The Daily Parker

Last night's, ah, debate between the president and Joe Biden raised eyebrows worldwide:

The Chicago Tribune: "But despite his efforts to dominate the discussion, Trump was frequently put on the defensive and tried to sidestep when he was asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and paramilitary groups. ... The scattershot debate bounced from topic to topic, with Trump again refusing to embrace the science of climate change while Biden accused Trump of walking away from the American promise of equity for all and making a race-based appeal."

Josh Marshall: "Beyond all the individual offenses one of the underrated sub-themes of anti-Trumpism is exhaustion. One of the deepest traumas of living in the home of an abuser stems not from the outbursts of physical violence, verbal abuse or manipulation but the accumulated stress of ambient tension, uncertainty, the reflexive, unshakeable hyper-vigilance. It is exhausting in a profound way. Trump is exhausting – I suspect even for some who share his dark values. This was 90 minutes jam-packed with everything that makes Trump exhausting. ... The most important thing remains that Trump had to shift things in his favor and he failed. Since he’s already losing that’s a big loss. I suspect it was even worse for him. Maybe a turning point."

NBC: "It was unclear that Trump made up ground in an evening during which he put his brash and petulant style on full display, with the apparent intention of appearing dominant and making Biden look weak. Trump's approach to date has hemorrhaged support among seniors, suburban women and white college graduates, and those constituencies are likely to decide the election."

The New York Times: "For four years, Mr. Trump has rarely strayed from the warm confines of his own informational bubble. Any exposure to the outside world — a White House news conference, a friendly media interview, a rally with adoring supporters — has generally gone forward on his terms. But on Tuesday, this was a picture of a presidency stripped to its studs: an unpopular incumbent unfurling an often dubious defense."

Fox News: "'On the Trump side, it was too hot,' [former New Jersey governor Chris] Christie said. 'You come in and decide you want to be aggressive, and I think it's the right thing to be aggressive, but that was too hot. With all that heat, you lose the light. That potentially can be fixed. Maybe, maybe not.'"

The Washington Post: "Donald Trump came to heckle. He came to interrupt and to pontificate and to flail his arms, batting away questions and facts in a chaotic fury. He was a boor and a troll, holding up his stubby mitts in an angry pantomime as he tried to halt the words coming from former vice president Joe Biden’s mouth. Trump seemed to believe that with a single rude hand gesture, one that he regularly uses to assert his dominance, he could hold back the truth so he could be free to spin and hype and vent. It was an exhausting mess that spun beyond moderator Chris Wallace’s control and outside the bounds of anything that could reasonably be called a debate. It was a 90-minute display of a president’s testosterone-fueled, unmanaged rage and insecurity. Biden came to debate, God bless him."

NPR: "This was maybe the worst presidential debate in American history. If this was supposed to be a boxing match, it instead turned into President Trump jumping on the ropes, refusing to come down, the referee trying to coax him off, and Joe Biden standing in the middle of the ring with his gloves on and a confused look on his face."

The Toronto Star: "Trump’s onstage intensity and logorrhea have proved a formidable challenge for some of the nation’s leading interviewers. And with the president ignoring the traditional parameters of debate decorum, Wallace was left with few good options to keep Trump from chattering without pause."

The Guardian UK: "The looming question is whether Tuesday night’s performance will sway voters. While nearly three in four voters said they planned to watch the debate on Tuesday night, according to a recent Monmouth University poll, just 3% of voters said it was “very likely” to affect their vote in November."

The BBC: "[I]f Trump's goal was to turn this campaign into an ugly scrum, leaving voters alienated from the process and uncertain about whether there will be any kind of clarity or resolution at the end, it was an evening's work well done."

La Prensa: "Durante 90 minutos de debate el mandatario interrumpió constantemente a Biden y lo corrigió varias veces. Incluso el moderador Chris Wallace le pidió que dejara hablar a su oponente ante lo cual Trump increpó al periodista: 'Parece que estoy debatiendo contigo, no con él'. Este momento cristalizó un desempeño positivo de Biden, sobre el cual planeaban dudas ante sus conocidas equivocaciones y lapsus, que fueron aprovechadas por los republicanos para señalar que el exvicepresidente de 77 años tiene un deterioro mental."

Der Spiegel: "Soon you felt like you were in an elementary school yard - until presenter Chris Wallace of Fox News, who found himself unable to moderate the president at times, stated exhausted after an hour and a half: 'This is the end.'"

Betcha can't wait until October 15th!

Every single talking head in the US is now saying "I've never seen a debate like this one." No kidding.

Judy Woodruff: "I can say we broke new ground with presidential debates."

I'm going to watch PBS's talking heads for a bit, until my head explodes, and then I'm going to read some of Kay Ryan's poetry because...because I need to.

I promised some reactions from friends:

• "Joe's inherent goodness is actually breaking through."
• "I wish I hadn't stopped drinking right now."
• "Biden lost. He should have taken the power. All the actors see it."
• "I don't think they should have the next two debates. Biden was far too decent to respond more than once or twice [to the president's bulldozing]..."
• "Embarrassing."

Yeah, to everything but the third bullet point. I think Biden held his own, despite the president's schoolyard taunting.

I need another drink. I was way too sober for this clusterfuck.

Start refreshing this page around 21:00 EDT. I'll be watching the festivities intently and reacting in real time.

The best idea for a drinking game I've heard is to take a drink every time the president tells the truth. (It's the best way to stay sober throughout.) In no small irony, neither of the candidates drinks, and both for largely the same reason (alcoholism in a close family member). I think the public will drink enough for both of them tonight, though.

All times below are Eastern US time, 4 hours behind UTC.

20:37: If you want to get warmed up, here are previews from Josh Marshall, Amber Philips, and James Fallows. And for the record, I'm having an old fashioned.

20:44: You can also read this fascinating article on hacking coffee makers. It's funny until it's not.

21:00: I'm watching PBS (WTTW-Chicago). In my experience, PBS tends to have the least hype and the calmest presentation after NPR. I would have NPR on instead, but radio and TV never line up in these things. Judy Woodruff has kicked it off...

21:04: And they're off! Chris Wallace lays out the rules. The woman directly behind him to the left is wearing a Biden/Harris mask. Both campaigns agreed the candidates will not shake hands at the start of the debate, which knocks everyone's bingo card off by a square right away.

21:09: Wallace starts with a question to both about the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. The president: "We have the Senate, we have the White House. ... They had Merrick Garland, but they didn't have the election." Biden: "We should wait for the outcome of this election. ... The president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act...which will strip 20 million people from health care." The president: "There aren't 100 million people with pre-existing conditions." That's false; there are 129 million.

21:12: Biden: 200,000 deaths already; what does that mean if the ACA is struck down? The president is talking over him; Wallace is trying to get in there.

21:13: The president: "[Roe] isn't on the ballot. You don't know what's on the ballot." What?

21:14: Now Wallace and the president are arguing about Obamacare. Wallace says the president has no plan to replace it; the president says getting rid of the individual mandate is a plan. And now drug prices are coming down 80-90%? Insulin is so cheap it's like water?

21:17: Biden, on beating Bernie Sanders: "I'm standing here facing you, buddy." On the president: "Everybody knows he's a liar." On the president letting him finish: "He doesn't know how to do it." The president is trying to derail Biden with all his noise; Biden is just ploughing forward. But wow, as Quinta Jurecic wrote, the president is just so tedious.

21:21: Wallace asks about ending the filibuster and packing the court; is he willing to say whether he supports this? Biden: "That's a distraction. Go out and vote."

OH HO! Biden to the president: "Will you shut up, man?" Wow.

21:23: Biden: The president knew, and 200,000 people still died. Get out of your bunker and off your golf course and save lives. The president: It's Jina's fault. You don't know many people died in Jina, or India.

21:25: There it is! "Fake news!"

21:26: Biden, talking directly to the people at home: "How many of you lost your mom and dad with the nurse holding the phone up?" The president keeps interrupting, the picture of confidence.

21:28: The president on the vaccine: "It's a very political thing. [Drug companies] can go faster but the left won't let them." What? "We have the military all set up" to deliver the vaccine. Biden: "This is the same man who told you that, by Easter, it would be gone. ... Maybe if you inject some bleach in your arm."

21:31: Biden: "Unless he gets a lot smarter more people are going to die." The president: "Don't say 'smart'," you public schoolboy. Biden: "Oh, please."

21:32: The president: "Nancy Pelosi." Biden: "Oh, hush."

21:36: The president, on holding big rallies: "People hear what I want to say." Wallace: But, virus? "We do them outside. We have tremendous crowds. And Joe does the circles and has 3 people." Biden: "He's not worried about you, he's worried about himself."

21:37: "The Jina plague." "Two million people would be dead. ... It should never have happened from Jina."

21:39: Biden: "Billionaires have made another $300 billion...but you people at home, how well are you doing?" Here comes the $750 tax payment.

21:41: Biden on opening the economy is tying the policies back to the entire Republican Party. The president brought back Big-10 football.

21:42: And here it comes: Wallace asks about the Times article. The president: "I paid millions of dollars in taxes." Biden: "Show us your tax returns."

21:44: Now the president is trying to explain how the Obama administration gave him all the tax cuts that he used because he's not stupid. That's going to play well in Scranton. Biden: "I'm going to eliminate the ... tax cuts." "You're the worst president America's ever had."

21:48: The president is saying Obama had "the slowest recovery ever." Oh? Biden: "We had the worst recession since the great depression, and he blew it."

21:50: I can't imagine that most Americans find this at all useful. The president is just bloviating. Biden: "It's hard to get any word in with this clown."

21:52: Wallace has lost control.

21:54: Wallace: Why should the voters trust either one of you on race? Biden: "We have never walked away from trying to achieve equality." Brings up the KKK rally, and "very fine people."

21:57: A friend of mine who's a teacher says "As someone who commonly gets interrupted by children for a living, [Biden is] doing pretty decent."

21:59: Biden says nonviolence and peaceful protest work. The president interrupts with accusations about violence at protests.

22:00: Wallace: "Do you believe there is systemic racism in the country?" The president says he saved the military by getting rid of "bad and sick ideas" about sensitivity training. "They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, that it's a racist place." Biden: "He's the racist. ... People have to be made aware of what other people feel like. ... There is nothing we [Americans] cannot do if we do it together." The president: "There was violence and racism under Obama" because of the Democratic mayors are radical lefties.

22:05: The president has insulted Chicago. Biden: "He wouldn't recognize the suburbs. This isn't 1950."

22:06: Biden: "The police need more resources. Where the officers get to know the communities."

22:08: One of my friends texted, "no legitimate candidate should get on the stage and debate [the president]." Another person texted me: "I think they should cancel the next two debates. This is totally useless. I agree with [you], Wallace has lost control." Another friend: "[Biden] cannot start acting like [the president]. ... if he does that, we've lost."

22:11: The president is boasting that Obama left him 128 judge vacancies. Will Biden say why? Hmmmm?

22:13: Biden: "He's Putin's puppy." But nothing about the judges.

22:15: The president is going after Hunter while Biden is talking about Beau. Wallace finally jumped in, but Biden didn't get his full time. The president's entire strategy is to disrupt and posture.

22:17: The president wants "immaculate air and immaculate water" but won't answer the simple question on whether he believes in climate change.

22:19: I'm annoyed with some of my friends, whose responses I will post (anonymously) at the end, who are bending over themselves trying to find ways Biden lost. I'm finding it very frustrating. I think Biden is holding his own, without getting into a shit-slinging contest.

22:21: Biden lays out a cogent, thoughtful plan to address climate change. This is what a candidate should do.

22:23: Biden goes after the president's existing climate policies. The president once again interrupts with nonsensical fear-mongering about taking out the cows or something. Wallace redirects, cuing up Biden to point out that we can create millions of jobs in environmental remediation.

22:26: The Biden campaign is already selling "Will you shut up, man?" t-shirts.

22:27: Election integrity question. Whoo boy. Biden tells people where to find good information, points out that mail-in ballots are safe according to the FBI director. Blames the president for scare-mongering; "vote, vote, vote. Vote early. He cannot stop you."

22:29: The president says "there was no transition." Crooked Hillary; a coup; they spied on me. He's getting all of the crazy in this answer. Wallace gave him a wide-open door to go off on scare-mongering about the election. But...Wallace is now following up with actual facts.

22:32: The president just admitted he wants Barret to be on the Supreme Court, and SCOTUS to decide on the ballots. "This is not going to end well," says the guy in charge.

22:33: Biden: "He's just afraid of counting the votes."

22:36: The president is "urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch."

22:37: Of course Biden will wait until the election is independently certified. (Does Wallace sound nervous? There's a definite quiver in his voice.)

22:38: Biden: "I'll be the president for everyone."

Former vice president Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party nomination for president last night:

Speaking before a row of flags in his home state of Delaware, Mr. Biden urged Americans to have faith that they could “overcome this season of darkness,” and pledged that he would seek to bridge the country’s political divisions in ways Mr. Trump had not.

“The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long — too much anger, too much fear, too much division,” Mr. Biden said. “Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness.”

The task that faced Mr. Biden on Thursday night, and that looms over him for the next 10 weeks, was assuring Americans that he had both the grit and the vision first to topple Mr. Trump and then to deliver on a governing agenda that would materially improve their lives. Mr. Biden has laid out an ambitious suite of plans for next year, should Democrats win power, but in the daily din of public health emergencies and presidential outbursts, it is not clear how many voters are familiar with them.

Joe Scarborough called Biden's speech "Reaganesque." Dana Milbank says "Biden speaks from a place Trump doesn't know—the heart:"

[T]he power of Biden’s acceptance speech — and the power of his candidacy — was in its basic, honest simplicity. The rhetoric wasn’t soaring. The delivery was workmanlike (he botched an Ella Baker quote in his opening line). But it was warm and decent, a soothing, fireside chat for this pandemic era, as we battle twin crises of disease and economic collapse and we only see each other disembodied in boxes on a screen. Biden spoke not to his political base but to those who have lost loved ones to the virus.

Even the National Review admitted the speech did its job:

Biden’s discussion of policy issues tonight was purposely vague, a far cry from detailing his agenda, and he offered very few criticisms of Republican policies or proposals. For a guy who has spent years in the trenches of the judicial-confirmation wars, he was strikingly quiet on the courts and the issues they control — he did not mention the courts once.

This may be enough: Biden is banking that Trump is such a liability, and so detatched from any policy agenda, that you don’t actually need to talk people out of Republican ideas or into Democratic ones. This convention as a whole put more effort than the Democrats did in 2016 to pitching themes sympathetic to swing voters, the 2016 election having shocked Democrats at least temporarily out of their 2012-era smug certainties that running hard to the base would be all they would ever need again to win. Still, it gives Republicans an opportunity (if they are up to the challenge, a big if) to talk at their convention about what a Biden-Harris election really means.

Just a little more than 10 weeks—74 days—until we find out.

Today is former president Bill Clinton's 74th birthday. Last night, he spoke at the Democratic National Convention, where the party formally nominated former vice president Joe Biden to be president.

In other news:

• Chicago removed Wisconsin from the list of states too dangerous to visit without quarantine. With the exceptions of California and Nevada, the map now looks a lot like projections of the 2020 election.
• Five Thirty Eight updated its interactive guide to voting by mail this fall. In Illinois, ballots must be postmarked on or before November 3rd, but counties won't stop counting them until November 17th. We really won't know the outcome of the 2020 election until Thanksgiving, it seems.
• Americans with IQs over 100 have lost patience with anti-mask covidiots. 
• Kevin Drum explains why the president "hates the Postal Service."
• Olivia Nuzzi digs into the president's "chaotic, desperate" re-election campaign.
• Mali's army has mutinied and its president has fled the country.

And finally, in about half an hour, Parker will get a much-needed bath. He has no idea this will happen. I'll let him sleep another 10 minutes before the horror begins...

Presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president Joe Biden, who I hope will have shortened that title by 5 words by January 20th, has picked US Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate:

Ms. Harris, 55, is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party, and only the fourth woman in history to be chosen for one of their presidential tickets. She brings to the race a far more vigorous campaign style than Mr. Biden’s, including a gift for capturing moments of raw political electricity on the debate stage and elsewhere, and a personal identity and family story that many find inspiring.

A pragmatic moderate who spent most of her career as a prosecutor, Ms. Harris was seen throughout the vice-presidential search as among the safest choices available to Mr. Biden. She has been a reliable ally of the Democratic establishment, with flexible policy priorities that largely mirror Mr. Biden’s, and her supporters argued that she could reinforce Mr. Biden’s appeal to Black voters and women without stirring particularly vehement opposition on the right or left.

After leaving the presidential race in December, Ms. Harris turned her attention back to the Senate and found new purpose amid a wave of nationwide protests this spring against racism and police brutality. She marched beside protesters and forcefully championed proposals to overhaul policing and make lynching a federal crime, often speaking with a kind of clarity that had eluded her in the presidential primaries on economic issues like health care and taxation.

I thought Harris or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, though I would have agreed with any of his top-5 picks as we knew them earlier today. But Harris seems like exactly the right choice.

Note that I am, and will continue to be, a financial contributor to the Biden—now Biden/Harris—campaign.

Tom Friedman gives Joe Biden some good advice:

First, Biden should declare that he will take part in a debate only if Trump releases his tax returns for 2016 through 2018. Biden has already done so, and they are on his website. Trump must, too. No more gifting Trump something he can attack while hiding his own questionable finances.

And second, Biden should insist that a real-time fact-checking team approved by both candidates be hired by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates — and that 10 minutes before the scheduled conclusion of the debate this team report on any misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies either candidate had uttered. That way no one in that massive television audience can go away easily misled.

Of course, Trump will stomp and protest and say, “No way.” Fine. Let Trump cancel. Let Trump look American voters in the eye and say: “There will be no debate, because I should be able to continue hiding my tax returns from you all, even though I promised that I wouldn’t and even though Biden has shown you his. And there will be no debate, because I should be able to make any statement I want without any independent fact-checking.”

We'll see. But really, Biden has no reason to debate Trump otherwise. (Note: I am a financial contributor to Joe Biden's campaign.)

In other news:

• The Atlantic's David Graham says the Mazars decision lets Trump run out the clock; Andrew Sullivan thinks it's still a good decision.
• French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Notre Dame's spire will be restored to its 19th-century design.
• Band of Bohemia, the only Michelin-starred brewery in the world (and a future stop on the Brews and Choos project) has closed temporarily while they work out some hostility.
• This afternoon Chicago will break a record for the longest stretch of 27°C days in a row (12), which has helped make Chicago's air dirtier than L.A.'s.

Back to coding.

I'm back in the office tomorrow, after taking a 7:15 am call with a colleague in India. So I won't spend a lot of time reading this stuff tonight:

• Tom McTague sees other countries pitying us, and would prefer they get back to loathing.
• Harry Cheadle says we've "failed the existential-crisis test."
• The Economist decries the politicization of the Justice Department. So do Aaron Blake and Aaron Zelinsky.
• Eric Lach muses over "Donald Trump's empty campaign rally in Tulsa."
• Jamelle Bouie calls the President "the boy who cried fake news."
• Jonathan Chait believes "Joe Biden is actually running a great campaign."
• Wired reports on the Trump Administration's suspension of visa classes particularly valuable to the tech industry.

OK, I need 3,700 steps before 10pm, and then I need to empty my dog and go to bed.

After Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president earlier today, New Republic's Walter Shapiro has some simple advice for the Democratic Party: "Stop panicking about Joe Biden."

What the Democrats fretting about Biden’s lackluster TV performances fail to understand is that virtually every presidential candidate spends weeks—sometimes months—wandering in the wilderness after wrapping up the nomination. After the tension of the early primaries, everything comes to a grinding halt once there is a de facto nominee. Suddenly, the only one surefire way to make news is to announce a vice-presidential running mate. And that banner headline is traditionally reserved for the days leading up to the convention or for the convention itself.

Biden has more than four months to fill until the delayed Democratic convention. An out-of-nowhere VP choice might be enough to generate a boomlet of media attention, but there are limited options. By announcing that his running mate will be a woman, Biden is left sorting through an obvious list of worthy contenders, such as Whitmer or Senators Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren.

Biden boasts advantages that some of his predecessors lacked at this point in the calendar. After nearly a half-century in public life in Washington, the former vice president doesn’t have to worry about introducing himself to the American people. And in the midst of a pandemic, voters already know that their lives are on the ballot in November—even without Biden resorting to bitter attacks on Trump.

Biden undoubtedly still remembers that in June 1992, Clinton—that “helluva candidate”—was running a distant third in the polls behind both Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush. Of course, in November, Clinton romped home with 370 electoral votes. Even before the pace of politics accelerated with cable TV news and social media, it was a long, long while from April to November.

Exactly. And many of the next 208 days will generate new images of Donald Trump completely botching the most important job of his lifetime, saying stupid things in general, and honking off 50% or more of the electorate every time he opens his mouth. Could Biden win against Reagan? Probably not. Against any other Republican in my lifetime? Probably so.

I just hope we're out of quarantine by then.