This gasp of the guests in a bar in Chicago, when President Joe Biden initially stumbled verbally in his debate with Donald Trumpspoke for a lot of Americans on Thursday evening.
At viewing parties, in bars, at a bowling alley and elsewhere where people from across the country gathered to tune in to the televised broadcast, Trump’s supporters in joy and Biden’s supporters in anxiety, if not fear, appeared to largely agree that they’d witnessed a one-sided contest.
At the tip of the 90-plus minutes, some Democrats said what partisans say to make things look pretty much as good as possible: It’s early. A debate doesn’t necessarily sway the nation. Judge him by what he has done and what he desires to do, not by how he says things.
But many were disillusioned.
Biden “just didn’t have the spark tonight that we needed,” said Rosemarie DeAngelus, a Democrat from South Portland, Maine, at her election party on the Broadway Bowl. Trump, she said, showed “more guts or more verve,” even when, in her view, he told a pack of lies.
Lynn Miller, a Biden supporter and bowling alley-goer from nearby Old Orchard Beach, said, “It’s like someone gave Trump an Adderall, and I don’t think they gave Joe one.” (The drug is used for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.)
“I’ve never seen Trump so coherent,” Miller said. “And I hate to say it, but Joe seemed a little off track. But I still support him over Trump because Trump lied about everything that happened.”
Trump supporters agreed that the difference in energy and coherence between the candidates was striking. At a festive pro-Trump party within the Detroit suburb of Novi, Bonnie Call wore her red MAGA hat and said of Biden, “He just can’t think on his feet. President Trump is just good.”
In McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border, London’s Bar & Grill is generally noisy on a day just before the weekend, but many patrons were quiet as they watched the talk on television screens, where Biden supporters, Trump supporters and undecided voters mingled.
Among them is Vance Gonzales, a 40-year-old moderate Democrat who said the talk convinced him that “we need another Democratic candidate, to be honest, because this is not competitive.” Of Biden, he said, “He’s not on point with anything. I find that disappointing.”
Marco Perez, 53, voted for Biden within the last election and expressed his frustration with what he heard and saw. “I want to hear more facts, more actions, instead of more blame, more accusations or false accusations,” he said.
His girlfriend Virginia Lopez, who was sitting next to him, still didn’t know who she would support in November. She heard snappy but unsatisfying answers from the Republican. “Trump is just evasive in all of his answers and he just lies,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like a real debate.”
Biden? “I just think he’s too old,” she said.
Sitting on the bar, 72-year-old Hector Mercado, a veteran wearing a U.S. military beret, was a special guest who listened attentively to the talk. Although he was a Democrat for several years, he switched parties under Ronald Reagan, a Republican.
Mercado heard Biden accuse Trump of creating derogatory remarks about veterans, but that did not change his support for Trump. “Yeah, he said some bad things about veterans in the past,” he said of Trump. “But now he says, ‘No, I support the veterans and I’ve never had any problems with him. I got a raise on my VA disability when Trump was president.'”
Biden’s performance left him cold. “I think Trump is stronger,” he said, “and Biden is a little weak.”
At a migrant shelter in Tijuana across the Mexican border, people, mostly from southern Mexico who wish to apply for asylum within the United States, watched the talk from folding chairs in front of a screen on the wall.
The migrants, most of whom have been waiting months for his or her nominations in the method, stared blankly on the screen because the Spanish-translated version of the talk continued, watching an American democratic ritual in motion.
Andrea, who didn’t want to offer her last name as a consequence of threats of violence in her home country, has been living in the house for nine months. Her conclusion from the talk: “I have the feeling that people in the United States do not like Mexicans at the moment.”
At Hula Hula, a tiki bar in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, patrons cheered wildly when Trump mentioned their city – even when it got here because the Republican was complaining about lawlessness. Biden supporter Amy Pottinger of Seattle said the Democratic president is at his best when Trump makes him indignant.
“When he started talking about Roe v. Wade, it was like Biden woke up and was here,” she said.
At the identical Chicago bar where patrons complained about Biden’s blunder – the M Lounge within the South Loop – the president scored points with this witty comment to Trump: “You have the morals of a street cat.”
“Whoa!” said the spectators there.
But it was a nervous night at a Democratic election party in downtown Atlanta.
“I’m so nervous, it feels like my child is walking on stage,” said Georgia State Senator Nikki Merritt right initially, patting her stomach as if she had butterflies in her stomach.
The technicians had problems with sound and video. When one failed, the gang chanted “Let’s Go Joe!”
“I want to hear Joe Biden speak to the voters and ignore the madman in the room,” said Matthew Wilson, vice chairman of the Democratic Party in Georgia.
But they might not ignore the person they declared to be insane.
