Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

So many important issues are at stake in the 2024 election: foreign policy, reproductive rights, immigration, the future of American democracy.

But coming out of the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, one topic has crowded all those out: Biden’s performance.

Biden’s rationale for agreeing to this historically early presidential debate was, in part, to try and put concerns over his age to rest. Instead, they’ve been supercharged. Multiple reports soon after the debate claimed that top Democrats were downright panicked by how Biden came off onstage. Major media outlets wrote that Biden “struggled” and appeared “shaky.”

Biden is the oldest president ever, and Republicans have long been trying to push an exaggerated narrative that he is senile. He didn’t seem senile on stage — but he didn’t seem sharp, either. He spoke very softly, his answers were often messy on the substance, and when he did have decent lines they were usually hampered by his halting and understated delivery.

Sources told NBC News midway through the debate that Biden has a cold, implying his affect was a one-off fluke. The risk, though, is that voters determined after watching that he is simply not up for the job he wants to keep. This was, after all, the most prolonged look at Biden in an adversarial setting we’ve gotten in some time, and he didn’t come off well.

Trump’s performance was no great shakes: He said absurd and untrue things, rambled and lost coherence. But he did it more energetically — and, more to the point, he was typical Trump, no one would be surprised by what he said or how he said it.

On one level, all of the above is so shallow and superficial that I feel somewhat embarrassed to have written it. Politics should be about more than theater criticism and affect. It’s about important issues that will affect the lives of millions of people. 

Unfortunately, the question of what a relatively small group of swing voters thinks about Joe Biden’s age may well be what the 2024 election hinges on. Many Democrats think they have a winning argument against Trump on the issues, but they’re worried that Biden simply can’t make the case. So the most immediate consequence of Thursday’s debate will be a revival of chatter about whether Biden should even stay in the race or whether there’s still some other option for Democrats.

And that consequence makes for a pretty clear set of takeaways for the race in the wake of this debate. 

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

No need to belabor the point: If the debate ends with your party debating whether you should even stay in the race, it’s pretty obvious you lost.

The Biden “age issue” is really a conflation of a few separate things. Again, there’s the exaggerated right-wing narrative that he’s senile. There are normal concerns about aging slowing people down somewhat mentally and physically. There’s the question about whether his health would hold up in a second term. There are questions about whether any of this has impaired his decision-making or governance (I don’t believe it has; it’s hard to point to an example of any administration that would be different if he was Joe Biden but younger).

But there’s also a more difficult concern for Biden to rebut: that he has failed to appropriately “perform” the role of president or presidential candidate. That he hasn’t been good at seeming like he’s in command, like he’s energetic, can handle tough questioning, and is up to the job. 

This is where he failed most glaringly during the debate.

For many elite Democrats, the worry about Biden’s age is mainly a meta-worry: It’s about what swing voters will think about Biden’s age. If that’s your rubric, it doesn’t matter if you think he’s doing a great job as president; what matters is what the swing voters will think. And it’s hard to believe many liked what they saw on Thursday.

By default, in a two-person contest, Trump won the debate due to Biden’s weakness. But his performance was not particularly impressive.

As usual, Trump got sidetracked into his perennial grievances (“Russia Russia Russia,” “the laptop,” James Comey, false claims of 2020 election fraud). He lied, said ridiculous things, and dodged questions. He also missed opportunities: Biden was shaky enough that a more disciplined and savvy Republican candidate could well have embarrassed him far more — by, for instance, posing questions directly to him and truly throwing him off.

Trump did benefit from the relative lack of focus on his attempt to steal the 2020 election and his recent criminal conviction. And perhaps the way he won most was that the debate seemed to normalize him: His attack on American democracy was just one issue among many, only showing up halfway through.  

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Look, it never seemed particularly likely that with these two candidates on stage this debate would be an enlightening and nuanced exchange about policy issues. Neither are wonks, Trump lies constantly, and every debate he has participated in ends up devolving into a mudslinging contest.

Still, for anyone interested in substance, this debate was a truly desultory affair. 

On abortion, Trump accused Biden of wanting to kill 9-month-old babies and Biden struggled to explain Roe v. Wade’s three-trimester framework. On climate change, Trump bragged that while he was president the country had clean air and “H2O.” On the economy, Biden claimed Trump destroyed the economy in 2020, while Trump claimed Biden solely caused inflation and has only created jobs for migrants — all false.

The nadir was the supremely stupid exchange in which both candidates insulted each other’s golf games. ”I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag,” Biden said. Trump responded by mocking Biden’s “swing.” Why?

Back in March, Biden’s fiery State of the Union address quieted many concerns among Democrats over whether he was up to the rigors of another campaign. Now, the debate has reopened that topic of discussion. 

It will take more time (and polling numbers) to determine just how serious the damage to Biden is. Maybe mainly politics die-hards who have their minds made up were the people watching this very early debate. The media may focus on Biden’s age for a while, but attention will inevitably shift to other topics.

Still, the odds that Kamala Harris ends up the Democratic presidential nominee for 2024 are, in my view, higher after the debate than they were before it. 

The Democratic National Convention is at the end of August. Biden won the primaries and has most Democratic delegates pledged to him, so he can’t be totally pushed out against his will. But if power players in the party tell him that he has to step down — and he listens — then Harris would be the obvious next in line.

When this scenario has been discussed, it’s often been about an “open” convention, where delegates would come together to somehow choose their own nominee, as in older political eras. My guess is that this would be far too messy and impractical, and coordination and consensus-building around one option would be too difficult. There have been doubts within the party about Harris’s political strength, but if Democratic elites come to agree Biden is fatally politically flawed, they’d be more likely to roll the dice with her.

For now, dropping Biden still seems very unlikely. But it seems less unlikely than it did Thursday morning.

—Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent

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