Democrat Operatives Committed the Classic PR Blunder

Whelp… 

Over the next several days, there will be a litany of kneejerk reactions to assess the debate’s PR fallout via opinion polls and various audience snapshots, but alas, they won’t tell you anything useful. This was one of those events where the sands of popular opinion will still shift dramatically over the next several days. So, it really doesn’t matter where we are right now; what matters is where we’re going to be. 

Media outlets love to rely upon these Frank Luntz-inspired polling experts who’ll bloviate endlessly about which moments triggered the most clicks or what an audience thought on a minute-by-minute basis, but this information is mostly irrelevant. Why? Because these events – and, specifically, that level of Biden trainwreck – don’t consist of a bunch of individual moments multiplied. The human brain didn’t score the Trump-Biden debate on a 10-point must system, where you add up the scorecards and see who won the most rounds. That’s just not how an audience processes information. 

What’s truly important isn’t the sum of individual moments but the feeling when all those moments are over. 

It’s the takeaway that matters. 

In baseball parlance, it doesn’t matter which team “won” the most innings but which team won the game. Everything else is incidental or anecdotal; the point is the final scoreboard. 

So what will the audience take away when the dust settles and the image crystallizes? 

The first is the most obvious: President Biden is old AF (as the kids say) and mentally unwell. Right now, the public is considering what this means for them, their country, and the entire world. 

There are ways they could try to rationalize it: Perhaps the modern-day presidency is mostly symbolic, and Biden has strong, capable people around him. Perhaps Trump is still worse. Perhaps Biden took the wrong cold medicine or was struggling with the flu... because he can’t be like this all the time... can he?! 

Biden’s best counter-PR strategy would be to demonstrate his mental acuity via interviews on friendly platforms in (very) controlled environments where he can zing Trump with all those debate one-liners he so badly mangled (or just forgot). He’ll be feisty(er), lively(er), and lucid(er) – and this outreach will certainly help. At least for a little while. 

The first audience Biden absolutely, 100 percent, must reach is his supporters. If he can’t convince them that he’s still capable of beating Trump and winning the election (and, to a far, far lesser extent, still lucid enough to at least sorta-kinda do the actual job), Biden is toast. Eventually, some combination of Clinton(s), Obama(s), and party leaders will demand he step aside. So this is the first hole he must plug, and he must plug it immediately. 

But by midweek, the American people will have solidified their opinion: 

They’ll be angry that they were lied to. 

They’ll be furious that journalists, politicians, and pundits hid the extremeness of Biden’s mental decay from them. 

Their final thought will be: If THAT was Biden with one full week to plan and prepare, what the hell would it look like if there was an emergency situation somewhere in the world and Biden had to answer a midnight phone call? 

MAGA Republicans might be saying, "I told you so," but many Democrats are in a state of shock: They committed the classic PR blunder of believing their own press clippings. The media outlets and influencers they trusted never warned them that Biden was so diminished, and now they’re feeling a sense of emotional whiplash.

They knew Biden was old... but not THAT old! 

The Trump-Biden debate was a tipping point in popular opinion. The repercussions, reverberations, and aftershocks are still to come. Biden’s performance changed the equation and made this election a referendum on him. But for Biden to win, he needed the election to be a referendum on Trump. 

Left unchecked, the voters will conclude that Trump might sometimes give dishonest answers, but at least he understands the questions! 

I’m sure there’s a teeny-tiny part of Trump’s ego that resents being left out of the discussion, but if he can avoid the Trumpian temptation to steal back the spotlight, then the spotlight will continue to showcase an elderly, feeble-minded octogenarian who’s clearly on a steep, downward mental trajectory. Biden is visibly melting under the spotlight, so keep the spotlight on Biden. 

Because if Biden’s this bad now, what happens in 2025, 2026, 2027, and 2028? THIS is the guy we want playing nuclear chicken with Putin?! 

After the debate, the only thing that can beat Trump is Trump. (Which doesn’t exactly make it a slam dunk: Time and time again, Trump has been Trump’s worst enemy.) If the ex-president can show the same discipline and restraint he demonstrated at the debate through Election Day, then Trump will become the next president in a landslide.