Here, then, are three things which we expect to happen, both in the debate, and in its immediate aftermath.
1. Biden will focus on Trump’s status as a “convicted felon”
President Biden is short of good arguments to use about his own record. “Bidenomics” is a dud. Everyone knows that the economy is a major reason many Americans don’t like the sitting president. “Bidenflation” is a far more apt term. Moreover, the number of crises which have proliferated on Biden’s watch – the refugee crisis in New York, the Israel-Hamas war, and the somehow still going Ukraine boondoggle – are catnip for an opposing candidate. Without any positive arguments to make for why his leadership has worked, in other words, Biden has only one opening by which to prevail, especially as a polling underdog: namely, he has to render Trump himself unacceptable.
But this, too, is tricky, not because Trump lacks scandals, but because almost all of them have already been extensively (and sometimes literally) litigated. Voters have had eight years to price all of Trump’s least attractive qualities into their decision. This doesn’t mean Biden won’t seek to remind voters of those qualities. He will, for example, almost certainly bring up January 6 and echo the phrase so often used by Democratic candidates in 2022: “Democracy is on the ballot.” While this message makes us roll our eyes, based on 2022, it is undoubtedly effective at shifting more educated voters into Biden’s column. Given that Biden is bleeding support from practically everyone else, running up the numbers with that segment of the population is vital for him.
However, there is one element of Trump’s background which is fresh, and which has already proved effective at shifting independent voters (if only temporarily) out of Trump’s camp: his status as a “convicted felon.” Granted, the conviction was nonsensical; a bad joke and the product of a politicized court. But explaining why, while it should be easy in front of an appeals court, is not so easy in front of voters. The legal minutiae of the case would go over most voters’ heads. Trump will, of course, say (correctly) that the case was fake and rigged, but for Biden, it’s still a lifeline. His campaign surely believes that, if he can hammer the point that Trump is a felon into voters’ heads, then hesitance will be enough to at least make them stay home rather than vote against him. He will have aid in this respect, because…
2. Barring a truly disastrous performance, the mainstream media will say Biden won
There are ways this debate can go irrevocably wrong for Biden. A highly noticeable senior moment, for example, would almost certainly cripple his argument and possibly even reopen the argument for replacing him as the Democratic nominee. However, as we saw with this year’s State of the Union, Biden has ways to avoid such embarrassing moments in high stakes situations. He can, at times, even spontaneously respond to jibes from opponents. Oh yes, he’ll still look and sound old, but so did Ronald Reagan in 1984 (a comparison which Biden’s campaign will gleefully lean into in the event of a competent performance). And as we know from 2022, a performance that seems a bit out of it intellectually yet connects with voters at an emotional level is not a dealbreaker. Just ask Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) about that one. In short, for Biden, it’s not necessarily a dealbreaker if he just looks like an old fart, so long as he comes off as a well-meaning and essentially competent one. What’s more, Biden has a way of beating expectations. We, at least, remember in 2012 when Republicans assumed the gaffe-prone vice president would be steamrolled by the erudite and quick-tongued Paul Ryan. Instead, Biden made Ryan look like a nerdy kid getting a swirly from his gym teacher.
We bring all this up to hammer something home: the expectations for Biden leading into the debate are at rock bottom. Even a mildly competent performance would be enough to beat them. Which is why the media will happily spin the debate as a win for Biden pretty much no matter what happens. This is particularly likely, given that Trump is his opponent, and the media has proved pathologically incapable of giving President Trump credit for anything.
Biden’s campaign, we suspect, knows this, which is why they aren’t bothering to push back on all the speculation about whether Biden will be mentally fit for what’s to come. They’re sacrificing the game of perception before the debate so that they can appear to have more decisively won it afterwards. And what’s more, they are almost certainly hoping that Trump will repeat a mistake from 2020 and debate too aggressively (as he did in the first debate of 2020) in order to force a Biden stumble, alienating undecided voters. Which brings us to…
3. President Trump will focus on the issues and speak directly to voters
We frontloaded the bad news for a reason, and it was to get to this: President Trump has improved dramatically since his first two runs for president. What’s more, we suspect both he and his campaign know all the things we’ve just mentioned. For President Trump, this bad news is actually liberating. Knowing that Biden will attempt to make the debate personal because he lacks any substantive arguments for reelection, and that the media is a lost cause, enables him to focus on the one thing that actually matters: persuading the viewer that the past four years have been a disaster and that Biden must be replaced.
In other words, despite the media’s persistent refusal to treat President Trump as a serious candidate, we expect that he will be the candidate who focuses on actual substance. And he has a lot to work with. The Biden administration is a disaster. Its policy record is deeply unappealing, its own base is restive, and it is bleeding support among the very groups (minority voters and young people) who were supposed to power the Democratic “coalition of the ascendant” during the Obama years. What’s more, Trump is in the lead; the pressure on him to act like a challenger is diminished. Which means that he really has only to keep making his case directly and personably to the voters, and to appear more fit for office than Biden (not a tall order) in order to win. Biden will try to bait him, yes, and we expect President Trump to respond, but rather like with other desperate establishment underdogs (like Jeb Bush in 2016), Biden will be easy to shrug off, simply by virtue of the polls. Trump will, therefore, have room to focus less on bloodying up his opponent and more on simply making Biden look irrelevant and like a symbol of yesterday’s politics (which, given his age, will not be hard). Will he get credit for it? Not from the mainstream media. But no one trusts them, anyway. All he needs is to sell a remedy for the pain experienced by everyday Americans in swing states laboring under Biden’s crisis-prone presidency in order to consolidate his lead. And President Trump knows how to sell better than anyone. We don’t expect tomorrow to be an exception.
