The double success I had hoped for on Thursday, which was Trump defeating Biden in the CNN conversation and the US soccer team beating Panama in the Copa America, was never realized because both Biden and the football team both suffered humiliating loses.
In reality, both bombed, and their fall was heard loud and clear across this country. Biden had no solution to a robust Trump, who got ahead with a lengthy series of his typical lies but who seemed much younger, energetic, nicely- spoken and disciplined. And a good triumph over an inferior team turned into a 1- 2 defeat for the US soccer team, which was reduced to ten players after Timothy Weah received a fatal red card earlier in the match. If the Americans do n’t defeat Uruguay next week, they now run the risk of being eliminated from the competition.  , It was an awkward fight.
For the leader it was a “painful evening”, writes Robert Reich, teacher and a leading progressive words.
According to renowned critic Andrew Sullivan, Biden should presently “withdraw from the culture.”
Their thoughts are echoed by some, as the Democrat Party and its followers are reeling from what Steven Schmidt, an pro- Trump past Republican, calls” a crisis of the first scale” for Biden.  ,
The , Democrat Party may have a Chernobyl- stage panic, and there will be calls for Biden to move away in the , 2024 election for younger, rising stars in the party. No one’s desire for an election came out tonight. Joe Biden’s continued support on the campaign trail would be ineffective, leaving the Democratic Party in a likely catastrophic defeat, giving the nation its greatest democracy threat since the Confederacy.
Biden’s performance, writes veteran journalist Joe Klein, was “worse than disastrous. It was sad, it was humiliating. ” Biden appeared to be a hospice patient who lost himself on the way to the bathroom.”
Klein joins all those who believe that things need to change right away:
Joe Biden has had an honorable career and, I believe, he’s been a very good President. It’s tragic to see it end in this manner. But end it must. He cannot win this election. He would not be able to serve as president for the next four years, based on the evidence from last night. He needs to stand down, as soon as possible. He needs to give his convention delegates more room to run for business and allow the Democrats to elect a new leader.
So my hunch that Biden would come through, as he so often had done in big moments, turned out to be wrong, completely wrong. Biden, 81, did show his age, and although it had been much discussed, many were surprised, some even shocked.
Leading Democrats and members of the grass-roots party were in a state of panic. What do we do now? This cannot continue, right? But how and what can we accomplish?
In CNN’s flash poll shortly after the debate, 67 percent of the debate watchers surveyed, around 565 registered voters, said that Trump had won the debate – a debate that Biden and his team had wanted but which they now, surely, regret having proposed.  ,
In the upcoming days, we’ll see how this panic turns out. It might eventually all settle. There is little the party can do to alter Biden’s intended and official nomination as the party’s presidential nominee at the Democratic convention in August unless he decides to withdraw.
Journalist Klas Bergman has reported from Europe, the Middle East, Central America, Canada and the United States, primarily , for , the Swedish daily , Dagens , Nyheter , and the , Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of Minnesota Politics: How Nordic Immigrants Shaped Minnesotans. This article first appeared on his Substack blog Notes on America, which he writes from his current Los Angeles residence. It is republished with permission. Follow this author on X @ksbergman