The “Debate”

I had a busy day, then a Zoom meeting that ran a half hour into the first presidential debate. I watched it on lag and then got caught up on some commentary. (If you can call it that...my favorite Twitter comments will be included in the usual monthly round-up, which is due in a few days.)

But I think this tweet by Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer was a good general summary of how the debate went (not the content, but the form):

After the first 15 minutes, Biden realized that Trump was going to DDOS the whole format, that he didn’t need to respond to any particular Trump idea, and he started delivering talking points directly to the camera.

If you don't know what a DDOS attack is, it's a good metaphor for Mafia Mulligan's presidency in general, and his debate performance particularly. I've talked about it before as the Gish Gallop, a term that comes from the history of debate.

Meanwhile, immediate reaction to the debate is that even some of Mulligan's usual supporters thought he underperformed (or maybe they weren't watching):

Since his poll numbers generally run in the low 40s, never lower than the high 30s at any point in his presidency, hitting 28% is a new low, so it indicates just how badly he did.

But as many people said on Twitter, the real loser was our country and democracy.