Why a Flawless Debate Against Trump Was Never Possible

Plus: What To Do If Someone Tries to Gish Gallop You.

Democrats, you can quit your handwringing. Thursday’s debate wasn’t exactly revelatory. It confirmed what we already knew: Biden is old and that could be a problem, while Trump is a serial liar and malignant narcissist and that IS a problem.

In fact, the best punch that Biden landed was when he said Trump had the “morals of an alleycat,” although I’m sure we all have met an alleycat or two who were better people than Donald Trump.

Biden is old is probably the least interesting story from the night because duh. There’s no mystery there. Is it scary to have an old president? I guess it makes some people nervous, although I’m not sure why because we have a fantastic, intelligent and capable VP in Kamala Harris.

So let’s focus on what we do know with Trump: He will release all of the Jan. 6 convicts back into our communities and imprison teachers and librarians who conservatives consider “woke.” Eliminate the Department of Education and use the Department of Justice to go after Trump’s political enemies. Allow discrimination against people based on race and encourage ostracism of LGBTQ+ Americans. Enact a national abortion ban and register women’s pregnancies. Prop up the oil and gas industry and remove any progress on climate change.

This is all spelled out in Project 2025, the conservative playbook if Trump wins another presidency. If this is what ultra-rightwing conservatives are saying they want for the future of the country, imagine what they’re not saying.

I spent a few hours on the wrong side of TikTok, which is what the kids are calling it when the algorithm feeds you videos you don’t actually want to see because they conflict with your values. I told you I was willing to go to awful places so you don’t have to, dear reader. Swipe after swipe revealed MAGA hats and beer bellies shouting “Let’s go Brandon,” as their truck nuts swayed in the breeze.

MAGA culture is really something to behold.

For the most part, MAGA TikTok was full of criticisms about Biden’s terrible debate performance. His speech stumbles. His gaffes. How slow he walks. The moments he looked confused. One very odd but specific conspiracy that he wears a prosthetic ear with a microphone hidden inside. I’ve never thought so much about the size of someone’s ears. Frankly, this is mild compared to some of their past hits on him.

Of course, they were never going to support Biden anyway, so they hardly matter.

Who does matter? Fellow democrats, who were ready with their circular firing squad before Biden even left the debate stage. What did liberal TikTok talk about? His gaffes. How slow he walks. The moments he looked confused. And many, many, MANY calls for him to step down before the DNC in August. This would force an open convention with no clear Democratic nominee, something that hasn’t happened since 1968.

Democrats are a notoriously nervous bunch, but it’s time for us to take our Zoloft and tighten up. I have evangelical friends who are absolutely salivating at the prospect of Project 2025 becoming the rule of law. In order to keep that from happening, we have to win in November. And frankly, I’d vote for one of those alleycats over Donald Trump for president.

I don’t know what Democrats were expecting, frankly. Did we think a flawless debate against Trump, an unrelenting megalomaniac, was possible? Trump loves to employ the Gish gallop, a poor, pathetic, and obvious debate mechanism, to overwhelm his opponents. We watched this happen time and time again in the 2016 and 2020 debates. CNN moderators tried to help the situation by muting Trump’s mic after his time ran out, but it actually had the counter effect of making Trump look more restrained than we know him to be capable of.

This is a man who threw a bottle of ketchup at a wall in a rage. A man who can’t keep his disgusting paws off any woman he wants to grab by the alleycat.

A Gish gallop is a technique that exhausts an opponent with a deluge of arguments without regarding the accuracy or relevance of the claims. Named after creationist Duane Gish, the young earth creationist who attempted to overwhelm good-faith scientific debaters with a flurry of half-true but impressive-sounding arguments that they didn't have enough time to fully debunk.

It is an attempt to win by confusing, deflecting, and bamboozling the debate stage. It’s impossible to respond to every incoherent statement, making it look like the opponent lost — when in actuality they were just trying to keep up.

My biggest criticism about Biden’s performance has nothing to do with the ways he stumbled or lagged. It is that he sometimes allowed himself to get pulled off message and drawn into the nonsense. He seemed most competitive when talking about his golf game, not protecting a woman’s right to choose or solving our country’s childcare crisis.

Watch Now This Impact’s video about this moment in the debate here

Biden actually does have an excellent answer to these questions! Never before since the 1970s has a women’s right to choose been so under threat, but Biden has taken numerous actions to protect reproductive rights. He has

• Supported protections of FDA-approved medication abortion;

• Defended access to emergency medical care;

• Fought for the ability to travel for reproductive health care;

• Strengthened access to high-quality, affordable contraception;

• Safeguarded the privacy of patients and health care providers; and

• Ensure access to accurate information and legal resources.

When it comes to childcare, last year the Biden-Harris administration signed an executive order updating the Child Care and Development Fund, which is the main federal funding source for care for low-income families. It removed red tape for working families in need of assistance and ensured states made timely payments to child care providers, giving them the security they need to keep their doors open.

What would Trump do? We don’t know. He didn’t answer that question and instead deflected. There was a lot of talk about golf after that.

Biden fell for the Gish gallop. Trump deluged the conversation with ALL the things, to render Biden incapable of talking about anything constructive.

But you don’t have to fall for it. Learn how to recognize a Gish gallop so you can avoid wasting your time with bad actors.

For example, let’s say you think you're having a conversation about #blacklivesmatter, and then all of sudden you're supposed to respond to arguments about crime, abortion, that one white guy who was shot by a cop, mental illness, guns, and the failure of the American nuclear family.

Here's how you respond to it:

"I too am concerned about _____, ______, _____ (use their entire list, so that if they have any self awareness at all, they will realize how ridiculous they sound). However, right now we are talking about systemic racism in our justice system. Your attempt to deflect and overwhelm this space is not helpful to the cause and therefore I am no longer interested in communicating with you."

Gish gallop. Write it down.

Onward, Democracy Defenders!