'I was sad. It was sad': Voters bemoan nasty debate

Donald Trump and Joe Biden debated. Americans cringed.

After presidential candidates put on one of isiest, most chaotic debates in recent memory, voters across country struggled for words – printable words – to describe display. Many went first to profanities. Ors landed on more polite, but still biting, terms for live, prime-time event, long considered evidence of rigors of U.S. democracy: “A joke,” “a disgrace” and “so disrespectful.”

“I was sad. It was sad, and it was very patic,” said Rickey Hampton, as 54-year-old stood inside doorway of his Las Vegas apartment.

It was ar day of reckoning with nation’s rapidly transforming political culture and its seemingly irreparable divisions. In interviews with voters across key states in contest, those who watched spectacle nearly unanimously recoiled from it. Many said Trump was instigator, whose frequent interruptions blew up rules and any pretense that men were re to discuss policy.

ne said it would change ir minds on how y planned to vote. Instead, voters on both sides said it only reaffirmed ir positions.

Hampton, who works at a tuxedo and tailoring shop in Las Vegas, said that president’s decorum was “t presidential at all” and that he appeared to speak only to his base of supporters, t to American people.

Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy reaffirmed for him as a Black man that voting is t eugh — he must urge or people, specifically his Black friends and family, to vote, something he doesn’t rmally do, he said.

“This is really life or death, and he’s letting you kw,” Hampton said. “This is serious. ... You have to vote. You really have to get out re. This is different.”

In Wisconsin, Donald Darwin, a 52-year-old white man, heard something different from president, saying he felt he appropriately condemned white supremacists when asked about it by moderator Chris Wallace.

“Trump said exactly what Wallace asked him to say. He told m to stand down," said engineer from Wautoma.

He acceded debate appeared to get out of hand at times, but he stopped well short of faulting Trump and praised him as “a fighter."

“This election is incredibly important. If Trump were to give an inch, you can bet Biden and left would have savd him over it,” he said.

Keith Valentine, a 37-year-old Las Vegas Democrat, said president behaved like “a narcissist,” and he turned off his television after watching debate for about 10 minutes. “We knew it was going to be like that for an hour.”

Valentine, who is reluctantly voting for Biden, said he wasn’t shocked by what he saw and dismissed idea that it was “nastiness” on display. “That is two old people, two rich people bickering,” he said.

Nastiness is what it's like to “be Black in America. Or be a mirity in America. Be a woman in America,” said Valentine, who is Black. “You’ve dealt with far worse.”

debate that played out Tuesday, coming amid a pandemic, months of protest and unrest over racial injustice and or compounding crises in America, “was a moment where all of us were like, ‘Something is wrong here. Something is deeply wrong here," said Amytess Girgis, a 21-year-old University of Michigan student in Ann Arbor.

“I’m t sure if any of debates are going to change anybody’s mind,” said Girgis, who intends to vote for Biden. “I’m sort of of disposition that vast majority of Americans have decided who y’re voting for. question is body of Americans who are deciding wher or t to vote at all.”

Bill Kitz, a 62-year-old Republican in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, spoke at front door of his Victorian within blocks of Lake Winnebago. He voted for Trump in 2016 but regrets it. He said he had already planned to vote for Biden but was taken aback by Trump’s behavior, which he called “unseemly.”

“I’d had eugh of this kind of thing for a long time,” said Kitz, a 62-year-old education professor at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. “But my wife and I watched debate last night and were just sickened by spectacle of this man, who nations of world are supposed to look up to, disparaging Biden, matter what you think of Biden and his years in Washington.”

Across country in front of her central Las Vegas apartment, 61-year-old Maria Loomis, a new Republican, said debate reaffirmed her decision to vote for president.

“Donald Trump, he won’t listen to anybody. He marches to his own drum,” she said. “He gets results that need to be done. He may t be ethical about it sometimes, and he’s t social graceful, eir. But it gets done.”

Loomis, who registered for first time to cast her ballot for Trump this year, ackwledged her candidate was often aggressor, but said she thought former vice president didn’t have much to say and appeared weak.

She described debate as “a couple of kids on a schoolyard” but wrote it off as politics as usual.

“ debate was debate. Period. It was just ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne,” she said, using her hands to mimic talking back and forth.

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