It was, by many accounts, the most dismal performance in a debate by a political candidate in this country’s history. And it wasn’t the candidate’s fault, either.
Senatorial candidate John Fetterman was running almost evenly in most polls against his Trump-anointed opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in a race to replace Sen. Pat Toomey and represent the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Fetterman had suffered a severe, life-threatening stroke just five months prior. Although his thought processes were fine, he still had problems with auditory processing, a fact that clearly and vividly impaired his ability to articulate during his Oct. 25, 2022 debate appearance in Harrisburg. The debate format was even changed so Fetterman could read the questions and answers off a closed-captioned video screen.
A smirking, hyper-aggressive Oz dominated the debate. And although Fetterman was able to withstand Oz’s constant barrage, he couldn’t do much more, and it showed. After the debate the Oz campaign instantly made ads depicting Fetterman’s responses as indicative of mental weakness or instability (because that’s what nasty people do when their opponents are suffering the after-effects of a disabling stroke).
All the GOP knives immediately came out for Fetterman after that. He had his defenders (and Oz had made a really bad gaffe on abortion), but the audience saw what they saw. And Republicans instinctively knew that no amount of effort Democrats expended explaining that the stroke had no impact on Fetterman’s capacity to perform as a senator could change that fact.
Politico’s coverage at the time was typical, asserting that Fetterman had seriously imperiled his chance to win the election. As reported by Holly Otterbein and Burgess Everett, Republicans—such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—immediately weighed in:
Republicans were harsh in their assessment. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in an interview that the whole episode was “stunningly painful” to watch.
“Every person I’ve talked to is flabbergasted that the Fetterman campaign allowed him to debate in such an obvious condition of impairment. I don’t know how anybody objectively could watch that performance and conclude anything other than: This guy can’t possibly do this job,” Cruz said.
However, in the actual election (two weeks after the debate), even following Oz’s barrage of criticism and snide insinuations, a strange thing happened. It seemed that voters weren’t changing their vote. Many had made their minds up by that point and even Fetterman’s glaring difficulties during the debate weren’t about to change their opinions. Fetterman handily won the race by nearly five points (538’s polling average had Oz leading on Election Day) even as Oz tried to paint himself as a moderate in his commercials beamed into the voter-rich Philadelphia suburbs.
There’s a lesson in that for those currently transfixed by the media’s stunning discovery that President Joe Biden is now 81 years old.
RELATED STORY: House GOP to launch critical investigation into just how old Biden is
As we are all aware, the media’s current bone du jour to chew on is the issue of Biden’s age. This despite the fact that Donald Trump has threatened to abandon NATO (and even encourage Vladimir Putin to attack the European continent). He has vowed to create a weaponized, Trumpified Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute his political enemies. Trump has also crafted plans to institute mass deportation policies and purges using police state tactics, the likes of which the country has never before experienced. With personality and behavioral traits resonant of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Trump has made himself and his intentions perfectly clear.
So Trump is already a known quantity. Unlike even the hapless Oz, he doesn’t have luxury (or even the capacity) to pretend he is some kind of “moderate.” On abortion (an issue most energizing Democratic voters), Trump is already on record. He is the reason that Roe v. Wade was overruled. In fact, he’s bragged about it not once, but multiple times. Nor can Trump escape the fact that his most ardent followers are exactly the kind of people who tend to repulse the college-educated voters in those suburban enclaves he needs to win in 2024. Those supporters will become much more vocal and energetic as the election approaches, deliberately making themselves impossible to ignore in an electorate already thoroughly polarized and predisposed to vote for their party’s candidate under almost any circumstances.
But most importantly of all (short of Biden physically collapsing) what happens to Trump over the next nine months—be it a felony criminal conviction or simply another in a seemingly endless line of rancid, inflammatory statements—is going to be far more consequential for the November election than anything Biden does or says. Just as it was in the runup to 2020, Trump’s pathological need for attention and instinctive impulse to double down is his own worst enemy. Fox News and right-wing media may continue to shower him with accolades while continuing to smear Biden for being old, but Fox News viewers are not the ones Trump needs to convince.
Republicans have already announced their intention to hold yet another series of kangaroo hearings to focus relentlessly on Biden’s age, as if their own candidate’s clear mental instability and destructive impulses didn’t even exist. But none of the Republicans’ circus-atmosphere investigations have made any appreciable impact on the public to date, and there is no reason to believe these will be any different. In fact, they stand a good chance of backfiring as Democrats will be able to counter them with abundant examples of Trump’s glaring pathologies contrasted with Biden’s established competence. If there is one truism to American politics, it’s that given an opportunity, Republicans—blind to anything that exists outside their right-wing bubble universe—will always overplay their hand.
The analogy between Fetterman’s situation in 2022 and Biden’s isn’t perfect. In fact Fetterman’s situation was even more fraught in some ways. Both he and Oz were relatively unknown quantities in 2022, but Fetterman had established a rapport and trust with Pennsylvania Democrats and was able to paint Oz as an opportunistic pill huckster (and carpetbagger). But above all, people just didn’t like Oz, and they really didn’t trust him. Those were the key components in Fetterman’s victory, with the stroke and its after-effects ending up as a nonissue.
Trump, however, is now well-understood by all Americans. At this point most have decided whether they like him or find him abhorrent, but the latter perception will be reinforced repeatedly over the next nine months. Yes, Biden is “old” (and Trump, who will be 78 by Nov. 5 is also “old”). Yes, Biden exhibits his age more than Trump (thus far). But if the 2022 Pennsylvania senate contest is any indicator, voters may vey well simply not care: They may conclude there are far more important issues at driving their decision.
RELATED STORY: Trump echoes Hitler's 'final solution' rhetoric in latest speeches
Campaign Action
