Last week saw the first debate of the 2020 Democratic Primary.
And Joe Biden is wishing America hadn’t watched.
After walking onto the debate stage Thursday night, Biden watched in horror as his campaign imploded around him.
Joe Biden’s campaign for the White House is in complete disarray.
With his poll numbers in free fall after Thursday night’s debate, and his rivals licking their chops at the prospect of finally taking him down, Biden’s collapse came at perhaps the worst possible time imaginable.
His campaign had already been stalled after a wave of scandals that crashed into him in the days before the debate, from past allegations of plagiarism to claims from fellow Democratic rivals that Biden was praising racists on the campaign trail.
Biden needed a big break at the debate and instead, things went from bad to worse.
The Week reports, “Former Vice President Joe Biden gave perhaps the most disastrous performance by a frontrunner in the history of presidential primary debates on Thursday night. Throughout the evening, Biden sounded aloof and evasive. There was not a single moment when his words or behavior suggested the ease and confidence of someone in control of his political destiny.”
Those are the words describing one of the most historic debate collapses in modern political history.
And it only touches the surface of how bad things went for Biden.
The Week describes Biden’s performance in the following words: “Biden looked utterly lost.”
And it was a weakness that others sprang on the moment they could.
California Senator Kamala Harris ran roughshod over Biden with attacks on his voting record in the US Senate, insinuating that he supported racists in the chamber in the 1970s and 1980s.
And even obscure candidates like Congressman Eric Swalwell attacked Biden over his age and time in politics, demanding that it was time for Biden to “pass the torch”.
Biden’s campaign may be looking for a bailout from former President Barack Obama, but the problem that Biden is facing is that Obama hadn’t endorsed Biden before the debate, and he seems unlikely to want to do so now.
“The last thing he [Obama] probably wants to do is go out of his way to back a loser, which is exactly what Biden is looking like right now,” adds The Week.
Within Biden’s camp however, the alarm is being rung like never before.
“The post-debate headlines for Biden were uniformly terrible. Already there are reports that he is not cooperating with his handlers during debate preparation, that he is ‘set in his ways,’ and that members of his staff are ‘freaking out,’” concludes The Week.
The conclusion for all of this is rather straightforward.
Biden’s campaign is collapsing at rapid speed, much like how Jeb Bush’s faltered in 2016 shortly after President Trump entered the field.
And it may only be a matter of time before Biden is overtaken by another rival in the field.
We will keep you up to date with any new developments in this ongoing story.
