Fact Checking the June 27th Presidential Debate: Conclusion? Trump is a Liar, and Biden Knows What He's Doing

 PolitiFact Fact Check of the June 27th Presidential Debate

Sensational headlines, like Biden had an epic fail and Democrats are in a panic, can give way to the facts about the June 27th debate.  If I were Democrats, I wouldn't really panic.  Trump didn't win any new voters last night.  He's had a large group of Republicans, more than 25%, who have consistently voted against him in the primaries, something they didn't have to make an effort to do if they didn't care whether he was their nominee or not.  That defies the polling data that says this is close.  

Biden didn't pick up any support last night, either.  But he told the truth.  Well, take a look at PolitiFacts fact checker, which is something that I wish had been running across the bottom of the debate screen last night.  Yes, Biden is old, past eighty and has always had a stutter, speaking without notes and with a stutter.  But he was pretty clear.  In the long run, will this debate have an effect on how people vote on November 5th?  Considering past debate history, not really.  Sometimes they do, as in the case of JFK and Richard Nixon in the first televised debate, sometimes they don't, as in the case of the first Obama-Romney debate, or any of the Trump-Biden debates in 2020, or the Clinton-Trump debates in 2016.  

What Democrats should be doing now, instead of panic, is planning.  

The fact check is heartwarming and comforting, by the way.  No one is perfect, but through the more than hour-long debate, Biden got his facts straight 90% of the time, and Trump may have accidentally told the truth once or twice.  Overall, if you evaluate the debate on that basis, Biden won a slam dunk.  

What Bothers Me Most

I won't argue with those who express concern over the President's debate performance.  He was trying to remember all of the stuff that he'd been studying and trying to arrange in his mind, a lot of information and some of it, in typical political style, designed to sound and be presented like a campaign.  He tried to get in too much content in too short a period of time.  And he didn't look like he felt well.  He had a pre-set agenda and that led to his not confronting Trump's incessant lies with the facts.  He is old, he has a speech impediment, has never been a great public speaker and that combined to create a bad debate performance.  He didn't help himself.  

Trump incessantly and deliberately lied, lost track of his theme, and kept coming back to blaming all of America's problems, mostly exaggerated in his mind, on immigrants coming across the border.  His exaggerations are literally unbelievable, his ego-driven delivery makes everything about him, and not about the country, his ignorance of the Constitution and of American History is appalling for an adult American with a sixth grade education and his contempt for his MAGA base is astounding.  He thinks that if he speaks, they believe, cheer and on we go.  

And he's right about that.  

He was appealing to his far right base last night, not to new voters, independents, young people, clearly not to black or Latino voters, and not to anyone still undecided.  And what bothers me most about that is that even thought this is clearly a minority, there are far too many Americans who are caught up in that selfish, racist, misogynist, arrogant ignorance, and they are an obstacle to progress.  

This is an epic fail of the world's greatest Democracy.  We have not provided our people with an educational system that is successful in undergirding the democracy with core values, an appreciation, understanding and knowledge of its history from which its core values are derived, and which helps preserve and sustain it by providing an educated, informed electorate that loves the freedom it provides.  Trump's supporters have fallen for his hatred of freedom, and his worldview wrapped around selfish ambition, which places the aquisition of money at the top of the list and love of neighbors and people at the very bottom.  People who are not like him are simply stepping stones to his own personal prosperity, a philosophy he has obviously lived by for his entire life.  That's what appeals to his brainless followers.  

When these people are interviewed on camera, they are an embarassment to this country and what it stands for.  They literally don't know.  It's all about them and their freedom at the expense of everyone else's freedom.  And until we fix our educational system, we're going to have to deal with this subversive element of society and culture.  

Rant over.