Given all the talk of what a shit show and an unprecedented disaster it was, when that was always the obvious outcome, I am guessing that many Americans had a lingering faith that the the ritual of a presidential debate would somehow set limits on Trump’s depravity. Maybe a lot of us expected that Trump would at least fake it.
Instead, what we got was a sort of summation of the last four years of our national life, stripped down to a stage set and three actors. The president lied, blustered, bullied, interrupted, and essentially made it clear that he saw no purpose to the commonly accepted idea of a presidential debate - that the candidates would make the case for why they and their ideas deserve the support of voters. Instead, he seized it as a forum to enact the bullying dominance rituals which he believes connote strength and appeal to voters who wish to see an authoritarian strongman in the White House. His constant interruptions made it impossible to have any sort of linear conversation, just as his presence in our national life has distorted all discussions about our pressing needs, from an effective coronavirus strategy to fighting global warming. Joe Biden and moderator Chris Wallace stood in for the traumatized American people, occasionally speechless at his antics and frequently the intended victims of his narcissistic rage.
It was also as clear as ever that one of Trump’s basic political strategies is to try to drag everyone down to his level. Political commentators have described this as a way to discredit both other politicians and democracy in general — if everyone else is also bad and corrupt, you may as well support the bastard who seems to have your back. You could see this in the way he attacked Wallace and repeatedly tried to provoke Joe Biden to respond at the same schoolyard taunt-level on which he operates.
It’s great for the country that there’s such a general consensus that this debate was very bad for Trump, but the enormous attention being paid (correctly) to the president’s refusal to condemn white supremacists when given the chance by Wallace reminds us of a crisis that transcends Trump. Not only has the president already shown himself to be a white supremacist president for the past four years, but the larger GOP endorses his white nationalist policies like suppressing the votes of African-Americans and abusing Latin American immigrants. It’s not nearly enough to call Trump our, and actually counter-productive to suggest that he’s some sort of outlier in his party.
That said, his shout out to the Proud Boys to “stand by” was an abomination. Presidential validation of this white nationalist group is no abstract thing for those of us who live in Portland. Members of this paramilitary organization have engaged in violence in this city on multiple occasions, and we will bear the brunt of it if and when members emboldened by the president’s endorsement spring into fascistic action. Trump tried to score points against Biden for the former VP’s supposed failure to order Oregon’s governor to send in the National Guard against antifa protestors, but he actually got it half right — Biden should be encouraging Oregon to send out the National Guard, but against the illegal white supremacist militias that threaten violence against American citizens.
After Trump used the debate stage to amplify his self-serving conspiracy theories about mail-in ballots, essentially suggesting that the election is already corrupted and any outcome in which he isn’t the winner must be invalidated by the Supreme Court, it feels like a corner may have been turned in how the media is conceiving of this race. It’s not really Trump versus Biden, but Trump versus the election, as Rachel Maddow put it. Better yet, it’s Trump running against our democracy, as none other than Hillary Clinton tweeted. No one could have made this case against Trump any better than he did himself last night.