Домой United States USA — Art A serious debate that leaves Biden with lingering bruises

A serious debate that leaves Biden with lingering bruises

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Joe Biden’s debate performance and the help he got from every major media organization may not be enough to kill the corruption issue
Thursday night’s debate was far calmer and more substantive than the street brawl that preceded it. If we score it like a boxing match, it was pretty close. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden landed punches. Neither had to be carried out on a stretcher. But that’s the wrong way to look at it. It matters, obviously, that neither candidate won a decisive victory and that Trump needed one more because he’s trailing, according to polls. But the debate helped Trump in another way. Biden said things he will regret. Time and again, he made false or misleading claims and politically-questionable promises. Three stand out: ‘super predators’, fracking and family corruption. Fracking is important because it has led to much lower energy prices and freed America from foreign oil supplies. Whether to continue fracking or significantly reduce it is part of a larger debate about fossil fuels. How much are Americans willing to pay to move away from cheap hydrocarbons? How quickly they wish to do it? On the debate stage, Joe said he has never wanted to ban fracking. But that’s ‘General Election Joe.’ Last winter, ‘Democratic Primary Joe’ had a very different position. His running mate Kamala Harris was even more emphatic. Even in this debate, Biden acknowledged he wants to ban fracking on federal lands. Biden and Trump differ sharply on America’s energy future, and those differences came through in the debate. Biden made aggressive statements supporting alternative energy, pledging to gradually phase out the entire oil and gas industry and add thousands of new, high-paying jobs as he did so. There are really two issues here. One is whether voters have a clear sense of what Biden will do and how much it will cost. The other is how these promises will play in states that rely on energy production (such as Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio) or on energy-intensive industries (Michigan). How Pennsylvania voters, in particular, see Biden’s energy policies is crucial because, if Trump loses the state, he’ll have a very hard time winning reelection. That’s why Trump was so quick to jump on Biden’s ‘green energy’ promises during the debate. He thinks Biden is hurting himself in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Second, Biden denied he ever used the term ‘super predators’, a not-so-veiled reference to black street gangs. He’s right, sort of. Hillary said it in 1996. But in 1993, as Biden was trying to pass a major crime bill, he spoke of ‘predators on our streets…literally without any conscience developing.’ As Joe himself might put it, ‘Just play it for yourself on the Victrola.’ In 1998, he told a convention there were 100,000 juvenile ‘predators’, arrested for violent crimes, who ‘warrant exceptionally, exceptionally tough treatment’. He later came to regret that language and the crime bill, which led to mass incarceration of young black men. Trump has attacked him on it and emphasized his own success in passing criminal-reform legislation. Trump also spoke of his long-term funding for historically black colleges, the creation of ‘enterprise zones’ in minority areas, and especially the record-low unemployment among minorities before the pandemic.

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