EDITORIAL – The presidential debate was a complete disaster for democracy
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
LET’S BE CLEAR, Donald Trump didn’t win last night’s presidential debate. He was his usual self, arrogant, nasty, ill-informed. And he lied like he always does. Many times.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, lost. He lost his voice, his numbers, and his concentration. Mouth open, eyes glazed, he seemed to stare at nothing in particular. He was strong on substance but weak on everything else.
Early on, he totally lost his focus trying to answer a question involving Medicare. He missed opportunity after opportunity to hit his opponent with zingers, despite Trump leaving himself wide open. He frequently stumbled. He looked as though he might not make it through the 90 minutes.
Television commentators said in the debate’s aftermath that Democrats are in a panic over their candidate’s performance. That’s likely true. It was worse than lackluster; it was a disaster. What happened to the State of the Union Joe who gleefully and effortlessly swatted away his Republican hecklers a few weeks ago? That Joe was nowhere to be seen last night.
His camp says he has a bad cold that accounts for his low, raspy voice. But it doesn’t account for his seeming feebleness in what was supposed to reassure voters that he’s vibrant and able. The debate did the opposite.
It’s all quite depressing, because it surely increases the chances quite dramatically that Donald Trump will be president once again. This is the man who wants to abandon Ukraine, who admires dictators, who makes fun of handicapped people, who wants to replace civil servants with his own loyalists, who is a convicted felon, who thought the cure for COVID was to drink bleach…. and on and on.
Imagine what Trump will do with Biden’s performance at his mockfest rallies in the coming days. If Donald Trump came out ahead last night, it was by default. And everyone else lost.
Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
American government learned long ago that it can say anything, literally anything at all, about any one of us, and about what’s happening in any part of the world and get it uncritically reported. If anyone attempt to tell the truth they become a pedophile, a rapist, and a liar and if that doesn’t work you wind up in Belmarsh Prison, or in exile, or dead by suicide or maybe dead by a sniper bullet always with Russian fingerprints.
Robert F. Kennedy held a parallel debate which was watched by 11 million Americans and not a word about it in the Media.
Kennedy said “Biden administration hollowed out our middle class, made a laughingstock of US military power and moral authority, pushed China and Russia into an invincible alliance, destroyed the dollar as the global currency, cost millions of lives and done nothing to advance democracy or win friendships or influence.”
The American democracy denied Kennedy the right to participate in the debate. This is depressing not the fact that Biden lost.
I will not defend Trump but maybe the editor of this article could enlighten us with evidence why Trump was not charged years ago with the crimes attributed to him now? Do you not see the pattern?
Mel, you write Trump “is the man who wants to abandon Ukraine” Ivan Katchanovski who teaches at the School of Political Studies and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa explains how the present Ukraine war is our creation. When we failed to topple the elected government of Ukraine with several colour revolutions, Katchanovski writes we used snipers to kill police and protestors in Kiev in order to get the present tragedy of Ukraine and Russia.
This present war is just one more Eastward crusade which can be traced back a thousand years of invasions starting with Vikings, Mongols-several wars, Teutonic Knights the Vatican, Swedes-several wars, Poles-several wars, Turks-several wars, Britain-several wars, France-several wars, Germans-several wars, Japanese-two wars, USA Canada and twenty other countries after WWI, Cold War and the West presently. The wars were invasions, one country or several together or one empire or several together that marched Eastward and Russia expanded. Canada lost the Alaska Panhandle to the USA because of these wars.
The tragedy of Ukraine should not have happened but it was just one more project of the “bidenites” (McCain, Lugar, Dole, Biden, Clinton and the military industrial complex). Our wars in Asia, Middle East, Africa and the Americas were fought to save the British Empire and in the past 200 years to save the American Empire. US General
Smedley D. Butler, writes in “War Is a Racket” “I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street”.
Mel, you write Trump “admires dictators”. I would need several pages to list all the dictators we admired and helped them kill thousands of their people in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Does Pinochet in Chile ring a bell? You claim Trump “wants to replace civil servants with his own loyalists”, please tell us how nepotism works in our society? The drinking bleach comment to ward off Covid that you attribute to Trump came from Biden ‘s attempt to mock Trump’s criticism how US handled the Covid crisis. .
Mel, call a spade a spade, Biden dug a hole so deep which doesn’t account for his seeming feebleness. His followers excuse their bullying of an old man as “losing his voice, and forgetting numbers, and concentration” You write “he was strong on substance”. Give us a break he was not even there.
You continue “Democrats are in a panic over their candidate’s performance as they ask where is the State of the Union Joe who gleefully and effortlessly swatted away his Republican hecklers a few weeks ago? His camp says he has a bad cold that accounts for his low, raspy voice” Teleprompters do wonders as all news readers know.
Mel is this what passes for journalism in the western world today? Reporting completely unfounded allegations against our enemies and political opponents based solely on assertions by government insiders and lobbyists demanding more weapons and sanctions against those enemies by making claims that sound like they came from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
We are being deceived and confused into consenting to agendas that could very easily lead to nuclear Armageddon, and if we ever raise our voices in objection to this, we are branded Putin propagandists and disinformation agents.
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Has the collective west gone insane? Are you actually advocating for a known genocidal war criminal to hopefully return to his role as the incompetent leader of the most dangerous country in the world? Joe Biden is complicit in enabling the most horrendous racist genocide we have seen since WWII, he has demonstarted a complete disregard for humanity. He is as corrupt a politician as all the others, but he has the protection of the powerful three letter agencies pulling his puppet strings. This mafioso like, nasty insane s*%tshow south of us, has provoked a war with Russia and enabled the murderous Israeli’s to slaughter civilians, women and children, trapped in a cage called Gaza, The Biden administration seems visually impaired to the very real potential these conflicts have to manifest WWIII or a nuclear armageddon.
Our country is no better off, with the embarrassing bobble-head puppet Trudeau in charge. The collective west has lost its marbles and morality. The people of the west are not bad people, but the media has aligned with the politicians to make the people ignorant, they can say anything to them and make them believe anything. It is shameful.
The two party political system in America is a joke and a travesty. Biden and Trump are both unfit for office. The USofA is an oligarchy run by the 1%’ers, an economy based on endless wars and gangsterism. We are living in a world controlled by monsters and clowns, who are manipulating an apathetic dead-eyed dystopioid population, distracted by state media propagandists, while marching through life sedated by smartphones, sports, and snacks.
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Great comment Denis.
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I got to like you many years ago and I saw that you understand that the kings of the chessboard – continue to maintain complete global control by concentrating government power into the hands of a few. It’s much easier to influence a few government officials than billions of citizens.
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United States of America is not a democracy, fyi…. It’s a Republic.
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These two candidates are the best the free world has to offer? One is a man that appears to be sleepwalking for the majority of his day, who attempts to sit on invisible chairs and speaks with world leaders who have been deceased for 30 years. The other is a convicted felon who has a fleeting relationship with the truth, who cheated on his wife with a porn actress, has sexually assaulted women and is about as smart as a ham sandwich.
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They are both just figureheads. The voters are the rednecks vs the woke. The Washington puppet masters make all the decisions. America is doomed, and b/c they rule the western world, we’re all doomed as well. RIP democracy.
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It will have to be seen how “disastrous” Biden’s debate performance was. I do think he made some points and was the more coherent of the two. If there is anything good that came out of this debate it’s that it really exposed Trump for who he is, warts and all.
The really depressing thing was not the debate. It’s that a person who is so transparently shallow, petulant, dishonest and lacking in character can make it to the debate stage at all.
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