I watched the debate from New Hampshire. Contrary to the television political pundits, I thought that Joe Biden had a great discussion about his views on the future of the country.

The future, after all, can not begin until Donald J. Trump is defeated. Biden made it clear that the goal of the 2020 campaign season is to defeat Trump.

Clearly, Biden understands that the number one enemy of the future is Trump. An immediate repeal of the Trump corporate tax cut, immigration detention centers, and nasty political discourse will lead towards a bright future.

It is evident Biden believes in the future. His website proclaims: “America’s best days still lie ahead.”

I don’t know if Biden has the right stuff to win in November, but I do believe he acquitted himself well during this debate, much better than is reported by our thought leaders.

Yet the media is in search of a fresh face. Like what is wrong with old familiar faces? Old faces once ran the media conglomerates, but today’s media is much younger and less likely to be relatable to older people. Hence Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren’s performances are viewed from the prism of more inexperienced eyes. Hello, age discrimination brought to you live and in living color during the presidential campaign.

What the public is left with is the ranking of candidates my age. The older candidates are perceived to have old ideas and lack the physical endurance to compete on the debate stage with an old guy from their generation, thus what is needed is a younger man or woman who can debate the old dinosaur representing the Republicans.

Youth, as a litmus test, makes about as much sense as what happened in 2016. Four years ago, the liberal media promoted the idea that Secretary Hillary Clinton was the heir apparent of the public anointing of Brack Obama as the first Black person to serve as President.

It did not matter that Senator Bernie Sanders put forth ideas to expand on the Obama Presidency, while Clinton campaigned on the pledge to reform Obama’s healthcare plan.

The 2020 Presidential election is not about selecting a candidate that can handle Trump in a debate. Clinton proved in 2016 that Trump was not a master debater. She beat him in every discussion, including the night Trump pranced behind her on the debate stage.

This year, to paraphrase Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, in his victorious 1992 presidential campaign, it’s not the debate skills, it’s the best interest of the country, stupid.

The media, and especially CNN, contributed to the climate that enabled the political neophyte Trump to survive and thrive through the 2016 election cycle. More specifically, the juvenile questions asked by Wolf Blitzer.

This election season brings us the mundane commentary of Chris Cillizza. Biden, Cillizza posits, came away a loser on the night. Cillizza points to Biden’s explanation that the polices of the Obama-Biden team made the future the present reality as a defense “of the politics of the past.”

Well, duh! How did the country arrive in the future without “the politics of the past?

The candidate Cillizza credits for winning the debate is a direct beneficiary of Biden’s push for gay marriage, Pete Buttigieg. Pete and his husband Chasten could not have entered into a lawful marriage on June 16, 2018, had Biden not tugged at Obama to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.

It didn’t take Buttigieg long to reject Biden’s “politic of the past” that enabled him to embrace the man he loves publicly.

“These are new times, and they demand new solutions,” Buttigieg debated five years after Biden altered history for his benefit.

There was a time when the shelf life of useful service lasted a lifetime. Biden, like Obama, is finding out that good deeds do not continue beyond one Presidential cycle.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contacts him at [email protected].