Now I work down at the car wash
Where all it ever does is rain.
Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train?
——- Springsteen
To be honest with you, I couldn’t bear to watch most of that. I followed it through the NYT’s live analysis. It seemed safer that way.
Biden’s objectives were to avoid looking like a senile old man, to prevent Trump from rolling all over him, and to convince everyone that voting was worth the effort, because Trump would have to leave if he lost. He succeeded admirably in the first two; I don’t know about the third.
Having failed to prove that he was the alpha male, Trump just resorted to abusing everyone around him, playing to his base, lying, and implicitly threatening to call his supporters on to the streets when he loses. There was no evidence of any effort to win over undecided voters, especially suburban women. Rachel Maddow said he was running against the election, not Biden. That sounds about right.
What a ghastly advertisement for our system! I feel like I just watched an episode of domestic violence on live TV. I’m not sure I care to repeat the experience two more times.