 as Joe Biden opened his mouth to incoherently attempt to answer the first question. Some people may have expected Biden to slip or stumble during the debate, and certainly his supporters expected the typical Joe Biden bluster. But few people were truly prepared to see Biden stumbling out of the gate as he did, with little improvement as the night wore on. The bar Biden needed to clear for victory had been set very low for last night, and yet he still failed to clear it by a wide margin.