This week's debate between President Biden and Donald Trump won't produce much in the way of civil dialogue about the nation's future. It's more likely to resemble a demolition derby, with each contestant trying to derail the other.
And, let's face it, many viewers will tune in primarily for the accidents.
The question is not who will win that series of collisions, but who will lose.
Presidential debates rarely transform an election. But Thursday's showdown could change the momentum of this year's race, especially since the stakes are so high for Biden.
The president is nearly tied with Trump in national polls, but trails in battleground states that will determine the outcome. He is also fighting the view among many voters in both parties that he is too old to serve effectively for another four years.
Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to stoke those doubts. Biden “can't put two sentences together,” the former president told his supporters last month. “He can't find the stairs to get off stage.”
That's a pretty low bar for Biden to clear. Last week, Trump belatedly realized his mistake and tried to reverse course, calling the president “a worthy debater.”
“I don't want to underestimate him,” he explained.
Either way, the 90-minute debate will give the 81-year-old president a chance to show that he can not only find stairs but also think with his feet. If Biden visibly fails that test, his campaign will struggle to recover.
Trump, 78, also faces challenges.
In his first debate against Biden in 2020, the then-president behaved like a disruptive bully and quickly lost four points in the polls.
A similarly chaotic performance this week in Atlanta would help revive the coalition of anti-Trump voters that ousted him last time.
If Trump makes a serious mistake — he has been known to lapse into incoherence and confuse Biden with former President Obama — he, too, would face new questions about his mental fitness.
Once again, the question is not so much who will win but who will lose. Candidates fail in debates by stumbling more often than they succeed through brilliant wordplay.
So there is a lot at stake for both candidates. The incentive will be to attack, to try to push the other towards disaster.
The debate, hosted by CNN with correspondents Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators, will spare viewers the tedium of opening statements. There will be no live audience, a demand the Biden camp made after witnessing the loud enthusiasm of Trump supporters at previous events. Each candidate's microphone will be muted while the other speaks, in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2020 debate, when Trump constantly interrupted Biden and the moderators.
I asked strategists from both parties what advice they would give to each candidate.
Biden's first task is “to show that he's not too old to serve another term,” said Doug Sosnik, who advised President Clinton during his 1996 re-election campaign.
After that, Sosnik said, Biden “needs to have a clear narrative about his presidency, what his goals would be for a second term. And then he will be able to go after Trump.”
Republican strategist Alex Conant agreed that Biden should try to steer the debate toward the future and away from a referendum on his management of the economy, which has left most voters dissatisfied.
“He needs to spark a debate about abortion and everything else that Trump doesn't want to talk about,” Conant said. “He should try to provoke Trump into overreacting…then get out of the way and let Trump destroy himself.”
One pitfall Biden must avoid: boasting about legislation he has passed or trying to convince voters that the economy is better than they think.
“He has to pursue his political case against Donald Trump and not get bogged down, as headlines often do… in defending his record,” said David Axelrod, who advised Obama during his 2012 re-election campaign.
Trump's goals, unsurprisingly, are virtually the opposite of Biden's. He wants to make the election a referendum on Biden's first three years.
“My advice to Trump would be: 'You're going to win this race on two issues: inflation and immigration. Those are the only two things you should talk about,'” Conant said.
If the moderators or Biden ask Trump about his conviction for 34 felonies in New York state, “he doesn't need to get involved in that,” Conant said.
Sosnik agreed. “Stick to a referendum,” he said. “Were you better during [Trump’s] Presidency or Biden’s?”
The danger Trump must avoid: falling into complaints about the 2020 election, his conviction or his three pending criminal cases. That would reinforce the appearance “that he is only out for his own benefit and settling old personal scores… [and] reminding people how chaotic and exhausting his presidency was,” Sosnik said.
So will Thursday's debate change the direction of the race? Conant, the Republican, thinks so.
“This is the most consequential debate we have had in recent times,” he said. “Voters have important questions about each candidate. There are an unusual number of undecided or third-party voters who could still be mobile. “If one of the candidates has a really bad night, that could be decisive.”
But Sosnik is skeptical that many undecided voters will bother watching “a debate between two candidates they don't like.”
“It will take a big moment where one of the candidates falls flat on their face for this to be a game changer,” he said.
With four months left before Election Day, one June night will not determine the winner. But Thursday could be a crucial moment, depending not on which candidate performs better but which candidate performs worse.
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