Digging Into 2024’s First Presidential Debate
I guess America’s media moguls think the people want to see a train wreck. It certainly isn’t because people like the legacy political parties’ candidates for the nation’s top post.
Fox News, Fox Business, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, NewsNation, Scripps News and Newsmax have all agreed to simulcast a CNN-sponsored presidential debate on Thursday, June 27 at 6PM PDT.
Just about every article referencing polling mentions how uninterested voters are in the 2024 general election. And we’re looking at the two least-liked major party presidential candidates in three decades, according to Pew research.
This will be the first debate between a current and a former U.S. president. It will be the first featuring a convicted felon. And it will be the first presented before the major parties have actually picked a nominee.
None of the minor party candidates, who are mostly polling in the single digits, will be appearing. The last and only time a non-major party candidate appeared at a televised debate was 1992, when viewers thought Ross Perot won the first and third debate. (Future president Bill Clinton won the second.)
In the general election, Perot did not win a single electoral vote, despite garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Clinton bested George H.W. Bush in the Electoral College, 370-168. The reality of elections in the United States is that third party bids in our first-past-the-post political system are essentially impossible.
Donald J. Trump, running for another shot at the job, has started downplaying expectations. His campaign, along with their sycophants at Fox News and other Murdoch media, were building a narrative portraying incumbent President Joe Biden –according to the New York Times– as a “husk of a man who can barely walk or formulate complete sentences.”
Selectively edited videos purporting to discredit Biden have been passed around at every level of the right wing media ecosystem. It’s almost as if they’re nervous about their own candidates' cognitive issues.
At campaign rallies in recent days, Trump has tried to trivialize the possibility of a strong Biden showing, invoking Sean Hannity’s concerns about the president hoovering up a big pile of cocaine as a performance enhancer. And, of course, there’s the “fact” that both moderators -Jake Tapper and Dana Bash- will be in the bag for the Democrat.
Just remember folks, every Republican accusation is a confession. Remember the debate with Hillary Clinton where Trump wandered about the stage and had a bad case of the sniffles?
This past weekend was the start of debate prep time for candidates. These candidates are debating because each of them sees this not as an obligation, but rather something that’s in their campaign’s own best interests, recognizing this election could go either way.
The Biden side will largely be ensconced at Camp David. In the past, prep has started with general conversations about how to answer policy questions and ended with rehearsals with a stand-in opponent.
Democrats have settled on a master strategy, namely working on communicating the notion that the former president snapped after losing in 2020 — becoming more self-obsessed, more dangerous and more extreme.
Via The Washington Post:
“We’ve been working on how to marry the sins and the ills of the first term and Trump’s visceral branding that continues to a second term, because voters are always voting on the future,” said Molly Murphy, another pollster working on the Biden campaign effort. “It allows us to talk about a variety of issues.”
Among those issues are much of what the Biden campaign now obsesses over — Trump’s embrace of the term “dictator,” his rhetoric about “retribution,” his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his more aggressive second-term policy plans and his legal challenges. The campaign also plans to broaden the attack in the coming weeks by arguing that Trump is now more willing to give away policy wins to the wealthy and well connected, citing the former president’s recent comments at fundraisers promising to reward high-dollar donors.
This week, the campaign released an ad that focused on Trump’s felony convictions for business fraud and civil judgments regarding sexual assault and additional fraud. Advisers say the import of that ad is not the felony label that got headlines, but the argument Biden’s team is using the label to make.
An obvious tactic for the Democratic candidate will be to see if he can get under Trump’s skin, looking for another “Will you just shut up, man” moment.
If Trump falls into that trap, it will undermine his campaign’s assumptions that he can make the debate about strength vs weakness. On the other hand, if the debate is as boring as this year’s rules threaten to make it, both candidates should try to look extra-sharp. Nixon’s five o’clock shadow didn’t stand a chance against Kennedy’s rugged youthfulness in 1960.
Republican National Committee headquarters hosted a debate prep session for their candidate this past week, catering to Trump’s preference for looser conversations, batting around themes, ideas and one-liners more informally among advisers.
Via The New York Times:
“He views his rallies as debate prep,” said Marc Lotter, who was an aide on Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign and now works for a conservative nonprofit group. The challenge for Mr. Trump, Mr. Lotter said, will be to tighten answers to a time limit. “If they’re literally going to cut your mic, you’ve got to hit your marks,” he said.
Team Trump believes they have one key advantage over the debate four years ago: an unpopular Biden record to attack. Their guy is being urged to focus on inflation, the fact that major conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza began during Mr. Biden’s tenure and record border crossings that the former president blames for domestic crime.
Rupert Murdoch's New York Post has been hammering the issue of migrant crime, repeatedly featuring stories on the theme on its front pages and programming articles into the top position on its website. Recent front page headlines include "OPEN BORDER KILLER," "MIGRANTS HORROR." Some of the stories featured aren't even local New York crime stories. Fox News has featured those stories on air, dubbing the segments "MIGRANT CRIME CHAOS."
I would expect the former President to tell at least one gruesome crime story, which will be debunked hours later when the details don’t matter as much as the impression..
There are some different rules for this debate, starting with absence of an audience.
There will be no opening statements. Each side will get two minutes for answers to moderators’ questions, and one minute for rebuttals. Trump won a coin toss and will get the last two minute closing statement.
Mics will be muted when it’s not the candidate’s turn. Biden’s team demanded this because of Trump’s constant interrupting at the first debate in 2020. The upside for Trump could be less antics and interruptions, which many believe cost him in 2020. However, wherever he goes, there’s always drama of some kind.
There will be two commercial breaks with ads from corporate sponsors. While this format will allow Trump and Biden to take a breather, CNN is saying “campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time.”
These tamp-down-the-craziness measures (if people stay awake) should favor Biden’s side, provided he brings the State-of-the-Union energy displayed earlier this year.
Reasonable people will hope the contrast is obvious enough to reassure undecided voters. If the President can flash those Dark Brandon eyes at some point, the already committed will be satisfied.
So Trump’s defense will be offensive, trash-talking, and lie-spewing about every aspect of Biden that he can summon. MAGAnaughts will proclaim victory, regardless, just as they plan to do with the 2024 election results.
Nina Burleigh, writing at the American Freakshow substack, sums up the real purpose of Trump’s theatrics:
The bar for Trump, as has been pointed out helplessly, to no discernible effect, over and over by political reporters forced to keep eyes on him, is low, low, low. Somewhere along his life path, his Saurian* eye identified a need among a swath of Americans for nonsensical gibberish. The MAGAs love it. And the rest of the world barely raises an eyebrow anymore when he rants about whether sinking electric boats can electrocute sharks — his rationale for a serious policy proposal to ban electric vehicles that is shameless, open payback for his one billion dollar campaign donation ask from fossil fuel giants. (*Saurian = lizard like)
In another era, Trump’s true calling in life would be a traveling tentpole circus barker, hustling from town to town with an entourage of snake oil salesmen, other grifters, and assorted freakish animal and humanoid curiosities. The Sinatra croon, the show, that’s entertainment, and as ever, it serves a nefarious purpose - diverting the crowd from the pickpockets.
Serious people, the 21st Century American oligarchy, the chiefs of the oil companies, the hedge fund and private equity dukes, the Silicon Valley magnates, and all the one percenters around the world interested in exploiting the United States for natural resources, cheap union-less labor, weapons, are staking their hopes on the diversionary madness he provides.