After the Debate: What’s Needed Now

I watched only a few minutes of last night’s debate. It was a dispiriting experience. Biden made a lot of important substantive points, but was ineffective in articulating them. Trump was, as expected, a fire hose of lies. There was no time to rebut them one-by-one, the moderators were passive, and Biden failed to get across that nothing Trump says should be assumed to be true: his record is such that he should be presumed to be lying unless proved to speaking the truth. Biden failed to get this across. He needed to overcome Trump. Instead he was overcome.

At this point, I think that the best chance Democrats have of saving American democracy is for Biden to convene Party leaders and best prospective candidates for President and Vice-President at the White House, reach unified positions, and endorse new candidates with both Biden’s and Harris’s enthusiastic blessing. A prime time press conference dealing with the conclusions they reach, would gain a huge national audience and would include a devastating item-by-item rebuttal of each of the major false assertions Trump made in last night’s debate.