity, desire or will to affect meaningful change in any direction. 

If fate elects Joe, I’ll take what solace I can in the fact that he’s no ideologue and mostly just a guy looking to fill out his political butterfly collection with the rare Potus-excremus.  Nothing new, certainly nothing better, but probably no worse than business as usual.

I’m in the species of conservative who thinks Washington is rotten down to its core, whose vote for Trump was a message to the D.C. establishment, left, right and center, that the game is up.  And it’s that same disgust for Washington’s three-card monte that will pull the lever for DJT once again.  

I think Donald, for all his many foibles, has a genuine love of country and a desire to do the right thing by his countrymen and women. That, for me, is the trump card in a deck full of one-eye jacks.  Establishment Washington wouldn’t know a straight deal if they saw one; and worse yet, if they did, they’d form a posse to hang that dealer, which is more or less what played out as the Mueller probe over the past three years.  

Get in there Donald and break some shit!

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