Post debate, Biden's Democrats don't look quite so different from Trump's Republicans

US President Joe Biden walks off the debate stage with his wife, Jill Biden, in Atlanta on Thursday. Reuters

My reaction to the appalling debate between US President Joe Biden and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump on Thursday was primarily anger. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says he wept. Many reported feeling panic or despair.

But on the night, and even more since, I remain profoundly angry at, and disappointed by, a Democratic Party that has proven itself far more like the Trump-era Republicans than I imagined.

The differences remain staggering. The Republicans are morphing into a virtual personality cult that is openly and aggressively hostile to democracy and the US constitutional order. It is shot through with racism, extreme personal and unheard-of institutional corruption, and both real and feigned radical Christian fundamentalism.

The Republicans still pose a range of dangers that the Democrats simply don’t. One of the worst Trump-dominated Republican characteristics is their reliance on gaslighting. They appear to have made an art form of lying, insisting that obvious facts are not true and telling Americans to believe them.

Denying verifiable reality and sowing mistrust of knowledge and perceptions is routine for Republicans both for political expediency and to protect the interests and feelings of their leader, Mr Trump. It has been a degrading spectacle, and one in which Democrats, for all their faults, did not appear to be replicating.

The debate, however, revealed that Americans have been systematically hoodwinked by Mr Biden’s inner circle who insisted that, despite "senior moments", Mr Biden remained sharp and mentally agile. It's likely that Mr Biden does not realise the extent of his deterioration. But his most important enablers, especially his wife, Dr Jill Biden, have apparently not only failed to inform most of the party and public about his actual condition, but don’t seem to have told him the truth either.

Now the party has rallied around Mr Biden, ensuring he will remain its candidate. But now we know why he has given so few interviews and press conferences, and has been shielded, to an unprecedented extent from unscripted public events. Mr Biden huddled with his family on Sunday and was reportedly unanimously urged to stay the course.

Most major party leaders and donors have waved away his public mental implosion as "a bad night". Former president Barack Obama assured the public every candidate has such stumbles. But this was manifestly not an ordinary "off day", or the consequence of an illness or other circumstance likely to improve or not be repeated. Mr Biden lacks the ability to roll back the hands of time.

It makes raw political sense for the Democrats to stick with him. Trying to replace him now risks a collapse into infighting by the interest and identity groups that make up the coalition, and take numerous ballots at the convention to decide a nominee. That candidate might be hobbled by resulting recriminations.

But such a candidate might inspire and electrify the party and public. Voters are clear they don't like either candidate and are keen on a younger, new face. The Democrats have many plausible such candidates, most notably Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer could be a plausible presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. AP

But the party obviously doesn't want to take that risk and has made no effort to convince Mr Biden to voluntarily step aside, free his delegates and decline to endorse anyone, which is what would set up the high-risk but high-reward gamble of a highly charged and very quick open process to find an alternative.

It’s obvious why Democrats want to stick with Mr Biden. Replacing him might constitute political malpractice if all you care about is winning. And it can be plausibly argued that defeating Mr Trump, given his authoritarian tendencies and adjudicated corruption, is all-important. Changing candidates is probably a much bigger risk than sticking with a tried-and-true president who enjoys the advantage of incumbency and several other invaluable qualities that an alternative would lack.

Many Democrats persuasively argue that the fundamentals will eventually favour Mr Biden, current opinion polls notwithstanding. They would indeed be toying with those fundamentals if they charge off in search of someone else, assuming there’s no repeated public meltdown.

Changing candidates is likely a much bigger risk than sticking with a tried and true president who enjoys the advantage of incumbency

So, political expediency, the probability of victory, the need to preserve the existing Biden coalition, and a reluctance to hurt the feelings of their own leader, even without a cultic devotion to him, all explain this wagon-circling. Yet this also means that Americans must recognise that Democrats share some of the very worst qualities critics of the Trump-era Republican Party have most deplored. By waving the debate performance away as merely “a bad night", a typical campaign "setback", or, most preposterously, the result of "a cold", Democratic bigwigs are gaslighting the public.

They are urging us to pretend we didn't see what we saw, that it doesn't mean what we know it means, or that it somehow doesn't matter. For the party, maybe it is and must be only about winning. But even the imperative of defeating Mr Trump, which remains crucial, does not excuse a shoddy exercise in deception that urges people to ignore an obvious and devastating reality they witnessed in real time.

Closing an election sale is certainly vital, but sober and patriotic political marketers should also care a little about the nature of the product. Democrats are probably right to stick with Mr Biden if all they care about is beating Mr Trump and taking no wild gambles. But even given the risks, it might be important to field a fully cognisant and competent candidate who doesn't regularly have "bad days", and who will surely have increasing numbers of them in private and public.

Above all, asking voters to ignore what they saw – rather than stressing the need to defeat Mr Trump, or insisting that Mr Biden will be a capable chief executive surrounded by strong lieutenants – is unforgivable.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are not nearly as different from the Republicans as many of us thought and hoped. That even implies that they might be almost as bad if they had their own version of Mr Trump, which is, thank goodness, a remote prospect.

Democrats are still dramatically preferable to Republicans. But Americans and people around the world are discovering the contrast is not nearly as stark as previously imagined.