The pundit class really, really hated the first presidential debate of the 2020 election.
They hated it so much, in fact, that many of them say the remaining debates need to be canceled.
“Tonight was the first presidential debate of the 2020 election, and if there is any sense or mercy left in this nation, it will be the last, too,” writes the Atlantic’s David Graham.
If the Commission on Presidential Debates “really wishes to benefit the American electorate,” he adds, “it should cancel the rest of the debate season.”
“Cancel the remaining presidential debates. We can’t have a repeat of the first one,” reads the headline to an opinion article by Washington Post contributing columnist Donna Edwards.
“This should not be allowed to happen again,” she writes, adding, “more presidential debates are only going to make the destabilizing chaos worse. We do not need a repeat of giving Trump a prime-time opportunity to enable him to stir a pot that is simmering to a boil. His pot.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said earlier, “This is a disgrace, a low point in American debate history. There is no reason, not one, that Joe Biden should participate in another debate.”
Slate’s Christina Cauterucci argues elsewhere that “Trump was no more or less abusive, no more or less truthful, and no more or less interested in governing than he was in the debates four years ago. The only difference is that now, we’re viewing the calamity from inside Donald Trump’s America, which we can see with our own eyes. What more is there to know?”
Her article, by the way, is titled simply, “Cancel the Rest of the Debates,” its subhead adding, “this degrading spectacle didn’t show voters anything they don’t already know.”
“There should be no more ‘debates,’” said Bill Kristol. “For the sake of the country, Joe Biden should refuse to appear again on the same stage as Donald Trump. Biden can have weekly or twice weekly town halls, including with Trump supporters.”
He adds, “He can do all manner of interviews and forums. He can make clear he’s happy to engage with the American public in all kinds of ways. But he should not put the nation through another ordeal like that.”
Former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry demanded of the Commission on Presidential Debates, “Cancel the remaining debates. The debates are now a danger to public safety and a direct threat to Black life. Cancel the debates.”
“Fix these debates or cancel them,” said the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan, taking a slightly different tack.
I can’t say I blame any of them. The debate Tuesday evening was excruciating. But I am also a big believer in the cliche that says “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The more the electorate sees of these two clowns, the more informed it will be. The more informed the electorate is, the better it will understand what is at stake come Election Day. It will be painful. It will be awful.
But more information is almost always preferable to less, even if it means watching two septuagenarians scream at each other for a couple of hours.
