My Predictions For the Debate

Here’s the YSDA take on the big debate coming up this Thursday evening.

The debate. The big debate. Trump v. Biden. No, I know, they haven’t even officially been nominated yet. Yes, I know the election isn’t until November. Yeah, it’s summer. I know the weather is nice. And, yes, I also know that your mind has been made up for something like a hundred years.

Okay. Well, fine. If that’s going to be your attitude about the Most Important Debate Since Lincoln-Douglas! which will help decide the Most Consequential Election of Our Lifetimes!, well, then go ahead and just enjoy your pleasant summer evening on your porch watching the Brewers and sipping your gin and tonic. See what I care. (Okay, to be precise, the Brewers don’t play on Thursday, but there are other games.)

For the rest of you, who actually care about your country, let me offer my Crucially Important!, Spot On! take on what is likely to occur.

First, Trump will say outrageous, offensive and downright stupid things. Nobody will care because saying these things is what you’d expect from this guy. He cannot commit a gaffe because he is one giant gaffe. In a brilliant move, he has immunized himself from a mistake by making constant mistakes.

Second, Biden will look old, brittle and doddering. He’ll say things that make sense, but nobody will care because nobody’s listening to him anymore. It doesn’t matter what he says. It matters how he looks and sounds. He’s immunized himself from winning over any voters who aren’t already with him. But even worse than that, by getting into the sty with Trump he’ll undermine one of his strengths: the fact that he is a better human being than Trump. Biden will come off as combative, playing Trump’s game. It’ll be two codgers screaming insults at one another. The feeling held by most of us that this is a match made in hell will be doubled.

Third, Biden’s handlers will claim, as they did after his barely adequate State of the Union address, that, boy, he sure nailed it and put to rest once and for all the trope that he’s not just sharp as a tack! Nobody will buy this.

Fourth, as mentioned above, the vast majority of Americans will not even be paying attention. It’s summer. The election seems months away only because it is, well, months away. And they’ve already made up their minds anyway. And if you are among the rare Americans who are persuadable you definitely won’t be tuning in because, actually, you’re among the least politically engaged (and therefore perhaps among the most sane) of all of us.

So, my bottom line prediction is that this thing will have no impact whatsoever, unless it is a negative one for Biden. People expect Trump to be a jerk. He can’t hurt himself. People have already decided Biden is too old. He can’t help himself. But what Biden can do is commit a really bad error that will get media and social media attention. If he stares at the camera too long before speaking. If he gets confused in the middle of an answer. If he forgets the name of his wife. If he confuses Beau with Hunter. Biden can have a flawless performance and he’ll get no credit. But if he messes up to any unusual extent, THAT will be the story.

I’m not proud of this feeling and so I hesitate to even mention it, but I actually hope that this will happen. I think the odds are that Biden will lose in November and the odds of winning are somewhat better with another candidate. If Biden crashes and burns on stage he might provoke a crisis that prompts my party to nominate a stronger ticket. Without something like this to shake up a process that looks like sheer insanity to me, my party will nominate the ticket that we all know to be among our weakest bets.

Why Biden and his team pushed for this early debate is beyond me. I guess they live in this bubble where everybody is living and dying over this election and so they think that every utterance coming from the lips of either man will actually have some kind of impact. They also seem to think that if only Americans were reminded of just how awful Trump is, everything would be fine. But Trump is as universally known as anyone. People understand exactly who he is. If you hate him, as I do, you hate him. If you love him, you love him. If you hate him, but plan to vote for him anyway for whatever reason, nothing new that he or Biden can say is going to change your mind.

I think the Biden camp has made a mistake with this early debate. It’s likely to be a mistake — like hanging a slider over the plate in the ballgame I’m likely to watch instead of the debate — that they get away with… unless they don’t.

And on a related matter… Nothing to Bragg about. If there was any doubt that Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump on relatively penny ante charges was a dumb move, there’s this from Politico: “The flood of post-conviction donations to Trump — including $70 million raised online in the first 48 hours after the verdict, per his campaign — “has the potential to dramatically reshape the presidential race,” WaPo’s Maeve Reston and Clara Ence Morse write. By the numbers … $141 million: amount raised by Trump and the RNC in May. $81 million: amount raised by Biden and the DNC in May. $116.5 million: amount of cash on hand for the Trump campaign at the start of June. $91.6 million: amount of cash on hand for the Biden campaign at the start of June.”