Koterba decided his task before his deadline was to come up with a cartoon that would not only lampoon a historic election campaign but also resonate with how many other viewers imagined they might have felt. But how could he condense all his disgust and concern into a single drawing?
“Uncle Sam? The Statue of Liberty? We use them a lot as symbols because they're easily recognizable, but they can get overused,” he said. Then, with his girlfriend's son watching independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. behind him, Koterba was reminded of a famous painting: On the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Chicago Sun-Times cartoonist Bill Mauldin captured the nation's emotions with a depiction of Abraham Lincoln grieving at the Lincoln Memorial.
In Koterba's cartoon, Lincoln is watching the debate on his cell phone, and appears panicked and frightened by it. “I don't often include the Lincoln Memorial in my work,” Koterba said, “but for me, the debate reached a level where I used the symbol to express my anxiety and frustration.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson of Texas' Reform Austin News chose instead to reflect the sudden fear that erupted especially among Democrats, with a drawing of election night terror captioned “Woke Up.”
“I went to bed Thursday night worried about the election,” Anderson said, “so the idea of 'Woke' came from my personal experience watching Biden's halting performance.” It wasn't a good night for Biden, even members of the presidential campaign acknowledge.
“Joe Biden understands better than anyone that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy,” Anderson said. “Unfortunately, as Thursday painfully demonstrated, he is not the candidate best suited to the status quo.”
By Friday, Anderson had come to believe Biden should step down and nominate a replacement. Democratic candidate.
“There's too much at stake in this election to continue on the current path,” the cartoonist said. “This will go down in history as an act of selfless patriotism.”
Some editorial writers chose to focus not on Biden, but on a string of false, misleading or inaccurate statements made by Trump during the debate. (The Washington Post reported Friday that Trump made “a slew of false claims, many of them his pets,” and that Biden “made several.”)
Darin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for King Features, deemed Biden's debate performance disastrous and a wake-up call.
“A Trump victory has become a very real possibility, and millions of Americans will take that seriously and remember why they voted against Trump in 2020,” Bell said. “They have four months to remember the chaos, the pathological lies, the deception, the dehumanizing treatment of immigrants and the racist rhetoric. They have four months to decide whether to choose a watered-down version of the antidote they chose in 2020, or the poison itself.”
While there are growing calls in some parts of the media for Biden to step down, Bell sees things differently: “The American people didn't vote for Joe Biden because he was energetic, or young, or charismatic. They voted for him because he was not Donald Trump. As long as Biden is healthy, he will remain the only viable candidate who is not Donald Trump.”
Anne Ternaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, took artistic aim not at Biden's debate performance, but at Trump's misdeeds and crimes.
“Regardless of President Biden's facial expressions and voice during the debate, the fact is that Trump violated his presidential oath and incited a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol,” Ternaes said. “If you believe in our democracy, there is no excuse for voting for such a person.”
Herblock Prize-winning cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz of the Andrews McMeel Syndication purposefully drew a “middle ground” cartoon that satirized both candidates.
“I wasn't too upset or saddened that Biden looked old, because he is old. He wouldn't stand on end,” Alcaraz said, noting: “You can't discount Biden's performance, but you can't ignore Trump's blatant lies. The first thing I wanted to portray was Biden frozen in a block of ice, and then I had the idea of Trump's trousers on fire. It's a kind of visual balance and elemental balance.”
Meanwhile, former Pulitzer Prize finalist Jeff Danziger of the Rutland Herald in Vermont said the historic moment was no laughing matter, but he used his cartoon to sharply criticize the focus of some media coverage, saving the final punch line for the media's performance.
“Cartoons, even when drawn with the most over the top and unforgiving humor, can sometimes be a failed attempt to make light of a situation,” Danziger said, “and a good political cartoon is like a towel on your butt: It's meant to be playful, but it hurts too much to laugh.”
Michael Kavna is the author of the Comic Riffs column and a former staff writer at The Washington Post.
