There's No Debate

The op-eds, tweets, and intra-party discussions have come fast and furious over the past few weeks. The argument is as predictable and it is laughable—progressives are floating trial balloons to try to convince the voting public that a presidential debate is unwarranted, unnecessary, and just plain wrong. 

The reasons for cancelling the debates all boil down to the tacit admission that poor Joe Biden is cognitively unable to enter into a debate with anyone over the age of 7 on any subject. Debates require the recall of facts; they reward quick thinking, and they assume that the debater can string coherent thoughts together to make an argument. Poor Joe can't do any of that and the Dems know it ... so ...

Cancel the debates. Because ... "the virus," "Trump is a liar and shouldn't be given a platform," "everyone has already made up their minds anyway, "everything you need to know is at the Biden website," ... blah, blah and blah. Or, party shills like Thomas Friedman suggest that conditions be placed on the debates, e.g., that Trump be forced to release his tax returns as an offering to the mighty Joe Biden.

Here's Elizabeth Drew in a recent NYT op-ed:

Nervous managers of the scheduled 2020 presidential debates are shuffling the logistics and locations to deal with the threat of the coronavirus. But here’s a better idea: Scrap them altogether. And not for health reasons.

The debates have never made sense as a test for presidential leadership. In fact, one could argue that they reward precisely the opposite of what we want in a president. When we were serious about the presidency, we wanted intelligence, thoughtfulness, knowledge, empathy and, to be sure, likability. It should also go without saying, dignity.

Yet the debates play an outsize role in campaigns and weigh more heavily on the verdict than their true value deserves.

She then has the unmitigated gall to state:

This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests. The point is that “winning” a debate, however assessed, should be irrelevant, as are the debates themselves.

Ya gotta give Ms Drew points for chutzpa.

The Dems know full well that any debate moderator will be a trained hamster who will do everything he or she can to protect poor Joe, to correct his "gaffes" in real time, and to explain away his incoherence or rephrase his responses to make them intelligible. Every mainstream media outlet will declare Joe the "winner," suggesting that his fractured language and broken logic were necessary to combat Trump's "lies." Fact checkers will declare everything that Trump says to be untrue, and since Joe won't say much beyond programmed cliches, there won't be any facts to check on his side.

And still, the Dems are worried enough to suggest that the debates should be cancelled. As a fall-back, they'll delay while pushing hard for mail-in ballots, hoping that most people will have voted before any debate happens, if it ever does. That tells you a lot more about Joe Biden and his ability to lead than any policy paper ever could.

UPDATE:

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John Kass comments on Elizabeth Drew's op-ed and VP hopeful Susan Rice's serial lies during her stint as an Obama advisor, along with the current state of the Biden campaign and its search for a VP:

The latest voice in the cancel culture for Biden in debate is liberal Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew, who tells us in The New York Times that debates don't make sense as a test of leadership, because too much attention is focused on snappy comebacks.

She doesn't like party conventions, either. "There's no reason not to throw the presidential debates on the trash heap of useless [at best] rituals that are no help in our making such a fateful decision."

Is it best to let Joe hide in the basement with his pudding?

Move along. Nothing to see here. Toss the debates in the garbage. Forget bothersome questions about Susan Rice. Protect Joe.

Let's just forget the whole thing.

And if Biden is elected, the scandal of the Obama administration using the powers of the intelligence agencies to spy on political opponents will be buried. And Joe will enjoy his ice cream or pudding as Susan Rice and the Obama crowd run the country.

At least Biden could do one decent thing:

Tell America that he's found a delicious new flavor -- Banana Republic.

Heh.