Joe Biden Won Every Debate - Including the Won Trump Ran Away From
Joe Biden won the first debate. He won the split-screen town hall debate after Donald Trump was too gutless to face him. And he just won the third debate - not by a little, either. Meanwhile, Donald Trump squandered his last chance to offer any rationale for another four years.
Again, Vice President Biden demonstrated why he is the only candidate in this race with the judgment and the experience and the temperament to overcome these crises that Trump has worsened and to unite the country again. And Donald Trump, who desperately needed an enormous win, sputtered and ran away from his own record - especially on taxes and corruption.
Joe Biden boiled the race down: American families have to be at the center of everything a president does. And Trump showed again how excruciatingly out of touch he is. He doesn’t recognize that families are hurting because of his historic failures, more than at any time in decades.
Joe Biden knows that this race is Scranton vs. Park Avenue. Donald Trump only sees the world from Park Avenue. Joe Biden sees the world from the kitchen tables in Scranton. Donald Trump mocked those kitchen tables. He mocked Biden and his family for having to move away when his dad lost his job. This is the struggle that working families across the country face in Trump’s economy. And, Trump mocked it.
Joe Biden won this debate.
• Political Polls: “Who won tonight's debate? Biden 52% (+11) Trump 41% @DataProgress, Among Debate Watchers”
• Charlotte Swasey: “Preliminary results from the @DataProgress snap debate poll: A majority of voters who watched the debate say Biden won (52% Biden, 41% Trump, 7% undecided) and moderates in particular think Biden won by a 2:1 margin”
• Bloomberg’s Tyler Pager: “CNN post-debate focus group finds 9 people think Biden won the debate and 2 people thought it was a tie. None of the participants thought Trump won the debate.”
• Nate Cohn: “CNN instant poll... Biden 53, Trump 39 32D-31R party ID”
• US Politics Polls: “BREAKING: Based on our snap poll of 772 likely voters who watched tonight's debate, 52% say Joe Biden won the debate overall. 39% say Donald Trump won tonight's debate, and 9% said it ended in a tie.”
• Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson: “Biden won the debate. Ironically, not being able to talk over Biden made things worse for Trump, who tonight couldn’t block Biden from giving a sophisticated performance.”
• NBC News’s Jonathan Allen: “If you had Biden speaking with more energy, precision and passion than Trump tonight, you probably won a lot of money.”
• Michael Beschloss: “History says that the winner of a last Presidential debate usually has a very good chance of becoming the next President. Joe Biden won this debate tonight.”
• ABC’s Matthew Dowd: “Biden won debate. Yes trump wasn’t a bull in the china shop like last debate but that standard doesn’t make him a winner. Biden had a lead going in and has a lead leaving. Net plus for Biden.”
• The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol: “For Biden at this point in the campaign, a draw would have been a win. But Biden did better than draw. Biden won. Not by a knockout. But Biden won. Gotta keep going to the last minute of the race, but we're in the stretch, and it looks good.”
• New York Times’s David Brooks: “Biden is best when he speaks from his moral core. Trump doesn’t have one. It’s evident.”
• Palmer Report: “Joe Biden won the debate. Pass it on.”
• Mother Jones’s Clara Jeffery: “Biden won that by a mile. Maybe viewers won't be as horrified by Trump, but from Biden they heard some real plans and real empathy and Trump was just Fox Cinematic Universe subplots and zero empathy.”
• Washington Post’s Greg Sargent: “Trump is talking about Biden's basement, and Biden is talking straight into the camera to people who lost loved ones.”
• BuzzFeed’s Ivor Tossell: “This time Biden won that debate by winning it, and not merely by surviving his opponent’s self-immolation.”
• Reuters’s Patricia Zengerle: “That last question played into Biden’s wheelhouse - gave him a chance to make his point that he will represent all Americans, not just his voters.”
• New Republic’s Matt Ford: “Biden won. Trump was slightly less deranged this time. Welker did great and should do this again. 12 days to go.”
• MSNBC’s Jonathan Alter: “Trump didn’t set himself on fire but Biden won on Covid, health care and even on immigration. More broadly, he won on unity, which Americans want. That makes it awfully hard for Trump to close a big Biden lead in the polls. And he’s almost out of time.”
• Teen Vogue’s Samhita Mukhopadhyay: “Biden stuck the landing”
While Donald Trump only succeeded in proving to voters how out of touch he is with America’s families.
• MSNBC’s Zerlina Maxwell: “On healthcare, Trump has no idea what he’s talking about. No specifics at all because there is no plan.”
• CNN’s Jeremy Diamond: “Trump fails the empathy test again. Rather than address the concerns & fears of Black Americans, Trump attacks Biden and then makes his usual false claim about having done more for the Black community than any other President other than Lincoln”
• CNN’s Daniel Dale: “Again, an absolute avalanche of lying from Trump tonight.”
• New Yorker’s Evan Osnos: “Trump seems a little low-energy tonight. Sad.”
• Vox: “If Trump really cared about corruption, as he insists in his Hunter Biden attack, he would have done what every other modern president did before taking office: divested from his business before taking office.”
• Rashad Robinson: “Wild to listen to this man blame businesses for failing in the pandemic... when they designed #PPP to allow banks to systematically exclude Black businesses from the loans they needed to stay afloat. #Debates2020”
• Mede Nix: “Trump says the numbers in Texas are going down. They are going up.”
• Brian Guest: "Like a miracle it will be gone". Well it's not. Trump is responsible for over 100k American lives. #Debates2020”
• Michael Deibert: “223,000 dead Americans & @realDonaldTrump still thinks it's all about him. #Debates2020”
• David Litt: “The reason Trump kept interrupting last time is that when Joe Biden gets two minutes to talk about COVID it becomes clear he has a plan and the president doesn't. #Debates2020”
• Daniel McFadin: “Did the President of the United States just diss his opponent for having a message aimed at middle class Americans? Yes, yes he did.”
• Larry Sabato: “Remember: Time spent on COVID does not help Trump, no matter what is said. #Debate2020”
• New York Magazine’s Irin Carmon: “It’s hilariously easy to get Trump to drop the practiced restraint.”
• Scott Dworkin: “Trump is panicking. He knows he’s losing this debate big time. This is so pathetic. Vote Biden. #Debates2020”
• Los Angeles Times’ Sewell Chan: “The anguished cries of these caged children will be the lasting soundtrack of this administration. Trump's audacity in trying to shift the blame is beyond the pale. #Debates2020”
• Yale’s Howard Forman: “Trump EITHER still does not understand how tariffs work or is lying to the American people. In either case, it is unacceptable and disqualifying. #Debates2020”
• American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten: “People who had #COVID19 will have preexisting conditions. Trump has no plan to protect them. None. He's trying to take their protections away at the Supreme Court right now. #Debates2020 #AFTvotes”
• Variety’s Marc Malkin: ““They are so well taken care”—he says while his administration can’t find the parents of more than 500 children #Debates2020’
• United We Dream’s Cristina Jiménez: “Trump has no plan to reunite the children w/ their families. Trump's only plan is to keep separating families. #TrumpLies #VoteTrumpOut #Debates2020”
• New Yorker’s Susan Glasser: “Trump has now lost his temper. Apparently Joe Biden cracking a joke about him being "Abraham Lincoln" really got to him…”