I've changed my mind: This week's presidential debate is important.
Before we continue, a brief summary: Last month I expressed my long-held opinion that Presidential debates are not very significant. and they are very stupid. They are pseudo-events, the term historian Daniel J. Boorstin uses to refer to fabricated media spectacles that appear meaningful because we imbue them with meaning.
My opinion on this as a historical question has not changed. Even debate fans admit that John F. Kennedy won the first presidential debate in 1960 because he was telegenic and Richard Nixon looked like he had woken up in a motel room after a bender. In other words, debates have always revolved around style rather than substance.
And even the style hasn't mattered much. Researchers have found that the debates have virtually no detectable electoral impact.
So why have I changed my mind on this debate? To begin with, because in a “vibes“Election, a vibe debate could matter.
We have all heard that many voters (about 20%) are the so-called double enemies, people who really don't want to vote for Trump or Biden. Perhaps most importantly, just a few months ago an even larger share of voters did not believe they would actually have to choose between Trump and Biden. Only 33% of those surveyed by Economist/YouGov pollsters in March said a Trump-Biden rematch would “definitely” happen.
That's one reason Biden's camp wanted a debate in June, the earliest such meeting ever in three months. They need to get their “reachable” voters to stop wallowing in the crapulence of denial, accept that this is the option, and go home. That alone makes this debate different.
Typically, debates serve one or two functions. Sometimes they are desperate efforts to persuade voters to make their decision. In other cases, they are post-Labor Day attempts to introduce or reintroduce candidates to voters who haven't been paying attention.
But this debate is first and foremost an effort to get voters to understand what their choice is. These candidates (a sitting president who has been in politics for half a century and a former president and reality TV celebrity) do not need to be reintroduced to voters, although voters do need to be reassured about them.
That's why a debate, with its tendency to amplify style over substance, might matter more this time. Great debates occasionally arise from well-placed one-liners, but more often they involve unintentional factors like gaffes, body language, and even sighs. What is learned from presidential debates tends not to be a policy position or a plan, but rather a level of comfort with the idea of a person being in front of us for four more years.
That's a pretty stupid criterion for choosing a president. But these are stupid times. And when the biggest challenge for candidates is convincing voters who have deep doubts about their mental acuity and character, comfort level may be the only thing that matters.
That's why the stakes are higher for Biden entering this debate. Yes, it was foolish of Trump to set the bar so low for his opponent by suggesting that he is a “brain dead zombie”, but I think the traditional experts on the expectation game are exaggerated. Regardless of Trump's rhetoric, millions of people—undecided Democrats, independents, and especially those who hate doppelgangers—have legitimate and sincere concerns about Biden's physical and mental fitness. I don't think debates are a good test of presidential fitness, but for many voters, this debate could be a decisive test of Biden's mental fitness.
Even progressives like Van Jones have admitted that if the president really screws up this debate, it will be “game over” for him. I think that's right. Fair or not, if Biden has a major malfunction, it will be an irreparable confirmation of voters' concerns about his age. I would expect the whispers about replacing him on the ticket to become almost screams From overnight.
But if Biden clears that low hurdle, suddenly the stakes will be higher for Trump. Most voters don't like the former president and virtually never have. If he leans toward the traits that turn them off — if he follows that old “Be yourself” advice — and Biden is even modestly reassuring, doppelganger haters and other undecideds could easily lean toward the president. Not all of them, of course, but Biden doesn't need all of them.
To put it in boxing terms, if it's a knockout, Biden is likely the loser. If it's a split decision, there's a good chance it will split in Biden's favor.
