Back on July 22, I participated in a debate hosted by the Soho Forum on the question of which presidential candidate a libertarian should support — Biden, Trump, or Jo Jorgensen (the candidate of the Libertarian Party). I argued the case for Trump. You can watch the July 22 debate, including my presentation, by going to the Soho Forum website.

Later today, at the request of the Soho Forum, I will be recording an update to my July 22 presentation. Not much has happened to move the needle since July 22, particularly given the dearth of public appearances by both Biden and Harris, and the flat refusal of those two to respond to any remotely unfriendly or probing questions from reporters. That leaves mostly just the debate of September 29 in the category of new information. Trying to do my job conscientiously, I watched the whole thing. If you did the same, I pity you, and I also strongly suspect that you found the experience unpleasant, as I did.

As a general matter, I found Trump’s aggressive approach off-putting and unhelpful. On the other hand, Biden’s approach was to make wild and unsupported statements and promises, often inconsistent either with his website or other statements he made in the debate itself, with seeming complete confidence that the moderator would give him a total pass. And on that he was right — time after time, moderator Chris Wallace gave him a total pass. The underlying concept was that in a Biden presidency, the government would provide perfect solutions to all human problems and bring justice and fairness to all through the magic of government spending and programs. Does anybody really buy this? Unfortunately, I think a lot of people do buy it.

I’ll focus on just a few issues that arose in the debate. I have used a version of the transcript found here to try to get as close as I can to the exact words used.

At the top of the list of important issues for libertarians is the Supreme Court: Is the Court going to enforce the Constitution as written, or a new “living” constitution, never adopted by the people, that morphs as needed to accommodate the progressive political agenda of the moment? Particularly noteworthy on this issue was the question of whether Biden would support “packing” the Supreme Court by adding several new liberal justices to permanently alter the Court’s balance. At approximately 17:40, moderator Chris Wallace asked Biden:

[Y]ou have refused in the past to talk about it, are you willing to tell the American tonight whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the court?

And Biden then gives this completely incoherent non-response:

Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. You’re voting now. Vote and let your Senators know strongly how you feel.

What does that even mean? He’s telling you to vote based on this issue; but how are you supposed to vote on this issue if the man refuses to tell you his position? In fact, you clearly need to assume that Biden would support and/or go along with packing the Court, because otherwise he would issue a clear denial.

Wallace of course failed to follow up on this critical issue. But Trump did not fail:

President Donald J. Trump: (18:05)
Are you going to pack the court?

Vice President Joe Biden: (18:07)
Vote now.

President Donald J. Trump: (18:08)
Are you going to pack the court?

Vice President Joe Biden: (18:09)
Make sure you, in fact, let people know, your Senators.

President Donald J. Trump: (18:12)
He doesn’t want to answer the question.

Vice President Joe Biden: (18:17)
I’m not going to answer the question.

I can’t ever recall seeing a candidate so explicitly refusing to answer such a critical question. Anyway, at that point, instead of pressing the issue, Wallace took Biden off the hook and moved on to another topic.

A second issue of great concern for libertarians is whether Biden plans a massive increase in the size and scope of the federal government, including multiple trillions of new dollars of annual spending, in accordance with the recommendations of the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” and the Green New Deal. Actually, we know (or we think we know) that Biden does plan such a massive increase in the government, one principal reason for that being the so-called “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations” that came out in early July. The document is universally referred to as the “Manifesto,” and remains on the Biden website today. It contains a lengthy section on “The Climate Crisis and Environmental Justice,” from a sub-task force headed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and John Kerry, that sure sounds like the Green New Deal. Needless to say, Wallace did not ask Biden about this at all. But Trump did. Here is the exchange:

President Donald J. Trump: (14:51)
Listen, you agreed with Bernie Sanders and the manifesto.

Vice President Joe Biden: (14:55)

There is no manifesto, number one.

OK, then. Later in the debate, Biden also denied that he supports the Green New Deal. Really? Here is an example of a statement from the “Climate Crisis” section of the Manifesto, taken from the Biden website:

[W]e will mobilize] historic, transformative public and private investments to launch a clean energy revolution. We will use federal resources and authorities across all agencies to accelerate development of a clean energy economy and deploy proven clean energy solutions; create millions of family-supporting and union jobs; upgrade and make resilient our energy, water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure; and develop and manufacture next-generation technologies to address the climate crisis right here in the United States.

There are plenty more statements like that.

And how about the corruption of Biden’s son Hunter. Again, in the absence of any challenge from Wallace on the subject, it was Trump who brought it up:

Trump: The Mayor of Moscow’s wife gave your son three and a half million dollars. What did he do to deserve that?

That was followed by this complete non-response, as Trump continued to press the issue:

Biden: That’s not true. . . . None of that is true. . . . It’s been discredited. . . . My son did nothing wrong.

At about that time, Wallace cut Trump off on the issue, and moved the debate to another subject. Biden never had to say a word about this $3.5 million, or the $3+ million from Burisma, or the billion dollar investment from China, beyond the simple ritual denial “It’s not true.”

Finally, for some insight into Biden’s thinking — if you want to call it that — on how the world works and the government’s role, I’ve selected this word salad supposedly about the subject of Covid-19:

Vice President Joe Biden: (12:23)

The fact is that he has in fact, worked on this in a way that he’s going to be the first president of the United States to leave office, having fewer jobs in his administration than when he became president. Fewer jobs than when he became president. First one in American history. Secondly, the people who have lost their jobs are those people who have been on the front lines. Those people who have been saving our lives, those people who have been out there dying. People who’ve been putting themselves in the way to make sure that we could all try to make it. And the idea that he is insisting that we go forward and open when you have almost half the states in America with a significant increase in COVID deaths and COVID cases in the United States of America, and he wants to open it up more. Why is he want to open it up? Why does he take care of the… You can’t fix the economy until you fix the COVID crisis. And he has no intention of doing anything about making it better for you all at home in terms of your health and your safety.

There’s no actually making any sense of it, but somehow in there he both blames Trump for all job losses from shutting down the economy, and also criticizes Trump for wanting to re-open the economy while he (Biden) wants to keep the economy closed to protect your “health and safety.” Well, why not? Nobody will ever call him on it, other than a few cranks like the Manhattan Contrarian.