Biden-Trump TV debates: there can be only one winner

Trump, who moonlighted as TV boxing analyst in his Studio 54 years and is fond of posting Photoshopped images of himself as an adonis in satin shorts, thinks of himself as the Ali of the politics arts when in all honesty the record shows that when it comes to debating he floats like an anvil and stings like a tickle stick.

Over the course of two Presidential campaigns he has debated his opponents four times and lost on every occasion - three times to Hillary Clinton in 2016 (by an average margin of 30%, according to polls of American voters who watched on TV), and once to Biden in 2020 (by 48% to 40%).

A TV debate the last time around (Image: free)

All four of those debates were memorable, albeit for all chaos and incoherence of the discourse, and the proof they offered to the watching world that America had strayed miles from its self-image as the beacon of democracy. In particular, the reviews of the 2020 meeting of Trump and Biden were brutal, with all of the discredit landing on the then incumbent.

“Fortunately, it’s not like this in Denmark,’’ wrote the then Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

Even Chinese observers, not known for promoting debate, never mind offering critical analysis of debates, chimed in. Hu Xijin, editor of the state-backed Global Times, commented, “Such chaos at the top of US politics reflects division, anxiety of US society and the accelerating loss of advantages of the US political system.”

The highlights - rather, the lowlights - belonged to Trump. He constantly spoke over Biden, he rambling incoherently about complex issues of international diplomacy, and declared himself “the least racist person in the room” while at the same time pandering to the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, telling them to “stand by'' - a message the group took to heart on January 6, leading the assault on the Capitol in Washington DC, for which many of its leaders are now serving jail time.

In the aftermath of the debate, Biden’s lead in the polls increased by three percentage points. On election day Trump lost the popular vote by more than seven million votes. It is impossible to calculate how many votes his dire debate performance cost him but you don’t need to be John Curtice to conclude it certainly didn’t help.

Despite all of this evidence to the contrary, the Republican standard bearer believes the more debates, the better his chances of regaining the White House in November. Trump has argued for two more debates “for excitement purposes,” and a “very large audience”. Biden blew off that idea.

His position as President allowed him to set the terms of engagement so there will only be two debates and no audience at either. Trump complained but he has only himself to blame. Infamously, in 2016 he brought along as his invited guests to his final debate against Hillary Clinton three women who had accused her husband of sexual assault. Four years later, he had secretly tested positive for Covid three days before the debate, failed to tell either the organizers or his opponent, and showed up anyway.

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Given these “off stage” indiscretions he should count himself lucky he gets to share the stage at all. Jen O'Malley Dillon, head of Biden’s campaign, was short and succinct in making this point. "No more games. No more chaos, no more debate about debates. We’ll see Donald Trump on June 27th in Atlanta." Her boss was a little less formal. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,’’ Biden said - a reference to the scheduling of Trump’s on-going criminal court case in New York, which doesn’t sit on Wednesdays.

The announcement set forth a blizzard of political analysis covering everything from the debate logistics to Biden’s motivation for agreeing to the debates in the first place. Since 1988 the non-partisan Commission for Presidential Debates has been responsible organising and setting the terms for these events but it was cut out of the process this time, with both sides complaining about the Commission’s proposal to stage debates as late as October, which would have come after early voting had started in many states. But if October was considered too late, June is unprecedentedly early. So why the rush?

The Trump camp, and in fairness a handful of more impartial analysts, smell panic in the Biden campaign. Despite a huge advantage in campaign advertising, and the daily gift of Donald Trump’s on-going criminal trial, the sitting President has remained persistently, albeit very narrowly, behind in the polls.

The respected CNN host Chris Wallace, who had the unhappy task of moderating that infamous 2020 debate, said he understood why Biden had agreed to two debates. “If the arc of the campaign continues in the way it has been, he will lose,’’ he said. “This early debate will give him a chance to dramatically change everything. If he shows up and handles himself reasonably well that will be enough to reassure those who agree with Biden on the issues but are concerned about his age and competence.”

Biden did exactly that earlier in the year, when he confounded low expectations for his State of the Union address to Congress with a lively, combative performance that revived his lifeless campaign. Trump failed to understand the most basic political lesson of that moment.

“Crooked Joe is the worst debater I have ever faced. He can’t string two sentences together,’’ the GOP candidate declared on his social media platform after the debates were announced.

When the bar is set so low, Biden hardly needs to lift his foot off the ground to step over it. Trump made the same daft mistake in 2020. But if Boss refuses to learn any lessons, his campaign staff and Fox News surrogates have been more political savvy, spending the rest of the week on trying to change Trump’s narrative from Muhammed Ali versus Dopey Old Joe to The Peoples’ Champ versus Dopey Old Joe, the Deep State, the Corrupt Media, Biased Judges, etc, etc, etc.

The two men have debated before - and Biden was judged to be the better performer (Image: free)

“This whole thing is rigged so heavily in Joe Biden’s favor but everything always is,’’ said Lara Trump, recently appointed chair of the Republican National Committee and - her sole qualification for that job - Trump’s daughter-in-law. Her complaint was that CNN had chosen Jake Tapper as one of the debate moderators. To normal viewers, Tapper is inoffensive and bland, albeit that he has on occasion pointed out to viewers inaccuracies in the things Trump says. But to the likes of Lara Trump, he is a radical, left-wing partisan.

Meanwhile, over on Fox News, which Trump had argued should host the second of the two debates (it went to the ABC network instead) the hosts were incandescent. They usually are but this time the network’s prime time superstar, and close personal friend of Donald Trump, Sean Hannity pole-vaulted over a mighty dung-heap of fake outrage in his anxiety to undercut the high expectations his mentor and friend had so inconveniently set.

“Biden’s list of demands will be in operation and I have no doubt that “Jacked Up” Joe will return to the debate stage after a heavy dose of whatever he had before the State of Union (that was weird, wasn’t it?),’’ he said of the debate terms. “Either way, don’t expect a walk in the park.”

There will be six more weeks of build up to the big night. Six more weeks of Hannity’s malevolent, fact-lite nonsense. Six more weeks of abuse, of lies. Six more weeks to quietly weep at the abject state of politics is what was considered the greatest democracy on earth. By the end of it all, the June 27 debate might come as a blessed relief. Until it starts, of course. And then all bets are off.