Chris Seward/AP Photo
A campaign worker carries out a podium that indicates former President Donald Trump will debate President Joe Biden anytime, anywhere, or anyplace, before Trump speaks at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, April 20, 2024.
If the dice must be rolled, the Biden campaign decided, ’twere best ’twere rolled early. (They probably didn’t use the word “’twere,” but you get the picture.) This Thursday, then, the first of the two Biden-Trump debates will unfold on CNN, with no audience to hiss or applaud, and with microphones that will be switched on when it’s the candidate’s designated time to speak and, more importantly, switched off when it’s not. No Trump interruptions, save when Trump interrupts himself with digressions from his id.
Despite the anxiety among Biden supporters, fearing that a halting delivery could arrest his modest rise in the polls or (worst case) doom his chances, it’s Trump, not Biden, who’s voiced anxiety about the impending face-off.
The problem is that Trump and the MAGA right have depicted Biden as so enfeebled—with altered video clips being their go-to weapons—that even an adequate Biden performance could undo the credibility of their attacks. It’s both the MAGA base and the barely attentive not-very-partisans who’ve swallowed that mischaracterization of Biden. A New York Times story last week on the crowd at a Trump rally noted one of his supporters yelling, “Biden can’t stand up!” while the woman next to her was wearing a T-shirt bearing a picture of Biden with the words “Impeach me. I won’t remember.”
So Biden and his campaign have no need to lower expectations going into the debate, though that’s common practice for presidential candidates. Trump and his ilk have already done that for him, day in and day out for the past couple of years. If Biden actually can stand up and remember things, he will have undercut the one perception most damaging to his prospects: that he’s too old to be president—at least, when compared to Trump.
For which reason, ironically, Biden goes into the debate having to surmount the same hurdle as novice candidates (a category in which Biden certainly does not belong): demonstrating that he’s simply up to the job. That was the hurdle that John F. Kennedy faced as the nation’s youngest presidential nominee when he faced off against Richard Nixon in 1960, in the first-ever presidential candidate debate. To those watching on television, Kennedy won by looking like a plausible president—at least, as much as Nixon did. Sixty-four years later, Biden will submit himself to the same test, and likely find (I hope), as Kennedy did, that this isn’t the hardest bar to clear.
The two issues on which Biden most needs to acquit himself are the economy and immigration. On the latter, his two recent initiatives—putting a numerical ceiling on border crossings, and granting legal status to the undocumented spouses of American citizens (while enhancing the legal status of the Dreamers)—move him closer to majority public opinion than he’s been up to now. The extremism of the Trump–Stephen Miller plan for concentration camps and mass deportations presents a target, but one that he must handle gingerly, if at all. If the opportunity arises for him to make a clear contrast between the two policies, however, he should take it.
As to the economy, Biden needs to highlight what we at the Prospect might call our empirically substantiated line: the role that corporations with unusually high profit margins have played in the persistence of elevated prices, and the market concentration that enables them to get away with it. Without getting into the weeds of antitrust, Biden should note his administration’s and associated agencies’ efforts to reverse corporate concentration, fight C-suite lawbreakers, and continue his attack on junk fees. On the high cost of housing, he should go after the banks and private equity firms that have become the mega-landlords of our time. Beyond these points, he needs to speak, as he seldom has, of his second-term plans—certainly, to revive the Child Tax Credit and make child care affordable. He’s the family-friendly candidate, not Trump, and he needs to hammer that home.
Foreign policy will be a fraught topic, what with Biden’s ongoing support for a war that Bibi Netanyahu is determined never to end. But he should certainly note the yawning chasm between the alliances of democratic nations that he’s shored up and Trump’s knee-jerk affinity for every autocrat on the map. Trump has made all too clear that his idea of strong leadership is the use of force to suppress domestic dissent. Biden will surely contrast that with the democratic values to which our nation is committed, even if it has failed on innumerable instances to honor them.
The issue of Biden’s age has been, quite understandably, such a dominant topic that it’s easy to forget that viewers deemed him the winner of his 2020 debates with Trump. In no small part, that was due to Trump coming across as, well, Trump, a man unable to contain his boundless rage. Even with the constraints imposed by a turned-off microphone, Trump will surely go after Biden on a personal level, and after Hunter as well. Biden can probably swat this down; after all, his pledge not to pardon his son if Hunter can’t prevail in appellate courts provides a sharp contrast with Trump’s pledge to pardon the January 6th rioters (and implicit pledge to pardon himself, which should be made explicit). The more Trump gets personal, however, Biden should also note that the election is about the future of the American people, not that of the Trump and Biden clans.
None of this, of course, will diminish the anxiety that Biden supporters will feel during the next four days. But herewith, a guide for the fretful: The debate is not the only thing happening this week. The Supreme Court is likely to weigh in with some rulings that could undermine American democracy almost as much as a Trump presidency would. Want some relief? Worry about that.
