Five months ago, when we all thought anybody but Biden would be the nominee, I would have said it’s the exact opposite. But now it really does seem like the debates are a negative freeroll for Biden. Trump is not going to lose any support regardless of what he does or says on stage. Biden is a gaffe factory just waiting to ramp up production of civilization ending stupidity in the form “listen here, cornpop” lines and completely forgetting who he is.
Not debating at all is a terrible look, but no way in hell should Biden be putting himself out there more than the bare minimum that is necessary.
Eta: I’m saying Biden should debate 3 times. No more, no less.
Agreed. Biden isn’t going to convince any Trump voters to come to his side, and Trump isn’t going to convince any Biden voters to come to his side. All that will happen is Biden will convince people to stay home. But fuck it would be so entertaining to watch.
Horrible idea. People will wonder what Biden is hiding, and justifiably so. No one has any idea how much support Biden would lose because its never been tried. Because it’s kind of crazy, honestly. Your candidate can’t get in front of the camera for a couple of hours and defend his ideas? The attack ads would be scathing, and justifiably so. Biden has to debate.
Doesn’t matter. Biden range of potential outcomes in the debates is way worse than Trump’s.
Biden: 75% does well and gains little or no votes
25% has a major gaffe that gives people a reason to stay home, gives GOP easy attack ads that will drive their turnout.
Trump: 100% is a bumbling asshole, loses not a single vote.
But Biden is way out in front and running against a team that is in total denial of reality and lies shamelessly. Every choice has more downside than upside for him.
I watched several very long speeches of Biden’s over the past couple weeks (BLM and his Trump attack this week) and the claim he is an incoherent mess is simply wrong. Empirically so. Save your selected clip of his millions of speeches. He is old as fuck and has a stutter. Of course he has periods of forgetting or misspeaking. He is no Obama but he sure as fuck is no Trump, either.
Bottom line, to equate him and Trump is simply disingenuous nonsense. It has no basis in reality. It’s pure projection.
That’s true. So let’s limit the opportunities for that downside to be realized. Debate 3 times as is standard. Don’t give any more opportunities than that for the downside to come into play.
Fine by me, I’m not calling for more debates. But the observation that debates have net downside for him is not sufficient to conclude debating is bad, because not debating also has net downside.
If Trump is desperate to debate, that means that Biden has leverage for negotiating the terms of the debate.
Can Trump say no if Biden insists on Yamiche Alcindor moderating one of the debates?
I’d love to see a debate format where questions get asked by the reporters who have been interacting with him at White House press conferences and he’s forced to take tough questions from them when he can’t just storm off and refuse to answer.
I mean it in a slightly different sense. People are projecting onto Biden what they want to be true instead of what is true because they so want to hate him.
So… sounds like we’re on the exact same page. I can see how my earlier post may have been poorly worded. I was intending to say he should debate 3 times. No more, no less. Sorry for the confusion.
lol that would be great for Trump. If he can get Biden to insist on someone clearly and transparently antagonistic to Trump and friendly to Biden, then that’s the story. You couldn’t have a more perfect narrative for Trump.
Obviously he’s not as eloquent as he once was because that’s what happens when you get old. I’m still convinced, though, that a lot of his problem comes from when he’s in a situation - like a debate - when he has to try to make lots of points fast. His mouth gets ahead of his brain, so he stumbles and mashes thoughts together. We’ve all done it - is just more obvious because he’s old and in the spotlight.
When he’s speaking in a scenario where he doesn’t have to rush, where he can collect his thoughts better, he’s still pretty impressive.
EDIT: Yes, and the stutter, too, which likely goes hand-in-hand with my first paragraph.
This. I saw one of his ads on YouTube a few times recently. He doesn’t get through 5 words before making an awkward mistake. In a format that he could have reshot infinite times until he didn’t make a simple mistake. The right wing will be very successful at painting him as a dementia riddled fool whether that is reality or not. Of course compared to Trump that’s not at all true, but truth doesn’t matter. Perception does.