Full Presidential Debate Guide: Biden vs Trump - The New York Times - 0 views
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First, the presidential race so far has been an extremely stable affair, with little disrupting Mr. Biden’s consistent polling lead — not a pandemic, not record joblessness, not mass protests over policing and racism, and not an unexpected Supreme Court vacancy. A 90-minute debate will be hard-pressed to move the needle more than those factors.
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Second, the debate still represents one of Mr. Trump’s best opportunities to jostle the current dynamic, his first chance to speak directly to an audience of tens of millions of Americans alongside Mr. Biden.
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Mr. Trump has always been a showman, and debates have been some of his biggest stages as a politician. He jawbones, interrupts and lashes out in unusually personal ways, and he generally exerts an intense gravitational pull toward whatever he wants the spectacle to be about.
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Mr. Trump has lowered the bar so far — even demanding Mr. Biden take some kind of drug test
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Mr. Biden wants to avoid that — and he has been stress-tested by advisers not to respond to Mr. Trump’s obvious provocations if they are not central to his own message.
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Will Mr. Trump successfully goad Mr. Biden into losing his temper? Or will Mr. Biden be able to avoid walking into the trap?
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(For those who don’t know, his first wife and infant daughter died in a car crash nearly 50 years ago. His two sons survived but one of them, Beau, died of cancer in 2015.)
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For those wondering how far Mr. Trump might go down this road, it’s worth taking a look at when he debated Mrs. Clinton. Pressed on allegations of his own sexual misconduct — this was right after the “Access Hollywood” recording was released capturing him making vulgar remarks about groping women — he simply turned the spotlight to Mrs. Clinton’s husband.
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When provoked, Mr. Biden is prone to getting rattled and angry and to losing his train of thought, and he risks coming across as condescending.
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“The only analogy I can think of is, Joe Biden would hold a funeral for a squirrel he hit on the highway,” Mr. Luntz said.
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In 2016, Mr. Trump was relentless at the debates in his attacks and claims, many of them false or at least inaccurate. Mrs. Clinton tried to respond by urging viewers to go look at the fact-checking feature on her website. That proved ineffective.
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“Despite a global pandemic, despite an economic calamity, despite these seismic civil rights protests, nothing has changed,” Ms. Smith said. “If people have lost their job, lost their ability to go outside, can’t send their kids to school, then what is a one-hour televised debate of political talking points going to matter to them?”