Should Joe Biden Step Down?

We all know what happened last week, and we all know the conversation that has happened since. Given that debate performance, should Joe Biden step down and let a different Democrat run for president against Donald Trump? First, at the risk of engaging in some Sturm und Drang blame-storming, I’d like to get a few things off my chest. I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

The debate was a disaster for Joe Biden. It was equally disastrous for the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Worse, I would say.

“The microphones were muted,” wrote Michael Grynbaum of The New York Times. “So were the moderators.” They might as well have not been there. CNN could have just as easily provided a list of questions rather than have moderators ask them.

They could have been posted by a producer in a control room and spoken by an AI voice. This is a major reason I hate the way we do debates. Moderators ask the same boring questions and allow candidates to ramble on with tired talking points, hyperboles, overstatements, ad hominem attacks and outright falsehoods.

They do a complete disservice to the viewers, voters and the nation. Before the telecast, CNN chair Mark Thompson said the moderators would act as facilitators, not participants. If I were sitting in on one of those preproduction meetings, I’d have told Thompson this: If we don’t change the way we do debates in here, we will fail the voters out there.

You don’t need moderators. You don’t need facilitators. Or even need journalists.

You need referees to throw the flag every time a candidate utters a lie. There were no real-time fact-checks of Trump’s baseless assertions. There were plenty afterward when no one cared because they were more obsessed with Biden’s performance