Transcript: Swamp Notes — After the debate, is this it for Biden?

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — After the debate, is this it for Biden?’

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Marc Filippino
Debates can define elections.

Barack Obama (2012 debate audio clip)
You mentioned the Navy, for example, and we have fewer ships than we did in 1916.

Barack Obama (2012 debate audio clip)
Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.

Ronald Reagan (1984 debate audio clip)
I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience. (laughter)

Marc Filippino
And the CNN presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump may define the 2024 race.

Donald Trump
I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.

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Marc Filippino
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Marc Filippino. This week we’re asking: who won the first presidential debate and what does it mean going forward for both candidates? Here with me to discuss in Atlanta after covering the debate is Lauren Fedor. She’s the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hey, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Hi, Marc.

Marc Filippino
And we’ve also got Steff Chávez, the FT’s Washington reporter. Hi, Steff.

Steff Chávez
Hi, Marc. Hi, Lauren.

Marc Filippino
Lauren, can you set the scene of how we got here? June debates are not normally a thing. And I guess, what was each candidate trying to prove to voters going into the debate?

Lauren Fedor
Well, this debate being held as early as it was, was the idea of Joe Biden and his campaign. They set out a whole series of kind of requirements or expectations for the debates. CNN agreed to take them on. So CNN, the cable news channel, hosted this debate in June at the urging of President Biden and the agreement of the Trump campaign. All of this was because Biden and his allies wanted to create a contrast. They have argued all along that the polls may be close, yes, but voters need to be reminded of the choice that they have between Biden and Trump. They were certainly reminded of that choice during the debate, and it might not have worked out so well for President Biden.

Marc Filippino
That’s exactly right. I mean, from the get go, President Biden was hoarse. His answers were rambling.

Joe Biden (2024 Presidential debate audio clip)
Dealing with everything we have to do with, what if we finally beat Medicare . . . 

Jake Tapper (2024 Presidential debate audio clip)
Thank you, President Biden. President Trump?

Donald Trump (2024 Presidential debate audio clip)
Who is right. He did . . . 

Marc Filippino
And the big word that came out of that debate was “backfired”. This plan by Biden to have an early debate backfired. And one tweet from our colleague Ed Luce said, “Democrats need a new nominee”. That is not a unique thought. A lot of people have been saying that. Steff, could that actually be in the cards?

Steff Chávez
I mean, it seems like there was a pretty unprecedented level of Democratic panic. You know, our colleagues reported that private conversations among top Democrats were going places they don’t usually go after debates. You know, even ones that don’t, you know, hit it out of the ballpark. Technically, the Democratic party can replace Biden as the nominee, even though he swept the primaries for the party. The Democratic National Convention isn’t for another two months or so, and there is a prospect that he could drop out. He could face a lot of pressure to drop out. A lot of people are asking, you know, is he really gonna stay in the race? What is he doing right now? It’s been a long time since the Democratic party has had an open nominating convention. It’s been decades, you know, and it technically could happen. Whether or not it will, I think we’ll kind of start to figure out over the next few days as, as more reaction comes in and as the dust settles a little bit.

Lauren Fedor
One thing I would point out is that while Steff is totally right, it could happen, there isn’t some apparatus for the party to throw him out at this point. He has enough delegates to be the nominee. So if Joe Biden is going to step aside, it’s going to be because Joe Biden decides to step aside. But these questions about Biden’s age and the pressure for him to step aside has been there for a while now, and he has been stubborn and held strong. So all of the op-eds in the world might not be enough to stop him.

Marc Filippino
But if he does, what are the optics of that for Democrats? Will voters look favourably upon the party for making that call, or does it signal chaos?

Lauren Fedor
You know, it’s interesting because recently I was speaking with a pollster at Ipsos, that’s a non-partisan pollster, and he was arguing that — this was before the debate — but he was arguing that getting rid of Biden would be detrimental for the Democrats. And he pointed to some polling that suggested historically over the long term and looking across the globe as well at different elections, voters tend to prefer the incumbent to getting rid of the incumbent and finding a new guy. That said, this is just such an atypical situation, and I think that even before the debate, we saw that the overwhelming majority of American voters did not like the choices they represented. They didn’t want a Biden-Trump rematch. So I’d be inclined to say that if the party got rid of President Biden or President Biden removed himself from the equation, that voters might not feel too bad about that.

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Marc Filippino
You know, we’re talking a lot about Biden here, and rightfully so. But I mean, Trump was there, too. And, a lot of the questions going into the debate were: how is Trump gonna do? What did we learn about Trump 2.0, and what can we learn about him kind of moving forward as a candidate and potentially president?

Steff Chávez
There were kind of two things happening. One was that because Biden was so hoarse and, you know, speaking so disjointedly right off the bat, Trump just had to speak at a regular volume to come in sounding stronger. And a lot of the substance at certain points, almost kind of fell away because you were just so focused on their performances. But when I did kind of zone back in to what Trump was actually doing, I thought that he actually rambled a little bit less than he usually does. He was more direct and clear than I expected him to be. Of course, you know, he said misleading things. He continued to make false claims of the sorts that, you know, we’ve been tracking throughout the campaign and since he was president, basically. But his performance, you know, was better than I expected it to be.

Lauren Fedor
I would just follow up on that. I think one of the things that we saw from Trump was what a lot of political insiders or professionals would call discipline, and I thought it was really interesting, his ability to quickly pivot no matter what the topic was. So, for example, when he was asked about January 6th, which is obviously a weak point for him when it comes to swing voters, people in the middle . . . 

Donald Trump (2024 Presidential debate audio clip)
And let me tell you about January 6th. On January 6th, we had a great border, nobody coming through, very few. On January 6th, we were energy independent. On January 6th, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever. On January 6th, we were respected all over the world. All over the world . . . 

Lauren Fedor
He barely answered the question and he was able to do that pretty seamlessly. And I think that was really, really effective. Was it necessarily informative for the voter or the viewer at home? No, but it allowed him to kind of control the conversation, in a way that I found, very effective.

Marc Filippino
Guys, what does the reaction to this debate — both to Biden’s performance and Trump’s performance — tell us about what matters in US politics?

Lauren Fedor
Gosh, I mean, I think the era in which we were fighting elections on matters of policy is a distant, distant memory. A lot of this contest is about personality. And it’s it is remarkable. You know, it’s been said many, many times we have a country of more than 300mn people, and these are the choices that American voters are being given. But that is that is where we are.

Steff Chávez
Yeah. And it seems to be much more about the ability to give a performance. I don’t necessarily mean like perform the job itself, but there is kind of an aspect of, of performance to the presidency or to any, you know, for any political role, but especially the presidency. And it kind of seems like, you know, we’re judging them on these moments and like Lauren said, like less on their policy ideas.

Marc Filippino
Yeah. I mean, we haven’t talked about policy once, and I think it’s because, in my opinion, nothing substantive came out of this and nothing surprising came out of it. I don’t think people were looking for policy in this debate. I think they were looking for the exact things that we were talking about, and they got the answers that they wanted.

Lauren Fedor
I mean, I agree, but I also disagree on a certain level, Marc, because I actually think that I don’t think the public craves what they saw this past week in the debate. The public, you know, we see on the economy, for example, the public is, on the whole feeling quite downbeat, feeling stressed about prices, the cost of living. And they want solutions. They do want someone who’s gonna make their lives better and explain how government is gonna work for them. I really do believe, and maybe that’s a bit Pollyanna-ish, but I think that’s what the public wants, and it’s just not what the public is being given. And that is, to say the least, a disappointment, if not a disservice.

Marc Filippino
You know, as I said at the start of the show, debates can define elections. There are debates that we remember in American history, like Kennedy-Nixon in 1960. The second debate between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan in 1984. Was the other night’s debate between Trump and Biden one of those kinds of debates? Could this debate shape the outcome of the election?

Lauren Fedor
Well, Marc, that’s like the billion-dollar question. I’m not sure I feel confident going out on a limb now. I will say that one of the arguments against all of the Democratic hand-wringing is that it is, believe it or not, still early on. There are still many, many more flash points to come. Just in the next kind of, couple of weeks alone, we’re going to have President Trump being sentenced for those 34 criminal convictions that he had last month in New York. We’re gonna have the Republican National Convention. We’re going to have the Democratic National Convention. All of that’s going to happen before the summer is out, and the election’s not until November. That said, it did seem that for all of the months and months of quiet and not-so-quiet hand-wringing about Biden and his age and fitness for office, that this was something different. And it seemed like waking up the morning after the debate, like the public outcry was definitely different and stronger than anything we’d seen before.

Marc Filippino
It was quite the hangover. Well, on that note, we normally do exit poll, but I think we’ve had enough rigorous political analysis for this week. So I just want to thank our guests, Lauren Fedor, she’s the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief, reporting from Atlanta. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Marc.

Marc Filippino
And Steff Chávez. She’s our Washington reporter. Thanks, Steff.

Steff Chávez
Thanks, Marc.

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Marc Filippino
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Sonja Hutson. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson and Breen Turner. I’m your host, Marc Filippino. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. We’re taking next week off for the 4th of July holiday, but we’ll see you soon for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.